The Gotham Gentlemen's Club had been among the first thirteen buildings built in that city, right behind the church (which had since taken root as the mighty Gotham Cathedral). It had stood for over three hundred years, as unyielding and stubborn as Gotham's citizenry. A fire had destroyed the original club, so it had relocated to the top floors of a skyscraper in Downtown Gotham. Of course, the interior had been recreated so thoroughly that you couldn't tell the difference.

Harvey Dent didn't care for it. The innards, so stately and fastidious, didn't salve his anxiety as it did others. He felt like he didn't belong, that peculiar wanderlust of the heels that had afflicted him all through his college days. Bruce's ready smile eased that some what. They shook hands and, making light conversation, sat down in the club's parlor to play chess.

Harvey loved chess. Tennis and squash were more Bruce's speed, but although Harvey could hold his own on the court, he much preferred the intellectualism of board games. Black and white, night and day… no points or half-measures, just one side victorious and the other defeated. Clean, crisp simplicity. It put his mind in order after days of swimming through shades of gray and plea bargains as Gotham's youngest district attorney.

"You're sweating, Harv," Bruce said. His voice was lower than the chipper tone he had on the television, but still pretty light. Harvey noticed these things. "Considering you're going to beat me in seven moves, I don't see what the point of that is. Air conditioning broken?"

"In the Club?" Harvey moved his victory over Bruce that much closer. "If this place got hotter than sixty degrees, the mummies would combust."

"I promise I won't tell anyone you called the city fathers that."

They concluded their game and Bruce leaned back in his plush leather chair, hands steepled together in a very careful way. "No, seriously, what's wrong?"

Harvey crossed his legs and signaled for one of the waiting staff to bring him a drink. He'd only been in the Club for a few weeks, but he'd already run up a decent tab and gotten the waiting staff used to his preferences. Beer in the afternoon, martinis in the evening, vodka at night. Not that he drank that much, but this city forced odd hours upon him.

"It's this Penguin character."

Bruce tapped his fingers together. "If this is a roundabout way of bringing the conversation around to the Batman…"

"He and you are still too cryptofascist for my tastes."

"Moi?" Bruce cut in self-deprecatingly. "Strange thing to hear from a law and order candidate."

"And I would argue that Batman's vigilantism is chaos and anarchy personified, but we were on the subject of the Penguin."

Bruce gestured for him to continue as the waiter brought Harvey's drink. It was spewing smoke as if full of dry ice.

"One for you, sir?" the waiter asked Bruce.

"No thanks, I don't smoke. I will have my usual, though."

The waiter hustled off to get it. Ginger ale, Harvey knew. Bruce let everyone think it was champagne. It would be a shame to stain that playboy reputation by letting it be known he was a teetotaler.

"Death threats," Harvey said, the webbing between his thumb and forefinger resting neatly against the knot in his forehead.

Bruce was suitably impressed. "You are coming up in the world. Is it serious?"

"Probably just cranks. Jim – Commissioner Gordon, you probably haven't met – posted a squad car on my street. All it's managed to accomplish so far is worry Gilda. Did you know we don't get anything on caller ID?"

"Doesn't sound like cranks. Anything specific or just 'you will die'?"

"'If you don't back off such and such we'll do such and such'."

"Oh, that's lazy. I get rhyming couplets sometimes. Sonnets, even. A haiku, once."

"You run with a more genteel crowd." Harvey sipped his drinks. "They'll back off once they see I can't be intimidated. Guido Bertinelli will be in jail this time next week. I've got the jury in the palm of my hand."

When Bruce spoke, his voice was suddenly darker, colder, like it had to be filed against something metal to get out of his throat. "The mob's vindictive, Harv. What they can't corrupt, they'll kill."

"And what do you know about the mob?" Harvey asked, an eyebrow raised.

Bruce sipped his ginger ale and said nothing, but there was a trace of midnight in his eyes that Harvey had never noticed there before.

Sarah Gordon was doing ten things at once, as always, talking on the phone while she tried to wash off the good china (which they'd used for James Jr.'s pizza party because James Sr. had been too busy to run to the store for paper plates) in time to dry off before their dinner guests arrived. Gordon pressed a quick kiss against her cheek, his moustache bristling against her skin, and untangled her from the phone cord. She muffled her mother's voice against her blouse and mouthed instructions to Gordon, who nodded and stepped clear of the walking disaster area. He pulled a pie pan of Pizza Bites from the oven, shook them out onto a plate, and carried it upwards to his daughter.

Barbara's friend Dinah was sitting on the bed, which was arm's reach from the desk Barbara was working at. She was painting her nails with a intensity that rivaled most Olympians. The bedroom put Gordon's own workspace, both at home and on the job, to shame. Everything neat and tucked away. She still had essays filed away from her freshman year at Gotham County High School.

"Hey, Babs, it's your dad," Dinah said, tapping Barbara on the shoulder. Barbara peeled her iPod out of her ears and smiled at him.

"How are the college applications coming along?" he asked as he offered up the snack. Dinah scooped hers up hungrily, Barbara with a bit more reserve.

"They're coming. Thanks for the snack."

"Thank your mother. And while you're at it, you mind watching James Jr. tonight?"

"I will, Mr. G," Dinah offered quickly. "Barbara has things and I need the money."

"There won't be any repeats of last time?" Gordon probed.

"Nah, I've learned my lesson. Sugar rushes and Power Rangers – not good bedfellows."

"This is why I'm the smart one," Barbara piped up.

"Doesn't matter, I'm prettier." Dinah threw her bare feet up on Barbara's shoulders and looked up at Gordon. "Blondes have more fun, don't we?"

"Good night, girls," Gordon said, beating a hasty retreat. "Don't stay up too late and no loud music."

He closed the door behind him. Barbara already had her iPod back in and a half-chewed Pizza Bite reduced to cud.

"Filling out college applications just ain't no fun without my college application mix tape blowing out the windows," Dinah mock-pouted, kicking one of Barbara's stuffed animals off the bed. When Barbara didn't respond, Dinah picked it up and put it back. "I'm bored."

Barbara didn't respond.

"Don't say anything if you want to experiment sexually with me."

Barbara bopped her head slightly as her song reached a chorus.

Dinah licked the back of her neck.

"Dinah!" Barbara cried, jumping out of her skin. "What was that?"

"I was bored."

"You lick people when you're bored?"

"They won't let me lick toads anymore. Stunts my growth." Dinah ran a hand through her hair. Then again, stringing it out. "We should dye our hair."

"Busy."

"Come on, we all know what college you're going to." Dinah sidled up to Barbara's desk. "Hudson University just outside city limits, so you and Batman can still have your late-night booty calls."

"Shut up!"

"He'll drive up to you in his Batmobile and say he needs your help on a case. But halfway there his car will conveniently break down and the two of you will have to huddle together for warmth."

"I will murder you," Barbara said warningly.

Dinah pantomimed zipping her lips. Then murmured "Batpenis."

"That's it!"

Barbara jumped her, easily batting aside Dinah's six-week self-defense course training to put her in a hammerlock, Dinah's face planted in the bed she was bent over.

"Black belt," Barbara bragged.

"Overachiever," Dinah taunted, muffled by the mattress her mouth was buried in.

Gordon walked in, not batting an eye, to pick up the plate of Pizza Bites. "Barbara, think of how it would reflect on little ol' me if my daughter killed someone. Dinah, at least pretend not to enjoy this." He waved the plate. "Your mother wants this back" He snatched the last Pizza Bite on it and popped it into his mouth as he left.

"Your dad's cool," Dinah said when Barbara let her up.

"Thanks."

"I'd bet he'd introduce you to Batman if you asked."

"Black belt."

"Shutting up now."

The kitchen of Wayne Manor was a cozy setting, suited to one person's cooking rather than the preparation of feasts. That was what caterers were for. Alfred had no pretensions of being a master chef, but he knew how to prepare enough meals that no one would accuse his ward of subsisting on bread alone. Although it left something to be desired in sophistication, his latest culinary conquest was rendered with the able assistance of Ms. Rachel Ray on the telly.

Alfred checked the pot. Chantill le devout was an acquired taste, but one that was unlikely to be acquired if allowed to simmer for too long. It was a truism that a watched pot never boiled, but it was also true that an improperly cooked soup could ruin an otherwise fantastic evening. And with the master's latest feminine safeguard against disquieting social rumors on her last nerve regarding mysterious absences and more mysterious secrets, Chantill le devout could make the difference between a happy couple and more tabloid scrutiny.

Alfred took his eye off the pot to scrub some of the finer china. The poor girl. Julie Eliza Madison. He'd had to remind Bruce of both middle and last name despite his master's steel-trap mind. If only the frivolities of high society could occupy and engage him the same way criminology did. He would be the most popular socialite since Sue Dibny married.

She might not love Bruce Wayne, but there was affection and friendship between them that could blossom into love with the slightest amount of effort or sacrifice. Julie was willing. Master Wayne, less so.

Back to the pot. It was simmering now, the top joyously bubbling. He stirred it with his ladle, took a sip. Perfection, if he did say so himself.

The phone rang, the old-fashioned kind that hung from the wall and had a cord at the bottom. Alfred picked it up. It was Master Wayne.

"Alfred, heat up the cave. I'm going out tonight."

Of course. "Master Wayne, I would be remiss not to remind you that you have obligations to stay in."

"In?" Master Wayne repeated.

"With Ms. Madison, I believe sir. You promised her that you had reserved the night specifically for her."

Master Wayne was already tuning out, his voice shedding pitch as it entered his customary growl. "Tell her I can't make it. Urgent business meeting."

"Your last three dates were precluded with the same lack of explanation. She is going to believe you're giving her the brush-off and she'll be right."

"I don't have time to debate relationship etiquette. Harvey Dent's in danger. Lives come first."

There was precious little conversation to be had after that.

"And what about your life, Bruce?" Alfred asked the dial tone, before returning to the soup.

Oh well, Chantill le devout could serve one as well as it did two.

The Iceberg Lounge was the newest and, paradoxically, hottest nightspot in Gotham. Amid a wave of trendier-than-thou nightclubs, many of which had sailed past bat-themes and into various post-meta motifs like supervillains, giant typewriters, and the like… the Iceberg Lounge was the old-time class not seen since Thomas Wayne's day. It was also frequented by Mafia heavy-hitters like Carmine Falcone's squabbling sons, Roland Desmond, Roman Sionis, and even (it was rumored) William Earle. The proprietor, Oswald Cobblepot, seemed like just another trust-fund kid with more than his fair share of ugly and a harmless eccentricity.

Batman had been in Gotham long enough to know that eccentricities were never harmless.

Case in point, the parrot squawking Batman's arrival to everyone in the upper tier of Cobblepot's operation.

Batman had neither time, nor the inclination to hide. Instead, he found a suitable ambush spot and waited. He didn't wait long.

"Paulina!" Cobblepot cried in his upper-crust whine of an accent, shocking through the door. "You were fed a mere thirty minutes prior, what need have you of…"

Batman lurched out of the shadows. Just enough for Cobblepot's eyes to detect the movement and look for the bogeyman in the dark. Oswald Cobblepot was a short, stout man with a protruding belly and facial features that did indeed remind one of nothing so much as a bird. Especially the hooked nose. He covered up for it well, the finest in Italian silk, the finest in everything. If you counted his top hat, he came up virtually to Batman's chin.

"See here, good man, I warn you this is a private establishment with a quite exclusive clientele!"

"You want we should bounce him?" asked one of the two hairy-knuckled thugs Cobblepot called "security." He and his mirror image came through the door, one at a time. They wouldn't have fit at the same time, even if they turned sideways. Steroid cases.

"Yeah, bounce him off the roof?"

"Grammar, gentlemen, you hurt my ears with your coarsening of the English language." Cobblepot swiveled to look at Batman. "I don't suppose I could interest you in a club membership? We have an excellent bar."

"Do I look like I drink?" Batman growled.

"You look like you could use one," Cobblepot replied.

"I think you're dirty. Maybe I'm right. Maybe I'm wrong. But since you opened your club, crime rates had been soaring."

Cobblepot grinned. "My dear detective, I think that's much more your problem than mine."

"I could make it your problem."

Batman's voice was so vehement that the thugs automatically went for their guns. He froze them with a sharp look. Then returned his attention to Cobblepot. "Harvey Dent is off-limits. If anything happens to him, I'll run you out of town. That's if I'm sure you weren't involved. If you are involved…"

"Threaten threaten threaten, intimidate intimidate intimidate. Consider me suitably chastened. In the meantime, I have a business to run and I'm sure you have a purse snatcher to trip or a kitten to get out of a tree." Penguin rested his weight on his cane. "So unless you have anything besides innuendo to occupy me, I must bid you a not-so-fond adieu."

Batman grimaced and started for the window. The thugs closed rank in front of him, intent on body-checking him. He scrutinized them both.

"Archibald Cunning. Three arrests for assault and battery, two for armed robbery. And Bubba Barley, one arrest for aggravated sexual assault, two for drunk and disorderly conduct, another for assault and battery."

The one named Bubba Barley crossed his arms. "Mr. Cobblepot's lawyers squared that all away. We're free and clear."

"He is." Batman's eyes shifted from Cunning to Barley. "You, on the other hand, have an unpaid parking ticket."

The next thing Bubba Barley knew, he was on the ground with a painful ache on the side of his head.

"I trust you'll alert the authorities," Batman said to Cobblepot. "It wouldn't do for you to be associating with scofflaws."

"Just one more paycheck that won't get cashed." Cobblepot snapped his fingers and Cunning brought a fist down on Barley, then dragged him out of the room. "If there's nothing else?"

"For now." Batman looked closer at Cobblepot. "Don't forget to feed Paulina."

Cobblepot turned to look at his caged bird, then turned back to see his opponent had vanished.

Fantastic. He was being stalked by a sixth-grader who specialized in "Made You Look".

Batman prowled the rooftops, leaving the Batmobile behind for the night. Cobblepot's physiology had felt guilt, even if the man hadn't. He had played the innocent martyr card too hard and too smug, virtually guaranteeing there was a hit out on Dent… Harvey. The knowledge was a double-edged sword. If Batman hadn't heard about the hit until now, it meant that it wasn't open-market… Cobblepot had brought in a hitter specifically for Harvey. Which meant his best bet was to catch the assassin, which meant using Harvey as bait. Helluva way to spend a night.

Batman scaled a skyscraper to a layer of deco-industrial gargoyles, where he leapt off and took wing. The night was lonely, dark, deep. He fit right in.

Four uniformed police officers shadowed Commissioner Gordon. It had been a meteoric rise to power, but the way he had attacked corruption in the GCPD had endeared him to the public as a man that could be trusted. People felt safer with him as police commissioner. Not safe. But safer. The people occasionally gave him a nod or a wave as he walked down the street at dusk, walking alongside Harvey Dent.

"Really, James, protective custody?" Harvey pulled his coat just a little tighter around himself. "A little much, don't you think?"

"Only until Bertinelli is behind bars. You'll thank me later."

"I'll thank you now to not scare Gilda out of her wits. She never wanted to come to Gotham in the first place. I received threats in Boston too. They never panned out."

Gordon had a .38 in his pocket and his thumb ran along the chambers as he walked, checking the bullet casings to make sure they were in place. He was scanning the face of every stranger they passed, watching for the predatory stare of a killer. It was the bad old days all over again.

"Gotham isn't like Boston. If there's one thing I hope, it's that you live long enough to learn that."

The car rounded the corner at thirty miles per hour, nice and easy. The engine ran clean, not making any aberrant sound to mark it different from the thousands of other cars on the road. The windows weren't tinted, but they were dark. Batman's binoculars fell on it, as they had a hundred other cars, but this was the only car whose license plate showed signs of being tampered with. It was too dark, even the inside lights dimmed. And the rear window was rolling down, the tail pipe was spewing exhaust as more fuel was injected into the engine…

It was already too late for a Batarang, so Bruce had to improvise. He quick-drew his grapple-gun from where it made its lair on his utility belt. A bursting hiss of compressed air and the familiar chemical tint of pressurized gas being freed. Just as a gun barrel poked out the cracked window, the head of Batman's de-cel line hit the car's front tire. It blew out and the mini-grappling hook punched out the hubcap.

The rest seemed to happen in slow motion. The car tilted to the side, as if making a turn, and ran through an awning before hitting a fire hydrant. Water gushed up from the cracked hydrant like blood from an open wound. The policemen mobbed Harvey, pulling him into an apartment for cover. Gunshots shattered the night, so much louder than either the tire blow-up or the crash. Gordon was hit, the shoulder, a bright flash of blood that colored in the dreary gray of the night.

Batman was in motion, a hunter's lunge that encompassed every motion, every muscle, every thought.

The policemen returned fire, Gordon bleeding from the arm, Harvey absurdly pushing a handkerchief against it, shouted calls into shoulder-mounted radios. And above it all rose the beating of Batman's heart as he reached the edge of the roof and leapt.

Not flight this time, but a swooping arc. His cape flared out, slowing his fall just enough to turn his landing to merely bone-jarring. His boots thudded down on the roof of the crashed car, left imprints. The impact blew out the windows. The far car door flew open and a man tumbled out, scared and with a gun in his hand. His red mask was growing redder, plastered to his scalp by a bleeding cut. This time the Batarang was right on time. It knocked the gun away like a bad dream. Batman rose out of his crouch.

The sun died.

"Jesus Christ," Harvey said. Suddenly everything all seemed so secondary. Gordon's injury, the attempt on his own line, everything. The Batman was real. The Batman was here.

It was dark. Jack looked back at the car. It was dark. But somehow Batman saw him and somehow the Batman's shadow fell over him, darker than dark, marking him like tar.

A shotgun blast turned the darkness to supernova. It poked a hole up through the car roof, but all it hit was the hem of Batman's cape. With fluid speed, Batman dropped to his knees and shoved a hand down into the hole. He rustled around there. His bicep bulged as he caught hold of the shooter. Jack heard something organic squelch inside the car. He ran, not even bothering to retrieve his gun.

Batman rose once more, blood dripping off his glove, and calmly walked off the car in pursuit.

Alfred had been trying to decide how much Chantill le devout to eat while it was fresh and how much to store in the refrigerator when the phone rang. Although hardly anyone called that he didn't turn away to the tender mercies of the answering machine, Alfred conscientiously checked the caller ID. Julie Madison. Oh, bugger.

He picked up the phone. "Hello, this is the Wayne residence. Alfred Pennyworth is speaking."

"Alfred." Julie Madison greeted him sweetly before her voice turned into that of the harridan. "Put Bruce on the line."

"I'm afraid Mr. Wayne is detained. An unforeseeable business affair. He simply had to deal with it personally."

The alleys and shortcuts of the Gotham Bowery were legion. They formed a modern-day labyrinth, at which Jack was an old hand. The maze stretched for miles, and if you were good you could navigate the rotting warehouses and disease-ridden shanty towns to emerge well clear of any pursuit. Jack was good. He had grown up in the Bowery, or at least spent enough time as a kid there that it had felt like it.

The details were fuzzy.

He heard the Batman clambering over the rooftops overhead, neatly sidestepping the many dead-ends of the Bowery. Empty pigeon coops, their wire covering gnawed through by the omnipresent rats, were kicked aside. TV aerials were ducked between. Loose bricks and shingles were dislodged as the Batman jumped and landed. All the stories of how the Batman was as quiet as a fucking ghost and now he was making all this racket? The sadistic maniac must've wanted to scare him. Jack wasn't afraid of anyone.

He ducked down a sidestreet, through a backalley, elbowed through a group of sailors taking a smoke break. They cursed after him, but he was too fast for them. Fast Jack, quick as the devil. Slow down and you die. Words to live by. Climbed a fence… CLANG! The Bat, landing with a thud on the neighboring building. Jack slipped through a loose board in a wooden fence. Shit! Main street. Graffiti stained the boarded-up corpses of old gentrification attempts and the occasional car flew down the streets at a hundred miles per hour. Carjacked, taken for a ride, or just greasy punks with too much money and too little sense. Jack ran the street, nearly got run over for his trouble, and hit the other end. He wiggled through the boards that covered broken window and into an appliance shop. The smell was god-awful and every step crunched hypodermics. But the Bat would never…

Black gloves whipped into the very hole he'd entered through, ripping the wooden boards loose. Jack cursed and ran for the backdoor. Behind him, there was another horrible crash as the holed window broke all the way open. Then, rising like a specter over the sound of his own racing heartbeat, the crunch of boots on broken glass and discarded needles. The fire door! He shoved his way through it and the alarm blared for a moment before short-circuiting. He was out and…

A mugger stepped in front of him, grin wide and yellow. He had a gun.

"The wallet."

Jack's heart was beating so hard it hurt. There wasn't enough air in the whole world to fill his lungs. And he just didn't care anymore. He batted the gun aside and swung fast, swung true, with his home protection… a screwdriver. It hit the shirt, hit the skin, hit the flesh. Sunk in to the heart. Never had the kill been so immediate, so visceral. He could see the anguish, the relief, the hatred, the fear, the entirety of death in the man's eyes as he died. Jack pulled the screwdriver loose and a spurt of blood lanced across his face. It felt hot enough to scald, even through his hood.

Jack giggled. How was that for murder in hot blood?

Alfred could hear the exasperation in Julie's breath all the way over the phone lines. "If Bruce went to half the emergency business meetings he said he did, he would be the hardest-working man in Gotham."

Batman reached into the mugger's wound, quickly pinching an artery shut as he pulled a quick-pressure bandage from his utility belt. He'd already activated a med-alert homing device. Hopefully Gotham EMS would bother to send someone. He released the artery and pressed the bandage to the wound, watching as the high-tech adhesive went to work. The latest in first-aid technology, instantly releasing painkillers into the bloodstream and foam that sealed the hemorrhaging from within. It would have to do. Not even bothering to wipe the blood off his hands, he stood and ran after the assassin. An impossible task, locating one man in a sea of insane architecture and cast-off humanity. But all he could do was try.

Wherever Julie was, she was crying now. The sobs strained her voice. "You know, I hope Bruce is seeing someone else. At least that bitch can have his full attention now."

Jack rattled the door, but it stubbornly resisted him. Figured. The one thing that worked in the Bowery and it was a fucking lock. Through that door was the Ace Chemical Plant. The run-offs led straight to the river and from there he could reach the docks. Not even Batman could follow him there. If only he could get through this… fucking… lock…

With a scream of rage, Jack backed off and shot the lock off with his pilfered gun. It took two shots from his revolver, but finally the lock laid broken on the ground. He threw the door open and then threw himself inside.

Half a mile behind, Batman cocked his head. The sound of gunshots carried clearly, like lighting. Either it was his man or it was a new crime. Either way…

Scaling a wall, he ran the rooftops and their narrow gaps. Ahead, the light puffs of pollution from the chemical plant's smoke stacks marred the starscape like open wounds. He fired a line out to the top of one and swung out, over a woefully inadequate chainlink fence to land on the rooftop.

Below, Jack winced. Nearly pissed himself. He clattered up the staircase to the catwalk, where ruptured safety railings twisted like fangs around him. A fire or explosion or something. Chemical vats bracketed the catwalk on either side, each with an emergency release leading to the river. But they were all full! Bubbling with some poisonous swamp. A drug lab of some sort (Jack had heard someone was mixing LSD down in the Bowery) or just toxic waste no one had bothered to clean up (Ace never had been big about industrial safety since Lexcorp bought it). Jack didn't know and didn't care.

What he did care about, if he ever cared about anything since That Night (that one bad day that was almost… almost as bad as this one), was the shatter of glass and the crackling of leather wings as Batman descended from a skylight. Impossibly, the Batman slowed in mid-air, landed with a hard impact. A tremor went through the catwalk, jostling Jack so much that his first shot went wild. The Batman rose, fragments of glass dropping off him, the aura of dust around him giving way. Jack's gun-hand shook. Why was his hand shaking?

"It's over," Batman said. His voice was the sound a headstone made when it cracked open.

"I've got the gun, don't I?" A trace of hysteria in his voice, growing exponentially.

"Dent's alive. You've failed. Tell me who you're working for." He took a step forward. The catwalk bobbed. "I can protect you."

"Protect me? You can't protect anyone. Where were you when she died?" Sweat now, dousing Jack's forehead, stinging his eyes. "I'll tell you what I'm being paid. Four thousand. Enough to buy a coffin. Two coffins, in fact. Life insurance only covered one."

The Batman had never cared for sob stories. You started to care, the enemy would use them to psyche you out. It was an obvious ploy, a plea for sympathy, a push off-balance. He drew his weapon.

Jack saw a Batarang gleaming in the man's hand. Yes, he was a man, that was clear now. The darkness that sheathed him was armor, not skin. The eyes that stared out of his pointed cowl were human… more or less.

"Put down the gun," the voice almost gentle now. Still rough. Still scrapping over cobblestones on its way out his throat, but compassionate.

"You can't make me!" Jack whined childishly. Then fired.

Even as his arm tensed, Batman was in motion. The Batarang arced to the side. Then the bullet struck the breastplate of his armor. A second shot, equally as accurate. Batman fumbled backwards, bullets embedded in his armor like two lead nipples. Jack laughed. He had done it! He had killed the Batman!

He laughed last, but he didn't laugh long. He had stepped forward as he fired, and so the Batarang that had once been flying towards his gun instead took him in the face. It ripped through the cloth of his red hood, cut through his cheeks, passing between his upper and lower jaw to embed itself in a pipe to Jack's left. Jack's laugh turned into a gurgling gibber of pain and rage and insanity. He spun, a whirling dervish trying to exorcise the pain that finally matched his inner agony.

Batman limped towards him, an arm over the bruised flesh where the bullets had been rebounded. Too late. Jack slipped in a puddle of his own blood. Like a clumsy dancer, he hit the safety railing and toppled over. Batman's arm jerked out, grabbing Jack by the foot. The weight of Jack's body pulled him against the railing, right at the bruise. Both men groaned in pain in the same instance, reminding them of each others' presence.

Jack looked up at the Batman.

Batman looked down at Jack.

"Give me your hand!" he said, lowering his.

Jack raised his gun.

Batman had no choice. He let him go.

And as Jack fell, he pulled the trigger. The gun clicked empty.

Jack's last thought, before he hit the toxic muck beneath him, was that it was funny as hell. All of it.

Batman watched as blood, and a few bubbles, marked the assassin's resting place. The mask, its mouth hole smiling with its cuts, floated to the surface. Prying both bullets loose of his armor, Batman tossed them in after Jack. Then made his way down off the catwalk. The mugger Jack had stabbed would still need help.

If he had stayed a little longer, he would've seen a nose bleached white and lips painted red parting the surface of the chemicals. They breathed in, smiled, and breathed out laughter that grew from a mild titter to a hyena's cruel cackle.

Wreathed in blood and strychnine, the Joker's head broke the surface.

And it was all… so… funny.

Bruce took his time in the shower. He felt as if the chemical atmosphere of the plant had immersed itself in his skin. Melded with his sweat to cover him with toxin. The assassin's death was unfortunate, but couldn't have been avoided. He was like Ra's in that regard. In the end, his evil had turned the only place it had left to go… inward.

Psychopaths were always self-destructive.

Finally satisfied with his cleanliness, Bruce emerged from the shower. A towel and a robe were waiting for him. He dried off and went to join Alfred aboveground.

"Miss Madison asks that you no longer request the pleasure of her company."

"Good for her." Bruce sat down, wincing at the pain in his ribs. The Kevlar had done its job admirably, much better than his first suit would've done, but chancing a hit to talk the assassin down had been a foolish risk. Faith in humanity… a sucker's bet. He'd be more cautious in the future.

Alfred pressed a bowl of reheated Chantill le devout in front of him, full of disdain for the soup if not for him.

"Anything else?" Bruce asked before he dug in.

"Yes Master Wayne, I Tivoed it for you." Alfred held up a remote and pressed play. The TV unfroze a baseball game.

"Thought you were more of a rugby man, Alfred," Bruce said. He had to keep his quipping millionaire playboy face up when he wasn't inside the comfort of his mask.

Alfred didn't say anything. He didn't have to. In due course, the camera had swam upward to show the source of a strange noise coming from the sky.

"Look, up in the sky!" the play-by-play sportscaster said.

"It's a bird," the color commentator said dismissively.

"It's a plane."

"Holy shit," the color commentator shouted. There were sounds of fumbling chaos in their sound booth. "It is a plane!"

The unidentified, almost meteoric shape had resolved into a plummeting airplane, trailing fire and smoke like a desperate parachute.

"Fear gas in the emergency oxygen?" Bruce asked. Crane had tried it before.

Then he was struck speechless as a red and blue speck took over. It interposed itself between plane and ground, growing larger and larger as it approached the ground. Finally touched down, red boots sinking an inch into the artificial turf. A moment later, the plane was set down with infinite care.

Bruce sat back in his seat and pushed the Chantill le devout away. He'd lost his appetite.

"Clark's back."