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Batman 1939: Swimming in the Styx
Chapter 4: Rising Action
A flock of neighbors clustered around Arturo Bertinelli's apartment door. Some were drawn by the the 'thump' of heavy objects hitting the floor. Most were drawn by the screaming. They had arrived in their night clothes carrying rolling pins, canes, shoes, and other domestic weapons. It was that sort of building. When the boldest of the flock, an octogenarian named Gretchen, knocked on the door, there was no answer. A few neighbors tried to yell inside, but no one responded. Soon they heard a low, unfamiliar voice in the room, speaking to another occupant. The voice spoke for minutes, but it was too soft and deep for anyone to understand.
The neighbors faced a dilemma. There knew exactly who owned the room (no one else had a brick facade), and they knew that whatever was happening inside was bad. But was it the kind of bad that needed the police? Or was it the kind of bad that definitely should not involve the police? That was the problem with living around wise guys: they had plenty of expectations, but they weren't the type to share. No one published a civilian handbook for this sort of grey area. The mob didn't offer a yearly seminar.
As they debated, the stairwell door was kicked open and Wonder Woman leaped in. Shocking a Gothamite was next to impossible, but she came close. The flock watched her approach at a brisk jog. Wonder Woman stopped in front of them, arms akimbo, and proclaimed, "Don't worry, I'm here to assist."
They stared at her mutely. Someone coughed. After a moment, Gretchen hobbled forward and squinted at her. "Who're you s'posed to be?"
"I'm sorry, this is Mr. Bertinelli's room, yes?"
The flock shared suspicious glances. Gretchen answered, "Maybe."
There was a ripping noise and heavy footsteps inside the apartment. Then a pained moan.
Wonder Woman gave her a look. Gretchen shrugged. "Yeah."
Wonder Woman went to the door and tried to open it. A young man informed her unhelpfully that it was locked. She set her arm and tried again. After a moment of struggle, the latch broke through the strikeplate, and the door swung open. Her audience raised a collective eyebrow. Behind the door she found a barrier of overlapped steel slats. Wonder Woman turned and pointed at it. "Is this normal?" The neighbors shook their heads. Wonder Woman turned back, crouched, and slid her fingers under the edge of a slat. She took a deep breath.
Forty seconds ago.
"Your fingerprints match this set on the foreman's satchel. You've also touched this paper I found inside your bookkeeper's trash can, dated the same day the foreman's messenger stopped by your office. It lists a sum of bill denominations. You deposited that same sum three days later at the Manfred Savings and Loan on Union Street. It says so on this bank receipt."
"That- that was in a locked box in my study! You were in my house!"
"Prove it."
"You, you- but you're no cop. Yeah, big guy, none of that will be admissible in court! That's tamperin'. How about that, huh?"
Batman gently shook his head. Arturo would have called it pitying if his fingers weren't bent sideways. "The court will find that due process was followed to the letter, with all evidence the product of routine police work. We both know these matters can be arranged." The grin appeared again. "After all, I don't exist."
Arturo looked furiously at the papers laid on the end table. He leaped out of his chair and grabbed the pile with his good hand. Then he used his mouth to rip them in half. Then in half again. Then he crumpled the shreds into a ball, dropped it, and stepped on them as hard as he could. Batman watched this effort quietly until Arturo stopped to pant.
"Those weren't the only copies."
Arturo fell to his knees and moaned, his head bent down in exhaustion.
Batman gave him a moment to reflect. "Convinced yet?"
"Si animale sporco. You can't threaten me, ya lunatic. You don't- You're nobody. You're just nobody."
"Think it over. I have all night."
Batman heard a sharp creak of bent metal and splintered wood. Someone had opened the locked door to the hallway. Forcing a latch through an old interior door frame was simple as far as strongman tricks went. Fortunately for doors, very few people were strongmen. Unfortunately for him, one had apparently joined the bystanders. He mentally shrugged; it was a slight bump in his plan, but ultimately a moot point. The door didn't matter. Batman made a note to check if any neighbors were weightlifters next time.
As he committed this to memory, he heard a much louder noise - a long agonized shriek of straining metal.
Batman turned this time. The latches that locked the barrier to the floor were quivering. He watched slack-jawed.
That wasn't possible.
The two tempered steel latches were drilled deep into the room's brick foundation. He could hardly fathom the effort it would take to pull them out – at least a thousand pounds of vertical force, maybe two. A car jack might do it eventually, but there was no gap under the barrier to position one. No, something had simply gripped the steel wall and lifted - a feat that would challenge a silver-back gorilla. It rose two inches, then four, then eight. A pair of red boots appeared.
His mind raced, but his thoughts kept crashing into dead ends. Physics was one of Batman's weakest academic disciplines. He had mastered enough for practical uses like chemistry and ballistics, but the more esoteric branches, those strange new ideas about cosmic rays or the nature of time, were never worth his time. He regretted that now. Obscure insights on relativity might be helpful here, because his little Newtonian brain said that what he saw was impossible. He had heard rumors of impossible things in the far corners of the world, some a little too sensible, but he had always been a skeptic. No one could do this. Nothing could do this. Nothing could do this. Logic failed. He broke into a cold sweat.
Arturo Bertinelli had already crawled to the far corner and hid behind the bed. It was his first wise decision that night. The last person who broke into his safe house with their bare hands hadn't been friendly. Arturo watched the steel barrier shake. He saw Batman stare at the door with the static intensity of a starving wolf defending a kill (something he had actually seen once on a hunting trip - the beast had been terrifying). If the rumors were right, Batman was about to do something devastating and unexpected. Arturo held his breath, waiting with morbid anticipation.
The Dark Knight turned and sprinted away through the hole in the wall.
That was unexpected.
Wonder Woman's body trembled from her shoulders to her knees as she lifted the latches out of their foundation. All the weight was on her fingertips, and she was genuinely concerned that all the lifting would push her feet through the floor. Fortunately, she happened to be standing on the edge of the bricks that fortified the bottom of the apartment. After raising the barrier just over her knees, the deep rods securing the latches ripped out, and the rest slid up like a feather.
She found a small room with a disheveled older man trying to hide behind a bed and a large hole in the wall. The neighbors peered around her in silence. Wonder Woman stepped in. With a cold anger, she saw that his face and clothes were stained with blood, and he was favoring an injured hand. She took a knee beside him.
"Mr. Bertinelli?"
Despite his obvious shock, the man's eyes were sharp. He scrutinized her. "Who wants ta know?"
She respected that. The government was lucky to find such a careful and loyal asset. "Don't worry, I'm with the military." Mindful of the crowd, she leaned in and whispered, "Was the Bat Man here?"
He grimaced. "Just ran off when you broke my door."
"Well, I'm to bring you to safety, let's-"
"Na, na, no. Listen honey, you look set for a brawl. Go after him."
"Sir, I'm-"
"The guy's a public menace. He did this to me laughing, and he said he was gonna do worse all over town!"
She nodded seriously and stood. "Help is coming. Stay safe."
"Run quick, toots."
Wonder Woman ran. The room beyond the hole was much the same, only there were dozens of bricks stacked in front of the door, and the window was open. She looked out into the dark and smell of the night. The window was in the back of the Twelfth Street Arms above an alley. The roof across was ten feet away and ten feet down. She stepped onto the windowsill and peered around. There was some decorative stonework to her left, between her window and next one. Wonder Woman quickly noticed a thin rope tied to a sturdy peak in the decoration. She followed it with her eyes. It was difficult to see in the dark, but the rope stretched loosely across the alley to a chimney on the far roof below.
Wonder Woman leaped, heedless of the frightening drop. She landed nimbly on the the other roof. Where now?
Cities were a terribly alien environment, Gotham in particular. She had spent months in Washington, but the nation's capital was a sleepy village compared to this hive. Half the inhabitants seemed either a wretch or a villain, and everything was covered in scum. But she was a huntress, Artemis-blessed, and no mere brute would best her tonight. She squatted and examined the gravel roof. If he came across the rope, he had to have landed very close to the chimney that anchored it. The gravel here was fairly soft and thick. Indeed, Wonder Woman quickly spied a pair of foot-sized depressions, with shallower copies moving ahead. The gait was long: he was either running or eight feet tall. She followed the tracks at a brisk speed, stopping to check the path in short pauses. Between this building and the next was an alley so narrow even a regular man could jump over, and the tracks didn't slow near the edge. She swiftly picked up the trail on the other side. As she grew more confident where the steps headed, she sped up until she covered the distance at an uncanny speed.
But then the roof ended, and the next building had sloped shingles instead of gravel. She leaped up and looked around. There were no more roofs to reach from here, and shingles didn't leave a trail. He could have climbed down in any direction. She hopped to the top of a nearby radio mast. Her Bat Man had a minute's head-start, surely he wasn't too far away. Wonder Woman was now quite a distance from residential Twelfth Street. This was a place of industry and closed for the night. It was more spacious here. The architecture was long and bland. Unlike most of the city, parking lots were plentiful. She knew by the light of the full moon that the roads were wide and empty of pedestrians; only a few trucks passed though.
There seemed to be too much open ground for anyone to hide. A crowded street with a thousand warrens to duck inside would have made pursuit impossible, and the city had an endless supply of them, yet he came this way. Perhaps he feared crowds as much as he feared her. Wonder Woman forced herself to relax and focused her senses. This was the highest point in the vicinity with many clear lines of sight. She soaked in the scenery, priming her eyes to notice any movement.
There! Two hundred yards away, a side door of an unfinished building opened. Wonder Woman stepped off the radio mast, grabbed a drainpipe, slid to the ground, and crossed the distance in seventeen seconds.
Batman's normal mental state was beyond what most people could experience. He possessed a crystalline clarity that couldn't be shaken or overwhelmed. Most minds worked like a rowboat in a gale. He ordered his thoughts like a set of bookshelves in a quiet room. That was the norm. Batman's current mental state was more like someone stuck in an elevator with a bee hive. He had taken precautions against every possible interference tonight, so of course tonight was when he met the impossible. This was the first time that he had to sweat in his new armor. It made the joints very uncomfortable. Batman cursed the pile of scrap. Not for the discomfort, that meant nothing, but for the burden. He valued agility over every other physical trait, and now he would struggle to place at a high school track meet.
He was so distracted that he momentarily forgot what he was doing. This husk of a building would eventually be a GothCorp frozen food plant. It was in the middle stages of construction, and its disposal room had two industrial-size pipes descending to a low level of the sewers but not yet connected to the machines. The Gotham City underground was easily the deepest and most diverse in the hemisphere. To paraphrase Victor Hugo, Gotham had another Gotham under herself; a city of sewers; which had its streets, its crossings, its squares, its blind alleys, its arteries, and its circulation. The old city had been digging basements, tunnels, mines, drains, bunkers, cisterns, and catacombs for hundreds of years. A traveler could move everywhere if they knew how but wouldn't be going anywhere if they didn't. He wasn't sure what the being at the apartment was capable of - he didn't even know if he was being chased - but if there was one place where he could lose pursuit no matter how strong or fast his pursuer, it was the underground, and these pipes would lead him to the biggest hub in the district.
Batman slid over the stacked conveyor belts and crawled through half-finished walls. In little time he made it to the disposal room. The openings of the two pipes were in the floor, covered with a stack of heavy crates. He pushed, moving the crates at an agonizing pace. Before he could finish, he heard a noise from outside. He disappeared.
Wonder Woman rammed through the door shoulder-first. It took six steps to slow down. She found herself in some sort of manufactory, pitch dark save for the occasional hole in the roof. She found a switch that turned on a scattering of nearby lights, but it didn't help much. The building had two tall stories and was segmented by many walls, but most of the walls and floor were skeletal, showing the building's viscera in the strange frames of Man's architecture. She could glimpse nearly the length of the interior if it was bright enough to see. Wonder Woman walked ahead, confident that none could slip by her keen senses this close.
Batman hung from the ceiling in a dark corner like bat. Also like his namesake, he listened intently to his surroundings. Light footsteps walked randomly though the building. Its gait sounded like a woman. Batman remembered the red boots, and his breath caught in his throat. After several minutes, the footsteps neared his hiding place. A humanoid shape soon stepped into the room, each slow footstep a drumbeat in the silence. It passed under a patch of moonlight, and he furrowed his brow in disbelief. Watching above and upside-down, he could see simulacra of arteries on its neck. Its chest region rose and fall as if it breathed. But it couldn't possibly be organic life. It's nasal-form twitched when it passed through dust, and the pupils of its eye-analogues contracted when it stepped into the light. But it couldn't possibly be human. The being glanced around the room. His nerves sparked like firecrackers. Then its eyes crossed over him. An eternity passed. But the being didn't react. It continued around a corner.
Batman waited forty-eight seconds before he dared to draw a breath. Since he first saw the steel barrier rise, Batman's imagination had run wild. He recalled beings from fiction and myth during his escape. If his aggressor had one unnatural power, it might have any of them. All the rules were gone. It might fly. Read minds. Stop his heart with a thought. But now solid lines were returning to the world. Now he knew it couldn't sense his presence in an extraordinary way. It couldn't see in the dark. It couldn't or wouldn't tear down the building to force him out. It was bound by the same gravity. He could work with this. Fiction and myth also said that even the supernatural could be slain. He dropped to the floor.
It was a twelve foot fall. He shifted to make a noiseless three-point landing, a hand and both feet, but he hadn't practiced acrobatics in the armor. His left leg buckled and the metal kneepad struck the cement with an awkward klunk.
The footsteps in the far room stopped. Then they started again, fast, loud, and coming his way. He jumped atop a tall spool of wire then wall-kicked to a beam on the ceiling where he could swing up to the second floor. Then he scaled a pillar to the roof. Batman sprinted as a voice behind him yelled, "Stop!" He ignored this and was nearly at the edge of the roof when he sensed motion above. He rolled to the side. The being leaped overhead in a somersault and landed ten feet in front of him. He rose to a low crouch. It turned, placing it's hand-assemblies on its hip-zone.
"Stop."
So it spoke. Batman let his cape drape over his arms and stood in silence.
"The Bat, I presume. You're a public menace, and I'm here to take you to justice."
It had a woman's voice, confident, not hostile, but certainly not happy with him. Whatever lab or dimension it came from made mistakes with the language: it's English had a strong and unfamiliar accent. Batman looked at it for a moment, then he turned and headed towards another edge of the roof.
It took a step forward. "I don't want to hurt you."
He kept walking away. "Then don't."
It fumed and began to jog towards him. Before it could take a third step, Batman turned and, in the time it took the cape to shift aside, threw two batarangs. The being stood its ground. In a blur, both missiles ricocheted off the shiny bracers on its arms. Neither party moved as weapons bounced harmlessly on the metal roof.
It made a small smile. "You can't touch me."
With a flick, Batman produced six more batarangs. The being lifted an eyebrow and raised its arms for a fight. The Dark Knight dashed forward. He threw the three in his left hand then the three in his right. The being blocked the first three with the same uncanny reflexes. The next three blades missed its body by yards. As the being finished deflecting the first set, it realized the batarangs that missed were boomeranging back along three different arcs. The thing pivoted just in time to intercept the boomerangs. Then it turned to face him again, but Batman had already closed the distance. His flying knee drove straight into its breastplate.
Batman discovered that at least the being had the same mass as a real woman. His alloy knee connected squarely with its chest and knocked it flat. Inertia was a beautiful thing. He landed but tripped on his first step. Even lying prone, it had reached back and caught his ankle. The being stood, still holding his ankle in a solid grip. He couldn't shake it, so he used the supported ankle as a anchor and pistoned his other heel to its inner thigh just above its knee. This was a surefire wayto break a normal knee, but he was quickly realizing that he couldn't win this gently, and with an ember of enthusiasm, that he didn't have to.
The being's knee stayed intact, but it winced and let go of him. Batman sprung to his feet and nearly walked into a punch. The volley came fast, as fast as any pugilist he'd faced before, maybe faster. They were the same height, so it had ample reach, and each strike landed like the blunt end of a tire iron - battering his arms and shoulders as he weaved around. The prototype was designed to be hit by tire irons, but every hit still stung. Finally, the being feinted and landed a twitch-quick side-kick to the gut that sent him stumbling backwards, then a high kick that lightly clipped his mouth. This glancing blow flayed a path of skin from the corner of his lip to his ear. Batman finally raised his arms, but the being slipped under and tackled him, landing on top. But for all its speed and strength, this was a mistake. Maybe it underestimated him; he didn't care. Arm speed meant much less in a grapple. And its formidable psudeo-muscles had nothing to push against without leverage. Before Batman slid to a stop, he gripped an arm and pulled into a triangle choke. The being seemed to breathe: he could fix that. They rolled as it struggled to pry him off. It hit him repeatedly with its free arm, but it couldn't reach his face, so he held on through the pain, tightening the choke.
It managed to get its feet under it and stood, lifting him bodily into the air, then slammed him down against the roof. He held on. It lifted and slammed him again, then again, then again. He let go on the fourth impact. It stepped hard on his chest. The armor took the blow, but it still shook him like a wave. He rolled away to his feet and tried an uppercut. It caught his wrist in that marble grip. He threw a cross with his other fist, but that wrist was caught too. He leaned back and, with extraordinary flexibility, brought a leg up and kicked the being in the chin three times. With a bark of frustration, it forced him to his knees, then swung him by the wrists into the brick wall of a roof stairwell entrance. It pulled him to his feet against it, pinning his arms up against the wall.
"Yield!"
Batman panted and didn't resist. A membrane of blood covered his teeth from his cut lip and his body was a blanket of bruises. The being's own flawless features had been marred. Its neck was still tinged red from the choke, there were small gashes on its face and limbs, and its hair was dusty and askew. Overall, far less damage then he would expect from a person. He could feel it breathing a touch faster than before. It seemed to gather its composure.
"You will come peaceably, scofflaw. Do you understand?"
The being held his gauntlets firmly against the wall, but it didn't hold his hands. The wrists of the heavy gloves were lined with steel bands that kept their shape under pressure - grasping them wouldn't constrict the cuff openings. The Dark Knight had a well-honed gift for legerdemain; he held his palms rigid and smoothly slipped his hands out. It was another simple slight of hand to drive his thumbs into his captor's eyes.
Whatever it was made of, that still hurt. It roared and thrashed. He grimaced through a blow to his shoulder that cracked the armor plate. Leaning forward, he gouged in further, using the eye sockets as purchase to grip the face with his other fingers. Employing this leverage, he threw its head into the brick wall. The head bounced off in a mist of powdered clay, and he volleyed it back with a punishing elbow strike to the temple.
In the pause between breaths, he marveled that its skin, her skin, felt like any woman's: same weight, same warmth, same follicles, pulse, and texture. He saw that she bled from a new cut on her forehand where his sharp elbow raked her. And it was certainly blood. He knew blood. Maybe some paranormal magic could fake a voice and a mind, but blood? That smell and that heat couldn't be faked. He didn't care how irrational that sounded, he refused to believe it. He couldn't say if she was human, but she was, by any sane taxonomy, a person.
With inhuman speed, she caught her balance and twisted with a perfectly proficient back fist that would have taken off his jaw if he hadn't been waiting for it from the start. He leaned just outside her swing and thrust up a batarang -this one long and thin, more a stiletto than a throwing star. Her momentum sunk the blade into her fist. Incredibly, she kept swinging, ignoring the steel point in her flesh which fell out at its zenith. She threw a left hook, but he was already counterpunching to that arm, stabbing another batarang through her inner elbow, hitting the soft curve under her bicep. This one he twisted, then hastily pulled out to block her right jab. His timing was off, and the weapon fell out of his grasp against her shiny bracer.
The jab staggered him, but he could sense this fierce counter-assault was running out of steam. Incredibly, her eyes seemed basically unharmed, but were bloodshot and unfocused. She was holding her left arm low, suffering the elbow wound. Her next kick was amateur. He let it glance off his ribs as he stepped up to bat. His arms were too close for her to grab or push away. He reached up and slapped her ears sharply, then drew a hand back, turned his shoulder, and smashed the heel of his palm across the side of her nose.
As she spun from the blow, briefly exposing her back, Batman crouched low. In a single motion, he produced another thin batarang from his belt and slammed the point into the soft tendon behind her knee like he was burying a tent stake. Again, her skin felt human, but the flesh underneath was inhumanly tough. Even at that fragile spot, her tendons had the durability of mixed cement: smooth and supple as a muscle but so paradoxically dense that only the most forceful strike with a sharp tool could hope to nick it. But the Dark Knight never lacked for strength. His own mortal tendons strained as he sunk the blade deep and pulled it sideways through the joint. For any human and most large mammals this would instantly collapse the leg, but Batman took no chances. He left the blade and seized her foot and ankle with both hands. Batman stood and stepped back, keeping her off balance, then he torqued the foot around like the handle of a socket wrench.
She made a noise through gritted teeth that might have been a cry. He dropped the sprained ankle, hugged her just above the hips, heaved, and arced backwards into a German Suplex. Her shoulders struck the roof, but he didn't bother looking. He leaped up and sprinted for the edge. Just yards away, his upper body was yanked backwards like a dog on a leash. He landed on his back with his legs in the air. When his vision cleared, he looked down and saw a shimmering golden cord around his chest, over one shoulder and under the other armpit. He rose to a knee and tried to slip it off, but it seemed to cinch with the effort. Another harsh tug from behind pulled him down again.
He saw the woman approach, slow and angry, but with hardly a limp. She held the golden cord that had been looped at her side. Batman squinted at this puzzle. Forget her recovery, how had she snared him? Throwing a rope that far with just a moment to aim was an incredible feat, but to arc over a moving target? The trajectories didn't exist. He crawled backwards on one arm until his shoulder hit the low barrier around the edge of the roof. By then she stood over him. They eyed each other coldly.
"Why did you attack Arturo Bertinelli?"
It sounded as a much a command as a question. Batman tried to respond with something shrewd and deceptive, but he felt a sudden itch in his face and throat. Horrified, Batman realized some foreign presence was soothing his mind and sapping his focus. His lips quivered. Before he knew it, he was speaking.
"He's a dangerous kidnapper. I was trying to coerce him into revealing where he had taken his victims."
Whatever the lady with the lasso was expecting, that wasn't it. Her mouth fell half-open, and she watched him strangely. Batman couldn't have cared less. He was still processing the shock of his outburst. Was he suffering a seizure? Had he been hypnotized?
She finally decided something and spoke again. "What is your name?"
The itch in his face returned, and he felt his hostility being gently smothered. He clenched his jaw, but before he knew it sound slipped out. "I'm Batman."
She rolled her eyes. "What is your given name? What were you called at birth?"
Batman tried to keep it in. His face turned red and his cheeks puffed and his head shook. A vein twitched in his neck. "... Bbbb ... Bbbbbbbrrrrr ..."
"Yes?"
He raised a trembling hand up, as if pleading. "Bbbbrrrrrrrrrr ..."
"What is it?"
He turned the hand and struck himself in the throat. His voice collapsed to a choking gargle.
The woman stared in astonishment. She pulled tight on the cord. "No! Speak!"
He grinned as he choked, showing the blood on his teeth. She could have sworn he was trying to laugh. The woman lifted him up by his collar. He spit in her eye then frog-kicked off her body, sailing over the edge of the roof.
