Contraband...

“Come ON you mooks! Get the lead out!” Cried out the chief dock worker while a crew busied itself in the dead of night. Shipping crates were being moved from a ship docked in the Gotham harbour, to trucks still running and waiting for their loading gates to close so they could head out. Like a conveyor, one by one the crew unloaded foods and manufactured products into the trucks, slapping the side to let the driver know that their vehicle was full and ready for delivery. Driving out of the lot out into the city. They did not have anything of interest, clothing, furniture, foods. Most of what went in or out of New Gotham was screened by the national guard that surrounded the city.

Damien wasn’t interested in those trucks, instead, he was keeping an eye on the marked boxes being set aside on a pallet so far out of the 20 crates that were brought in, each crate only had a single package with a blue sticker on it, the pallet had 18 of them already. If those were carrying foods like breads or pickles, then they were not listed on the manifest. It was clever really, to keep the shipment under the radar, it was all shipped piecemeal. No one would bother looking for a single box out of 5000 a crate improperly marked as ‘washers’, especially 20 crates. It was already taking the shipping crew present all day just to empty them all to fill the trucks. By that time, the twentieth box was placed on the pallet, those boxes were largely ignored now that other goods could be divided and distributed across the city.

Perched over the ledge of a nearby warehouse watching the work being done, he spotted something that was left unseen by the shipping crew. Two cars parked just outside of the shipping zone fence line opened with at least six men cutting the fence link and sneaking through to gather the parcels. Dressed in black and wearing black ski masks, they were hard to see in the dark, planning their moves carefully and plucking a single box at a time off the pallet and returning to their vehicles.

“Now I’ve got you…”

Unfurling his cloak like a pair of wings, Damien glided down and carefully landed on the top of a lamp post without making a sound, looming overhead of the six men gathering the boxes. Reaching into his belt, Damien plucked a Batarang out in hand, and used to smash the light underneath his feet. Distracted by the loss of light, the six men stood stunned, trying to refocus their eyes in the sudden darkness when a dark shape descended and attacked. Far too fast to react to and far too brutal to fight back, one was lassoed around the leg and strung up to the lamp post while four others received an elbow and heel to their teeth, too slow to react to the blur of strikes that had them all tumbling to the ground. The sixth man dropped the box he had in hands and made a run for the two vehicles. Pulling a bolas from his belt, Batman hurled it at the fleeing man who staggered and fell on his face when his legs became tied up. The one hanging by his leg whimpered and struggled to get free before he was knocked out with a single punch.

“Five seconds…”

Looking down at one of the boxes dropped, it had split open after landing roughly on the pavement, spilling small piping washers out of the split and burst holes. The fight had eventually garnered the attention of the dock workers who found the cloaked Dark Knight looking down at five unconscious men and one hanging from a lamp pole. “Hey! What the hell are you doing here?” Called out the dock chief, his words mostly ignored as the rest of the workers gathered around, until Damien turned around with a washer between his fingers like a coin, offering it to the dock chief. “Tell me what you think this is.” Dropping it into the man’s hand, the dock chief thumbed the metal in his palm, seeing it glitter in his hard hat light. “What you have there is silver.”

Eyes going wide, the man immediately tossed it towards the pile on the ground as if it were poisonous, wiping his hand over his jacket. Silver had been banned in New Gotham after the war, that and wolfsbane. Both substances were deathly toxic to lycanthropes and efforts were made sure to keep Gotham free of the metal. A sudden screech of tire rubber alerted Damien back to the two cars outside the fence line. Sneering and cursing to himself for not checking to see if there were more men involved, Batman ran and pulled back his cloak to reach for a pocket in his utility belt, flinging a black metal ball with expert precision through the muffler of one of the vehicles, instantly exploding underneath the car’s undercarriage and stopping it instantly while the other vehicle sped away.

“Amateur!” Damien hissed, sneering at the vehicle that managed to escape before turning his attention to the one that did not. Moving over to the driver’s seat, he found the man unconscious with his head laying on the steering wheel. He was furious with himself, but for now there was nothing he could do. Looking to the dock workers who had been watching the entire scene play out, Damien glared back at the dock chief. “Go call the police, let them know what happened here.” While the group of men looked at each other, fumbling to find a phone to call the authorities, Batman had pulled a grappler from his belt and aimed over his head, firing a cable at a rooftop and propelling upwards into the sky to disappear from sight.