Chapter 23 : Toyman - Part 5: Defiance
May 2016 — Schott Family Factory — Collapsing Workshop
The walls were designed to crush.
Industrial-grade compression panels, moving on hydraulic tracks that I could hear groaning somewhere in the factory's infrastructure. Toyman had built this place to be a tomb, and now he was sealing it with me inside.
I ran for the only exit I could see—a doorway on the far side of the workshop that the moving walls hadn't yet blocked.
Explosive toys detonated in my path. I deflected shrapnel, feeling my powers strain against the volume of threats. Too many vectors. Too fast. The headache was building, the familiar pressure behind my eyes that warned of approaching limits.
Push through. You've survived worse.
The doorway loomed ahead. Ten feet. Five.
A mechanical arm burst from the wall, clotheslining me across the chest. I hit the ground hard, rolling with the impact but still losing precious seconds. The walls continued closing. The doorway was shrinking.
I scrambled up. Dove through the gap with inches to spare. Landed in a corridor that was somehow worse than the workshop.
Conveyor belts running in every direction, carrying toys that bristled with weapons. Pendulum blades swinging from the ceiling. Gas jets hissing from floor vents.
And at the far end, suspended over a massive industrial vat, three people.
Human people. Bound. Gagged. Terrified.
"Ah, you've noticed my insurance." Toyman's voice echoed through the corridor. "Three workers from the factory's glory days. They came back looking for salvage. Found something much more interesting instead."
The hostages hung from ropes attached to a mechanical timer. Below them, the vat bubbled with something that looked like acid but was probably worse—knowing my father, it was specifically engineered to maximize suffering.
"Save them or stop me." The speakers crackled with something that might have been amusement. "You can't do both. The timer gives you ninety seconds. The exit to my location is on the opposite side of the building."
I stared at the hostages. At the timer. At the maze of death between us.
Kara. I need Kara.
"If you're thinking of calling your alien friend," Toyman added, "I should mention that I've seeded this entire facility with Kryptonite shards. Nothing lethal in small doses, but enough to make her uncomfortable. She'll be... sluggish."
Of course he had. Of course.
Eighty-three seconds.
I ran.
The conveyor belts were the worst part.
They moved at different speeds, different directions, creating a constantly shifting maze that forced me to calculate trajectories on the fly. Jump from this belt to that one. Duck under the spinning blade. Absorb the impact of the dart-shooting teddy bear and redirect its momentum into the pressure plate ahead.
Seventy seconds.
A gas cloud billowed from hidden vents. I held my breath, using vector manipulation to push the toxic air away from my face. The effort cost me speed. The timer kept counting.
Sixty seconds.
The pendulum blades created a gauntlet I couldn't run through. I had to time each step, each dodge, each desperate lunge. One blade caught my sleeve, tearing fabric and drawing a thin line of blood across my forearm.
Fifty seconds.
The hostages were crying now. I could hear their muffled screams through the gags, see their struggles against the ropes. They'd been here for hours, maybe days. Waiting for someone to save them.
I'm coming. Hold on.
Forty seconds.
The final obstacle was a rotating cylinder covered in spikes—a device straight out of medieval torture chambers, spinning fast enough that touching it meant losing a limb. I studied the rotation for half a heartbeat, calculated the gaps between spikes, and jumped.
My body threaded through the machinery with millimeters to spare. I landed hard on the platform below the hostages, knees screaming at the impact.
Thirty seconds.
The ropes were too high to reach. The timer mechanism was locked behind reinforced glass. And the acid below was definitely not something I wanted to test my enhanced durability against.
Twenty seconds.
Think. THINK.
The timer mechanism. Electrical. I could feel the current flowing through it, powering the countdown.
Fifteen seconds.
I reached out with Lightning Logic, pouring my awareness into the device's circuitry. The maze of wires and switches resolved into something I could understand—and manipulate.
Ten seconds.
I reversed the current. Not enough to break the mechanism, but enough to confuse it. The timer stuttered, reset, began counting up instead of down.
Five seconds became six. Became seven. Became stopped.
The hostages weren't falling.
"Clever." Toyman's voice lost its amusement. "But you've wasted your time. I'm already—"
The roof exploded.
Supergirl descended through the hole she'd just created, heat vision carving through the ropes in three precise bursts. The hostages dropped—not toward the acid, but into the arms of DEO agents who'd rappelled in through shattered windows.
"I told you I wasn't coming alone." I watched my team work with something that might have been relief. "I lied."
Kara landed beside me, her cape settling around her shoulders like a promise. "You okay?"
"Cuts. Bruises. Possible concussion." I smiled despite everything. "Nothing permanent."
"The Kryptonite—"
"I feel it. It's like... background radiation. Annoying but manageable." She grabbed my shoulder. "Alex's team is securing the hostages. J'onn's got the perimeter. Where's your father?"
"Opposite side of the building. He said."
"Then let's finish this."
We moved through the factory together, Kara clearing obstacles with strength I couldn't match while I handled the traps she was too weakened to dodge. A team. Partners. Everything I'd hoped we could become.
The workshop doors were ahead. Reinforced metal, locked from inside.
Kara tore them off their hinges.
And there was my father.
Standing at his central workbench, hands working frantically on something I couldn't quite see. Surrounded by monitors showing feeds from around the facility—including the now-empty acid chamber.
"You brought her." He didn't look up from his work. "After everything I told you about working together, you brought the alien instead."
"She's not 'the alien.' She's my partner." I stepped into the workshop, Kara at my side. "It's over, Dad. Your hostages are safe. Your facility is compromised. You're not getting out of here."
"Perhaps not." He turned, and I saw what he'd been building.
A small device, clutched in his right hand. A red light pulsed on its surface.
"But neither is anyone else."
His thumb rested on a button. A dead man's switch.
"One more step," Toyman said softly, "and this whole building goes up. Everyone inside dies. Including you, including your precious Kryptonian, including those DEO agents who think they're being so clever."
Kara froze.
So did I.
"Now," my father said, "let's discuss your options."
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