"I… I think most people tend to underestimate how quickly things could go to shit, how long two weeks actually are, and how much bullshit could be packed into a single fortnight.
In one night, Bruce had taken an unscheduled dip in the ocean.
In that same night, I got my ass handed to me by Deathstroke of all people.
Within three days, news of his supposed 'Death' had spread across Gotham like wildfire, and every two-bit goon who had previously been too scared of racking up another fifty-grand hospital bill suddenly came crawling out of the woodwork.
For the next ten days, the city's entire rogues' gallery basically threw a city-wide 'Fuck Batman' party by tearing down everything he built while he and I were off elsewhere licking our wounds.
In fourteen days, everything about my hometown had changed and, unless shit graffiti had become the new norm, it wasn't for the better.
By the time I did manage to drag my sorry ass back to that shithole, all that remained was a battlefield while I was left to pick up the pieces, and boy were there a lot of fucking pieces to pick up. To make it worse, most of those pieces even had smaller pieces to throw at me…
But you know what the real kicker was?
They didn't even give me the box cover to know what the final product was supposed to look like…
Welcome to Gotham, I guess?
Come for the crimes, stay because everything's on fucking fire and the only exit had been blown to hell.
Welcome to No Man's Land."
— [HELLBRED] —
Day #1:
The ward stretched endlessly down a corridor lit by stuttering fluorescent strips that cast everything in nauseating, anxiety-inducing red light.
Dozens of cell doors lined both walls, their reinforced windows like dead eyes staring into the hallway; specifically the peeling paint hung in strips from the walls, then the linoleum floor stained with decades of fluids no one in the old facility had dared, nor wanted to identify.
Every breath brought the stench of waste, disinfectant, and something else that seemed to clog in her airway, refusing to depart like that one friend who just wouldn't leave even though it was nearly one in the morning and she'd dropped like half a dozen hints for them to fuck off since three hours ago…
'Ahem, Harley, ahem.'
She'd learned to breathe through her mouth during her first week here, though that had its own problems since the scent tended to settle on her tongue like a film of rot.
Inside the 'comfort' of her Cell, where the concrete walls were covered in scratches clearly made by fingernails in a fit of madness,
Where a metal toilet sat clogged and overflowing in one corner, its contents mixing with the standing water that seeped from cracks in the foundation…
Where a dirty mattress lay shredded on the floor, its stuffing scattered like snowflakes across an even filthier floor, Dr. Pamela Isley paced, taking in the phrase carved hundreds of times into every available surface: 'They're in the walls they're in the walls they're in the walls.'
Courtesy of her Cell's previous occupant, surely.
She sighed and traced one set of the obsessive scratches with her fingertip, as if bidding farewell to an old friend.
Then, heartlessly, one of Gotham's most (in)famous—depending on who you ask—femme fatales turned toward the cell door to follow the sounds of riot echoing through the narrow corridors… There lay her ticket out of this ugly, brutalist concrete box.
Dr. Isley poked her head out of the cell doorway, careful not to reveal herself.
She wasn't weak by any means, but she wasn't a front-line combatant like Selina or Harley.
Without a plant around, she was practically defenseless.
There was the Kiss, of course, but...
Her expression darkened as she watched the scrawny, half-naked inmates leap onto overturned tables and desks, howling like rabid animals.
Was it any wonder Pamela didn't want to give any of them the Kiss?
Closing her eyes, she waited for the madmen to clear, then snuck into the courtyard where wild weeds grew in abundance and an old oak tree leaned slightly to the right. Pamela sighed; moaned almost as the Green—as her Children, reached out to welcome her back.
It had only been a little less than two months since Batman recaptured her, but oh how she'd missed this!
"Rise, my beauties! Let's see how long this concrete jungle will last without its precious Bat…"
~ § ~
Day #2:
Andrea had always prided herself on being a practical woman. Twenty-eight years old, assistant manager at Gotham First National, sensible apartment in Midtown, sensible car, sensible life.
She'd survived the city's endless parade of costumed lunatics by keeping her head down and following four simple rules: Avoid going out after dark, never take the subway alone, pay the local gang and always carry a means of protection on her person.
But standing in her kitchen at 6:47 PM, those rules felt… Inadequate.
"The Bat's dead! The Bat's dead!"
The chanting from the streets below had been going on for hours now and with each repetition, that familiar knot of anxiety would tighten in her stomach. Word had it that Arkham had suffered another breakout last night, and the escapees were celebrating something that couldn't possibly be true… 'Could it?'
This morning alone, Andrea had heard variations of the rumor six times already,
Be it on the bus.
In the coffee shop.
From her doorman even!
As an assistant manager, she didn't know much about criminology or police tactics; what Andrea understood were supply and demand, profit margins, risk assessment and her decade of experiences told her shit was about to go down.
For four years straight, Batman had kept the… Cost of criminal activity artificially high.
Now, if the chants weren't just ravings of lunatics, that cost had just plummeted overnight, while the reward remained pretty much the same, if not greater given how dependent on him Gotham had become.
In layman's terms, the city was primed for a catastrophic market correction, and Andrea wasn't quite sure if she wanted to stick around for the downturn…
The screech of tires from the street below suddenly woke her from her contemplation. Andrea rushed to her window just in time to see two police cruisers cornering a black sedan at the intersection. The car doors flew open and gunfire erupted, shattering Mrs. Chen's storefront windows while the pedestrians dived for cover.
When the smoke cleared three minutes later, four robbers and two officers lay motionless on the asphalt.
The third was clutching his bleeding shoulder while shouting frantically into his radio.
"Well, that settled it."
Never mind the escapes—Gotham had a population of eight million, while the GCPD had what, three thousand officers? At best five thousand spread thin across various precincts, assuming none were corrupt…
Even a blind person could see how terribly this would go down once the Supes hit the stage and the crooks realized they no longer needed to fear their own shadows, much less Andrea.
She grabbed her phone and typed to her supervisor, then immediately phoned her dad afterward. "Pa'? I think something big is about to go down in Gotham, so I'll get out tonight. Is my old room still available?"
After getting a curt 'Yes' and promising she'd give him a call, Andrea hurried to pack her luggage. And she was far from the only person who'd reached this conclusion.
Overnight, thousands with the means and the sense had already fled Gotham through the bridges connecting the City of Sins to the mainland, with thousands more on the way… The rest, meanwhile, either had nowhere else to go or foolishly believed that with or without the Bat, Gotham would endure!
After all, hadn't it for centuries?
If only they'd known…
If only they'd listened…
~ § ~
Day #3:
"You want to do WHAT?" Penguin's monocle nearly popped from his eye socket, his umbrella clattering against the marble floor. "Repeat that last part—slowly, so my old ears can process the sheer stupidity of what you just said."
Two-Face's scarred half twitched with irritation while the other side remained calm as ever. "The coin has spoken, Oswald. We're claiming Gotham as our territory, ans the first step is—"
"Blowing up the bridges?! Do you hear yourself, Harvey! Do you have any idea; any conception whatsoever of how monumentally idiotic that plan is? We're criminals, Harvey, not terrorists. There's a difference!"
A difference that was apparently too subtle for the Two-Faced freak's bifurcated brain to grasp.
Reflexively rolling the coin between his fingers, Harvey Dent silently listened while the Penguin began to list off.
"The moment those bridges go boom, every government agency from here to Washington will classify us as international terrorists. They will send in the military!"
Two-Face's good eye narrowed. "We can handle a few—"
"Second!" Penguin's umbrella jabbed toward the window overlooking Gotham's harbor. "Thousands of people have been fleeing this city since word spread about the Bat. Normal people with normal families who just want to survive. You blow those bridges, you murder civilians by the thousands! Their relatives; their friends will demand blood. Our blood!"
While it was true that they held the most power in Gotham, each of of the kingpins commanded only a few thousand henchmen at most. The reason ordinary Gothamites had tolerated their criminal enterprises thus far was because they had businesses to run, lives to protect, families to feed.
They had too much to lose by fighting back… And they still do, but the moment those bridges went down, that might not be true much longer.
"Cornered dogs will bite, you maniacs!"
"I never knew you were such a coward, Ozzie!"
The Joker—Gotham's self-proclaimed 'Crown Prince of Crime' giggled, slouched in his seat.
"Coward?" Face flushing purple, Cobblepot roared. "I'm the only one in this room thinking past tomorrow! You really want to know what happens when you trap eight million desperate people?!"
Unfortunately, neither Two-Face nor his purple-clad accomplice seemed to give a damn.
In fact, the latter only looked more and more excited by the thought. "Oh, but that's the beauty of it, Ozzie! No boring negotiations. No tedious profit margins! NO. MORE. RULES!"
"Lawlessness doesn't pay my bills, clown!"
Harvey's coin clinked steadily against his knuckles as he calmly answered. "Short-term losses for long-term control. The coin sees the bigger picture."
"The coin sees jackshit! Chaos benefits only one person in this room, Harvey! The rest of us need some goddamn stability to operate!"
And these were only the reasons off the top of his head!
Give him an hour with his ledgers, and Cobblepot figured he could probably list fifty more ways Harvey's quote-unquote plan would bankrupt them all.
"If the bridges do not go down, we'll not be able to take Gotham, not without federal intervention."
"And you think blowing a few bridges will stop the U.S. military? They have got helicopters, they've got ships, planes, nukes!" Cobblepot snorted, his voice climbing with each word as disdain etched deeper into the lines of his face.
"At least we avoid ground invasion. Harder to coordinate air strikes in a populated city."
"And if they carpet bomb us?"
"They won't. Not while we have millions of hostages on hand."
"Unless they decide collateral damage is acceptable."
Letting the coin settle in his palm, Harvey mumbled. "You're underestimating how excellent eight million civilians make for meat shields. And if the locals get restless... Public executions tend to restore order quickly. We're not politicians—we don't need to pretend."
"What if they decide to starve us?!"
"And starve the civilians too? No, the feds will drop supply crates whether they want to or not… Worst case scenario, we still have your ships to deliver more rations until we secure better food sources."
Cobblepot had seen madmen; he'd been surrounded by them his entire life,
Hell, he himself wasn't entirely sane either, but even the Penguin was struggling to comprehend the depth of their insanity.
"You're mad… You've all gone batshit crazy! Find your own goddamn supplier! I'm not running a charity for delusional terrorists!"
Glaring at his fellow criminal masterminds, Harvey flipped his coin in a smooth arc, caught it, and glanced at the result. "Heads yet again."
The scarred side of his face contorted, lips pulling back to expose a set of yellowing teeth as he leveled his gun at the Penguin.
"You seem to have it confused, Oswald, this operation will move forward regardless of your involvement."
"What are you doing?! You need me!"
"Ah, ah, ah! That's where you're mistaken, Ozzie. We only need your ships! You, on the other hand…"
For the first time since the Bat's debut, Cobblepot found himself longing for the vigilante's presence.
The Dark Knight might have cost him millions in wares and henchmen, but these treacherous parasites might really be the end of him.
Springing from his chair, Oswald thrust his umbrella forward, deflecting five bullets before the sixth caught him in the thigh.
He staggered back through the broken window and snarled as he plummeted, "Y-You won't get away with this!"
"Oh, but we already have, my dear Penguin! Ah-haha... HAHAHAHA!"
~ § ~
Day #7:
Seven days, it'd been.
"We just got another call! There's a shooting at the—!"
Seven days of mayhem.
"We're running out of cruisers to send!"
Seven days of riots, of robberies, of criminals running amok—criminals who were growing ever bolder with each passing night that light in the sky remained unanswered.
"Co-Commissioner?!"
Running a hand over his face, Gordon conveniently removed his glasses.
"Sir?"
Sometimes it was better to see nothing at all than to watch what you love crumble before your eyes.
"Sir?!"
Sometimes it was easier to turn a blind eye than to watch the horrors in sight.
"SIR?!!"
How bitter the irony that Gordon, of all people, had found himself agreeing with the sentiment…
'Why am I even here?' Oh, that's right: Because the Captain was shot dead the night before, along with several other high-ranking officers in a city-wide massacre perpetrated by none other than Joker and Harvey Dent.
Now hadn't that team-up been a surprise?
Gordon never would have suspected it himself, given their history.
"SIR!!!"
Gotham's youngest Commissioner jumped, glasses slipping from his hand and clattering to the floor.
He took a breath, then a second in a fruitless attempt to compose himself.
Sleep deprivation was a terrible thing to experience, made so much worse by the hammering of his heart from the ungodly amount of caffeine he'd gobbled down in the past few days. "Yes?"
"I just got a call from the upper district, the False Facers, Dent's and Penguin's crews are having a—"
"Shootout. What else's new?" He hadn't needed to guess.
That was all Gordon seemed to hear nowadays.
"W-What do we do?"
"Beats me." He answered.
What else could he say?
There were dozens of those happening nightly, and fewer of officers left to respond every day.
If anything, he was already grateful it hadn't spread to the morning hours, but judging by the raging gang wars breaking out every other day, even that smidgen of levity might be gone soon. "Sir—"
"I know! I KNOW!!! I get it!"
Gordon hadn't meant to blow up at the lieutenant, but it'd be a lie to say a part of him hadn't wanted to. In fact, he had a lot more to say. 'Why are you asking me? What the hell am I supposed to do? Call in the reinforcements?! What reinforcements! Half the force are either dead, missing or in hiding…! Stop them on my own?! Do I look like—'
Batman.
If it were him, he'd be able to put a stop to this.
"I need to get a breath of fresh air." He said, then, not even waiting for an answer, walked out on her. It wasn't safe at night, not even for him, but it was the time when the Signal would shine the brightest, and they all knew without him, the morning wouldn't remain safe much longer.
"Don't call me."
He didn't remember the drive—hard to when his mind and stability were running on nothing but frayed nerves and caffeine fumes.
Hell, Gordon was quite certain he had dozed off half a dozen times on the way, only jerking awake when he finally saw the familiar building where the Bat-Signal was installed.
Getting out of his beat-up sedan, the Commissioner retrieved his service weapon from its holster, making sure to display it as a deterence to any lurking wrongdoer who might be lurking in the shadows.
While he couldn't see them in the darkness,
While he couldn't quite understand why they hadn't bothered to destroy the one symbol of Gotham's Protector; why they'd left the beacon untouched when they'd already torn down so much else, Gordon was sure they were around,
Watching.
Maybe they want to drive the city to complete despair?
That had to be it.
Why else would they allow the Bat-Signal to continue shining into the empty sky.
The walk up the building exhausted Gordon more than he'd care to admit, partly because the thirty-five-year-old was running on little more than desperation at this point, and partly because of the certainty that he would return empty-handed yet again.
Despite it, he clung to hope as desperately as he did the rusted railings, trekking to the top and turning on the faded light that sputtered to life like a decades-old tractor.
Truth be told, Gordon had always known in the back of his mind that this day would come.
He'd known from the start that the Legend of the Batman would end, but he'd hoped it would be further down the timeline... When he was dead, perhaps?
When the Dark Knight grew old, tired, or simply weary of his nightly crusade.
He just hadn't expected it to be this soon.
The GCPD wasn't prepared to fill the void, not even close.
Glancing at the forest covering half of Old Gotham, at the streams of light pouring out on the bridges, then at the city drowning below, Gordon could only thank his lucky star he'd had the sense to send his daughter and five-year-old son away with her martial arts instructor on the second day.
Instinctively, he reached for the tiny bottle of Whiskey strapped to his belt.
Gordon had promised his late wife he would stop drinking after he suddenly collasped in the bathroom from alcohol-poisoning one day, but what were promises if not to be broken…?
Besides, 'She wouldn't blame me.'
Not for this.
Not during these dark times at least.
Downing his alcohol, his tears, and his despair, the Commissioner covered his face, ashamed of the state he was in, even though no one was there besides himself.
He choked back a sob just as an explosion shook the entirety of the citt.
"What now?!" Growling, Gordon lifted his head.
He'd thought nothing could shock him anymore, only to be proven wrong once again as the bridges crumbled in the distance, taking with them thousands of cars and presumably many more thousands of lives.
"Oh, God…"
.
.
.
If somebody had told the thirteen-year-old she'd get enough fights to last her a lifetime a week ago, Catgirl would have laughed in their face.
Now, the best she'd be able to muster was a weary smile, and for good reasons. While her aging master; the—allegedly—best boxer 'round town had taken upon himself to handle the more serious battles, Barbara herself had been given permission to actively participate as a frontline combatant in thirty-six fights so far.
That was how truly hopeless the situation in Gotham was, that Wild Cat felt it necessary to send his young, inexperienced, albeit talented protégé on the field.
A rough hand seized her auburn hair, yanking Barbara backward.
Instead of resisting, she simply rode the momentum, spinning into an elbow that sent teeth flying from her attacker's mouth.
'You're small and light, Babs, so every movement has to count, even the ones that hurt.' Wild Cat had beaten into her brain during those first training sessions, and thank God he did. Throwing herself in a kick that would've made Jean-Claude Van Dame proud, Barbara froze stiff as she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket.
'Are you kidding me? Now?!'
It was only a moment, but that one moment of distraction nearly became her last as one of the pursuing thugs whipped out his gun, only for Barbs to close the distance and pushed his aim skyward.
After dispatching the remnants of Joker fanatics, and what a shock it was to find out there were people actively worshipping the psychotic clown, Barbara collapsed against the wall, gasping as she frantically searched her pockets for her phone.
She really needed a better costume, 'cause this one was too stuffy; too restricting.
Setting aside her thoughts about the designs for her next supersuit, Catgirl took a deep breath to catch her breath, then put on a bright smile.
Believe it or not, people could hear smiles through the phone.
It had something to do with how facial structure and minute movements could affect a person's vocal resonance.
Her dad had always been excellent at reading people thanks to his detective work, though he preferred calling it his 'sixth sense' rather than acknowledging her scientific explanation.
"Hiii, dad…" Barbara dragged, kicking one of the groaing thugs to silence him.
"—Barbara?! You're out of the city, right?!"
"Yes!"
Obviously, she wasn't; only her younger brother, who was currently being cared for by one of Ted's old colleagues, was.
But she couldn't very well tell her father that, could she?
To really sell the act, she'd even rehearsed responses to his follow-up questions! But…
"—That's good to hear! And you're safe?! Does he treat you well?"
"I..." Barbara hesitated, glancing at the five unconscious thugs sprawled behind her, then forced a smile into her voice. "I am. Teacher's been very accomodating… You sound worried. Is everything okay over there?"
"—Everything's—"
Like father, like daughter.
"—Everything's fine, sweetheart. I just… I wanted to hear your voice."
"Dad, you're scaring me. What happened?"
For a brief second, it was as if she had gone deaf, though it was more probable her brain had simply failed to process his words because she could hear the distant gunshots just fine. "Dad, could you repeat that? I think I lost signal for a bit there."
She caught the sound of her dad gagging down saliva on the other end of the line, working his parched throat, then reluctantly revealed, probably realizing he couldn't keep such a monumental disaster from her even if every paternal instinct in him screamed to shield her from the knowledge. "—The bridges are down, sweetheart. Somebody blew them up."
Barbara felt her brain work to process the words, neurons firing in an effort to reconcile reality with her expectations.
Though she'd known there'd be ramifications for Batman's death, she hadn't expected this level of destruction… No one had, as evident by the city's complete lack of preparation.
Yet, it still felt too surreal to be true.
It'd only been a week, for God's sake!
How could so much have gone askew so fast?!
'Did I hear wrong again?' The protégé wondered internally, then wondered aloud. "Dad, I think my phone's broken, 'cause it sounded like you said they took down the bridges."
Her dad did not respond this time,
And that was all the answer Barbara needed.
"—I fear Gotham's lost…"