Gotham City Heroes (rewritten version)

by Batfan98

Chapter 18 Slow Burn

Scootaloo was sleeping peacefully until she awoke abruptly to the sound of knocking on her door. "Ms. Scootaloo, breakfast is ready." Called Alfred.

Scootaloo yawned as she stretched out her arms, "I'll be right there, Alfred."

She hopped off her bed, making her way to the kitchen. "Morning Bruce, Alfred."

Bruce nodded, "Morning."

Scootaloo sat at the table, before her sat a plate of eggs, she began to dig in.

"I have something for you." Bruce said.

Scoots gulped her food, "What is it?" She asked, excitedly.

Bruce reached down beside his chair, emerging with a red folder.

"What's that?"

"It's a scrapbook. I thought you'd like to keep something to hold onto memories of being Robin."

Scootaloo smiled, "Really?"

Bruce nodded, "Yup, in fact I've been saving newspapers from your last nights."

"Awesome!" Scoots exclaimed. "Do you have a scrapbook?"

Bruce shook his head, "No, but I have old case files."

"Even for your first case?" Scootaloo beamed.

Bruce chuckled, "Yes, I'll show you after breakfast." Bruce promised. Scoots has never eaten her meal so fast.

---

Once they were finished eating, the two made their way down to the Batcave. Once they arrived, Bruce lead Scootaloo to a corner in the cave. It had a number of file cabinets and a desk against the rock wall, with a lamp standing atop of it. Bruce scanned the years labeled on each case file until he found the year indicating his first. He slide open the top drawer, Bruce always preceded to organize his cases from top to bottom. He cracked through each case file until he found the one labeled Case #1 May 27.

"Here," He pulled out the file, setting it on the desk. "This should be my first case, I was only Batman for two months."

"Awesome," Scootaloo beamed as she sat at the desk, looking over the file. It was titled Chemical Syndicate. The case file reported Batman had to solve a murder of one Lambert, a CEO of ACE Chemicals. One of the suspects was a man named Steven Crane, a business partner, but he ended up getting murdered as well. The last suspect was another business partner, Alfred Stryker. Scootaloo chuckled at how he and their Alfred had the same first name. He turned out to be the murderer, because he wanted to own the company all to himself. Thankfully Batman apprehended him and he was sent off to Blackgate Prison.

"Heh, so you were a detective even in your early days." Scootaloo remarked.

Bruce shrugged, "When you travel across the world to be a crime fighter, detective work is something to pick up on."

Scootaloo's eyes grew, "You traveled across the world?"

"It's how I trained. In my travels I learned various fighting styles, science in mechanics, biology, and chemistry. A also learned different languages such as Spanish, French, Japanese, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Dutch, Swedish, and many others."

"Wow, you know a lot more things than I do." Scootaloo smiled brightly. "You gotta teach me other languages."

"That would take some time, but I can someday. Maybe you'd like to hear about my time in the Himalayas." Bruce offered.

"That would be cool, but what is the Himalayas?" Scootaloo asked. Bruce chuckled.

---

Now came the time of night in Gotham City. Batman and Robin were patrolling the city, running across rooftops, stopping any crime they came across. They came by a rooftop to stop and take a rest. Robin sat at the edge of the building, her legs dangling over, Batman standing beside her, his cape flowing in the wind.

"Well, aside from a few petty crimes, I don't think there's much going on tonight." Robin remarked.

"I don't think so, anything could happen." Batman disagreed.

Robin shrugged her shoulder, but jumped back at the sound of an explosion. She stood up quickly to see a large fire above rooftops coming from a few blocks down across from them. The Dynamic Duo quickly grappled to the fire. Upon arrival, the building was already engulfed in red flames. They already passed that building not long ago and from it's prior condition they knew it was abandoned, so they did not have to worry about anyone inside getting hurt.

"Who did this?" Scootaloo asked aloud. From the inferno flames emerged a figure, a flying figure. Scoots inspected him further, he wore a grey skin tight suit, his mask looked as though it were the head of a bug, he held a large flamethrower in his hand and a wing-jetpack held him floating in midair.

"Firefly." Batman grimaced.

"Batman." Firefly said in a voice sounding like he was gargling sand paper. "I had no idea you and your new boy wonder would be here at this moment."

"Girl," Robin muttered.

"I'd say it's nice to see you, but you're too much of a pain in my ass!" Firefly had an accent that sounded like Applejack's, but it had a high insanity to it.

"We're giving you one chance to surrender." Batman growled.

"Surrender? HA HA HA HE HE HAAA!" Even his laugh sounded uncomfortable. "Maybe instead you'd settle for a quick burn!" He pointed his flamethrower, and fire immediately shot in their direction. Batman quickly used his cape to cover himself and Robin as the fire burned off the leather of the cape.

Firefly immediately soared, hoping to escape, but Batman and Robin were on his tale. Inside Robin was having mixed feelings. Wow! That guy has a gun that can shoot fire? Fire?! That's just so awesome! But on the other hand, I almost died. She hook her head out of the thought and put her focus back on the exciting chase. The excitement was starting to rise in her chest as it made her pick up more speed.

Firefly chucked an object at the two, they leapt out of the way as it came towards them. Robin had no idea what it was, but she had a feeling it wasn't good. The object exploded into flames.

He has fire bombs? That is so cool! Focus Robin, focus! Robin scolded herself.

Batman and Robin jumped off a building as they glided after the flying pyromaniac. Firefly turned around and quickly fired his flamethrower. Batman and Robin just barely dodging the flames. Robin felt the wave of heat radiate to her, but thankfully managed to be unburned by the flames.

"Alright, Dynamic Duo, let's see how you handle this." Firefly nose dived downward. Batman and Robin landed on a near rooftop as Firefly had escaped their sight.

"Where did he go?" Robin exclaimed.

Quickly Firefly rose up from behind the building. "Right here, birdy." The maniac shot his flames at the two superheroes. They quickly ran away as the oncoming flames chased them until they grappled up behind the cover of a billboard. "You can run, but you can't hide!" Firefly kept on shooting his flamethrower at the sign. Robin felt that it was getting warmer.

"Robin, glide behind that shed!" Batman ordered. Robin looked to see a lone shed standing on the roof. She quickly leapt off the sign, gliding for cover behind the shed. Batman took from his belt his concussion detonator. With it, He can stun Firefly long enough to fire an electric bat-net at him. He dropped under the sign, throwing the gadget at the villain. The detonator hit against Firefly's chest. Before he could react, it exploded into a small flash.

"Aagghh!!" He yelled.

Just before Batman could prepare his net gun, a line was fired at the villain. He looked over his shoulder to see Robin zooming through the air, holding her grapple gun. "I got him!"

"Robin! Don't!" Batman warned, but was too late. Robin had latched herself into Firefly. They struggled as Firefly tried launched forward. He was flying and spinning, hoping to get the little brat to let go, but she was holding on tight. Firefly hurled his front against a building, the suit was protecting him and Robin held onto his back as her arms hooked him in a hard choke hold.

Eventually, the crashed into the surface of a roof, rolling on impact. Robin lost her grip and was flat on her back. Firefly stumbled as he tried to get up, he pointed his weapon towards her. "So kid, how would you like to die, hmm? I could disintegrate you until your burned to the bone, or I could just melt your face off. Yes, I'll go with melting your face off."

This is it, this appeared to be the end. Scootaloo squinted her eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable. Before she could meet her fate, a batarang knocked the flamethrower out of Firefly's hand. Scoots turned her head to see Batman hold up an object, looking somewhat identical to his grapple gun. Out of it sprung a net, wrapping itself around Firefly, knocking him to the ground. He struggled in the net, cursing Batman, but was interrupted by the surge of electricity coming from the net, ending with him unconcious.

Robin sighed in relief. She stood up, holding her hand in a high five gesture. "Looks like another awesome job by Batman and his..." She lowered her hand as her stomach was dropping once she looked at him. Bruce was giving her a face that she thought he only gave to criminals.

"Back there, what were you thinking?" He exclaimed angrily.

Scootaloo gulped, "I was...trying to stop him."

"I had it handled. What was your plan anyway? You were going to grapple onto him and then what?" Batman yelled. Scootaloo shrunk in her spot. "You could have gotten yourself killed."

"Isn't...isn't that what heroes do? Put themselves in situations where they might get hurt?" Robin argued.

"Yes, but we're supposed to plan ahead so things don't go wrong. So others won't get hurt. What you did back there, it wasn't heroic, it was stupid."

Scootaloo opened her mouth to say something, but the glare Batman was giving her made it hard to think of a counter argument at this point. She lowered her head and sighed. "I'm sorry. It was dumb."

"It was. Come on, let's take Firefly to GCPD."

---

Meanwhile on the outskirts of Gotham, Arkham Asylum stood. Inside it housed some of the most dangerous criminals in the world. Particularly one criminal, a mastermind who has done many things that ended up making him more feared than the Batman, even by other criminals. He has spent the past month planning a new scheme to bring onto Gotham. A scheme that required the helping hand of two other criminals currently held within the asylum. One a self proclaimed master of fear, the other a schizophrenic hypnotist with a Wonderland persona. The Joker laughed as he felt it was time to set his plan into action.

Comments

[badninja]

Well it looks like Scarecrow and Mad Hatter will be making an appearance soon. I hope Scootaloo will be ready.