Chapter 1

This is my city. I was born here, raised here, my parents were murdered here in cold blood by a common street thug who was just looking for someone to kill. From that day onward, I have dedicated my life to fighting crime in my home... Gotham City. After the death of my parents when I was ten, my butler, Alfred Pennyworth, took care of me and never argued or complained when I requested that we leave Gotham so that I could seek out the best places of learning, and over the next ten years, I trained my mind and my body, learning a wide range of subjects, but specializing in multiple forms of martial arts, forensics, criminal psychology, surveillence, and basically everything else that has allowed me to earn my reputation as the world's greatest detective. Really, though, it's the fact that my parents left me with a thriving group of businesses and considerable wealth to support my knack for invention, and I don't miss many clues. It's easy to be a great detective when you can pick up clues that the authorities have missed. Like right now, for example, I'm on the trail of a perp who, I believe, is involved with some type of international crime or terror syndicate. Because of the flourescent visor in my cowl, one of the several visors that I can summon with the touch of a button, I can track my target's footsteps through this alleyway as easy as if he had left his footprints in the mud. I can also tell from the markings on some of the footprints that the shoes are of foreign make. I can barely make out the stamp of a middle eastern brand on the print. Good thing there's so much dust in these alleys, the flourescent visor picks up disturbances in the dust and lets me follow a trail in lightly travelled areas or if something has been moved on a shelf.

I follow the trail around a couple of corners and up a fire escape. Now, my prey is beginning to step into my territory. Noone spends more time on the rooftops of Gotham than I do. I shoot my grapnel and ride it up to the roof of the building, taking care to check the top of the fire escape to make sure I can pick up the trail. I follow the trail to the pinnacle of the building, and it suddenly stops, he must have hitched a ride. Now I know that this was all planned beforehand. The Gotham City PD have finally shown up at the scene of the crime, an explosion at a guns and ammo shop that I had been keeping an eye on because of suspicions that it may be a front for some organized crime syndicate. I haven't seen any of the usual suspects, but the actions are the same. Unfortunately, my other life as Bruce Wayne, owner of Wayne Enterprises- though all of the work is done by Lucius Fox- philanthropist and playboy, got in the way. When the shop exploded, I was just pulling into the alley where I've been hiding the batmobile, so I wasn't able to see anyone near there at the time of the explosion. I figure I need to assume that the explosive was either detonated remotely, or on a timer, so I decide on a five-minute fuse. It's been approximately five minutes since the explosion, so a helicopter would have a hard time getting more than twenty miles or so in ten minutes from a stop. Of course, as always, I have an ace up my sleeve, so I call her.

"Oracle, it's me. Find my GPS coordinates, there should be something showing up on radar flying relatively directly away from my position that would not be a commercial airliner... most likely a helicopter."

"Hey, Bruce. Are you investigating that explosion at the gun shop downtown?"

"Yes."

"I'm not seeing anything showing up on radar, but one of the weather sensors on a roof in your area did pick up some wind sheer about ten minutes ago that could possibly have been a helicopter. Possibly one that is invisible to radar. Be careful if you go after it. It may be EMP shielded as well. What were you able to find at the scene?"

"Residue that suggests that it was a semtex-type explosive. I followed a trail that ran from the scene to this rooftop and abruptly ends here. There were dead bodies left behind, killed by gunshot wounds."

"Covering his tracks, great. When your ride shows up, try going south-southwest. That's the direction that the sensor is from you."

"I'm on my way. Thanks. By the way, check any chatter you can find and see if there is any talk of foreign crime syndicates or terror groups running operations here in Gotham, and see who the listed owner is for the shop."

"You mean you got a visual of the perp?"

"No, but his shoe prints showed foreign manufacture... a middle-eastern shoe company."

"You're amazing, Bruce."

"So are you."

I was already in the Batwing, heading in the direction specified by Oracle, aka Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl. It's ironic, really. As Batgirl, she was a sidekick. I trained her as I had, and still did, Robin. She had proved useful more than once, which is why I agreed to train her, but she also proved to be a liability on occasion. Then, the worst happened, Joker shot her and the bullet pierced her spine. She survived, of course, but was permanently confined to a wheelchair. However, instead of letting her lack of bipedal locomotion leave her moaning in perpetual depression, she found a new hobby. She learned the art of computer hacking and excelled at it to the point that she is now likely the best hacker in the world, or at least on par with the best that the NSA can muster. She's built herself a massive computer network in the Gotham clock tower with over ten terabytes of data already stored in her massive databases, plus she has almost perfect total recall of anything that she's ever seen. She's more valueable to me now than ever.

My aircraft is pretty fast, so I catch up with the helicopter twenty-five miles away from where my footprint trail ended, even flying zig-zag to cover more area. I want to see where it's going, so I ascend into the clouds of the night sky, hoping that they didn't see me. The Batwing is invisible to radar and EMP shielded, so I don't think that they could have spotted me or, if they did, they can't really do anything about it unless they have heat-seekers equipped on that thing, and I have countermeasures to deal with those. It's an attack helicopter based off of a Russian design. How did it get here? I scan it and send the scan to Oracle.

"Oracle, I need anything you can give me on the scan I just sent you. The getaway helicopter is an attack model based off of a Russian Hind or Black Shark."

"Someone is flying a Russian prototype attack helicopter over US airspace?"

"I can only assume that it was smuggled piecemeal into the country and assembled here."

"Give me a few minutes to see what I can dig up on unusual cargo that may fit the description. As for the chopper, it's a prototype Ka-55. Stealthed, EMP shielded, and carries a payload of eight missiles and has two twenty-millimeter machine guns, not to mention any other modifications that were done aside from the standard design. The missiles can be either Air-to-Air or Air-to-Surface, so be careful."

"Always. Thanks for the info. Keep me posted on what else you find."

I conitnue to track the heli south. Where is it headed? I bring up my map overlay for the radar. Looks like we're making a relative beeline for Boston. As I'm staring at the radar, I see three bogeys incoming. USAF F-22 Raptors coming up fast. I stay in the cover of the thickest clouds I can find and hang back. Someone must have spotted them.

"Oracle, did you call in the cavalry?"

"No, but I'm picking up some NSA chatter through encrypted channels. One of their agents must have spotted it somehow, or knew when it was coming and where from."

"You hacked the NSA comms? I'm glad you're on MY side."

"I had broken their encryption on the comms a while back, so I keep a listening device available to tune into their frequency for just such times as these. When I got your pic of the heli, I figured it might come in handy, so I fired it up."

I switch the craft's readout to thermal to watch the show. They probably saw the fighter jets coming about the same time I did, so they are prepared for the approach, if there's anything that they can do against fighter jets. I see the heli bank slightly to align itsself, and the door opens just for a moment while some type of discharge comes from what I believe is some type of rocket launcher. There's no way that I can react fast enough to try to shoot the rocket out of the air, even if I had anything to shoot it with. I've always basically used this craft mainly only for transportation and surveillance, so there was never a need to put weapons on it. Only one shot from the bad guys, but it was before the fighters ever spotted them. The Raptors are able to get off a volley of missiles before the projectile from the Ka-55 explodes, then I'm able to see what it is. An EMP blast goes off around the jets, paralyzing them. I'm EMP shielded and so is the heli, but the jets are going down, and modern fighter jets are equipped with electronic ejector seats, so those pilots are stuck. Meanwhile, the heli dives, leaving behind some countermeasures at the top of the dive, going far enough to escape the damage. This guy is good. The jets are going down, it's time to come out of hiding. I have two tow cables, so I shoot them at the furthest two from me and then fly underneath the remaining one, then begins the balancing act as I lower one jet piggy-back style while towing the other two. The best I can do is to get them into the water. No way I'm landing all three of these birds safely over land. I let them down to just over five feet from the surface of the water, about a tenth of a mile offshore and push a button on my console, causing a small barrell-type object to protrude from the back of the Batwing. My targeting system targets the two fighters on the tow cables and fires. One. Two. The towed Raptors are hit with a bouyant putty invented by Wayne Enterprises that I have co-opted for my own use. It has multiple uses, I can incapacitate a fleeing perp with it and make sure they stay put while the authorities get to them. I can also use it to keep someone, or something, afloat. I hit the release on the cables as soon as the goop hits, then let the one riding piggy-back slide off and hit it with the putty as it falls to the water. I then shoot a flare into the air to alert rescuers to the downed fighters position.

"Oracle, 3 disabled American fighter jets in my current position floating in the water. Let the Coast Guard know. Pilots are safe."

"Done. What took them down?"

"Rocket launcher equipped with EMP payload. My shielding held. First time I've ever had to use it."

Well, that went well, but I believe that my targets in the heli know I'm here now and they know that I was following them, so they may have taken other precautions. The best I can do is try to catch up with them again and hope that they don't have an easily reachable hiding place.

Five minutes later, I spot them again. I think the blackness of night may have worked to my advantage, not allowing anyone inside the chopper to see me going to the jets' rescue. I stay back away from them for a while longer until we start getting close to Boston, then the heli begins to decend. They find the building that they were looking for and the Ka-55 Black Shark prototype Russian-made attack helicopter comes to rest atop a building in one of the largest cities in the USA.

I stay calm. I can't afford to give myself away now, not before I'm able to plant a bug on to the building. I wait until everyone is out of the heli and inside and I decend to line up a shot close to a window. The bugs that I use have been augmented with Wi-Fi capability so that Oracle can hack into their emails as they're being sent. I find a window close to a phone line so that it can pick up phone conversations as well and fire away. I alert Oracle that it's live and tap into it myself to make sure that It's working before I go back to Gotham. I take note of the address of the building and send that to Oracle as well.

"Oracle, I'm sending you another address. This is the building where the bird landed. See if you can find out who owns it. Also, I checked the bug and it's broadcasting. I'm on my way back to Gotham."

"Ok, Bruce. I'm hacking the email server now. Also, I have a name for the gun shop, it's Kane Degand. I ran the name through some of my databases, and got a hit. He was a known henchman in the Ventriloquist's gang, and the Ventriloquist, as you know, is one of the inmates that was broken out of Arkham last week."

"Ah, yet another piece of the puzzle."

"Yes, and guess who was ID'ed just this evening by one of the thugs who was apprehended yesterday from the breakout."

"You have piqued my interest."

"Talia al Ghul."

"So Ra's is tied up in all of this somewhere. She broke them out?"

"Yes. Maybe less tied up, more holding the strings."

"Good point. It's very possible that this is all his doing and the bombing tonight was just to cover up some evidence, and maybe also a way of cutting Scarface out of the operation."

"Let me guess, you're going to go pay a certain wooden mob boss a visit when you get back into Gotham."

"Exactly. Batman out."

"Good hunting."

Just under an hour later, I'm back in Gotham City. I make the rounds to some places that I know that Scarface's gang has holed up in the past. The third building I try is an old closed down department store building and I see movement on the inside. I have the Batwing drop me off and hit the button for the Batmobile to come this way. I enter the building through a window in the upper floor and slip into the shadows. I move around to the stairway near the rear of the building and sneak down, paying close attention to any noises coming around the corner. I reach the bottom floor and look around. I see the Ventriloquist holding the puppet known as Scarface, fashioned of wood from the old gallows of Blackgate prison. Those gallows were the site of 313 separate excecutions, and some people believe that the souls of the criminals who died there are all contained in the wood and that Scarface is a gestalt entity who is able to control whoever holds him. I hear him barking orders at some of his thugs.

"We need to get noding. If we don't get gack here gy fide in the norning, we'll ge to late to get it done at all without getting gagged gy the coks."

I didn't say the Ventriloquist was any good at BEING a ventriloquist, he has trouble with the letters b, m, p, and v. I move around the perimeter of the room, quietly incapacitating a handful of his goons before making my way toward my marks. I toss some exploding pellets of knockout gas toward the last of his goons and grab Scarface and the Ventriloquist, taking them outside and up to the top of the building.

"Talk! You were working with Ra's al Ghul on something, weren't you?"

"We thought the noney was good, gut he duggle-crossed us this edening."

"What's he planning?"

"I don't know!"

The best thing about interrogating someone made of wood is that all it takes is a little bit of fire to get them to open up.

"Talk or toast!"

"We don't know, gut it's got sonething to do with an international terrorist grout called the shadows."

I've heard of them. They were making a lot of noise a few years ago.

"What was your part in this?"

"He was using the gunshot as storage for sone tackages. He also ordered sone sentex and C4. Tonight he ticked up a gox of twenty nillineter annunition and LAW rocket nodified ENT grenades and glew ut the tlace."

I leave them hanging from a light on the roof of the building.

"Oracle, I'm coming up. I need everything you've got on the Shadows terrorist organization."

"It'll be ready when you get here."

"Thanks. Batman out."

This has a chance to be the biggest, most dangerous terror plot that Ra's has ever hatched. The Shadows are a relatively new player on the terror scene, but they have been very active over the last few years. I'm not going to let anything happen to Gotham. I have sworn to protect this city and its people. I am the Batman, and this is my city.