Black and Studs

This town, as the saying went, was not big enough for the both of them. Not, of course, that Selina Kyle wasn't used to having to share, Gotham was full of its fair share of loons who laid claim to the city, not least of the damn Bat, but this new girl with her plated armour and its decorative cat ears was one pussycat in Gotham too many.

Recently, there had been a number of weird events within the city, its streets displaced, the shape of a tremendous comet flickering occasionally into view in the midday sky. On the television, Lana Lang had said that this was due to a temporal rift of some kind, that she had every faith that the Batman was working hard to put a stop to the weirdness, but Kyle remained uncertain.

There were so many mutants in Gotham, so many damn kids hopped up on Nuke that she wasn't sure the Bat could turn his attention for long enough to the skies above them to worry about such impossible concept as temporal rifts and all that other science mumbo-jumbo. That stuff was Justice League stuff, she thought, and that Lana Lang lady should know better than speaking out for Batman when there was so much else going on.

From where she crouched atop the Museum of Antiquities, the rain falling heavily from the darkened sky, the moon bright, milk white, Kyle knew that something would have to be done about this, and, at the same time, she knew that she was not the one to resolve it; who was she after all, just an ex-trick in a homemade costume, what did she know about temporal rifts?

And yet this new girl, this new girl troubled her. She had got both Holly and Ted to do some digging for her, but, there was only so much either of them could unearth: how do you find dirt on someone who doesn't exist in your world? Still, what Ted had discovered, leaning no doubt on those Justice Society friends of his, was that the girl's name was Lynx, Lynx Kassandra, and she was some kind of ninja hero from another Earth, one without a Gotham.

He had handed her a grainy Polaroid of a girl with pink hair and thick nerd glasses, a baseball cap on backwards with obvious and obnoxious cat ears.

'Don't ask for more,' Ted advised her in his gruff tone, 'I ain't got nothing more than that.'

Probably he had been warned off it for whatever reason. Still, Selina Kyle wasn't a woman who took no for an answer.

Holly had checked in later that day to say that this Lynx girl had set up with a robot called A.I.M. —not the A.I.M. that she had known previously, another one of those evil corporations from another one of those alternate Earths that had done business with Cadmus—in some place called Frosty Flights, but Kyle had no idea how to get to such a place or on what Earth it was located.

This was the problem with temporal rifts, she reflected, they got everyone turned about head over heel.

It was then that she caught sight of that other woman in the streets below, the lights of police sirens casting her shadow large across the brick walls stained with clown gang graffiti.

She felt a sudden thrill of delight at the sight of her rival, a feeling of intense excitement. It wasn't as if she revelled in the chaos such events as this afforded, and it wasn't as if she was in total denial as to her attraction to the other, and yet, more than anything else, she did so love a game of cat and mouse.

With a smile and a purr, Selina Kyle swung into action.