Batman Inc. #6

What strange and evil creations cities are, cages built so that mortal men may conform to a society governed by concrete artifice, their lives laid out and planned like the very streets they come to inhabit. Yet there is a city whose streets are crooked indeed, and whose societies are often crooked also!

That city is Gotham, and its wyrd and dark watchman, the


A warning, dear reader! The story presented before you now is intimately concerned with the fatal dichotomy of Man and City (as in this case Bat-Man and Gotham City!) and contains depictions of the doomed future, and the dark days that came before!









Batman grunted, throwing back his cape and hurling the fistful of batarangs as the great dark canvas unfurled.

Turning as the batarangs spun off into the advancing gloom, he stumbled, the headwinds that rattled the pinnacle of New Gotham Mesa whipping his cape up around him and whirling him off balance.

"It's all over, Bruce. Your great detective game, your midnight chases, your thrilling duels with psychotic villains. All over, the bat swallowed up in granite and in lime."

Pulling off the charred remains of his gloves, Batman worked with hands frozen numb to unclip the kevlar plate across his torso. The chest-mounted bat-signal sparked and fizzed, and the OLED display curled and broke like brittle glass as it dashed against the limestone basin of the rooftop. Something within the electronics burst into a shower of crackling blue sparks, illuminating the hunched shape of the Batman in brilliant arc lighting.

His cowl was torn, the mask held only loosely to the scowling face beneath. One lens raced through filters, an impossibly rapid data feed streaming in cracked overlay, while the other had been torn free, revealing a bloodshot eye. The iris sat ice cold on the field of burst veins and tiny specks of clotting.

The fragments of Alfred's voice that his shattered earpiece still caught warbled, the frequency thrown low and distorted. In all the chaos, all the death and destruction, all the horror of the night, this perversion of his friend's familiar tone still stung. Every inflection sounded alien, unknown, and Batman was high above a hostile city that was no longer his own.

"-eached, Master Richard still dark...ksssch...cave still...no news from Paris...-don abandoning the station...they're blowing the bridges...where are you, Master Bruce? No reading on..."

There was a pop as the earpiece blew out, Alfred's last words thrown shrill and lost in the screeching of the winds.

The nomex fabric that stretched across his jumpsuit was torn, frayed cobweb stretches that revealed liquid kevlar moulding and fractal circuitry patterns.

"No bat-gadgets, no toys and tricks. My beasts have taken everything from you. Just a man. A man fallen prostrate atop a monument to his greatest enemy. Minutes to midnight."

Batman unclasped his belt, reaching into one of the few blocky ochre pouches still pinned in place.

"Let's finish this, Bruce. I've allowed the pretender Waynes to go on too long, and there is no place for their last son in my new world."

Batman tossed the belt into the rolling shadows that were swirling around to surround him.

Lifting his head, breathing hard. Lungs aflame. Shoulder out of joint. Batman stared into the crashing black as it engulfed him. He spat a mouthful of bloody backwash into his hand. Feeling the hard lumps, he discarded a tooth, sending it bouncing over the edge. The other he held on to, his thumb brushing the miniature plastic switch fixed into the enamel.

"You're wrong," he grated, limping backwards, "and I'm going to stop you. There is nothing more to this than that."

The fuse clicked and the belt exploded, and Batman dived from the rooftop.

As he plummeted, the city rushed up to meet him.

Concrete, steel, granite and limestone, gilded in darkly-stained glass and backlit in neon.

Gotham.

The city raged, the siren song and angry chant of urban warfare. Patrolling formations of RoBats peeled off to engage with rioting bands and police megaphones sounded hoarse over the barking of gunshots. The blackened frames of cars burned acrid fumes, makeshift bombs blew holes out of tower blocks and baying mobs snapped cable lines over crudely-erected gallows.

The great grey mass of a ruptured zeppelin lumbered through the sky, fiery fingers licking at the canvas balloon.

Batman fell, weightless, his body spun and thrown by the descent. Underneath the nomex suit, whole sections of his articulated armour had come loose, rattling against hard muscle that was already turning into a crowd of knotted welts and bloody lacerations. The man falling from his tower.

His fingers closed on the plastic tooth in his hand. The trigger pressed down. He spoke one word.

"Rise."








"HEATWAVE continues to scorch Gotham, with temperatures soaring beyond all expected figures. We have asphalt just melting off the streets, and passions are running high-"

Omnidirectional, water-cooled, high-performance. Bruce's body lay flat, low slung within the bare-bones black framework. The batpod, Lucius had called it.

Bruce's arms held straight, fitted to flat carbon-fibre plate shields, his shoulders flexing, his hands twisting the accelerator grips up as the 'pod whispered into the straight, his face illuminated by the internal glow of the 'pod's electric dials.

"-and here's to Gotham's favourite son, Bruce Wayne, who, in a characteristically impulsive turn, took Batman Incorporated's latest toy to feature at the Gotham City 100, for five deadly, high-speed laps around the city speedway."

The 'pod took the turn, the wheel axes rolling onto new orientations to accommodate the sharp curve. The crowds massed out along the tight oval speedway track cheered, the dark blur zipping by with a Doppler whine of its single-cylinder engine. A faint electric blue line trailed through the air, a luminous blur that looped the track as it followed the trajectory of the speeding 'pod.

Last lap. Seconds before Bruce Wayne breaks the speedway record, Bruce thought. He twisted back the bars, jerking the 'pod in a controlled spin. Time to test WayneTech's latest safety measures.

The cheers turned, the shouting shifting into screams. The crowd recoiled, the emergency sirens beginning to whirl. The 'pod spun off the painted lanes, the spherical wheels rolling loosely within their arch cages.

As the 'pod jumped, crashing over the first barrier, grey plumes of liquid smoke streamed through jet nozzles built into the 'pod's chassis.

The 'pod came skidding to a halt at the foot of the seating ranks. Porous foam had sealed around the bike in a springy ball, slowing the spin and cushioning both vehicle and driver from the projected collision.

Bruce offered an apologetic smile as the red-visor of his helmet was pulled free. Paramedics in fluorescent jackets stood over him, puzzled. The crowd waited, unsure, as the bulky playboy untangled himself from the clinging foam bubble.

"I guess that's why we leave racing to the professionals," he said, leaning forward to address a microphone hanging from the hand of a startled journalist. "I'm fine, by the way. Ego aside, that is."

The speedway relaxed, Bruce Wayne's audience put at ease by the practised, smooth confidence of a deliberately-oiled mask. The background hum of the commentary box began once again, the relieved chatter of the press as they vied to surround the man, the sounds of a city continuing as normal.

Bruce squinted, looking up at the sun blazing against the glassy structures of the city. It seemed to hang larger than before, an angry orange burning the sky and searing the hot, cloying air that filled his lungs. Gotham always looked different in the sunlight. Colours seemed eerily vibrant, cartoonish.
He looked up, to the twin-spired pinnacle of New Wayne Tower, a slender shadow on the skyline.
Somewhere behind him the real races were beginning. Attention had moved on, until only the gossip columnists and celebrity watchers still surrounded him.

"Gotham really is your playground, Mr Wayne."

Bruce looked down to where Vesper Fairchild had appeared, working her way through the now-distracted crowds. She spoke into a headset, her eyes and pearly teeth sparkling in the sun.

"And now you get the Batman's shiny black toys, too," she said, her look turning mock-inquisitive. "It's practically criminal."

"Ms. Fairchild. I've read your blog."

"You and the world, Mr Wayne. So now we're both victims of high-profile crashes. How are you finding life-after-disaster?"

Bruce's gaze hardened. He scrutinised Vesper's face. For a moment it seemed a dark shadow fell across his eyes, curving down his cheekbones.

"I'm just fine."








"Ah, jeez, Jackson, pay attention, willya?"

Arch Todd scratched his neck, and shivered. It was with effort that he hauled up the compressed-air hammer to smash the rivet through into a wide cap.

"You’re the shakiest negro I know, you know that?"

Honor lowered his dolly bar, and fitted a fresh cigarette between his lips. Arch lit it for him, accepting one for himself.

"Let up?" he called down to where a hatchet-faced tanned man worked a small furnace.

The man nodded, and the five-man riveting gang lowered themselves, hunkering down on the girders so that their legs swung free, kicking at nothing.

"Get your 40¢ ready for the sandwich bar," Honor Jackson spat, reaching into his vest and fishing out his string money bag.

"I blame the Empire State. Eight years since it’s been done, and everyone wants one just like it."

Honor waggled his eyebrows. "So you’re mad we’re working, that it? Getting paid near enough $2 an hour problematic for you?"

"We wasn’t made for going so high. You can’t tell me this is natural."

They both looked down, through the framework of steel girders, and down through the thin cloud at the city below.

"Think they mind?" Arch jerked his thumb at the heater man, and at the catcher sat with his bucket and tongs.

"To the Mohawk Indian man the sky is but a place to commune with the spirit world," Honor asserted. "To talk with the ancestral voices that guide and judge the redskin. So for these two proud men of the sky-walking tribe such heights hold no fear, and they walk as nimble as cats up here."

The two men stopped to catch sandwiches from a high beam being hoisted up, waving confirmation of delivery down below.

"How much of that did you make up, Jackson?"

Honor said nothing, working at his sandwich. They ate in silence, each catching their breath through the cigarette smoke and counting the hours until the day’s end.

They scrambled up again when the food was finished, and set to work, the five-man gang acting in slow ritual as the heater threw hot rivets up to the catcher’s waiting tongs. Honor, the bucker-up, held the rivet in place with his heavy steel dolly bar, so that Arch, the driver, could fix it into a cap with his compressed-air hammer, all before the rivet could cool.

The riveter, a burly white man with a split nose, oversaw the drill, and inspected the bonds as they went.

"Eighty storey ’scraper, smack in the middle of Gotham," Arch said, resuming their talk.

"And right on top of the old Wayne Tower, too. I guess if you’ve the money."

"And boy do the Waynes have the money."

"Boy, right," Honor agreed. "You know I been talking to them?"

Arch frowned, the hammer jolting his arms. The bruising on his shoulder ached, and made everything feel like it was in sharp focus.

"Who?"

"Them. The Mohawks."

"Yeah? What about?"

"They told me they feel it too. About this not being like a normal job."

"Hey, stow that talk," Arch snapped, the bruising on his shoulder flaring with his irritability. "I don’t know what you mean, anyhow."

"Come on," Honor pressed. "You’ve said it. Lots of the older guys have said it. They’ve worked this sort of thing before, in other places. None of them felt as bad looking down at the city as they do here."

"Gotham’s a town like any other. They’re just getting dizzy, or worried about...King Kong coming up for them, I don’t know. Willya leave it?"

Honor fumbled with the dolly bar. Arch had hit the last rivet too hard, and both men knew it. They moved on, continuing to work, as the structure swayed slowly with the wind.

"Gotham’s different," Honor insisted. "You know it. I know it, an’ I never worked anyplace else. Something about being up here, feels like... like the city’s looking back, right? There’s something real unsettling to it."

Arch’s lips were pressed thin. "You’re too young. Dreaming too much."

"Maybe. But the Mohawks said some things. About these Miagani people, this lost tribe of bat-people that ran Gotham County and lived right down in the catacombs under the city, with warrens and tunnels and nests wormed right into the bedrock."

Arch pretended not to listen. His mood had soured, rapidly, and he was straining with his arms, the bruising seemingly getting worse.

"They say that these Miagani were crazy even for redskins, and that all of this land was off-limits to outsiders. Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, they say it all happened here, because the Miagani were at war with the land itself, and the land was fighting back with all kinds of beastly things."

"Willya stop, I said?"

"Lord of the Night and the Dark Sun, they called the land. Like...it was the devil to them. It gets a new name later, from the Dutch or the Swedes or whichever whites were here first, because they felt it too... Barbatos. Oh, hey, ease up with that hammer, Arch. Only I guess for them the Miagani and the cursed land just got confused up together, and Barbatos becomes this bat-devil thing."

"Willya goddamn shut your mouth, you filthy-"

Arch’s words were lost, as the compressed-air hammer bucked violently and he dropped it, staggering back. The catcher shouted something, and Honor thought he heard ancient words echoing in the shout, but he blinked and Arch was tumbling down, head over heels after his hammer.




Dale Cummings, born-bred-Gothamite, so don’t get me wrong, I lived through all kindsa crazy with the Bat around, y’know. I seen him outside my window once, sweartagawd, I just don’t think I know he, y’know, exists f’sure, y’know? Show me a picture, and not one of those Justice League...advanced...Kryptonian photo magic fakes y’know?







"I must say, sir, it was good to see Bruce Wayne enjoying himself today. Of late it has seemed more as though Batman has been working with his mask on and off. The high-speed crash was a welcome touch of humility."

"Got to agree. Bruce Wayne as the smiling Batman in a business suit is... honestly more scary."

"Alfred. Dick," Bruce slid out from underneath the armoured car. His face was streaked with oil, his pigeon grey undersuit stained with spidery chemical burns. He placed his wrench down on the platform, and climbed to his feet.



"The speedway always attracts excitement among the biker gangs. The Carnies, North Town Hammers, Red Warriors, Killa Wattz, all had chapters in attendance. With this recent Black Mask business altering the balance of power at the top of Gotham's organised crime, I thought it best to keep an eye on the fallout among the dregs."

Bruce drank the proffered tea in one short gulp. He walked past his faithful butler, replacing the delicate China cup on the tray as he went, and headed along the narrow walkway from the garage workspace to the Batcave's towering computer cluster.

"And more scary is good. You could learn from that."

"Respect my interpretation." Dick warned, following him. "You gave me the cowl, let me wear it."

"Gotham's 'Bright Knight'," Bruce said, the phantom of an expression playing across his look. "How are you and Tim working together?"

"Well. Very well, actually. He does a lot of the obsessive detective work that I used to let you do. And I, you know, club stuff with my sticks. Good partnership."

"I fear Master Richard sells himself short," Alfred allowed, rearranging the tray. "He also drives the car, as I am lead to believe."

Dick staggered, mock-wounded into a winged swivel chair. Bruce stood brooding over the Batcomputer, his hand on a rolling dial. Lucid blue screens flickered by.

"No, we work well. Honest," Dick admitted, relaxing into the chair, his easy smile and posture offset by his blowtorch blue eyes, that were marking the computer screens and impassive expressions his former mentor displayed. "You know how we operate. I'm all fast reactive thinking and improvisation; Tim's about inquisitive investigation and holistic assessment. It's a solid combo, and honestly - it's fun being part of Batman and Robin again."

"That's good." Bruce's eyes didn't leave the data readouts, and his tone stayed level and flat, his jaw set at a stern neutrality. But Alfred recognised the faint pride in his master's voice. And he suspected Dick had recognised it too, though the younger man's louche smile was in many ways as difficult to penetrate as Bruce's stoicism.

What father doesn't want his son to follow in his bat-embossed footsteps? Alfred mused, setting up a paper cup of assorted pills and supplements by the keyboard layout.

"I know I've been a little... focused... during this stay in Gotham. The Gaddon case became a personal priority."

"That's okay," Dick shrugged. "You've been doing what Batman should be doing. Tim and I have our own casework keeping us busy."

"I have a two-man team arriving in Gotham tonight. They should be able to help share your assignments, while you monitor their... provisional period in Incorporated. But right now what I want to hear about are your case files..."

Bruce brought up a map of typed reports, footage filmed by cowl-cam, evidence holograms and police dockets. He isolated a moving image of Toad, the bilious green neck straining out of his checkered yellow shirt collar as he squirmed.

"Start with this one. What do you know?"

There was a revving of an oiled motorcycle engine, and the scarlet red Robincycle pulled up on the rotating vehicle turntable.

Robin stepped off the bike, unhooking his helmet and hanging it on the handlebars.

"I heard there was a family gathering in the cave," Tim said, peeling off his domino mask. "Thought I'd bring the chips. You know the new Batman and Robin work from the Bat-Bunker now. This commute to Bristol County is totally old hat."

"I told him, but he likes his cave," Dick shrugged, matching Tim’s playful exasperation.

Bruce permitted a thin smile, his eyes still scanning the computer.

"Bat-Bunker. Like when you first went to college, Dick, and I spent a year working from my Wayne Foundation penthouse, looking for a fresh start. I agree, it’s good to operate from the heart of the city. Ensures you don’t forget what Gotham is."

He sat back, frowning. He moved his hand to his face, and for a moment looked lost in thought.

"But you like your cave," Tim said, joining the trio on the Batcomputer dais.

"But I like my cave," Bruce said; his train of thought moved on, his hands returned to the computer keys.

"Overlay BATMAN&ROBIN casework with BATMAN files. Run high-intensity pattern checks, using all possible data groupings. Match keywords and strings. Tim. Progress review. Starting with Toad."

"Right," Tim said, easily slipping into a professional manner as he rattled off his assessment. "Well, he’s refusing to talk or co-operate at all in police custody, so we’ll work from what we’ve been able to find out. Formerly circus sideshow, acted as the deformed 'M' for the ringmaster’s 'S'. Varied criminal record throughout Europe, moved Stateside last year. He’s been making bombs in Detroit and Las Vegas for a mix of minor groups, never anything big, but came to Gotham when his former ringmaster - get this - one Lazlo Valentin hired him as help in his tenement block."

Bruce sat back. "Lazlo Valentin. My first case after returning from that month away. My last case before announcing Incorporated. The man ran a murder-house, an abattoir for processing human flesh, with his tenants as livestock."

"We didn’t catch him then," Dick said, his smile gone. "Or find out who he sold the product to. He’d cleared out through another secret crawlspace by the time we were done with Croc."

"Yeah," Tim said, nodding. "Well Lazlo is also known as Professor Pyg, owing to an abnormality that left his feet fused and callused, like pig trotters. He was the driving force behind the Circus of Strange, putting himself and others through some real Hammer horror stuff that people paid to watch. He specialised in amateur surgery and chemical concoction, and there are accounts from East European towns where his circus showed up and people went missing, only to turn up later as acts in the show."

"Just look at some of his co-stars," Dick said. "Not your usual Haly’s Circus billing. Bearded ballerinas, a self-combusting human flame, conjoined kung-fu triplets."

"What did he want with Toad?"

"I think Lazlo was trying to recruit him for something here in Gotham, only Toad didn’t want in. Here, listen to this:"

“Toadey’s been head hunted by the big beasts for the coming festivities, but he don’t want in on none of it! Turned them down, Toadey did, and now he needs protection, batty! Protection from the ordering howlers!"

"That’s from Toad’s arrest. Note the mentions of 'beasts', because he then says:"

“Beasties coming, coppers. An’ they won’t leave a brick of your upstanding stations, no they won’t.”

"We’ve cross-referenced the word with Gotham’s current crime organisations and iconography, but the only real connection we get is this book, On the Order of Beasts in Gotham."

"Ah, I believe I know that one," Alfred said. "It’s an old children’s book, written by Solomon Wayne; your great-great-great-grandfather, Master Bruce. It’s about a banquet held by all the people in Gotham, where everyone dresses as an animal according to their nature. The richest dress as owls, as from the rhyme, the ugliest as pigs, the loudest as geese, the commonest as goats. They all come together and are put into order at the feast, and then a man in a top hat shares up the city with a long carving knife and they devour it, street by street. It was written as a nonsensical poem, not long before he disappeared from his hotel room in Paris, and it was often said to be demonstrative of the madness he supposedly suffered in his older age."

"I never liked that story," Bruce said, frowning. "Your case-files do make note of the recent 'goatmen' attacks. Meaning we have a toad, a pig and goats in Gotham."

"Could be a new themed crime family," Dick said, arching his back and stretching. "I have sources on the streets that say the homeless are being abducted, being given goat masks."

"So we’ll assume there is an 'Order of Beasts' in Gotham," Bruce said, patiently. "They’re recruiting foot soldiers from the streets. Lazlo could have been supplying them with human flesh. Toad is approached because he makes bombs and fits their theme. They’re planning something, something soon."

"Human flesh is a curve-ball," Dick admitted. "Could be that they want to play the part of man-eating beasts."

"Could be sacrificial or of occult significance," Tim suggested. "Maybe it’s more cult than crime syndicate?"

"Blood and flesh are parts of the ritual," Bruce said, bringing up screens of Zero Island and grotesque analysis.

"Ritual?" Tim tapped the Zero Island file. "You have a theory?"

"Everywhere I go, I seem to find Gotham already waiting, already settling down concrete roots," Bruce flashed up architectural plans and city permits, all in different languages and government processing. "In Paris they’re rebuilding suburbs with old unrealised Gotham designs, in a project funded by a Comité de Dégradation Urbaine and spearheaded by a man named Hibou."

Tim and Dick exchanged glances.

Bruce continued. "The man’s name was a fake. There was no Adrien Hibou until the day before Bruce Wayne’s plane touched down in Paris. It was a name chosen to mock Batman’s new corporate representative. I followed the Comité’s money trail and connected them to corresponding agencies across the world, all of which have been working towards the spreading of Gotham original architecture since Batman Incorporated was announced."

"Why? Gotham isn’t exactly known for excellence in civic planning - the opposite, if anything, it’s infamous for how byzantine and chaotically inefficient everything is." Tim folded his arms, the mystery tugging at his detective’s mind.

"You might find out tonight," Bruce said. "While the international agencies have been operating since Incorporated, there have been connected groups in Gotham who have been working much longer. You’ll be familiar with the New Gotham Mesa building."

"The huge ziggurat they’re building in Old Gotham town?"

"Monstrosity is more like it," Alfred sniffed. "I think it’s a perfect eyesore."

"It seems there was some intrigue during the design phase five years ago. A group of privately funded individuals pressed for the use of some of the Gates Brothers’ more unorthodox concept blueprints. A new mode of urban expression from the past, a monolith to Old Gotham as it could have been, and taller and broader than any other skyscraper in the city. Wayne Enterprises had a share in the construction, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time."

"The WayneTech Ion Cortex is in the Mesa though, isn’t it? That’s what we’re unveiling along with the building being opened tonight."

Bruce looked at Dick. "Yes."

"So these people with the mystery agenda have a huge skyscraper with our Ion Cortex in it? Are you connecting them to the possible 'Order of Beasts'?"

"I am, though it’s not entirely clear yet..." Bruce said. "Have a suit pressed. We’re all going to be there for the opening ceremony."





"Shut the blinds, Chief O’Hara, sun keeps blinding me. Who’d have thought it could get so hot in this city?"

"Right you are, Commissioner," O’Hara submitted, genially, twisting the glass rod until a ladder of thin slits of light played over the cramped, cluttered office.

"Can’t think straight," Gordon said, mopping at his face with his handkerchief. He suddenly seemed to catch sight of his old friend.

"You alright, O’Hara? You look worse than I feel."

O’Hara shook his head and removed his blue cap.

"Must have been something I ate, Commissioner. Coughed up something fierce this morning, so I did."

"Anywhere I should avoid?" Gordon asked, though his mind had already begun to wander.

"Broke the old rule. Never eat anything in Arkham. Not even the guard’s canteen. Something rotten in there, always known that."

Gordon finished signing his name against dockets, then moved them to his out-tray. Picking up the next sheaf of papers from the overflowing in-tray, he found more dotted lines waiting for his ballpoint signature.

He sighed, and pushed his glasses up onto his forehead so he could work the knot forming between his eyes.

"You think Batman gets this much paperwork now that’s he’s Incorporated? Somehow I can’t imagine he does."

"What do you think his signature looks like?" O’Hara beamed. "I’d wager he’s got some of that Far Eastern, secret calligraphy training, can you imagine?"

"Bruce Wayne," Gordon said, "is what it would look like."

O’Hara coughed, thumping his chest. He spluttered, accepting the handkerchief Gordon held out for him.

"Oh, I see your meaning, Commissioner. It’ll be Wayne that does all the side of things. Or that Fox, I suppose. No, don’t mind me, Commissioner, I’ll be just right as rain-"

A face poked in through the door of the office. Gordon caught himself before his hand made it to his shoulder holster, but found that he took some distasteful comfort from the reflex.

"What is it, Hadlow?"

"You’ll want to see this, sir. It’s on the TV in the break room."





"People of Gotham," the black shape snarled. "This is the voice of the Mutants."

Dick frowned. "The lunatic fringe of gangland speaks. Who’s listening?"

"Everyone in Gotham, that’s for sure," Tim said. "They’re hijacking the television signals."

"Cycle channels," Bruce said, sitting back.

The black head on the screen, illuminated only by the red bar of reflective plastic where the eyes should be, switched to a grinning face, smeared in white greasepaint, with a lurid pink smile stretched out over the cheeks. The laughter was reedy, and sounded hollow, a cheap imitation.

"The Jokerz are going to have some fun of the random acid to the face variety with Gotham if our demands aren’t met-"

Changing again, and a muscle biker growled over the roaring of an engine.

"-release Toad to the beasts he belongs to, or we’re burning this city down, right down-"

"Gotham has the night to decide. The city, the hospitals, the mayor, the housing blocks, the beat cops...they’re all forfeit."

The television channel flickered again, and a lost-looking Vicki Vale stood in a studio in disarray, the microphone unhooked from her dress.

"They’ve stirred up the dregs," Dick said, pointing. Bruce tapped at the console.

"Jim. This is Batman. Have Toad moved to another station. Send armoured transports to every station, and lose the paperwork. Keep him under lockdown and do it in secret. I’ll have my teams cover all stations."

"We can have RoBats track gang movements. Though these are all pretty fringe. They meet up in bedrooms and warehouses, use homemade armaments. Easy to slip through the net."

"Do it, Tim," Bruce said, rising. "Then extended patrols. Cover the stations but don’t lose sight of the bigger picture."

"Could be a distraction?" Tim asked.

"Could be. Either way, the opening ceremony is still happening as planned, only I’ll have to cover it alone. Mayor Sharp is making a high-profile appearance, and he was just listed as a target."

"To think I was going to let my hair down, rather than strapped into a cowl," Dick sighed, following Bruce up the stairs of the Batcave.

"I’m going to have to prep your new allies ahead of schedule."




Tommy Orsch, I work nights at Soleil’s Wax Museum. Yeah, I like this new Batman business. He’s finally sold out, right? Joined the rest of us in the rat race. I say good for him. I mean, he has to pay taxes now, right? Makes him seem more...I don’t know, human.

Hey, you think he offers on-the-job training, or what? What kind of CV does it take to be a Batman?




"You understand that this is probationary. You both have plenty to prove to me."

The figure in the midnight-blue scalloped cape pulled on the winged helmet, the angry crimson visor turning to return Batman’s unflinching stare.

The youth - barely half his partner’s size - scowled and pulled on his own beaked crimson helm. He folded his arms, foot tapping impatiently.

"You are to follow Batman and Robin’s orders. Any hesitation or refusal will lead to your removal from the Incorporated roster. You are to learn, and better yourselves, to the betterment of others."

Batman threw back his cape, and the candlelight flickered, the single flame fanned by the draft.

"Swear to me."

Speaking the undying oath, all three held one hand pressed to the design of the Bat laid out beneath the candlestick.

"-and swear that you two will fight together against crime and corruption and never to swerve from the path of righteousness!"

Their voices sounded low and hushed, falling away like the pale firelight into the shadowed rocky recesses of the cavern.

"I swear it!"

"Remember, no-one can know your true identities. From now on, you answer only to Wingman, and the all-new Redwing!"




Me? I love Batman. He’s finally putting the boot up the right asses. Hell, forget Batman Incorporated, bring on Batman Inaugurated, know what I’m saying? He’d kick the crap outta the Middle East.




"Mayor Sharp. Delighted."

Quincy Sharp’s eyes flicked from corner to corner, while his tongue ran over bulbous lips.

"Ah...yes, thank-you, Wayne. I’m pleased you could make it...uh..."

"I think it was a brave move coming out tonight after that broadcast," Bruce smiled, catching a champagne flute as a waiter glided by. "Should be popular with the voters."

"Yes, well, I have great faith in my security team...ah...and the good commissioner, of course."

From across the select crowd, an uncomfortable looking Gordon returned the nod, then continued to circulate, his phone pressed to his ear.

"And the Batman, I expect."

Sharp eyed Bruce’s face for insult, but the genial smile was implacable.

"You know I’ve had my doubts about the Batman in the past, Bruce..."

"You were elected on the anti-Bat ticket, if I remember correctly."

"Well, yes... but that was after that bomb scare with the ninjas, I mean... what else was a politician to do? I am a servant to the people, Wayne. And right now the people want Batman Incorporated."

"You’ll excuse me," Bruce said, patting Sharp on the shoulder, "but I’ve just seen Lucius Fox, and he’ll want to be getting on with the presentation in time to put his girls to bed."

"Of course, of course," Sharp enthused, his eyes still jumping around the room.

Bruce made his way to where Fox stood, arms folded and watching the proceedings with a bemused weariness. Discretely they switched glasses, with Bruce now holding an empty flute while Fox held an untouched one.

"I know that look. Is high society really that bad?"

Fox chuckled. "Look at where we are, Bruce. Monument to the egos of the one percent. The Mayans would be proud of us."

Bruce leant over the glass-and-steel barrier that bordered the high plateau of the Mesa, the colossal terraced steps falling away down to where the streets below blurred, obscured by the haze of the evening sun. It was a leviathan of a skyscraper, with granite blocking and naked steel girders thrusting up to form the primitive and primal structure of a ziggurat, looking like some ancient stepped temple forcing its way up from the city floor.

They would build monorail depots into the lower levels, and raised super-highways would branch out on stilted supports from there.

The city’s armada of commercial blimps could dock with the higher tiers, and already a great array of urban functions were being outfitted within, with apartment complexes, cathedrals, factories and restaurants all housed together behind the stone-clad shell.

And deep down, nestled within the heart of New Gotham Mesa, was the ion cortex.

"Let’s get this over with," Bruce said, straightening. "The sooner the party’s over the sooner I can get back to work."

"You’re here to protect Sharp, don’t forget. Didn’t I read somewhere in the gossip pages that you were attending tonight’s function with one Vesper Fairchild as your date?"

"It seemed like sensible cover. She should be arriving shortly. I’m afraid it will be a brief arrangement."

"Aren’t they all?" Fox said. "Oh, while I’ve got you, your guest got in from Switzerland. I’ve provided them with secure accommodation, as you requested."

"Thanks, Lucius. I’ll see you on the other side."

Bruce stepped up to where a swing band was just finishing a number, and tapped his empty glass for quiet.

"If I might have your attention for a moment," Bruce smiled, "I’d like to say a few words. While doubtless we will hear something from the fine philanthropists behind the construction of this, Gotham’s tallest and most extravagant skyscraper, I would be doing the brilliant minds at WayneTech a disservice if I did not offer my praise for the Ion Cortex that sits at its core."

The mayor showed he was listening with his head tilted, while talking in a furious whisper at Gordon and two thick-set men in rented tuxedos.

"The Ion Cortex is a dream, the blueprints to a better world sketched out by idealists and optimists. A glowing machine that can wirelessly redirect wasted energy, eliminate inefficiency and cut the rising costs of powering our homes, industries, and governments. The Ion Cortex means we don’t have to fear a future where civilization starves itself, it means we can build new global definitions through shared resources, where the surplus of one nation feeds the deficiency of another."

A murmur of applause worked through the crowd, and Bruce raised his hands for calm.

"Thank Lucius Fox and his team at WayneTech for making that hope into a reality, for letting us all share in that imagined future. The Ion Cortex goes online now, and it is the promise of Wayne Enterprises that we shall see mass co-operation throughout the world’s major corporations to ensure that no-one is left outside, no-one is left behind."

Bruce gestured to Lucius Fox, who made a play of hiding behind his glass, to appreciative amusement from the assembled glitterati.

"Mr. Fox, if you would say the voice-activation codeword, then the Ion Cortex can make its first crucial exchange - surplus energy from a Wayne Enterprises factory plant to a hospital in Mtamba."

Fox coughed, clearing his throat, before leaning forward and speaking into the microphone.

"Begin."

Then the rigged lighting cut out, and the rooftop was thrown into darkness.




Batman and Bruce Wayne, ever see them in the same room? No. Have I ever seen either in a room? No. Doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion, though, does it?

Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed, right? Yeah, that’s the story Wayne Enterprises (or should I say the Batman-Industrial Complex?) fed us, only some of us realised the food was spoilt rotten, just like Bruce Wayne himself.

Batman is Bruce Wayne and his dad. They made a deal with the President - no, not that President, the real one - and he gave them leave to operate as a conformity enforcer, the rich attacking the poor. The Waynes use their reptilian skin-shifting - like all aristocrats of the twenty-first century - to turn into Batman, and into the Joker and Two-Face and, most tellingly of all, Killer Croc. The mother is the brains behind it all, though...

Yeah, you can read more about it on my website. There’s a whole manifesto I got sent by someone about it, this PairsMal1 guy, he’s a visionary...




"Colonel Kane."

The wide-necked man with the military crew-cut looked down, then grimaced.

"Wayne."

"Not much good in the dark, I’m afraid. What’s happening?"

"Either your Ion Cortex blew a fuse or we’re about to receive company. Judging by the sound of zip-lines and those grappling hooks on the railing there, I’d say you should find cover. Excuse me."

Bruce crawled by the colonel in the darkness, pretending to feel his way through the nervous guests.

He disappeared from view, briefly, then reappeared, a stray line cracking his face around the nose. He stood, suddenly seeming to fill his suit more, relaxed muscles suddenly flexing.

"Commissioner."

Gordon turned, squinting through the gloom. "Oh, it’s you. Your disguise is damaged. I thought I saw Bruce Wayne ducking out a moment ago."

"He’s in a safe-room. I had to disguise myself quickly."

"Trouble?"

"Of course."

"I’ll get people moving down the fire escape."

"I’ll get the mayor."

They broke, moving through the crowd. Bruce caught Sharp’s arm and pulled him close.

"Come on. We’re evacuating."

"Bruce? Why would we need to-"

The lights clicked into life again. Stood between the exit and Bruce was a man, obscenely fat and pressed tightly into a ballerina’s pink tutu. Held up by beefy arms and with sausage-like fingers rammed into the trigger guard was a machine gun, and the small goatee’d face worked a lewd grin, eyeing up the guests.

"Big Top," Bruce said. "The Circus of Strange is coming for you, Sharp."

Sharp squealed and looked up at Bruce.

"You don’t sound like Bruce Wayne...oh god, you’re..."

"Batman," The Batman growled, peeling off Bruce Wayne’s face to reveal a black moulded mask beneath. "Stay down."

There was a shout, and Gordon staggered back, clutching a reddening hand. One of the waiters was advancing on him, driving him back from the fire escape.

The waiter’s head blazed with a violent orange flame, his teeth blackened by soot and grinning from within the fire.

"Phosphorus Rex," Batman said, shedding his tuxedo. His batsuit underneath seemed dove-white in the stark rooftop lighting, his cape jet black, the light finding no hold in the canvas.



There was a metallic scraping, and two hulking figures dragged themselves up over the railings, then drew out roughly-hewn weapons that had been bound to their backs.

"The Abramovici Twins. Hammer and Sickle."

The two giants lumbered off-balance, long seams running down their sides from where they were once fused together. Now, each one-armed brute carried their namesake, the one a curved sickle blade, the other an over-sized steel hammer.

"Leaving Siam, the kung-fu triplets."

On the far side of the crowd the triplets moved, conjoined by the shoulders into a dense knotted cluster of muscles and sinew, rolling together and twisting, every outer side covered and guarded by one of the three.

"Surrounded!" Sharp gaped. "This is all because of Gordon and that Toad freak!"

"Quiet!" Batman ordered. He threw his cape up around him, then settled into a fighter’s stance.

"Freak!?" Big Top wheezed, hauling the machine gun around. "Freak? Toad might be a fink, but no flatty josser fekes our Toad, you rokker?"

"Circus parlari," Batman said, dismissively. "The carnival theme is overplayed."

"You’re goin’ straight down the khazie, me bat-minger."

The machine gun barked a report as Batman moved, a cable winding around the muzzle and jerking it away from Big Top’s grasp. The mayor squeaked, a line of scorched marks running along the floor and halting abruptly before him.

The punch broke Big Top’s front teeth, and his face seemed to shrink back into the fatty cushion it sat in. The machine gun hit the ground with a clang, then folded, the metal claw of the grapnel line closing down on it like a vice.

"Gaff of a barney," Top gasped through loose teeth.

"Toad belongs to the Order," Hammer roared, striding forward and swinging his arm. Batman turned, running, leaping up and kicking off the railing to catch the hammerhead mid-swing. Hammer staggered back, then toppled off-balance, coming down hard on his back. Tearing the hammer from his hand, Batman swung it sidelong, Sickle’s leg snapping to an unnatural angle and sending him falling to the floor. Batman moved as Hammer lurched up, his hand closing around Batman’s arm.

"We’ll take the commissioner if not the mayor," Phosphorus warned, his hand blazing bright as he held it to Gordon’s face. "Someone big is dying if we don’t get Toad."

"Hands off, hothead," Gordon said, pulling his pistol free from beneath his jacket. He jabbed it at Phosphorus’ chest, only to quickly throw it aside as the metal grip turned red hot.

"Contagious combustion, Commissioner," Phosphorus said.

"Hutt!"

The black-and-red shape cartwheeled overhead, and a slew of dry powder showered Phosphorus.

"Potassium bicarbonate," the black-suited woman grated, hefting up the extinguisher. "You’re looking put out."

The metal extinguisher clanged as it connected with Phosphorus’ jaw, snapping him around and sending him tumbling down the fire escape.

Gordon stared at the newcomer. "I thought you were in Las Vegas."

"I’m the new one," Batwoman said, flatly. Opening her cape there was a glimpse of blood-red, then she was off, moving fast over the heads of the crowd.

"Figures," Gordon muttered. "Come on, people, exit’s clear, let’s move!"

Batman leant to avoid the giant’s headbutt, then jabbed, his two outstretched fingers clinching a swollen nerve-cluster and crippling the Russian strongman’s one working arm.

"Hammer, fall."

Hammer’s grip on Batman dropped, and he sank down as the Batwoman’s crimson boot clipped his head.

Moving together to face Siam as they jointly rolled into the fray, Batman and Batwoman struck martial stances shoulder-to-shoulder.

"Counterfeit Bat," Batman said. "Didn’t take long."

"Consider this a demonstration of my eligibility."

"Alright. Demonstrate."

Batwoman leapt, snapping her leg up straight in a high kick that sent Siam reeling into themselves. Batman went low, trading kung-fu blows with the rotating Siam fighters.

They span, rapidly working to meet Batman’s attack, while Batwoman harried them with aerial kicks, keeping them off-kilter.

There was a crack as a bone broke, and Siam revolved faster, dancing back to keep the handicapped triplet from the action. Batman pressed the assault, his footwork weaving almost too fast to follow, his hands matching with ferocity Siam’s hasty blocks and guards.

Batwoman kicked high, and the triplet’s broken arm moved too slow to block, and Siam folded in itself, the handicapped falling into the others. Batman looped a cord around the trio, and winched it tight.

"Demonstrated, sir."

"I’ll be in touch," Batman said, binding Siam. The Batwoman, the bat across her chest as red as the hair that cascaded down her shoulders, disappeared over the railings.

The mayor emerged from under a table of canapés. "Is it over?"





"I’m sorry, I must have locked myself in there," Bruce said, sheepishly. "Too much champagne to be operating a safe-room’s security."

"That’s fine, Bruce," Vesper purred. "I’m just sorry I missed all the fun. The parties at the Laotian embassy always drag."

"Yes," Bruce said, putting his jacket over her shoulders. The Mesa’s opening soirée had all but dispersed, even though the night was far from over. Gordon had had to hurry back to the station, and the mayor had hastily accepted the offer of a secure safe-house from Colonel Kane, at Bruce’s intimation. "I’ve been. Never again."

They laughed, and began to make their way to the elevator.

"I have to go."


"I suspected as much."

"But I’ll pick you up later, if that’s okay."

"That’s fine," she smiled. "If you can make it."

"If I can make it," Bruce admitted.

"I thought you only accepted my asking you out to look good for the cameras tonight," Vesper sighed, putting her head on his shoulder in a playful gesture. "What makes me think you changed your mind?"

Bruce said nothing, pressing the elevator button.





"Jesus, it’s hot." Hadlow padded his face with his tie. The sweat made his shirt cling to him beneath the ballistics vest, tightening his chest and making his breathing feel heavy and laboured.

"It’s called a heatwave, Hadlow," Gordon snapped. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

"How’d O’Hara get out of this?" Hadlow asked, leaning against a filing cabinet.

"Food poisoning. I’ll look into it later."

Hadlow jumped and backed away from the caped detective who advanced from the shadows.

"Oh, Bats," he breathed, tipping his peaked cap back. "You seem... more grim tonight."

"I am," Batman growled, moving to Gordon’s desk. "A threat has been made on the mayor and a prisoner in GCPD custody. There are armed gangs of deranged psychopaths out there who have promised to see those threats carried out. I need to talk to Toad again. I need answers."

"You can try," Gordon harrumphed. "You know which cell he’s in already, I’m sure."

"Of course."

"Batman," Gordon added, as the vigilante moved, "if you know what’s going on, I need to know. Don’t forget what I told junior on the rooftop."

"Never, Jim." Batman moved back, his hand passing across the desk and leaving a glossy pin sat on top of a sheaf of typed reports.

"Keep this on and we’ll be in touch," Batman said, opening the office door. "Something is going on, Jim, but we’re prepared to face it. Just like always."

Gordon inspected the pin, his peppery ginger moustache wrinkling. A black bat logo stamped on to a yellow oval, disguising a microphone and transmitter. He clipped it on underneath the lapel of his tan overcoat.

"So I’m a Batman now, eh?" he chuckled, returning to his papers. "Imagine that."




Flighty Left, aggravated student and herbologist, I want to know how come Batman has got the whole fascist police-industrial complex at his beck and call now? What kind of Orwellian nightmare are we living in here?

Hey, hold on, I think I’m coming up...




"You need to talk to me, Toad." Batman flicked off the light-switch of the interrogation room as he walked in, pitching the room into a darkness where he stood invisible.

"Toad ain’t for grassing, Battie," Toad insisted, folding his arms. "Toad’s got his reputation to consider. Besides, what use’d I be after snitching, eh? Toss me out to the dogs...or should that be goats? Or owls, or...urp...pigs. No, Battie, I’m not saying a croakin’ thing to you."

"Goats, owls, pigs. You mentioned an 'Order of Beasts' when they arrested you, Toad. Is that a code? The order they go in? Are you next?"

Toad pursed his lipless mouth and blew spittle across the plastic table he was sat before. The white triangles of Batman’s eyes appeared, suddenly from the darkness, looming in from behind Toad’s chair.

"Then it’s an organisation. A group of themed villains, like the goat-masked murderers. They wanted you to fit the theme. But you declined their offer."

Toad licked his eyes, nervously. His bulging amber eyes followed Batman’s white slits as they circled him in the gloom.

"You mentioned pigs. You used to be part of a circus, Toad. A low-rent exhibition of pain and cruelty. A Circus of Strange that recently attacked the mayor in protest for his holding you in custody."

Toad began to sweat.

"A circus owned and run by its director and headline act. One Lazlo Valentin, recently wanted for his involvement in a human-meat trade. Also known by his stage name - Professor Pyg."

Toad belched, and then spat, gobbing great wads of phlegm at the darkness.

"Geddout! Geddout you dirty bat! Toad won’t speak, Toad’s in up to his gizzards already-"

An alarm was going off. Somewhere a window broke, and a mob jeered. Gordon could be heard making clipped demands through a megaphone.

Toad groaned and flopped back in his chair. Batman grabbed him and dragged him to the door. The officer outside the interrogation room caught him, and Batman strode on.

"Gordon, keep your men on guard here. Toad is priority. I’ll deal with our guests."

Throwing the station’s armoured front doors open, Batman stepped out, snarling at the mob of steroid-pumped junkies and brutes in jackboots and disco visors all swarming the front steps.

Cracking his knuckles, Batman identified the leader, a hulk of a youth with pierced studs lining the definition of his abdominals. Filed teeth drew back into a shark’s smile, an open maw waiting to snap. He growled, sizing them up.

"Alright, you young punks. Listen up."




Lacey Drawers, mother of nine, honest Presbyterian. I want to know where the women are in all this. Where’s Batwoman? Is it so much to ask for a Batwoman in this crazy city? We got everything else!

And Batman should be hiring more kids, they need the work!




"Figure he berserk, spud. Billy berserk."

Batman's glove whirred, and metal casings popped off his knuckles with pneumatic pops, one by one.

The sonics wailed, the emitters opened up and howled. Batman moved, his fists now blasting high frequency siren-calls as he slipped into the gaggle of Mutant punks in vests and jackboots.

Pink visors burst apart, and meaty hands clutched at studded piercings that now rattled against the skin they were buried in. Batman could feel his teeth shaking inside his head, and the sound of his cowl's audio dampeners cycling through.

He swung up, lamping a lanky youth whose nose had begun to trickle. A billy club broke against his shoulder, staggering him, but he dipped and turned with it to absorb the impact and whipped his leg back, his combat boot cleanly snapping bone and sending the assailant flailing away.

The bruiser with the disco visor and filed teeth lunged, a sawn-off clamped in a swollen hand, and bellowed as he jabbed the filed muzzle into the press.

Batman pressed his hand to a shrieking girl brandishing a cleaver and hurled her down the stone steps, then there were sparks and he was spun around, his armoured gauntlet a smoking weight of dented metals bent into his arm. The sonics had been cut short with the explosive shot, and the glove's concealed emitters fritzed and died.

"He shut up, now he bleed nasty. Slicer-dicers, take the wire-cutters to his face. See how he bleed some more."

"Enough," Batman growled, his unimpeded hand dropping to his belt and scattering silver spheres into the gang. Foam hissed out and enveloped the press of bodies, gluing the front ranks of Mutants together into bubbled clumps, their angry faces pressing out of porous pockets and snarling, whinging or spitting. Batman kicked, sending the foam blob churning backwards, scooping up the slower of the remnants and entangling them in the heap.

The Mutant leader had leapt back, his beady eyes flashing red behind the thin black plexiglass of his visor, and was pulling his gun arm up as three curved batarangs planted themselves in succession along the bone. His hand spasmed, and jerkily pointed, his finger instinctively squeezing off the second shell as Batman launched himself up through the air towards him.

The shot tore a hole through the great shadow of his cape as it opened up behind him, and Batman landed, swinging his foot low and tripping the brutish leader. Two hundred pounds of flesh and muscle crunched heavily against tarmac. Batman's boot slammed down, his heel grinding the flapping face. The visor splintered, then snapped, plastic shards ripping into the Mutant's cheeks and eyes. The Mutant leader howled, and clawed at Batman's leg with fingernails filed into razor claws, his scratches leaving rendered streaks across the fabric of his jumpsuit.

A glove punched down, and jet emitters built into the knuckles piped thick green gas into his face, rolling his bloodshot eyes back and his stocky arms falling as if on hinges to his sides.



Batman tapped the side of his cowl, judging the flight of the very last stragglers of the Mutant lynch-mob as they scarpered into the street. Patrol cars were pulling up, blocking their escape on the road, and officers from the precinct station Batman stood on the steps to had begun filing out, haggard looks plaguing their faces.

"Batman to Batman. Sitrep."

"Jokerz in here almost dealt with.

"The punks out here are done."

Batman flicked his wrist, and the enterprising young Mutant who had almost shimmied to the top of a shaking drainpipe fell back, a bat-bolas binding his arms to his sides. He came down with a soft squelch into a refuse bin, his moan echoing inside the drum.

"Didn't doubt it. Any word from our 'new' Wingman?"

"He's...Wait..." Batman spun around, his cape whipping up around him. His head turned up, white slits dilating.

"Movement. Get to Toad!"

The shadowy arrow slipped from the rooftop of the Old Gotham police station, leaping with spry bounds across the elevated maze of chimney stacks and ventilation funnels that stretched out towards the R.H. Kane Building.

Police that had begun handcuffing bruised and beaten Mutants were now shouting, calling out orders to the officers inside. Batman didn’t need his cowl filters to spot the traces of sleeper gas snaking from under the heavy armoured doors.

Launching a grapnel line, Batman swung up, vaulting the guttering of a crumbling brownstone hand over hand, then sprinting over tiled rooftop in pursuit.

"Bruce? What is it?"

"The Mutants were the distraction," Batman grated, hitting his stride between the eaves, the long drop to a cobbled alley falling away beneath. "The real hit was professional. Slipped in while I was busy."

"We’re in the Batmobile, we can swing around to intercept. Just stay on them."

The free-running assassin was wreathed in shadow-spun greys and blanched whites that trailed out behind in two feathered wings. The slim rounded face that peered back at Batman was ivory white, a smooth curving sweep forming the design of an owl’s beak, two tall black voids marking eyes.

Speak not a whispered word about them, or they'll send The Talon for your head. That’s how the rhyme goes.

The bleached shape dived, the cloak closing up and rippling as it dropped beyond the dark gables and away towards the street below.

Batman carried on across the rooftops, marking the figure as it ran through a gaggle of startled aerosol-can-toting youths. It turned left, springing down the sloped sidewalk into Novick Tunnels. Batman fired his decel cable, swinging, his cape rising into the open wings of the bat.

Through the gloom of the cloying hot night, white beams of light stabbed through, the glossy red aerogel of the Batmobile’s arched windscreen broke, the whooshing turbines of the hover engines churning up the midnight mist.

They ran, the masked manhunter and the silvery shadow. The few cars that raced through the tunnel lit the pair up, in brief flashes, as their sodium plate headlights cast angry silhouettes of the two.

There was a clacking sound that reverberated through the tunnel, and suddenly the Talon had vanished, slinking into a circular hatch that had mechanically opened into the concrete siding and was now shifting shut again.

Batman threw the batarang without breaking stride, the slim black metal wedging into the hidden sliding panel’s recessed groove. The hatch stuck, the mechanism whirring as it fought the stuck blade.

"Batman, there’s a situation just starting, I’ve got reports of goat-headed men in eight different locations breaking into housing blocks and taking hostages, executing residents...I need to go."

"Go. I’m going underground. This passageway is new, communications might get patchy. Lead the others on this."

"Will do. You deal with our mystery."

Batman dived into the dark beyond the hatch, just as the batarang broke and the exit sealed behind him.





Batman landed in a poised crouch, his cape draped out over a midden of broken glassware and splintered furniture, all coated in dust and grime.

He had fallen through the hatch and down through the broken roof of a shopfront beneath the city streets, emerging out into a pitch black cobbled road lined with shattered and dilapidated houses and stores. High above, the underside of Gotham hung cavernous.

Wonder City. A technologically brilliant complex built in the old heart of Gotham back in the 19th century, designed to encapsulate everything coming modernity had to offer, and to shield and protect a select few of the city’s elite against the expected fall of civilization...

Batman’s cowl lit up the subterranean scene with a night-vision lens, while thermal imaging picked up the Talon picking their way lithely through one of the many large vault doors that compartmentalised Wonder City into hermetically sealed districts, each with its own function and purpose.

In reality a plot by R?’s al Gh?l, who intended not only to bring about that fall of civilization, but to control the one hub of society left behind as well. All the secret knowledges he accumulated over his unnaturally long lifetime, all the early mechanical marvels he utilized in the architecture of this underground city.

A plot that failed, and left behind a concealed urban complex, a mistake R?'s took pains to erase from history.

Batman was moving, more slowly now, quietly tailing the Talon as they activated the levers and pulleys that cranked open the vault doors.

Into the Scientific District. I first discovered this place with Jason, Batman thought, stepping through the open vault door in pursuit. After battling R?'s al Gh?l’s League of Assassins acolytes we mapped it out, found the byways to and from the surface. This 'Talon' used a new one. Has someone been repurposing the vaults? Have I really let my city go unchecked so badly?

He paused as the Talon paused, Batman drawing up his cape and melting into the doorway of what was once a botanical gardens, though now the towering trees had hardened as though into stone, and there was nothing but heaped piles of withered branches to suggest any real vegetative growth had ever occurred here. He watched as the Talon turned, scanning the darkness.

Good luck picking up my heat signature, Batman thought, with small satisfaction. To use Wonder City like this... R?'s al Gh?l’s mystic-chemical immortality makes him my oldest enemy in age, but why go through the Order of the Beasts charade? Why-

The Talon had pulled out two long knives from beneath the weathered folds of their cloak, and was springing up against the wall of the botanical garden building.

Batman turned his head and gritted his teeth in disappointment.

The glassy-eyed stare of a mechanical automaton watched him, the glass tank that formed its head revealing a moving belt of wax and clockwork augmented with the distinctively more modern electronic lighting of a wireless rig.

Wonder City’s Mechanical Guardians. The definitive pinnacle of early modern automata. They’re watching me.

Batman moved, stepping aside as the knives came down. The Talon twirled, and Batman had to bring his already mangled gauntlets up to entangle the blades in the flat-edged spines that ran along his forearms. Twisting them, he disarmed the Talon of one knife and forced her to jump back to free the second.

She was a nimble fighter, and with fast reflexes. Batman didn’t give her the space to use that. Gripping her arm he held her tight, taking her knife thrust in the armoured kevlar weave of his neck brace, before catching the blade and snapping it at the hilt. She struggled, her footwork useless while he kept her grounded and fixed within arm’s reach, her one-armed guard not enough for his heavy, pumping punches.

She buckled, and Batman swept her legs, jerking her arm up behind her back until it threatened to come free of the socket in her shoulder, a faint popping sound audible as her under-armour strained.

"You’re going to tell me everything. I haven’t the patience to play games."

He brought his face in, low, and tore off her bleached white owl mask. Her eyes met his, defiant and angry.

Then Batman dodged left, the stained steel fist hissing on creaking pistons, a tinny voice playing on an internal gramophone.

"Crsssh! Violence is a thing of the doomed world outside! Wonder City Crsssh! demands better!"

The Talon bit down, as Batman’s gloved fist closed on the glass brain, shattering the casing and yanking free a strand of electronic wiring, from which dangled a wireless transmitter. The Mechanical Guardian slumped, just as froth began to gurgle from the Talon’s mouth.

"No. That isn’t how you escape." Batman prised open her mouth and pressed a padded fingertip into the frothy discharge. Microsensors built into the glove ran preliminary analysis through his cowl, and he unlatched the strap on one of his belt’s yellow pouches.

The second Mechanical Guardian hosed him with stagnant water from a high-pressure hose nozzle, while the third repeated the warning of the first through degenerated vinyl, advancing on girder-legs towards him.

"Violence is a thing Crsssh! Wonder City demands Crsssh!"

Batman rose, shielding his work from the water with his shoulders hunched, his cape drawn over. He mixed two thin vials, making fast calculations, his body held rigid, the stream breaking as if on a rock, then he grabbed the Talon’s head and upended the mixture into her mouth.

Clamping his hand around her jaw to keep her from spitting, he flung his arm back and fired the grapnel gun. The hooked clamp burst through the body of the hose-wielding Guardian, sending the high-pressure stream jerking away, then Batman retracted the line and whirled, sending the automaton smashing into its advancing partner and then both crashing into the glass frontage of the botanical gardens.

Batman checked the Talon’s vitals, then hauled her over his shoulder. He climbed the wall of a laboratory suite on the opposite side of the subterranean road, and then clambered up through a disguised chamber in the high ceiling.

Slipping out with his quarry in tow through a manhole cover, he emerged on the street outside, the mossy slime of the climb clinging to his cape. The Talon’s breathing was shallow, and faltered with every rise and fall as she was carried.

He was stood on the street that ran alongside the New Gotham Mesa, the colossal ziggurat that his company had finished constructing on his month away. Looking up, Batman’s eyes went from the foot of the tower to the plateaued top, where the hazy wavering of the heat made the bulky skyscraper seem to loom down at him, sizing him up.

"Progress report, everyone."

"The attacks were subdued. The 'goatmen' are brawlers, slashers with ugly weapons. no real challenge. But we’ve got civilian fatalities. Lot of injured. They weren’t after anything. Just looking to do damage and then get caught or die in the process. One went off with a homemade bomb strapped to his waist."

"It’s rough, Bruce. To have eight of these happen so fast..."

"They were a distraction," Batman said, flatly. He looked at the unconscious Talon held in his grip.

"Just pawns thrown away to let the real asset escape."

"Tell me you got them."

"I did. Though it might be some time before she can talk. Suicide pills. A custom blend. Potentially long-term brain damage even if the antidote takes. She might never be able to form a coherent thought or speech, let alone betray their plans."

There was a brief silence on the line. The Batpod drove up, riderless, and revved its engine. Batman slung the Talon across the back and climbed into the driver’s saddle.

"The goatmen we’ve got have had work done on their frontal lobes. They’re automata, really. Utterly suggestible, all decision making functions rinsed and stripped. The ones we can ID come up as vagrants, drifters. People nobody reported as missing."

"I’ve got a wireless transmitter that someone was using to protect the assassin. I’m taking it to the cave for analysis. Batman and Robin, you’re on extended patrol. Work the gangs, make sure the Jokerz, Mutants and Carnies really are through. Wingman and Redwing, you’re taking the underground. Wonder City has been reopened for business and I want to know who uses it and where they go through it. The Mechanical Guardians are being operated by the opposition, so stay sharp."

"Right."

"Fine."

"I’m on it."

The ’pod leant into the traffic, speeding onto the raised highway. Batman changed the communication channel as he overtook a taxi.

"Gordon, what’s the situation at the station?"

"Batman? Ah, the pin...we got gassed and played, that’s the situation. Managed to seal my office but whoever did it got to the cells and they got to Toad. Hell of a mess.

"I’ve got your murderer. Assassin. Well-trained, with connections in the city. The owl-mask fits our 'Order of Beasts'. I’m dropping her off with you now."





"I did say I’d pick you up, didn’t I?"

Bruce straightened his dark suit jacket, unbuttoning it to hook a thumb casually into his pocket, and leant against the batpod. Vesper laughed, lifting her silky dress to descend the stairs to the street.

"I suppose I'll have to ride side-saddle," she said, accepting the helmet. "You know what happened the last time I saw you drive one of these? Then again, you were attacked by a psychotic circus on our first date. And I was tardy. I suppose it can’t get worse. Won’t Batman mind you borrowing it?"

"Batman doesn’t scare me," Bruce said, gunning the engine. "Want to do something expensive?"





"I’m glad you kept the date. I’ve been meaning to check this place out for a while now, and to do it with such fine company, well..."

Bruce smiled, sunk back into the dark gloom of the exclusive booth.

"Did you expect me not to show?"

Vesper pretended to blush, but her intelligent eyes stayed fixed into Bruce’s. "Girls talk, and you have quite the James Bond reputation. Bright brief blooms, then nothing. Nobody gets close."

"If that’s what they say, then I’m looking to change that conversation. My life... took a lot of steps forward recently. I’ve been rethinking a great deal about my approach to the things that matter to me."

"Mm," Vesper said, leaning in and arching her fingers together, as if in examination of the man sat with studied louche poise across the table. "Did that line work on anyone I know? Ah, drinks."

The waiter placed the silvery capsule on the table between them, two slender tubes arching over two cocktail glasses. With a flourish reserved for the VIP tables, he inserted a glowing blue cartridge into the device and turned a dial.

Vesper clapped, politely. "Instant iced martini. Isn’t it just so à la mode? They use a variation on the principle behind Mr. Freeze’s cryo-weaponary."

"Pop crime is in, is it?" Bruce said, darkly. "You’ll excuse me for just having the club soda. Batman has rules about driving his bikes over the limit."

Vesper wrinkled her nose. "You aren’t exactly playing up to your role of the playboy billionaire, Bruce. Okay, so. I’d say tell me about yourself, but what’s to know? I grew up in Gotham, and the Waynes are like royalty. I lose track of how many profiles and interviews I’ve gotten to know you through."

"I’d like to think I have a private side," Bruce said, rolling the icy club soda around the glass, "but I could say the same about you, Vesper. The superstar that grew up in Crime Alley."

Vesper waved a hand dismissively. "Sure, sure. Vesper Fairchild, writer, composer, director, journalist, critic and opinion-shaper and trend-setter; I tell you, the internet means you can be famous for everything and anything, all without a conglomerate-sized mega-fund. I made it all with a keyboard, camera, and a wireless connection."

"I think a lot about what would have happened if I hadn’t been a Wayne. If I’d had to start from the outside looking in."

"Just be glad you weren’t born in Crime Alley."

Bruce’s eyes narrowed.

"Oh," Vesper said, catching herself. "Right."

Bruce made an apologetic smile, leaning in from the shadowed corner until he sat forward with Vesper in the neon blue lighting. The cocktail bar was Iss Ríkir, the month’s newest trend, intimate, poorly lit and impossible to enter without being a somebody in Gotham. Fashionably ironic garish fluorescent stencils made murals across the bar, recreating the iconic newspaper photograph of Victor Fries’ glassy stare. A man locked into a suit of hissing piping and life-preserving cryogenic fluids.

The round red circles of Fries’ goggles watched Bruce and Vesper, framed in the pale circle of illumination, huddled over a steel table.

"This place seems popular."

"There’s nothing like a Gotham bar," Vesper agreed, gratefully changing subject. "I mean, when a city faces crime, corruption and madness on an unparalleled scale every night, it encourages a special resilience to the social scene."

"Well," Bruce said. "The nightlife does have to be pretty good when it’s up against the highest murder rate in the country."

Vesper nodded, enthusiastically. "I really do think Gotham is something unique. We should be living in constant fear, depression, or insanity here, but we aren’t. We get on, we make sick jokes about whatever nightmare happened last night and we drink and let go and keep going on. Hit up #Gotham and you’ll see it playing out in realtime. The funny words and things we say to keep ourselves sane in this city. You’ve heard the one about the three comedians? They’re performing one after the other, and the first one is from Keystone. He goes up, gets his act over quickly and moves on. Next one is from Metropolis, and he goes through his material carefully and he says he just hopes the crowd enjoyed it."

"Then the last comedian comes on stage, and he’s from Gotham," Bruce picked up the line, "and he floods the place with sarin gas and mutilates the corpses with a straight-edged razor. Because he was The Joker."

"You have to be a Gothamite to find that funny, I think," Vesper said, drinking.

"Iss Ríkir," Bruce said, waving a hand languidly to encompass his surroundings. "The old Nordic name for Gotham’s river. It means ’Here, Ice Reigns’. It became synonymous with one of the most harrowing accounts of colonial survivalism in American history."

"Right, and they decorate it with an ice-themed serial killer and use his murder weapon as a novelty drink dispenser. Gotham."

Bruce laughed, a low and dark knowing growl of a laugh. Gotham.

"It’s horrible and it’s morbid and yet we can’t move away. First response to saying you’re from Gotham is always: ’Why don’t you just move away?’ Just like that. People - outsiders, I mean - don’t understand what this city is."

"I’ve been reading The Journal of Honor Jackson recently. A mostly overlooked member of the East-Coast Beat movement here in Gotham, he writes about urban survivalism from the perspective of the ultimate insider. Walking the streets taking direction from the city itself, interpreting meaning and instruction into everything, road signs, the contents of garbage cans, the patterns made by cracks in the sidewalk, snatches of conversation overheard, everything. He takes in Gotham unfiltered and obeys it, becomes an instrument to civic will."

"Sounds like a Gothamite to me," Vesper agreed. "That’s why I love it. This city caters to them all, from the beatnik panhandlers to the super-rich deviant orgies where anything can happen to anyone if you wear the right owl mask."

"What did you say?" Bruce raised an eyebrow.

Vesper sucked at her straw and drew her lips back.

"Or so I heard. It’s only a story."

Bruce sat back, shifting under his black shirt.

"Let me tell you about Crime Alley, Vesper. What it means to me. Crime Alley may have been a tragedy in my early life, but it’s also where most of my charity work is now focused. I’ve seen successes there, working with deprived children and their families through Wayne Foundation, and I’ve seen people survive senseless violence as I did through the Victims Inc. program. You yourself are proof that we can’t define this city by its failings, can’t resign it to its darkest places."

His gaze was fixed, his words slow and hypnotic.

"That’s Gotham. It’s everything, every aspect of human nature given form in geometric blocks. The human condition mapped out in streets and alleys, locked in grid-work."

"Stop, Bruce," Vesper purred. "I’m getting chills."

She thought for a moment. Then spoke, quietly. "But what kind of man tries to escape from the human condition?"

"Excuse me?"

"Like I told you, you’re Gotham royalty. And recently your subjects would say you’ve been, well, threatening desertion. You’re jet-setting just about everywhere on this Incorporated business, rebranding the city’s own devil horns for international use. I hate to say it, but some people out there are saying you’re running away from Gotham, like your seven years in absentia all over again."

"Gotham is my home," Bruce stated, placing his hands on the table. "and I already ran away from my home once. I’m not doing that again."

"Your home and your oldest enemy," Vesper pressed. "The city did hurt you, all those years ago, Bruce."

Bruce smiled bleakly, and drank deeply from his glass. Then he frowned.

"Something’s come up," he said, rising. A mugging at Aparo Plaza. I can be there in four minutes. "I’d like to see you again."

Vesper’s eyes fell, just slightly. Her curved mouth didn’t allow itself to waver. "The James Bond exit isn’t usually until after."

Bruce took Vesper’s hand in his, and she felt the curl of paper tickle her palm.

"That’s my personal line. You can always reach me on that."

"I’d miss talking to Alfred while trying to get hold of you," she wrinkled her nose, her fingers closing around Bruce’s, and then around the paper. "Go on. I won’t be too hard on you in my blog. So long as there’s a third date."

"To be continued," Bruce said, walking away.








Redwing strode into the room, flipping over a dusty tome and hopping up onto the long oak table. He sat, legs swinging, looking around the tall circular chamber.

High wooden panels were rotting along the walls, revealing limestone blocks and a gridwork of copper wiring. Paintings hung and mouldered, or else lay in heaps of ruined furnishings and bent brass ornaments, and everything in the chamber echoed with quiet portent.

Wingman ran a clawed finger along the table. Chalk lines ran in spiralling patterns across the wooden surface, blurred by the gradual shifting and mixing with dust and grime.

Waxy residue came away with his finger, and he plucked a charred string wick out of the melted pile.

"Chalk circles, candles. Maybe hundred years old. Older, even. And then there’re the Telluric currents my suit’s reading as all spreading from this place," Wingman muttered. "Crazy occult significance."

"Boring," Redwing tutted. "Let’s skip the detective stuff and go straight to the violence. There’ve got to be more of those owl assassins in this place."

"I hope so," Wingman agreed, under his breath, "but pay attention."

"Hidden passageway, right above my head."

Wingman snorted, continuing to pick through the tattered pages that had scattered loose across the floor. He ignored Redwing for a beat, then stole a glance upwards.

"How’d you figure?"

Redwing smiled, smug. He patted the table corner he was perched on, talking with the mock-patient air of a teacher speaking to a rather slow pupil.

"No dust here. They cleared it when their workers were installing the new exit route. Now can we agree that you’re my sidekick already?"

Wingman stood up, his hands on his hips, pouting. Climbing onto the table he reached up and found the almost invisible freshly-cut groove that marked a hatch going up through the ceiling.

"Mark it down," he snapped. "and don’t get cocky. I’m not going to be your brooding straight-man."

Redwing smirked and tapped his helmet. "Mark marked. We’re under that Mesa travesty. Aren’t you the one that makes puns or something?"

"No," Wingman grunted, straining. There was a grinding, and the hatch swung open, the weighted fall muffled as Wingman caught it.

"You know, the costume improves you," Redwing said, rubbing his chin.

Wingman looked up, at a polished shaft climbing upwards, ladder rungs fixed into the steel plating.

"If we’re under the Mesa, then they might just have an owl infestation."





"Dick, Tim, put your masks on."

"Nightwing or Batman?" Dick asked, the Bat-Bunker camera feed flicking on to a screen in the Batcave. "I have way too many identities these days."

"Either. We’re addressing the employees."

"So Bilal, Cyril and Beryl, the...uh...Hong Kong one..." Tim blushed, fitting his domino mask. "Have you recruited any others?"

"Just a few," Bruce said, pulling his cowl up. Tapping a command key, he lit up a wall of screens across the Batcomputer.

Acknowledging voices chirped as the computer recognised the agents, and they smiled, scowled, saluted and waved in portrait feeds.

"Online...Batman, Batman & Robin, Knight & Squire, Nightrunner, Black Bat, Batman Japan, Batman Moscow, Man of Bats, El Gaucho, Batwing, Dark Ranger, Wingman & Redwing..."

"Huh," Robin said, frowning, suddenly one face among many.

"Wotcha, Dark Knight," Squire waved.

"Let’s get this corporate talk out of the way Batman," the muscle-bound biker in the white vest snarled. A thick curled moustache came down from beneath his bandana-mask, and the eyes flashed violently dark hazel.

"I joined as a favour to you, not because I want to check in to a conference call every five minutes."

"Ah, simmer down, mate," Dark Ranger said, his voice modulated into a low rumble by the face-encompassing mirrored helmet he wore. "I’m listening, Batman."

"Batman, are you calling to say you’re firing this dolt yet?" Redwing demanded, stabbing a finger at a pouting Wingman.

Black Bat pursed her lips, saying nothing.

"Agents of Incorporated," Batman said, leaning over his console. "You all took the oath. Batman Incorporated is standing before a grand conspiracy of crime and corruption, and all of you have parts to play."

Tapping another key, detailed plans and files beamed through the system, spreading from the central Batcomputer to every Incorporated unit across the globe.

"These dossiers are your battle-plans. Preparation against the coming storm. Study them. Our first Incorporated global mission begins now."