Truth & Justice II #1

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Truth & Justice II #1

Written by JC Roberts (Calamityjamie)
Edited by Daniel Dyer (Spider-Man Beyond)

I have sunk so low
I have messed up…
And there doesn't seem
A way to be redeemed.
~ “Fallen,” Sarah McLaughlin

Superwoman palmed away the lightning bolt and drove a spinning back kick into the ribs of the colorfully masked super-powered desperado who’d flung it at her. She followed up the first kick with a heel to the solar plexus, but the villain, who called himself Pillan, managed to toss off a tornado-like tongue of fire before he doubled over, gasping. The flames twisted around the tall blonde superhero, obstructing her view long enough for Pillan to recover and put a chunk of the blazing Chilean sky between them.

As she shrugged through the fiery helix, Superwoman glanced quickly landward and noted that Pillan’s two dozen fanatical followers, pumped up as they were on some sort of herbal super-steroid, were less than a challenge for her seven teammates. Only a handful of the orange-masked, loin-cloth clad disciples of the self-styled would-be Mapuche god remained on their feet. The rest of Pillan’s “huecuvus” – demon spirits – lay scattered on the Earth like a weird mosaic of candy corn.

Pillan was soaring inland toward a cluster of small long-dormant volcanoes. Superwoman was glad to see him moving away from Arica, the resort city he had targeted for annihilation. In addition to tourists luxuriating on some of the nicest beaches in Chile, the city was thick with nightclub patrons and gamblers from all over the world – a hell of a lot of potential massacre victims. Superwoman felt more comfortable letting loose in the isolated mountain area surrounding Arica. She felt hot wind against her face and shoulders as she rocketed toward her adversary, determined that his first ride on the supervillian train would be his last.

She was faster than Pillan and mere meters from grabbing him when she felt a torrent of murky warmth push over her shoes, past her legs and finally over her torso and head. Lava.

Damn.

He’d waited until she’d flown over a volcano and triggered a sort of geological projectile vomiting effect. Now Superwoman was pissed. She was sure the molten rock had melted the soles of her favorite Reeboks.

Pillan was plummeting downward, skimming the body of one of the larger volcanoes in an attempt to obscure his escape. Apparently, he had not taken a potential need for camouflage into account when choosing his garish red and purple costume, opting instead to make some sort of warped cultural statement. Superwoman spotted him easily and plunged after him, effortlessly parrying a single, rather weak, lightning bolt he attempted to throw over his shoulder. Then she flew parallel to Pillan, locked her arms around his waist from behind and flipped backwards. She slammed heavily into the ground, taking Pillan with her. The impact did nothing to Superwoman, but the supposed South American deity was unconscious.

“Guess this ends your reign of annoyance,” Superwoman said. She was sorry Pillan couldn’t hear her. Hoisting him over her shoulder, she lifted off to rejoin the rest of the Justice League.

Her teammates had finished off Pillan’s minions and were waiting for her. Arsenal and Flash were walking among the wounded Huecuvus, most of whom where out cold. Midori, the League’s newest member, was jotting notes on a handheld device, while Grendel Gardner, the League’s Green Lantern, projected a giant inverted emerald arrow into the sky, alerting local authorities to the location where the bad guys were available for pick-up. Arican squad cars were tearing down a badly paved road toward the battle site. Not far behind them were jeeps bearing squads of military police.

Batman was standing with his back to a giant boulder, his arms folded over his chest as he surveyed the field of tangled bodies. Near him stood Quiver, Arsenal’s daughter. Lian Harper, like her father, Roy, was an expert archer. She was smacking at the handle of her bow in an attempt to brush away some dirt when Batman seized her by the arm and lifted her off of her feet, swinging her in a high circular arc toward an attacking Huecuvu who had seemingly come out of nowhere. Quiver recovered quickly from the unexpected lift and rammed the pointed end of her bow into the charging man’s chest.

Superwoman opened her mouth to shout a warning: a second rogue Huecuvu had just leapt from the boulder behind Batman, who was still swinging Quiver into her assailant.

Superwoman should have known better; Batman was the ultimate combat multitasker. His left leg shot almost 180 degrees in the air, catching the second attacker with a thrusting sidekick that would end his reproductive capabilities, before setting Quiver gracefully onto the ground. The Huecuvus’ last holdouts lay crumpled at their feet.

“That was awesome.” Superwoman touched down and dumped Pillan. She beamed at her teammates. Lian curtsied with exaggerated flourish. Batman reacted as he always did to praise – by not responding at all. His eyes moved from Superwoman to the lifeless Pillan.

“I guess we’re not going to destroy civilization in order to rebuild it,” he said.

“Not today,” said Superwoman.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

As soon as the door to the Javelin-11 sealed shut, Superwoman dropped into a seat and touched a spot near her right hip. In a shimmering instant, the statuesque blonde transformed into a petite young woman with striking near-black eyes and shoulder-length brown hair. There was a device resembling a tiny MP3 player clipped to the hip pocket of her faded jeans. Martha Kent pulled off one of her pink and white Reeboks and winced at the mutilated rubber sole.

“These are out of stock,” she said mournfully.

“You should wear something more practical,” Batman said. He had taken a seat across from her.

Martha shrugged. “I like to be comfortable.”

Flash, whose real name was Wally West, buckled himself into a nearby seat and glanced surreptitiously at them, an anticipatory glint in his blue eyes. Most conversations between Batman and Superman’s daughter flared quickly into heated rows. Flash found these exchanges supremely entertaining. It took very little to set them off – Martha dismissing Batman’s advice on combat attire could easily descend into an avalanche of acrimony.

“You’re going to lose a lot of shoes,” Batman said mildly, as Gren started the Javelin’s engines and the shuttle began to shake.

Flash frowned, then glanced over at Roy, who seemed as relieved at the lack of fireworks as Wally was disappointed.

Lian Harper scrambled to strap herself into the seat next to Martha’s before Gren had them airborne. She barely made it, tumbling against Martha as the Jav lifted off and Gren pointed its nose toward the sky. Lian shook her long red hair free from where it had been trapped between her shoulder blades and the back seat cushion and wriggled into a comfortable position.

“Ready for tonight?” she asked Martha.

Her roommate grinned, nodded and pulled a thick medical textbook out from under her seat.

“Tonight?” asked Midori, a green-skinned, blonde Coluan whose real name was unpronounceable. “Tonight’s weapons inventory night.” She received half a dozen puzzled stares. “At the Watchtower? We’re going to have pizza.”

Everyone’s eyes shifted to Roy, who was struggling to hide an embarrassed smile. “C’mon now, guys. These things have to get done.”

“I’m afraid it’ll have to get done without us,” said Martha. “We’re going to a party.”

“A BOHICA party,” added Lian.

Although Wally was pretty sure Roy had set up the inventory as a strange sort of date for himself and Midori, he looked eagerly at Batman, in case the caped crusader had something biting to offer about Martha partying when there was Justice League business to be done. Batman said nothing.

“A what party?” asked Meera Buhpathi, the team’s telepath. She pushed her shiny black bangs off of her forehead and some Arican dust flurried onto the floor of the shuttle.

Martha’s dark eyes shone mischievously. “In late August/early September, most hospitals start their teaching cycles,” she explained. “New medical students and residents arrive and the training process starts over again. The first few months can get pretty trying. Returning staff usually kicks off the year with a big party.

“At Arkham Asylum, recruiting talented psychiatrists was always difficult, but this year had been a particular struggle,” said Martha, who was a second-year fellow at Gotham City’s infamous institution for the criminally insane. “After the mass murder of dozens of staff earlier in the year by a psychotic technopath named Fray, most of the young doctors who had accepted residencies at Arkham withdrew to find safer training programs. It had taken Devon Persky, the asylum’s director, months to find replacements, most of them only marginally qualified. The last of these nervous recruits had reported in yesterday at 8 AM and had been carried out on a stretcher, minus one of his big toes, by 10:53 AM. Persky had said to hell with it and declared his staff roster full.”

“So now you get your party,” Flash said.

“Yeah,” said Martha, now searching through the contents of Biochemical Components of Sociopathology. “One of the senior fellows has a loft near the riverfront. He’s throwing it.”

“And it has a Polynesian theme?” Meera asked.

Martha and Lian looked at her quizzically.

“The name you said: Bo – Bo-something. It sounds kind of…”

Lian giggled. “It’s an acronym. Bend Over–”

Martha added, “–Here It Comes Again.”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Martha had not planned to attend the party, but Lian had found a crumpled invitation in the kitchen recycling bin and insisted that they go. It had been a grueling year for her roommate, full of death and disillusionment. Lian believed a little dancing and a lot of beer would go a long way toward healing Martha’s battered spirits.

She had not counted on the reverse happening. Once they had settled into the party, Martha realized most of the people she would ordinarily have talked to were dead, having been murdered the previous spring by Sean Fray’s flock of robotic, razor-winged butterflies. She particularly missed her friend, Lucy, who had started her fellowship at the same time as Martha and who possessed a similar attitude toward following rules. Although Martha gamely attempted to enjoy herself, she was near tears by the time Lian noticed her despair and shepherded her home.

It wasn’t quite midnight when the weary women dropped into opposite sides of their shabby teal living room couch and exchanged apologetic glances.

“Lian, I’m sor –” Martha started. Her eyes fell on a bright pink post-it note lying near the phone on the end-table. Although the note came from a pad on her desk, she was sure the single sheet had not been there when she and Lian had left for the party. She reached for the square of paper and studied the solitary word scrawled upon it.

Hartrampf.

Lian was watching her. “What is it?”

Martha continued to scrutinize the note, as though there were secrets to be learned from the hastily scribbled cursive lettering. “He wants to know about my new patient.”

She didn’t have to explain who “he” was.

Lian examined her roommate’s face. “I noticed we aren’t fighting so much anymore,” she said, referring not to herself and Martha, but, rather, to Superwoman and Batman.

“No,” said Martha, who was still inspecting the note. “I told you, we agreed to a truce.”

Lian said carefully, “When he drove you home after your parents’ anniversary party.”

Martha looked exasperated. “He did not drive me home after the party. We had to leave because there was a chemical fire in Midvale. And Gren went with us. Which you know.”

Martha had proposed the truce at the party itself – her parents’ 30th anniversary celebration – after her father convinced her that her continued bickering with Batman threatened the stability of the Justice League. To her relief, Bruce had agreed. So far, the peace seemed to be holding.

“And yet, when I returned home from that hostage thing in Central City, you were getting out of Bruce Wayne’s jag. At five in the morning,” Lian said.

Martha relented. “He gave me a ride back from Midvale.”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

She did not know why she was so reluctant to admit this to Lian. It had not been a big deal. It had taken five hours to help firefighters extinguish the blaze at the hazardous waste plant. Afterwards, Gren had rocketed off to lend a hand to their teammates in Central City. Superwoman and Batman had stayed behind to help emergency workers establish a safety zone around the plant, in case there was a secondary flare-up.

Batman had left the scene a few minutes before she did. After delivering a few last-minute suggestions to the officer-in-charge, Superwoman soared off into the smoky sky, did a tight loop under the cover of a cloud and landed a quarter of a mile away, in a little patch of woods where Bruce Wayne had stowed his jag. He had changed back into his dress shirt and trousers by the time she’d arrived and was leaning against the driver’s door. With a quick, reflexive glance around an area she knew to be abandoned, Superwoman touched the tiny projector on her belt and the hologram vanished.

For the second time in one night, Bruce almost smiled. This time, Martha had the feeling it was at her expense. She looked down at what had been a sexy new red satin dress. It now resembled something Wilma Flintstone might wear – jagged at the hem and bare in unconventional places – if she’d tumbled into a coal mine. The dress had cost half a week’s pay.

Bruce’s eyes had traveled down the length of her legs. “Lost your shoes.”

“I know.” She couldn’t remember losing the first one, but the second high-heeled pump had fallen off somewhere over a fire-engulfed waste processor. “I really liked those shoes.”

He was silent for a moment, then his eyes flicked back to hers. “Want a ride?”

She hesitated. “OK. Thanks.” Martha could have flown back to Gotham in minutes, but it seemed rude to leave him to drive home alone.

The ride home started out awkwardly. Bruce could not remember being alone in such close quarters with Martha Kent when there was no crimefighting business to discuss. He fiddled with the gear shift considerably more than he had to and tried to appear intent on the dark road ahead of them. Midvale was about an hour and a half away from Gotham City. If one of them didn’t break the dense silence that now filled his sports car, it was going to be a long trip.

He had not planned to offer to drive her home – as usual, his mouth worked well in advance of his brain when it came to Martha. At least the words it brought forth this time were not derisive. He had spent most of their encounters over the previous year listening to himself insult her as if an angry stranger was controlling his speech. It was true that Bruce often found himself at odds with her father, but his reaction to Martha had been over the top and he still didn’t understand it.

It probably had something to do with a representative from Superman’s camp parking herself in Gotham for at least three years. Bruce resented the intrusion into his territory. But he became quickly aware that his initial impressions had been unfair – Martha adored her father, but she was nothing like him. She had suffered more loss in her 28 years than Superman ever had and her first year at Arkham had been brutal. She had not deserved Bruce’s animosity, and yet it was Martha who moved to end the succession of arguments that he had usually started. Her heartfelt appeal had disarmed him and made him feel ashamed.

He glanced at Martha and saw that she seemed as uncomfortable as he was. She stared nervously through the front windshield, one of her hands playing with a rip in her stocking just over her left knee. The other hand was clutching the grip on the passenger door.

“Am I driving too fast?” He was going about 70.

Amusement instantly filled Martha’s eyes. “Um, no.” It had probably been a silly question to ask a woman who clocked at 500 miles an hour. She tilted her head towards the speedometer. “Of course you are breaking the law.”

Bruce shrugged. “Playboys… sports cars…”

“Were you ever really a playboy?” She sounded curious.

“No.” He reconsidered. “Yes.”

She waited and after a moment, he said, “When I was in my early 20's, before I started… what I do… there was a lot of –” Bruce searched for a polite word “–carousing. After I started wearing the suit, Alfred sat me down and told me the good guys didn’t use women or hurt them and I was doing both… without giving it much thought.”

“So… before Batman…”

“Yeah.” He could not remember telling anyone this before and he was suddenly self-conscious again. He nodded towards the glove compartment. “There’s some music in there.”

Martha popped the little dashboard door and her eyes grew. Built into the interior of the glove compartment was the highest tech digital music player on the market. It was not only capable of storing thousands of songs – it could actually scan the airwaves for requested tunes and download them into the hard drive.

“I don’t even know how to use this,” Martha said.

“Ask to see the menu,” Bruce said.

She leaned forward and asked, “Can I please see the menu?”

She’s even polite to machines, he thought wryly.

The faceplate of the player seemed to split in half, widening into four-inch menu screen. At the same time, a fairly simple control bar slid out from under the menu. Martha looked delighted. After frolicking through his files for a few minutes, she said, “You like a lot of different kinds of music.”

“What did you think I’d like?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Classical.”

“I like classical,” said Bruce. “I just like a lot of other things, too.”

His collection ranged from the best of the Big Band era to stuff barely breaking the airwaves. There was a lot of Mozart and Beethoven, but he could tell some of his preferences surprised her.

“Eminem,” Martha said gleefully.

“You’ve heard of him?” The rap artist hadn’t cut a new album in 20 years.

“Are you kidding? I was forbidden to listen to him. I know all of his songs,” she replied. “I’m surprised to see him on your playlist, though. Johnny Cash – of course, the Man in Black,” Martha said, paging through the menu. “Remy Zero, Tina Turner, Wrong Prefix – who’s Xsavior?”

“Play that one,” Bruce said, eyeing her as he steered the Jaguar onto the I-95 on-ramp.

She touched a button and the car filled with dark, poignant chords. Martha’s face moved slowly from interest to a stunned vulnerability.

“Oh.” She looked over at him. “Deep.”

“Yeah.” They listened in a much more comfortable silence until the tune ended and she’d chosen another one. Halfway through the song, he heard himself ask, “Where’d you meet Josh Greenberg?” He immediately regretted not only the question, but offering her the ride. He had agreed to stop arguing with her, not to become one of her girlfriends. A band of heat surged across his forehead.

But Martha did not seem to think it was an unusual question. She had been dating Greenberg for about three weeks. He was Gotham’s youngest city councilman and she was aware that Bruce knew him. Martha had met Josh six months earlier, when they were both volunteering at Gotham General Hospital in the aftermath of a bloodbath orchestrated by Sean Fray and the Joker. A thousand people were wounded or dead and the hospital was desperate for extra hands. Her voice took on a flat tone when she mentioned those early morning hours in the ER, as though she were forcing away any emotion that might accompany the memory. Bruce remembered that night, too. Martha had been desolate and exhausted and he had not been nice to her.

“We just said hello that night – both of us were so busy – but he came back the next day, looking for me.” She failed to conceal a smile. “But I wasn’t on staff – no one on the day shift knew me, so that was it.”

They had forgotten about each other, until about a month ago, when, while rushing to a session with Harvey Dent, she had nearly run into Josh. He and four other council members were visiting Arkham on a fact-finding tour.

“We had that big deficit you probably read about in the Gazette and we were hoping the city would give us some money,” Martha said.

“I’ll bet you got it,” Bruce said. He was fighting an impulse to reprogram the sound system to play something morose, possibly a selection of Rachmaninoff’s most depressing concertos.

“No,” said Martha. “Josh voted against it. He wanted the funds to go to some poverty programs.”

Bruce did not pick up the conversation, and they spent the rest of the drive listening in quiet appreciation to a random selection of songs. He didn’t look at her again until they’d crossed the Gotham City line. By then she had fallen asleep.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Lian grinned triumphantly. “That must have been interesting,” she said. “The two of you in that tiny little car and not being able to yell at each other.”

Martha set the note back on the table and stood up to go to bed. “I fell asleep.”

“As soon as you got into the car?” asked Lian suspiciously.

“Pretty much.” Lian had been Martha’s best friend all of her life and Martha kept very little from her. But Bruce was such an intensely guarded person that even the most trivial chat with him seemed intimate. To share the details of their conversation with Lian – whom he didn’t particularly like – would feel like a violation of his privacy.

“He looked pretty good in that suit,” Lian added, referring to Bruce’s party attire. She was examining Martha closely.

Yawning, Martha replied, “He can afford nice suits. Night.”

As Martha shambled towards her bedroom, Lian asked, “So you don’t think he’s even a little hot?”

“No, Lian. Dark and damaged doesn’t do a thing for me.” Lian’s innuendo neither surprised nor bothered her. What was disturbing was the display on her bedside clock. She had to be at work by seven o’clock and six hours didn’t seem like nearly enough time to recover from that disastrous party.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Lian didn’t bother going to sleep. She poured herself a glass of iced green tea from the refrigerator, plopped back on the couch and half-heartedly watched a sitcom re-run on Lifetime. And she waited. From the moment she’d seen Martha’s face at the BOHICA party, Lian knew she’d be pulling nightmare duty. She gave Martha maybe an hour, but her roommate’s muffled sobs broke through the door about halfway through the second midnight episode of The Golden Girls.

Sighing, Lian eased off of the couch and used a manicured thumbnail to unlock Martha’s bedroom door. She flicked on the night table lamp and her roommate’s contorted face was bathed in soft light. Martha had been gripping the corner of the mattress so hard that her thumb had punctured its thick fiber shell. That was a shame. It was a new mattress. Six months earlier, the old one had been soaked through with a near-dead Batman’s blood.

Martha whimpered raggedly.

Sometimes, you just couldn’t get the blood out, even you’d bought yourself a brand-new mattress, Lian thought. She sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her roommate’s hair.

“Martha. It’s OK, sweetie,” she whispered.

Martha rolled onto her back without waking. “I can’t find it,” she mumbled.

“Can’t find what?” asked Lian.

“His leg.”

Lian sighed. “His leg is on his body, Martha. You saved it.”

Martha’s breathing slowed and it seemed like the nightmare was over. Lian sat watching her for the next few minutes, but her roommate didn’t stir again. It had been the worst part of an unspeakably gruesome week and it was not the first time Lian had caught Martha re-living it. Just days after Sean Fray broke the Joker out of Arkham, Martha had barely managed to rescue a dying Batman, his leg nearly sheared off by a razor-like mechanical whip wielded by Fray. Saving his life had been extraordinary enough – the fact that Martha – along with a replantation specialist recruited by Superman – had actually saved his leg was truly a miracle. But the ordeal had traumatized Martha on so many levels that Lian was pretty sure the injury had been easier on Batman than it had been on his doctor. Had he lost his leg, Martha would have blamed herself. Had he lost his life, Lian didn’t know what her roommate would have done.

As she closed the door to Martha’s bedroom, Lian thought about the children who went to bed each night wearing Wonder Woman pajamas and who tied capes around their necks and leapt off of their bicycles, hoping the momentum would help them to fly. At one time or another, probably every kid in the world had dreamed of becoming a superhero. Personally, she thought it was overrated.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

If Batman had been driving blindfolded, he could still have pinpointed the moment the car crossed into Crime Alley. It wasn’t just the smell – a blend of urine and cheap booze and an overtaxed sewer system – or the sound: the crunch of glass under his tires immediately announced his whereabouts. It was the feel – a tense, pregnant silence, interrupted often by drunken epithets, firecrackers or gunfire. Crime Alley gave off a sullen, bitter energy Batman wanted to – but couldn’t – loathe. It made him feel at home. Spiritually, he had been born here.

People living in Gotham’s shrinking middle class sections often lamented the encroachment of crime in their neighborhoods. “The neighborhood is changing,” someone would say. Crime Alley had been the same for 40 years. Things were no worse, because they had been impossibly bad to begin with. Of course, they were no better, and during the few times in his life Batman had allowed himself to despair, this bitter reality was on the top of his list of self-designated failures.

He spent more time here than in any other section of the city and yet it remained the most problematic. Gang-bangers, drugs, illiteracy and poverty had simply sucked all of the hope from this forsaken cluster of city blocks. The only stirrings of optimism Batman had witnessed recently had not come from the impact of his feet and fists, but rather from Josh Greenberg’s series of poverty programs, most of which involved significant participation from members of the aided families and an intense emphasis on education. The programs were expensive and Greenberg got a lot of flack for them from conservative council members and Gotham’s tiny wealthy community, who resented the flow of tax money from their lined pockets into Crime Alley.

Still, Batman thought, as he swung the car toward Nelson Rockefeller High School, a dozen families lifted out of hopelessness translated into a fewer criminals – and fewer crime victims. He wasn’t sure you could put a price on that.

One of Greenberg’s more successful programs was a GED course for teen parents. It let out every Tuesday and Thursday at 9:30 PM at the high school and there were often fights there, ordinarily between students and punks from the neighborhood; sometimes between the students themselves. Batman always cruised by to make sure everyone got off campus in one piece. He was a little late today, but everyone seemed to have cleared out without incident… except… He squinted at a blur of shadows just around the rear corner of the building. Something was going on back there.

He was out of the car and across the schoolyard in seconds, rounding the corner in time to pry two solid-looking girls off of a third, smaller one before some of their vicious but wild kicks split open her head. She was already bleeding from the nose and mouth.

Batman cuffed both attackers and cuffed them to the fence that surrounded the school’s running track. His quick, efficient dispatching of the girls did absolutely nothing to stop them from cursing out their victim – and now they were mouthing off to him too. Unbelievable. Nothing seemed to scare these kids, not a single thing.

He helped the smaller girl to her feet. “You OK?”

“Yeah.” Instead of gratitude towards Batman, her eyes blazed in anger towards her cuffed, cursing attackers. “They’re gonna pay.”

“I’m going to make them pay. You’re going to go to school and give your kid a better life. How old are you?”

The girl spat blood and glared at him. “Fifteen.”

“You’ve got to be the smart one,” Batman said. “Anyone that would double up on someone half their size – they’re lost. Your revenge is you get out of here and live a good life.”

“They bloodied me,” the girl said through gritted teeth. “I can’t let them get away with that.”

Inwardly, he sighed. “You’re not going to press charges, are you?”

“I ain’t no snitch,” she replied.

“Of course not,” Batman said. He didn’t know how to combat this sort of warped thinking. “But you owe me, right?”

She bit her lip and rolled her eyes distrustfully toward his.

“Got a boy or a girl?” Batman asked. He saw two Gotham cops approaching. Apparently they’d spotted the Batmobile and come to investigate.

“Girl.”

“Go home. Pick her up. Take her over to a mirror. Take a look at the two of you holding each other. Then imagine yourself out of that picture. She’s all alone. She’s got no one. Whoever raised you is raising her and they’re screwing it all up. Think about whether revenge over a bloody nose is worth doing that to her. Because growing up without parents? It’s not so great,” he said.

Without checking to see if he’d made a dent in her street-tempered armor, he turned sharply and walked away, his cape billowing in the October breeze.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

The rest of the night went much better. Two men tried to rape a middle-aged nursing assistant walking home from a bus stop, a trembling crackhead attempted to knock over a convenience store and a sniper fired a poorly aimed shot at a rookie cop as he made his way nervously down K Street. All of them resisted when Batman tried to intercede. He was grateful. The job was much more satisfying when you were able to punch someone.

It had been a busy night and he was maybe an hour away from heading home when he saw them. There was just a flicker of a shadow crossing into the dull glow of a fading streetlight, but Batman felt his skin tighten like a silent alarm. This encounter would be different than the night’s previous skirmishes. He parked the car a block ahead and triggered the lockdown mechanism.

The alley was lit perfectly for his needs – dark enough so that he would be invisible, with enough ambient sound so that his approach would be perfectly silent, undetectable even to the most seasoned prowler. A tinkle of broken glass and a muttered curse drew him to his quarry.

Cartoon-like is the only way he could describe the first man. He was built like Popeye’s perennial nemesis, Bluto, with a massive, muscular upper torso and almost sticklike legs. His companion was dressed in black, but Batman could see his lean, muscular frame and graceful, cautious gait. Batman silently nicknamed him “the ninja” and decided he was the one to look out for.

Bluto’s sweat-stained T-shirt was a midnight blue, but Batman could see darker straps encircling his shoulders and realized he was wearing something. Maybe a backpack – or maybe a weapon.

Batman found a convenient niche in an alley wall and waited for them to pass. Neither so much as shivered as they walked by him, so close he could have yanked the backpack off of Bluto. It was a backpack – a full one. Batman was pretty sure it wasn’t full of religious tracts.

It took a full five seconds for Bluto to realize he was no longer wearing the backpack and in that time Batman had determined that the contents of the bag included three bootleg videos and at least a kilo of a powdery substance that was either cocaine or corpulthesizine, an active ingredient in the Joker’s lethal laughing gas, Smilex.

Bluto’s reaction to losing the back-pack was loud and obscene. He immediately spun around and stomped back down the alley. His companion proved Batman right by hanging back and slipping closer to one shadowy brick wall. A lightning left cross to Bluto’s temple retired him for the night. He crumpled onto the filthy asphalt. The ninja was running as soon as he saw his partner start to wobble.

He gave good chase, but Batman tagged him by the second block, and both men rolled onto the broken ground. Most men couldn’t fight well at such close range. The ninja wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t Batman, either. In less than a minute, the caped crusader had flipped him onto his belly and cuffed him. The ninja, who hadn’t said a word, struggled to catch his breath. He seemed to be waiting for Batman to speak first.

Batman hauled him up by the cuffs and threw him face first against the crumbling alley wall. He positioned his lips close to the ninja’s ear and whispered, “I know about your boss. Tell me where he is.”

He wasn’t actually sure Joker was behind this – even if the powder was corpulthesizine, it could have been a freelance gig. There were plenty of underworld types eager to sell to the Joker, who was known to pay handsomely – when he didn’t just use the stuff on his connection and steal the rest. But the ninja didn’t know that he was bluffing. Not a lot of people were willing to call Batman’s hand.

The ninja didn’t answer. Batman shoved his face into the wall by jerking up on the cuffs. The man winced in pain, but he remained silent.

“All right.” Batman’s voice was an ominous hiss. He wrapped his hand around the ninja’s right index finger. “We can go through this finger by finger.”

If Batman had really intended to break the man’s finger, the ninja would have heard the snap before he felt any actual pain. Instead, Batman squeezed the digit as hard as he could and started bending it slowly against the knuckle.

The ninja gasped, “I don’t know. They move.”

They move.

“Joker and Fray,” Batman whispered menacingly.

The ninja nodded, unintentionally banging his forehead against the brick wall.

“How often do they move?”

The ninja seemed to sense his future options involved either a cell or a grave and this realization sapped the fight from him. He sagged against the bricks. “I don’t know.”

“Where were you meeting them tonight?” Batman asked.

The ninja closed his eyes. “We weren’t. Fray’s got us in cells. We were supposed to wait until someone contacted us to make the exchange.”

Batman had more questions, but this wasn’t the place. He was careful not to break the man’s elbows as he dragged him down the alleyway by the handcuffs. He was less surprised than frustrated to find that Bluto was no longer face down in the alley. Either he’d recovered extraordinarily quickly from the punch, or someone had dragged him away.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

The Joker would have laughed with demented glee had he known the Batmobile bolted by his current hideaway before dawn each morning as the caped crusader headed back to Wayne Manor. Fray had accessed the computer records of a local upscale supermarket and determined who had groceries delivered to their homes on a regular basis. He then cross-referenced those names with a variety of other services that suggested the customers in question did not get out much. Of particular attraction to the Joker was an elderly, very rich couple who lived a few mansions away from such well-heeled Gothamites as Orest Lyakhovolska and Bruce Wayne. Joker did not believe lying low had to be an uncomfortable experience. Nor did he believe it was particularly fair of some people to lay claim to a longer lifespan than nature intended. All of these vitamins and miracle drugs had cluttered up the world with old people, he remarked airily to Fray, who might not have heard him through the gas masks they wore as they watched the aged couple writhe on the floor, laughing themselves to death.

That had been several days ago, and in that time they had lost one of their best henchmen, Michael Hartrampf, who was now pacing a padded cage at Arkham Asylum. In the last hour, there had been word that a second member of the gang had fallen to Batman. Fray seethed, but the Joker took the news with his usual maniacal stride.

“Seannie, Seannie, heads do roll,” he cooed as Fray paced the length of the frilly, antique-strewn living room. “But we can always play a lovely game of croquet with them later.”

Fray twisted towards his hero and nearly spat the words, “Langer was one of our best men. That bastard –” he meant Batman.

“Did what he does best, Seannie,” Joker said. “He’s caught in a cycle, you see – find the bad guy, punch the bad guy, jail the bad guy. He’s been doing it for 30 years.” A thought struck him and he started giggling madly. “Do you know the definition of insanity?” he asked Fray, who shrugged morosely.

“It’s doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,” the Joker cackled. “Gives you a little insight into who’s really wacko, doesn’t it? Does Gotham look any safer to you?

“Anyway, Langer was nothing but a gymnast with a Bruce Lee complex,” he added. “It’s losing Michael that breaks my heart.”

“Yeah, and what the fuck was that about?” snapped Fray, whose resentment of Batman had snowballed into irrational proportions. “When does Bats need half the Justice League to take in one man?”

“Well, Michael isn’t just one man… as you know,” said Joker. “Though it was a precious combination that bested him: A bat and two bimbos.” He looked immensely pleased with himself. “Wouldn’t that be a lovely name for a band?”

“That bitch, Quiver,” said Fray. “She’s been a real pest since she moved here. You think Bats is boning her?”

“His friend Arsenal’s daughter, Seannie? You know better than that.”

“And why’s Superwoman hanging around so much? I thought she lived in Metropolis,” Fray groused.

“She’s a little worldlier than her father,” said Joker thoughtfully. “You do have a point. Batman is pesky enough. We might want to do something before the whole Justice League moves to Gotham.”

“Like what?” The Joker’s tone intrigued Fray enough to calm him.

“Oh… something special. With sprinkles on it.” The Joker’s grin grew wider as his new idea began to take form. “Let’s take a stroll through the Yellow Pages under Big Guns. I’ll need some pretty powerful alliances to take on the Justice League.”

Fray’s foul mood returned. “I’m a powerful alliance,” he said. “I’m telling you, I took down Bat –”

“Oh, Seannie, you have got to let that go. Liberating me from Arkham – and the splash you made downtown with those adorable butterflies – was more than enough to prove your worth.”

“He was dead!” shouted Fray. “I nearly ripped his freakin’ leg off!”

“And yet he was swinging around Gotham a day or two later,” Joker said. “Legs and all.”

“It – it was a robot or something,” Fray sputtered. Batman’s Justice League partners had taken turns masquerading as their teammate while he recovered from his gruesome injuries, but the technopath had no way of knowing that.

“A Batbot? Do you really think it could have fooled so many people?” asked the Joker. “Honestly, Seannie, it’s all right.”

No, thought Fray. It wasn’t. It wouldn’t be all right until he finished what he’d started.

Continued...