Alright, lads and lasses, I'm gonna be completely fucking honest with you.
I've run dry of creative ways to beg for Power Stones.
How dry are we talking? Dryer than an old nun. I'm pretty sure I saw fucking cobwebs in there too... So... Hands up! This is a goddamn robbery! Cough up your fucking Power Stones and reviews before I pop a cap up your ass!!! Please, man, I just wanna get on the Ranking once :((((((, that's all I'm asking.
— — — — —
"—Why are you doing t..."
The surveillance footage screeched, then stilled as Bruce pressed the rewind button with enough force to nearly crack its plastic casing, his molars grinding together with equal parts rage and guilt. On the screen was the blurry reflection of the boy who was slowly icing the strangulation marks on his neck before moving to examine the bruises darkening his arm.
Was there a single patch of skin on him that wasn't mottled blue or black?
His eyes inadvertently flicked to the boy's face, lingering on the scarring that stubbornly refused to heal despite Rowan's regenerative healing factor. The marks were almost certainly caused by religious objects given what he knew of Demons.
Not for the first time, Bruce found himself wondering if he'd made a mistake pulling the boy into his war. No, that wasn't quite right. He was certain that he had.
The cowl—as though with a mind of its own—hesitantly peeled back as he opened his mouth, searching for the apology lodged somewhere between his throat and tongue that wouldn't come. And so, he instead settled for something even the Dark Knight must admit was… Inadequate. "Are you alright?"
"Oh, I'm just peachy!" Rowan sassed, voice dripping with venom he couldn't quite mask. Usually, the boy could maintain his poker face rather well even when being a smartass, but the toll the night had taken had very obviously stripped his barricade bare. "There's just a tiny, teeny problem with my sternum seeing as, well, THEY'RE FUCKING BROK..."
He paused mid-shout to cough, facial features twisting as he clutched his chest, only to stubbornly power through not a second later. "BROKEN, ASSHOLE!"
"I... I'm sorry."
Whatever fight Rowan had left drained in an instant as he slumped back, voice dropping. "Never mind that. Please tell me you have an antidote? A plan? I'll take literally anything at this point."
"It's a new strain."
The base compound had been drastically altered from the old formulas, then spliced with Scarecrow's Fear Toxin. Nothing in his database could counteract it as of now, and even if something could, he was 80% certain they would be looking at some level of brain damage. "I need a liquid sample to synthesize a cure."
"Okay. What about Alfred and Dick? What are we supposed to do with them?"
"Keep them in separate cells. For now."
"Fantastic." Rowan's head dropped back. "At least tell me you have a sample? You were at ACE Chemical when this all went down, weren't you?"
Bruce stifled a sigh, fingers drumming anxiously against the keyboard.
"Oh-no. What's with the look, Bruce?"
"The chemical evaporates on contact with air."
"Fu-uuuck." Rowan groaned like his admittance caused him physical pain.
Fuck, indeed.
"But you can find a cure? How long will that take? A week?"
Bruce's lips twitched. Sometimes the boy seemed to think him omnipotent…
He wasn't sure if that was flattering or just downright exhausting, but right now he had bigger fish to fry.
"I don't know yet. It might take longer." He answered absently while typing into the Batcomputer. Cameras had become more conventional in recent years, but only 37% of the city was actually covered.
He needed more than that…
He needed the processing power of, "[Brother Eye] Initiated. Processing power limited to 1.9%." Two would be enough to handle the data intake from his eyes and ears—every phone in Gotham—courtesy of the, "[Oracle's Nerve] Initiated!"
Brother Eye alone could become an extinction-level event. Paired with the Oracle's Nerve, which gave it access to every networked device in the city, and humanity might be gone by morning. And hence, these tools weren't to be used lightly, and certainly not regularly. But desperate situations required equally drastic measures.
"Will you be fine on your own?"
Rowan took a moment to consider, then nodded. "I'll be fine."
Bruce knew 'fine' from Rowan rarely meant fine—it didn't for him either.
He could see the state the boy was in, plain as day, but he didn't have it in him to argue tonight. What would be the point? Even if Rowan confessed otherwise, what was he supposed to do? Stay behind and hold his hand while Gotham tore itself apart? While Alfred and Dick remained tormented?
He hated that he felt tempted to stay.
He hated even more how effortlessly Rowan saw through his internal struggle as the boy repeated, quieter this time. "I'll be fine. You know me, I can take a real beating."
Bruce didn't see what was worth bragging about that, but considering how hard he'd pushed the boy, he didn't feel it was his place to say anything either. "There's fresh food in the refrigerator—"
"I know, I know. I'll brew something for our 'captives.'"
"For yourself as well." Bruce added. "After a good eight hours of sleep."
"Jesus, you're starting to sound like Alfred. Go already. I'll catch up when..." Rowan slid off the table, stumbled, then steadied himself against the edge. "When I'm better."
Taking one final glance at his ransacked Cave and the boy who was struggling to stand upright, the Caped Crusader leaped into the Batwing—his most expensive gadget yet—and instructed. "Don't wait for me. And if you start seeing things, there's still serum from the last Joker Toxin batch. It will not cure full infection, but it'll hold off the major symptoms for some time."
He watched Rowan mutter something as the cabin closed around him, then the Batwing whirred to life and shot out through one of the tunnels leading to the docks. And like just that, all distractions fled his mind to focus solely on the perpetrator of this catastrophe, "Joker!!!"
Only when he couldn't hear the Batwing's roaring engines anymore did Rowan drag his weary feet to the replica kitchen.
Apparently, the Batler was quite vocal about his utter disdain of the Batcave's dreary atmosphere, and insisted on a spot to call his own, hence…
Rowan couldn't help snickering at the thought.
That certainly sounded like Alfred.
Inside the kitchen, he threw together a slightly charred egg that Alfred would undoubtedly frown at, then plated it. The Batcave wasn't the same without the old man's chiding… It was quiet. It was sad. And most importantly, it was cold. So very cold.
Doze off number five, and suddenly Rowan was staring at the cell room doors.
He didn't remember the walk down.
Hell, he didn't remember deciding to come here at all…
He'd never even been allowed in this section, only saw it on the Cave's blueprints.
Still, those doors weren't supposed to be that massive though, right?
They were built to hold even Croc or Clayface, sure, but this was almost twice what he'd expected. And they definitely weren't curved like that either. It was like his perception of space had warped!
* Kekekeke!
Rowan pressed hard into the raw, baby skin of his scars, snapping himself out of the haze, and suddenly the doors looked normal again. Yet, his feet would not bring him any further…
He sure hoped they'd still be unconscious…
Would make things a hell of a lot easier if he did not have to see or hear them.
"Abandon all hope, ye who enter."
He entered nevertheless, and was greeted by two familiar faces.
"I must profess our accommodations are horribly insufficient."
In the adjacent cell, Richard pounded desperately on the reinforced glass. "Let me out please, Rowan! I don't want to be in here! Please, I'm scared!"
Rowan had watched scenes like this play out on screen a thousand times, but being subjected to it was far more distasteful than he expected.
"In case you're wondering, he's been at it for half an hour, sir. I told him you wouldn't fall for it a third time, but he said, and I quote, 'third time's the charm'…"
Alfred's shoulders rose and fell helplessly.
"Ah, you've brought us dinner. How thoughtful of you, sir."
Refusing to let them get a rise out of him, Rowan silently pushed the tray to Richard, before moving onto Alfred, who decided it'd be a good idea to slam into the glass with enough force to shake the cell.
Rowan jolted upright, exhaustion stripping away the mask he wore as his face contorted into something feral and hateful.
His expression fell the moment he caught the green glint pulsing brighter in his reflection.
"There it is... That's you."
He turned when Alfred's voice bounced between the cold and narrow walls. "If you'll permit an old man's curiosity, sir, why do you resist? It seems a rather pointless exercise, given your nature."
Rowan glanced back and immediately wished he hadn't when he caught sight of the deranged grin splitting Alfred's dignified features. "I know you want to do more than just glare, sir. Go on, let it out. You and Master Bruce are terribly wound up. It's not good for either of your health."
Seething, Rowan bolted for the exit while Alfred cackled.
"You can blame it on the Toxin, sir! Nobody will judge you for it! I certainly won—!"
The heavy iron doors groaned shut behind him, and he doubled over a displaced crate which crunched like a bag of Lay's under his fist, spilling Batarangs all over the ground.
For a moment, Rowan let himself imagine it was the Joker's skull he'd caved in instead;
That the blood on his hands belonged to that sick fucking freak rather than himself…
God, wouldn't that be something?
.
.
.
Bruce grimaced at the hellish sight below—at the howling madmen tearing through the streets, the flickering wild fire slowly engulfing Ivy's garden in the distance, then Selina waving for him to land. Bruce didn't… He couldn't risk it when he had no way to know whether she'd been affected, and he couldn't afford the delay with his city still up in flames either.
Instead, he circled the city from above, dropping to street level only when the damage grew too severe to ignore, all in an attempt to draw the Joker out. The clown had never been one to pass up on a confrontation, much less the chance to gloat over Gotham in ruin. And yet, even with the Batwing's radar, Brother Eye and Oracle's Nerve all working in tandem, Joker was nowhere to be found.
It was as if the clown had vanished from the face of the planet, or perhaps more believably, was planning his next move in secret, possibly even in disguise.
It didn't help that most of the infected looked and acted just like the bastard either, which only muddled the waters further for Brother Eye. If there was any silver lining, it was that some Gothamites still clung to fragments of sanity, too terrified or perhaps too paralyzed to join the chaos.
Others had gone completely feral, howling and tearing at anything that moved.
And then there were the ones who'd surrendered entirely… Men and women who—willingly or otherwise—had given in to their worst impulses.
Gotham had become Hell on Earth in the most literal sense, turning the kingpins' blood-soaked turf wars into fond memories by comparison.
Bruce dropped from the Batwing as a crazed mob went about strapping screaming children to a crude wooden frame.
They were moments from lighting it ablaze when he made his presence known.
"What are you doing?!"
"Back off, freak!"
"Stop him!"
'He's done it.'
The Symbiote tore through the bindings, sending the children scattering into the dark on legs barely strong enough to carry them, fueled by survival instincts powerful enough to overwhelm even the drugs coursing through their veins. The parents came at him next, fists wild and utterly useless as he put them down, watching their faces cycle between anguish and hysterical laughter.
"No, no, no!"
An old man clawed at his own face, sobbing and cackling in the same breath.
'He's won.'
Even with a cure, the memories of what they had tried to do tonight would haunt them forever… No antidote could wash away that kind of stain.
"Don't you see?! God demands sacrifice! That's why he's sent Demons in our midst! He must be appeased!!!"
"This isn't the work of a God." Bruce said, then silenced the man with a strike to the temple.
No.
This was the work of a Demon whom he'd spared one too many times.
He sighed, glaring through his pitch-black cowl at the explosion from afar.
Seven hours of this it'd been.
Seven hours of searching, fighting, containing the damage wherever it flared worst.
Seven hours without a single loss! And yet he'd never felt more defeated in his life…
As he dropped the last infected, Bruce suddenly felt a change in the air behind him. He dove, titanium-coated claws missing his spine by inches and gouging deep furrows into the streetlamp instead.
"Selina—" He cried hoarsely as he snagged her whip mid-strike. "Don't make me do this. You're better than this."
She smiled.
Yesterday, that smile would have made his heart skip. But the woman grinning back at him wore madness more tightly than she did her leather suit, and it looked all wrong on her.
"You always did think too highly of me!" Selina yanked, and he allowed the momentum to carry him forward before trying to hook her ankles out from under her. She rolled with the fall, her boot catching him square in the chest before he could capitalize.
The kick sent him stumbling back into a parked sedan that blared with alarm.
And then she was on him, whip coiling around his throat like a serpent.
Perhaps he'd thought too highly of her…
Maybe he'd been stupid to expect a friendly face instead of a hostile one… Selina's eyes went wide behind her red goggles as his cape erupted into a writhing, tumorous mass that swallowed her whole. "That's not fair!" Yelled Catwoman when a pellet slipped from his fist and into the organic glob.
She fought it at first, titanium claws leaving large swaths of the Symbiote withering away on the grounds.
Then the anesthesia kicked in, and her struggles began to slow, before ceasing completely. He let loose a sigh of relief when the x-ray confirmed her heart was still beating strong beneath her ribs. After securing the cuffs, he slung her limp form over his shoulder and made for the Batmobile.
The specialized containment unit in the trunk could hold metahumans twice her strength.
Selina would wake up safe and secure, if a bit uncomfortable.
Staring down at her prone form, something hot and ugly twisted in his chest. And the Symbiote responded accordingly, rippling across his shoulders in agitated waves. Even if it meant the end of the Batman, Bruce would make sure the clown never hurt anyone again… Now if he could just find the bastard.
A harsh whisper cut through the air. "Bat! Hey!"
His head snapped toward the source—a man not much older than Bruce himself—covered in white paint. His x-ray showed neither bones nor organs, only a cold, lifeless clump in the form of a human.
"Clayface…" Formerly Matt Hagen, an actor of great renown who'd retired after being disfigured in what the press called a tragic accident that turned out to be no accident at all… A rival in the industry had arranged the whole thing to make sure Hagen's face would never grace another screen.
The metahuman had been active as a professional killer for three years now, though Bruce's investigation had uncovered murders with similar patterns dating back two years even before that.
Hagen was easily one of the most dangerous metas operating in Gotham.
He could be anyone, become anything, adapt on the fly in ways that made him nearly impossible to predict, though Bruce had narrowed down two exploitable weaknesses. The first was water—massive quantities of it, enough to dilute his clay body past the point of structural integrity.
The second being the cryogenic freezing technology invented by Victor Fries before his transformation into Mr. Freeze.
"Wow, wow!" The meta screamed as Bruce's hand drifted toward his belt where six cryogenic pellets waited patiently in their compartments. "Don't shoot the messenger!"
A message? "From who?"
The shapeshifter's grin held for maybe two seconds before his concentration broke, causing his face to drip shapeless brown.
"I bear a message from Mr. Cobblepot. He wishes to offer his assistance."
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