As Huntress leaped from the next building and crashed through the already-broken window of the seemingly disused warehouse, landing with enough force to crack the bare concrete beneath her feet, a wild, vicious grin was spread across her noble features - though it dimmed slightly at the bleating protests coming through in her earpiece.
'Huntress! Please, wait for backup! Qualia is still out of action, Flamespout and Radiance are being held up by other villains, and Axehead is still a long way out. You're on your own here. It could be a trap. You can't go in the-'
Huntress plucked the tiny device from her ear and crushed it to pieces underfoot. Farsight, the group's coordinator, was always careful - but in this case, far too careful. After all, they had finally tracked The Cobra to her secretive lair. This was their chance to finally take the supervillain down, once and for all. What was Huntress supposed to do? Just sit on her hands until someone showed up to babysit her?
No way. Not in this lifetime. Not after everything The Cobra had done. This was personal.
"Sorry, ladies," Huntress muttered, as she advanced towards the building's depths. "This time, the glory's all mine."
What did she have to be afraid of? The Cobra was a mastermind and a diabolical manipulator, certainly. There was no telling who she might have turned into a mindless, fanatically loyal double agent with that power of hers. But here, now, in the flesh, all those plans and schemes would mean nothing. In a fair fight, The Cobra was little better off than a mere civilian.
Huntress, meanwhile, was a superhero with godlike strength - literally. She'd started out as a mere vigilante, hunting petty criminals and wrongdoers, but her will and determination had soon caught the attention of Dianae, the ancient maiden goddess of the hunt. Dianae had blessed her with many gifts: strength, stature, a hunter's instincts, and her own divine armaments. Now, as the goddess's avatar, Huntress stood seven feet tall, with an amazon's body, clad in an enchanted, steel blue, leather bodice and cowl, with a colossal, heaven-forged war bow strapped over her back.
Yeah. The Cobra didn't stand a chance.
Her resolve set, Huntress moved like a stalking wolf. For years, The Cobra had been a ghost. A curse, weaving her malign influence throughout the world without once leaving herself vulnerable to just retaliation. It was only through happenstance that Huntress managed to track her here, to what seemed like nothing more than yet another abandoned warehouse hidden deep within anonymous urban sprawl. It was the perfect place for a cunning supervillain to hide.
But The Cobra was about to learn that she was no match for the cunning of a huntress who had caught her scent.
The disused building was huge, and as Huntress headed into its depths, the open storage spaces gave way to cramped rooms and narrow, labyrinthine service corridors. Huntress moved quickly, faster than any mere mortal could have, but her senses remained keen to any danger and her hunting instincts guided her along a sure route towards her prey. She expected traps, tricks, maybe even minions - but there was nothing. No impediment to her progress as she made her way toward The Cobra's lair.
Huntress let herself grin. It was so typical of villains. When you finally hit them close to their home, they were all but defenseless.
In turn, featureless, dusty corridors soon gave way to passageways that showed signs of recent use and renovation. Huntress's superhuman ears picked up on the hum of electricity, and the walls were covered with wires; brand new fiber-optic cables, all of which seemed to lead inexorably towards a single point. Eventually, she came to a heavy, metal door, deep within the bowels of the building. Behind it was the nerve center of everything.
This was it. This was The Cobra. It had to be
Huntress swiftly unslung her bow from her shoulder, notched an arrow, and forced the door open with a single, mighty kick.
Inside, it was dark, even to Huntress's enhanced eyes. Light spilled out into the large room only from a huge array of monitors arranged on the opposite wall. Before the monitors was a desk, and before the desk was a woman sitting in a chair, staring up at them. She didn't look round, not even at the sound of the huge, heavy door to her lair crashing to the ground.
But Huntress didn't need to see her face to know that she'd found her enemy. At last.
The woman was brunette and considerably shorter than Huntress; even from behind, Huntress would have recognized her anywhere. The true giveaway was what she was wearing: a tight bodysuit, so dark it was almost black, except that when it caught the light, it was possible to see a scaled pattern etched across its surface in the deepest shade of emerald.
"Cobra!" Huntress roared, as she stepped across the threshold. "It's over! In the name of the goddess, I'm here to bring you to justice."
There was no reply. The Cobra didn't even turn. Information kept flickering across the monitors: maps, dates, statistics.
"You're finished." Huntress advanced another step. "I'm going to make sure you spend the rest of your life behind bars - and even that's better than you deserve. You've killed a lot of good heroes. You killed my friend. Come on. Come face your reckoning."
The Cobra still didn't acknowledge her presence. She remained completely focused on the screens in front of her, and constant flickering as they chanced and scrolled. Huntress felt her choler start to rise.
"Face me!" she yelled. Another step. "I want to see the look in your eyes when you realize you've lost."
Still, nothing. Huntress's temper flared, and anger drowned out her more cautious urges. She'd had enough of this childish game.
"Face me!" she repeated - and as she stepped forward, she loosed an arrow from her bow. Thick as a spear, it flew through the air and hit square its target: one of the monitors to The Cobra's left. Impaled, it flickered black and shattered, showering the supervillain in sparks.
But she still didn't move
Huntress frowned. She stepped forward, reached out to put her hand on The Cobra's shoulder, and spun the chair.
It wasn't her. It was some stranger, a woman Huntress had never seen before, with a passing similarity to the supervillain, dressed in her costume and sat in her chair, a telltale look of glassy-eyed, insensate pleasure on her face.
Huntress barely had time to process the sudden, sinking feeling in her gut before the trap was sprung.
The superhero wheeled and instinctively raised her bow - but without a notched arrow, it was useless. Before she could prepare one, she caught a glimpse of a slender outline, darting towards her from the shadowy corners of the room, holding some kind of large weapon that was already trained directly at the superhero. Huntress braced herself - but still, she wasn't worried. Her divine gifts made her bulletproof. She was ready to take a blow.
