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Monarch Theater6,444 words
Crime Alley7,506 words
The Six O' Clock Lounge5,939 words
Doll Room4,664 words

Crime Alley

Blood is everywhere.

It’s spattered across the walls; running down in thick rivulets—as if the walls themselves are bleeding—and forming dark puddles at his feet; it sizzles and burns on the light fixtures; its sour, acrid smell filling the alley.

Blood is everywhere. Blood that had, not even a minute before, belonged to Batgirl and Nightwing.

And standing there in the middle of it, like a demon ascended from the depths of hell, was Man-Bat. Man-Bat. He just stands there, looking at Batman with those hellfire-eyes; smiling like death, his face smeared with blood. He’d killed them. He’d torn Nightwing and Batgirl apart right in front of him.

“Hello, Batman,” Man-Bat says, in a voice like crunching bones, the words spoken slowly through its massive teeth, blood dripping down its chin. “Did you enjoy the movie?” Man-Bat holds up a claw to his muzzle and licks the blood off his talons. Nightwing’s blood, he thinks. Or Batgirl’s. Man-Bat places the freshly licked claw onto Batman’s shoulder. “I liked it. I liked it a lot. But there was one thing I really didn’t like.” Man-Bat’s gaping maw is only inches from Batman’s face. His breath reeks of rotting meat, Batman can see fat droplets of blood running down between his teeth. “I didn’t like the ending,” Man-Bat says, and squeezes Batman’s shoulder; his armor—a bulletproof, ultralight titanium resin—cracks like an eggshell, and the talons sink deep into his flesh.

The pain is horrendous, like five scorching knives digging into his shoulder. But Batman doesn’t say anything. He can’t say anything. Only seconds before Kirk Langstrom stepped out from the shadows and injected himself with the Man-Bat serum, Batman’s entire body had become paralyzed. He didn’t know what had caused it. Nerve gas? Poison? Sonic inhibitors? But whatever the reason, it had rendered him powerless, and he couldn’t speak any more than he could move.

“I like happy endings,” Man-Bat continued speaking, “And the ending of that movie wasn’t very happy. I mean, the good guy died and Batman lived! That’s not a very happy ending at all!”

Man-Bat lifts him up by his shoulder, like a carcass on a hook. The pain is excruciating. Batman can’t move, but he feels his teeth clenching and his muscles spasm and twitch with pain—like a marionette in the hands of a sadistic puppeteer.

“I have a much better idea for an ending,” Man-Bat says in that broken-glass-voice. “Here’s the pitch: Batman is walking down an alley with his two little sidekicks—when suddenly, Man-Bat comes out and kills them all!” Man-Bat brings Batman’s face to his, until they’re scarcely an inch apart. “Whaddya think, Batman?” droplets of bloody spittle fly into Batman’s face as he speaks. “Do I get the Oscar?”

Batman says nothing.

“Why, Batman, you’re speechless.” Man-Bat takes a hold of Batman’s other shoulder with his other talon, and with a sick squelching noise, pulls his claws out of Batman and drops him. Batman falls to the ground and crumples like wet papier-mâché. Then Man-Bat starts making a clogged coughing sound, and Batman realizes that he’s laughing.

Move, Batman, come on! Move! He tries to desperately to move, to break free of the paralysis; to reach into his utility belt; to curl his hand into a fist; to kick out, to get up, to fight! Nothing. He just lays there like a life-sized Batman doll. Completely powerless.

Man-Bat kicks Batman over onto his back, and plants one clawed foot in the middle of his chest; then he laughs that horrible gurgling laugh again—the sound of a man choking to death on his own bile—and says “Don’t worry, Batman, I’ll make sure to mention you during my acceptance speech.”

Man-Bat raises a claw to strike.

Batman doesn’t feel afraid, not exactly. He just feels a cold clarity settle over him as the pieces settle into place. Kirk Langstrom’s mind must have become unstable from his repeated use of the Man-Bat serum. He’d gone feral, reverting to his baser instincts, and decided that Gotham was his “territory.” His next step would have been to “secure” his claim by eliminating any potential rivals. He’d retained enough of his intelligence to either fabricate or steal a paralyzing neurotoxin, and then dosed him with it. Then he’d just had to wait until the toxin took effect, and Batman was no longer a threat, to make his move.

It had worked Perfectly.

Man-Bat had dispatched Nightwing and Batgirl without incident. Quickly and brutally.

As he watches the claw descending towards him, he wonders what will happen to Gotham City after his death. There’s no one to carry on after him. The Joker murdered Robin, and Man-Bat has just murdered Nightwing and Batgirl. He’s not worried about the super villains locked up in Arkham; The League will dispatch operatives if—when—they escape. It’s the “regular” criminals that concern him. The ones too small time to appear on the League’s radar: the muggers, the thieves, the rapists, the murderers. Without Batman, they’ll run rampant.

Well, maybe not. He’s made preparations. In the event of Bruce Wayne’s death, and the deaths of his heirs, his estate would go into trust--to be donated to the Gotham City Police Department. It might be enough. It would have to be.

It's funny, he thinks solemnly. I always thought it would be the Joker.

“ENOUGH!” a voice thundered out suddenly from above them.

Man-Bat’s head jerks up. “What!?”

Suddenly the night turns to day, and then everything disappears in a flash of blinding white light. Man-Bat screams; Batman feels the weight leave his chest, then there’s a CRACK, loud as thunder, and the ground trembles, and as suddenly as it appeared, the light fades. Batman is temporarily blinded, then the filters in his visor adjust and begin to compensate for his blinded eyes; a picture forms.

Before him stands a Dark Goddess. Great and terrible and furious. The closest analogue that his mind can liken this deity to is a horse, but before him is no horse , her body is a hurricane made flesh, every muscle strained and pulled taught underneath her skin like cords of steel. Her eyes are twin maelstroms of lightning, crackling and spitting with terrible purpose. Her mane and tail whip about her with the fury of the heavens. Her wings are splayed out on either side of her, the tips touching the alleys walls. Her head is lowered, horn pointed towards Man-Bat. And when she speaks, the ground seems to shake underneath the power of her voice.

“BEGONE, NIGHTMARE! LEST I SMITE YOU WHERE YOU STAND!”

The sides of Man-Bat’s mouth split open almost to his long pointed ears, in a hideous grimace of hate. “Dreamwalker!” he snarls at her. “You have no power here! This is not your domain!”

The Goddess makes no reply. Suddenly, her horn blazes with that same blinding white starlight from before, and a liquid stream of crackling blue energy erupts from her horn and strikes Man-Bat squarely in the chest. Man-Bat screams, a high-pitched keening wail, like a thousand jagged fingernails scraping along a chalkboard. “No! You have no power here! You have no power here! You have no power here!” Man-Bat screams the words over and over, like a blasphemous prayer, as the light spears into him. A glowing spider web of cracks appear across his face and chest. Man-Bat howls—one last wordless intonation of pain, fury, and hatred—and then explodes. No sound accompanies the explosion. No blood either. Like an immense glass statue, Man-Bat’s body shatters and flies apart in a burst of light and stardust.

The Goddess stares out at the falling dust motes of light—all that’s left of Man-Bat—gives a derisive snort and stomps her hoof onto the concrete. Then the winds whipping her mane calm; the maelstroms of lightning leave her eyes, and she is Luna once more.

Luna.

The word echoes through his mind like a ripple in a pond, growing bigger and louder, until it is no longer a ripple, but a tidal wave! Crashing through his mind!

Luna.

Luna . . .

LUNA!

There's a flash if exquisite pain behind his eyes, and he remembers. Everything.

He remembers waking up, his battered and broken body surrounded by diminutive aliens. He remembers waking up again, to find his body completely healed; meeting Luna and Celestia; how quickly they'd learned his language, how diligently they'd worked to send him back to his own world, and how their every attempt had failed. How he had been trapped there. Was still trapped there.

This isn’t real, he thinks, relief and shock running through him in equal measure. It’s just a dream; albeit, a very lucid one.

She turns to face him, and her face goes slack; it’s not too hard to imagine how he must look right now, his shoulder and chest are soaked in moist warmth underneath his armor.

“Bruce! Bruce, how badly are you hurt? Bruce!?"

She goes to him and places her head onto his chest. Her ear flickers there for a moment, searching for a heartbeat, before she raises her head to look back at him. “Bruce, if you can hear me, I need you to hold on. I am going to heal your wounds.”

Heal his wounds? She doesn’t need to heal his wounds, he’s not really wounded. This is a dream! Unless . . . unless it’s not a dream. The thought sends a cold chill through him.

Luna tilts her head down and lights her horn; her aura envelops his chest and props him up into a rough sitting position, and then he feels the soft tingling sensation that he recognizes as healing magic.

And then a skull appears out of the shadows, grows out of the shadows. It’s not a human skull, the teeth are too long, the nasal passages too wide. The shadows around the skull bulge and warp, and suddenly the skull is joined by a skeletal claw, and then, impossibly, the skull looks at him. It shouldn’t be able to. Inside that skull’s empty eye sockets are two black pits. But Batman knows beyond any possible doubt, that the skull is looking at him. And it’s smiling. Slowly, the claw moves towards the skull and places one bony talon to its teeth conspiratorially. The skull slowly rises up on a swelling wave of writhing shadows, which begin to form stiff white bones. Another clawed arm appears, and then a spine, a ribcage, pelvis, femurs, kneecaps, tibias, and finally two clawed feet. An inhuman skeleton steps out of the churning shadows.

Noiselessly, the skeleton takes a single step forward, then a second, a third. Thick red strands of muscle sprout out of the shadows at the skeleton’s feet, and begin to wrap themselves around the bones in thick knots.

Man-Bat, Batman thinks numbly. He’s regenerating himself. Luna! Her back is turned, she’s gazing at him intently, completely unaware of the approaching skeleton. And he still can’t move!

The skeleton is now a well-muscled body, save for the skull. Veins and arteries, dripping blood, sprout from the shadows and wind themselves around the muscles like macabre creepers.

Move damn it! He struggles against his unseen bonds. Nothing. His body doesn’t so much as twitch. The only thing he can move are his eyes, and they’re hidden by his cowl. Damn it! Turn around, Luna! Turn around!

A suit of brown furry skin appears behind the grisly body, walking limply, impossibly. The skin splits open down the middle, and wraps itself around the body, like a living Halloween costume. For one gruesome moment, the skin hangs loose, then it tightens, and it’s done.

Man-Bat is rebirthed from a womb of darkness. From start to finish, the entire process has taken less than a minute.

Man-Bat smiles with vicious glee, like a child about to pull the legs off a grasshopper, but the smile isn’t directed at him, it’s aimed at Luna!

No. Batman thinks. He’s not afraid to die, but to die like this, to just die peacefully in the night, without even a word of defiance? While this monster murdered another person he cared about? No. He wouldn’t.

He felt a fury rise up in him, and a painful tearing sensation, as if the words were clawing themselves out of his throat, “Luna, behind you!”

Luna doesn’t question the command; she spins around in a blur of motion, just as Man-Bat brings his talons to bear, Luna moves fast, but Man-Bat moves faster. His talons miss her head by only a scant few inches, but instead rake a bloody triptych gashes across her side. She cries out, and lights her horn, but Man-Bat slams his other claw into her chest, sending her flying back into the wall. But her horn is still alight, and before Man-Bat can press his attack, she unleashes another lance of molten starlight into his chest. Man-Bat flies into the opposite wall, then through it, in an explosion of dust and shattered brick.

She stands there for a moment, breathing hard; she’s standing in a growing pool of her own blood; her side and chest soaked crimson. She turns back to Batman, her eyes fraught with concern. “Bruce, are you well? I feared that you were no longer amongst the living.”

“Can’t . . . move,” Batman says.

“You can’t . . . move?” Luna’s eyes go wide, “You’re bespelled! The dream; it’s using the dream to—”

LUUUNAAA! An earsplitting scream cuts through her words like a guillotine. She turns, and gasps. There is Man-Bat, crawling through the blasted opening in the bricks. He looks rabid, foam fills his mouth and dripped out from between his fangs in fat dollops; he was smoking, but otherwise appeared unharmed. “I told you!” he screams madly,.” “I told you, Luna! I told you! I told you! I told you! You have no power here! This is my domain, my world! You are nothing here, Luna! Nothing!”

Shock and horror fight for dominance upon Luna’s face as Man-Bat advances. “Impossible . . .” she says numbly, then steadies herself and fires another blast into Man-Bat. This time, though, the light doesn’t so much as budge him; he walks through it with like water.

Man-Bat cackles cheerfully, and says “Not the brightest star in the sky, are you?

Luna flares her wings and bares her teeth, “Silence, wretch!” The light from her horn intensifies, and for a second, Man-Bat pauses, but only for a second, and then he resumes his march towards her—one step, then another, and another. He’s at the mouth of the opening now, nearly within striking distance.

“Luna! We have to go, now!” Batman screams at her, the “spell,” if that’s what’s really holding him immobile, is no longer impeding his speech, but he still can’t move, and Luna can’t beat Man-Bat alone.

Luna’s horn burns brighter, and silver chains sprout forth from its tip, wrapping around him , binding him.

"You think that this can hold me!?" Man-Bat shrieks.

Luna snorts disdainfully at him, and suddenly, Batman is moving! But he’s not moving of his own volition. His body is covered in the soft blue glow of Luna’s magic, being carried by her. Her horn glows brighter, and a silver saddle appears atop her back. “I am sorry for this, Bruce Wayne, but time is short, and we must not dally.

Luna lifts him onto her back; silver stirrups appear around his feet; black reins wrap themselves around his hands, yet more silver ropes wind tightly around his torso and shoulders, pulling him down into a jockey position. It feels like being strapped into crash webbing. No sooner do the bindings secure him, when there’s a wrenching sound of twisting metal behind them; Man-Bat has broken free of the chains. “You can’t escape me, Dreamwalker!” he screams at her, but she’s already galloping away.

Batman has ridden horseback before, and his only thought is that this is nothing like riding a horse. It’s smoother, faster, as if she’s not galloping but gliding, like an ice-skater. He can hear the clinking of her metal shoes on the pavement, and the clacking of Man-Bat’s taloned feet gouging into the ground behind them in pursuit.

Luna’s at the mouth of the alley now, Man-Bat hot on their heels, pursuing them like a hound out of Hell. “Luna!” Man-Bat screeches. “You think you can run away from me,Luna!? Do you!? Because you can’t! There’s nowhere you can run that I cannot find you!”

Suddenly, Luna leaps; her wings flare open, and beat mightily into the night air. She looks back at Man-Bat, “I do not intend to run, nightmare, I intend to fly.

Man-Bat roars frenziedly. “Is that it!? You think you’re pretty fluffy wings will save you from me!? That you will keep me from my prey! ME!? I’m going to cut off your wings, Luna! You’ll never fly on the midnight tides again; never see your precious moonlight dancing upon the clouds again! Never!

Man-Bat spreads his own massive wings, and takes off after them. The flapping of those leather wings sound like the withered heart of a corpse beating with stolen life.

Luna beats her wings again and again; the buildings seem to be falling around them as they ascend. Batman is a ragdoll; unable to move, held fast to a flying pony by a few bands of enchanted leather, hundreds of feet above the streets of Gotham City. “Luna! What the Hell is going on!?”

“I do not have time to explain what is happening, Bruce,” she says without looking back at him. “But this is not a dream. At least not as you know one.” She banks a hard right, flying down Fourth Street, Batman could hear Man-Bat’s screeching behind them, but growing distant. “I can remove the binding upon you, but I will need time to do so.”

“How much time?” Batman shouts over the rushing wind.

“I do not know. Several minutes at least. Maybe more, but I cannot perform the spell whilst carrying you as well. I will need you to be my eyes, and guide me through this city. Have you a place we can go to ground?”

Batman takes in his surroundings for a second before answering, they’re flying above Poplar Street. “Luna, in about a minute you’ll see a tram track, when you do, take a left, and follow it to the—”

Man-Bat erupts out of a window directly in front of them, eyes burning, mouth foaming, fangs bared and talons reaching.

“Luna! Dive!"

Luna snaps her wings shut, plunging them into freefall.

Man-Bat shrieks and slams a claw into Batman like a cudgel; wrenching him backwards in the saddle hard enough to break the enchanted straps holding him. He’s on his back now, hanging by the stirrups; arms thrashing madly like worms on a fishhook, face to face with the vicious grinning face of Man-Bat. Batman has an upside-down rearview of his hateful visage.

Man-Bat screams, scant inches away from Batman. “You’re mine now, Batman! Mine—”

Luna bucks him in the face. There’s a sickening crunch as his nose breaks, and his face collapses inward from the blow. Then it’s drowned out as Man-Bat screams in pain and fury. He swipes at Batman furiously, striking his head hard enough to crack the armored plates in his cowl; for a moment, Batman’s blinded by motes of phantom starlight dancing painfully in his eyes.

“Hang on, Bruce!” Luna cries.

Hang on to what? Batman thinks.

There’s a FWAP, and Batman’s suddenly jerked sideways. They’re no longer falling but flying. Man-Bat unfurls his own wings and just barely manages to level off behind them. “I’ll kill you both!” He roars through a mouthful of broken and bloody teeth.

Luna banks hard to the left, down a narrow back alley. Man-Bat follows, hot on their heels.

“Luna!” Batman yells.

Luna flies out of the alley and immediately pulls a hard left; Man-Bat flies out after them in hot pursuit.

“Luna!” he yells again.

He feels something warm and wet dripping onto his chin. He looks down. Blood. Luna’s bleeding. And flying around like this isn’t going to help.

“Luna!”

“What!?” she yells back finally.

“Take us higher! Above the skyline!”

“Higher!? Have you gone mad? The beast will catch us for sure!”

“He’ll catch us anyway if we don’t do something soon, Luna!”

Luna looks back at him, then past him, at Man-Bat. “Very well.”

Luna jets skyward, beating her wings furiously. Batman, still hanging by his stirrups, feels the blood slamming down into his head. Below them, Gotham City is growing small and distant. Man-Bat is following them, but there’s a marked difference in their speeds; Man-Bat is closing fast.

Luna looks back at him. “Now what?”

“Find Wayne Tech. It’s the tallest building in Gotham.”

Luna scans the horizon. “The one adorned with the golden trident?”

It takes him a second to understand her meaning. “Yes! The W! It’s right below my office! If we can activate the security protocols, the entire facility will go into lockdown!”

Luna stares back at him, “What!?”

Suddenly, Man-Bat shrieks, “I’m right behind you, Luna!”

“Just fly through the big window!”

"Very well."

The Night Princess flew across the sky and the Man-Bat followed.

“I’m coming, Luna! Coming to chop off your wings!”

“Luna!”

“I hear him!

“It’s a long way to the ground, Luna!”

“Luna!

“I’m flying fast as I am able!”

“Fly faster!”

“You’re both going to scream, all the way down!”

“We’re almost there!”

“Well he’s almost here!”

“No he’s not! Hang on!”

Batman felt a whirring sensation around him, like static electricity, and suddenly, Luna turns her head and fires one final stream of molten starlight into Man-Bat. It doesn’t appear to hurt harm him any more than before, but it does throw him off balance, into a spinout.

“You can’t stop me!” he snarls at them, beating his wings madly, trying to regain his balance.

“That will buy us a few seconds at most,” Luna says, “but it will be enough. Now hang on to me.”

There’s a flash, and to Batman, it looks as if they're passing through a tunnel of swirling blue light. Then the light is gone, replaced by muted darkness; the screeching of metal horseshoes chewing through the carpet fills the room; Luna stops, and Batman is jerked upward back onto her.

Then his helmet filters compensate for the low light, and he sees where they are: Wayne Tech. His office, to be precise. He sees his polished mahogany desk, his computer glowing softly in the darkness; the wine cabinet concealing his express elevator to the Wayne Tech Batcave, and—

"The window!" Batman cries.

The spanning the length of his office, is a ten foot tall, twenty five foot wide, glass pane window. Completely intact. Instantly, Batman realizes that Luna didn’t fly through the window, she phased through it. Which meant the security protocols hadn’t been activated!

Luna looks up, startled. "What!?"

"Luna, break the window! Now!"

Again, without question, without hesitation, without a second thought, Luna lights her horn. The entire window glows soft blue in her aura. Nothing happens at first—then the entire wall begins to creak like an old staircase, and, impossibly, the glass starts to bend outward, as if it wasn’t glass but plastic! Luna grits her teeth. “Spurious bastard. But I am not so easily thwarted!” Her horn flashes, and sparks fly from her horn into the window—the effect is immediate: the glass ripples like water, reforms, and then, with a sound like gunfire, the window explodes! Thousands upon thousands of glittering shards fly out into the night like droplets of frozen rain, just as Man-Bat appears.

The glass, propelled by Luna’s magic, slams into Man-Bat with deadly speed. The shards spear into Man-Bat’s flesh; slice through his wings; blood sprays out in every direction, staining the glass red, like swirling mass of broken Christmas balls.

Man-Bat screams—whether in pain or rage, Batman can’t tell—and plummets downward in a screaming bloody heap of glass, fangs and claws.

At that moment, titanium shutters slide down into the window frames—the security protocols have initiated—Wayne Tech Tower is now in complete lockdown.

Luna looks back at him, panting, “I like the way you think, Bruce Wayne.” She takes his body in her aura, and the straps fall away limply from his chest and feet. He’s lifted up, then sat down softly in his desk chair. “I will have you disenchanted in a moment, Bruce Wayne.” She smiles wryly, “Try to be still.”

“Very funny, Luna.”

Luna touches her horn to his chest, there’s another tingling sensation, similar to the healing magic, but different, almost like they’re—burning! Suddenly, his nerves feel like they’re being engulfed in electric blue fire! “Aaug!” he screams hoarsely. And then, it stops, gone as suddenly as it had come.

“Bruce! Are you okay?” Luna asks, taking him in her aura.

Batman holds up a hand to stop her—then realizes that he just moved.

“Yes. I’m fine. Whatever you did, it worked.” Shakily, he stands to his feet, curling his hands into fists. “I just hope you don’t have to do that again, anytime soon.”

Luna smiles, relieved. “So do I.” She glances at the titanium shutters. “Your tower is warded, but I doubt that the beast has been felled, and I fear that is only a matter of time before it is again nipping at our heels.”

Ordinarily, Batman would have said otherwise. Those shutters were made of solid titanium and almost a foot thick. But ordinarily, Man-Bat couldn’t reconstitute himself out of nothing.

Luna shrugs off the silver saddle, which crumples into dust as it hits the floor. “I know you must have questions about what is happening—”

“I’m asleep. We’re in a dream world, we’re being attacked by some kind of hypnomancer that’s taken the form of Man-Bat—any injuries we sustain here in this dream world will carry over into the waking world, same for deathdeath. Did I miss anything?”

Luna stares at him, speechless. “How do you—”

“It’s happened before,” Batman says nonchalantly.

“My. You must lead quite an interesting life in your world, Bruce Wayne.”

Batman shrugs, “It has its moments.” He turns back to the shutters, then back to Luna—at the dripping wounds in her side and chest—and asks “How badly are you hurt?”

Luna shrugs—then winces. “The claws cut deep. I cast a spell to slow the bleeding.” She pauses for a second, “If not for the spell, it would have surely proven fatal. Tis only a temporary measure, though; in time, the wounds will have to be dressed properly.”

“Can you heal yourself?” Batman asks.

Luna shakes her head. “No. Restorative magic has never been my strength, and my strength is fading quickly now with every passing second.”

Batman considers her words for a moment. “I have a Batcave underneath Wayne Tower: it has a state-of-the-art medical suite, and an armory. If Man-Bat’s still out there, it would be the best place to face him.”

Luna smiles grimly, “By all means then, lead the way.”

Batman goes over to the wine cabinet, reaches underneath the sink, and triggers the mechanism. There’s a click, and then the entire cabinet sinks into the floor—revealing a pair of stainless steel doors. Noiselessly, they open, revealing the sparse narrow interior of an elevator.

Luna looks at it skeptically. “You conceal the entrance to your sanctum behind a liquor cask?”

Batman steps inside. “I needed something big enough to hide an elevator; it was this or a gun rack. I don’t do guns.”

Gingerly, Luna steps into the elevator, there are only two buttons: an arrow pointing up, and an arrow pointing down. Batman hits the latter button.

Noiselessly, the doors close, and they descend.

“This dream world,” Batman says without looking at her, “How does it work?”

Luna looks at him apprehensively, “What do you already know of the dreamscape, Bruce?”

“I know that if you want to kill someone in their dreams, then the dream has to be based off of reality. The dream has to be real. Real enough to die in.

Luna smiles wryly, “But it is a two-edged sword, Bruce Wayne; if the dreamscape must be so real, that the dreamer can die within it—”

“So can the killer,” Batman finishes grimly, remembering the storm of glass as it flew into Man-Bat; shredding his wings; stabbing him like a thousand glittering knives.

“I don’t kill.” He says decisively.

“I know. But the creature that attacked you, it is a nightmare—a creature born not of flesh and blood, but fear and shadow. It only maintains a semblance of life by feeding off the fear of others. You cannot kill what is not alive, Bruce Wayne. Only destroy it.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

Luna sighs, “You may not have the that luxury, Bruce Wayne. This is no ordinary nightmare we face, it—" At that moment, a claw rips through the roof of the elevator and stabs into Luna’s back.

“SURPRISE!” Man-Bat’s maniacal voice rings out from above. “I hope I didn’t miss anything important!”

“Luna!” Batman screams. Before he can move, Man-Bat throws her bleeding body into him like a hunk of meat.

“Oh, no, no, no, don’t get up, Batman. I’ll let myself in!” Man-Bat’s arm retracts to the lip of the hole, and he begins tearing at it furiously.

Batman pulls out a small cylinder from his utility belt; covers Luna’s eyes with his cape, and throws it towards Man-Bat.

The flash bang explodes in a burst of deafening and blinding light and sound; Man-Bat’s superhuman senses work against him, amplifying the grenade's effects. Through the hole in the ceiling, Batman can see Man-Bat screaming in pain and rage, holding his clawed hands to his head in agony. “Your little toys won’t stop me, Batman!” Man-Bat shrieks, and starts swinging his claws into the ceiling blindly, ripping through the metal like a wrapping paper.

Batman crouches down and lifts his cape off of Luna. She’s bleeding badly, the wound in her back is gushing blood like a fountain. Amazingly, she’s still conscious. “Luna,” he says to her, “Are you strong enough to make it back?”

She looks up at him dazedly, “What?”

“Outside. Back to the waking world. Can you get back?”

Understanding arises in her eyes. “No! I will not abandon you !” Her words are punctuated by the torturous groans of twisting metal, as Man-Bat blindly rips apart the ceiling. They have maybe half a minute at most.

“You’ve already done enough, Luna. I can takee it from here.” No sooner do the words leave his mouth, then Man-Bat screeches above them:

“I’ll kill you both! You hear me!? I’LL KILL YOU BOTH!”

Batman takes off his cowl, and looks Princess Luna in her eyes. “I can handle this, Luna. Now. Go.

Luna looks from his face to the widening hole in the ceiling, then back to him, “May the Mother be with you, Bruce Wayne.” She stares at him for a second longer, and then her horn lights, and she becomes transparent, then fades away into nothing.

Man-Bat’s torso is halfway through the ceiling now, swinging wildly around the interior of the elevator. He’s still blind, though.

Batman works quick, replacing his cowl, he takes out two canisters of explosive gel. Keeping low, out of Man-Bat’s flailing talons, he begins spraying it around edges of the elevator floor. As soon as he’s sprayed the gel across all four corners of the floor, he glances up at the floor indicator: if this is going to work, he’ll have to time it perfectly.

They’re on the 82nd floor. That means that they’re eighty two stories up.

81st floor . . .

“Batman.”

Batman turns to see Man-Bat looking at him, smiling gleefully.

“I seeee you, Batman.” The blindness has worn off.

80th floor.

Man-Bat lunges; Batman detonates the explosive gel.

Six.

The floor of the elevator blows outward; Man-Bat’s claws pass harmlessly through the space Batman’s head occupied less than a second ago.

Five.

Man-Bat falls. Upward and away. The light of the elevator shrinks to a pinpoint, a lone star in a black sky.

Four.

Batman feels his heart rate increasing, his breathing quickening, his muscles tensing.

Three.

He can’t see the bottom. The shaft is too dark for his visor to compensate. It doesn’t matter.

Two.

Everything slows down.

One.

Batman throws his arms out, his cape catches the wind and the takes shape. He kicks his legs out straight, and for a second—a lone, solitary second, he thinks that he might have miscalculated—and then his boots slam into the ground with a thwap. There’s no time for thoughts, in a second, his arms are outstretched, probing for the door. He finds it, and wedges his fingers between the door, trying to pry it open. The door is unyielding, which is no surprise; all of his Batcaves are made to be secure. He’ll have to wire the doors.

Above him, there’s a sudden wrenching noise, followed by the screech of metal on metal. Batman looks up, and sees a glowing pinprick of light above him. It’s growing larger even as he watches. The elevator. Man-Bat’s disabled the elevator’s locks, and has sent it careening down after him!

There’s no time to wire the doors. Batman takes an explosive batarang from his belt and shoves into the space between the doors, then backs into the corner and detonates it. There’s a flash, and a muffled explosion. When the smoke clears, the doors are still intact, but charred and dented.

Batman looks up. He can see the elevator now; the screeching of metal has become a roar; sparks are flying from either side in flaming torrents.

He looks back to the doors. It’ll have to be enough.

He braces his shoulder into the doorframe, wedges both hands into the door, and begins to push. Slowly, the blackened door begins to give. Only a little at first, but then a little more, and more. It’s almost wide enough now. “Come on,” Batman grunts, the sound lost in the roar of the approaching elevator. He heaves again, and with a final groaning, wrench, the door opens.

Batman throws himself out of the door. Only seconds ahead of the screeching elevator car.

It hits the ground in a horrific explosion of twisting metal; the force of the impact throws Batman back, like the invisible hand of a god swatting a fly. He lays there for a moment, then stumbles to his feet and surveys his surroundings.

He’s in the Wayne Tech Batcave. At one time, it had been part of the Old Gotham Railway system; after the Great Quake, he converted it for his own use during the reconstruction of Wayne Tower. And as far as he can tell, everything is the same: a large, dimly-lit, hollowed-out room. Nestled against the wall opposite the elevator, is the Bat computer: banks of dark computer monitors suspended over a massive console—upon which hundreds of lights, keys, dials, and buttons are flickering. Taking up the center of the room is a makeshift laboratory: a large metal table, surrounded by standing racks full of tools and equipment. To the left, is a tunnel leading out to the garage, and to the right, is—“The armory,” Batman grunts. The armory would have what he needed.

“Knock, knock, Bat, Man.” A voice comes from behind him.

Batman spins around, to see Man-Bat stepping out of the twisted doorframe. Before, in the dim light of the elevator, Batman hadn’t been able to see Man-Bat clearly, but under the florescent whites of the Batcave, Man-Bat looks like a walking corpse: red lines of oozing blood crisscross every inch of his body; there’s almost nothing left of his wings except tattered shreds of flesh; one of his ears is sheared clean off, and the other is limp, hanging by a thread; his muzzle is a bloody crater from where Luna bucked him, and then there are his eyes. They’re gone. Both of them. In the sockets where his eyes should be, are two empty pits. Twin fountains of blood pour forth from them, and yet, Batman knows that Man-Bat can see him—is looking right at him. But the worst thing, is that Man-Bat doesn’t seem to be crazed, or angry, or even in pain. He seems, if anything, annoyed, as if everything that he and Luna have done to him amounts to no more than a mild inconvenience.

But even as the thought crosses his mind, Batman realizes why: Man-Bat is regenerating himself again. Even as he watches, the shards of glass are falling out of Man-Bat’s flesh, falling to the floor with soft chinks. The bloody cuts are closing up, and even his missing teeth seem to be growing back.

Man-Bat stops, and looks around idly. “Where is the Dreamwalker, Batman. Where is Luna?

Batman says nothing.

Man-Bat smiles a horrific, bloody smile. “Is she dead? That would be wonderful. That little brood sow has been a thorn in my side since the day we first met. I hope she died painfully!” Man-Bat spits a bloody gob onto the floor at Batman’s feet for punctuation.

Batman ignores the question. “Who are you?” he asks precisely.

Man-Bat keeps smiling his macabre smile. “Why, Batman, don’t you recognize me? It’s me! Man-Bat!” Man-Bat laughs, spraying blood and spittle from his mouth in doing so. And resumes walking towards Batman.

Batman steps back as Man-Bat steps forward. Towards the Armory.

“Are you the one that brought me to Equestria?”

Man-Bat doesn’t break stride, “Do you really have to ask, Batman?” Man-Bat throws back his head and laughs. “I thought you were the ‘World’s Greatest Detective.’ I guess that part must have been exaggerated.”

“Why are you trying to kill me?”

Man-Bat stops, and looks down at him through empty black sockets. When he speaks again, there’s no trace of humor in his voice, and his words don’t come through a broken muzzle and a jumble of broken teeth; they come clear and precise, ubiquitously, no louder than a whisper, but coming from everywhere around him. “Kill you? Is that what you think I’m trying to do? I’m not going to kill you, Batman. I need you: your body, your mind, your strength. And once I have you, I am going to kill everyone you know and care about, then I am going to ravage your precious city and then your precious world. Then, and only then, once blood runs in crimson rivers down the streets and every tree burns; when the skies of your world are choked black, and when the bodies of your kind litter the ground like the groveling maggots that spawned your wretched race, then and only then, you may have my permission to die, Batman. But not before.

“No thanks,” Batman says, shifting his gaze behind Man-Bat, and shouts “Luna! Now!”

“What!” Man-Bat spins around towards an empty wall, poised to fight; the moment he does, Batman does the same, running towards the Armory. Behind him, Man-Bat roars in fury.

Batman runs to the Armory, the biometric scanners in his suit have already unlocked the door. Inside, are racks filled with batarangs, bolos, smoke pellets, grapple wire, sonic traps, and countless other weapons. Batman runs past them all. He knows exactly what he’s looking for, and it doesn’t take him long to find it.

“Batman!”

Batman turns around, Man-Bat is poised at the Armory entrance. “Do you think I’m a fool, Batman! That I can be so easily tricked!?”

Batman shrugs dismissively, “You fell for it, didn’t you?”

Man-Bat roars, and lunges; Batman primes the device in his hand, and throws it towards Man-Bat.

When exposed to a light source of one hundred-sixty nine lumens, the average person will experience approximately ten seconds of blindness.

At two thousand lumens, blindness is instant, and total, but temporary.

At four thousand lumens, the duration of blindness becomes indefinite.

The fusion flare Batman throws at Man-Bat, burns at twenty five-thousand lumens.

When it detonates, it’s like a miniature sun.

Batman can see the light, through his cape, through the lenses in his cowl, and even through his own closed eyelids. Under his armor, he can feel second-degree radiation burns erupting all over his skin.

Man-Bat’s scream is loud enough to shatter every glass surface in the Batcave.

When Batman’s vision clears, everything around him is charred black. His cape is on fire, his armor is scorched, and his cowl is melting. He throws off his cape and cowl, and looks over at Man-Bat.

Man-Bat is now a howling, writhing, burned mass of eschar.

“Real enough to be killed in,” Batman says coldly.

At the sound of his voice, Man-Bat rears up. “It burns! It burns! What did you do to me!?”

“That was a fusion flare. Developed by Wayne Tech for use against the White Martians, after they invaded Earth. They were nocturnal; didn’t like the sun; it burned them. I thought it might work the same way on you.

Man-Bat charges him, “I’ll kill you Batma—” his words are cut off by Batman’s fist.

“Do you know how often someone gets mugged in Gotham City?” Batman asks.

In answer, Man-Bat just snarls.

“Every twenty three minutes.”

He slugs Man-Bat again with an uppercut, the force of the blow sends Man-Bat flying back through the doorway.

“Do you know how often someone is raped in Gotham City?”

Man-Bat staggers to his feet, and charges Batman again, swinging a clawed hand towards him in a lightning-fast arc.

“Every forty seven minutes.”

Batman catches the blow with one gloved hand, and sends his other fist into Man-Bat’s elbow, shattering the joint. Man-Bat roars in a mix of agony and pain, and something else, something that hasn’t been there until now: fear.

“Do you know how often someone is murdered in Gotham City?”

Man-Bat lashes out with his other arm, this attempt is no more effective than his previous attack, and Man-Bat’s other arm joins its counterpart with a snap.

“Every ninety three minutes.”

Batman lands a savage kick into Man-Bat’s chest, he goes flying in a spray of charred flesh, landing squarely onto the examination table in the middle of the Batcave.

Batman walks up to him, slowly, unhurriedly, as if he has all the time in the world.

“Final question: do you know long I’ve been away from Gotham City?”

Man-Bat can only let out a strangled gurgle.

“I’ve been gone, away from Gotham. Six. Months. Do the math.”

He brings both fists together and then down on Man-Bat’s head, hard enough to break the table.

Man-Bat lays there, and lets out a choking laugh. “You won’t kill me, Batman. You don’t kill. You’re weak.”

Batman takes a batarang from his belt. “You’re right. I don’t kill. But you can’t kill what isn’t alive. “He looks down at Man-Bat’s burnt form; into where the eyes would have been. “Only destroy it.”

Before Man-Bat can say anything beyond a surprised yelp, Batman takes the batarang in both hands and plunges the blade into Man-Bat’s chest.

Man-Bat explodes. Not in a flaming blaze, or storm of guts and gore, but in shadow. A writhing mass of shadowy tendrils erupts from Man-Bat’s form, filling every corner of the Batcave. There’s the sensation of screaming, and then of some great pressure releasing. And then everything goes black.

Author's Note:

Whew! Things are getting dark now!