Just as Fury said, the helicopter transport got Steve within range of Gotham City by late afternoon. Besides the constant rotator blade spinning and the occasional chatter between himself and the pilot, the super soldier spent the trip reading up on all things Gotham and Batman.
The files conveniently printed out in neat paper stacks, painted a pretty bleak picture of a city that couldn't catch a break.
Organized crime, already present since the turn of the old century, got a whole lot worse when two crime bosses established themselves after WW2: Vincent Falcone and Luigi Maroni. Through the rest of the 40s then the 50s and 60s, they cut a bloody swath throughout Gotham. The old families of Gotham who founded the city centuries back tried to fight it. But the Crowne family folded, the Dumas sole heir exiled himself overseas while the Kane, Elliot and Wayne families almost got snuffed out thanks to various family tragedies.
The Wayne's murder was the last straw.
With them more or less gone and less principled men taking over their business', Carmine "The Roman" Falcone, son of Vincent Falcone became don of the city, ruling it for the next 20 something years with an iron fist. If the information here was as accurate as Steve thought it was, Falcone spread his influence over Gotham in a way that'd make H.Y.D.R.A. proud. Nobody from the mayor to a regular beat cop was safe from him or his associates. Everyone was too afraid to fight back.
Until Batman.
From the police and news reports compiled, he first appeared sometime in April 1993, attacking muggers, low-level mob enforces and crooked cops at first. They didn't take him too seriously, until May 19th. The night Batman invaded a dinner party hosted at one of Falcone's old estates on the city outskirts, where he declared war on him and everyone who ever helped him drag Gotham through the mud.
On June 7th, he made national news when he took down a special police force called S.W.A.T. team of eighteen men by himself before a swarm of bats showed up to help him sneak away.
He's got a flair for the dramatic. Steve thought when he read that.
The manhunt for Batman only intensified after that with several suspects listed such as Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent but his true identity remains a mystery to this day, 19 years later. By the end of '93, an ex-Chicago cop named James Gordon got promoted to Captain, giving Batman his first ally in an official capacity. For a time, things seemed to get better with the mob being taken down piece by piece, Gotham looked like it had a chance.
Then Joker showed up for the first time.
He was the original Gotham Freak as they came to be known and tried to turn the water supply into raspberry jelly because, as he put it, why not? Steve didn't even want to think how that was supposed to work. Other so-called super criminals like him followed suit, sometimes just crooks with gimmicks while the rest were complete psychopaths racking up a sickening body count each.
Some of them got help like Victor Freeze, Basil Karlo, and Kirk Langstrom, others started out bad and stayed that way. Harvey Dent, one of the men most to thank for putting away Falcone was horribly scared and turned into one of the Freaks, Two-Face. Joker changed too, starting out as a grand scale prankster then turning into a makeshift mob boss then vanishing after his presumed death only to come back as a citywide, mass murdering terrorist.
Throughout all this, Steve noticed a marked shift with Batman. From the start, fear and intimidation tactics were par for the course with him, but gradually, as his enemies became worse, Batman himself seemed to grow more violent. Increasing reports detailed him leaving criminals in worse and worse shape, some so badly beaten they're still crippled to this very day.
The incident that made even Steve's war blood run cold was a particular incident two years ago. During his later career, Batman had gotten a partner called Robin to help him out. For a while, the crime rates seemed to drop with two of them around, but then Robin vanished one night and Batman spent the next three weeks practically ripping Gotham to pieces to try and find him.
A solid number wasn't determined, but from what Steve could see, he hospitalized between 80 and 130 known criminals during that time along with several of the super crooks. The part that put the former soldier off was the last piece of footage Fury provided for him alongside second and third-rate sources showing how Batman fought.
Dubbed "The Warning" it showed the Joker with two black eyes, most of his teeth either broken or punched out as he lied on the floor, his arms and legs snapped into unnatural angles. It was broadcast on every single television, computer and cellphone in Gotham, lasting only a minute, most of it was dedicated to just staring at the broken Joker until Batman talked to the camera at the very end. The only thing he said was, "This is what I'll do to you if you break the law."
Gotham's crime rate plummeted and stayed down for the next year and a half before steadily growing back up again. The Joker is, to this very day, still in a coma. Robin was never seen again.
He was thankful to get out of the helicopter, after spending hours on end watching an endless cycle of pain and misery repeat itself over and over again left him feeling grim, tired and worst of all, very conflicted. Part of him wanted to strike out at Batman just as much as the criminals making life in Gotham miserable. Using fear and torture to try and control people, to force them into submission was something that offended Steve to his very core. It reminded him far too much of the bullies of his youth, and the Nazi's and H.Y.D.R.A. forces he helped bring down decades ago.
On the other hand, the Batman seemed to be the only one capable of fighting back what was happening there. Everyone else had given up on Gotham years ago, surely if Fury wanted to, he could have done something, anything, to help, the information here proved he must have known what was going on, why not help? Even at his worst, this Batman had a rule he never seemed to break: he never killed anyone. No matter who he faced, no matter how much they might have had it coming, this sole thing stuck out to Steve as he read through the vast assortment of information given to him.
But did that excuse him potentially stooping to his enemies level in other ways? Was there no other way to help this place?
"Cap got a call for you! It's Director Fury!" The pilot asked as they began their final approach to the city. As he rose up to walk over to him, Steve got his first look at Gotham itself from the cockpit. From this far away, high in the sky and bathed in beautiful summer sunlight, you'd never think it was any different from other places like New York or Chicago with its massive skyscrapers that seemed to go on forever. From up there, if you didn't know any better, you might call it an achievement.
"Thanks, what've you got for me, sir?"
"Bad news Cap," Fury's grim voice cut through the rotor blade noise like an explosion through a gunfight. "Two more banks were hit in the past couple of hours, same as the one yesterday. A dozen people dead and twice that hurt. That's not even mentioning the 300 million dollars they've racked up in just under 24 hours."
Damn it... "Do we have any new leads, anything to help me nail these guys?"
"Unfortunately no, whoever these guys are, they aren't half-assing this operation, they know where to hit and more importantly, get out without leaving any evidence."
"Somebody must know where to find these guys. I can't believe that in a group of ten people there isn't even one of them who's not bragging about getting away with that much money. Back in my day, they'd practically make a party if they managed to scam someone with a stolen carpet."
"Such is the law of keeping a secret, the more people know about it, the higher chance it'll get out. It's not anything close to a good lead but you don't have much choice but crack some skulls until someone points you the right way."
"And if Batman takes it too far?" Steve wondered as vivid descriptions of his later interrogations sprang to mind.
"Then I ask that you consider things carefully," Fury's tone managed to sound even grimmer than usual. "You might not agree with all his methods, but Batman gets results and in Gotham, that's a unique quality for someone on the right side. Besides, nobody knows the Gotham underworld the way he does, so unless you want this to drag out, you don't have much choice but to rely on whatever help Batman's willing to give you."
Steve reluctantly conceded Fury's point. "Then I guess I'll head to Commissioner Gordon tonight. From what I've read, short of breaking the law, that's the fastest way to get to this Batman."
"Till then, keep a low profile, get to know the lay of the land. Just make sure you're at the GCPD by nine, that's when I'll have someone deliver your suit and shield for you."
Which gives me five hours to see just how bad Gotham is for myself. "Understood sir, I'll nail the bastards before they hurt anyone else."
"For all our sakes, let's hope you do. Keep the phone, it'll help us stay in touch."
With that, Fury ended the call, allowing the super soldier from Brooklyn a few more uninterrupted minutes to just look at Gotham before the copter touched down at the outskirts. Taking his motorcycle out of the back and thanking the pilot for getting him there, Steve put on his sunglasses and Los Angeles Dodgers cap on and made his way into the city.
Crossing in over the Robert Kane Memorial Bridge, Steve had gotten a much closer look at the city from the ground level as he slowly made progress through the afternoon traffic jam. From there, the city didn't shine quite like it did just a few minutes earlier from the sky. The skyscrapers, instead of being brightened by the sun, looked dark and foreboding as if they were cast in shadows nothing could get rid of.
The first neighborhood he visited was Old Gotham and at first glance, it put him at ease. Being the starting point from where the rest of the place was built from, this section of the city didn't see any tearing down or new construction done since the 1950s. If any modernization was done, it happened in bits and pieces here and there or inside people's homes, the whole place had a vintage feel to it with its old shop signs, blocky buildings. It reminded him of home.
Steve had heard that a lot of cities purposefully left parts of themselves like this, for historical preservation and of course, for tourist traps but he doubted any place had it all over the place like Gotham. No matter where he went through the first few hours, there was something... old everywhere. No matter where he drove, what he stopped to look at, he found a lot of things that reminded him of old days everywhere, even the newest, most modern buildings seemed to age twenty years just by being there.
Unlike Old Gotham, however, where he found it charming, the way it felt through the rest of the city put him on edge. He was no expert on architecture, but the way the buildings seemed to almost... twist around, how he found gargoyles built all over the place, not just near churches or cathedrals, how the alleys looked less like place you walked through and more like some dark, damp cave instantly reminded Steve of those old horror stories, EC Comics he read back then.
Then there were the people and this is where Gotham's... atmosphere was almost tangible for him. No matter where he looked or who, the old super soldier saw tension and fear in the way people went about their business. They way they took in their surroundings by constantly looking over their backs or how they kept an unnatural distance from one another whenever they spoke to anyone. But it wasn't a fresh kind of fear you'd expect from people under attack by alien super weapon using criminals. It too made him think back to the war, back when he infiltrated enemy territory and saw how people lived in the occupied territories.
These people, much like those before them, were always afraid, but they'd live with it and the possibility of disaster so long, they'd made it almost a natural part of their everyday lives and they didn't even know it. This was fear when it became a practiced ease.
As the hours went by and the got smaller and smaller, the foreboding Steve felt was practically palpable as night began to fall. The bizarre way the buildings seemed to have put together, the way it looked like it suffered from a blackout despite thousands of lights all over the place and the unnatural way the people lived only enhanced the feeling of this place feeling... off. Not entirely wrong, he couldn't admit that much but something definitely oppressive.
He felt pretty relieved by the time the car Fury told him about arrived with his shield and a suitcase carrying his new suit inside. It meant he could get down to business and hopefully do some good for this poor place. After so much doom and gloom, seeing almost the whole department, even the crooks there, practically stop dead when he all walked in was a welcome change.
"Evening ma'am," He greeted the woman at the reception with a smile. "I'm Steve Rogers and I've come here to speak with Commissioner Gordon about the recent bank robberies here. Could you help get me in contact with him?"
The woman gawked at him for a little while longer before she and the rest of the place slowly unfroze themselves. "O-oh course! J-just gimme a second here."
She fumbled around for the phone, knocking over papers and important look files in a mad scramble to get to the phone pretty obviously put right next to her. Before he pointed that out, she seemed to remember that and made the call. One back and forth between her and the Commissioner on the other end, followed by her sending him a photo of Steve standing there to prove it later, the WW2 vet finally got a chance to see James Gordon, Batman's confidante in the G.C.P.D. in person as he walked into the lobby.
As a companion piece to the vast Batman file, Gordon received one as well, born in 1957 to Jonathan Kimble Gordon, a WW2 vet who saw most of his action during the Pacific theatre, James Gordon spent a pretty normal childhood living in Chicago where he joined the police department after dropping out of college. Apparently, he'd come to blows there with the higher ups concerning corruption within the force caused by Carmine Falcone's sister, Carla Viti, last head of the extinct Viti crime family.
First Lieutenant, then Captain and then Commissioner just in his first three years here, Gordon had become one of the city's most respect individuals and a known close ally of Batman'. Though he was 55 years old, the sobering effect he had on the room was almost tangible, dimming a lot of the ruckus Steve had caused when he entered, all just by looking across the room until his eyes finally landed on the super soldier.
Then, after staring for a few seconds was trying to keep that calm composure from breaking apart in front of every there. "Captain Rogers," He welcomed Steve with a nod and a handshake, his voice sounding remarkably casual even as his eyes looked big enough to pop out of their sockets. "It's an honor to meet you!"
"Likewise Commissioner."
"Sorry about not coming here sooner, it just-"
"Sounded pretty unbelievable, I know, I heard. " Steve gave a disarming smile which seemed to make Gordon even more anxious if the way his heart rate pounding against his chest was any indication.
He shook Steve's hand just a few seconds longer than normal before glancing down and hastily pulling it back. "Uh, please! Follow me, we can talk more without so many prying eyes and ears."
With a silent acknowledgment, the WW2 vet followed him through the halls of the G.C.P.D. building. It, just like the rest of Gotham, had a strange way of making even the new seem old and worn. Steve could see dozens of pieces of high tech machinery sprawled all across the place from computers to cell phones to lights, built on old tiled floors with pieces of aging wood connecting all of it this way and that. A few minutes later and with more than a few surprised stares following them, they reached Gordon's office on the upper floor.
It was a humble place with creaking old floorboards, two decks one on the front with a computer, family picture and one on the back where Steve noticed some doughnuts and a coffee machine. Three windows gave Gordon an overview of the ins and outs of the building with binds on all of them.
"Please, make yourself comfortable," Gordon pulled a spare chair for him. "I'd offer you some coffee, but having Captain America die of a heart attack in my office sounds like it'd be bad luck."
Steve grinned as he sat down. "Can't be worse than some of the booze the guys back in the day used to make to pass the time."
"Yeah, my old man said something to that effect," He paused to look at the shield, lulling the conversation for a bit. "I hope I'm not being presumptuous, it's just-"
"Help yourself," Handing it out, Gordon took the shield with a careful reverence, running his hand against it and weighing it back and forth in the air. Another pause later, he started chuckling softly.
"Another thing my dad used to say is that he saw you in action on Okinawa, that you tossed this at an incoming Japanese plane and cut it right in half," Gordon laughed again. "I knew he was full of crap later but it makes for a good kid story."
Though there were talks about him being transferred over there once Europe was liberated, Steve had never set foot there.
"If it makes you feel any better, I did cut a talk in half."
Gordon stopped again and stared at him for any sign of a joke, despite not finding any, he laughed again. "What I wouldn't give to see that."
Handing the shield back, Gordon sat behind the desk and with a deliberate slowness, sat down in the creaking old chair. The nervousness and excitement from before seemed to drain out of him, replaced by a resigned grimness. "But given recent events, I might just see you fight anyway."
"Unfortunately you just might," Steve replied evenly. "But if I can nail these guys fast, no one else has to die or get hurt."
"And you need my friends help to do that."
The Super Soldier nodded, Gordon sighed.
"He might not want to help you. I've known him for a very long time and he can be... difficult when it comes to accepting help from anyone outside."
"Which is why I'm counting on you to help me, Commissioner" Steve replied without hesitation. "The weapons these men carry are dangerous, even to me, and much more so to other people. All of us know that and they can't be allowed to stay in the hands of crooks. If Batman refuses my offer for whatever reason? Fine, doesn't change the fact I'll be going after these guys no matter what."
Gordon smiled at that. "You're just as headstrong as he is. Too bad I don't know if that'll help or ruin your chances of getting him to agree," Rising out of his chair, he took a thick looking brown coat and hat off a rack. "I'll go set up the signal if you've got to get changed or make any preparations, nows the time. Just take a left to the fire escape door and keep going up after you're done."
A moment later, Gordon was gone and Steve wasted no time in getting ready. Opening the briefcase he noticed... a suit inside. In many ways, it looked like his outfit from New York. Except, the blue was a few shades darker, almost gray, the helmet was completely separate from the neck and the gauntlets were replaced by a pair of brown, fingerless gloves.
Guess Fury thought the old outfit was too bright for night ops. Seeing wisdom in the choice, Steve hastily put the clothes on, conscious of the fact someone might try to take a peek at him and emerged from the office fully suited up, his regular clothing left inside the briefcase on Gordon's desk while the shield was strapped to his back. With a fast step, Steve climbed the several flights of stairs, reaching the rooftop just-in-time to see a massive, bright light suddenly shoot out from it.
Blinking the sudden flash away, the soldier saw Gordon standing next to a massive searchlight, staring up into the night sky. Steve looked in the same direction and there, hanging over all of Gotham like a giant monster ready to come down any second was the shape of a gargantuan black bat. His gaze shifted over to Gotham beneath them and suddenly, in that mix of shadows and pure blackness he found so unnerving earlier, there was something else there. Seeing the bright lights cut through the pitch black around them...
"Quite a view, isn't it?" Gordon asked as he walked up to the edge. "You should see it come Christmas time, the snow makes it even better."
Steve absently nodded and kept watching, trying to reconcile the enigma that was Gotham city. How could a place look so promising at first, lose absolutely all of its appeal then, at night of all times when the worst crime was reported to happen, had a sort of rugged, twisted beauty of its own all over again? Before he could ponder about this any more, Steve suddenly heard something thump behind them and spun around to find the cause.
When did he- There, standing just on the periphery of the searching light he stood, tall and imposing, with a body that seemed impossibly huge to move as quietly as it just did. From the side of his face he could make out, he had a firm, thin-lipped jaw and grim eyes that could give Fury a run for his money.
"Jim," He spoke with a distorted voice that seemed simultaneously loud and soft. Then his eyes settled on Steve. "Captain America."
The Super Soldier nodded, his eyes unflinchingly meeting the vigilante's. "Batman."