Lothal, 22:30
The darkness had always been the Batman's ally when chasing after a criminal, the sanctuary that he could retreat to whenever he needed it. That's what he taught Dick, it's what he taught Barbara, and Tim, Jason, and Damian. Unfortunately, it was also what he taught Ezra Bridger. He knew he was somewhere, down there, lurking in the crowd and shadows. Ezra was once his student, long before Kanan ever took him in. He taught the young boy everything he knew, and with the aid of the force, he would make for an incredible hero.
Sadly, that destiny was taken away by The Joker, the monster under the bed. It had been about thirty-eight days since the clown was shot dead by Ursa Wren, a Mandalorian from Krownest, and the mother of Tristan and Sabine Wren, both of whom had been tormented by him, Tristan being killed and Sabine being paralyzed. It nearly took the breath out of Bruce's lungs the minute he saw his nemesis die, almost like a phase of his life was ended in an instant.
There was also something incredibly familiar about the nature of Sabine's paralysis, the incident, the manner of which she'd been shot, the unexplained lens-cap found at the scene, it all seemed disturbingly familiar. He would have to look into that later, because right now, the only threat on their hands was Ezra himself. The Joker's last masterstroke was that he some how found out where Ezra was exiled to, and sent him something that changed him for the worst. Now there were attacks on multiple rebel bases, Mandalorian compounds, and even what was left of Imperial Factories, but they were all done with the surgical precision of the Bat-Family, but with the twisted and horrific nature that the Joker brought to the table.
Sullust, Keldabe, and level 1313 of Coruscant were all places which the attacks were most frequent. It took a lot of beating, interrogating, and hunting to narrow the boy's location down to one specific planet- Lothal. It seemed too obvious at first, but that's exactly the type of thing Bruce would look for in a site for a base.
"Orrelios, what do you see?" Bruce spoke into his gauntlet from a top of a building in Lothal's capital city, the rain bouncing off of his shoulders, and the thunder outlining his form in the dark blue sky.
Hera had recommended they enlist Garazeb Orrelios, a former member of the Ghost Crew, to help in the effort to locate the young padawan, "Just a whole lot of civies," The Lasat answered, with the slightest him of dread in his voice. Bruce was crouched a top of one Lothal's taller buildings, though it barely gave him a view of the whole city. He had figured out that Ezra was using a transmitting device that he gave him years ago, and since it was developed by Wayne Enterprises, it could be tracked, "You sure he's here?"
"Positive," The detective answered, but he wasn't able to pin-point an exact location, he only knew that the signal was coming from inside the city somewhere. He switched radio channels, "Sabine, do you see anything?"
"Nope, just static." Sabine's voice came. Since she'd been shot she was bound to the ship, and since it was an actual bullet that shattered her spinal cord, the process of getting her ability to walk back was a slow one, "Wait..." Bruce could hear the computers lock onto something, and the clacking of the keyboard was loud and rushed, almost panicked.
"What?" Zeb asked, switching to their channel.
There was a silence for a moment, "I've got something, patching you through to a security feed now. This is weird." Seconds later, a message came through on Bruce's gauntlet comms. It was a video file. It looked to be the security feed from a camera in a grand (as Lothlian houses go) mansion of some kind, not quite as beautiful as the Manor, but still very clearly a home of the wealthy.
Bruce watched closely for a moment, before a man entered the frame. He was wearing Earth-like clothes, a black beanie, combat pants, a SWAT vest, and a balaclava. He strolled across the wooden floor and pushed open a steel door at the end of the hallway, and an obscured voice came from the room inside, turning into shouts as the door closed.
"Sabine, was that who I think it was?" Zeb asked, his voice was heavy and filled fear.
"Who?" Bruce asked, but they both ignored him. It was clear they both understood who was the on the other side of that door.
"Rex," Sabine gasped, "The governor's palace, go!" She yelled. Bruce stood up in a flash and fired his grapnel launcher towards the palace, zipping off into the night.
New York Penitentiary
2:32 AM EST, November 2nd, 1992
'I regret to inform you that Russian forces have invaded Poland, and despite unrelenting requests for a cease-fire, we have received no responses from the Soviet Union.' Idiots, all of them. The world should have seen this coming a thousand miles away, and for whatever reason- they didn't. They were saying the nukes would fall within the hour, now. Things were worse. Much, much worse. What Dan was doing here, he couldn't tell you, both because he would probably be killed if he did, and even still- he wasn't sure himself.
'God help us all.' The news station shut off suddenly, the only sense of normalcy in the building cut off as the prison was once again filled with shouts of anger and confusion from the inmates. The guards were gone. They'd been evacuated hours ago, and all the scum-bags and cockroaches were left in their cells to rot just before their skin would be seared off their bones by nuclear war. It was a wonderful thought, quite frankly.
It wasn't like Dan had grown bitter in his years away... well, it was, but that wasn't why he relished the idea. He relished it because some of the people locked up in here were the worst of the worst. The deadliest of the deadly. And some of them were the same people who murdered Hollis Mason, an old man and the first Nite Owl, using the framed pictures and busts of what was left of his days as a hero, and never got what they deserved.
Dan, the former Nite Owl was currently perched a top of a guard tower on the west side of the prison, watching through the windows as the crazed inmates desperately tried to reach through the bars to reach a single set of keys that was laying smack in the middle of the hallway, just out of reach. Rorschach would've loved it. That sounds bad, yes. And under other circumstances, he would've freed some of them, but they were on the clock.
Unfortunately, age was beginning to crack at his once strong-demeanor. He was now in his late forties, and was just getting used to a normal life when everything came crashing down. He knew that Rorschach- Walter- kept a journal of everything that he did, but quite frankly it seemed unimportant to him during all the craziness that was going on during their little adventure in '85, but it did cross his mind in '91.
He got in touch with Adrian shortly after, asking him if he found Rorschach's journal when he was killed. There was a long pause on the line, before Adrian choked out; "A journal?" They spent the next few months frantically trying to hunt it down, but it was too late. A break through discovery came in during June of 1991, linking the "Kraken", as it had been named- to Adrian's genetic engineering program. It all went downhill from there. Laurie found out very soon after, and shouted at Dan for not telling her earlier, calling Rorschach a stupid, crazy, ignorant son of bitch, before storming out of the house in pure and utter rage.
He couldn't argue with her that Rorschach was crazy, and sometimes ignorant, but he was far from stupid. Nearly a month later, Adrian appeared inside their house at the middle of the night, flipping through the magazine that had just came in. He said he'd found a way to find Jon and attempt to convince him to return to this world to save it from itself. Dan knew that Laurie would be against this idea, and he wasn't wrong. She opted out of joining him and Adrian on their quest, choosing to stay with her mother.
Dan reluctantly complied with Adrian's plan, and went with him to pick up Archie (the Owl-Ship) and the rest of Dan's old vigilante gear. It didn't take Adrian very long to implement a system into the Owl-Ship's main frame that could track Jon through space and time. It almost made Dan ashamed of himself, he was supposed to be the mechanic of the group- at least- that's what Hollis used to say.
Before long footsteps came from behind him, and as he whirled around, he was met with Adrian standing there with something in his hands, "We're ready."
"We ready?" Bruce asked, as he pressed his shoulder up against the door with Zeb on the opposite side of him. The Lasat nodded in agreement, clutching his rifle close to his chest, ready to open fire on whatever they found inside, "Sabine, we're in position."
"Alright, I'll see you on the other side." Sabine went radio silent as the sound of the Batwing flying over head could be heard. Bruce still wasn't entirely sure he should be letting her fly the thing, but he was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
As Bruce looked to Zeb, the Lasat placed a single charge on the crack between the doors, "One..." Zeb growled, switching his blaster to stun.
Batman clenched a smoke bomb in his palm, ready to breach, "Two..."
"Three!" Zeb yelled as the charge went off and they rounded the corner into the room, but they were met with a rather surprising sight. The was a slender, dark figure tied upside-down from the ceiling, his form casting a long shadow across the room. "Is- is that..."
"Ezra." Bruce growled as he approached the body, examining it closely. He was dressed in black robes that were stained with blood, his hands and face were unnaturally pale, and on the floor was a cowl not unlike the one Bruce wore. Ezra had been driven insane by the Joker, he had been trained by the Batman, and was extremely well-trained in the force, yet when the detective looked at the boy's face, it was bruised and battered, like he had been beaten into submission.
Zeb looked horrified by the scene, a far cry from Bruce's stoic and serious demeanor. As Bruce looked at Ezra's face, he noticed that the boy was still breathing, silently thanking whoever... or whatever was watching them from above. "Bats," Zeb mumbled, picking something off of the ropes Ezra was tied up with, "A note."
Bruce moved over to Zeb and peered down at the note, the only thing written was what looked like a rorsch- CRASH! Zeb went flying to the ground, his rifle clattering to the floor as Bruce dove to his left, attempting to grab the rifle as Sabine's voice came through the comm, "Batman! What do you see?"
He was inches away from the rifle as it suddenly slid away, and Bruce crumpled to the ground. He rose up quickly with his fist raised, only to be met with the blaster's barrel in his face, and a man in a brown trench coat, fedora, and white face mask behind it. "Hurm. See a bat." BANG!
But my dear man,
Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot,
You know.
-Alan Watts
Please forgive me if you have no idea what the f*ck is going on. Everything will become clear soon enough. Anyway, sorry for the wait between chapters, but I am very busy with school starting again. On the flip side, I am trying to write longer chapters than before, and hopefully make them more complex than before. For the next chapter, I will be introducing the Stranger Things characters (Or Eleven, at least) into the story, give a little more context to the "antagonist" of the story, and look into what's going on in the MCU right now.
Leave a review on your way out if you enjoyed, since it always helps to have feedback on this. Until next time.
-MB
