It had been months since I had met Sherlock at our old apartment at 221B Baker Street. Sherlock, as the matter stood, had the perfect ability to be exclusively annoying when you didn't want him in the system. But, he had been quiet for months. Unusually quiet. Of course he couldn't be dead, Mrs. Hudson's regular reports were never found strange over the weeks. So, it was only natural for me to pay a visit.

As I climbed the staircase, an eerie sense of nostalgia hit me. My sub-conscious, by some method unimaginable to me, had remembered the exact stair to skip, avoiding the creak. As I approached the room, a strong stench of gunpowder prepared me for what was to come. It meant Sherlock was alive. It meant Sherlock was impatient.

As I swung the door around its hinges, things seemed a little less clear. In the smoke filled room, I saw a mess of papers all scattered around on the floor. "Scattered", I think now, would be an inaccurate portrayal. It can be easily said that there was not a speck of floor visible in the mess. The vertical beams that stood in the room were scarred with knives holding up unordered parchments. The windows were totally blasted with pieces of glass lying everywhere, indicating the targets of the gunshot perhaps.

But nothing caught my attention as the door flew. The only thing that I could apprehend in the mess was the lump of mass before me. An ugly lump laden with stink of blood all around.

"Sherlock!", I shouted. "Are you out of your bloody mind!"

Sherlock never responded. I moved forward with an impending sense of uneasiness with every step. Rushing out for his hand, I checked his pulse.

"Oh, thank God, you're alive!", I couldn't help but exclaim as a rushing flow of relief passed through me.

But he still didn't respond. I picked up his limp-like body to the settee. A few drops of water and he seemed to regain consciousness.

"What on Earth were you doing, Holmes?"

"Bad fly! Bad fly!", he sat up with a jerk of consciousness, still delirious.

"What are you talking about?", I screamed. "Look at you! A MESS!"

"I can explain —", he started.

"Can you, really? What was it this time, huh? Opium or Cocaine?"

"If you'd only sit dow —"

"Just look at you! I come in here and see you lying there with blood all over you! Blood of God-knows-who!"

"Watson!", he said with a certain sternness in his voice. "If you'd first sit down. I can explain it all"

"Well, then DO!", I said sitting down.

"Not so easily."

"What do you want, then? Queen's requests?"

"I'll get to write the next chapter in your book."

"What? Why? You don't even like my book!", I looked him in the eyes for a moment and said, "No way!"

"Too late. I am doing it already …"

It was a Saturday morning. I remember that explicitly because Mrs. Hudson had forgot to buy bread and she was out. I tell you, that woman just needs an excuse to go marketing. But I had plans.

Only 5 years ago, he had appeared. Out of nowhere. In the darkness of the night. Two white eyes undaunting and unblinking. It was certain that he had tried his best to leave no traces of his arrival, as I had entered the room, and he would have been successful if he could've just wiped his footprints on the path outside. Although, it was a rainy day, so he was not all to be blamed.

"You try too hard.", I started the conversation while he had been sulking deeper into the corner.

There was a moment of silence. I hadn't turned to face him, as I waited for a reply.

"You live up to your name, Mr. Holmes".

"Ah, same to you, Mr. Man. Oh, wait, what's your last name again?"

"So you've heard of me."

"If you're Mr. Bradman, then yes. Otherwise who are you?"

His eyes, the only thing I could observe in the darkness, gave away a questioning glance at me. Studying deeply he started, "You know me". His eyes moved onto the desk adjacent to him, laden with papers, as he continued, "You've followed me."

"I want to hear it from you", I said with a determination. I had followed him, and that was correct. His fiasco with the potential scare-gas or whatever he called it had particularly attracted the attention of Professor Moriarty and so obviously me.

He deterred for a moment and replied in the gravest tone, "I'm the Batman."

"I can't believe you just said that.", I chuckled. To all my readers, and as Watson suggests rather strongly, "our" readers, I'd like to point out how childish the name seems. It is clear that my reactions could have never been different!

His eyes darted up, presently. With a more serious tone in his voice, he asserted, "I don't have time for your reasons. And I don't care."

"Then why are you here?"

"You are to leave Moriarty alone."

With all my deductive reasoning, I could only see a hint of such unexpected topic. If I was not arrogant, I might've even said that it came out of the blue. But for now, let the readers think that I had a hint.

"I don't have to 'do' anything.", I replied.

"Sherlock Holmes, you don't understand the fields you're entering in. It is nothing you've encountered right now. I'd suggest you strongly to refrain."

"Mm—nah. I'd prefer it if you called me "Mr. Holmes". Gives the hipes. And as for the challenge, Bru—-Bat —-"

"What did you say?", his eyes reflected surprise. I have never known why. OK, Watson has urgently suggested, rather quite by force, to take down the sentence. I certainly knew why. His secret identity was too sacred for him. But not too well guarded. It is literally a mystery to me how anyone could *not* see that.

Obviously, the high-tech gadgets quite very ahead of his time, that he used, needed well-funding. That crossed out almost 93% of the population. And a person had only to correspond the timings of arrival of a "certain man" (as Watson suggests it might not be clever to reveal the identity). And the arts that the Batman seemed to posses needed the exact time that "certain man" remained absent.

"What did you say?", he persisted.

"Brubat. Brubat - it's a new flavor of cocoa. Fancy a try, I say?"

His looks were apologetically intimidating. "Leave Moriarty alone, Holmes", he said and the next moment he was out. Just as quietly he had come.

That was 5 years ago. And the next months were the most eventful for anyone in my profession - I invented my own profession, you know.

The battle was afoot.

It was a cold war, mind you. At every turn as I grew closer to Moriarty, his presence seemed near and nearer. Till the moment.

We were there, in our room. And by 'we', I mean 'I', for Watson had long left my companionship in the wake of his new marriage — something I don't blame him … directly. The web was closer around the neck of Moriarty than ever, and then on the fateful night they arrived.

Lestrade, with all his forces, forced entry into my accommodations. I had anticipated the sudden tip-off as they had called it, but it was due a few days later as I had known it. Lestrade, by his nature, directed the few men to the settee at once. Obvious amateurs, if you ask me. And there they obviously found under the depthness of its cushions, the royal papers that I had sneaked out.

Lestrade, on that fateful day of his "tip-off", had not arrested me directly, though. Only a single telegram to the royal palace was sufficient to consider the favor that I had presented on the Blackwood case. And so Lestrade left me alone.

And that's how Mycroft bailed me out of the jail.

Oh, wait! I think I left a part, there. Right! Mycroft. Of course, the Bat, as I had been accustomed to call him, had placed his pawn in front of me, only to be slayed. His turn was over and mine was to begin. Mycroft was clever, but he always needed a nudge. And in the many cases that I had presented him with hard evidence, he had developed a custom to follow my advices.

And so, it began — the war. Of course, this was different from any that had been ever seen. There was never to be a drop of blood shed. Physical injury was puny, non-lethal — repairable. It was to be attacked, strategically. Luring in the pieces till it gets checked, and then eventually mated.

As I have often said in the recorded descriptions of Watson, Mycroft was the advisor of the government, but many might instinctively declare him as the British Government itself.

As it happened, that "certain man" had a "certain foundation", and a "certain company". His city was obviously not far-away from the British Isles and so had hurried trade relations.

It was easy to lure his company into the trap. The British government was to offer the company a lease to work in the Great Britain and huge donations to the foundation to speed the process up, and in return had to be given a considerable share of its stocks. Obviously, the company had been transferred in the hands of a different person and was no longer private. But, the man sure owned and controlled it at his will. I am pretty sure that, had the Bat been notified about the deal, the plan would have been stopped then and there. But I was sure that the he had no interest in the business relations of his company. I was counting on it. And so I played the risk.

My Bishop to his pawn.

Watson has eagerly nudged me to not provide the diplomatic details of the process — considering it to be tempting, and lethargic, simultaneously. He never understood the art of a well-planned strategy. But his urges seems only wise to not display the perfect crime into a book that a well published population of the London reads all so often.

And so I skip the months of plans and strategy that it took me to cover the basic controlling shares of the company — the root of the Bat. All so gradually, meticulously planning each step to never raise any suspicion, I was able to take over it. The complete method was complex — even for me. There were many legal complications that had to be looked after, and many evidences to be set up, but my plan was near to it.

Someone wise noticed that a single rock can disturb the stillness of the pond.
And so it was for me, that a rogue pawn hit the king. The suspicions raised in an instant, and hate came rather sooner. The actions were as I had thought. He obviously knew that he could never cause any honest harm to me legally, after all. Those trivialities were too small to be considered. And so it was turn for a big one.

Two armed men, covered in black, with weapons I had never seen, entered through.

I am confident there were two men because that's what the court papers state. The next moment, as the witness stands, two men were heard to fall from the first floor of the apartment of ours.

It is certain that I had minimised my blow to cripple them, only — with no chance of recovery. But as the matter stood, two *dead* bodies were found in the aisle below crumpled on the bins.

This was of course, a bigger attempt of his to keep me under the hands of the law. But I would not say a "better" attempt. As I have said many times in my own words, Amateur.

If he could replace two living crippled with corpses, it was equally easy to chance the reversal.

And that's how Mycroft bailed me out of the jail.

Ah, there! Now we are all caught up. A perfect reasoner is not necessary to anticipate that my next step was to pull the last of the strings and - bam! - came down his empire.

My Rook for his Queen.

His roots were all cut up. It's now even more obvious that all the gadgets that he had relied upon on this battle were limited, more than ever. He was at loss.

The "certain man" took over the responsibilities, after all. It was necessary for him to take over it. I agree, and I am not ashamed to say it, that the man was shrewd. He knew what to do. But he didn't know when to give everything up — and fight the battle.

His attention deterred ever, as he roamed around trivialities. It is not to say that in these months I had never received a case. But the advantage that I exploited was the faster sorting of it. Watson thinks eternally that I have transformed our accommodations into a mess, but he is only too unaware to appreciate the orderliness. And with that order, my rival, as he stood for now, had taken a lot more time than me to "physically" fly off to the scenes for the job to be done. That's messy, if you ask me.

He knew that he had no support if the company collapsed. More than that, if I may call him noble as he seemed, he knew that more than half of the population of his city depended on his company directly, and the other half, indirectly. If he wasn't my nemesis for the battle, I may have even called him and his ideas — noble.

For months, he remained busy for every hour that he had, to bring his foundation up and working, again. And for the free time that he might've gotten, it was filled all so strategically by my orders, regularly, giving him only the basic time to sleep - if not even that.

The rest incidents in the following months, were brilliantly explained by my Boswell till the Reichenbach Falls and its "Final Problem".

But that seemed to be the end of it. I had been roaming the world for years, pretending to be dead. I admit that I had sensed some presence in the dark alleys that I passed, watching me, following me. But it was only instantaneous and often far away at the other corner.

It turned out that I underestimated the potential of my rival as he brought his company back to its foot — going out of his character as a free lancer, that he had thought was necessary to protect his identity.

And then — this.

The culmination of battle I prefer to call it. The Final stroke of war. Where every resource has been drained to its full extent, and only the self to rely upon.

My King against his.

I had been working at my desk, I remember. The hooligans of Prof. Moriarty were subtly active. If only I could kill off the last fire, this whole incident could easily have come to a successful end. I could consider my complete career as successful, I used to tell myself constantly.

And then the wind blew. My totally unguarded papers flew off the desk. I didn't need to pick it up, of course. Till those papers remained in the room, it was of no particular importance. But my attention was not aroused by the wind, rather the window. I know it had been closed - bolted.

"So, we meet again", I started. It was a waste to look back. There was nothing to see in the dark.

"I told you to lay off Moriarty.", he said with his own grave and coarse voice. If I hadn't followed him, I'd have even said that man had throat cancer.

"And I said I won't. You know a circle literally has no end."

"You fool! You have no idea what you have done, do you?"

"Bought your company; then ruined it. Condemned you of the crime of killing me, and then dropped the case with compensation ruining your resources. Isolating your gizmos. Bringing down your luxuries to its primitive form, making you work 24/7, and finally made you stop following or disturbing me to stop Moriarty, forever".

I turned, and he was upon me in an instant.

With rage he called, "YOU DON'T WHAT YOU DID!"

"If you'd only stop spitting on me, may I ask why Moriarty is — excuse me, was — so important to you?"

"Because, he had set up — thanks to your previous catch, Blackwood — the most deadliest of bombs underneath my city! He appointed the most dangerous, lunatic criminal to be his accomplice. A lunatic, that if got out of his hands, would blow up the city. He needed to LIVE!", he shouted and landed a punch at me out of nowhere.

Blackwood. I suddenly realised as all the pieces started fitting in the places. Blackwood, of course.

Before I could look back at him, he raised another punch at me, hurtling me backwards.

"Wait —", I started but was soon cut off by another punch at the cheek.

With bleeding mouth, for I admit that his punches were powerful, I had to defend myself before anything.

His advantage: the gadgets.
My advantage: his rage.

First: An uppercut at his exposed chin. Leaving the victim dazzled for a moment. Use it.

Second: As he attempts to recover, a quick jab from the left. Starts to regain his consciousness as the victim resists the technique.

Still dazzled, he attempts a weaker hook at the face.
So, third: A cross at his eyes moving out of the way of the incoming.

Next: The victim becomes more aware of the disadvantage; brings out the blades, possibly hidden on the bracelet on his wrist. Blades, in a haphazard manner are aimed at the face, again. Classic.

Move out of the way of the incoming blades. Duck — gives the best chance. Move the victim out of balance. But he knows his piece of arts: A counter-attack is inevitable. The victim hits; this time probably in the abdomen; uses his advantage, another jab at the jaw; two blades hurling at the thigh — crippling the legs.

His advantage: My injury.

Minimise the influence of injury; minimising the use of the legs. Two punches at the face; and one at the chest; probably protected by a vest but would send down vibrations all the same.

Use his rage. Counter the incoming Overhand, and turn in the elbows. Rotate around on the body weight, dislocating the joint. Use the advantage and throw of the body making a nice and perfect rainbow.

But the victim has learnt the lesson. He exploits the use of his cape. As showed by his previous encounters; the cape can form a rigid shape.

His move: Wrap me up; probably detach the cape from the body, leaving helpless.

But not as much. Be prepared with the knife. The joints of the cape look the weakest; would crumble away easily. Roll away to escape any incoming shots and then jump at the victim. Break the other two joints of the hands and cripple the legs.

Recovery time: 6 weeks.

And so it happened as I had anticipated: Uppercut, Jab, "Hook", Cross, "Blades", Kick, "Counter-attack: punch", "Blades", Punch, Punch, and Fist.

But it seems I overlooked. There is a certain confidence in him. Why? Why?

My answers were soon heard upon the street outside. In the moonless light, the path shone outside, brightly. There outside the window I saw the glimpse of a whole new technology — a flying machine. But that was not what drew my attention. The aircraft had a long barrel pointing in my room — a sort of gun, if you ask me. And even then I'd have been less surprised, if it hadn't been glowing.

The next moment, I am really clueless what happened, but a flash blinded me and the huge sound deafened the wits out of me. The windows blasted and there I laid, with rest being the history, till Watson picked me up and I found that my rival-in-the-battle had gone, never to be seen after.

And so I listened to Holmes babbling on for over an hour, when Mrs. Hudson entered with tea and a new wave of screams.

"Why didn't he kill you?", I started.

"Rather too eager to see that, aren't you Watson?"

"Do you blame me?"

"I don't know why — probably some misplaced sense of self-righteousness."

"What would you do about the bombs? Killing off the whole city — that's really lunacy - even for Moriarty!"

"Often, the wise retains the mask to watch the world burn, my dear Watson. But I had already sent a word to him before the encounter. He'd receive it tomorrow. His city won't die — he shall be helped by Sherlock Holmes himself.", he said with a certain moment of wisdom in his eyes, twinkling for the first time in years.

"Drop the arrogance, would you?", I said. "But what do you really believe, who won then?", I asked eagerly as an addition, perhaps not the best question but fitting the whole incident in its own.

"Watson, as usual you are undeterred in your personality. You see, but you don't observe. The distinction is clear."

"Well, what?"

"For the time being let's say: I won the war but lost the battle."

"You'd never drop the arrogance, would you?", I said lighting up my pipe. "What about this criminal that Moriarty helped? If his character stands as explained, why didn't he blow up the city?"

"I am not sure Watson, but I don't think it ends here"

Episode II - Joker meets Sherlock (coming soon)