Whap!
Black Cat hung upside down from the gantry crane, a faint blush on her flawless face. The shadow had bound her so tightly she couldn't even struggle.
She tried to shout, but her mouth was sealed with thick, white webbing; only muffled groans slipped out.
She still had no idea whose hands—or what kind of creature—had taken her. A twinge of despair rose in her chest.
"This was my first job since joining Kingpin's crew, and I botched it…"
What stung wasn't the failed job—it was that her revenge plan had died the moment it began.
"Who is Kingpin? Why are you out for revenge?"
The low voice at her ear, appearing from nowhere, made her jump.
She steadied herself and rolled her eyes around, trying to spot the speaker within her narrow field of view. No luck. All she saw was the pitch-black yard; no one in sight.
"Mmph."
Two whimpers were all she managed; her mouth was still sealed.
A moment later her body went light, the world spinning—then Batman set her down gently on the ground.
He tore the webbing from her mouth and body. Freedom returned.
Playing it cool, she stretched her limbs and scanned the darkness again. Still no trace of whoever had saved her from the Squid-Man. So she addressed the empty air in front of her.
"You just cut me loose—aren't you afraid I'll run?"
"Answer my questions. Who is Kingpin? Why revenge?" The low voice rasped like a devil whispering from a nightmare.
"If you don't know Kingpin, you're not local—at least not in the underworld," she said, feigning calm and trying to read him. "But you still stuck your nose into a gang transaction tonight. What do you want?"
Boom!
Her evasions seemed to test the stranger's patience. She watched, stunned, as an I-beam weighing at least five tons was raised upright and driven deep into the ground.
Black Cat froze.
Everything tonight had blown past her expectations. Only now did she realize she was facing something inhumanly strong.
She let a touch of fear show on her face while her mind raced.
"I can't take Kingpin alone. I need help. My plan was to antagonize as many New York crews as possible, but it looks like I've found a better partner…"
"This is a warning. Answer the question."
The voice cut through her thoughts. He still didn't enter her line of sight—still a mystery.
"Kingpin is the boss of my crew. A year ago he started expanding all over New York. Says he's going to be the emperor of the world's underworld, so he calls himself 'Kingpin'…"
Rattled, she dumped everything she knew:
"Problem is, there are more than fifty major gangs in New York alone, and old families too—like, like the Corleones…"
Like Gotham's Falcones, Batman noted silently.
"…So his expansion hasn't gone smoothly," she finished.
"Why revenge?" Batman asked.
At the word "revenge," the feigned fright faded from her face, replaced by a hatred she didn't bother to hide.
"Kingpin killed my father.
"My father was the infamous 'Cat Burglar.' Six months ago, Kingpin came to him for a job—wanted him to steal something. My father refused.
"The next day he was found dead in an alley. It took me a month to prove Kingpin had him killed."
Silence. She waited, thinking he'd left—then the voice returned:
"You're not lying. Kingpin is on my list, too. Interested in working together?"
For Batman, not knowing who Kingpin was after three days of nonstop intel-gathering would be shameful. In the makeshift ops center deep in the shipyard, Kingpin's photo was already pinned in the most prominent spot.
To get back to Gotham, he had to build his own business empire from zero—and that meant a collision course with organized crime. Likewise, Kingpin would launder his crimes through legitimate fronts. Even if Batman didn't come for him, Kingpin would come for Batman.
Asking Black Cat about Kingpin was a pretext. The moment she whispered about "revenge," Batman had sketched the plan.
—Her whisper might fool men standing right beside her. It couldn't fool Batman's sharpened hearing.
At the mention that Kingpin was his target as well, Black Cat's lips curled. This was exactly what she'd wanted; why he wanted Kingpin was none of her concern.
"Work together? Absolutely. What do you need me to do?" She folded her arms under her chest, carving a tempting line of cleavage.
"Take a vacation. When you're back, we start."
She blinked. "Vacation where?"
"The NYPD."
She couldn't fathom why teaming up against Kingpin required a trip to the police, and blurted:
"No, wait—at least tell me if you're human or… what?"
The low voice sounded right at her ear:
"I'm Batman."
She blacked out.
When Black Cat came to, dawn was just breaking—and she and her crew were trussed hand and foot with rope and chains on the steps of an NYPD precinct in Manhattan.
The bindings were nothing to someone trained since childhood by the Cat Burglar. She slipped free in seconds and vanished around the corner before sunrise.
As for her men… she had no intention of helping her enemy—Kingpin—by springing them. She'd be happy if every one of Kingpin's goons woke up tied to a precinct door.
"Batman…" she whispered the name.
"Batman?" Hours later, Kingpin—neck thicker than his head—tapped his cane on the polished floor and rose like a wall. "He ruined my plan?"
In an office somewhere in Hell's Kitchen, Black Cat nodded, still rattled.
"Yes. We planned to sell Joseph a bad batch of guns he'd flip to a handful of small Manhattan crews. Tonight we'd swallow them all at once.
"But after I put a bullet through Joseph's head, the Squid-Man bolted—looks like he wasn't sticking around for a dead boss."
She knew Kingpin was too shrewd to be lied to, so she told the truth—leaving out the part about working with Batman. He'd pry what he wanted from others anyway, Joseph's crew included.
"First Spider-Man, then Squid-Man, and now a Batman. When did New York become a zoo?" Kingpin said with a smile.
Ignore the look, and you might mistake the voice for a kindly uncle's.
He picked up the day's Daily Bugle, pointing at the front-page photo of the Squid-Man.
"That the squid you mentioned? Tell him I'm offering five million dollars for Batman's head."
At the same time, deep in the abandoned shipyard, Batman studied that same morning edition of the Daily Bugle, lost in thought.