Gotham City. Not the best place to be on a Friday night, or any night really.
The streets are paved with both the blood of innocents and criminals alike, and the rich are just as guilty as the poor and the criminals they claim to despise.
While bats and birds fly in the skies overhead, swooping down to protect what is left of Gotham's fading light; clowns, scarecrows, and monsters of their ilk continue to cast their shadows in the streets and into the hearts of the people. This was the norm in the city.
However on this particular night, a bat would encounter an animal far more dangerous than any penguin or crocodile.
"I'm close to the location."
Black Bat - Cassandra Cain, once known as Batgirl - traversed the rooftops of the Narrows with precision and speed. Her lungs breathed in the rotten air from the sewage. Her eyes nearly blinded and her nose itching and twitching from the thickness of the smog billowing from the rooftops. The streets were still wet from the rain earlier in the day, but her boots prevented her from losing any traction.
At times she really hated this city. The trash on the roads. The corrupt cops that turn a blind eye to innocents as long as the pay is right. The wealthy socialites that disgusied themselves as humanists. She hated it all. But other times she knew that these elements were why she stayed here.
This was where she needed to be.
Where she belonged.
"Was there no one else available to handle this?"
"Nope. You know the deal. Batman is on a mission with League. Red Robin's with Nightwing in Bludhaven. Batwoman and Batgirl are chasing down a lead on the location of the Crime Bible. Robin and Bluebird are with the Titans, and who knows where Red Hood is these days?"
The voice in Black Bat's ear belonged to Oracle - Barbara Gordon. The daughter of Commissioner Jim Gordon. She was also the first Batgirl.
She sat in her loft in the clock tower, typing away on three keyboards while sipping from her fifth cup of coffee that night. "Caffeine, you keep me sane." She muttered with a grin.
Black Bat stopped short of a rooftop on top of an old deli. Looking down into the alley, she saw someone lying face down in the pavement. "I've found him." she said into her earpiece.
She jumped down into the alley, swinging on the clotheslines to slow the momentum of her fall. Landing safely on the ground, she walked to figure.
It was a man - roughly 200 hundred pounds and over six feet by Cassandra's estimation. His eyes were wide open, and he had slash marks all over his back and arms.
"What do we have?" Barbara inquired.
Black Bat placed her fingers against the man's neck. It was a useless practice for a conclusion she already determined, but she did it anyway. "He's dead. He also has multiple lacerations on his back and arms."
"Focus your visor on him, I'll try and get an id."
"Ok." Black Bat stood up and blinked to activate the scanner in her mask. At the clock tower Oracle typed on her keyboards, logging into her database as the data was relayed to her. A picture of the man in the alley appeared on her screen in a matter of seconds.
"Richard Hughes. He's was a scientist working in WayneTech's R&D division. He went missing a couple of days ago."
"No one filed a police report?"
"Not by the looks of it. That's odd even for Gotham."
"Perhaps he had no one that missed him." Black Bat surmised.
"Or someone is covering it up."
"What of his injuries?"
"It looks like the cause of death was massive blood loss from his cuts, but I can't be sure without a proper autopsy."
"What do I do now?"
"I'll call the police and get them to the scene, you get back here and we'll see if we can't pick up some sort of lead on whoever did this."
"On my way." Black Bat climbed the balcony ladders of the apartment building to her right and ascended to the rooftops once more. As she ran back to the Aerie – the home base of Oracle, as well as the Birds of Prey – Black Bat mused on the case.
For the past few days bodies had been turning up in the Narrows with the same injuries as Hughes. He was the fifth. Black Bat offered the possibility of Killer Croc being the culprit, but Oracle denied that due to the cuts being much more precise than what Croc was normally capable of. When she ran down other suspects - Brutale, Zsazz, and Copperhead among others - she realized that the wounds didn't match their methods either.
Whoever made these cuts was an animal to be sure, but the sheer precision of them was something to take an interest in. The cuts weren't especially deep, or seem to target any major arteries. It was baffling.
Black Bat had never seen anything like it. The ferocity of a wild animal, with the precision of a surgeon. Whoever this person was, was a master at their craft.
Upon reaching the clock tower, Cassandra entered the secret elevator in the wall on the bottom floor. She rode the elevator to the top floor of the tower, entering the Aeire. She took off her mask before walking to Oracle; who was still typing on her keyboard.
"Want some coffee?" the redhead offered, not looking at her charge. "Freshly brewed."
Cassandra looked to the pot that sat on a table to the right of Barbara. "No thank you." She declined. "Coffee dulls my senses in the field."
"Don't say I didn't offer." Barbara took a sip from her own mug.
Cassandra looked to the large screen above her and saw the pictures of the five bodies that had turned up over the course of the case, including Hughes. "What have you found out so far?" she asked Oracle.
"All of the victims were top scientists in various companies across the country." She began to explain.
"Like I said earlier, Hughes worked for WayneTech. Here's the first victim." Barbara enlarged a picture of a woman with short blonde hair and blue eyes.
She looked young by Cassandra's estimation. She couldn't have been older than twenty-five.
"Amy Reinhart. She worked for applied sciences at LutherCorp."
The next picture Oracle enlarged was of an African-American man with short black hair and glasses. "William Henly worked for Roxxon's R&D division."
The next picture was an Asian woman with long black hair tied in a ponytail. "Reina Yamada was in assistant at a bio-chem lab in Stagg Industries."
The last picture Barbara showed was of a man with short brown hair that was almost completely hidden under a baseball cap.
"Finally, Jackson Smith was the newest scientist in the integrated technologies division at Stark International."
Cassandra studied all of the victims. They looked like normal people. None of them really stood out as people who would willingly be in Gotham, let alone the Narrows. "Do they have anything else in common besides being scientists?"
"Glad you asked." Barbara typed on her keyboard and a new picture appeared on the screen. This one showed all of the dead scientists - along with two other people - wearing caps and gowns. "All five of them attended Boston College, where they were part of the same think tank."
"Think tank?"
Barbara nodded. "The aim, according to the papers they wrote, was to find a clean renewable energy source. But they were never able to complete their work before graduating."
"Do you think that whoever is behind the killings knows of this think tank?"
"It's entirely possible. They might be kidnapping the scientists and forcing them to work on the project."
"And killing them when they refuse to cooperate." Cassandra deduced.
Barbara nodded. "Yeah. That's what I was thinking."
"Who are the other two people in the photo? Were they part of the think tank as well?"
Barbara zoomed in on to picture and focused on the two people on the far right. An African-American woman and a Hispanic man. The computer then pulled up their information. "Shaunna Wesley and James Rodriguez. Wesley works for Agricultural development at Kord Industries and Rodriguez is a petroleum engineer for Oscorp."
"That means they'll likely be the next targets."
"Way ahead of you." Oracle typed some more information into the computer and a new screen popped up. "It looks like they're currently in Gotham for a company summit."
Where is this summit?"
"At the Kane Hotel on Grand Avenue. Are you heading there now?"
"I am." Cassandra was in the process of putting her gear back on when Barbara called to her.
"Get there quick, Cassandra! It looks like whoever has been behind the attacks has shown up!"
Cassandra looked back to the computer and saw that Barbara had hacked into the hotel ball room's security camera. She saw people running around in fear but she couldn't tell what from. The feed then cut out.
"I'm going!" Cassandra ran to the elevator.
"Be careful. I'll see what I can piece together from the footage. Let me know if you find out anything. I'll be in contact."
Cassandra nodded and the elevator door closed behind her.
In the conference ball room of the Kane Hotel, two people stood among the dead bodies of the attendees. They surveyed the scene, their faces showing just how much disgust and guilt they felt in their hearts.
"This is horrible."
The girl that spoke had long brown hair that was tied into a ponytail and flowed down over the back navy blue and yellow spandex. This was Shadowcat - Katherine "Kitty" Pryde. A mutant with the ability to phase through objects. As well as a member of the X-Men.
"All of these innocent people…"
"He has no remorse for anyone. All he did was complete his objective and take the scientists." Kitty's companion stated.
She was a couple of inches taller than her and she also wore yellow and blue spandex. The main difference being that she wore a mask. Though her black hair still could shown flowing from under it. This was Laura Kinney - clone of the X-Man Wolverine. Formerly known as X-23. She is now the new Wolverine.
Wolverine lifted her head into the air and began to sniff. "His scent is gone as well. The bodies here are masking it."
"I'm surprised you can smell anything in this town." Kitty joked, trying to take her mind off of the gruesome scene around them.
Laura clenched her fist. "I should have caught him much earlier. Then none of this would have happened. If he were here he-"
Kitty placed her hand on the Laura's shoulder.
"Hey don't say that. You're doing fine. Creed may be an animal but he's not stupid. He's pretty clever in his own right, even Logan would have admitted that. We'll catch him before anyone else gets hurt. Ok?"
Black Bat arrived outside of the conference hall, but stopped when she heard the voices of the mutants. She crouched by the outside of the door and peeked inside, seeing them talking amongst the bodies. Who are they? Are they the ones that did this?
"Black Bat?" Oracle hailed from the earpiece. "What's going on?"
Wolverine sniffed the air again, this time catching an unfamiliar scent. She unsheathed her claws, alerting Shadowcat.
"Laura? What's wrong?"
Black Bat grabbed three batarangs from her belt. Oracle called out to her again.
"Black Bat, come in. What's happening?"
"Laura?" Kitty called.
The tension began to build.
"Cassandra?"
"Someone's here."
Black Bat threw her batarangs around the corner, but Wolverine slashed them away.
"What was that?!" Kitty shouted. She watched as Wolverine took off towards the doorway. "Laura, wait! Where are you going?!"
Black Bat rolled from out of her hiding spot and dashed towards Wolverine, pulling out more batarangs as she prepared for battle.
Wolverine jumped into air, her roar echoing in the air as she aimed her claws at her new enemy.