Benny Smalls felt like he was going to throw up. He had run for three blocks straight, skirting rival territory and risking his reputation, as tiny as it was, but it didn’t matter. He could already feel the bile pumping up into his throat, although he couldn’t tell if it was from physical strain or pure fear.
Rounding the corner by catching the lamppost, which splashed disjointed light through the cracked glass case over the bulb, Benny nearly tripped over the first stoop in a series of row houses. Catching himself, he vaulted the concrete plateau and doubled his efforts to get as far away as possible.
He hadn’t expected the old man to fight back. He hadn’t expected that the bag he was carrying was just full of fruit instead of something much more valuable. He hadn’t expected to get so angry at the old man’s audacity to actually punch him in the jaw. He hadn’t expected to pull out his butterfly knife and plunge it into the old man’s thigh.
He hadn’t expected to draw the attention of him.
The crew he was jumping into, the 99ers, had a certain way of doing things. They were relatively new on the Gotham scene, but already they were making a name for themselves. Over the last year their numbers had doubled, and Benny knew that it he wanted to survive on the streets he needed to be counted among them. So, after the ritual beating to show how tough he was, he then had to pull a job on his own.
Benny spotted the old man coming out of the Cash 4 Coin joint on Carson Street carrying a big brown bag that just had to be filled with something good. Maybe he had picked up something he had pawned previously, or maybe it was some stacks of cash from selling his junk. Whatever it was, Benny could just take if off him and show it to the 99ers as proof of the robbery he would tell them he committed. What was the difference between a mugging and shoplifting anyway? Stealing was stealing as far as Benny cared.
But the old man screamed, fought back, and knocked Benny down. So, Benny stuck him. Then some teenagers coming out of the pawn shop spotted him and yelled. Benny took off. He would have to try again somewhere else.
As he knelt in an ally a few blocks away, sizing up a convenience store on 9th Street, he thought he was in the clear and wasn’t planning on giving the old man a second thought. That’s when he heard a deep, resonating voice from within the shadows of the ally.
“Aggravated assault and carrying a concealed weapon,” the voice said.
Benny, tough guy that was proud of himself for not even whimpering after his ritual beating, nearly wet himself when he heard that voice. He knew who had spoken it and was shocked that he would waste his time with someone like Benny.
Benny turned slightly, but was too scared to move more than that. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the darkness come to life. Twin white eyes blinked at him and he saw a glimmer of yellow wrapped around a black symbol.
“Heavy charges for a minor,” the voice from the shadows continued. “And now you’re casing your next target. That’s premeditation.”
“I…I…I don’t…uh…” Benny couldn’t even string a complete sentence together he was so terrified.
“Benjamin Fishburne,” the voice continued. “At 15 years-old, they might decide to try you as an adult. That’s two to six years depending on how generous the district attorney is feeling.”
Benny stumbled over the garbage can he had been hiding behind and fell into the street. He didn’t even know where he was running to, but all he cared about now was getting away from that voice.
From him.
The end of the block was coming up fast and he would have to choose which direction to run in next. How had he known Benny’s name? Were the legends true? Was he more than a man? Some kind of demon? How else could he know his name and his age?
The squealing teens that yelled at him after he stuck the old man; they must have drawn his attention. Or was he really everywhere there was darkness in Gotham? Some said he was a part of the city, like something Gotham conjured up to take care of business. Right now, that business was Benny, and he was so panicked that he thought he might go crazy.
“Get away from me!” Benny managed to sputter, and he was surprised at his own courageousness.
The shadow moved closer. “You hospitalized that man,” it said. “For what? Some fresh produce. Do you think the 99ers will bring you into the fold based on your ability to steal oranges?”
“How…how did you know that?”
“I know a great deal many things, Benjamin. I know that you were once arrested for selling crystal meth. I know that you were a corner boy running between the stash and the bank. I know that your mother is worried about you.”
Benny’s eyes went wide. Everything he had heard about the Batman, about how it was some kind of mind-reading spawn that anticipated your every move, was true. How could he know all of this? Benny was a nobody. A no-one. There was no reason for someone, something like the Batman to even knew he existed. Yet here he was, cowering before an urban myth.
“What do you want?”
Finally, the shadow stopped moving toward him. It paused, perhaps considering. Perhaps it would let him live. It stood watching him silently for what seemed like an eternity, as if it were weighing his very soul in judgement.
“One street over there is a police precinct,” it finally said.
“Yeah. I know.” Benny nodded furiously. “I’ll turn myself in. No problem.”
“Tell the desk sergeant that you want to speak with Detective Millard. In a town that is so ready to embrace the darkness, he is a man of integrity. Confess to him what you did tonight. Tell him that you will plead guilty.”
“Right. Of course! You got it. Just let me go.”
The shadow silently moved a single step closer.
“I am watching you, Benjamin Fishburne. If you do not do as I have said tonight, I will know.”
As Benjamin, whose street name was Benny Smalls on account of his short stature, slid out of the ally he could have sworn that he saw a twisted smile creep onto the face of the Batman. But that was insane. Nothing that dark, that had to be born from a nightmare, could possibly feel happiness. No, Benny Smalls was sure that his imagination was tricking him into making the encounter seem worse than it had actually been.
But he wouldn’t tell Detective Millard that when he saw him in the next few minutes.
And he was definitely going to use his one phone call to tell his mom that he loved her.
# # #
“I’m just saying I think it’s an invasion of privacy,” Dick Grayson said.
Batman watched from his perch on the corner of a rooftop, overlooking the 52nd Precinct between 10th and 11th, as Benjamin Fishburne pumped his legs as hard as he could to get inside the police station. The youth had been sufficiently pushed psychologically into doing what Batman had wanted him to do, which was ultimately for the better. He had spotted the mugging gone wrong back at the pawn shop too late, but had easily followed the perp by running along the top edges of the buildings. He had learned long ago that the people in this city rarely looked up, making it easy to hide in plain sight regardless of his urban camouflage.
Once Benjamin was inside, Batman finally spoke in response to Dick’s comment. He barely whispered, but the throat-microphone woven into his costume would pick up the vibrations of his vocal folds easily enough. “Accessing public records isn’t a violation of anyone’s privacy,” Batman stated.
The earpiece inside his cowl relayed his former protégé’s comments from their subterranean headquarters to his current location in downtown Gotham. “Not exactly,” Dick replied. “First, you used facial recognition software linked to the cowl’s lenses to identity this kid, and then pulled his rap sheet up on your palm-top holo-display. You scared the bejeezus out of him. I’m surprised he didn’t pee his pants. He probably thought you were reading his mind or something. Second, you’re using the term ‘public’ pretty loosely. The file is stored at a public agency, but isn’t necessarily a public record.”
“You know better than anyone that what I do is just as much imagery and theatrics as it is deduction and legwork.”
“Sure,” Dick conceded. “And tapping into GCPD sealed juvenile records certainly helps. I’m just saying that the ethics are a little sketchy. The part about his mother was a nice touch. How did you know that?”
Batman stepped back from the ledge, content that the matter was resolved. The night was still young and he had a lot of ground to cover before dawn. The black and grey of his costume absorbed what little moonlight there was this evening, and the remainder could be sucked in by his jet-black cape if need be. While few people in Gotham looked skyward, in recent years he had learned that just as much danger could come from above: satellite tracking, drones, and even the occasional aerial criminal. While there was no imminent threat as he moved across the roof, he could never be too careful.
Reaching the opposite side, and now facing north, he reached around to the small of his back and retrieved his gas-powered grappler. His older models had used cartridges to propel the line, but they were too noisy and might draw attention. The compressed carbon dioxide cylinders were whisper silent, but the trade-off was that the line wouldn’t shoot as far.
Extending his arm, he targeted a ledge two buildings up from his current position. The line launched out, its end fastened to a 440C steel arrowhead with pressure sensitive egress barbs. The arrowhead buried itself in the face of the cement ledge and the force of impact released the barbs on either side of the arrowhead, effectively wedging it into the cement. The line would hold twice his own bodyweight, possibly more.
“A lucky guess,” Batman responded as he jumped off into the night and hit the button to retract the line. He silently flew over the open street to the next ledge, continuing his patrol. “I saw that his mother was still listed as his primary guardian in his file. Every child, deep down, cares what his mother thinks about him.”
“Sounds a little like profiling to me.”
“Profiling is a complicated art form built on education. It’s a deductive science.”
“Oh, I’m not disputing the results. Again, merely the ethics of coercion.”
He approached the ledge quickly, and just prior to reaching the cement fixture, Batman flipped off the retraction motor and swung his feet forward. He pumped downward and allowed his momentum to swing him under and then up over top of the ledge, where he landed gracefully on both feet. Another click and the arrowhead released itself and slipped back into the grappler, which was again magnetically clipped to Batman’s belt.
“You spent several weeks in the cave doing nothing but profiling criminals when you were thirteen,” Batman pointed out. “You never brought up this concern before.”
“Yeah, because I was thirteen. I’ve matured since then.”
Batman could hear the smile in Dick’s voice. He was proud of his first mentee in a way that a father is proud of their firstborn. There had been others to take up his cause over the years, others that had dedicated their lives to justice. Some took more forceful approaches than others. But Dick had been the first and had easily set the standard. A standard which was coming under strain recently.
“Ethics aren’t a luxury we can afford,” said a new voice spoke over the communications link. This one was younger and more profound in his diction. “We are not common gumshoes trying to hash out a suspect. We are champions of this city, and are therefore above the normal regulations of the private citizenry.”
“Gumshoes?” Dick muttered over the line. “Hash out?”
“He’s been watching old Philip Marlowe films,” Batman stated.
Twenty feet from where Batman stood, a cloaked teenager with dark hair and a green domino mask stepped out from behind an HVAC system. His cape was draped over his shoulder in much the same fashion as Batman’s, but there were two key styling differences: the lining was yellow and a hood capped the top, which was down at the moment.
“Fine examples of your American cinema,” the newcomer, the latest of Batman’s protégés to wear the costume of Robin, stated plainly. Batman heard him both through the earpiece and from his close proximity. “A shame your country developed passed the 1950s. They had style back then.”
“It’s your country, too, kid,” Dick said from where he sat back in the cave.
“Only by proxy.”
Robin stepped closer to Batman, his father. Damien Wayne had come from what his mother had hoped to be a perfect union, that of the world’s foremost deductive expert and the League of Assassins. One night of passion, drug-induced as it was, with Talia al Ghul had spawned the heir of the Wayne lineage, forever bonding Batman to the League.
As a result of being raised by the League, Damien was a natural killer with instincts that Batman tried to suppress. Typically the Robin role was meant to counterbalance the darkness of the Batman persona, but with Damien, both Bruce and Dick found themselves trying to control Damien’s bloodthirst.
“Find anything?” Batman inquired as Robin approached.
“Only a few containers of venom.” Robin stood next to his father, overlooking the city and allowing the wind to slip the folds of his cape off of his shoulders. Despite the height he looked perfectly at ease far above the cold streets. “Either the buyers were tipped off or they spotted me upon arrival. Obviously the latter couldn’t be true.”
“It’s also possible that the containers were left in a dead drop location and will be picked up later,” Batman countered.
“Which is why I drained them onto the warehouse floor and diluted the liquid with water and bleach.” Robin stole a glance up at his father. “I’m not an idiot. Maybe the tip was bad.”
“The tip was good,” Dick responded via radio. “My contact heard it from his cellmate last week. The presence of the venom barrels proves that much. If I wasn’t laid up in the cave with a busted ankle—”
“We know, Nightwing,” Batman cut in. “We appreciate the ops support. I’m sure that Oracle is enjoying her night off.”
“We still have to find whoever is moving venom through the city,” Robin said. “With Bane out of commission, we have zero suspects and tonight didn’t yield any usable results.”
“I’ll press my contact again,” Dick replied. “Until then…hold on.”
Batman’s gaze stayed on the street below, but his posture shifted slightly in anticipation of having to move quickly. “What is it?” he asked.
“Maybe nothing. GCPD transponders show seven cruisers bunched together in the business district uptown. Looks like they’re between Elmer and 27th.”
“A blockade?” Robin asked.
“No. They’re spread unevenly and not following any type of protocol I recognize.”
“We’ll check it out,” Batman stated as he raised his arm, grappler already in hand.
A cloud briefly washed over the moon, blanketing the city in darkness for a mere second. When the cloud passed, the ledge where two of the city’s defenders had stood only a heartbeat ago was vacant. Silently swinging through Gotham, Batman and Robin made their way uptown toward the business district.
Despite all of their training, their careful and precise movements, and their unique ability to remain invisible in the night, someone saw them. From a vantage point nearly a hundred yards away, a single person smiled as the vigilantes swept off into the evening. It had not been the right time to pull the trigger, even though they had both been under the unwavering watch of a scope. No, the time was not quite right.
But it soon would be.
# # #
“Push these idiots back!”
Detective Harvey Bullock hated one thing about Gotham: the costumed nutcases. Unfortunately, the city was flooded with them. To him every night was Halloween and it drove him crazy. He missed the good old days when the worst the city had to offer was the average murderers and rapists. Normal people doing terrible things, for sure, but still normal.
Crouched behind his Crown Vic, which he had skewed across the yellow line on Elmer Street to try and form some kind of makeshift vehicular barrier alongside the gathered cruisers, Bullock really wished he could transfer to another city.
“We’re trying, detective,” a patrolman named Skeers replied beside him. He was dressed in his uniform blues and his shield shone brightly from the street lamps. The kid was young, but Bullock had seen him around and knew he could handle himself. “They aren’t being rationale, sir.”
“Goddammit! I know they aren’t rationale!” Bullock peaked over the hood of his car and the scene caused his grip to tighten around his service revolver. “Look at how they’re dressed!”
Thirty individuals had been corralled between the cruisers and other responding vehicles, which were still arriving. The calls had started coming in only a few minutes ago, but this was Gotham, and when the authorities caught wind of any suspicious activity involving someone dressed as a clown, they took it seriously. When it was thirty clowns marching down the middle of town, they considered it a virtual epidemic. The result was every available unit, and even ones that had been involved in other matters, within a twenty block radius descended on the scene.
Thirty assorted men and women, all wearing purple, red, and green. The customary colors of one of the city’s most notorious criminals.
“We can’t just start shooting them, detective,” Skeers said. “The riot squad is still five minutes out.”
“We ain’t got five minutes,” Bullock shot back. “These fruitcakes are going to try charging us soon, I just know it.”
They had appeared out of nowhere, like a flash mob of insanity, storming down the street and causing general havoc with no apparent target or destination. Thirty separate people, all of them laughing hysterically and sweeping over pedestrians with brutal efficiency, trampled their way toward downtown. The calls to the police had gone out immediately, but not before two people and a dog had been viciously butchered.
They carried knives, axes, huge hammers that would typically look comical, and other hand-held weaponry. Mailboxes, trash cans, storefront windows, parked cars, and newspaper dispensers were thrashed and decimated in their wake.
Individually they would pose a serious threat. Together they were a force of nature.
Bullock looked up just in time to see something descending toward him. He jumped on Skeers and used his substantial bulk to bowl the patrolman over, shoving him to safety. A glass bottle filled with gasoline shattered on the hood of his Crown Vic, instantly igniting from the lit rag sticking out of the neck. In a heartbeat his car was covered in liquid fire and he felt the scorching heat of the assault.
“That’s it!” cried Bullock. He raised his revolver, ripping the hammer back with his thumb. “I ain’t waiting! We have to take these clowns out before someone else gets killed.”
“But the Commissioner said—”
“The Commish ain’t here, is he, rookie? Now, get that shotgun up before…before…”
Skeers gripped his single-barrel shotgun tightly, saying, “What is it, sir?”
Bullock wasn’t paying attention to Skeers any longer, or the chaos trapped behind him. Out of the corner of his eye he had seen something move, something above the top of the nearby buildings. He hated the costumed nutcases that this city seemed to cultivate like bacteria. He had heard all of the excuses for why they seemed to crawl out of the woodwork, but he knew the truth.
They were here because of him.
“Crap,” Bullock muttered and then turned to face Skeers, the look on his face dead serious. “Kid, you ever see the Bat in action?”
Skeers, who was already sitting upright, seemed to straighten his posture into precise regulation. “The Bat? No.”
“Do yourself a favor and stay down. This is going to get intense.”
Skeers opened his mouth, but didn’t get a chance to ask the detective what was about to happen. Coming up in his own precinct, he had heard his fellow officers trade stories about encounters with the Batman. Most of them seemed too far-fetched to hold any truth in them. They seemed more like tall tales or urban myths.
After tonight, he wouldn’t think that any longer.
A dark shade dropped in from nowhere, landing squarely in the central mass of the collective clowns. Despite the red and blue lights blanketing the scene from all sides, the headlights from the encircling cruisers, and the ambient light from the street lamps, Skeers could still barely make out any real detail about the figure that had dropped into the fray.
The clowns weren’t sure what was happening at first, but the shade moved and one of them dropped. Then another. And another. Like lightning, the shadow moved between them, striking their knees, their temples, their throats. His cape masked his movements and he hit with such precision it was almost surgical.
When the clowns around the outskirts of the perimeter heard the fracas they quickly moved inward, like water to a drain. What was thirty was now two dozen, and the number was still dropping rapidly. None of them talked, issued orders, took control, or otherwise communicated. All of them, every single pseudo clown, did nothing but laugh uncontrollably as they fell in to try and kill this new target.
That’s when a second shape dropped down from nowhere, this one a blur of red and yellow. As the central figure, presumably the Batman, worked to take down the clowns from the interior, this smaller but just as vicious figure took them down from the exterior.
Their numbers dropped to twenty and then ten. The pair worked in perfect tandem, slamming gloved knuckles and steel-toed boots into vital areas of the aggressors. The majority focused on the black wraith pummeling them from within and were thereby easy pickings for the younger predator at their backs.
Skeers stood up, aiming his shotgun, but Bullock put his hand on the barrel and forced it down. “Don’t,” the detective said. “You’ll just piss him off.”
Shocked, but heeding the senior officer’s warning, he lowered the weapon and watched as amazingly, incredibly, only one clown was left standing. He squared off with the Batman and the red and yellow blur, now side by side. This had to be the legendary partner of the legendary manhunter, Robin. It could be no one else.
The last clown could barely contain his laughter, the giggles and guffaws slipping through his clenched lips. The vigilantes stared at him, unwavering as the clown tossed a machete between both hands.
Batman said something to him, but neither Skeers or Bullock could make it out. The clown didn’t seem to be responding anyway, as instead of carrying on his side of the conversation, the purple-clad assailant leapt forward. The machete sliced down between the pair, missing them completely. Skeers thought he saw one of them move, but when the clown hit the pavement it looked like both Batman and Robin were completely still, their capes covering their torsos.
Thirty men and women in white face paint with green hair and smears of red around their lips, all of them down for the count. Bullock stepped into the makeshift arena, which Skeers took to be a sign that everything was now clear.
“You don’t move, Bats!” Bullock shouted as he pointed an accusatory finger at the vigilantes. “You’re completely surrounded, so no pulling your disappearing act this time.”
“Sir—” Skeers started to say, but Bullock waved him off.
Bullock rubbed his hands together, apparently savoring the encounter. “Oh, this is bittersweet, for sure,” the detective said. “The Commish ain’t going to save your butt this time. No, no, no! I got you dead to rights, freakshow.”
“Do you not think there are more pressing matters at the moment,” Robin stated. While grammatically it should have been a question, coming from this serious-looking teenager it seemed more an accusation.
Bullock ticked off his fingers as he spoke. “Interfering with a police investigation. Reckless endangerment. Possession of a concealed weapon.”
Skeers looked around at the floored perps around them, most of which they had to step over just to get close to Batman. “I think they did all this with just their hands, sir,” he said.
“You know they got something hidden on these getups!” Bullock turned back to the duo. “What have you got to say for yourself? Huh?”
“These people were obviously drugged,” Batman stated coldly. “Their pupils are dilated and all of their hands were shaking uncontrollably. They’re pawns, detective.”
“Yeah. Duh. Any idiot can see they were out of their minds. They’re working for the Joker, obviously. Just look at what they’re wearing.”
“The Joker has been locked up in Arkham for the last six months,” Batman countered. “I disabled his network of underlings personally. He has had absolutely no visitors and no communication with the outside world. Unless he had a time-delayed procedure in place prior to his incarceration, he’s not behind what happened here tonight.”
Bullock smirked and shook his head. “You’ll say anything to make yourself sound more valuable, won’t you? C’mon, Bats. You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain—”
“Bullock!”
Bullock froze in place, recognizing the voice. He closed his eyes in irritation and turned to face the man who was pushing his way into the scene. Skeers stepped aside to reveal Commissioner James Gordon of the GCPD stomping toward them.
“Hey, Commish!” Bullock said with a forced smile. “Welcome to the party. I was just—”
“I know what you were doing, and I didn’t authorize it. Get these men organized and start cuffing the real troublemakers before they wake up.”
Bullock looked between the Commissioner and Batman twice before throwing his hands up in the air, relenting to his superior’s orders. He grabbed Skeers by the shoulder and turned him forcibly around, saying, “Let’s move, you mooks! You heard the Commish! Start slapping the bracelets on these freaks.”
The Commissioner took a moment to coordinate the mass arrest, signaling to other officers to come forward to assist. Batman and his young partner waited silently in the center of the maelstrom, Robin obviously uncomfortable at being so exposed.
Finally, Gordon came over to them. He said, “You know I’ve warned you not to take on Bullock. He has it out for you.”
“Tonight wasn’t a random occurrence, Jim,” Batman replied.
Gordon nodded. “Agreed. What’s the next move?”
“The Joker isn’t behind this, but he’s obviously connected somehow. My first inclination is that this is a distraction of some kind; that we were drawn here on purpose.”
“But a distraction for who? The GCPD or you?”
Robin made a note to discuss the perceptive deductions of Gordon with Batman later on. He had very little experience in working with the Commissioner, but he had quickly come to respect the leader of the GCPD. While Bullock immediately jumped to conclusions, Gordon had consciously opted to not do that and make an assumption based on the appearance of the assailants.
“A fine question,” Batman replied. “One I’ll be asking the Joker myself.”
TO BE CONTINUED
Rounding the corner by catching the lamppost, which splashed disjointed light through the cracked glass case over the bulb, Benny nearly tripped over the first stoop in a series of row houses. Catching himself, he vaulted the concrete plateau and doubled his efforts to get as far away as possible.
He hadn’t expected the old man to fight back. He hadn’t expected that the bag he was carrying was just full of fruit instead of something much more valuable. He hadn’t expected to get so angry at the old man’s audacity to actually punch him in the jaw. He hadn’t expected to pull out his butterfly knife and plunge it into the old man’s thigh.
He hadn’t expected to draw the attention of him.
The crew he was jumping into, the 99ers, had a certain way of doing things. They were relatively new on the Gotham scene, but already they were making a name for themselves. Over the last year their numbers had doubled, and Benny knew that it he wanted to survive on the streets he needed to be counted among them. So, after the ritual beating to show how tough he was, he then had to pull a job on his own.
Benny spotted the old man coming out of the Cash 4 Coin joint on Carson Street carrying a big brown bag that just had to be filled with something good. Maybe he had picked up something he had pawned previously, or maybe it was some stacks of cash from selling his junk. Whatever it was, Benny could just take if off him and show it to the 99ers as proof of the robbery he would tell them he committed. What was the difference between a mugging and shoplifting anyway? Stealing was stealing as far as Benny cared.
But the old man screamed, fought back, and knocked Benny down. So, Benny stuck him. Then some teenagers coming out of the pawn shop spotted him and yelled. Benny took off. He would have to try again somewhere else.
As he knelt in an ally a few blocks away, sizing up a convenience store on 9th Street, he thought he was in the clear and wasn’t planning on giving the old man a second thought. That’s when he heard a deep, resonating voice from within the shadows of the ally.
“Aggravated assault and carrying a concealed weapon,” the voice said.
Benny, tough guy that was proud of himself for not even whimpering after his ritual beating, nearly wet himself when he heard that voice. He knew who had spoken it and was shocked that he would waste his time with someone like Benny.
Benny turned slightly, but was too scared to move more than that. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the darkness come to life. Twin white eyes blinked at him and he saw a glimmer of yellow wrapped around a black symbol.
“Heavy charges for a minor,” the voice from the shadows continued. “And now you’re casing your next target. That’s premeditation.”
“I…I…I don’t…uh…” Benny couldn’t even string a complete sentence together he was so terrified.
“Benjamin Fishburne,” the voice continued. “At 15 years-old, they might decide to try you as an adult. That’s two to six years depending on how generous the district attorney is feeling.”
Benny stumbled over the garbage can he had been hiding behind and fell into the street. He didn’t even know where he was running to, but all he cared about now was getting away from that voice.
From him.
The end of the block was coming up fast and he would have to choose which direction to run in next. How had he known Benny’s name? Were the legends true? Was he more than a man? Some kind of demon? How else could he know his name and his age?
The squealing teens that yelled at him after he stuck the old man; they must have drawn his attention. Or was he really everywhere there was darkness in Gotham? Some said he was a part of the city, like something Gotham conjured up to take care of business. Right now, that business was Benny, and he was so panicked that he thought he might go crazy.
“Get away from me!” Benny managed to sputter, and he was surprised at his own courageousness.
The shadow moved closer. “You hospitalized that man,” it said. “For what? Some fresh produce. Do you think the 99ers will bring you into the fold based on your ability to steal oranges?”
“How…how did you know that?”
“I know a great deal many things, Benjamin. I know that you were once arrested for selling crystal meth. I know that you were a corner boy running between the stash and the bank. I know that your mother is worried about you.”
Benny’s eyes went wide. Everything he had heard about the Batman, about how it was some kind of mind-reading spawn that anticipated your every move, was true. How could he know all of this? Benny was a nobody. A no-one. There was no reason for someone, something like the Batman to even knew he existed. Yet here he was, cowering before an urban myth.
“What do you want?”
Finally, the shadow stopped moving toward him. It paused, perhaps considering. Perhaps it would let him live. It stood watching him silently for what seemed like an eternity, as if it were weighing his very soul in judgement.
“One street over there is a police precinct,” it finally said.
“Yeah. I know.” Benny nodded furiously. “I’ll turn myself in. No problem.”
“Tell the desk sergeant that you want to speak with Detective Millard. In a town that is so ready to embrace the darkness, he is a man of integrity. Confess to him what you did tonight. Tell him that you will plead guilty.”
“Right. Of course! You got it. Just let me go.”
The shadow silently moved a single step closer.
“I am watching you, Benjamin Fishburne. If you do not do as I have said tonight, I will know.”
As Benjamin, whose street name was Benny Smalls on account of his short stature, slid out of the ally he could have sworn that he saw a twisted smile creep onto the face of the Batman. But that was insane. Nothing that dark, that had to be born from a nightmare, could possibly feel happiness. No, Benny Smalls was sure that his imagination was tricking him into making the encounter seem worse than it had actually been.
But he wouldn’t tell Detective Millard that when he saw him in the next few minutes.
And he was definitely going to use his one phone call to tell his mom that he loved her.
# # #
“I’m just saying I think it’s an invasion of privacy,” Dick Grayson said.
Batman watched from his perch on the corner of a rooftop, overlooking the 52nd Precinct between 10th and 11th, as Benjamin Fishburne pumped his legs as hard as he could to get inside the police station. The youth had been sufficiently pushed psychologically into doing what Batman had wanted him to do, which was ultimately for the better. He had spotted the mugging gone wrong back at the pawn shop too late, but had easily followed the perp by running along the top edges of the buildings. He had learned long ago that the people in this city rarely looked up, making it easy to hide in plain sight regardless of his urban camouflage.
Once Benjamin was inside, Batman finally spoke in response to Dick’s comment. He barely whispered, but the throat-microphone woven into his costume would pick up the vibrations of his vocal folds easily enough. “Accessing public records isn’t a violation of anyone’s privacy,” Batman stated.
The earpiece inside his cowl relayed his former protégé’s comments from their subterranean headquarters to his current location in downtown Gotham. “Not exactly,” Dick replied. “First, you used facial recognition software linked to the cowl’s lenses to identity this kid, and then pulled his rap sheet up on your palm-top holo-display. You scared the bejeezus out of him. I’m surprised he didn’t pee his pants. He probably thought you were reading his mind or something. Second, you’re using the term ‘public’ pretty loosely. The file is stored at a public agency, but isn’t necessarily a public record.”
“You know better than anyone that what I do is just as much imagery and theatrics as it is deduction and legwork.”
“Sure,” Dick conceded. “And tapping into GCPD sealed juvenile records certainly helps. I’m just saying that the ethics are a little sketchy. The part about his mother was a nice touch. How did you know that?”
Batman stepped back from the ledge, content that the matter was resolved. The night was still young and he had a lot of ground to cover before dawn. The black and grey of his costume absorbed what little moonlight there was this evening, and the remainder could be sucked in by his jet-black cape if need be. While few people in Gotham looked skyward, in recent years he had learned that just as much danger could come from above: satellite tracking, drones, and even the occasional aerial criminal. While there was no imminent threat as he moved across the roof, he could never be too careful.
Reaching the opposite side, and now facing north, he reached around to the small of his back and retrieved his gas-powered grappler. His older models had used cartridges to propel the line, but they were too noisy and might draw attention. The compressed carbon dioxide cylinders were whisper silent, but the trade-off was that the line wouldn’t shoot as far.
Extending his arm, he targeted a ledge two buildings up from his current position. The line launched out, its end fastened to a 440C steel arrowhead with pressure sensitive egress barbs. The arrowhead buried itself in the face of the cement ledge and the force of impact released the barbs on either side of the arrowhead, effectively wedging it into the cement. The line would hold twice his own bodyweight, possibly more.
“A lucky guess,” Batman responded as he jumped off into the night and hit the button to retract the line. He silently flew over the open street to the next ledge, continuing his patrol. “I saw that his mother was still listed as his primary guardian in his file. Every child, deep down, cares what his mother thinks about him.”
“Sounds a little like profiling to me.”
“Profiling is a complicated art form built on education. It’s a deductive science.”
“Oh, I’m not disputing the results. Again, merely the ethics of coercion.”
He approached the ledge quickly, and just prior to reaching the cement fixture, Batman flipped off the retraction motor and swung his feet forward. He pumped downward and allowed his momentum to swing him under and then up over top of the ledge, where he landed gracefully on both feet. Another click and the arrowhead released itself and slipped back into the grappler, which was again magnetically clipped to Batman’s belt.
“You spent several weeks in the cave doing nothing but profiling criminals when you were thirteen,” Batman pointed out. “You never brought up this concern before.”
“Yeah, because I was thirteen. I’ve matured since then.”
Batman could hear the smile in Dick’s voice. He was proud of his first mentee in a way that a father is proud of their firstborn. There had been others to take up his cause over the years, others that had dedicated their lives to justice. Some took more forceful approaches than others. But Dick had been the first and had easily set the standard. A standard which was coming under strain recently.
“Ethics aren’t a luxury we can afford,” said a new voice spoke over the communications link. This one was younger and more profound in his diction. “We are not common gumshoes trying to hash out a suspect. We are champions of this city, and are therefore above the normal regulations of the private citizenry.”
“Gumshoes?” Dick muttered over the line. “Hash out?”
“He’s been watching old Philip Marlowe films,” Batman stated.
Twenty feet from where Batman stood, a cloaked teenager with dark hair and a green domino mask stepped out from behind an HVAC system. His cape was draped over his shoulder in much the same fashion as Batman’s, but there were two key styling differences: the lining was yellow and a hood capped the top, which was down at the moment.
“Fine examples of your American cinema,” the newcomer, the latest of Batman’s protégés to wear the costume of Robin, stated plainly. Batman heard him both through the earpiece and from his close proximity. “A shame your country developed passed the 1950s. They had style back then.”
“It’s your country, too, kid,” Dick said from where he sat back in the cave.
“Only by proxy.”
Robin stepped closer to Batman, his father. Damien Wayne had come from what his mother had hoped to be a perfect union, that of the world’s foremost deductive expert and the League of Assassins. One night of passion, drug-induced as it was, with Talia al Ghul had spawned the heir of the Wayne lineage, forever bonding Batman to the League.
As a result of being raised by the League, Damien was a natural killer with instincts that Batman tried to suppress. Typically the Robin role was meant to counterbalance the darkness of the Batman persona, but with Damien, both Bruce and Dick found themselves trying to control Damien’s bloodthirst.
“Find anything?” Batman inquired as Robin approached.
“Only a few containers of venom.” Robin stood next to his father, overlooking the city and allowing the wind to slip the folds of his cape off of his shoulders. Despite the height he looked perfectly at ease far above the cold streets. “Either the buyers were tipped off or they spotted me upon arrival. Obviously the latter couldn’t be true.”
“It’s also possible that the containers were left in a dead drop location and will be picked up later,” Batman countered.
“Which is why I drained them onto the warehouse floor and diluted the liquid with water and bleach.” Robin stole a glance up at his father. “I’m not an idiot. Maybe the tip was bad.”
“The tip was good,” Dick responded via radio. “My contact heard it from his cellmate last week. The presence of the venom barrels proves that much. If I wasn’t laid up in the cave with a busted ankle—”
“We know, Nightwing,” Batman cut in. “We appreciate the ops support. I’m sure that Oracle is enjoying her night off.”
“We still have to find whoever is moving venom through the city,” Robin said. “With Bane out of commission, we have zero suspects and tonight didn’t yield any usable results.”
“I’ll press my contact again,” Dick replied. “Until then…hold on.”
Batman’s gaze stayed on the street below, but his posture shifted slightly in anticipation of having to move quickly. “What is it?” he asked.
“Maybe nothing. GCPD transponders show seven cruisers bunched together in the business district uptown. Looks like they’re between Elmer and 27th.”
“A blockade?” Robin asked.
“No. They’re spread unevenly and not following any type of protocol I recognize.”
“We’ll check it out,” Batman stated as he raised his arm, grappler already in hand.
A cloud briefly washed over the moon, blanketing the city in darkness for a mere second. When the cloud passed, the ledge where two of the city’s defenders had stood only a heartbeat ago was vacant. Silently swinging through Gotham, Batman and Robin made their way uptown toward the business district.
Despite all of their training, their careful and precise movements, and their unique ability to remain invisible in the night, someone saw them. From a vantage point nearly a hundred yards away, a single person smiled as the vigilantes swept off into the evening. It had not been the right time to pull the trigger, even though they had both been under the unwavering watch of a scope. No, the time was not quite right.
But it soon would be.
# # #
“Push these idiots back!”
Detective Harvey Bullock hated one thing about Gotham: the costumed nutcases. Unfortunately, the city was flooded with them. To him every night was Halloween and it drove him crazy. He missed the good old days when the worst the city had to offer was the average murderers and rapists. Normal people doing terrible things, for sure, but still normal.
Crouched behind his Crown Vic, which he had skewed across the yellow line on Elmer Street to try and form some kind of makeshift vehicular barrier alongside the gathered cruisers, Bullock really wished he could transfer to another city.
“We’re trying, detective,” a patrolman named Skeers replied beside him. He was dressed in his uniform blues and his shield shone brightly from the street lamps. The kid was young, but Bullock had seen him around and knew he could handle himself. “They aren’t being rationale, sir.”
“Goddammit! I know they aren’t rationale!” Bullock peaked over the hood of his car and the scene caused his grip to tighten around his service revolver. “Look at how they’re dressed!”
Thirty individuals had been corralled between the cruisers and other responding vehicles, which were still arriving. The calls had started coming in only a few minutes ago, but this was Gotham, and when the authorities caught wind of any suspicious activity involving someone dressed as a clown, they took it seriously. When it was thirty clowns marching down the middle of town, they considered it a virtual epidemic. The result was every available unit, and even ones that had been involved in other matters, within a twenty block radius descended on the scene.
Thirty assorted men and women, all wearing purple, red, and green. The customary colors of one of the city’s most notorious criminals.
“We can’t just start shooting them, detective,” Skeers said. “The riot squad is still five minutes out.”
“We ain’t got five minutes,” Bullock shot back. “These fruitcakes are going to try charging us soon, I just know it.”
They had appeared out of nowhere, like a flash mob of insanity, storming down the street and causing general havoc with no apparent target or destination. Thirty separate people, all of them laughing hysterically and sweeping over pedestrians with brutal efficiency, trampled their way toward downtown. The calls to the police had gone out immediately, but not before two people and a dog had been viciously butchered.
They carried knives, axes, huge hammers that would typically look comical, and other hand-held weaponry. Mailboxes, trash cans, storefront windows, parked cars, and newspaper dispensers were thrashed and decimated in their wake.
Individually they would pose a serious threat. Together they were a force of nature.
Bullock looked up just in time to see something descending toward him. He jumped on Skeers and used his substantial bulk to bowl the patrolman over, shoving him to safety. A glass bottle filled with gasoline shattered on the hood of his Crown Vic, instantly igniting from the lit rag sticking out of the neck. In a heartbeat his car was covered in liquid fire and he felt the scorching heat of the assault.
“That’s it!” cried Bullock. He raised his revolver, ripping the hammer back with his thumb. “I ain’t waiting! We have to take these clowns out before someone else gets killed.”
“But the Commissioner said—”
“The Commish ain’t here, is he, rookie? Now, get that shotgun up before…before…”
Skeers gripped his single-barrel shotgun tightly, saying, “What is it, sir?”
Bullock wasn’t paying attention to Skeers any longer, or the chaos trapped behind him. Out of the corner of his eye he had seen something move, something above the top of the nearby buildings. He hated the costumed nutcases that this city seemed to cultivate like bacteria. He had heard all of the excuses for why they seemed to crawl out of the woodwork, but he knew the truth.
They were here because of him.
“Crap,” Bullock muttered and then turned to face Skeers, the look on his face dead serious. “Kid, you ever see the Bat in action?”
Skeers, who was already sitting upright, seemed to straighten his posture into precise regulation. “The Bat? No.”
“Do yourself a favor and stay down. This is going to get intense.”
Skeers opened his mouth, but didn’t get a chance to ask the detective what was about to happen. Coming up in his own precinct, he had heard his fellow officers trade stories about encounters with the Batman. Most of them seemed too far-fetched to hold any truth in them. They seemed more like tall tales or urban myths.
After tonight, he wouldn’t think that any longer.
A dark shade dropped in from nowhere, landing squarely in the central mass of the collective clowns. Despite the red and blue lights blanketing the scene from all sides, the headlights from the encircling cruisers, and the ambient light from the street lamps, Skeers could still barely make out any real detail about the figure that had dropped into the fray.
The clowns weren’t sure what was happening at first, but the shade moved and one of them dropped. Then another. And another. Like lightning, the shadow moved between them, striking their knees, their temples, their throats. His cape masked his movements and he hit with such precision it was almost surgical.
When the clowns around the outskirts of the perimeter heard the fracas they quickly moved inward, like water to a drain. What was thirty was now two dozen, and the number was still dropping rapidly. None of them talked, issued orders, took control, or otherwise communicated. All of them, every single pseudo clown, did nothing but laugh uncontrollably as they fell in to try and kill this new target.
That’s when a second shape dropped down from nowhere, this one a blur of red and yellow. As the central figure, presumably the Batman, worked to take down the clowns from the interior, this smaller but just as vicious figure took them down from the exterior.
Their numbers dropped to twenty and then ten. The pair worked in perfect tandem, slamming gloved knuckles and steel-toed boots into vital areas of the aggressors. The majority focused on the black wraith pummeling them from within and were thereby easy pickings for the younger predator at their backs.
Skeers stood up, aiming his shotgun, but Bullock put his hand on the barrel and forced it down. “Don’t,” the detective said. “You’ll just piss him off.”
Shocked, but heeding the senior officer’s warning, he lowered the weapon and watched as amazingly, incredibly, only one clown was left standing. He squared off with the Batman and the red and yellow blur, now side by side. This had to be the legendary partner of the legendary manhunter, Robin. It could be no one else.
The last clown could barely contain his laughter, the giggles and guffaws slipping through his clenched lips. The vigilantes stared at him, unwavering as the clown tossed a machete between both hands.
Batman said something to him, but neither Skeers or Bullock could make it out. The clown didn’t seem to be responding anyway, as instead of carrying on his side of the conversation, the purple-clad assailant leapt forward. The machete sliced down between the pair, missing them completely. Skeers thought he saw one of them move, but when the clown hit the pavement it looked like both Batman and Robin were completely still, their capes covering their torsos.
Thirty men and women in white face paint with green hair and smears of red around their lips, all of them down for the count. Bullock stepped into the makeshift arena, which Skeers took to be a sign that everything was now clear.
“You don’t move, Bats!” Bullock shouted as he pointed an accusatory finger at the vigilantes. “You’re completely surrounded, so no pulling your disappearing act this time.”
“Sir—” Skeers started to say, but Bullock waved him off.
Bullock rubbed his hands together, apparently savoring the encounter. “Oh, this is bittersweet, for sure,” the detective said. “The Commish ain’t going to save your butt this time. No, no, no! I got you dead to rights, freakshow.”
“Do you not think there are more pressing matters at the moment,” Robin stated. While grammatically it should have been a question, coming from this serious-looking teenager it seemed more an accusation.
Bullock ticked off his fingers as he spoke. “Interfering with a police investigation. Reckless endangerment. Possession of a concealed weapon.”
Skeers looked around at the floored perps around them, most of which they had to step over just to get close to Batman. “I think they did all this with just their hands, sir,” he said.
“You know they got something hidden on these getups!” Bullock turned back to the duo. “What have you got to say for yourself? Huh?”
“These people were obviously drugged,” Batman stated coldly. “Their pupils are dilated and all of their hands were shaking uncontrollably. They’re pawns, detective.”
“Yeah. Duh. Any idiot can see they were out of their minds. They’re working for the Joker, obviously. Just look at what they’re wearing.”
“The Joker has been locked up in Arkham for the last six months,” Batman countered. “I disabled his network of underlings personally. He has had absolutely no visitors and no communication with the outside world. Unless he had a time-delayed procedure in place prior to his incarceration, he’s not behind what happened here tonight.”
Bullock smirked and shook his head. “You’ll say anything to make yourself sound more valuable, won’t you? C’mon, Bats. You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain—”
“Bullock!”
Bullock froze in place, recognizing the voice. He closed his eyes in irritation and turned to face the man who was pushing his way into the scene. Skeers stepped aside to reveal Commissioner James Gordon of the GCPD stomping toward them.
“Hey, Commish!” Bullock said with a forced smile. “Welcome to the party. I was just—”
“I know what you were doing, and I didn’t authorize it. Get these men organized and start cuffing the real troublemakers before they wake up.”
Bullock looked between the Commissioner and Batman twice before throwing his hands up in the air, relenting to his superior’s orders. He grabbed Skeers by the shoulder and turned him forcibly around, saying, “Let’s move, you mooks! You heard the Commish! Start slapping the bracelets on these freaks.”
The Commissioner took a moment to coordinate the mass arrest, signaling to other officers to come forward to assist. Batman and his young partner waited silently in the center of the maelstrom, Robin obviously uncomfortable at being so exposed.
Finally, Gordon came over to them. He said, “You know I’ve warned you not to take on Bullock. He has it out for you.”
“Tonight wasn’t a random occurrence, Jim,” Batman replied.
Gordon nodded. “Agreed. What’s the next move?”
“The Joker isn’t behind this, but he’s obviously connected somehow. My first inclination is that this is a distraction of some kind; that we were drawn here on purpose.”
“But a distraction for who? The GCPD or you?”
Robin made a note to discuss the perceptive deductions of Gordon with Batman later on. He had very little experience in working with the Commissioner, but he had quickly come to respect the leader of the GCPD. While Bullock immediately jumped to conclusions, Gordon had consciously opted to not do that and make an assumption based on the appearance of the assailants.
“A fine question,” Batman replied. “One I’ll be asking the Joker myself.”
TO BE CONTINUED