From corleyj@dakotacom.net Sun Nov 21 21:42:43 1999 Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 22:45:05 -0700 From: Jason Corley To: brainy9@eyrie.org It's snowing, an early dry snow that comes down out of a black night tasting like ashes and feeling like dust, disappearing in the dirty slush along the dark streets and flaking along the shoulders of the few coat-cloaked shadows that slink along the street in the early-morning hours of a Tuesday. The crimes tonight are of the desperate and the hated - the victims cold and unheeding. There is the jolt of adrenaline when something unusual happens, finally, /something/, but, god, not that. It's a frenzied call out on a police band: "Clear for emergency traffic! *KWEEEEEPZZZcCKT*...kham Asylum, it's Two-Face's gang, we think they're trying a breakout...CZZCKT..inside the walls...CZCKT under top security lockdown request backup assistance from all available units immediately. *SKRRRCKT*." "Units four, twelve, nineteen, respond immediately to code four-twelve, Arkham Asylum, unit seven-eighteen..." the dispatcher's voice begins to crisply direct officers there, by the book, closest to furthest, most available to most busy, lowest-ranking to highest-ranking, ambulances, fire engines, like reading out of a police manual. Somewhere on a winding backroad, The Batmobile races, speeding over the gray watery slush that lines the twisting strip of pavement. Steering the black car through the natural halls formed by the intertwining canopy of skeletal trees, the Dark Knight Detective's face is intent, though weary. Lines in his jawline accentuate the frown as he hears the relayed messages. Tuesday. The Twenty-second. 11-22, no less. Always like this in the winter, he thinks, turning down a dangerously narrow country road - a shortcut known only to himself and a few old locals who still frequent the wooded outskirts. A shortcut to the even more twisted road leading to Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Batman goes IC. The asylum lights are glaringly bright: the gates closed. As Batman leaves his dark vehicle behind in the shadows, he can hear a smatter of gunfire from somewhere on the premises. Where to begin? The target? The gates which the criminals must surely try to break through to escape? The entrance doors hanging open and swaying in the dry breeze? Batman stalks towards the Asylum itself, vaulting onto one of the high iron gates. He makes his way to a rooftop hatchway, intending to drop into the corridor where Harvey Dent's cell is currently located. Where its always been located. He's gone, he's gone, he's gone, the whispers float up out of the cell windows as Batman passes over the barred skylights of some of the other prisoners. The hatchway is locked but there are ways around such things. There is the sound of a scuffle down in the hallway below the hatchway. Batman removes a module from his belt and unscrews the cap of it. Tipping it over he removes a set of slender metal rods and picks. Judging the right one for the job by touch, he sets about opening the hatchway without setting off alarms (any that aren't already going haywire) and seeing just what's going on inside. Perhaps oddly, the alarms on the hatch seem to be working - the perimeter must still be in effect. The shrill sound of the alarm floats out now as the hatch slides open. There appears to be a struggle going on between an Arkham orderly in his grey-green scrubs and thick grey boots and a man wearing half a Halloween mask. A gun has been kicked over to one side of the hallway. Two-Face's door is wide open, so is Harvey Dent's, but none of the other doors in the corridor are. There are no more gunshots from within the building. [OOC] Two-Face says, "One door, that is. ;)" Falling to the laquered floor tiles, Batman takes the opportunity of the drop to fan his cape out, edges clasped in his outstretched hands. It slows him a tad and he lands relatively soundlessly near the struggling men. As he hits the ground and drops into a crouch, he reaches for the demi-masked individual's mask band, attempting to drag him from the orderly. The masked man swings around a fist wildly at the orderly as Batman reaches for him, which is fortunate for him, because the blow pushes him off balance and Batman's grab goes wide. The orderly is surprised so much that he stumbles even further back. The masked man hesitates. He's probably going to try for that gun again, now that the orderly is away from him. Batman fluidly takes a batarang from his belt and hurls it end-over-end at the gun, intending to have a sharp end stick through the hole of the trigger guard and pin the weapon to the ground. [Gotham] Batman attempts his first dubious stunt of the evening. [Gotham] Two-Face says, "Sheesh, man, you know I'm a sucker for that stuff." The batarang 'snicks' into the ancient plaster and the gun is frozen in place. The masked man struggles with it a little. The orderly turns to put his back to Batman's. "I think this is the last one." he says lowly. "I think this is it, as far as he got." The masked man then gets to his feet and bolts up the hallway in the opposite direction, taking to his heels. Glancing for a silent second over a draped shoulder at the orderly, Batman's expression show his doubts. Nothing's that simple with Two-Face. Then he's suddenly rushing down the hallway after the escaping man in the mask, running past the all too familiar row of names. The masked man slams up against the door, which opens, and he goes racing around a corner. "There's one! Get him!" comes the shout, presumably of another officer or an orderly. Batman pages: Which door did the guy slam into? Harv's cell door? You paged Batman with 'Door at the end of the hall, leading to another hallway exactly like this one - at the opposite corner there is a stairwell, maybe he is headed in that direction.'. Batman turns the corner, gauging the fleeing figure's most like route. He leaps into the air and catches onto a bar leading to a flourescent light fixture in the ceiling. He swings up and over into a flip, intending to use the momentum and whatever ground he's gained on the fugitive to land in front of him. The thug had paused when he heard the shout, and had only started running again, so it is a trivial matter to get in front of him. "#*&$*#!" he says enthusiastically. This close to him, he looks awfully young. He looks for a way around Batman, then starts backpedalling, apparently wanting to try his luck in an ancillary hall. The eye Batman can see is scared. Batman simply raises a palm in a blunt but relatively harmless strike to the masked man's chest, attempting to knock him off balance as he starts his backwards run. He advances with a cold and displeased expression, the set of his shoulders leaning in on the man. His pace is slow and deliberate. Inevitable. The man stumbles back and thumps up against the wall. He flails a fist out at Batman, then an inexpert but enthusiastic kick. Lot of wiry strength, lot of fight, no skill at all. Batman takes the fist to the ribs. He feels it, but he doesn't let it show in his icy features. He then snaps down his forearm gauntlet to block the kick and push the leg aside. "Enough." he says. "Where is Two-Face?" The man snivels, from the floor, holding up a hand to ward off more blows "I dunno, I dunno, I dunno, we were s'posed to break in an' get him but I was th'only one that made it this far. I got the guy to open the door but then that #&**&# made a grab for me..." He whines, "Don't hit me, I got rights!" A policeman and an orderly round the corner. The orderly says, "Good. We got him." The policeman gives Batman a long incredulous stare but the orderly just looks right through the black-caped figure as they approach. Batman slants his gaze towards the policeman. "He's yours. I'm going to check the cell." He turns from the cornered malefactor, pace quickening a little as he returns to the hallway where the former District Attorney's cell is located. He moves to the doorway, face impassive but his eyes behind the mask alert and concerned. The orderly is standing at the door, just staring into the cell. The glaring searchlight has been turned on this cell, sending arcs of black and white light down through the sixteen bars of the window. The bed is neatly tucked in at the bottom and crazily mussed at the top. Sitting exactly in the middle of the bed is Two-Face, his horrible visage divided again, into four, light at the top and dark at the bottom, by the wild shadows of the cell. He has his hands folded around each other and he is staring at the door. When Batman looms into it he gives a horrible smirk. "Stop /and/ we'll shoot." he snarls with a laugh. "All the way to the door but couldn't get back out. So many people can only go one way, I've found. In but not out." Batman once more finds it in himself to keep from wincing at the torture inflicted on the face and in the voice of his friend. A black splotch in the doorway as his cape rests formlessly around him, he squints into the shadows. "One way. That doesn't sound like you Harvey." Batman says, voice low, restrained. He lets his gaze trail around the floor and walls, as if seeking some indication of what backup plan Two-Face has. Two-Face is just sitting there smirking at him. The cell is bare of any ornamentation. One side is clean and swept and pristine. The other is filled with mold and a horrible smell and crumbling dirt. "No, but we can't exactly pick and choose who we hire when we're in here." he says. "We can either pick or we can choose, but not both, and that just doesn't work. You really need to be able to do /both/." Two-Face lowers his voice a little. "Did you really think I would leave? I was committed here by court order, you know." Batman stays in the doorway, watching the bad eye stare out at him through the darkness. He watches the unblinking eye, the window to the corrupt part of Dent's soul. "Where did you get this batch from? Cobblepot?" He shakes his head a little. "Whoever it was, you got a bad deal. Street kids. Lucky for all of us that nobody was badly hurt." Two-Face tilts his head and the shadow shifts to hide the horrible scars, so it is a weirdly incongrous image when he snarls in an ugly, vicious tone: "Oh, we think you'll be surprised." he snarls. "I heard gunshots...and /I/ heard them stop. People hardly /ever/ stop shooting unless someone is hurt." He sneers in a manner that would make the most handsome movie star look ugly. Batman looks at the leering expression distastefully, a tight scowl on his lips. He glances out towards the hallway, seeing if there are in fact any indications of the status of the other breakout crew, guards, and police. "What did this get you, Two-Face? You'll still be here, counting the hours. Stuck with yourself." Two-Face looks back up, returning his awful visage to the light. "Why, it got us a visitor." he says. "Two if you count the orderly. I think I will count the orderly. For tidiness." A pause. "Yes," he says. He opens his hand and reveals the coin, unmarred face up. "I'll still be here." Batman looks down at the coin as it glints in the spotlight's strirated beams. He knows the power the coin holds over the cell's inmate and the fact that the next time this happens it could very well go a different way. Not for the first time he finds himself almost grateful for the coin's existence. "I see." He shifts in the doorway, turning to leave the cell. "I'll be waiting." Two-Face smirks and tucks the coin away again. "So shall I." he says. This seems to strike him as somewhat funny, for he grins horribly. The orderly moves to close the door behind Batman. The flashing red and blue lights of the police cars surround the Asylum. A few ambulances have left with those wounded in the gunplay. No other problems are obvious. Batman does a brief check of the crime scene from a distance, then slips back out the way he came in, trusting Gordon's people to get the facts. He'll be looking into them, of course. The night wears on. And two hours later there is a call on the police scanner. "Clear for emergency traffic....oh god....oh god...code red at Arkham Asylum, uh, breakout, officer down, I..." The transmission goes dead and the same dispatcher begins reading the same codes and the same units and the same list. Another transmission breaks in, a female voice, "h.h.h..h...ello....oh, god, somehow he got a gun, how did he get a gun...is this radio on?" The dispatcher begins 'talking her down.' and the officers change to another frequency. More hours pass. The Gotham police ransack the cell and gather their evidence, and it is once again locked and the lights are shut off. And, out of the inky blackness of the cold quiet, half-clean, half-chaotic room, Batman appears. "So many people only go one way," he mutters to himself. "In but not...out." He removes a tiny flashlight and begins doing his own search of the room. Its bad enough that Harvey escaped, but the doubly damning fact is that he did so after Bruce left. The bed has been stripped bare. There are bullet holes in the frame of the door - from the inside out. Though they have taken away the body that lay outside in the hallway, the pool of blood and...is that a little gibbet of flesh?...outside the door tells testament to another death. Evidence tape outlines the wall above the pool of blood. The hall lights are out - shot out, perhaps. So it is something of a surprise when the flashlight's thin beam outlines the letter 'S' smeared in blood on the wall. A little adjustment of the beam reveals that someone has written 'Forget' in perfect, outlined, cursive script, in blood, but with the tip of something sharp...and then 'Something?' underneath it in jagged, savage, angular capitals. And stuck the tiny batarang to the wall as the dot at the bottom of the question mark, the very one that only a few hours earlier had been /such/ a good shot to hold that gun to the crumbling plaster floor.