Batman Attacks

As the frontmost of Bane's men drew close, Batman sprung. Drawing a weighted rope from his utility belt, he sent it around the thug's rifle with a practiced flick of the hands. One good tug sent the weapon flying from his hands. The superhero followed it up with a miniaturised smokebomb. One speedy throw, and it impacted the criminal's shoulder, shattering and quickly engulfing his group in a voluminous cloud.

That was when Batman moved in. He smashed the nearest of his assailants into the ground, quickly and cleanly taking him out of the fight, then moved on. He could hear the others panicking. A couple even fired their weapons, but the rifle rounds were nowhere near him.

"Who is this guy?!" One cried out.

"Pendejo! He's worse than the Demon!" Went another.

Batman moved low, the smoke shielding him from detection until he was ready to strike again. When he did, he struck hard, whirling around, ripping the rifle from the nearest goon. He brought it, stock-first down on the head of another criminal, stripped it in a half-second and then tossed it clear.

That left him and one solitary opponent. Trained though he was, it was simple enough for Batman to feint around his attack, and then **** him into a hold. He'd keep this one conscious for now, just until he'd extracted a little information.

"Who are you?" Batman demanded. "Who do you work for? Why are you attacking me?"

"Screw you!" The thug spat back. Batman's response was to twist the man's arm. Hard. What he had to say next was more co-operative.

"We-agh we work for Bane!" he admitted. "He gave a bunch of us these co-ordinates, told us to bring the mask we found at them in to meet him."

"Bane and I have already met." Batman told his captive prey.

"Didn't sound like it to me!" the thug cried. "Look, I don't have a clue who you are, but if I were you, I'd consider hopping the skytrain to New Metropolis. Gotham City has got more than enough masked crazy."

Batman was a little taken aback by the criminal's words. To hear him tell it, they *were* in Gotham City, but it was a Gotham where no one knew the Batman? Had the particle accelerator sent him to a parallel world, one without a Bruce Wayne, a Batman? Something told the hero it would be a long time before he stood back in his own Gotham...

"Drop him!" Batman's attention was drawn by the sound of rifles being aimed at him, as a dozen or so more operatives filed quickly on to the level of the parking structure.

Sloppy, Bruce... Batman admonished himself.

"Ha! You think Bane'd send four guys to take down a mask. He didn't take over this city by being so stupid!" the criminal in Batman's clutches laughed.

"We'll do this nice and calmly, hero. You're lucky Bane wants you alive. Drop our buddy and put your hands up. You try anything funny, and you might arrive at his place pre-broken." the leader of the incoming squad commanded.

Of course, Batman had no intention of going in quietly. Or of going in at all. Eyes darting from raised rifle to raised rifle, his genius-level intellect had already begun to formulate plans. Four would get him out of the parking structure alive. Two, would even get him out unharmed.

Before he could put one of his plans into action, however, an ear-splitting ringing began in his ears. From the reactions of the men around him, he could tell the rapidly-intensifying tone was affecting Bane's forces as well.

Many of them doubled over in pain, clawing at their ears as the screech reached fever pitch. The pain of it washing over Batman in great waves, he summoned the appropriate pain management technique, and stayed standing.

Then, as if on command, the rifles held by some of the hardier henchmen began exploding. The **** of the blasts knocked a couple of men down outright.

"It's- it's The Bat!" One of Bane's men cried out. As if on cue, a gleaming black aircraft zoomed into the parking lot, stopping overhead of Batman and the thugs.

Not much larger than a car, Batman quickly noted a number of sensors, arrays and cannons across the craft's fuselage. Something about their construction suggested a custom-engineered approach, not a mass-produced police or military vehicle, but something created to serve the various **** requirements of a single individual. Sounded familiar...

A compartment atop the aircraft swung open, and a figure dropped down not far from Batman. He took her in. She was lithe, slender, and clad in a tight black combat suit of a material he couldn't quite place, something that looked like a strange midpoint between metal and leather. The gloves on her fingers were pointed, clawed, and on her head, she wore a cowl, not unlike his, a black clouded faceplate ending at the nose to reveal the lower part of her face, pale skin and red lips.

"You shouldn't have butted in, BatBitch!" the leader of Bane's squad snarled at the interloper. "Bane said we can finish the job with you!"

Reaching for a holstered sidearm, Bane's lieutenant brought it up and fired a few shots, right at the cyber-vigilante. He continued until the magazine was empty. The Bat was still standing. She stretched her arms up over her head mockingly, as if the proceedings were boring her. Batman then noticed a digital flickering about her person.

"And you..." the real Bat began, as she decloaked and dropped from the ceiling, right onto the leader of the criminals. "Shouldn't be fooled by an augmented reality decoy."

She smashed his head against the concrete, hard, and then moved onto the disarmed and quickly dwindling remainder of the enemy ****.

Raising her hand, The Bat pointed her fingers at a cluster of three nearby goons. The black claws on her fingers flew off, curving on impossible trajectories as they impacted a target each. No sooner had they made contact, than the criminals convulsed, and keeled backwards, incapacitated by a high-power shock.

Batman took that as his cue to move in. His "rescuer" may have had him beat when it came to technology, but he was far from helpless. He rained punches down on the first criminal he could get to, lifted him, span and hurled him at another. A burly henchmen roared and charged him, but a well-placed blunt batarang hit to the forehead had the man downed and in store for a nasty concussion two seconds later.

"Not bad." Batman's female counterpart said, a satisfied smirk playing across the unmasked portion of her face as she swept the leg out from under another thug, then brought her knee down on his face once he landed.

"You've got some decent tricks up your sleeve yourself." Batman conceded.

"Oh, you have no idea." The Bat said, fixing him with a borderline sadistic smirk as she fiddled with a display on her right gauntlet. A few seconds later, a turret on the underside of her air vehicle whirred to life. It fired two shots, and the remainder of Bane's capture squad hit the ground, engulfed in nets.

Another strike to the criminal she was sitting on's head to ensure he was truly pacified, The Bat cartwheeled off of him and to a standing position near Batman.

"I'm guessing you're not from around here." she said, looking him up and down.

"You're guessing right." Batman responded. "Something happened, I was fighting Bane, a version of Bane, and-"

"And you ended up here." The Bat nodded. "I can explain everything, you just have to come with me."

Before Batman could respond, the leader of Bane's capture squad sprung to his feet, bloodied and bruised, but still in the fight.

"BATBITCH!" He roared, charging the two vigilantes. Batman could see the green glow in his eyes, the discoloured vascular system, he had fired his Venom pump while on the ground. The berserker produced a grenade, holding it high as he bore down on them.

"Get behind me!" The Bat cried, throwing up her arms. A thin, black fabric seemed to extrude rapidly from her armour, mantling out across the front of her body.

Batman did his best to comply, but he had only taken a couple of steps when the grenade blew. He felt himself thrown into the air, and colliding with a concrete pillar, hard. Everything was ringing, everything was spinning. He tried to get up, but he couldn't.

The Bat brought her arms down, and the hyper-durable nanomaterial cape draping around her receded as quickly as it had spawned on her. She ran across to Batman, bringing her hand up to her cowl.

"Kerri, come in. I need you to prep Lizzie for emergency medical procedure #3, we've got a wounded man incoming. "

Even as Batman fought to stay conscious, he saw The Bat drop to her knees at his side, and begin to do everything she needed to do to ensure he stayed alive long enough to get some proper medical treatment.

At the touch of a button, the darkly clouded glass face covering on The Bat's cowl cleared, and he saw her face, attractive, green-eyed and youthful, early twenties.

"Don't you die on me, Bruce..." she urged him.