Chapter 5
The warmth of the city lifts from the streets like a shroud over a corpse in a mausoleum, leaving only the cold, lifeless vessel underneath exposed. So it is with Gotham. The city is a corpse, which during the day, can be made up to look as though it still has blood running through its arteries and veins, but the truth is unmistakable at night. The life has left this city.
Watching from First Church of the Trinity, along the river on the Narrows side, the gargoyles keep watch over this forsaken land, keepers to the gates of Hell on Earth. As cold as the city below, the sentries are poised as if ready to leap into action. One of them, however, is not content to merely watch.
The night is where he belongs; it is when Bruce feels most at ease. It isn't the body armor or weapons that comfort him during these lonely nights above the city, but that familiar feeling. Looking at the cold steel cityscape of Gotham, Bruce feels a connection. His crystallized emotions freeze him and harden his resolve to a diamond-like clarity of focus.
The sound of a bottle breaking and the rattling of a chain link fence draw his attention, and with the turn of his head, it is Batman and not a stone demon that has been guarding the city.
He dives straight down into the depths of the Narrows. He tucks into a mid air somersault to flip his feet below him and the micro-fiber cape becomes a parachute to slow his descent. He lands silently on the top of a roof and runs to the edge, leaping without a second's hesitation or doubt as to where this may take him. The next building is lower, hidden from view by the previous ledge. Batman lands on the rooftop with a tumble roll and is instantaneously back to his feet. A brief pause to ascertain the direction of the sound. A flip of a switch on the cowl and the amplified hearing device hidden in the bat ear is activated allowing the caped crusader to hear a whisper one hundred yards away. Lenses slide down over the eyes of the night stalker and infrared night vision is activated, seeking out signs of life by signature of body heat.
Then he sees what he has been searching for, a figure stumbling down an alley, globules of heat signature dropping from him as he careens unsteadily. He is losing massive amounts of blood very quickly
"Here pussy, pussy, pussy." The bionic ear receives its first transmission of the night as five more figures enter the scope's field of vision.
"Boss-man sent us to collect on yer skimming."
The wounded body in the lead slumps to the ground, perhaps losing the strength or will or both. "No, please, it was a misunderstanding, I didn't know..."
But he isn't begging to the gang behind him. He is throwing himself at the mercy of something in front of him, something that doesn't have a heat register and appears only as a faint apparition to the infrared eyes.
Demonic laughter fills the earpiece, loud enough to be heard without amplified devices, it echoes through the corridors of the Narrows. The injured man is thrown back to the ground with blinding force. Batman has seen enough.
He draws his harpoon gun and fires diagonally into a construction yard, snagging the steel girders with the hooks. Locking the cable into place as he runs to the far corner of the rooftop, he leaps into the alley adjacent to the fray. The angle of the jump and harpoon line allow him one chance for a surprise attack, as he swings down into the alley, the cable veers to the right and he rounds the corner into the melee.
As the gang encircles their victim, swinging boots connect with the face of one of the attackers, the sound of cracking bones quickly replaced by silence.
"whut th' bluddy fook wuzzat?" is all one of them has time to say before two metal throwing stars slice the air with high pitched whirrs, striking one thug through his outstretched forearm, pinning it to the derelict wall behind him. The other spikes the foot of another assailant bringing him to the ground.
From above, Batman drops into the action, grabbing the head of a mop haired, multi-pierced freak as he lands and slamming it into his knee. He spins and kicks his foot-impaled victim in the face, sending him backward into the dark. One of the horde decides to make a move against the Dark Knight; he pulls a switchblade and races toward the armored chest plate. Batman snaps his arm to catch the aggressor by the throat. In desperation, the man jams the knife in the arm that holds him captive, but it stops about half an inch in. The determination turns to fear in the short man's face as he tries to unleash himself from the grip, but Batman squeezes, cutting off the air supply to the thug, his already crooked nose contorting even more to find air.
The fifth gang member stumbles back into the ruckus, nose broken and bloodied from meeting Batman's boots. He grabs a chain and whips it at Batman while he is preoccupied with choking the thug's cohort. Batman grabs the chain and pulls the miscreant to him, winding the chain around the neck of the mohawked youth. The teen grabs at the chain to remove it from his neck, but it is too late, Batman has grabbed his Taser and jams it onto the chain conduit, sending thousands of volts directly into the spinal column and nervous system of the gangbanger.
Just as the short man in his grasp loses consciousness, Batman drops him to the ground. The shadowy avenger turns to see the first of his prey still pinned to the wall in terror, having lost bladder control at the sight of this monster single-handedly taking out his crew, he stands in a puddle of his own urine. He isn't going anywhere.
Batman looks to find the man who was injured prior to his arrival. He finds the man laying face up in the far end of the alley, covered in blood. Stab wounds to the arm and abdomen were probably the causes of the blood droplets as he made his way through the alley, but the wounds on his face must have come from the mysterious figure in front of him while he was begging. His face has been slashed from each corner of the mouth to the bottom of the earlobes. The mark eerily resembles a grin. Contrasted with the look of horror sculpted into the victim's face, as if the last thing he saw was the devil himself.
The man is still alive but begins to go into convulsive shock from the massive loss of blood. Batman grabs a vial from his belt and loads into an injector mechanism, pushes the man hard against the ground and shoves the needle into the chest, injecting adrenaline into the heart. He then quickly wraps the wounds to slow the blood loss until he can get the man to a medical facility.
Batman turns to question his captive only to find the gang member has freed himself from the stiletto constraint, leaving only a small dangling piece of flesh behind. Sounds of a struggle come from the next alley over and Batman leaves the injured man to see if his prey has found more trouble.
Even Bruce isn't prepared for the sight that greets him as he turns the corner. His prisoner receives a quite thorough beating from another costumed vigilante. It takes Bruce only a second to process the image before him, and then he is back to Batman.
"Find your own creeps to beat on. This one is mine." Batman yells to the costumed figure.
Gotham's newest masked avenger turns and Batman glimpses the suit in full view, some sort of bird homage in theme. Batman lunges at the birdman to try and get him off balance and away from the gangbanger. The bird, in a martial arts-like motion, gets a leg between himself and Batman as he falls to the ground backward to flip the caped crusader over him and onto the pavement. Batman is back up, but not in time to deflect a punch coming directly toward him.
The punch stops short though and instead a hidden tube releases a burst of mist into Batman's face. He stumbles back feeling his eyes blur. Tear-gas, just enough to impair visibility in a foe. Batman feels for a bottle of saline rinse to cleanse his eyes, as he tries to make out what the birdman is doing.
Through bloodshot, tear filled eyes, he sees the costumed challenger activate something on the costume and rockets ignite from the boots. The bird's arms rise to reveal a rather large wingspan and, as the birdman takes flight, Batman watches in disbelief.
The saline rinse begins to clear the irritant out of Batman's eyes and he makes his way back to the wounded victim in the alley, only to find there has been yet another visitor to this skirmish tonight, a visitor who left as his only sign, a bullet hole in the forehead of the man Batman had worked to save.