[30 minutes before Wayne Tower went up in flames]

The Caped Crusader entered the empty room, expecting something much different than what he found. In front of him stood a mysterious figure, who seemed to be more than consumed by darkness, but absorbing light itself. They were a near pitch black figure, with bodily features that were loosely feminine, but it was still difficult to decipher anything about them.

They carried a small pistol in their right hand and what laid in front of them was the madman which the Dark Knight had thought he was pursuing.

"What have you done?" The Knight demanded from the person standing in front of him. Blood slowly dripped from his mouth, down to his chin, and finally landed on the large bat-symbol on his chest.

"No introductions?... I see." The person responded as they replaced their weapon into the holster on their right thigh. "Doesn't matter, you don't need to know who I am."

To the Knight, the warehouse around them seemed to darken, but he fought as hard as he could to stay conscious. It was a fight against a poison he had never experienced before. He let out a small grunt. "What--" He faltered. "have you...done?

"Why, I've killed the Joker." They said nonchalantly. "To be honest, I'm not sure why you haven't done it already." The Knight attempted to walk toward the person, but fell to one knee.

"I don't...kill." He argued. More blood slowly drained from his mouth. He wiped it off and tried to stand himself up.

"Well, Dark Knight, I beg to differ." They challenged before leaning closer to the Knight. "I call bull, and I have proof.

"Bruce."

[At Wayne Tower, Orphan and Bluebird, now]

"Orphan, we gotta hurry up!" BlueBird shouted as they each took on their own set of thugs. They were currently battling against the forces of The Penguin. As BlueBird blasted a few henchmen with her electricity gun, she called out, "How you doin', Cass?" In that moment, a thug had been thrown at and through the rear window of the sedan that BlueBird was standing atop of. "Awesome." She commented.

BlueBird knew full well that Orphan was capable of handling herself against nearly anything, but she just wanted to check in to make sure she was doing okay despite knowing that fact.

BlueBird quickly noticed that the Penguin's forces were dwindling, and thus decided that she needed to know where the man himself was.

She proceeded to do a sideways aerial flip off of the vehicle and shot at the group of henchmen in front of her while in midair before landing and charging the closest thug to her, slamming the butt of her gun to his forehead, knocking him down.

"Cover me!" BlueBird shouted out to Orphan, who quickly turned her focus to protecting her partner. The henchman that BlueBird had struck with her gun was thrown against a delivery van by the initial strike, followed by BlueBird rapidly advancing and pinning him against the van. "Where's Penguin?" She demanded, and only received a smirk in response.

"Why should I tell you?" He finally said, almost laughing. "You don't scare me."

BlueBird scowled.

"Cass, away from my left!" BlueBird shouted, and Orphan obeyed. As BlueBird kept her eyes locked at the thug's eyes, she grabbed her gun with her left hand, swung it outward, shot and pulled it back without looking. She had managed to hit the largest clump of henchmen, knocking them all unconscious. "They could be dead. You wanna be in a better position than them, you tell me where Penguin is, alright buddy?"

The thug nodded vigorously. "Alright, alright, I'll tell you!" He shouted quickly, with fear evident in his voice. "He's personally makin' moves on Riddler's guys, but he's got a grenade launcher and the biggest mercs I ever seen with 'im."

"Thanks." BlueBird said before striking him in the cheekbone with the butt of her gun, knocking him out. "Cass, pull back, Riddler's guys."

Both BlueBird and Orphan finished off nearby thugs and began heading east, toward the Riddler's dwindling territory.

As they were halfway there, explosions began erupting close to them, blowing up cars and setting off chain reactions. They both narrowly escaped each one, and quickly reached the border between the two controlled areas.

The interrogated henchman was right, Penguin was surrounded by large mercenaries. So large that it must have been inhuman.

BlueBird had only noticed them when it was too late. She had ran into one, stopped in her tracks, and looked up at the manning figure. The man had to be standing at least two feet taller than BlueBird.

"H-hi." BlueBird said, as she began backing away, but the man walked toward her.

Soon, her back hit a parked vehicle and she panicked. Within a second, she had pulled out her gun, only to have the man slap it away. It was launched toward the nearest building, and far, far out of her reach.

"Oh..." she said simply, waiting for the man to do something really, really bad to her. She held her hands at chest level, her fingers only slightly curled.

Just as BlueBird thought she was done for, Orphan suddenly flew out of nowhere toward the man's face, kicked it and immediately elbowed it before landing on the road, rolling, running a few feet, stepping onto a car door to boost herself backward and flying toward the man. She punched him in midair, causing him to spin around, giving BlueBird an opportunity. She quickly got on top of the vehicle behind her as the man stumbled, trying to refocus, and jumped toward him, wrapping her arms around his neck in a sleeper hold.

Orphan then proceeded to kick the back of each of his knees until they buckled. After he was now on his knees and nearly passed out due to BlueBird's surprisingly firm grip, Orphan stood in front of him and unleashed a flurry of punches and kicks while simultaneously avoiding his half-hearted and disoriented strikes.

After a few moments, he had passed out, allowing BlueBird to dismount and retrieve her weapon before the others, who were more focused on Riddler's gang, noticed their comrade was missing.

BlueBird and Orphan quickly made their way to Penguin, who they quickly found after their encounter, and knocked him unconscious before the other large men could notice. BlueBird dragged him into a nearby building as Orphan made sure no one noticed or followed them.

BlueBird placed the unconscious man on the floor in the lobby of an office building and tried waking him up by repeatedly slapping his face.

After a few attempts of no success, she made a comment, "Why isn't this working?" She exclaimed. "This is what they do in the movies and it works."

Orphan approached her and signalled for her to move before she sat him up against a wall and punched him in the face.

He jolted awake.

"Ah!" He shouted. "Who are you!? What did you do to me!? Where am I?!" He rubbed his recently punched cheek as he stared at the two vigilantes in front of him. He took time to focus, and then looked both of the women in front of him up and down. "More of 'em? I thought we had enough wenches in this damn city!"

BlueBird quickly took out her gun and almost struck him aside the head, but Orphan stopped her.

Orphan then kneeled down in front of him and started to place her right hand on his neck.

"What's she doing?! Get your hands off of me!" He shouted, but then she started squeezing and his shouts became screams of agony.

"What's going on here? Why is there a siege on the tower?" BlueBird demanded. Orphan let go of his neck, and he little man only spat. Orphan began to move her hand back toward his neck when he quickly objected.

"H-hold on! I'll tell you!" He pleaded. "We're here because we 'ave no choice. We don't know who did it, but all of our hideaways and precious lairs, all destroyed and all had messages to come here. We all want to find who did this to us." He told the women. "My iceberg lounge..." he whispered to himself.

"How do we get into the building?" BlueBird asked.

"Riddler ought to know. Bloke boasted about it. Only reason he can't get in is because he's being attacked from both sides, but now that you've weakened my damn forces, he ought to be in there-!" He began shouting, but Orphan punched him in the face, rendering him unconscious.

"Guess that's where we go next." BlueBird said as they made their way out to the street and snuck by the large mercenaries.