Terry was a little on edge during the patrol. Bruce's insistence that he take wing through Neo-Gotham this evening had caused yet another fight (break? break-up? He could never quite tell.) with Dana when he cancelled yet another date. And all because Bruce had heard from a notoriously unreliable source that someone was bringing a bomb into the city. It didn't help his mood any that Commissioner Gordon had chewed him out right alongside Bruce as he tried to protest
Still, Terry knew the geezers were right; the city and her people came first. If only he could just tell Dana he was Batman, he knew she'd understand.
As he flew through the area the bomb was supposed to be planted, Terry kept his pointy ears open for any sort of sketchy-sounding chatter. Given how this part of Gotham was almost completely uninhabited and the buildings stood largely empty, he was almost positive that the bomber-in-question wasn't going to end up being Mad Stan. Good thing, too: that guy gave him such a headache. The telltale laugh of Jokerz confirmed his thoughts, but brought a new source of worry: Mad Stan may be crazy, but he was predictably crazy. The Jokerz were crazy in their own special way.
As he cloaked and stuck to the side of the building creating the alleyway the Jokerz were cavorting in, he saw the bomb they were tinkering with and decided that the word "bomb" was a powerfully inefficient descriptor. This thing was huge, nearly the size of the Batmobile.
He kicked off the building, tackling the closest goon to the ground. As the clown's shriek of pain and terror drew the attention of the rest of the dozen or so assembled Jokerz, Terry uncloaked and stood there defiantly.
"That's quite the Jack-in-the-Box, boys. I'm gonna have give it back to the toy store you nabbed it from"
"It's The Batman!" the greasepainted ringleader shouted. "Don't just stand there, get 'im! It's just one loser in a Halloween costume!"
"And you think all your costumed losers are enough to take me down, laughing boy?" Batman retorted with a smirk.
As the Jokerz charged, Terry took them down one by one with furious punches, kicks, and more than a few well-placed Batarangs, until only their leader remained between him and the bomb. As Terry stalked closer to him, the clown laughed. Not the kind of scared laugh he was used to hearing from these joking jerks when he stared them down one-on-one. A confident laugh. A knowing laugh.
"What's so funny, Giggles?"
"Look behind you, Batbrain." came the chortled reply.
Terry whirled to see that the Jokerz behind him had all scampered away after he dispatched them.
"Okay, what's the ga—" Terry's words caught in his throat as he turned back to the chief clown, only to see that he had similarly fled and the timer was counting down on the bomb. The whole thing had been a setup. The old man and the Commish were gonna get an earful, assuming Terry survived.
Ten seconds. Not enough time to move it, disarm it, or even get away. He kicked on the jets in his boots, hoping they'd carry him straight up fast enough and far enough that the explosion's shockwaves wouldn't turn him into ground beef. As the last second ticked down on the timer, the top of the bomb opened to the sky, and a bright purple beam shot out, racing up alongside Terry. He tried to veer away, but he reacted too slowly to the unexpected effect of the bomb, and saw above him a hole in the sky.
Whatever the beam was, it had ripped open a gaping hole in the Gotham night sky and Terry was rocketing straight for it
