Disclaimer: If you recognise it, surprise, I don't own it.

 

Chapter 14– I AM BATMAN.

 

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The city isn't what it used to be. It all happened so fast. Everything went to crap. It's like... everyone's sense of morals just... disappeared. Bad economy made things worse. The jobs started drying up. Then the stores had to shut down. Hundreds of people losing their jobs, and their livelihoods, all so a couple of evil men could make a couple of bucks. I leap across the sky, a literal shadow that remains unseen, my cape fluttering behind me. 

 

I hop over an alley and look towards the street. A giant billboard lighting up the night, a billboard that says change is coming, a big bald man's bid to become this city's Mayor. However, the word liar is spray-painted over the word, an accurate assessment.

 

If there is one thing that shows this city is very nearly beyond saving, that the corruption has spread too far, then it would be the fact that a mob boss is very close to being elected the Mayor. I pull out my grapple gun, and it connects to the ledge of a building, zipping me up into the air. Opening my cape, I glide through the dark sky, completely unseen.

 

This city is dying, and no matter how many try to stem the wounds, its lifeblood continues to drain, evil men continually sucking it dry. I look down at the street, where a young man and women crowd together under a single umbrella on this stormy night, hurrying home, scared to stay out on the roads. As more and more people turn to crime and violence, the town becomes gripped in fear.

 

Dark times. The city needs protection. I step off the ledge of the building, plummeting down towards the grimy alley below, opening my cape at the last moment, slowing my plunge into a float, and allowing me to land softly on the hard pavement. 

 

The white chalk outline of a man and a woman defaces the ground, the scene of a crime wholly forgotten by the denizens of this city, ignored by those who should be resolving despicable crimes like this. I quickly move on, sickened by the sight of it, to know two lives were cut down in this place, and so close to the busy road nearby where traffic constantly flows, where somebody could have helped them.

 

There is an animal that lives by night, that swoops through the air and streaks across the sky. It strikes fear in all those who see it, scared of the danger this animal represents. And an animal is what this city needs, something that will terrify those who take advantage of the night, a symbol to be afraid of, a symbol of fear.

 

I run through the night, jumping across the city skyline, traversing through this city's many shadows, shadows where usually only evil lurks, but now something else hides within those shadows as well. Finally, spotting something from the city rooftops, I leap down from a great height and glide down to rest on top of a parked car.

 

The scum that taints this city has spread too far and festers in every alleyway, in every brick, on every asphalt pavement. To clean out the gutters of society, I have chosen to become that something, to become more than a man. I am not the hero this city deserves, nor am I the one it needs. But, I am the hero this town cannot survive without. I am... the Batman! 

 

As the world plummets into despair and countless innocent voices cry out for help, Batman will fight to keep the order intact and to bring down the hammers of justi-.

 

"HEY, GET THE HELL OFF MY CAR, YOU FREAK!!" 

 

Oh shit, I didn't realise there was somebody inside the parked car I am on top of. I quickly jump off it and whip my grapple gun out to zip me away and up to the ledge of a roof, so I can get away from the guy getting angry at me. I can still hear him even now, ranting and raving.

 

"ALL OF YOU GODDAMN FREAKS SHOULD JUST LEAVE. I AM TIRED OF ALL YOU SPIDER PEOPLE AND YOU DEVILS AND YOU BIG HULKS SMASHING AROUND THE PLACE!! JUST LEAVE US NORMAL PEOPLE ALONE!!" Jeez, Louise, grow up already, you asshole. You don't see me complaining because that bastard interrupted my fantastic brooding Batman monologue. I didn't even get to the part about my never-ending crusade or my two hands being the hammers of justice.

 

"AGGGGH!" A scream rips me from my thoughts and reminds me just why I glided down to land on that car. Acting quick, I ran along the rooftop towards the place where the scream came from, and I found a woman running away from three men who were doggedly pursuing her through an alleyway, their goal obvious, with one of them wielding a knife.

 

Diving down over the edge of the building as if I was diving into the sea, I head headfirst towards the ground or, more accurately, head first towards the group of three degenerates that deserve to be pounded into the ground. Closing in on them, I deploy my cape and widen it to catch all of the air, allowing me to safely land while maintaining enough momentum to kick two of the guys in the back and send them sprawling to the ground.

 

Skidding along the ground, I turn around in time to see the two guys getting back up to their feet, confused about what just happened and shitting themselves at the sight of me towering above them. I rush them before they can do anything else and stomp on one of their head and smash my fist into the face of the other, promptly knocking them both out.

 

Turning around, I expect to see the last thug looking at me in abject horror and scaredly backing away from me. But instead, I see him still running off down the alley in pursuit of the scared, cornered girl, so disgustingly fixated on his objective that he didn't see or even hear me knock out his fellow comrades. Seeing that the girl is still in danger, I quickly sprint off down the alley, soon catching up to the piece of shit.

 

I reach him just as he manages to lay a hand on the woman and spins her around to see him, making her stumble back in the process and fall back onto her behind, the thug standing menacingly over her. But instead of her cowering to him, her eyes quickly find mine. Instead of holding relief or hope, they fill up with abject fear and despair, finding my terrifying visage frightening. She begins to start desperately shuffling backwards to get away from me.

 

"Haha, you aren't going anywhere, girly. You can try to run, but you won't get anywhere, you are mine now, and we are going to have some fun. You see this here, knife. If you don't do exactly as I say, then I am going to cut you up into a million tiny pieces and store you in a box, a glass box, that I will display on my mantle." The thug brandishes his knife and moves to strike her, trying to stab her in the leg and pin down her movements.

 

"Huh?" He stupidly mutters when his arm refuses to move down, and when he looks towards it, he sees my mighty black gauntlets grasping his forearm, denying it the freedom to move. I watch as his bewildered eyes follow along my hand across my arm and up to my shoulder before he locks his gaze with mine, and the blood drains from his face, which makes sense since my face is completely covered in a pitch-black mask that has bright white lenses for eyes and two large horns on top of my head.

 

Before the scum can even react or let out another syllable, I whip my arm to the right, dragging him along with it and letting him go to smash into the brick wall, not paying attention to his cry of pain or the clatter of his knife hitting the ground. 

 

The force leaves him, letting his body slide down the wall until his ass hits the ground, his hand clutching the wrist attached to the hand that was wielding the knife, but that is all the attention he can afford to it, and his nervous eyes dart up to see me calmly stalking towards him.

 

"S-STAY AWAY FROM ME! YOU, YOU DEMON! S-STAY BACK, OR, OR I WILL CALL THE POLICE!! THE- THE AVENGERS WILL COME FOR YOU, SO YOU BETTER LEAVE ME ALONE!!!" He pathetically calls out in the hopes of stopping my advance, but I ignore him, and I ignore the irony that a criminal like him that was about to commit a serious crime is now toting about the police and the Avengers, claiming that they will come to rescue him.

 

Tired of this pathetic showing and this situation as a whole, I forgo the foreplay and dart forward to slam my knee into the trash's face, pinning his head between my limb and the hard brick wall, no doubt crushing his nose and a few other bones in his head, but he will live. Drawing my knee back, the thug slips to the right, no longer having my knee in place to hold him, and he slumps down to the ground, unconscious.

 

I am getting really tired of all these diversions, I was supposed to be at my destination a half hour ago, but I keep getting pulled away. This was supposed to be a simple thing. I would go out dressed as Batman, beat up a few thugs that look to be a bit organised and interrogate them, ply information about Fisk from them and then use that information to fuck up all of his operations.

 

Well, that plan started out great, and I managed to glean some information on Fisk's businesses by leaning on some mooks. I immediately set off to assault the place I was told about before that idiot regained his sense and went to tell someone, which would probably be bad for him since snitches aren't regarded well in his line of work.

 

But it is like I am playing a fantastic RPG, and my main goal, the main quest, is right in front of me, and it is an easy home run. But as I run towards it, suddenly all of these little blips start to pop up on my minimap, and I can't help but be the gamer that I am and run towards them, eager to do all the side quests and having a compulsive need to do everything before I tackle the big boss.

 

I have had to stop several times on my way to stop some minor crimes and even some major crimes, given how you look at them, and it has made me seriously late for my self-made appointment. New York really is kinda crap; there is another crime going on every few minutes, every few blocks. And since I sense them, I have to go and stop them; it's like the instinct is engrained in my soul.

 

Suppressing a sigh, I turn away from the downed thug and move to go and check on the girl who is still sitting on the ground, trembling profusely. Seeing that she is still scared and possibly in shock, I walk toward her to wake her up a bit so she can call the cops and leave, but when I take a step towards her, she reacts violently.

 

My feet stop when she suddenly lifts her hand and points something toward me, and I am shocked to see her wielding a knife, the same knife that the thug dropped when I smashed him into the wall. She must have picked it up while I was knocking him out. Seeing the knife pointing threateningly in my direction, I narrow my eyes at it, which seems to be the wrong move since she reacts wildly.

 

"S-STAY AWAY, STAY AWAY FROM ME, YOU DEVIL. L-LEAVE, NOW YOU FOUL SPIRIT!!" She begins to scream, wildly brandishing the knife in all directions as if that will protect her. She has really freaked out, and I fear that she has had a mental break of some sort; undoubtedly, she will leave today with a lot of trauma.

 

"Oh, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth..." She begins to mutter profusely to herself, clutching onto the knife with both hands and rocking back and forth, constantly repeating her prayers in the hopes of being saved.

 

Seeing that my presence here is doing more harm than good, I quickly move away from the situation and zip up on top of a rooftop before looking down to keep an eye on the situation since I can't just leave it like this. I reach into my utility belt and pull out a burner phone which I will use to ring the police and inform them of the situation, and then I will be on my way as soon as someone arrives.

 

Note to self, next time, tone down the intimidation and fear factor when there are innocents nearby since I don't want to frighten them as well. 

 

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Perched on top of a water tower, I look down across the street to a, by all means, regular little building, a hovel, if anything, but it is nothing out of the ordinary. Especially not for the area we are currently in since the building perfectly suits its shady surroundings; if anything, I would say that it is actually inconspicuous.

 

But I know that this place is, without doubt, the most fucked up residence in this neighbourhood, though I don't know in what way. The helpful piece of crap I grabbed and held off of the top of a building didn't really know much, but he did hear some of his superiors discussing this place in hushed tones, talking about important merchandise.

 

That was all I got, but it looked to be much more of a lucrative tip than all the ones I had got so far. Usually, a corner where a dealer hangs out or a bar some higher up regularly goes to, things to keep in mind for sure in case I can use it later on, but all in all, small beans, and for my first blow, I want to have a significant impact, and it seems like this might just do it.

 

Right now, I could storm into that building and start kicking the crap out of every degenerate hiding inside that building, and then once they are all taken care of, I can place an anonymous tip to the police and then watch as they clean house. But, there are a few problems with this place, and there is a better way to handle this.

 

I am still determining what the merchandise actually is, it could be drugs, or it could be weapons for all I know, but I know for a fact that it is at least somewhat important, and that is good enough for me. The thug told me that from what he heard, he figured that they were storing some merchandise at this place, a stop-gap, apparently. 

 

And tonight, the merchandise here will be picked up and transported to one of the places in the city where they store whatever it is I am liberating from their hands tonight.

 

So I figure, why settle for the little fish when I can use it to bait something bigger and crackdown on that instead? So my plan right now is to wait for this truck to come and pick up this merchandise. At this point, I will stealthily follow it to wherever it is going and find the bigger jackpot, after which I will kick the asses of all of the goons inside there and then confiscate all of the merchandise there, and then call in the police force for the cleanup.

 

Thankfully, all of the diversions and distractions on my way here will not negatively impact my plan. I planned to come an hour earlier than the time the thug told me the pickup was going to take place just to scout out the site properly and make sure I wasn't fed some bogus intel. Thankfully the thug was telling the truth since I had been observing for a few minutes, and I had seen some guys walking around with guns on them through the windows.

 

The drop is not supposed to be for quite a while now, and I have some time to kill, so I better not waste my time. Therefore, I have decided to go and infiltrate the building and sneak around to find out any more information I could get and what precisely this merchandise was. But, of course, I am only planning to observe and learn, nothing else; I still want to follow the stuff to its next destination and break a bigger operation.

 

While this location does serve as an excellent place to hide stuff, given its none suspicious looks, it does not have very good defences. However, it was honestly not even hard for me to get inside. All I had to do was get up on the roof. And since they chose a dilapidated building to blend into their surroundings, there are quite a few holes in the roof, the tiles have fallen off, and so I can easily slip inside.

 

Once inside, I sneak around in the shadows and lurk in the darkness, observing all the thugs inside and listening in for anything that might prove to be crucial information. But all I can seem to delve from all the ongoing conversations is that they are all on high alert and that they will all soon be moving out, orders from their boss, who I have learnt is residing on one of the top floors. 

 

Seeing that the rest of these mooks are all useless, I head up to the boss's room to see if I can find anything of worth and maybe find out why all these guys are on high alert and why they will all be moving out soon. But, honestly, even though these guys are on high alert, this building is too broken down and dark that they don't notice as I quickly work my way through the building and into their boss's room, who seems to be in conversation with one of his men.

 

"So, why are we all on the lookout, boss? We have done these types of transfers of merchandise before, and it has been fine every time, not even a single nosy cop. But this time, not only are we patrolling the building, but you have even moved up the pickup. What's going on, Johnny?" The apparent second-hand man asks the boss, who is aptly named Johnny, asking the exact questions I have on my mind.

 

"You know that little shit, the naive one that recently joined us? The little rat called me a little while ago and told me he gave up this place to a devil or something, I think he meant Daredevil, and he gave him the time of the pickup. Which is why I told you guys to pick up the slack and why I moved up the pickup. It should be here in about fifteen." So Johnny tells his man, revealing to me just why everything has been thrown out of whack. That stupid little idiot must have been very new to make a mistake and call up his boss. So now I have to worry about them lynching the kid.

 

"Wait, Daredevil? What the hell are we going to do, Johnny? We are going to get the shit kicked out of us. And what the hell is the big man going to say when he learns that we fucked up this badly? Shit, let's just tell them to stop the pickup and then get the hell out of here." The number two immediately starts to panic and freak out while Johnny watches on passively.

 

"Are you done? Do you think I haven't already thought about this shit? I can't just stop this pickup. The big man expects things to run smoothly and on time, like a well-oiled machine. If we stop the transfer, then the boss is going to get angry, and when we tell him that we had a rat, he is going to boil me alive. I recruited the little shit, after all." So Johnny tells his man, who seems to calm down a little bit and starts to pace up and down the room, still stressing out.

 

"Alright, then, what are we going to do? He could be watching us right now, or he could even be in the building. We can't hope to take him down, literal supervillains have tried, and they couldn't do it." The right-hand man starts to doubt, looking askance at his leader.

 

"We aren't going to be sticking around to fight that horned fucker. It didn't even cross my mind. That little rat shit told Daredevil the original pickup time, which is why I moved it up. Hopefully, we can do this pickup, and then we will pack up and get the fuck out of here, find a new place to set up shop, and just say we started to get a little heat here and needed a change of scenery." Johnny calmly explains from behind his desk, or what is made to seem like a desk since it is as broken down as the rest of this building.

 

"Then, once we have changed location and gotten things in order, we will get that little shit and teach him a lesson. Though it will be too little too late since we are going to make sure he never squeals again. Now go out there and do something useful. Go check on the two boys in the garage that will be loading the truck up and make sure they know to be as quick as possible." Johnny continues and dismisses his man, already pulling open his desk drawer and reaching in for a bottle of whisky and a glass.

 

"And... What if he gets here early? What if he is already here?" Instead of going like was clearly asked of him, the right-hand man expresses his fears, still worrying about me, or technically Daredevil, but really me. Clearly, that was not the right move as the boss thunderously gets up, knocking his bottle of whisky over and charges up to his man to grab him by the collar.

 

"DIDN'T I ALREADY TELL YOU THAT IT IS ALREADY TAKEN CARE OF, JIM!? NOW, GO OUT THERE AND DO YOUR FUCKIN' JOB! AND IF DAREDEVIL DOES SHOW UP, THEN... Then we will deal with it, alright." Clearly, the boss is just as stressed and freaked out, but he is trying to keep a hold of it, and Jim's incessant questions are getting on his nerves and driving it to the forefront of his mind.

 

I don't waste any more time on this and drop down from the rafters where I was listening in on them and immediately grab their heads and smash them together, letting go. They both drop to the floor, unconscious. I don't have any time to waste now, the pickup is in about fifteen minutes, and after that, all of these guys are going to pack up and jump ship, and I will be following the truck.

 

I need to knock out all the goons in this building except the two in the garage before the truck gets here because otherwise, they are going to scurry away into the night, and that idiot kid that tipped me off is going to get lynched by them. Thankfully even though their boss has told them to start patrolling and be on high alert, they don't know his reasoning, so even though they are doing it, they are being quite lackadaisical about it, making it easy for me to knock them off one by one.

 

Using my unfair advantage of my super senses, my increased strength and my best ability for this environment, my ability to walk on walls. No one looks up at the ceiling, making it easy for me to sneak around and pick them off one by one. I could even take out two at a time silently by acting swiftly enough. In no time, everyone except the two thugs chilling out in the garage was taken out, and I just managed to get into the garage in time for the truck's arrival.

 

After three knocks on the garage door, the two thugs went and opened it up, allowing the back of a truck to back in. Some new thugs walk through the opening and open the back of the truck up while the other two walk over to the back of the room and move a wardrobe out of the way, revealing a staircase going down into the dark depths.

 

They walk down the steps and disappear for a while, and then they come back with the merchan...dise. 

 

Shit. Those are people... in chains... with bags over their heads.

 

This is a human trafficking ring.