The warehouse on Miller Avenue had been dark for two days straight, which, to anyone who knew Gotham, meant one of two things. Either the power grid had finally given up on the block entirely, or someone inside preferred the dark almost as much as he did.
Brother Eye had flagged the location an hour ago after cross-referencing procurement patterns with known Joker supply routes. Eleven trucks had come and gone in the last six hours, all arriving empty and leaving heavy. There were seventeen thermal signatures inside, clustered mostly in groups of four that seemed to suggest prior considerations rather than thoughtless mayhem.
Bruce dropped from the adjacent rooftop without a sound, the Symbiote flattening against his armor as he pressed himself to the warehouse's corrugated exterior. Twelve on the ground floor, all arranged in a loose perimeter around a loading bay. Four on the catwalk above. And, at the center of it all, was a gaunt, lanky silhouette that made his jaw tighten on instinct.
The figure moved with boneless theatrics, then gestured with long arms at the crates being stacked below while the others scrambled to obey. Every one of them had burlap sacks over their heads, crudely painted in garish streaks of yellow, green, and purple. The Dark Knight would have believed it without hesitation had someone told him they'd beaten the sacks with those abstract… Smears that seemed to be all the rage recently.
[COMPOSITE SIMILARITY INDEX: 97.2%.]
Bruce's fingers clenched, as if he could already feel the bastard's neck between his fingers. The last impersonator had only scored eighty-nine. This was a whopping nine-seven, which was too close to dismiss. Silently, he slipped in through the roof.
The first went quietly as a tendril looped around his ankle and dragged him into the rafters. Bruce left him zip-tied to a support beam and moved on to the next, dropping behind a stack of crates and another thug, his footfalls dampened by the gooey material.
The second and third fell in quick succession shortly after, with the first choked unconscious in the shadows between shelving units, while the other was clotheslined off the catwalk by a tendril he never saw coming.
The fourth followed moments later, then the fifth, and the sixth; all before any of them could tell what was happening. Bruce worked the edges the way he always had, letting the growing silence do half the work for him. Unease rippled through the remaining thugs as call after call went unanswered, their painted sacks jerking toward every creak and groan the old building let out.
"Careful! I think sumthin's in the room wit' us!"
They finally thought to cluster together, but by then it was already too late. One of them got two rounds off before tendrils wrenched the barrel skyward and Bruce's metal-cladded boot caved in his sack.
Two immediately fired upon him with repurposed fire extinguishers filled with the compound that Brother Eye noted was nearly identical to what Firefly used.
And the moment the Symbiote sensed the picking heat, it retreated between the plates of his armor, leaving Bruce utterly exposed as twin jets of chemical flame turned the loading bay into an inferno.
He rolled behind a concrete pillar, feeling the heat lick at the exposed sections of his suit where the Symbiote had already abandoned him once before and warped the plating into molten slag.
He reached for his belt and found exactly three Batarangs left.
He sent all of them at once, two finding heads and the third embedding itself in a fuel line that forced the thug to drop his extinguisher or be consumed. The man chose wisely. Taking advantage, the Dark Knight closed the distance in two long leaps and drove his plated shin into the man's side.
His hand went to the belt again as the remaining thugs turned their weapons at him. Bruce grimaced when he found nothing.
Hours of uninterrupted combat had burned through his reserves faster than he'd anticipated, leaving him with exactly one smoke pellet, his fists, feet and not much else.
He cracked it against the floor and let the grey swallow the room whole.
Unlike the group, Bruce didn't need eyes.
He had the sonar built into his cowl, the muscle memory of thousands of fights, and a righteous rage he was no longer bothering to leash. The remaining thugs swung blind, hitting crates and each other and empty air while Bruce moved between them like air through gaps, violently dropping one after the other.
By the time the smoke cleared, only the Joker remained.
The Dark Knight could've ended it in a heartbeat, but he wasn't going to. Not without making the clown suffer first, even if Bruce doubted Jack was even capable of suffering in any meaningful sense. He rose from a crouch, wordlessly eyeing the figure at the center of the bay.
His shoulders were loose, his head cocked to the side, holding a butcher's knife low in a reverse grip that felt somewhat unfamiliar. Jack was no slouch with his fists or a blade despite what his gangly figure suggested, owing to what Bruce could only describe as methhead strength, but in every prior encounter he had always favored a proper grip. "Come on, Batsy! Don't be shy! I've been DYING to see you!"
Bruce closed in and nearly lost his throat for it as the knife came up in a vicious arc that'd have opened him from collarbone to chin if he hadn't jerked back at the last instant. Still, the blade managed to kiss the surface of his cowl and peel a thin line up the reinforced polymer. He threw a straight right that the figure fluidly ducked under, before countering with a lateral slash aimed at the tendons in his wrist.
Bruce caught the knife hand, twisted, and felt resistance he hadn't expected.
The figure reversed the grip mid-grapple, nearly slipping free, then drove a knee into Bruce's hip that was aimed at the femoral nerve with precision the Joker had never once displayed nor cared for. The Dark knight ate the hit, trapped the leg, before elbowing the figure's temple, and the burlap sack tore.
Beneath it was not the chalk-white skin or the acid-green hair or the permanent rictus grin he'd been hunting for days.
What stared back at Bruce was a gaunt, scarred face covered in a hundred tally marks and then some carved into every inch of visible skin in neat rows that ran from his scalp to his jawline and disappeared far, far beneath the stolen purple suit.
"Victor Zsasz."
The serial killer grinned, and it was a gnarly, wretched thing, rivaled only by the mania that possessed Jack.
This was man who counted lives the way accountants counted receipts. He wasn't the Joker, but like Jack, he was one of the few who had ever truly tested Bruce's code. Was there any hope for redemption for a man like this? Wouldn't the world simply breathe easier with him gone? "Disappointed, Bats?"
"I didn't take you for the kind who takes orders."
Zsasz's grin stretched a fraction wider. "I don't usually, but the clown has a way with words." Bruce suspected the free rein to hunt Gotham's populace at his leisure had more to do with it than any speech. Seizing the knife hand, Bruce slowly twisted until the wrist dislocated with a pop.
Zsasz screamed as the knife clattered to the floor, but not before trying for a retaliatory swing which Bruce apathetically caught and bent at an angle. The serial killer immediately dropped to his knees, clamoring after the knife like a drowning man would driftwood, only to still when he stomped down on his right ankle.
The screaming would've made a normal man flinch, but the Dark Knight was neither normal, nor a mere man.
In the quietest, darkest corners of his mind, Bruce saw himself a symbol of vengeance, much the same way Jack believed himself an agent of chaos. A symbol that could not flinch, could not fear, could not feel, not even while facing all the evils the world had to offer… Or enacting cruelty on said evils that would leave hardened ex-cons and seasoned soldiers blue in the face.
Beneath his boot, Zsasz sprawled in a broken heap, limbs twisted at angles that guaranteed months of rehabilitation and several lifetimes of complications… He was still breathing, still conscious, still grinning through bloodstained teeth. How Bruce wished he wasn't. Breathing, that was. "You're getting sloppy, Bat… Used to be you'd stop at the arms."
"Where is HE?!"
"C'm-C'mon, Bat! You know me," Zsasz sputtered through clattering teeth. "I'm not one of those snivelling pussies you can just intimi—!"
"WHERE?!!"
Much to his annoyance, the killer simply laughed. "Preparing another disaster, maybe? Who knows?! Hehehe!" A glint of satisfaction surfaced in his eyes. "Yo-You look like me, Bat. Do it. Kill me. Free me from my misery… You know you want to, I can hear it in your voice." It would certainly be a shame to miss how all this would conclude, but for Zsasz in particular, getting THE BAT to finally cross the line would be the bigger prize by a mile.
It would prove him right, that life was suffering, and that 'liberating' the broken and the mad from it was the merciful thing to do.
On any other night, Bruce wouldn't have entertained the thought, but his patience with the Code had been thinning for days now and Zsasz, raving mad as he was, had always had a talent for finding the cracks. If the killer wasn't the closest thing he had to a lead on the Joker, he'd have gladly crushed his windpipe. Instead, he roared, the featureless mask splitting into two jagged rows of fangs that bared the fleshy pink tissue beneath.
There wasn't much of Bruce in what followed, nor the Batman for that matter. Bruce would not even deign to rationalize it beyond that he wanted-needed to release the pent-up rage he had been trying his damndest to temper. And when the Dark Knight came to, it was to a face that just barely qualified as one anymore.
A single punch was all it took to reduce Zsasz's teeth to powder, which was going to make extracting information considerably harder, but he'd manage.
What worried him far more was how effortlessly a broken man on the ground had gotten under his skin, and more worryingly still was how eager he'd been to give in to his dark impulses… Bruce looked at the black material coating his hands, then grimaced. Vast as the Symbiote's power was, it wasn't without a cost, it seemed.
He dragged Zsasz out by the collar and tossed him into the back of the Batmobile with no more ceremony than one would afford a bag of garbage, then went back for the rest, hauling one and two at a time through the loading bay doors.
Depositing them in a row on the sidewalk, Bruce then doused the crates in whatever flammable material he could find… The fire caught fast and spread even faster.
He watched it burn for longer than needed, then climbed into the Batmobile and reached for the compartment beneath the dash where the spare utility belt should have been, to find it as empty as the one around his waist… So was the secondary cache in the trunk, and the tertiary one bolted under the passenger seat.
All of them, without fail, had been spent, because the man usually responsible for restocking them was currently locked in the very Cave he used to keep spotless. And Bruce hadn't even deigned to pay him a visit…
He drove in silence, seemingly oblivious to the burning city that painted the tinted glass in streaks of orange and green while Zsasz's limp weight thudded against trunk that doubled as holding cells with every sharp turn.
The Batcave greeted him the way it always did, with the hum of generators and the drip of water echoing in some corner of the natural formation Bruce had repurposed into his lair.
Bruce dragged Zsasz through the main chamber without a glance at the cells, deposited the serial killer into the anechoic room he'd originally designed for sensory deprivation therapy, and locked the door behind him. The serial killer worshipped death, and reveled in the act of taking life, so Bruce was curious to see how he'd fare when given a taste of the void he so eagerly sent others to.
In the meantime…
Slowly, Bruce made his way to the armory and started to restock.
He swapped the damaged chestplate for an intact spare, replaced his gauntlets and greaves, then turned to the replacement cowl sitting on the bench. He reached for it, but didn't put it on. Instead, he walked toward the cells.
Dick was pacing in his padded restraints, muttering nursery rhymes to himself. Selina sat motionless in hers, eyes open and fixed on nothing in particular. Ted and Barbara were there too, which meant Rowan had found and brought them in at some point. Bruce didn't linger… He wasn't here for them. He'd come to seek permission and forgiveness from the man he considered his father in all but blood.
Bruce touched the override on the console, and the glass panels on the other cells instantly shifted from transparent to opaque. The sound dampeners engaged a second later, sealing the occupants in their own private little worlds.
Alfred's cell alone, he left clear. "Alfred."
He pulled a chair from the corner, set it in front of the glass, and sat.
"The prodigal son returns at last." Alfred's voice was thin and theatrical, even as the Affliction wringed each word for every sliver of mockery it could. "Shall I fetch the fatted calf…? Or have you already slaughtered it on one of your little outings?"
Bruce opened his mouth, then closed it.
For once, he was unable to find a response, or any word for that matter.
He'd fought monsters thrice his size; stared down the barrels of men who'd have loved nothing more than the bragging rights of killing the Bat, and yet here he was, stumped by a confession to Alfred. He might've laughed at himself if his sense of humor hadn't died the same night his parents did, or if he didn't find his own hesitance so… Painfully pathetic.
"Silent treatment, is it? How very you, Master Bruce. You always did prefer brooding to conversati—"
"Do you remember when I was nine?"
The mockery faltered, not because clarity had returned to the old man, but because the change in topic had caught even the Affliction off guard.
"The Whitmore boy. He was twelve, I think? Maybe thirteen. Kept shoving me into the lockers after my parents died and calling me 'the orphan.' You picked me up from school that day and didn't say a word during the drive home… I thought you were angry with me for getting into a fight, but when we got to the Manor, you took me to the garden and taught me how to throw my first proper punch."
His lips curved slightly, despite himself.
"You said, 'A gentleman should never start a fight, Master Bruce, but he should always know how to finish one.' Then you made me practice on the heavy bag until my knuckles bled, and wrapped them yourself afterward without a single lecture. I never lost a school fight after that day."
"How touchi—" The butler snarled, but Bruce paid it no mind. Even if Alfred wasn't afflicted, he could never really bring himself to be upset with the old man.
"You drove me to my first date. Rebecca Alston." Bruce kept going, choking Alfred's taunt before it could be spoke. "You waited in the car for three hours because I told you I'd be fine, and you said, 'Of course you will, sir.' And then you sat in that parking lot, reading the same newspaper front to back. I never told you, but she kissed me that night. I wanted to at first…"
But he hadn't, because he was a shy teenager, and which shy teenager would willingly tell their father about their first kiss?
"Why didn't you?"
"I was afraid you'd make fun of me…"
"I most certainly would have, sir." The words left Alfred fractured, half-dripping with the Toxin's usual venom and half-soaked in warmth even the affliction couldn't bury. Smiling fondly at the memory, Bruce leaned forward, finally gathering the courage to confess, "I'm going to kill him, Alfred."
The ever-present grin that had been plastered across the old man's face for days vanished at last. "I'm going to find the Joker, and I'm going to end it, once and for all. And then I'm turning myself in."
"… What did you just say?"
"I can't leave Gotham without a Batman. So I'm leaving the mantle to Rowan. Wayne Enterprises too, when he's old enough. The Cave, the safehouses, the contingencies, everything. Lucius will handle the transition until the boy's ready." Bruce leaned back, glaring at the ceiling. "I'll record holographic tutorials for every piece of equipment I've kept from him. I was wrong to… He's earned it. All of it."
He stared at the glass, at Alfred's rigid silhouette that had not moved once since he started speaking. It was an enormous weight to drop on two boys, he knew that, but Batman could not kill… Not ever. And the moment he did, the man beneath the cowl could no longer claim the right to wear it.
"When you wake up, and you will wake up, I need you to take care of them. Rowan and Dick. I need you to help them the way you helped me…. No, better than you helped me, because I turned out... Well. You know how I turned out."
The butler's mouth opened, then closed, then opened again.
For a split second, it looked like Alfred Pennyworth had regained a semblance of lucidity. Like he was… Present, and utterly devastated. And then he started to cackle.
"I'm sorry, Alfred. And thank you, for everything."
—————
A/N: You know, recently I've done some deep dives into Warhammer lore, and the more I read about it, the less the Emperor's actions and choices make sense. I mean, you're telling the 12ft tall psychic Space God with super tech couldn't fix the nails hammered into Angron's skull? Or save his brothers and sisters?
I know the official explanation is that the Great Crusade, time, logistics, blah… blah…, but do you fucking buy that? Because I don't. Big E could've killed every single one of the slavers by literally dropping on them from space. It'd have been spectacular, and would've ensured Angron's loyalty forever.
He could see the fucking future, and couldn't predict or take measures to prevent the Heresy? Or which of his Sons would turn against him? I don't buy it. It sounds like a load of horseshit. And to make matters worse, all the loyalist Primarchs are, somehow, good for the redevelopment of the Imperium should the worst case scenario come to pass. The traitors all have flaws that could have led the Imperium to endless wars if left alone.
Take Magnus, for eaxmple. He could've become a scholar to humanity, but he's also arrogant in the sense that he's too curious about everything and once convinced by his own judgement would ignore all warning. That's basically what happened to the Webway. It was only a matter of time before he decided to poke and prod the Deep Warp and rouse something even worse than the Chaos Gods.
Keep in mind, there are things not even Tzeench fw, like the Well of Eternity. So he literally represents 'curiosity kills the cat.' And sometimes it's just best to let sleeping dragons lie.
Perturabo's too resentful. He could have been a builder of civilization, but he could have easily turned to war if he felt like he was being undervalued for his works.
Angron and his World Eaters were too bloodthirsty, and given their Primarch's past, I feel like they'd have become another Thunder Warriors.
Horus was… Well, he's Horus. He's a worse Sanguinius with too much pride. Think all the worse flaws in the traitor Primarchs put into one.
Konrad was perfect for horror, and for intimidation to preserve the Imperium's authority during time of war, but not much else. The dude's incapable of seeing the fact that people and future could change. You'd not want this motherfucker designing the justice system, especially since he's known to brutalize people for crimes they have yet committed.
Mortarion was a hypocrite, though granted a symapthetic hypocrite, and Lorgar would have definitely spawned another Chaos God without the Emperor around, or attempted to become one himself due to his need to worship, and so on.
On the other side, we have Sanguinius and Vulkan, who're basically a better Konrad/Horus and 40K's Jesus. They are both charismatic spiritual leaders who understands mortals' failings, are empathetic and could uplift them through their presences alone.
Russ and his Space Wolves are what Angron and the World Eaters wish they could be. And if we're talking about resistance against tyranny, the Khan has that taken care of too!
The Lion's basically Horus, but without the excessive pride and need for external validation that would have brought about Amargeddon. Ferrus Manus/Dorn are Perturabo, but less like a petulent child constantly in need of acknowledgement. They knows when to be a builder, and when to be a general.
And Roboute has the power of, drums please, EXCELLLLLLLL!!!!!!
I could go on and on and on, but basically, the loyalists are all fucking perfect for rebuilding civilization, while the traitors all have some kinds of catatrosphic flaws. So my theory is that Big E knew about the Heresy, maybe he even allowed it to happen and was being selective towards which of the Primarchs to keep, and which to discard like he did the Thunder Warriors.
The only person who does not quite fit this theory is Fulgrim, whose desire of perfection could never have been achieved, but they gave us Clonegrim already.
For 10,000 years nobody could clone a stable Primarch due to metaphysical and Warp bullshit, and suddenly Fabius succeeded in cloning a perfect Fulgrim V2? If I had to guess Fulgrim needed to fall to seperate the Good and the Bad in him. The Bad went to Slaanesh, which was his impossible desire for perfection, and everything Good about the Primarch to Clonegrim.
And given how the Emperor's Children react to him, I'd say it makes sense. Why else would they believe Clonegrim to be their Genefather otherwise?
But why did Big E do it? Well, I'm glad you asked! Because his plan was interfered with. I don't think he meant for the Primarchs to be lost, or to be sacrificial pieces at first. I think they were supposed to supplement each other, but then fucking Erda happened (Prolly was manipulated by the Chaos Gods), and he had to pivot to Plan B. If he couldn't preserve them all, he'd preserve the ones that could survive the fall and lead Humanity again once the major threats are dealt with.
If we look at thing this way, it makes more sense than the Emperor just being a shitty dad and an arrogant dumbass who believed his Primarchs would never betray him. And even if he were, the dude's been alive for god knows how long and should be well aware of human nature. It does not make sense for him to play favorite.
I also think he's doing it partly because he knows he'll become the Dark King. Big E was already strong enough to defeat the Chaos God as a bioengineered psychic superhuman, imagine how fucking ridiculous the Dark King would be! Maybe he knows it's inevitable and wants the traitors to bolster Chaos' forces, so the Dark King could drag the Tyrannids, Chaos, the Orks and the Necrons down with him, leaving the galaxy in the control of the remnants of the Imperium!
So essentially:
Guilliman runs the state.
Dorn preserves institutions and defenses.
Lion handles major wars.
Russ handles controlled violence and enforcement.
Khan keeps the system from becoming a prison.
Vulkan keeps it humane.
Corax watches for oppression and corruption.
Ferrus rebuilds industry if he could be resurrected.
Clonegrim rebuilds culture, aesthetics, education, and aspiration.
Sanguinius handles the spiritual/Warp side.
I could be wrong though…
No, no, no! Fuck you, I'm fucking right! I'm not crazy! You are! This is the only way it makes any fucking sense!!! I'll not hear it!
I KNOW THE MIND OF GAWWWWWDDDDD!!!
Anyway… Here's the link to my: P 4 tr 3on . C0m (slash) Regularrr