Thea hadn't even reacted yet when the chaos below began announcing her handiwork for her.
"It's Batman's smoke bomb!"
"Run! Batman's here!"
Voices erupted through the haze — wild, panicked, overlapping like a marketplace in full panic.
Thea stared blankly into the smoke, utterly speechless.
Seriously? You smell a little gas and lose your minds like this?
Bruce, you've traumatized this city so badly they probably flinch at their own shadows.
Still… if they wanted to mistake her for Batman, she wouldn't correct them.
Better for everyone if "the Dark Knight" took the blame tonight.
She flipped down her infrared goggles, scanning the smoky blur of red silhouettes — heat signatures moving, ducking, stumbling — and began firing.
Pull, release, pull, release.
Like an arcade game.
She wasn't even checking who fell; that wasn't the point.
"Situation under control," she muttered into her earpiece. "What's the status at the campus? And where's my backup?"
Only static answered.
"…Hello?" she pressed again.
After a moment, Felicity's nervous voice came through.
"Ah—Thea, everyone's… really busy right now. The enemies here are tough!"
"How many?"
Thea squinted at her thermal feed, tracking the movement of every warm body.
"Nine!" Felicity blurted. "Selina's fighting four, Barbara's got three, Lyla and one of the agents are handling one each!"
Thea almost dropped her bow.
Nine? That was it? She'd assumed Gotham's entire rogue gallery had shown up — and meanwhile her team was struggling with nine random thugs?
You've got to be kidding me.
But she bit back her irritation. Saying that out loud would crush morale, and right now she had no time to babysit egos.
Her own smoke-filled battlefield had gone quiet — no more moving heat signatures. Still, just in case, she loosed another round of arrows, one for every body still twitching.
"Get me three drivers," she said curtly. "I'm heading over."
She didn't dare leave immediately — not until she was sure none of the "casualties" were faking.
With Gotham's brand of lunatic, you never knew who might play dead until you turned your back.
"We're almost done!" Catwoman's voice cut in, panting hard. "You clean up fast, huh?"
"Something like that," Thea replied dryly.
In truth, she was exhausted. In under five minutes she'd fired ninety arrows — each shot aimed at moving, dodging, screaming targets in dense smoke. None of them had been easy hits, and though she'd tried to avoid lethal areas, she had no idea how many were still breathing.
With a sigh, she hopped onto her hoverboard and glided low across the carnage.
There — among a heap of unconscious bodies — she spotted a familiar black-haired figure.
"Hey," she said into her mic, "found Robin. He's out cold, but looks fine."
"…Thank God. Thank you, Thea," Barbara's relief came through, raw and trembling.
Reassured, she finished one last sweep, debating whether to wake the boy or just tie him down and drag him out when she heard the approaching engines.
Sirens. Police.
And at their head — Commissioner Gordon himself, armored and grim, leading a dozen GCPD officers armed with submachine guns.
They came running down the road… only to stop dead.
The smoke had thinned enough to reveal what lay beneath.
The asphalt — once black — was now slick red.
Dozens of bodies sprawled across the street, soldiers and thugs alike. Blood pooled under them in jagged rivers.
Every one of them had arrows jutting from their limbs.
Some had three or four, others only one or two.
The scene didn't look like a modern firefight — it looked like a medieval battlefield, as if a company of English longbowmen had teleported into Gotham and unleashed hell.
Several men hadn't died but had been pinned to the ground by the arrows through their hands or feet. During the panic, others had stumbled over them, tearing flesh against the embedded shafts — turning clean wounds into shredded stumps.
The stench of iron filled the air.
"Ugh—"
Two young officers gagged and stumbled aside, vomiting behind a truck.
Even Gordon, veteran of Gotham's filth, felt his stomach twist. He'd seen war, seen worse — but not in his own streets, not like this.
Still, as he studied the wounded, one thing caught his attention: not a single body was dead.
Every shot was cleanly nonlethal — arms, legs, shoulders, nothing vital.
The realization softened his expression.
So the rumors were true… she really does hold back.
In his mind, that made her a hero.
A bit brutal, maybe, but in Gotham? Brutality was practically compassion.
As for the missing limbs — well, that was a matter for the rehab clinics and the disability fund.
He nodded to his men. "Round them up."
"Uh, sir…" one rookie called hesitantly, looking at a maimed prisoner. "This guy's got no hands. How are we supposed to cuff him?"
Gordon sighed like a man who'd lived too long.
"Find another one missing the opposite hand," he said evenly. "Cuff them together."
Problem solved.
The rookies blinked, then nodded in admiration.
Experience. That's leadership.
As they began pairing up the injured criminals like mismatched dolls, Thea dusted herself off and turned back to Gordon.
"Commissioner, they're all yours. I'm heading to the campus — still got unfinished business."
Before anyone could respond, she kicked off the ground and shot skyward, vanishing into the pale morning light.
The officers stared after her — some in awe, some in fear.
"…She did all this alone?" one finally whispered.
"Looks that way," another murmured. "God, she's terrifying…"
The group fell silent, glancing back at the street of shattered bodies and broken arrows.
One woman.
Thirty enemies.
No fatalities — but enough blood to paint the road red.
Too ruthless to be an angel.
Too merciful to be a monster.
Gotham had found itself a new legend.