"The world feels not the same, though I know, nothing has changed. It's all my state of mind. I can't leave it all behind. Have to stand up to be stronger."
~Within Temptation
Ch.2
Kelsey Lannis stood outside the edge of Gotham City, staring at the moonlit sky. Her feet did not waver as she stood perfectly still and silent. Her pale skin almost appeared to glow with the shimmer of the moonlight, and her grayish-blue eyes took on an ethereal quality. She did not know what had drawn her here, to this town. Blindly she followed the North Star, listening to the echoes resonating inside of her inner core and hoping fearfully that they led her on the right path. 'But what is this but my Destiny?' a voice inside Kelsey threatened to quiver. But it didn't. Kelsey squelched the words of doubt as soon as they tempted to enter her abode. She had been trained from an early age to not allow any weaknesses of herself. When she was three years old she had been kidnapped from her family and trained by an evil man to become a killing machine. Years ago, Kelsey had managed to kill her master and escape. Now, lost and wandering, Kelsey had not yet forgiven herself for the sins she had unwillingly committed when she was a mere child. At age seventeen, she knew that she was still a child.
A lone tear fell down her face and Kelsey touched the tear harshly, knowing that she shouldn't cry. Her past was molded into her soul and despite the fact that her master's forbidden evil had vanished Kelsey still could never allow herself to be weak. 'My family's dead, slaughtered,' she remembered. 'This is a world full of monsters and I am the only one who can look out for myself.' Long ago she was taught that if someone caught her off-guard and managed to hurt her, it was her fault, not the fault of her enemy.
Kelsey sighed longingly – not exactly knowing what she was longing for – and let the emptiness that was growing inside of her chest absorb and destroy all of the pain from her past. 'What will Gotham bring to me?' Kelsey thought, and despite the fact that she had no clue what her purpose was, her unwavering willpower and trust in the pull of her unconscious knowing of what she must do allowed her to push herself forward.
With one step Kelsey swung her torn black tote bag behind her back and took one last step into Gotham. "This is it," Kelsey whispered. "Gotham City, Land of Faded Dreams, here I come."
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Inside the Wayne Manner, the lights creeped through the windows.
"Wake up, Master Bruce," Alfred said in a soft, kindly voice.
Bruce stirred in his bed and after a couple minutes forced himself out of bed and began doing the 100 pushups he did every morning. Well, if it was morning when he woke up. Bruce stood up and drank the glass Alfred had brought up. "What time is it?" Bruce asked.
"2 p.m," Alfred said. "You have a meeting scheduled at 3:30 p.m., will you be ready?"
Bruce nodded.
"I'll have the car ready when its time," Alfred said.
An hour and a half later, Bruce Wayne was sitting in a boring meeting. The business men in the meeting room droned on and on and Bruce was only half-paying attention. His mind was distracted – last night he had heard from Gordon that a new serial killer was on the loose and so far Bruce hadn't had any luck finding out any information. 'Of course,' he thought sarcastically, 'Right after one serial killer is caught another starts on a psychotic killing rampage.' From the files he read, he knew that the killer had specific patterns, but other than that he didn't know much yet.
Soon the meeting was over and Bruce sighed with relief. However, he remembered that he had to attend the fundraising party he had set up a couple days ago. Bruce groaned internally; a couple more hours of pretending to be an ignorant billionaire playboy.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
"I'm not staying home," Hannah Lannis said to her adoptive parents.
"Yes you are."
Hannah sighed. They truly did not understand her…AT. ALL.
"Mom, you know it's important to me," Hannah said.
"You're a child; you are NOT going to run off looking for your sister. I told you a million times, she's dead."
Hannah scoffed. "You don't know anything.." Even though she was only one year old when her sister was kidnapped and her birth parents were slain, something inside her could remember her sister. Not remember, exactly, but Hannah could feel her sister's presence. It didn't make any sense. It was completely illogical. But Hannah had felt alone for her whole life, never had any friends, and it always felt like something was missing.
And Hannah was pretty sure she would be able to sense it if Kelsey Lannis was dead.
She hadn't told her fake parents about last night, either. She figured, what's the point? Its not like they would really care, and its not like it affected her in any serious way. All she had to do was shrug her shoulders and then it didn't matter. Not. One. Bit.
Anyways, Hannah had more than one reason to suspect her sister was alive, and not only that, strong. She had been researching this since she was ten years old, and even though the files were hard to find and barely nonexistent and under several fake names, Hannah knew.
And maybe she was more like her sister than she originally thought.
So Hannah Lannis walked out the door, and didn't look back.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
10:00 P.M., Gotham City
Bruce Wayne finished putting his black armor on and opened the door to the Tumbler, entered it, and sped out of the Batcave. Whoever the serial killer was had already gotten away with three murders and Batman wasn't about to let him (or her) get away with any more. If only he could be every place at once; it's not like various criminals took turns at corrupting the streets. They all went out on the same night. There were plenty of them and only one of him.
Batman was watching over the city, moving across building tops and looking out for criminals below. When he heard a noise, his internal radar went off and Batman silently swept down and appeared behind a burly criminal. It turned out there was more than one; it was a gang trying to get away with selling cocaine. Something alerted Batman to the fact that something about this was more than drugs; as soon as he got them tied up he'd question them before the cops arrived.
First he had to fight them.
At second glance, it turned out that only five of the men were criminals and the six "man" was a young boy that the gang was trying to murder.
"Release him," Batman roared, sneaking up behind the criminal that currently was choking the boy. Batman pulled the man up by his lapel and threw him on the ground. The other members of the gang moved to attack the boy on the ground, but batman stood in the way, attacking the gang member with a spinning roundhouse kick as he tried to get his hands on the boy. The gang member tried to punch Batman but Batman easily blocked it and countered it with a counter punch, which made the gang member stumble. Another gang member moved in, thinking Batman was preoccupied with the other one, but Batman easily deflected the knife that the gang member was trying to stab him with and kicked the gang member in the ribs. He started to tie two of the gang members up but he didn't notice that the first one that had fallen had gotten up and was behind him. The gang member punched Batman's lower back but Batman used the momentum of the punch to spin around and crescent kick the criminal in the face, pulling the criminal down at the same time while gripping his wrist and holding it in a wrist lock.
Batman quickly tied the three gang members up so they couldn't escape. He sprinted to the other two remaining gang members, and was relieved when he saw that the boy the gang had been attacking had already run away but was also worried that the boy may have injuries that weren't attended to. The last two men started to run off, trying to escape, but Batman hovered over them and pulled them back. Within no time he had all five criminals tied up.
"You won't get away with this!" Batman roared. "What else were you involved in?"
"I swear to god, nothing…"
"Swear to me!" Batman roared. It sounded like they were stalling and they sounded unnaturally confident, and Batman knew something was up but didn't know what it was.
All of a sudden Batman felt something pound into his side and then fall to the ground and then he realized that someone in the distance had shot him. Luckily Kevlar was bulletproof and the only thing the bullet would do was leave a nasty bruise.
He turned and saw the boy that he thought the gang members were attacking; so apparently this was even more complicated than he thought. A set up?
But then the boy came rushing forward and fell to his knees; Batman saw tears falling from his eyes and he realized that the boy had been aiming at the criminals who attacked him but misaimed.
"They deserve to die," the little boy cried.
No one deserved death, no matter how cruel they were. Well, maybe some people did but it wasn't up to humans to judge.
Batman walked up to the boy after he was sure that the gang members were secured to the wall. "What did they do to you?" he asked.
The boy pointed to his leg; they had shot him in the leg. Bruce called the cops so they would come pick up the criminals, and he drove the boy to the hospital so his leg could be examined, and then Batman continued to patrol long into the middle of the night.
The night went on. the city street lights blurred off and on and dirty minds hid in the shadows and corrupted souls danced when it finally started raining and held their tongues out to catch droplets of the rain, which probably tasted bitter.
Batman continued to patrol the streets. It was the only thing that mattered.
If he was out, maybe he would be able to stop the serial killer. He certainly wouldn't be able to do so if he wasn't out.
He thought he saw someone running, a shadow. Long hair. In the rain there was something very ethereal of a strange shape running in the night.
Not that strange.
It's not safe to be in the Narrows alone. Batman hid in the shadows, watching, protecting.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Kelsey was running, not because she had to; not because there was someplace she had to be. Not even because there was someone after her. No one was after her.
No, Kelsey ran because she needed to. She needed the adrenaline rush that came when she was running at an incredible speed; it almost felt like she was flying and her soul was somewhere else, somewhere safe and beautiful; somewhere that had nothing to do with her broken life.
When she was running, Kelsey didn't remember that she never had a life.
Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Those were the words of the man that for the longest time, she had thought was her father. She remembered him punching her in the gut when she cried. Glaring at her with those sinister green eyes when she flinched in pain after one of those training sessions. 'Punch the bag. Harder.' Her fist had been bleeding. It didn't matter. Harder, harder, harder. So she did. Perfect technique. Four years old.
It hurt so much when she found out that he wasn't her father. That he had taken her. It wasn't his right. And yet. She only found out because of how well he had trained her. To be a killing machine, yes, but at least she could defend herself. And it wasn't as if she didn't like fighting. It wasn't as if fighting wasn't her best language. It wasn't as if fighting didn't make her feel alive, fucking ALIVE.
And of course she blamed herself, because that was how she had been taught.
God, oh god, the monster slaughtered her family, she had found out. She never knew them. She had only been three.
Daro was her father. Her kidnapper, yes, but her father. Not by blood, but he was her father. He was the only father she had ever known.
And she had killed him.
Kill the one to save the many, right?
No. It was wrong. Daro had forced her to kill before and Daro surely had killed before and Kelsey was a slave to Daro so Kelsey killed Daro so she never had to kill again….so Daro could never kill again.
Kelsey ran. Kelsey ran and ran and ran and ran. She felt the wind tugging at her long blackish-brown hair. It almost worked.
But she felt so damn numb. So fucking dead.
And yet.
She felt so fierce. She felt so determined. She felt so passionate, despite the fact that she had no access to her passion valve and had no clue what that passion was. Maybe it was just energy, lots of energy, and anger. And she felt alive. More alive than she had ever felt in her seventeen years.
And she didn't know why.
And that puzzled her, angered her, jinxed her.
Somewhere along the line she sensed that someone was watching her. She couldn't see whoever it was, but she knew. She could feel it.
To Be Continued…
