Gotham City.
It is an old town, full of dust and history, its roots tied to gothic architecture with buildings made of harsh stone that rise from the ground like nightmares. This is not a good city to raise a child in. Gotham City is a city of crime, steeped in the hold of the mob, accompanied by the petty crime and gangbangers that plague its dark streets. On another world it might be protected by a man dressed up as a bat.
There are no bats here.
A dark figure sits perched atop a gargoyle, clad in black and gray. Round eye goggles flicker blue with information, a crackle of police band scanner in his ear beneath his mask. He listens attentively for a moment, then leaps off the gargoyle, his cape extending to help him glide. This city is nestled in the talons of a creature of the night, too strong to break, too suffocating to throw off.
There are no bats here.
The figure's glide comes to a stop, feet touch ground atop a commercial warehouse with a dull thud, knees bending to absorb the shock. It is practiced and graceful, a skill borne of a thousand repetitions. A hand goes to his belt, rummaging for a tool as his opposite hand goes to where a normal man's ear would be, opening a line to his home base. There are no bats here.
This is a city of Owls.
"Owlman to Cave." His voice is smooth yet tempered like steel. It is the voice of a man used to this kind of thing, to be nocturnal and do what men of the night do. "Cave here, sir. I'm listening in on the GCPD's communications." Owlman grunts at this, pulling out a razor sharp boomerang; The press have taken to calling them Razorangs. Owlman didn't care what they were called as long as they got the job done. Kneeling by the skylight of the warehouse, he quirked his head slightly to the left, then grimacing again, putting the razorang back into his utility belt. It figures, he thought, that the warehouse he owns should use glass thicker than his boomerangs could sufficiently cut through.
Swearing under his breath, he dug into a separate compartment, pulling out a small, handheld laser. Pointing it at the glass, Owlman activated the laser. "Cave, access security cameras for our warehouse near the docks, in the Bowery,"He growls out. " I need to know what I'm walking into." The laser burns through one hinge of the glass, the smell acrid and drifting into the night air. When the glass is nearly cut in a neat circle he places a suction cup device to it, and finishes the circle, taking the cut glass out quietly and slipping a gloved hand inside. The latch-why the skylights to a warehouse would have latches on the inside is a mystery to him, as few things are-comes undone with a quiet click, barely perceptible to the human ear.
He lifts the screen up carefully, quietly. Those inside cannot know his presence until he wills it. Unwanted detection can have dire, dire consequences.
Thomas is not like the others in this world. He cannot bend steel with his bare hands, move faster than the speed of light or transmute matter with his hands. Thomas cannot summon constructs of hard light. This did not make him weak; rather he is skilled. He is a wraith, keeping to dark shadows where he remains unseen. And he has something the others do not. A finely tuned mind and a body honed through years of training, forged into a perfect weapon.
He slips inside the open latch, perching atop on the rafters, carefully balancing his weight lest the beams be too unstable to hold his weight. Owlman looks around, piecing together the story from the evidence presented to him from this vantage point. Alfred prattles in his ear, reading off the police report the computer has hacked from the GCPD.
Thomas does not need the report, he is clever and he is cunning; but it never hurts to listen to what the cops know. CSI has cleared the scene already, and no boys in blue currently inhabit the scene. If they did, they would run at the suggestion he might be there. Bad things happened to cops who got in the Owl's way.
Satisfied that he is alone, at least for the moment, he leaps from the rafters, already scanning for evidence the inept crime scene investigators might have missed. As usual, the GCPD's case solvency rate is surpassed by their ineptitude. Blood hidden by a box, bloody handprint on same, hidden by the dark lighting in a corner twenty yards from the body's position. He pulled up the crime scene photos of the body to his HUD, pleasantly surprised they had a decent photographer.
His surprise turns to anger when he sees the evidence that the PD clearly missed. They assumed the victim was done in randomly. Admittedly, random crime was a real occurrence in Gotham, but he did patrols to rein those in. Few got away with plying their trade in Gotham without the say-so of the Owlman. All who liked breathing paid homage to him.
There were a few who opposed him, but they existed, despite Gordon's atrocious attempt at propaganda to the contrary. The press, Satan damn them, had given them all colorful sobriquets: Names like Gentleman Grundy, and Quizmaster, Citizen Crow, Mister Freeze and the like. Where they had no sobriquet, they were known to their real names. Harvey Dent, a district attorney dedicated to bringing down Organized Crime by any means, or perhaps Roman Sionis, the Man running for police commissioner this year. None of them worried him so much as the Joker.
Long ago, when Owlman had set out on this journey to build his empire, Thomas had prepared for all kinds of resistance; but nothing prepared him for the Joker. A madman claiming to be for the people, an anarchist trying to topple control. None of his other adversaries kept him up as much as Joker.
Thankfully however, this holds none of the hallmarks of that monster masquerading as a "hero." This was quick and dirty, a mob hit. Few criminal organizations refused to bow to him, but they existed alongside his other, more chivalrous adversaries. This held the hallmark of the Cosa Nostra, and that meant Huntress, Helena Bertinelli. It was impressive how skilled the bitch was, especially when it came to fighting and murder, but it concerned him little. She was the same as any other rival to his empire, a bug to be quashed under his boot heel.
"Bertinelli...you go too far this time." It was easy to see why she would go after Wayne Enterprises' shipments, as he was a military contractor, building bleeding edge weapons; also a useful cover for developing his arsenal. She was trying to arm herself for an assault against him, using his own would be toys.
Owlman shakes his head out of his thoughts and presses a button on his belt, summoning the car. "I'm going to kill her today, Alfred. She's irritated me for the last time."