"Imbeciles."
In a panic, Julian Day secured the handcuff attached to the case of three million dollars to his wrist as he was ushered back towards the shipyard's entrance. Down to a single armed guard, the only one who hadn't heard a violent struggle and gone running off to investigate rather than secure the package or its handler first, he had made the decision then and there to table the deal in light of the unfortunate intervention. His employer would be displeased with the fact that the Shark was now holding onto the item a bit longer, Day knew that for certain. But this outcome seemed far more preferable than attempting to have one guard haul the sizable crate into the back of an SUV while either the Falcones, the Maronis, the Chechen, or the GCPD emptied a sea of bullets into both his and White's forces. Preserving the money was the least he could do to ensure that the deal would resume another night - though at the moment, the more pressing question seemed to be whether Warren White could be trusted after this bungling. He had even noticed the putrid arms dealer running off by himself shortly after the chaos began, likely hiding in some frigid pocket of the docks that he'd found to evade capture by the police. The mental image of that impishly-faced halfwit burying himself in a freezer full of imported fish made Day's lips curl in revulsion, forgetting the immediate peril that he'd found himself in.
"You're driving."
Straddling in from behind the guard, Day removed a set of keys from his pocket and thrust them forward, awkwardly forcing them to be collected.
"As soon as we've left, our employer will be expecting a call from me."
The guard nodded, still keeping his weapon up.
"Just stay close. Radio contact went dark, so we still don't know what's going on back there."
Julian's eyes darted back, nervous. "I don't think I want to know."
Was it peril, though? As the struggle on the other side of the docks raged on, with shouting and thumping being vaguely heard from Day's position, he started to wonder why he hadn't picked up on the noise of any gunfire. If this were one of the other mob families out to retaliate for trading under the table, he doubted that the conflict would sound so contained. The Italians often brandished the finest firearms, relishing in the chance to use them. The Roman had taught them to take no prisoners in these matters, as Day was well aware from working under that outfit. And the Russians or the Triad weren't going to bother sneaking about when they could engage in open barbarism. Which only left the GCPD, who had always been the least subtle in their approach. They would announce themselves over bullhorns and sweep in under the roar of helicopter rotors on the occasions that they even bothered to put on the act of public servants. So if it wasn't any of them, the Calendar Man began to consider the only alternative that remained.
A couple of years ago, a would-be vigilante had started making trouble for the Falcones. A few weeks after these disturbances became noticeable, Day would be one of the first to witness him in action: sporting an all-black ensemble with his face hidden by a balaclava, the vigilante surprised them while preparing a shipment of narcotics bound for Blüdhaven. Even at so primordial a stage in what would become a career in self-righteousness, he had seen him single-handedly fight off a crew of highly trained foot soldiers with finesse. The assailant had thankfully never noticed Calendar Man before he took off after a driver who tried to escape with evidence linking The Roman to the shipment. The incident had stuck with Day until a few months later, when whispers began to circulate about a member of The Royal Flush Gang. The drunken idiot had apparently claimed at a local dive that they had just murdered the vigilante on the orders of their psychotic leader, The Red Hood. As he sobered up into the early morning hours, a group of bar patrons was given a chilling account of an ambush, the merciless beating that followed, and an eventual execution. When pressed for proof, it was claimed that the body had been dumped in Gotham Harbor after the extent of the injuries had left the face unrecognizable. It seemed simple enough to be true, Day thought at the time. Another story of some fool attempting to take the law into their own hands. Somehow, Gotham had always known how to make an example of them.
But that hadn't been the vigilante's end. Almost as soon as Julian rationalized that death for one so capable seemed a bit too simple, his theory began to materialize. Because not long after that band of lunatics claimed to have eliminated him, reports had started coming in of someone looking to continue right where the masked man had left off. Someone who was even more skilled, whose methods were far more unconventional. Described to appear like a ghost in the night to dispatch his enemies with precision, looking as if he were some demon that the city had conjured up. Day actually laughed off the initial sightings, chalking them up to underworld rumor. After all, the sources were killers, thieves, and the other lowest of the low, so their narrative seemed questionable. But after a few weeks, the sightings didn't seem to stop, and the ferocity of the attacks had actually escalated. Even Carmine Falcone admitted that he'd encountered the madman on the night of his emergence, whispering some trite about having eaten Gotham's wealth and spirit in the mobster's ear. A definite connection between that original man in black and this new, evolved wraith that now stalked the city's criminal element had never been proven, but The Calendar Man had quietly maintained that The Red Hood hadn't succeeded. That he'd pushed the vigilante to up his game, as it were, and start presenting himself in a more fearsome light. That the psychopath's carelessness had actually given birth to something worse.
"It's unlocked, sir. I'll cover you."
Day began to stray from his train of thought as his accompanying guard frantically pried open the driver-side door, his weapon trained in the direction of the distant brawl. Truthfully, whether this was the handiwork of the so-called Batman or some other third party hardly seemed relevant at the moment. All that mattered was getting himself secured and putting as much distance between him and the shipyard as possible, with the additional prayer that his new employer wouldn't have him shot for failing to secure the payload. Moving to grab the handle on the rear door, Day struggled to lift his arm and paused, having briefly forgotten the heft of the steel case that had been cuffed to him. His frustration building, he then realized that the key to the cuff was still with the thug that had been originally attached to it, having been instructed to trade the case off after the deal went haywire. That man was nowhere to be seen, meaning Day was likely stuck like this until they could find a hacksaw. Clenching his fists, he wondered if the evening's indignities would ever cease.
"Huh. You hear something?"
"What? What is it now?!"
The night itself seemed to answer him. In unison, Day and the guard snapped their heads towards the docks as they began to hear a faint laughter echo across the area. Seemingly feminine and maliciously mocking in tone, growing louder as it seemed to emerge from every direction. If Calendar Man hadn't been afraid of anything happening before, this new development certainly put him closer to the edge. Involuntarily, he backed against the side of the vehicle, watching the guard set his weapon's sights towards the air and shifting from left to right in a vain attempt to pinpoint the laughter's origin.
"Sounds like someone's..."
CRACK!
Without warning, the guard found his head constrained within the crushing hold of a thick leather bullwhip. Panicking, he immediately lost his composure and screamed, firing half a clip of ammunition into the air. The whip's coil so heavily compressed his eyes that he was unable to notice an approaching figure darting out from the shadows and perform a somersault above him. Unable to comprehend what was happening, Day barely caught a glimpse of the gracefully moving shadow landing behind the guard, jamming a hard knee into his spine and jerking his neck backwards. Too afraid to try and intervene on the guard's behalf, Day's already pale complexion shifted a shade whiter as he quietly wondered if he was to be next.
Throwing his weight to the left in a bid to swing the brunt of his rifle into his attacker, the guard didn't realize that the swiftly-moving figure was already a step ahead. Throwing in a sweep kick to knock him off his balance, his attacker then vaulted into a sideways cartwheel and sprung into an upside-down kick that landed violently across the guard's still-enshrined face. He dropped his weapon just in time for Day to watch him be pummeled with a series of quick attacks, followed by some swipes that revealed jagged cuts across his face with every slash, painfully bringing him to his knees and then to the ground, before a brutal stomp to the head finally rendered him entirely limp.
"Who..."
"I wouldn't worry about your boy, Julian. He'll sleep it off."
Still catatonic, Day remained focused on the whip as it unspooled from the unconscious guard's freshly mangled visage, sliding loosely across the pavement. Then his gaze trailed up to its wielder, the mysterious assailant who he just learned knew his name. A masked woman in a leather jacket stood over the fallen guard, her back turned to Day as his mind finally considered a retreat. A consideration that came far too late, with the woman spinning into a charge and leaping into the air, her wild eyes briefly locked with the horrified Calendar Man's. Before their attention shifted to the case of three million dollars that tantalizingly dangled from his arm.
"Shame about the deal going south, though."
"Up for a renegotiation?"
"Was I supposed to feel that?"
Batman's leg slid back across the partially frozen docks, feeling his knee begin to throb with pain. Amused at his opponent's failure to drop him with a Muay Thai kick to the chest, Killer Croc patted the steel tire iron against his open palm as he casually stepped forward, making sure to flash a grin wide enough to display his sharpened, nicotine-yellowed teeth. While remaining unintimidated, even resuming a stance, Batman quietly admitted that what just happened had definitely thrown him off his guard. Despite the minor trauma to his head from the iron's blow, his opening attack hadn't been made in desperation. In the interest of predicting the coming fight, he had noticed Jones's leering gaze towards a cigarette during the attempted exchange. Making the mental note then and there to strike at the lungs to gain an early advantage, he assumed that since the move had worked before on scum that had dwarfed him in size, Croc would react to it with considerably more than a chuckle. But if anything, it caused the brute to charge with more energy than before. Lifting the iron above his head, Croc's gaze read as someone who wanted to toy with his prey before delivering the kill. Reaching back into a hidden compartment on his belt, Batman was determined not to give him the satisfaction.
"Feel this."
Whipping his cape aside, Batman arched his arm to the left and swung downwards, slamming a handful of miniature smoke pellets onto the planks below. By the time Croc brought his own weapon down, he could only watch as he became enveloped by the growing cloud of a darkened chemical irritant, causing him to blindly decimate a crate that stood where his enemy once was. Yet despite the smoke threatening to choke him, Croc remained largely unaffected. Another sign to the now hidden Batman that the failed kick hadn't been a fluke. Stepping through the cloud, wiping away a few tears brought on by the agent, Croc's eyes darted up towards the top of the stack of shipping containers that surrounded him, expecting some sneak attack from above. What he got instead was a violent punch across the side of his face, delivered just after Batman tore through the cloud with a rolling lunge. Following it up with another from the opposite direction, a third from directly ahead, and then an even quicker haymaker that collided with the top of Croc's skull, Batman didn't allow himself to breathe for fear of inhaling the smoke and losing his momentum.
That ended up being a mistake. Growing annoyed by the succession of meager blows, Killer Croc tossed the tire iron aside, opting instead to break through Batman's escalating close-quarters attacks by shooting his arm forward and brutally snapping his hand around his opponent's neck. With a squeeze powerful enough to crush another man's larynx, Batman felt his throat suddenly tighten as the armor plating in the cowl slowly began to warp, pressing against his windpipe. Even as he struggled to breathe, Batman's mind raced towards an inevitable conclusion that Croc's strength and endurance seemed to confirm. The grip was immense, even for a hardened ex-con. And despite a weapons-grade riot dispersal and at least four concentrated attacks to the head and face, Croc's resolve hadn't been the least bit tested.
"A couple of swipes and some smoke? How are there fools in this town who're scared of you?"
Croc savored every moment of Batman's attempts to break free, barely noticing a couple of nerve strikes as they smacked against his forearm. Feeling empowered, his hold on the vigilante's throat tightened even more.
"I was never one of 'em. And it looks like I had you figured right. You ain't shit."
He was a mutant. While Bruce Wayne had traded blows with hundreds of opponents spanning the entire globe, and The Batman had spent the last three years dispatching criminals across the city, he'd never encountered one in combat. Truth be told, he never even saw the need to prepare for it. With the city under the control of the mob and a heavily corrupt GCPD, most mutants and metahumans saw Gotham as a last resort for refuge. Under the former Commissioner Loeb and the current Mayoral administration, racial profiling was already on high as it was. Individuals with abilities just didn't see the need to rock the boat, especially with organizations like Frost Industries doing the work to ensure they were relocated if outed to their communities. As Batman watched his vision blur, he realized that his mission had been too focused on the common scum that polluted the streets. If a leviathan like Croc could manage to take him by surprise, there had to be others that were still lurking in Gotham. Hidden in the cracks, disenfranchised enough to want to climb the ranks of the underworld and put their talents to use.
But he'd have to live long enough to consider that for another night. Feeling more outmatched by the second, the choking Batman reached into his belt and slid a batarang into his hand, beginning to feel the struggle to remain conscious. If a direct assault wasn't going to earn him anything against Croc, he'd have to start fighting dirty. Violently stabbing the razor's edge of the batarang as deeply into Croc's hand as possible, he assumed that qualified. Once embedded, he yanked it backwards, watching a jolt of pain twist Jones' arrogant expression into a surprised grimace. The grip immediately loosened, allowing Batman room to breathe and giving him the chance to bend both legs upwards, pinning them against Croc's sternum. With a savage thrust, Batman smashed the heel of his boot into his enemy's jaw, sending Croc stumbling backwards while launching himself into a backflip, gracefully landing atop some nearby machinery. Feeling at the damaged plating as he gasped for more air, the vigilante turned towards Croc and watched him rip the projectile out of his hand, a crimson stream dripping down his fingers. Momentarily examining the bloodied bat-shaped shuriken, Croc angrily glared back at Batman, staring him dead in the eyes while applying enough pressure to crush the metal into an unrecognizable husk. By the time it hit the ground, Croc had managed to produce the discarded tire iron once more.
"Message received. I'mma make this slow."
Retrieving the grapnel gun hidden underneath his gauntlet, Batman's attention shifted upwards. Firing off a line, he rapidly ascended into the air above Croc, angering the latter by this perceived move of cowardice. Ratcheting his arm back, Croc tossed the tire iron into the air, only narrowly missing Batman as he reached his destination: a suspended crate hanging from the crane above. Unable to see his opponent's next move, Croc snarled loudly and paused, managing to hear an unexpected sound: the ignition of a miniature blowtorch, followed quickly by the snap of a cable. Initially confused, it didn't take long for Croc's eyes to widen with realization. The other side of the cable buckled and the crate dropped out of suspension immediately, hurtling toward Croc with the speed of a homing missile. The killer only managed to let out a quiet gasp as the wooden box smashed ontop of him and splintered into pieces, with broken planks colliding against their immediate surroundings.
Covered in sawdust, Croc now found himself slowly crawling along the snow-drenched docks, his head spinning with every labored movement, thoughts blanketed in a daze. But one thought managed to ring louder than the rest. Ever since he'd arrived in Gotham, there had been rumors floating among the underworld that for all of his intimidation tactics, The Batman refused to leave any bodies. Even when given the chance to end his enemies permanently, it seemed as if the vigilante had gone out of his way to avoid a kill. Given the severity of what had just happened, letting that crate drop without the certainty that it wouldn't crush the man below it, Croc wondered if rumor was all that had ever been. Grabbing onto a nearby railing, Croc weakly pulled himself up and hunched over it.
Looking around, he noticed that his enemy hadn't made a sound, much less another appearance. He was in too disoriented to laugh, but he wanted to. Maybe the big bad Bat had realized what he'd nearly done, becoming so overwhelmed that he'd fled. Or maybe he'd really been a killer after all, assuming that the job was finished by the time the crate had hit him. To be honest, Croc didn't really care. In the nearly thirty years of his cruel existence, nobody had ever brought Waylon to this point before. Guessing that he was likely suffering a concussion, he didn't even know whether he should seek medical attention. It had never been nessescary before, given that his mutation made it so he'd withstood most injuries.
For the insult of putting him through that uncertainty alone, Killer Croc promised himself that he'd personally hunt the Batman down, skin him alive, and consume his still-beating heart. With the thought of the savagery to come pushing him into a second wind, Croc stumbled ahead to try and regain his composure - only to start to hear a noise coming from above him. Irritated, Croc's neck slowly craned towards the night's sky, becoming confused as the noise grew louder. Like the sound of a flag that furiously unfurled against a torrential wind, or even the wings of a...
The thought crossed Croc's mind a millisecond too late. Spinning around to get a better view of the open space behind him, the criminal beheld a truly horrifying display as Batman descended upon him with an all-encompassing wingspan to complement a look of righteous fury. Trying desperately to will himself move out of the way, Croc was forced to endure the brunt of his enemy's attack, his chest colliding with the reinforced heels of Batman's boots driven at a blinding speed. Feeling the impact more acutely due to his weakened state, Croc flew back and tripped over another railing, the upper half of his body careening into an adjacent ramp and shattering it. Without warning, Batman landed ontop of him, jabbing a hard elbow into Croc's throat. Attempting to stifle a pained wheeze with an even louder growl, Croc swiped upward at the vigilante and tried grabbing at him, but found himself unable to react quickly enough. Batman leaped backward and spread his cape, allowing the wind to pick up and lift him into a short glide, putting a few feet of distance between him and Croc.
By the time Batman landed, his opponent felt a slight tugging at his ankle. In the midst of his follow-up attack, the vigilante had managed to sneak in an extra move by wrapping Croc's leg within a thick cable. Assuming it was one of the many toys that seemed to fall out of that ridiculous belt at every turn, Waylon didn't allow himself to fear whatever came next, ignoring it in his feeble attempts to regain his standing. It was only when Batman spun around and tossed another batarang into the sky that Croc paused, watching it sail through the snowy air and slice into a much higher control panel, hitting a switch that caused the overhead crane to hum with life. Looking down at the cable attached to him, Croc's eyes went wide. He had attached him to the crane itself.
"You fuckin' coward, let me outta this! Let me out, you hear?! Fight me like a man!"
Batman stared back, void of emotion as Croc's entire world shifted.
"Tempting. But I had something else in mind."
As the blood began rushing to his head, and Croc felt his body be forcibly lifted from the docks, he watched Batman break his stoicism to do something unexpected: reveal the abandoned tire iron from beneath his cloak. Launching into a fevered sprint, Batman brought his arm back and lunged forward, bringing the iron down upon him with a heavy swing. Just before he abruptly lost consciousness, Waylon began to realize something about this fairly brutal encounter.
He was afraid.
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