With a loud crack the steel pipe struck a leather clad chest.
A moment later the wielder let out a gasp of surprise as his arm was grabbed by a hand that might as well have been a vice, and proceeded to scream in fright as he was launched into a wall.
A thud and a groan and the stocky thug was knocked unconscious.
"N...no! It can't be!" The last thug took a step back, a shaking hand raised to protect himself against the dark form before him. The man had fifty accounts of rape on his file, had killed five men and committed so many robberies and assaults that his file oozed of evil. Yet now he trembled, his eyes wide in fear, desiring nothing but to run away.
There was no escape though, the dark knight stood before him, blocking any exit. Sprawled around them lay over a dozen men, vicious murderers, monsters in human shape, killers to a man. All...knocked out, their knives, steel pipes and bats uselessly strewn over the ground, useless against the force of nature that had put them all away.
"Y...you're no man!" The thug fell to his knees, moments before he had been filled with glee, eager to spill the blood of the vigilante that had put him in jail. Now he remembered all too well the previous encounter, and it paralysed him with fear. "Y...you're a monster!"
"No." The man was nothing but a shadow, a shadow that moved, eclipsing what little light the moon above offered, the darkness freezing the blood of the thug. "I'm batman."
The man never saw the blow, his already overloaded mind all too eagerly accepted the sweet release of oblivion, though a frightened look was still frozen on his face as he fell to the ground, unconscious.
For a moment nothing moved, the grey evening imposing its silence on the god-forsaken corner of the asylum while batman stood still, the dozen thugs sprawled over the broken tiles of the corner of a building as much part of the terrain as the tufts of diseased grass poking out from a smudge-covered road.
Then he fell.
"Batman?" Oracle called out via their communicator, voice coloured by worry. "Batman are you there?"
Nothing but a pained cough was the answer. Doubling over batman's left hand went to clutch at his chest while the other steadied him against the ground, grabbing a tuft of grass as if he was lost at sea and it was his only lifeline. Bloodied slime slowly oozed from his lips even as another cough escaped him, his breath wheezing.
"Batman!?"
"O...oracle." Another cough made him wince as a lance of white pain shot through his chest. "I'm fine." Now that no one saw him batman felt his shoulders slump, tense muscles shaking with pain from the work he hadn't allowed himself to feel before. His hands trembled and the taste of blood was in his mouth, pain lacing through his every vein.
"You don't sound fine."
"There are..." He groaned as he touched one of his ribs, the bone at the point of breaking. "...a great many criminals here." Then he felt his stomach churn from the heavy blow it had received from a bat.
"Batman!?"
Blinking away the tears of pain Bruce wiped his mouth from what little food he had had before the Joker's escape, hunger was only one of the pains he felt by now though... "I'm...recuperating Oracle." He shook his head, his jaw was almost dislocated from the many blows he had received, and the Scarecrows injections gave him a throbbing headache. Not to mention making him feel nothing but bitterness as old memories continued to assault his already occupied mind.
"Bet you look like crap by now." Oracle's tone was light, an obvious attempt to cheer him up.
Bruce managed a weary chuckle. "Not really, I carry my injuries on the inside." He tore a chunk of grass from the ground, crushing it in a hand he could barely feel anymore. "Batman cannot be injured, they must not see it, they must not know they can hurt him." He spat, bloody phlegm landing on a white tile that had fallen from a wall that had once displayed a mural.
"I see, then how are you feeling?"
"Like I'm dying." Bruce didn't have the energy to lie, whatever was left being spent on keeping himself from collapsing into a deadly sleep. "One rib is definitively broken, two others cracked...there is probably some internal bleeding as well, at least one bullet has gotten through the suit...and I've suffered five dislocations so far."
"Oh..." There was a pause as the woman considered the words. "...you want me to call evac?"
"No." With a groan he forced a leg up, dark boot crushing the grass under it. "Injuries of the body are nothing." Both hands dropped unto his knee and pushed down, helping him to slide unto his feet. "And I have yet to let these monsters, be they Joker or Scarecrow, to get to me."
"But if you're injured..."
Pain shot through his every nerve as he straightened himself. "I'm injured."
"Yes, and that's-"
Cracking his knuckles the dark knight was once again an invincible creature of the night. "Batman isn't."