Bastet Heist
Once upon a time, the Gotham City Museum unveiled a brand new treasure for everyone to admire: a small golden statue of Bastet, the ancient Egyptian goddess of cats, on loan from a private collector for a single glittering evening.
Selina Kyle read about it over breakfast, in a little article tucked into the pages of the Gotham Gazette, and very nearly choked on her coffee. A cat goddess. Made of solid gold. Guarded by nothing more than a glass display case and a handful of tired, rented security guards.
Well. Selina simply had to circle that date on her calendar in bright red ink.
The night of the gala arrived warm and golden, and the museum filled with Gotham's wealthiest families, all dressed in their very finest, sipping drinks beneath the museum's tall marble columns while a string quartet played softly in the corner. Selina slipped through the front doors disguised as a photographer, her whip and her clawed gloves hidden carefully inside a black camera bag. She smiled at the ushers. She admired a painting or two, just to look the part. And she waited, patient as any cat, until the lights dimmed low for a speech.
She counted the guards without seeming to look at them at all — three by the front entrance, one dozing near the coat check, none anywhere close to the Bastet exhibit itself. The museum's donors, she noticed, cared far more about their champagne than they did about protecting a three-thousand-year-old goddess.
Then she moved.
Over the velvet rope. Past the pressure sensors, each one avoided with the ease of long practice. She had the display case open and the statue tucked safely in her bag in under two minutes — fast enough that even Selina, who rarely let herself feel proud of anything, allowed herself a small private smile.
"Bastet suits you," said a low, familiar voice, right behind her.
Selina turned, and there stood Bruce Wayne — the museum's biggest donor — in a sharp black tuxedo, without his cape or his cowl anywhere in sight. She hadn't expected to see him here like this, so calm, so unguarded, in the golden light of the gallery.
"Everything suits me," Selina said smoothly, tucking the golden statue deeper into her bag. "Cats are adaptable, you know."
And then the alarms began to wail, echoing through the marble halls of the museum like a siren song. Selina bolted for the nearest roof access, and Bruce Wayne peeled off his tuxedo jacket as he went, disappearing around a corner. By the time Selina reached the skylight, breathless, moonlight pouring down through the glass, Batman was already there — full costume, cape settled just so — having changed faster than she thought any person possibly could.
They fought, but it wasn't really fighting. It was something closer to a dance they both already knew the steps to. Her whip cracked out across the rooftop, catching a chimney and swinging her wide. His cape swept past, close but never quite close enough to catch her. Neither of them was truly trying to win. Both of them, somewhere underneath it all, were smiling.
Finally, at the very edge of the roof, with the whole city glittering below them, Selina stopped. She slid the golden statue of Bastet gently across the stone toward him.
"Bastet protects cats," she said quietly. "And I figure she'd rather stay somewhere safe than somewhere I have to keep running from."
Batman caught the little statue, genuinely surprised. "You're returning it?"
Selina smiled, already turning toward the skylight behind her. "I'm loaning it," she corrected, one foot already braced on the ledge. "Cat's honor."
And with that, she vanished into the cold night air of Gotham City, gone as quickly and as silently as she had arrived.
Bruce Wayne stood alone on the rooftop for a long moment, holding the small golden goddess in his hands, the city lights spread out beneath him like scattered stars. He thought about the note she'd once left a night guard, and the coins she'd once left for hungry families in the East End, and the way she always seemed to leave just enough kindness behind to make him wonder.
Not for the first time — and, he suspected, not for the last — Bruce Wayne found himself wondering exactly whose side Selina Kyle was truly on.
Somewhere below, a cat meowed softly from an alley, as if it already knew the answer.