Disclaimer: I do not own Batman Beyond or its characters. Wish I did but. :)

Terry was having a terrible day.

It was not just a bad day, for that usually entailed missing school, be it first period because he slept in or the whole day because he had to chase down a bad guy or two or even the entire gang.

It was clearly not an awful day, because that entailed either angering Bruce over something trivial like forgetting to put the seat up on the toilet in the 'Bat Cave' or pissing off his girlfriend because he did leave the seat up.

No, for Terry, the latest Batman of the 22nd century, today was worse than all that combined.

It was a terrible day.

He had been patrolling the north quadrant near the pleasure district when Bruce had radioed in that the Jokerz gang had knocked over Gotham savings and loan for the umpteenth time.

After a mad dash across town, pushing the retro boosters and his body to the max, he had proceeded to round up the usual culprits of the group when all had gone to shit.

It had been so simple the whole fight; the Dee Dee twins tried to bludgeon him with giant hammers as Wolfe had latched onto his leg with his razor teeth.

All three were quickly disabled with a few well aimed punches and a batarang or two.

Scarecrow had made a break with the loot leaving only Clown with his ever trusty bazooka. Rushed and panicked Clown missed Terry entirely, sending the warhead into the side of a building.

This building, by luck would have it, happened to be vacant at the time but the blast totalled the 14th floor causing the entire upper structure to buckle and collapse. Naturally to make matters worse the building fell on the inner city mono rail tracks just as the mono rail was passing.

The destruction was epic.

Cars, trucks, mono rail and building all combined into one horrendous mess.

Terry abandoned the chase to help search for survivors allowing the Jokerz to get away. Terry vowed to hunt them down first chance he got and make them pay for this.

In a corner of his mind he noted to himself there and then that he would be kept awake at night replaying this situation over and over. Blaming himself for letting it happen in the first place. But there was time to wallow on what could have been later.

And so pushing those thoughts to one side he descended upon the conflagration.

Yes. Today was a terrible day.

It appeared to get worse when the Dee Dee twins jumped him from behind. But instead of attacking him they dived into the wreckage reappearing moments later with survivors under each arm.

Terry could not comprehend what was going on. But dove in himself pulling a young boy and who appeared to be his badly injured mother out from under the rubble.

Soon there was hundreds of emergency personnel onsite. Scouring the area for those still alive. Other superheroes and those who were sometime villains came from far and wide to help.

Terry was amazed that no one had died in the incident. Many serious injuries but none life threateningly so.

As he was walking through the lower floor of what remained of the toppled building he found Delia and Deidre sitting on a couch panting heavily, their masks off and make up running in worn rivulets down their necks.

"So" he said "what are you playing at and where are your buddies?"

"Fucking assholes ran off." Delia shouted obviously angry.

"Yeah, motherfuckers are probably laughing it up over on mccauley street." Dedrie continued.

"Go fuck em up if you want, we are going to give them a beating next we see them too."

Terry smirked under his hood "Why the change of heart ladies?"

"Pfft, you know us, we are in it for the frills, most the money we make goes into games and tech."

"Yeah bats, Scarecrows got a drug addiction, Clown needs constant upgrades and Wolfe, we are not quite sure about Wolfe."

"Don't think a bit of community service will get you a free ride."

"Fuck off, we didn't do it for some scam, we did it because it was the right thing to do."

"We ain't going nowhere bats, Nanna Harley is gonna kill us but where totally exhausted."

Terry smiled genuinely "Impressive stuff out there ladies."

They laughed "Meta human strength and other DNA upgrades. Pappa was a mutie."

Terry shook his head "Mccauley street, OK girls, if I find you here when I get back your joining the rest of them in jail."

Terry shot off into the night sky.

It took little over an hour to round up the Jokerz.

They had been hold up in the only building on mccauley's capable of sustaining life. The other structures being oil refinery fuel tanks.

Terry had clobbered Clown and bagged Scarecrow before Wolfe even knew what was happening. After a bit of bat and dog, Terry had Wolfe nabbed too.

A man of his word Terry returned the the building where he had last seen the twins. Both were gone but their masks had been left behind.

Each broken in half.

Terry smiled and walked away.