Chapter Text
The cold wind of Gotham sliced through the broken rafters of the abandoned factory, howling between the cracks like a warning. Bruce’s jaw clenched as a shiver crept down his spine, the wind an unwelcome but familiar feeling between the crevices of his suit. The factory had stood for centuries on the edge of Gotham’s harbor—long forgotten up until recently. Rumors of activity had surfaced over the past few weeks: shadows flitting through the windows, hushed transactions in the dead of night. A gang had taken up residence within the crumbling walls, dealing in illegal contraband and vanishing before anyone could pin them down, that is, until now. Bruce had studied their patterns and tracked their movements, making an educated guess as to where they would land next and now, here they are, exactly where he had predicted them to be.
He adjusted quietly from his position within the inside of the roof's infrastructure, his gaze trained on the figures below, in comparison to the eerie quiet winds from above, below him erupted with life, men taping up boxes and hauling them into the back of an unmarked truck. Others stood guard, scanning the darkness with watchful eyes. Bruce narrowed his gaze. With an irritated faint huff, he noted the unfamiliar weapons in their hands—advanced, military-grade, something that lowly thugs shouldn't have access to, how they obtained them was unbeknownst to him. Below, a louder voice barked orders, clearly the one in charge as the men carried out their duties.
Without a sound, Bruce gripped a support beam and dropped to the catwalk on the second floor. The weight of the suit never betrayed him—his steps landed soft against the cold metal, quieter than breath. He melted into the shadows, becoming part of the factory’s long-forgotten darkness as he stalked his way through the second floor, his eyes still trained on the men below.
From his belt, Bruce unlatches a compact device, its sleek form gleaming faintly in the low light. His eyes swept the room, then locked onto the power box. With practiced ease, he pressed the device against its panel. A low hum, a flash of sparks—and the factory plunged into blackness.
Panic followed, sharp and immediate.
“What the hell?!” one voice shouted.
Bruce’s lenses flicked into night vision, casting the room in ghostly green outlines as he quickly advanced. “Find the damn power box!” another snarled—sharper, commanding. But before any of them could act, Bruce dropped from above, silent as a shadow.
Weapons snapped up, ready to fire at the first movement, but it didn’t matter. He was already in motion.
The first man barely had time to lift his flashlight before Bruce struck—sweeping him off his feet and slamming him flat onto his back with a brutal thud as he yelped. The flashlight clattered to the ground and went dark.
Chaos erupted.
Gunfire lit the room up in violent flashes, strobing through the darkness as they aim for whatever lurked in the darkness. Yells echoed as confusion took hold. Bruce moved like smoke—striking, vanishing, reappearing again behind another target. Each blow was deliberate, each throw of a batarang swift and silent. A bulky guard lunged toward him, only to crumple beneath a kick that sent him into a stack of crates. Bullets tore through the air, missing by inches as Bruce twisted out of their path, his cape trailing in sharp arcs like a blade of shadow.
One by one, they fell—overpowered by something they couldn’t see, couldn’t track, couldn’t stop. The fight was over before it even began. Silence settled heavy over the factory, broken only by the low groans of the men scattered across the floor. Some curled into themselves, others sprawled motionless—breathing, but barely. Above them, the overhead lights flickered once, then buzzed back to life, casting everything in a sterile glow.
Bruce winced, eyes narrowing as the lenses in his eyes deactivated. The sudden brightness stung after the clarity of night vision. He stood still for a beat, letting his senses readjust, his breath steady and low beneath the cowl.
Then he saw it.
Patches sewn onto their jackets—dark green, stitched with a familiar symbol.
A question mark.
His stomach turned.
The Riddler.
It had been a year since the city drowned—since the bombs went off and the lies came to light. Since Gotham was stripped bare and left bleeding. Edward Nashton was locked away in Arkham, but his legacy never needed a cell. The scars he left behind ran too deep, poisoning Gotham’s bloodstream.
Bruce stepped forward, boots scraping against the dirty and blood-slick concrete. His eyes lingered on one of the men—a younger one, maybe early twenties. A follower. Just like the others, his chest tightened slightly.
The forums hadn’t gone dark after the attack. They’d grown. Mutated. A digital hive of conspiracies and manifestos, feeding off Gotham’s fear like vultures circling a dying city. The Riddler's followers believed every word he said. They saw themselves in him. They wanted more.
Now, they’ve gotten enough confidence to act outside of the screens, operating and moving in live time yet still hiding behind his ideology like it was scripture.
Bruce’s jaw tightened unconsciously as he stared mindlessly at the men beneath him, inspecting their faces and the masks that cover them.
The Riddler may have been behind bars.
But the rot?
The rot was still here.
He forced his mind to focus—pulled it away from the men before him and turned it toward the crates. One step at a time. That was how the rot revealed itself.
Bruce knelt, gloved fingers pressing into the edge of the nearest container. The wood creaked under the pressure as he slowly pried the lid open. No sudden movements. Just control.
He peered inside.
Cookies.
Neatly stacked boxes of generic store-bought snacks—the kind lining shelves in corner stores across the Narrows. Innocuous. Familiar.
Too familiar.
He reached in, digging past the surface layer, his movements deliberate. His fingers brushed cardboard, then plastic… then cold metal.
There it was.
Beneath the sweets, the truth.
Coils of insulated wire. Circuit boards. Optical lenses. Lithium cells. Fragments of something larger. Devices stripped down to their most dangerous pieces. Black market tech—expensive, traceable, and never meant to be in hands like these.
Bruce stared down at the cargo, eyes narrowing behind the cowl.
This wasn’t just drug running. This was infrastructure. Tools for surveillance. For disruption. For control.
Bruce drags his gaze across the technology, ever since the flood, the city had been rebuilding itself, licking its wounds from the chaos that wrecked its infrastructure. But he had a sinking feeling deep in his gut, that something had changed throughout the past year, a disturbance in the world, and it wasn't just about chaos anymore, and this only confirmed this eerie feeling.
Someone was building something and this—this was only the beginning of it. But the question is, who?
He traced a gloved hand across the wires, the polished metal, the delicate sensors. Then he stood, silent as ever, and made his way to the next crate. His eyes scanned every corner, searching for anything—anything that might point to where this shipment was headed. But the sides of the crate were bare. No shipping label. No barcode. No markings at all.
Nothing.
Another lid came off with a groan of wood and nails. More of the same—store-bought sweets hiding state-of-the-art tech. The pattern was clear, and that was the problem. Whoever was behind this was good. Careful. Using Gotham’s broken supply routes as a cover. In a city half underwater, no one was watching the docks anymore.
And these men? Riddler’s leftovers? They were just handlers. They weren’t keeping the tech. They were moving it.
But where?
Bruce’s brow furrowed behind the cowl. His frustration was quiet, but it simmered beneath the surface. He turned away, cape sweeping behind him, just as the distant wail of sirens pierced the silence. Red and blue light bled through the broken windows, crawling up the walls like an alarm.
Then came the crash of the front doors bursting open, officers flooding the scene.
“GCPD! Hands where we can see ‘em!”
Officers stormed the factory, weapons drawn, boots slamming against the concrete as they flooded in. Their eyes scanned the room—guns tracking until they froze at the sight of him.
The Batman.
Standing alone.
The bodies of semi-unconscious men at his feet.
“Put those guns down!” a familiar voice barked.
Lieutenant James Gordon stepped into view, his eyes locking with Bruce’s before sweeping over the scene. The officers hesitated, then slowly lowered their weapons. More filtered in behind him, spreading through the warehouse, checking the truck, the crates, the shadows.
“Christ,” Gordon muttered, approaching. “You could’ve waited, y’know. Let us take a crack at this before… all that.” He motioned vaguely to the downed men, his tone caught somewhere between exasperation and awe.
Bruce didn’t answer the comment. He turned back toward the crates.
“This isn’t a drug bust,” he said flatly. “It’s a black market shipment.”
Gordon followed, leaning over the edge of the open container. His eyes widened at the tangle of hardware hidden beneath the sugar-coated camouflage.
“They were loading the truck with these,” Bruce continued. “No markings. No origin.
Someone’s moving high-level tech through Gotham’s blind spots. And it’s not just some gang pushing street products.”
Gordon let out a slow breath. “You think it’s military-grade?”
Bruce didn’t look at him. “Worse.”
Gordon exhaled hard, dragging a hand down his face as the weight of the situation set in. He cast a glance around at the officers moving through the scene before turning back toward Bruce.
“Gotham doesn’t make tech like this,” he said flatly.
Bruce met his eyes, voice low. “I know.”
He turned away from the crates, stepping back as the arrested men were hoisted to their feet, wrists bound in steel. They staggered past, some groaning, others staying quiet. Bruce watched each one, cold and unreadable. But one face stuck—bald, scar across the temple. The one who gave the orders.
“Try him,” Bruce said, not looking away. “The one with the scar. He was in charge.”
Around them, the factory buzzed with movement—boots scuffing against concrete, radios crackling, truck doors swinging open. Bruce’s voice cut through it with the same sharp edge.
“Gotham doesn’t have the funding, the access, or the network to move this kind of equipment.”
Gordon gave him a sidelong look. “Then we find out who does.”
Bruce nodded once.
Gordon stepped closer, lowering his voice as he surveyed the tech again. “We could try to reverse-engineer it. Break it down, trace the parts. But whoever built this—they don’t want to be found. No fingerprints. No trail.”
He sighed, eyes heavy.
“Aliens in capes. Now this.” He muttered, almost to himself. “Hell of a month.”
The words hung awkwardly in the air. But Bruce caught them.
He turned his head slowly. “Aliens?”
The word felt strange in his mouth—foreign, detached. But his tone didn’t betray much. Just curiosity, tempered by restraint.
Gordon hesitated. Then nodded.
“There’ve been… reports. Out past the city line. People see things. Things they can’t explain. Not just tech—something bigger. Freaky stuff. Not human.” He paused. “You’ve heard of Metropolis, right?”
Bruce’s eyes narrowed behind the cowl. The name stirred something. Not fear—something quieter. Tension.
Metropolis.
The “City of Tomorrow.” Clean skies. Clean streets. Light where Gotham only had shadow. A symbol of what cities could be if they weren’t rotting from the inside.
“I’ve heard of it,” Bruce said, his voice distant. “But not that.”
Gordon gave a quiet hum, eyes fixed on the aftermath around them—the men, the crates, the tech glowing faintly under flickering warehouse lights.
“It’s not what you’d expect,” he said, voice low—meant only for the vigilante beside him.
“It’s everywhere now. News. Socials. Papers. People are calling him an alien, but he looks like… anyone else. Humans. Says he’s here to help.”
A pause.
“They’re calling him a hero over there. Metropolis. Crime rate’s at an all-time low. The streets are clean. People feel safe.” Gordon’s voice dipped further. “They call him Superman.”
He let the word hang.
“I looked into it. Had to. This guy can fly, Batman. Fly.”
Gordon turned, finally meeting Bruce’s eyes.
But Bruce was already watching him.
Silence sat between them—thick, unsettled.
A flying man. A hero. Bigger than the symbol he wears.
Bruce’s jaw tensed. His thoughts turned hard and fast, spiraling beneath the calm of the cowl. How had this escaped him? How had someone like that gone unnoticed?
But then again… things have been different lately.
Since the flood, Gotham had been in freefall. Crime bleeding into every street corner, every broken home. Desperation had become routine. But beneath the chaos, there was something else—something Bruce couldn’t name. A shift. A pressure in the air.
Fear.
Not just of him.
Of something else.
Something bigger.
For years, the Bat had loomed as the thing in the dark—the one the underworld whispered about. But now… there was something else out there. And maybe the criminals felt it, too. Something not born of fear, but of power. Power they couldn’t understand. Couldn’t outrun.
Bruce’s eyes flicked back to the crates—stacks of foreign tech, cold and silent.
Gordon cleared his throat, grounding the moment again.
“I’ll get my men to lean on Scarface. See if he knows who’s calling the shots. If we’re lucky, we can shut this whole thing down before it spreads further.”
Bruce nodded once, still focused.
“I’ll follow the trail myself,” he said quietly, then stepped back from the scene.
He moved through the chaos without hesitation. Officers parted as he passed, some giving quiet nods, others just staring. They were used to his presence—but not entirely comfortable with it. They never would be.
Outside, the night hit him—cool, thick with the weight of rain yet to fall. The city stretched before him in silhouette. Broken. Beaten. But still standing.
His mind raced, but something inside had settled. The city was changing. The world was changing.
So he would change too.
This Superman—this alien dressed as a man, worshipped like a god—might have earned Metropolis’s trust. But Bruce didn’t believe in blind faith. Not anymore. Though he believed in hope, in truth, he had seen what hope looked like when it was twisted into something else.
Yet these crates. The gang. Riddlers masses. The weaponized tech.
It was all connected.
And he was going to find out how.
Because beneath the noise and the headlines and the stories of a hero who could fly, something else was moving.
And Bruce would be the one to uncover it.
Starting with the alien.
Starting with Superman.