Gotham City
23rd February 2021
1 Month after Bane's Occupation
The mugger hit the ground running, his polished shoes scraping on the gravel. He sprinted as fast as he could, attempting to get away from the grim black shadow descending on him.
He wasn't fast enough.
Screaming, he was lifted up by his left ankle, his flat cap floating serenely off down the street.
"Pino Maroni." The shadow coldly stated. "Youngest son of Salvatore Maroni, nicknamed 'The Italian', infamous mob boss, killed nine years ago by Harvey Two-Face Dent. Now look at what his family's reduced to. Robbing spare change off shopkeepers and prostitutes."
"A-Are you… hi-him?" Pino asked, trying to ignore the liquid running down his shirt.
The shadow gave a dark chuckle.
"Who? The Batman? Haven't you heard? The Bat's dead."
Pino didn't respond, so the voice continued, spinning a staff in one hand.
"Of course, that doesn't mean anything to you lot, does it? One whisper of a Bat, you all go running. Criminals," he pronounced, shooting out, grabbing Pino's jacket and pulling him closer, leaning into the light as he did so "Are a superstitious, cowardly lot."
Pino stared in shock.
"Jesus," he stammered out "You're just a-"
"Finish that thought," The boy interrupted, flicking out a serrated knife "And… well, you've seen that Joker fellow, haven't you?"
Pino gulped very audibly, and worked his jaw around before timidly asking: "Wh…What do you want?"
"Lots of things." The boy chuckled "A world without crime, a lack of corruption and a nice stiff cup of Earl Grey. But what I want now, more than anything…" He leaned in towards Pino, so that all he could see was his cold blue eyes, glaring at him through the dynamo mask.
"Is the Batman."
A/N: Relatively new idea for me here-never done an episodic series, so new territory with old characters.
This is partially set in my IrregularVerse, but it's not necessarily a Crossover, so I'm not putting it there. It's also not necessarily needed to read that to understand this. Basically all you need to know is that at this point in time, the Irregulars are a global-spanning detective force that only people high-up in government know about but who keep track of all people of interest-high class criminals, ancient conspiracies and, of course, giant bat vigilantes. I'll explain more as we go on.
Please leave a review or comment, and please don't ask me where the rest of my stories are on being updated. They are not, repeat NOT being abandoned, but I've got so much on my plate at the moment that this is getting done over Doctor Who (Which is Class-1 Heresy in my British sensibilities) and only because It. Would. Not. Leave. Me. Alone. So, please, just a bit of sympathy for the poor A-Levels student, s'il vous plait?
God I'm speaking French.
Note on Timelines: For some weird, unexplainable reason, I've always pictured Dark Knight as taking place in Summer 2012. Taking that as read, Batman Begins takes place in 2011, and as Bruce is 30 then, that means he was born in 1981, meaning the Waynes were killed 1989, and as Rises is set 8 years after Dark Knight, Rises is set in 2020. As it is clearly winter during the final act of Rises, here I've taken it as either late December or early January of 2021. I'll draw up a timeline on my profile.