Arkham City

Wonder City

1:47 A.M.

"The Sins of the Father"

"So tell me Batman, how does it feel?"

The ground beneath the Dark Knight rumbled with malicious intent as he stalked up to the flesh-and-flora covered entrance to the remnants of Wonder City.

It was as if, with every step he took, the earth itself was reacting to his physical presence: gnarled roots broke through the broken tiles and moss-covered walls of the underground infrastructure in his immediate vicinity.

Never hesitating nonetheless, he continued on until something blocked his path.

Glaring upwards, the narrowed slits on his cowl betrayed no emotion as he stared directly at a menagerie of Poison Ivy's sadistic machinations given a crude and twisted physical form.

Dozens of bodies were perversely strung up like decorative ornaments against a thick vine-infested canopy that had seemingly swallowed the original entrance of Wonder City whole.

Their bodies had been viscerally decomposed to near skin and bones, but the tattered remains of TYGER tactical uniform and Arkham City orange jumpsuits still clung onto their emaciated corpses.

Gargantuan vines gestated all around them, forming a seemingly impenetrable wall of flora that separates him from the plant queen.

For now, at least.

"How does it feel…..knowing you failed?" Her voice graced his ears once again, a taunting sneer in his head, but an almost godlike echo outside of it.

"Arkham City is mine, Batman. My children will feed off of what remains of Gotham soon enough. And now that you are here, my little Bat, you will be mine too…"

His fists clenched as she finished, "...just as your 'faithful follower' now belongs to me."

Ivy's mocking laughter followed after the last word, building to a scathing crescendo that chipped away at but ultimately did not penetrate his unyielding composure.

"Why don't you come and see for yourself, lover? Robin is just dying to see you again," her voice rang in his head yet again.

Prompted by her words, the plant-human wall slowly parted into two halves, revealing a grisly and unknown darkness that would easily dissuade any ordinary man from entering.

Naturally, Batman gave not a second's pause and entered inside the barely lit tunnel teeming with hostility towards him.

Ignoring the fledgling vines hissing away at his metallic boots, he switched on his Detective Vision in order to get a clearer visual of his surroundings.

Moving intently yet ever so cautiously towards the light at the end, his cowl registered anything that was on either side of him: mutated vines the size of fully grown anacondas, the bent and broken halves of the rectangular entrance barriers, and most gruesomely of all, recently decomposed corpses strung up in the air by their wrists with some breed of parasitic mushroom covering what remained of their faces.

"As you can see, some of the meat were gracious enough to donate their bodies for my babies' nourishment. Of course, once the little ones had had their fill, I had to find another use for their pathetic husks. Mother Nature is never one to waste." Her bemused snickering only highlighted the pure sadism and disregard for human life displayed by the former scientist, even more so when she added, "They really liven up the place, don't you think?"

Continuing on despite the deathly aroma emanating from the hanging corpses, a smell that he was far too familiar with, the detective stepped over a pulsating Venus fly trap the size of a television set before coming face-to-face with the last body in his way.

Pausing in place, he tried to get a closer look at the inmate's face for forensic analysis.

The vigilante had just activated his Evidence Scanner when the man suddenly lifted his head up to meet him.

Malicious cuts and bruises adorned his youthful features, his eyes sunken into despair and his unkempt raven black hair covering up the deeper lacerations along his hairline.

But, most startling of all, Batman made out what looked like a crude symbol in the form of a J burned into his left cheek.

Staring up at the Dark Knight's unflinching expression, the boy croaked out at him, "You left me to die."

Quickly steeling himself, the detective brushed past the inmate and refocused himself on the task at hand.

"Just a little further, my little Bat…" Again her taunting voice goaded him on, and again he ignored her, remaining on his guard as more and more of her mutated creations hissed at him from all around.

"We're all waiting for you, my love. I know you can feel my babies all around you. Gathering beneath your feet, in the air that I allow you to breath. They've grown so much since you've seen them last, my dear, Dark Knight. My…..beloved."

Batman stopped once again, a burning tinge of familiarity once again breaking through his cold exterior.

There was just something ...different about the way the redheaded vixen uttered that last word, something about it that just-

"Bruce."

His artificial ears perking up at the second woman's voice, the Dark Knight turned to his right only to see the dying form of Talia al Ghul.

Crimson red trickled down her mouth as she weakly clutched at the gunshot wound to her chest with one hand, the other clinging on to a detached pipe for support.

"Why did you let the clown kill me, beloved? I thought you loved me," she told him sadly, her usually cold and calculating eyes pleading with him as her breaths became shallower and shallower.

Eyes narrowing, he started forward only to have his foot nearly caught in a mushroom-covered crevice.

Stepping over it, he looked up only to see a deceased member of Talia's personal guard tied to the wall by thorny vines, her face forever frozen in a look of horror and fear as one vine in particular slithered around her now broken neck.

I thought you loved me, beloved.

Turning away before her words could linger on his conscience anymore, he hastened his pace through the tunnel, trudging tirelessly through rotting flesh and hostile vegetation until finally…

A soft rumbling from underground proceeded the two vertical columns slowly parting before him, revealing the full scope of Poison Ivy's floral paradise.

He had walked the streets of Wonder City perhaps a dozen times in the past few weeks, but never like this.

The buildings towering above him were almost completely dominated by monstrous vines of prehistoric proportions draped over the Gothic architecture.

On the street level, however, his eyes automatically zeroed in on six human-sized cocoons lined up against the store windows.

After a cursory glance around, he stepped over a pulsating vine and warily approached the closest one.

Sizing up its glowing green, almost alien exterior, he activated his Detective Vision for further analysis.

Detecting a person inside, he was just about to examine the closed shell with one gloved hand when suddenly, he heard her voice.

"Curious now, aren't we, my little Bat?"

Slowly turning around, the Dark Knight had nothing but annoyance and violent intentions in his mind as Poison Ivy stepped out from around a store corner, her smile as bright as her fiery red hair.

Elegantly crossing one leg after the other, she leered at him with those seductive yet ever-sinister emerald eyes.

His fists clenched, his teeth gritted together, but, the Batman did not make a move. Yet.

Holding up a vibrant rose in one dainty hand, she gazed at it happily before smirking at him knowingly, "Of course, you know what they say: Curiosity killed the cat."

His eyes only narrowed irritably as she then began whispering lovingly to the sentient plant.

Taking a few steps forward, she casually dropped down into a kneeling position before a patch of grass that had formed out of the broken cement.

Kissing its petals with her own rosy lips before gently lowering the flower on the grass, she watched with motherly pride as the plant bloomed even more, stretching out its petals to the wingspan of a beautiful butterfly before digging its stem into the soft dirt.

Not even looking at him, the plant queen's eyes rested solely on the rose, before her lips eventually curled into her typical sneer.

"Welcome to Eden, Batman."