The Unicorn's engine hummed low as Barbara steered it through the cracked streets of Gotham's lower industrial district, the night air carrying the scent of rust and oil. Her eyes stayed fixed ahead, but her voice carried weight when she finally spoke. "Pamela, I'm going to show you someplace I've been working on for a long while. I never really wanted to be a villain. But I always thought—if I ever needed it, I'd need my own place. A space for electrical work, vehicle modifications, computers, anything. My own little Batcave." She gave a short exhale, almost like a laugh. "Not that I've ever seen Batman's. But I wanted something that was mine in case I decided to fight crime someday. Funny how instead of fighting it, I ended up joining it. Or causing it. Either way, we're criminals now."
Pamela turned her head toward her, the streetlamps flashing briefly across her green eyes. "So you have your own Barbara Gordon Cave?"
Barbara shook her head lightly as she guided the car onto a narrower side street. "Something like that. But we'll need to come up with a better name. And more importantly, aliases. We can't have henchmen or recruits knowing our real identities."
Pamela lowered her gaze briefly to the Midnight Rose bracelet circling her wrist, her thumb brushing against it in thought. "You're right. If they get caught by Batman, they can't tie anything back to us. We need layers of distance. Hire through proxies. Use middlemen to deliver results. Maybe even use middlemen for the middlemen. A three-tiered structure. That way, the low-end workers never even know we exist."
Barbara's mouth tugged into the faintest of satisfied expressions as she nodded. "With that kind of structure… we'll rule this city faster than anyone expects."
Pamela's tone sharpened with ambition, her lips curving with certainty. "Gotham is only the beginning. Real power means more than just this city. Imagine ruling an entire country. Oppressively, if necessary."
Barbara tilted her head, considering. "Oppression isn't always the smartest move. Better to rule from the shadows. Prop up fake politicians, maybe even a puppet president. Fund them with syndicate money. Giving the real orders from behind the curtain."
Pamela's eyes glimmered with approval. "Now you're thinking ahead. But those are long-term plans. Right now, we need to see your Barbara Gordon Cave—and start modifying our Unicorn."
Barbara gave her a curious look. "Why do you keep calling it the Unicorn?"
Pamela pointed down toward the front bumper where a small faded emblem barely caught the glow of the streetlights. "Don't you know anything about cars? There's literally a unicorn symbol right there. This is an old Unicorn, built by Unicron Unicorn Incorporated—the most bottom-of-the-barrel, trashiest car manufacturer in U.S. history."
Barbara's eyes widened in realization as she glanced at the emblem. "So this really is the most janky, forgettable vehicle ever made. Nobody's going to give it a second look."
Pamela smirked with approval. "Exactly. The Unicorn is the ultimate in attention deterrence. Nobody respects it, nobody stares at it, and that makes it priceless."
Barbara's grip on the wheel tightened slightly as she nodded. "Now I get it."
They left the narrow road behind and entered an abandoned warehouse district. The streets here were cracked and uneven, littered with graffiti-stained walls and rusted shipping containers stacked like skeletal towers. Barbara slowed the car, steering it down toward a drainage ditch that cut across the district like a concrete scar. The ditch looked like something pulled straight from Los Angeles—wide, barren, with narrow streams of runoff trickling along the base.
The Unicorn bounced as Barbara veered off-road into the ditch, its suspension grumbling but holding steady. She kept driving along the trench for nearly two minutes, the empty space echoing faintly with the sound of the engine. Ahead, almost hidden in shadow, a massive corrugated pipe jutted out from the ditch wall, a crude ramp leading up into its mouth.
Barbara guided the Unicorn up the incline and into the pipe. The walls of the tunnel closed around them, the sound of the engine deepening with the hollow acoustics. Water stains streaked the sides of the pipe, but further ahead the surface grew smoother, reinforced with steel and cement.
Pamela leaned slightly closer to the window, her voice low. "You really wanted your place to stay hidden, didn't you? You buried it in the sewers."
Barbara's eyes flicked toward her before returning to the path ahead. "There's no better place to hide something important—whether it's a criminal base or a crime-fighting lair—than where nobody wants to look."
Pamela nodded slowly, her hand brushing her bracelet again as her lips curved into thought. "I agree."
Join my patreon today to read my patreon exclusive stories like Raven from the teen titans Goes To Hogwarts or Iron Maiden featuring Talia Ivory Stark as the Iron Maiden of Zero Fall featuring a high school teenager named Crystal Constantine who is the reincarnated queen of Atlantis with the power of ice that can literally freeze time or Rem Of The Remembrance Or my new Yuri Naruto novel featuring a female Naruto and Sasuke in love with eachother with Sayuri Uzumaki now 6 years old starting the Ninja Academy with a gamer system. Join for only 3 to 5$ to read up to chapter 151 in advance.
patreon.com/everstone