Alfred and Jeremiah watched as the Batwing returned to its hangar before Bruce and Lelouch stepped out, taking off their helmets and putting them on the desk as they sat down at the Batcomputer, accepting plates of the Christmas Ham dinner that had been prepared earlier.
"Are you back for the night, sirs?" Alfred asked.
"No. It's going to be a long night, Alfred." Bruce said as he slid the memory card inside. "Lelouch and I just ran into a human-shaped crocodile, who told us that Black Mask has hired assassins to kill us."
"I take it things are more complicated than anticipated?" Jeremiah asked.
Lelouch nodded. "Much more. Commissioner Loeb is dead. That leaves Captain Gordon in charge for the time being."
"Let's hope the upcoming mayoral election goes favorably. You'll both find a strong ally in Gordon if he becomes the new commissioner." Jeremiah said.
Alfred, however, was a bit more concerned about the "assassins being hired to kill Bruce and Lelouch" bit.
"Assassins, Sir? As in, more than one?"
"That's right."
"And you heard this from the mouth of a crocodile man?"
"His name is Killer Croc, real name Waylon Jones, a former circus wrestler," Lelouch explained as he looked up the memory card footage. "And don't worry, he's already behind bars."
Alfred shuddered. "I pity his cellmate."
"I don't," Bruce said before looking at the footage. "Looks like the memory card was intact enough to retrieve the data. Now we can correlate that with Interpol's dossiers to learn more about who Black Mask hired."
The data then showed recorded footage of Black Mask ordering his men to make deliveries to the eight assassins in question.
"Each of them gets one of these envelopes. I want them delivered tonight!"
Jeremiah raised an eyebrow when he saw what was being delivered.
"One night to kill the Bat and Zero, bounty of 50 million dollars, each? I never took Sionis to treat this as a game."
Bruce nodded. "They're all hired killers, the best in the business. Black Mask isn't messing around."
The first image came up, revealing a man in half-orange, half-black armor with a mask covering his whole face except for his eye. Recorded footage showed him taking out a whole group of agents as the Black Mask goon sent to give him the message watched.
"Slade Wilson... Deathstroke. Subject of a failed military experiment."
"Failed, you say?" Alfred quipped, having seen the extensive combat capabilities Deathstroke showcased.
"It was meant to make him immune to enemy truth serum, but the unstable formula left him with surprisingly beneficial side effects." Lelouch clarified. "According to the file, he's ex-military. An undisclosed incident left him blind in one eye, but it clearly hasn't slowed him down."
The next file depicted a man in a full-body asbestos suit and winged jetpack torching a helicopter with a custom-made flamethrower.
"Garfield Lynns AKA Firefly. Burns on 90% of his body." Bruce noted.
"A former pyrotechnist, he goes for volume without caring about collateral damage. He's been positively linked to several known arson cases." Lelouch read.
Bruce hummed. "His obsession is going to be his end."
"How unlike anyone I know." Alfred quipped.
The next file brought up showed a woman with snake-like tattoos and contortionist skills breaking free from a holding cell and killing the guard watching over her.
"Copperhead. According to the file, that's a name used by several assassins in the past." Lelouch noted. "The current one has been identified as a woman, but no known name is given. She's escaped from police custody fifteen times in total. Apparently, she's a skill contortionist, and most of her targets have died due to lethal envenomation."
"And those that didn't?" Jeremiah asked, dreading the answer.
"Broken necks."
The next assassin showcased was an African-American man in sniper gear with a balaclava mask that covered his whole face except for his eyes, which had some kind of high-tech targeting scope goggle attachment on the right eye.
"Floyd Lawton AKA Deadshot. Says here he's an expert sharpshooter."
The man fired a single shot from a sniper rifle that ricocheted several times to kill a group of SWAT Guards that attempted to take him in.
"How on earth...?" Alfred asked in surprise at the sheer marksmanship.
"I can see where he got his handle," Jeremiah said.
"He has a complete mastery over every type of firearm known to mankind," Lelouch noted. "Every assassination has only taken one shot each, even against multiple targets. He'll be especially dangerous."
"True, but he's also young and reckless. We just need to catch him off guard." Bruce said.
The next assassin was a young thuggish-looking man with electric burns on the side of his face and equipped in armor with a pair of shock gloves, fighting in some kind of underground fight ring.
"Street tough named Lester Buchinsky. Calls himself Electrocutioner." Bruce noted.
"Shocking." Alfred quipped.
Bruce's eyes then widened in surprise when he saw who the next assassin was.
"Shiva."
"Isn't she one of the students you trained with at the Togakure-ryu temple?" Lelouch asked.
"Yes, her skill is unmatched. Even I struggled against her." Bruce admitted. "Since then, she's joined a rather interesting group known as the League of Assassins."
The last file got Bruce and Lelouch especially worried. It showcased a large juggernaut of a man in a trenchcoat and black and white luchador mask, who showed equal parts strength and finesse.
"Bane, here, in Gotham?"
Lelouch shuddered. "Last anyone heard of him, he'd taken over the Santa Prisca prison, where he was being forced to serve his dead father's sentence from infancy."
"I've heard quite a few horror stories about that place. Seems he survived that hellhole." Jeremiah noted.
Alfred nodded. "And as the saying goes, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Clearly, he took that saying to heart."
"But why would he be taking money as a hired killer?" Bruce wondered.
The memory card data then showed Warden Joseph being forced onto his knees by Black Mask's goons as the crime boss himself walked up with a lit cigarette, which he used to graphically burn out the poor man's eye.
"Is that Warden Joseph?" Alfred asked.
Bruce nodded. "Must be how Black Mask got inside the prison. He uses torture for intimidation...and entertainment."
"So with Waylon Jones now incarcerated, you have seven assassins left to contend with, all of whom have one night to kill Batman. How do you plan to deal with them?" Jeremiah asked.
"We're going to find out who was operating this drone and make them tell us what they know," Bruce said. "Then we're going to find Black Mask and put an end to this."
"Sir, I may be stating the obvious here, but since the four of us are the only ones who know Batman and Zero's true identities, besides Mr. Fox and Miss Chawla, those assassins will all fail their mandate if you just spend the evening here," Alfred said.
"They'll put innocent lives in danger to get our attention. You know we can't take that risk, Alfred." Bruce pointed out.
"50 million is a lot of money, and they only have one night to collect," Lelouch added. "We can't let them fight each other over the bounty either. They'd tear half the city apart."
Jeremiah sighed. "Then it seems the best course of action is to take the fight to them, on your terms. But you'd need a way to find them first."
Bruce nodded. "There's only one person in all of Gotham who can get his hands on tech like this: Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot AKA The Penguin."
"The drone does match his type of gear. After all, he uses it to keep an eye on the other gang lords in the city." Lelouch noted. "And it seems he's been tracking Black Mask for some time. The drone's next waypoint was supposed to be a rendezvous with Penguin's men at Jezebel Plaza. An arms deal, from the look of it."
"Jeremiah and I will get the Batwing fueled and ready for deployment while you two finish dinner," Alfred said. "And if you should encounter any of the assassins, might I suggest studying whatever combat styles or technologies they might employ. You might find some of it useful."
Lelouch nodded. "Not a bad idea."
Bruce and Lelouch continued to eat dinner as they sifted through the drone's data to plan out their next patrol.
Relatively short chapter, just wanted to set up the hunt for the assassins and Black Mask as well as confronting the Penguin. I'm using Arkham Videos to help guide me through this as well as what mtnetsurfer wrote for Code Batman.