I want to make it clear that while Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth is mentioned in both this chapter and the last, it is not one hundred percent canon with this story, only concepts that were introduced within it. Killer Croc doesn't look like Godzilla, thank you very much.

Two-Face had known the doctor had friends, and they had predicted that at least a few of the guards on his floor were among them, but the crimson colored, bat-shaped jet that had blasted through the roof, before opening up to reveal a platoon of people wearing uniforms like hers? Even if you'd given them a million years, they'd have never seen that coming.

The hoods exited their craft in seconds, and Two-Face immediately recognized the one in charge. He didn't wear the most armor out of them all, not by a long shot, but the fact that his shield was on his chest, along with the fact that it had laurels around it? It couldn't have been more obvious, and neither could his identity. Floyd Lawton was the only man who could wear that ridiculous eye-piece scope and matching helmet without getting disoriented, and the signature suit with the signature arm-mounted 45 mm cannons did no good towards hiding his obvious identity.

Deadshot had walked up to the doctor and started having a conversation, but their mind was on their prize alone, they tuned anything else out. Cobblepot noticed him and, likewise, tried to puff out his chest. It went like that for a few minutes, the two staring at each other as the guards were all rounded up into the center of the bottom floor of the massive two floor room, including the security chief, as some of the hoods ran down stairs, and, eventually, alarms blared. Two-Face was only distracted when they heard Floyd address them.

"One Bat is here and more are on their way, you'll have to make it quick.", he said, handing them a bowie knife.

Gordon watched over the room with Harvey from the shadows. It had been a tight fit for his partner and hell on both of their bodies to squeeze through the vents into this room, and they barely made it in time to see Edward Nigma being loaded into the...Batplane, which he was definitely going to ask his other partner about later.

The Ventriloquist, Tiger Shark, and The Great White Shark were all taken alongside him up the ramp and into the craft.

They couldn't see into Two-Face's or Cobblepot's cell from the small maintenance shaft they were looking in from, one of many small openings and crossings in the vent layout that Gordon was certain Wayne had put in for his own ease in case of emergencies. He didn't object to how accessible the new asylum was for the man's alter ego, but he hated that someone like Joker could one day use it against them just as easily, and Gordon was certain that Prometheus, Al Ghul, and Anarchy would've all been treated the same way had they not been at large.

He looked over towards the man who was obviously in charge, Deadshot, and Spoiler, who had been placed beside him as a load of inmates from downstairs were also thrown into the plane. As he was making a mental note of the men and their equipment, Bullock hit his arm.

He looked over to his friend immediately, and tracked his eyes to the Penguin's cell, where Gotham's White Knight and one of Gordon's greatest regrets, Harvey Dent, walked out in a brand new two-sided black and red suit, his right hand around a buck knife, spattered with blood.

Well...there goes Cobblepot.

"So...whadda we do now?"

"You go back and make sure they know to leave this one to the Bats. Tell 'em to focus on protecting the convoys I'm going to try and sneak this on to one of them.", Jim said, holding out an active bat-tracker Barbara had made him keep on himself in case someone got the drop on him one day.

"Alright. Stay safe, partner."

"You too, Harvey."

Gordon crept through the vents, his knees screaming at him as he went. He managed to get behind a vent cover leading into the room, and threw the tracker through the cover and onto one of the hoods near it.

It figured that as soon as he thought they finally had some good news, someone discovered him. As he'd been focused on throwing the tracer on to the closest man, another one saw him through the vent cover and yelled, rushing forward.

He grabbed his revolver and jumped back, but he heard the vent cover practically explode and he was pulled out of the vent so hard he slid for a few more feet once he was out. He'd dropped his revolver in the scuffle, and before he could grab for his knife, the man who'd snatched him out of the vent used his own handcuffs on him. His glasses were gone, but he was farsighted, so he could plainly see the pistol that was shoved into his face.

"Bad move, Cop.", he heard the man in the red hood say. Before he could respond, Deadshot gave his assailant order.

"Bring him and come on, all of you. We've gotta get out of here before more of them show up."

He was hoisted up off the floor, but he wasn't able to take three steps before the room shook. He turned, to see the ice wall separating them from the Security Office had shattered. Deadshot immediately handed Spoiler off to a hood and yelled for Harvey to follow henchman along with the man holding Gordon down, as he shot a Catarang out of mid-air.

Selina took point, Huntress covering her left flank and Catman covering her right. As they rushed into the room, she was shocked to see that despite them all carrying guns, they each switched to a less than lethal weapon, or just went with their fists. Apparently, the three of them were also on the list of people these strange men refused to kill. They were far more skilled than your average gang as well, which she learned as the three were stopped in their advance by a crowd of the hoods, all gathering up around them with assorted weapons, from the exotics to more standard crap. Bo Staffs, escrima sticks, pneumatic gauntlets, baseball bats, even a couple swords.

The three of them managed to down a few hoods in spite of that, and the rest all grabbed their wounded friends and ran for their ship. As they gave chase to the retreating man, a new figure slowly descended from inside the craft, walking forward slowly to stand beside Lawton not two feet from their ship's ramp. Selina recognized him instantly, as did Huntress.

When they stopped dead in their tracks, so did Thomas.

The luchador now wore padded combat pants, armored combat boots, a massive black leather jacket, a pair of fingerless combat gloves and a new black and silver mask that showed his eyes and his mouth off, but Selina still recognized the "man" as Bane - the monster who'd broken her Bat.

"How dare you come here."

"Gato, has your Bat not told you-"

"I don't care if you know just what you put him through now, you still put him through it. And unlike him, I don't forgive shit like that."

The man, still giant now despite a lack of glowing green veins sighed, and dropped his jacket, revealing the rest of his armored form and the lack of the venom tubes she'd been expecting.

He really did get clean? Moron.

"Come, then.", he said, getting into a battle stance as he gave a nod to Floyd, who then took off.

"Go get Spoiler and Gordon.", Selina told the two behind her. As they rushed past the non-responsive "Breaker of Bats", the two stared each other down for a few seconds, waiting for the other to make the first move.

Selina darted forward, smashing into her massive target, but just as she started laying into him with her fists, he grabbed her and threw her a few feet away, towards the still unmoved ship. He charged her with a battle cry, and as she tried to jump over him, he snatched her back down, slamming her into the concrete. She didn't take the full force of the drop thanks to her armor, but the wind was still knocked out of her. She rose again, and this time tried to be smarter. She threw a bolas at his feet when he began his next charge, but he jumped it.

As he landed, she threw her caltrops at his feet. Instead of just landing on them, the Luchador came down on all fours, pushing off of the ground with his fists before she could kick him in the face. As he regained his balance on the other side of her little trap, she pounced at him with her claws out. When she did, he locked his stance, and ducked.

As she flew over head, trying to scratch at his downturned face, he grabbed her by both the belt buckle and the neck, dropping her back down on the concrete. He was now on top of her, but before he could hammer down on her face or grab her hands, she attempted to claw his eyes out, forcing him to use both hands to stop her as she then grabbed the sides of his head and forced it down onto her. Her small frame was able to avoid the forced headbutt, and she then managed to get out in the second her little counter attack had bought her as he slammed down on the hard floor.

Out from under him, she prepared for him to get up and charge blindly, only for him to sneakily throw a small smoke bomb directly into her face, blinding her. As she coughed, she felt him punch her in the chest so hard she made impact with the cement instantly, once again only avoiding a concussion due to her armor.

She heard Helena scream her name, but it didn't mean much as her enemy's massive boot smashed into her face.

Helena saw red. She cared about Bruce as much as she could, his judgmental attitude about her methods and past aside, but Selina? Different story entirely.

She dashed straight at the man who had slung the master thief over his shoulder, not even thinking about how she was leaving her boyfriend to deal with the entire crowd of hoods.

He saw her and immediately dropped Selina, careful not to let her fall too hard, as if that would get Huntress to stop. She threw two of her throwing knives at his knees as she jumped up high, coming back down with her Bo staff in a movement that would've probably fractured his skull had her diversion worked. Unfortunately, it hadn't and he side stepped her attack, attempting to clothesline her as he did.

She swept underneath his arm, however, and managed to avoid the knee he threw her way, getting behind him. As he turned, she hit his other leg with her staff, putting him on his knees. She then used a bolas to tie his hands and arms to his chest, but she only managed to get a couple good hits in on the sides of his head before he yelled and her bolas disintegrated off of him. Now truly enraged, he charged her. She then tried Catwoman's bolas trick, diving underneath him when he jumped over it and bringing her staff up between his legs as he came back down, dropping him.

As she turned back, he grabbed his injured manhood and rolled over, groaning.

With a clearer head, she realized what she had done as she saw Thomas, barely holding his own, guarding the freed commissioner and still-bound Stephanie as the onslaught of hoods tried to get them back into the craft. He was making her proud, but he was getting injured and worn out as the seconds dragged on like hours and his injuries piled up, and she didn't know how longer he could keep it up with losing his shit. She rushed forward and threw Stephanie over her shoulders much to her chagrin. Retreat was necessary at this point, but just as she told her boyfriend and Gordon to come on as she rushed to get Selina, a very unamused and red-faced Bane stepped in front of her.

"That's enough.", Lawton yelled from the plane, "Antonio, leave them and just come on. We've got other shit to deal with."

When Helena growled at his dismissive tone and the implication that they were inconsequential, Lawton chuckled and said, "Learn to cut your losses, and be glad we have more important shit to do than watch old 'Tonio ragdoll the you all now that you've made him get serious."

Thomas took a step forward, a mad look in his eye, but Gordon stopped him. He then turned his head and spoke to Floyd.

"If you leave now, we won't fight."

Helena's jaw dropped at the older man's surrender, and Bane didn't even acknowledge them as he walked past. Floyd gave the group a small nod as the massive ramp closed, the jet raising up slowly before firing off into the night sky.

Helena sat down Spoiler and asked what they were all thinking.

"You mind telling me why you just gave up? That isn't like-"

She stopped her questioning when he pulled out and showed them a small device they all recognized as one of Batman's portable tracer receivers, handing it to her as he told her he had to get back to his men, thanking them all for what aid they had been able to give. Barbara, who'd been watching the struggle through Helena's cowl, spoke in their comms.

"I'd say you all did good considering the circumstances, but you'd all consider that patronizing. So I'm just going to take the "B" route and tell you to get back to the cave for medical attention, immediately."

"What about the-"

"What about nothing, Steph! The last thing that's gonna help stop them is you all chasing them and getting taken."

"But what if-"

"Whatever they do now, we'll have to deal with later, once we have the rest of the team to back us up. Now get. Back. Here."

As she finished that last repeat of her order, the line went dead. Stephanie spoke as the restraints Thomas had been trying to remove turned off autonomously.

"I really hate when she does her Batman voice."

"So do I, kid. Come on.", Helena replied, recognizing that Babs did have a point, even if she hated that she could see it.

Oracle had been visiting a lonely Alfred when they had gotten the alert, so she was unfortunately having to work from The Batcave instead of The Nest. It was a bit of a downgrade, but that didn't mean she was in the dark. As Helena's group made their way to the cave, having to take the discreet route through Finger Hill thanks to Thomas's inclusion, Barbara tracked the strange group in the craft that she was now almost certain had previously belonged to WayneTech.

There was no camera attached to the small tracer, nor a microphone, but CCTV footage could make up for that when they landed, whenever and wherever that ended up being. On the massive screen, she watched the outlined routes of the GCPD convoys headed from the Asylum to the GCPD HQ, Helena's group, and of the red Batplane as it flew over the city.

It was obvious that the group of masked men and women, whom she was now beginning to suspect had something to do with the legendary boogeyman "The Red Hood" Dick had told her so much about, were now headed for the convoy of Wing B. The GCPD officers had given the convoy all the support they could, with dozens of cop cars surrounding the 5 massive transports and an emergency closing of the roads their route followed.

Wait...5? No, no, NO!

Barbara's mind raced even faster as she realized that the last transport, truck six, was missing from the line up. Joker's truck.

Her hands flew as she looked back, running through the footage, trying to find where she had gotten distracted enough to let that slip. The closest thing she could do to finding footage of the truck's change in direction/stopping, was to come up with a five-minute window during which the truck went missing. She sent this information to her father, but she couldn't spend any more time on it, unless she wanted to let something like it happen again.

Getting the many tabs of other footage off her screen, she saw the map, and instantly recognized that the red Batwing was directly over the Wing B convoy, and that the Wing C convoy had stopped.

As if the situation wasn't stressful enough, she got a red alert from the Hole.

She turned on the automated defense systems for the small meta prison and ignored it, knowing there wasn't much more she could do beyond that. She watched both convoys from cameras nearby at once, several in the case of Convoy B. Convoy C, which carried mostly harmless inmates and wasn't backed up too heavily, had been interrupted by a massive explosion which destroyed the street, affectively caving it in, and as they had tried to turn around back into the tunnel they had been heading down, the lights turned off, and so did each car and truck, followed by every other electronic device within a two-block radius.

Short range EMP device? Who ARE these people?

Convoy B, on the other hand, was much simpler, if more horrifying. Instead of forcing the convoy away from the dozens of cop cars surrounding it, men jumped down into a hail of gunfire, and took control of the trucks individually in teams of two, knocking out the drivers and their partners. The back doors were controlled by the drivers, now hoods, so the security guards and cops within the truck were trapped inside with the prisoners. No cops were killed, but a couple hoods did fail to make the jump and fell off into traffic below.

She almost felt bad for them, until she remembered the very real possibility that these men were only sparing the cops instead of killing them to gain leniency. The bodies of the hoods that had been shot up or ran over after having fallen were left there, but she made sure the GCPD sent men and ambulances to take care of them as best as they could.

When all five trucks had been taken over, the Batplane pulled up and vanished into the night sky, going to fast for the police helicopters or patrol blimps to follow. She cursed, realizing that the man her father had planted the tracer on was the hood driving transport 4.

The hoods in the trucks were now in better positions than one would normally think, namely because they were now behind the wheels of nigh-impenetrable war machines with tires that very few firearms on earth could penetrate, a fact they were all too aware of. In a tight formation, the small fleet of trucks forced their way onto an overpass headed for the financial district. Making sure to avoid civilian vehicles, the hijacked convoy turned to avoid a police blockade, and wound up in a steel yard. They proceeded to drive straight into the vacant indoor lot of a nearby mill, the massive steel auto-doors closing behind them. The police immediately set up a perimeter and surrounded the building, SWAT only a minute out.

She took a second to look away and check on Helena's team, telling Alfred to go ahead on unlock the sewer entrance for them, as they were only a few minutes out.

Looking back to the scene with Convoy B, she saw that her father's partner, Harvey Bullock, was attempting to start negotiations with the group over a megaphone, but that the group inside had no reply for them. But just as Barbara started considering the possibility that the group had ran, a window shattered on the second story of the mill, as a hidden figure fired gas canisters at the massive crowd of cops. The cops who breathed in the gas fell to the ground, unconscious but not dead. Her eye was caught by a CCTV feed from the other side of the building. As one of the hoods shot the knockout gas out the front, inciting the cops to fire back out of panic, their fellow officers around the building came to aid them, not realizing that they'd given an escape route to the assailants.

They came out, two by two, forcing the inmates they had kidnaped to behave at gunpoint, and headed for a nearby manhole cover. By the time she managed to hack into the police radio and warn the officers, the group was long gone, disappearing into the only part of Gotham her eyes couldn't see. She set the computer to scan footage throughout the city for any sightings of the hoods or the inmates they had taken in their raid on the asylum and in their raid on the convoy teams, but there was still at least one hood left inside the steel mill: the one with the tracer. The hood had knocked out half the police force when SWAT finally showed up, gasmasks equipped before they even stepped out.

She kept the windows to the mill's security camera system open and playing, but she also opened new windows that showed the bodycam footage from the eight-man team of SWAT officers. The team breached through the steel access door and into the lot, finding the trucks there, but no hoods and none of the inmates being transported. They split up in teams of four to search room by room for the assailant/assailants left, and Barbara stopped breathing when one of the teams finally started to open the door leading into the room where the tracer was located.

They opened it, but instead of an angry, dangerous figure she thought they'd find, they found nothing. Nothing except a red bat spray-painted into the floor of the small storage room, with her dad's tracker smack in the center of it. They continued searching for hours, but Barbara had already stopped watching, as she knew that they would find nothing. She gave one last message to the rest of their little "family" before focusing completely on finding out just who this new "Red Hood Gang" was.

Helena's group had shown up with the still semi-conscious Selina Kyle during the SWAT raid, but they knew better than to tell Barbara that she needed to rest now that the sun was starting to come up.

Stephanie wasn't too injured and had a worrisome mother to calm down, so she headed home, promising to do better next time and to be ready whenever they needed her. While the rest of them just decided to stick around. Selina knew her Bat would be worried without at least being able to see her, Helena knew he'd probably want her to at least give him her side of the story, and Thomas had a few broken ribs he'd been hiding, so he had to be placed in the infirmary alongside his fellow feline.

J'onn hated how scattered the league was as of late.

He'd accepted his role as the mission control of the massive team after the event last summer when the Legion of Doom had stolen Batman's contingency plans on each of them, which had ended in the league losing a lot of the faith it placed in the Dark Knight and those close to him, such as Oracle, and his temporary removal from the team. He accepted this role, and all of the stress that came with it. But still, the league's current state was unnerving, even to the martian.

The various smaller teams that the league commanded and cooperated with were all dealing with issues all on their own, Superman and his family were in different galaxies, Kyle Rainer was the only one of the four Green Lanterns assigned to their sector that remained on Earth, Aquaman was dealing with political unrest in Atlantis due to his constant "abuse" of his kingly ability to give his wife Mera his power in times of an emergency so that he could aid the league, and so on.

The most powerful member of the league who could deal with a true crisis should the need arise at present beyond himself was Diana, and she was currently unconscious alongside Bruce after returning from a mission with him to Qurac to investigate rumors of a rouge amazon being connected to the violent dictator in power there, during which she had been mind controlled, leading into a fight Bruce had barely been able to survive by teleporting the two of them to the Hall of Justice. J'onn had just managed to incapacitate her before Bruce crumbled, several bones broken and exhausted.

Should someone like Doomsday arrive to reap death and destruction upon the Earth, it would go no better than that monster's first appearance had. It frustrated him to no end that after all their troubles following that awful day to make the League strong once more, they still had times like this, when the size and power they now wielded seemed to weigh them down like a mighty dragon with wings too heavy to fly. He thought over their position and how he could remedy it as he walked from his room to the medical facility within their great hall, the greatest stronghold ever built, designed to protect the league from their greatest enemies.

He missed the times when the Watchtower was the team's headquarters, when it had just been the seven of them. But over time, both using the space station as their headquarters and the team consisting of seven members had become novelties, ones that could not survive if the world was to. So, while their old base still rotated the earth every night, remaining a fallback option and as a transport in times of great peril elsewhere in the universe, the league had built this hall. Bruce, mainly. It had made them paranoid, a few of them even suggesting that the hall was built as a prison for them, until they were reminded that a vast majority of the league's enemies had powers similar to theirs, making the question of whether or not Batman had designed the facility to protect them or to protect against them of little consequence compared to his contingency plans.

He heard voices coming from the room Batman was in before he even opened the door. He used his powers to look into the room and to better hear to conversation. He saw that Batman had awoken from his rest, and that his ward was speaking to him while his current partner stood by. Richard seemed to be fine, while Timothy looked worn out, but uninjured. The older of the two had been investigating rumors of the infamous "Outlaws", a group the league had been seeking out for a couple years by that point, and his second successor had been sent alongside his team and his predecessor's team to deal with a human trafficking ring operating in Motor City that Cyborg had been tipped off to, operated by their long-live enemies, The Hive.

"Bruce, you can't come like this. You're still exhausted, and the healing bots haven't had enough time to fix you up. At least wait until tonight."

"Dick, I can't just sit here while he's in town."

"You said it yourself years ago that he turned over a new leaf, even if he is still a bit rough. He's not gonna come burn down the manor or anything. And even if he tries it, I'll be there this time. I can deal with Bane. You can't. Not in this state. And whatever this new group is up to, be they The Outlaws or anyone else, Tim and Babs can figure it out just as well as you could in that time. Twelve hours, Bruce, that's all I'm asking."

"...what about Joker?"

"I'll find him, too, if he tries anything before you get done resting up. Him and his little gang of psychos."

"Fine. If you promise me you'll both be safe."

The boys did so, and Tim shared a nod with Bruce as they walked out, straight past the invisible martian. They closed the door behind themselves, and J'onn looked on with melancholy while Dick put an arm over his fellow Robin. He reminisced on the times when Dick had been even smaller than Tim now was, and, much more sorrowfully, on the very few times he'd met Jason Todd, Dick's first successor.

Many looked down upon that boy. It helped them distance themselves from the blame if they could say that it was his own temper and inexperience that had killed him, as if the majority of the league and the titans shunning him for not being Dick had nothing to do with the stress and anger issues...as if everyone other than a select few of them being willing to show him the ropes had nothing to do with his lack of experience and skill when compared to his predecessor. The martian was one of the few who still thought of him kindly, from time to time. Clark, Diana, and especially Bruce did, but not many others. Few had known him enough to reminisce on the boy at all, to J'onn's knowledge.

His head dropped as he couldn't help but think of that clown, and his interaction with him after that fateful day, when Clark had come back to the watchtower with a disheveled expression that didn't fit his kind face, telling them all what had happened.

J'onn had come to Arkham to lobotomize the clown. Whether or not J'onn had cared for the boy, the clown had learned his identity, and that meant he had learned Bruce's. Before he preformed the lobotomy on the sleeping clown whom Bruce had put in a full body cast, only being stopped from killing him by Clark, he looked into the depraved mind. The images of what he saw within haunted him to this day, not only of the second Robin's death, but of every depraved act the clown had ever committed.

As he prepared his mind like a hammer and chisel, ready to end the madman's mind, Batman revealed himself. He told J'onn that he had no right to pawn off killing someone as "a medical accident", or to lie to them about following the principles of the league without actually having to do it as the rest of them did.

"Besides,", the melancholy Dark Knight had said, halfway growling, "he already knew who I was. He just didn't care."

J'onn had left that night, Joker's mind still intact, but he hadn't liked it then, and he didn't like it now as he couldn't help but envision a crowbar making impact with that hot-headed teenager too stubborn to just give up and stop fighting.

He looked up and over at Bruce, and saw his lips say something he hadn't heard, but could understand all the same.

Come in.

He opened the door, now visible, and stepped inside.

"Bruce."

"J'onn. I need you to do something for me."

"Anything."

"Stop spying. All you and Clark do with that is make me even more paranoid."

"Bruce, we both know you said that without knowing I was there."

"Do we?"

"...Fair point. I will strive not to "spy" as much."

"Thank you. Now bring me everything we have on The Outlaws."

"I thought you just told Dick you'd-"

"I said I would stay here. I didn't say anything about sleep.", the aging billionaire said with a smirk that seemed alien due to the scowl lines that accompanied it.

If you're new to comics or have never read any, let me suggest Batman: Cult if you want to better understand who Jason Todd was as a character, before he died and was then brought back as a cry baby with no amygdala.