Daniel sat crouched atop the corner edge of one of the brick buildings in Gotham's slums, the shadows shrouding him in a protective cloak. Nobody could see him, not when he was in his element: darkness. The shadows protected him from the eyes of the beautiful vixen walking the streets.

Her ears were good, but Daniel's were better. He could hear every breath she took, every beat of her heart And he could hear the footsteps of the men that approached her from the alley way. He heard their threats, and he knew where their actions would lead. Tapping his ear, Daniel sent a signal through an earpiece he wore. There was a large number of bats spread throughout the area. They didn't normally come together, but they would come if he told them to.

"Come to me," he whispered. "Come to me, and help me save her." He could hear the bats' compliance with his wishes.

"We're coming," they seemed to say back to him. Daniel smiled in satisfaction and looked down to the street again. The men had encircled Carmelita and were beginning to make threats. That simply wouldn't do. The first bat flew by. Then the next. Soon, there was a full swarm of bats circling Carmelita. Bats may be relatively easy to kill in general, but when a swarm of them begins to circle someone at high speeds, they don't have much to worry about. The fear they spread is enough to keep them alive. And fear was exactly what Daniel wanted to spread at that moment.

Grabbing the edges of his cape, Daniel leaped down from the roof he was on. His cape billowed out and became rigid like a parachute in the form of a bat's wings. It slowed his decent enough to make it non-lethal, but not so much that his entrance was anything but dramatic. His boots slapped the concrete, making every man's head snap up. Daniel stood up, his face calm and collected behind the full face mask he wore. The scared faces of the punks that surrounded Carmelita brought a slight grin to his face. Fear was exactly what he wanted them to feel, and fear was exactly what they would feel.

One of them was stupid enough to take a swing at him. He easily blocked and threw his own punch to the face that knocked the man out cold. Within a few moments, four of the other men were unconscious as well. The last one, the ring leader, had turned and run the other way. It wouldn't make any difference. Daniel pulled a grapple gun from his belt and fired it at the roof of the building, but not before grabbing Carmelita's backpack. He had a plan for that. Zipping up to the top of the building, Daniel raced across it and onto the roofs of the other buildings, Carmelita's bag in hand. Deactivating his earpiece, Daniel gave the bats the order to dissipate and go back to their normal lives.

The man kept running away, but Daniel overtook him, firing a cable down at the man's foot. The man shot straight up into the air until Daniel stopped him when he was level with the roof of the building he was next to. He hung there, suspended fifty feet in the air by the metal wire that held his ankle.

"Don't kill, me, man," he begged. "Please don't kill me."

"I'm not going to kill you" Daniel replied. Through his mask though, it didn't sound like his voice. It was colder than normal, and it inspired fear in the hearts of those who heard it. "I'm not going to kill you at all. I want you to do me a favor."

"Anything, man! Just don't kill me!"

Daniel ignored the man's desperate plea, Daniel growled, "I want you to tell all the punks in this neighborhood that if they so much as touch Carmelita Fox or her family that I will hear about it, and they will have to answer to me. Make sure they know that what happened to you and your friends tonight was me showing mercy, and if it happens again, I will not be nearly as merciful. Do you understand?"

"Yeah, yeah, I got it!"

"Good." Daniel lowered the backpack down to the front porch of Carmelita's apartment building where she would find it with a package he had prepared for her. "That is all."

Daniel released the cable that held the man's foot, causing him to drop, screaming. At the last second, he stopped the man's fall, but he did let go to drop him the last few inches. Daniel watched in satisfaction as the man ran away from Carmelita as fast as he could. Looking down, Daniel saw that Carmelita had gotten his package. He could hear her breath and her heartbeat again. They were still somewhat erratic-as was to be expected after what she had just gone through-but they were both slowing to a more normal pace.

Carmelita looked up, and even though she couldn't see him, he saw her, and it nearly made his heart stop. Her sapphire blue eyes seemed to bore into the chocolate brown ones that laid behind the red lenses of his mask. "Thank you," he heard her say before she went inside.

"You're welcome, querera," he whispered as he pulled out his grapple. Firing it at a nearby stone gargoyle, Daniel leaped off the building he stood on and swung away towards home.