The Batmobile roared down the ramp and hissed to a stop, engine ticking in the cavern's stillness. Batman stepped out, cape trailing as he moved straight toward the looming glow of the Batcomputer. Its banks of monitors were already alive, data streaming across them maps of Gotham with red blips flaring, police frequencies scrolling in rapid lines, live reports of gunfire, ambulance calls, missing persons. The war was stripped bare and written out in cold numbers.
Robin dropped down from the overhead gantry a few seconds later, pulling off his mask just enough to rub the sweat from his eyes. "Hey," he called, jogging up beside him. "How'd it go?"
Batman didn't glance up from the screens. "It went fine. Did you run into any trouble?"
"No," Robin admitted, hopping up to sit on the edge of the terminal, swinging his legs. "But it's getting harder to keep up out there. Whole damn city's on fire." He nodded toward the map as another district lit red. "Word on the street is these Underpass guys are starting to make waves. Whole war kicked off because they tried to claw out a territory for themselves. Can you believe that? Another gang in Gotham. One that could actually rival Penguin's hold."
Batman's jaw tightened, but he didn't reply. He kept scanning, his gauntleted fingers tapping through feeds, cross-checking reports. More blips lit up a shootout near the Narrows bridge, a burned-out car off Bowery, police pinned down near the tracks. The city's pulse was violent and endless.
Robin frowned. "Don't just ignore me. They're making moves. We can't write them off."
Batman leaned forward, eyes narrowing as two fresh icons blinked alive in East End. "Are you ready to go out again?"
Robin blinked. "Again? We just got back."
"Crime doesn't rest, Robin." Batman's voice was flat steel. He keyed in a sequence and split the map. "You'll sweep the Narrows start with the bridges. I'll handle East End. We need to keep pressure on the hotspots before they spread."
Robin groaned, sliding off the console. "We need help, Bruce. For real. Look at this!" He swept a hand at the wall of screens, the flickering chaos of emergency calls and gang reports. "This isn't a two-man job anymore. You had Young Justice jump in when the Arkham escapees got out—why not now?"
Batman finally turned, cloak whispering against the stone floor. His eyes under the cowl were cold, unblinking. "They're not familiar with Gotham. You are. Gotham doesn't forgive mistakes they haven't dealt with something like this before."
Robin clenched his fists, shaking his head. "Don't be so damn stubborn. You can't do everything alone."
"I don't need everything," Batman cut in. "Gotham needs precision. That doesn't come from outsiders." He turned back to the monitors, already shutting the conversation down. "Put your mask back on. We move in five."
Robin let out a frustrated breath, muttering under his breath as he stalked off toward the lockers. The Batcave hummed with machinery, with the city's endless noise piped underground, and Batman stared into his eyes unblinking.
***
Outside, the rain has turned the city's grime into a slick mirror. A lookout's shadow slips along a sewer grate and then a figure runs boots slapping metal, breath sharp in the night. He reaches Dre two tunnels over, panting, eyes wide.
"Boss," the lookout hisses without ceremony. "Big force. Body armor. Trucks at the mouth. Falcone boys—no, not just Falcone, some hired hands with him. They're coming down the East culvert. Forty, maybe fifty. They want our tunnels."
Dre's shoulders tighten. He doesn't call Naima she would be too late and so would the others. He moves with practiced urgency. "Get everyone down," he orders. "No lights. No fires. Quiet. Stack on the west side, by the old pump. If they find you, push deeper and don't make a sound."
His people fold into the shadow grooves of the sewer—men who've lived under tides and know the language of pipes. No children where present only shooters. They press themselves under service ledges, behind overturned crates, into the crawlspaces carved out for maintenance. Dre checks faces, gives three sharp nods, and counts off with his thumb: two on the pump, three on the grate, a pair watching the far vent. He sets his own pistol to a safety he knows by feel.
At the mouth of the culvert, the attackers file in like a business with guns. They move with corporate precision: radios clipped to collars, tablet maps lit under headlamps, riflemen spaced like a formation. The leader—an older Falcone captain in pressed leather—waves a sleeve. "Sweep clean. Take control. No honors for these gutter dogs."
Dre's plan was simple, hit the front of the column, take a few, break their momentum, then melt back into the darkness. Surprise is his weapon. He wills the men to stillness and slides forward with two of the fastest—knives silent, breaths held. They break from their hiding spots like ghosts and slam into the first pair of men rounding a corner.
For an instant the operation staggers. A throat is cut, a rifle clatters. Then the attackers' training answers automatic fire erupts like a bad storm. Concrete vibrates. The tunnel becomes a chamber of light and hot sound. Dre's man goes down with a mouthful of red; another takes a slug and folds, silent.
They'd expected rough men, maybe some ex-military muscle. They did not expect Falcone's combination of money and professional subcontractors: helmets, plate carriers, coordinated mic calls. The attackers press forward, compact and relentless. Dre's fighters are good born and bred for these passages but the number and firepower is more than any quick ambush should have to swallow.
"Pull back!" Dre shouts, voice cracking over the din. He's trying to shepherd the men toward a side crawl, every step measured. The attackers pivot, and the tunnel becomes a choke too narrow to turn. Magazines empty into rib and concrete. Dre feels the air close with heat and scent of burning hair. He takes a hit in the shoulder and tastes metallic panic.
Then the pipes above him shudder.
A sound like something uprooting itself in the deep water comes first; then the lights along the tunnel wash as if a tide has rolled through. From the darker channel—a place where sewage runs like a slow river movement uncoils.
Killer Croc rises up through the dark like he was born out of the sewer itself: scaled shoulders breasting the lip of a side drain, teeth flecked, eyes a wet, patient yellow. He doesn't charge so much as apply pressure; his first motion sends three men sprawling into the muck. His hands find a rifle and snap it like a twig. Where he closes, armor folds and meat gives. He moves with single-minded, animal logic he is the environment and the violence poured into form.
"Oh god oh god!" One of the falcone men screams in terror as his fried was ripped in half
Luckily he didn't have to call out for god much longer as he was swiftly sent to be judged by him.
The attackers try to regroup; flashbangs pop and bloom light that carves shadows into the tunnel's skin. Croc keeps coming. Bullets pelt his hide but slide away or send up sparks from the concrete behind him. One of the hired men swings for his face with a buttstock and it's like hitting a pillar; his skull cracks and he goes limp. Croc's laugh sounds like a bell being struck under water. He lifts a man by the throat and crushes ribs with a hand the size of a basin. The wet pops and gasps of men ending are awful and immediate.
Dre's men watch the carnage with a feral sort of recognition relief that is edged with the shame of joy. This was not the elegant strike he'd hoped for, but Croc's arrival splits the battle wide open. The attackers break; conditioned soldiers become disordered in the face of a thing their own minds taught them not to reckon with. Dre finds that the fear in his chest rearranges into a raw grin.
"FUCK YEAH!" he roars, firing a wild, useless round into the ceiling because his throat needs the sound. Around him, hardened sewer-operators move like a second tide, cleaning up the surviving hired men with knives, with suppressed shots, with an old intimate brutality of just not caring because Gotham and no one cared about them before all of this.
When the last of the attackers are either dragged bleeding into corners or lie spent and empty-handed on the floor, Croc cools. He paces through the wreckage, nostrils flaring, picks up a boot and throws it aside like a toy.
Dre wipes mud from his face and looks down the line of ruined gear and ruined men. He watches Croc slide back into the darker drain from which he'd come, back into the city's stomach, leaving a wake of wet footprints and a smell of river and moss.
The sewer settles then, only the drip and the low mutter of breath. Dre straightens, spitting into the water, and nods to his men. "Hold tight. Double watch the mouth. Tell Base the word goes up. Falcone tried us. They got taught quick." He grins, sharp and hungry. "If they come again, we'll get em again."
"And for gods sake start stripping their weapons and armor!"
***
The rain beat steady against the wide panes of the penthouse windows, Gotham stretched beneath like a labyrinth of flickering orange, blue, and blood-red. Nolan sat at his desk, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, one hand gripping a tumbler of dark liquor, the other pressed against the side of his temple. His eyes were half-shadowed, scanning the coded reports that had just filtered up from the tunnels.
The words were sparse, stripped down by Dre's terse style of communication, but the meaning was loud enough: Falcone's men had descended into the sewers with paid guns and military hardware. They had been torn apart. Not by Dre's men alone but by the unstoppable arrival of Killer Croc.
For a moment Nolan let out a soundless chuckle, lips curling into a grim smile. Croc siding with them, even loosely, was the kind of gift no one could buy. But then the smile thinned, evaporated, replaced by the heavy drag of thought. Falcone wouldn't waste this much muscle without reason. He wasn't probing anymore. He was sending a message.
And Nolan understood it clearly: the Underpass was now on the radar of the oldest, best-funded criminal empire Gotham had ever bred.
The weight of that realization sat in his chest like stone. He set the glass down with a soft clink.
The intercom beside his desk crackled to life. "Mr. Everleigh," the concierge's voice filtered in, calm and professional, "your guest has arrived."
Nolan's gaze lingered on the city one beat longer before answering, his voice smooth, controlled. "Let him in."
The doors to the penthouse whispered open, and footsteps clicked across polished marble. Nolan's expression shifted seamlessly the exhaustion and worry slipping away, replaced by a pleasant, practiced warmth as Kieran stepped into the foreground. He rose from his seat, crossing the room with a smooth confidence, hand already extended.
The figure before him wore his own kind of armor, not plated steel but the careful composure of a professional killer. A smile that was more calculation than kindness tugged at Nolan's mouth as he clasped the man's hand firmly.
"It's great to see you again, Floyd," Kieran said, his voice laced with easy charm. He gestured to the chair opposite his desk, the smooth host in his own castle. "Please sit. We have much to go over."
Deadshot's sharp eyes flickered once around the room before he lowered himself into the chair.