Batman Inc. #5

[Admin]

Batman Inc.
Issue #5: “The Gaunt of Gotham”
Written by Fantomas
Cover by Scot Paisley
Edited by Mark Bowers

Virgil Gaunt (the third Virgil Gaunt) was a corpulent man whose manor and grounds commanded the craggy peak of Bristol County, a long and winding way above the city of Gotham.

The Gaunts, like the Waynes, Cobblepots, Eliotts and Kanes, were an established name in Gotham, able to lay claim to the lineage of some Norwegian family or other that had settled in the blasted coastal heath centuries ago. They were Old Gotham, as it were. And like many of the families of Old Gotham, the family name had all but dwindled to one, lonely sole heir.

Virgil Gaunt had taken pride in his refusal to match what he called the wanton abandonment of Old Gotham values, refusing to indulge in the urban life of a wealthy playboy, or staking his heritage on a company name, or even attending any of the many and varied social gatherings of the city’s elite.
In truth, Virgil Gaunt was too deep in debt to be a playboy, his family business (the production of rare and unusual replica buttons) had long since gone bankrupt, and he never attended the many and varied social gatherings because he was not considered one of the city’s elite, and thus was never invited.

Quite what Old Gotham values Virgil Gaunt held to was hard to say, but he held to them alone, from the seclusion of his manor.

It was said that there had been a Mrs Virgil Gaunt III, but it was also said - in a dark, hushed tone - that she had disappeared from the Gaunt estate quite suddenly, in the dead hours of a wintry night, with her portraits erased and her records stricken.

Similar stories were told of Gaunt sons, and sometimes daughters, or even servants (of which Gaunt could afford none, save for the ever-lingering presence of McGloumish, a butler inherited along with the library folios and silverware). And the stories about his parents... Gaunt was, to those who remembered his name, Gotham’s bogeyman, like Staten Island’s Cropsey, or Port au Prince’s Uncle Gunnysack.

It was on one grey, muggy night that Virgil Gaunt sat slumped in a tall oak chair, staring at the marble bust of his father, the second Virgil Gaunt. Lightning crackled outside, electrifying the thick wash of cloud, and in flashes the two Gaunts were lit up, illuminated in stark whites before blackness swallowed them away again.

The dark cross of the grated windows cast over the Gaunt faces, the one firm, a scowl immortalised in stone, the other flabby, gulping for breath between long swallows from a grubby lowball glass.

He was bleeding, he realised. Must have done it while shaving, he thought, scratching a patch of overgrown hair on his neck. Funny, as the red trickle wound its way down his arm, how the mind plays such tricks on you. Why, I don’t even remember...

The sound of hastily-trotting feet across the library floor disturbed his thought. Drowsily, upending the whiskey resting in his hand, he pulled himself around in his chair. Squinting, he thought he could have seen a shape, shambling away into the recesses of the dilapidated library. If only they hadn’t cut off the electricity... he jumped, a whimper escaping him as a dull clattering threw up dust clouds in the far alcove.

Breathlessly muttering, Virgil Gaunt looked to his father. Then away again, to the alcove.

“A book falling. Nothing more. Just rotting old books.”

The statued face offered nothing.

Slowly, hand over hand, Gaunt dragged himself upright and began an unsteady journey across the floorboards.

“McGloumish?” he called. “You there, old boy? You skulking around the books again, eh? I said, you there?”

The rolling crash of thunder answered, but the haggard butler did not.

On unsteady feet, Gaunt reached the shadowed alcove. Fumbling, he felt around the floor, the layers of dust and grime mingling with the thin film of sweat that coated his hands. Fidgeting along the pine floorboards, his fingers brushed up against a rough, dried hide. Gaunt recoiled, before collecting his wits and scooping up the leather-bound volume.

“A fallen book, as I said!” he exclaimed, proudly, jabbing the tome at the stone bust. “Just another one of your legacies collecting dust, eh?”

Chortling as if there were anything funny, Gaunt began to make his shaky way back to his chair.
“Bleeding,” he realised once again. “Wonder how that keeps happening...best to find that mangy old manservant of mine. Got to be somewhere in here, hasn’t he? Eh, piggy? Wonder how I survive alone here, eh?”

As Gaunt hobbled away deeper into the empty manor house, the lightning flashed on scattered hoof-prints in the dust, and on the misshapen figure sat in Virgil Gaunt’s tall oak chair.

Wayne Tower, Gotham City

The five costumed figures leant over the ledge, looking down across the polished mirror surface of the high-rise tower complex.

A strong headwind sent a scrap of paper whipping by, until it caught the tall arm of the letter W, plastering itself across the green neon glass.

Metalhead, long spikes erupting from his jet black jumpsuit, tested the winch system. Beside him, Shame went over his modified handguns once again.

“Simple yo-yo drop and gun,” Pi-Meson Man repeated. “Hit the floor, spray the deck, jump up top. Sends the message, gets us the big bucks.”

Through his ochre radiation suit, Pi-Meson hummed slightly, bathing the other four in a pale yellow tint. Dials ran up across his chest and arms, and his face pressed up close to the grimy glass casing.

“Targets are, in priority order: Bruce Wayne, Lucius Fox, Richard Grayson, Timothy Drake, members of the press.”

“Wayne ain’t here,” K-9 growled through a stitched canine mask. A muzzle fitted around the mouth housed the ultrasonic whistle that - he had claimed - could blast the eardrums and blow the eyeballs out of anyone in a tight target.

Savage Skull’s eyeball rolled. Perpetually festering skin peeled, and the socket’s pasty ligaments visibly strained with the gesture.

“Then exclude him from the list,” he corrected. “Do I have to spell everything out?”

“Enough chatter,” Metalhead said. He leant back again, bracing himself against the building’s side. The pulley line fed out and then held taut.

Far below, at the tower’s distant base, Dick Grayson adjusted his tie and stepped up to the podium.

“First of many Batman Incorporated press conferences for us,” Tim said, offering Dick a wan smile.

“Not quite the same as a midnight chase through an abandoned factory, is it?” Dick said, checking the specs Fox had handed him.

“No,” Tim agreed. “This is scary.”

Flashing broad smiles and flattening their tailored Arthur Berstein suits, the two Wayne adopted sons stepped forward into the flashing lights of the press conference. Taking his place at a low glass podium, Dick leant forward, taking in the audience.

From the television, newspapers and even radio crews present, he found himself isolating faces and names from his memory. He was satisfied that he had most of the crowd before the quiet descended.

An old practice Bruce had instilled in him. Dick found it helped keep the mind settled, and never hurt to have a scene identified and catalogued.

At his sides Tim Drake and Lucius Fox took their places, and Dick returned the encouraging nod Fox offered him.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” Dick said, feeling the welcome nervous thrill transform, as it always did, into sublime confidence. “Ladies and gentlemen of the world. I’m sorry my adoptive father, and the CEO of both Wayne Enterprises and Batman Incorporated, couldn’t be here tonight. But let me assure you:”

Somewhere above a high-pitched whirring sound began to grow.

Dick leant forward. “I do a damn good impression of the old man.”

A ripple of amusement spread through the press.

Lucius Fox chuckled, and tapped a button on his watch. He shared a conspiratorial wink with Tim.

“Now,” Dick said, “what does security mean to you?”

Someone shouted, and then a series of gunshots sounded. Five brightly-costumed figures landed in the crowd, and the podium was blasted with a series of ultrasonics, radiation and gunfire.

The press scattered, crashing into one another in a bid to clear space. The five costumed criminals stood, weapons and armaments raised, as the chaos around the podium cleared.

“Because with Batman Incorporated,” Dick said, stepping out from behind the sleek black metal front of a towering robot, “security means never allowing second-string villains to threaten good people on an open street.”

The five hesitated, uncertain, as the RoBats advanced. Yellow bat-signals built into the chests lit up, blinding the five and fixing a stark spotlight over them. Standing at nearly twelve feet tall, clad in jet-black armouring and with twisted jet-wings mounted on their backs, they advanced.

“We call it the RoBat,” Fox announced, stepping up to the podium and speaking into the microphones. “The latest in non-lethal defensive technology, capable of sustained flight and soon to be found in every major city worldwide.”

Shame spun his modified six-shooters back into their holsters and jerked the pulley, zipping him up into the air. One of the RoBats reacted instantly, jet-wings flaring as it took off in pursuit.

K-9 ducked and blasted the ultrasonic whistle, catching a hulking RoBat in the midriff and sending it skidding backwards. Metalhead jumped into the space, lashing out with one of his spiked cables, sending blue sparks showering the night sky.

Pi-Meson twisted a dial on his arm and three pale yellow after-images strobed around him. A policeman’s gunshot whistled through one, but the steel fist of a RoBat closed around the original’s arm, hauling him to the ground.

“Don’t bother with the hired help, get the Wayne brats!” Savage Skull rasped, grabbing a cameraman and dragging him between himself and the RoBats. He flicked his lidless eyes around the staging.

“Where’d they go?”

“Interesting timing.”

Tim pressed the domino mask over his face. “Could have been worse.”

“There’s a crowd out there and two of our gatecrashers are unstable metas. Contain and neutralize fast.”

“Same as always.”

Dick pulled his dark blue cowl down and leapt as Batman from the hidden recess, Robin at his heels.

The batarang spun, whirling around and clipping itself to Savage Skull’s back. There was a concussive blast and a blinding flash, and suddenly the cameraman was gone. Skull rasped a spluttered curse, turning into Batman’s dark blue fist. He fell backwards, clutching the open holes where his nose had once been.

“Behind you,” Robin called, following Batman’s lead with a second punch to Skull’s reeling body.

“Is your opinion of me that low?” Batman grinned, whirling his leg back in a snap kick. K-9’s modified whistle-muzzle cracked, tearing from the matted-fur mask. There was a high-pitched squealing, the frequency control crackling and fizzing. Batman’s boot came down, silencing the malfunctioning sonic weapon.

“Down, boy,” he said, landing a punch that floored the dog-themed mercenary.

Robin leant back to avoid the gun as Skull raised it. It went off, catching a body in the fleeing crowd, before Robin knocked it away. He brought his knee up, sharply, doubling Skull over, then wove around him as he staggered forwards.

“That’s enough, Bridger.” Batman wheeled around, launching a batarang at the yellow-suited figure blasting radiation waves into the crowd. The batarang exploded in mid-air, unfurling a thin wire net that tangled itself around the Pi-Meson Man.

With a somersault over the snarling Skull, Batman landed over Pi-Meson. He unclipped one of the plated compartments on his belt and drew out the thin arc cutter between his fingers.

“This should keep you contained.”

The acrid smell of burning metal wisped away, and Batman leapt up, leaving the trapped Pi-Meson with a smouldering mess where his radiation control unit had been.

Up above, a RoBat spun in mid-air, cutting one of the cables with the spines that ran across its gauntlets. Shame yelled, his ascent suddenly thrown into a freefall.

The RoBat caught him, robotic fists closing on his legs. As it drew level on its hissing jets, Shame’s arms swung up, the twin barrels fitting to the RoBat’s curved head. The series of explosive blasts rocked the head back, sending fragments of burnt black metal scattering over the scene below.

A grapnel line shot by the aerial battle, and Robin darted up above the pair, a crimson streak as his black cape opened. Two metal blades curved into the shape of an ‘R’ embedded themselves in Shame’s pistols. Shame squeezed the triggers, and there was only the dull click as they jammed before the headless RoBat clamped stylized handcuffs over his wrists.

Metalhead lashed out, the spiked bullwhip tangling on Batman’s midnight blue cape as he threw it up in defence. There was a gunshot, and Metalhead staggered, his eyes bulging beneath the tight leather gimp mask.

He crumpled over, moaning, the bullet wound cleanly shot through his kneecap.

Commissioner Jim Gordon holstered his gun, and waved the patrolmen on.

“Get these freaks downtown, fast.”

“I ever tell you how crazy the Bat has made this city?”

Jim Gordon gave a low and throaty chuckle. “This city was always crazy, Hadlow. But I’d watch what you say about the Bat next.”

Dick swung up from a fire-escape below, the blue of his cape melting into the rooftop’s deep shadows. Patrolman Hadlow choked on the gulp of coffee he had taken.

“I know you couldn’t hear me.”

“Didn’t have to,” Gordon replied, turning. “Figure we have some talking to do.”

For a moment the older man seemed to size up the younger, his face offering nothing, then a quiet, tacit nod.

“That was some stunt.”

“The gatecrashers weren’t intentional. Hospital chatter says the three reporters that got hit will pull through.”

“RoBats? Wayne is really going for this Incorporated business. Must be a fortune in legal fees to get those things on the streets.”

“Thankfully fortunes are Wayne’s speciality. As is a dedicated loyalty to what Batman stands for.”

Gordon grunted. “We won that round, but attacks like this won’t be the last one. Metalhead confessed that they’d been paid to hit Batman Incorporated civilian members, but he won’t say who by, though there’s no shortage of Batman’s connected enemies to choose from. Wayne’s put a real big target on a lot of heads with this.”

“We can’t let fear stop good people from doing the right thing,” Dick countered. “We can’t let the criminal element dictate our actions.”

Hadlow frowned. “I never seen you in action before, Bats, but I never heard of you smiling like you were then. People been talking about the way you’re acting now. Lot of us like it. Easier to work with. Feels less like...ah, less you’re showin’ us up, I guess.”

Gordon and Dick shared a look.

“So where is Wayne anyway? Since when did Grayson take such an interest in the company?”

“Bruce Wayne is in Japan, working alongside the NPA to set up an Incorporated presence there.”

“He really pulled a number on us, coming out in support of this whole Incorporated deal in public like that. I guess guy with a past like his, makes sense enough that he would put his lot in with the Bat. Just never figured he’d be so brazen about it.”

“Lot of people with pasts like his,” Hadlow chipped in. “Y’know, I heard that the Incorporated hotline gets more tip-offs and witness statements than 911 nowadays. People like the Bat.”

Gordon turned again, facing away from Dick. He put his hands in the pockets of his overcoat and exhaled.

“I know this thing is getting bigger than us. There was a time... a very brief time... where I used to think that if it ever got out of control I might, might, have been able to put a stop to it. That isn’t the case anymore. I know that. But...”

Gordon paused, staring at the GCPD headquarter’s cracked brick wall. Shadows and the creeping dark of the night loomed around him as he let his gaze fix.

“Don’t forget the deal that was made, right here on this rooftop all those years ago. Don’t let any of your Batmen forget that. Wherever this thing goes, however big it gets... don’t forget that there will always be a cop with a signal. Japanese, British, Australian, whatever. There will always be a cop with a signal, waiting to talk.”

Gordon didn’t turn around. He didn’t have to see that the Batman in blue had disappeared. Instead he just pulled his coat collar up and went inside.

Hadlow flicked off the modified searchlight and looked out over the city. Somewhere, in the silver-streaked clouds of smog that hung like a drape over the higher towers, pinnacles and factory stacks, he thought he saw the dark shapes of blocky figures flying on twisted wings. Like big, black bats, he thought.

Alfred placed the jug of orange juice on the tray with practised care, then neatly arranged the cups and saucers by the still steaming pot of tea.

Picking up the tray he carried it across the penthouse that commanded the upper two floors of Wayne Tower, illuminated by the sluggish rosy fingers of dawn breaking through the giant plexiglass windows.

He walked into the wood-panelled elevator and whistled an old tune. The elevator doors closed. If it weren’t for the rapidly falling floor numbers, it would have seemed as though the elevator had remained motionless.

The doors opened to the dim, industrial lighting of the Bat-Bunker, the subterranean complex concealed beneath Wayne Tower’s lowest levels.

Alfred raised the tray and began to step beyond the elevator when he stopped, and stood still at the doors.

Dick caught a ball, laughing, and adjusted his position on the gymnastic bars. He balanced it, then threw it up in a looping arc. Tim, without turning from his desk at the Bunker’s Batcomputer, leant back and caught it.

Alfred smiled, and continued his walk over to the desk.

“I apologise for the delay, young sirs. I tried the Cave, but-”

“It’s too...Bruce for me,” Dick admitted. “What’s for breakfast, Alfred?”

“An assortment of vitamin supplements, energy tablets, fish oils and...ah, yes, French toast, croissants, sausages, eggs and bacon. With a pot of tea, cafetiere and freshly-squeezed orange juice.”

“You’re the best, Alfred,” Tim asserted, leaning back and snagging a triangle of toast.

“I must confess, it is nice to see a Batman laughing and joking with his Robin once again,” Alfred said, pouring the tea.

“You know much about ‘Goatmen’, Alfred?” Tim asked, fitting the toast into his mouth before continuing to tap away across the keyboard.

“I can’t say I’m familiar with such fellows, Master Timothy.”

“Been a few weird sightings over in the New Urbia estates,” Dick explained, climbing off the bars. “Some attempted homicide with an axe on Tomasi Avenue, similar story from Aparo Park. Guy with a goat mask, or cloven feet, varies.”

Tim coughed, reaching for the coffee Alfred held out. “Lot of urban mythology that fits that, usually put to recluses and drifters in various small towns across the country. But we’ve had twelve reports over the last week. Even considering how these stories spread, it seems worth looking into.”

“Lot of satanic connections, Baphomet imagery,” Dick hazarded, accepting the cup of tea. “We’ve had our fair share of cults in Gotham before.”

“It’s not too large an area to cover, we can have a few of the RoBat patrols give it priority in their sweeps,” Tim said, pulling up an array of camera feeds.

Alfred ran a finger across the desk’s surfaces and scrutinized the result. “There is of course the significance of the city’s own etymology. Gotham, from the Old English, gat and ham. ‘Home of goats’, if you will.”

“And I just assumed it was all the gothic architecture,” Dick grinned.

“The computer’s running cross-references on anything that connects to goatmen, goats or city-based cults,” Tim said. “but I’m sure I remember something from one of Bruce’s recent case files. Here, in that drug bust he ran in Paris with Nightrunner-”

The screen flashed and pulled up a street map. A police radio crackled as the audio feed was patched in. The RoBat video links scrambled, then two were selected, running footage of a helicopter ablaze, whirling into a smoking tailspin.

Alfred put down the pot of tea and stepped back into the darker recesses of the bunker.

“It’s a GNN news copter. Nothing on what hit it. Rerouting a RoBat patrol to stabilize it and run surveillance. Alfred, if you can co-ordinate with the emergency crew on their way-”

“Of course, Master Tim,” Alfred assured him, stepping out with Robin’s crimson suit folded neatly over his arm. “And to think I had just cleaned your work clothes for the night.”

“We’re working the morning shift now.” Dick pulled the cowl over his face.

The morning sky over Gotham had begun to bleed a violent orange, spilling over the rising blocks and spires of the city and turning every glass pane into a fiery mirror. The city itself seemed to blind Vesper as she gripped at the helicopter’s flight stick, so that all she saw were the dark skeletal frames of the city’s jagged teeth whirling up to meet up.

“I’m so sorry, Danny,” she said, unhooking the headset from around her still-bleeding pilot’s neck.
Danny had grown up right here in the Boweries, as she’d quickly found him fond of saying. Never left the city in all his adult life, just went up, he’d joke.

Danny’s chest had taken the brunt of the twisted metal when the news copter’s front had caved in, warped brutally inwards in abstract, melted tangents by the first explosive round. He was dead, even if his eyes didn’t seem to know it yet.

Vesper Fairchild had worked in warzones. She’d interviewed despots and dictators, mad scientists and cackling ([/i]actually[/i] cackling in some cases) super-criminals. She had - and even Danny hadn’t known this - been born and raised on Crime Alley, and been all of twenty years old when her name had featured in the Times ‘Top Twenty to Watch in Media’ list. She wasn’t about to go down easy.

“I can survive this,” she promised. “I can be alive this evening, buying coffee from Mazzucchelli’s, then getting drinks at that nice new cocktail bar underneath the Ellsworth Building. Hell, I’ll even ask Bruce Wayne out just as long as I can survive this.”

The copter spun, throwing her against the side, jabbing her back with a sharp door handle. Rushing winds streamed up from the rendered gaps in the cockpit, blasting her face and whipping up her hair, tangling it in the scratchy fabric of the seating.

“Is anyone there?” she called, white noise warbling in her ears. “This is GNN Helicopter 3, carrying ace freelancing media-fiend Vesper Fairchild. If you didn’t catch it the first time, I’ve got a date tonight, and I’d like assistance landing.”

Her voice sounded dry and hoarse in her mind, the confident words empty and wavering.

She jerked the flight stick and the copter screamed in response.

“There was panic in the parlours and howling in the halls,” the squat green-skinned man jabbered, bouncing in the driving seat of the jalopy. “There was crying in the cow-sheds and shrieking in the stalls!”

The cherry red car swerved as his feet - long webbed toes curled around the wheel - jerked left, scudding around the corner of an old brownstone and hurtling into the oncoming Bayside District traffic.

“When the Toad! Came! Home!”

Kicking the wheel with his foot splayed, Mr. Toad tooted the car horn, the brass-emblazoned motor car juddering between two cars as they collided.

“There was smashing in of window and crashing in of door,
There was chivvying of weasels that fainted on the floor...”

Toad adjusted the neckline of his tweed jacket, and began to feed another round into the RPG pipe.

“When the Toad! Came! Home!”

Up above the helicopter whirled around, thick plumes of black smoke belching from the crumpled cockpit. Toad levered himself as upright as his bent frame would allow, and his tongue flickered out to lash at his eyes. Sirens whirled and two squad cars skidded onto the road ahead.

“Bang! go the drums!” Toad squeezed the trigger, a warm rush as the rocket spiralled out and looped into the traffic. “And the cannon they are shooting and the motor-cars are hooting!”

The patrol cars erupted, tossed up and over. Toad’s motor car zipped through, two wheels lifting up from the road as it took another corner.

“Not here for you, coppers!” Toad snarled, his wide mouth flapping from his sunken head. “Toad wants the big batty boys, yes he does! Where are you, my lovely batties?”

The Batmobile cleared the brownstone, hovering on glowing aero-jet turbines. There was a series of clipped shots, and suddenly a cable pin stood protruding from the motor car’s bonnet.

Toad clapped his hands together, a croak of laughter escaping him.

“As the Hero comes!
Shout- Hoo-ray!”

The motor car leapt up, dangling on the line. Toad toppled backwards, head over heels again and again until he folded up on the tarmac. A tanker’s brakes screeched as it swerved by. Groaning, Toad looked up.

Two RoBats held the news copter level, Vesper’s tanned face just about visibly peeking out at him from behind cracked glass. Two caped shapes fell just outside of his vision, and then he was pulled creaking to his webbed feet.

“You have my attention,” Batman said, folding his arms. Robin punched his fist into his palm.

“Quite the joy-ride. You’re not from Gotham, are you?”

“But I have a feeling you’ll be staying with us a while.”

Toad waved his arms, fending off the gang of police officers who had gathered around him. Back down the road, the two upturned patrol cars were being opened, industrial cutters taking off the doors.

“Coppers don’t take in Mr. Toad, we all know that!” Toad protested, his flat nostrils blowing out soupy bubbles as he wheezed. “No! No! Toad’s here for the Bat! Why else would I take such a wild ride in my motor car? Toad’s in trouble, and no copper can keep him safe!”

Batman stepped forward, throwing his cape back.

“It doesn’t work that way, Toad. You’re in Commissioner Gordon’s hands now. You’d better hope those officers come out of those cars in one piece.”

Toad squealed, kicking out with both of his ropey, springy legs. The police grabbed him, pinning his arms back and struggling as he threw himself against them.

“Toad’ll croak, you can’t do that to ol’ Toadey, you can’t! They’ll get me, gut me in the gizzards, hang and draw me so’s I’m stringy guts for garters!”

Commissioner Gordon snarled, pushing through the growing crowd of onlookers and flattening his moustache.

“Much as I hate to say it, you’ll be safe in police custody. Safe in Blackgate - or maybe Arkham, way you’re babbling - but safe enough.”

Gordon looked at Batman, and allowed a gentle harrumph. “Good catch, Batman.”

Batman flashed a smile back. Some of the cops found themselves sharing the smile, despite themselves. Broad daylight, and Batman’s putting them at ease, Robin thought. This is new.

“You jibbering jackanapes, it ain’t the coppers Toad’s afraid for!” Toad yelled. “Toadey’s been head hunted by the big beasts for the coming festivities, but he don’t want in on none of it! Turned them down, Toadey did, and now he needs protection, batty! Protection from the ordering howlers!”

Batman leaned in, grabbing Toad’s tweed lapels. He drew the myrtle face in close, until Toad could see his warts reflected in the white slit lenses.

“You put a lot of people in danger to get on my radar. And now you’re on it. And I will find out everything, Toad. But right now you have an appointment downtown.”

Batman dropped him. The officer that caught him nodded. “We got him from here, thanks.”

“No problem, Officer Hadlow.”

The RoBats touched down, placing the wreckage of the GNN helicopter down. Vesper Fairchild stepped out, steadying herself. Batman and Robin reached up, launching zip-lines up to the floating Batmobile.

“We’ll be in touch, Commissioner.” Batman snapped off a salute. “You can be sure of that.”

“Good to know,” Gordon nodded. “Now get this filth off my streets. Come on, cordon’s up, where’s the wreckage crew? And where the hell was my SWAT team? Get Hennelly on the radio, now!”

Toad’s eyes rolled back, his arms bent into handcuffs. Watching the skies, he followed the red and black car as it flew off into the clouds. He grumbled, a cold sweat leaving an oily sheen about his face.

“Beasties coming, coppers. An’ they won’t leave a brick of your upstanding stations, no they won’t. Not when their big storm arrives, then’s when Toadey needs his head deep down.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hadlow spat, pressing his head down to duck him into the pulled up van. “Eurgh. Slimy devil, aren’t you?”

Toad’s eyes followed Hadlow’s as he was sat down.

“Oh, Toad ain’t the devil. He ain’t here... yet. But he’s coming.”

The armoured door swung shut.

“All the beasts are calling him.”

Virgil Gaunt stared at shadows.

He didn’t know how long his home had not been his own, but now he was sure it was not. He staggered along the portrait gallery, leathery book in hand, with a dim sense of mission in mind.

“Damn butler, always... always getting into wrong places... where is he? Where are you?”

His hand pressed against a torn painting as he stopped, leaning heavily for support. He lifted the book’s spine up, close to his peering eyes, until he could just make out the weathered gold print.

“On the Order of Beasts in Gotham,” he managed, slowly.

He continued on his way, his hand leaving a dusty smear print across the shrewd, pinched bird-faced woman in the portrait. The Order of Beasts. It sounded grossly familiar, but unwelcomely so, the very idea an alien feeling stabbing in his gut that wouldn’t go away. An invasive idea, seeping into his house and sinking deep into the foundations, filling every shadow until they hung heavy and thick like bilge water across the corridors of his home.

A figure seemed to watch his progress from the far end of the corridor, but Gaunt knew not to look too hard. They watched him, in the house that was no longer his own. They kept their distance, though... he thought. Perhaps. He thought he remembered confronting one such shadow, but his memory became blurred, and painful. Or they came for him, sometimes, but then...

He shook himself, clattering into a picture-frame and unhooking it from the wall. Stumbling, he thought the shadow moved, began to sprint towards him, then everything jumbled and Virgil Gaunt was alone again, pressed deep under the mildewy covers of his parent’s bed, in the master bedroom of the empty old Gaunt Manor.

Gunner Gobey retched, heaving up a wad of black phlegm with a dogged sense of determination. Wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his faded desert camo jacket, Gobey cleaned up the worst of the attack, and started moving on, clutching himself and shivering.

“Cold night, private.”

Gobey started, his hands automatically reaching to prep an assault rifle that wasn’t there. Then, his head catching up faster than his hands, he smiled, revealing teeth blackened by the discharge pulled up from his lungs.

“Batman, been too long. Thought you’d gone dark on us again.”

Batman stepped out, slipping from the lee between the two bricked buildings. He shared Gobey’s smile, and moved to stand by the burnt out metal drum.

Gunner Gobey, Dick thought, tossing a cap into the drum. Whatever odd array of salvaged junk and scraps that had been steadily and laboriously built up in the drum lit up with a dry crackle, the orange-blue flame licking at the night air.

“Just doing the rounds. Some odd chatter about the city’s come up. Wondered if you’d heard anything.”

Gobey huddled closer, gratefully rubbing his hands together and pressing them as close to the flame as he dared. He breathed in and out in rattled gulps, misting the air around him.

He’s been on the streets under Trigate since before I was Robin. Can he tell? Does he recognise me?

“Get that cough looked at, Gobey. There’s a free walk-in clinic at the Wayne Foundation building on O’Neil, they’ll take care of you.”

Gobey waved a hand, huffing and shaking his head. The hunting cap - misshapen with years of tears and then bad stitching, or in one case taping - shook precariously as he did so.

“No bother, Batman, I don’t bother nobody. Not in walk-ins, ‘specially walk-ins where you don’t walk-out ‘gain, no thanks.”

“You can trust this walk-in, Gobey. I have my eye on it.”

Gobey began to laugh, raucous and rasping gasps that came in wheezing bursts, like a dog barking.

“You should keep your eye on us more closer, you should. We’re dropping down the cracks, swept up by fancy suits in big grey cars.”

Batman narrowed his gaze.

“Wait, what are we talking about here? You aren’t scared of the doctors, are you? This is something else.”

Gobey spluttered, his laughter petering out into more mouthfuls of thick tar.

“Who’s taking people, Gobey?”

Gobey flattened his scraggly beard, making it slick with spittle. Fixing a wild eye on Dick, he stared, no longer finding anything funny.

“At the walk-ins, at the shelters, same old story, time after time. Sack men hoovering up us nobodies, taking away their faces, making them new faces, ‘orrible ones.”

“Goat faces,” Dick supplied, no longer smiling.

Gobey looked ruminative, his stare glazing over.

“Watchin’ all the time, these sack men. Nobody safe from their claws. Fancy suits, cold white faces...same old story, rich eat us poor, Gunner found that out in the marines...”

“Thanks, Gobey. I’ll sort this out. Just go to the Wayne Foundation clinic. You’ll be safe.”

You have my word on that, Gobey. This secret new order in Gotham has gone on too long.

Punching a cable into the air, Batman executed a graceful leap up, letting his body go lithe as the line carried him over the imposing steel skeleton of Trigate bridge.

He zipped away in looping arcs, as the city around him steadily continued to grow, the scaffold cages and looming cranes marking the sites of urban renewal where the gothic arabesques of Old Gotham were being built anew, rising up in granite and lime.

Virgil Gaunt was not sure whether he was sleeping. He remembered climbing into bed, the leathery book still clutched in his hands, but then he remembered being stood on the balcony, arms outstretched, moaning into the winds. There had been figures leaning over his bed, he thought, though it was a thought that caused him to moan again. He felt sure there was something important he had to do, or remember...

McGloumish bleeding out, or... no, it was... he found himself in the manor’s deep, dark cellar, treading as quietly as he could down the winding staircase.

“Mustn’t disturb the work,” he told himself, chiding himself with the childish mantra. The sound of voices and bleating lowing came bouncing up the stairs.

To his horror, he found himself beginning the rhyme, drudging up the old, mumbling tune from the days when the Gaunts were in full number, from when the mother Gaunt would rasp the words in the breathless, expectant voice she used for special storytelling.

”Beware the Court of Owls, that watches all the time, ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch, behind granite and lime. They watch you at your hearth, they watch you in your bed, speak not a whispered word about them, or they’ll send The Talon for your head.”

Virgil Gaunt tripped as he descended the last stair. He squealed, a child caught out by angry parents, and scrabbled to his knees.

Lit by burning torches and hissing gas lamps, the assembly of stinking, soiled goat-headed men brandishing axes, butchering tools and sparking angle-grinders turned to crowd the blubbering Virgil Gaunt. Slimmer, more elegantly-dressed creatures hid in the press, disguised by their curved white owl masks. In the midst of it all, a pig-masked man paraded, his trouser legs rolled up high to reveal hairy cloven hooves.

He posed, with a squeal to match Gaunt’s, and rhythmically wound his way between the goat-headed mass.

“Our squee! host attends to his guests! How Pyg can repay the master of the house, with pig pineal gland liquified and shot right through to the jugular, PCP in the brain! Squee!”

Gaunt moaned, his arms flailing limply as Pyg swept him up in his own, stubby embrace. They waltzed, Pyg grinding on the fatter man as no music played and the Goatmen snorted in laughter and the twisting, haughty Owls chirped and chittered their own high derision.

“Gotham’s Order of Beasts is in congress, the Old Gotham convulses with an-ti-ci-pation because Gotham... Gotham, Gotham, GOTHAM, is coming... coming back, my pretty fat date.”

Pyg threw back his head and squealed.

“Gotham is back for bad.”

[Admin]

To let us know what you think of this issue, please visit the letters page here!