Part Five

Barry, Oliver, and Kara were returned immediately to a holding cell occupied by convicts that started to harass Kara the instant she was put in. "Hey, baby," one of them called. "Why don't you bring your sweet self over here?"

Barry and Oliver, knowing that Kara was left vulnerable without her powers, stepped in front of her to ward off the lowlifes.

"Back off," Barry said. "She's with us."

"Well, she about to be wit us now," the lowlife retorted. "So why don't you back off, snowflake?"

Words turned to shoving, and Barry and Oliver verged on an all-out brawl with their cellmates.

That was until a strange alien noise reverberated within the cell.

A heavy humming, grinding noise.

Barry, Oliver, and Kara knew it as the welcoming sound of Maureen's T.A.R.D.I.S. It materialized inside their cell, terrifying the convicts, who backed themselves against the corner.

Selina appeared at the doorway. "Well, don't just stand there like morons, move your butts," she urged the three heroes, who showed no hesitation in following her command.

"Selina?"

The streetwise girl's concentration veered to one of the cowering convicts at the corner. "Ralph," she identified him.

"Hey, you bustin' your new friends out," Ralph said, "do the same for us, huh?"

Unfortunately for Ralph, Selina never held the man in such high regard.

"Sorry, Ralph. Not enough room."

And with that, she retreated back into the T.A.R.D.I.S., which had dematerialized out of the cell afterward.

Barry, Kara, and Oliver met with its Time Lady pilot at the controls.

"Had to practically fight the Nuage to materialize at the station," Maureen told them. "It's getting bigger and stronger by the second."

"Have you found a way to stop it?" Oliver asked.

"I think that I have, but it's a bit drastic," Maureen confirmed. "It involves opening a rift that will suck the cloud back into the infinite dimensional corridor. But, right now, I'm more bothered with findin' my father, who still thinks she's a ruthless Gotham City gang leader."

"One of the officers back in the station mentioned a gang war she's going to be in with the Sirens," Kara alerted.

"We can't let that happen," Maureen resolutely declared.

Urgently, she brought her T.A.R.D.I.S. out of the dimensional corridor.

Leading their men, including Butch Gilzean, Barbara and Tabitha confronted Min Curtsinger and her heavies by the Gotham City docks. Both gangs were armed with enough artillery to ensure a total bloodbath.

"Where's your lil' sissy?" Barbara taunted Min. "She chickened out on you?"

Her mocking made Min's trigger finger that much itchier.

"Me and my boys can take you, your little dominatrix, and the human pit-bull all on our own," Min disputed.

Barbara grinned in sinister glee. "Take her down," she ordered her gang.

The war was just about to begin before a new faction busted into the scene.

"G.C.P.D.! FREEZE!"

Gordon, Bullock, and the rest of the police force raided the confrontation.

Their presence, however, only encouraged more violence as the gangs opened fire on them and each other.

"Geez Louise," Bullock exclaimed. "Can this night get any crazier?!"

In response to the acting commissioner's rhetorical inquiry, a large dark figure shaped like a bat dropped right in the middle of the deadly conflict, engaging in fierce combat with thugs in both Min and the Sirens' gangs.

Gordon and Bullock witnessed the costumed vigilante's fast-as-lightning moves in complete awe.

"Is that Theo Galavan back from the dead…again?!" Bullock questioned.

"No," Gordon negated. "Don't remember Galavan looking like a giant bat."

Suddenly, in the midst of all the chaos that erupted at the docks, Gordon and Bullock detected a strange grinding noise in the air, followed by the bizarre arrival of a tall, rectangular black solid out of thin air.

"Alright," a befuddled Bullock gaped. "That's hands-down the weirdest thing here right now."

Doors formed on the solid, permitting the emergence of Oliver Queen from the alien spacecraft. Armed once again with his bow and arrow, the emerald archer subjugated most of the thugs by shooting for their arms and legs.

When he reached Min, he froze in place, his arrow trained on her.

Likewise, she had him at gunpoint, initiating a standoff between them.

"This isn't you, Min," Oliver told her.

"You don't even know me, Robin Hood."

"You're right, I don't. But my friends do, and that's good enough reason for me to convince you to come with us."

"You freaks took my sister from me! I should kill you for that! And I think I will!"

Oliver tensed, seeing her finger hug up on the trigger.

Before Min could fire, she felt something clamp down on her head.

"What the—?!"

Her body was abruptly overcome with paralyzing agony, from her head straight down to her toes, and she fell into deep unconsciousness.

She collapsed into the waiting arms of Barry Allen, who was successful in creeping up behind Min, placing a portable version of the Chameleon Arch on her head, and activating it.

He and Oliver worked without delay in getting her back in the T.A.R.D.I.S.

On their way, they passed Alfred, who disembarked from the Gallifreyan ship long enough to watch the bat-shaped man that he knew to be Bruce Wayne vanquishing the remaining thugs with effortless combat expertise.

"Bruce," he called.

The man looked his way, a deep glare of recognition penetrating beneath a frightening black cowl. Alfred was struck by it; he knew those eyes to be Bruce's, yet they were far different…more focused…more intimidating…more matured.

A smoke bomb was thrown to the ground by the batman, fumigating the area and sanctioning him to flee the scene unnoticed.

"Alfred," Maureen beckoned, sticking her upper body out through the doors of her T.A.R.D.I.S. to see the flummoxed butler staring at an empty cloud, which thankfully wasn't the Nuage…at least for now. "Alfred, c'mon! We have to get outta here!"

Snapping himself out of his trance, Alfred returned inside the ship.

It dematerialized to the audience of an overwhelmed Gordon and Bullock.

"What just happened here, Jim?"

Moments passed since the frenzied situation at the Gotham docks.

Safe inside Maureen's T.A.R.D.I.S., Min lied unconscious in one of the console platform seats, while Barry removed the smoking portable Chameleon Arch headset off her head.

Maureen utilized the functions of her Gallifreyan ship to open a temporary, stable rift above Gotham City, vacuuming the Nuage out of the city's atmosphere and dispersing it back into the infinite dimensional corridor.

"Still can't believe that was Bruce we saw back there," Selina contemplated, feeling as distraught as Alfred. "He's gonna be back to normal with that Nuage thing gone now, right?"

"Of course," Maureen assured. "The effects are temporary. He should be back to himself within a few months."

"A few months?!" Selina cried out in disbelief.

"Hey, the streets of Gotham will be a whole lot safer with him out there," Maureen noted.

Neither Alfred nor Selina could argue with that logic – not after what they saw Bruce was capable of as the batman. Maureen dropped them off back to Wayne Manor and, after an exchange of farewells, returned into the infinite dimensional corridor with Barry, Oliver, Kara, and Min.

"Now there's just the problem with Barry and me getting our powers back," Kara despondently said.

"Yeah, when or if they'll ever return," Barry added in the same manner.

"Oh, I think I have the perfect solution," Maureen addressed, retrieving the Chameleon Arch headset from Barry. "It'll only take a bit of reprogramming each of your biological structures."

Barry and Kara gulped, neither thrilled to undergo the painful procedure.

The team then heard groaning near them, turning to see Min finally regaining consciousness and her normal senses.

"Pop," Maureen approached her. "You okay?"

Rubbing the back of her head, Min replied, "I feel worse from guilt than pain."

"I know the feeling," Maureen shared in the remorse. "But none of it was your fault any more than it was mine."

"I'll try to keep telling myself that," an unconvinced Min said. "In the meantime, I'll just rack it up as another reason why I have to travel alone. I only end up hurting the people I care about when they're around me."

As much as it was in Maureen's yearning to boost back her father's self-esteem, she understood what Min meant. There was still much culpability in this incarnation of the Time Lord known on Gallifrey as "The Tinkerer." It was not only from the Time War, but her recent abandonment of Gen, a past regeneration of Maureen's.

Sadly, she had to oblige to Min's request, returning her to the last known destination of her Type-X T.A.R.D.I.S.

And so Min was left to journey the infinite D.C. alone.