Khvirsur

Bruce Wayne. 

Growing up, he had been loved by his parents, Dr. Thomas Wayne and Martha Kane, two very wealthy socialites. So wealthy that they had an ancestral manor on the outskirts of Gotham, which they required servants to upkeep. 

The butler, Alfred Pennyworth, was one of them, but he was more like a friend to the family, and more like an uncle to the young Bruce Wayne.

Tragedy struck, however, at age eight. His parents were murdered in front of him, coming back from a play at the monarch theater.

He mourned. Blinded by grief and rage, he yearned for justice for his parents, but knew that if he tried to avenge them, he would not be able to.

As he was then, he would have been more likely to get himself killed than to help.

He embarked across the globe, learning, training. He trained with the League of Assassins and many others.

At one point, he joined a circus and became their contortionist, as they had a lack of one.

He acquired many useful skills, such as martial arts, dancing, weapons training, engineering, coding, hacking, programming, and so on.

He also learned anything that could be construed, however tenuously, to be helpful. He learned to make lassos, to mimic bird cries, and much more.

He learned, he trained, he grew, and, once he felt prepared, he returned home to Gotham, ready to fight crime.

It started out simply. The first time, he went out for two hours, skulking in the shadows, patrolling the rooftops of Gotham, watching for crime.

He'd stopped a couple of muggings, foiled a robber, and stopped a transaction of money for drugs. A rather quiet night, all in all, with him doing more listening than anything else.

He continued going out, doing just two hours a night for a while, but most of the time consisted of simply listening. And, oh, what rumors he heard.

"Did you hear? Gotham's got itself a cryptid."

"A giant bat, going around fighting crime!"

"I heard it's the coalescence of our sins, come back to punish us! There's no way it's human, the way it moves!"

"It's some sort of creature!"

So, they didn't think his alter-ego was human, because of the way he moved. 

(Probably from when he was being shot at and he bent over backwards so that his chest was facing towards the sky, went up on his hands, flipped himself backwards onto his feet, and continued fighting.)

If he continued moving like he was, like a human, that rumor would not perpetuate. It would die out and be disbelieved by most.

He didn't want that. Not when fear was a good motivation for staying out of crime, and what better way to fight crime than to stop a civilian from committing a crime in the first place?

So. If he wanted to scare civilians away from crime, he had to be frightening enough to make them double-guess potentially committing a crime.

He had to have a fearsome reputation, then, and moving like he wasn't human was a good starting place. 

To begin with, Bruce upped the frequency of which he did yoga, pilates, and contortionism.

He watched nature documentaries, committing to memory which movements screamed prey and which screamed predator, and he practiced, until he moved like a predator, until they were second nature. 

Until he could tell the ways that he moved that made him feel like a predator, and took those movements to make more. 

Until people got out of his way when he walked, at which point he had to unlearn those movements for when he acted as Brucie Wayne. 

Until there was dissonance between Brucie Wayne and the Bat.

Until he didn't know who he was anymore. Bruce Wayne was an act. He was more like Bat, but he could be comfortable, instead of the unending hyper-vigilance.

He didn't know who he was anymore, but he was comfortable in his own skin. Confident in himself and his abilities.

He leaned into the creepiness, into his plan to unnerve and to scare, and he delighted in it.

In them seeing him move in ways no human should be able to, in their horrified expressions, in the way they stutter-stepped backwards before turning to run, to try and fail to escape.

The rumors grew wildly, fueled by how he moved however he wished to- too graceful and silent one moment, then twisting and lunging and crouching and skittering and twitching and moving in ways such that it appeared he was unpossessing of bones the next.

"It's got fangs and claws!"

He had been experimenting with ways to climb buildings that relied on only his own strength, for times that a grappling hook would not have anything to latch onto, and he had been startled, halfway up a wall.

He had turned to the henchman, his mouth opening in a snarl instinctively. 

His teeth, with his canines always being remarkably (his dentist had remarked on it multiple times) long and sharp, had gleamed in the light of a streetlamp, frightening the henchman into running away.

As he hadn't caught him in a criminal act, he'd let him go. He needed to justify it to himself or else, as he had learned, it would eat at him.

A few days later, sharp curved claws had been added to his gloves; his boots had been altered to be more like water shoes in shape, but with metal claws on the end to aid in climbing; and altered a retainer such that it was all pointier, and then used it to make synthesized bone extensions for his teeth, making them all closer to fangs. 

(He hoped he would never have to bite anyone with them, but he would, and the flesh would cleave beneath his enhanced fangs like a knife through butter, leaving incredibly painful half gouged-out skin in the shape of a square, with tiny lacerations to the sides, prone to getting infected. So much so that they said the Bat's saliva was a bio-weapon. 

False, of course, even with Gotham's alterations- soon, the retainer would be fused with his teeth, strengthening them, and his saliva would be hazardous to any baseline human, minorly so to most anyone enhanced too, however- but that doesn't come yet.)

"The bat can fly! No- I'm telling you, it flew!"

Well... His alter-ego was a bat-man, why wouldn't  he be able to fly?

Because the technology for one-person self-reliant flight was being researched, but, for all the advances in other types of flight, it didn't really exist.

Fortunately, Bruce was a genius. He started out by altering his cape. He changed the material, making it more rigid, mimicking leather, and adding rods through it. He enlarged it, but changed the shape, so that it looked more like bat wings. 

They were so large that they had a parachute-like effect, allowing him to glide in conjunction with his grappling hook as he cooked up a way to actually fly using mechanical wings.

He researched the ways different animals flew, different materials, ways to make them silent...

It was freeing, flying under his own power, without the use of a grappling hook.

It had taken a long time to make the wings, with many prototypes, and he would for-sure be ever-improving it, coming up with new models, but he enjoyed flying.

He could now watch for crime from the skies. He couldn't help but to make a chitter of glee as he dove, pulling up, and sinking his talons (for he had altered his climbing boots. They now had talons, three on the front and two on the back) into the shoulders of a mobster and flying into the night with only a few flaps.

It was harder to listen to the rumors from the skies, but he heard as the public perception of him shifted.

"Shadows dripping off of its frame- 

can use the shadows to teleport- 

as though its pockets are endless wells of supplies- 

so scary, I swear, I was just walking home and I saw its eyes but nothing else, its eyes were white and it wasn't blinking, wasn't moving-

talking to itself, but it wasn't words, it was chitters and squeaks and whistles and growls and-

I was a guard at a heist and you can't know the terror I felt, seeing it contort itself through a barely-open window and climb along the ceiling to drop down on another guard and take us out, I ran away, obviously-

it has a carapace, scales, you know, like an armadillo. What's the word... Chitin! It has chitin -

bulletproof! Bulletproof, I say, it was shot right in the chest but it just kept going-"

Most of the rumors had some amount of foundation in truth. It had been a dark night, even for Gotham, and he had been following a drug smuggler coming into port, when one of his wings malfunctioned in the rain and he took a brief dip in Gotham harbor.

He had been seen with water dripping off of him, not shadows as whoever saw him then said it to be.

It had been before he could fly, when he was using his cape and a grappling hook, but the criminals hadn't caught on yet. Gliding like that was very fast, likely why they said that he could teleport.

He had pulled candy, snacks, and anything he could think of out of his many, many pockets, trying to calm down a child. His pockets weren't endless wells of supplies, but he could see how they thought that.

The lenses of his mask were tinted so that they appeared to be white, and he had a habit of staring into space while he strained his ears to see if he could hear anyone crying out for help.

When frustrated, he tended to grumble to himself, but not with words, with sounds.

Communication was difficult, and tone tended to say more than words, so he tried mimicking animal sounds, mostly that of birds, but also of bats and various other creatures.

Okay, so he had indulged himself that time, but the reactions he got by acting creepy were just absolutely delectable.

He had taken to watching nature shows for ideas on things he could add to his costume, and science-fiction things. He had gotten inspiration, seeing an armadillo, and had made a carapace for himself out of metal alloy with overlapping scales, with a dilatant layer in the middle.

It was due to that that he could take being shot in the chest and just keep going. 

It limited his mobility somewhat, but they were sown through the very middle of each scale and nowhere else, so they flexed with him.

Sure, it wasn't as safe, but he was more protected than he would be without the scales, and could still bend in ways that made people go pale, shudder, and either look or run away, so he took the compromise.

(He also had on a light body armor beneath that, due to Alfred's insistence.)

"The Bat protects us, watches over us." "Who are you talking about?" "The Bat. Gotham's very own cryptid*. A protector, a defender."

He was vengeance. He was the night. He... Was the Bat.

His daughter, Barbara Gordon, was settling in well. It was good, really, but he worried about her.

He may have been worrying over her more than usual, but they had just moved back to Gotham from Chicago, he felt justified. 

Gotham... Wasn't like other cities. For one thing, there was an ever-present dark sky, filled with smog and other noxious things, blotting out the light of the sun.

This caused summers to be cooler, and winters to be bitingly cold, often below freezing.

That wasn't what worried him, though- well, alright, not the main thing to worry him- it was the crime rate. The corruption.

Gotham was called the "crime capital of the world" for a reason, after all.

It may not have been the best environment for him to have grown up in, nor the best environment for his daughter to grow up in, but he had been transferred back to Gotham.

He liked being a cop, liked dealing out justice, liked parsing the guilty from the innocent, liked criminals getting what they deserved. He felt like he was doing good.

...Mostly. Most of the time, he felt like he was doing good. He knew the justice system of the U.S. was lacking. Cruel.

He didn't like seeing petty thieves or those having committed minor crimes like pick-pocketing or jaywalking or protesting being sentenced a disproportionate amount of time, or fines, because of a cruel, messed-up, and blatantly corrupt, system.

He liked being a cop because he could work on fixing the system from the inside, work on making it fairer, on making it better.

He had underestimated the amount of work Gotham would be to work. It seemed impossible, fixing it, but he would work on it.

He believed in due process, in what the law- in what the justice system- should be.

He heard the rumors of a dark shape in the sky, on the roofs, a creature made up of living shadows.

Not long after, criminals started showing up on their doorstep, with the cameras showing nothing but static, only to go back to working afterwards.

He knew what was happening, or, he had thought so. A vigilante, a dramatic one.

He hadn't put much stock into the tales, of the descriptions of the vigilante.

A creature made of sentient shadows, with claws and fangs and wings? Preposterous.

Well, Gothamites liked to sensationalize, and he was sure that was what was happening. Of course they were exaggerating. 

So what if the land was cursed seven ways to Sunday, and the water was borderline dangerous to drink?

He didn't believe the Bat, as it was being called, was a being, a creature. Why would he?

...

Another group of thugs had been found tied up outside of the station, bound with something odd. 

It was used like rope, but it seemed like a cross-between of industrial metal cable and electric wiring, like used in houses.

It was black and rubbery, flexible but stiff, and it had a frankly mind-boggling tensile strength. It was thinner than one of his fingers!

Jim didn't like vigilantes. They acted outside the law to dole out whatever justice that they saw fit to.

This one, at least, didn't judge and sentence (kill), instead handing the criminals over to the police to dole out lawful justice.

One of the terrified men babbled about what he had seen. "-it rose out of the harbor dripping shadows- flew onto the boat- lashed out like a snake, but, like, with limbs- like a snake-cat- it was staring into my soul, I'm telling you- could barely see it, couldn't see the edges of its form, like there was no difference between it and the shadows-"

He tuned out the henchman and gestured to another officer for them to be taken into custody.

"Ah- sir? There's- there's a note..." The rookie walked over to him and presented it, the words made up of letters that were a mix of elegant curves and scratchy lines that he struggled to comprehend.

He took off his glasses and cleaned them, hoping that it would make it easier to read.

"It says, sir, that they have been smuggling drugs in through the harbor, and the product's in a warehouse on the docks- there are coordinates- and that there was supposed to be a transaction in three days."

More and more criminals turned up like that, hogtied in that odd rope-cable, with a note.

Jim was assigned to a particularly difficult child trafficking case. They could tell that children were being snatched off of the streets, and they had arrested one of the men in charge of transporting the children, but he wasn't talking.

They had tried interrogation, using Gotham methods, even. Good-cop bad-cop, isolation, drugging, leaving him in an extremely hot room to sweat about it... Nothing was working. Time to bluff.

Taking off his glasses, he pinched the bridge of his nose. "I didn't want to do this, but it seems I have no choice. Officer Davis, take him to the roof and leave him for the Bat."

"Sir?" "You heard me, Davis." The criminal now looked uncertain, and slightly afraid, like he didn't believe in the rumors of the Bat, but if the police were leaving him for it, well...

What if it was real?

– – – – – The Bat – – – – –

It had been just another night. He had been patrolling, caught some muggers in the act, and lightly cut them with his claws, which were dipped in a specialized anaesthetic to knock people out when they got cut. 

He had dropped them off on the doorstep of the GCPD, tied up in his fellig (that was what he had decided to name the cord he had made, that he was using to tie up criminals with, from the root words fel, evil / despicable/ vile, and lig, to bind / to tie.)

He was going to grapple away, but he heard talking on top of the police station, and his curiosity got the better of him.

Digging his claws into the brick, he hoisted himself up, off the ground. He held himself in the air using only his arms for a few seconds, until he managed to stick the claws on his feet and the claws on the tips of his wings into the wall. He stealthily climbed up the side of the station, until he could hear what was being said.

Stretching his arms out to the side, he sunk them into the brick, repeated it with his 'wings', using the claws on the tips, and hugged the wall, listening.

"-just leaving me out here, then? Tied up? In the rain? Waiting for a creature that probably doesn't even exist to try to make me tell? How desperate are you?"i

"It's not my first course of action, I'll admit. All my more reasonable courses of action have been exhausted. I just hope you don't get hypothermia; it would be harder to attempt to get answers out of you if you got sick."

It seemed like the criminal didn't hear that it was a bluff, a last-ditch course of action. The police officer seemed slightly nervous about doing it.

He heard the door close and the footsteps fade away. Slowly, he reached up and dug his claws into the roof, did the same with the other wing's, and then did so with one hand, following it with the other.

He pulled himself up agonizingly slowly, inch by inch, and he could hear the breathing getting louder, more panicked.

He stepped his legs up onto the roof. He looked up. The criminal's eyes were dilated with fear as he tried to scoot the chair backwards, but  he couldn't escape.

He was on all fours, with his legs tucked under his stomach, and his elbows were bent outwards. He scuttled forwards, but in a way that felt like a prowl. His cape dragged on the roof behind him, helping to obscure his form and intimidate the criminal.

When he got close enough to be able to reach out and touch him, the Bat settled his weight onto his heels and rose upwards, trying to go up one vertebrae at a time, until he towered over the wide-eyed, hyperventilating, criminal.

"ȾⱯⱢ𝓚."

The criminal talked.

– – – – – Jim Gordon – – – – –

Knock       Knock       Knock

All the officers looked around, trying to find someone else to pin on the duty of going up there and seeing what had happened. With a sigh, Jim started walking. It had been his idea, after all.

He hesitated at the top of the stairs, with his hand on the doorknob. Did he really want to see..?

Well. He had to. Pushing open the door, he froze at the sound of sobbing.

Looking around, he spotted the criminal, tied to the chair, but he had evidently scooted backwards.

He was sobbing and shaking, with wide, terrified eyes fixed on the edge of the roof.

Seeing a glint underneath the leg of the chair the criminal was sitting in, Jim tugged it out to find what looked to be a plastic recipe sleeve.

It was taped off at the top, and there were papers inside. He turned it over, but it was blank on that side too. It was thick, though.

He beckoned another officer to untie the criminal and take him back to his cell.

Walking over to where he had been staring, he found gashes in the roof, clearly made by something with claws. He didn't admit it, but the gashes scared him.

He turned away, unable to look at it anymore, and headed back inside, down the stairs, and to his desk.

Sitting down, he peeled off the tape- clear tape, about two inches wide, like used for keeping packages closed- and gently tugged out the papers.

It was a treasure-trove of information. The names of the people involved with the ring; their addresses; where they were keeping the children; the number of children; the guards' schedules...

Everything they needed to take down the part of the ring in Gotham. Everything they needed to free the children.

"Thank you, Bat," Jim whispered, tucking the papers into the inside pocket of his coat. Far too many of the police officers were on someone else's payroll for him to trust that, if he left the information at the station, it would still be there when he came in the next day.

Jim really only trusted two other officers at the GCPD, twin sisters Andrea and Jennifer Johnson.

 As the one in charge of this case, he pulled them onto the roof four days before he planned for the operation to begin.

"Andrea, Jennifer, thank you for meeting me here." He pulled a drag on his cigarette and blew out the smoke, watching it curl and dissipate into the Gotham smog.

"Of course. We trust you." "But, what do you need us for?" He eyed the brunettes, one with streaks of dark purple in her hair, and the other with streaks of dark red.

He looked Jennifer in the stormy gray eyes she and her sister shared as he talked, "I trust you too, and that's why I wanted to talk to you. Are you aware of what happened with the criminal in the child trafficking ring, Liam Jones?"

"Didn't you interrogate him, but he wouldn't talk?" "And then you left him out here in the rain until you heard three slow knocks?"

He walked over to the edge of the roof and bent down, tracing the gouges in the roof with a hand.

"Those look like- claw marks. Jim- Jim, are those- are those from- did- did the Bat-? Jim. Jim, what happened?"

He stood up. Unzipping his jacket, he takes the papers, still in the sleeve, out of the inner pocket, and he holds them out.

Jennifer took it and started looking through it, while he talked with Andrea. "Jim? Where did you get that?"

"We had Jones out here, handcuffed and tied to a chair. I noticed this, underneath the leg of the chair, when I had him taken back to his holding cell. I looked at it later, and it contains everything we would need to take down the part of the ring in Gotham."

"Is there a reason you're not assembling a team and telling us all this? Why just the two of us?"

"You know how corrupt the police are, here in Gotham, Andrea. You two are the only ones I'm trusting with this."

"It's not that I'm not touched, Jim, but we can't take down the ring with just the three of us, and besides, how do we even know that the information is correct?"

"What choice do we have but to believe that it is? This is the best- no. It's the only lead we have."

"We only have four days? Jim. Jim, that's not enough time," Jennifer hissed, looking up from the papers.

"Why? We have all the information. It should only take two days to case the warehouses."

"What about how long it'll take to set up for the raid, Jim? Organizing the teams? There are two warehouses to raid, we'll have to make sure everyone can work together first-"

"Jennifer?" 

"Yes? What is it?" She snapped, her mouth a tense line, and her brow furrowed as she flipped through the papers, obviously agitated at having so little time to prepare.

"Are you aware of how nearly every other cop in the GCPD is crooked?"

"What? Yes, of course. What does this have to do with– oh."

"'Oh'? Pardon me, but I'm not following."

"An', Jim's saying that we can't trust any other officers to help us if we want our op to succeed, because they are likely to sell us out."

"What? Jim, we can't take down the ring with just the three of us. We need help. En'. Tell him. Back me up here!"

"An' is right, Jim. Just the three of us can't take down the ring, not by ourselves."

He sighed, dragging a hand across his face. "I'm aware. I'm not suggesting that we do it by ourselves."

"Then what are you suggesting?" Jennifer asked, as ever the cleverer one.

"I'm suggesting that we go ahead and figure out the teams, but we don't alert them that something's going down until we get there."

"What, you think that'll work? Jim. Jim, no, they're not stupid, they'll figure out what we're doing, and, like you said, they're nearly all crooked. How do we know they won't just turn on us once they realize?"

"You two will be together," he told them like it was a foregone conclusion, and it was. The twins were so close that it seemed wrong, seeing them apart. "You'll have each other's backs. You'll be fine."

"But what about you, Jim? You'll be alone, with-" "With others from our precinct? Yes, that's correct," he interrupted.

"Jim." The exasperation and worry contained in one word caused him to slouch in shame.

"Jim. Jim, no. You haven't been back in Gotham, working, for too long. The other officers-" Jennifer stopped, grimacing.

"The other officers think you're annoying. They think that you think that they're so below you, because you're not corrupt. That's not true, of course, and we know that, but they don't, and-" this time, it was Andrea who stopped, grimacing, and let her sister take over.

"They're our colleagues, and we've been working with them for years. They know us. We're on cordial terms with almost all of them. You..."

"They have lived in Gotham their whole lives. They're not- they won't hesitate, just because you work in the same precinct as them."

"What do you suggest I do, then? Not head one of the teams? Try to find another officer in the GCPD that I can trust? I'm open to suggestions."

Andrea and Jennifer didn't like it, and he didn't either, but none of them had a better idea, so they went with his plan.

He had been aware of it before, but now knowing how they didn't like him, he was extra aware of the dirty looks they threw him, of how they talked about him in scathing tones behind his back.

It wasn't pleasant, knowing that only two of his colleagues really liked him.

This extra awareness of how his colleagues didn't like him made his nerves worse before the op. He had felt like they were planning something. 

He now knew that they were planning how to get rid of him, due to them having left him, alone, with the child traffickers. Who were armed with guns. Guns that were pointed at him.

He felt helpless, in the face of so many guns being pointed at him. His own gun was under the boot of some thug. He was defenseless.

"-don't get, is how you got Liam Jones to talk. Nothing you could have done should have been able to make him talk. So? How did you do it?"

"'You'? Are you talking about the police? We did nothing to make him talk. In fact, he didn't even talk, not to us."

"Then who did what to make him talk?" Antagonizing the head honcho probably wasn't very smart, but he was stalling. 

(What was he stalling for? There would be no miraculous rescue for him. His team were all turncoats, corrupt, who wouldn't help him, and even if Andrea and Jennifer got it into their heads to check on him, the three of them wouldn't be able to fight off so many gunmen. It was pointless. So, why did he bother?)

"Well, I don't know. We left him out on the roof in the rain, and when we went to go get him there was a file under his chair, detailing everything. Now that I'm thinking about it, he might not have even talked; that file might have already been made."

"Stop stalling, officer! No one's coming to save you! Who made Liam Jones talk, and how?"

"Like I said, I don't know... But, really, who could get on top of the roof, and who would be able to get one of your guys to crack? There's really only one suspect..."

The lights flickered momentarily before plunging them into darkness.

He dropped to the floor, rolling to the side, and tried to make his way to where he remembered the door to be. 

He ignored all the gunshots. All the screams. The sound of bodies hitting the floor.

The whoosh of air from something big moving quickly through space.

He fumbled his way across the floor, ignoring all the sounds of conflict. Meeting the wall, he dragged his fingers across it, trying to find the doorframe.

Finding it, he reached up. Not there, not there, not there- there! He stood up, his hand on the doorknob, ready to open it and dash for his life.

Was that the smartest idea? The best course of action? Probably not, but–

Before he could decide whether or not to open the door and possibly reveal his position, the room fell eerily silent, but for the soft sound of fabric rustling.

He didn't move, indecisivity freezing his frame. What was happening? Were all the members of the ring knocked out or injured? Or were they just frozen, like him?

The lights flickered again, so briefly that he was blinded, that he couldn't see anything more than the bodies on the ground.

The lights flickered a couple more times before staying on. He brought the hand that wasn't on the doorknob up to shield his eyes, allowing him to catch a glimpse of a vaguely human-shaped shadow too dark to be a shadow, so dark that it couldn't be anything but— no. 

No, he was getting fantastical. Was he in shock? It sure felt like he was in shock, and being in shock would make sense, he had resigned himself to getting no backup, to dying, only to be saved by- by the Bat? 

Jim was still skeptical as to the Bat being anything but a human putting on a performance to scare the criminals on the streets of Gotham, nothing more than an elaborate fear tactic. Well, if so, it was working.

Shaking his head, he took out a pair of handcuffs and handcuffed the one who had been monologuing, and the two thugs flanking him. He didn't have enough handcuffs for all the rest- what.

Unable to believe his eyes, he walked over to the bundle of "rope" dropped in the middle of the room.

Had- had the Bat left him some of the material it had been using to tie up criminals?

Well, he supposed it wouldn't hurt to make use of it...

The- cord?- rope-like material was strange to work with. It was like using the thinnest of industrial cable, but with shrink wrap on the outside.

He had struggled to tie it, but managed, eventually, despite how difficult it was to tie in knots and have it not come undone easily.

By the time he was working on tying up the last one, he heard talking outside the room, and the door pushed in to reveal the rest of his team, who were now looking in, gaping.

"Holy- you managed to take them all out by yourself, Gordon?" "Well, this, uh, this 'splains why there were so few'a 'em in the rest'a the warehouse..."

He could feel resentment and anger rising in him, demanding for him to do something, but instead he bit his tongue and finished up tying the last one.

"What of the children?" he asked, his tongue leaden in his mouth, "are they alright?"

"Scared, o'course, an' relieved, but they're fine." "We ought to go check... See how, uh, the other team's doing!"

He relaxed as they left. They were his co-workers, his fellow officers of the law, but he wouldn't trust them with his life, nor with his daughter's. 

He felt ostracized, sometimes, when Andrea and Jennifer weren't there, but he had hardly worked there for long before getting transferred to Chicago, and no one was still there. 

They saw him as the newbie, as some upstart outsider who believed himself to be so much better than him because he wasn't corrupt. 

It was... Tiring, always having to be on guard, but he was working to protect the city, to better the system from within. He wasn't going to quit.

The lights flickered again, and he tensed up, wary. The last time, the lights had flickered before going out, and the Bat had taken out the ring almost single-handedly, then flickered again to reveal the bodies.

The lights turned off, and a voice echoed around the room, wrong in ways he couldn't explain.

It reminded him of a growl, but with echoes of nails on a chalkboard, the screaming of the damned, and the screeching of bats...

No, that wasn't enough to describe it, to describe why it raised the hairs on the back of his neck and made him want to flee.

"ⱲĦɎ ĦȺṼƏ ƝǾȠƐ ƑǾƦ ɃⱯȻƘ‽ ȺƂⱠḜ ĦɄɌȾ¡!"

The rough, scratchy noises, only vaguely recognizable as words, sounded like it hurt to say. It sure hurt him to hear.

 Why have none for back? Able hurt! Did... Did the Bat mean Why do you have no one guarding your back? You're in more danger that way!

"I only trust two others in my precinct, and they're leading the raid on the other warehouse."

"ȾĦḜƦỀ, ⱯḸⱠ ƧȺƑƎ," the Bat assured him, "ɎǾɄ ỰŊⱾⱯƑɆ.ɃȺƉ. ƑƗȠƉ– ĦƎⱠⱣ– §ⱭƑƏ¡!"

There, all safe, you unsafe. Bad. Find- help- safe! This one was slightly harder to untangle the meaning of.

Maybe... Everyone there is safe. You aren't safe without someone watching your back. You should find someone to help keep you safe.

Was... Was the Bat trying to make him get a partner? The whole situation was unreal...

The lights flickered, and the Bat let out what sounded like an annoyed snarl, accompanied by the sound of rustling fabric.

"ɎǾɄ ǤǬỠƉ. ɎǾɄ ḒƗḜ, ɃⱯƉ. ƑƗȠƉ– ĦƎⱠⱣ– §ⱭƑƏ¡!"

The lights flickered again, staying on for a couple seconds before going off again, and Jim's breath caught.

It was incredibly brief, but he had seen a figure, dripping in shadows, with wings flared out behind and horns curling above the head.

Fuzz filled his head as the lights came back on, with the Bat gone. He stumbled, his center of gravity thrown off. His head hurt; his vision was swimming; his ears were ringing.

Shaking his head to clear the fuzz, he tried valiantly to ignore what he had just seen. Instead, he focussed on what the Bat had said.

You good. You die, bad. Find- help- safe! 'Find- help- safe', he had already figured out what it meant, and you die, bad., was easy enough to understand, but...

'You good'? Was- was the Bat acknowledging that he wasn't corrupt?

Later, he met up with Andrea and Jennifer. Apparently, their operation went well, and the part of the child trafficking ring that was in Gotham was taken out, though only with intervention by the Bat.

Despite urging on the twins' part, Jim did not get a partner 'it's not that simple-!' and life went back to normal in the precinct.

He was, of course, slightly more on edge, but that was expected when your co-workers tried to have you killed.

Criminals still were dropped off on their doorstep, tied with the bat-cord (he would never call it that out loud, but that was what he mentally called it), but that was becoming normalized.

Frustrated about a particularly stubborn case, he went up onto the roof for a smoke.

Reviewing it was difficult in the poor light, even with the moon being full (barely any of the moon's light shone through the smog, in any case).

"ŴⱵȺŦ ĦⱯṼɆ‽" (What have?)

He startled, dropping his cigarette on the roof. Staring down at it sadly, he ground it out under his heel, and turned to rebuke the Bat for startling him, but the words caught in his throat.

The Bat was veiled in shadows despite the full moon, and it was tall enough that he had to crane his neck to look up to the head- which was cocked sideways in a chilling parody of animal behavior- despite it being crouched on the edge of the building.

Its wings pooled wide around its form on the roof and down the side of the building, like molten shadows.

He couldn't tell where the edges of its wings stopped and the shadows began; it seemed to attract the darkness, simply by being.

Unable to look at it any longer, he dropped his eyes down to the folder in his hands.

"Oh, this? It's a frustratingly difficult case. It's shaping up to be another cold case."

"Ḭ- ȾⱭƘɆ ⱠØǾⱩ‽" (I- take look?)

"You know what? Sure." Carefully avoiding looking at the Bat, he held out the folder, which the clawed hands took with surprising gentleness.

"ƝɆⱣⱵḜⱲ– ŴƗŁⱢ ȻĦⱯȠǤḜƉ– ƑǾƦ ḈƟⱮⱣȺŇɎ‽" (Nephew- will changed- for company?)

"I'll take a look, thank you for your input," Jim said, carefully taking back the out held file. 

"ƑɄŊ¡! ĦⱭṾɆ ⱮǾɌƐ‽" (Fun! Have more?)

"There- yes. Yes, there are more. How should I contact you, when more of these frustrating cases come up?" He asked carefully, not wanting to antagonize the possible demon. He couldn't even look at it!

"ƝɆẊŦ ŇƗǤĦȾ, Ɨ ĦⱯɅɆ– ŴḮⱢḸ ⱾǾⱠṾḜ¡!" (Next night- I have- will solve!)

"Alright then. I'll come to the roof tomorrow night to see what your solution is."

Jim was, admittedly, nervous. The Bat- an inhuman creature; a twisted mockery of something humanoid and something other; activated his fight-or-flight; made him physically ill for looking straight at it; something more shadows than anything on the physical plane- was attempting to find a solution to being unable to contact it.

So, yes, he was nervous. Rightfully so, he felt! However, despite his trepidation, he went onto the roof of the police station that night. He didn't have to wait long.

A series of chitters, chirps, and coos sounded from behind him. He turned, his breath caught in his throat, only to see a puddle of shadows, about the height of one of those chairs in the waiting room at the hospital, with pure-white eyes looking out at him.

"You said you would find a solution?" He asked, his mouth dry. Swallowing did nothing to help.

"ɎḜƧ– ƋƗĐ– ⱠØƟⱩ¡!" (Yes- did- look!)

It bounced up into a more humanoid shape and then oozed over to... What looked like a spotlight?

It looked like it had been torn out of a ceiling, with exposed wires coming out the end of it.

It... Had been hooked up to an extension cord? But the part of the extension cord that you plugged into had been taken off, and the wires had been wound into the ones from the spotlight?

"Are you sure this is safe to use?" He asked, averting his eyes as the Bat oozed across the opening, pulling back to reveal a piece of plywood, dripping a tar-like substance, with a bat precisely cut out of it.

"ɄⱾɆ¡!" (Use!)

The Bat agreed, scuttling over to the light switch by the door into the station. 

With a beleaguered sigh, he walked over and turned the light switch on. Admittedly, he had just been humoring the Bat.

He hadn't actually thought that it would work, not with the way it was wired, but he was seeing the proof: a bat symbol, projected onto the smog. It stood out, brighter than day.

"Well, I suppose that's one problem solved," he said, turning to where the Bat had been just seconds ago, but was now empty. 

"Uh... Bat?" He called out, feeling silly, and he didn't get a response. None of the shadows darkened to indicate the presence of the cryptid. He was alone.

Kate was sharp in both intellect and demeanor. She had explored Wayne Manor with Bruce when they were younger, and had found the cave system.

They had made it their very own hideaway, one of the caves, decked out in pillows and blankets.

It got uncomfortable, sitting on the cave floor, so they had drilled into the walls to hang hammocks.

Emboldened by their success, they had next done slacklines, and ropes above that to hold on to to keep their balance. In a separate, larger, cave, of course,

They had been planning on doing a zip-line next when Alfred had found them, and he had told them in no uncertain terms that they were not to go back down there until he had determined if it was structurally sound.

He had found it to be safe, but he also didn't let them drill into the cave walls anymore. 

Apparently, he had to be the one to do it, as he had the knowledge of how to make the screws go in and stay, so that they wouldn't be in a hammock and have it all fall because it wasn't secured properly. 

Why he had that knowledge, they didn't know.

With Alfred's help, they had also done a zip-line, a climbing wall with a foam pit beneath, gymnastics equipment, and all the exercise opportunities they could ever want. 

All that unorthodox training had gotten her in shape for the military.

In the military, Kate had learned many things, the least of which being don't hesitate. In the military, if you hesitated, it could get you and your entire platoon killed.

Kate had learned to forge through the hesitance, the wondering of whether or not it was the right thing to do, and actually do it.

The first time she had come back, Alfred had taken her aside, and she had started bawling.

"I know that it's either them or us, Alfie, but it still- I've killed people, Alfie, and it- I can't bear it, I can't, I- I-"

Alfred and her had talked, comparing their own service times, and the things he had to say helped.

"Miss Katherine, what you are feeling now never truly goes away, but you can learn to live with it. Tell me, do you believe in the cause? Is that which you are fighting for worth killing for?"

"I- yeah, yes, I mean, but- well- what if I fail? What if I'm not good enough? They're- they're thinking of sending me off to Afghanistan to capture a- a terrorist leader! If- if I fail there, then- then so, so many people's lives are at stake."

"Ah. I understand. I, myself, was a SOE, and later part of the SIS, or MI6, as you would likely know it." "SOE? What's that?"

She had looked it up later, and it turns out that SOE stood for Special Operations Executive.

SOE was a British organization formed in 1940 to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in World War II. 

It was dissolved in 1946.

That was when Kate started to suspect that Alfred was immortal.

It would not be the last.

After leaving West Point, she fractured her skull in a diving mishap off the coast of Coryana, a so-called "pirate nation" located in the Mediterranean Sea.

It was crudely stitched up using gold thread, but she didn't mind, not when it gave her a small ability to detect electromagnetic fields.

After that, she had been taught by various members of various special operations units, such as, but not limited to, the Green Berets, Navy SEALs, and SAS.

That was just a small part of her training; she also learned a wide variety of martial arts, including karate, Krav Maga, Muay Thai, taekwondo, and Wing Chun, as well as many things other than martial arts, such as wingsuiting, survival skills, and bomb disposal. 

So, yes, Kate was smart. She had heard, in her training, of a man going by just "Bruce", wracking up many, many, many more martial arts styles than her, and she had 14!

The rumors spoke of him training with the League of Assassins, too, and in so much more.

She knew her cousin, knew how he had dwelled on his parents' murders, knew how he had declared war on the criminals of Gotham, knew how he had gotten antsier the longer he stayed in Gotham, unable to do anything, knew how he finally got fed up and left at age 13.

When she had gotten the news that Bruce was back in Gotham, she had gone to visit him, and had noticed how utterly different he was.

It hadn't been difficult to realize that her cousin, tired but settled, for the first time since his parents had been murdered, was the Bat.

And, well, Bruce was her cousin. She wasn't about to just let him do it alone, no way. She was going to help. Whether or not he wanted her to.

While exploring the caves, they had found many other exits, and she now employed the use of one by the edge of the property to sneak towards the manor.

She had been expecting him to keep all the Bat-related paraphernalia in the caves, where no particularly intrepid reporter or newest fling could accidentally come across it, but she hadn't been expecting the sheer scope of gadgets, inventions, and miscellanea coming from him being the Bat.

She gave in to her curiosity and poked around a bit before settling down in a dramatic, high-backed chair in front of a large set of monitors to wait.

"-what do you think, Alfred? The scare tactics are working. The criminals are terrified of the Bat, in no small part due to how, with the wings, I can swoop down, grab them, and fly away with them! So, should I try to figure out how to 'drip shadows', like they think I do?"

"It is your decision, Master Bruce." "Oh, come on, what's your opinion? Your input is very helpful!"

Slowly, ominously, swiveling the chair around, she gave her opinion, "I think that you're already too far into it not to delve deeper into the scare tactics."

"K- Kate? Hi, hello, I, uh, I didn't know you were back in Gotham..." He fiddled with the lapels of his shirt under her glower.

"Why shouldn't I hide things, like my arrival back home, from you? What with you keeping from me that you finally started your crusade against crime?"

"I- er- sorry... I just... You- you'd want to join me, and..." "Damn right I want to join you, and don't you dare tell me no! Gotham's my home too, and while they were your parents, they were also my aunt and uncle!"

"I shall make tea, Miss Katherine, Master Bruce, if you would care to talk it over in a more civilized setting."

"Thanks, Alfie, we'll be up in a few minutes!" Kate said, tossing a smile at him before turning back to her cousin.

"Bruce? Don't think you're getting out of it so easily; I'm still going to want to see how you managed singular self-reliant flight, and all your other inventions. I heard that you got shot in the chest and just kept going? I doubt you would settle for a regular bullet-proof vest, if you're anything like the cousin of mine that I knew, who insisted on nothing less than this for our exercise room."

"I- okay, I'll show you my inventions, but I'm not going to let you join me! You're my cousin, I would feel terrible if you got into- into all this- because I did." He started walking, and she followed him.

"Yeah, well, how do you think I feel, with my cousin being a hero? With no one to have your back when you get in a dangerous situation?"

"A- a hero? I- me, Kate? A hero? You- no, I'm not, if anything I'm a vigilante, really, not... Not a hero. I- I could never be a hero..."

"Why not, Chiroptera? You're going out there and saving people. So what if you're using fear tactics to do it? The people of Gotham are paranoid, and it's admittedly not without cause, but they're still paranoid. Are they still so on-guard around you as they were when they started out?"

"Well... No. They avoid looking at me, though." "C'mon, Murciélago, you are purposefully making your fursona intimidating, you should expect that. What's the real problem here, Fledermaus?"

It took him a second to recover from his alter-ego being called a fursona, but he managed to answer the question.

"You're calling me a hero, Kate, and- I don't feel deserving of it. All I do is go out at night and punch some criminals, then leave them at the police station. A hero is supposed to save people, supposed to be- it's-"

He struggled to find the right words to convey what he wanted to.

"Fiction makes it seem like heroes are supposed to be pinnacles of good and righteousness, but I'm... I'm just me. I have the right tragic backstory, but, in the end, I'm still going against the law. I'm still just going out at night and punching people, delivering them to go through a justice system that is more concerned with whether you have money than if you committed a crime."

"So? You have tons of money, too. Why can't you use all that money to make the system better? Take it over and turn out the corrupt. Make it fair. Hell, if you can't achieve that with all your money, go out as the Bat and intimidate them into- well. You're smart. I'm sure you can figure out what to make them do."

They walked in silence for another minute before they entered the manor. They sat and drank their tea in some more silence, with Bruce getting progressively twitchier.

"I'm friendly with a police officer, as the Bat, and he won't even look at me! I've been presenting myself as, like, a child, or maybe a cat, but he still won't look at me!"

"So? Like I said, you probably look intimidating in your fursuit. Tell me more of your interactions with him, and I'll prove it to you."

"Well, the first time, he was being ambushed, alone, by armed child traffickers. I entered and took them all out. I created a localized EMP, and it took out the lights for the room, but it's still in the experimental stages, and, as I couldn't stay around to tie them up, I left some of my fellig- er, a rope, cable, thing?- for him to tie them up with. By the time he had done that, it had recharged, so I used it to stop all the lights and electronics in the room so I could talk to him."

Kate sighed, exasperated. Her cousin had always been dramatic. "And what did you say?"

"Well... Uh... So, you know how I said I presented myself more like a child or a cat..?"

"Nsusu, what did you say?"

"I just- I kinda ignored grammar? Like, they're saying I'm the coalescence of Gotham's sins come back to punish them, a demon, and stuff like that, so I figured, why would a demon need to know English grammar?"

"Alright. You ignored grammar rules. Right. Okay. Well, what did you say?"

"I said 'ⱲĦɎ ĦȺṼƏ ƝǾȠƐ ƑǾƦ ɃⱯȻƘ‽ ȺƂⱠḜ ĦɄɌȾ¡!', if I remember correctly."

Kate suddenly started developing a headache, pressure pulsing behind her eyes. There must be a front coming in.

"That was all you said to him?"

"No, I said, like, three sentences then. The next one was, uh...Well, I reassured him that the other team was safe, and I- uh, I kinda... I kinda scolded him for not having anyone to guard his back..?"

"Right, of course, sure. Why not. You said, three sentences? What did you say after that?"

"This is all embarrassing," he grumbled, but told her, "'ɎǾɄ ǤǬỠƉ. ɎǾɄ ḒƗḜ, ɃⱯƉ. ƑƗȠƉ– ĦƎⱠⱣ– §ⱭƑƏ¡!'."

Kate could barely think over the pounding of her head. Opening up her purse, she found a Tylenol and downed it with the rest of her tea.

"I'm alright," she waved off her cousin's concern. "That was the first time, you said? How many more?"

"Two more times. The second, he was smoking on the roof, reviewing a case, and I asked him what he had. He showed me, and I told him what had happened, but I'm pretty sure he was just humoring me when he said that he'd look into it. I told him it was fun, and asked if he had more. He said yes, but that he didn't know how he would contact me, so I told him that I'd find a solution and to meet me there on the roof the following night."

"What was your solution?" "Not the most elegant, but I took one of the spotlights from storage and spliced it with an extension cord. There's a piece of plywood covering it, with a hole cut out in the shape of a batarang, and all I have to do is look to the smog to know if he's asking to meet."

"It works, then? Oh, what am I saying, you're a genius, of course it works. But, back to our original point of contention- I want to join you."

"What would you even be called?"

"Wraith? Phantom? Nightshade, maybe? Or, you know, I could let the public name me, like you let them name you."

"Well, why do you want to join me?"

"Aside from the fact that Gotham's my home too, and I want to help clean up the streets, the corruption? You, my cousin, are going out to fight crime with no one to guard your back, like you chastised your police officer for doing. I want to be there, to have your back, to patch your wounds, to make sure you get back home after each night out."

"It's dangerous! I don't want you in the line of fire!" "I don't want you in the line of fire, but here I am asking to join you, not asking you to stop and go back to philanthropy."

"I- Kate, please. I can't- I can't handle seeing another person I love die, I only just started recovering from my parents' deaths-"

"Bruce. I may not be as skilled as you, but I am skilled, and how do you think I feel, with you going out, risking your life, to save people? Your parents were my aunt and uncle and I loved them. They're not you, though. They're not you, my cousin, who I was raised practically side-by-side with and had playdates with at least twice a week. We're closer now than I was with them, and seeing you going out and risking your life, and especially with no backup? You're like a brother to me, Bruce, I couldn't bear to lose you."

"If I may?" Alfred asked, continuing with their attention, "It would be advantageous to have someone to have your back, Master Bruce."

Kate turned back to her cousin with a smirk on her face. They both knew that she had won the argument now that she had Alfred on her side.

"Fine, but it'll take a while to make you a costume and teach you how to act sufficiently wrong," Bruce muttered, sulking. 

"Thank you, Iore! I promise you you won't regret getting a crime-fighting partner!"

The costume actually didn't take that long to make, as his 'Bat' outfit already existed, but it took a while for Kate to become bendy enough to move sufficiently wrongly, and then to ingrain it in her mind such that she wouldn't forget to move in an inhuman way when she had to concentrate on something else.

Due to having so much extra time before she could start, she spent a lot of time obsessing over her costume.

Like her cousin, she had a bat-eared helmet that came down from her head, with lenses over where the eyes would be to make hers appear white.

In addition to the helmet- unlike her cousin- she had a mask, made of a semi-flexible, plastic-like material, designed to filter the smog and any toxins she might come across. 

Because of having the mask, the helmet avoided most of her nose, but the mask contoured around her face, a dark void with the image of real-looking pearly fangs on the mask's surface.

Her boots, too, were similar, with three claws coming out the front and two in the back, with a slightly spongy sole to absorb impact and deaden sound.

Unlike her cousin's, hers had swirls of red climbing up the sides. The red was so dark that you would miss it if you just did a cursory look.

Her pants were the same as Bruce's, but for the occasional scale of the carapace that was the same red that climbed her boots.

Her chest-piece was altered to be more comfortable for the female figure, with more red scales scattered about.

Her arms were mostly the same, though it did have a metal bracer sticking out past her elbow for her to stab people with if they tried to sneak up behind her, dipped in the same anaesthetic-adjacent substance as was on the claws, and the same red detailing continuing.

Her wings, however, were the most different from that of her cousin; it was based off of real bats' wings, with some structuring from birds.

It had metal rods through it, and the supporting points were down her spine and her arms, down to her hands, as well as large shoulder guards, all of which reacted to her movements to move the wings. 

It also had flaps of the leather-like material attached only on the sides, made to catch extra air on the descent, allowing her wings to be smaller, and the inside of the wings was red. The flaps on her wings looked like the tatters of a cloak, and it made her look wraith-like. 

Kate made the inside of the wings a patchwork of differently-sized pockets, allowing her to store first-aid supplies, knives, lollipops for the children, and anything else she wanted in there. She loved having so many pockets.

The first night out was exhilarating, despite them not doing much. Just flying? Breathtaking. Looking down upon Gotham from in the sky where she blended in with the smog? She was immediately addicted.

Bruce- the Bat- had coached her on how to speak like he did, and the more she got the hang of it, the less spontaneous headaches she got, hearing it.

The first crime they stopped together was a drug deal. They had perched on roofs opposite each other, limbs jumbled up unnaturally, and they talked.

"ⱳħⱥȶ ƌǿɨƞǥ¿?" (What doing?)

Kate questioned, tilting her head like an owl would. Unnaturally far. "It's the Bat!" She heard whispered furiously, and grinned behind her mask.

"ĎƦɄḠ ĐɆⱯⱠ– ƝȺỮǤĦȾɎ, ŊⱯɄƓĦȾỸ¡!" (Drug deal- naughty, naughty!)

The Bat crowed back, and they both bared their teeth ferally at the drug dealer and drug buyer below them. They were swiveling their heads back and forth between the Bats, trying to rationalize what they were seeing.

"Dear god, th- there's two!" The one buying the drugs screeched, fleeing. Kate knew that- the Bat- would want her to go for the least dangerous option, as this was her trial run. 

She leapt off the building, descending towards the runner, and tackled him to the ground. 

Rolling, she came out on top, and sat on the buyer. She was dense with muscles after all her training, so she herself was heavy, but with the armor, the wings, and the other miscellanea? She weighed so much that she was surprised she could get off the ground.

"ƞⱥữǥħⱦƴ, ȵⱥữǥħŧɏ," (Naughty, naughty,) Kate crooned, still as a statue. She was regulating her breath so that he couldn't hear that she breathed, and the mask helped with muffling the sound of her breathing, but she couldn't help upping the creepiness factor. 

She could understand how her cousin got caught up in becoming a cryptid. It was amazing, and she felt a sadistic pleasure in scaring the criminals, despite having only done it to two so far.

"ƦȺŇ," the Bat warbled disapprovingly, "ɃⱯƋ. ⱤƐĦȺɃ ƗŊ ⱣⱢⱯȻƎ ǾƑ¡!"

"I- yes, yes, I swear I'll go to rehab instead of buying more drugs, just please- please, please, let me go-" he sobbed.

"ẘɇ ḩǿłƌ– ɏøữ– ȿŵɛⱥɍ," Kate promised ominously, and, with a chirp of agreement from the Bat, they ascended into the skies.

He would go to rehab, never to touch another drug, too scared of the menacing mirages of the night. 

He called them many things in hushed whispers with haunted eyes, looking like a hunted man, but never after the sun had set. 

The most prevalent among them phantom, specter, apparition.

They cycled through many names for her. The one that stuck, however, was Ilmestys*. The Bat and Ilmestys, otherworldly creatures of justice and vengeance.

His tale was the first, but not the last, of the Bats to be whispered by the wary, those either toeing the line of legality and illegality or fully criminal in their dealings.

Ilmestys, once it had settled in, was much more violent than the Bat. It was said that the red staining its form was from all the blood, so much so that it would no longer wash out.

The Bat was a protector, fierce one moment and childlike the next, with broken, barely-comprehensible speech.

Ilmestys, too, was a protector, and certainly fierce, but Ilmestys seemed more human than the Bat, especially with the fiery red river of "hair" falling down its back.

It would take down criminals with quick strikes and restrain them, then sit back on its haunches and purr at the civilians until they were calm. 

They all saw flashes of black-red trailing them in the skies, but the general consensus was that it made them feel safe, like they were being watched over. Protector, the women and children called her, Guardian.

Ilmestys, Protector, Guardian, or whatever she was called, Ilmestys was accepted, just as the Bat had been.

They watched over Gotham, over the citizens of Gotham, and they were warily accepted as part of life in Gotham.

When she asked about his day, he mostly complained about the station's coffee, or the way that his co-workers treated him, or something about the Johnson twins. 

Occasionally, however, he started to doze off for a few seconds before jerking back awake. It was then that she managed to get him to talk about other things, confidential things. 

She felt guilty, of course, but she wanted to be involved in her father's life, to know about the things that made him stay so late at the precinct, to know what was making him work so much overtime, to know what it was that was taking her father away from her!

Barbara was a smart girl, and always kept her ears open for anything interesting. 

Most of the time it was just gossip at her school, and sometimes it took a little hacking to check to see if it was anything worthwhile, but occasionally there were things interesting enough to toss into conversation. 

She did it with a casual air, so that her dad wouldn't immediately notice that it wasn't more than a little tidbit.

In reality, she had turned over the information in her head, again and again, until she figured out a way to talk about it to her father without letting him know that she was snooping- she didn't want him to be disappointed in her- but still give him the clues in such a way that it wouldn't take too much for him, a detective, to connect her seemingly unrelated information to a case.

She kept her ears open, and occasionally some of the things that she heard were confirmed by her father.

One of these things was the existence of the Bats. Or, well, the Bat and Ilmestys.

Barbara was a smart girl, but she was still a girl, not yet an adult, and she came up with an... Ingenious... Way to help her father better.

What else could it be but becoming one of the very vigilantes helping clean up the streets of Gotham?

After a little digging, she found that there were no pictures of either the Bat or Ilmestys better than there were of the supposed sasquatch, so she set out with a camera and a good memory.

Finding another kid, a boy at the very least four years younger than her, with black hair, blue eyes, expensive clothes, and a super fancy camera, was concerning.

"What are you doing? Your clothes and the camera are very clearly expensive, so you're not a street rat, so either you're out here in a very out of your depth attempt at pre-teen rebellion, or you're here to take pictures of something with your fancy camera. So, which is it?"

"Oh, you are good at investigating, too? Are you... Also here to take pictures of the Bat and Ilmestys? Because, if so, the Bat is coming this way in another minute or two, so you should get down. Unless you want to be seen, of course, I won't judge, but that does not sound very conducive to taking good pictures."

She blinked for a second at the very verbose way he talked, clearly from a rich and elite family, but answered by getting down and hiding in the shadows with him, mirroring her camera to his.

Sure enough, the Bat came flying by, wings spread wide against the smoggy sky, the edges blurring into the darkness of night, far enough away that hardly any of the still air was displaced for them to feel it.

She blinked, and the Bat had passed them by, too shocked to do anything but stare. "Damn it, I didn't get any pictures."

"What are you trying to take pictures of them for?" The boy inquired, understandably wary of her, a strange girl on the roofs of Gotham in the middle of the night.

She stared at him, trying to gauge why he had asked the question. He seemed, almost, protective of the cryptids?

"...My father is a police officer, and he works so much overtime I hardly ever get to see him. I want to become a vigilante, like them, and I was going to take pictures of the Bat and Ilmestys so that I could model my design after theirs," she admitted, looking down at her old and worn camera in disappointment at missing her chance.

"I have quite a few pictures of them, if you are willing to meet up to receive them from me," the boy told her.

"Sure! Ah, that would be great, thank you. When and where? Oh, and I don't know your name!"

"We could meet here Tuesday night, at the same time, if you are amenable? What name are you planning on using as a vigilante?"

"Awesome, I'll be here. Uh, I'm planning on using Batgirl, 'cause the costume I'm planning is going to be based off of the Bat and Ilmestys, and, y'know, they're humanoid bat creatures."

"Very well, Batgirl, you may call me Myotis. I look forward to meeting with you again."

"See ya, Myotis!" With that part of her plan figured out, she wound her way back home to figure out what pieces of clothing she had that were black. After all, that would be her color scheme, if she were to base her costume off of the Bat.

Most of her clothing was in dark colors, but not black. She didn't really have any black clothing, more in various shades of dark gray.

(Nearly everyone in Gotham had, at one point, tried to blend in with the shadows, and found out for themself that dark grays and dark colors with slight striations, such as Gotham's version of heather gray, blended in much easier.

Speaking of, how did the Bats merge with the shadows like that? Sure, the shadows in Gotham were darker, that was common knowledge, but still).

She could go out and buy black clothing, but, without pictures of the Bats to reference, she would likely have to return some of it and buy other clothing. That wouldn't be ideal. But she didn't want to wait!

With a pout, she put away all the clothes she had gotten out and then flopped onto her bed with a sigh. It was only a couple more days.

Only a couple more days...

Barbara got more and more jittery the less time she had left to wait, and less impatient. In fact, she began to second-guess her idea. 

What if she got injured? She was doing this to help her father, to ease his workload so that she could see him more, but if she got injured then that would worry him. And she didn't want to worry him!

Scrambling up the fire escape as quietly as she could, she scanned the roof. Empty.

Her mind whirred through the worst circumstances. Had Myotis forgotten? Bailed on her? Told the Bats?

She hoped not, Ilmestys seemed scary. Scarier than the Bat, despite, or perhaps because of, the Bat coming first. That was why she planned to model her costume after it, after all.

Hearing the quiet creaking of the fire escape, her head swiveled over to it and she stared.

She didn't blink, eyes open as wide as she could force them in an attempt to force them to adjust to the Gotham night's darkness. 

The darkness of Gotham's nights was heavy, laying over the city like a weighted blanket, as though trying to smother out any light.

Used to Chicago's light-polluted nights, with street lights every twenty feet, her eyes struggled to perceive much of anything in this heavy, suffocating darkness.

A head popped up, over the edge of the roof, and he froze as their eyes met.

After a few seconds, she recognised him to be Myotis and blinked, stopping straining her eyes to see in the oppressive darkness of a Gotham night.

Unknown to her, 'Myotis' had frozen like a deer in headlights upon seeing her because of how inhuman she looked. 

The light of the moon had managed to shine through the smog, casting her figure in sharp relief, and managing to hit her choroid just right. 

The choroid, humans' version of a tapetum lucidum, causing the red-eye effect in photography despite causing weak reflectivity, nowhere near enough to cause eyeshine in normal circumstances, had seemed to glow ever-so-slightly with the light of the moon.

Paired with her posture, defensive and twisted to look at him, with her head cocked to the side slightly, she seemed like a more humanoid version of the Bats. 

Then she blinked and relaxed, ruining the illusion. Even still, he remained spooked, the illusion superimposed over his vision like what happens if you look at a bright light and then look away.

"You have the pictures?" Barbara- Batgirl- asked, in an attempt to knock Myotis out of his funk.

"Oh- ah- yes, I do have them. I brought a few with each of them separately, and a few of them together," he explained, bringing them out of his pockets and tentatively holding them out to her.

She took the pictures like they were precious (they were to him-) and gently shuffled through them.

She paused on one, entranced. The Bat was playing- it looked like tag- with Ilmestys, airborne.

The Bat's back arched out, away from Ilmestys' outstretched claws, into nearly a crescent shape, and its wings were large and puffed up, as though it had been startled. 

Ilmestys' posture, long and elongated, stretched out in an attempt to 'tag' the Bat, seemed like it had beat its wings once or twice to propel itself, then stopped and pinned its wings against its body, like an arrow, allowing its momentum to carry it in an attempt to 'tag' the Bat.

In an attempt that failed, it appeared.

"They are cryptids," Myotis spoke, tearing her attention away from the breathtaking photo.

"They embrace it. They do not pretend to be human to ease anyone's mind. If you are to pretend to be one of them, one of the colony, you will need to feel inhuman, like they do. I wish you good luck in your endeavor, and bid you adieu."

With a nod that looked like he was restraining himself from bowing, he climbed down, leaving her alone with her thoughts and the pictures of Gotham's cryptid vigilante protectors.

On top of making a costume, she had to figure out how to seem inhuman, despite being anything but.

With a groan, she flopped onto her bed, mentally cataloguing what she would need for her cryptid costume.

She would need padding for sure. Knee pads, elbow pads, padding to wear underneath her clothes, probably a helmet, too...

Her clothes. She would need black, or at least very nearly so, clothes, but Ilmestys had red as an accent color...

("Accent color", she said! When she had heard the rumors of Ilmestys being permanently dyed red from all the blood she got splattered with! Had this whole idea of hers been draining her of any and all common sense?),

She could go with an accent color too. Did she want to? What color would she use? Just another thing to figure out, great.

What would she use for her 'wings'? It would need to seem like the Bats', so it would need to be strong but pliable, so definitely a fabric.

Over the next couple of weeks, Barbara assembled her costume. For the padding under her clothes, she used a couple of old blankets, wrapping them around her arms, legs, and torso.

She kept it in place with a liberal usage of safety pins, and she also actually tied it around her legs, torso, and arms with some pieces of fabric she would paint to match the rest of her costume.

She had asked around, and found an old bicycle helmet- as well as some knee and elbow pads used for scootering- and, using a mix of epoxy and modeling clay, she had filled in the holes in the bicycle helmet and poked out mimicry ears / horns, like that of the Bats', that she had made out of the same material. 

She had wanted to wear a hoodie, but didn't know how to keep it from falling off, and this presented a solution to two of her problems!

She could cut slits in the top of the hoodie and poke the 'ears' out of, which would keep the hood in place, and it would also obscure her head, making the fact that she was wearing a helmet with ears much harder to make out.

She wore the helmet over top of a balaclava she had altered to suit her purpose, one example of which being that she sowed a bridge between the eyes and covered the eye-holes with a white, see-through material she had found in the discount bin at a fabric store.

Barbara had bought a pair of hiking boots at the thrift store, a dark purple pair that were just a smidge too big.

It was coming up on the time that it became hot and dry, which led to the occasional day that the smog cleared and the sun shone, so there was a sale on parasols.

She bought a dozen, to use the rods inside for her 'wings', and also some leather from a craft shop to make it look like actual wings.

As for her clothes, she found some dark purple athletic wear, bracers, like for archery, and shinguards, like for soccer.

Unfortunately, some of it she could only find in bright, eye-catching yellow, which wasn't ideal, but spray paint existed.

With the help of a pair of scissors, a needle and thread, safety pins, an epoxy-modeling clay mixture, elastic, and spray paint, she finally had her Batgirl costume ready to go.

Unfortunately, that still left her two problems: how to seem like she wasn't human, and how to talk like the Bats.

"CʳEᵉPʸ?" Barbara tried, frustration mounting at her inability to talk like the Bats. "Hrraunli!" She tried again, and this time it came out like a big cat's snarl, nothing like the word she had tried to say.

"C'rhe-" she ended up coughing, unable to finish the single, not very long, even, word. 

Taking a deep breath in an attempt to calm down, she reminded herself that she was doing this for her father.

Okay, so that approach wasn't working. Time to try something else. She could maybe try making a voice modifier, or getting one, if she had any idea on how to begin trying to do either.

She had been trying to copy the Bats' way of speaking, but, if the way she was failing was any indication, she likely couldn't speak like them.

Couldn't speak like a cryptid trying to speak English and only barely being able to be understood.

So, that was out, but what was to say that she needed to emulate the way the Bats spoke?

After all, Batgirl would clearly be an adolescent of whatever species the Bats were, and no one knew that, so who was to say that an adolescent would speak like the Bats did?

If the adolescents would still be learning to speak, then Batgirl's speech would have to be broken, choppy. Likely intermixed with chirps and squeaks and whatever she thought the Bats' own language was like.

"Khur'reA- eeeee'pii!" Barbara tried. It was better, definitely, going from a growl to a squeakier, high-pitched trill, almost. She still wasn't sure it was what she wanted, though. Or if it was intelligible enough.

"Creepy? Creepy? Creepy? No... Creepy?" She tested once again, weary of the constant trial and error, but forging through it for the sake of her father.

"Better," she sighed, "and it might have to be enough." Barbara wasn't sure she had enough patience to keep trying, or to keep it up on patrol, once she started, but at least her speech would be choppy as Batgirl, due to supposedly starting to learn to speak English, only saying enough for her meaning to be understood.

On to the next obstacle: acting creepy enough to be considered inhuman, like the Bats were. Yay.

The first thing she searched was "how to turn people off", which got her results about people trying to get people to stop flirting with them. Entirely unhelpful.

Barbara kept on re-wording her search, and eventually found out about contortionism, which seemed like something that would be helpful for seeming inhuman, but it wasn't enough. 

Sure, contorting her body into shapes that humans couldn't normally could totally creep out criminals, but it was nowhere near the level of inhuman-ness that the Bats reached.

Nor would it likely be enough to knock the criminals off their game enough for her to gain an advantage. Not if they were used to the Bat and Ilmestys.

Also, learning contortionism took a long time. If she was really dedicated, she could be able to see some progress within a few weeks, but that slight amount more flexibility wouldn't really help, and set back her timeline. 

Plus, if she was fighting, it would be unlikely that she could remember to use some of the contortionist moves, rather than move as she would normally. No, it wasn't enough.

Barbara had spent quite a while pondering on the subject, searching for an answer, but she hadn't found one.

The closest thing she could think of... Well, there was no guarantee.

Despite having no guarantee, she still found herself donning her wandering clothes and slipping out into the darkness of night.

It took her a few nights before she found Myotis again. He wasn't happy to see her- he looked wary- and he had seemed spooked for all of their last meeting. Had she done something to scare him off?

"Myotis! I'm sorry to intrude upon your time like this, but I'm having trouble acting creepy, and, well, you've been taking pictures of the Bats for a while, so I was wondering if you could help me?" she blurted out, twisting the fabric of her shirt in her hands anxiously. What if he said no?

"You sought me out... To inquire as to methods of striking fear into the hearts of criminals? Am I correct in my synopsis of your plea?"

"I- yes. You have it right. Please? I don't- I hardly ever see my dad, he's so overworked, and I just... I really want to have him home more, to be able to see him more often, and this- this seems like the best course of action to me," she explained.

"Ah- no need to explain, I was simply perplexed as to your reason for seeking me out. Those who look for me on these streets in the dark of night hardly have the purest intentions."

He paused, head tilted to the side as he thought, and she bounced in place nervously, awaiting his answer.

She didn't really have any contingency plans for if he turned her away.

"I would, perhaps, have some tips for you... Nothing so significant as to have you act as the Bats do, being just an observer of them as I am, but enough for you to get an understanding of how to act inhuman, for you to build off of."

Barbara leaned forward, intensity in her posture and with her eyes fixed upon the young boy before her.

"Now, most of this has not come from the Bats, but they are not the only ones to use intimidation tactics, even if theirs are, ah, rather more peculiar."

Myotis paused again, re-organizing his thoughts. "Quick, jerky movements, as though you are a puppet whose movements are dictated by some higher force, I would recommend. The unpredictability would likely aid you."

She nodded, mentally taking notes. "Widen your eyes- no, not so large as that, just barely more than they are when open normally- and stare. No, no, you are simply staring. You need to stare. Here, I shall demonstrate it for you."

He turned to look at her and widened his eyes slightly, just enough that she could see them better, and then all the emotion extinguished, leaving him with dead eyes. She couldn't help but to shudder.

He wasn't done yet, though.

Tilting his head downwards, he grinned, a terrible, awful thing that stretched across his face, long and sharp and horrible.

His eyes snapped to hers, vibrant in the dark night, and she nearly stepped backwards because of the primal fear that seeing him like that invoked.

Then he relaxed, his smile becoming once again a smile, not a baring of teeth, and his eyes stopped being so dead. 

Despite Myotis now appearing a human child once again, it did nothing to alleviate her unease.

"You said... You said that most of- that- you didn't learn from the Bats? Where did you learn it from, then, if you don't mind me asking?"

He looked at her, really looked. Judging her. Hadn't she already proven herself to be trustworthy?

What secret was he hiding that made him think he had to re-evaluate how much he trusted her?

"To those that wander these streets in the dark of night, I am known as an omen. As Moros."

Barbara's knee-jerk instinct was to flee. She'd heard of Moros, the Omen of Gotham, the Omen of the Bats, of Myotis' many names. She listened, after all.

The criminals in Gotham's underbelly, the rare few that managed to escape the Bat and Ilmestys, spoke of him.

They avoided using the name Moros in favor of calling him Omen.

They said that he was a spirit that they weren't in time to save, and that had decided to aid the Bats, to make sure that the fate that befell him befell no one else.

There were many rumors surrounding Moros, but none of them even entertained the possibility of the Omen being anything but unnatural, supernatural. 

How could Moros be anything but, after all, when he was seen to watch criminals' illicit activities from near-inaccessible high-up places, and to vanish just as soon as having been observed, with no indication of the Omen ever having been there? 

When either the Bat or Ilmestys descended upon those observed criminals near-immediately?

When any that managed to escape the terrors of the night, awoke outside the police station, bound, the next time they went to sleep after re-offending?

Yes, there were many rumors surrounding Moros. Looking at the Omen before her, she couldn't help but think that the Harbinger didn't look all that ominous. The Presage looked like a normal human boy.

"Moros," she finally spoke, the word falling off her tongue heavily, awkwardly; the word foreign in both origin and in how often- hardly ever, closer to never- she said it. Omen was more familiar to her tongue, being not nearly-taboo to say as Moros was. 

"That is me, yes,"  the boy before her agreed. Looking at him, he seemed naught more than any normal child. Barbara- Batgirl- couldn't reconcile him with Moros, the Omen, the Dooming One, the One-With-Many-Titles.

"So, you must be really qualified to teach me how to seem inhuman," she finally settled on saying.

What else should she have done? Turned tail and ran away screaming? No, Batgirl was not a coward.

He also liked to ambush her when she was getting lax, saying that the scum of Gotham's underbelly would do their best to catch her off-guard.

That he was just preparing her, and that if she didn't like it she could leave.

Ears strained for the slightest sound, and aura flowing around her like kelp in a current, she was ready for him. However and whenever he tried to ambush her.

Quiet breathing-!

Turning around and crouching at the same time, his swing just went wide. She grabbed it and yanked him towards her.

His balance upset, he smoothly transitioned into a roll- feet coming towards her face-!

Ducking down, she grabbed his legs. Twisting, his legs still clamped under her left arm, she planted her right foot on his back, forcing his face into the gravel of the top of the roof.

Darting forward, she grabbed his left wrist, then his right. Pushing them forward, with an iron grip on his wrists, she prevented him from using them for leverage.

It was awkward for them both, but she didn't care. Not if it meant that she won.

He had said that she could go out on the streets as Batgirl once she won against him, so long as she met his conditions.

He wiggled in her hold, but she added more pressure and he went limp.

Releasing him, she quickly placed her foot on his head before he could do anything.

If he had been a real criminal, Barbara would have kicked his head, likely giving him a concussion, but he would have been enough out of it for her to tie him up with the zip-ties she had gotten at the hardware store and was planning to keep in her pockets.

"You won against me," Moros admitted.

"Can you do it again?" he called back to her, having run away.

Likely acting as the accomplice to the criminal that he would have been playing, that she would have taken down had the scenario they had been acting out had been real.

Running after him, she tailed him from the roofs, appearing to be nothing more than another shadow in the night.

Barbara tracked him down to an alley where he had tried to hide.

He knew that it wouldn't work, but that wasn't the point.

Crouching on the roof behind him, she jumped down. He evaded her, and she rolled into a stand.

Upon looking up, she found a knife to be pointed at her, and she could feel her eyes widen involuntarily.

Taking a closer look, she realized that the 'knife' was a prop one, like they sold in Halloween stores, and was made of plastic.

It didn't matter, though. They were acting like this was real, and that meant that she had to evade the knife as best she could, and if he got her somewhere that would be life-threatening, or that would leave her to his mercy, then he won.

Baring her teeth in a farce of a smile, she churr-churr-churred, the cooing, condescending mockery of laughter unnerving even to herself.

She took advantage of him being shaken and lunged forwards, twisting his wrist and plucking the knife out of his hand.

Throwing it in the direction of the opening to the alley, she grabbed him by the neck with her now-free hand, and waited.

Moros tried to free himself, but he failed.

She waited, counting down the seconds, and let him go once he would have been unconscious had the scenario been real.

He rubbed his neck briefly before silently running into the night. With a sigh, she pursued him.

This situation was the trickiest so far, with Moros having entered an abandoned warehouse.

There was too much room to maneuver in, too much space for her to ambush him easily.

She could drop on him from the rafters, but it was too tall for her to drop from without hurting herself, and she didn't have anything to slow her fall, being not in her costume as she was.

Carefully slipping through a broken window, she twisted around on the ledge, until she was facing the wall, and slowly climbed down.

If this were real, she would be in danger from Moros. It was fact.

However, this wasn't real, and she wouldn't be doing this if it was. Not out of costume, certainly, and the 'wings' of the costume would help break her fall and slow her down.

Barbara would have to test to see how high she could fall from with the aid of her costume's 'wings' without feeling in danger of getting hurt if she landed wrong...

She dismounted from the wall, and turned around to find Moros pointing a gun at her.

Forcing down the fear, she countered it with logic that he wouldn't shoot her, and that the gun probably wasn't loaded.

It wouldn't work if the situation was real, rather than them imitating it, so she would have to come up with something for that situation.

"Wh- what the hell are you?" Moros asked with a convincingly frightened voice and body language, the gun in his hands wavering as his hands shook.

"Ba-a-a-a-tgirl," she chirped, the as leaping off her tongue like the rat-tat-tat-tat of a machine gun.

"He-e-e-ell you-ou are a-a-a crimina-a-a-al." The words, garbled with Ĝotham's help, didn't sound condemning, but rather disappointed, and she pushed it out into her aura too, along with a soothing, smothering feeling of don't fight.

Moros' hand wavered, the tip of the gun lowering slightly. It seemed to only take her one step to cross the distance that ought to have taken her at least three, and she twisted the gun out of his hands, throwing it away from them.

She pounced, momentum carrying the two of them down to the ground, where she wrestled him onto his back, and held him immobile.

Just to prove that she could, Barbara took out a length of string and looped it around his wrists, the way she had him pinned keeping his struggles from freeing him.

Had it been real, she would have won the fight, and he would have been tied up and handed over to the police.

Stepping off of him, she watched him keenly, ready to tackle him if he tried to take off again.

"Congratulations," Moros told her as he stretched like a cat, "you passed. I give you my blessing to go out in the night to hinder crime. Provided you allow me to look over your costume before you go out in it, and to supervise you for your first few weeks out."

"Wait, really? I passed your test? You approve of me being a vigilante now that I am 'adequately trained'?" 

Barbara couldn't believe it. She had been working with him to get ready for what felt like months, and now he was saying that she was done? That she was ready?

It had seemed like she would never meet his standards, his requirements.

"You beat me in hand-to-hand, whilst I had a knife, and then again with me possessing a gun, and nearly all of the criminals out on the streets are less trained than I am. It would be foolish of me not to. However, this does not mean that I will allow you to slack. We shall meet once a week, with an increase in intensity or frequency or both, if I find that you have."

"I- yeah, that's good with me. You said you want to look over my costume before I go out in it? What about here, tomorrow night? Or, just, at our usual spot?"

"There shall be a drug deal happening here overeve. As such, it would be unwise to meet here at such a time. Our normal rooftop and time shall suffice."

"Overeve-? No, forget it. What I want to know is how you know there will be a drug deal going down here tomorrow night and why you brought me here tonight if a drug deal is going to go down right here so soon?"

"My reputation is not unearned, and it would not do for you to forget it. As for why I brought you here now? You underestimate your skill in pursuance. And for another, you shall soon be taking on drug deals, you ought to acclimate to the idea of being so close to such dangerous criminal endeavors."

"I... I suppose that makes sense," she reluctantly admitted, "but what if some of them had come here to prepare for it? I'm not in my costume, which has more padding than what I am wearing right now."

"Tell me, Batgirl..." Moros inquired, diverting the conversation away from her question.

"What was it that you did as I was pointing the gun at you? One of your eyes glowed purple, and I felt disappointed in myself, like giving up and starting again. If you had known how to do it before now, you would have utilized it in our fights." 

"Or maybe I was waiting until a serious situation to spring it on you," Barbara countered, mentally reeling from the reveal that one of her eyes glowed purple while she was using her aura ability. 

How had she not noticed? She had been practicing, cataloguing what the different colors meant, in a mirror.

"I know that you are extremely adaptable, and that, once I used it, I would lose the element of surprise."

"That could be so, but I do not find it to be likely. Stop trying to talk around it: what was it that you did?"

"I... You're right, I did discover it not long ago. As for what it is..." She hesitated.

Not necessarily because she didn't trust him, but because, if she talked about it out loud, then that would mean that it was real.

And that meant that everything to do with Ĝotham was real, and she was already freaked out by the possibility of it being real.

"Yes?" Moros prompted her to continue, and she swallowed, trying to swallow her apprehension along with her saliva.

"It's- well, it's a couple different things, but it all has to do with auras," she blurted out.

His aura went from light green to shiny silver and light pink, with the dark purple as ever-present in his aura as always.

"You influenced my emotions... You influenced my aura? Pray tell, how did you do so, and how did you gain such a skill?"

"Well... I gained it because of Ĝotham, either as a- a consolation prize of some sort for being ċhanged against my will, or as a side-effect of Her stopping the ċhanges, once it was safe to do so, like I asked, since She wasn't able to un-do it..."

Barbara shook her head to clear it.

"As far as I have discovered, I can push emotions into my aura as I expand it to influence others' emotions, and... Yes? Go ahead and ask."

"'Expand it'? What do you mean by that? Oh, I understand suffusing the air with emotions," he waved his hand in a 'shoo' or 'go away' motion, "it's like pheromones, but in such a way that works with humans."

"I... Yeah, I suppose so, kind of? I have to focus on projecting the emotions I want while expanding my aura, though I haven't tried expanding my aura and seeing how others react to that without purposely projecting any emotions, so it is possible it could work like that and I just haven't discovered it yet- what, why are you looking at me like that? You yourself said that it was new, and it is!"

She derailed slightly from her explanation to admonish him.

"Uh, anyway... Right. What I mean by expanding my aura is, like... I flare it? Does that make sense? Because, normally it only wafts off of your body by, like, a foot. It doesn't go far."

"If you 'expand' your aura, that implies that your aura has enough metaphysical material to 'unfold' away from you, and that implies both that, the farther away from you you extend it, the weaker its influence gets, and that you could "tear off" pieces of your aura and attach them to things or people, that you can then track through it."

"Hold that thought, I had one of my own," Barbara told him distractedly, repeatedly pushing out her aura just to get a feel for it, and then did the reverse, pulling in her aura. 

It felt like she had engaged her core, except much more distracting. It wanted to be free, not confined, and, the longer that she held it in, the more uncomfortable it became.

She barely managed to pull out her pocket mirror and flip it open before her hold on her aura slipped and her aura rushed free, bright white suffusing her aura.

"What was it that you just did? You went blank. I couldn't read you, through your body language nor your expression, despite knowing that I ought to be able to. It was not that you weren't expressing anything, but rather that it seemed to be in a language I do not know..."

"Really? Well, that confirms my theory that sensing auras is a common, passive ability."

"Your theory does appear to be based in fact, yes. However, it does not make sense. If your theory is true, does that mean that the ability to read body language is all reading auras? Body language, lip reading... It can be trained. Does that mean that reading auras is a trainable ability, or just its divisions?"

"This is all new to me. If I find out, or have another revelation, I'll let you know, but I know about as much as you do on this subject."

"I suppose," Moros relented, "however, if you discover anything new about your aura ability, or anything to do with auras, I expect you to tell me. Now, when have you been considering starting out as Batgirl?"

"What?" Barbara asked, startled at the sudden change of topic.

"Oh, um. I was thinking of starting on Friday night? Friday and Saturday night, Tuesday night, and then every other night?"

"Hm. Well, you will just have to try it out and see if it works for you. If it does not and I see you flagging, or getting sloppy, however, I will make you change it to every fourth night until you recover, and then afterwards you will get two nights' break between outings as Batgirl. Do you understand?"

"Yeah, I understand, but why are you so insistent about it? We hardly even know each other."

"Running yourself ragged will only make your father concerned for you, jeopardize your health, put the people that you are saving in more danger, attract the attention of the Bats to you, make yourself a target, and show that I have done a poor job training you, if you cannot recognize your limits and know when to stop, when to take some time and recuperate." 

"Oh... Alright. I suppose that all makes sense. Anyway, see you tomorrow night at our usual place and time," Barbara called back as she smoothly parkoured away, only having to detour a couple of times to lose Moros. He was always testing her.

– – – – –

"So? How is it?" She asked nervously, slowly turning for Moros.

To an outsider, the scene may have seemed comedic: a pre-teen girl in what appeared to be a cosplay nervously showing off her costume to a younger boy on a rooftop in the middle of the night.

"Hm. Fairly decent for what it is and what you had available to you, but the 'wings' are delicate and unmaneuverable, likely to break with a single strike. The blankets under your clothes are likely going to be prone to slipping, provide no sort of protection from anything other than blunt force and perhaps shallow cuts, as well as restricting your movement, and getting in the way. The boots are too big. And, I cannot help but to notice, you have not a single weapon of any kind with you.”

"I- yeah, that's all correct. How do I fix it? I don't- I- like you said, I did the best with what I had available to me. What can I do to make it better?"

Moros looked at her, really looked. He scrutinized her, and she wasn't sure what he saw, but he shook his head.

"There is nothing more for you to do. Were you doing this alone, you would go out in this and, more likely than not, get injured. Whether or not it would stop you... Well. That prospective future is not ours. Meet me here in the night after two days, as Batgirl and yourself both."

"Wh-" the question she was going to ask trailed off at Moros' disappearance, at him fading into the shadows. 

Barbara asking him if he had just popped into existence from the abyss had been a joke at the time, mostly, but now?

After seeing him take a step back into the shadows and seemingly unravel from existence, into the shadows?

It had her doubting how much of a joke it was.

Still, she was in too deep to back out. At this point, she didn't really have a choice- she had to become Batgirl- and even if she did, she probably would have chosen to continue on to being Batgirl, anyway. 

Nothing more to do, at this point, than to see why Moros wanted to meet up again.

– – – – –

She approached their rooftop cautiously, not knowing what to expect.

Of course she wouldn't; it was Moros! He was unpredictable and feral and unnerving and inhuman.

The sight that greeted her didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary, well, except for the pile beside him.

"Do you have your costume?" He asked, and she opened her mouth to reply, but the words got stuck in her throat, so she held up the bag she had brought with her, instead.

Snatching it from her, he laid it out on the rooftop, where it looked rather pathetic.

He put the blankets to the side, along with the safety pins that she had been using to keep them in place.

From the pile beside him, he pulled out something. At first glance, it appeared to be nothing more than a shirt, but upon another, it flowed oddly in his hands, inviting curiosity.

"Steel silk. You would not have heard of it, but it is manufactured silk and steel, 500 times smaller than a human hair- half the thinness of actual spider silk- woven in an overlapping pattern for maximum protection, and dyed dark purple."

He held it out to her, and she realized as she took it that it was both a shirt and pants.

"Surely- surely this is expensive? I can't- why are you doing this for me? You trained me, and now you're giving me this, which has to be expensive, but you didn't have to do either of those things, and I just can't figure out why. What do you have to gain from this?"

"I have lived in Gotham for longer than you have been alive, and I have seen its highs and lows. After Bruce Wayne's parents were killed, everyone mourned. The city was gray and dreary, even more so than normal, which in turn caused more crime. More crime equals more tragedy, and more tragedy equals more crime."

He paused for a second before continuing. "Bruce Wayne came out of hiding for a bit, and started working as the CEO of Wayne Enterprises, to help clean up Gotham, to get people jobs, to get people out of crime."

"Did it work?" Barbara couldn't help but ask. She may not be sure about Moros' age, about whether or not he experienced it or whether he was simply telling her the stories his parents told him, but either way it felt like the truth, and she needed to know.

"For a time, yes. However, an everyday worker's salary is less than you get from crime, and as people started realizing this, they started trickling back into crime. Gotham has always festered with darkness and ill intent, but it never really recovered from Martha and Thomas Wayne's deaths. After his failed attempt to help Gotham, Bruce Wayne left."

"What? He left?" She asked, befuddled. "But... He always seems so dedicated to helping the city, and its inhabitants, whenever he is interviewed, or in his policies..."

"He is. Make no mistake about that. Gotham grime runs in his blood, and he returned in force to help the city once again. Perhaps he left to research economics and the like, or perhaps he went on a world tour. We may never know. Whatever he left for, he was not the same upon his return."

"Not the same how?" She had become invested, somehow, without knowing.

Perhaps it was Moros' storytelling, or perhaps it was the story being told. Either way, she needed to know.

"Before he left, he was charming, insightful, and brilliant. He always had a witty comeback, and, on the rare occasion that he did not know something about a subject, he asked for you to explain and listened rapturously, soaking up every piece of information you dropped. The next time you encountered him, he would be a master in the subject, talking about thesis-level theory in the subject with ease."

"I can't imagine that. I've seen him on tv, of course, and he seems... Well... Kind of air-headed. He still knows what he is talking about, and he is enthusiastic about the subject of jobs and Wayne Enterprises, but he gets easily distracted, and he is... Well... A playboy now, isn't he?"

"That he is, or, at least, that is what he wants everyone to think. I cannot speak as to whether it is the truth or simply an act, however I can say that he knows more about more things than when he left, and is still dedicated to the well-being of Gotham's citizens."

He shook his head to clear it.

"Ah, but I digress. With his return, and his new policies, people flocked to WE for jobs, and crime dropped. Homeless shelters, orphanages, charities, non-profits, clinics, anything beneficial for the people you could name, he started one. Gotham benefitted."

"Gotham doesn't seem too bad, now, not like the stories my dad was telling me to try to prepare me. But, if Wayne's return helped so much, how come my dad is working so much overtime?"

"Gotham benefitted by Bruce Wayne's return, that is true. However, there are those that benefit from others' suffering, and they began to strike back at Bruce Wayne any way they could. Arson, robberies, planting of drugs... People began to fear going to Bruce Wayne's charitous places, lest they be punished by those that thrive in the underworld for the supposed crime of attempting to get help. Your father was likely brought in in an attempt to minimize and prevent the strikes. However, what they did not understand, is that law enforcement is not trusted, is not to be trusted, here in Gotham."

Barbara grimaced, knowing just how true that was from her father's complaints about how his co-workers tried to sabotage him and his operations, his paperwork, really, anything they could.

"And then, four months after Bruce Wayne returned, the Bat surfaced for the first time. A couple of muggings, a robbery, a drug deal. Nothing big, not compared to the sheer amount of crime in Gotham. Back then, they were laughed at, when they talked about what happened to them, what supposedly apprehended them. Nevertheless, it kept happening, and rumors began to spread."

"My father didn't believe the criminals' testimonies of how they were apprehended. He thought, at first, that it was just a guy in a costume playing vigilante."

"As did the criminals. However, as more and more began to be apprehended, and actually put away, a fair few, those that managed to bribe their way out told unbelievable stories. Things settled down for a while, until Ilmestys showed up, around a year later, and the stories seemed too exaggerated, rather more like something out of a horror movie than something that could occur in real life."

Barbara nodded in agreement. She kept her ear to the ground for anything about either of the Bats, and the things she heard about Ilmestys were straight-up sickening.

"Even now, the average civilian will scoff when you ask them their opinion on the Bats, but, somewhere around every one in four, they will whisper to you about how one of the Bats saved them. From a mugging, a drug deal gone wrong, a robbery, a crazed lunatic holding them at gunpoint... If you name it, there is a person in this city that holds that story close to their chest. That holds the truth that there are creatures, beings, protecting and guarding this city, close to their heart."

"And did it help, do you think? I mean, I know that it did, but did it help with Wayne's charities and stuff?"

"Oh, yes. It very much did. With the combination of keeping WE's civilian-beneficial businesses safe, and taking criminals off the streets, as well as scaring away prospective criminals, Gotham is doing better than it has since Martha and Thomas Wayne were killed."

"Still, that doesn't explain why you are helping me so much, when you have no obligation to!"

"'No obligation to'? I am a Gothamite. Gotham is my city and my home, where I belong. I have seen the mostly-positive influence the Bats have had upon it, and then I bumped into you, who had the goal of imitating the Bats. It may be driven by both a selfish and selfless motivation, but that does not change your goal."

"Okay? You keep talking about my goal to imitate the Bats, but I am just a single human girl. Surely I can't have that much of an impact?"

"If you take even a single criminal off the streets as Batgirl, never-mind five or ten or twenty, or more, then the impact you shall have made will have been positive, no matter how small. My little investment shall have paid dividends back to the city I live in, and thus back to me. I gain something from this, you gain something from this, Gotham benefits from it. Why wouldn't I aid you in your quest?"

With a shake of his head, he picked up half of the pile and held it open towards her so that she could see what it was.

"Is that- is that a wing?" Barbara asked incredulously, striding over and taking it into her hands.

It moved fluidly, even with just a twitch of her finger on the material, and the material looked like an actual wing, with "membrane" and "bones", and the material was unlike anything that she had ever felt before.

"Indeed, and there is a matching one. Rather than a harness, it connects to the inside of a jacket, and has strings attached to these sort of manacles, here at the bicep, just after the elbow, and just before the wrist. It does have a back brace with "ribs" to secure it, however it should not be uncomfortable."

"How does it connect? And, how flexible is the back brace thing?" Barbara asked as she played with the wing.

"The "back brace" is sewn into the jacket, as an inner layer, and it is made up of overlapping bamboo slats. Due to this, it should be able to flex with you, so long as you do not bend too overly far backwards."

Moving aside the other wing, he picked up the jacket and handed it to her, taking the wing from her so that she could examine the jacket and back brace more thoroughly.

"This must have been expensive..." She murmured, turning it over and examining it as best she could in the Gotham night's darkness.

Taking the jacket from her, he placed it between his knees and dragged the wings over.

"Now, this part here? It is a three-part mix of the artificial silk, steel, and a semi-rigid foam. If you fold it up like this, insert it into this hole, push it down, and then let go, it should unfurl and fill up the space, locking it in place. Why don't you try it with the other wing?"

She followed his instructions. Once it was in, she attempted to wiggle it, only to find that it wouldn't budge.

"How does it come back out? Transporting it like this would be a hassle, but I don't see how..?"

"Unfortunately, undoing it is a bit more involved, but this is rather new technology. This strip here, a slightly darker purple? It is stuck in place with a strong adhesive, so you shall really need to- tug- on it, to get it to come off. From there, the foam is visible. With it being one-third fabric, it becomes more malleable in water."

Taking out a flask from his pocket, he unscrewed the lid and poured some of the liquid- presumably water- in, just enough to cover the foam, and then put away the flask.

"Unless it gets soaked for half an hour or so, the small amount more malleable it gets will not compromise the friction keeping it in. So, if you get caught out in the rain as Batgirl, go home and take it out. Let it dry. To take it out, simply reach in, get your fingers to the corners and dig down, under it, and rip it out."

Moros nearly stumbled at the force he had to use to rip it out, but he simply set it aside and moved on to the other.

"Once you have removed it from the socket, you shall have to let it dry for three hours. Any less than that, and there is no guarantee that it shall not shift in the socket and compromise the wing staying attached to the jacket, especially if you use it to glide."

"Wait- I can glide with these? You didn't mention that!" Barbara exclaimed, taken in by new fantasies of swooping down upon criminals and incapacitating them.

"Not as you are imagining. For you to glide, you shall have to stand with your arms open, like so, and the "manacles" have magnets in them that shall attach to those in the wings, keeping them open, and you shall have to get a running start to clear whatever it is that you are jumping off of."

"That doesn't sound too bad. I can still swoop down on criminals, though, can't I?"

"'Gliding' shall not be a stealth maneuver, and nor will it disallow you from having to roll so as not to damage your legs with the impact of landing. This is the largest wingspan you can handle currently, and it is not large enough to soften your impact by very much. Not unless there is an updraft to soften your fall further."

"Okay, so it's more like break-my-fall-slightly and guide-my-trajectory than actual gliding, got it."

"That is so, yes. I am glad that you understand. Now, you have very little time left to get used to these wings, and with them undone- and thus unusable- for the next three hours, we have even less time for you to get acclimated. I would say for you to wait until the week after next, however I know that you have started to become impatient. One hour of training every night until Thursday's night shall have to suffice. I advise you to begin to take naps during the day."

"I- uh, I'll heed your advice. See you here tomorrow night, then? At our normal time?" Barbara asked, gathering up her costume and the new additions.

"No, not here. Meet me at the site of the gun test tomorrow evening, half an hour earlier than our normal time."

"Ah- okay," she said, but she was speaking to empty air, as Moros had already disappeared.

One day- one day!- she would see him as he snuck away!

– – – – –

Barbara had been disgruntled when she woke up to her alarm, but excitement quickly replaced it, even almost drowning out the apprehension and cold fear curling in her gut.

The excitement only mounted as she donned the costume and slipped out the back door, climbing a fire escape and leaping to start her parkouring towards her destination. 

... She didn't get that far, though.

The new wings on her back responded to her leap, twitching open at the swinging of her arms, and they caught air as she leapt towards the next rooftop. 

Just enough air to cause drag, and, plus the added weight, to cause her to almost miss.

She ended up having to scrabble at the edge and pull herself up onto it. So! This was a new challenge...

With a bit of experimentation and a few more near-misses, she managed to get somewhat used to the added weight and drag. 

If she held her arms as though they were pinned to her sides, the wings didn't open.

It was tricky, as she had gotten used to moving her arms. This threw her balance off even more, and it was harder to catch herself with her arms having to move from that position.

She just had to get used to the extra drag along with the extra weight.

She adapted surprisingly quickly, though she did have a few moments where she either over-compensated or under-compensated, which was scarier each time. But she managed to get to the warehouse with minimal mishaps.

"Hm," Moros huffed at seeing her. "You are late, off-balance, and shaken. How was your roof-hopping to get here?"

She straightened unconsciously at Moros addressing her, only to have to take a windmilling-arms step back, as her balance was upset by the extra weight on her back.

"It was difficult. My balance was upset with these hanging off of me. Plus, they're so attuned to my movements that they opened slightly as I was running, which created extra drag that I wasn't ready for. I thought I had gotten used to it, but I guess not."

"You adjusted to it, or rather for it. That is not the same as getting used to- accustomed to- them."

"Yeah, I'm noticing that now," she agreed, still fighting to regain her equilibrium. The wings seemed to be attempting to make her fall on her behind, which was rather rude of them; they were supposed to help her, not hinder her.

"Fortunately, I anticipated this, and I have, as such, prepared. I have brought the equipment for an exercise to improve upon your balance and coordination." 

Barbara- Batgirl- didn't like the way the corners of his mouth curled in a self-satisfied manner.

She adjusted her stance so that her legs were further apart, bent her knees and leaned forward, like a baseball player ready to make a play.

Stepping to the side, he revealed a cart, loaded with dodgeballs.

"This cart is holding 10 dodgeballs. For each you fail to dodge, you shall have to go another round, and so on and so forth until your hit-debt has run out. We shall then re-do the exercise, following these same rules, until you have avoided getting hit 5 times in a row."

Moros smoothly went from rolling the ball from one hand to the other to throwing it at her with no warning.

His aura didn't even change from its typical dark purple!

"Ack!" She squawked, lunging to the side, which turned into a stumble at the weight of the wings, taking her down to her knees.

At the sight of a ball coming towards her, she hunched backwards.

The wings swung forward automatically, stopping at about halfway closed, and she began to realize just how much work it would take to get used to these new faux-appendages.

"Your hit-debt is now one," Moros informed her, lobbing another ball at her. She awkwardly rolled out of the way, and staggered to her feet as she dodged another.

Just- just seven more to dodge, and then another ten! She could do it- ow!

... Make that just six more to dodge, and then two more rounds..! Damn it. This was going to suck...

Barbara climbed the fire escape slowly, tiredness having settled into the bones of her aching body.

Stepping up onto the roof, she stretched for a minute, grimacing at the way it pulled at what would soon be bruises.

Having warmed up, she began to parkour her way back home, balance undeniably better than it had been before Moros' exercise. 

She hated him for how long he had kept her there, making her dodge dodgeballs over and over again until she had no 'hit-debt' left, and she hated that it worked.

 If it didn't, if she still could barely make these jumps in her Batgirl get-up without scrambling and panicking, she could have hated him.

It would have been justifiable, even! However, it did work, which made the 'hate' more begrudging.

He didn't hold back with the dodgeballs, throwing them with a force that didn't seem like it should have been able to come out of such a small body, and, oh, did she mention? Her body ached.

Barbara stumbled as she finally crossed onto the roof of her house.

She was absolutely exhausted, and didn't think that she could get back into her room right then. 

She was still outside, on her roof.

At least it was the weekend, and she didn't have school. Climbing down, she went inside, changed into her pajamas, and slept some more.

When Barbara woke up for the second time, she felt lethargic and her eyelids felt heavy, but she looked at her clock and found it to be not long before she had to leave for the library.

She changed quickly and grabbed a bagel on her way out the door, which she munched on as she walked.

The Gotham day was as bright as a Chicago night, which was to say, decently dark. 

If Ĝotham hadn't messed with her physical form, making her by all rights a meta, she would have struggled to see. 

She was still a bit bitter about it, but it had happened and couldn't be reversed, so she was doing her best to accept it and move on from it.

Pushing open the door to the Gotham Public Library, she headed inside, instinctively quieting her footsteps. 

Barbara wasn't religious- hadn't been, before the whole debacle with Ĝotham, and just because she now knew that things like personifications / deifications of cities existed didn't mean that she thought they deserved to be worshipped- but that didn't change the holy, sacred air of libraries that always made her feel at peace.

"Oh, hey, Barbara," Samuel Torres greeted her from behind the desk, his aura citrine.

"Come to check out some books, or to volunteer some more?"

"Ah, just volunteering for right now. I mean, I'm not saying that I won't take a look at some books while I'm re-shelving, but the main reason I'm here right now isn't to peruse the selection."

"Sounds like fun, just check with Matthew to see if he needs anything before starting to shelve or whatever you decide to do."

"Will do," she agreed, turning from the front desk and walking the short distance to the office of Matthew, the curator of the Gotham Public Library.

"Hey, Matthew," Barbara greeted him from the doorway, "do you have anything specific for me to do, or just the normal?"

"I don't have anything specific for you to do, no. Thanks for checking.” He tacked it on at the end like an afterthought. 

She had never liked him all that much, despite not having a reason. He was nice and polite, but something about him had always rubbed her the wrong way.

That had been part of the reason she had begun volunteering there, not just because she loved the library.

She was still trying to figure out what the different colors of aura meant. The combination of sepia and magenta, however, was an eyesore. 

The awful mix of colors- especially with the olive spots- was enough for her to believe that she was correct in her summation of his character.

Now, she only had to discover what he was hiding. What illegal or immoral activities was he doing?

Shooting him a delayed thumbs up, she went straight into the stacks.

She was only volunteering for an hour and a half, because there was no need for more than three or so volunteers at a time, really, and some siblings that she hadn't actually met yet volunteered after her.

Barbara started in the adult non-fiction room, and did what she had said she was going to do- re-shelving, pulling books to the front of the shelves, checking to make sure that the books were in order, stuff like that- but the back wall caught her eye.

Gotham was technologically weird. Most of the factories were still being used, not having fallen out of use like in other places, and people still preferred to get the newspaper than to read it digitally, except for the rich folk.

They were technologically weird in other ways, too, of course. Most of which being that they preferred to use pen and paper to digital alternatives, but the point was that Gothamites liked their newspapers.

It had been a bit of a culture shock, going from Chicago to Gotham. In Chicago, most everyone had an I-phone, and in Gotham, only the rich did. 

Guns weren't uncommon in Chicago, but in Gotham they were about two-thirds the width, and extremely customizable. Almost a statement piece.

Point was, the back wall of the adults non-fiction room was a wall of shelving, with neatly-organized newspapers in baskets on the shelves, and she had found herself curious.

"This year,"  Barbara hummed, running her fingers across the temporary plaques showing the year of the basket above it. "Last year... A-ha, two years ago."

Taking down the four baskets (only the newspapers with anything particularly noteworthy in them were kept, and then they were divided into the four quarters of the year. As the years passed, the newspapers were lessened until there were enough to go into one basket, and then, once it had been shuffled out, that basket went into the archives, where you could request it from), she moved them to one of the study tables and sat down.

It took a bit of skimming the newspapers before she found what she was looking for.

Vigilante Or Cryptid? By Jules ButlerGotham City, NJ April 17, 19##

Early this Tuesday, the serial kidnapper and murderer known as the Vivisector was discovered tied up outside the Gotham City Police Department.

The Vivisector was discovered by police officer Harvey Bullock in the early hour of 3 a.m., with a file next to him detailing his victims- and his identity.

The Vivisector is revealed to be one William Myers, a 29-year-old from Crime alley.

Upon his questioning, the irrational and manic Myers revealed that the information in the dossier left with him was all correct.

While this would lead us to believe that there is a new vigilante* in town, some of Myers' statements while being questioned would have us believe something else.

'It swooped down, out of the sky, and tackled me! I got up and ran away, but it just- it just kept hounding me, galloping on all fours like a $^%¢ª#*$¢ monster!' 

'I tried to lose it by making rapid turns through Gotham's alleys, but it just bounced off of the $#*%#§^£¢ wall and kept chasing me! Then, just when I thought I lost it, it popped up out of the shadows in front of me like a- a- a demon!'

'Myers was raving like a lunatic,' police officer Harvey Bullock attested.

'Do I believe it was some sort of nightmare beast? While I'm not ruling it out- this is Gotham, after all- I am inclined to say that it was a vigilante. The dossier was very neat and professional, formatted better than most I've seen. I doubt that some sort of shadow demon could do that.'

Whether you believe that the Vivisector, Myers, was apprehended by a new vigilante or some sort of shadow demon, we shall all have to wait and see if they appear again.

*List of former Gotham vigilantes

Barbara sat back, thinking over the article. This was the first documented (or at least news-making) appearance of the Bat. 

Myers sure made the Bat seem like something inhuman, but he also made it seem more beastly and mindless than her dad had talked about it being, more beastly and mindless than she had seen it be.

Perhaps it only acted like that to instill fear in criminals, in a sense its "prey"?

She had seen it being playful, with Ilmestys, which was a clear contrast the testimony of her father, the criminals, and the witnesses, as to their behavior.

Folding the newspaper back up, she set it to the side in its very own pile before beginning the search again.

Cryptid broadcaster warns of white eyes and pearly fangs in the night: ‘as the rate of crime rises and falls, so too shall the sightings of our crime fighter’-

Whether a vigilante or a cryptid, this as-of-yet unnamed crime fighter has terrified the common criminal: crime rate down by 2.6%-

Cryptid broadcaster says to ‘watch out for those of the order Chiroptera’-

Taking inspiration from this and the words of our very own favorite broadcaster, the vigilante-slash-cryptid has been named the Bat-

There! She had been looking for the official naming of Gotham’s mascot cryptid.

Gotham’s Very Own Vigilante / Cryptid, Named At Last By Jules ButlerGotham City, NJ August 23, 19##

Something prowls Gotham’s streets and stalks its skies. There is fierce debate as to whether it is a vigilante or a cryptid, and whether or not it actually exists. 

In these past few months, the police have gotten used to having criminals dropped off on their doorstep, tied up in an unusual material, and with a dossier of information on the criminal and their crimes off to the side.

Descriptions of it vary, including whether or not it can fly, or if it can only glide. 

Agreed up on is that it is a monstrous figure in the night, measuring between six and eight feet tall, with glowing white eyes and horns on the top of its head.

It has been seen clinging to the side of buildings with its claws, and the puncture wounds in criminals’ shoulders speak of it grabbing them with its talons and flying them away.

‘It appeared with no warning. It wasn’t there, and then it was. It didn’t even speak or nothin’, just advancing, looming taller with each step. The only way to- to get that thing to leave me alone was to give in to what it wanted.’ 

‘It started with warnings, but I was too dumb to listen. No, I won’t elaborate, you’ll know it if it happens to you, but you had better pray it doesn’t; the only way to escape it is to turn yourself in.’ 

‘Did I consider not turning myself in once it physically showed up to threaten me into complying? Are you kidding? Of course not! It ain’t human, an’ I have no clue what it would have done to me if I hadn’t, but I wasn’t going to bank on it having morals.’

Witnesses speak of it melting out of shadows and disappearing back into them if you take your eyes off of it. 

One particularly fearless criminal didn’t back off from holding a child hostage, assuming that it wouldn’t dare do anything while he had someone to threaten.

They swear that it raised its ‘demonic’ and ‘bat-like’ wings in a threat display, ‘at least tripling in size! With its wings open it spanned nearly half of the warehouse!’

Taking inspiration from this and the words of our very own favorite cryptic cryptid broadcaster, the vigilante-slash-cryptid has been named the Bat.

If we get too much push-back we may reconsider and run a poll of names, but now we have something to call it other than ‘it’ or ‘the vigilante-slash-cryptid’. The Bat is here to stay.

Only getting more drawn in by the article, Barbara kept looking, taking note of which newspapers had word about the Bat in them before putting them back and doing the same with the next year’s baskets.

Barbara had heard the siblings come in, signaling that her time to volunteer was over, but she didn’t care. She was too invested into this research about the Bats.

The Bat Is No Longer Alone By Jules Butler Gotham City, NJ February 5, 19##

The Bat is no longer the only of its kind! A source informed us here at the Gotham City News that, just last Thursday, in the early hours of morning, a drug deal went down.

While this would normally be nothing unusual, nor would it be at this point for the Bat to have stopped it, that was not quite the case last Thursday. While the Bat did stop the drug deal, it didn’t do it alone.

Our source had to say about it:

‘The druggie and their dealer were, well, doing the exchange, when they hear, what they think is the Bat, say “what doing?”, except, it isn’t really words.’

‘If you’ve been lucky enough to never hear it- it sounds like static, nails on a chalkboard, and the roar of a jet engine all mixed together and mangled into something that sounds almost like English words, with the screaming of the souls of the damned in the background.’ 

‘Their grasp of linguistics and sentence structure is poor, but that also means they speak less, which is a mercy, as their way of “speaking” feels like someone is shoving an ice pick through your eye socket into your skull.’

‘They hear what they think is the Bat say that, so they look towards the rooftops, and they spy it perched there like a gargoyle, but with its head tilted almost 100 degrees, like an owl. It looks like the Bat, nearly identical, but with more red. I didn’t think anything of it but that it’d had a bloody night, when we hear more “speaking”, this time from a rooftop on the opposite side of the alley.’

‘It #*%&-near crowed the words, “drug deal- naughty, naughty”. Obviously, we were agog and didn’t believe what we were seeing. Why would we? It was hard enough to fathom that the Bat was real.’ 

‘Out of nowhere, there was this new cryptid? I couldn’t believe my eyes. At first, I thought it was a specter, or an apparition, or a shade, or even a hallucination.’ 

‘I thought “My mind must be playing a trick on me”, but that was disproved when the Bat took down the drug dealer and the new one took down the druggie, sitting on him.’

‘He kept muttering “ilmestyskirjan peto” over and over, only stopping to vigorously nod in agreement when they told him that he shouldn’t have run, and that he should go to rehab instead of buying more drugs.’

‘They left with the drug dealer after one final ominous warning- “we hold- you- swear”- to the druggie.’

If this new vigilante-slash-cryptid is anything like the Bat, which, if their supposed appearances are any indication of, they are, then this new one is here to stay.

Barbara placed the newspaper back in the basket, emboldening the notation of it in case she wanted to go back and find it again.

Gotham’s Second Vigilante / Cryptid, Named By Jules ButlerGotham City, NJ March 29, 19##

We began getting the reports of the Bat in mid-April of last year, and only the well-off have the ability to decry it as “not real” at this point.

As Gotham’s very own vigilante-slash-cryptid has patrolled the skies, Gotham’s citizens have gotten used to the twisting shadows and glimpses of something beastly and monstrous out of the corner of their eye, that is never there when they turn to look.

In late February, not quite two months ago, we got word of another creature of the same type as the Bat, only distinguishable as different by more red coloring, a slightly different vocalization, and by being half a foot or so smaller.

If you get close enough to notice any of these details, then you are no doubt done for, and ought to go peacefully. 

Why am I encouraging this, aside from crime being bad and wrong and not something that you should do?

Well, this newer one is much more wrathful and violent than the Bat. More prone to fracturing bones, and more likely to land on you, as well, which I have seen to lead to full-body bruises.

They make the Bat, a symbol of fear among criminals, and something you use to warn your children to stay off the streets at night, a mercy.

Out of the many names suggested to us, we did consider choosing Wrath for this very reason, but we did not feel that it was creative enough. Yes, we are aware of the irony, as we are the ones who named the Bat.

Taking inspiration from the druggie who was the first victim of the new one, who kept muttering “ilmestyskirjan peto” over and over, and the encouragement of our very own favorite cryptic cryptid broadcaster, who did a recent broadcast entirely in Finnish,  the vigilante-slash-cryptid has been named Ilmestys.

Ilmestys meansvision, apparition, manifestation, phenomenon, spectacle, sight, or (religion) revelation

Ilmestys comes from ilmest of the Finnish word ilmestyä, + the Finnish ys (alternatively, us)

to appear, show up, materialize, pop up

to show up, pop up, appear (to arrive, especially suddenly or erratically)

to emerge (to come into view)

to be issued, be released

+

Forms nouns from verbs, describing an action, event or a result of that action

Ilmestyskirjan is a compound of ilmestys + kirja (book, document), meaning (informal or figurative) Revelation (last book of the Bible).

Ilmestyskirjan peto means “the beast of revelation”. While perhaps some will feel that we ought to have chosen peto, as it means “beast”, we felt it to be inaccurate and insulting to this clearly intelligent being.

For another, the multiple meanings of ilmestys, most of which track with apparition, as the first witness thought it to be, we found it poetic and fitting.

Ilmestys has joined the Bat as a nighttime cryptid crimefighter of Gotham.

Gothamites are untrusting folk, but we have come to tenuously be not afraid of the Bat. 

In time, perhaps we may come to trust it, or at least to stay mysteriously benevolent to those of us that are not criminals, and perhaps we may feel the same for Ilmestys.

Until then, stay on the lookout for our cryptid, eldritch protectors, as you would be on the lookout for more mundane threats.

Barbara noted down the edition and leaned back, a fantasy in her mind’s-eye of reading the newspaper about her own debut, and her own naming, though that was if “Batgirl” didn’t catch on.

Shaking out of it, her head clear, she put away the baskets of newspapers and straightened them, despite the time she was volunteering for being long over.

Checking her watch, she was surprised to see that it was just a few minutes from 5:00, which was closing time. 

She hadn’t thought she had spent so long looking through the newspapers, but her body was letting her know now; hunger, her knees, and her bladder were all making themselves known.

Barbara could solve one of those now. Heading downstairs, she quickly used the ladies’ room, and was about to leave the stall, when she heard footsteps.

“Anyone in here?” A familiar voice called, and she quietly hopped up onto the seat of the toilet.

This was her chance to investigate, not that she had anticipated it coming so soon.

“The library is closing…”

After hearing Matthew’s steps fade away, she left the stall, used some of the hand sanitizer, and followed him, darting into the room he had just checked.

She was beginning to doubt herself, as he got closer and closer to having checked the whole bottom floor. 

Had she misjudged him? Was he truly just a normal citizen, not up to anything nefarious, as she had thought..?

Hah. This was Gotham, who was she kidding?

He was doubtless up to something at the very least illegal, though whether or not it would be enough for Batgirl to intervene for, especially for her first operation, she would just have to see.

Her thoughts were de-railed as Matthew very obviously looked around to see if there was anyone to see what he was doing.

It didn’t make sense, seeing as he had just finished clearing the downstairs.

Then again, paranoia was often irrational.

Having poorly checked that no one was there and watching him, Matthew unlocked a door- the storage closet, perhaps?- and slipped inside.

She heard the key turn in the lock, which caused her hopes of getting in to plummet. Still, she had to check.

Creeping out of the room she had been hiding in, she silently stalked over to the door. The door proved the have not shut all the way, not latched, and thus not locked.

She was in luck!

Carefully, she tapped the door until it was open wide enough for her to see inside.

Matthew was moving things away from the wall in one corner, muttering to himself too quietly for her to make out any words.

Once he had moved it all away from the wall, he straightened and started running his hands up and down the junction of the two walls.

He dug his hands in and pulled. It swung open, revealing it to be a hidden door, and he vanished inside.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t expected this, exactly, but she was caught off guard by him disappearing down through the door.

It swung shut behind him.

She scrambled over there, somehow without the door squeaking as she nearly slammed it open it in her haste, and pressed her ear to what she now knew was a door.

Footsteps, on… Stairs? Yeah, it was stairs. She could hear the echo, even as the sound of the actual footfalls faded.

Once she could barely hear his footsteps, she set about trying to figure out how to open the secret door.

She ran her hands up and down the junction of the walls, as he had done, but couldn't feel anything out of the ordinary.

No divot, no handle of any sort to dig her hands into that would allow her to pull open the door. Nothing.

Swallowing down an actual growl of frustration- just another reminder of how she had been changed- she took a deep breath and tried to calm herself.

This time, she was slow and methodical as she trailed her hands across the seam, even closing her eyes so as to concentrate better on the feel.

Nothing… Nothing… Nothing… Wait! That was something!

Inching her hands back down, her brow furrowed in concentration, she found it.

She felt a flare of satisfaction, and could see her aura echo it in hazelnut out of the corner of her eye, as she dug her hands in and pulled it open.

It swung outwards, and she had to step to the side so that it wouldn’t hit her.

Peering down, she discovered that it was a spiral staircase. 

No chance of Matthew seeing her, and suspiciously convenient for spying.

Then again, it could also just be because it saved space. Not everything had a malicious reason behind it. Either way, it was convenient for her.

Creeping down a few stairs, she twisted to close the door, halting it just before it closed completely.

Taking a calming breath, she crept further down the stairs, eyes open as wide as she could make them in an attempt to get them to adjust to the darkness as quickly as possible.

Creeping down the stairs, she halted as she saw the end. Stepping down one, she stretched out, seeing how far she could go without losing her balance.

Down another. Stretch. Not quite far enough. Down another. Stretch. Not quite far enough. Down another. Stretch. Far enough.

Poking her head out from the stairwell, she surveyed her surroundings.

A sub-basement, roughly carved out of the surrounding stone, with a rack of something on each wall opposite of the stairwell.

There were dark shapes in the middle, which she could discern just enough to label as furniture. 

She couldn’t make out much else in the dark, other than the one door with light leaking out from the space between the frame and the door.

That had to be where Matthew had gone.

Creeping down the remaining couple of stairs, she hugged the wall and snuck forward until she was just before the door. 

Dropping into a crouch, she cocked her head so that her ear was facing the door, and listened.

“-that, the Bat is cracking down on our operations, that pesky policeman from Chicago, and the competition, well… Is it really advantageous enough for us to keep going? Is there not another sort of business that we could transition to?”

“Please,” the second person, whose voice she could identify as belonging to Matthew, scoffed. 

“No other sort of legal business pays so well, and the threats would be the same, or even worse, if we just went into a different illegal business.” 

She could hear another scoff and footsteps, which jacked up her heart rate before she realized that it was just him pacing.

“So, you’re suggesting that we stop our business. Even if the legal threats could convince me, there is still the Bat, and also our customers. They wouldn’t be happy if we suddenly stopped selling, and with what they’re buying, and for the cost that they are, they wouldn’t have any qualms about hiring hitmen to kill us ‘cause we know who they are.”

“What are you suggesting, then? We just- we just keep doing our business, ignoring the higher-than-ever risk to ourselves and our livelihood?”

“You’re overstating the risk. One non-corrupt officer surrounded by corrupt ones, some  weird bat cryptid thing that may or may not even be real, and the same competition as ever? It’s not like we can’t take out the po-po. We could even tip him off to some of our competitors and then take him out once he’s evened the board some for us.”

Barbara thought she might be sick. Either that, or she might kick open the door and go in swinging. 

But, no, she couldn’t. This was her first op, and an undercover, info-gathering one, at that.

She couldn’t. Even if they were talking about using and then having her father killed.

Killed! The curator of the library that she was volunteering at!

“Our front is a library, and everything upstairs is completely legal and above-board. Even if anyone thought to look into it, which, who would? It’s a public library, for fuck’s sake, they wouldn’t find anything. Our competition will be taken out long before us; they’re doing business and storing the merchandise in warehouses. Embodying the cliché. Oh, would you chill it? We’re in no more danger than ever.”

“What about that volunteer? Babs or something, isn’t she called? Her last name is Gordon, like that police officer, you know. What if she’s investigating, following in her father’s footsteps?”

“Have you met her? No, of course you haven’t, you aren’t part of the upstairs business, on account of you being too paranoid and a nervous wreck. Look, she’s absent-minded and loves books. Earlier, she didn’t even notice me, she was too absorbed in reading one of the old newspapers, probably something to do with school. She is no threat to us.”

“If you’re sure, I suppose. Back to business, then: when is our newest shipment coming in, and how are we going to get it here?”

“We’re in Old Gotham, we can just load the product onto our boats and take it up the river, then drive it here and move it in after hours. Like we always do. Why are you so high-strung and doubtful lately? Nothing has gone wrong. Things are running as smoothly as ever.”

“Exactly! That’s why! There are more threats than ever, and it is improbable that things continue on as smoothly as they are, especially with how long they have been!”

“Stop making mountains out of molehills. Anyway, to answer your question, it’s getting to the docks at 4 am on Wednesday.”

“I just still feel as though something is going to go wrong, Matthew. I can’t trust this quiet- it feels too much like the calm before the storm.”

“Your whining and paranoia is getting on my nerves, frankly. Take tomorrow off and find your inner peace or whatever. Sort yourself out. Just don’t be so annoying when you get back.”

He’s being dismissed, she realized, I have to go before he comes out.

With quickness born of panic, she darted back to the stairs and began climbing them as quickly as she could while still being quiet.

She briefly paused at the top to listen, and, hearing footsteps nearing, opened the door and slipped out.

Carefully closing it again, she headed on her way on autopilot. 

Her head was swimming with the realization that she had stumbled across criminals planning, but not only that, at the place volunteered, and her boss was the leader! 

He had joined the public side of the circus as a Flying Grayson, a performer. 

The Flying Graysons were renowned for their quadruple-somersault.

They were three of somewhere around five people, around the world, to be able to do it.

He wanted to grow up in that world, to live and grow and work in the circus. He never wanted to leave.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Flying Graysons!"

He had been impatient and fidgety, waiting for their act, for the chance to fly, and there it was.

Dick jumped off the platform, somersaulting one- two- three- four times.

He reveled in the audience's gasps as he flew through the air, completely untethered.

His father caught him by the ankles, and he fliped up to grab his father's hands.

They smiled wide at each other, cheeks flushed from all the spinning.

The memory of his father, grinning as they're airborne, is one he could never forget.

Dick got to show off for a few more minutes, flying back and forth from his mother to his father.

He was little enough that they could both catch him, and they did. 

At one point, his mother hung on the bar with her knees, and Dick clung to her neck.

She leapt from the platform at the same time as his father, and he jumped from her neck into his father's arms, his grin only widening at the screams from the crowd.

Dick got put down on the platform, and he watched his parents flip and fly through the air, as though gravity released its grasp on them, as entranced by the spectacle as the crowd.

He liked the next catch. It was probably his favorite, despite being so simple.

His mother leapt, and his father caught her with one hand on her ankle and the other on her wrist. 

They were flying, high out in empty space, and then there was a crack akin to a gunshot.

Dick didn't know what it was, but he realized as they fell, the smiles on their faces were replaced by horror, by terror, by fear.

They contorted in the air, his mother reaching up for him, and he reached out, regardless of the many, many feet between them...

They fell, as all things do, and he could do nothing but stare at their bodies, arranged on the pavement in a way that just felt wrong. 

It didn't compute at first, and then something salty fell into his mouth, which he hadn't even realized was open. A tear.

More and more fell, and his body shook, tremors wracking his small frame with a viciousness he had never before encountered.

A cry of grief burst from his mouth, his sight blurred from the tears in his eyes as he made his way to the floor.

Mr. Haly had tried to keep him from getting to his parents, but he dodged, and fell to his knees by the corpses of his parents, blood pooling around them.

His mother's wedding ring shone on her hand, outstretched towards him, and, in a daze, he reaches out, the slick red blood allowing him to pull it off with one hand.

Cradling his mother's wedding ring in his hands, he muttered to himself, "No. No, no, no!"

His body shook from the force of his tears as he denied the scene before him in every language he knew.

He heard Mr. Haly yelling to clear the tent, but it sounded distant, removed from him, as though he was underwater and everything else wasn't.

Unbidden, he thinks back to earlier that day, when he had gone to see Mr. Haly in his office, only to find some men there, threatening Mr. Haly! 

'"You'll want our protection, Mister Haly. Bad things tend to happen around here. It would be such a shame if one of those bad things were to happen to your circus, with nothing and no-one to protect it."

"You're threatening me? Well, I don't negotiate with criminals, Tony Zucco, and I want no 'protection' you could offer me. I trust you to find your way out."

Dick had never heard Mr. Haly sound so cold before. It had felt wrong.

He had left before the threateners had, and had mostly let it slip from his mind; Mr. Haly would protect them, like he always did.

There hadn't seemed to be any reason to worry, not at the time.

Time seemed to slip by him, leaving him adrift with nothing to hold onto, nothing to ground him.

Still, murmurs slipped in. Most, he didn't care for, didn't spare a thought for, having little brain power to be used for anything other than complete, overwhelming horror at the sight before him. Police, though, he heard.

Before coming to the states, his parents had sat him down, finally deeming him old enough, and they had a talk. 

Even in this century, they had said, police can not be trusted. Not by us. We're different, little Robin, and they condemn us for it, most Americans do. Most Americans don't have the power to hurt us, though. The police do. We can't trust them. Promise us not to trust them, little Robin.

Dick had promised them, and they- they weren't there anymore, they couldn't- they couldn't protect him any more. He had to- he couldn't be- he–

Already muddled by the grief, the horror, and the anger, panic came in and swept any rational thought he could have had away. 

Upon realizing that the police were going to come, he ran. He ran out of the tent, out of the grounds the circus had been let camp on, and through the dark rain into the city.

Tears streamed down his face, blurring his vision and mixing with the cold rain.

He ran until he fell, rough pavement scraping his knees, and he just stayed there, grief overpowering everything else.

What could there be for him, after all, without his parents?

Only once he began shivering did he get up and stagger into the alley he had fallen by, hoping for some cover. 

He found it in a convenient crumbling wall. Squeezing past the bricks that protruded from the hole, he found himself a nice little gap where the builder had- quite literally- cut corners.

He curled up there in the small space, feeling heavy with grief. As he slid into unconsciousness, he wondered if he would wake up, and found that he didn't really care.

– – – – –

"-protection racket thing. Pah! Like we're going to agree! We're Gothamites! We haven't been under the 'protection' of anyone in years and we damn sure aren't going to give in to this upstart 'Tony Zucco'-"

Dick had been half-asleep, annoyed that they were being loud right outside where he was sleeping, before they had said that. 

Upon hearing that name, the grief twisted into an anger that sat heavy in his gut. Mouth turned down into a snarl, he crawled his way out of his hole.

"WhAt kNoW- tOnY ZuCcO?"

"What- what do we know about Tony Zucco? That upstart? We know quite a bit about 'im, but why should we tell you? What do we get out of it?"

He hissed in agitation, in anger at the man's response. The crumbling wall provided plenty of handholds, allowing him to climb up the wall, staring at them all the while despite how it hurt his neck.

The hissing changed into a yowl-growl as he jumped off of the wall. He landed on the man. 

"TeLl! TeLl!"

He screeched the word as he clawed at the man underneath him, tearing his shirt to shreds, and, not long after, he reached skin, at which point the man un-froze and started pleading.

"Stop! Stop! Please- please- I'll tell you! I'll tell you! Just- just stop, oh god it hurts-"

"tElL!"

"Hi- his real name is- real name is Anthony Zucco, and he is also called Boss Zucco or Fats Zucco! He- he's a family head, though- though he isn't much of one, and- and he's under Sal Maroni! Not- not directly, but, but they're both part of- they're both part of the Falcone crime empire! It- it's current leader is Sofia Gigante! He- he's the main drug smuggler! I don't- I- that's all I know, I swear!"

With a crackling, static-like hiss of displeasure, he got off of the sobbing man and scurried up the crumbling wall with ease. 

He paced for a couple of minutes, thinking over the new information. A couple of leads, but nothing substantial, and no locations. Frustrating.

Despite the frustration thrumming through his body, fatigue pulled on his bones, the weight hindering his agility and making his movements leaden.

He climbed back into his hole in the wall, and succumbed to the pull of sleep.

He dreamt of women. Women without faces, women in mourning attire, women that couldn't seem to settle on a form.

She/They reached out towards him, speaking incomprehensible, echoey words. He couldn't understand the words, but he could understand the feelings behind them.

The Women/Woman held immense sorrow, for his parents among others; the injustice rankled, an emotion making them vibrate with the need to right it; rage, a howl of emotion into smog-black skies, twisting everything into shadows of what they had been, now changed; and calculation. 

A net around everything else, not smothering but rather restricting. Voices he couldn't understand whispering in his ears. 

How to hold back and wait, how to get information without giving himself away, how to make a trap and set it. 

How to drive his prey into his trap. How to take his revenge for what had been taken from him.

He awoke, emotions heightened but under control. He awoke, an itch at the back of his mind, telling him that he was being watched, the weight of the view of the city bearing down on him hard.

There were expectations of him, now.

He had already been planning on doing that which was now expected of him, so it could not be called a great burden. 

That did not change the feeling of being an ant under a magnifying glass.

Of being viewed by something so much more than he could comprehend, with the risk of burning up should he keep Her interest for too long.

Buzzing energy filled him. He climbed out of his hole and walked the streets, keeping to the shadows, only paying half a mind to where he was going and what he was doing.

He had let instinct take over.

The days and nights blurred into each other, filled with an itch he could not scratch, a need his entire body hummed with even as he slept.

He was either sleeping, trawling dumpsters for food, or pursuing leads on the Iniquitous One.

Time passed and became meaningless. What did it matter if it were Monday or Thursday, April or June? Heat and cold only matched his fury and his grief.

The grief he held had begun with the loss, the murder, of his parents, but it had grown to eclipse that.

So much tragedy and so many atrocities happened on the streets, and somehow he knew it had been worse before the Protectors had risen to the task.

The murder of his parents had caused him to flee to the streets. The longer he spent with vengeance in his heart, the more he seemed to blur, losing the line between himself and something greater, something more than himself.

Was he Dick Grayson, son of the deceased Flying Graysons?

Was he Gotham, the city personified, the weeping, howling deity?

Or was he neither of those? 

Had deification crawled into his mind and twisted his body, only unable to cause his ascension because he had a goal, had a Purpose, something tying him to mortality?

Perhaps- in a different world- he would have cared about his mortality being burned away by the attention of something more.

In this one, however, he had tunnel vision. The only thing he cared about was making Tony Zucco pay.

He had finally found his target, in a warehouse in Robbinsville. The guards he took out with ease;  none of them expected to be attacked from behind by a child-creature-thing.

Just as he was about to pounce on his target, the lights flickered. His target swore and unholstered his gun.

"I know you're there, you bat! Did you think we wouldn't get wise to your tricks? We know! The power flickering before going out is a sign that you're there! Give it up- I'm ready for you! I'll shoot!"

His wide eyes darted around looking for an enemy, and he waved his gun around to punctuate his words.

The target may have been ready to be attacked, but that didn't mean he had to let one of the Protectors poach his target.

He slunk across the floor, target fixed firmly in his sightline. Once he got close enough, he pounced with all of his might, bowling Zucco over, but he couldn't keep the man pinned down.

"And who are you, pipsqueak?" Zucco asked as they circled each other, shooting glances toward his gun.

His actions guided, he waited until Zucco was away from the gun and then engaged.

He knocked away Zucco's hands with his own. 

Not yet— Not yet— Now! 

He jumped and donkey kicked his target in the ribs with both feet, and then pounced on Zucco before he could recover from getting the wind kicked out of him.

Claw pressed against his parents' murder's throat, he felt a sick sort of satisfaction. Of twisted justice.

"NoW- hUrT No mOrE," 

His voice crackled like lightning as he hissed out the words, but he felt strangely torn. 

Didn't he want this? He had been chasing it for what felt like eternity, and yet, with a claw at the throat of his parents' murderer, he couldn't make himself.

"ƌǿɲţ. ŵøűłđ ɓɇ- ɱḯşⱦẳķɇ."

Protector, their mind whispered, interfering.

The emotion accompanying the words was annoyance. They were irritated at the disruption to their plan.

He could feel Her gaze slide off of him with disgruntlement.

There were others... Other possible vessels... But- but something..? He couldn't- the thoughts were slipping away from him-

Zucco escaped him and scrambled for the gun, but the concern came to him slowly, as though through honey.

What did mortal matters concern him, yet, when he could feel the divinity that had been suffusing him pull away?

Just before Zucco got to the gun, something dropped from the rafters and pinned him.

"ɱḯşⱦẳķɇ- ŋǿŧ ḯṋ ằȼţỉǿṋ. ŗⱥŧḩɇṝ- ḿɇṱĥǿđ."

"wHaT- mEaN?"

"şⱦṝⱥḯḩǥⱦ- ǩḭĺļ. ṧħǿụłƌ- ħⱥǚɲŧ ƒḭȑşⱦ. ṕⱥɍɐɲǿḯⱥ."

The Protector- Ilmestys- twitched with indecision from where they sat on his parents' murderer.

"ḉǿɱɇ ŵḯⱦḩ¿?"

He stared at them, feeling hollow inside as the last of the divinity left him. He could feel the divinity on them. 

"sUrE."

He didn't exactly fall asleep, but he wasn't exactly conscious, either, as he followed Ilmestys.

He returned to himself in a cave, ensconced in a cozy nest-like pile of pillows and blankets.

"-going to do with him? We're not prepared to have a child, Kate! We go out as cryptid vigilantes every night to fight crime, what happens if we die? He just lost his parents! Do you think he could handle that? He's still a child!"

"Well, I'm not leaving him! So what if we're not prepared to care for a child? We can figure it out! What would you have me do with him? Dump him in foster care? It's Gotham! He'd just go right back onto the streets where I found him!"

"I'm not saying we do that, Kate, I'm not heartless, but- how are we going to care for him? We don't have any- well, anything for caring for children! How would we care for a child?"

"Are you forgetting about Alfie, Manavy? He raised you. I doubt he threw away your things from when you were a child. It's probably in the attic."

"Yes, he raised me, but look how I turned out! A vigilante striking fear into the hearts of anyone who looks upon me! Pretending to be a- an otherworldly entity of some sort, not just the human that I am! He could help, but even then, we still aren't prepared to raise a child. Kate..."

"That's the trauma from watching your parents be murdered right in front of you, Paniki, not how Alfie raised you."

"He watched his parents get murdered in front of him too! Why- why are you so insistent on this, Kate? Because he was living on the streets? Because he was in a bad situation? I'm not saying it's wrong, but why him? He's not the only one. This is Gotham- there are so many kids out there, either living on the streets or in bad situations or both. Why him, specifically?"

"Of course I know that he's not the only one. I've seen it. But we're myths, legends, to most of the population. The others won't let us help them, but he will, he is, and... I brought him back here because I saw you in him, Bruce."

"What do you mean by that?" The other voice, that he just knew to belong to the Bat, Bruce Wayne, asked warily.

"He also lost his parents and himself. He also sought retribution but couldn't go through with it. He's lost and needs a purpose- our purpose. Don't tell me he shouldn't be in our business; he already is. He's gotten a taste of it, with Zucco, and he'll find his way back to it one way or another. Whether or not we're there to mentor him."

"Fine... Fine! Have it your way! I'll go get Alfred, that way one of us can have a clue what we're doing." 

"iLmE- Ilmestys?" He coughed, the voice he had been using on the streets escaping him.

"Hi there. Are you back with us?" Her voice sounded softer than it had when she had talked with the Bat- with Bruce Wayne.

"Yeah. I am."

He took the opportunity to look at her. She had cape-like wings that used talons at the middle of the top of the wing, where it bent, to latch around the neck, and the rest of her body was scaly, with a smattering of red.

Her appearance was mostly bat-like, but her feet had talons, like that of a bird of prey, and her hands had long, curved claws, like that of a cat.

"My name is Kate. Kate Kane. You would probably know me better as Ilmestys, however." 

She smiled awkwardly at him as he sat up abruptly. 

Ilmestys? This woman before him was Ilmestys? But she had barely any divinity! Gotham wasn't keeping an eye on her! 

Could it be because she had taken off her mask and the rest of her headwear?

Did that make her feel more like Kate than Ilmestys? Could that be it?

"My name is Dick- it's- it's Dick Grayson," he choked out, looking away from her.

Not just a Grayson, but the last Grayson.

"It's alright, Dick," she attempted to soothe him, misunderstanding.

"These costumes are to make us look fearsome, so that we can scare the bad guys away. After all, if they're scared, they're sloppy, and then they're easier to fight with less risk to yourself. Less risk to yourself is always a good thing; it means you're less likely to get hurt."

"Good heavens, Miss Kate," a prim voice spoke, and he noticed Kate jump slightly too.

"To decide to take in a child without alerting me first? What were you thinking?"

"I saw a little boy that had just had his parents die in front of him and remembered how heartbroken Bruce was, and thought that we could help him. Besides, if I didn't, it's likely that he would have ended up in the foster care system, and we all know how bad it is. We've only just started making a difference, and, as more legend than fact, the criminals aren't scared enough of us to stop doing crime without us showing up to strike fear into their hearts."

"You do realize that taking care of a child is a commitment, Miss Kate, do you not?"

"Yeah, Alfie, I do. Bruce was just trying to dissuade me from keeping him by informing me of that very fact, but I've made up my mind. I'm keeping him. Could you help me? I'm going to do it with or without your help, but having your help would be a relief."

"Certainly, Miss Kate. I shall set up a room in the family wing for him. Your name, young sir?" He asked, addressing Dick for the first time.

"I- my name is Dick. Dick Grayson. I... I know Kate, but- but who are you? What's your name?"

"My name is Alfred Pennyworth, Master Grayson- Master Dick." He looked kindly and sad in his suit, but Dick didn't know why. 

"Why are you calling me master? I'm- I'm just- me. I'm not anyone important, or rich, or- or anything."

"I called you master, Master Dick, as I knew that Miss Kate has grown attached, and will not willingly let you go. You are part of the family now."

"There is no escape," an unknown man with a familiar voice told him, amusement in his body language.

"My name is Bruce Wayne, and you've already met Kate and Alfred. A... Friend of ours also comes over occasionally. Her name is Barbara."

"Nice to meet you, Bruce. Is- do you- argh. Kate is also Ilmestys, but do you, uh, are you also another person too? And Barbara?"

"Yes... Yes, I am known as both Bruce Wayne and the Bat, and Barbara is also known as Ayra. Anyway, since you are going to be staying here, would you like a tour?"

"Hey! Back off, Peká, he's mine! I'm going to take him on a tour!" The aggression, he could see in her body language, was mostly performative, but Bruce backed off either way. 

"Anyway, Dick, this is part of a large network of caves. This room is where we hang out together, since we went to the trouble of hauling down all these pillows and blankets."

"It's like a nest. I can see why," Dick agreed. "It's so cozy... Can I make one in- in my room?"

"So long as you keep it tidy and out of the way, sure. Now, the cave system is extensive, so please only come down here with one of us until you know how to navigate it without getting lost. That is only one of the caves of varying sizes..."

Kate continued to show him around.

She took him up into the manor and showing him the passageways from inside the manor down to the cave, then the manor itself, with Bruce interjecting every so often.

Alfred was not with them, having gone to prepare a room for Dick.

"This is my room here, and that one- the one across the hall from mine- is Kelawar's. That one over there is Barbara's, if she ever wants it. We don't know where Alfred sleeps, or if he even sleeps. I'm convinced he's an immortal being."

"Why do you keep calling Bruce things? He has a name."

He was half in shock from the tonal shift of hunting his parents' murderer to being taken in by rich people who were fake cryptid vigilantes on the side.

Perhaps that's why he asked.

"I'm aware, Dick. But he's the Bat, and that's a fu- that's a really stupid name, nowhere near as cool as Ilmestys, so I'm mocking him and calling him 'Bat' in a bunch of different languages," she patiently explained.

Alfred exited the room to the right of Kate's.

"Master Dick, I have taken the liberty of setting up a room for you."

"Oh, th- thank you. Can- could I see..?" He asked hesitantly. He didn't know if he wanted to or not.

"It is your room now, Master Dick, to with as you please," Alfred agreed, stepping aside.

Haltingly, Dick walked forward and opened the door.

"This- this is- this is mine? Are- are you sure you didn't- are you sure?"

"Certainly, Master Dick. Is it not to your liking? There are other rooms available, if you wish-" he was cut off by Dick barreling into him, hugging his legs tightly.

"It's- it's more than I- it's perfect. Thank you, Alfred."

Letting go, he pawed at his eyes, wiping away the tears, and walked inside his room.

Kate and Bruce both peered in, but it was nothing unusual. A twin bed, desk, wardrobe, bookshelves, and closet. 

Perhaps it was the pile of Bruce's old clothes for him to try on and find ones that fit him making him emotional?

In any case, his reaction had endeared him to the butler.

"So, we've got a child now. I'll take the blame; it's my fault, after all, but how are we planning to do this? Keep him a secret from the public? Or pretend we found him on the doorstep of the manor, lost, confused, and traumatized, with the only memories after seeing his parents die as a blur of black and red, accompanied by the sound of nightmarish cooing? What's our game plan, Šikšnosparnis?"

"You're insufferable, you know that?" Bruce asked with a sigh. Shaking his head at the shit-eating grin he got in reply, he re-focussed.

"Alright, so, Dick's parents were just murdered in front of him. I don't think it would be good for him to be exposed to the vul- ahem, press- so soon. He should be allowed to recover, to go out, without being followed."

"Okay, but you're not planning to keep him hidden away forever, are you? He's going to need friends, more people to interact with than just the two of us, Alfie, and occasionally Barbara."

"Of course not. Your plan about the faked mostly-amnesia's not too bad, but how are we going to cover up how Alfred is going to feed him? The Bats wouldn't know how to feed a human."

"Why don't we just take him out to restaurants, diners, fast food places, and get him food there? Buy a whole bunch of, like, pizza, and see what he likes, then either give it to a... Whatever the place is called? Where they give out food for free to people who need it? Not a food bank, but... You know what I'm talking about..? A soup kitchen, hah!"

"That's a good idea, but the Bats wouldn't know how to do money. What would we pay in, batarangs-? No. No, Kate, no, we can't pay in batarangs, those poor minimum-wage workers! They're not paid nearly enough, we can't pay them in batarangs!"

"Then let's just visibly puzzle over it before giving a huge wad of it to Dick and let him pay. If he overpays, then great, they can take it as a tip, and if he doesn't, then I'm sure they'll inform him."

"When?" Bruce sighed, used to his cousin's particular brand of chaos after growing up together.

It was like they had never parted to each go off on their own gallivant across the globe. 

"When what, Kabog? To introduce him to the press? In a month or two, maybe, so interspersed between now and then."

"Fuck, alright. Oh, hell, Kate, we have a child. What- how are we supposed to care for him? We're as clueless as the Bats are about child care, and they're supposed to be, like, the living personification of the sins of the people of Gotham! How-"

"Oh, shush, Fiidmeerta. We've got Alfred, who raised you, to help us raise him. I'm not saying it'll be easy, but at least it's not just the two of us."

"Yeah... Yeah, at least it's not up to just the two of us. Alfred's here to help us. This- we can do this."

Dick shuffled out of his room in different clothes that didn't fit him too poorly, looking lost. 

He had never had so much before. Traveling light was necessary, living a nomadic lifestyle as he had with the circus.

It was all going to take so much getting used to...

"Hey there, Dick. How are you feeling, chum?" Bruce asked, concern etched in the lines of his face.

"Numb. And, uh- over- overwhelming? 's that how..? It's... 's just a- a lot, and 'specially with knowing why..." 

Grief flitted across his face at the reminder, but he was too tired to really process it.

It should be only a few hours away from the sun rising, not that it would be overly noticeable in Gotham, what with all the smog.

"That makes a lot of sense. You know what might help? A couple of snacks before bedtime."

She ignored Alfred's sigh.

With that, they became the beginnings of a family. Dick had just lost his parents, but they had all experienced loss, and were able to help him through it. 

With the help of his second, newfound family, he managed to work through his grief and act like a kid again- as much as he could, with the loss, and how close he had gotten to becoming a vessel of the divine.

In the beginning, it was often that he would stare into space, just existing, not really present, or throw a fit, or scream for his parents, or just start crying out of nowhere, but Bruce, Kate, and Alfred were there for him.

He had snuck out a couple of times at night- not that Alfred didn't know- when the echoing silence of the manor got to him, and terrorized the petty criminals.

Ayra occasionally joined him. They started calling him Robin. Still, he always went back when he got tired.

(He had noticed, when he snuck out to terrorize criminals, that She payed more attention to him. Specifically, when blood was spilled.  A few members of the circus had been from one religion or another, and he had observed their rituals a time or two. Perhaps that was why he first dedicated the blood to Her as a sacrifice, which then spiraled to having a small altar in his closet that he put offerings on for her. Alfred found it, of course, but he only showed him his own altar, hidden out in the garden, looking like a bird bath. "Gotham gives and takes, young Master Dick. Kate understands some, but not truly, and neither does Bruce. Nor did his father. His mother did, but she couldn't make up for her husband, not with him being a doctor and pulling people back from the brink. It is why they died, you see." "Do I have to worry about you, and Bruce and Kate and Barbara? About Her taking because they don't understand?"  "Neither of their goals helped the city, so She didn't hesitate; She is cruel. Not on purpose, it is simply in her nature. However, She is fond of you all, her Bats and her Bird, and me by proxy. No, she cares for you too much to let you die and stay dead. And yet, there are things worse than death..." After that, they did nightly offerings together. Five. One for each of them. "We offer these in hopes of the continued health and safety of our loved ones.")

He was tentative around them at first, strangers whose home he was living in, but he learned. 

He learned that he could go to them, after a nightmare, or if he had a question about anything.

He learned that they weren't going to let him go. He learned to smile again. 

He learned about their nighttime escapades. He learned about many things with their help, including how to live, instead of just being alive.

He learned to work through the grief, how to keep living, but there were still rough patches; he was a victim of a tragedy, and he would live with that for the rest of his life, but he still learned, still grew, still lived.

He was incredibly helped by the outings with the Bats, once they had stopped being such mother hens that they allowed it. 

He got to perform, and to see the outside, when he was woken up by nightmares and couldn't bear to try to fall asleep again.

The first place they had taken him was a pizza place. 

"ŵħⱥƫ– ⱳⱥɲⱦ¿?" they had asked him, heedless of those covertly trying to film them.

It wouldn't work; Bruce had a program to sweep the net for pictures or video of him and remove any of good quality.

Dick hadn't known, so he had shrugged and told the person at the counter, "One of everything, please."

"What size?"

Were they dead inside? Was that why they looked at only him and ignored everything else going on?

"Er- medium, please?" He had guessed, and it had been a safe guess. The fun part, however, was what came next.

"Can you pay?" He had shrugged and turned to Ilmestys. "The nice lady wants to know if we can pay. Can we? Do you have money?"

"ɯǿŋɇƴ¿?"

Ilmestys fluttered her wings, and a few hundred dollar bills had fallen out. She ignored that, shoving a few batarangs in the 'tips' jar. 

Dick had picked up the dollar bills, looked it over with a shrug, and shoved it in the hands of the stunned cashier.

They had gotten the pizzas, which he had staggered out the door with, Ilmestys and Bat hovering over him protectively.

Ilmestys had even been cooing, which had spooked the poor diners.

Once out of sight, they had each taken half of the pizza boxes, and he had tried them on a rooftop. Barbara somehow knew to join them.

They donated most of the rest- all that Barbara didn't take- to one of the soup kitchens funded by the Martha Wayne Foundation.

They knew that eating pizza inside the manor, that Alfred had not made, would have caused him to be even snarkier than usual, more pointed with his barbs, and they didn't want that.

He had enjoyed each time they had gone out and done some variation of that, whether it was Kate, Bruce, Barbara, or some combination of them that took him.

His favorite time was at a burger place, where he had pulled a wad of cash (all hundred dollar bills) out of his ratty sweater, and handed over five, muttering, "I hope that's enough..."

He later learned that they had renamed the restaurant Batburger, after the Bats had visited it with him.

Going out with them, however, had caused him to push for him to go out patrolling with them.

No one had liked his suggestion. The ensuing fight had taken four days to end, and it ended with Bruce caving. 

"Fine," he'd said, "but not how you are now. You have to be trained first. Only once I have deemed you good enough will you join us."

He was given the cold shoulder by both Kate and Alfred after that, but he had been Dick's favorite person... Until they had started training. Bruce was exacting.

There was so much training, both mental and physical, but he had enjoyed coming up with a language for them to speak, made up of chirps, trills, and other sounds animals- mostly birds and bats- could make. 

It took elements from both the rosicrucian cipher and morse code, then tone and animal sounds, to make their very own language.

He got restless, with all the training but not being allowed to go out, and had snuck out a few times, only to be promptly returned by one of them. 

They had compromised, letting him be on comms until he could go out with them.

On his tenth birthday, he had received a pair of gigantic mechanical bird wings. 

(Bruce had been working on them for a long time. Not long after he had begun training Dick, in fact. Why had it taken so long? Well, the wings for Dick- for Robin- were bird wings, which was new territory. 

Researching the different wing shapes, what the different wing shapes helped with, such as stamina or speed, and then the different kinds of feathers and what those did, took a long while. 

Making a pair for himself and testing them out as a trial run, tweaking it, and then creating a downsized pair for Robin? That made it take even longer.)

It had taken him a couple of months to really learn how to use them like he had been born with them, and it was only then that he was allowed to patrol with them.

While facing down his first criminal, he had learned what Bruce had meant when he had said to be scary, not intimidating, as being intimidating was the job of the Bats.

He had giggled eerily from above, the acoustics of the alleyway helping it really bounce around, especially with the training he had received on how to throw his voice around.

"bE NoT AfRaId!" He'd screeched, dive-bombing the mugger.

A whirlwind of blade-like feathers, he'd bounced between the alley walls, punching the crook from multiple angles, and giving him a headache from simply trying to keep up with Dick.

"ⱣⱠⱯɎƗƝǤ," the Bat had warned him from the rooftops, watching to make sure he didn't go overboard or get hurt.

"ⱴƚḉⱦƚɱ," Ilmestys had agreed disapprovingly.

With a pout, he knocked the mugger out and bounded over to the victim, where he flopped down into a puddle of questionably-human anatomy and feathers.

"oKaY?" he'd asked, "NoT HuRt?"

The victim had affirmed that they were unhurt, and that they even still had all their possessions, thank you by the way, but who are you?

"mE? I, RoBiN!"

And so Robin came to be associated with the Bats, and to be tentatively thought of as safe, if eerie.

The tale grew and changed with time, of course, as tales are wont to do as they are told, words passed through mouth to mouth.

It was said that the Bats had taken a boy, a human boy, but had been unable to care for him as a human. 

It was said that they took his essence and added some of theirs, creating Robin, the most human of them, as it had formerly been human.

The news was passed around that Richie Grayson was the boy the Bats had taken the essence of, abandoning him on the doorstep of Bruce Wayne after it became clear that they couldn't take care of a human child.

They were unmistakably similar, but both seemed changed by whatever it was that the Bats did to him.

Essence of a boy, separated from a still-living- and not even catatonic!- human host, changed with the essence of the Bats.

It was said that he was sustained on childhood innocence ripped away before its time.

What would happen to the Robin, they whispered, if it was in want of childhood innocence to sustain itself with?

No one knew, and it was frightening, but they came to accept the Robin, as they did their Bats. 

The worry lingered, however. What would happen if the Robin no longer had enough marred childhood innocence to sustain itself with?

– – – – – Additional Scene – – – – –

Jim Gordon and the Bat weren't particularly close. In fact, their relationship was closer to co-workers than anything else.

They were, after all, a human cop and a cryptid vigilante, respectively.

He and the Bat interacted almost exclusively on the roof or the police station when he turned on the Bat Signal for some help with a case, or a particularly-stubborn criminal, though they did occasionally encounter each other at crime scenes.

No, they weren't close. Understandably, due to this fact, he got curious when he noticed that the Bat Signal had been activated from the roof.

It could have been a rookie, but he had a feeling that this had to do with the Bat.

Jim climbed the stairs and opened the door to find nothing.

Nothing, other than the Bat Signal having been pulled out and aimed at the smog, right where he could see it out of his window.

It wasn't a coincidence. But, then, where was the Bat?

Turning around, he nearly had a heart attack at seeing a looming, shadowy shape perched on top of the entrance to the stairs, its shadowy wings pooling around its form and dripping off the sides of the stairwell like spilled ink.

Despite the feeling of iron bands around his heart, the nausea, the pounding headache, and the way its unblinking white eyes made him feel like a bug under a microscope, like he was prey being hunted by a predator, Jim didn't avert his eyes.

He had to get used to being in the Bat's presence.

The Bat oozed off of the top of the stairwell, down the door, and it straightened up.

His breath caught in his throat. Irrationally, he wondered if the Bat was there to kill him- if it wanted to, it would have already done so- if it was his time.

Or, did it want something? It seemed to, but what?

The Bat let out a chirp, and from the front of the Bat out popped a child. Except, it wasn't a child, or, not a human child.

"I- RoBiN!"

"Jim Gordon. My name is Jim," he introduced himself on autopilot, unable to look away from Robin. 

With just a glance, it looked like a kid in a red-and-green jumpsuit.

Sure, it had wings and talons on its feet, but crazier things were out there in the world.

When you looked closer, however, you began to notice things. 

Its eyes had no pupils or iris or anything, its eyes were just white. It also had wings, the feathers rigid and sharp-looking, like weapons almost.

Its skin was pale, deathly pale, almost a pasty white. It didn't seem to breathe, either, fidgeting and vibrating under his gaze, but its chest didn't move up and down.

The nausea had faded, but it came back with a vengeance.

He knew the child's face, knew it from the news and from a closed police report, but this was not Richard Grayson. 

This was a creature, similar yet different from the Bat.

"I hadn't believed the rumors," he croaked out, tearing his gaze from Robin, before him.

With a soft whistle from the Bat, Robin disappeared back into its shadows, and Jim was left reeling.

"Why- why show me?" He asked, unbalanced by the interaction.

Something about Robin, a cryptid version of a child, being, well, a cryptid, seemed more wrong than either the Bat or Ilmestys being cryptids.

Perhaps because he, himself, had a child at home.

"ĐȺŊǤɆƦ. ḮƑ– ǤǾȠḜ, ɄⱾ... ḈȺŖɆ– ƦǾḄǏṊ."

"Why me? I'm a human. Isn't there someone- someone else you would trust to take care of Robin?"

"ŇǾ."

It seemed to hesitate, almost as though it wasn't sure it wanted to continue.

Either way, he appreciated the short break; his head was hurting from hearing the Bat's speech.

"ɎǾȔ– ƑƦȈɆƝĐ. ŦⱤŲṦȾ."

Jim nodded, his throat suddenly dry. The Bat trusted him? And with its child, no less? With Robin?

That was huge, especially as they didn't really even interact, not that frequently, and certainly not outside of work. 

At least both the Bat and Ilmestys would have to be gone for the responsibility of Robin's well-being to fall to him? 

Not that he wanted either or both of them to die or whatever the bat-cryptid equivalent was, but he didn't feel qualified to take care of a young cryptid, to take care of Robin, especially with one of both of its parental figures gone.

Though, the Bat had said if they were gone, using the word 'us'... He might be reading into it too far, but what if the Bat and Ilmestys weren't the only adult cryptids of their kind? 

What if there was another that could take care of Robin if both the Bat and Ilmestys were gone?

He startled, noticing that the Bat and Robin had both disappeared whilst he was having a crisis, back into the shadows from which they came, likely to torment criminals on Gotham's streets.

In the following days and weeks, the word spread like wildfire that there was another cryptid, spawn of the Bat and Ilmestys, the Robin. 

There had already been tales told about a supposed child cryptid by the name of Robin, but for those that believed, the Robin becoming associated with the Bats legitimized the rumors.

He may have felt guilty about it, but he was glad that he wasn't the only one unsettled by the Robin, that the criminals were too. 

If the Robin, being passively creepy and cryptidious- was that a word?- in his presence had spooked him so much, he felt bad for the poor criminals that got the actively creepy and cryptidious Robin.

Bruce specifically listened for rumors about it, knowing how much damage a group of super-humans could do if left unchecked, so he knew what he had to do when an alien invasion had started. 

Well, firstly, he had aided Ilmestys in clearing Gotham of the aliens, then left Ilmestys, Ayra, and Robin to make sure there weren't any remaining, while he went to aid the other superheroes with fending off the invasion.

Would it have been smart to take Ilmestys with him?

Yes.

Did he leave her with Ayra and Robin because he didn't want to let them go alone, no matter that they had both passed all of Bruce's tests and even come up with a language for them, based on animal noises, intonation, and morse code?

Yes.

Heroes had emerged from the woodwork, all around the globe, to fight in defense of Earth. 

After leaving Gotham, the first heroes he came across were Superman, Green Lantern, Flash, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, and Martian Manhunter.

He had perched on the top of a building and skulked, looking for a good, dramatic entrance. He watched to see who was starting to get overwhelmed.

Superman was faring well, what with his invulnerability. The others, however, were not doing quite as well; the aliens outnumbered them by far.

Martian Manhunter did not have it too bad, as he had near-invulnerability and intangibility, which were extremely helpful in a fight. Unlike Superman, however, he was not fueled by the sun's rays.

Wonder Woman was an Amazon, sculpted from clay and imbued with life. Any injuries she sustained did not slow her down and hardly impeded her fighting, but if she got too injured she might not be able to 'heal' from it.

Green Lantern was flagging, and that tiredness made it hard for him to keep going, despite his powers working on willpower.

Flash wasn't getting overwhelmed, but he was using up vast amounts of energy without stopping to eat to replenish it

Green Arrow was just a man with a bow and arrow. He had used up all of his arrows, and was now using the bow as a weapon.

Green Arrow, as the only mere human, was struggling.

Positioning himself on the edge of the roof, Bruce tensed, ready to intervene at any moment.

He was conserving his strength, and  he would only jump into the fray when necessary.

Green Arrow used his bow like a baseball bat to knock one away, but another took its place, poised to strike a killing blow.

Pushing himself off the ledge, he opened his wings just slightly, enough to maneuver himself in the air. 

Three.

Two.

One. 

His wings exploded out behind him, catching wind and allowing him to control his descent.

The panels in the wings caught the air, adjusting to his angle, and he swooped forwards, a nightmare come to life on the battlefield.

Pulling up slightly, he extended his legs, and used the pneumatic system to sink his talons into the alien's head.

A beat of his wings and he was in the air, head of the alien clutched in his claws. 

A minute gesture, and the talons released. The severed head plummeted, falling, but he couldn't pay more attention to it; there was a fight going on.

Not only that, but his wings weren't working all that well. 

They were working, of course, but flapping them seemed to take more effort than normal, and the lift he got from one flap was much less.

As though he were waving them through the air rather than pushing them down to get lift. Bizarre. 

But, then, all of this felt overwhelming and strangely different.

Not quite as though the outside world had changed during the time he had spent back home, but more so that the outside world had caused him to be off-balance, with how different it was from Gotham.

He felt exposed... No time to think-!

Bruce dove, colliding with multiple aliens, and rolled right back up into a stand, wings spread out wide and teeth bared.

He couldn't see himself, but Superman had stopped and stared. He hadn't looked away, not even when some of the aliens had run themselves into him, their weapons bending and breaking off of his body.

He was the Bat then, truly and completely; his wings and talons were just another part of him, like his legs or his eyebrows. 

He could not know it, but he, at that moment, was cloaked in shadow despite the sun beating down on them, the shadows writhing and striking out at an alien that dared to try to attack him. 

He felt more like himself, then, than he had since he had left Gotham. Still exposed, but less so.

He looked like a predator, like a hunter. He looked dangerous.

The aliens shied back, intimidated, and Clark nearly took a step back despite being entranced by the Bat's majesty.

Then the Bat flicked the tips of his wings out with a huff, staring at Superman, and he got the message. Tearing his gaze away, they each got back to fighting.

He couldn't help but to look, however, when the Bat called out, "ƑⱠȺƧĦ¡!"

"Yeah, ally? What is it?" Flash had panted, having to fight his way through the horde to get to the Bat.

"ǤǾ– ƓØȾĦⱯⱮ– ɃȺŦƂɄƦǤḜⱤ. ɆⱯȾ. ƝǾ ĦƎⱠⱣ– ƧŦȺƦṾɆĐ¡!"

"Are you sure? How do you know it'll be open, or not, like, run over by the aliens that are invading? Are you sure I should be leaving to go eat, not fighting?"

"ȻⱠḜȺƦɆĐ. ǤǾ¡!"

Reluctantly, he zipped away, leaving them to keep fighting the aliens without him.

It stung, being the weak link- he had powers, Green Arrow didn't!- but he knew that their new ally, whoever they were, was correct. He needed to eat.

He had not anticipated being flipped on his back as soon as he entered the city, and pinned down with a blade to his neck.

"ŵħɏ– ⱶⱸɍɇ¿?"

"I'm sorry it's just that I was fighting aliens with some others and maybe I was starting to slow down or something but I'm really fast and because of it I have an enhanced metabolism and a bat guy who showed up not long ago told me to go to Gotham to some place called 'Batburger' to eat because 'no help- starved' but I'm sorry I can go-"

The figure chuffed and stepped away. They didn't offer him a hand.

Standing up, he was ready to run, when they spoke again, this time pointing a clawed digit. Was that the blade that had been at his neck-?

"ŧħŕɇǝ ƃĺǿḉḱ- ŧħɇɍɛ. ɲɇǿŋ. ħⱥȿⱦǝ¡!"

With a respectful and wary nod, he zipped away to the allure of food and the prospect of no longer feeling like his stomach acids were eating away at his stomach lining. Yay!

He ordered "the most calories I can get, please", and got a burger as thick as the brioche bun, topped with two eggs, and a fair helping of every single topping, as well as a basket of thick-cut fries, and a milkshake.

By the time he was finishing the milkshake, he got another burger, and the man sat down beside him.

"Got sent 'ere by th' Bat, ay? Most'a us Gothamites don' believe in it, bu' I saw it'n Ilmestys come in wit' a kid, 'n orphan, ta try'n feed 'im. 'E's now partly the Robin. Jus' a warnin'- be careful 'round the Bats'n the Bird. They're b'yond us humans, an' don' work like us."

With that unsettling talk over, he zoomed back towards the fight, only to get intercepted on the border of Gotham again, this time by a literal child- with green bird wings!- dressed in traffic light colors.

"wAtChInG. ArRoW- NeEd mOrE!"

With those unsettling words, the child shoved multiple quivers into his hands, along with what looked like a police baton, but with a heft to it. 

He looked up to ask questions, only to see the child flounce off of the building and rise into the Gotham smog, disappearing with an unearthly cackle that raised the hairs on the back of his neck and goosebumps along his arms.

He zipped back to the fight, only to find that nearly all the rest in the immediate area had been dispatched in his absence.

Seeing the items he was holding, the Bat huffed, tilting its head so that it was parallel to its shoulder questioningly, and asked, "ƦǾɃḬȠ¿?"

"Er, yeah," Flash said awkwardly, unable to help remembering the Batburger employee's words. 

He sped over to behind Green Lantern, where one of the few remaining aliens had been attempting to kill him. It was now dead.

"I am Diana of Themyscira, and these are my fellow warriors, Superman, Green Lantern, Flash, Green Arrow, and Martian Manhunter. May I inquire as to your name?"

"ɃȺŦ. ǾƑ ǤǾŦĦȺⱮ."

"It's very nice to meet you, Bat," Superman said, pulling himself together. He held his hand out to shake that of the newcomer.

The shadows on the Bat recoiled away from Superman's outstretched hand, as though sensing that his powers came from the sun, leaving him feeling exposed- not in a bad way, more like he was standing in the sun on a cool winter's day. 

With his homeland's shadows having retreated from the living solar panel's offered arm, he felt more like Bruce than the Bat.

Tentatively, Bruce reached out to carefully shake Superman's hand, doing so mostly with the palm of his hand, with his fingers flexed outwards so that his claws did not cut the Kryptonian. 

He knew that his claws wouldn't cut Superman's skin, but it was the principle of the thing.

As Clark shook the cryptid's hand, he felt his powers be dampened slightly, despite the shadows on the cryptid having retreated at his outstretched arm. Not much, but as though he were sitting in the shade. 

Oddly, it didn't feel bad, but rather like he was relaxing in the shade on a hot summer's day. It felt nice, soothing.

"You're the Bat? The one that lives in the crime-ridden city of Gotham? The creature that haunts Gotham, terrorizing the criminals and scum of the city? What are you doing here?"

"ⱣƦǾŦƐȻŦ ǤǾȾĦȺḾ. ĐȺŊǤɆⱤ– ɆⱯƦȾĦ¿? ĐȺȠǤɆȒ– ǤǾȾĦȺⱮ."

"Well, this is nice and all," Green Arrow cut in, "but shouldn't we get going? The Earth is being invaded by aliens."

Bruce nodded, pulling his hand back. "What next? Are we just going to run around fighting aliens, or?" Green Lantern asked, still wary, and Bruce shook his head.

"ⱮǾȾĦḜƦⱾĦḬⱣ. ĐɆⱾȾƦǾɎ– ⱮǾȾĦḜƦⱾĦḬⱣ, ĐɆⱾȾƦǾɎ– ƑƗǤĦȾɆƦŞ¡!"

While Bruce was aided by highly advanced technology, they still fought through hundreds, possibly thousands, of aliens, and he was just a man. 

He was reaching his limits by the time they had gotten to the mothership.

He was exhausted and injured, but he still managed to create a bomb, using miscellanea he had in his many pockets and pouches, as well as the things already on the ship.

"ⱠɆⱯṼɆ," he warned them. There wasn't long left on the timer, until it would blow.

"What about you?" Superman asked, sounding actually concerned for him. How touching.

"Ḭ ɃɆḸǾƝǤ– ǤǾȾĦȺⱮ," Bruce assured, "Ȋ– ɃɆ ƑƗȠɆ."

It actually rang true, even to him, who knew that he was just a man in a costume, but it got Superman to leave him on the mothership, alone with the bomb.

With no one there, he had no reason to maintain the façade of being alright. Limping over to the shadowiest corner, he eased himself down.

Fatigue pulled at him. It would be so easy to just let go, to just slip into sleep and never wake up again, having been blasted to pieces by the bomb detonating, but he couldn't.

He couldn't just die. He couldn't just leave Kate and Dick.

Gotham's residents might be starting to accept Ilmestys and Robin like they had him, like they had accepted the Bat, but he couldn't ruin that by leaving them all behind.

"By Gotham," he muttered, "I've got to get home."

The last thing he saw before succumbing to unconsciousness was the shadows around him creeping up his limbs.

"Bruce? Nietoperz? Why didn't you let any of us know that you got back? We were watching, and we saw you get injured- and battling through the injuries, really- we need to treat them."

"...Ka'e?" He muttered, only to start coughing at the residue of smoke and grit in his mouth.

"Dick? Could you please go get him some water? Thank you. Now. What happened?"

"Kate? I- I got home? The- the las- the last thing I remem- remember, I couldn't g- get out- in time, and I sai- I said, 'by Gotham, I- I've got to get- got to get home'."

"Do you mean to tell me, Bruce, that you were on the mothership when it exploded? Bruce. Netopier. Tell me that I'm understanding you wrong."

He just coughed again, unable to look her in the eyes. She sank down beside him, medical supplies in her hands, and began to disinfect and wrap his wounds, humming slightly as she did so.

"What did you hear about Gotham while you were away training? What did people think of her?"

"'Her'?" Bruce muttered, confused. Shaking his head, he re-focussed on Kate's question.

"Uh, they all avoided it- both the location and the topic- but that's not surprising... Hm... I remember someone saying that a cousin of theirs grew up in normal New Jersey and once had to enter Gotham... Said that their cousin was never the same..."

"Did they mention anything their cousin said about Gotham?" Kate prompted, ignoring his hiss as she began to sew up a cut on his side.

"Yeah- said- said Gotham seem- seemed sentient- was creeped out b- by everyone saying 'by Gotham' and 'd- dear Gotham' and s- stuff like th- like that... Their cousin said 'I'm afraid- of Gotham, but at th- at the same time- it feels like I- like I'm compulsed to go back- to go back there. Gotham- once Gotham's got its hooks in- got its hooks in you, it won't let go'."

"Did you notice anything odd about Gotham, compared to the rest of the world, once you got back from your travels?"

Dick walked over, very carefully concentrating on not spilling any water out of the cup he was carrying.

She thanked him quietly and motioned for him to give it to Bruce. He took it, drinking nearly all of the water before he began to talk.

"Yeah. I felt- welcome? Not by the people, but- by Gotham? Other than just normal Gotham stuff, no, not really, because, sure, the shadows have more depth to them, but the smog nearly completely eliminates the light from the sun."

"Are you being serious? Bruce. How have you not realized. Gotham is sentient, and, as you said, all the 'by Gotham' and 'dear Gotham' stuff? It works like prayers would, to a god or goddess. When you said 'by Gotham, I've got to get home', you essentially called out to a goddess that has claimed you, a goddess that is your home, and said you needed to get home. Gotham herself heard your request and granted it."

"Oh." He might not have been functioning on all cylinders.

"Well then, I'm definitely going to 'pray' to Gotham more, but why are you calling Gotham a her? Isn't- isn't Gotham a city? Why would Gotham have a gender?"

"I suppose you could call Gotham a he, but no, Gotham just feels female to me. Don't tell me you don't think Gotham is a her?"

"I hadn't even realized Gotham was sentient, why would I have been thinking about whether or not Gotham felt male or female?"

He stopped. "Wait. How long- how long was I out for? Did you let the heroes know that I- that I'm fine?"

"It's been two days since the invasion began, Jemage, and I only just found out that Gotham whisked you home. No, we haven't communicated with the other heroes. They're calling themselves the Justice League, now, and have promised to defend against threats to all of Earth. What do you think?"

"Should I- should I even go back? They seem like they're doing well without me..."

"Don't be an idiot, Bruce. None of them have any sort of organizational skills, and certainly no ability to plan and come up with contingencies anywhere near your, or mine, or even Dick's level. Of course they need you."

"Right... Right, yes, of course... Hn... Do you know where I could find them..?"

"Their current base of operations is 'Mount Justice'. They are using the inside of it. 'Mount Justice' is located within a mountain just outside Happy Harbor, Rhode Island."

"That's... Hn... Around two hundred miles... Do I have some sort of jet, or airplane, or any sort of aircraft?"

"A few, but they're all civilian aircraft. Don't worry about it, though; Dick and I- Robin and Ilmestys- will take care of it! Just sleep. We'll take care of it."

Gotham may have whisked him back home before he could be blown up, but he was still injured. He needed rest, to be able to heal.

"I trust you," he murmured, unwisely.

"Just- be safe..." With that, he stopped fighting, and allowed himself to slip back into unconsciousness.

When Bruce awoke, he was no longer down in the cave, in the nest, but instead in his bed.

He finagled himself into a sitting position. Only to have to hold back a coo at the sight of Dick, curled up at the foot of his bed like a cat.

Reaching out, ignoring the pain in his side, he poked Dick gently. "Hey there, chum."

"Nhg," he got in response, and Dick just curled up tighter in an attempt to get away from his offending finger.

"Hey, chum. Dick."

"N'h whaddaya want?" The boy asked, hardly coherent, but enough to swipe at the hand he was poking with.

"How long was I out?"

Accepting that he wasn't going to be let to sleep in peace, Dick stretched like a cat, his spine popping multiple times as he arched his back.

"Wha''s th' question, 'gain? Repeat it, please..?" He asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"How long was I asleep?"

A yawn split Dick's face, stretching open wide before snapping shut.

"I was also asleep, why'd I know? I don't. I 'n go get Kate o' Alfie, though, 'f you want?"

"Yes please, chum. Before you go- do we now have an aircraft I can use as the Bat?"

Dick bounced off the bed, shot him a grin and a thumbs up, and left the room.

Bruce could hear him thundering down the hall, and the squeal of Dick as he slid down the bannister.

He leaned back onto the pillows behind him and began to meditate.

He had never really been good at it, at just existing, but he wanted to see if he could feel Gotham on himself.

He was curious as to what the effects of being whisked through space by a sentient, deified (?) city, would be.

Closing his eyes, he focussed on himself, on how he existed in the space around him.

He didn't focus on his heartbeat, nor on his breathing. Just on the space his body took up. Just on how his body felt.

The wound in his side was stitched, and he could feel the tension from the stitches holding his skin together so that it could heal. 

He had a bit of a gouge on his right arm, near the joint, but it had been disinfected and wrapped.

He had been knocked back and had hit a wall.

His wings worked with supporting points going down his spine, 'ribs' wrapping around his torso to disperse the weight.

Having been thrown into a wall, all the support for his wings had been pushed into his back. He could feel the bruises already.

Aside from those, he also had a few more minor cuts, scrapes, and bruises, including a long but thin and shallow cut down his leg.

Right... Meditating...

Breathing in and out, he sank deeper into a trance-like state, until he felt disconnected from his body, yet still tethered to it. An odd dichotomy.

In... Out...

The first thing out of the ordinary was the slick. It was slick like oil, coating the outside of his metaphysical body. 

The slick had sunk under his skin, like it had been woven into the tapestry detailing his life and the injuries he had obtained during that time. Like it was a part of him.

It went under his skin, and into his veins, into his blood, his blood tinted dark with the slick. Gotham ran through his veins. He belonged to Gotham.

Oddly enough, the thought made him feel comforted, instead of ill at ease.

Gotham had claimed him. He couldn't say he was surprised; what could that which he was doing as the Bat be but claiming the people of Gotham, claiming Gotham itself?

He was part of Gotham, and Gotham was part of him. He wasn't unhappy about it.

The slick was sinking into him, had been since he was born in the city, into the city, and had only receded somewhat in his trip around the globe to train, coming back in full force when he returned to claim Gotham in turn, as it had claimed him.

Looking over the slick, he noticed it pooling around him, as well as within him. Peering closer, he found it to be a mimicry of the batsuit.

The darkest of the slick was focussed in the ears (horns), the wings, the fangs- he hadn't even noticed the synthesized bone retainer becoming fused with his teeth!- and the claws.

That wasn't to say that the slick wasn't dark where it echoed the scales of the carapace-like armor he wore, no, simply that it wasn't as dark, as concentrated.

Bruce was jarred out of his introspection by the door opening and Kate walking in.

"Hello. Did Dick tell you of my questions?"

"Sure did, Vlermuis! It has now been three days since the alien invasion began."

"And about my other question..? Do we now have an aircraft up to your standards for us to use as Gotham's cryptids?"

"Sure do!" Kate chirped, her smile long, thin, and mischievous. Bruce knew his cousin too well for him to trust it.

"What did you do, Kate?"

"I have no clue what you mean, Lakuriq nate! Our new aircraft, fit for use as Gotham's cryptids, is totally legally acquired, a transaction acquiesced to by both parties!"

"Kate," he sighed beleagueredly. "Please tell me you didn't steal us some sort of aircraft."

"Dick and I totally didn't steal us a jet, no, of course not, that would be ludicrous! We paid for it!"

"'Paid', hn, sure. Did the owner of the jet agree to you buying it from them?" 

The silence was telling. "Well, I suppose we have it now. How about we go down to the cave and you show me the jet?"

"Should you be getting out of bed? You're injured, and likely drained from Gotham dragging you back home."

"I'm fine; I slept. And, I was fighting with these injuries, I ought to be able to walk with them."

"Mm, if you're sure. Is there a passage to the cave from this floor that I don't know about, or will I need to help you down the stairs?"

With a grumble, Bruce got up and showed her a special passageway at the back of the master bedroom's walk-in closet.

It was a testament to how comfortable he felt around Kate that he allowed himself to limp, to show weakness.

"Whoa, cool. This is, like, a servants' corridor, but for evacuation from the master bedroom? And, you said it comes out in the caves? Cool. Do you think it was used as an emergency escape route for the masters of the house? It has to have, right?"

"It was designed for that use, yes," Bruce agreed, "but now it is being used for ease of travel by us. I hope that Dick doesn't get into pranking, or else this would be used in nearly the opposite way of how it was intended to be."

They walked in silence for a while, until the stairs smoothed out into the familiar stone of the caves, at which point Kate hefted his arm over her shoulders and led him.

Underfoot, the stone broke up into gravel, which then ceded to dirt. "You left the jet outside?" 

"Well, I first thought to keep it in the caves with the rest of the stuff related to the Bats, but there wasn't a big enough opening to bring it it, and no cave large enough to store it in, except for the Batcave, and there's too much stuff in the way, so, yes, it's outside."

Bruce raised his hand, using it to shade his eyes from the dull sunlight that managed to eke through the smog.

"Is this- a Blackbird?" He asked, shocked. "They're going to miss a Blackbird. Why would you choose to take this one? Just, why?"

"The Lockheed SR-71A, only unofficially known as the Blackbird. Why did I choose it? Well, it's an advanced, long-range, high-altitude, strategic reconnaissance aircraft that can go faster than Mach 3."

"Hn. Have you started on any plans to modify it? It will need to be able to truly leave Earth's atmosphere, if I am to work with the Justice League, and camouflage would be quite handy..."

"Nah, I'll leave the Bat-ification to you, Sovsouri. Shoo, go get suited up. And don't forget the extramural lenses!"

Bruce may have grumbled at the reminder- it wasn't like he'd forget- but he appreciated the concern that led to it.

He rushed through putting on the suit, but double-checked to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything, just in case.

He was excited to meet real-life superheroes. Not that he would show it outwardly.

One could argue that he, too, was a superhero, but he was the Bat, a symbol of terror that haunted the skies of Gotham as a deterrent to criminals, and besides that, he was simply a normal human.

No enhancements of any sort, not that he knew of, anyway. There was the slick, but that could just be Gotham acknowledging him as the Bat, not enhancing him.

Walking outside, he had to squint to see. The normal lenses in the cowl gave him night vision, enhanced clarity, enhanced sight range, and the ability to zoom.

The extramural lenses, for leaving Gotham, were more akin to sunglasses, though they had most of the features of the normal lenses included as well.

He was working on a pair of lenses that functioned as an extra iris, opening wider or closing thinner to let in different amounts of light.

He had yet to manage to make it automatically adjust with different light levels and have the amount it adjusted to still allow him to see, rather than cutting off his sight by contracting too far or blinding him by opening too wide, however.

The weight of the suit felt heavy on his shoulders, as though the additions were trying to pull him down, into the ground. 

Was he really about to do this? To go meet up with superheroes, and possibly join their group dedicated to keeping Earth safe from extraterrestrial threats?

He was just a man in a bat costume! An un-enhanced, plain, regular, vanilla, human. 

He had already almost died, on the first mission, and only survived because he had 'prayed' to Gotham, which he hadn't known to be sentient!

It was a fluke, a stroke of luck. He wasn't in the same league as those in the Justice League! How could he pretend himself to be?

"Hey, Mileme. Are you ready to go spook the shit out of those superheroes?"

"Spook them?" He frowned. "Why would I spook them?"

"You aren't the same as them, Bruce, we aren't. They are superheroes. We are fundamentally different. They exist to stop criminals, to stop villains, to save people, to make people feel safe."

Eyes narrowed, he slowly nodded for her to continue.

"Us, however? We exist to scare criminals, to scare villains, to strike fear into their hearts in an effort to dissuade them from crime. We save people, but they are wary of us, and that is good. We exist, to the people of Gotham, as frightful, inhuman creatures. Beings, cryptids, that are mysteriously mostly benevolent."

"You are right. We are fundamentally different from those superheroes. Are you saying- are you saying that I should try to scare the Justice League?" He asked, smothering the beginnings of a smile.

"Of course! If even the Justice League think you aren't human, then they won't try to unmask you, they won't try to figure out who you are beneath the cowl, because they won't think you exist as anything more than the Bat."

He was typically too serious to smile, whenever he was himself, not acting for the cameras, but he could make an exception...

The Bat bared his teeth in an animalistic, feral expression of glee.

Kate smirked back at him, but it was a human smirk, as she was the human Kate Kane, then, not Ilmestys.

Ilmestys would have bared her teeth back in a mimicry of his own 'smile'.

Boarding the jet, he followed the choreography of a dance he hadn't known himself to be a part of, and found himself piloting the jet. 

He went with it, following Gotham's instructions, and soon he could do it himself, without needing to follow any instructions, having learned what the controls did from Gotham's light nudges.

He thanked her just before she slipped away, him having left Gotham's borders.

The journey was quick, even with him not exceeding mach one, as he had no wish to break the sound barrier.

Setting down the jet, he disembarked onto the rocky ground of the mountain, 'Mount Justice', and quickly skulked to beneath the cover of some trees.

He felt exposed, standing in the light of the sun. It was just so bright, even with the extramural lenses.

Now... How to find the entrance..?

As it turned out, finding the entrance was easy. The entrance was just a man-sized tunnel straight through to the center of the mountain. 

The tricky part would be getting in, as it was blocked by a boulder covered with green light. One of Green Lantern's constructs, no doubt.

Skulking around the construct, hunched in on himself due to the bright, almost searing, light, he tried to find a way in without touching the construct. After all, he didn't know if Green Lantern would feel it if he did.

He felt disconcerted, having blinked and found himself in the shadowy tunnel.

He just shrugged to himself, feeling the slight smugness of the faint presence of Gotham.

He would surely obsess over it later to find out how he entered without moving the boulder construct, but at the moment he just felt relief at being out of the sun.

Following the tunnel down, he was surprised when none of the assembled superheroes noticed his presence, as it had abruptly opened up into a cavern where they were sitting on (construct) chairs around a (construct) table.

He didn't smile; even in the low light, his pearly fangs would have shown and likely attracted some attention.

However, that didn't mean that he didn't feel the urge to smile at the opportunity he found before him.

If anyone were to notice him, it would be Superman, with his enhanced hearing and x-ray vision, but apparently he was engrossed in the conversation they were having, as he didn't seem to notice him climbing the walls and onto the ceiling.

Hanging on to the ceiling with the claws on all of his limbs (yes, he included his wings as limbs. They were a part of him, and he felt bare without them), he rotated his head to look over his back to see that none of them had noticed him, even still.

This was just too good.

"-often are we to meet? I assume that none of you wish to leave behind the cities under your protection to protect Earth from threats that are not ever-constant?"

"ǾƝȻƎ– ⱮØŊȾĦ¿?"

He suggested, and they all startled, looking up at him ready to fight, though they relaxed somewhat once they saw that it was him. 

Superman was the only one to completely relax at seeing that it was him, however.

All of the others remained tense and on guard, but with the addition of being freaked out, so his plan to scare them seemed to have worked.

Unknown to him, he looked like a demon there, hanging from the ceiling like a cat but with wings, head twisted nearly 180°, his unblinking all-white eyes staring down at them. 

Nearly all of them shuddered at seeing him scuttle across the ceiling.

They watched with wide eyes as he let go of the ceiling, twisting in mid-air and letting his wings open, slowing his plummet to a controlled descent, and landing like a cat if it was an eldritch horror, wings pooling around his form like oil.

"Bat! You are alright!" Superman grinned, standing up and striding over to shake his hand again, the only one unaffected by the display. Even Wonder Woman was slightly unnerved.

At Superman's approach, from where he crouched, puddly, he snapped up into a mostly-humanoid form in the blink of an eye.

He looked like a vampire then, a tall humanoid creature with its wings draped around it like a cape. 

Even closer-resembling a human, something about the Bat still made the hair on their necks stand up, made them want to flee, made them feel as though they were in the presence of a predator.

Something about the Bat felt inhuman, felt wrong.

A hand emerged from the shadows draped around the Bat, no ripple in the cape to indicate such, but the arm was out, hand open.

Superman shook the Bat's hand, neither of them letting go for just a touch too long to be normal, before the Bat withdrew its hand back into the shadows surrounding it.

"How did you escape the mothership before it blew? I didn't notice you leave, and it took you nearly two days to meet up with us."

"Ḭ– ǤǾȾⱧȺƜ'Ȿ. Ȉ– ĐȺŊǤɆƦ, ǤØȾⱵⱯⱮ– ŦȺⱩɆ ɃⱯȻƘ. ƬǾƟǨ- ȾǬȽⱠ."

It bared its teeth in its own way of smiling, then, at the other heroes' shudders, tried to form its mouth into a smile like Superman's.

The long, sharp teeth made the effect even more chilling, however. 

The uncanny valley effect activated, seeing something so clearly not human mimicking it, and so well that it nearly looked identical, even if it took a little bit of work to make its mouth move that way. 

They all wished it would go back to baring its fangs... Bar Superman.

He thought the attempt at mimicry was cute, but, then, he wasn't human himself. 

Oh, having lived with humans for so long, the mimicry of their behaviors was second nature for him, automatic, and thus didn't activate the uncanny valley effect, but that did not change the fact that he was not human.

Green Lantern conjured up a chair for him, and he perched on it like a cat, but they all managed to get through the meeting, even scheduling the next. 

They all noticed the Bat's increasing agitation the longer it dragged on, vibrating, shifting, and eyeing the door, like it had somewhere to be. 

They weren't surprised when it launched itself off the chair, beat its wings in a couple of flaps, and vanished out the exit.

All of them but Superman were relieved, even despite having gotten somewhat used to having the Bat there with them.

– – – – – Additional Scene – – – – –

It had been a few months since they had formed the Justice League, and they had all gotten somewhat used to the Bat. 

Oh, they were still unnerved by its voice when it chose to speak, and sometimes it moved in ways that reminded them that the Bat was an inhuman creature, but they had started getting used to its presence.

Of course, just when they were getting used to having the Bat there with them, just as they were starting to become accustomed to the new routine, it was all upheaved.

When they arrived, the Bat wasn't perched in the chair like normal, which in and of itself was a difference that they took notice of and talked about, but then they had all shown up, and the Bat still hadn't arrived.

They waited for a bit, but it didn't show, and they started the meeting. 

Despite going forward with the check-ins, reports on their cities, and everything else, the Bat's absence was weighing on all of their minds.

The reports on their cities was the last thing they did before mingling, a way of getting to know each other.

Everyone had completed the reports on their cities, and they were all just kind of looking at each other, all of them wondering the same thing, when they heard a voice from above.

"ⱥƚł ǥøǿƌ– ǥǿⱦħⱥɱ. ŋø– ɲɇŵ."

"Who the hell are you?!" Chitters of laughter was the response to Green Arrow's question, even despite an arrow being pointed at them, with every member of the Justice League ready to attack them. 

Including Flash, who knew about the intruder. Oh, it wasn't his fault, the intruder was intimidating, and their first run-in hadn't exactly been the best.

The figure on the ceiling let go with their wings and hand-claws, hanging upside down like an actual bat. They looked similar to the Bat, incredibly similar, but they had seen a flicker of red as the figure wrapped their wings around themself.

"ḯłɱɇṥⱦɏș¡! ƃⱥŧ– ȿḭṧⱦḝṝ¡!"

"The Bat has a sister? There are more of you?!" "Why are you here instead of the Bat?"

"ŗǿƃḯŋ– ȿȉḉǩ. ƃⱥŧ, ṥţⱥƴ- ẁⱥƭḉħ ǿⱴɇⱹ."

"Robin? Who is that?" Superman inquired, the only one brave enough to ask.

Ilmestys didn't answer, fluttering its wings, showing the red of the inside, and putting them back, having adjusted to be more comfortable.

They mingled, as they did in normal circumstances, but in the back of their minds they all knew that Ilmestys was there, and they were wary of it.

The Bat attempted to make them all more at ease by mimicking human behaviors, but it backfired.

It only making them more ever-presently aware of how it was not human, of how it couldn't be human.

Ilmestys, however, didn't bother attempting to seem more human.

It remained hanging from the ceiling, watching them all with sharp, unblinking white eyes, whereas the Bat had used a chair but badly in an attempt to set them more at ease.

No, Ilmestys wasn't human, and it didn't bother trying to seem like one.

It acted like a creature.

An intelligent creature with a somewhat grasp of the English language, and, while unnerving, while creepy, it somehow felt less so than the Bat, due to not pretending to be something it wasn't.

"That would be Enzo's bar. They have a poker game on the first Friday of each month, and Bruce- er, Matches- goes. How are we supposed to get in? I'm thirteen. Hardly the twenty-one of the age minimum."

"Oh, it's a Gotham bar, we'll just go up and say we're looking for our uncle, Matches. If that doesn't work, we could probably sneak in."

"Oh, are you sure? Don't they have, like... Bouncers? Aren't those things?" He asked, gnawing on his bottom lip.

"Why do you think I'd know? I'm not so much older than you that I can bluff myself in. Don't have a reason to know. But, yeah, I'd imagine so, which is why our second option is to wait a while and sneak in."

He frowned, but he glanced down at his Robbie notebook, at everything they'd decided and how much better it was than what he'd had when he had been working alone, and nodded. He'd follow her lead.

Babs- Ally- walked up to the bar, fully decked out, head tilted back just slightly and walking with a strut. 

He shadowed her, though he was slouched and his eyes darted around as they walked, whereas her spine could have been switched with a steel rod and her posture wouldn't change. 

She didn't even look around! On Gotham's streets! Oh, how he wished he had her confidence. 

She must think that the plan would work, or perhaps she was faking it? Either way, he couldn't emulate it. Not with his silent, persistent doubts.

Despite her confidence, they got stopped at the door. "You aren't old enough to enter," the lady told them.

"Oh, stuff it. It's not like we're here for the alcohol. 'sides, it's unlikely they'd serve us anyway- no, we're here for our uncle Matches."

"You're here for Matches? You said he's your uncle? That would make you Robbie, and you... Alessandra- excuse me, Ally?"

At Ally's scowl and fingering of something in her pocket, she corrected herself. Matches must have warned them to use Ally's not-proper name, just like he'd made a notation in her file.

"Well, he isn't here, or I would get someone to bring him out for you. But I am not going to let you inside."

"Fuckin' bouncer. I'll remember this. An' you better not tell 'im we're lookin' for 'im- or I'll see to it that you regret it!" she swore, and turned away.

"Come on, Robbie- we've got better places t' be." Ally strode away, a thumb tucked into the corner of her pocket and other hand playing with a black lighter engraved with a blue flame and the initials A.I.M.

(Seeing as Bruce had only given them first names, they decided to have some fun with their initials. No real theme, just for fun. Ally Irene Malone, to make AIM. Robbie Uther Malone, to make RUM. Matches Obsidian Malone, to make MOM. Aeneas Reginald Malone, to make ARM. They couldn't find good initials for Kate, so just gave her Mace as a middle name.)

Once they were out of sight, Robbie put away the knife he'd been twirling in his gloved hands and became Dick again.

"So, plan A's a bust. When should we do plan B? And, do you really think she'll keep quiet about our visit?"

"Who knows? But if she doesn't- if she ruins this for us, after all the hard work we've put in- I'll shred her shoes."

Dick blinked at the transition from serious to almost the cartoon-villain level 'threat'.

He hadn't expected that. He had expected a more oblique threat, such as 'I'll make her regret it'.

"Anyways, we've got a couple'a weeks before we ought to go back and make our way in. 's not too bad, anyway; we've gotta practice keeping up wit' bein'- well, like this, 'f you catch mah drift."

Dick did catch her drift and attempted to shift more into being Robbie with a sigh. He'd just quit...

"Awh, come on, Ally!" he pouted as he ran a finger across the edge of his knife, "but it's soooo boring! Why w'd I practice when I c'd be not doing that?"

She raised an eyebrow at his snarl and the knife pointed towards her throat. When he didn't lower it, she pretended to put her hands in her pockets, nonchalant as anything.

Changing directions with her hands, she grabbed her dual hatchets and pulled them out as she jumped back. He swung, and she parried.

They got caught up in the adrenaline of the fight. Robbie kept slipping minisculely, and then being locked back down.

It was in one of these moments that she caught the knife he had thrust forward such that it would have gotten her in the midriff had it landed, and used the moment to kick him.

He stumbled back, releasing the grip on his knife, and she surged forward. He stilled as her axe blades met his neck. One in the front, one in the back.

They stared into each other's eyes, and, after a few tense seconds, simultaneously relaxed.

She re-holstered her hatchets and he grabbed his knife from the ground. After a quick inspection of the edge to make sure it hadn't cracked, chipped, or rolled, he re-sheathed it and sedately made his way to her side.

The fire had waned in him, and she had gotten out her frustration in the brief, impromptu spar. They walked together until they came to the point that their paths diverged. 

"You'd best not forget t' practice," she warned, lightly jabbing him in the gut with the finger she'd just been waving in his face.

Robbie rolled his eyes at her reminder, unbothered, and grabbed her for a hug that only lasted as long as it took for her hands to reach her hatchets.

"Oh, ah dare say y' won'' let me forget, dear cousin! Adieu!" With an exaggerated bow- his hair nearly touched the street- he bounced up and pranced back towards the manor.

She shook her head in exasperation at his antics, and let Ally half slip as she made her way back home.

She spotted an aura along the rooftops, but only let a slight smile through as she shook her head. 

She was acquainted with the owner of the aura with that particular shade of dark purple. How nice of him to check in on her.

– – – – –

After a couple of weeks, they met up again, a couple of blocks away from Enzo's bar. Ally- having gotten there earlier than him- pushed off the wall she had been leaning on as Robbie approached.

"Hey-a there, Robbie. Are you ready t' start making waves?" She asked with a sharp, anticipatory smile. He returned it.

"Follow me then, pal. I've got the specs o' the buildin', and the vents are no-go, but there is an old half-window t' the basement that we can get in through."

"Sounds like a plan- or a start of one. D'you have any meat on the bare bones of this plan, or are we supposed t' fuckin' wing it?"

"Oh, c'mon pal, don't be obtuse. D'you really think that I'd go t' all the trouble of findin' the blueprints of the buildin' just t' say 'hey, let's go in through this window and improvise from there'?"

"Well, what'd you want me t' think? 's what you said!" Robbie shoved his sunglasses back up his nose and tugged on his fingerless gloves, and then the bandana tied around his neck, in an attempt to fidget out his energy. It didn't work.

Ally eyed him dispassionately behind her sunglasses. She took them off, polished them with her shirt, and then tucked them away.

This caught Robbie's attention, as they always kept their sunglasses on. For two reasons.

Because it fit their image and because, when it became part of their image, nobody would be able to properly imagine them without their sunglasses, which would help to protect their identities.

After all, would you recognize a baseball player without their hat and otherwise out of uniform?

When Ally shifted into a combat stance and gave him the come at me finger waggle, he grinned in a feral manner and pounced.

She jumped back and managed to avoid his lunge and the swipes with his knife. He jumped up at her, but she just leaned back, out of the way of his swipe.

She twisted smoothly, ending up behind him and holding one of his knives- which she had plucked from his hand so cleanly that he hadn't noticed- to his throat, and his other knife-holding hand out to the side and twisted such that he could not use it without her spraining his wrist.

Robbie took back the knife she held at his throat with his free hand. She let him go and re-donned her sunglasses.

He didn't attack her again. Even despite how his aura kept spiking violently and his mouth stayed twisted halfway between a grimace and a snarl.

She stared at him for a moment before nodding and turning on her heel. He followed, reluctantly.

"They open the half-window b'tween eight and ten pm, April through June, and September through November. There's a screen in place, but it oughtta be easy t' kick out. 't opens into the basement where they keep the bottles o' alcohol, an' they hardly come down t' get refills unless it's a Poker Night or real busy."

"Oh yeah? But what 'bout the upstairs? W'd they not 'ave a guard on th' door?" He challenged.

"Oh, come now. Of course they do! However, everyone needs to use the bathroom, and the guard locks the door wit' a key at 8:30 and leaves to use the bathroom, arriving back no later than 8:35. The door locks from the inside. All we hafta do is unlock it and head on out into the bar."

"An' how're we supposed t' get back out, if th' guard accidentally re-locks it when comin' back?" Robbie challenged.

She checked her watch and started walking faster. "You say that as though you think I ain't prepared. Dependin' on when we wanna leave, we either wait until the guard has another bathroom break and accidentally unlock the door, or we jus' walk right out the front door."

"The front door?" He asked, appalled. "You're sayin' that we oughtta jus' walk out th' front door? 'spite that they w'd not let us in that way?"

"Ah, we might get some attention if we decide to leave thataways, but what does it matter, really? I daresay they won't be able t' figure out how we got in, and even if they do, there are other ways."

They came towards the building. When the bouncer saw them, he shook his head, and they kept walking in a false-dejected manner.

They went around the block and then cut through the alley between the buildings to get to the back of the building.

They came to the window, and it was open as planned. Ally kicked the screen, softly at first, but with increasing force until it rattled out of the frame. She just barely caught it before it hit the floor.

Letting out a sigh of relief, she stooped and slid through the window to land on the floor. Nothing.

She stepped aside and let Robbie come in before replacing the screen. The metal frame had bent a bit because of her kicking it, but not enough to be overly noticeable, thankfully.

Ally led the way through the basement, and they crept up the stairs, careful not to let it squeak under their weight.

She pressed her ear to the door, but that didn't help at all. She crouched down and peered out from the gap under the door.

With a brief glance at her watch, she settled in to wait. Not for long, but for enough that staying crouched would be uncomfortable.

She looked up at hearing the key turn in the lock, and glanced under the door to see the guard walking away. Yes! Her plan was working!

Robbie tried to get up, but she held out her arm to bar him from approaching the door. The seconds ticked down, and sweat trickled down the back of her neck.

After waiting long enough for no attention to be lingering on the door, she straightened up, pulled on her clothes to make them look less rumpled, and turned the lock.

She opened the door, with confidence but without theatrics, and strode into the room. Robbie scrambled after her, having taken a moment too long with closing the door.

Plopping herself down at the bar, she demanded, "What sorta non-alcoholic drinks d'you have?"

"...We have water, apple juice, tomato juice, and ginger ale," the lady drawled, "if you can pay."

"Jus' put t'on Matches' tab, he won't care, not if 'e knows what's good for 'im. Two unopened cans o' ginger ale, if you please."

With an eye-roll, she called over another woman, the bouncer that had turned them away, and asked her to go get them from the back. With narrowed eyes, she did so.

"So, how did you get in?" She enquired, leaning on the bar. "I know that you've been turned away before, and the owner of this bar has said to keep this Gotham-legal, which includes not letting in children like you."

Ally elbowed Robbie in the ribs to keep him from going for his knives and telling her off for calling them children.

"For your information, we ain't children, lady. An' for another, it ain't none o' your business. We were turned 'way, yeah, but that jus' made it a challenge. You oughta know better than t' serve up a challenge to a Malone, let alone two."

"That may be so, but it is my business how you got in here, seeing as we are supposed to keep minors out, and yet you somehow made your way in anyway. The boss won't be happy that we've failed."

"The boss, you say? Oh, gee, sorry 'bout makin' 'im mad at you- not. This never wouldda happened if you hadn't turned us 'way! We only came 'ere lookin' for Matches, 'nyway, not for trouble or a drink. But when you turned us away, you incited our wrath. The only reason we decided t' sneak in instead o' burnin' this place down 's cause Matches likes it, an' we don't wanna havta deal with him in a snit."

"Is that a threat?" She asked cooly, taking the drinks from the other lady and opening for them as Ally watched her movements with eagle eyes.

"No, 's not a threat. You'd know if 't were a threat. No- 's a fact. I'm tellin' it to you straight. After all... You house a lotta alcohol here, an' it's very flammable..." She trailed off suggestively.

"Noted," she said, sliding the ginger ales across the counter to them. They picked up the cans and walked over to a table in the corner of the room.

The two Malones didn't hear it, but behind the bar, one of the women noted, "Just like Matches, those two. Even went straight to his table, and sitting where they have their backs to the wall."

Upon sitting down, Robbie raises an eyebrow, and she makes a wave motion with the hand not holding her ginger ale.

He smirks in response, but they sit there and sip at their ginger ales, people watching, even as Robbie begins to fidget with the tab of the can.

They get noticed, and word spreads throughout the bar. It doesn't take long for someone to come up to them.

It's a man, poorly hiding his leer, with a couple of other men hanging around nearby. Lackeys, they know.

The lackeys' auras are navy and celadon, and they're shifty, almost uncomfortable looking, in contrast to the main man's umber-and-persimmon aura.

It doesn't look bad, color-wise, but it does look dark. Match that with his leering look and the lackeys' discomfort, and it was plain to see that he was going to be unpleasant to deal with.

Or... Her eyes slid to Robbie, vibrating in his seat next to her... Perhaps this could turn out quite well for them.

"'ey there, kiddies," the guy spoke, voice rough in the way only years of smoking can do. "Y' here lookin' for an opportunity t' get out there big? Cause I, Don Blackthorn, 'ave a plan, an' y'd be a great help. You 'specially, little missy."

•––|•–|•••–|•|•••, she taps and scratches out on the underneath of the table. He cocks his head briefly before grinning meanly in her periphery.

"'s that all you'd be offerin'? Cause that's a p'thetic ploy 'f I've ever 'eard one. We're 'ere t' make waves, t' get our own reputations out there. Joinin' you'd be counterproductive. And, anyway, 'f we wanted an in to a crime group, we'd jus' join our uncle. 's that all?"

"You-!" the guy spluttered, turning red in the face and his aura turning laurel and razzmatazz. An unflattering combination.

"We're gonna go for a talk," the guy blustered. "Spike, Thistle, grab them!" The two lackeys took slow steps forward as the other patrons watched from their seats, not even trying to hide their reluctance, their aura-colors increasing in intensity.

"Now, now, boys. Step aside, an' we'll see if we let you join us later. If you don't, well... Then 's your own damn fault for bein' stupid and joinin' an idiot ruled by 'is impulses whose brain could revolve inside a peanut shell for a thous'nd years without touchin' the sides."

Impressed whispers sprung up around the room at her insult. "Well?! Get them!" Blackthorn shouted, nearly frothing at the mouth.

The lackeys took another hesitant step forward, only to halt as Robbie shot up, crazed glint in his eyes and insane smile on his lips. They flinched as the chair he had been sitting in tipped over from the momentum of the way he scooted out.

"Poor man, can't do anythin' by 'imself. Couldn't pour water out'a a boot wit' instructions on the heel." More oohs from the watching patrons.

"What are you fucking hesitating for?! Am I paying you to be fucking pussies or am I paying you to do what I tell you?!"

There was a small murmur of, "You don't pay us at all," that went otherwise overlooked.

"He doesn't actually pay you? Well then, why the hell 're you workin' for 'im at all? Come work for us. We'll actually pay you, an' as a bonus, you'll be workin' for someone whose brain actually works for more'n hormones."

"No! You can't poach my lackeys from me! GET THEM! And my brain does work! How dare you!"

"Oh? Sorry, I'd 'ssumed that the hamster was dead an' t'was only the wheel still spinnin'."

The crowd oohed again, and she smirked. It felt nice to verbally eviscerate him. She was outwardly too meek as Barbara, and too eldritch to talk well enough for her barbs to land as Ayra, but as Ally? She could be an insult-based wordsmith.

Giving up on his lackeys, Blackthorn stormed forward and shoved a finger in her face.

"You think that you can just come in here and insult me, after I was so gracious as to extend you an offer to make it big- ow!"

He cut himself off with an ow as she broke his finger from where she sat primly in the chair. "Robbie?"

"Yes, Ally?" he asked, bloodthirsty smirk only growing at the way Blackthorn paled as he obviously recognised the names.

Robbie circled around the table- prowled, really- and Blackthorn stumbled back as he neared.

"Now, really, this- this isn't necessary!" he protested, voice shrill as he backed away, clutching his broken finger to his chest.

"On the contrary. Robbie, wouldja care t' escort 'im t' the door and treat 'im to the Malone family specialty?"

Robbie pounced, and dragged Blackthorn across the floor to the door, peals of laughter escaping him.

They only grew more manic and insane-sounding as he pinned the terrified criminal to the wall by the door, sprayed something on him, and then lit him on fire before pushing him out the door and closing it behind him.

"Now, you said that 'e didn't pay you? I'd be willin' t' do so, if you pledge t' serve the Malones. Or, you could be given the same treatment 's your former boss, 'f you'd prefer that..."

She quickly received vehement and scared agreements of servitude, and she gestured for them to take a seat across from her so as to discuss the terms.

Robbie sat down by her side, sprawling diagonally across the chair and twirling a knife in his gloved fingers as he stared the sweating lackeys down.

Yes, this turned out well, she thought, as she asked the lackeys about preferred days, crimes, and names.

After a while, she got the answers she wanted from the lackeys- navy-aura's name was dominic, and celadon-aura's name was david- and let them go after receiving a way to get in contact with them.

The bar's patron's attention lingered on them for a while longer, but they finished their ginger ales and she declared, "remember, no one tell Matches 'bout our little visit before we do or we'll give you the Malone family specialty." they slipped out into the dark night unhindered, laughing at the trail of ashes and a scorch mark on the pavement.

To an outsider, they would seem like typical Gothamite teens, if particularly uncaring or perhaps indulging in schadenfreude, but the bar-goers that night knew better, and whispered to each other as the door swung shut behind the two teens.

They knew Matches, of course, even if only peripherally or through a friend of a friend. Matches had a certain reputation.

The way he'd talked of 'his kids'- though they weren't actually his- was common knowledge, squirreled away inside brains that went tick-tick-tick.

They all knew that he was fond of them. They all knew that, if he ever made an enemy out of someone, 'his' kids would be the first targets.

Matches knew that, too, but they hadn't understood why he wasn't, or at least didn't seem to be, concerned about that being a known weak point of his, about that being something that could be exploited.

After seeing his kids, they understood. They'd seen their confidence, the self-assurance, the way they handled themselves.

They'd seen the axe holstered at Ally's belt, and had seen the outline of some other weapons under her shirt, by her shoulder blades.

They'd seen the way Robbie's fingers deftly twirled knives, and itched for them when he wasn't. They'd seen him drag a grown, struggling man across the floor with ease and pin him, still struggling, to the door frame with one hand.

Ally had directed, though not any less dangerous for being the one pulling the strings, and Robbie had danced to her tune.

Had acted as her bodyguard, as her muscle, for all that they suspected she didn't need it.

He was insane. The cackles of laughter slipping out between breaths and lighting Blackthorn on fire before punting him out the door with such glee, had seen to their understanding of that.

She was the orchestrator. She had watched Blackthorn come up to their table with a gleam in her eye and a smirk on her lips, and had played the criminal like the cheap kazoo he was.

She had turned the situation to her favor. Stolen his underlings, humiliated him, and got Robbie to throw him out like an unruly cat, which would be terrible for his already poor reputation.

All of it, without ever getting up or raising her voice. She did it all with words alone, and had planned it from the get-go.

Robbie may be an insane little menace that you wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of, but anyone who was there that night would testify that Ally was the more dangerous one.

Yes, they understood why Matches wasn't too worried about them being known as his weakness.

There was a beat of silence.

Then all the other students that were early for class started laughing and whistling. Danny was immediately red in the face and pulled Tim upright, then dragged him back out the door into the hallway and even a little farther into an empty alcove to get away from the two people chanting “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

Tim was almost tomato red with blush, his lips pressed tight together as he stared at Danny’s arm that curled behind him, hand pressed against the back of his ribs where he’d pulled him away, which Danny quickly released like it burned him. There was a split second of disappointment in Tim’s expression that caused Danny’s heart to soar and crash at the same time, and all this rollercoaster of emotion is what made Danny blurt out the words,

“We’re married.”

Tim’s face froze.

Those dark blue eyes that were usually so aware despite the dark bags beneath them suddenly froze like a computer screen had fully gone Blue Screen Of Death. And Danny would swear he heard the Windows startup sound when Tim blinked, nodded seriously, and met Danny’s eyes.

“Okay. Yeah. What do I need to know?”

“Uh.”

Danny knew Red Robin had been through a lot of strange situations in the past. All of Gotham’s vigilantes had wild stories and rumors circulated on campus. But it was another thing entirely to see the hero he’d been crushing on just accept the situation and ask for details like it was a mission brief.

Tim spoke up when Danny didn’t.

“I’ve done the fake boyfriend thing twice before. Helped a stranger ditch a stalker. Scared him off and helped her get a restraining order. Second time was to mess with some homophobic family during Christmas. A high school friend had just come out as bi and his family kept saying shit like ‘so just choose a woman and it’s fine’ so he wanted to freak them out and asked me to ruin the holiday on purpose. It wasn’t my fault the tree caught fire but I definitely take credit for dumping the punch bowl on his aunt after she started yelling slurs.

“So whatever your situation is just tell me what story we’re going with and I’ll memorize the details you’ve already told to whoever you’ve lied to about being married. I’ve never been a fake husband so we gotta figure out how we met, dating stories and an anniversary, embarrassing but benign family stories to share, and also discuss boundaries for PDA. If we stay the night anywhere I’d sleep on the floor of course. I can get a couple of my siblings to vouch for our relationship if necessary, they owe me some favors. I’m great with makeup so I can wear a disguise if you don’t want to end up in the papers being seen with a Wayne.

“Or,” and then Tim paused. He’d been talking very fast, nodding to himself as he planned, but now he met Danny’s shocked eyes with an almost serious anger. “If someone is being a creeper and you just want them gone, point them out and I’ll ruin them for good.”

Danny felt like a deer in the headlights. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t look away. He was certain his heart had stopped and was grateful that wasn’t something he needed to worry about. The huge crush he’d been holding for Red Robin might have just turned into love as he listened to Tim Drake Wayne talk about defending others and promise protection again for Danny himself.

“Wow,” his mouth moved without his input, “I basically said ‘jump’ and you didn’t even ask ‘how high?’ before jumping to all the wrong conclusions.”

Tim’s eyebrows scrunched together in confusion and Danny got the urge to kiss the crinkle away.

Instead he cleared his throat awkwardly and shuffled his feet. His hand reached up to rub the back of his neck, but the glint of his new ring made the hand pause, held up between them. Tim noticed of course, and his face (which had finally lost all the blush) suddenly went white.

He lifted his hand with the bandaid, and the faintly glowing words got brighter as they got closer.

“What is this?” he asked. The words were quiet and almost monotone, somehow sounding dangerous. Not like a threat, but a demand.

“So. Um,” Danny’s guts squirmed and he tried not to fidget. He failed. “I don’t know how exactly but I have someone I can ask and I was planning to go visit him this weekend so I could get the details but then-”

“Tell me,” Tim said flatly. “What is this.”

Danny closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He let it out slowly. He could do this. Just get the words out.

He glanced around the alcove and out into the hallway. Empty. Everyone was in class or moved on to another building. But even then he leaned a little closer to Tim and whispered as quietly as he could, in awkward fast sentences,

“I swear I didn’t know who you were last night when you offered to walk me home, I only recognized you out of costume because of the ring and words on your skin. I’m also - well I was a vigilante back in my hometown but retired when I left for college, and I’m not fully human. Half human. And it’s the non-human half that I’m pretty sure has some cultural rite that magically tied us into marriage because we, um, we… kind of exchanged vows last night?”

“Vows.” Tim still didn’t look angry, but Danny couldn’t tell exactly what he was feeling.

“Yeah. Uh.” He pulled the ring off his thumb, showed the words glowing on it before sliding it into its proper place on the ring finger. It felt good there. “Mine has your words on it. ‘I’ll protect you.’ And yours…”

Danny reached out slowly. Tim didn’t flinch or pull away, so Danny gently removed the bandaid and the glow of the words got brighter.

“Yours has my words. ‘Be my Knight.’”

There was a moment where they both just stared at their clasped hands.

“It’s not official yet,” Tim said. His voice had gone breathy, and Danny noticed a gleam returning to his eye.

“I mean. Maybe? I don’t know and I can-”

“No,” Tim interrupted, and this time he lifted his chin a little, and the corner of his mouth twitched upward. It looked like a challenge. “It’s not official yet because you haven’t kissed me.”

“Whaahahahahatt?” Danny giggled loudly. It was such an embarrassing response that he tried to cover his face to hide, but Tim caught the hand that he’d been holding and twined their fingers together. He wore a full grin now, blush returning, and his body tensed but he stepped forward anyway looking excited. Their clasped hands were the only distance between them now.

“I’ve wanted to ask you out for a while. And I meant it down to my soul when I said I’d protect you. I will. So… kiss me.”

Danny obeyed. He might have been floating a little when he leaned forward and closed the gap. Their lips touched and it was electric in the opposite way from dying.

“My knight,” he whispered, their lips still close enough they both moved with his words, and he couldn’t help but smile.

Tim tugged him along down the hallway in the direction of their next classes by their clasped hands.

"I think I'll be able to make an excuse, but I'll need your number just in case I can't get away."

Danny blushed even as he snarked back, "Oh no, how sad for you... But, I am sorry for- for this. I mean- we like each other, that's clear, but- I took away your choice of who you marry, and for that I'm sorry."

"Hey, no," Tim protested, "if this didn't happen, I probably wouldn't have married, with me being me. I'm rich, so I have to worry about people trying to marry me for my money, and, with being the CEO of Wayne Enterprises, and... My nightly activities... I would hardly have had time for a partner unless they were in the same line of work as me."

"I hadn't thought of that, but it makes sense. I struggled enough with school, never mind a relationship, before I retired."

"What? You were in my line of work? When? How come I didn't know? Nothing came up on your background check."

"Aw, you did a background check on me? I'm flattered. A friend of mine did a background check on you, too. Why don't you try and see if you can't find the answers to those questions yourself, hm, handsome?"

With a kiss to the back of Tim's hand, he stuck a sticky note with his number onto his blushing cheeks, he let go and walked to his next class, softly singing Whitney Houston's I'm your baby tonight.

The time dragged, unsurprisingly, but he arrived on time. It was Danny's own fault he had been early.

"Hey," Tim greeted, practically throwing himself into the booth beside him.

"Tough prior commitment?" He asked, only to get a groan and a teenage CEO flopping over, head in his lap.

"That bad, hm?" He asked, running his hands through Tim's hair without a thought. It just felt natural.

"Ugh, you don't know the half of it… I swear, those old fogies are worse than when I started, if possible."

Tim started to be lulled to sleep by the petting, but made himself get up before he could actually drift off, and perked up when Danny slid him his half-finished coffee and an only nibbled on cream cheese danish.

Once the food was all gone, Danny got up. "Need a hand, my knight?"

His expression was open and sincere. Tim took his hand, and didn't let go, letting his husband lead him to their destination.

Danny didn't know where he was going, not really.

Opening portals tended to be an instinctual thing for ghosts, so Wulf had had trouble teaching him.

He'd gotten it in the end, but mostly he just let his ghost senses do the work for him, finding the easiest place to rip a tear to travel through.

Most of Gotham was decent enough portal practicality wise. He could make one pretty much anywhere in a pinch.

That didn't mean it wasn't still difficult. Not when he was still getting a handle on it.

He stopped, only to find himself in a random alley out back of a warehouse in a run-down, overgrown neighborhood.

It would probably be easier inside the warehouse, but not enough to bother.

Settling into a wide stance, he rocked back and forth to make sure he was stable before setting his gaze on the air before him and letting his ghostliness slip through.

He reached forward with now claw-tipped hands, and he

t o r e .

Keeping a portal open was strenuous, considering that you were literally holding open a tear in the fabric of the universe.

"A f t e r you," he told Tim with a strained grin. Tim, who was looking at him with awe and fascination.

"I… Yeah," he agreed, dazed, and stepped through the portal. Danny followed quickly, shaking out his arms as the rift began to close behind him.

"How- how c-could you d-do that?" Tim asked, teeth chattering.

"I forgot. How could I forget? Fuck! Sorry, my love, I don't normally travel to the Far Frozen with complete humans. Uh- here."

Reaching out, he grabbed Tim's hands and transformed as he held them, letting his protection-obsession and ice-core infused ecto flow through his husband, replacing the small amount of ecto he'd accumulated as he had become liminal.

"I don't know how much that'll help, love, but it should keep you un-frozen until we can get to the yetis'."

He mentally cursed himself. It had been a while since he'd gone into the Zone with anyone.

His sister and his friends had to remind him every time that they, while ecto-contaminated and liminal, were still squishy humans and couldn't survive there without some sort of protection.

He had also been planning to go to Clockwork for answers at first, but then seeing the ring on Tim's finger- he had switched gears from answers to making sure his husband was alright.

And, hopefully, some answers also, but making sure that his husband was okay had become his first priority. Except, he'd fucked that up too!

He should have remembered!

Things were different for humans! But, he'd gotten so used to being half-ghost with an ice core that he'd forgotten that cold was detrimental to humans!

That humans could die of cold!

He flew towards the Far Frozen at high speeds, protection Obsession writhing underneath his skin.

He slowed down enough not to break the ice when he landed, and hastily hopped across the ground like an astronaut on the moon.

"Frostbite!" he called, bounding into the clinic and sliding to a stop, "Frostbite, where are you?"

Frostbite came out to meet him, only to see the human in his arms.

"Frostbite, thank the Ancients! He's too cold- help him!"

"Of course, Great One! Follow me," Frostbite told him, and led him aside, into a room empty but for a bed, chair, and heart rate monitor.

Danny's normal room for when he was recovering from an injury? Why were they there?

He quickly set Tim down in the bed and pulled the sheets up.

"Why did you tell me to bring him in here? He's too cold, it's bad for him," Danny fretted.

"Do not fear, Great One. I can control the temperature of my Haunt, and I can control the temperature of this room independently of the rest. I have been raising the temperature for your consort."

"Oh!" Danny exclaimed, and slouched into the chair beside the bed, finally able to relax, knowing that his husband was being cared for, "that's good to hear."

Frostbite smiled indulgently. "I was unaware that you were in courting, Great One?"

"Hah! Well, we kind of skipped straight from strangers to being married. That's kind of why we came. I was hoping… Well… The thing is… I kind of don't know how we got married? He flirted with me and I flirted back, and then the next morning I woke up with a ring on my finger."

"Hm. Well, that certainly is a conundrum. That alone should not have ended up with you married."

"How does a ghost get married, anyway? I didn't- I mean, I know Neverborns like Box Lunch come into existence, but I didn't know that ghost marriage was a thing."

"It has to do with Obsessions, Great One. Obsessions are very important to ghosts, as it is the crux of a ghost's being. Ghosts are formed when a being dies in an ectoplasm-rich environment with strong emotions."

"Yeah, I got that," he agreed, rubbing the hand that he had hit the 'on' switch of the portal with.

He often thought that, if he could peel away the jumpsuit, he would find Lichtenberg scars.

Sometimes he had them as a human, sometimes he didn't.

"Most often, it is the cause of death, or at the very least, the circumstances of the death, that decide upon the newly-formed ghost's obsession."

"Yeah. Mine is protection, since I died with my friends nearby, and I- I wanted to protect them from having to… From having to see me die. But, uh, what does that have to do with ghost marriage?"

Wanted to protect Sam from the guilt and horror of having killed me, he didn't say.

It was hard enough talking about his death with his ghost doctor without going into the details.

"Yes, and you are noble for that, Great One. To propose to someone, you must do something related to their obsession. For the Box Ghost and Lunch Lady, he would have had to cook for her and give it to her."

He started to get a sinking feeling in his gut. Not that he regretted being married to Tim, but… Well…

"If she accepted the meal, then they would have begun courting. For them to get married, she would have to offer something related to his obsession as well. Perhaps a box or a warehouse to store boxes, or something along those lines."

"…Tim is a mortal. Well, he's liminal, but he's not a ghost. He doesn't have an Obsession. Does- would that change- how would that affect, uh, getting married the ghost way?"

"I have nothing to offer but conjecture, Great One, however… I would think that he would have to offer something related to protection or protecting, to you, and then you would have to accept."

"Oh," he murmured faintly. "Would- uh. Would him offering to protect me- and walk me home- and be my 'knight in shining armor'- be enough?"

"Yes, I daresay so. Perhaps not if he had offered only once, but for him to have offered thrice, and should you have accepted? It is quite possible. Of course, it would not have worked should you have denied his offer…"

"Oh," he repeated again. "Well, that's… That's what happened. Should we decide that we want to, is there any way to annul a ghost marriage?"

"The process of proposing is deeply intimate in ghost culture, Great One, and may last hundreds if not thousands of years before they decide to marry. There are very few who make it that far before deciding that they wish to be parted in death. The only way I have heard of is reincarnation. That is not to say that there isn't a way, however, only that I have not heard of one."

"Oh," he repeated himself. He was actually glad that there wasn't a way to get ghost divorced. Still, what if Tim wanted to?

"Since we're only ghost married, and both still at least half human, could we-" he grimaced at the thought, "-just ignore each other and marry other humans?"

"I can not tell you definitively if you could or if you could not, but I would not recommend it, Great One. Our kind of marriage is a bond unlike anything humans can replicate. It is core-deep."

"…Core-deep? Do you mean to tell me that I am literally bound to him for… Well, forever?"

"Yes, that is so. As I said earlier, reincarnation is an option. However, most ghosts only do so once they have tired of this plane of existence, which is uncommon in young ghosts. Should you decide to do so, the effects would be unknown."

He blew out a breath and slouched in his chair. He hadn't wanted to get a ghost-divorce from Tim, and perhaps he was awful for feeling glad that he and his bullshit had trapped Tim with him for all eternity, but he couldn't help it.

Danny liked him. Really, really liked him. It freaked him out a bit, sometimes, how strong the urge to protect him, to whisk him away and keep him for himself where no one else could get to him to hurt him, was.

They were both human. Mostly, at least, and he knew that he shouldn't have those urges, knew that it would be bad for him and would freak him out, but that didn't stop him from getting them.

"Great One?" Frostbite's voice broke in, and he heard the ghost-speak echo of concern after the words.

"Yeah? I'm- I'm okay, it's just sinking in properly that I- hah!- that I've gotten married."

He shook his head in disbelief that echoed in the silence as the tried to gather his thoughts.

"You're monitoring him, right? Could you tell me if anything changes, or, if I fall asleep, if he wakes up?"

Frostbite nodded, which turned into a bow before he left, shutting the door after him.

Only then, knowing the room to be soundproof, did he let the hysterical laughter bubble up.

He hadn't- he'd gotten married! It had been an accident, but somehow he had gotten married!

Because of the typical ghost bullshit surrounding him, he had managed to tie Red Robin to him for the rest of eternity!

What if Tim didn't want to be married to him? He would understand- he wouldn't want to be married to himself if their positions were reversed- but there was nothing they could do about it!

Apparently reincarnation was an option, but Frostbite had been vague about what it entailed, and had also implied that it had to happen after they both died.

That it had to be done together, at the same time.

He choked on his laughter, and couldn't breathe. Not that it was a problem, of course, when he wasn't human and didn't need to breathe, especially not like this, as Phantom!

Why would Tim want to be married to a wreck, a freak, like him?

Ellie seemed content to wander the world and experience everything, but he wasn't under the illusion that she was morally upright.

With Vlad and him as her examples, how could she?

Dan was the example of what happened when you mixed them, and while she didn't seem to be evil, she was technically a halfa, unlike him.

With him unable to provide funds for her, no doubt she was either stealing, or doing a Vlad and over shadowing them to leave money for her.

He couldn't blame her, when it was his own fault that she had to, but she wasn't super great with moral scruples.

Vlad hardly had any left. He was just straight-up evil and insane. Vlad, the other technical-halfa.

It was him, Ellie, and Vlad, but he was the only true halfa.

Vlad had slowly died from the ecto-acne until he stabilized at half dead and half alive (and fully insane). He was more alive-aligned.

Ellie was a mix of him and Vlad, genetically, but mostly ectoplasm. She, too, was technically a halfa, but she was more of a Neverborn. She had been made, not born, and was more death-aligned.

While he, too, had been made into a halfa, he was actually straddling the line, unlike the others.

The energy of the portal had killed him, but the ectoplasm had resurrected him, and this process had kept going, flipping him between dead and alive, Schrödinger's boy, and when he had fallen out of the portal, he had been exactly halfway between dead and alive.

He was the only true halfa, and only one of three total halfas. Why would Tim want him, when he was a freak of nature?

When Dan was his destiny? An unavoidable inevitability for him? Something that haunted his future? Something that Clockwork kept sending him those green post-it notes with cryptic messages on them that helped him stave off that looming future?

He was traumatized! Not only from Dan, or Vlad cloning him and only one surviving, or his parents' constant mention of wanting to tear him apart molecule by molecule, or Spectra or Desiree!

He was traumatized by being a teenage hero! By having the people that he protected think that he was a threat, that he wanted to hurt them! By dying in his parents' lab at fourteen! At them not noticing that he died!

He had moved to Gotham for college, to get away from it all after shutting down the portal, but sure enough the ghostly side of things was still fucking up his life!

The worst of it was, it had been working! He had gotten away from everything, to a place where no one knew him or his parents, had started to be happy- and then this!

When Tim decided that he wanted nothing more to do with him and asked for a divorce and found out that there was no such thing and made his college years a living hell using his influence, he wouldn't even blame him! He only ever made anything worse!

"-ey, hey, breathe with me! In one-two-three-four, hold it one-two-three-four, out one-two-three-four… Come on now, let's repeat that. In one-two-three-four, hold it one-two-three-four, out one-two-three-four…"

By the fifth repetition, Danny had gotten enough of a hold on his breath that he could speak in stead of his body going through the motions of hyperventilating.

"Th- that re- really wasn't necessary, since, since I don't need to breathe, but the intent is appreciated," he told Tim with a shaky grin.

"You don't need to breathe?" Tim asked, blinking quickly and looking like he was buffering before taking Danny in with narrowed eyes.

"I- yeah. I'd meant to tell you, really, I did, but then I forgot that humans- that cold could hurt humans, and then- well, you, uh. I had to bring you to my doctors."

"You say that like you're not human. We're at your doctors'? It's… Icy."

"Hah!" Danny laughed, relieved that Tim was awake and well enough to make jokes.

"Yeah, it is. My doctors are Yetis, and they live here, in the Far Frozen, which, well, it's far and it's frozen."

"Your doctors are Yetis? And… You say we're in the 'Far Frozen', but where is that? I'd have thought that we would have found it before now, even if it was on one of the poles…"

"Oh, probably, but we're not on Earth anymore."

"Wait, what? What do you mean we're not on Earth anymore? You portalled us to space? Why can I breathe, then?"

"No, no, we're not in space. We're in a space, in the spaces, actually. We're in- well, it has a couple different names, but it's mostly known as the Infinite Realms, or the Ghost Zone."

"Uh-huh, and what is that, and how come I've never heard of it before?"

"The Infinite Realms… It's like… The glue holding the multiverse together, I guess you'd say. If you were to leave the Far Frozen, you would find an expanse of green 'sky' with doors and islands everywhere you look."

"And… Where would a door take me?"

"Anywhere, anywhen, all across the multiverse. You could go through a door and find an Earth when the dinosaurs still roamed, you could go through one and find a bustling Krypton, a bustling Mars, a planet billions of lightyears away from Earth. Anything. And, even if you ended up in, like, 1980? If you tried to wait until the present? There's no guarantee it would be your Earth."

"I… I can't comprehend that. Can- can we come back to that another time? You said this was the Ghost Zone, does that mean that you're a ghost?"

"Ehhh, yes and no? Short version is, my parents were ghost hunters and I had an accident in their lab and ended up half-dead and half-alive. Half-human, half-ghost. I'm what's called a Halfa."

"You're half dead? How does that work?"

At Danny's flinch, he took the hint and changed the subject.

"Anyway, you brought us here to find out how we ended up married. Could your doctors tell you why?"

"I… Yeah. So, uh, ghosts have an equivalent of a heart, and it's called a 'core'. It's the very core of their being, and it's the first thing of a new ghost to take form. Each ghost's is different. Typically, it depends on how they died and who they were before they died."

"'Typically'? Do you mean there are exceptions?"

"Yeah. There are Neverborns and Ancients and whatever the Observants have going on. Neverborns were never born, and typically never even alive, either. My clone, she's a Halfa like me, but she was cloned from me, so she was never born, hence the name, and I'm not entirely clear on the logistics, but there's a ghost called Box Lunch, who is Box Ghost and Lunch Lady's kid. And I'm pretty sure Ancients are deifications of an idea. Like, there's Clockwork, who is the Master of Time, and there's Nocturn, whose deal is sleep."

"You have a clone? Why? Who cloned you?"

"Yeah. Her name is Ellie, and she's like my sister. As for why, well, my godfather is an absolute Fruitloop, who wants to marry my mom and have me as his son. When it became clear that I wasn't going to, he tried to clone me. Ellie's the only one I could save."

"That must have been incredibly traumatic."

"Yeah. Watching her destabilize in my arms still stars in my nightmares sometimes."

He took a few ragged breaths, more because the motions were comforting than any real need, before continuing.

"A- anyway, cores are very important to ghosts, very intimate, and how ghosts 'eat' is by fulfilling their Obsessions, which are woven into the core. It's… Well, Obsessions are determined by either how you die or the circumstances around how you die. Mine is protection. So, basically, ghosts try to 'feed' their Obsessions, 'cause 'feeding' it fuels the ghost."

"Okay..?"

"And, to propose, one ghost has to do something for the other ghost related to their obsession. Mine is protection, and you- uh. You offered to protect me. To be my knight. Since you're liminal, it worked as a ghost proposal, but, since I'm the only one with a core, I'm the only one who had to accept for us to get married."

"Huh. Considering we got ghost-married accidentally, our human marriage is going to need to be extravagant. Actually, it was going to have to be, anyway, since I'm a Drake and a Wayne, but this way we get three marriages."

"Th- three?" He squeaked, and he could feel his cheeks blush green.

"Yeah. Ghost marriage, human marriage with a private ceremony just for close friends and family, and a semi-public one."

"I- you're not mad that we're ghost-married? There's no way to un-do it…"

"Danny, mi amor, I've had a crush on you since we had our first classes together. No, I'm not mad. In fact, I would be ecstatic, except that it was accidental, which means that I can't properly woo you the ghost way."

"But- me? You're going to be stuck with me for the rest of eternity!"

"Danny. Look at me." Tim took his love's ice-cold hands in his and held on when he tried to take them back.

So what if they were cold and he was recovering from a hypothermia scare?

Actually, how was he feeling so good after being nearly hypothermic? No, no, back on track. Focus

"Danny. I love you. Do you hear me? I love you. You, Danny Fenton, have stolen my heart, and had it even before we got married. I don't care that you're half-ghost and half-human, that you're half-alive and half-dead. I would love you even if you were a full ghost, or if you were fully human. I love you, Danny, the whole of you. Both halves. I would have been disappointed if there had been a way to annul our marriage."

"You- really? You love me back? 'Cause I love you, too, and I never thought I'd be lucky enough to get you. I'm also glad that we're stuck with each other."

"Yeah. I'll be your knight for the rest of eternity, so long as you'll be mine. The human way, too."

Basically, the Dursleys go to America as a work trip for Grunnings, and they stop somewhere and tell Harry to get out. He does so, and is left with nothing but the clothes on his back.

(He let Hedwig out to go to Hermione before they got on the plane + they still have his trunk in the back of the rental car. They later dump it in a river.)

He's lost. He could try to find American wizards, but also, why would he?

The Wizarding World's opinion on him flip-flopped basically every year, and besides, he doesn't want to be a savior. Especially not theirs.

He just watched his godfather- the closest thing he had to a parent ever since his died- die, and the year before that, a schoolmate three years older than him was murdered right before his eyes.

Sirius, his Godfather, was dead! Killed by his own cousin because Harry had been too stupid to realize that it was a trap, and his friends had been badly injured because of him rushing in too, his stupidly loyal friends.

He might love them, actually (did he know what love was? The only demonstration that he personally had was his parents' love- dying for him, which, actually, explained some things- and the Weasleys').

His friends, though he knew that they would disagree, would be better off without him.

Could he even leave? The Wizarding World was not going to let him go.

After the fight in the Ministry, the public would panic when Fudge was forced to admit that Voldemort was back, and they would look to him, to their savior, and he had had enough of leading an army with the D.A.

He had had enough of being looked to for salvation.

So… Why shouldn't he just chill out and enjoy his time alone until they eventually find him and he gets dragged back into their mess?

He enters the subway and slides onto a train with the crowd.

A stranger hisses, trying to get his attention, "Kid, you need to get off now. The next stop, if anyone goes there, they don't return, they are never seen ag–" they freeze and seem to glitch, before looking around in confusion and getting off with a shrug.

The smart thing probably would have been to get off after the warning and the odd behavior.

But.

A place that no one returned from, where there was clear magical interference preventing anyone from being warned away?

That sounds like the perfect place to lay low. Maybe- maybe they won't find him? It's probably a pipe dream, but, well…

Hermione's a muggleborn. She could get out.

Ron? Not to say that he didn't care, but he hadn't forgotten the way he'd acted upon his jealousy about him being entered into the tournament.

Ron could get out, too, if he wanted to, and so could the rest of the Weasleys. Bill and Charlie lived elsewhere, they could go and stay with them.

Neville and Luna, too, would probably be fine, as purebloods and non-blood-traitors.

Perhaps it was selfish of him, but he wanted. He wanted to be left alone, to be 'just Harry' for once, as he had attempted to be but failed because of his accursed fame.

He gets off the train and wanders the city for a while, until his feet start to hurt and he sits down on a curb to think about what he's seen and where he could sleep.

The shopkeeper chases him away with practiced motions and boredom, and he scurries away with the realization that he's now a street rat.

He decides to go back to the abandoned subway station and scope it out. Upon getting there, he feels a pull, and he follows it.

He ends up in a creepy cave with a guy older than Dumbledore, they chat about prophecies, and then the guy says that he was chosen.

He says the guy's name (and the guy turns into dust???) and his body is different.

He's in his mid-twenties, maybe early thirties, has a ton of muscle and is very much not affected by malnutrition, and is wearing spandex with a cape and lightning bolt insignia on his chest.

He says the name again and is hit by lightning. He's back as himself.

He shrugs off the occurrence and settles down in a corner and naps. He wakes up in the middle of the night and can't fall back asleep, so he wanders around town and finds himself in front of a department store with a mirror in the window.

He feels guilty as he does so, but he changes his looks in an attempt to stay unidentified, and tries to think of a new name.

There's a weird scrunkly trench coat man accusing him of being a supernatural being and then offering him a place to stay (he turns it down. He has more sense than that), which is weird.

He decides to go back into the subway to sleep some more.

He coaxes a wild owl that he finds on one of his midnight wanders (and that's becoming a habit) close.

He befriends it with pieces of stolen jerky and tidbits of magic, and gets it to carry his letter to Hermione (it does ask her to share it with Ron. Not that he expects him to understand).

He says his good-byes, his maybe see-you-laters, and moves on with his life.

He's a street rat now. Homeless. One of many. The anonymity? He revels in it.

Sure, it means that he has to steal, and the weather and other homeless people have become threats to him, but he enjoys it.

The threats are finally mundane for once, and not the magic psycho and his minions trying to murder him.

Besides, it's not like he's unused to any of it. Humans aren't a new threat, nor is the lack of food, and he's a little caught off-guard by Fawcett's magical flora and fauna, but he adapts, and begins to thrive.

Though, he does eventually get tired of the hostility, and works on winning over the other street kids.

He shares food, protects them from magical threats, makes them talismans made from woven grass and flowers with scrap metal or wood in the center, and imbues them with magic as he does so.

They note all of this, especially that their luck has increased ever since they got talismans from him, and they protect him in turn.

It starts small. One of them tells him not to go to a certain store because the owner is hostile to the homeless. Another tells him where the cops have set up.

Things spiral from there, and before he knows it, he's at the very center of a child gang. The leader, if you can believe it (he can't).

A few of them get snatched by a child trafficking ring.

Now, they knew that he was some variety of Other, by his luck and the talismans and his appearance sometimes shifts and a million other little things, but this is the first time they've seen him truly understood.

He razes them to the ground. He gets back one of them, but there are two more who got shifted to a different branch before he got to them.

He tells them who he's appointing leader while he's gone, and he heads after them.

He tracks the branch down to Gotham, and finds that someone is already working on trying to tear it down.

If the guy in a red helmet finds it odd that a sixteen-year-old (who looks younger due to malnutrition) occasionally joins him and makes them regret what they've done, even more than him and his guns, well, he doesn't say anything.

Actually, he doesn't say anything at all. They work, together and yet separately, to take down the trafficking ring, and never bother to talk. Not to exchange names of anything.

It's at the final location that he sees his kids, and he leaves the guy in the red helmet, is ally, in the dust.

He tears through them with reckless abandon, barely restraining his magic, and the bars disintegrate in front of him as he steps into the cage and fusses over his kids.

They're his, never mind that one of them is older. He takes them with him as he leaves, and only stops to give Red Helmet a nod on his way out. He gets one in kind.

They settle back into Fawcett, and he takes back leadership of his gang, and everything is going well.

Occasionally, there are those that don't get the memo that the street kids are under his protection, and he has to curb-stomp them, but it's mostly quiet.

Except, he can't get it out of his mind. He'd left Fawcett, and nothing had happened.

Nobody had come after him. Was… Was he free? Had the Wizarding World let him go?

It seemed unlikely, but maybe? Surely, though, his luck wasn't that good?

Were they just waiting for him to get established before swooping in and tearing him away and taking him back and telling him 'you can't have nice things'?

…Or, was the nature of Fawcett preventing them from finding him?

He remembered the way the train had strained in place between stops before shooting off as if crossing some sort of barrier.

He didn't want to leave and get found, but they hadn't found him, and he'd been out of Fawcett almost two weeks.

Yes, he had been traveling. Yes, he had stayed in Gotham, which was magically nasty and cursed six ways to Sunday.

Still, surely they were desperate at this point? Would they not have come after him- no matter where he was- upon finding any trace of him?

He was supposedly prophesied to be the only one to kill Voldemort, who must be rampaging through Magical Britain by now.

So, why hadn't they? Could he have changed so much that they couldn't detect him?

He found himself walking to the border of Fawcett City during his midnight walks he had become so known for.

He walked up to the line, and out into the shimmering unknown, and wondered.

It took him a few weeks to work up the confidence to cross. He planned to go back to Gotham and maybe actually talk with his temporary ally, the guy with the red helmet, or so he had been told, Red Hood (though it was a helmet, not a hood, so false advertising), and had told his subordinates so.

It didn't exactly go to plan, though. Apparently the guy who told him that nobody came back from Fawcett hadn't really lied.

He had crossed the border, and gotten caught in some sort of temporal magical webbing, and stumbled out in the early nineteen-fourties.

He got drafted into the war, and revealed to a select few his ability to transform into a superhero.

He quickly rose in the ranks, becoming a Captain, and his nickname became "Marvel".

"Yo, there goes our marvel!" had been called out enough times as he walked past that he just started sighing (it boosted morale, he knew, so he didn't try to stop it) and answered to "Marvel" and then his rank and nickname got combined and he began to answer to "Captain Marvel".

He got shipped overseas, and his company got bombed. The trenches protected them some, but only a few of his men from each platoon survived.

He cursed himself for not learning more healing spells. What use was "episkey" to a body bleeding from the inside from the shockwave, or a torso torn to shreds by shrapnel?

The survivors had to be shipped back to the states for medical care, leaving him alone.

He got re-assigned- poached, really- to the magical side of things. They had been sniffing around him for a while.

Whereas before he had allowed himself to change shapes occasionally, allowed him to be just him, and not a hero, he didn't.

Not when he was dealing with the sort of people that loved him one second and hated him the next. What if they decided he was to blame for the whole war and poison him?

Unlikely, yes, but he'd met a relative of Mad-Eye Moody's, and that just reminded him what he had to lose.

He kept fighting for a long time, and just as they started to gain hope of winning, he had to wrangle a dragon on the battle field and got caught in the middle of some spells.

He couldn't get out of the way in time, and ended up back in America. Just outside of Fawcett.

He was being selfish, but… He re-entered Fawcett, and got spat out only a month and a half after he had left.

He was torn, then. He had been helping them win the war, had contributed on both sides, but now?

He was back.

He had missed this, had never stopped missing it, but also, what if his disappearance changed history?

What if Grindelwald and his puppet won, because he had decided not to even attempt to go back?

With a heavy heart, he crossed the barrier again- only, this time he was shot out in some gleaming city.

He walked around, as himself for a change, and got stares because he was a street rat in a gleaming city.

He found a major league ballpark after some wandering, and- the Metropolis Meteors? Really? They named the city Metropolis?

Well, he was getting off track. He found a newspaper, and it was the 2000s, which was kind of the opposite of what he had tried to do.

He snuck away and transformed. He flew back to Fawcett, and breathed a sigh of relief at having been gone hardly any time.

With a heavy heart, he decided to stay. Fuck duty, he had a place here. Here, he… He didn't have to fear.

His gang noticed his new-found paranoia, the way he jumped at certain sounds, how he was especially vicious when dealing with those who tried to harm his, how he still went on his midnight walks but you couldn't find him doing so unless you needed to.

And, he started to patrol as Captain Marvel. Before his little jaunt through time, he hadn't done so, because he had never gotten clear instructions on what to do or what 'Champion of Magic' meant, and also specifically decided not to be a hero anymore.

But now, he needed the reassurance that the city, his city, was safe.

He tried to be present in the community as Captain Marvel, too, and found a couple of old friends from his days in the trenches before the bomb.

They thanked him for saving their lives. They knew, so it was a toss-up as whether he visited them as Captain Marvel or as himself.

He settled in, again. He didn't dare leave, not until a few aliens came into Fawcett with the intent to conquer, and he found out from ripping through their minds that they wanted to conquer Earth, and that there was an alien invasion on.

He had armed his gang with various magical improvised weapons, so he put them in charge of keeping Fawcett safe, and finally braved the border again.

He passed through with minimal turbulence as Captain Marvel, and flew wherever he was needed.

Things petered off after a while, and while he had interacted with other people protecting Earth, he didn't go to them to celebrate or whatever.

He headed back to Fawcett, to his city, to survey the damage and do what he could to help fix things.

He grimaced. It would mean that he was no longer "Harry Potter", and couldn't be found by magical means unless they had his blood, and there would be no guarantee that it would work as it would be from when he still was Harry Potter, which, of course, were all positives. 

The downsides, though... Possibly giving one of the fair folk ownership of him? He'd been "owned" enough already.

•Both the upsides and the downsides are great. Any chance you happen to know someone who knows about the fae that you could recommend to me?•

"What would you be willing to give me for it, kid? I'm not promising anything, mind."

His name could be either worth so much that it would jeopardize his situation, or be worth nothing. He didn't want to reveal that he was a wizard.

He... Didn't really have much to bargain with.

•Nothing I'm willing to give for no guarantee. Just know that if I ever get snatched by weirdos in red robes and/or the oldest man you've ever seen, it's your fault.•

"Aw, c'mon, mate, you can't just drop that and then walk away!" The man called after him, and then, after a short grumble, spoke up again.

"I may not be an expert on the fair folk, but that doesn't mean I don't know anything you wouldn't be interested in."

Bruce Wayne. 

Growing up, he had been loved by his parents, Dr. Thomas Wayne and Martha Kane, two very wealthy socialites. So wealthy that they had an ancestral manor on the outskirts of Gotham, which they required servants to upkeep. 

The butler, Alfred Pennyworth, was one of them, but he was more like a friend to the family, and more like an uncle to the young Bruce Wayne.

Tragedy struck, however, at age eight. His parents were murdered in front of him, coming back from a play at the monarch theater.

He mourned. Blinded by grief and rage, he yearned for justice for his parents, but knew that if he tried to avenge them, he would not be able to.

As he was then, he would have been more likely to get himself killed than to help.

He embarked across the globe, learning, training. He trained with the League of Assassins and many others.

At one point, he joined a circus and became their contortionist, as they had a lack of one.

He acquired many useful skills, such as martial arts, dancing, weapons training, engineering, coding, hacking, programming, and so on.

He also learned anything that could be construed, however tenuously, to be helpful. He learned to make lassos, to mimic bird cries, and much more.

He learned, he trained, he grew, and, once he felt prepared, he returned home to Gotham, ready to fight crime.

It started out simply. The first time, he went out for two hours, skulking in the shadows, patrolling the rooftops of Gotham, watching for crime.

He'd stopped a couple of muggings, foiled a robber, and stopped a transaction of money for drugs. A rather quiet night, all in all, with him doing more listening than anything else.

He continued going out, doing just two hours a night for a while, but most of the time consisted of simply listening. And, oh, what rumors he heard.

"Did you hear? Gotham's got itself a cryptid."

"A giant bat, going around fighting crime!"

"I heard it's the coalescence of our sins, come back to punish us! There's no way it's human, the way it moves!"

"It's some sort of creature!"

So, they didn't think his alter-ego was human, because of the way he moved. 

(Probably from when he was being shot at and he bent over backwards so that his chest was facing towards the sky, went up on his hands, flipped himself backwards onto his feet, and continued fighting.)

If he continued moving like he was, like a human, that rumor would not perpetuate. It would die out and be disbelieved by most.

He didn't want that. Not when fear was a good motivation for staying out of crime, and what better way to fight crime than to stop a civilian from committing a crime in the first place?

So. If he wanted to scare civilians away from crime, he had to be frightening enough to make them double-guess potentially committing a crime.

He had to have a fearsome reputation, then, and moving like he wasn't human was a good starting place. 

To begin with, Bruce upped the frequency of which he did yoga, pilates, and contortionism.

He watched nature documentaries, committing to memory which movements screamed prey and which screamed predator, and he practiced, until he moved like a predator, until they were second nature. 

Until he could tell the ways that he moved that made him feel like a predator, and took those movements to make more. 

Until people got out of his way when he walked, at which point he had to unlearn those movements for when he acted as Brucie Wayne. 

Until there was dissonance between Brucie Wayne and the Bat.

Until he didn't know who he was anymore. Bruce Wayne was an act. He was more like Bat, but he could be comfortable, instead of the unending hyper-vigilance.

He didn't know who he was anymore, but he was comfortable in his own skin. Confident in himself and his abilities.

He leaned into the creepiness, into his plan to unnerve and to scare, and he delighted in it.

In them seeing him move in ways no human should be able to, in their horrified expressions, in the way they stutter-stepped backwards before turning to run, to try and fail to escape.

The rumors grew wildly, fueled by how he moved however he wished to- too graceful and silent one moment, then twisting and lunging and crouching and skittering and twitching and moving in ways such that it appeared he was unpossessing of bones the next.

"It's got fangs and claws!"

He had been experimenting with ways to climb buildings that relied on only his own strength, for times that a grappling hook would not have anything to latch onto, and he had been startled, halfway up a wall.

He had turned to the henchman, his mouth opening in a snarl instinctively. 

His teeth, with his canines always being remarkably (his dentist had remarked on it multiple times) long and sharp, had gleamed in the light of a streetlamp, frightening the henchman into running away.

As he hadn't caught him in a criminal act, he'd let him go. He needed to justify it to himself or else, as he had learned, it would eat at him.

A few days later, sharp curved claws had been added to his gloves; his boots had been altered to be more like water shoes in shape, but with metal claws on the end to aid in climbing; and altered a retainer such that it was all pointier, and then used it to make synthesized bone extensions for his teeth, making them all closer to fangs. 

(He hoped he would never have to bite anyone with them, but he would, and the flesh would cleave beneath his enhanced fangs like a knife through butter, leaving incredibly painful half gouged-out skin in the shape of a square, with tiny lacerations to the sides, prone to getting infected. So much so that they said the Bat's saliva was a bio-weapon. 

False, of course, even with Gotham's alterations- soon, the retainer would be fused with his teeth, strengthening them, and his saliva would be hazardous to any baseline human, minorly so to most anyone enhanced too, however- but that doesn't come yet.)

"The bat can fly! No- I'm telling you, it flew!"

Well... His alter-ego was a bat-man, why wouldn't  he be able to fly?

Because the technology for one-person self-reliant flight was being researched, but, for all the advances in other types of flight, it didn't really exist.

Fortunately, Bruce was a genius. He started out by altering his cape. He changed the material, making it more rigid, mimicking leather, and adding rods through it. He enlarged it, but changed the shape, so that it looked more like bat wings. 

They were so large that they had a parachute-like effect, allowing him to glide in conjunction with his grappling hook as he cooked up a way to actually fly using mechanical wings.

He researched the ways different animals flew, different materials, ways to make them silent...

It was freeing, flying under his own power, without the use of a grappling hook.

It had taken a long time to make the wings, with many prototypes, and he would for-sure be ever-improving it, coming up with new models, but he enjoyed flying.

He could now watch for crime from the skies. He couldn't help but to make a chitter of glee as he dove, pulling up, and sinking his talons (for he had altered his climbing boots. They now had talons, three on the front and two on the back) into the shoulders of a mobster and flying into the night with only a few flaps.

It was harder to listen to the rumors from the skies, but he heard as the public perception of him shifted.

"Shadows dripping off of its frame- 

can use the shadows to teleport- 

as though its pockets are endless wells of supplies- 

so scary, I swear, I was just walking home and I saw its eyes but nothing else, its eyes were white and it wasn't blinking, wasn't moving-

talking to itself, but it wasn't words, it was chitters and squeaks and whistles and growls and-

I was a guard at a heist and you can't know the terror I felt, seeing it contort itself through a barely-open window and climb along the ceiling to drop down on another guard and take us out, I ran away, obviously-

it has a carapace, scales, you know, like an armadillo. What's the word... Chitin! It has chitin -

bulletproof! Bulletproof, I say, it was shot right in the chest but it just kept going-"

Most of the rumors had some amount of foundation in truth. It had been a dark night, even for Gotham, and he had been following a drug smuggler coming into port, when one of his wings malfunctioned in the rain and he took a brief dip in Gotham harbor.

He had been seen with water dripping off of him, not shadows as whoever saw him then said it to be.

It had been before he could fly, when he was using his cape and a grappling hook, but the criminals hadn't caught on yet. Gliding like that was very fast, likely why they said that he could teleport.

He had pulled candy, snacks, and anything he could think of out of his many, many pockets, trying to calm down a child. His pockets weren't endless wells of supplies, but he could see how they thought that.

The lenses of his mask were tinted so that they appeared to be white, and he had a habit of staring into space while he strained his ears to see if he could hear anyone crying out for help.

When frustrated, he tended to grumble to himself, but not with words, with sounds.

Communication was difficult, and tone tended to say more than words, so he tried mimicking animal sounds, mostly that of birds, but also of bats and various other creatures.

Okay, so he had indulged himself that time, but the reactions he got by acting creepy were just absolutely delectable.

He had taken to watching nature shows for ideas on things he could add to his costume, and science-fiction things. He had gotten inspiration, seeing an armadillo, and had made a carapace for himself out of metal alloy with overlapping scales, with a dilatant layer in the middle.

It was due to that that he could take being shot in the chest and just keep going. 

It limited his mobility somewhat, but they were sown through the very middle of each scale and nowhere else, so they flexed with him.

Sure, it wasn't as safe, but he was more protected than he would be without the scales, and could still bend in ways that made people go pale, shudder, and either look or run away, so he took the compromise.

(He also had on a light body armor beneath that, due to Alfred's insistence.)

"The Bat protects us, watches over us." "Who are you talking about?" "The Bat. Gotham's very own cryptid*. A protector, a defender."

He was vengeance. He was the night. He... Was the Bat.

His daughter, Barbara Gordon, was settling in well. It was good, really, but he worried about her.

He may have been worrying over her more than usual, but they had just moved back to Gotham from Chicago, he felt justified. 

Gotham... Wasn't like other cities. For one thing, there was an ever-present dark sky, filled with smog and other noxious things, blotting out the light of the sun.

This caused summers to be cooler, and winters to be bitingly cold, often below freezing.

That wasn't what worried him, though- well, alright, not the main thing to worry him- it was the crime rate. The corruption.

Gotham was called the "crime capital of the world" for a reason, after all.

It may not have been the best environment for him to have grown up in, nor the best environment for his daughter to grow up in, but he had been transferred back to Gotham.

He liked being a cop, liked dealing out justice, liked parsing the guilty from the innocent, liked criminals getting what they deserved. He felt like he was doing good.

...Mostly. Most of the time, he felt like he was doing good. He knew the justice system of the U.S. was lacking. Cruel.

He didn't like seeing petty thieves or those having committed minor crimes like pick-pocketing or jaywalking or protesting being sentenced a disproportionate amount of time, or fines, because of a cruel, messed-up, and blatantly corrupt, system.

He liked being a cop because he could work on fixing the system from the inside, work on making it fairer, on making it better.

He had underestimated the amount of work Gotham would be to work. It seemed impossible, fixing it, but he would work on it.

He believed in due process, in what the law- in what the justice system- should be.

He heard the rumors of a dark shape in the sky, on the roofs, a creature made up of living shadows.

Not long after, criminals started showing up on their doorstep, with the cameras showing nothing but static, only to go back to working afterwards.

He knew what was happening, or, he had thought so. A vigilante, a dramatic one.

He hadn't put much stock into the tales, of the descriptions of the vigilante.

A creature made of sentient shadows, with claws and fangs and wings? Preposterous.

Well, Gothamites liked to sensationalize, and he was sure that was what was happening. Of course they were exaggerating. 

So what if the land was cursed seven ways to Sunday, and the water was borderline dangerous to drink?

He didn't believe the Bat, as it was being called, was a being, a creature. Why would he?

...

Another group of thugs had been found tied up outside of the station, bound with something odd. 

It was used like rope, but it seemed like a cross-between of industrial metal cable and electric wiring, like used in houses.

It was black and rubbery, flexible but stiff, and it had a frankly mind-boggling tensile strength. It was thinner than one of his fingers!

Jim didn't like vigilantes. They acted outside the law to dole out whatever justice that they saw fit to.

This one, at least, didn't judge and sentence (kill), instead handing the criminals over to the police to dole out lawful justice.

One of the terrified men babbled about what he had seen. "-it rose out of the harbor dripping shadows- flew onto the boat- lashed out like a snake, but, like, with limbs- like a snake-cat- it was staring into my soul, I'm telling you- could barely see it, couldn't see the edges of its form, like there was no difference between it and the shadows-"

He tuned out the henchman and gestured to another officer for them to be taken into custody.

"Ah- sir? There's- there's a note..." The rookie walked over to him and presented it, the words made up of letters that were a mix of elegant curves and scratchy lines that he struggled to comprehend.

He took off his glasses and cleaned them, hoping that it would make it easier to read.

"It says, sir, that they have been smuggling drugs in through the harbor, and the product's in a warehouse on the docks- there are coordinates- and that there was supposed to be a transaction in three days."

More and more criminals turned up like that, hogtied in that odd rope-cable, with a note.

Jim was assigned to a particularly difficult child trafficking case. They could tell that children were being snatched off of the streets, and they had arrested one of the men in charge of transporting the children, but he wasn't talking.

They had tried interrogation, using Gotham methods, even. Good-cop bad-cop, isolation, drugging, leaving him in an extremely hot room to sweat about it... Nothing was working. Time to bluff.

Taking off his glasses, he pinched the bridge of his nose. "I didn't want to do this, but it seems I have no choice. Officer Davis, take him to the roof and leave him for the Bat."

"Sir?" "You heard me, Davis." The criminal now looked uncertain, and slightly afraid, like he didn't believe in the rumors of the Bat, but if the police were leaving him for it, well...

What if it was real?

– – – – – The Bat – – – – –

It had been just another night. He had been patrolling, caught some muggers in the act, and lightly cut them with his claws, which were dipped in a specialized anaesthetic to knock people out when they got cut. 

He had dropped them off on the doorstep of the GCPD, tied up in his fellig (that was what he had decided to name the cord he had made, that he was using to tie up criminals with, from the root words fel, evil / despicable/ vile, and lig, to bind / to tie.)

He was going to grapple away, but he heard talking on top of the police station, and his curiosity got the better of him.

Digging his claws into the brick, he hoisted himself up, off the ground. He held himself in the air using only his arms for a few seconds, until he managed to stick the claws on his feet and the claws on the tips of his wings into the wall. He stealthily climbed up the side of the station, until he could hear what was being said.

Stretching his arms out to the side, he sunk them into the brick, repeated it with his 'wings', using the claws on the tips, and hugged the wall, listening.

"-just leaving me out here, then? Tied up? In the rain? Waiting for a creature that probably doesn't even exist to try to make me tell? How desperate are you?"i

"It's not my first course of action, I'll admit. All my more reasonable courses of action have been exhausted. I just hope you don't get hypothermia; it would be harder to attempt to get answers out of you if you got sick."

It seemed like the criminal didn't hear that it was a bluff, a last-ditch course of action. The police officer seemed slightly nervous about doing it.

He heard the door close and the footsteps fade away. Slowly, he reached up and dug his claws into the roof, did the same with the other wing's, and then did so with one hand, following it with the other.

He pulled himself up agonizingly slowly, inch by inch, and he could hear the breathing getting louder, more panicked.

He stepped his legs up onto the roof. He looked up. The criminal's eyes were dilated with fear as he tried to scoot the chair backwards, but  he couldn't escape.

He was on all fours, with his legs tucked under his stomach, and his elbows were bent outwards. He scuttled forwards, but in a way that felt like a prowl. His cape dragged on the roof behind him, helping to obscure his form and intimidate the criminal.

When he got close enough to be able to reach out and touch him, the Bat settled his weight onto his heels and rose upwards, trying to go up one vertebrae at a time, until he towered over the wide-eyed, hyperventilating, criminal.

"ȾⱯⱢ𝓚."

The criminal talked.

– – – – – Jim Gordon – – – – –

Knock       Knock       Knock

All the officers looked around, trying to find someone else to pin on the duty of going up there and seeing what had happened. With a sigh, Jim started walking. It had been his idea, after all.

He hesitated at the top of the stairs, with his hand on the doorknob. Did he really want to see..?

Well. He had to. Pushing open the door, he froze at the sound of sobbing.

Looking around, he spotted the criminal, tied to the chair, but he had evidently scooted backwards.

He was sobbing and shaking, with wide, terrified eyes fixed on the edge of the roof.

Seeing a glint underneath the leg of the chair the criminal was sitting in, Jim tugged it out to find what looked to be a plastic recipe sleeve.

It was taped off at the top, and there were papers inside. He turned it over, but it was blank on that side too. It was thick, though.

He beckoned another officer to untie the criminal and take him back to his cell.

Walking over to where he had been staring, he found gashes in the roof, clearly made by something with claws. He didn't admit it, but the gashes scared him.

He turned away, unable to look at it anymore, and headed back inside, down the stairs, and to his desk.

Sitting down, he peeled off the tape- clear tape, about two inches wide, like used for keeping packages closed- and gently tugged out the papers.

It was a treasure-trove of information. The names of the people involved with the ring; their addresses; where they were keeping the children; the number of children; the guards' schedules...

Everything they needed to take down the part of the ring in Gotham. Everything they needed to free the children.

"Thank you, Bat," Jim whispered, tucking the papers into the inside pocket of his coat. Far too many of the police officers were on someone else's payroll for him to trust that, if he left the information at the station, it would still be there when he came in the next day.

Jim really only trusted two other officers at the GCPD, twin sisters Andrea and Jennifer Johnson.

 As the one in charge of this case, he pulled them onto the roof four days before he planned for the operation to begin.

"Andrea, Jennifer, thank you for meeting me here." He pulled a drag on his cigarette and blew out the smoke, watching it curl and dissipate into the Gotham smog.

"Of course. We trust you." "But, what do you need us for?" He eyed the brunettes, one with streaks of dark purple in her hair, and the other with streaks of dark red.

He looked Jennifer in the stormy gray eyes she and her sister shared as he talked, "I trust you too, and that's why I wanted to talk to you. Are you aware of what happened with the criminal in the child trafficking ring, Liam Jones?"

"Didn't you interrogate him, but he wouldn't talk?" "And then you left him out here in the rain until you heard three slow knocks?"

He walked over to the edge of the roof and bent down, tracing the gouges in the roof with a hand.

"Those look like- claw marks. Jim- Jim, are those- are those from- did- did the Bat-? Jim. Jim, what happened?"

He stood up. Unzipping his jacket, he takes the papers, still in the sleeve, out of the inner pocket, and he holds them out.

Jennifer took it and started looking through it, while he talked with Andrea. "Jim? Where did you get that?"

"We had Jones out here, handcuffed and tied to a chair. I noticed this, underneath the leg of the chair, when I had him taken back to his holding cell. I looked at it later, and it contains everything we would need to take down the part of the ring in Gotham."

"Is there a reason you're not assembling a team and telling us all this? Why just the two of us?"

"You know how corrupt the police are, here in Gotham, Andrea. You two are the only ones I'm trusting with this."

"It's not that I'm not touched, Jim, but we can't take down the ring with just the three of us, and besides, how do we even know that the information is correct?"

"What choice do we have but to believe that it is? This is the best- no. It's the only lead we have."

"We only have four days? Jim. Jim, that's not enough time," Jennifer hissed, looking up from the papers.

"Why? We have all the information. It should only take two days to case the warehouses."

"What about how long it'll take to set up for the raid, Jim? Organizing the teams? There are two warehouses to raid, we'll have to make sure everyone can work together first-"

"Jennifer?" 

"Yes? What is it?" She snapped, her mouth a tense line, and her brow furrowed as she flipped through the papers, obviously agitated at having so little time to prepare.

"Are you aware of how nearly every other cop in the GCPD is crooked?"

"What? Yes, of course. What does this have to do with– oh."

"'Oh'? Pardon me, but I'm not following."

"An', Jim's saying that we can't trust any other officers to help us if we want our op to succeed, because they are likely to sell us out."

"What? Jim, we can't take down the ring with just the three of us. We need help. En'. Tell him. Back me up here!"

"An' is right, Jim. Just the three of us can't take down the ring, not by ourselves."

He sighed, dragging a hand across his face. "I'm aware. I'm not suggesting that we do it by ourselves."

"Then what are you suggesting?" Jennifer asked, as ever the cleverer one.

"I'm suggesting that we go ahead and figure out the teams, but we don't alert them that something's going down until we get there."

"What, you think that'll work? Jim. Jim, no, they're not stupid, they'll figure out what we're doing, and, like you said, they're nearly all crooked. How do we know they won't just turn on us once they realize?"

"You two will be together," he told them like it was a foregone conclusion, and it was. The twins were so close that it seemed wrong, seeing them apart. "You'll have each other's backs. You'll be fine."

"But what about you, Jim? You'll be alone, with-" "With others from our precinct? Yes, that's correct," he interrupted.

"Jim." The exasperation and worry contained in one word caused him to slouch in shame.

"Jim. Jim, no. You haven't been back in Gotham, working, for too long. The other officers-" Jennifer stopped, grimacing.

"The other officers think you're annoying. They think that you think that they're so below you, because you're not corrupt. That's not true, of course, and we know that, but they don't, and-" this time, it was Andrea who stopped, grimacing, and let her sister take over.

"They're our colleagues, and we've been working with them for years. They know us. We're on cordial terms with almost all of them. You..."

"They have lived in Gotham their whole lives. They're not- they won't hesitate, just because you work in the same precinct as them."

"What do you suggest I do, then? Not head one of the teams? Try to find another officer in the GCPD that I can trust? I'm open to suggestions."

Andrea and Jennifer didn't like it, and he didn't either, but none of them had a better idea, so they went with his plan.

He had been aware of it before, but now knowing how they didn't like him, he was extra aware of the dirty looks they threw him, of how they talked about him in scathing tones behind his back.

It wasn't pleasant, knowing that only two of his colleagues really liked him.

This extra awareness of how his colleagues didn't like him made his nerves worse before the op. He had felt like they were planning something. 

He now knew that they were planning how to get rid of him, due to them having left him, alone, with the child traffickers. Who were armed with guns. Guns that were pointed at him.

He felt helpless, in the face of so many guns being pointed at him. His own gun was under the boot of some thug. He was defenseless.

"-don't get, is how you got Liam Jones to talk. Nothing you could have done should have been able to make him talk. So? How did you do it?"

"'You'? Are you talking about the police? We did nothing to make him talk. In fact, he didn't even talk, not to us."

"Then who did what to make him talk?" Antagonizing the head honcho probably wasn't very smart, but he was stalling. 

(What was he stalling for? There would be no miraculous rescue for him. His team were all turncoats, corrupt, who wouldn't help him, and even if Andrea and Jennifer got it into their heads to check on him, the three of them wouldn't be able to fight off so many gunmen. It was pointless. So, why did he bother?)

"Well, I don't know. We left him out on the roof in the rain, and when we went to go get him there was a file under his chair, detailing everything. Now that I'm thinking about it, he might not have even talked; that file might have already been made."

"Stop stalling, officer! No one's coming to save you! Who made Liam Jones talk, and how?"

"Like I said, I don't know... But, really, who could get on top of the roof, and who would be able to get one of your guys to crack? There's really only one suspect..."

The lights flickered momentarily before plunging them into darkness.

He dropped to the floor, rolling to the side, and tried to make his way to where he remembered the door to be. 

He ignored all the gunshots. All the screams. The sound of bodies hitting the floor.

The whoosh of air from something big moving quickly through space.

He fumbled his way across the floor, ignoring all the sounds of conflict. Meeting the wall, he dragged his fingers across it, trying to find the doorframe.

Finding it, he reached up. Not there, not there, not there- there! He stood up, his hand on the doorknob, ready to open it and dash for his life.

Was that the smartest idea? The best course of action? Probably not, but–

Before he could decide whether or not to open the door and possibly reveal his position, the room fell eerily silent, but for the soft sound of fabric rustling.

He didn't move, indecisivity freezing his frame. What was happening? Were all the members of the ring knocked out or injured? Or were they just frozen, like him?

The lights flickered again, so briefly that he was blinded, that he couldn't see anything more than the bodies on the ground.

The lights flickered a couple more times before staying on. He brought the hand that wasn't on the doorknob up to shield his eyes, allowing him to catch a glimpse of a vaguely human-shaped shadow too dark to be a shadow, so dark that it couldn't be anything but— no. 

No, he was getting fantastical. Was he in shock? It sure felt like he was in shock, and being in shock would make sense, he had resigned himself to getting no backup, to dying, only to be saved by- by the Bat? 

Jim was still skeptical as to the Bat being anything but a human putting on a performance to scare the criminals on the streets of Gotham, nothing more than an elaborate fear tactic. Well, if so, it was working.

Shaking his head, he took out a pair of handcuffs and handcuffed the one who had been monologuing, and the two thugs flanking him. He didn't have enough handcuffs for all the rest- what.

Unable to believe his eyes, he walked over to the bundle of "rope" dropped in the middle of the room.

Had- had the Bat left him some of the material it had been using to tie up criminals?

Well, he supposed it wouldn't hurt to make use of it...

The- cord?- rope-like material was strange to work with. It was like using the thinnest of industrial cable, but with shrink wrap on the outside.

He had struggled to tie it, but managed, eventually, despite how difficult it was to tie in knots and have it not come undone easily.

By the time he was working on tying up the last one, he heard talking outside the room, and the door pushed in to reveal the rest of his team, who were now looking in, gaping.

"Holy- you managed to take them all out by yourself, Gordon?" "Well, this, uh, this 'splains why there were so few'a 'em in the rest'a the warehouse..."

He could feel resentment and anger rising in him, demanding for him to do something, but instead he bit his tongue and finished up tying the last one.

"What of the children?" he asked, his tongue leaden in his mouth, "are they alright?"

"Scared, o'course, an' relieved, but they're fine." "We ought to go check... See how, uh, the other team's doing!"

He relaxed as they left. They were his co-workers, his fellow officers of the law, but he wouldn't trust them with his life, nor with his daughter's. 

He felt ostracized, sometimes, when Andrea and Jennifer weren't there, but he had hardly worked there for long before getting transferred to Chicago, and no one was still there. 

They saw him as the newbie, as some upstart outsider who believed himself to be so much better than him because he wasn't corrupt. 

It was... Tiring, always having to be on guard, but he was working to protect the city, to better the system from within. He wasn't going to quit.

The lights flickered again, and he tensed up, wary. The last time, the lights had flickered before going out, and the Bat had taken out the ring almost single-handedly, then flickered again to reveal the bodies.

The lights turned off, and a voice echoed around the room, wrong in ways he couldn't explain.

It reminded him of a growl, but with echoes of nails on a chalkboard, the screaming of the damned, and the screeching of bats...

No, that wasn't enough to describe it, to describe why it raised the hairs on the back of his neck and made him want to flee.

"ⱲĦɎ ĦȺṼƏ ƝǾȠƐ ƑǾƦ ɃⱯȻƘ‽ ȺƂⱠḜ ĦɄɌȾ¡!"

The rough, scratchy noises, only vaguely recognizable as words, sounded like it hurt to say. It sure hurt him to hear.

 Why have none for back? Able hurt! Did... Did the Bat mean Why do you have no one guarding your back? You're in more danger that way!

"I only trust two others in my precinct, and they're leading the raid on the other warehouse."

"ȾĦḜƦỀ, ⱯḸⱠ ƧȺƑƎ," the Bat assured him, "ɎǾɄ ỰŊⱾⱯƑɆ.ɃȺƉ. ƑƗȠƉ– ĦƎⱠⱣ– §ⱭƑƏ¡!"

There, all safe, you unsafe. Bad. Find- help- safe! This one was slightly harder to untangle the meaning of.

Maybe... Everyone there is safe. You aren't safe without someone watching your back. You should find someone to help keep you safe.

Was... Was the Bat trying to make him get a partner? The whole situation was unreal...

The lights flickered, and the Bat let out what sounded like an annoyed snarl, accompanied by the sound of rustling fabric.

"ɎǾɄ ǤǬỠƉ. ɎǾɄ ḒƗḜ, ɃⱯƉ. ƑƗȠƉ– ĦƎⱠⱣ– §ⱭƑƏ¡!"

The lights flickered again, staying on for a couple seconds before going off again, and Jim's breath caught.

It was incredibly brief, but he had seen a figure, dripping in shadows, with wings flared out behind and horns curling above the head.

Fuzz filled his head as the lights came back on, with the Bat gone. He stumbled, his center of gravity thrown off. His head hurt; his vision was swimming; his ears were ringing.

Shaking his head to clear the fuzz, he tried valiantly to ignore what he had just seen. Instead, he focussed on what the Bat had said.

You good. You die, bad. Find- help- safe! 'Find- help- safe', he had already figured out what it meant, and you die, bad., was easy enough to understand, but...

'You good'? Was- was the Bat acknowledging that he wasn't corrupt?

Later, he met up with Andrea and Jennifer. Apparently, their operation went well, and the part of the child trafficking ring that was in Gotham was taken out, though only with intervention by the Bat.

Despite urging on the twins' part, Jim did not get a partner 'it's not that simple-!' and life went back to normal in the precinct.

He was, of course, slightly more on edge, but that was expected when your co-workers tried to have you killed.

Criminals still were dropped off on their doorstep, tied with the bat-cord (he would never call it that out loud, but that was what he mentally called it), but that was becoming normalized.

Frustrated about a particularly stubborn case, he went up onto the roof for a smoke.

Reviewing it was difficult in the poor light, even with the moon being full (barely any of the moon's light shone through the smog, in any case).

"ŴⱵȺŦ ĦⱯṼɆ‽" (What have?)

He startled, dropping his cigarette on the roof. Staring down at it sadly, he ground it out under his heel, and turned to rebuke the Bat for startling him, but the words caught in his throat.

The Bat was veiled in shadows despite the full moon, and it was tall enough that he had to crane his neck to look up to the head- which was cocked sideways in a chilling parody of animal behavior- despite it being crouched on the edge of the building.

Its wings pooled wide around its form on the roof and down the side of the building, like molten shadows.

He couldn't tell where the edges of its wings stopped and the shadows began; it seemed to attract the darkness, simply by being.

Unable to look at it any longer, he dropped his eyes down to the folder in his hands.

"Oh, this? It's a frustratingly difficult case. It's shaping up to be another cold case."

"Ḭ- ȾⱭƘɆ ⱠØǾⱩ‽" (I- take look?)

"You know what? Sure." Carefully avoiding looking at the Bat, he held out the folder, which the clawed hands took with surprising gentleness.

"ƝɆⱣⱵḜⱲ– ŴƗŁⱢ ȻĦⱯȠǤḜƉ– ƑǾƦ ḈƟⱮⱣȺŇɎ‽" (Nephew- will changed- for company?)

"I'll take a look, thank you for your input," Jim said, carefully taking back the out held file. 

"ƑɄŊ¡! ĦⱭṾɆ ⱮǾɌƐ‽" (Fun! Have more?)

"There- yes. Yes, there are more. How should I contact you, when more of these frustrating cases come up?" He asked carefully, not wanting to antagonize the possible demon. He couldn't even look at it!

"ƝɆẊŦ ŇƗǤĦȾ, Ɨ ĦⱯɅɆ– ŴḮⱢḸ ⱾǾⱠṾḜ¡!" (Next night- I have- will solve!)

"Alright then. I'll come to the roof tomorrow night to see what your solution is."

Jim was, admittedly, nervous. The Bat- an inhuman creature; a twisted mockery of something humanoid and something other; activated his fight-or-flight; made him physically ill for looking straight at it; something more shadows than anything on the physical plane- was attempting to find a solution to being unable to contact it.

So, yes, he was nervous. Rightfully so, he felt! However, despite his trepidation, he went onto the roof of the police station that night. He didn't have to wait long.

A series of chitters, chirps, and coos sounded from behind him. He turned, his breath caught in his throat, only to see a puddle of shadows, about the height of one of those chairs in the waiting room at the hospital, with pure-white eyes looking out at him.

"You said you would find a solution?" He asked, his mouth dry. Swallowing did nothing to help.

"ɎḜƧ– ƋƗĐ– ⱠØƟⱩ¡!" (Yes- did- look!)

It bounced up into a more humanoid shape and then oozed over to... What looked like a spotlight?

It looked like it had been torn out of a ceiling, with exposed wires coming out the end of it.

It... Had been hooked up to an extension cord? But the part of the extension cord that you plugged into had been taken off, and the wires had been wound into the ones from the spotlight?

"Are you sure this is safe to use?" He asked, averting his eyes as the Bat oozed across the opening, pulling back to reveal a piece of plywood, dripping a tar-like substance, with a bat precisely cut out of it.

"ɄⱾɆ¡!" (Use!)

The Bat agreed, scuttling over to the light switch by the door into the station. 

With a beleaguered sigh, he walked over and turned the light switch on. Admittedly, he had just been humoring the Bat.

He hadn't actually thought that it would work, not with the way it was wired, but he was seeing the proof: a bat symbol, projected onto the smog. It stood out, brighter than day.

"Well, I suppose that's one problem solved," he said, turning to where the Bat had been just seconds ago, but was now empty. 

"Uh... Bat?" He called out, feeling silly, and he didn't get a response. None of the shadows darkened to indicate the presence of the cryptid. He was alone.

Kate was sharp in both intellect and demeanor. She had explored Wayne Manor with Bruce when they were younger, and had found the cave system.

They had made it their very own hideaway, one of the caves, decked out in pillows and blankets.

It got uncomfortable, sitting on the cave floor, so they had drilled into the walls to hang hammocks.

Emboldened by their success, they had next done slacklines, and ropes above that to hold on to to keep their balance. In a separate, larger, cave, of course,

They had been planning on doing a zip-line next when Alfred had found them, and he had told them in no uncertain terms that they were not to go back down there until he had determined if it was structurally sound.

He had found it to be safe, but he also didn't let them drill into the cave walls anymore. 

Apparently, he had to be the one to do it, as he had the knowledge of how to make the screws go in and stay, so that they wouldn't be in a hammock and have it all fall because it wasn't secured properly. 

Why he had that knowledge, they didn't know.

With Alfred's help, they had also done a zip-line, a climbing wall with a foam pit beneath, gymnastics equipment, and all the exercise opportunities they could ever want. 

All that unorthodox training had gotten her in shape for the military.

In the military, Kate had learned many things, the least of which being don't hesitate. In the military, if you hesitated, it could get you and your entire platoon killed.

Kate had learned to forge through the hesitance, the wondering of whether or not it was the right thing to do, and actually do it.

The first time she had come back, Alfred had taken her aside, and she had started bawling.

"I know that it's either them or us, Alfie, but it still- I've killed people, Alfie, and it- I can't bear it, I can't, I- I-"

Alfred and her had talked, comparing their own service times, and the things he had to say helped.

"Miss Katherine, what you are feeling now never truly goes away, but you can learn to live with it. Tell me, do you believe in the cause? Is that which you are fighting for worth killing for?"

"I- yeah, yes, I mean, but- well- what if I fail? What if I'm not good enough? They're- they're thinking of sending me off to Afghanistan to capture a- a terrorist leader! If- if I fail there, then- then so, so many people's lives are at stake."

"Ah. I understand. I, myself, was a SOE, and later part of the SIS, or MI6, as you would likely know it." "SOE? What's that?"

She had looked it up later, and it turns out that SOE stood for Special Operations Executive.

SOE was a British organization formed in 1940 to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in World War II. 

It was dissolved in 1946.

That was when Kate started to suspect that Alfred was immortal.

It would not be the last.