#chruce

In his first six online performances, the show starts with the camera zoomed on his face covered by a black, skeletal mask that reflects the harsh spotlight surrounding his victim as he rants on about the darkness in the world and Gotham’s inability to see him for the truth-teller he is. He bitingly laughs at the newspaper articles and news channels that call him a monster; the biggest terror to haunt Gotham’s streets since the Joker’s incarceration.

“You know what I really am, don’t you?” he admonishes his viewers, “I’m your savior.”

Once he’s had enough of his own voice, the camera focuses on the victim, always a pretty, young woman, strapped down to an operating table.

“Are you beautiful?” he asks as his gloved hand dips into one of several containers on the tray table next to his victim.

No answer, only a groggy groan as the girl comes out of sedation; he never receives an answer on the first try.

“And now?” he asks again smearing the goop on his hand across her beautiful face. Before the camera, her face transforms into a hideous sight as the so-called make up’s, he has used, toxins seep through her pores permanently disfiguring his victim’s face. A sizzle sounds sending a shiver down every viewer’s back; the sound of the make up melting onto bare skin. It’s a sound only identifiable to those who have lost innocence and beauty, and in Gotham that’s an experience everyone can sympathize with.

As for the victim, he still receives no answer from her; only a tortured shriek; her skin melting, reforming, hardening- never has there been a pain so excruciating.

And so the ritual goes until the tortured soul pleas for their suffering to end, finally summons the courage to form words and beg for death, and not until they answer his question with a resounding, ‘no’ are they put to death.

“Are you beautiful?”

“No,” his victims sob.

“Do you want to live in this ugly world?” he finally asks.

“No,” his once beautiful victims answer.

From there his method of execution varies- a broken neck, a gun shot to the head. How much pain does a person need to be in before decapitation by machete seems peaceful? All his victims but one would know.

Alice Shrewder, born Zelda Olav, gets caught in Black Mask’s cross hairs by mistake. Witness Protection placed her in a 9 to 5 job with her husband and kid in Gotham, not the safest place, but then Zelda wasn’t the safest woman and she certainly hadn’t come from the safest of homes or married into the safest of families. After she is over an hour late Brian, really Boris, knows she won’t be coming home, but he never imagines he will watch his wife die.

Used to torture, Zelda does not succumb to Black Mask’s questioning. The first stream of video ends as her face begins to boil like a cauldron of stew. The next night, a second video of Zelda airs. Barely alive, she stares blankly at the camera through her swollen left eye. Black Mask doesn’t bother ranting; he simply unties the once gorgeous woman from her restraints on the table.

She falls face first to the floor as Black Mask flips the table. He turns her over onto her back.

“If I take you to the hospital now they can save you,” Black Mask promises and for the first time something akin to emotion flashes across Zelda’s face. “You’ll be permanently disfigured since the make up has sat on your skin for so long, but I’ll give them the antidote to save you.”

“No,” she gasps.

“What’s that?” Black Mask mocks her, “I didn’t quite hear you.”

“No,” Zelda cries.

“You don’t want to live in this ugly world?” Black Mask maniacally laughs. It’s far from a question.

The machete follows soon after.

Organized crime loves him. He takes the heat off; hell, he practically makes them look legitimate.

The petty criminals ignore him.

The law is left baffled by him.

His public gives him what he desires most- fear, anger, outrage. Dirty, ugly parts of themselves that come from places they couldn’t begin to comprehend, but it’s a place he understands perfectly. It’s why he performs his social experiment on the innocent- the Suzy-Do-Gooders of the world.

Batman is filled with the drive to stop him; with every kill the drive increases tenfold. The dark, beautiful city he is forever fighting to save is cowering; even worse some are bowing. The horrid desperation he has slowly beaten back over the years is back in less time than it took for the first video to stop streaming. But that’s okay, because in desperation Batman thrives. It’s times like these Bruce’s alter ego is most in his element. It’s Bruce himself who suffers seeing his city so willingly kneel before another deranged murder. He loses pieces of himself watching psychotic criminal after criminal devour Gotham. So he throws himself into Batman; pursuing his nightly activities with a vengeance, looking for those lost pieces of himself he’s not so sure he can ever really get back.

Tonight, fully suited in his Batman armor he watches the monitors in his high tech basement filled with images of the man in the Black Mask skip over his usual rubbish. Without even one lead on his newest nemesis, Bruce feels one more piece of himself disappearing. The signal from the video is being bounced from tower to tower all over the world; there are no distinguishing markers to be found in any of the videos including the one currently airing; and no manufacturer Bruce found could place where his unique mask came from. Most haunting, no bodies have turned up. An autopsy can be so revealing, but more importantly a burial is deserved.

The camera turns to a green eyed, blonde woman, whom looks to have a whole lot of life left to live, tied to Black Mask’s operating table and he feels that piece of himself going, going, gone. He watches, determined not to let this woman die in front of nothing but morbid fans looking to be entertained; if nothing else she’ll have one person looking to take her killer-to-be down. Alfred tries to usher him out to patrol, but Bruce refuses. Ever faithful Alfred stays with him.

Black Mask is angrier than usual tonight. He’s growling and condemning and threatening. He’s not playing the misunderstood hero card this time. Someone has royally pissed the psychopath off.

“Do you ever shut up?” the feminine voice complains.

“Shut up Bitch!” Mask snaps taking an eyeliner pencil and shoving it into the young blonde’s arm.

She grimaces but doesn’t make a noise.

“What a waste of perfectly good product,” angrily, he tosses the pencil away.

“Really?” she rolls her eyes, “Guyliner is so 1990s. You’re better off without it, trust me.”

“Maybe we can find something more to your standards,” he sneers.

“The antidote would fit my standards just fine. I’d rather not be left with that little scar there,” she gestures to her arm with her head.

The remark gives Black Mask pause. In a fit of rage, his hands smack either side of the table where she lays, “What makes you think there’s an antidote?”

“You, Smart Guy,” she answers nonplussed looking straight into the camera. “Right before you killed her, you offered Zelda Olav the antidote and implied if it’s received in time there is no lasting damage.”

Bruce stills as he listens to her. She knows someone who can help her is watching, and it isn’t him. She’s feeding them information. Batman knows all of this, what she’s relaying wouldn’t help him. He has, after all, watched every feed. The killings are in his city.

Mask picks up a black jar of a creamy substance and flings the table with the rest of his products across the room. “Don’t worry yourself about that. By the time they find you at the bottom of the bay, they’ll be more concerned with whether or not there is enough left for a coffin much less an antidote.”

Her green eyes spark, “Is that how you get rid of the bodies?”

“That’s enough from you!” Black Mask all but howls bringing the black jar back to light and unscrewing the lid.

The woman’s interest subsides quickly as her fear shines through finally, but Bruce hasn’t had this much hope for a victim of Black Mask’s yet. Busily typing away on one of his screens, Bruce begins to run a search on the black jar kept in the shadows until this night. He knows that uniquely egg shaped jar.

Janus Cosmetics had nearly gone under almost three years prior. Thanks to a last minute buyout by Wayne Industries thousands of jobs were saved and Janus Cosmetics doors stayed open. Roman Sionis, who ran the company into the ground investing in a line of “ground breaking” cosmetics which altered a persons appearance without plastic surgery, had always hated Bruce Wayne; and he resented him further for being in a position to bail the company out when his line of products had horrible results- changing physical appearances of those who used it for the worse. The black egg shaped jar was the container for the line of appearance altering

cosmetics.

Refocusing on the main screen, Bruce watches as Black Mask paces around the dark room frantically. “Gloves, where did the gloves go?”

Still looking at the camera, his latest captive and proven spitfire is blinking rapidly. Over and over again, she blinks. She is muttering under her breath and only every few words are being caught by the mic. “So much for…birds…I swear to never…field…”

Something about her eye movement is strangely catching.

“It would seem the young Sionis boy has finally taken the final plunge off the deep end,” Alfred remarks looking at the research Bruce has pulled up.

“Alfred, is she having a seizure of some sort?”

For a long moment, Alfred stares at the image of the blinking slight of a girl strapped to the table. “I think it’s Morse Code, Sir.”

“Morse code?”

“Yes. If you could slow it down Master Wayne, I could better interpret it. So far I’m reading ‘West, Southwest, there is three ducks.’”

“Ducks?” Bruce asks incredulously.

“Well, if you would slow down about the last thirty seconds,” Alfred frowns.

Rewinding it, Bruce plays it twice over in slow motion.

“South by Southwest Dock 33.”

“Ducks,” Batman laughingly mutters under his breath entering the new Batmobile and taking off leaving Alfred to watch the screens for any more information that may be relayed.

“Aha! Here they are!” Black Mask crows finding his gloves.

Finally after much seemed contemplation the blonde yells, “Oh for goodness sakes, HELP!!!”

“She seems to be getting desperate. She’s resorted to yelling for help,” Alfred communicates through the earpieces. “Black Mask has found his gloves.”

“I’m four minutes away.”

“That’s three and half too far, I fear,” Alfred answers.

In response Bruce takes a sharp left through a glass plate window going through rather than around a building.

Black Mask’s hand is seconds from marring the young woman when a blur of red and blue speeds across the room. The camera is knocked from its stand, but before it falls to the ground the woman is gone from the table and Black Mask’s hand smears the goop across cold metal. The camera screen cracks then goes black when it lands, but the audio is still heard.

“How about you pick on someone your own size,” a righteous voice trumps.

“Really, do you have to be so cliché,” the blonde’s feminine voice questions.

“It would seem our young mystery woman had her own savior all along, but I’ve lost visual” Alfred tells Bruce over the comm.

“I thought she might,” Batman growls as his tank crashes through the walls he has so long been searching for. Not ten feet from the tank, Roman Siones lies tied up and unconscious.

“The feed has completely gone off line, Sir,” Alfred informs him.

A man in a red cape and blue tights pushes the young woman behind him facing the Batmobile head on. Bruce’s thumb skits over his various weapon buttons through the thick but dexterous material of his gloves, and he contemplates whether to activate them. Slowly, the young woman steps from behind the brightly costumed, dark haired man.

“We’re all on the same side here,” she attempts. “I’ve done my research on the Dark Knight known as Batman. You’ve been fighting crime here in Gotham for years. I’m Vicki Vale and this is-” she is interrupted as her friend clears his throat, “the not-so-subtle Superman.”

Emerging from his vehicle Batman’s gravelly voice answers, “I know who he is. What I don’t know is why Mr. Metropolis is in Gotham, or what someone so informed on the Black Mask was doing letting herself be kidnapped by him.”

Bruce notes Superman’s face darkened at the end of his statement. He thinks to keep that in mind when looking to throw him.

“I didn’t exactly let myself be kidnapped,” Vicki replies indignantly. “I’m a new reporter for the Gotham Gazette. I was following a lead on the Black Mask when he found me and brought me here.”

“Gotham reporters are corrupt,” Batman sneers.

“It’s a good thing I’m not from Gotham then, huh?” Vicki raises her brow.

“Gotham reporters also don’t nearly get themselves killed,” he continues with glib darkness.

“They also don’t bother to report the real story. They print what the criminals tell them to,” she counters her feathers beginning to ruffle.

Bruce gives her a look as if evaluating something before turning his gaze to Superman, “And can I hope whatever you were doing here was related to her,” he gestures toward her with his hand looking for a description that doesn’t come, “and is now over? And you will be permanently returning to Metropolis?”

“I only came because she called. I have some things to take care of in Metropolis and need to get back. She hadn’t exactly included me in her investigation until now,” he pauses to pointedly look the woman avoiding his gaze. “You can hope whatever you want, but if she calls for help again, I’ll be here.”

“And what is the likelihood Miss Vale would need this kind of assistance in the future?” Bruce’s voice growls without the distorter causing the distorter to sound doubly deep.

“I’d like to say not much, but experience would say otherwise,” She smirks.

“Perhaps you should look into a less dangerous profession.”

“Pot meet kettle. You never would have found him without me,” she huffs. “Besides this is the least dangerous of the jobs I’ve held.”

“Is that so?” Bruce asks annoyingly intrigued.

“I think it’s time I get you home.” Superman cuts in before she can continue with her banter. “Can you take care of Black Mask?” he directs to Batman.

“Yes, run Miss Vale home,” he speaks condescendingly. She’s interesting as hell, but the farther he keeps her from Gotham’s underbelly the safer she’ll be and the less he’ll have to worry about. “I’ll take care of the Mask.”

“You mean Roman S-” Vicki glares at Batman as she is hauled away at inhuman speed in a flash of red and blue.

*~*

Commissioner Gordon opens the back doors of the unmarked van he has been sitting in with two other officers for the last two hours. Frustrated and angry with himself for not being able to keep track of one blonde reporter, he kicks the rear passenger tire. The girl, Chloe Sullivan,- a civilian in the witness protection program- was most likely dead or worse thanks to his inability to find the Mask. This day would haunt him for the rest of his life.