[CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/klz6g2r.png[/IMG][/CENTER]

Thunder echoed in the distance as the dark of night swept over Gotham City like a violent hand cascading into the inhabitants' chests. It was almost loud enough to drown out the sirens in the distance, the crying of infant children in the background, the verbal altercations of motorists in the foreground, and every other potential assault on the senses. And yet as the rush of wind picked up and brought with it a sudden current and the weather seemed to weigh like a heavy ton of bricks hovering above the streets far below, a shadowy figure touched down onto a rooftop that seemed well removed from anyone's line of sight. For a moment, he remained standing, like a sprawled inkblot against a page that only wanted to soak into the fibers to become a permanent fixture. But he quickly found himself a reason to move. Each step forward was deliberate, slowly bringing the oddly shaped individual forward. Like a child experiencing his first steps. There was a hesitation evident, but a curiosity that seemed to prevail above all else. The figure stopped at the rooftop's edge and took in the view infront of him. The lights of the city's skyline seemed so distant from up here. From his position, it was as if he were inhabiting a sinister outer-world that were divorced from it. A realm of shadows, where the light couldn't touch. It felt cold and isolating, yet so vividly familiar. Like a horrible memory or a faded dream.

Then the rain began to sprinkle from the heavens. The figure reached out with a hand and allowed the droplets to smack against the black leather covering his palms. He allowed himself to forget, one last time, and simply experience it. The rain was inviting, even as it poured down harder with every passing moment. It seemed to beckon him forward, even though he remained firmly planted where he was. Telling him that this was the path he was meant to choose, guiding him towards a destination he hadn't even chosen. His exposed skin, what little of it was there, grew hotter with the humidity. All he had to do was close his eyes, breathe deep, and focus on what he'd been taught. More than half a world away, a voice rang through the back of his mind. Shihan Matsuda, an often cruel and unwavering master of the eight disciplines, had been the one to expand his knowledge of how to control his body. It took less than seventeen seconds for his core temperature to adapt.

[b][i][color=#54626e]This can't be how it ends.[/color] [/i][/b]

The thought was less of a mortified rejection of the admittedly unusual tactics that he'd spent so many of the previous weeks developing and more of a defiant, angered bellow that acted as a call-to-arms to bring himself out of his childlike wonderment. The moment that his mind snapped into the present, his stature changed. He felt himself tense up, his palm clutching against the wet rooftop as he leaned against the edge. Hyper-focused, with a laser-like scan of the miles of concrete and suffering ahead of him. The truth of the matter is, he didn't have the slightest idea of what he was doing. He'd convinced himself otherwise not too recently, and that had ended in unmitigated disaster. A miscalculation had cost him weeks that had compromised an advantage that he had mistaken for being his. So he resolved himself to give into instinct instead of planning. Patience and fortitude would give him the weapons that he needed to enter battle in place of reliance and expectation. After all, this was war. And wars weren't won with time on the enemy soldier's side. They were won with a turning of the tide. Everything leading into that was designed to be fleeting and irrelevant.

Still, failure wasn't an option. He'd spent too many years and made too many mistakes for these endeavors to continually be halted by trial-and-error. He wasn't going to get anywhere by continuing to linger on the misfires, the moments where his overconfidence nearly got him killed before he could even begin. Otherwise, this would all amount to little else than insanity manifesting itself as a desperate last-ditch effort to justify fifteen years of globetrotting and honing everything he thought he knew into something definite. And any misgivings that he had about tonight aside, the one possibility that he couldn't begin to face was that it was insane. He'd sooner die than tell himself that. What he [i]could[/i] tell himself with certainty was that one way or another, tomorrow morning would answer the question of whether or not any of it was ever worth it. Either he'd be in the headlines as an obituary or he'd have accomplished something beyond his wildest imagination. Either way, Alfred would likely be there to say 'Per the usual, I was right all along.'

No more questioning, he told himself. This was the time to focus on the task at hand. To look at the forest, ignore the trees, and hope that he didn't trip on his way in. Bringing up the back of his wrist, he touched a hidden screen running vertically down his forearm. The glow of the device illuminated the dark for a moment, giving him text alerts that had been automatically rerouted to his GPS from the Gotham City Police Department's radio dispatch, translating the feed through a text-to-speech writing algorithm that yielded higher accuracy than the most advanced search engine. Waiting for some sign of where to go and what to do first, he carefully scrolled through every minor alert that the GCPD were expected to respond to and often didn't. An electrical outage in a neighborhood south from his position. Some kids strolling late at night on the streets somewhere on Miagani Island. An amber alert that had already been solved by the time it reached the channels. As his brow furrowed and he started to grow frustrated, he saw a code flash across his screen that commanded his attention.

[b][i][color=#54626e]Code 211S.[/color][/i][/b] Silent alarm triggered in a robbery. He glanced out at Gotham upon memorizing the coordinates. Immediately, he surmised that the patrol car wouldn't make it in time. The neighborhood had been assigned to two men under the employ of Rupert Thorne, and Thorne had been busy as of late having all uniforms on his payroll ignore the areas between Robinson Park and 77th Avenue. A fifteen block radius that was going to remain unmonitored just because one of Gotham's most prominent fixers had it reserved for some unsavory activity that he'd yet to discern. But it meant that no matter what happens, even if active gunfire sprayed the into the walls of every building in the area, no cop would go near it if they valued their badge. Some even had to fear for the safety of their families.

But not him. Clenching his fist, he felt a surge of determination guide his movements as he pushed the cloak wrapped around his body far enough away to give him the space to move. The raindrops were now sliding in thick trails around his boots, and the concrete below the soles was getting slippery. But he ignored it all and broke out into a sprint across the roof, stopping himself only when he reached the other side. Turning to take one final look, he paced himself for a moment's preparation. Then ran forward even faster, reaching into the back of the belt around his waist for a device that would guide him over the next few blocks. As the edge of the rooftop came closer into view, he felt his heart pound against his chest and leaped over it, into the open air. 

The device in hand, he reached out and fired it infront of the space ahead. A thick cable shot out into the night's sky and a multi-pronged titanium hook wrapped around a nearby railing. The line went taut and he went from free-fall into an ascent above the dark alleyways below him. Trying not to allow himself to be overwhelmed by the moment, there was nevertheless a feeling that had felt foreign beginning to manifest itself at his very core. It was wild, untamed and equally unnatural to the disciplines that he'd spent half a lifetime mending into second nature. But it was a feeling that definitely had a name, a name that shot across his mind like a massive surge of lightning.

[b][i][color=#54626e]Freedom.[/color][/i][/b]

[hr]

"Guard's tied up. Fidgety old fucker's not going anywhere."

Lowering the walkie-talkie from his lips, a ski-mask clad hoodlum raised a semi-automatic uzi to mid-chest level as he and another stood watch for a larger group of thugs. They were in the midst of raiding a large truck full of wares infront of a shipping dock connected to a pharmaceutical company. The night watchman had seen them park onto the lot and managed to hit the silent alarm, but he wasn't much of a fighter when it came to defending himself from the brunt end of a gun. With an open gash across his forehead, the guard hopelessly watched as the masked men began to wheel crates off of the ramp and hoard them into the back of an unmarked van that had been sitting for hours across the street. Clearly, this heist had been planned in advance. But the thieves had been sloppy, casing the outside of the warehouse without even bothering to check for security measures. They simply wanted to get in and out with as much as they could carry and figured anything else would be wasted effort. The shipment had been broken into select palates, but the ones that they had clearly been eyeing were chemical components for the creation of a prescription antibiotic called Tromosierm, a fast-tracked but FDA-scrutinized answer to the epidemic of side-effects inflicted on patients that had been unfortunate enough to be exposed to airborne particles that had been sweeping Gotham's long-impoverished Bowery neighborhoods following the shutdown of several factories connected to the manufacturing of Janus Cosmetics. 

The drug had also been rumored to make up one hell of an easy recipe to concoct military-grade heroin. The black market had been looking for a boom in sales of trade narcotics after Gotham's streets had opened back up following the worldwide epidemic, so now was the time to get in on the ground level of the seller's market. The problem with that being, in alot of supplier's minds, that anyone able to fake a diagnosis was being handed the keys to becoming a direct competitor. That's where these men had come in, being instructed to pick up the shipment before it could reach the streets by an industrious third party. For the sake of convenience, they had all chosen to remain anonymous to eachother - jobbers vying for a chance at an easy payday, most of whom had already been out of work for months. But the minute that they'd been supplied with the shipment of guns to help pull this off, there hadn't been any hesitation among the group. They were in it for the long haul, and the guaranteed prize was a couple of grand per crate. Harder tasks had been performed on these streets in recent months.

The ringleader had been a volunteer ex-marine with a chip on his shoulder. He was imposing enough, towering above every other member of the group by at least a good two feet with pounds of muscle that made him look built like a freight car.

[b]"Take it nice and slow. Remember, the cops aren't coming."[/b]

"Yeah, that's what the boss said, too. I'm not taking any chances. They won't slap the cuffs on us for this, but that doesn't mean they're not gonna muscle us out of pocket and take this shit for themselves."

"Jesus, are we doing this or do you two wanna talk semantics for the rest of the night? The point is, there's no bust happening. That means we can parcel this out between at least a couple of cars. Larger the payload is, the bigger the payout."

The ringleader rolled his eyes. [b]"There won't [i]be[/i] a payout if any of you assholes mess up and damage the freight for being jumpy. Just make it as relaxed as you can, alright? We're on the clock."[/b]

"Hey, wait a minute. You hear something?"

[b]"Hear what?"[/b]

"It sounded like..."

Everyone paused. They all looked to the gunmen watching the lot for any unwanted attention, who turned to them as soon as it became apparent that the theft had stopped in its tracks. At first, they both looked confused, looking at eachother as if something was amiss. But when they looked back at the truck, both of their eyes widened and their jaws collectively dropped. Raising their semi-automatics, both men were unexpectedly, swiftly taken down by something that had whisked by them in the torrential rain and flew up into the air. One fell forward onto the pavement, hard, while the other fell backward. The rest of the group had let go of their stack trucks in the immediate confusion and began to scan the area. They weren't hearing anything, mostly because of the storm. But something had definitely taken down their lookouts. Shining a flashlight across the lot, the ringleader stepped forward, armed with a large crowbar and a 47. magnum.

[b]"Huh. What the hell's that thing on the ground?"[/b]

By the time the light focused on it, the group immediately recognized the small object embedded into the pavement as a piece of metal. But not any ordinary kind of artillery or bullet fragment, like they'd vaguely suspected. No sign of sniper rifle fire amongst the fallen bodies, which were still twitching with life. Instead, what they found was a single projectile, visibly sharp and shaped like an unusual form. It was almost as if it resembled [URL=https://img-new.cgtrader.com/items/813938/07bdc1c090/batarang-throwing-weapon-3d-model-low-poly-obj-3ds-fbx-stl-dae-X.jpg]a spread-out animal, with widened wings like sharpened razors and horns atop a flat head.[/URL]

[b]"Any of you ever seen shit like that?"[/b]

Before any member of the group could answer, a loud thumping noise bounced off of the top of the truck and caused each gunman to jerk in the opposite direction, flashing their lights towards whatever could have caused such a commotion. For a split second, none of them knew what to make of what they saw staring back at them. But it was enough of a glimpse to cause one of them to bellow in a shrill, immediate scream of fright. The figure looked down towards him first and raised it's arm. Suddenly, pockets of smoke erupted from the ground, catching each member of the thieves off entirely off guard as they ran for a safe distance. But their lungs were full in an instant, causing them to wheeze and cough while stumbling around, unable to see anything as their eyes were overpowered with irritation. None of them could speak, as their throats fought against them for air. 

But they could all hear what happened next. Another muffled scream, before the same punk who had first reacted to whatever the hell had landed ontop of the truck could be heard grunting in pain, following a series of hard smacks against flesh. A crushing noise followed, similar to the sound of bones being smashed before the screams started again and were silenced. The ringleader pressed himself against a wall and aggressively wiped his eyes of stinging tears, unable to comprehend whatever had just happened. Was it the cops after all? This easily could have been tear gas, but the more the brutish thug thought about it, the less it made sense. Police would generally announce themselves, and nothing about whatever they had seen on the truck was explainable through police interference.

With a couple more coughs, he coarsely called out to the rest. "Hold the line! For fuck's sake, hold the line! This is an ambush! It's gotta be! It's gotta---"

Another projectile flew out of the cloud of smoke and embedded itself into the concrete next to him. He looked visibly confused as he got a closer look at the weapon. It looked like a...

[b]"Wait a minute. Wait a fucking a minute."[/b]

He squinted, barely whispering his next utterance.

[b]"Is that a... is that a [i]bat?"[/i][/b]

As if answering him, a dark, suddenly widened wingspan rose from the top of the smoke cloud and rushed forward. Black-clad hands reached out, grabbing the ringleader by the collar of his shirt and forcing him, with considerable strength, back into the disorienting smoke cloud as it began to dissipate. As the punk face-planted directly into gravel, hitting his jaw so hard that he saw one of his teeth violently dislodge and slide onto the lot with a thick trail of his own blood, he gazed up at the scene infront of him. Black boots landed directly into his field of vision, standing over several of the guys that he'd been watching load the crates into the van just seconds prior. They were knocked clean unconscious, with another few attempting to fire their weapons at whatever was coming at them. Either the guns were entirely jammed, somehow rendered unable to fire with only a clicking noise to offer, or the men wielding them were too scared out of their minds to try and blow away the thing. A wide swath of black leather-wrapped itself around two of the men at once and brought them colliding into the street, hard. Unwrapping itself, it only revealed two more of their ranks downed and out. 

[b][i]What the fuck is going on?![/i][/b], the ringleader screamed inside of his own head. But there were no logical answers as the group became completely overwhelmed. Nine men had entered the lot with the intent to steal the chemical supplies that were only half-loaded. Six of them were now on their backs, their stomachs, slumped against the massive tires of the truck or otherwise incapacitated. The remaining three tried to fight, with one even pulling a knife against the rapidly-moving shadow that seemed to move from target-to-target. That unfortunate individual found his swing countered with an unseen motion, with the knife being driven directly into his own leg. As he cried out in pain and fell to the ground, clutching his fresh wound and attempting to foolishly pull out the handle plunged into his flesh, the massive form cracked like a whip against the remaining two thugs, sending them and their guns flying into one of the nearby crates.

The ringleader attempted to move, but his jaw felt numb and immobile. It caused him to wince hard, signaling either a fracture or a complete break. By the time he opened his eyes again, the guard was being untied, though the old man's eyes were as widened with shock as the group that had been taken down in less than a minute. One of the black-clad hands reached out to help the watchmen to his feet, while the boots turned - apparently, the figure had noticed that one of the men was still conscious, though his state was far from prime. Despite being a Marine, all that the massive man could do was try and crawl away. A futile gesture, as he was brought up from the ground by an iron grip and slammed, spine-first, against the nearby wall. 

[b][color=#54626e]"Who hired you?"[/color][/b]

The voice was impossibly deep, almost inhuman. Like the pit of hell itself had formed a throat to speak through. With a single step forward, the figure seemed to go from being massive, almost formless to being the shape of a tall, horned creature. While the ringleader tried to speak, mostly to utter a series of bewildered curses, blood only trickled out of his mouth and another tooth fell. This seemingly angered the shadow, who grabbed the ringleader by the throat and pressed the side of his head against the wall. The ski-mask was ripped from his head, revealing an ugly patch of blonde hair in a ponytail adorning a half-broken face, as the powerless soul shrieked in pain as his jaw's injury was exploited.

[b][color=#54626e]"ANSWER ME! WHO HIRED YOU?"[/color][/b]

[b]"Nuh... nuh nahm. Nuh nahm! Ah [i]swear,[/i] ah..."[/b]

With another violent pull, the ringleader found himself staring down the most horrifying sight of his life. A visible stain formed in the front of his pants, despite the rain soaking everything, and his panicked breaths turned sharp as he looked upon the unfathomable thing that he and his fellow opportunists had apparently unleashed. He could see the guard slowly back away as the face only grew closer, encapsulating all that he could see.

[b][color=#54626e]"You swear?"[/color][/b]

He shook his head repeatedly as if to say "it wasn't real" over and over, trying to wake himself from a dream that he couldn't shake if his life depended on it.

[b][color=#54626e]"Look me in the eyes."[/color][/b]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/2IsGxao.png[/IMG]

[b][color=#54626e]"Say it again."[/color][/b]

But it was [i]very[/i] real.

And it was only getting started.