Summary: The Batman fights the Stone-God on the roofs of Japan. His oath is to protect people. Whoever they are, wherever they are... whatever it takes.

Disclaimer: Batman and all affiliated characters here are property of DC Comics, and I do not own them.

Chapter 3: B2

Yokohama, Japan

His last visit to Japan had been eight years ago. He had trained with sensei Yoru in the mountains of Kamidenki. It cost him endless bruises that took months to subside, a lot of blood, and some ribs that would never be the same. How could he have known that, after all that, the land of the rising sun would bring him so much physical pain again?

The truth was that sensei Yoru's teachings did not remind Bruce Wayne of physical woes, but of virtues, experiences, and lessons learned. He had to remain calm, as if meditating under the waterfall. He had to ignore the pain, for it resided in the mind. It was true that he was still young and inexperienced, but age should not be an obstacle to using his strength and intelligence to the fullest.

Nothing could be created from nothing, no matter which world it came from. If the alien wasn't throwing parts of its body, then they must have been pieces of the building itself. When it came into contact with pieces of stone, it could grant them basic movements, basic intuition to perceive other forms of life, and some kind of natural instinct to cause harm.

He, The Batman, focused on the golems in front of him. He dodged the nearest one with a jump to the left, choosing to ignore the pain in his leg, and threw a shuriken at it. It didn't cause any damage, but Bruce focused on the noise it made and for the first time noticed the small and big differences between the golems who had crossed the night sky. They weren't all the same.

Two of them were made of granite. Given the hardness of the one he had thrown down, it must have been made of something similar to gravel. The one that had made his arms shake was much whiter than the others. He took another shuriken from his belt, jumped towards the creature, and cut it with the sharp weapon. Bruce confirmed it was marble.

"When it touches any mineral material, it gives them movements and instincts, Alfred. But they're not alive, they're not clones either, they're just puppets made of materials from our world."

"Puppets? Are you saying someone is controlling them?"

He didn't need to answer. Bruce heard the screams of hundreds of people in the streets, chased or attacked by the stone monsters thrown by the extraterrestrial. The Batman had sworn to protect those who couldn't defend themselves. He wasn't in Gotham, but he could well consider Yokohama a temporary substitute. Even if the criminals came from another world, he vowed to get rid of them.

Bruce gathered his strength, dodged his attackers, took out the micro-bombs again, and threw them at the golems. The explosion didn't take long. Those lifeless creatures turned into small boulders thrown to all corners of the rooftop. They had been just stone creatures. Different types of minerals. The way they crumbled and exploded confirmed his knowledge of lithology.

Television and police helicopters focused on the explosion, but by that point, Bruce was already far away. He was only a block away from the skyscraper, where he saw the stony extraterrestrial that he was looking for through smoke, fire, and toxic gases. He also noticed some new military jets in the dark, cloudy sky. Some of them fired projectiles at the beast, while he ran across the rooftops.

"Alfred, where are they from?" he asked, knowing his butler still had twenty-five seconds of vision left through his blue cowl.

"They don't belong to any military organization I know of, but they definitely belong to the US government. They lack an insignia, but I recognize the vehicles."

"The smoke makes it hard to assess the situation… The missiles are… ugh, resonating heavily in my head… Tell me, could they destroy it?"

"Negative, Master Bruce. Negative," he said after a while.

"Then I'll bring down… the puppeteer myself." Just then, his cowl camera went dark. Only he could see through his own eyes.

Bruce pulled out the grappling gun that Lucius had built for him, under the silly excuse that he wanted to practice climbing. Both were playing dumb, really. Lucius knew perfectly well that Bruce wore grey and blue clothes at night. And a cape. And long, pointed ears on the cowl. Unlike Lucius, Bruce was very much surprised that blue worked better for camouflage than black in Gotham, as his previous uniform.

However, camouflage was not useful this time.

He aimed at a group of broken windows, three or four floors below where the alien was standing. He could see it more clearly now. It had a humanoid shape and was as tall as two whole stories. It had arms and legs, but its hands and feet were stone spheres, without fingers. Its torso was wide near the head, and so thin at the waist that it seemed non-existent. Its head was gigantic, almost as big as the rest of its body combined, defying all physical laws. It lacked facial features, just like its creations. Bruce saw some cracks in its body, a result of the projectiles. Apparently, it required much more power to destroy it, as it was not made of simple stone. It was a living creature.

From the jets, which were already a dozen as far as he could see, long cables began to fall, from which descended numerous agents dressed in black and light blue. They had no logos on their uniforms. A secret agency, for sure. They were focused on what was happening on the streets, so they did not notice his presence. And it was better that way.

Bruce began to feel his limbs failing him from exhaustion, but that didn't stop him. He fired the hook, hitting one of the farthest windows. He made an amateur mistake, didn't check that the cable was firmly attached to the window before pressing the trigger, jumping off the building, and letting himself be carried. If he fell and died, it would be his fault alone. But he was lucky. In five seconds, he entered the building, amid the flames and the stinky smoke. He activated the gas mask.

It seemed like the whole world was shaking. The roof of the floor where he was standing, disintegrated into pieces with every step the monster took, some stories above. The windows shattered when they fired another missile. He wouldn't be able to stay there for long without becoming one of the victims.

"Alfred! Is this building already uninhabited?"

"Master Bruce, the survivors have been evacuated. I'm not sure how they managed it so quickly, but…"

"And the area below?"

"Affirmative, sir. The agents from before have cordoned off the area."

"Good. That's good enough."

The Batman headed towards one of the many holes in the roof, looked up at the area, impossible to distinguish through the smoke, and fired his grappling gun again.

The monster was five meters away from him. They met face to face. Or what was supposed to be its face. The projectiles kept hitting it, generating increasingly larger cracks in its rocky body. The extraterrestrial was trying to find more pieces of wall to throw into the sky, to create even more golems. But now, its attention was focused solely on the man dressed as a giant bat.

The alien raised one of its arms and brought it down like lightning. Bruce managed to dodge it and jumped into an adjacent room, watching the floor he had just left shatter with the impact. The entire building was on the verge of destruction. And that was precisely what Bruce was hoping for. He checked that he still had six more micro-bombs in his belt. He took one out and threw it on the ground, at the feet of the extraterrestrial.

The explosion managed to damage neither the infrastructure nor the huge monster, but it did create a curtain of smoke, and a soundwave that weakened the supports. He used the smoke to hide his presence from the rocky creature's eyes, who was flailing around, both trying to connect a blow against his enemy and getting rid of the projectiles that kept falling.

Bruce heard bullets from a machine gun. He was going to need a lot of luck to survive that too. He slid across the floor, setting the detonation time of the second bomb, which he planted in a fissure in what would be the creature's knee. He quickly placed another one in the hole before the stone that served as a foot. The Batman had to be impeccably precise.

He set two more bombs, dodged a swipe, and planted one on the creature's other knee. Amid the unbearable smoke, he was hit by a bullet in the shoulder, followed by one in the arm and another in the chest. To make matters worse, soon came the cannon-like blow of the stone creature, right on his back. He felt his body crunch and tremble. But he couldn't stop. It was his mission. It was his oath!

"Master Bruce! What are you about…?"

"It can take damage, Alfred. And there's one thing here that can be more powerful than these damn missiles. Gravity."

He threw the bomb at the foot of the extraterrestrial. He fired the grappling gun at the farthest wall he could find, and threw the two remaining bombs to the floor, where the alien had trampled the most. There were two seconds left for them to explode, all at once, so he had to get away as fast as possible...

A long arm caught him before he could push the trigger. He experienced pains he had never felt before. The bombs exploded, and Bruce felt like his oxygen was running out. He wondered whether he would die from the grip, from suffocation, from the fire, or from a blow of the creature to whom he was tied.

Or maybe he would die after falling from the 52nd floor.

No. He couldn't die there. Not yet. As he descended brutally and chaotically, in a whirlwind of fire and rocks being shot everywhere, The Batman used one of his bat-shaped shuriken to ease the grip of the monster. He wasn't about to lose control or be overcome by fear. He had learned to use terror to his advantage, not against him.

He broke free from the grip with all his strength, turned around, and stood up on the alien's torso, still descending through the floors of the building, which were collapsing under its own weight. For a few moments, he managed to look directly at what was supposed to be its face, a rocky and disfigured surface.

"You shouldn't have come here. This is our world. You only landed to fall further."

...

All he could hear were the sirens. All he could smell was the smoke. On his lips, he could taste his own blood. His whole body was in pain. But, this time, the pain was a good thing. It meant he was alive.

"Master Bruce! Please, answer me, Master Bruce!"

"I-I'm here, Alfred. I'm here."

"Where are you, sir? How are you?"

His suit was extremely battered. He had taken it off a while ago, put it in a dirty bag he found in the alley, and was now only wearing his shoes, his watch, his socks, and some tattered pants he stole from a shopkeeper.

His skin was covered in scars; some very recent, some very old. There was one crossing his chest that he had gotten precisely in Japan, eight years ago. He was sure he had a bunch of broken bones. It would take a while to mend them before he could stand up.

"Ah… behind an alley, three blocks from the skyscraper, next to a dumpster. God, it hurts like hell…"

"Sir?"

"I'm alive, Alfred. Hh. That's what counts. Report."

"Yes, sir. I can't confirm if the Stone-God..."

"Stone-God?"

"That is what they call it, sir."

"It fell quite easily for a god." He wanted to laugh, but his ribs hurt too much, and he had to stop. "C-continue."

"We don't know whether it is alive or dead, but we do know it is completely inactive. Upon impact with the ground, all its golems crumbled to pieces. The agents have taken the creature away, I don't know where, in what condition, or for what purpose. You have saved everyone, sir," he said after a meaningful pause.

"I see. And the others?"

"The others, sir?"

"There were more meteorites crossing the sky, that's what you told me. Tell me. What happened to them?"

"I have not been able to find all the places where they landed. I think these agents are blocking out satellite signal."

"But?"

"..."

"Alfred, what are you not telling me?"

"Master Bruce, you need to rest, this has been more than what someone like you..."

"Alfred!"

He heard his butler's sigh in his ear. He knew him perfectly. It could be translated in many ways, but it was generally interpreted as a simple I give up.

"One of them is active. It has been described as a creature made of plasma and fire. It is facing you-know-who at Metropolis Bay, right now."

"The alien?"

"Yes, sir"

Gotham was 700 miles east of Metropolis. If the alien failed, his city could be next.

No. The Batman had a responsibility with everyone. Everywhere.

Bruce stood up. Then he fell again. He tried to stand up once more. It wasn't easy, he was exhausted. He heard a murmur coming from the alley, and cursed not having fixed his bones in time.

"Sir? Are you okay? We're evacuating the area" said a female voice, in her native English, with an American accent. "Sir?"

"Y-yes, I'm fine, don't worry. Don't come any cl…" he whispered. Not because he wanted to. He was just so tired.

"Do you speak English? Sir, are you injured? The threat is already contained. Don't be afraid, I'm just… Oh, dear gods! Bruce Wayne?" asked the agent, her mouth open in shock. She was blonde, with sky-blue eyes and a well-trained body. She was wearing a black jacket made of Kevlar, and Bruce was sure her legs could kick anyone right to Kingdom Come.

In any case, she reacted as anyone would have, whether a government secret agent or a random neighbour, by seeing the famous playboy from Gotham City.

"Well, I have no idea what threat you're talking about. Hey, you should try the sake they serve nearby. Man, it does wonders" Bruce concluded, doing his best drunken imitation. He was getting very good at it.

"You didn't notice anything?" The agent helped him up. "And these wounds?"

"I have no idea, but they sure hurt, ha, ha, ha."

"Probably the debris. Maybe?" The agent put her finger to her ear. "Lance here. I have a wounded man behind Maki Street, at the Yeah Saki restaurant. Multiple bruises. It's Bruce Wayne. Yes, that Bruce Wayne. No, it's not a joke, Kurt!"

"Oh, don't worry about me, Agent Lance" said Bruce, wondering who she —and the other agents— were working for. "Are you from the FBI? Oh, I love the FBI! But don't worry about anything, just take me to Gotham and I'll buy a hospital or two to take care of me. I'll just need a ride, okay? Is a ride with the CIA cheap, Agent Lance? Are you with the CIA? Because I love the CIA!"