Protector in the Shadows
Disclaimer: refer to prologue.
Chapter 2
II
"My boss has been missing for two days. Which, in this town, means I should probably start by looking at the bottom of the river."
-Batman Begins
II
They had tried everything, exhausted every resource, to fight back against the ever growing criminals. They had even started to succeed when Gordon had been made commissioner.
Then something changed. Suddenly they weren't just fighting against your average crime bosses and street criminals; they were encountering something much more intimidating.
It had started with the first attempted destruction of Gotham by an unknown and unidentified group of people. A toxin had been put into the water and then sent into the air, causing mass illusions and unwavering fear. If the train that held the device causing the water to evaporate into the air had made it to WayneTower then all would have been lost and Gotham would have been destroyed, tearing itself apart from inside out.
Ironically, the device never made it there. The tracks were not being cared for like they had been back when the Wayne family had been alive and over time had started to decay. The shaking of the ground as well as the heavy weight of the speeding train had caused one of the weaker pillars to collapse, sending both the train and the device plummeting to the ground. The device was destroyed but the people who had planned the attack had vanished.
Gotham had had a few short weeks of peace after that, as if the city was holding its breath. The attack had been both unexpected and unprepared for. There had been no warning and it terrified them to realize that, if not for the weak pillar on the tracks they would all be dead.
That was only the first attack, but it certainly wasn't the last.
A new breed of villains started to appear, seemingly from nowhere. They were different from the average criminal, using brains over brawn and wearing masks to hide their identity. They ranged from skilled thieves to insane clowns who liked to blow up things for no other reason than that they wanted to.
Joker was the worst of them all. His face permanently stained white and his own followers deathly afraid of him, his goal in life was to make everyone 'smile', just like he was always smiling.
Just to say, his definition of funny wasn't like that of a normal person.
After the villains had started to appear the police force had been forced to send for help. The help they got, however, didn't work. The city was given up for lost and any remotely sane person fled, leaving the city to rot.
Too bad most of the citizens who had grown up there all of their lives were too stubborn to leave. Gordon was one of those, and he hadn't been about to give up on his home city just yet. He knew that there was a solution out there, just out of their reach, and they just had to find it.
Hence the situation they were in now.
The machine had been sketchy at best. No one knew if it would actually work but they knew that they had to at least try.
It was meant to pull someone who could defeat the super-villain that they could not, someone who had probably already had in their world.
Gordon had been expecting a police officer, maybe even himself, to come out of the portal. They had all been ready for someone who they knew, possibly someone from the city that had never stepped up in this timeline to save the day.
What they hadn't expected, and maybe they should have, was the masked bat like figure that stood before them with a cold, hard gaze, completely unconcerned with being surrounded by almost the entire police force.
"You'd better have an explanation for this, Gordon."
The voice of the man (was he really just a man . . . or was he something else entirely?) was even more terrifying than his appearance. It was dark, gravely, and hard to make out, but every word was perfectly clear. Combined with his dark figure, still draped mostly in the shadows, the sound of his voice made most of the police officers reach for their weapons.
A second after the being had spoken Commissioner Gordon registered what he had said.
"Y-you know who I am?" Gordon asked, stunned. They way that the being had phrased it was almost like they had known each other, though he was perfectly sure he would remember meeting someone who dressed up as a bat.
The white eyes narrowed even more and the slightly relaxed posture suddenly stiffened. A cold wind swept over the rooftop at the moment as they realized that they were dealing with something that could, potentially, be a lot worse then the Joker ever was.
"Who are you?" the figure said, grabbing the sides of his cloak as he glared direction at Gordon.
Commissioner Gordon wasn't exactly sure what to say but he decided to go with the truth, "James Gordon, Commissioner of the Gotham City Police, and you are?"
The grip on the cape tightened, "If you were really James Gordon then you would know who I was."
Gordon felt his eyebrow twitch, "Well, I don't, and I am who I say I am."
"You may look like the Commissioner but I know that you are not him," the figure abruptly moved and all the guns were suddenly pointed at where he had been a moment before. He dodged between them, moving like water and taking them down with little to no effort, leaving unconscious but unharmed officers behind him. His path led him to the edge of the hundred story building where he crouched, undisturbed by the wind that tore hungrily at his cape and the darkness that made his eyes seem to glow. Turning back to them he spoke one last time, "When I find out what has happened I'll be back. You'd better hope you have no part in this."
Gordon felt his eyes widen as the being jumped from his perch into the air and plunged downward. He, along with several of his officers, ran to the edge to see what had happened.
There was no one there.
Distantly Gordon heard the flutter of cloth and looker outward, his breath catching as he watched a large, bat-like shape swoop out into the night on a pare of near silent wings.
Whoever that had been, they couldn't be human.
0~o~0
Bruce angled his wings into a slow glide and landed silently on a shadowed rooftop. His mind was in turmoil and he had no idea what had happened.
He had been sent spiraling through a tunnel of light only to find himself landing on a hard roof surrounded by the police force and James Gordon.
A James Gordon who had no idea who he was.
One thing was clear, something had gone horribly, terribly wrong and he had no idea how to fix it, or even what it was. The man he had seen sure looked like the commissioner. He talked like him too, but Bruce didn't understand it. Gordon acted like he had never seen the Batman before.
And that scared him. What could make Gordon and an entire police force, who had been after his blood for weeks now, not remember him? He didn't know, but he was going to find out.
Carefully pressing the signal on his belt to call the Batmobile Bruce settled down to wait. After a few minutes of silence his frown deepened and he pressed the button again. There was no response, from the gadget or from the car.
A feeling of dread seeping through him Bruce shot his grappling hook and swung out into the air. He had to get back to the BatCave. First he looses contact with Alfred and then everyone around him doesn't remember him.
He didn't know what was going on but he was going to find out, and if the man that claimed he was Gordon wasn't, he would learn that messing with the Batman was never a good idea.
The trip across the city took less than thirty minutes, though it would have been shorter with the Batmobile. He kept to the shadows, not feeling like being seen again tonight. The moment that he reached the town limits and came within sight of where WayneMansion was supposed to be Bruce felt his breath freeze in his throat.
Where WayneMansion used to be . . . was a pile of burned out rubble.
"No . . ." this couldn't be happening. He had left only hours ago and the security on his mansion would have alerted him if there had been something wrong.
His feet took him up the hill though his mind was protesting as he kneeled down and ran his hands through the ashes. Impossibly, the damage was weeks old, possibly months. There was no smoke in the air and the ashes were colder then they would have been if the fire had been hours ago.
Bruce felt his body shudder. He didn't know what had happened. The fire that had burned down his mansion had been several months ago but he'd had it rebuilt. The remains here looked like no one even cared to come clean up the damage.
A suspicion started to grow in Bruce's mind, something so crazy he was hesitant to believe it.
He had fallen through a portal with unknown energy readings. Gordon had no idea who he was. His car wouldn't respond and his mansion was burnt to the ground.
It was almost like he had never come back from his seven year disappearance.
No, that couldn't be right. Everything that he had worked for, everything he had lost and gained . . . it couldn't be just . . . gone.
Numbly he stood from his crouched position and made his way through the overgrown grounds to the small well that he had fallen down as a child.
The well was boarded up, but not with the new boards he had used when he had rebuilt. This wood was old and in several places rotted through. It took only a kick to send them clattering downward into the darkness.
Without pausing to consider what he was going to do if what he feared was true he jumped into the well. His fall was graceful and he landed in a crouch at the bottom, uninjured even though most normal humans would be.
The cave was dark. There was none of the equipment that he had brought down over the year and a half had he had been Batman. The cave was empty but for him and his nocturnal companions.
For the second time in his life, he knew that he was completely alone and this time, no one was coming to help him.
0~o~0
Review?
Thank you to my first reviewer on my last chapter. I'm glade for the encouragement and I hope you continue to enjoy this piece.
On another note, I'd just like to say that I am not making the Joker like he is in The Dark Knight. Sorry to disappoint, but I'm going to incorporate more of the cartoon version of Joker (From The Batman) who is more . . . kid friendly. He is still going to be insane and nothing he does is going to make sense (when does it ever?) but he is not going to be all 'I'm going to kill you in the most terrifying way possible'.
To tell the truth, I don't see Joker as someone who seeks to kill. He's in it for the laughs but is willing to eliminate anyone in his way. As such, I'm going to keep the killing and description of Joker's victims at a minimum. Thank you for reading and I hope you continue to enjoy this story!
Chapter 3 - Preview
"I'm looking for a job, you wouldn't happen to have something here would you?"
The store owner looked over the younger man, seeming to be around twenty five but still young to the eighty-six year old, with a raised eyebrow. The cloths that the man wore appeared to be from a charity bin but the man himself was not scruffy. To tell the truth, the store owner had not expected someone like the young man to apply for a job here, "You do know that this is the Narrows, right kid?" he asked gruffly.
The young man nodded and chuckled slightly, "I wouldn't be here if I didn't. Where else do you think I'm going to get a job looking like this?"
He had a fair point, the store owner conceded; the boy's appearance wouldn't get him passed the bridge into the higher levels of society. He felt kind of sorry for the young man.
"One week. If you're a good worker then you stay. If not . . . well, you know the drill."
The young man nodded again, "Thank you. When do I start?"
The store owner considered him for a moment before grunting, "Right now."
0~o~0
Jackson twisted the pencil though his fingers quickly, "It . . . it seems as if the alternate time line was . . . drastically changed from our own. Maybe an important event, something that happened differently, created the . . . bat?"
Gordon's cheek twitched, "Doctor . . ."
"I don't know, ok?! Whatever we saw on that roof is not something found in this world!" Jackson cried, the pencil snapping in his hands with a loud crack.
Sighing, Gordon rubbed the bridge of his nose, "Yes, I know. The fact that . . . the bat, as you referred to him, got away so easily worries me."
'Even the Joker gets slightly nervous around a full force of police officers but this guy didn't even twitch,' went unsaid.
Gordon focused his eyes back on Jackson, "We need to find him, and fast," he paused, considering, "In your opinion, Doctor, if you were a bat where would you go?"
"Um," Jackson blinked, "A . . . cave?"
0~o~0
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