2015-01-10 - Black Bat vs Taskmaster

It's 2am, and Cassandra had been on patrol. Slow night actually - took down 3 burglars, one who was a metahuman or on some sort of metahuman-laced drugs, and the 4 gang members who were mugging that young couple. The couple thanked Cassandra before running off, and everything seemed quiet. Though there was a feeling. A vague instinct. To move.

Cassandra frowns, as she leans out over a rooftop. There's no reason to think that anything is up, but ...

Diving to her left and rolling, Cassandra kicks upward and flips to her feet as she gets some distance, ending up in a low stance as she looks behind her. With her eyes shaded by her mask, she hopes she didn't just do an awesome dive evasion for no reason at all.

Luckily, there's no chance of that tonight. Cassandra takes a punch right in the sternum after standing, but manages to disarm the figure that's attacking her sending two katanas skittering off the roof with a metallic clang.

The figure that struck Cassandra is remarkable for two reasons. First - he's someone she's seen before - on the gladiator planet that Mxy and Batmite sent Cassandra and Kara to. The fight lasting all of 2 seconds, without a single punch being thrown.

The second remarkable thing is he not only managed to hit her, but he hit her with a surprisingly effective strike.

Taskmaster looks at Cassandra after his katanas go off the edge of the roof. "Been.... looking for you." He says with a strained voice. "...Did SOMETHING to me." He whips out a gun to fire at her. "Going to make you tell me what!" he says as he starts firing.

A third remarkable thing - for some reason, she's not seeming to be able to read him well. It's like watching a TV through a stretched glass mirror.

Cassandra peers at Taskmaster in the darkness, her reading being...not exactly blocked, but she can tell that it's less effective. She can see what he'll do a move ahead, but he's acting like HE can do it too! Which means it's basically not going to work, and she doesn't know how to handle it.

When he starts talking, she squints and blinks a few times, and actually hesitates when he pulls the gun on her. A shot to her left arm spins her around and she rolls toward him, sending a haze of dust into the air from her left hand to screw with both of their visions long enough to roll behind some cover!

At least one thing she can do; count shells. When the gun needs to reload, she comes out from cover enough to throw a batarang at the weapon!

After the first bullet actually hits her arm, the haze of dust causes Taskmaster to miss the next three shots, then two more after that. The next several shots are stopped by the air conditioning unit Cassandra gets behind, through two still seem to go through the sheet metal..... narrowly missing Cassandra. Then she hears the telltale 'click.' of the gun, meaning Taskmaster is about to reload!

At which point the batarang flies at the gun and, with practiced ease, she manages to knock the gun out of Taskmaster's hand, at which point the skull-masked villain gets ready for hand-to-hand fighting.

"You are...not...the same," Cassandra says as she approaches, low and wary. "What...happened?" Using that as a distraction she rolls forward, while trying to figure out what the hell is going on! She knows there's more to this than just an attack.

The fact that she can't tell what he's going to do makes her hold back; she doesn't want to overestimate and accidentally shatter something. So she chooses to go for a leg grapple to take him to the floor, kicking at his face while she does to keep him from ducking into punching range.

Taskmaster usually sees his opponents as just some challenge to overcome, or a job to get paid for. With this particular person, there's more. He's angry at Cassandra for some reason. It's obvious - body reading on the fritz or no. "Don't... know! Your fault!" he says as he manages to both block Cassandra's leg grapple, then brings his hand up to block her leg with both hands, before trying to grab that leg to swing her around into a wall outcropping. Clearly, the man has martial arts experience, but again - it's all fuzzy, like he keeps shifting between one style and another... it even seemed briefly familiar with fighting herself in a shadow boxing way.

Cassandra Cain frowns mid-swing, then she's in mid-air as her kick is turned into being swung against a wall by his successful ankle-grab! She impacts with the wall, relaxing enough to take it without too much damage. Reacting quickly though, she curls up and digs her fingers into his hand to force him to let go, and wraps her legs around Taskmaster's arm to use her body weight to throw him to the rooftop in an elbow toss.

"I can..see that," she says as she works, not having a great deal of time to chat just yet. But she's getting more information from what he's doing that what he's saying. "You're...confused."

Taskmaster does wind up letting go when Cassandra forces her fingers right into his hand - pain is pain. During which time she has the opening to throw him across the rooftop, and over it! However, she can hear a metallic 'clink' sound after she loses sight of him.

Certain that falling off of a roof wouldn't slow HER down, she assumes that Taskmaster will not be killed by falling off of this one. She lands from her throw in a wide stance and launches herself after Taskmaster, leaping over the side right after him while snapping a line onto a pipe so she won't fall to her death.

When Cassandra launches herself after Taskmaster, she sees that he took some sort of metal spike (a climbing piton) and hit it into the side of the wall and is hanging from it. When she was visible, Taskmaster launches himself into her, knocking both of them onto a nearby lower rooftop, though he did hurt himself in the process.

Cassandra Cain lands heavily, but throws herself back up to her feet ignoring the pain and uses the motion to start a spinning kick that should knock Taskmaster back down if he's trying to get up. The fact that she has no idea if he's going to or not means it's a guess more than anything, but she really needs to buy herself time.

As she's going, she's starting to spot things. That's mine, that's also mine. The launch into her to knock them both down? It's the same move she just tried to use on him, right down to the pivoting motion to get to the right angle. But his motions, they seem to her to be kind of...scared.

She spins in the air, thinking, and tenses in case he counter-attacks. After all, she would in his situation.

Taskmaster does indeed counterattack, and rather masterfully so. Just like Cassandra would have done, sliding along the ground to then summersault and kick upwards at her from below, whereupon he flips backwards to get ready for CASSANDRA's counterattack, "How... turn it off!?"

Struck, and struck hard by her own counterattack kick sent by Taskmaster, Cassandra takes the blow and pivots in the air, then lands on her hands and feet a few feet away from Taskmaster, breathing hard and mentally checking her ribs for damage. Writing it off as necessary damage, she throws textbook whip-kicks off both legs to keep Taskmaster moving so she can read him.

Mid-move, she thinks of throwing a somersault punch upside-down and starts the move, then gets distracted by his question and changes her mind. But the oddest thing, he makes the tiniest move to try and block the -punch- that was never thrown.

And Cassandra gives a tiny smile, saying, "I can...help." Then she feints the beginning of a high kick. She starts to throw a kick at his head but instead relaxes both of her legs, collapses, and throws a straight punch at Taskmaster's gut from her knees.

Taskmaster brings up his arms to block a punch that he instinctively knows is going to come. But it doesn't come. Instead, a kick's about to come, so he quickly moves his body to dodge the kick. But the kick never comes as well - instead, a straight punch from Cassandra buries itself in his gut, causing Taskmaster to double over, coughing in pain. Cassandra knows enough about body language to actually make her body lie, apparently. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened - The Joker and other insane people have that feature. But it would be the first time Cassandra did it herself. Randomness of body language - it's like a normal person suddenly talking gibberish unexpectedly, on purpose.

Cassandra seems a little surprised at Taskmaster's body language as he gets punched, but she doesn't stop. A small mental calculation of what has to happen in this situation lets her bypass the distorted body reading, since she knows roughly the limitations of his body now, and she makes a solid educated guess. After the punch, he'd likely move like this, then he'd be...here!

With her eyes closed to let her not be distracted by the body language issues, she stands up and brings her fist up in an uppercut to the knockout point on Taskmaster's jaw, turning him off as promised.

And with that, Taskmaster finally goes down as Cassandra strikes the underside of his jaw with a rising uppercut. It took a bulletwound to the arm, and 1... no... 2 broken ribs, and quite a few more bruises than Cassandra has ever had save for in fighting people like Lady Shiva - but in the end, Cassandra was the one still standing, and Taskmaster was the one unconsious and drooling on the rooftop.

And Alfred would be showing the techniques he's learned for binding broken ribs from Master Bruce over the past 10 years.