Author's Note: Readers, this is the second installment of the City in Pieces; this is also the third installment of Chance Bremly (AKA the Lieutenant)'s adventures. I've gotten many kind and generous reviews from the first story that circled around Chance's journey from being a needy, greedy thief to becoming something more. Because the last installment ended with the Joker's reign of Gotham, this is circling Bane's 'chance' on the city, and he will bring the city to pieces. I hope you enjoy this one as much as all of you have enjoyed the first. As usual, this is going to be rated as M for sexual content (and most likely sexual misconduct), gore, language, and any use of the Mature rating that you can think of because I can't. I would appreciate the reviews, guest and users.

Anyway, let the games begin.

The City in Pieces II

Chapter One: After All These Years

Chance Bremly had once considered trying to convince her old friend and ally, Ace Leswaae to join the League of Shadows. However, it raised several complications. The League was born under the rule that it would be used as a weapon to exact vengeance on those who deserved it; Ace, though kind and loyal as an ally, was only a monster under all those clothes and that hair. The League of Shadows trained the lost and the more deserving of the world's lowest instincts to become great in themselves; Ace was a better fighter, but she lacked the discipline to follow any rules. The League of Shadows worked as a unity; Ace couldn't be controlled by anyone. She was a loose dog without a collar, rabid and blood thirsty. Chance felt compassion for her, despite their unkindly past that had taken its toll before she was reunited with Ace. Once, Ace had tried to murder her, and would have succeeded, had Bane not been led astray by a lie from one of Chance's trusted men. Chance wanted everything for her dear friend: freedom, truth, a place in the world that was led by corrupt bureaucrats and lawlessness, but Ace made her own luck through her many murders.

Some people, Chance had realized, couldn't be helped. Ace was proof of this. Even after the Joker, Prince of Crime, was arrested, pushed into a van, and sent off to Arkham; Ace's mind could only set on him. Had Chance not intervened, Ace would have pitched herself off the Prewitt building in order to rejoin her clown prince on concrete, but Batman had saved Joker, despite the year's events of him trying to kill the caped crusader. Ace, even after Joker's apprehension, could not rid of him. He was embroidered into her life like a patch onto a fine quilt, something so easy…so simple, and it drove Chance's best mate to madness.

Such unrequited love could kill a woman inside, though Chance was sure that Joker was being driven insane in the madhouse as well; his weakness, after all, had been the one woman who truly accepted his own insane qualities: without her, he wasn't entirely gone, but he was less amusing.

After Joker's rein on Gotham, two years later, when Chance turned thirty-years-old, she was under the impression that Dr. Leonide Pavel understood their agreement. He would make the reactor below Applied Sciences a bomb, though he would be unaware of the true nature of it. The reactor was actually particle of the Clean Energy Project that Gotham's wealthy investor, Miranda Tate, was using in order to provide the city with clean water and fresh air. Only to the League of Shadows was the executive board member known as Ra's al Ghul's only child and heiress to the League of Shadows, Talia. Chance Bremly, under the notion that Pavel deserved compassion for the loss of his wife (Bane's doing) and his eldest son (Chance's doing), released him from his prison in Bulgaria. To her dismay and fury, Pavel left the country and informed America's CIA and CTU that two mercenaries named Bane, 'a masked man', and the world-renown 'Lieutenant' were in Bulgaria, and informed the government that his scientific papers exposed him to the nature that he could provide the world with one atomic bomb, were it to be forced upon him to make one. The CIA introduced the Task Force to search for the two terrorists on a world-wide basis, international and domestic, but Bane and Chance had escaped 24-hour observation, evacuating into East Europe to search for the turncoat.

A year later, Ace Leswaae, driven to the point of desperation to free her lover from Arkham Asylum, constructed a bomb out of oil and concrete and engaged it to the walls of the criminally insane hospital. Gordon, Harvey Bullock, Stephens, and Murphy, who all had been tracking the mass murderer for three years, apprehended her before she could detonate the bomb. Ace was wounded in the leg to negate escape, and as Gordon handcuffed her, she flew into a mad rage, declaring to any God that would listen that she'd choose death over a cage. To her unfortunate dismay, her sentence was not that light. Chance was given word from one of Maroni's former thugs that Ace was charged for the murders of over 50 men, 20 women, and 12 children in the first degree; 90 trespassing, breaking-and-entering; 32 kidnappings; 92 cases of torture; 40 burglaries; 900 muggings; and 1,246 counts of obstructions to justice. Ace was to serve 3 life sentences; after that, she would serve 7 death penalties. Ace was sent to Black Gate Prison, the only female inmate there, placed in solitary confinement with white walls and floors. Chance received mail from her every week, but the envelopes piled up. No longer bearing to be able to read the words of despair, broken-hearted, and furious words from Ace Leswaae without wanting to kill the warden, Chance stopped reading them.

Three more years passed. In Gotham, there were burglaries and thefts that didn't involve Chance and the news finally uncovered that the culprit was a new girl next door, called Catwoman, but her real name was Selina Kyle. Sleek, slim, and skilled in stealth, the mischievous cat burglar was never caught; the jewel thief, as in her modus operandi, stole from the namely rich to the untimely poor. Because of her deeds, Chance never pressed the matter. When the situation called for itself that one of the agents of shadow wanted to capture her, Bane ordered that no one would try to kill Catwoman. She posed no threat, though Miss Kyle gave John Daggett some trouble.

Another three years passed, and the fire started to rise from sparks to smoke when, whilst Chance and Bane were searching for the nuclear physicist in Western Romania, long-term businessman contacted Chance via webcam, and finally requested the said favor that Bane had long told Chance that he would come to speak. Since Bane was running the operation at the time, it was to Chance that Daggett spoke, and although he did not favor that he spoke to the second-in-command, it was all the same. Daggett, finally recuperating from the death threat that had been inflicted on his now executive chairman, Phillip Stryver, requested politely that Bane would sink Bruce Wayne's riches to his accounts, thereby rendering Wayne Enterprises to Daggett Industries. Chance promised to keep in regular contact with him, and then informed Bane of the request. Without delay, Bane accepted the proposal. As the plan proceeded as expected, Daggett, in return for their agreement, provided Gotham's workers with concrete and oil from his industrialized oil company, unknown to him that his products were being used as mixtures for bombs. It had been Ace that had taught Chance to produce such an easy mixture, and Chance had passed it to Bane as a conversation over pillow talk. Although Daggett met the Lieutenant with little fondness, he didn't cross her that time. Chance was still being trained more furious martial arts and resourcefulness that by the standards of most dangerous women of Gotham, Chance's ferocity, skill, and mind were sharpened enough to outmatch Ace as the deadliest killer female fatale.

Eight long years had passed. In those eight years, Talia al Ghul and Chance redeemed friendship as comrades-in-arms. It took about three years for Talia to finally convince her that she and Bane were only platonically suited for each other. Their love was on a median level, one caring for another, while Chance's admiration and affections bordered on that of a captain who had fallen irreparably in love with her general. Talia, whatsoever, did not take away anything from Chance. She was Bane's lighter side in life, the half that never existed when Bane was languishing in Hell on Earth, nor when he was excommunicated from the League for being the remembrance of Talia's mother's fate. Talia's efforts in Gotham perceived her to be well-respected in the city as good woman who wanted the best for her country. This led her to be disliked by Daggett, who wanted the throne for riches to far more wealth, while Miranda Tate wanted the throne of Wayne Enterprises to be something of a reward. Daggett went unaware of Miranda's true identity.

Gotham's prince, Bruce Wayne, became a recluse among the insects, hidden in his manor. Coincidentally enough, Batman vanished after the people resolved their hatred to him when they discovered that Batman was Harvey Dent's murderer, though to anyone except Gordon, Wayne, and the death sight of Rachel Dawes, Harvey merely fell. The people, as Joker predicted, turned on Batman, naming him a criminal like Crane.

The Dent Act was put into power, under the influence that the fallen hero, the District Attorney and white knight of Gotham, stood against the corrupt. It denied probation and bail for any criminal that would be named an ungodly creature, sent to Black Gate, and never to be released. Ace's measures suffered through this policy. The Dent Act was made on Dent Day, celebrating the death of Harvey, and out of the sheer respect and three years that Chance worked by his side before she met Bane, she attended in secrecy, honoring her deceased comrade.

Commissioner Gordon's years were stacking. Twenty-eight years had been put into his career in law enforcement, but his hope for humanity was being burned by a policy he introduced that was wrapped around a lie. He would have only a few more years to work before either the mayor would can him or he could retire.

Gotham's police department was aware that although Chance was this highly-evolved creature, reformed from the ashes of despair and loss that she had been seventeen years ago, they couldn't touch her. Flanked by body guards, Chance's security was a strong hold. Dangerous at any angle, the officers didn't dare touch her, in fear that the man she worked for would discover her missing, and he would come for her rescue. Chance attended a bar, ran by her main man Barsad, one of Bane's recruited, trained, and trusted men.

After the hard incident with Lick, a man who had the potential of being someone great, but turned when he discovered that his efforts were to help Chance's friend, Ace, Chance digressed. Barsad, a good-looking and obedient man, offered his life to her, should something happen and she pick one of her men to die. Out of his courage to fall for his League, Chance chose him.

Gotham was surviving its second blow from the underworld. It had faced panic from Ra's al Ghul and Crane, avoiding a dangerous toxin extracted from a rare flower from the mountains. It had resisted unrest when Joker flanked the city with bomb-infested ferry boats and hospital burn-outs. Now it would face something far more dangerous and larger than anyone anticipated.

Even as Bruce Wayne lived his sheltered life in is manor, as Selina Kyle broke into a jewelry shop, and as Gordon arrested criminals from the streets, Bane and Chance had only just begun.