"Have you ever wondered how the kingpins keep their people on a leash? Sure, they pay well enough, and the ladder climbs itself pretty frequently thanks to the profession's low life expectancy and high occupational hazards—courtesy of Batman and, for a while, yours truly. But I couldn't wrap my head around why the low-ranking mooks would have any loyalty to their bosses, especially when it's their necks on the chopping block.
Money only buys so much devotion when you're staring down the barrel of a gun or getting your ribs caved in by a vigilante.
Harvey Dent was a chisel-jawed, silver-tongued attorney before his unfortunate accident. Him, I can see luring others to his cause with words and ideas.
He speaks in courtroom rhetoric, makes you believe you're fighting for something righteous even when you're kneecapping a snitch in some back alley. The Clown, crazy as he is, becomes a beacon to those early-to-mid-twenties types who see the world's order as shackles. He offers them something money can't buy, which is the permission to burn it all down, and to laugh while doing it.
Maroni and Falcone represent the bygone Old World with a more traditional idea of crime. You know the type: Loans, racketeering, gambling rings, fighting pits, all that classic underworld business. They sell traditions, structure, the promise that if you follow the rules and keep your mouth shut, you'll die richer than the last sucker. There's comfort in that for some people, I suppose.
Penguin is the mastermind who is just as brutal as the rest but smart enough not to throw away a piece before he's exhausted its use.
That restraint grants him a far better reputation than his fellows, along with a network any aspiring kingpin would kill for. He actually treats his people like investments rather than expendable assets, which makes them actually want to stick around. Novel concept, I know.
Each of them represents an aspect of Evil, and each possesses a theme of their own that draws followers like moths to a flame. Most offer something beyond just a paycheck; like identity, purpose, a reason to die for, however dumb and destructive said reason is.
And then there's Roman Sionis. He isn't as charismatic as Dent and couldn't convince a drowning man to grab a life preserver to save his life. He doesn't embody the sheer, nihilistic evil that Joker stands for, nor does he have Penguin's ever-expanding network and resources.
He's not exactly traditional either, not in the way the old Families operate, and he's definitely not as scary as Scarecrow. Black Mask is brash, violent, ugly to his core, and about as charismatic and witty as a rabid dog foaming at the mouth. So how does he stand tall in Gotham? How is it that people still flock to him?
The answer came to me one fine evening. It's sheer audacity mixed with reliability. Now, most of the kingpins will place a bullet in your brain for putting a finger in their slice of the cake unless you have something better to offer, while Black Mask will put a bullet in your brain regardless of, then come back and shoot the corpse a few more times to make sure you got the message.
The man is a stubborn and vicious dog that operates on pure, unfiltered aggression with a singular focus on the Society's benefits.
He never gets distracted by theatrics or that heavy, obsessive fixation on Batman that Joker and Edward Nigma have, and that is perhaps his greatest asset in a city full of crazies.
To render him truly helpless, I knew I had to take away more than just his ability to fight.
I had to dismantle his capacity to conduct business.
I needed to shatter his mythos.
Luckily, he'd already handed me the means to."
— [HELLBRED] —
For years he bounced from one place to another, absorbing everything the League of Assassins and field experts could teach him. Bruce had left Gotham a seventeen-year-old boy drowning in grief and rage, and returned a man of discipline and purpose.
Martial arts, forensics, chemistry, tactics.
He'd thrown himself into each discipline with the single-minded intensity in hope of filling a void that could never be filled. And even after that, he hadn't been content with competence when expertise lay just beyond reach, meaning his education hadn't quite ended with just the League.
Explosives alone had required months of consultation with demolitions experts across four countries until he could identify a device from wire gauge and tape residue alone.
So, needless to say, tracking down most of Harvey Dent's bombs had proven rather trivial ordeal, especially with Wayne Enterprise's aforementioned vast resources at his disposal. Dismantling the bombs themselves wasn't the issue either.
The captives were.
Apparently, Dent had gotten the bright idea to attach the detonators directly to them, rigging each device to monitor its victim's pulse. A flatline would trigger the bomb remotely, and any attempt at removal would activate a fail-safe that injected air bubbles directly into their heart.
And even if he somehow figured a way to remove them safely, the sensor would still register it as flatline. The smartest move would be to leave them be, but these mechanisms weren't tied to any single bomb.
In the hours since he'd spent searching, Dent's henchmen could have planted dozens more across the city, and every one of them would still function.
His nose scrunched beneath the cowl as he turned away from the shivering victims pressed together in the corner. The only solution was talking Harvey down, provided enough of the district attorney survived beneath the scar tissue to be reasoned with. Bruce had started considering backup options when one of the captives pulled himself to his feet despite the tremor in his legs. "Thank you, Batman."
"You're not safe yet."
"Maybe not," The man rasped, his swollen eyelid twitching "But at least we're not alone with them anymore."
Another captive pushed himself up, younger, maybe early twenties. "We can handle ourselves from here. You've got bigger problems."
"You're all wired with detonators monitoring your vitals. Your heart stops, the bombs go off. Someone tries to remove them, you're dead anyway."
The younger man's face paled. "Then what do we do?"
"I can take you somewhere secure. The Batmobile's equipped to—"
"No." The woman from before stepped forward, arms crossed despite the tremor in her hands. "You're needed elsewhere. Dent's still planting these things… They are killing people, and every minute you spend with us is another minute he has." Then she glanced at the others. "This isn't our first rodeo. We will make it. Just tell us where to go."
Bruce studied her, weighing risk against necessity. She was right. Strategically, she was absolutely right, yet Bruce felt disturbed all the same as he listed an address.
The building was purchased through a labyrinth of shell companies that would take even Penguin's best accountants weeks to trace. "Go to this address. It's stocked with medical supplies and food. Take the service alleys, avoid main streets. I'll come to remove the detonators when the night's over…" They nodded, filing behind him in an order line like little ducklings while Bruce led the way to the exit.
Then his mind quietly shifted to the next probable bomb sites, when his HUD lit up with thermal signatures.
Too many.
Twenty… No, twenty-eight figures spread in a formation, all armed with rifles, shotguns, submachine guns and someone appeared to be speaking into a radio. "There are people outside… Hide!"
The captives didn't dare waste time with questions, scattering and pressing themselves into shadows where they flattened against rough walls to make themselves small. Only after he was sure they were no longer visible did Bruce latch onto the space above the door and ripped said door from its hinges with the tendrils sprouting from his wrist.
Predictably, the henchmen backed away like startled, wide-eyed deers and to Bruce's surprise, clicking growls that reminded of him much of the creature Jim and Jon Thomas had dreamed up all the way back in the eighties.
"Move in!"
"Move in? Are you fucking crazy?!" One of the henchmen, apparently the voice of reason in the group, roared back. "Who knows what the hell's in there? That door's solid steel and it just folded in half!"
Then, as though believing the absurdity still hadn't been properly emphasized, he added, "For seemingly NO. FUCKING. REASON!"
Bruce found himself idly noting the man's survival instincts, a remarkably rare trait in this part of town.
"Enter, or you'll handle the fallout yourself."
The man paused, his mind racing through his options.
The man paused, his mind racing through terrible options.
There was their scarfaced boss who would flay him alive for cowardice, the terrifying black shape that had dismantled his entire squad in the past, and now the beckoning abyss that seemed to dare them to enter. "I think I'll take my chances with the boss." Better the Devil he knew than one he didn't.
"Fucking coward." Their leader growled, gesturing for another to enter, only to be met with scared, hesitant gazes all around. "You trippin', man."
"After you, boss."
"Cowards! Cowards, the lot of you!"
With a heavy sigh, he began psyching himself up for what came next.
Despite his tough exterior, he was just as terrified as the rest of them, but the promotion was still fresh and tradition demanded he prove his worth or get demoted, which in their line of work usually meant surrendering a finger or two if the coin came up in his favor.
Swallowing the snot at the back of his throat, he raised his gun upon which a flashlight was mounted; a flashlight that barely illuminated anything at all and showed only the darkness that he swore shifted and all the dust particles drifting to each gust.
It felt like an eternity before he reached the entrance, scanning the interior until he spotted someone's boot. "Identify yourself! Identify yourself or I'll shoot!" He roared, and a girl with a messy bobcut poked her head out, seeming deeply uncomfortable.
At first he thought he was the source of her disvomfort since she was staring in his general direction, but her gaze was slightly off.
Slightly…
Up?
"What're you looking at?" Even as he asked, his eyes and gun had already followed her line of sight, and there, right above him, a black shape clung to the wall with sharp, dark talons that carved into the concrete as effortlessly as hot knives through butter.
He never managed a scream, but screams sounded nevertheless. Screams from his own men as he got dragged up the ceiling by dark tendrils he only realized had entangled him after his trigger-happy finger let loose wildly the entire magazine into the ceiling. "Ah! Ahh!"
He tried screaming through the slick tentacle filling his mouth, desperate to alert his crew and bring them storming with weapons drawn. Then he screamed again for entirely different reasons when his eyes landed on the smooth, rippling mask of the Bat's new costume.
Before he could register what was happening, he collided with the ground and groaned as he curled, his now U-shaped weapon jabbing him in the ribs.
Blacking in and out of consciousness, his bloodshot eyes remained glued to the figure as it burst through the second floor window and leaped upon his panicking squad, apparently too impatient to lure them in as it had done with him.
Some instantly dropped their guns and bolted for safety.
Others, the smarter ones, decided to put their weapons to good use.
Not that it helped, since their bullets found only shadows and billowing cape fabric as the Bat whizzed and weaved through the hail of gunfire. "Ha...!" He wheezed, desperate to draw in gulps of air and got up, but it was as if his body had been paralyzed and so he could only lay while men got a beatdown to last lifetimes. His second wheeze came with the realization that half his men were already sprawled across the pavement in similar states.
He'd heard the stories, of course, whispered in back alleys and shouted in holding cells.
He'd climbed the ranks despite Gotham's boogeyman, dismissing the tales as nothing more than the babbling of madmen meant to keep a semblance of dignity for themselves.
Gotham, after all, had no shortage of those.
Now he saw that he was wrong.
The vigilante grabbed one henchman and hurled him bodily through a nearby wooden shed, which splintered and collapsed into a heap over the groaning man. Then, and only then, did those wide, alien white lenses moved to him. "Where's Dent?" The Bat boomed just as he managed to get to his feet and catch the jeep barreling toward them at breakneck speed.
At the speed it was going, and given his newly acquired limp, there was no way he could dodge it, so he screamed, praying the vigilante would react. "Behind you!!!" And react he did! Or more accurately his cape did, erupting into a bulging mass of tendrils that grabbed hold of the speeding vehicle and toppled it over onto its side in a shower of sparks.
Clearly, the tales had either undersold the Bat's capabilities or he'd recently received one hell of an upgrade.
Sam didn't get to complain for long before the vigilante loomed over him, his suit rippling like the mask. "Look, man, I don't know."
Then the mask split open like a tangerine peel, its texture shifting and grinding against itself to produce an ear-piercing shriek that sent ice through Sam's veins.
"Try again!"
"I really don't know! The guy's fucking paranoid, alright?! He never stops moving, never stays anywhere long!" The words tumbled out in frantically. "I only got my orders through a proxy!"
"I'll count to five, then you better give me something, or I'll start breaking bones. One…"
"If I told you, he'd fucking kill me!"
"Two."
"Please, please! I'm just following orders, I'm nobody!"
"Three." Futilely, he tried to struggle free, but the Bat's grip felt like a vice clamped around his collar even as his panic mounted. He wasn't a stranger to pain. Nobody was in this part of town, but that didn't mean he enjoyed it. Who the hell did?
"Four."
"Alright, fuck! I'll—"
The emergency broadcast system suddenly blared to life, its shrill alarm drowning out whatever confession had been about to spill from his lips. Then came a distorted, though unmistakably amused voice. "—Hello, Gotham. Can you hear us? One, two. One, two." There was a brief pause, then the voice continued with mock curiosity. "I think they can hear us... What do you think, Roman?"
By the look of it, the Bat probably recognized the voice, judging by how his grip immediately loosened on Sam's collar.
"—C'mon! Don't make our audience wait, tell them about yourself! Tell them or I'll shove my arm up your ass and work you like a muppet."
"What the fuck?" The Bat seemed equally disturbed by the broadcast, one hand coming up to press against his masked forehead in what could only be described as secondhand embarrassment.
"—I-I'm Roman Sionis. You may know me as Black Mask…"
The second voice wavered, then fell silent as muffled conversation passed between the two speakers.
"And I'm here t-to repent..."
"By?" The Imp's voice dripped with mock anticipation.
"By... Sin-Singing a song."
"C'mon, don't be shy."
It took a while and probably every ounce of the kingpin's remaining courage to finally begin. "I-I-I'm a—"
"Say it! Say it!" The Imp urged gleefully.
"I'm a Barb... I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world—"
It could have been Sam's imagination, but he could have sworn he heard muffled sobbing mixed in with the singing, until the shame got the better of him at last, and he roared. "—No! Kill me! Just fucking kill me!"
"—Apologies for the interruption, folks. We'll be back with you shortly."
"Man, that's just fucked up," Sam mumbled, then asked in disbelief, "Is that elevator music?"
For the first time since Sam had laid eyes on him, the Bat looked equally floored by the absurdity, until something seemed to click in his mind. "Give me a name and address, or you'll deal with him."
"Dude..."
Pain Sam could endure.
Death too, since nobody entered this line of work without contemplating their own mortality a few times, but that kind of humiliation? That level of indignity? After tonight, Black Mask would be obsolete. "... You need their number to go with the name and address?"