Silent Knight, Holy Knight
A Batman Fanfiction by MJTR
Author's Introduction: With 2019 about to come to a close and the third Angel of the Bat story still untold, I wanted to put out something a little different with this concept I've grown so close to. As evidence from this story's placement under the Batman the Animated Series banner, I'm writing this as a reimaging of Cassandra and the Angel concept. While the main Angel stories are steeped in Batman comic lore, this one will be taking the more pragmatic, stripped-down approach Batman adaptations usually go for. Similar to The New 52 and Rebirth's approach to certain legacy characters, I thought it would be interesting to skip over Cassie's time as Batgirl entirely and introduce her and a few members of the Angel supporting cast with their own histories together, outside of Batman. This is also not a retread of either of the previous Angel stories, but something I think would have fit into the animated series back in the day.
In that same spirit, I'm going to try my hand at writing this in the spirit of a Saturday morning cartoon meant for children. I'll be a lot lighter than previous Angel stories, I'm going to keep my filthy mouth in line, and the subject matter will be a fair deal simpler.
If you enjoy this piece and it's your introduction to the Angel of the Bat series, welcome, and I hope you enjoy yourself enough to check out some of my other works. If you're a returning fan, I'm very happy to have you along for this adventure. Let's proceed, shall we?
-000-
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been, heh, I dunno, ten, twenty years since my last confession?"
"Did you spend all night waiting to say that, Danny?"
"As a matter of fact, I did."
Marco Maroni breathed a sigh of contempt. He longed for the days he could have picked a fight with his would-be partner, Danny Falcone, but Gotham's major crime families had lost nearly all of their organization years ago. A pair of gimmickless gangsters like the two of them were lucky to even find work that didn't involve dressing up and swearing allegiance to one of the freaks. Even their latest employer insisted on sending them in with one of the weirdos for backup, but he was apparently too good to get involved in the lock-picking and initial slip inside Saint Michael's Cathedral. With black ski masks tight over their faces, they proceeded onward.
"I always hated churches at night," Marco said. The two had entered through a small door at the side of the cathedral that housed its administrative offices. With their path lit only by dim flashlights, Marco shuddered when his beam shined upon a statue of the Virgin Mary at the end of the hallway. "You know what I mean?"
"Aw, what, you afraid the holy mother's gonna sneak up behind us and bless you while you aren't looking?"
Marco forced down the impulse to shove Danny and kept moving toward the chapel proper. Even with only the faint glow to go off of, the flashlight hinted at the enormity and majesty of the cathedral. Dozens of rows of lacquered wood pews led down the aisles of the church, a baptismal font of holy water sat before a great, marble altar. And between a pair of brilliant blue stained glass windows that could shimmer even off of the weak light hung the Son of God from his massive cross. Danny gave all this only a token notice, but the sights made Marco want to bow his head in both shame and reverence. Again and again, he told himself they hadn't come for anything anyone was going to miss. The churchgoing public of Gotham had no idea what secrets lay beneath the hallowed halls, and the place would surely be just fine without the prize he and his cohorts were after. But no matter what apologetics he repeated to himself, Marco remained convinced: if there was ever a right reason to steal from a church, this wasn't it.
"Hey, choir boy, wake up."
Danny snapped his fingers in front of Marco's face and pulled him from his introspection. Marco shook his head and glared at his partner.
"Let's get a move on already. Big man said the passageway's over by the devotional."
As if it was triggered by the utterance of the word, a tiny orange light sprung to life in the alcove on the opposite side of the chapel. The sight of a small body as it lit a votive candle and set it before a statue of Saint Michael the Archangel made the blood of the two gangsters run cold. In Danny's case, however, the fear subsided quickly.
"Aye, kid, a little past your bedtime, isn't it?" The jest was a bit presumptuous. Even at the lowest age estimates, the body had to belong to someone beyond puberty. But that didn't change the fact that it probably didn't even come up to Danny's shoulders and looked to lack any discernable muscle mass.
"Can it," Marco said. "She might be security. Or she might at least have a phone."
"That scrawny little thing?" Danny laughed. "Yeah, right."
The figure at the devotional stood up straight and took two steps in their direction. Their comprehension of the body resolved itself, Marco and Danny were confident they looked upon a young woman. The firelight hinted at a bronzed complexion offset by the clothes of simple white cotton she wore. Over most of her face were secured what must have been breathable lines of bandages, though a little of her tied back black hair did peek out the sides.
"All right, let's take it easy now." Marco opened his jacket to show off the handgun holstered to his waist. "Don't try anything funny, kid. We just came for some goods, we're not looking for a fight."
The young woman in white took another step toward them, paused, and pointed at the front door of the cathedral.
"Is that silent act supposed to be intimidating?" Danny scoffed. "Why don't you come over here, girl, and see if you can even lay a finger on me. I promise I'll go easy on you."
Still, the one dressed in white only lowered her pointed finger for a moment so she could enunciate when she pointed again. Save for when Marco laid his hand upon his silenced pistol, none of them made a move. He didn't intend to shoot at an unarmed girl in a church, it was only an intimidation tactic. Danny, however, had other plans.
"All right, kid. Just remember we gave you a chance." Danny imitated Marco's gun grab.
"For God's sake, Danny, don't—"
Marco didn't want the kill of that child on his conscience and was prepared to talk his partner and the girl down. But none of that mattered. The one in white seemed to almost throw herself at Danny, her movements as fast and lithe as a ballerina. A kick into Danny's gut forced the air from his breath and made him relinquish his hold on the gun. The girl spun for momentum and punched him square in the face with enough force to knock him to the floor.
"What the heck was that?" Marco wasn't able to contain his shout as he reached for his gun, but his opponent had no trouble closing the distance between them. With hands open yet clenched tight, she threw a blitz of finger strikes into his body. A shout of pain escaped Marco's lips before his entire body went limp and crumbled.
Just before he hit the floor, he got a better look at the costume the young woman wore. In the center of her white shirt was what initially looked to be a crude assemblage of yellow cloth. As he fell against the ground and his vision came back into focus, he realized there was nothing crude about the design at all. Dozens of different shades were meticulously stitched together to give the appearance of stained glass and came together into an all too familiar, terrifying shape around a white cross.
"No way," he said. "The Bat wouldn't have someone out here, no way!"
The girl with the stained glass Bat symbol looked down at him for another moment, performed a sign of the cross, and turned on her heels. She'd sensed Danny had nearly reached his gun, stomped on his foot, and bent down for the finishing blow.
"No!" Danny struggled. "Oh please, no!"
The girl pulled him up high enough to deliver the same series of savagely effective blows to his chest, and Danny too fell into a heap on the ground. As Marco looked on, almost motionless with fear, he couldn't shake the thought this was no mere security guard they had picked a fight with: they'd angered the church's guardian angel.
The angel in white looked down at the two. As she contemplated how best she should move their unconscious forms, the echo of heavy footsteps moved through the chapel. She looked toward the hallway to the admin offices as out stepped a giant in a thick leather jacket and black mask. Completely unlike the balaclavas that covered Marco and Danny, his luchador mask did not obscure his identity but confirmed it.
"Quick, spirited little thing, aren't you?" Bane cracked his knuckles as he slowly closed the distance between them. "So what are you then, chica? A bat, or an angel?"
She held his stare as she again pointed toward the front door of the cathedral. Bane laughed and lunged at her. The waif dodged the brick wall of one of his fists and thrust her fingers into a series of strikes up his arm. But the padded leather of the giant's coat absorbed most of the impact and he wasted no time before he threw another punch. As Bane had observed, the child was a master of perception almost as if she possessed true clairvoyance. With her pressure point strikes temporarily ineffective, she weaved around one of his punches and threw a closed fist into the luchador's stomach. The force of the punch was enough to make Bane keel forward and utter a quick bark of pain. It felt as if there was more weight in that punch than the girl had in her entire body. With him temporarily thrown off, the girl grabbed ahold of the zipper of his jacket, yanked it down, and threw a dozen pressure point strikes into his uncovered chest. With the final blow, Bane fell backward and gasped in pain, his opponent, little more than a child, stood victorious over him.
Through grit teeth, the assassin said, "Such a prodigy you are." He slipped one hand into its opposite sleeve as the girl maintained eye contact. "Ready for round two?"
Without a look at what the giant was doing, she was unprepared when the giant jumped back to his feet and let out a roar. After a brief struggle, Bane threw off his jacket and the young woman got a good look at several translucent green tubes that ran down along his arms. As a fluorescent liquid flowed through them into his veins, the giant's already mighty muscles seemed to pulsate with the force of the drugs within. He rose, snarled and smirked all at once. The woman in white took a step backward in confusion. The giant closed the distance between them in a single bound and even the young woman's foresight wasn't enough to get her around his next enormous punch. The impact of the blow nearly threw the woman in white into the air and forced her back against the wall adjacent to the devotional.
Bane followed up with another punch, his opponent dodged the strike and his fist shattered a stone carving of Christ on his journey to Golgotha on the wall. The angel thrust several strikes into his pulsing arms, but though Bane shouted again it did nothing to slow his backhand. The strike knocked the angel to the floor and twisted what little of her face was visible with pain. The luchador did not let up, and though the angel outmaneuvered most of his strikes, any that did make contact shocked and shook her body to its core. And whatever damage her palm strikes, pressure point attacks, or kicks and punches did, nothing seemed to slow the giant for more than a moment. With her normal methods rendered ineffective, the angel retreated to the back of the church's entrance.
"Not so bold now, are you?" Just to mock her, Bane grabbed ahold of the wooden pew nearest to him, wrenched it from the floor, and flung it at the angel.
She dodged, but the impact shattered a stone statue of Mary and the child Christ, much to her chagrin. With reluctant acceptance she could defeat Bane by her normal means, the angel ran into a hallway on the vestibule's left. As the giant chased after her, he scowled when she reached a fire alarm and yanked it downward.
"Cobarde!" Bane scowled and briefly considered carrying on the fight anyway before he decided the advance he'd received wasn't worth a fight with the GCPD or worse. "I'll settle things with you another time." The giant retreated into the cathedral to ensure his allies didn't have a chance to prove how fickle their loyalties could be.
The angel, on the other hand, slipped into a nearby door into the underground maintenance rooms. The fire department arrived and decried a false flag. The Gotham City Police Department went inside in search of the prankster to found a pew torn out of the floor. But by all accounts at night's end, there was no one to be found.
"Even the churches now, even the churches." The tall, broad-shouldered detective, Harvey Bullock, nearly chomped the toothpick in his mouth in half. "No pun intended here, but isn't anything sacred?"
A whole head down from him, his partner, Detective Renee Montoya, didn't bother to look up from her notepad. "I'm not convinced the joke wasn't intentional, Harv."
Police Commissioner James Gordon uttered an exasperated sigh as he stepped between the two of them and pinched the bridge of his nose over his glasses. "Has anyone managed to get ahold of the minister yet? Or know anyone who would know if this place has any enemies or anything like that?"
Montoya uttered a chuckle. "It's a Catholic church, chief. It has enemies sprinkled across about two-thousand years."
Bullock raised an eyebrow. "You talking from personal experience there?"
"Not my enemy, just my traditionalist uncle I don't speak to anymore." As if it had become routine, Montoya turned to the commissioner. "Do you think there's someone here who might render a fourth opinion?"
Commissioner Gordon walked past her and Bullock without comment, came to a tall, thin staircase that noted it had roof access, and stepped into the shaft. The last few years of pursuits through burning wreckage and being thrown out windows by mad clowns had done a number on his body, Gordon had to concentrate to not slip into panting. But when he did arrive at one of the cathedral's lower bell towers, a crouched figure was there waiting for him. And despite the imposition that radiated off of it, it was no gargoyle.
"I take it you've already overheard our investigation." Gordon stepped up beside him. "What's your initial impression?"
The man at his opposite rose to his imposing full height. In his black cape and cowl, he seemed to almost blend with the night's darkness. The golden emblem that held a bat on his chest was the only light surface on his entire body. And his voice, resonant and deep, was a force all its own. "I haven't had a chance to conduct my own investigation, but did I hear right a church pew was pulled from the floor and thrown across the room?"
"That's what it looks like, yes."
"We have a heavy hitter on our hands," the Batman said. "Killer Croc, possibly Bane, but you didn't need me to tell you that."
"There's a fist indent in a stone carving down there, we figure there must have been a fight. But why here? What would anyone have wanted with this church?"
Batman narrowed his eyes as he looked down at the church. The motive for the fight only one of the things on his mind. No matter how he tried to isolate the thought, he couldn't help but wonder: who in that church had picked a fight with someone like Bane and lived to slip away?