Double Trouble! 6.

"All right, girls, put your hands up!"
"Okay," I did so in the most seductive way possible, and the Black Kitten followed my example. Unfortunately the gun didn't waver.
"Now, I'm going to..."
"You're going to put down your gun before I put a bullet in your back."
We'd forgotten about Scruff. She stood there in her Robin costume with a very large gun in her hand. At that moment Emily materialised in the little gallery, crossbow held ready.
"Between us," she told the gunman, "we could kill you. Drop the gun."
He dropped it, and then he ran. Emily juped down from the gallery.
"Let's go," I said with feeling. The Black Kitten nodded.
"I've got my own exit," she said. "So long!"
"Wait, you little..."
She didn't. And I wasn't going to get Emily to stop her.
"Okay," I told my team, "we're getting out of here!"
We scrammed. I like a good fight, but I didn't see any reason to wait until the heavy artillery arrived.
Back at the apartment I flopped on the sofa. We were both still in our fancy-dress costumes.
"There you are, Scruff, we've met the Black Kitten."
"Yeah," Scruff agreed. "She's okay."
"Scruff! She wears a skin-tight costume and she takes insane risks! I can't shake off the feeling that she's got a very personal reason for doing what she does."
"Maybe some London mob murdered her Dad?" Scruff offered her constructive opinion.

"Which leaves the field WAY too wide."
"I know. But her voice was educated. Like yours."
"Which means she went to a good school! Scruff, I think her accent's Cheltenham! That narrows the field enormously!
"Well, I try to help."
"And you DO help! Emily?"
"She has to be on the guest list. Have you got that, Scruff?"
"Yes. But she might have done what I did and added her name. Still, it's a start."
Scruff opened the Black Kitten's blog. She laughed.
"What is it?"
"Listen to this! 'I meet the Girl in Grey'."
I wasn't at all sure I wanted to listen. I was already revising down my opinion of the Black Kitten.
"'Tonight I met the Girl in Grey. Only she wasn't in grey, she was wearing a Batgirl costume, and she had a weird-looking...' Hey! I don't look weird! This girl's got issues!"
I smiled. Scruff had been enjoying herself until she read that description of herself, and I was glad she'd come down a peg or two.
"Of course you don't. Go on."
"... Girl dressed as Robin -as in Batman and - with her. I think she wants to stop me. She nearly got both of us killed, and it was just her weird... her friend who saved us. Her and some really weird black smoky thing with red eyes that sounded like a little girl."
"Hey!" Emily stopped overhauling her crossbow, jumped up and ran over to the computer.
"We've got to find who she is. Scruff, check the guest list. We know she's a white Cheltenham-educated teenager."
"Cheltenham has non-white students!"
"I know, but not many. And that party didn't have any non-whites. It was old London gangsters, not the new breed."
"Okay. I'll patch this machine into your base computers..."
I left her to it. I wanted to go out again, so I took the Outsider and we went to where I keep the car.
Our street doesn't mind my wandering around in a Batgirl costume. Not after dark, anyhow.