Batman and associated characters and concepts are the property of DC Comics. This story is for entertainment purposes only.
Chapter Two: Paint It Black
Tim Drake should have been at home finishing up his term paper on Douglas MacArthur's five years as American shōgun of postwar Japan. It was not customary for a boy his age to don cape and costume and crawl along rooftops at night as a masked vigilante, certainly not on a school night. But the cape-and-cowl routine had become such an established part of his life that Tim no longer gave it much thought; he had grown accustomed to functioning (or rather, attempting to function) on only a scant few hours' sleep a night. It barely even registered to him that he was dressed somewhat madly in a black cape, a red cuirass and green leggings with a domino mask. Occasionally he wondered whether his nom de guerre came from the literal red-breasted robin, or after the bandit hero Robin Hood. Strangely enough, he'd never thought to ask.
Once upon a time he'd lived a normal life. Well, a kind of normal. His father was a well-known archaeologist... of sorts. A somewhat less athletic, less exotic version of Dr. Henry Jones (one of the first men to have proven that truth quite often is stranger than fiction). Perhaps normal was a bit of a strong word. But his life had been forever changed that day his parents had taken him to the circus, that horrible day he'd seen the amazing Flying Graysons plummet to their deaths... that day he'd first set eyes on the Dark Knight of Gotham. The day he'd first seen the Batman.
Ever since that one chance sighting, Tim had been fascinated by superheroes; he'd devoured every book the library had on the subject by the time he was ten. From the amazing exploits of Henry Jones and Clark Savage it had been a short leap to the thrilling true stories of the men of mystery like the Shadow, the Spider, the Green Hornet, the Crimson Avenger, the Sandman, the Phantom... It had seemed unfair to his childish mind that New York City had practically had a surplus while poor crime-riddled Gotham City had only had one or two. Gotham's only famous man of mystery was the Grey Ghost — and he was a fictional character, not even based on a true story like Zorro had been.
His excitement had been virtually impossible to contain when he'd heard the stories that the "urban legend" had taken on a protégé, the daredevil Robin, the Boy Wonder; there were no words for how he'd felt when he'd seen video footage of Robin performing a quadruple somersault maneuver that reportedly only three people in the world could do (one of the little bits of obscure trivia that he hoarded like a miser with gold). From there it had been a matter of detective-work-by-numbers to identify Robin with the similarly-aged and raven-haired Dick Grayson, sole survivor of the Flying Graysons and ward of billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. In retrospect, it was almost a rehash of old Diego de la Vega and Percy Blakeney. One of the oldest ones in the book, and somehow it never got old.
It was this bit of detective work that had eventually earned him the right to don the domino mask after Dick Grayson had moved on to become Nightwing. Just imagine! Not too long before it had been his boyhood fantasy to be Robin, to leap rooftops fighting evildoers alongside the Caped Crusader. And then there he was, for real. His childhood idol had become the big brother he'd never had. The Dark Knight had become his mentor. It was like a dream come true.
Of course, it wasn't all fun and games. He'd become Robin after his immediate predecessor, a street urchin named Jason Todd, had been murdered by Gotham's deadliest rogue. His own mother had been poisoned and died; his father had been confined to a wheelchair. He'd seen more death and violence than most career soldiers. And that was before this past year, before even more deaths... two of his closest friends, Connor and Bart... his father... and even —
Tim cleared his throat. He tried not to think about it. At least his friends and his father had, at least, died quickly. Relatively painlessly. Not like... not like she had. Bruce had been mercifully vague about the specific details. By the time he'd seen her body, she'd already been prepared for the viewing. The bruises and cuts had been disguised; the morticians had contrived to restore the face he'd adored. Laying in the casket, she'd been beautiful. Her short blonde hair and fair skin were flawless. But there was no mistaking that lifeless shell for the girl he'd fallen in love with. The tranquil expression on her face wasn't the real Stephanie; and though Bruce's money had bought her a dignified repose it couldn't erase the knowledge that she had been brutally tortured by the Black Mask, that she had suffered agonies he could scarcely imagine.
Stephanie Brown had been his girlfriend for years. Like Tim, she'd been a masked vigilante, calling herself the Spoiler. She lacked the training and equipment that Bruce had afforded Tim, but she was strong, stubborn, and enthusiastic. She'd done all right for herself, built up a solid reputation on her own turf, over by the North End stretching into Widowstone Creek. Nothing remotely as formidable as Bruce or Dick or even Catwoman, but respectable for a self-trained high school girl. She'd even supplied her own costume; Tim grinned every time he thought about her never-ending campaign to convince people that it was eggplant, not purple ("Purple would've looked stupid," she'd insisted). She'd been — Oh, God. He couldn't do this. He couldn't think about her. It hurt so much. Thank God almighty Bruce hadn't put up a trophy case for her in the Batcave. Tim didn't think he could've taken seeing her uniform every time he was there. One of Bruce's rare concessions to human sentiment.
He glanced at the sun dipping beneath the horizon, burning the sky a moody red and orange with just a hint of... just a hint of purple. God. Eggplant, he thought to himself, swallowing hard.
"Twelve o'clock," said one of the shadows. Thank God. Tim had never been more grateful for Bruce's obsession with sneaking up on people. Thankful for the interruption to his train of thought, Tim raised his miniature binoculars to his eyes and scanned the streets in the direction suggested. Everything looked clear; very likely the worsening weather had driven all the casual skels indoors. Not that he blamed them; it wasn't exactly comfortable out.
"I don't see anything."
"On top of the warehouse. Investigate and report back to me."
Tim took no offense at the brusqueness of the order. That was simply how Bruce was when he was wearing the cowl; everything about him changed, from the way he stood to the way he spoke, even down to his voice, a harsh noise somewhere between a growl and a stage whisper. The Batman persona was not supposed to be pleasant or friendly; it was supposed to terrify criminals, whom Bruce had always considered to be a cowardly and superstitious lot. Nobody had ever doubted its effectiveness — he even intimidated other good guys.
Tim moved out, just as Bruce had trained him; quick, quiet, methodical. There was a quiet whuff of compressed gas as his grapnel gun went to work, and Tim efficiently made his way across the rooftops with ease that came from many, many nights of practice. It would have been amazing, how easily he did this sort of thing these days. Would have been, had he actually thought about it. Bruce considered that you weren't properly trained on something until you could do it perfectly while exhausted and disoriented. His exacting standards had literally saved Tim's life on more than one occasion.
"Oh, Jesus..." Tim breathed as he arrived at the rooftop. Even for someone who'd seen as much as he had, it was...
The Black Mask had seen better days.
He was a coughing, wheezing mess. His suit was in tatters, leaving more than half of his body exposed to the elements. The skin and some of the muscle on his left hand had been torn off leaving bone exposed, and his right hand had been left a scorched remnant with third degree burns all the way up to the shoulder. His left leg was missing below the knee, and some of his ribs had punctured through his chest; his skin was broken, bruised, and bloody. Based on the way his blood was smeared on the rooftop, it looked as though he'd been dragging himself along somehow. His already disfigured face was twisted into a rictus grin, and there was a strange quality to his wheezing, almost as if...
...almost as if he were laughing.
"Batman," Tim reported into his throat-mic, "it's Black Mask. He looks critical. He's been exposed to Smilex." The so-called Clown Prince of Crime's signature toxin induced increasingly painful fits of laughter as it progressively shut down heart and brain functions, and resulted in a characteristic contortion of facial muscles into a death's-head grin. A horrible way to die; nobody knew how many victims had succumbed to Smilex in the long and infamous career of Gotham's most notorious criminal. The mass-murdering psychopath had a known body count in the quadruple digits — including Jason Todd, the second Robin — , and was reckoned to be the most prolific serial killer in North American history.
Tim was amazed to discover he felt absolutely no sympathy for the latest victim.
Black Mask was wanted in connection with more than a hundred murders; his gangland dealings had destroyed God only knew how many lives. But one of his crimes stood out in Tim's memory. Black Mask had tortured and murdered a blonde girl who insisted her uniform was eggplant.
"I'm on my way," came the response, a hint of urgency in the raspy voice. Bruce knew the rage and pain that came with the loss of a loved one. He knew the lust for revenge.
Movement. Thinking it was Batman, Tim didn't turn. That was a mistake; the blow caught him across the back of the head and carried him off his feet. He rolled into the fall and came back up in a crouch, and looked up in time to see a figure dressed in a black bodysuit not very different from those the family used; like the family, he was wearing a utility belt festooned with pouches, with the addition of a Sam Browne belt and a dark red hooded cloak. Whoever he was, he was well-trained, that much was clear — Tim had barely heard him before the attack, which meant he was certainly no amateur. Tim brought his telescoping bo staff up just in time to deflect a volley of three shuriken, and was surprised to find that his adversary nimbly leapt over a swipe of his staff. His surprise was compounded by the other man's speed; a right hook that felt like a bowling ball connected with his jaw and took him down.
Tim had been in far more than his fair share of fights, but not too many people had ever hit quite like that. Before he had a chance to get up, the other man turned and drew a wakizashi from a scabbard hidden somewhere within his cloak and skewered the Black Mask cleanly through the left eye before pulling the blade up and away; given the design of the cutting edge, this pulling motion sliced the top of the gangster's head in half. His work accomplished, the figure in the red hood dropped a smoke capsule and beat a retreat from the scene. It had all happened so fast that it was over before Batman had arrived.
"Robin!" he hissed. "What happened here?"
Tim shook his head to clear it; that had really been some roundhouse right he'd taken. "I think Red Riding Hood just killed the big, bad wolf," he managed.
