Batman and the associated characters are owned by DC. James Bond and the associated characters were created by Ian Fleming. With thanks to Cmar for beta reading this for me and thanks to all the reviewers and readers so far! All reviews welcome.

Golden Bat – Chapter Thirteen

The rain lashed down at the smoking remnants of Damian Alvey's house. Steam mixed in with the smoke as the water damped the ashes down. The huge boiling pyre of smoke had long since died down and the flames that had licked greedily at the house and consumed everything it could had been beaten back by the combined efforts of the rain and the firemen. The firemen, covered in a thin layer of white ash, were starting to roll up their hoses. This would now be the home of the scenes of crime investigators. Outside the house the crowds of people that always gather at disasters began to disperse as it looked like the disaster was over. For Gotham it was only just beginning…

Near the back of the house, unseen by the firemen and passers-by, a blackened skeletal hand was sticking out of the ash. Impossibly, incredibly a skeletal finger twitched and in seconds the bone was covered in a thin layer of red muscle and pulsing veins. A few seconds more and an unblemished skin appeared. A gust of wind covered the hand in ash. The rain seemed to wash the ash off the hand and underneath was pink living breathing skin and the hand grasped at a blackened girder that was holding the man down under the house. There was a creaking sound as part of the house caved in and a man walked out of the house. He was covered in horrendous burns that seemed to heal up as he walked in the rain. He started off naked but as he walked along clothes seemed to knit up out of thin air and covered him.

The fire chief ran up to him. "Jeez, Mr Alvey, how the hell did you survive that?"

"Don't talk to me of hell, fool," said Alvey, picking the fireman up with one hand, "for I have seen it." He threw the fireman into the remnants of his house. He looked back into his house that had consumed his wife and son and felt his stomach lurch with grief. His son had been too near the centre of the flames and not even his nano-droids could heal him. He himself had been caught on the edge of the flames and survived, barely. One man was responsible for this. One man. Donnington Speen. He would find him and show him the true meaning of pain.

"Alfred, stop the car," said Bond quietly.

"I've been told to take you back to the manor, sir." Alfred was concentrating on driving the car. For some reason the engine was starting to give out a strange whining sound.

"I'll join you later; I need to find Alvey first. Either him or Speen. One of them must know where Blofeld is."

"But Master Bruce said…"

"But nothing. Stop the car. Stop the car now…"

"This is the east side of Gotham, sir. If I stop the car here even for an instant we'll be carjacked and like as not sold into white slavery." He raised one eyebrow at this slight exaggeration.

As Bond looked out the car window he could see filthy streets and alleyways. Gangs of young men and women roamed about the place, all wearing ill concealed weaponry and poorly fitting clothes. Armoured police cars drove past in groups of three very quickly, just in case they saw anything that would need their attention. "Perfect," he said to himself.

Selina tried to back up Alfred. "Bruce said we were to go back to the manor."

"Do you always do what you're told?"

"Darling, I'm a cat and a woman; I never do what I'm told."

Bond grinned at this. "Are you coming?"

"But you're unarmed. You lost your gun and I lost my claws on the particle accelerator."

"They're not," he said, pointing to one of the gangs walking along the street. "Let's go shopping."

Speen fired at Batman twice in quick succession. Both bullets bounced off the Batman's armoured chest, pushing him back against the wall.

"Have you armoured your head?" hissed Speen and loosed off another shot. Somehow Batman dodged the bullet and launched himself into the attack.

"I don't need to be, with your being such a poor shot," said Batman. He grabbed Speen's hand and tried to wrench the gun out of it. He was surprised at how strong he was and kicked Speen in the stomach, which sent him reeling back, coughing.

Batman did not let up the attack and kicked him in the arm making him drop the gun.

"Is everyone in this town bullet-proof?" Asked Speen. "I'll have to do this the old fashioned way." He punched at Batman who ducked and Speen hit a lamppost with a dull metallic clang. Where he had hit the lamppost was a huge dent. "You're fast," said Speen. "I'll give you that." He looked down at his hand. Some of the outer pink covering was giving way under the onslaught, revealing a metallic hand.

Batman kicked at Speen, but he grabbed his foot and pushed him back into a car window. A car alarm rivalled the sound of the fight for a few seconds.

"You wonder about my arm, do you?" asked Speen. "I got it bitten off by a shark on a mission for British Intelligence. Blofeld found me and fixed me up. It gives me a punch you've got to love!" He punched Batman so hard that it sent him flying over the street, narrowly avoiding a truck, and into a shop window. The entire display of clothes and mannequins fell on the Batman. Frightened shoppers ran screaming from the shop. Batman struggled to his feet as he saw Speen cross the road towards him.

Speen tried to run across the street to carry on the attack but found his high heels and skirt restricting. "Damn these clothes! How do women fight in heels?" He twisted around as the Batman launched an attack at him and blocked one fist but didn't see the foot that knocked him out…

When Speen next woke up he was hanging upside down from a lamppost and he was gently swinging in the breeze, metal wire restricting his movements.

He could see the grinning upside down face of Dane. "Are you all right Donny, I mean Mr Speen? I've looked around everywhere but I can't find the body of Batman!"

"Fine lad, fine. Just be a good chap and let me down, would you?"

"I don't think a skirt suits you, Mr Speen."

"Shut up."

"Also I think you should shave your legs if you try that disguise again."

"Shut up!"

"You know what they say about women with red shoes?"

"SHUT UP!"

James Bond and Selina Kyle got out of the car and walked confidently down the street. Selina, out of her Catwoman costume, gave a smile at Bond as they walked past a gang.

A man came running in front of them and stopped.

"Hi," said the tattooed man in front of them.

"Hello," said Bond.

"You two homies lost?"

"We are exactly where we want to be," said Bond.

He drew a gun and said. "Let's see your…" What he wanted to see was lost in the blur of movement in front of him. Bond grabbed the gun hand whilst simultaneously elbowing him the throat. The man fell senseless to the ground. Bond looked at the gun and turned around to see the rest of the gang pointing their guns at him.

Bond ignored this threat and continued looking at the gun. "This is just a Colt 45. I know you Americans swear by them but really…" He looked down the barrel and tutted. "It hasn't been cleaned properly either. You really should clean the muzzle out after use. It would probably do someone more damage if you threw it at them."

"Put the gun down!" said the leader of the gang, pointing a gun at Bond's head.

"Gladly," said Bond, dropping the gun and looking at the guns pointing at him with as much interest as if he was window-shopping. "That one is not bad," he said, looking at the leader's gun. "Desert Eagle 0.50. A bit of a cannon, a lot of stopping power but difficult to conceal. Also…" He grabbed the gun from the surprised man's hand and pressed a small lever on the side, "if you are threatening someone you really should have the safety off." Bond grabbed the thug by the collar and pointed the gun at the back of his head. "Now I really don't want to have to blow your brains out but if your boys don't back away after leaving their guns on the pavement - sorry, sidewalk, forgetting where I am - I might have to see what damage this gun does at close quarters." There was a clicking of safeties being taken off and three of the gang edged forward pointing their guns at Bond. "They really don't have your safety at heart do they?" Bond pulled the man back using him a shield. He made an ineffectual attempt to escape but Bond was too strong.

"Roach my man, put the cannon down! He's crazy! He'll blow me away!"

Bond ground the muzzle of the gun into the man's head. "Please try it! I haven't killed in two days…"

"Drop the guns! Drop 'em!"

There was a clinking sound as the assorted weaponry of a street gang fell on the street.

"All of your weapons…" hissed Bond, with a touch of ice in his words. Various knives and knuckle-dusters also cascaded onto the sidewalk. "Too kind. I just find myself caught short at the moment." He picked up a couple of the best guns on the sidewalk. The others he kicked into a drain. "Thank you gentlemen. If ever I'm in the area again I'll return your guns."

"No. No! Please, it's a gift, my man!" said the man he pointed a gun at.

Selina gave Bond a slow handclap as he backed away quickly from the gang. "You don't do subtle, do you?"

"I try not to. Come on, we've got to go, we need some transport now." Bond walked into the street and stopped a motorcyclist by means of pointing a Desert Eagle Magnum at him. In seconds he and Selina were roaring down the street towards where Alvey had lived…

"What are we doing here, Mr Speen?" asked Dane. They were in an apartment building outside a door.

"I told you. We have to eliminate Bruce Wayne's secretary. Followed by Wayne and his staff."

"What about Batman?"

"We'll have another go later. He doesn't know about you obviously, since he wouldn't have just tied me up if he had. That could be to our advantage. Now just be quiet!" Speen had attached what looked like a small cup over the lock. Inside was a mechanism that was quietly picking the lock. The door opened over on the other side of the corridor and an old man walked out.

"You two looking for Miranda?"

"Yes," said Dane. Speen rolled his eyes at this. What a great assassin he would be telling everyone their business.

"We are looking for the lady, yes," agreed Speen, glaring at Dane and willing him to keep quiet.

"You'll have a long wait! She'll be with her fancy man tonight. Adam? Albert? Alfred, I think. He works for Bruce Wayne, you know! She's asked me to water her plants and feed her cats tonight." He gave Speen a jocular elbow in the ribs. "She thinks her luck is in!"

"Thank you, sir," said Speen, bowing slightly as he left. He turned around at the end of the corridor with a gun in his hand. "Just one thing sir…" He shot the man twice in the chest sending him flying back into his own apartment. He then slapped Dane none too lightly on the head. "When you are an assassin you don't talk to people."

"Sorry, Mr Speen."

"You certainly don't tell people who you are looking for."

"Sorry, Mr Speen."

"You should apologise to that man I had to kill." He pocketed the lock-picking device. "Come on, Dane my boy, we'd better go." As they walked down the corridor, Speen rubbed his hands in glee. "This is a stroke of luck, Dane my boy. We'll pop into Wayne manor and kill everyone we find! And try not to talk to anyone on the way there."

Batman cursed quietly to himself. He had not been watching the Joker's car in his little altercation with Speen but he hoped he had not missed him leaving. His car was still there, which was a good thing, but an ambitious car thief was trying to lever his way into the driver's side of the Joker's car. The fool could ruin his stakeout. A high tensile line wrapped itself around the thief's shoulders and in just seconds he was four stories up and staring into the face of a leather clad demon.

"Leave the car alone," hissed Batman.

"Hey I gotta live, my man!"

"A strange choice of phrase for a man dangling a hundred feet from the sidewalk."

"Let me go, man!"

Batman let a few feet of line slip from his hand.

"NO! DON'T LET ME GO!"

"I don't intend to…" Batman crawled down the building, holding his screaming and crying victim in one hand like a predator of old, to the lamppost he had tied Speen to. He cursed to himself. Speen was gone. He was a fool, he should have realised he would have had a colleague in the area. He had allowed his fixation with the Joker to cloud his judgement.

He left the struggling victim dangling from the lamppost for the police to pick up and climbed quickly and easily up the building again. The rain was falling in big drops now, spattering against the building and making the climb slippery and dangerous, but it did not slow him down at all. Just as he was approaching the top again his communicator buzzed in his ear.

"Sir, this is eerrrm, A, sir."

"Yes A, what is it?"

"Mr…" Alfred tried to think of a way of saying this. They never revealed their names in communication just in case someone was listening. It was extremely unlikely since the communicators were encrypted with rolling digital signatures that changed every 30 seconds. However unlikely it was, it was a possibility and Batman was paranoid about security. "The gentleman who…"

"I know who you are talking about…"

"He has gone, sir, I couldn't dissuade him. He left, taking S, or should it be C, with him."

"Where?"

"Bond wants to find Alvey or Speen," said Alfred ignoring the first letter rule, "and find out where Blofeld is hiding out."

Batman cursed quietly to himself. He really did not want Bond loose. The man was like a loaded cannon on the deck of a ship in a storm. When he exploded he could kill friends and enemies alike. Still he could not go after him; the Joker had to be stopped first.

"I hope you don't mind sir, but I am entertaining tonight…"

Even under the impervious mask Bruce raised an eyebrow. "Entertaining…"

"I promised Miranda, I mean M, to cook her a proper Indian curry. Since my time in the services in India I've…"

"Enough, enough. Enjoy yourself but keep me informed if you hear anything."

"Certainly sir. Have a good evening. Over and out."

The rain lashed down on the precarious parapet Batman was on, the wind threatening to catch his cloak and pull him to his death. The wind was howling down the chasms of Gotham giving an eerie whistling sound around him. The cold and wet was starting to seep through gaps in his costume. Still, he reasoned with himself, at least Alfred is having fun. He shuddered for some reason and looked around him suspiciously. With all his training he was extremely intuitive and he sensed someone watching him. He looked around himself suspiciously but apart from the stone glares of the statues that shared his rooftop perch there was nothing there. He was wrong though, it was not someone watching him…

Alfred had just arrived at Wayne Manor. He had picked up Miranda on the way. The car was starting to behave very badly and it juddered up the driveway towards the mansion.

"You are a terrible driver Alfy," said Miranda.

Alfred was rather perturbed at this and opened the bonnet of the car, and what he saw shocked him. Or rather what he couldn't see. Large parts of the bonnet and engine were missing. It was almost like something had been eating it away. "Curiouser and curiouser," said Alfred as he found he could poke a finger through the door. Something had been eating the metal away on his car. The question is what, he thought. Unfortunately he was asking the wrong question, he should have been asking why. Oh well, he would have to take a look at that problem later. Now manners dictated he look after his guest.

Ten minutes later Alfred was bustling about the kitchen of Wayne Manor talking to Miranda about their favourite subject. The wonderful smell of a curry cooked to perfection was beginning to waft about the room and the room was nice and warm. Miranda was sitting at a chair at the kitchen table and both of them were talking happily to each other without really listening to what the other was saying.

"Anyway Alfy, he came into the office the other day and he barely said a word all morning. I mean I was talking about that cat show I took Frisky to, you know the one where he scratched the judge, I mean I would have scratched him as well if he had handled me where he handled Frisky, and Bruce practically ignored me. I mean he was looking at me but I could see his eyes glaze over. Anyway I gave him one of my special double chocolate chip cookies, coated in marzipan and icing. Practically a cake! Lovely they are. I didn't get my waist," she said tapping at her ample hips, "by not eating cookies like that and he said he was on a diet! Him, a diet!"

"Don't get me started on that," said Alfred, rolling his eyes. "The other day I spent an hour preparing breakfast for him. Three sausages, two eggs, black pudding, mushrooms, the whole selection basically. And did he eat any of it? Did he?"

"Did he?" asked Miranda.

"No he didn't! He never eats properly, that man; I swear he counts the calories on every breath he breathes in."

Lightning flashed in the sky, briefly silhouetting two men standing by the gate of Wayne Manor. The rain was still pouring down, making the road muddy and treacherous.

"Come on Donny, I mean Mr Speen, let's clamber over this…"

Donny put a hand on Dane's shoulder. "Not so fast, Dane my boy. Can't you see the security alarms and cameras?"

Dane looked about confusedly at the wall. "No, I can't see nothing."

"It's 'I can't see anything' Dane my boy, and neither can I."

"Well, what are we waiting for?"

"This Bruce Wayne is a high flier with Wayne Tech being one of his subsidiary companies, right?"

"Right."

"So don't you think it conceivable that he would have a few of his Wayne Tech toys about?"

"Right."

Donnington Speen got a small scanner out of his briefcase. He pointed it towards the gates. The picture on the screen changed its view rapidly from infrared, to x-ray, to ultraviolet, to sonar, to picking up beta radiation to picking up electro-magnetic radiation. He stopped the screen at the last view. Several wires were showing up hidden in the brickwork. He walked up to the wall and examined it closely. Tiny heat and movement sensors were protruding from the top, all pointing at the top of the wall and the gate. If anything alive moved, the sensors would show it up and presumably set off alarms in the manor.

A good system. A fine system in fact, but Donnington hadn't spent five years working for British Intelligence without being able to break into places undetected. He gave himself a wry smile. He had broken out of the maximum security wing of one of Northern Ireland's H blocks not six months ago. The one designed to hold the toughest psychopaths and killers imaginable. Bond had caught him back then.

Bond said he kept him alive out of professional courtesy. It was not a courtesy he would give him when he next met him and now they were in the same city. His spine tingled with pleasure. He would look forward to killing Bond.

Whilst he was thinking about all this he was gently pointing the tiny sensors away from the gate and wall so all they were looking at was the sky. He then grabbed the top of the wall and crawled over the top. He lent a hand to Dane and soon they were both loping like wolves towards the mansion.

A flash of lightning revealed the mansion in silhouette perched like a malevolent spider waiting to pounce on top of the hill. Despite himself Donnington shuddered as he traipsed up the hill; he felt like someone was walking over his grave and stamping his soul straight to hell.

Alvey was walking down the road from the ruins of his house. However it would be wrong to say it was the same Damian Alvey who had walked the earth the day before. This was a nano recreation of a possible Damian Alvey, a probable Damian Alvey, but he was not Damian Alvey. That man had died in the fire and his soul had been scorched away when Speen shot his wife and killed his son and his body was now infested with nano-droids.

Each individual nano-droid had no intelligence, no effective sight or hearing and not even 0.0001 of an IQ point. But a hundred nano-droids could communicate with each other by firing off protons in a simple on-off configuration. A thousand by doing this could hold basic memories and even see basic rudimentary shapes through light particles hitting them. Ten thousand could see and hear and via the patterns created by protons could hold a memory for several weeks. They could even, by firing off protons at the right time, fly through the air and home in on visual targets.

Alvey had over a million nano's in his body and they were in communication with millions more in the air around them. Alvey closed his eyes and could immediately see a myriad of images, all over rain-drenched Gotham.

The nanos, despite the destruction of the particle accelerator in Wayne Tech, were breeding, and as the numbers increased and spread like an invisible net over Gotham so did their intelligence. They could start to see people, and the order that had been placed in the core of each one was starting to guide their thinking. Kill. But now there was no central computer to guide them. To program them. Their only guidance was from Alvey and he was not himself…

He could see the Batman, crouched and waiting at the top of a building like a devil waiting to claim a soul. Alvey saw the flash of another face, soaking wet and straining as he climbed a hill in the pouring rain. Speen. He grinned to himself. Speen would pay for this… There were not enough nano-droids in the area to infect people. Not yet anyway… That would change, given a few more hours… But Speen he would deal with personally.

The .avi file showed a grainy video with poor sound quality of the Joker standing in what seemed to be an underground tunnel. It had obviously been shot on a mobile phone or a digital camera. The mayor was shaking as he watched it.

The sound and image might have been poor quality but the words were not.

"You see this?" crooned the Joker. The grainy image homed in on what was obviously a nuclear warhead. For some reason his experts had not been able to fathom, it was attached to a crudely made metallic tube that disappeared into the distance. It was difficult to tell because of the quality of the image.

"This is an 85 R-36MUTTH missile warhead. Those wacky Russians have the craziest names! This is just one itsy bitsy warhead though. Don't worry about the others. I'm not! It's perfectly safe unless I press this." The deranged clown was holding a remote control device with a large red button on it. He kept jabbing his finger at it and missing the button by millimetres. He cackled manically as he did this. The camera view was shaking as it watched this. Obviously the cameraman was just as scared as the mayor was feeling now. "But you know what?" asked the Joker. "I don't want this thing. If it's not purple it's not me, I always say. I'll swap you this little iddy biddy device for …" Furrows appeared on the Joker's forehead as he thought. "I dunno. Gotham City! I want full control of Gotham City and its police force and the National Guard! If I say hop, I want them to say 'where to?' You sign over control of the city to me, and I want a lovely lawyer there to make sure everything is above board and legal. If I hand you this little firework I want the city! You have two hours, then I blow up this baby! It'll be a hell of a bang!" At this point one of the Joker's ice-cold blue eyes filled the screen and a cackling sound filled the speakers.

The mayor pressed the stop button on the file. He turned to one of his experts.

"Is he telling the truth?"

"The Pentagon has analysed the pictures. He is definitely telling the truth about the warhead. That tube is the craziest of things though. It looks like a crudely made particle accelerator. There are no joins in it though, and it looks like it has been made of old metal."

"Forget that, it's not important. We're talking about the destruction of Gotham and you're worried about crazy tubes. Goddam it, get a grip! What are our options here?"

"Well, two really. One: hand over power to the Joker…"

"Not really a practical option given the time constraints and the legal ramifications. Not to mention the voters would probably not want to be ruled by an insane clown. And the second?"

"Get destroyed in the nuclear blast, but at least you wouldn't have to worry about next year's mayoral elections."

"I see…"