"I did make a few discoveries, and I believe my investigation is ahead of everyone else's." Batwoman touched her pale cheek with a red-gloved hand holding a cigarette, looking at Detective Chimp and Deathstroke. "I did step on a robot's head and nearly got knocked down by its counterattack, but there was a reason for it."
Kate wore an expression of complete confidence. She slowly took a sip of red wine, as though it allowed her to ignore the pain, her face relaxing into one of pleasure.
Unlike Bruce, she had never trained in yoga. She could not block out pain through willpower, so she had found another way—using alcohol to numb herself. More unusually, she seemed able to control the alcohol, directing it through her bloodstream toward her wounds rather than her brain.
"I deliberately stepped on a lone robot and wrestled with it for quite a while so I could inspect it thoroughly—not just its head, but its chest, crotch, every inch of its body, anywhere that might contain a processor or power source." She raised a leg to display her red high-heeled boot, its pointed heel as sharp as a spear. "But there was nothing like that inside them. They were like a lump of mud."
"Or mercury." Detective Chimp sat on the coffee table and tossed the cigarette butt from his mouth into the sea. "Deathstroke encountered one in the Hall of Justice before. He told me about it."
"Exactly. I'm no mechanical engineering expert, but I know they're metal constructs, and they're quite heavy. Energy is always a problem when it comes to driving their movements and transformations, so I thought of one possibility."
No matter how much she drank, she remained clear-headed. It defied common sense, but perhaps that was one benefit of dealing