AUTHOR'S NOTE: As I finally got my set amount of reviews and such we're into the third chapter of this series I'm going to be starting to tell the main part of the story. Any feedback is welcome through the reviews feature and by e-mail on sam@sgcharrison.freeserve.co.uk. Batman or any other DC trademarks that I have unwittingly infringed do not belong to me and I am only using them in a non-profit sense.
As an added note I have had a request as to whether somebody can use my characters and main story concept to write their own story, if anyone wants to do this that's fine but will you please wait until the end of the first arc as there's going to be a few changes to the main characters. Also if you're going to write something with my concepts in it then please send it to me first for approval, because if its crap then I don't want to be associated with it (no offence).
BATMAN: LEGACYPART THREE: SHAKEDOWN
The Batman darted from building to building, leaping and running along the broken rooftops of Old Gotham as he searched out for anyone who looked a little shady. The suit's internal sensors picked up the heat signature of a fire nearby and he whipped his cape around him and shot into the air with a release of compressed air. He set down again on top of the building next to the fire and crept up to the side of the building to listen in to the conversation. The bat-suit went into stealth mode, the cape covering his entire body and altering colour to fit the background. The white of Batman's lenses darkened to black and the demonic horns on his cowl lowered so they were barely visible. If you looked closely you could see him but nobody liked to look too closely in Old Gotham.
"You hear the guys in the Wayne building lost the kid?"
"They lost her?"
"That's what they're saying, personally I reckon somebody got her."
The Batman had been waiting for this, David had advised him to shake down some locals for information and this was the closest camp to the Wayne building. He was about to leap down when one of the others started to speak.
"You shouldn't be saying stuff like that man, you gonna get us into trouble you know?"
"What? They won't come for us. We're nothing."
That was it, he had to find out who "they" were, and why they would've taken the girl. The Batman leapt from the rooftop and landed on the broken asphalt of the clearing, his cape swept up around him and a hood formed from its blackness to hide his features completely. He stepped up to the group of men gathered around the fire silently and stood still for a moment before being noticed.
"I want to know everything you can tell me about the little girl and her disappearance," he said loudly and clearly, addressing the closest member of the camp.
The men all stood up and massed into a small group, trying to threaten him, "Why should we tell you anything bro?"
"Because otherwise there will be consequences."
"Consequences huh?" one of the men said, stepping forward, "well looks like there's one of you and five of us, I'm not liking the odds on your part."
"I'll take that bet," the Batman replied and smiled under his mask. Leaping thirty feet into the air he whipped his cape back around, warping it back to normal as he spun over in a somersault to land among the group.
"What the-" one man shouted as the Batman's elbow was sharply introduced to his nose, followed by a short spurt of blood and a short scream. The Batman grasped the edge of his cape and swung it at the face of another man, forcing him to the ground. He pitched forward and brought his leg up to hit a man behind him in the kneecap, a satisfying crack followed by a scream erupted from the man and the Batman didn't have to check to see whether he was down. The man in front of the Batman threw both his fists in an attempt to box his ears but the Batman caught these swiftly and pulled them up under his shoulders. He jolted them upwards and bent the arms in ways that arms were not supposed to bend, throwing the man up and over his shoulders.
The Batman whipped his masked head around to see the man who had threatened him running away, not once looking back at the rest of the group, as they lay prostrate on the ground. He flung his right arm forward and the spikes on his glove flew through the air, embedding themselves in the fugitive's right calf. The fugitive fell and rolled to the ground with pain as the Batman drew up on him, slowly, calmly, menacingly. The Batman came up on the man and took his left arm in his gloved hand and pulled it back, he pushed his foot on the man's shoulder and wrenched the man's arm from it's socket. The man screamed out louder than any of the others and underneath his mask the Batman grimaced, he kept hold of his arm and bent his head right down to the man's ear.
"I want to know everything you can tell me about the little girl and her disappearance."
"The buzz on the streets is that she's been taken," he said, "I can't tell you by who."
The Batman pushed the man's arm a little further out of its joint.
The man shouted with pain again, "Okay, okay. I wouldn't take this as gospel man but I know this guy who lives up in the slums, he said there's a van comes in every day from Old Gotham to New Gotham. Suspicious too, he swears he heard someone banging on the doors from the inside once."
"Give me a name."
"Dixon," the Batman pulled lightly on his arm again, "Charles Dixon."
"Thank you," the Batman said, letting go of the man's arm, "you might see me again."
The young man stood on a street corner of the slums of New Gotham, he had spiky black hair and a clean-shaven face that made him look sixteen years old. He was wearing black leather trousers and jacket with a grey long-sleeved t-shirt underneath, a cigarette was drooping from his lips as he accosted passers-by. He opened his jacket to show a small collection of different timepieces that hung from his coat lining on display. He had a wide smile on his face and was offering his wares to anyone and everyone, especially those who gave him more than a casual glance. He dropped his cigarette butt to the pavement without putting it out and struck a match to light the replacement he had already placed in his mouth. When he put out the match there was a shadow on the rooftop, something moved towards him. The shadow had horns and its blank, white eyes stared down at him devoid of any emotion yet still managing to frighten him more than anything he'd ever seen before in the depths of Old Gotham. The man turned and ran, his cigarette falling from his hand and crushed under his footsteps. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him, tripping twice over the uneven paving of the streets of New Gotham's suicide slum. He ran as far along the road as he could before becoming out of breath, he took a quick look around and could not see the shadow as he ducked into a dark alley. He gazed up to look at the full moon and began to calm down, he'd probably only imagined seeing him anyway. The Batman didn't actually exist.
There was a short jangle as the watches in his coat clinked together, violently being pulled by a black-gloved hand.
The Batman held the young tradesman up against the wall, his feet dangling in the air as he was held aloft by the Batman's enhanced strength.
"Charles Dixon I presume?"
"Look dude, I'm sorry about selling off all these fakes but I got to make a living somehow," Dixon replied with a stammer in his voice that reeked of fear.
"I don't care about your little business empire, I'm here about the van I heard you saw."
"It drives past that corner every morning just before dawn, all black, tires and everything. Don't often see real cars in New Gotham, it must be antique."
"You know anything about this little girl?" the Batman asked, showing the photo he had kept in his utility belt.
"I saw her, last week some guys were chasing her down back the way the van comes. They picked her up between the two of them and tied her up, then they carried her off."
"When you see the van," the Batman said after a moment's thought, "what direction is it going in?"
"I only ever saw it go from Old to New, never the other way around," Dixon replied, "nobody ever saw it go out, only ever comes in."
"Thanks," the Batman replied as he put him down, "I'll be in touch. Stop wasting your life on this crap, get a proper job," he advised before running silently into the shadows and whipping his cape around him, launching himself into the air.
"Shit," Dixon sighed to himself as he slid down to sit on the floor of the alley, his head in his hands, "I'm so screwed."
It had taken two days for the Batman to set up an observation camp undetected on the supporting column of one of New Gotham's elevated highways, he had worked slowly and methodically to bring any equipment he needed under cover of darkness, to not be seen. It was about midnight when he finally settled into the hidden nest up above the streets, he sat in complete stillness listening to his police scanner for any emergencies that required his attention. He had already ducked out of his nest once that night to help rescue some unfortunates from a car accident that had happened almost directly overhead. For six hours he waited, apart from his short vacation, in complete stillness hidden in his watchtower.
As he saw the first rays of dawn he began to realise that dressed in all black he would stick out like a sore thumb on his way back to the cave. Normally he would have returned by now, returned to eat, returned to sleep. He was tired and hungry, but as a former darksider he was used to it and it hardly bothered him. He was beginning to think he'd been misinformed when he saw Charlie Dixon walking up to his usual spot and begin to harass passers-by. He pulled an old-style batarang from his utility belt and aimed, just as was about to throw it in an attempt to scare Charlie out of his line of work a black van screeched around the corner. The Batman took only moments to change posture, aim and throw a tracking beacon that firmly attached by magnets to the roof of the van. He sat in his nest and watched the van disappear around the next turning, waiting for the confirmation that his tracker had worked. After a few seconds a yellow dot appeared on a small map in the corner of his display and he smiled under the mask, a good night's work. He activated his cape and switched it into stealth mode as he left the nest and crawled stealthily along the underside of the overpass.
He took a moment to look down at the road again and saw Charlie Dixon staring straight at him. The Batman fired off the batarang before leaping clear of the road and swinging on a jump-line to the roof of a nearby building.
Charlie Dixon, or Chuck to his friends, stood with his mouth agape looking at the ground. Literally touching the side of his boot there was a large, black, sharp bat embedded a few inches into the concrete of the pavement. Chuck bent down and with some effort pried it loose, pocketing it before running away around the corner again.
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Hope you liked this chapter, as always comments and whatever are always welcome. I have e-mail and too few of you have used it, but I'm not forcing you to in order to get another chapter (that'll happen after the first arc). As frequent readers know, if you don't review you won't get another chapter. Simple as that. If I don't know you're reading it then why bother writing it?
Contact me at: sam@sgcharrison.freeserve.co.uk
Visit my web-site at: www.anotherworld.gq.nu
Those of you who do visit my website will be treated to more of my writing (unavailable on ff.net) and soon earlier updates of this and other stories. The rule is pretty much that if you want to read these chapters before they come out on ff.net then go to my site.
Peace out, Sam.
