SPOILER: BAT OUT OF HELL

Gotham’s downtown skyline stands starkly against its usual blood-red sky, glowing in the night. The distant lullaby of car horns and sirens is normal. The city is so accustomed to things as outrageous as a mayoral debate being assaulted by a flamboyant, costumed assassin that such an outrage simply slides right off. Things happen in Gotham, and it springs back to normal like a block of gelatin. The things that have made lasting impacts are few. The emergence of the Batman. The Joker. The quake—and even those things are beginning to fade. All that’s left of the quake are a few memorials and a lot of PTSD, something that was already in plentiful supply. The Joker is locked away in Arkham, and the Batman hasn’t been sighted in a year.

Barbara Gordon, Stephanie Brown, Kate Kane, Helena Bertinelli, and even Dick Grayson have all stepped up in the meantime to patrol the streets of Gotham, but even the five of them, let alone any one of them, brings the fear that Bruce did.

Despite that, Gotham is still standing. A part of Stephanie Brown can’t help but take notice of that. Does Gotham need the Batman? It’s an uncomfortable question and the answer isn’t clear. But it is clear that Selina Kyle needs him, and that would be good enough for Steph even if she hadn’t given her word.

Steph faces Selina on the roof of Gotham’s oldest hotel.

Selina wears her gray Catwoman costume with an elegance that Stephanie can never hope to match in her comparably drab little Spoiler getup. Swathed in her cape and safe behind her mask, Stephanie feels like she’s hiding. Selina’s costume is much more forthright.

“A plan,” Selina says.

“More like an idea.” Steph straightens and pulls her grapple gun. “Can you keep up?”

Selina’s only reply is a roll of her eyes.

Steph’s never told anyone but Tim, but swinging around at night is far more enjoyable for her than fighting crime. She takes a swan dive off the building and basks in the frigid rush of wind as she swings her way into midtown, past Market Street and on to Coventry. There, the buildings are less suited to big swings. Steph bounds across the rooftops, jumping where possible and grappling across the wider streets.

Selina is always right behind her, unafraid to use her whip to swing from things that Steph would never trust. Steph likes heights; Selina gets off on danger. They are not the same.

She finally descends to the street. Headlights catch on dirty storefront windows and there are still some puddles from the day’s rain. Water splashes as Selina touches down beside her, coiling her whip.

“It was here. This is where they got to him,” Steph says, gesturing at the dark storefronts. One is under renovation. Another is closed indefinitely. The third is vacant. Bruce’s suit is by far the most technologically advanced in the Bat Family. Barbara’s old suit was nothing but cloth, and Dick still only wears a GPS. Stephanie’s newest one tracks her location and vitals, and the new one that Barbara wore briefly before her injury was the same.

But Bruce’s suit doesn’t just track everything, it can administer **** and antidotes and even reconfigure its armor, at least according to Lucius.

“This is where he was last?” Selina asks.

“It’s where his suit was.”

“And the kid couldn’t figure it out?”

She means Dick. Stephanie sighs. “I don’t think he tried very hard. Something to do with Bruce’s wishes in these situations. He doesn’t want people putting themselves into danger looking for him.”

Selina sneers, about to speak, but she pauses to smile at a pair of pedestrians who give the two costumed women a wide berth. A police car rolls by slowly, both cops inside watching nervously.

“You got warrants right now?” Steph asks.

“Who cares?”

“Get ready to bail, then.”

“No chance, sweetheart.”

Steph lets out a sigh of relief when the police keep going. “Anyway, better detectives than Nightwing have already been here. Batman has a lot of allies.”

“What do you have that they don’t?”

“Just this doohickey.” Steph takes the sampler off her belt. Lucius didn’t even have to build it when she told him her idea for finding a clue about Bruce. He already had something that was perfect for her needs.

“What does it do?” Selina asks as she follows Steph down an alley between the buildings.

“It takes readings on chemical compositions.”

“You’re thinking you’ll find a trace of Joker toxin or something,” Selina says.

“Not exactly. But we’ll need to look around in here without getting the cops called. Got your lockpicks?”

“I don’t even need them for this,” Selina says, a little sadly. She holds up a hand and a claw extends from her glove. She has them inside without a sound in seconds. Selina takes her goggles from her pouch and puts them on while Steph holds a flashlight in one hand and the sampler in the other.

“There’s nothing here,” Selina says as they creep through the buildings, Steph taking readings every step of the way.

“I know. That’s what probably made it such a good trap. Even I have done all the patrols enough times that I know where the action will be and where the boring parts are. Batman’s been doing it a lot longer. Coventry’s not a hot zone to begin with, and this block’s been gentrifying for two years. You’d be lucky to find a mugger here, let alone anything spicy. If he was ever going to let his guard down, it would be in a place like this.”

“Or he’d find it more suspicious if someone put out bait,” Selina suggests as they descend a concrete staircase into a basement “Where are you going with this?”

“I think if you’re the guy that takes out Batman, you’re careful,” Steph says, her eyes on the screen of the doohickey. “Careful people clean up after themselves. Especially after they take on Batman because they know that if he goes down, some heavy hitters will show to up look for him. Like Superman.”

“You think that thing’s going to tell us where someone used bleach or something to cover their tracks?”

“Sort of,” Steph says with a shrug. “Nightwing would’ve latched onto something that obvious. It’s something that…” Steph almost says Tim’s name.

“What?”

“One of the Robins taught me. Sometimes the clue is a thing that’s there and doesn’t belong. And sometimes the clue is the thing that belongs there and is missing.” She stops with a frown and holds up the sampler. She turns, waving it.

“What is it?” Selina asks, hands on hips. She surveys the empty basement without much interest.

“There’s no sulfur here,” Steph says.

“What?”

“Sulfur. There’s none.”

“Should there be?”

“There’s a trace amount of everything pretty much everywhere. But there’s none here. None at all. It’s the only place so far with none.” Steph peers intently at the sampler. “That’s only possible if someone got rid of it.”

“How would you do that?”

Steph swallows uncomfortably. “Magic, I guess.” She knows who her next call will be.