Batman and Nightwing had been at it for over an hour, moving through the chaos with practiced coordination, aided by the police who tried their best to manage the wave of panic tearing through the streets.
The night air was nerve rackingly thick with fear and the acrid stench of smoke from the earlier explosion. Broken glass littered the scene, catching the flashing red and blue lights of patrol cars. Every few seconds, the muffled sound of distant shouting echoed down the alleyways. One by one, the citizens affected by the toxin were sedated or restrained, their violent frenzy giving way to uneasy silence.
"This incident has Scarecrow written all over it," Officer Wright muttered, adjusting his jacket as he stepped beside Commissioner Gordon. His tone carried a grim certainty that came from years of experience in the GCPD.
Gordon's face was lined with exhaustion as he nodded. "Yeah," he said quietly, turning to where Batman and Nightwing were finishing up. "That's his signature."
Batman's silhouette lacerated against the smoke as his cape flickered with each passing gust of wind from the police choppers circling overhead.
Nightwing moved beside him, scanning the last cluster of victims with a mix of tension and controlled energy. His expression was serious but calm, he had the feeling that things were only beginning to spiral.
Once they ensured the area was secured, the duo left the affected citizens to the GCPD and proceeded to run a quick investigation before the hand off thr scene to the police. The sectioned-off area was barely visible beneath the flickering streetlights and broken signs.
The explosion had blasted open a section of the walls, leaving cracks that spidered across the pavement and shattered glass from the resturant. Bits of burnt debris still smoldered as the smell of scorched metal and chemical residue filled the air.
It was clear that the blast wasn't meant to kill per-say; it was a setup system, meant to disperse the toxin into agitated citzens who's nervous system had experienced a spike of adrenaline from the fear of the explosion.
Damian's voice broke through the comms in his usually composed manner. "I'm scanning the area now. Give me a moment." His drone whirred quietly above the space, its sensors cutting through the fog. After a few seconds, his tone shifted slightly. "I found something. Top of the resturant—looks like a canister hidden behind the vent frame." Since he was prohibited from directly engaging, he resulted to using a drone to help him stay vitually present.
Nightwing and Batman looked up toward the vent frame just as Damian remotely extended a mechanical arm from the drone. The small device latched onto the metal grating, unfastening it with quiet precision before pulling free a silver canister. The dull cylinder reflected the red glow of the emergency lights, its surface scratched but intact.
"Stay back," Gordon warned the nearby officers, raising a hand as he saw the drone approach Batman and Nightwing with a canister. The two vigilantes moved closer to inspect the object, their motions were calm and methodical. Batman crouched beside it, pulling out a small handheld analyzer from his belt. He scanned the canister with narrowed eyes behind the lenses of his cowl.
"It's empty," he said after a pause. "But there's residue left inside. Enough to confirm Scarecrow's latest work."
Gordon's phone buzzed. He glanced down, frown deepening as he read the message before answering the call. "Talk to me." His expression hardened with each word he heard. When he hung up, he exhaled slowly.
"Security just confirmed Scarecrow's escape from Arkham. They didn't issue a warning—they thought they could cover their asses by bring him in quietly without causing a fuss, and before he made it this far. They underestimated him."
Batman's jaw tensed slightly, the faint flicker of irritation in his eyes betraying what he already suspected. Scarecrow had spent years at Arkham but it was only a matter of time before he made an escape. Now he had.
Before Gordon could say more, a lieutenant called for him. At the same time, Damian's voice came through again as Gordon seem to receive his own report at almost the same time. "Same incident seem to be reocurring at two places. It looks like the explosion earlier was meant to serve as a diversion to draw our attention here, giving them time to carryout the others." As Batman and Nightwing listened, they watched Gordon give orders to his officers regarding the current development.
Batman didn't waste a second. He transmitted the analyzed data from the canister back to the batcave computer. "Alfred, work on formulating an antidote to the chemical composition of the toxin." He ordered.
Damian's voice came back through, quieter now, and quite thoughtful beneath the static. "If Scarecrow keeps this up, you think Pennyworth would be able to develop a cure fast enough before the toxin spreads through that section of the city like a wildfire?" His tone carried unease, something rare from him.
Batman was silent for a moment before responding. "If it's just a modified version of the old formula—if he only added new compounds—then Alfred should he able to." He and Nightwing began moving, his cape fluttered behind him as they made their way toward their vehicles.
"But if Scarecrow generated the formula without his original work at the core…" He climbed into the Batmobile, the engine roaring to life. "…then Gotham's in for a long night."
Nightwing, already straddling his bike, shot Batman a quick glance. "I'll handle the east side, you take the northwest." Batman ordered.
"Understood."
The two roared off in opposite directions, engines howling against the wet pavement as rain began to drizzle lightly from the smoky sky.
A few blocks later, Nightwing cut into a narrow alley, the glow from his bike reflecting off the rain-slick brick walls. He spotted a small group of Scarecrow's followers trying to make a run for it, they sprinted toward a van as they ran from a busy area which now had toxin victims loosing their minds to traumatically overwhelming fear.
The movement of the victims were jittery and erratic under the toxin's influence. The goons looked unhinged, wearing gas masks painted with crude, distorted smiles.
With a smirk on his face, Nightwing made a loud entry with hus bike as he pulled up between the goons and the van.
"Awwn, you shouldn't have." Nightwing said to them. They would have already disappeared, only they didn't ecpect the Bat family to respond to their current attacks on time since they should normally have been preoccupied with the first one.
"What?" Damian asked, his voice cutting through the comms.
"They've got a party waiting for me," Nightwing replied, grinning beneath his domino mask as he ducked a wild swing from one of Scarecrow's deranged followers. "They were trying to make a run for it, but either way, it's a party full of freaks in Scarecrow gas masks."
Damian sighed, loud enough for it to be heard through the comms. He frowned, genuinely confused—and slightly irritated—by the cringe remark that just came out of his older brother's mouth.
"Sometimes I don't know whether to be displeased or impressed by how efficiently you manage to annoy me."
"Eh, call it a talent," Nightwing said, spinning his escrima sticks as he swept one thug off his feet.
As Nightwing kept the situation under control, the police were hard at work sedating the toxin victims still flailing in the streets as they attacked snd slso ran from every moving thing, their terrified screams fading into uneasy murmurs. But Batman's attention wasn't on them anymore. His mind was elsewhere, thinking about Scarecrow, and that alone was enough to keep his jaw tight even with a steady pulse.
He knew what Jonathan Crane was capable of. if he had managed to orchestrate multiple gas attacks in less than an hour, the thought of what that man could accomplish with even a few more hours made Batman's gut twist—but his expression, as always, remained unreadable.
Minutes passed before the chaos began to settle. Between Batman, Nightwing, and the GCPD, most of the affected citizens were restrained or unconscious, though subduing them without causing injury had been far from easy. Their erratic movements and sudden bursts of aggression made every engagement unpredictable as each victims were constantly bombarded with visions of nightmare creatures.
But just as the silence began to return to the streets, the night's tension was split apart by an unexpected intrusion.
Every television screen and every digital feed across Gotham flickered—then shifted into static. The eerie hum of the broadcast filled the city, echoing across rooftops and through empty alleys. Within seconds, an image came into focus.
"People of Gotham City…"
The voice that came through was calm but soaked in malice. On-screen was a figure seated in a dimly lit room, his long black hair fell over his shoulders like dark vines.
A tattered straw hat sat crookedly on his head, and beneath it, the dull glint of a gas mask obscured his face. The lenses gleamed a sickly yellow under the faint light, reflecting just enough to make him look more inhuman than ever.
His look seemed like some sort of darker alteration of Freddy Krugger—brown, worn-out garments patched with straw along the hems, and a faded red scarf wrapped around his neck. His gloved hands came into view, each finger capped with a syringe that glimmered faintly in the light, forming claws made of needles.
When he curled his fingers, the motion was slow and deliberate, almost theatrical, letting each needle catch a glint from the dim and ambiant lighting around him.
He looked like something born from a child's nightmare—a walking myth who could transform into the personification of fear in the eyes of victims, with just a sting from anyone of those syringes.
Scarecrow had finally made his grand appearance.
"Damian," Batman's voice came through in it's usually low and firm tone, his eyes fixed on the large advertisment screen right above the scene where he was running damage control. "Trace the broadcast signal. Now."
"I'm on it," Damian replied instantly, fingers flying across the keyboard as multiple windows opened on his screen. The soft hum of his computer was drowned out by the steady tapping of keys. His expression was one of focused determination, the green glow of his monitor reflecting in his sharp eyes.
Within moments, he spoke again. "He's masking the signal, somehow shielding the transmission from any traceable interference. It's like he's running it through a self-contained loop that blocks external access."
Batman's silence stretched for a few seconds, as the police ran clean up. Finally, he gave a quiet hum in response, not of frustration but thought. He had hoped for some kind of clumsiness from Scarecrow, that would surely have made it easier to end his shinannigans before it escalates from this initial stage. But Scarecrow was meticulous with his approach.
Still, it didn't stop the faint, simmering irritation beneath Batman's calm demeanor. Gotham was his city—his garden, as he sometimes called it in his thoughts—and Scarecrow was just another weed growing too wildly. He could never completely get rid of weeds due to his no kill rule, but he could trim them down, again and again, no matter how much they keep coming back.
- - -
[Jason Todd's POV]
The low growl of his motor bike was one of the many things that cut through the quiet hum of Gotham's night, at that area section anyway. Jason leaned slightly forward on his bike, weaving through the dimly lit streets with ease born from habit.
The city stretched out around him—grimy, restless, and alive in that way only Gotham could be. Neon lights flickered along the sidewalks, reflecting off the wet pavement from a recent drizzle. The smell of smoke and oil lingered in the air, carried by the cold breeze rushing against his jacket.
He wasn't out for trouble tonight. Not this time. He just needed a drink—something to take the edge off and maybe, just maybe, a conversation to ground him a little.
There was a decent bar on the east end where he liked to stop by, and if luck was on his side, Ms. Li might be there too. She was easy to talk to, unpretentious, direct with her humor.
There was something about her that pulled him in—a calm steadiness that cut through the noise in his head. Maybe he'd buy her a drink tonight, have a real conversation, see if there was something worth building there.
As he sped past an intersection, the wind whistled around his bike's helmet, muffling the city's distant chaos. Then, suddenly, the massive advertisement screen on the corner of Harbor and Kane flickered. The bright commercial lights glitched into static before cutting abruptly to an image that made Jason instinctively hit the brakes. The tires screeched softly against the tarred road as the bike came to a halt. He looked up.
The screen stabilized, revealing a dark figure in a tattered hat, sitting in shadow. The voice that followed was all too familiar.
"People of Gotham City," Scarecrow's distorted tone echoed through the air, his voice crawling out of the speakers like the poison he spreads. Jason slowly flipped up his visor, the faint reflection of the screen lighting his face beneath the helmet.
"Unfortunately," Scarecrow continued, "due to my incarceration at Arkham, I missed my favorite holiday of the year. So I didn't get to share in the festive spirit of Halloween with you all."
Jason exhaled softly, watching in silence as the image of the madman filled the sky above the street. The eerie flicker of the screen painted the cracked buildings and empty sidewalks around him in shades of sickly yellow and orange.
"But fortunately," Scarecrow went on, his voice growing shrewdly, "I made it in time for a post-Halloween celebration—one I plan to deliver in style. You should all be thrilled… because I'll be spreading fear across Gotham until everyone feels the true spirit of the holiday."
Jason tilted his head slightly, narrowing his eyes. "Yeah… that sounds about right," he muttered under his breath.
Scarecrow leaned forward on the broadcast, the dim light catching the edge of his gas mask. "I love this city. It's my home. Which means we're all one big, terrified family, aren't we? So… enjoy the trick or treat. My treat."
The broadcast ended abruptly, the screen flickering back to its regular ads—now dull and meaningless after the message that just aired. The night seemed quieter for a moment, as if even Gotham itself paused to take a breath.
Jason stayed still for a few seconds longer, the engine of his bike idling beneath him. Then he let out a low sigh. "And the weirdos just keep coming back," he muttered, shaking his head slightly as he flipped the visor back down.
With a few sharp revs of the engine, the roar of the bike echoed through the empty street as he took off again, the sound fading into the hum of the city. The red taillight cut a streak through the night as he sped toward the bar, the faint glow reflecting off the puddles in his wake.
Scarecrow wasn't his problem.
Not tonight. He knew the Bat and his loyal sidekicks would already be on it, chasing the trail, scrambling to stop another chemically induced nightmare before sunrise. He had no interest in getting dragged into that circus again.
No, tonight he wasn't Red Hood. Just Jason Todd—someone trying to grab a few drinks, maybe a few hours of peace, and definitely no family reunions.
At least, that's what he told himself. But he knew that was about to change the instant the insides of his jacket vibrated with a buzz.
RING!!!
- - -
Join me at patreon to read chapters ahead of daily public release.
pàtreøn.cøm/Da_suprememaverick