Reviews:
H Max Marius: Oh. Didn't realize either of those things. I guess I didn't pay enough attention... Oops. I'll definitely go back and fix the thing with Batman knowing the Brockton Bay Brigade's identities. And I'll try to figure out a way to re-write the fight scene to include either Heith or Iron Rain instead of Purity. Thanks for pointing out those mistakes, I would never have realized I had made them otherwise!
Two years had passed since Batman had woken up in Brockton Bay. It was now 1998. He had managed to use his money from his job as a lawyer to buy what he needed to make several devices and pitch them to the PRT and some other investors. Specifically he pitched some non-lethal freeze grenades based on the cryogenic technology of Mr. Freeze to capture villains without killing them, mass producible computers that were quite literally decades ahead of their time and could be made at cheaper prices than current computers, smart phones, and two other pieces of relatively basic technology his company had developed for the police and military back in his world.
He succeeded in acquiring quite a few investors but by far his largest investor was the PRT. They invested tens of millions into Wayne Enterprises. Bruce found it almost suspicious how much they invested without him doing much convincing on his part. But it was within the upper bounds of what he predicted they might be willing to invest, and was still below his maximum prediction.
He planned to expand Wayne Enterprises business further of course. The automotive industry, aerospace, food, the oil and chemical industries, biotechnology, the medical industry, shipping, ship building, banking, and charity. Essentially everything Wayne Enterprises was into back in his original world. On top of all the divisions that Waye Enterprises had back in his world, he also planned to make an extra tinker-tech division if he could find some tinkers willing to work for him. Though he'd have to work out specialized contracts for them since he knew they would probably want to reap at least some of the benefits of their technology and could start businesses of their own if they truly wanted. Regardless, all of that would take time.
As Batman he had established a decent relationship with the PRT, Police, and Brockton Bay Brigade. And just like in Gotham all of the non-powered criminals knew of him, and nearly all of them feared him more than any other hero in the city. And while he hadn't managed to arrest more than a handful of super powered villains, he had fought them enough times they had some respect for him.
He had plans to update his suit by developing a suit that would be more resistant to blasts like Lady Photon's or Purity's, which could save his life in the future as he had several very close calls against the villain and only survived through pure skill and luck. Even if it could only help him survive a single blast that would be better than what he currently had. And he planned to make a headband to resist certain types of master effects, based on anti-psychic technology he had developed in the past to resist the mind control of white martians, and sell them to the PRT while incorporating the technology into his own mask given the threat of parahumans with "master" abilities. He knew the technology wouldn't work on all forms of master abilities that controlled people, but even working on some of them was better than nothing as far as he was concerned. However, he didn't have the equipment to make either of those changes just yet.
Batman was currently on patrol. Seeing a mutilated corpse lying in the middle of an alley, he moved to investigate. He started by checking the injuries. Knife wounds. Stabs and cuts. A large wound in the stomach, the likely cause of death by bleeding out. Hamstrings severed. Whoever it was that did this didn't want them running. Judging by the trail of blood, the victim tried to crawl away. Trying to get to the street?
Batman looked and saw a flip phone laying on the ground about eight feet away from the body. Likely left there intentionally by whoever did this to further torment the victim before they died. The victim was trying to get to the phone to call for help, but never made it. The murderer knew they wouldn't make it.
Batman checked the pockets and found the victim's wallet. Checking it he saw all the money and cards were still there. The culprit had no interest in any of it. That left revenge, an E88 initiation gone too far, or just pure sick pleasure as the motives. Considering how brutal it was, Batman was leaning closer to pure sick pleasure or revenge. The neo-nazis were disgusting but even they didn't normally go this far, especially the ones undergoing initiation. Usually it was a beating or in the more extreme cases a quick bullet to the head or heart, nothing like this. Unless the initiate was already a brutal murderer anyway. So while he wasn't ruling out the Empire entirely, considering the race of the victim, he found them to be less likely than the other two options.
He looked at the victim's ID and found the name. He then contacted the police with his cowl's built-in communicator. He had given the PD a communicator for him to call them with so he could just cut out the middleman and skip the emergency services operator. And it also let them contact him directly whenever they needed his assistance. Typically that usually involved an investigation they were having trouble with, as he was a detective, but sometimes they did contact him to help with hostage situations, surprise cape activity, and other such things.
"Batman? How can I help you tonight?" The Police Dispatcher inquired.
"I would like to report a murder." Batman said the name of the victim and gave a location to come find the body. "The wounds are all knife inflicted. The murderer wanted him to suffer. Let him bleed out. They didn't steal his wallet or anything inside. I'm trying to narrow down the reason. Any outstanding warrants or a past history? Domestic abuse, drug use, or anything else like that?"
"No… His record's clean. A couple parking violations and a speeding ticket or two. Otherwise, nothing."
"Thank you." Batman said before ending the call.
He could hear a police siren approaching already. Lucky. Apparently a cop was already close when he made the call.
Taking out his grapple gun, Batman grappled up to a nearby roof. He was going to find the murderer, of course. And the police were willing to cooperate with him on that front, as usual. He had no evidence to support this but something in his gut told him that this wasn't going to be the only victim tonight. So he had to go. If he could stop a murder before it happened, he had to at least try. And the victim was still relatively fresh which meant the murderers had to still be somewhere relatively close by, unless they were in a car or on a motorcycle, which he found unlikely if they were planning on targeting more victims. More likely they were on foot. And that meant there was a chance he could catch up with them if he hurried.
He might have taken his newly made batcycle instead but he didn't want to let them hear him coming. Plus there was a risk he might not notice the murderer if he was just driving by.
Searching for about ten minutes he eventually heard a woman screaming, a man shouting, and a child crying.
Rushing over to the source of the noise he saw a family cornered by several villains he recognized as the Slaughter House Nine. Jack Slash, Chuckles, Hatchet Face, Crimson, Crawler, Nyx, Psychosoma, and Breed. Only six members. There used to be nine, but the other members were dead.
Activating his cowl's communicator he called the PRT and without giving the dispatcher a chance to say anything he said, "The Slaughter House Nine are in Brockton, they are about to assault a family of three. I'm going to engage, but I will need parahuman reinforcements and an ambulance." He then gave the dispatcher his location. He then hung up before the dispatcher could say so much as a single word to him. He didn't have time to talk.
"Hm. Which of you three to kill first? Do I skin the child alive in front of the parents or do I force the child to watch as Breed's insects eat his parents alive?" Jack said, holding a knife threateningly.
"Leave my family alone, damn you!" The father shouted.
Jack extended the blade of his knife and stabbed the father in the shoulder, causing him to cry out in pain. "It seems we have a volunteer!"
Batman jumped off the roof and threw two electrified batarangs. One hit Nyx, knocking out the villain before she could use her poison gas while the other hit Chuckles, knocking him out as well. And Batman landed on Psychosoma knocking him to the ground, before punching the villain in the face and knocking him out so he couldn't turn the family into monsters and use them against him.
Finally he threw a pair of ice grenades at Crawler and froze the monstrous cape in place. "You three, run! I'll hold them off!" Batman ordered the family before throwing smoke pellets at the rest of the nine obscuring their vision. Mainly so Jack wouldn't have line of sight to try to stab or cut the family as they ran.
"T-thank you, Batman! Come on, let's get out of here!" The father said before grabbing his wife and son's arms and running past Crawler's frozen form.
"You won't be killing anyone else tonight, Jack." Batman growled through the smoke.
"Oh, I beg to differ. Crawler?" Jack said, trying to wave some of the smoke away from his face.
Suddenly Batman noticed Crawler starting to glow red underneath the ice. Suddenly there was a loud CRACK as the layer of ice shattered off Crawler and a massive wave of heat rolled over him. Crawler's body had to be at least several hundred degrees and the material his skin had been made of seemed to have changed, likely to a far more thermally conductive material to melt the ice faster.
"Stop those three from running and bring them back here, but try not to kill them just yet. I think we can still have a bit of fun with them. Though if they refuse… You can have your own fun with them. Crimson, Hatchet Face, grab Batman and hold him down." Jack ordered.
Crawler immediately turned and began bounding down the alley way after the family.
"No!" Batman shouted. He tried to throw another ice grenade but he was just a moment too late. It exploded behind Crawler, covering the ground in a layer of ice.
He didn't have time to try to chase after them before had to duck under Hatchet Face's ax. The villain wasn't trying to kill him, as he was using the blunt side of the ax head, but Batman still wasn't about to let himself get hit.
Unfortunately Batman was up against what were essentially two villains as strong as Bane who were debatably more durable than him. Crimson was the most similar to Bane but he fed on blood instead of injecting himself with Venom, and he had clearly already fed on some of the blood of their most recent victim given what he currently looked like. Disturbingly, this suggested the victim Batman found was not the most recent victim as there had been no signs of crimson ingesting his blood. Or maybe it was the victim before that? Either way it suggested they had more victims than the one Batman had found.
Regardless, this was not going to be an easy fight and he knew it. Given how tough they both were, his electric batarangs wouldn't work on either of them. Not well enough anyway. Batman was a brute three by this world's standards due to his own strength and endurance but these two were higher on that scale than him. Crimson was apparently immune to pain but Batman could tell his punches and kicks had some effect on him whether he realized it or not as he could feel bones cracking under the force of his blows. Not completely shattering as they would have if Crimson were a normal human but merely cracking. Hatchet Face, however, was even more durable than Crimson and Batman's attacks barely left a bruise on him despite Batman not holding back on either of them in the least.
In the end it was two mid tier parahuman brutes against one highly competent non-parahuman with a minor brute rating. His opponents were faster and stronger than him. So while Batman put up a good fight, Hatchet Face eventually managed to get a lucky hit while Batman was momentarily hung up dealing with Crimson, knocking him to the ground and cracking Batman's ribs with the blunt of his ax. Crimson then took that opportunity to grab him before lifting him back up off the ground and holding him so he couldn't move his arms. Batman struggled but under equipped as he currently was, he had nothing to free himself from a situation like this.
While they were fighting, Crawler had returned with the family walking in front of him. They were forced to watch as Batman tried to fight for his and their lives.
Jack Slash clapped slowly as he approached Batman. Though he stayed just far enough away that Batman couldn't try to kick him. "Such a brutal fighter. I like it. You know, the Nine has a few open slots. And you know what? I think you would be an excellent fit."
"You think I would ever agree to join you? No. I'd rather die." Batman growled.
Jack laughed a bit, kneeling down next to Batman's head. "That's an option too. But that's boring. I've actually heard of you, you know. Before we ever got to Brockton the people and the news were already talking about you. I've heard you started out holding yourself back but you've been becoming more and more ruthless lately. You always leave your victims just shy of actually killing them, don't you? You've even permanently crippled a few, even 'accidentally' leaving a cape from the Teeth a quadriplegic after he killed some Ward. Though we both know that wasn't really an accident, no matter what the official story was now don't we? You know what I think? I think you want to do it. You want to kill every criminal you fight. You probably want to kill me right now. When you first started out you were able to restrain yourself but it's getting harder and harder not to just give in to that urge isn't it?"
Batman glared up at Jack Slash but didn't respond.
"Not much of a talker, huh? That's fine. You don't need to say anything. I can see it. You're right on the edge of crossing that boundary. And once you do, you won't be able to stop yourself. You'll keep killing and killing. All you need is the right push. Well don't worry. Jack's here to help you with that." Jack Slash said, holding his knife up to Batman's face. The blade of his knife extended and dug into Batman's cheek. Batman could feel it stab through the flesh and start scraping the bone causing fresh warm blood to start pouring from the wound, but he didn't even flinch. He refused to give the murderer the satisfaction.
Jack smiled at him and chuckled. "My, aren't you a tough one? You didn't even flinch from that!"
"I've dealt with far worse than you and anything you can do to me." Batman responded.
Jack gave him a curious look. "Really? Hm… That doesn't sound like bravado. That sounds like you actually believe it… You're turning out to be more and more interesting by the minute! Well, I wasn't planning on using physical pain to break you anyway. And I don't plan on leaving Brockton for a while, so we have plenty of time to work on getting you to cross that line of yours. In the meantime, Breed. You can feed the parents there to your little pets. Watch closely now, kid. Wouldn't want you to miss the show." Jack said as he grabbed the child and ripped him from the protective grip of his mother.
"No, no! PLEASE! HELP US! SOMEONE HELP US! AAAAAAHHHHHH!" Screamed the mother just as the insects started to eat her alive.
"GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY SON YOU PIECE OF— Ah… AAAAAAHHHHH!" The father shouted only to start screaming as well as he was also being eaten by the insects.
"MOM, DAD! NO! STOP! PLEASE STOP! DON'T HURT THEM, PLEASE!" The child begged with tears running down his face.
Batman thrashed and struggled to get free as he watched the grotesque scene. He slammed the back of his head into Crimson's nose. He kicked, he wiggled, he tried to leverage himself free, he tried everything he could think of to no avail. The villain had an iron grip on him and wasn't letting him go. After a moment of this pain shot through Batman's body as Crimson started to squeeze, apparently becoming annoyed by Batman's struggling.
Where the hell was that backup he called for?!
"Oh? Is this getting to you, little bat? Good to know. I'll have to keep this in mind. This gives me a few ideas for games we can play to give you that push you need." Jack Slash said, over the screaming and begging of the parents and the child.
"STOP! STOP IT! STOOOOOP!" The child screamed.
Suddenly the child went limp in Jack's grip and all of the villains froze. Except for Breed's insects which continued to devour the parents even as their master froze.
Batman had heard of this before. It was a trigger event. The child had just triggered and as a result the Nine blacked out along with him.
Knowing he didn't have much time to capitalize on this, he used the opportunity to break free of Crimson's grip. By the time he did, however, the Nine and the Boy had all woken back up.
Suddenly the boy's hands started glowing.
Before it could get any further than that, Jack cut one side of the boy's throat and smacked him to the ground.
"A fresh trigger! Almost makes me want to take the kid as my nominee, but no. I already made my choice." Jack laughed.
Suddenly they heard the sounds of sirens approaching.
"Did you call the PRT before coming to play with us? How clever. I suppose our work here is done for now. Batman, you have a choice. Chase us and let the kid bleed out. Or try to save the kid and let us go." Jack Slash said.
To Batman it wasn't even a choice. He immediately rushed to the kid and applied pressure to the wound in his throat. Even before applying pressure Batman could see the cut was deep. Too deep. It had severed the jugular and likely cut the carotid artery. Even if he applied pressure the boy's chances of survival were very slim unless the ambulance got there fast. Still he had to at least try.
"Not surprising but fine. We'll be seeing you again soon." Jack said. "Grab Chuckles, Psychosoma, and Nyx. We're leaving."
Hatchet Face and Crimson did as they were ordered and grabbed the unconscious capes and the group began jogging away.
Looking down at the child he said, "Listen to me, I need you to be strong and hang on. An ambulance is on the way."
"M-Mom… D-Dad…" The boy struggled to say. He tried to turn his head to look at them.
Batman positioned himself to obstruct the boy's view of his parents. "You don't want to look that way…" He said in a quieter tone. The scene was… gruesome, to say the least. Their bodies had been completely shredded by Breed's insects. They were very obviously dead. Or if one of them wasn't dead yet, which was unlikely, there was nothing Batman could do to help them so they would be dead long before the ambulance arrived.
The tears pouring from the boy's eyes only intensified.
As the two of them stayed there waiting for the ambulance, Batman looked away from the boy. "I'm sorry… I failed both you and your parents. I wasn't prepared for this fight… But I promise you, they aren't going to get away with this. I will catch them and I will bring them to justice…"
The child looked up at him with immense sadness in his eyes, still crying. But Batman could see something else in the child's eyes. Rage. Hatred. Not directed at him, but at his parents murderers. It reminded Batman far too much of himself when his own parents were murdered.
He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to take on a new Robin in this world as he was still holding out hope he might be able to find some way to get back to his own world. That or maybe his allies may still find a way to bring him back. And if he adopted a kid here, he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to bring them to his world with him. He also wasn't quite sure if he would be the best mentor for a parahuman. And him adopting the child would give away his identity to the PRT. Maybe leaving the child in some orphanage and letting him join the Wards would be the better option in this case… However, all of that was if the boy even managed to survive in the first place which, judging by the blood that was still pouring from the wound, seemed more and more unlikely.
He heard footsteps running closer. Looking, he saw Challenger, the current head of the Protectorate ENE.
Challenger winced upon seeing the corpses.
"The Nine went that way. You might still be able to catch them. Is the ambulance I requested coming?" Batman demanded.
Challenger nodded. "Yeah. It's on the way now. You're going to be alright, kid, just stay strong for a little while longer. Batman, I have to at least try to catch these freaks."
The hero ran off after the Nine, while Batman stayed there, trying his best to prevent the child from bleeding out before the paramedics arrived.
Note: Batman's going to get new side kicks eventually. It's just a matter of whether it will only be canon characters or not. So should the kid survive or should I just let him be another casualty of the Nine?
Edit: Hopefully this version is a bit better. I tried to make Batman act more competently than he did in the previous version.