Chapter Three
"Around five months after No Man's Land was declared, we gained another member to our little group. His name was Jason Todd.
"His parents had been killed in the quake He had survived on the street on his own, avoiding all the gangs and stealing or foraging for whatever he needed. He could have simply gone to the GCPD section but his father had been a petty criminal, in and out of jail every few months, and he had gained a major distrust of the police.
"He finally found his way into a hidden section of tunnels off of the main subway route. Batman had set up several small stations around the city to work out of. Jason found one of them. With plenty of food and fresh water stored there, he camped and foraged. He didn't stay completely undetected, which would have been virtually impossible given where he was, but his ingenuity and street smarts impressed Batman, who let him stay.
"I don't think Batman ever intended to let Jason become the next Robin, but eventually that's what happened. Jason was always under strict orders not to let himself been seen unless he was with Batman. Batman always said criminals were a cowardly, superstitious lot and he hoped that the reports of an ever youthful robin by his side would give credence to the myth that they were immortal, that no matter what man or nature threw at them, they would always be.
"Not everyone was happy with this new development. I, for one, absolutely hated the idea. Batman kept him out of trouble for the most part, and the kid was a good fighter when he was in a scrape, but I kept getting this uneasy feeling like something was wrong. I was young when I started, and so were the others, but I just couldn't shake that feeling that Batman was making a big mistake.
"Over the next few months we worked alongside the GCPD and a growing number of civilians to bring a bit of stability back to Gotham. Little by little we gained land until half of Gotham was under our control. It helped that the criminals were fighting each other for control of what was left. Two-Face, Killer Croc, Riddler, Penguin. They were all openly fighting for control.
"But the real threat was still hidden and because we were all a little pre-occupied, none of us saw it coming. Bane, the one person who had come closest to destroying Batman, was in Gotham, staying in the shadows. It was the plan of Lex Luthor, Metropolis' biggest kingpin of crime, to lobby for Gotham's re-admittance into the United States and then to help rebuild it. With all the records gone, he then planned to bring Gotham under his control through ownership of most, if not all, of the property. Bane's mission was a simple one: destroy any records of property ownership left in Gotham. No one was ever able to prove any of this, of course, but we all knew it.
"Thanks to the efforts of both Batman and Bruce Wayne, Luthor's plan didn't work. It only succeeded in making it impossible for him to back out of his commitment of reconstruction. The National Guard came in to help restore order, but most of the worst criminals managed to escape and go underground.
"Until this time, we had completely misjudged where the real threat lay. While we were fighting the obvious threats, the Joker had been planning a much greater one. He'd always had a flair for the dramatic, and this time was no different, but his lack of public appearances led us to believe he'd hightailed it out of Gotham as soon as he could.
"I still don't know if it was because he'd lost the last bit of sanity he possessed or because he'd lost the mind-numbing insanity that had forever clouded his mind but the Joker had suddenly become worse than we could ever have imagined. He'd always been smart, but now he was cold and calculating, ruthlessly planning to finish what the earthquake had started."
