Twisting Pete's wrist until the wet pop of separating cartilage joined the orchestra of sounds no human being ever wanted to hear coming from their own body, the Dark Knight hissed from behind the cowl. "Where did you get these?"
"I-I—"
Bruce stared at the scum, at the sweat cutting lines through the grime on his face and the vein hammering away beneath the man's jaw, before tilting his head slightly to the side. He did not want to look. He did not dare admit to himself that he felt pleased, vindicated even, by how Pete's pupils had dilated to pinpricks, and how the tendons in his neck were pulling taut.
Only a few had ever managed to rouse any sympathy in him, and more often than not it was the downtrodden and the broken.
Pete was neither… Pete was the kind of vermin who dug his own hole, then grabbed the nearest bystander by the collar and dragged them kicking and screaming into it with him. He would not be missed. The world would not mourn. And Bruce, for his part, was finding it more and more difficult to remember why he ought to spare the man.
Did he ever truly believe they could be redeemed?
Or was it always about him? A convenient fiction he clung to, not for their sake, but to keep whatever was left of Bruce Wayne from rotting behind the cowl.
"F-Fuck y—"
"WHERE?!!!"
The symbiotic entity shot out from behind him, latching onto a desk that felt almost weightless and lifting the piece overhead. All it'd take was a thought, and Pete would be no more… All it'd take was him wanting it to happen.
"N-Nooo! Wait!"
And down the desk came, embedded right next to the criminal's head.
The criminally insane, turned out, could also feel fear, judging from the stain on Pete's pants and the puddle forming under him. "I'm not in a joking mood, Pete."
"I don't know who it was!" He roared, scrambling backward on his elbows. "It's some freak in a clown costume! Rolled up in one of those ice—"
"Half a pound of tuppenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle.
That's the way the money goes,
Pop! Goes the weasel."
"—Cream trucks!" Pete's eyes, tainted by green that made his pinprick pupils all the more visible, snapped toward the taped-up window as the nursery rhyme crept in from the street. "That's him! That's the guy! What the hell are you standing here for?! Go get 'im!"
"Thanks." Bruce grunted, driving his boot into the side of Pete's knee until the joint bent the way God never intended.
"ARRRRRGH! MY—MY FUCKING KNEE! I GAVE YOU WHAT YOU WANTED!"
"And I gave you what you earned."
Bursting through the window, Bruce landed on the fire escape and swept the street below. There, parked at the corner, was an ice cream truck.
It was painted a garish green with leering clown faces splashed across every panel, their grins stretched so wide they wrapped around the wheel wells.
The speakers bolted to the roof were still cycling through that same nursery rhyme on loop, the saccharine jingle burrowing into his skull until the melody cut abruptly, replaced by cackles and a voice of the Devil Incarnate.
"—Come one, come all! Papa's got gifts for the whole family!"
'Joker.'
The name alone was enough to make his jaw ache as Bruce vaulted the railing and slammed boots-first onto a flickering streetlamp.
From his vantage point, he could see three grunts crammed inside the truck.
They were passing out gadgets through the service window to Afflicted who were pouring from houses and alleyways in droves, while the Joker sat in the driver's seat, waving merrily at the growing mob with a grin that could curdle milk. "—Come, come, come…! Grab a toy, find a friend, and bash each other's brains in! It's on the house!"
Bruce was almost certain it was the Joker, until Brother Eye chimed in.
[SCANNING... SKELETAL OVERLAY IN PROGRESS.]
[JOINT PROPORTIONS DEVIATE BY 0.8MM AT CERVICAL AND THORACIC VERTEBRAE.]
[VOICE ANALYSIS: PITCH AND CADENCE WITHIN ACCEPTABLE RANGE. LARYNGEAL RESONANCE MISMATCH DETECTED.]
[SIDE PROFILE: MANDIBULAR ANGLE 2.1 DEGREES BELOW BASELINE.]
[COMPOSITE SIMILARITY INDEX: 89.1%.]
[CONCLUSION: SUBJECT IS NOT THE JOKER.]
"Regardless."
Joker or not, the impersonator would know something about the real clown's whereabouts. The real question wasn't whether to hit them, but when.
Attacking now would stop the immediate distribution. He could confiscate a truckload of gadgets and stop them from arming an already feral mob of Afflicted, but it would also scatter the grunts.
And there would always be another corner, another cache, another truck.
Lopping off one head without cauterizing the neck was a waste of time Bruce couldn't afford.
The gadgets were a symptom.
The Afflicted were a symptom.
Even this impersonator was a symptom.
So long as the Joker and Scarecrow continued to operate, Gotham's suffering would only compound, and no level of intervention would change that.
Not unless he ripped the rot out at the root.
His gaze lingered on the mob for a moment longer than it should have, and then he slinked into the darkness.
'Forgive me.'
.
.
.
"You sure you want to tag along?" Rowan asked, eyeing the potted plant Ivy cradled like a firstborn. "Could get ugly."
Ivy snorted, stroking the trembling plant with a tenderness she'd never waste on a human. "They don't call me femme fatale for nothing, sweetheart. Besides, who's going to tell you what to grab?"
"I've got a pretty good memory."
Her brow arched. "Knowing the name of something and knowing what it looks like are two very different things. Tell me, can you even identify pralidoxime chloride?"
"… Point taken."
"What about—"
"I said I get it, Christ!"
He'd never say it out loud, but Rowan hated the little smirk that danced on her lips at the small victories. He hated even more what it did to his pulse.
"...Why are we taking this cheap piece of junk when there's a perfectly functional car right over there?"
Brows pinched, Ivy gave the Supra's wheel a kick and tossed a look—the look his way. Rowan, meanwhile, followed her finger to the glossy EV parked across the street and recoiled in disgust. "I think you've got those two mixed up." Popping the Supra's hood with a wolfish grin, he let out a whistle. "God, would you look at her."
Ivy rounded to the front and peered at the twin-turbo inline-6 with visible disdain. "It's bad for the environment."
"Oh, my sweet summer child, you should see the reports on what lithium mining does to the soil..."
The Supra might not have been the greenest option on the block, but it beat gambling their lives on an EV stuffed with experimental tech. More complexity meant more points of failure, and in a city where the power grid was hanging on by a thread, "Would you really rather we sit around waiting for a charge?"
There was also a Humvee further down the block, but he'd sooner eat a bullet than be caught dead in one. Rowan threw himself into the driver's seat, stripped the panel beneath the steering column, and had the 2JZ snarling to life within seconds. The pleased grunt that left his lips nearly rivaled the engine's.
It was no Batmobile, but short of Bruce letting him take the actual thing for a joyride, she was the next best thing.
"It's lou--" Ivy started, only to flinch at the sharp intake of breath beside her.
"Easy with the heels! You scratch that coat and I'm leaving you on the curb!"
"…"
Lips twitching between outrage and disbelief, Ivy lowered herself into the passenger seat with exaggerated care and a pout that could wilt flowers.
"Are we going, or are you planning to marry the vehicle?"
"Shh… It's been a rough week, just… Just let me have this."
Cranking 'Careless Whisper' loud enough to rattle the mirrors, Rowan slammed the pedal and howled as the Supra shot off the curb just in time for an Afflicted to stumble out of the building in his bathrobe.
"Hey! HEY! That's my car!"
"Sorry, man!" Rowan hollered out the window. "Duty calls! I'll get you something better, I promise!"
"No you wooooon't!!!"
To his side, Ivy's hand inched for the seatbelt that she clumsily fastened around herself.
"Slow down!"
"Why would I do that?!"
"Because we can't save anyone if we're dead!" She hissed through clenched teeth.
"We won't be!" He flashed a grin she couldn't see but somehow felt anyway. "Trust!"
Against every rational instinct she possessed, she did, sinking into the admittedly comfortable seat as Gotham blurred past them. And very quickly, she learned that once she'd loosened her death grip on the armrest and let her nerves unwind, it wasn't half as bad as she'd feared.
Ivy might've even gone as far as to say she enjoyed it… Just a little.
Not that she'd ever tell him that.
Not with how reckless the teen was already driving
Sinking into the music, Ivy let her eyes drift shut, only to crack them open when two silhouettes caught her attention, bounding across the rooftops in tandem. One male, one female, with the latter barely reaching the first's chest.
Immediately, she knew she wouldn't have spotted them if they hadn't allowed it.
The Bat had gotten the drop on her too many times for her to believe otherwise.
Gaze flicking to the vigilante beside her, Ivy thumbed at the window. "Friends of yours?"
Only then did Rowan spot the two figures sailing between rooftops on grappling hooks too.
Now, grappling hooks on their own weren't unusual.
They were practically standard fare for street-tier combatants in this universe. What made him grip the wheel a little tighter was the acceleration. Even the ones used by Azrael and Deathstroke couldn't match that kind of speed. That level of acceleration was, for the moment, almost exclusively Batfamily technology, and the number of people in Gotham with access to it could be counted on one hand.
Bruce was the obvious first.
Then himself.
And since Dick was still padded in the Batcave last he'd checked, that left only Ted Grant.
The old man was a rarity among street-tier heroes in the sense that he had never needed more than a pair of fists and a nasty right hook.
And he could technically be considered a member of the Batfamily, having been one of Bruce's earliest mentors before Zatara and the League of Assassins ever entered the picture.
Granted, Ted was more that weird, retired granduncle who only materialized out of thin air for Christmas dinner and the occasional apocalypse, but Bruce still kitted the boxer out from time to time in case the itch to crack a few skulls ever struck him again.
The girl was obviously Barbara.
"Catgir—" His cheeks puffed at the near-miss.
Funny what swapping a single letter could do.
His gaze wandered to the window for one second too many before the sound of honking snapped him back to the road, where a food truck smothered in green and purple graffiti was barreling toward them from the opposite lane.
Rowan wrenched the wheel violently right, causing the Supra to spark against the railing as they narrowly dodged a head-on collision that would've ended their night prematurely.
He and Ivy were untouched.
The Supra?
Not so much…
"Do you know how to drive?!"
Swallowing his retort, Rowan jerked his head toward the rooftops. "Keep an eye on those two for me."
"Tsk." Ivy clicked her tongue but obliged anyway, craning her neck toward the window, but by the time her eyes found the rooftops, the silhouettes had already vanished.
"What is it?"
"They're gone."
"Fuck." Rowan cursed as a cold knot formed in his stomach. That feeling had never been wrong before, but oh how he wished it was when something suddenly crashed onto the roof of their car and caved it in.
"We have company..." Ivy muttered, neatly trimmed nails dragging down the potted plant's leaves as a fist imprinted itself in the metal above their heads. "I take it you know who it is?"
"It's a—"
Another punch rocked the car before he could finish.
"A very, very grumpy old cat…"