Welcome to Gaia! ::

"First point: Little girls shouldn't be playing with sharp objects; you can hurt yourself pretty badly. Second point: You're talking to a man who could easily kill you without a second thought if he wanted; be grateful I don't kill children. Third point: I already asked my question: Why is a girl who looks like she should be in elementary school trying to act tough by dressing up in a costume, carrying weapons, and roof-hopping? Leave that sort of thing to the professionals, sweetie," Apex said.

There was a nagging part of him eager to press this girl's buttons, to get her to attack just so he could see how good she was. He figured it was due to Deathstroke's tutoring; he had, after all, had a desire to fight Tim Drake and see how well the boy did. Apex was certainly not stupid; if she could do what she was doing, and wield weapons like she had on her, then she had to be skilled with them; what puzzled him was the why.

Apex was not intimidated, as he had studied Captain Marvel, as he had studied the rest of the JLA, and knew how to beat him. He paused a few moments, before speaking:

"That won't work; Captain Marvel's busy with Zsasz, who is far more dangerous to passerby than I am. He can't be in two places at once, super-speed or not," Apex said calmly. "Now, if you really think you can hurt me... I'll let you try. I'm curious to see if you can actually handle fighting someone who kills people for a living and has enough martial arts knowledge to defeat Batman. And by the way... It's been thirty seconds."


As it turned out, Apex was partially right: Billy didn't immediately jump at the cry for help, but it was not because of his lack of omnipresence; he had heard the screams, but the Wisdom of Solomon told him that it was not genuine, and that the girl was capable of handling herself. So he focused on Zsasz still.

((He's got Slade's augmentations and was trained brutally by Slade for several years, was a US marine and has had prior knowledge of martial arts prior to either of those events. Slade does not have the same amount of martial arts knowledge as Batman, but it still took Bats, d**k, and Tim at the same time to defeat Slade combat during Infinite Crisis I believe; it was due to Slade's augmentations that he could stalemate them. So Apex, being Slade's superior in the regards of fighting prowess while having those same augmentations, could most definitely defeat Batman one-on-one. Granted, this is taken from another version of Apex I have in another guild; I decided to flesh the character out more, and have been meaning to transplant that more-fleshed-out data over into MvDC's profile for him, but I never got around to it. Regardless, as he's my character and I've given the reasons for him to be able to do so, it stands to reason that he can do so.))


Apex watched her go, and smirked. So, the brat thought he'd just let her go? He had been forced to accommodate his plans for people trying to mess with him, and keep him from his targets before... and so he decided to test the girl.

He sprinted, catching up to the girl in a matter of moments, and he delivered a roundhouse kick to her head. Here he was, acting just like his mentor... Attacking without an apparent reason, but it was really to test his target.

Interesting... Apex thought as he used his own superhuman reflexes to not only do a short backflip away from Hit Girl's legsweep and dodge the bullets through assuming varied, marginally-different positions in order to make sure the bullets wouldn't hit him, but also to pull out his own pistol: your basic Glock. No need to be flashy or expensive when a staple would do, right?

He switched off the safety in the same instant that he pulled the Glock from its holster, and proceeded to fire while simultaneously avoiding the shots Hit Girl fired. His shots, however, were not aimed to be lethal; they were aimed to graze her limbs. If she wound up moving in the wrong direction and got hit by one or more, then at least Apex could claim self-defense when his conscience kicked in.

Apex allowed himself a small smirk, even as he dodged the bullets that were continuing to be fired by Hit Girl. When his Glock ran empty, he leaped into the air, doing a corkscrew flip in Hit Girl's direction, and did two things within those few brief moments (though to him, they seemed much longer): First, unlike Hit Girl, he holstered his gun; years of training under Slade had allowed him to do such a badass maneuver perfectly, as he had botched it continually when first attempting it. The second motion he did was unsheathe one of his two Promethium katanas, and when he landed on his feet, he seemed to vanish again, so quick were his reflexes. In reality, he had ducked low, and had aimed a grazing strike at Hit Girl's left leg.

"Neither did I, girl. Neither did I," Apex said, and his tone was almost melancholy. "You're very impressive for one so young. If I didn't know any better I'd say you were trained by my master."

He kept the blade of his katana pointed at her, but he did not attack; he was waiting to see if she would do anything first.

"He goes by the alias 'Deathstroke'. He's been training me for the past five years, and I was given the same superhuman augmentations he has. He gave me the alias 'Apex', and one thing I do when not on a contract is try to prove myself worthy of that moniker by finding and defeating worthy opponents. I'm... already superior to my master in hand-to-hand combat, and he knows it, but it's the only thing I'm superior to him in, really. Due to his training me and the augmentations I have, we're equals in pretty much every other respect. He's... harsh, and cruel at times in his training me, but..."

Apex paused, wondering if he was saying too much. He decided he was, and so slowly lowered his katana, his eyes still on Mindy.