"Prey"
Arkham City
11:27:12 (Two Weeks Ago)
Wonder City Command Center
"Protocol 10 commencing in three, two, one."
A button was pushed. Orders were transmitted.
"Sir, we have a successful launch."
And orders were carried out with deadly, destructive precision.
Behind the circular glasses of Professor Hugo Strange, madness thrived.
A heavy white lab coat symbolized his self-appointed status as the only doctor capable of curing the sickness that's inflicted Gotham for so long.
Cure through annihilation. Through absolution.
With both hands grasping the railing of the observatory deck atop Wonder Tower, the architect of Arkham City watched as his vision for the future finally began to take shape.
Just as his master had intended.
In a shockwave that rattled the steel bones of the towering landmark of old Gotham, missiles surged from hidden launchpads in the infrastructure, soaring into the high and above.
And then coming down through the clouds, making their fiery marks upon the city-prison.
Museums. Steel mills. Courthouses.
Nothing was spared. Everything was put to the flame.
Spreading out after the initial hellfire, military-grade helicopters sliced through the air, their searchlights sweeping over the battered buildings while systematically hunting for signs of life.
With deafening roars, the guided ships would keep a sweeping formation as they opened fire with mounted turrets, further adding to the ongoing massacre.
"Targets on the rooftop of the old casino are eliminated. Moving on to the next target." The voice of one of the helicopter pilots brought a smile to his face.
And what kept that smile was what he saw next.
That same helicopter would continue on to an old, seemingly abandoned hotel right in the overflooded area known as Amusement Mile.
From its crumbling spire to its boarded-up doors, the dilapidated building lay tucked away in a forgotten corner of the city-prison, nestled amongst other similar monuments to Gotham's former glory.
But it was far from abandoned.
Now the building was transformed into a sprawling, green sanctuary. A building reclaimed by nature. The dwelling of one of his more troubled former patients from the asylum.
Prisoner #181. Better known by her criminal persona, Poison Ivy.
Even under undeniably deadly conditions, the plants continued to thrive- right until a malevolent fireball rained down from the sky, inflicting a direct hit upon its exterior.
Followed swiftly by another missile that also hit the plant sanctuary.
Other buildings in the immediate vicinity were hit, but per his pre-given directives, the hotel received a much heavier bombardment than other structures.
"Targets are all hit. Sector Four is lit up like a Christmas tree, sir," a voice, metallic and cold, rang out from another TYGER operative in his earpiece.
"Good." Pleased at the satisfactory result, he commanded with a clinical coldness, "Perhaps now we can proceed to Stage 2 in Section 4. Captain, are the cleansing teams ready for infiltration?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then send them."
With the cover fire of the armed chopper, squads of faceless TYGER guards from a transport ship descended onto the smoldering sector. Each of them clad in tactical wear and armed to the teeth with assault rifles and shotguns.
Through their visors, they each showed an absence of fear, and an abundance of preparedness.
Going from building to building, they acted swiftly and without mercy upon discovering surviving inmates.
Pleading cries rang out from the gutted buildings, echoing hauntingly throughout the ravaged cityscape, only to be met with gunfire.
The hunters of yesterday had become the hunted, the inmates' numbers thinning rapidly beneath the brutal onslaught of explosive rockets from above and the relentless hail of lead from the emotionless, merciless TYGER guards.
One squad still on a transport ship, however, was dressed not in the standard issue uniforms, but in distinct, impermeable NBC suits.
In the grasp of some, the ominous silhouette of flamethrowers reflected a harsh promise of incineration. Each member of the squad was handpicked by Strange for one purpose only: to purge Pamela Isley and all her monstrosities from the face of existence.
As they repelled down from their hovering transport, the specialized guards moved with swift efficiency.
The armed inmates under the thrall of Prisoner #181 stationed in front of the ruined hotel were dispatched with trained accuracy, their lives snuffed out before they had the chance to register the end.
With a swift gesture from the commander, one of the elite operatives blew the lock of the fire escape away with his shotgun. With the entrance gate cleared, the rest of the cleansing squad moved in. Their heavy boots stomped across the walkway to her sanctuary, crushing undergrowth and flowers with indifferent brutality.
"Entrance secured!" one of them called out upon reaching the door. "Square Four is on position, over."
Magazines were being reloaded just in case. Flamethrowers primed for ready use.
"Team, ready?"
"Sir yes sir!" came the collective cry of them all.
"All members, prepare to make contact with Target Alpha. Breach, breach-"
The lead operative kicked open the door, and from there they all flooded in.
"This is Squad One, reporting in. All inmates in the Olympus Nightclub are eliminated."
"Squad Two, approaching the toy factory, now."
"Squad Three in the GCPD building, no sign of the Ice Man. There are signs of a fight. Maybe the Bat got to him first."
Like relentless tidal waves, reports flooded into the Wonder Tower Command Center, an unending stream of victorious confirmations and status updates.
However, one of the TYGER operators sensed something was amiss. "Has anyone received Squad Four's report?" He asked his colleagues.
Before his question could gain traction, Strange's authoritative voice boomed over the intercom, "Focus the missile attacks on the Steel Mill, I want the clown's fortress leveled."
As if on cue, the operators diverted their attention to the new directive, their fingers dancing across the consoles. The question about Squad Four, like a stone tossed into a raging river, was swept away, forgotten in the wake of their leader's command.
In the burning hotel, there were obvious signs of a brutal and bloody fight.
Yet, the term 'fight' seemed too balanced, almost too mild to describe the scene.
Rather, it was a slaughter. A grotesque ballet of violence that had danced its way through the verdant sanctuary.
All the members of Squad Four were once decorated members of the military, some of the best warriors the United States Armed Forces had ever produced.
However, that did not matter here.
It did not matter if they were once Green Berets, Marines, or Navy SEALS.
There were now only dead men and soon-to-be dead men inside of the building.
Illuminated by the fire, the former renowned botanist knelt among her plants, hugging a dying tree with its bark burned to a fatal black.
"We did nothing to you!" Her voice echoed throughout the devastated hotel, each word heavy with a blend of sorrow and maternal rage. "We only wanted to be left alone!"
Her delicate hands continued to stroke the dead bark, each touch a whispered comfort to her arboreal children.
Caught in the corner of her emerald eyes was a figure, struggling weakly on the ground.
The only survivor from Squad Four.
Gravely wounded, the TYGER guard was crawling away from her, desperately dragging his broken body towards his only hope for survival: a discarded radio lying amidst the soil and debris a few meters away.
Beside him, the bodies of his fallen brothers were everywhere. Necks were snapped. Body armor burned so greatly that the exposed skin was charred black.
All the training, and all the conditioning from Strange all culminating in this.
Half, if not more of the crowd were decimated by Ivy in a matter of seconds before they could even pull the trigger.
Thorny vines, cruel and unyielding, had pierced their armor. Lethal spores had filled their lungs, their advanced protective gear standing no chance against the merciless onslaught of nature.
The body to his right convulsed spasmodically, suffering the terrifying effects of just a small scratch from Ivy's poisoned fingernail.
Two of his comrades lay motionless a couple of yards away, their lifeless eyes wide open. Mere exposure to Ivy's hypnotic pink mist had turned them into her puppets, their minds ensnared and manipulated, driving them to fight each other to the death with their fists and flamethrowers at the merest flicker of her fingers.
Ultimately, the only 'winner' of that contest was now rising dangerously to her feet, turning to his crawling form.
Ivy, with her face usually colored with seductive mystique, wore only a mask of fury. Her usual enchanting demeanor was replaced by raw, unadulterated rage. With a swift, decisive motion of her hand, a monstrous vine shot forward, crushing the discarded radio with formidable force that obliterated the wounded guard's last hope.
Without a word, the plant queen raised her hand in a choking gesture. Instantly, another vine responded, coiling around the guard's neck and hoisting him into the air. Ivy's hand closed into a tight fist, and in a cruel echo, the vine followed suit, the snap of the man's neck reverberating through the lobby of the decimated hotel.
As the lifeless body was gently lowered to the ground, the verdant tendrils started to pull it beneath the broken floor boards, the once formidable soldier now nothing more than nourishment for Ivy's growing brood, a part of the twisted cycle of life and death in her heaven.
With the fire beginning to be diminished by her plants, Ivy walked towards the gaping hole left by one of the destructive missiles.
She looked up through the helicopter-filled skies of the city-prison, up at the distant Wonder Tower.
The arrogance of man was never so apparent now in that very moment.
Her emerald eyes, usually so beguiling and alluring, were now hard with icy resolve, a promise of revenge sparkling in their depths.
Strange had incurred a blood debt, one that would be repaid not just by him. Not just by his disciples.
"All of you will pay…" Her voice, a whispered vow carried on into the wind with a chilling certainty.
The blood she would take from mankind would be deep enough to fill an ocean.
And that was only the beginning.
Author's Note: Still finding time to write when life allows it, but I'm still very much in this until the end. Thanks also go to HMHdunkirk for helping greatly in the writing process. Truly he has been a great oasis of creative support in the writing desert I find myself walking through on some days. Thanks also go to those who take the time to read and review this story, so please don't stop. Talking about this particular chapter now, I always wanted to capture Ivy's perspective on Protocol Ten. Not only that but give a view from Wonder Tower itself from the mad doctor himself, Hugo Strange. More will be coming soon, but for now, please feel free to review, PM, or share this story! :)