Lyla could only give Thea a helpless look at her earlier question.
Even with her high clearance, she handled administrative coordination — not secret weapons programs.
And even if she had come across something sensitive, the endless codenames and compartmentalization meant she wouldn't have recognized what it really was anyway.
So she could only mumble vaguely,
"No, nothing like that. We're a responsible, humanitarian government agency. Anti-personnel gas, chemical weapons—those are violations of every moral code. We wouldn't touch them for a minute."
Thea just nodded, unconvinced. Sure, sure. You definitely don't have any.
Fine. If they wouldn't hand one over, she'd just make her own.
She spent the entire afternoon prowling through the A.R.G.U.S. tech division, trying to find something — anything — that could be repurposed.
Reality hit hard.
The moment she mentioned gas, every researcher's head shook like a row of bobble dolls.
No matter how many philosophical speeches she gave about "non-lethal containment," they refused to admit to anything.
From their faces, though, she knew perfectly well they were lying. There were things stored in some vault, just none of them were stupid enough to let her near it.
Even Lyla chimed in with a bureaucratic smile: We can all die on the battlefield, but we do not — absolutely do not — use poison gas.
With that, Thea could only sigh and give up.
Maybe something else? Sonic weapons?
They ran simulations using Arkham's blueprints. The asylum's walls were ridiculously solid — built like an underground bunker.
Explosives that could flip her entire command truck would only crumble half a wall inside Arkham.
Those same walls would absorb ninety percent of any soundwave impact. Unless they fired a sonic grenade into every room — hundreds of them — the effect would be useless.
Too expensive, too impractical.
Magnetic pulses? No good either.
Smoke bombs could work… but the asylum's interior was massive. They'd need one the size of a small stadium to cover it all. The tech team laughed nervously and said they'd get back to her in a decade.
By sunset, Thea's brain felt cooked.
She dragged herself back to her quarters, head spinning. "Fine," she muttered. "Tomorrow I'm calling a brainstorming session. Maybe someone else can figure this out."
Boom!
Bang!
Her well-earned sleep was shattered by explosions outside.
Still half-dreaming, she grumbled, Fireworks? What is this, Lunar New Year?
Then reality caught up.
Right. Wrong continent. They celebrate Christmas here.
Her eyes snapped open.
Damn it—don't tell me we're under attack again!
She cursed Commissioner Gordon six ways from Sunday as she threw on her suit.
Three nights in a row, and you still call this a "secure base"?
Rushing outside, she was relieved to see the key people — Gordon, Lyla, several agents — all present and alive.
Good. No kidnapping this time.
But what were they shooting at?
Then she saw it: everyone pointing their guns skyward, firing sporadically.
"Stop wasting bullets!" she shouted, looking up.
A purple-clad figure flitted against the clouds, jerking through the air like a drunken mosquito and spraying greenish liquid toward the ground.
Thea blinked. "What the hell…"
Her first thought: another mid-boss from Arkham.
Given the ridiculous outfit, probably one with an alias — Gotham never ran out of costumed weirdos.
The others were panicking, trying and failing to hit the target. The scene looked uncomfortably familiar — just like last night, when she'd had to do all the work herself.
Seriously? Again?
But something about this intruder felt off.
Flying solo into a fortified area? Bold or brain-damaged — maybe both.
"Hold your fire," she said. "I'll handle it."
She jumped onto her hoverboard, launching herself upward.
The closer she got, the clearer the figure became: a man in a garish purple striped suit, wielding a grotesque gun that spat streams of thick, fluorescent-green slime.
Thea grimaced. "Ugh. Disgusting."
Why do Gotham's villains always have such hideous aesthetics? she thought bitterly. Couldn't they at least try not to pollute the skyline?
Unlike her smooth hoverboard glide, his "flight" relied on brute force.
He had two flame-jet canisters strapped to his back, blasting bursts every few seconds to keep him aloft.
Each spurt sent him leaping twenty meters higher, trailing thick, black exhaust.
Thea wrinkled her nose. "Perfect. He's flying and ruining the air quality at the same time."
He seemed to find this method exhilarating, cackling as he bounced through the air like a demented pogo stick.
Laugh it up, idiot, she thought. You're an embarrassment to the entire tech community. Freeze looked cool; you're just pollution with limbs.
Sleep-deprived, cranky, and now genuinely nauseated, Thea decided she was done being polite.
She shot upward, gaining altitude until she hovered silently above him.
No way was she getting anywhere near that exhaust — who knew if the green sludge was toxic.
He was mid-spray, gleefully firing down at the base, when she struck.
"Who's there?!" he shouted, finally realizing something was behind him.
By the time he turned, two flashes of white streaked through the air.
Thea didn't bother with arrows — hitting a moving target in open sky was annoying enough. Instead, she used her board's built-in grappling chains.
Two heavy cables shot out, each tipped with a tri-pronged alloy hook.
Thunk! Thunk!
One pierced his shoulder; the other lodged deep in his thigh.
The hooks deployed instantly, clamping down with a metallic snap.
The man screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the wind — and then by the sudden acceleration as Thea's board jerked him upward.
You like flying, huh? she thought coldly, smirking as she increased speed.
"Then let's fly."
And with that, the purple fool became nothing more than ballast on her next high-speed joyride through Gotham's morning sky.