A Queen Among Heroes

[ Artificial Lake, Abandoned Amusement Park, Gotham city ]

Killer Croc was still thrashing wildly, his massive body rolling across the dirt. His reptilian reflexes tried to sound the alarm, but the agony in his spine and skull overrode everything. He couldn't even remember his own name, let alone decipher the danger signal. Whatever primitive instincts he had left were drowned beneath a wave of pain—and there weren't enough brain cells firing to translate warning into action.

"Rrrgh... what the hell..." he growled, his deep voice garbled with pain. "What hit me...?"

Compared to the punch that had landed on his neck with searing pain, the cold bite of the arrow barely registered. It felt like a tickle. He spotted the attacker almost immediately—the figure suspended mid-air, balancing on some sleek, unfamiliar contraption. He squinted. How could someone float like that? As a lifelong sewer-dweller, he'd never seen anything so high-tech.

Could this be what people meant by "airplane"? It didn't seem right. Airplanes flew much higher, didn't they?

The thought distracted him for a moment, long enough for the ache in his neck to subside slightly. That was good. As long as he could get up again, he could escape—run straight for the lake.

That flying person surely wouldn't follow me underwater. And the trio on the ground? I could take a few more hits. Nothing I hadn't endured before. If I reached the water again, I swore not to fall for the same trick twice. No matter what they screamed from the shore, I will stay under until they gave up.

It was a solid plan. He braced himself, ready to rise and dash.

"What the—?" he growled, blinking rapidly. Why wasn't my body moving?

His limbs refused to respond. A sharp chill surged through his body, deeper than anything he'd felt. He tried again, but it was like his muscles were frozen solid.

Confused, he glanced down—and let out a surprised grunt. "HUH." From the neck down, his massive frame was encased in thick, gleaming ice. Only his head remained free, wobbling side to side uselessly. Everything else was completely paralyzed.

His head jerked side to side. "NO—WHAT IS THIS?!" he bellowed. "I'M FREEZIN'—I'M—" He interrupted himself as his bulging eyes scanned the battlefield, but nothing had changed. The couple stood a distance away, watching. The woman who'd thrown the knives earlier was ready but relaxed, like she'd already seen this ending.

Catwoman, more familiar with Thea than the others, was visibly stunned. When the two had gone back for gear, Thea had casually described her typical monster-slaying approach—shooting from afar, slowing the enemy down, letting the rest of the team pounce. She'd pictured a sharp-eyed archer taking precision shots from a hundred meters out, targeting the leg, maybe hobbling the monster. Then everyone else would charge in to finish the job.

But what actually happened was far beyond anything Catwoman had imagined. She didn't even get the chance to assess whether Thea's archery skills were impressive—because what followed wasn't about precision. It was about power. Raw, terrifying power. Before her eyes, Killer Croc wasn't just slowed down—he was turned into a block of ice. Literally. The giant, 2.2-meter-tall brute was frozen from the neck down, his head sticking out like a bizarre crocodilian popsicle. If he'd been even slightly shorter, he would've been entombed completely.

"Okay…" Catwoman muttered, staring in disbelief. "This is not what I thought she meant by 'limiting enemy movement.'" Her definition of "speed reduction" apparently meant something entirely different from what Star City operated on.

This wasn't slowing a target down—it was medically qualifying him for cryogenic surgery. At this point, Killer Croc wasn't just immobilized. He looked like he was halfway to becoming a cheerful, high-level paraplegic patient with a room in Arkham's intensive care wing.

Robin had collapsed onto the ground after seeing Thea appearing into the battlefield. He was completely spent—breath heaving, muscles shaking—but the sight of Killer Croc frozen solid had shocked the fatigue out of him, just a little. The adrenaline came back, enough to make him stumble to his feet and stagger toward Batgirl with wide, incredulous eyes and his voice ragged as he asked. "Batgirl, what the hell was on that arrow?"

"It must be some kind of advanced freezing agent," Batgirl replied, narrowing her eyes thoughtfully. She might've been tired too, but her analytical instincts kicked in. Her education gave her a different lens from Robin's mostly field-based experience. After a brief pause, she added, "The delivery system's probably chemical. Pressurized capsule, maybe—fired on impact. But whatever it is, it's incredibly effective…"

Robin looked back at the ice sculpture. "Remind me to never piss her off." He sighed heavily. "You think we could replicate this kind of thing? This would've saved me from getting beat to hell…"

Batgirl gave him a sidelong glance and her brow furrowed. "Tempting... but Batman would shut it down immediately."

"Oh come on," Robin groaned. "We're always talking about being prepared for metahuman threats. This? This is prepared. Look at him—he's not even twitching!" Killer Croc's body twitch slightly. " Okay slightly twitching, but you get the point I am saying."

"Yeah and that's exactly the problem," Batgirl replied, her expression tightening and voice firm but not unkind. "Batman's rule is clear. No excessive force. And this? This skirts too close to lethal. And maybe it works on metahumans, but most of our enemies? They're still human. One shot from that thing, and they're not getting back up ever."

She couldn't deny the appeal. Fast. Clean. Devastating. With something like this, there would be no drawn-out rooftop brawls or alleyway ambushes. Just one well-placed arrow and even the worst threats would be neutralized. But as long as Batman refused to cross that line—no killing, no gray areas—it would remain off the table.

Robin didn't look convinced. He watched the frost-covered brute twitch and muttered, "What if we… developed it privately? A secret weapon. Doesn't have to be for everyone. Just… a last resort."

Batgirl sneered, one eyebrow arching sharply as she folded her arms. "Do you even know how much it would cost to develop something like that? Do you have a lab? A development team? Any clue about the amount of technical knowledge that goes into these things? Or were you thinking the two of us could manage that over coffee?"

The barrage of questions hit harder than Robin expected.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

"Thought so," Batgirl muttered, rolling her eyes.

It was pointless to argue. She was right, and he knew it.

Robin sighed and looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. "Alright, alright. Point taken."

"Good," Batgirl huffed. "Because unless you find a sugar daddy or win the tech lottery, we're stuck with batarangs and elbow grease."

They didn't have a Fortune 500 company backing them. They weren't secret heirs to empires or scientists with bottomless bank accounts. Dick had grown up under circus tents and Barbara—well, she might've been considered wealthy by neighborhood standards, but that was nothing compared to Wayne-level resources. For all he knew, Queen Consolidated and Wayne Enterprises were leagues apart, but the bottom line remained the same—they couldn't afford anything close to this kind of weapon.

Catwoman chuckled from the side, her hand resting on her hip. "You two are adorable when you argue like this. Like tiny, emotionally-repressed penguins."

"Not helping," Robin muttered.

Robin thought back to the blueprints Bruce had shown him once. The Batmobile's engine cost more than most entire homes. The Batwing? Don't even ask. Those were the kind of numbers that gave you vertigo.

All he could do now was sigh, wipe the sweat off his forehead, and silently decide to go home, take a long shower, and try to enjoy his not-so-glamorous life with Barbara.

Catwoman, meanwhile, crouched beside the massive block of ice, tilting her head in mild exasperation. "Okay, Princess Glacier. What exactly are we doing with this?" she asked, gesturing at the frozen Killer Croc with her whip handle. The block looked like it could anchor a ship. "In case you haven't noticed, our usual strategy of knocking 'em out and hanging 'em at the GCPD doorstep isn't an option. Mostly because... the doorstep exploded."

He'd been huge to begin with—well over four hundred kilos. Now encased in solid ice, he could probably qualify as military-grade cargo. No one here was strong enough to drag that. There were four of them: three women, one exhausted man who could barely stand. Robin looked like a winded puppy.

Thea hadn't exactly planned this far. She turned to Felicity through the comms, but even the queen of tech had no solution this time. So Thea made a decision.

"Everyone step back. I'm reinforcing the freeze," she said calmly, already pulling out another arrow. She pointed it toward Robin and Batgirl, who were hovering nearby like anxious parents.

"You're not going to kill him, are you?" Batgirl asked sharply, eyes narrowing at the icy prison. Killer Croc's large reptilian head—once twitching and scanning—had grown still. His yellow eyes were wide open, vacant. Every so often, his teeth chattered with a faint, pitiful de de de sound that sent a small shiver down her spine.

"He will be fine. Now move," Thea replied, unmoved.

She didn't understand their sudden moral qualms. If he died, he died. Was anyone really going to cry about it? Even if someone did, so what? This thing—this monster—had long ceased to be a human being in any meaningful sense. Was he covered under any laws? Did he have a social security number? Did he pay taxes or carry health insurance?

Thea almost wanted Batman to show up just so she could argue it out with him. She wouldn't even let him get a word in.

Besides, in her mind, this wasn't lethal. If Steve Rogers could be frozen for seventy years and wake up with abs, Killer Croc could manage a few days on ice. The guy was built like a tank and part reptile—cold resistance came with the territory. Nerve damage? Muscle atrophy? Not her problem. She had done her job.

And to her, that was enough.

To Be Continued...

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