A/N: Ciao! We're about to get into some interesting stuff.

Hey, did you guys hear that Gotham was taken off of Netflix? When I heard it, I tried to binge it as much as possible because I thought I may not see it again for a long while. Unfortunately, I had school—blah! I could only get through the first three seasons. I could've started season four, but I didn't have the energy. Bummer. But then I found out that it's now on HBO Max. Awesome! But I feel I need to take a break after wasting a lot of my time watching the show. It'll still be there for hopefully years to come.

Sorry for rambling. Enjoy.

The Devil in the Details

"Alverez!" Jim hollered the second he stormed into the precinct. "I need a search for a masked vigilante."

Alverez went to do so. Jim dictated the rest of the precinct for other tasks. Mainly for the evacuation plan. Afterward, he and Harvey shut themselves into the captain's office.

"Did you see that guy? I mean, did you see that guy?" Harvey said madly. "That was the most freaky mother flipping thing I've ever seen."

"We dealt with worse," Jim assured.

"I'll tell ya. He just flew right in and knocked that guy out like a fly. He looked like a, uh… like a—a bat! Yeah, some sort of a man-bat—" He snapped his fingers with a thoughtful expression on his face. "The Bat-man!"

Jim gave his longtime partner an unbelievable, critical look. "A name? Really, Harv?"

"Hear me out, Cap. Slap that name on a t-shirt or lunchbox and we've got tourists."

"He's a vigilante, Harvey. He just killed a man and you want to bring people to see that?"

Bullock grumbled at his ludicrous idea.

The two of them left the office to go see Lee. Turning the corner, Jim started speaking. "Hey, Lee, just want to check in on—" He stopped himself when he spotted her patient. "Bruce?"

The young man looked up while Lee tended to a bleeding cut on his shoulder. "Hey, guys," he said.

"Got banged up, kid?" Harvey asked.

"I was patrolling when I tried to break up a fight between two junkies. One of them had a knife."

"Gotcha pretty good if I might add," Lee said, starting to stitch up the cut.

The sound of a phone vibrated.

Bruce spoke. "Could you get that for me? Your wife drugged me."

Lee glared at him as she worked.

Gordon grabbed Bruce's phone from his hanging jacket. "It's from Selina," he said. He flipped it open and read the message to him. "'Hey Bat. Just letting you know that I'm staying with Barbara tonight. She seems trippy. Love you.'" After reading it, he looked at Bruce curiously. "Bat?"

"This morning when I was putting on my coat, she said I looked like a bat. And so a nickname was born out of it."

"Bat and Cat? I love it. That is so adorable." Lee said finishing up her work.

Something triggered Jim's intuition. "Bruce, where did you say you were patrolling?" he asked.

"Up by the Sirens' territory," Bruce said nonchalantly. "Officers Cooke and Greyson were with me."

That was somewhat far from where they were when the Bat-man appeared. However, by avoiding the roads and traveling via the rooftops, as he and Selina loved to do, he might have made it there. And at Axis Chemicals, Jim opened fire at the vigilante after he regained his wits. It wasn't clear, yet he thought one of the shots may have grazed him.

Jim had his fair share of bullet wounds. The stitches Bruce had could be paid off as a knife. Although a graze may be similar enough to pay off.

After Lee was done, Bruce took back his phone and threw on his jacket. When he was gone, Harvey leaned over to Jim and asked, "You thinking what I'm thinking? A batty nickname and a matching boo-boo."

The thought had passed through his head, but he ended up shaking it. "No. Bruce would never do that. That guy is a murderer."

"But him and Jeremiah, remember?"

Gordon scowled. He prayed that the kid didn't have to go through that again. God, what if he had and was going around on a spree?

What if he really was the Bat-man?

The Sirens, the next day

At her appointment with Lee, Selina saw that Barbara was just before her. After her checkup, the three of them started to chat. It was weird to see Barbara and Lee talk so closely. Yet, she still sensed tension between them. That didn't surprise Selina. Part of it on Bab's side was that she was secretly plotting to escape Gotham with Penguin and Nygma. However, since she arrived back in the city, the three of them got somewhat close. When Lee asked how far along in her pregnancy she was, it eventually came down to when the baby was conceived.

For some reason, something made her say where it happened. "Well, I believe it happened while we were in Hawaii. I actually think that's where the baby was conceived."

Barbara's wicked delight lit up her face. "Ooh! Had some action on the beach, did we?" she asked.

Selina had to groan and blush really hard. That still didn't stop it from being true, though.

That conversation then evolved into one about the trips she took with Bruce over the past year and then many other things.

Today, after their appointments, Barbara and Selina went back to the club. Regrettably, she had to bring her schoolbooks because she was behind on work. Years ago, she would've laughed her ass off for being such a nerd. But after a year of laying back and without stealing, she needed to do something. Something productive for once. That was where college came in. That was how she met Lois and she enjoyed a few of her classes. And she didn't want to fail school so she couldn't find a decent job. She didn't want to end up a waitress or a stripper. She had a baby coming.

Barbara was being cheeky and condescending. But Selina just gave her the finger and went to the backroom. In retrospect, it probably wasn't a good idea to work on homework while in a nightclub.

She was glancing over the name Helena Margaretha Van Dielen in her art history book when she was feeling burnt out. Three hours were probably enough to help her catch up. Even though the school was in a different state.

She went back to sit at the bar. One shirtless guy approached her, but when he saw her belly, he left. A part of her thought she should've gotten pregnant a long time ago. But then another part, she didn't know existed, thought that she wasn't as pretty anymore. She mentally told that part to shut up.

Barbara, behind the bar, came up to her giving her usual water, and said, "Hey, did you hear that a nutcase helped Jim take down some goon?"

"Yeah, Bruce told me about that last night over the phone," Selina said.

"I'd say Gotham is returning to normal."

"Sounds like it."

They clinked their glasses together.

"Oh! I heard that Bullock is calling him the Bat-man," Barbara said.

Selina knitted her eyebrows. "Bat-man?" Suddenly, she thought of Bruce in that long coat.

"Yeah. Catchy ain't it? They say he was dressed up like a bat. And he threw some weirdo into a bucket of acid."

"Yikes!"

One of Barbara's employees approached them. "Ms. Kean, we have a problem."

They both turned to the entrance and saw a dark figure wearing a suit and a fedora.

A platoon of large transports crossed the Brown Bridge and pulled up to the precinct. Jim, Harvey, Bruce, and Lucius stood out watching the soldiers approach. The man who was without a doubt the commanding officer approached them. He was a middle-aged man with dark skin and a mustache.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen," he spoke in a deep, gentle voice. "I am General William Lyonel. Which of you is Captain James Gordon?"

"That would be me," Jim said, saluting.

The general saluted back. "Are all of the refugees accountable," he asked.

"Almost," Gordon said. "We still need a day or two to prepare them for departure."

"Alright then."

"But General, we still have a potential threat," Jim warned.

"What is it?"

He then explained about the vigilante roaming about but brushed it off. That was when he explained the possible plot brewing from Jeremiah Valeska's followers. General Lyonel's brows creased.

"Hmm, I say our main priority is escorting the civilians out," he said. "My men will patrol the perimeter of the road. At any sign of hostiles, they will be ordered to shoot while the civilians make it across the bridge. Once they are safe, we'll comb through the city to find and eliminate these hostiles."

The camouflage transports roared down the road. Bruce monitored the escort from a building with binoculars.

"Roadway is cleared, Captain," he said into his earpiece.

"Roger that," Jim said from the other end. "Keep an eye out, Bruce."

Bruce took a glance at the National Guardsmen on other rooftops. The General wanted his men but Bruce wanted to look out for himself. He was glad to see the people finally getting a way out of the danger.

For some reason, his instincts told him that the danger wasn't far. It could've simply been not speaking to Selina since the morning. She had said that she was staying with Barbara Kean for the day. It could've been important, he tried to reason with himself. Barbara was well protected. But somehow that fact didn't seem right to him in this instance.

He pulled his phone out and held it tight in his hand. He debated calling her or Alfred. But was now the right time? No, it wasn't.

He looked through his binoculars back to the Brown bridge. The bridge went over the precinct so the transports drove east to get on the road onto it. Which wasn't far. So far, the bridge looked perfectly all right. That must mean something wrong was going to happen soon.

Jim watched several monitors of drone shots of the roads. A third of the refugees that were of the most critical assistance were being transported.

"Everything looks okay," Harvey said assuring.

"Don't jinx it yet, Harv," said Jim.

"It's perfectly fine, Gordon," General Lyonel said. "My men are watching every nook, crack, and corner for anything. And I have aerial footage watching from above. Nothing will get the drop on us."

"You don't know Gotham, sir," Gordon promised.

"General," a voice on the comm spoke.

Lyonel spoke into the radio. "What is it, sergeant?"

"I'm picking up some strange activity on forty-first and Grundy."

Right about then, several other soldiers were radioing in about other suspicious things near them. That was when Jim knew that the bad feeling was coming.

The general ordered the men to check out the disturbances. Some of the monitors were switched to zoom in on those areas. It was difficult to see. The quality of the camera was ironically poor. However, they were able to make out movements from down streets and alleyways.

"It looks like some people are just trying to catch the troops' attention," Lucius noted.

"They're probably just some of those minor gangs trying to lure us away," the general said.

Gordon then said, "General, these hostiles are known for causing distractions to occupy us while they execute their real plans. You should not underestimate them."

Lyonel considered him for a moment and nodded. He reached over and spoke into the communicator again. "Keep on your duty. If anybody shows any hostility, you have full permission to open fire—"

"Wait! Jim," Bruce's voice suddenly came over the comms in an almost panicked tone. "There's someone on the bridge."

They adjusted the cameras to view the bridge. Sure enough, there was a single figure standing in front of the bridge. It was small so they zoomed in. The person was wearing a cape. It wasn't until Jim saw the pointed horns—or ears—on its head that he recognized it.

"What is that?" asked the general.

It was the masked assailant. He was just standing there, his cape billowing in the wind. Still giving off that frightening aura from the other night.

"It's the Bat-man," Jim said on edged.

"Just a freak in a Halloween costume," Lyonel declared. "Arrest him!"

At the order, a small squad of soldiers marched up to the Bat-man with their guns fixated on him. The figure remained standing there unmoving. The soldiers were about an arm-throw away when they started ordering him to put his hands on his head and get down on the ground. Still, he remained motionless. The men were getting ready to fire when he finally did move.

He held up what Jim knew instantly was a detonator.

BOOM!

A/N: This is getting serious!

I spelled it "Bat-man" with a hyphen because that was how it originally was back in 1939. I thought that could've been a good origin for him. Bruce did not pick the name, only the symbol. And the media dubbed him Bat-man and eventually changed to Batman as a detail that he's fully growing into the mask.

Please leave a review!