Dark As Night

I can’t tell you know because that would make me a fucking hyporcrite 

Fuck this

Fuck 

I need reassurance I really hope it isn’t either, I still have college stuff I’m doing….

Just be happy you're not part of it anymore. That guy seems to hate cops and weirdo vigilantes, so you're safe. Lucky you. 

Black Alice! Such a cute character. 

For my friend happysorceress, who won my bust sketch request! 

A dead body was found two days ago in Crime Alley. Three days before that, a body was found in Gotham Proper. Both bodies had their throats slit and didn’t exhibit any defensive wounds. While this would normally be solely homicide’s case, Sarah was working it because the bodies happened to be two well-known dealers for the Rossetti and the Galante families. Dino Rossetti and Maccio Galante had carved out small chunks of territory for themselves in Crime Alley and Gotham Proper respectively. Sarah’s officers had been following them for months, trying to secure more evidence to build a solid case against their families. 

For years, the heads of the Rossetti and Galante families had been evading arrest. Controlled arrests didn’t work; no one budged and no one talked out of fear and respect for Gabriel Rossetti and Pasquale Galante. Oftentimes, if Sarah secured a witness, they ended up dead or retracting their statements the next day. The lower runners for the family would rather take the hit and serve jail time than wind up dead the next day at the hands of their former employer. Following Dino and Maccio around wasn’t a satisfying option, but it was working well for Sarah’s team. 

And now both men were dead.

Some people were theorizing that this was the work of the Sabatinos or maybe even the Rileys, but this wasn’t their style. They would have preferred to do it quick—do it clean. A few bullets to the chest or the back of the skull with an untraceable gun. In and out. They wouldn’t be found. Easy.

But this was different.

Dino and Maccio’s throats were slit. Someone wanted them to die in a gruesome way. This was personal.

Sarah wondered if they both knew the person attacking them. They had to be able to get close enough to the victims to be able to slit their throat unexpectedly. The angles and the blood spray pattern showed that their throats were ripped into standing up. The attacker either had to be someone familiar to them or someone they hadn’t expected to pose a danger to them.

But who the hell could that be? 

Sarah’s thoughts were enveloped by the case. Every once and a while she’d break to panic about the Bane situation, but there wasn’t anything she could do other than check her inbox repeatedly and scroll through his online interactions. So, her attention always flitted back to the dead bodies. The slit throats. The gory pictures of Maccio and Dino’s crime scenes on her desk.

She continued to think about it as she left the station that night, mind as hazy as the smoke billowing from her cigarette. There were plenty of people in this city who would have wanted these men dead, but this seemed like a message more than anything. A warning, perhaps?

It took four blocks to get to Sarah’s apartment building, which meant she shouldn’t have been wearing heels. Jim got on her case for them being impractical; Mitchell used to, too. She supposed they were right, but damn did they make her feel good. Even with a gun strapped to her hip, walking in her pumps was what made her feel the most dangerous. Powerful. Like she owned the world. She’d also been chided for walking home at night on her own, but she didn’t care whether it was three in the morning or three in the afternoon; she wouldn’t be afraid to move freely in her own city.

Sarah was finished with her cigarette by the time she was two blocks away from home, but she was already thinking about taking out another. She promised she’d stop herself—that she’d cut back—but she hadn’t been as disciplined lately as she wanted to be. As she was reaching for the pack in her purse, she heard the sound of a scuffle just around the bend. Sarah started running, hand hovering over the gun holstered to her belt. There, in the parking lot of the library, she spotted three figures: two men hunched over a body on the ground. Sarah slowed as she approached, body hugging the wall of the building to keep her out of sight.

"Did you really think you could take us?" one of the men asked, his foot tapping the body on the ground. "Are you fuckin’ delusional or just stupid?"

"I think she’s just stupid," hissed the other. "What the fuck was she saying earlier anyway?"

"Dunno." The man rounded the figure and gathered spit in his mouth, unleashing it at the body beneath him. "But let’s teach this bitch a lesson."

He reached into his jacket.

Lori laced up her trusty pair of boots and stared at herself in the mirror: it wasn't every night that she did this. In fact, things had slowed down after her first successful eliminations. The men she got rid of were never murdered--they would have to be important and worth something to be murdered. In Lori's case, they were insignificant, and only deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth so they never hurt another person again.

It didn't matter where their souls went after they left their bodies. That was of no concern to her--knowing that they felt physical pain and could never pass another pill onto anyone else was good enough. There was nothing quite like listening to the crack of a jaw under her boot. It was better than the music that was currently blasting through the speakers in her room, drowning out the sound of the TV down the hall. Her father had fallen asleep with it on again: it was comforting, she knew, to have the noise. Lori didn't have the heart to tell him they didn't have the money to keep the TV on all night, at least for now.

It was good that drug dealers requested all payment to be cash. She planned on filling her own pockets, too.

Lori turned to a nightstand nearby and began to dig through it. Its contents were that of any teenage girl's--spare nose rings, a scorpion in a jar of blue liquid, tea candles--but most importantly, there was the knife. She slid it in a compartment she sewed into her black jacket. It made for easy access when in tight situations, and tonight, Lori expected to get in one.

Luckily, she didn't particularly mind ridding the world of scum. Black Alice was a hero. Not even Batman had done what she had done--she knew that she had saved hundreds, if not thousands of lives so far. If the dealers couldn't roam the street and give out the drugs, people couldn't take them. They'd get clean and live, how her mom hadn't. No one deserved to feel that pain, except the men who supplied the drugs. With a last look in the long mirror, she switched off her own music, and shut off the television in the living room. It was dark now, how she liked it. She could get away with things in the dark. Rossetti and Galante's drug runners were dead, thanks to the darkness (and the very, very sharp knife courtesy of a wedding gift from Lori's great aunt). Their blood was wiped clean from her blade. No one had to know she had done it.

She pulled a throw blanket out of the closet and draped it over her father, whose breathing was slightly labored from the cancer in his lungs, and then set out into the inky night. 

After dodging men who offered her rides all across Gotham and drugs, if she was a 'good girl', she finally arrived. The men were exactly where they were supposed to be. For guys addicted to the high life, they were awfully predictable. It almost made her laugh, but not really. She didn't take pleasure in this--this was for her mother, for everyone else who would have ever run into the wastes of space she was about to demolish. Lori, as quietly as she could, ascended a fire escape on the building nearby. It was close to the ground--close enough to jump on whomever was unlucky enough to be close to her. Her boots were loud against the metal. Damn. It had caught their attention.

"Shit. The hell was that? I thought you said we was safe here."

"We are," the other replied, "we've done this here before, idiot. Got a quarter kilo in my pocket. Just waiting on some pretty little lady to walk on by and ask her if her nose is itchin' for something."

Before the other man could laugh, Lori leaped from the building and aimed for something--anything soft. She wasn't skilled or rich like the Batman, and couldn't afford his gear to prevent a nasty injury if she got hurt. Lori tumbled to the ground, falling onto her hands and knees. The pavement was cold and hard below her, and skinned the thin skin of her palms and kneecaps, even through her jeans. She had wanted to say something witty like Am I pretty enough for you? but all that came out was an ugly grunt. It wouldn't have mattered anyway--her face was protected by a ski mask. Still, the ski mask wouldn't protect her from a skinned knee. Great. No more jumping from buildings. 

As the men turned around, Lori was very aware she could die there, in a cold, dark alley. They'd find her body in the morning, and her father would get a call and be forced to make the trek to see his dead daughter. Then he'd have no kid, no wife, no money, and cancer. No way she'd allow that to happen. Lori stood up as quickly as she could, and reached into her jacket for the knife. "I'm going to make you eat your own di--" she started, but the bald man beat her to it, and brought a fist across her face. It hurt more coming from a grown man than the weak fist of a preppy, blonde cheerleader. 

Lori gasped in shock, and went for the man's face with her nails, painted as black as the night. She caught his cheek--she could hear him swear, and he dropped her onto the ground--but it wouldn't deter him. 

"Did you really think you could take us? Are you fuckin’ delusional or just stupid?" He aimed for a kick at her ribs, and she gasped in pain. 

"I think she’s just stupid. What the fuck was she saying earlier anyway?"

"Dunno," he said, and spat at her. "But let’s teach this bitch a lesson."

Another boot--she couldn't tell whose, for her eyes were screwed shut--was pressed against her torso. This time it was lower, resting on the soft flesh of her belly, skin still sensitive from her fall. He wanted to press down and make her insides come out for interrupting them, she knew. Oh, Athena. Lori couldn't die like this, couldn't die at the hands of the men who murdered her mother. That would be the ultimate slap in the face. Even if she didn't die, she'd never be able to forgive herself for getting those close to death. These men were the ones who didn't deserve to live, not her. No, she was a vigilante in her own regard, doing the things they would never dare to. 

The man pressed down hard and she could feel one hip ache with the pressure, and she bit her lip hard. She felt frozen, unable to use her arms and legs, crushed under the man's foot. 

Frozen?

She knew how to do that--channel her own afflictions onto someone else, the opposite of what she could normally accomplish. Usually, other people's powers were hers, but now her disadvantage could be the man's. Lori wanted him off. He needed to stop, he needed to be stopped, and she wouldn't allow this to go on. "Stop!" she barked, voice hoarse and pleading. 

They did.

Lori let out a heavy breath as the foot's force was lessened and sat herself up, wiggling out from underneath his foot. She turned behind her, noticing that the other man had pulled a gun out and had been pointing it at her head. Was she lucky or what? Lori tugged the gun from his hand and inspected it. The things were gross and loud, and she wanted nothing to do with them. She glanced up at the man, his eyes wild, but the rest of him still. The spell wouldn't last too long--just long enough so she could get the hell out of dodge and head home.

On October 16th, 2014 three unlicensed and unmarked cargo ships appeared in Gotham Harbor. When they were discovered, they were empty.  The next day, there was an odd number of roadwork crews around. Not just on the streets with the potholes, loose gravel, and gaping cracks in the asphalt. Main roads were torn up with jackhammers. Over the course of the next few days, roads were demolished, steam rollers and piles of tar were left in the middle of side streets, and navigating Gotham by foot or car became a challenge. Detour signs only led to more ruin, and more detour signs. Orange traffic cones blocked entire streets. Workmen in reflective vests denied being able to speak English, and men dressed as traffic cops redirected traffic. Then, as suddenly as they appeared, the roadwork crews disappeared, and in their wake there was large scale destruction.  At the same time, small time criminals were being snatched off the street. First it was drug dealers and leg breakers, but then unsuspecting gym-goers started disappearing too.  That was just the beginning.  Bane had liberated the prisoners Peña Duro, the prison where he was born and raised. The prison on the small Caribbean Island of Santa Prisca. And he would take Gotham. Hundreds of loyal followers, armed to the teeth and pumping venom, are under his command, bolstered by local gangs that had been absorbed. His goal? To rule Gotham. He had broken the bat, the city was his, and now, he only needed to prove it. He and his army of drug addled bruisers would take the city.  Important Notes:

Moving around Gotham is neigh impossible, with the rubble and chunks of asphalt and concrete on the streets

Bane’s troops have been ordered not to harm civilians unless necessary, but are specifically targeting vigilantes and the local police 

His troops are armed with automatic weapons, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, and grenades, as well as helicopters and tanks— all pillaged from the unsuspecting local National Guard 

Bridges connecting to the mainland have been structurally compromised. A few people walking across them might be okay, but something near the weight of a car would be risky 

About 1 in 20 of his troops are on venom, which makes direct hand to hand combat extremely dangerous

There are about 2000-2500 Peña Duro escapees, and another 500 or so bodies gleaned from local gangs