DC Redux Presents: The Batman - Beyond Gotham

Now in Technicolor Part 1

By Ivan Krolo


There's a distinct difference between traversing different cities from different parts of the world. An obvious thing to say but something you can't fully grasp until you've done it. Gotham embodies what many see in a standard American city through its architecture. With hundreds of skyscrapers piercing into the heavens, each of them dozens of stories tall with hundreds of smaller yet still imposing buildings in-between them. Each one a thrilling challenge to climb and glide to and from. Giving countless angles to approach a situation from offensively and defensively.

Buenos Aires, though not lacking in its own modern buildings, contains more buildings in its shanty towns than anything else. Cobbled together things that barely pass off as structures, rarely ever being more than a story tall and horribly unreliable because of their patchwork nature. Traversal in the types of cities relies less on quickly climbing them or scurrying through ventilation shafts as it does on abusing their lack of electricity to stay in the shadows on the ground level and shoddy craftsmanship for maximum effect. Whether it's smashing through a wall like some monster from Hell or preferably finding the right piece to break so its collapsing walls and ceiling get the job done for you.

Frankfurt am Main, the fifth largest and recently declared "Most Dangerous City!" in German stands somewhere in-between. Though a handful of skyscrapers stand out near the city center, the other buildings are all of an identical height, length, and design. None more than maybe 2 to 4 stories tall and a great many of them bearing an old world quality you'd never see in Gotham, barring a few exceptions like Wayne Manor.

It almost feels like a stroll traversing such a city of equal height, no time is wasted climbing dozens of stories or worrying about potential mud prints that could give your position away. A perfect location for some lightweight parkour practice for his Bruce Wayne down time.

Tonight isn't the time to think about something like that, though. Not with strange things happening not just across this city, but across the whole country as well.

"Any luck yet Master Bruce?" He hears Alfred's voice buzz in his ear as he crouches on the edge of a building, scanning the surrounding area for any homeless people sleeping or walking through the street this late at night.

"Nothing out of the ordinary," He smirks. "Unless you count me."

"I wouldn't call your nightly activities particularly odd, eccentric yes but certainly not the worst I've seen in someone as young or wealthy such as you."

"Is it eccentric if it's part of the family history?" Batman asks, once again on the move. "My great-grandfather Alan Wayne was convinced murdering owls were building nests inside his buildings and hid inside a private bunker underneath Wayne Tower."

"Another Wayne with an animal obsession, quite an interesting observation Master Bruce," Alfred muses, earning a small chuckle from his employer.

"Anything from Leslie?" He asks, returning to a more professional tone of voice through his recently acquired voice modulator built into his suits neck piece leaves nary a hint of difference between angry and casual Batman. At least, to an unaccustomed ear which Alfred is most certainly not.

At least, to an unaccustomed ear which Alfred is most certainly not. "Nothing but I cannot imagine Leslie is taking this situation any better than she did three days ago..."


3 Days Prior, Leslie's residence

"You really didn't need to come here to hear this Bruce, a phone call-"

"It wouldn't have been enough Leslie," He tells her with a sincere, warm smile on his face, hugging her tightly after quite a few years apart. "You're family, and I haven't seen you in years."

"Two years isn't that long, Bruce." She returns his smile and allows him into her humble, barely lived in abode. A tiny and barely furnished apartment with a television well past the point of being obsolete if its wooden casing is anything to go by. The couch, something older than Bruce himself is positioned opposite the TV with a chessboard-sized table in-between, littered with microwavable, eaten food.

"It looks like crap I know," She gestures for him to sit down while she deals with the dirty plates on the table. "If I knew you'd come in-person I'd've-"

"Relax Leslie," Bruce sits on the couch, sinking into it as if it were quicksand. "I've lived in plenty of worse places than this."

"Oh god, don't tell me that," She shakes her head with a grimace. "I don't want to imagine you eating rats in a Mongolian prison."

"The prison was in Peru actually," He wryly informs her. "And I never ate rats. My undefeated streak in the cage fights got me plenty of good food."

She returns with two cups of coffee and a worried, disapproving look on her face, one that makes Bruce instantly feel bad about making her imagine him in such living conditions.

"Sorry," He tells her like a scolded boy and takes a sip of her coffee as she sits to his left. "How's the clinic going?"

She averts her gaze from him, her face forming a frown which instantly makes her look far older than her actual age of 50. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about," she lowers her cup onto the table. "I need your help, I need Batman."

He gives her a curious look, pulling himself back from the sinking depths of the old couch. Leslie was no stranger to living in dangerous places, she traveled the world, working for the Red Cross in some of the least developed and downright hostile countries in the world where almost everything was actively trying to kill you on a daily basis, from diseases to armed militia. Then she opened a clinic in Gotham City, a place where you'd find yourself on the pointy end of a knife just for walking past a particular degenerate at the wrong place and time. A place that actually managed to drive her out once it became impossible to so much as put a bandage on a child without accidentally rubbing one mobster the wrong way.

Yet, she survived all of this and to see her visibly and deeply troubled like this sends a particular chill down Bruce's spine. "Is someone threatening you Leslie?"

She bites her lower lip nervously. "Not me personally, but there's something going on with my less well-off patients. They're..." She sighs. "Disappearing."

"Disappearing?"

She nods. "Not just mine either. A few of my colleagues across the country got together at a convention the other day and they told me the same thing. Patients with low income or patients living on the streets, with drug or alcohol issues, are going missing. There isn't anything about them dying in the obituaries and I've tried to track them down with the information I know but they're not at their homes, most of them don't have family or friends-"

"And the police don't care," Bruce concludes with a bitter taste in his mouth, it's a story he's heard all too many times. "How many patients have gone missing and when did this start?"

"It started two months ago with a female patient Angela Berg," She winces momentarily at the memory of the woman in question. "She's 38 and has severe anger and alcohol issues, it gets her into a lot of fights and accidents. After getting her leg broken in a bar fight, she stumbled next to my clinic and I've been patching her up for three years now. My clinics probably the only place she's got to live in. Most days she just drifts around town, sleep in parks or under bridges when she's not playing her guitar for more booze money."

"Any particular reason she acts this way?"

Leslie nods. "I managed to get her to eat breakfast with me a few times, to try and convince her to get some help but it never stuck. She told me about how her family died in Hurricane Katrina on a visit to New Orleans and... She couldn't cope with it any other way."

I know the feeling. Bruce admits, feeling a great deal of sympathy for the woman-in-question. "If she drifts around town, what made you suspicious about her whereabouts?"

"Well," Leslie takes a deep breath, recollecting everything for him. "She has a... routine you could say. Like I said, she plays the guitar for spare change and she usually goes drinking on the weekends. That's when she gets herself into trouble and comes to me afterward. Two weeks passed without incident and I thought she might've gotten tired of living like this and I went to see her. I went to the park where she usually plays and asked some of the waiters in the nearby cafes if they saw her and they told me they hadn't... for two weeks."

"Then you checked where she sleeps," Bruce states more than he asks and gets an affirmative nod from her. "Nothing there either?"

"She didn't have much," Leslie admits, remembering the one time Angela showed her where exactly she lived. "But I could tell no one was there for a long time: the place was picked apart. Angela told me it wasn't odd to find something occasionally stolen but if it wasn't for a broken picture frame of her family lying there in the mud, you'd have never known she lived there. The next places I checked were some of the bars she usually went to and no one saw her there for a while either."

"And you've noticed this with other patients?"

She nods again, drinking some of the cold coffee. "It's been harder to notice it with some of my more... erratic patients, but the patterns the same here and in other towns across Germany. Most of them older with severe psychological or substance abuse issues and all of them homeless, of an older age. Like I said, a few of my colleagues and I started talking at a convention a few days ago and the ones who keep a closer eye on their patients started noticing this too. Over 50 people have just... vanished without a trace and there's nothing anyone can do about it. The cops and press certainly can't or won't."

"They will," Bruce reassures her with a warm smile. "When Batman gets involved with something, people tend to notice. I've got a friend who works at the Gotham Gazette too, with her connections in the media, she'll spread the word as far as she can about these disappearances. Even if the police still ignore it, they won't get away with it once I find these people. Nothing makes a police force think twice about negligence than a good scandal."

"Why would someone go after these people, though? I know human trafficking exists but these people... they're sick, they're old..."

"That's what bothers me too," Bruce looks away from her, staring intently at nothing-in-particular. "The most common targets of human traffickers are young women, healthy ones who get sold off as prostitutes all over the planet. It's not out of the ordinary for ones with mild substance abuse to get manipulated by it into getting sold and then kept where they're sent off too. But the kind of people you're talking about here... They're too old, too tired and too much of a bother for any sane trafficker to use."

"You don't think its human trafficking then?"

"It could be," He says after a moment's hesitation. "But the targets are off... If it was isolated to just this city or just to you I'd say it was a serial killer specifically targeting this particular type of person or out to get you. But if it's across the whole country, that makes it a lot less likely. Serial killers don't work like that, they're loners, and contrary to what most movies and TV would lead you to believe, they're considerably less sophisticated and organized than you might think. Most can't get away with one murder before being caught, let alone 50 people. Something's definitely off about all this..."

"But you'll do it, right? You'll try to find these people, won't you?"

"Of course, I will," He takes her hand in his, giving her the same kind of grin he used on her when she knew him as a little boy. "You know I'm too damn stubborn to let something like this lie."


Present Day

"Nothing out of the ordinary's happened to any of her patients so far," Batman surveys the nearby street with the binoculars built into the white lenses of his cowl. "At least, not during the night. Most of them settle into whatever stopping grounds Leslie could tell me about."

"It's not enough, though."

"No, it's not," Batman admits, locking his eyes on an older, mixed-race man in his 50s with dirt ridden, patched together clothing walking down the street with a half empty bottle of cheap whiskey dangling off his right hand. "Leslie's hardly the only clinic in town and a lot of these people don't ever bother going into one. I didn't want to tell her this but a lot more people are probably gone."

"Potentially hundreds of them," Alfred grimly speculates. "Even after so many years, such apathy continues to distress me."

"We'll find them, Alfred, we always do-" Suddenly, the man halts, standing perfectly still in the middle of the street like a boot camp recruit under scrutiny by his superior officer. Batman looks ahead and around him to spot what exactly he's staring at but finds nothing. The man robotically puts the bottle down and with the same unnatural movements walks towards a sewer grate a few steps away and promptly lifts it off the ground, entering the filth ridden tunnels below.

"Oh dear," Alfred mutters with dread. "The stench..."

"It won't be the first time I've had to go down there." Reaching into one of the many compartments of his belt, he takes out a small breathing mask big enough to cover the exposed portion of his face. Keeping the smells of the sewers at bay and allowing him to speak to Alfred without giving his position away. He leaps into the air and following a short glide, dive bombs into the sewers via the entrance.

"A fact I'm well aware of, hence why I dread the smell of your clothing which, if you recall, I'm responsible for cleaning," He sighs. "I shall remain radio silent until further notice. You'll need to keep your wits about you down there. Good luck, sir."

Allowing himself a tiny grin, he spins around mid-air and fully unleashes his cape to its fullest extent, considerably lessening the speed of his descent and allowing him to safely land. The homeless man didn't make it far, only just turning a corner more moments after Batman's arrival. Allowing his cape to drape over his shoulder, the vigilante follows him cautiously.

Sewers are tricky for a variety of reasons. The assault on one's senses being the first many people think of, not without good reason. The stench is always horrific, even in civilized cities such as these and can get strong enough to knock a man unconscious should he not get prepared for it. The other issues were the waste lining the walls and floor. Substances from God knows where mixing with who knows want resulting in a cocktail of greases to be avoided. Stains capable of making someone slip or get stuck or give away one's location. Rats were another factor to consider, taking the wrong step could crush one and let your target know you're down here.

A multitude of factors Batman considers with each step, his heart beating steadily as he tries to balance between keeping himself hidden and not letting the homeless man escape his sight. A troublesome issue somewhat alleviated by the night vision goggles illuminating the area.

The homeless man turns another corner, his footsteps suddenly stopping and with that, Batman slows down. Putting his back as close to the wall as possible without brushing against it, he cautiously peers over the side of the corner and freezes at the sight before him. The homeless man, standing as stiff as a statue is approached by what can only be described as a Magnezone.

A floating, mechanical being that looks like two wide bowls combined together with two long arms protruding from them and a single, red-eye position front and center. The three clawed hands reach out towards the homeless man, grab him by the shoulders and hoist him off the ground.

Regaining some sense of control after the bewildering turn of events, Batman reaches into one of the compartments near the center of the belt and readies himself to throw a batarang when he hears an odd wobbling noise behind him. Followed by something swooshing through the air.

His reflexes kick in, allowing him to duck just as the metal arm punches right through the concrete wall. He tries to backflip away to get some distance from the other robot only to get hit in the back mid flip. He smashes face first into the dirt ridden waters of the sewer, completely submerged in it as the full effect of the blow leaves him with a constant, infuriating jolt of pain in his back.

"Master Bruce!" Alfred's worried voice rings in his ear. "Are you alright?"

"Wonderful," Batman grunts with a hint of amusement in his voice. "Sorry about messing the suit up, I'll be sure to make it regret that."

Taking five batarangs and his grappling gun out, he bursts out of the water and immediately tosses the five projectiles in the way of the robot, hoping for at least three of them to reach it. To his dismay, a pair of turrets appear from the upper case of the robot and promptly shoot down all of his batarangs.

Knowing they're likely to fire on him in a matter of seconds, he fires his grappling gun towards the robot to pierce its shell through the bright red-eye and deliver an electric shock to temporarily, but permanently if he's lucky, take the thing out. The robot casually grabs hold of his grapple line, its outer shell completely unaffected by the electricity coursing through it. Then, its red eye starts to glow brighter.

"Shit," He mutters and only narrowly avoids the wide laser from burning half his face off. Instead, it singes the side of his neck, instinctively making him want to rip his whole cowl off and throw it at far away as possible.

Noticing the turrets take aim, he grabs hold of his cape and shouts. "Release!"

The black fabric immediately detaches from the rest of the cowl, allowing him to fling it at the drone, momentarily blinding it. Its lasers manage to cut several holes through the cap, but they fail to stop it from covering it's body up.

While the robot tries to tear the cape off, Batman activates the secondary function inside his grappling gun: the explosive gel rounds and promptly fires four, fist-sized chunks of the substance onto the wall just above the robot and pressed down on the detonator button.

Instantly, the struggling robot is buried under piles upon piles of rubble smashing down on it. Hearing his heart pound in his ears, he pulls out more batarangs of the explosive variety and aims his grappling gun at the rubble, cautiously approaching it. The rock tilts in every direction as the robot tries to break free, but the cracks in its shell, along with the water seeping in have taken effect. It's bright red-eye starts to glow a lot less bright.

Then, in a last act of defiance, one of its two turrets manages to peek out through the rubble and fires on him. He tries to dodge but this time, the laser connects, piercing through the armor of his suit and blasting through his left shoulder. Biting back a curse, he throws batarangs with more force than necessary and drives two clean through the turret, causing it to explode. Finally, the robot seemingly dies, all power sapped from it if its faded eye is any indication.

With the threat defeated, at least for the moment, he allows himself to relax and let the surge of adrenaline pass. Something he quickly forgets once the pain from his back, neck, and his shoulder come back, stronger than ever before. Sitting down on the edge of the walkway, glances towards his burned shoulder and is silently thankful for his mask more than ever before. The stench of the sewers and of burning flesh isn't one he wants to get a whiff of.

"Alfred?"He asks, sounding more tired than he thought he was.

"I'm here Master Bruce, have you managed to subdue the... machine?"

"Its dead," He looks back at the defeated robot in the pile he'll have to dig him out of soon. "There's more of them Alfred, and if I'm going to take them down, I'm gonna need some serious help."


And thus ends the first chapter of DC Redux' Batman series! I hope the blatant Pokemon reference didn't rub you guys the wrong way. This Batman grew up in the 90s & early 2000s in Gotham and didn't devote to his usual training until he was practically out of high-school, hence why he's more prone to watching films and drawing over comparisons to pop culture.