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"Someday my prince will come."
— Snow White (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)
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<(Omniscient POV)>
"Something is watching us," NKVDemon growled from behind his mentor, tension laced thick in his Russian voice. "I can feel it, its gaze. Whatever it is, it's dangerous."
"Tch," KGBeast clicked his tongue as he turned a knob on his cybernetic machinegun-like arm, preparing himself for whatever was coming for them.
*Thump-thump-thump!* Suddenly, they heard the sound of footsteps approaching from the dark corridor in front of them. But it wasn't the sound of normal walking. No, it was as if someone was running in their direction.
"Hold up—isn't that Skylar the Skinner?" NKVDemon asked no one in particular, uncertainty flickering in his eyes as he peered out from under his mask. "Yeah. That's him," He concluded with a nod after a few seconds of deliberation. "Used to be big news till a few years ago. He was known for skinning his victims alive with nothing but a shaving blade. He has even taken out more than a dozen Arkham guards since they locked him up a decade ago. A real nasty record. Even the Ventriloquist kept his distance—stuck him on guard duty in the left wing, just to keep him away... But why is he running?"
"Help me, please. You have to get me out of here. We need to move. It's hunting me. It'll kill everyone." Skylar cried out as if on cue, his voice cracked and raw, like he'd been screaming for hours. His face was a mess of tears and mucus as he stumbled toward the two Russian operatives standing watch.
"Skylar, slow down—what happened...?" NKVDemon started to ask, knowing full well his mentor rarely bothered with strangers. But the words never made it out. The second Skylar's full form stepped into the light, NKVDemon froze. "Bozhe moi... What is that?"
Skylar's entire body was slick with blood—his back worst of all. Someone had meticulously flayed his skin from his shoulders to his chest, slicing just deep enough to peel the epidermis away without striking anything vital. His raw muscle, vessels, and tissue pulsed in the open air. Whoever did it made sure he stayed alive—awake—to feel every second of it.
"The Bat Demon—it's not some bedtime story. It's real and it's here, in Arkham!" Skylar shrieked like a lunatic as he reached KGBeast and NKVDemon, flailing to shove past them and keep running. But before he could get far, his body crumpled to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut—a single dart lodged in his back, its tail etched with the unmistakable symbol of a bat.
"The Grim Knight!" KGBeast reacted instantly, raising his cybernetic left arm and unloading a barrage of rounds into the darkness—firing at something only he seemed able to track through the enhanced night vision of his cybernetic eye.
NKVDemon followed his mentor's lead. He didn't have cybernetics or night vision tech—not yet—but he didn't need them to trust what his instincts were screaming. Without a moment's pause, he raised the SMG in his grip and opened fire into the dark, hoping the combined hail of both their bullets would be enough to bring down whatever monstrous nightmare the Grim Knight was supposed to be.
For nearly a full minute, heavy gunfire roared through the lobby. But surprisingly, there were no screams or even cries for help. Not even a tiny whimper. It made the two Russian assassins wonder if their rounds were hitting anything at all. Still, they kept unloading their ammo, sweeping the dark with hot lead, hoping the noise would draw in more inmates—more guns, more bodies—to stand a chance against the knight. After all, the tales they had heard of him all painted a picture of a bloody, demented monster who got his fix from stopping criminals in the most brutal ways possible.
***
<(Batman POV)>
Bullets? Really? I sighed from a few meters away, hidden with the help of my armor's own cloaking technology inspired by the cloaking tech in Predator armors, my forcefield, which was basically an improved Holtzman shield from the Dune universe, quietly deflecting every round before they even reached my armor. Not that it actually mattered. The suit, woven with neutral carbonadium and reinforced with promethium, was more than enough to shrug off most ammunition. But image mattered. In Gotham, fear was a weapon. And to keep the legend alive—the demon from the pit, the ghost in the dark—I had to look untouchable to the point where criminals couldn't even imagine having a chance against me in their wildest dreams.
After about a solid minute of shooting, NKVDemons was the first one to run out of bullets. KGBeast looked like he still had some ammunition left, but he too stopped shooting, perhaps to survey the destruction they had caused. Most, if not the entire, lobby was riddled with countless bullet holes. There was dust, concrete, and smoke everywhere, as chips and pieces of the wall fell due to heavy damage.
His cybernetic eye tracked me in the dark, even with my superior stealth skills. That's no street thug... there's more to him. And why the hell was Arkham storing combat-grade cybernetics inside the facility? Standard protocol allows only clothing and basic personal items. Rare exceptions are made for some small firearms in some unique cases. But a military-grade visual implant? A machine gun grafted as a prosthetic arm? That's not oversight—that's insanity. Are Gotham's administrators truly this incompetent?
I rubbed my forehead as a small migraine started to bloom. NZT-48 is making all the nonsense logic followed in the city far too clear for me... or maybe this isn't just some silly incompetence. Maybe it's corruption at its absolute peak. Yep, that must be it.
"Bruce, as you previously inquired, those two ahead are NKVDemon and KGBeast. Both are high-profile Russian assassins, currently marked DOA by their own government after a failed attempt on the president's life. And yes, as you suspected, scans confirm they've undergone extensive supersoldier augmentation. KGBeast alone is fitted with over a dozen military-grade cybernetic enhancements—strength, reflexes, endurance, everything has been improved through them. Combined with their field experience, they probably rank above even one of your average Colony operatives in terms of raw lethality," Cortana relayed through the helmet's comms in response to my earlier query.
"So nothing special," I muttered. In Gotham, every supervillain with a name had some edge—some twisted skill, power, or ability that made them more dangerous than any other real-world criminal around the world. Having a body with above peak-human capability was probably the most common and boring of them.
"You think we got him?" NKVDemon asked his mentor, his accent thick with grit.
I couldn't help but wonder why they were speaking English to each other. Russian would've made far more sense—tactically and otherwise.
"No. You didn't," I answered coldly, my voice low and modulated, as I stopped cloaking myself and appeared just a few feet from KGBeast. In one motion, I seized his head and drove it into the wall—hard enough to collapse part of the already fractured structure.
I could hear footsteps—more inmates closing in, drawn by the noise from the earlier barrage of gunfire. I'd already neutralized the ones in the restricted wing. These had to be the ones stationed near the warden's office and residential block.
"Demon!" NKVDemon shouted, flinging something my way that looked a lot like a grenade. Idiot. He didn't think twice about the blast radius or the integrity of a crumbling structure in a confined space. However, I didn't have that luxury. Keeping the prisoners—and the hostage guards—alive was still my job... no matter how much that annoyed me.
So, I decided to pull a Captain America. I caught it clean mid-air, locked it between my palms, and pulled it tight against my chest, before bracing myself for the impact.
The detonation hit like a freight train—at least 300 metric tons of kinetic force instantaneously slamming into me. Anyone else would've been blown into pieces. But my near-invulnerable armor, my reinforced musculature, superhuman strength, and focused chi kept my bones from shattering, only making me stagger a little.
"What—?" NKVDemon choked out.
Before he could finish the thought, I hurled the shrapnel fragments still in my hand straight at him with my full might.
They hit like rounds from a railgun, punching through his body. He dropped, blood spilling from his mouth instantly.
"No." KGBeast, who had already recovered, lifted his prosthetic arm and unleashed a stream of blue fire in my direction. The flamethrower roared, but I calmly pushed through the heat, step by step, until I reached him, then grabbed the nozzle and crushed it in my grip, bending it toward him until the fire sputtered out.
However, KGBeast didn't hesitate. He drew a sidearm with his free hand and emptied the entire clip at my face, point-blank, in a desperate attempt to break through my armor. But it was all for null.
'Feels like clearing a level 10 boss with level 100 gear,' I thought with a deadpan, before ripping the entire prosthetic arm from his shoulder in one clean, brutal motion. 'They should have at least arranged for something more challenging to divert my attention. This feels like child's play.'
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