Chapter 22: #WeGotBatman

He came to after the sun had set. Someone was shaking him awake.

And he had a bag over his head.

The young man, seventeen years of age, had been working his summer job as a stock boy at the Wal-Mart on Bleake Island when The Undying had his press conference. He and his fellow employees were let into the massive stock room in the rear to wait the whole thing out, so long as no one used the inventory to feed, clothe, or otherwise sustain themselves. He left as soon as the sun came up out of general principle.

By the time he left Wal-Mart, the mob had taken over Bleake Island and blew the bridges connecting it to the rest of Gotham. He lived on Miagani, so there was no way he was getting back to his parents. The stock boy called them, told them he was alright, and set off into the rest of Bleake Island to forage for food and see what was what.

He didn't do well on the food front, but seeing what was what? The stock boy did just that.

On the corner of tenth and Ostrander, he saw nine dead bodies scattered in front of a restaurant called Georgio's. He had learned from his Twitter feed on his phone that the mob had taken over the island and killed all the cops, but the nine dead bodies didn't strike the stock boy as either.

They were all women, for one.

And they were dressed head-to-toe in black leather.

So unless the GCPD or the Maroni and Falcone families had been recruiting from some of the more entertaining dreams the stock boy had been having, these dead women belonged to another party altogether.

The stock boy took a picture of the scene, and was about to take another, when someone came out of the front door of Georgio's. The stock boy hid in an alley, and stuck his head out.

It was another woman. Similarly dressed to the dead woman on the ground. She sported a bruise along her jawline and a black eye. But even from his vantage point, he could see that this mystery woman had raw and bloody knuckles.

The stock boy figured that the nine dead women on the ground went into Georgio's, the woman with the bloody knuckles killed them with her bare hands, and dragged them out of the restaurant.

The stock boy fancied himself an amateur detective.

He had also been taking self-defense classes for eight years, since he was nine, as he knew what kind of city he lived in.

Neither of these did him any good, as just when he was about to take a picture of the woman with the bloody knuckles, someone crept up behind him and knocked the stock boy out cold with a wrench.

Which led to his current predicament: his hands and feet tied, a bag over his head, and someone shaking him awake.

"Wake up," someone with a deep voice said. "I'm going to talk, and you're going to listen."

From what he could gather, the stock boy knew he was outdoors. He could still the sound of distant gunshots and helicopters coming from the other islands.

And he was wet, which was most likely from the rain. His ass was wet, which told him he was on the ground. He was leaning against something metal, most likely a dumpster. This meant he was in an alley. He didn't hear any rain falling, so it must have stopped for now.

His captor started speaking.

"Seven came out when I was a kid," he said. "David Fincher, 1995. John Doe kills people in an unnamed city according to the Seven Deadly Sins. I became a huge fan of Fincher. My favorite's Fight Club, but anyway…"

The stock boy could hear his captor coming closer.

"I reenacted the Envy killing with our cat Churchill. Put his head in a box. My mom and Dad sent me to therapy after that."

The stock boy's mouth was not gagged. And it wasn't like anything he was going to say was going to make his predicament worse.

"I take it the therapy didn't take?" the stock boy asked.

His captor laughed. "No," he said. "I guess it didn't."

The captor tapped something on the stock boy's head. The stock boy figured it was most likely a knife.

"Another favorite," the captor said, "is Silence of the Lambs . 1991, by Jonathan Demme, God rest his soul. Buffalo Bill skins his victims to make a person suit. Didn't age well, but the suspense is still there. Ideally, I'd have a plus-sized woman for this, but times are tight, and you'll do in a pinch."

The stock boy could smell his captor's breath through the bag.

"You ever wonder if Batman has good taste?" the captor asked. "What, uh… What kind of movies he watches?"

"No," the stock boy said, trying to sound less than the piss-scared that he actually was.

"I guess it's just one of those things I worry about," the captor said. "In an ideal world, I'd be like the Riddler, only instead of leaving riddles, I'd reenact crimes from movies. Instead of testing Batman's knowledge, I'd test his taste… Of course with my luck, he'd be the kind of guy who watched nothing but Fast and-"

Another thing that the stock boy could detect about his surroundings was that he was sitting on the pavement, next to a dumpster, and underneath a fire escape.

He knew that last one, because he could hear someone jumping from that fire escape and coming down on his captor. He could hear his captor scream for a bit, the sound of a foot hitting someone in the face, and then nothing.

And he could tell that his rescuer was a teenage girl, because she started to speak.

"Your favorite movie is Fight Club?" the girl asked his unconscious captor. "Tumblr warned me about guys like you."

The stock boy could hear someone else coming down the fire escape. The teenage girl called out to them.

"Could you untie this one so I can drag our freaky film friend here out of the alley? I don't want him waking up so close to us."

"Sure thing," someone who sounded like a teenage boy said.

The stock boy could hear the teenage girl dragging his captor out of the alley with a "God, you're heavy…"

The bag came off of the stock boy's head, and he found himself staring at the teenage boy who had come down the fire escape. He had shaggy brown hair and blue eyes similar to his own, and seemed to be just a couple of years younger than he was.

And he just… stared at the stock boy for a moment, eyes wide and mouth agape, as though he were water in the Sahara.

"Wow," the teenage boy finally said. "You're pretty!"

"Uhh… Thanks?" the stock boy said.

The teenage boy turned around and called to the teenage girl who was dragging the captor out of the alley.

"Hey, Harper! Look at how pretty this kid is!"

The teenage girl stood up from her exertions. She was about the stock boy's age, with short purple and blue hair, and blue eyes. She had a pierced septum and a Monroe on the left side of her upper lip.

She saw the stock boy, and then her eyebrows raised while her eyes themselves narrowed. The stock boy felt like a specimen of bug to be added to a collection by an entomologist who didn't expect to see his particular breed in an alley on Bleake Island.

"He is pretty," Harper said. "Congratulations."

"Thank you, too, I guess," the stock boy said.

"I'm Cullen," the teenage boy said. "Cullen Row. That's my sister Harper. And who might you be?"

The oddity of the situation made the stock boy forget his name for a second, but it came back.

"Tim," the stock boy said. "Tim Drake."

Cullen held his hand out to shake Tim's hand, looked him up and down, and said "I haven't untied you yet, have I?"

"No," Tim said. "No, you haven't."

Cullen untied Tim and got him to his feet.

"We're up on the roof," Cullen said. "We have food, stuff to drink, a laptop we can watch anime on. You should join us!"

"Cullen?"

Harper had returned.

"What?" Cullen asked.

"Stop making eyes at the straight boy," Harper said.

Cullen looked at Tim, and then back at Harper. "You don't know he's straight."

"Yeah," Tim said. "You don't know I'm straight."

"Are you?" Harper asked.

"Well… Yeah," Tim said. "But you shouldn't make assumptions like that without some kind of evidence."

"That how you go through life?" Harper asked. "Looking for evidence on every little thing before opening your mouth? Let me guess: you're the type of guy who trolls Twitter, asking random women to debate you."

Cullen, who was so friendly before, immediately recoiled from Tim. "Oh, gross."

Tim looked between the two of them, the look of a man who accidentally farted in church firmly on his face. "I… What? ... I… Look, I just try to keep an eye out for things, that's all. I mean, look…"

He patted the pockets of his jeans and hoodie. "Crap, he took my phone."

Harper reached into the pocket of her leather jacket and pulled out Tim's phone. "This yours?"

"Yeah… Wait, you robbed that guy?"

"He was about to murder you," Harper said. "Yes, I robbed that guy."

Tim took his phone. The battery was at six percent.. He brought up the picture he took.

"Okay," Tim said. "What are we looking at?"

"Dead people," Harper said. "Jesus, what kind of…"

"No," Tim said. "Look at them. Does something about them seem off to you?"

"Their clothes," Cullen said. "They're all dressed the same."

"Yeah," Tim said. "They're all women, which means they're not the mob, and they're not cops, either."

"So who are they?" Harper asked.

"They're with The Undying," Tim said. "I mean, they have to be."

"That's a reach," Harper said.

"No," Tim said, "it isn't. An all-female group of… ninjas, apparently, isn't gonna come to the middle of a warzone to do their business. And the fact that they're even in Gotham at all right now means…"

"It means," said a voice above them, "that they were already in Gotham to begin with when Hill locked the city down."

Tim, Harper, and Cullen looked up. On the fire escape, two floors above them, was Nightwing.

"I was in the neighborhood," he said. "Heard a fight. I take it you won?"

The three of them stared at him for a moment, before Cullen said "Damn!"

"That's what they all say," Nightwing said, and then he looked at Tim. "That's good work."

"Thank you," Tim said. "How did you get to this island? I thought the mob was shooting everyone down."

"They were," Nightwing said, "but I have a plane that shoots rubber bullets. Falcone and Maroni's men are very upset right now, and very unable to do anything about it. Mind if I have a look at that phone?"

Tim was quiet for a moment, before he said "Sure… Up on the roof."

"Why the roof?" Nightwing asked.

"It's… private."

Nightwing shrugged. "Suit yourself," he said, before he started walking up the fire escape.

Tim looked at Cullen, shrugged his shoulders, and said "Sorry I'm… y'know… straight."

Cullen put his hand on Tim's shoulder and said "At least you're man enough to apologize."

Standing next to each other, the Rows watched the two of them leave.

Harper, staring at Tim go up the fire escape, said "Y'know, today wasn't so bad."

Cullen, staring at Nightwing going up the fire escape, said "I know, right?"

Nightwing looked at Tim's phone. "That's them, alright. Where is this place?"

"Georgio's," Tim said. "On the corner of tenth and Ostrander… Wait, where am I now?"

"Eighth and Ostrander," Nightwing said. "That guy your friends knocked out didn't take you too far."

The conversation lapsed into a silence that was itchy on Tim's end.

And Tim Drake… just couldn't help himself.

"So… are you and him back together now?"

Nightwing looked at Tim. "Me and who?"

"You and Batman," Tim said. "You doing the whole partner thing now that he's back?"

Nightwing shook his head. "I was never Batman's partner."

Tim put his hands on his hips, debated himself, and lost. He'd been sitting on something he knew to be true for years now, and he wasn't going to get a better time to tell someone that was in a position to confirm or deny anything.

"Dude… You're the first Robin. You're Dick Grayson."

Nightwing slowly turned his head to look at Tim. His expression was… not kind.

Tim sighed. "When I was nine, my mom and dad got me a DVD from Goodwill of Haley's Circus. On the back of the case, it said it featured the Flying Graysons trapeze act, with Dick Grayson, the only person on Earth who could perform the quadruple somersault. A year after that, I'm watching Batman and Robin footage on Youtube of the two of them fighting Calendar Man on a rooftop. And there's Robin-there's you- performing a quadruple somersault."

Nightwing blinked.

"I look into Dick Grayson, and see that he was assigned by the state as a ward to Bruce Wayne after his parents were killed. If Dick Grayson is Robin, then Bruce Wayne must be Batman."

"Bruce Wayne can't be Batman," Nightwing said. "He saved Bruce Wayne's life at the Gotham Stock Exchange, remember?"

"Bruce Wayne can be Batman," Tim said, "because it was Superman in the Batsuit."

Nightwing didn't say anything.

"The bullet just bounced right off him," Tim said.

"And… have you told anyone about this?" Nightwing asked.

"No," Tim said. "Sitting on something like that, you don't just tell people. Not if you want Batman and Robin to still be Batman and Robin. Anyway, I see Nightwing fighting Blockbuster in Bludhaven on the news a couple of years ago, and wouldn't you know it? Quadruple somersault. Which means there was a second Robin who…"

"Hey," Nightwing said with some stank on his voice. "The ice is pretty thin up here."

Tim saw the pile of shit he almost stepped in, and nodded.

"If you work from the assumption that Batman is Bruce Wayne, there is evidence. You're Robin, he's Batman, Jason Todd… y'know… God rest his soul, and Barbara Gordon was Batgirl… I think. Bruce has a cousin named Kate that also has red hair. It's a deeper shade though, and the Batgirl pictures I've been able to find..."

Nightwing stared at Tim some more. "Okay," he said. "Now tell me who Superman is."

Tim snorted and smirked. "Are you kidding? Superman's just Superman. He doesn't have a secret identity. Why would he?"

Nightwing smiled a smile that he immediately had to wipe off of his face.

"What's your name?"

"Tim Drake."

"Okay, Tim Drake," Nightwing said as he handed him back his phone. "Take your wacky-ass conspiracy theories downstairs to your friends. I think one of them like-likes you."

"Yeah," Tim said. "He's… I mean I'm straight, so…"

"I didn't say it was the boy, genius."

As Tim tried to fathom this, Nightwing stepped to the edge of the roof.

"Hey," Tim said.

Nightwing turned his head to his side to listen.

"Batman needs Robin," Tim said. "He needs somebody. He's more effective that way. And I can't help but feel that doing what you do just… weighs on you."

Nightwing didn't say anything as he jumped off the roof.

And Tim couldn't help but notice that he performed a quadruple somersault before he deployed his grapnel gun to get to the next rooftop.

Years ago, Doctor Kirk Langstrom developed a serum to aid the deaf and the blind. The serum contained an augmented DNA cocktail from the hairy-legged, white winged, and common vampire bats. Langstrom, a man with little funding beyond what he could procure through private donations, performed the first round of tests on himself, as he had hoped that it would alleviate his own failing hearing.

To say that the serum had side-effects would be putting it rather mildly.

He turned into a terrifying creature, half man, half bat, that the papers dubbed "Man-Bat."

So as not to be confused with Batman, of course.

This serum had been coveted by Gotham's underworld, and Batman would have to stop some henchman or thug that had somehow gotten their hands on Langstrom's serum every eight months or so.

Batman stood on a rooftop in midtown, a few blocks from the Gotham River and about half a mile from the East End. The sound of helicopters criss-crossing the city was still present, but the sound of gunshots had, thankfully, decreased dramatically as the sun had gone down.

He had called Lucius to provide the antidote for Langstrom's serum (which he had synthesized and ready to go at a moment's notice) as well as a sonic emitter that would draw Man-Bat to his location. The Batwing, on autopilot, had hovered in place above the helipad on the roof of Wayne Tower. Lucius put the package in the drop chute, and the Batwing spat the package onto this very rooftop, before it continued its circuit around the city.

Despite everything, Batman thought that Kirk Langstrom was a good man. But the serum was addictive, and if given the chance, Langstrom would use it, if he'd had any on hand.

There must have been plenty in the Arkham inventory room when The Undying let everyone loose. If Langstrom had been let out of his cell, it was the first place he would have gone.

Batman reckoned that the best-case scenario was that he could apply the antidote (which was mixed with a powerful sedative), and Langstrom would wake up on this rooftop in a couple of days naked and confused, but very much alive.

The worst case scenario was that the people on rooftops, mistaking Man-Bat for Batman, would put a bullet in him, or at least scare him away from the city… at which point he would pass the barrier around Gotham, and the mind-controlled Zatanna would consume him in green fire.

Batman loaded two capsules of antidote into his gauntlet, ready to fire at the first sign of Man-Bat.

He placed the small egg-shaped emitter on the ground in front of him, and turned it on.

Seven hundred feet beyond the main terminal of the 1898 tunnels, where the five car bullet train built by The Broker was located, a small hotel had been built into the vaulted ceilings of the location.

It wasn't to have been a large hotel, no more than twenty rooms, but at the time of its initial planning, it was to have been reserved only for the decadently rich. The prices were to have been exorbitant, the luxury was to have been unparalleled, and the splendor was to have been unmatched.

It was never built, of course. What remained over one-hundred twenty years later was a series of twenty rooms that hadn't even had the doors installed. The place was lit by numerous cords of white Christmas lights.

This was where Hamilton Hill lived, now that he was back from the dead and playing the supervillain game.

He stood on the small bridge overlooking the F Line tunnel. It was boxed in by windows, and he surveyed the track beneath him as though he were Ishmael, listlessly staring over the starboard side of the Pequod.

Hill, having no more need to wear the robes associated with The Undying, was now wearing two pieces of a three-piece charcoal gray suit. Shiny black shoes, well-fitting slacks and a matching vest. No tie, and no jacket.

He'd asked Talia to get him this suit if they pulled this off, and as soon as he came back from the press conference, it was in his bedroom.

Things had changed for him since he had come out of the Lazarus Pit. He was a sixty-year-old man who looked like he was forty and felt like he was twenty. He had even had Kasha, Talia's right hand woman, train him in martial arts over the past year. Not because he felt he needed it, he was more of a thinking man, a talking man.

No, he had energy to burn.

He wondered where Kasha was right now. He hadn't seen her in a couple of days.

Hamilton Hill reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He went to Twitter and checked the trends for Gotham City.

Right up there at the top was the hashtag that had given him joy since he discovered it last night.

#WeGotBatman.

An ear-splitting screech echoed across midtown Gotham.

Batman prepared himself.

Three blocks away, six-and-a-half feet of hair and muscle emerged from behind a building on leather wings.

Batman pointed his gauntlet at the approaching Man-Bat, ready to fire one of the two syringe-tipped capsules of antidote straight at him.

He could hear the flapping now, and Man-Bat screeched again. Even with the dampeners in his cowl, Batman could feel his ears ringing.

Man-Bat was a block away now.

Batman held his breath.

He could see the gore dripping from Man-Bat's fangs.

Now was the time to fire.

The antidote capsule left Batman's gauntlet with a loud, popping gust of Co2.

At the very last instant, Man-Bat barrel-rolled, diving out of the way of the capsule.

Batman's eyes went wide.

And Man-Bat was upon him, grabbing Batman by the waist with his powerful, clawed feet and lifting him above Gotham City.

The #WeGotBatman hashtag was filled with photos of horror and blood.

Hill had told Gotham City that all of the madness and terror would stop if some enterprising citizen took it upon themselves to kill Batman.

And the fools believed him.

Men of all shapes, sizes, and ages in every kind of Batman costume under the sun, sporting bullet holes and stab wounds, all sporting the hashtag #WeGotBatman.

Guys in costume shop Batman suits shot by their neighbors. Guys in cosplay Batman suits stabbed by their friends. Guys in homemade Batman suits bludgeoned by their families.

But one of these pictures in particular gave Hamilton Hill pause…

Man-Bat roared in Batman's face. He could see a severed human finger as well as a crow feather in Man-Bat's filthy maw. He smelled the rotten flesh laced to Man-Bat's breath. His long, pointed ears stuck straight up to spite the wind. His flat, gnarly nose had a transparent well of snot at its base. His eerie yellow eyes bore a hole in whatever they looked at.

Batman tried to adjust himself as he was being carried through the air, tried to aim his gauntlet at Man-Bat to fire off that second capsule of antidote.

But he kept getting jostled mid-flight, knocking his arm out of position. He wouldn't have assumed that firing a small projectile at a six-and-a-half foot tall bat creature would be the ordeal it had become, but lo and behold.

Batman closed his eyes, and tried to time Batman's wing-flaps.

And he had noticed that Man-Bat's claws had worked their way between his utility belt and his armor.

In the third doorless room on the left in the hotel, Zatanna sat in her wheelchair, wearing the porkpie hat that controlled her mind.

Constantine had said that keeping track of nine million heartbeats in Gotham City would burn her out, and right now, it showed. Her eyes were sunken into her skull and her cheeks were hollow. The bit of collarbone that was visible through the collar of her Blackwell Academy t-shirt stuck out like the handle to an old refrigerator.

Hamilton Hill, now back in his suit jacket, ran a finger through Zatanna's hair beneath the brim of the hat.

A clump of it fell out, and down the front of her shirt.

Hill put his hand back at his side and just stared at her.

He heard footsteps coming to the doorway. Hill didn't even look to see who they belonged to.

"Talia's fine," Hyde said. "If you care, I mean. I have her stitched up and doped up. She's gonna be mad when she comes to."

Hill didn't say anything.

"I knew she was going to go after Catwoman. But I had no idea she'd lose. If I ever believed in the Tooth Fairy, this is what it'd feel like when I found out he wasn't real."

Hill still didn't say anything.

"I'd like to meet this Selina Kyle," Hyde said with a bit more gravel in his voice. "Tell her what I think of her in the polite and friendly way I'm known for."

Wordlessly, Hill took his phone out of his pocket, and held it out. Hyde walked in, took it, and looked at it.

"Hashtag We Got Batman," Hyde said as he scrolled through the tweets and pictures.

"Have you been following it?" Hill asked.

"Do I look like the kind of man who has shit else to do but go on Twitter?"

"Look at the one at the bottom," Hill said.

Hyde did, and all he had to say was "Hmm."

"How old do you think that kid is?" Hill asked. "Fourteen? Fifteen, maybe?"

"If you're trying to get me to pity this kid," Hyde said, "you should know I've killed younger than this one."

"That's not even a Batman suit he's wearing," Hill said. "It's a gray sweatshirt with a black do-rag over his eyes. That's a paper plate with a M written on it there on his chest because whoever shot this kid couldn't draw a Bat-Symbol. But they shot this kid anyway, and posted it to Twitter under the hashtag 'We Got Batman,' and said that they did what we wanted and we should let the city go."

Hyde paused before he asked "You're not going to get all squirrely and regretful, are you?"

"No," Hill said. "The thing is, I died two years ago. And what I remember after that is this hazy dream of walking out of a Lazarus Pit, and there's Talia and two of her lady bodyguards waiting to pump me full of tranquilizers. However… I only have Talia's word that I've come back to life."

"What do you mean her word?"

"The prospect that I am still dead and am in fact in Hell right now has not entirely left my mind," Hill said.

He reached inside his suit jacket, pulled out the nine millimeter pistol that took the life of his son, and pressed the barrel against Zatanna's head.

"So you'll forgive me if the consequences to my actions don't hold as much weight as they used to."

Now!

Batman waited until Man-Bat's wings were extended, before firing the capsule from his gauntlet right into the pink and foul expanse of Man-Bat's open mouth.

The small green capsule embedded itself right behind the upper row of Man-Bat's razor sharp teeth.

Man-Bat screeched and yanked back, sending Batman into freefall hundreds of feet above the city.

He heard the groan of destroyed metal, and he knew what it was immediately.

Falling back, Batman saw the remains of his utility belt plummeting to the earth hundreds of feet away from him now.

Batman turned in the air, and spread his cape wide, gliding the rest of the way down.

He landed on a rooftop, his boots hitting the tar-paper with a thud.

Batman surveyed his surroundings, and looked down at his waist. His utility belt was gone. He'd have to signal the Batwing to get a spare from Lucius at Wayne Tower.

He pressed a button on his right gauntlet, which glowed red.

That meant Nightwing was using the Batwing right now. He let his breath out angrily through his nose. He looked up…

...and saw a little boy on the rooftop with him.

He couldn't have been a day older than eight. He was wearing jean shorts and sneakers with a green t-shirt. He had a blonde bowl cut, and his brown eyes were wide with shock. He had his hands behind his back.

Words that Alfred had said to him echoed in Batman's mind.

"You could put the fear of the almighty Himself into adults, but every child in Gotham City could look into the night sky, see the symbol you chose for yourself, and never have to fear for their safety."

"Hello," Batman said to the little boy. "Are you alright? Are you safe?"

The little boy didn't say anything. His eyes seemed to have tears welling in them, and he was breathing so heavily that he seemed on the verge of hyperventilating.

"Hey," Batman said." "It's okay. I'm not going to…"

The little boy brought his hands from behind his back.

They were holding a small pistol, a thirty-eight with no more that five shots in the magazine.

And the little boy pointed it directly at him.

"If she dies," Hill said, grinding the barrel of the pistol into the unresponsive Zatanna's forehead, "everyone in Gotham City goes with her. One twitch of my finger, and this gun sings the song that ends the world."

"Are you, me, or Talia hooked up to that targeting system?" Hyde asked.

"No."

"Then I really don't give a shit whether you pull the trigger or don't."

Hill blinked. "The city hated me. That hate brought rise to Batman. And now I'm back, and I gave this city incentive to turn on him. And they did. Gotham City is eating itself. They're turning on strangers, on their loved ones, and all these fresh new corpses bear the symbol of the Bat. That… That is magnitudes worse than burning someone in effigy. I'm finding it hard to see how I haven't already won."

"Oh, you want to know if it gets worse?" Hyde asked. "Trust me. It always gets worse. I'm the expert in things getting worse."

Hill thought about this for a second.

"Good," Hill said. "This city's devouring itself… But I don't think it's full yet."

Hill pulled the gun away from Zatanna's head. He holstered it on the inside of his jacket, and finally turned and made eye-contact with Hyde. He was wearing the wetsuit that he wore under the Black Manta armor. Come to think of it, Hill had only seen him in either that wetsuit or the armor itself.

"I've only been The Undying for a hot minute," Hill said. "And that came with sacrifices. This life costs. I murdered my own son to prove to myself that I could murder nine million other people. I did, and I can. But the thing I'm curious about is… What did you give up?"

"Me?" Hyde asked.

"Yes," Hill said. "What essential part of yourself did you carve off to become Black Manta?"

Hyde leaned against the door frame and folded his arms.

"My dad is buried in the next best thing to an unmarked grave," Hyde said. "Just a blank headstone in a cemetery in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Can't dare put the Hyde name on it, for fear that some… shithead with more vinegar in his veins than blood will desecrate it. My dad was a Navy man. Proud of his service. Purple Heart, Distinguished Service Medal for what he did in Vietnam. And no one can know where he rests because his son's a supervillain. His son's gonna be the one that kills Aquaman and everyone else in Atlantis. But my dad's death has to be avenged. There's no other way this can go."

"Your dad's the only thing you're sentimental about, isn't it?"

Hyde shrugged his shoulders. "One of two things, maybe."

"In whatever capacity I have," Hill said, "just know that the former mayor of Gotham City commends and appreciates your father for his service to this country."

Hyde looked like that actually meant something to him. But if it did, he didn't say anything.

"Now what do you suppose Batman gave up to be Batman?" Hill asked.

Hyde squinted his eyes as he pondered a bit.

"Dignity? He had to leave the house for the first time wondering whether those ears on his cowl looked silly."

"Happiness," Hill said. "I mean, everyone who lives this life has to, to one extent or another, but that was the main one for him. He's tireless. Indefatigable. He devotes everything to being Batman, and that doesn't leave room for a whole lot else. He thinks his misery is what makes him so powerful. And do you know what? I think he's right."

Hyde nodded. Hill put his hands in the pockets of his slacks.

"Now answer this," Hill said. "All that misery, all that bravery in the face of certain death to protect this city, only to find that the city is turning on its own just to forsake him. That that bravery he showed hasn't actually rubbed off on the people he's defending. Knowing all that… Would Batman say it was worth it?"

No doubt this little boy had seen the news.

No doubt this little boy had heard his parents talk about how if the Batman were killed than the city would be saved.

No doubt this little boy had snuck into his parents' room, removed this pistol from wherever they had stored it, and kept sentry on this rooftop hoping to be the one that liberated nine million people.

The Undying had made this little boy terrified of Batman.

The tears were rolling down his round cheeks now. His deep breathing was getting louder.

"It's okay," Batman said. "I'm not going to hurt you. But you really don't want to-"

BANG!

The recoil from the weapon knocked the little boy clean off of his feet.

The bullet caught Batman between the shoulder joints of his armor, and lodged itself in the flesh between his right shoulder and the top of his ribcage.

Batman groaned, staggered back, and fell off the roof of the building.

His back banged against the fire escape a couple of floors down, flipping him over in mid-air, making sure he landed face-first in the half-full dumpster on ground level.

His entire right arm was on fire. Batman, struggled to his feet, trying to find footing on the half full garbage bags, and used his left arm to haul himself out of the dumpster.

He landed on the wet pavement in a heap, directly on his bad right shoulder, and he grunted in pain before he got to his feet.

Batman looked down at his shoulder.

He was bleeding.

Bad.

In normal circumstances, he could stitch himself up, but Man-Bat had pried his utility belt off of him in their struggle.

He could signal the Batwing on his gauntlet, he could contact Nightwing, but getting the Batwing would be a problem because without his grapnel gun, he couldn't get to a rooftop. And contacting Nightwing meant he would have to summon the Batwing, and being that he didn't know where he was, he ran the risk of bleeding out before he got here.

Batman racked his brain, mentally searching for the locations of his safehouses and caches in this part of town.

None of them were in walking distance. Or at the very least a distance he could walk to without raising unwanted attention or going into shock.

But… there was one place.

And as he began to walk, attempting to stick to the shadows along the way, Batman hoped that his welcome would be a somewhat warm one.