Byrd Man

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Marvelous Monday to you.

Blessings and high favor.

@Bounce

Everytime I read Marvelous Monday my mind goes to this song.

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Dutch Hill
3:51 PM

Alfred Pennyworth stepped lightly down the basement steps with a mug of coffee in his hands. It wasn’t a particularly long descent down into the bowels of the brownstone, maybe a dozen steps, but the hot coffee was incentive for him to watch each step. The building was set up to house multiple families on each floor, and the basement was no different. It had been used that way in the years before Alfred and Phillip bought the house, but the two of them had turned it into a single family home. When Bruce turned thirteen he’d moved into the basement, partially Alfred’s idea, to give him a semi-autonomous space away from the two older men. They were just using it for storage before that, and Alfred was sure that Bruce could make better use of it then they ever good. The former royal marine Alfred had called it Bruce’s safe harbor. But the boy had a different name for it. He called it “the cave.”

And Alfred had been right about Bruce utilizing the space. The basement was now the nerve center of Bruce’s ongoing war. Large monitors with digital, real-time maps of Gotham covered three of the four walls. The fourth wall had an actual paper map of the city and the subway system that ran underneath the streets. Two metal work tables were islands in the middle of the room. Bruce’s suit was laid on one table and neatly folded, the utility belt he wore stretched out beside it. The other island held an assortment of gadgets and devices, some weapons while others served defensive and surveillance purposes. There was the little drone shaped like a bat. A black motorcycle had been propped against the tables as well.

Bruce was seated in front of a desk that had been pushed up against the wall with the paper map. He had stripped down the black compression shirt and pants he always wore underneath the suit. On the desk in front of him were two computer monitors. On one monitor was a digital copy of a report with an ATF watermark on it. On the other monitor was a mugshot of a very familiar face.

“Ms. Kyle again,” Alfred said as he passed the coffee cup to Bruce. “I assume some valuable jewel has gone missing.”

“Not this time,” said Bruce. “It seems that since last we saw her, Selina has shifted into a new line of work. Recovery instead of theft.”

“So now she’s hired to steal back stolen things,” Alfred said with a chuckle. “And what precious commodity will her sticky fingers try to ensnare?”

“Information,” Bruce said as he clicked away from the mugshot and pulled up a surveillance photo of a fat man smoking a cigar. “Someone out there is crazy enough to blackmail Rupert Thorne. And he’s hired her to find out who it is and to recover the blackmail.”

“Is it wrong that I’m actually rooting for the blackmailer?" Alfred asked with a raised eyebrow. "And also may I ask what part the bat will play in all of this?”

“I’m giving her a long leash on this one, but watching close enough so that I can swoop in for the evidence when the time is right.”

“How very third-wave feminist of you,” said Alfred.

Bruce stifled a laugh as he took a sip from his coffee cup. Alfred always liked to see him smile. It reminded him of how young Bruce actually was. Only thirty years old and not that far removed from the sad little boy Phillip had brought home all those years ago.

“While that situation develops, I’m turning my focus towards Gordon’s tip.”

He sat his cup down beside the keyboard and brought up another mugshot. This one showed a surly, long haired man with an iron cross tattoo on his cheek and a tattoo around his throat that read “Make America White Again.” The corner of the photo stamped the picture as having been taken at Belle Reve Federal Penitentiary.

“Arthur Blackwood,” said Bruce. “President of the Gotham Chapter of the Crusaders Motorcycle Club and a registered metahuman. Blackwood and the club are on just about every law enforcement radar. ATF, FBI, some organization known as ARGUS that monitors metahuman activity. The three agencies have an ongoing investigation into the club. Operation: Templar. They’re in the process of trying to get surveillance and search warrants on Blackwood and his club.”

“And you know this how?”

“The ATF agent in charge of the operation uses ‘password123’ as his password for everything.”

Alfred watched as Bruce scrolled through pictures of guns that had been recovered as Gotham crime scenes. Automatic weapons, high-powered handguns, grenades. Even a few rocket launchers. It was equipment that belonged on a battlefield and nowhere near a drug dealer's reach.

“The Crusaders are running guns into the city for Jefferson Skeevers and his men. Gordon thinks that Skeevers is going to try to take over drug markets in the Finger Homes.”

“That’s Falcone territory,” Alfred said with a look towards one of the maps on the monitors. The city block sized housing project had been painted grey on the map, marking it as Italian mafia turf. “Or Maroni territory. Whichever mobster is at the helm these days.”

“If Skeevers goes into the Finger with those kinds of weapons--”

“I can only imagine,” said Alfred. “What are you going to do?”

Bruce turned back to the computer.

“The ATF need more probable cause to raid the Crusaders clubhouse. According to their surveillance, Blackwood and a few of the bikers are coming back into town tonight after a run out west. Based on the conjecture, they’re going to be packing heavy equipment.”

Alfred’s eyes fell on the bike.

“Tonight I’m going to give the authorities all the probable cause they need,” said Bruce.

---

Financial District
4:23 PM

To Selina, Fred Stickley lived up to his surname. His suit was very baggy on his pencil-thin frame. An equally thin mustache ran across his upper lip and his thinning hair was styled in a way that tried to hide the inevitable baldness that was coming for him, but only ended up drawing more attention to it. Stickley held Selina’s business card in his hands. He looked it over with a curious glance before motioning her to follow him down the hallway.

“While it is highly irregular for me to discuss the business of Heed, McElroy, & Standler, Mr. Thorne’s name does open a lot of doors.”

She followed Stickley down the halls. For a non-descript downtown investment firm, the building was richly decorated with plush carpets and the mahogany walls had tasteful art mounted on them, art that Selin'as trained eye knew had to be worth at least six figures to the right fence. With the basic corporate security in charge of protecting the building, it would only take her less than fifteen minutes to get in and out with all the paintings. She added the office to her mental list of jobs she could pull if she ever needed fast cash.

“So,” Stickley said once they were in his corner office. He took his seat behind the desk while Selina sat down across from him. “What is it that I can help you, and by extension, Mr. Thorne with?”

“You’re money launderers, right?” Selina asked with no preamble.

Stickley’s face turned red so quickly that Selina was worried the man had had a stroke.

“I don’t-- I--- How dare you--”

“Thorne said as much without saying it,” she said, raising a hand. “The decor here is too upscale for you to be just a regular hedgefund office. You court high-end clientele, or at least people who think they are. Despite the flash you show behind the door, you're not publicly known the way the bigger firms are. The small footprint is a selling point to people who appreciate you being quiet. Plus there’s the fact that Rupert Thorne is one of your clients. If you do business with a man like that, then there’s no telling who else you do business with.”

“I will not sit here and take this kind of slander,” Stickley shouted.

“I don’t care what you do, Mr. Stickley," she said with a sigh. "I’ve got a job to do. And a client who is paying me a lot of money to help him. I just want to know how Thorne is getting blackmailed over his financial records. Records that your firm only has access to, recoards you're responsible for safekeeping.”

Stickley moaned and rubbed his temples. He shook his head before reaching into the drawer of his desk and pulling out a bottle of scotch and two glasses. He poured both glasses full to the brim.

“No thanks,” said Selina.

“I wasn’t offering,” Stickley said as he downed one glass, then the other. “What I say to you does not leave this room,” he said after a scotch-soaked burp. "This firm has built its business and its reputation on anonymity and discretion. Our clients come to us for that.”

Selina spread her hands.

“I understand. I travel in similar circles, I get it.”

He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Two weeks ago our database was hacked by someone. Information on all our clients, their accounts, and where their money comes from and where it goes, was all taken. So far none of it has been siphoned off by the hacker. But the letters aren’t unique. Mr. Thorne isn’t the first to be blackmailed. There are a lot of people out there, Ms. Kyle, very powerful, very rich, and very angry. It's been a disaster for the firm, but so far we've done a good job keeping a lid on it. Everyone thinks that they're the only ones."

Selina leaned forward. “Tell me about the other letters, Mr. Stickley-- Fred.”

He shrugged. “I can’t. I don’t know any information in regards to the blackmail attempts, just that they’re occurring. I can show you the email I received after the hack.”

A few moments later, she was looking down at Stickley’s phone. The email had been sent from a dummy account, but the message was written in that same ugly green font.

???

The rich and powerful rule us all.
The rich and powerful will fall.
The rich and powerful have had their fun.
The rich and powerful’s time is done.
The rich and powerful have had their say.
The rich and powerful will pay.

Riddle Me This: How Do You Spell Candy With Two Letters?

???

Selina looked up from the phone. She passed it back to Stickley before she stood.

“Thank you for your time.”

“What are you going to do now,” he asked sheepishly.

“I have an idea. And I have a friend who can help.”

---

Unincorporated Gotham
9:30 PM

A small fleet of motorcycles roared down the expressway. They formed a diamond shape as they took up three lanes of traffic. In the center of the diamond was a cargo van. At the tip of the diamond rode Blackwood. They were now in the home stretch after a thirty hour ride from Houston. They only stopped for gas and bathroom breaks, eating in between gassing and pissing. The longer they delayed their return, the greater the chance there was for something to go sideways on the trip back home. And there was no way in hell Blackwood was going to risk something going wrong.

The cargo van was loaded down with the finest weapons on the black market. Some of the last weapons Stark Industries had produced before they shut it all down. As much as Blackwood had paid for the guns, he knew Skeevers would pay ten times as much for them. Some of the club didn’t like doing business with him, but Blackwood told them to fuck off. This was America, after all. Skeevers money spent as good as anyone else's. As much as he obsessed over race, green was his favorite color. The way he saw it was that if he could make money and help a few niggers wipe each other out, well that was a win-win for him.

Blackwood held his hand out and signaled the other bikers to slow. They were finally back home in Billyland. The name had been derisively given to this part of Unincorporated Gotham, the place where the people from Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia had migrated to in search of jobs after World War II. With its trailer parks and white trash, Billyland clung tightly to its reputation as a place that no upstanding Gothamite ever ventured to.

Something passed overhead and caused Blackwood to look up. A small object flew in the sky above the convoy and matched its speed. It took him a few moments, but then he figured out just what it was. A drone. Painted jet black and… in the shape of a bat.

“Oh, fuck,” said Blackwood.

He heard a roar from behind. The sound of yelling was loud enough to be heard over the engine of his bike. Gunshots rang out, the squeal of tires, and then the crunch of metal. Blackwood looked back and saw Little Walter's bike sliding towards the concrete median of the expressway, Little Walter clinging to it as it slid. Blackwood looked forward again and kept one hand on the handlebars while the other reached down and pulled a shotgun from the holster mounted on the side of his chopper. He looked back over his shoulder and saw another bike barreling down on him.



“Fuck!” he screamed as he opened fire with the shotgun.

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

<Snipped quote by Byrd Man>

I win. I had "Jim Gordon" in the "What will be the first two words in @Byrd Man's Batman run?" pool...

@Hound55

The bitch of it was, I was betting in the pool too. Just couldn't stop myself.

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Gotham Central
11 PM

Jim Gordon lit up a cigarette and took a deep drag off of it. He was trying to quit, but it felt so good to inhale the smoke and to feel the fire in his lungs. He blew a column of smoke into the air and watched it disperse into the night. The cigarette seemed to rejuvenate him slightly. He’d been at work for over fifteen hours now and was exhausted, running on nothing but caffeine for the last four of those fifteen hours.

He was on the rooftop of Central and listening to the nighttime sounds of emergency vehicle sirens warbling across the city. There was more chaos, always more, he would have to deal with, but that was a task for tomorrow. After he was done up here he’d go home and crawl into bed without even bothering to take his clothes off. In the morning, he’d wake up and go back in for another fifteen hours of punishment. That was what he did. Keep calm, carry on, and pray like hell the next day would be better.

“Smoking isn’t good for your health,” a voice rasped from behind Gordon.

“Neither is sneaking up on a man with a gun,” Gordon said without looking back. “I’m glad you got my message.”

“What have you got for me?”

“There’s a folder on the ground behind me.”

Gordon heard the scrape of boots and the rustle of fabric. He still didn’t look back. It wasn’t fear that made him look away, he’d seen him before after all, it was his own strange sense of morality. If Gordon didn’t see him, then he could at least defend his decision not to arrest him.

“SWAT found a cache of those weapons during a drug raid,” said Gordon.

His eyes tracked an ambulance speeding down a street ten blocks away with its lights flashing and siren blaring. Suddenly the sound cut off and the ambulance slowed to normal speed. He sighed as he blew smoke from his mouth.

“This is military grade hardware. Too high tech for these guys. Who owns the stash house your people raided?”

“Skeevers,” said Gordon. “Which means--”

“Thorne.”

“Or so we think. ATF is working with us on the weapons. They have a likely suspect. You ever go out into unincorporated Gotham much?”

“Not if I can help it.” A pause then he said. “Crusaders Motorcyle Club.”

“It’s sheriff’s territory,” Gordon said as he flicked the cigarette butt on the ground and stomped it out. “And the sheriff is hesitant to take on highly armed outlaw bikers. Can't say that I blame him. Regardless, my hands are tied. But yours?”

“Say no more.”

While he didn’t see or feel any movement, Gordon knew he was gone. That was how all their meetings worked. When he turned around, his suspicions were confirmed. He was gone, along with the folder that had been on on the ground.

“Good luck,” Gordon said to himself. “You’re going to need it.”

---

Gotham Palisades
11:21 PM

Rupert Thorne’s mansion was small by comparison. If Buckingham Palace was your comparison point. Less than five miles away from the Narrows, but it may as well have been on another planet. There was no trace of the junkies on the corner, doing the dope fiend lean as they shot up and fried what little brains they had left. No sign of the hookers who walked the streets, selling their bodies to feed themselves and their children. No dilapidated buildings with its copper piping and electrical wiring ripped out by money hungry fiends looking for a quick payday.

He never felt comfortable out here, given his line of work. The people out here were tantamount to American royalty with their fleets of cars, jets, and boats. Thorne’s people downtown peddled drugs, Thorne’s neighbors peddled Democracy to any third world country with finite natural resources to exploit. They robbed pension plans and left retiring employees penniless. Society condemned guys like Thorne and his men, saying they were the problem with America all the while the guy three houses down from him overthrew governments to avoid paying fifty cents on the dollar for exports. The only difference between Thorne's empire and the empires of business were that those criminal enterprises were deemed too big to fail by the government.

Thorne had a cuban cigar wedged in the fat fingers of his left hand. His right hand cradled the letter that had arrived earlier today inside a manilla envelope. He glanced out the window and could see the olympic sized swimming pool down below. He couldn’t remember the last time he swam in it. There was a good chance he never had. Just one of the many things he collected, a symbol of his status. But it was being used right now. Two of his security guards, muscle bound men just a step above gorillas in the evolution chart, had Arnie Fischer strung up over the water with a clothesline tied around his ankles. Water dripped off Arnie as he dangled in the air. Even from this far away Thorne could see his panicked breathing as he begged for mercy. Arnie was Thorne’s accountant, and this was all his fucking fault.

Thorne looked down at the papers in his hands. Photocopies of financial information that nailed him cold as the crime lord he actually was. Things that the police had been trying to get for years and had never been close to ever touching. Who the fuck had gotten it? The message that accompanied the photos was written on black paper with garish lime green ink. Thorne couldn't tell if the sloppy handwriting was a deliberate measure or not.

????

RiDDle ME ThIs:
What KIND of bIRD HAS wiNGs BuT doesn’t FlY?

ANSWER: A jailbirD
$$$$ 40,000 or EveryOne finds OUT WHAT I KNOW

????

Thorne gritted his teeth as he stubbed out his cigar into the letter.

---

Downtown Gotham
12:11 PM

“You come highly recommended, Ms. Kyle.”

Selina looked over her sunglasses at the fat, old man. They were sharing a table on the outside patio of the swanky coffee shop. Thorne looked Selina over like a piece of meat, the old man doing what he thought was a charming smile. She would have been creeped out by it, but he had bits of pastry flake on his tie and it made him more comically sad than anything.

“I do my job well, Mr. Thorne.”

“I can only imagine,” he said with a sleazy smile. “The only thing they wouldn’t tell me was your asking price.”

Selina sipped from her latte before answering.

“Forty.”

“Forty thousand seems steep.”

“Percent. Whatever you want found, I get forty percent of it.”

Thorne frowned “It’s… it doesn’t work like that. What I want is only valuable to me.”

Selina spread her hands “Then forty percent of whatever it’s worth to you. That’s my price.”

“That’s highway robbery!”

“Then call the cops,” Selina said with a smirk. “But if you were able to call the cops, you wouldn’t reach out to a… procurement specialist like myself. And since it sounds like something pretty valuable to you, the longer you haggle the more my price goes up.”

Thorne put his balled up fists on the table. They were squeezed so tightly that they were beginning to turn white. As fun as it was to see him squirm, Selina knew that a delicate touch would be needed here on out if she wanted the job. All these rich, old men. For all their power and arrogance, they just couldn’t handle a woman even appearing to get the upper hand. It was time to put on the motherly concern.

“Start at the beginning, Mr. Thorne,” she said calmly. “Tell me what’s been taken and we’ll go from there.”

Selina listened intently as Thorne told his story. She wasn’t the only one interested in the tale. Inside the coffeeshop, a young man sat in front of a laptop with earbuds in. To passerbys he looked like another would-be writer trying to write a screenplay.

But Bruce Wayne’s earbuds were relaying to him every word of Thorne’s story. The small listening device embedded in the band of Thorne’s wristwatch had amazing sound quality. He was able to perfectly transcribe the details of what Thorne was saying. Since Falcone’s fall, Thorne had become top dog in the criminal underworld. Without the ties to the Italian Mafia, Thorne ran his criminal organization like a business. And like a CEO of a Fortune 500, Thorne kept trade secrets close to the vest. He was too careful. Compared to Falcone and Maroni, Thorne and his men had the discipline of monks. After a year of intense surveillance, Bruce was nowhere near finding any evidence that proved Rupert Thorne was a criminal kingpin.

But now?

Now there seemed to be a path to see Thorne thrown behind bars

He just had to make sure he beat Selina Kyle to it.

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

@Byrd Man Congratulations, you're the new Batman.

@Lord Wraith

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Somehow Byrd has infected every superhero GM with a microchip that forces us to like him.

@Inkarnate

It's just my winning personality.

...

Fucker.

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

@Byrd Man

You seem pretty eager. Heh.

@Inkarnate

I've got to go to bed, and with a ten hour workday ahead of me tomorrow you gotta strike while the iron is hot

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

This is like 95% a sheet I made four or five years ago.

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

BATMAN

^{_{BRUCE WAYNE ♦ ENTREPRENEUR ♦ GOTHAM CITY ♦ INDEPENDENT}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

^{"Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves."
-- Robert Kennedy}

HISTORY

Bruce Wayne was born to Thomas and Martha Wayne, a working class couple from Gotham's East End. The Waynes lived paycheck to paycheck, Thomas working as an EMT while Martha worked as an IT technician at a cable company. Bruce showed an aptitude towards electronics at an early age, taking the phone apart and putting it back together when he was five, and he learned from his father that every life, no matter how rotten or undesirable, deserved another chance. While the Waynes didn't have much money, thy did have love for their son and their small and humble life. That changed when Bruce was eight. After coming out of a movie theater one night, a mugger stepped out of the shadows and robbed the Waynes. The robbery went bad, the man killing both Thomas and Martha. The mugger turned his gun on Bruce, but was gunned down by a nearby patrolman who heard the shots and rushed to the scene. Officer James Gordon comforted the crying boy covered in the blood of his parents and their killers. It was that day that he made a secret vow to his dead parents. That he would do any and everything in his power to make sure another little boy wouldn't lose his parents.

Bruce was briefly placed in a foster home before his uncle, Phillip Wayne, adopted him. Phillip and his partner Alfred Pennyworth raised Bruce. Alfred, a former Royal Marine with a background in clandestine services, took a shine to young Bruce. Having dealt with loss as well, Alfred and Bruce could connect with each other. Bruce disclosed his mission to Alfred, his pledge that he made to his dying parents. Bruce was sixteen when Phillip died of lung cancer, leaving Bruce and Alfred alone. Alfred encouraged him to go to college as an engineer. Never forgetting his dreams and ambitions, Bruce went to school and learned both about electronic engineering and criminology. Bruce was a natural in both classes. He quickly grew bored of school and dropped out after his junior year. Alfred then suggested that Bruce join the Gotham City Police Department, but Bruce recognized the corruption and vice inside the department. The city and its systems were broken. To be truly effective, he would need to operate outside the law. The next day he created Wayne Tech.

Over the course of two years, Wayne Tech went from an upstart to mid-level player in Gotham City. Bruce's cheap and effective security alarm systems were bought by nearly every business and organization in the city. What the people who installed the system didn't know was that their systms were all connected together. Using their security cameras and other embedded listening devices and sensors that were part of the security package, Bruce had a massive, real-time map of the city that fed him information and intelligence on nearly all the comings and goings of the city and its residents.

His network was in place, now he needed training. He approached Alfred for advice. Hesitant at first, he finally agreed to train Bruce. With Alfred as his guide, Bruce learned basic hand to hand combat skills, Krav Maga, and self-defense. The network and training were done, and now he needed tools. He bought basic kevlar and body armor and outfitted it with sensors and processors linked with a massive database. The database provided him with a full holographic HUD with streaming information on a variety of subjects and computations. In addition to the suit, Bruce also rigged up mini sticky tasers, tear gas loaded throwing balls, and special throwing weapons that worked like boomerangs. Bruce bought a motorcycle and rigged it with both offensive and defensive capabilities. With Wayne Tech's growing business, he was also able to purchase the components of a drone he could assemble and use.

One night, after an attempt to stop a hijacking became a fiasco, Bruce realized the key to win a war on crime was to use psychology. Strike fear and use it as an initiative against the cowardly and superstitious. He was licking his wounds when a bat came crashing through the window of his apartment. He had his symbol.

The network was running.

He had the tools.

Now he had the bat.

YEARS 1 AND 2

His first full fledged mission ended with Gotham Police seizing a million dollars worth of cocaine from the Falcone Crime Family, Carmine Falcone himself in bracelets. Bruce reached out to Jim Gordon, now a lieutenant, and formed an alliance to work with each other to fight against the corrupt system. Added to their group was assistant DA Harvey Dent. The three men and their crusade swept Falcone's organization up. Several members of the corrupt police commissioner Loeb's organization were among those arrested, Loeb included. Gordon's hardwork and void of command led to Gordon's rapid promotion from lieutenant to colonel. Rumors of The Batman of Gotham began to circulate. Ironically, Gordon was appointed to head up a taskforce to find and arrest the vigilante.

And the new year brought new trouble, as a madman he had been chasing through the shadows surfaced. Calling himself the Joker, he threatened to slaughter the entire population of Gotham's Village Square's new year's party with deadly nerve gas. Batman managed to disable the gas and take down Joker's men, but not before he slipped away.

SUBJECT TO CHANGE

With the absence of Falcone, new criminals began to fill the void. The horribly disfigured Jigsaw started a bloody gang war with Salvatore Maroni, Falcone's underboss turned don. A strange Serbian criminal known as the Purple Man threatened to take over both men's rackets, while Russian killer Sergi Kravenoff set his sights on the Bat of Gotham as the ultimate hunting trophy. While the work as Batman continues on, Wayne Tech continues to expand to other places outside Gotham, creating a wider and wider intelligence network for the Batman to use.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

Pretty much what I'm going for with Batman is an idea I've always had. Batman stripped of his money and years of training. People argue that while Batman is the most realistic of the superheroes, he's still a superhuman in a lot of ways. So I want to downplay his resources and make him more smarter, even more craftier, and using his brain and intellect to create workarounds to being a truly ordinary human. Also, I want to give him a bit of a Sherlock Holmes vibe, making the detective angle of Batman come to the forefront. Bruce is motivated by the same stuff he's always been motivated by. I think the different spin will help bring a new twist on things.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

Allies:

Commisioner James Gordon: supervisor of both the Special Case Unit (Anti-Batman Squad) and the Major Crimes Unit (Anti-Organized Crime) Batman's source inside the GCPD.

Alfred Pennyworth: British expat and former Royal Marine. Took Bruce under his wing after his uncle's death.

Lucius Fox: Manager of Wayne Tech

Harvey Dent: Assistant District Attorney, Batman's ally inside the Gotham DA Bureau.[

ENEMIES:

WIP

S A M P L E P O S T:

SAMPLE

NOT IN CONTINUITY, NOR IS IT PLANNED TO BE IN CONTINUITY. JUST A SAMPLE.

Gotham City
11:50 PM

The bike roared while I swerved through the mild downtown traffic. It was coming on midnight, and I had an appointment to make. The holographic map in my HUD showed the quickest route to my destination. It took just a few minutes to get to the GCPD's headquarters. I stood on the roof of the building across the street from GCPD headquarters and activated a button on my wrist. Wayne Security Tech installed all the cameras inside Gotham Central last year, along with a few pinhole mics that found themselves embedded in key locations.

Device 210434
Listening: 2nd floor break room

"So that's when the bear stops and looks at the hunter and he says 'You just don't come here for the hunting, do you'?"

Device 210437
Listening: Lt. A. Flass' Office

"Yeah, my shift ends in a few minutes. I'll be at the meet at about two, and then we can talk about the cut there. Just hope that sonofabitch Skeevers doesn't keep me too late."

Device 210440
Listening: (GCPD Night Shift Commander) Dep. Commissioner A. Probson's Office

"Come and knock on our door, we've been waiting for you!
Where the kisses are hers, and hers, and his. Three's Company, too!"

Device 210438
Listening: Col. J. Gordon's Office
N/A.... No Activity

Good. That meant he was waiting. I shot out a grapnel line and swung from the roof, gliding over the street below to the roof of Gotham Central. The night shift were half asleep and sloppy. The cameras and bugs guided me through the halls of Gotham Central, all the way way down to the basement in ten minutes. From there it's to the morgue, where the only friend I have in this city was waiting.

"You're late," the dark haired man in the suit said before he lights up a cigarette.

Identified:
James W. Gordon
Colonel, Gotham City Police Department

"Is it another OD?"

"Yep. This makes the sixth one in a month."

Junkies. They've been dropping like flies all over the city for the last two months. The heroin in their veins has up has been purer than anything they've ever had and then some. Toxicology reports said the vials have an extra dose in them. Something I hadn't been able to identify. Gordon and I were the only ones who seem to care at all. As far as most of the police were concerned, who cares if another junkie drops dead?

"Let's see."

Gordon led me to a sheet covered slab where the latest victim was. He pulled it back, kicking the sensors in my mask into overdrive. A man, appearing to be in his mid to late 40's. There were track marks all up and down his arms and legs. A long time drug addict. The medical examiner already had his chest cavity open, the organs packed away in a freezer somewhere. All that is window dressing though. The real action was on his face. Like all the others, his face was contorted into a sick and twisted grin that pulled back his lips and exposed a set of sickly green gums juxtaposed with bright red blood.

"It's the heroin, isn't it?"

I nodded. "That's the only explanation. Someone's tainting Gotham's drug supply."

"I would put my money on a rival dealer. Last I heard, the Council were pushing most of the H through the city along with their front man, Jeff Skeevers. Someone must have got tired of them getting all the profit."

The HUD blinked rapidly three times, snapping photos of the cadaver and sending them back to my harddrive at home. Gordon pulled the sheet back over the tarp when I finished.

"That's a good theory. I'll look into it. You should get home, Gordon. It's late. You're family will be worried about you."

Gordon flinched and quickly dug his hands into his pocket. He's trying hide his missing wedding ring. He's much too late on that front. I noticed it the last time we met. That and the fact that his partner, Sergeant DeWolffe, both disappeared about the same time.

"I'll be alright. What I want to is what are you going to do? I tried sweating some of the street dealers out there and see what they knew about it. They all clammed up in a hurry. Even when I threatened them with jail. They didn't flinch."

I turned away from Gordon and begin to walk out of the morgue.

"I'll make them flinch."

Two Days Later
Krank Co. Toy Factory
1:52 AM

Nearly 48 hours of tearing up the underworld has led me here. The freelance dealers for once are working in harmony, getting their smack from the same source: this place. I gently lifted up the window pane and stepped lightly inside the factory's assembly line floor. The ultraviolet lenses of my cowl activated, brightly showing everything hidden by shadow. I approached a set of chemical vats placed on the floor. There was fresh residue all over. I rubbed my finger through the vat and get residue on my finger tip. That was more than enough sample for the computers in my suit and the uplink it has with the computer back home. A few seconds later, it finished combing through the database before showing the results on my HUD.

Residue Result:

75% Diacetylmorphine aka Heroin
Street name: "Up, Up, and Away!"

15% Inositol
Primarily use: cutting agent

10% Unknown Substance
No matches with known chemicals in database

The results were interesting to say the least. Three quarters pure heroin is more than enough to kill almost all the junkies in the city and tri-county area who grew up with shots of smack cut down to ten and five percent. But it's the unknown substance that interested me the most. My databases are connected to the drug and chemical databanks of the DEA, FBI, SHIELD, and ATF. There's no known chemical compound that they don't have. But that would come later. For now, I needed to keep climbing the ladder. I took out most of the street dealers and middlemen pushing the poison, now it was time to take out the source.

The sound of a door opening a few hundred feet away drew my attention. I melded back into the shadows as three men entered the room. One of them towered over the others while one wore a three-piece suit and the third is dressed in a suit with a cowboy hat on his head and a lasso on his hip. I deactivated the UV lenses and boot up the facial recognition software.

"Can we go get some burgers?" The large man asked his two smaller partners.

Identified:
Raymond Bloch aka Ray Block aka Ox
Three arrests for assault & armed robbery
Known associates: Daniel Brito & Jackson Brice
Known method(s) of attack: Brute strength

"We got a job to do, Ox. Stop thinking with your stomach all the time!" The man in the suit said.

Identified:
Daniel Brtio aka Fancy Dan
Arrests for shoplifting, kidnapping, & racketeering
Known associates: Raymond Bloch & Jackson Brice
Known method(s) of attack: Guns, martial arts

"Wish ya'll would pipe the hell down!"The cowboy grumbled. "It's almost two in the goddamn morning!"

Identified:
Jackson Brice aka Montana
Arrests for armed robbery & kidnapping
Known associates: Raymond Bloch & Daniel Brito
Known method of attack(s): Lasso, knives

Three of them to the one of me. The one called Ox might be a problem. I pulled a small pad from my belt, and stuck it on the middle finger of my right, gloved hand. The glove and pad let out a soft, electric whine. I crept through the dark while they talked.

"Willie got pinched last night by the cops."

"Wasn't the cops that did it. It was that freak Batman. The cops were just on clean-up duty."

"Damn. Willie didn't know this is where we make the H, did he?"

"Naw, we always used Sam as a buffer. He came here to pick the shit up and then pass it on to Willie and the others."

"Well, if the Batman comes...I'll be ready. I don't give a damn what he can do. Nobody can beat the Ox!"

Taking the opening, I flicked the pad at Ox. It twirled through the air, a small spark shooting out and arcing with electricity. The pad slapped against Ox's neck and sent out a one time burst of 20,000 volts.

"Ggggk!"

The big man crumpled to the ground and convulses. His two friends ignored his convulsions, instead opting to put their guards up. Montana pulls a knife while Dan goes for the gun.

"Your friend didn't live up to his promise," I said as I step out of the shadows. "Can you?"

I tossed a batarang sidearm from the hip. It knocked the gun from Dan's hand and continued on an arc that sliced Montana's lasso into two bits of rope. I pounced on the man, kicking Montana in the chest and driving him to the ground. A well aimed punch to a nerve ending sends waves and waves of pain through Montana's body. He squealed in pain before another punch to the forehead knocked him out.

Dan was in the process of going for his gun when I stepped in the way. The gangster crouched into a defensive stance as I lashed out with a kick. He countered my karate chop and attacked with a roundhouse kick. I stepped back and held my cape, spinning it into Dan's face to disorient him. He stepped backwards as a reflex. It's more than enough time for me to lash out again with a grapple, spinning him around and knocking him to the ground in a submission hold. I tightened my grip around his neck.

"All I need to do is apply a three more pounds of pressure to your neck and pop your jugular. You're going to tell me everything there is to know about this operation. Who is making it, who is selling it, who is being paid off, and who pays you..."

I applied two and a half more pounds of pressure to his neck.

"Talk!"

He talks.

They always talk.

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

So I hate to do this, but I'm changing characters. I feel like I jumped into a character without a story, and now I'm struggling to really formulate one.

But I'm working on something else, so I'm not dropping out of the game all together or anything. Sorry for the trouble, but I'd feel bad establishing a character like Batman only to get stuck at the beginning and screwing over other people who are dependent on me.

@HenryJonesJr

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Part I:
Down the Rabbit Hole

"But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'"
-- Lewis Carroll

French Riviera

Tresser watched Vertigo do a line of cocaine off the glass coffee table. They were in the opulent cabin on Vertigo’s yacht somewhere near Saint-Tropez. Vertigo snorted and rubbed his nose before shaking his head and collapsing back on the wall white leather couch.

“Careful,” said Tresser. “Too much and you won’t be able to get hard.”

Vertigo chuckled and grabbed his crotch.

“No need to worry, Tresser. For me, getting hard is so easy.”

Tresser resisted the urge to roll his eyes. With his accent and gaudy jewelry, Vertigo was the perfect picture of Eurotrash. He was from some small Eastern European country, a deposed noble who clung to his title of count like a drowning man clings to a life raft. Regardless of his boorishness, the title at least granted him some partial entrée into the European upperclass.

“How are our friends in New York, Tresser?”

Tresser shrugged. “The Campisis send their love, boss.”

“I can’t spend fucking love. What about their money?”

“I took care of it,” Tresser said with a slight sigh. “It wasn’t easy, but I think Angelo learned the hard way not to fuck with people with enough weapons to supply a standing army.”

Vertigo laughed and started to chop together another line with his black credit card.

“This is good shit,” Vertigo said after doing another line. “I need you back to America, Tresser. A potential business client will need wooing. You know of this Hub City?”

“Vaguely. It’s a real shit-hole.”

“Who cares?” Vertigo asked with a shrug. “Money spends regardless of where it comes from.”

Vertigo stood while Tresser started for the deck of the yacht. Two beautiful women in slinky dresses came from the cabin downstairs and wrapped their arms around Vertigo’s waist. He chuckled and said something to them in French, something that made them laugh, but not too hard do that they sounded disingenuous. That was the difference between top dollar call girls and the cheap ones.

“Call me when you are in Hub City and have made contact,” Vertigo said as he pulled his eyes away from the two hookers. “We’ll go from there.”

“Sure.”

Tresser started to walk away as the two women began to undress.

---

O’Hare Airport
Chicago

Tresser swiped his credit card and bought twenty-four hours worth of time on the airport locker. He placed a simple smartphone inside the locker and closed it up. Tradecraft dictated that someone would be by within the next day to collect the phone. The phone was only capable of data storage. On it was Tresser’s report on his movements over the last month.

Per the op guidelines, he never wrote anything down or left any evidence of his true identity where Vertigo could find them. He always bought a brand new laptop before boarding a plane. While in the air and cut off from almost all digital signals he would write up a report, put it on the dummy phone, and destroy the laptop's hard drive soon after landing.

The report chronicled Tresser’s activities in New York City, along with the meeting Vertigo and Tresser in Turin with some real-life Italian mobsters. It seemed Vertigo was eager to get in bed with 'Ndrangheta, one Europe’s oldest and most powerful criminal organization. If he could do that, then he’d really be playing in the big leagues. Maybe that would get him and Tresser in the room with the real people behind LEVIATHAN.

Tresser used his false passport and credit card to rent a car. Vertigo, for whatever reason, never wanted him to directly fly in to whatever city he was doing business in. He’d always fly into the next closest city and drive the distance. That worked fine in Europe, but in parts of the Americas and Eastern Europe it could eat up a whole day just driving.

The little red compact car was his chosen vehicle and he hit the interstate, a sign announcing that Hub City was a few hundred miles away.

---

Hub City

The lobby of the office building wasn’t much to look at. But then again, Hub City itself wasn’t much to look at. If you could imagine all the worse parts of Detroit and Chicago without any of those redeeming qualities, you got Hub. Treser had only been here once or twice, and only then he was just passing through to a bigger and better city.

When the man he was here to see finally let him into his office, it was as dumpy as Tresser was expecting. A few bookshelves half filled, cheap desk and cheaper computer. It looked like a CPA’s office. The man who occupied this office would never been expected to work with international arms dealers.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said with a smile. “The surroundings are the point. No flash, no cash, no suspicions.’

He was middle aged, white with greying hair, and his suit was off the rack. A pair of reading glasses resting on the bridge of his nose helped with the CPA illusion. Tresser sat down across the desk from the man.

“You’re awfully trusting,” said Tresser. “To just invite me in to your office like this.”

“You’ve been vetted,” he said. “You and your boss are the real deal. Plus, if you are something like a cop I’m not too concerned. This office and the company who leases it are all registered in fake names. Shell companies within shell companies. I have many names, but nobody knows my real one. If you want to call me anything, you can call me Broker.”

“Okay, Broker. So why are you in need of my services?”

“Guns are my business. The past twenty years I’ve been selling weapons to the gangs in Chicago. Do you watch the news, Mr…”

“Thomas,” said Tresser. “Call me Thomas. And, no, I don’t want the news a lot. I prefer things with happy endings.”

“Right,” Broker said with a chuckle. “If you watched the news you’d see about Chicago. Politicians love to talk about the violence in the city, despite the strict gun laws. It’s a conservative talking point at this point. The problem with that talking point is that as strict as Chicago is with their laws, it doesn’t make a bit of fucking difference. It’s surrounded by Indiana and Michigan, places you can get a gun with no problem. So I buy guns in both states with straw purchasers, completely legal people who always pass background checks. Then I file the numbers off the guns and sell them to people in Chicago at double the amount I paid for them.”

Tresser tried his best to looked impressed. Broker was just another one of a long list of motherfuckers he wished he could put through a wall. The ops objective wasn’t to stop the influx of guns and violence in America. As fucked up as Vertigo’s business was, Tresser’s handler just saw it as a means to an end. They had no intention of shutting it down until Tresser could get intel on LEVIATHAN.

“It sounds like a pretty solid business,” said Tresser. “So why change it up?”

“I want to expand,” said Broker. “Into the other big cities in the midwest. Detroit, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Kansas City. I can’t do that with simple straw purchases. I need to up my supply to meet the incoming demand.”

“That’s where we come in, right?”

“Right.”

“I’ll have to touch base with my boss,” said Tresser. “But I think we can do business, Mr. Broker. Tell me what your needs are, and we’ll do our best to fulfill them.”

---

Tresser pulled his gun from the shoulder holster the second he walked into his motel room. There was supposed to be a splinter wedged in the doorjamb. He’d left it there after he went out to meet Broker.

He saw the figure sitting in the dark beside the lamp. It snapped on and he breathed a sigh of relief. His handler, Sarge Steel, had a jovial grin on his face. Even with the cool weather outside, Steel still wore shorts and flip flops.

“Read your report this morning,” he said with no preamble. “Forwarded the information about the mobsters over to Justice. Hopefully the FBI will be up on them in no time.”

“Why the fuck are you in my room?” Tresser asked as he holstered his gun.

“We needed to talk, ASAP. Can’t do it over the phone. Stopping you in the street would look suspicious as hell.”

Tresser sat down on the lumpy bed and faced Steel. The bed groaned slightly and sagged under his weight.

“What’s so important?”

“Your friend, Broker,” said Steel. “I assume your meeting with him went well.”

“It did,” said Tresser. “And how do you know about him already?”

Steel pulled a smartphone from his pocket and started to scroll through it in silence. When he found what he wanted, he passed it to Tresser. A mugshot of Broker was on the screen. A SHIELD logo in the corner of the photo.

“He’s on the government’s radar already. And I think you’re being led into a trap.”