Batman: Deception [Fanfiction]

[ApolloXL5]

CHAPTER 10

Midnight was fast approaching as the area around Blackgate prison had been sealed off by the GCPD as the heavens overhead opened up and released another downpour over the city, which to anyone living inside the city limits, had become as normal an experience as had it's continually high crime rate.

And this evening had turned into one of the longer ones for a certain podgy police officer as Bullock arrived in his patrol car, having not long ago left another crime scene.

"Do you remember when being a cop meant a usual `nine to five` shift, son?" the veteran asked his younger colleague who parked the car and looked over to his superior with a confused expression.

"Sir?"

"Never mind. Neither do I." the older man sighed before putting on his raincoat and exiting the vehicle, feeling the weight of it get heavier as the rainfall quickly drenched him, "stay here and keep the engine running."

He then walked past a line of reporters, ignoring their pleas for a moment of his time as they were being held back by several other officers, quickly joining Cris Allen and a female cop who looked around the same age as himself who was overseeing the situation.

"Allen, Lt. Sawyer. You do know that I had my hands full with the incident at the Thorne residence, right? I don't really have time to take on another right now." he groaned, earning their attention as his friend gave him a sympathetic gesture though the latter remained cold and focused on the task at hand.

"Cry me a river, Bullock. I was called away from Major Crimes for this as I am the most senior officer on hand while the Commissioner is currently recuperating in Gotham General. But because the crime scene makes no sense to me, and you have the most experience with such cases during your time working under Gordon, I have called for your assistance in this matter. Now please follow Allen here while I deal with the press." she ordered before leaving the pair as Allen gestured for Harvey to follow him.

"Lets go. We have a real Houdini of a mystery in there." the younger man said, earning a nod back from Bullock who then started for the entrance, before noticing Montoya staring back from the other side of the police barricades.

"Yeah, I'm coming." he replied before giving the lady a subtle nod back as the pair headed into the prison.

Once on the inside, the pair quickly made their way to the crime scene on the 10th floor, before the pair then entered the room in question.

"Wow." the podgy police officer then exclaimed in a unnervingly calm tone as he then entered the cramped cell, noting the dried blood on the walls and ground where the dead prisoner's body and head lay separate and covered by two grey sheets. "so this guy really did lose his head."

Cris nodded back in agreement as his colleague knelt down and lifted the sheet to inspect the body. "Yeah, but that wasn't the only thing he lost."

"...I see." Bullock noted, having spotted the severed hand and the knife that was still firmly in it's grip lying next to the headless corpse. "So, what was the murder weapon?"

"From what we can tell from the slices and entry and exit wounds, we think that it was a Japanese blade like a straight short katana-like sword." Cris described with an uncertain tone, making the older man stroke the stubble on his chin in response.

"You mean a 'ninjatō'." he replied knowingly, gaining a look of surprise from Allen.

"How do you know that?" the cop queried, making his friend smirk as he recovered the body and got back to his feet.

"I've seen a lot of Japanese films, Cris," he answered before looking over at the cell door. "And this place was locked up at the time of death?"

"That's right, Harvey. There was no sign of forced entry and the guards said that all the cells were locked up, like normal, 20 mins before lights out." the officer answered as the former turned his attention to the locking mechanism of the door, taking a small torch from his inside jacket pocket and illuminating the device in the hopes of seeing something that his colleagues might have earlier missed.

"I think you will find that we have already checked everything we possibly could have in this room, Harvey."

"Uh-huh," his more overweight friend replied as he looked over the door, keeping his eyes peeled for any clue or imperfection that he could find before sighing in defeat and turning back to Cris. "But you're right. Though it never hurts to have another pair of eyes on something."

"Well, what do you think? Have any ideas?". The young man then queried as the other officer took another look around the place.

"I would like to see the forensic report that was made before I got here, but this does remind me of a case Gordon and I handled several years back. Gordon and Stephens were there when I was a rookie back when the PD was working, unofficially, with Batman. We had a number of crimes being committed by someone called 'Lock-Up' who could break into any place without ever showing any signs of forced entry, despite never having the keys or codes required to gain access to such places."

"Lock-Up?" Allen then repeated curiously, earning his friend's attention. "I've heard that name before. Isn't that Lyle Bolton?"

"Yep," Bullock agreed with a nod before glancing up at the vent grate in the middle of the ceiling. "And as far as I know, he is still locked up here in Blackgate."

Cris took note of what his colleague was looking at and mirrored him before the former spoke again. "What about the vents? Couldn't that be an area of access to this cell?"

"The vents themselves are large enough for someone to crawl through, but the grates are top of the range and sealed to such a degree that no one could open them without some heavy-duty equipment. All of which would have gained everyone's attention if the perp had tried to gain access this way."

"I see," Harvey acknowledged as he used his torch again in the hopes of spotting something around the vent's grate, like stress markings or anything that could shed light on how the killer got in unnoticed before putting the device away and accepting defeat once more. "Okay, that's enough. I want to see that report now."

"Okay, let's go then. The clean-up crew will be here in five minutes." Cris agreed before the pair then left the cell.

Though, unbeknownst to the pair, Batman was lying in that exact vent just away from the grate that led into the cell in question, having crawled there all the way from its entry point on the prison's roof.

"Alright, Penny One. I have five minutes to check the scene for something that the police will have missed."

"Understood, Sir. But perhaps the Police have actually done everything already and have missed nothing this time." Alfred replied with a hopeful tone over the vigilante's earpiece, earning a sigh from the latter in return.

"Tch...they always miss something." he replied before noticing something about the vent's grate as he stopped next to it and tapping the side of his cowl. "There's something about the grate. Activating detective mode for my immediate surroundings."

With that, white lenses covered his eyes and the palm of his gauntlets lit up as both sets glowed with a dim white light.

"Your cowl and gauntlet sensors are now linked with the Bat-computer, Sir." Alfred replied, gaining a nod from the Dark Knight who looked through the special lens to scan the grate and its immediate surroundings, using the same sonar-tech he previously utilized to find the Joker years ago though at a much smaller range, showing a great amount of detail in the surface.

"I see something interesting, Penny One," the vigilante began to report as he moved one of his gauntlets around the edge of the grate, touching the area with one of it's fingers. "There are very fine markings and signs of fracturing fifteen centimeters from the edge of the grate that runs around its perimeter."

"Master Bruce, the sonar pulses from your gauntlet reveals that the markings are actually cuts around twenty centimeters deep and are at a twenty-five-degree angle." Alfred added from the Bat-computer back in the Batcave, gaining a nod from the young crime fighter.

"I see them too, Penny One. I have to admit, this is remarkable work. Someone took a great amount of care to slice not only into the steel of the vent but also through the concrete that lies underneath. And with the cutting having taken place at that twenty-five-degree angle, it means that the grate can be removed easily and can sit back in place without falling through the opening that was created which is not noticeable with the naked eye."

"In a more normal situation, Sir, this level of work and detail is meritorious. But I can now put a name to the face of Abbra's visitor earlier as the Bat-computer has found a match in Interpol and A.R:G.U.S.' databases," the butler replied, making the costumed vigilante stop and listen. "Slade Wilson."

"Slade Wilson?" the young man replied in his disguised voice with a curious tone as he then lifted the grate and pushed it in front of him and reopened the hole in the vent, before dropping down into the cell.

"Yes, Sir. He was a Major in the United States Army before being reassigned to A.R.G.U.S. due to his skill as an assassin."

"Let me guess," Batman started to say as he scanned the room. "He had his last mission in or around the area of Tibet?"

"That's right, Sir. He was the asset used to assassinate General Fang Zhifu twenty years ago. But once it was time for him to be extracted, Wilson was nowhere to be seen." the older man reported while reading from the file that appeared on the Bat-computer's main screen.

"Sounds to me like Ra's Al Ghul had taken our Slade Wilson into the arms of the Nanda Parbat at this point. But I never met him during my time in the League." the Dark Knight pondered in return.

"Perhaps Ra's had him on another assignment, somewhere else." Alfred suggested, earning a nod from Batman in response.

"So it would seem. But at least, we now have a probable face and a name to our killer here. We just need to confirm it," he replied before taking a look under the blanket at the corpse that was once Abbras, with his lens taking in every detail as they bombarded the body with sonar pulses. "and I have taken enough scans of the body and its wounds for the Bat-computer to run a reconstruction program on exactly what happened here and how our murderer here might look like."

"Yes, the data is compiling now, Master Bruce." Pennyworth stated, before hitting the enter button on the computer's main keyboard. "sending the results to your cowl now."

And then, Batman's HUD switched to playback mode as he stood back against the door as a hologram of Abbras appeared before him, looking as if he was made of pulsing energy with his physical details all in place but only in blue and white light, before the masked assailant dropped down from the ceiling between them.

"And that would be Slade." the Dark Knight remarked as he looked at the new arrival, who due to lack of data was just a blank figure with no detail whatsoever to his being, with only his height and size having been estimated due to the victims wound and the force used in delivering that fatal blow.

"That would be a fair assessment, Sir." Alfred agreed as he too watched the recreation via the Bat-computer which then showed the pair fight before the killer then sliced off the prisoner's hand, before driving his blade through the other's chest.

"That is definitely a 'ninjatō', a sword commonly used by the League's assassins." Batman observed as the former then removing the blade and decapitating the latter, who's holographic body and head fell down into the direct places that the real body parts lay now.

"So, Det. Cris Allen was right with his guess on what the murder weapon was?" Bruce's confidante clarified, gaining a nod back from the younger costumed man as he walked around the now paused footage, narrowing his eyes as he looked at the blank form of the killer.

"So it would seem, Penny-One. Not that I would take such details to chance on one's knowledge of martial arts movies." he interjected, gaining a head-shake and sigh from his Father-figure.

"Of course not, Sir. But since all the evidence on hand points towards the killer being this Slade Wilson and him being tied to the League of Shadows which is supposed to be a defunct group."

"Are they really gone? And if so, what is he doing in Gotham, and who is his partner?" Bruce then added, before Alfred's attention was caught by a warning light flashing from one of the smaller screens that showed activity at the end of the cell-block.

"Sir, I must insist that you leave now as more police officers are heading your way." he warned, making the vigilante nod back in response as his lens deactivated and slid back under his cowl, ending the holographic creation and returning the cramped room to its original dark atmosphere.

"I'm on my way out now, Penny-One." Batman replied before climbing back up into the overhead vent with ease and closing the hole up behind him, leaving the place exactly as he had found it as if no one had been there since.

^-v-^

[ApolloXL5]

Elsewhere in the city, a group of armed thugs was sitting on wooden crates in the center of an old abandoned warehouse with only the light of one functioning lamp to illuminate them as the cold darkness of the building's surroundings.

"How long are we going to have to wait here for the Boss?" one of them, a built and bruised thug asked as he rested the barrel of his shotgun on his right shoulder. "We've been here for over an hour."

"However long is necessary, Gavin." another more smartly dressed thug replied with a barely patient tone to his voice as he took a drag from his cigarette, before noticing one of the others nervously looking out into the dark. "Hey, stop doing that, Carl. There's nothing out there but rats."

This made his twitchy friend turn slightly back to the group, never keeping his back entirely to the dark, though you could see the discomfort in his face. "I don't like this place. I swore I heard noises out there."

"As Madson said, it's just the rats." another chunkier thug replied as he played with his revolver, constantly spinning its bullet chamber with his free hand.

"But what if it's not. What if it's the Bat!?" Carl almost shuddered, which made Gavin storm over to his frightened colleague and backhand him across the face, knocking the weaker man to the ground as he spat out a little blood onto the cold concrete floor.

"Just shut it and man up, Carl. The Bat doesn't know about this place, that's why the Boss called a meeting here." he barked, earning an eye roll from Madson as he took another drag from his cig before looking at the smoke rising up from it.

"You know those things will kill ya, right?" Gavin asked with a knowing look, making the suited man shrug his shoulders in return.

"Something will kill all of us at some point. I say, why worry about it. Just enjoy what you want." Madson replied though this answer did not sit well with Carl.

"Tell that to 'The Bird'. He died a painful death hooked up to all sorts of machines in hospital a few years back."

But the smartly dressed thug simply shook his head in return before taking another long drag, before exhaling a ring of smoke back at his cowardly looking friend. "If that's my fate, then so be it."

But before anyone else could reply to that, the main doors to the building opened and the light from the headlights of a car shone at the group as a limo drove into the warehouse and stopped just outside of their circle.

"Finally, the boss is here." Gavin observed with a relieved tone as the car's driver stepped out and opened the rear passenger door, revealing it's occupant to be Mayor Cobblepot.

"Hey, Boss. Why did you want us to meet here and not back at the base?" he asked as the small podgy-looking but well-dressed man walked up to the group with a cold steel glare.

"I asked you boys to wait here for me," Cobblepot began to reply, his voice no longer sounding opulent and posh but instead rasp and common. "Because I was nearly killed in an ambush at a public engagement by two clowns that our dear friend 'Black Mask' clearly sent."

"So perhaps, Madson, you could tell me how that was bloody possible?!" he spat with a venom tinged tone, making the suited thug lose his previously calm demeanor as he dropped his cigarette and stumbled to answer back.

"Uh, Boss... I had the place totally checked out for you before Thorne began his party." the guy defended with a worried tone, while Cobblepot was handed a closed umbrella by his driver.

"Well, Madson, let me put it in a way you'll understand," the boss then began to say as he stopped by him and Carl. "if you had done the job properly, as you claim, then I would not have been put in a position where I was at the mercy of two of Black Mask's costumed nut-jobs."

"But, Penguin...Sir, I had the entire perimeter of the place checked out. I had a few of your loyalists in the GCPD doing patrols in the area. There were no gaps that were not plugged up. It was the best I could do." The now nervous crook bargained, having noticed that Cobblepot's grip around his umbrella had tightened as the latter gritted his teeth.

"I believe your sincerity, Madson," Oswald acknowledged while keeping his eyes focused on his groveling minion ask he spoke, before then glancing away. "But you still failed me and put my life at risk from 'my' enemies and that cannot go...unpunished!"

The smaller man suddenly gripped his closed umbrella and swung it with force into Carl's face, knocking the guy straight to the floor, surprising Madson and the others around them as their boss turned his attention completely to their friend.

Carl shook his head as he looked up at then in a daze with blood running down the lower half of his face from his broken nose, completely shell-shocked from that sucker punch.

But the Penguin simply stood over him and lifted his umbrella over his head and brought it crashing down on the injured man with all the force of a sledgehammer, before doing it again and again and again.

Each hit made Madson twitch with unease as the sounds coming from each and every hit from the Penguin's regular-looking umbrella sounded like a piece of meat being tenderized, with even a splash of blood spraying onto the former's once clean suit.

"Oh, I think I broke him. Ha ha," Cobblepot then joked as he stopped and looked down at the bloody mess that was once Carl while blood dripped from the end of his umbrella onto the floor, before returning his attention to Madson. "That could have been you, Madson."

"Ye...ye...yes, Sir." The petrified criminal mumbled back, his words drenched in the fear he now felt for his own life.

But before anything else was said, Oswald suddenly pointed his red-stained umbrella at him and opened it, not only flinging more blood onto Madson but also dropping several clumps of dried cement onto the floor which brought a chilling smile to the Mayor's face.

"I do love these custom umbrellas I've had made," he praised while gesturing to the tool, before handing back to his driver who then opened and closed it several times before heading back to the limo. "You can hide anything inside any part of them. A gun, a blade...a pile of broken bricks."

"Yeah, Boss,...they're really good, Sir." Madson agreed under duress, making the smaller man step closer and look up at him with disdain.

"I was going to beat 'you' to death with it, but then I had a better idea...Spider!"

Suddenly, out of the darkness behind him, Madson felt someone grab him and touch a sharp blade to his throat. "Please,...Boss, give me another chance!"

This made the chubby man's smile widen as he took pleasure in the pathetic groveling on display from his minion, before nodding to Spider who dug the blade a little deeper into Madson's neck. "You have one more chance. And if you fail this time, then I will let the Black Spider here have his way with you. He can keep you alive for days while making sure that you die a slow and agonizing death."

The Mayor then turned away and made a hand gesture to his assassin, making him let go of Madson who fell to his knees as he grabbed his tie and held it to his slightly bleeding neck wound.

"Next time I tell you to ensure a location is secure, make sure that you are there in person to oversee it. That way, if our enemies do make an attempt on my life then you can use your pathetic life to keep mine going. Understood?"

"Yeah...yeah, Boss. Anything you say." The criminal quickly agreed, getting to his feet while keeping Black Spider in sight though the latter simply stood there stoically as if he was waiting for his next order.

"Tomorrow I will be seeing our contact in the GCPD to make sure that we do not suffer another repeat of tonight's debacle." Oswald then said aloud to everyone present.

"So the Mayor of Gotham City is the Penguin, it's would-be Kingpin of Crime." An unknown voice then echoed around the abandoned warehouse, putting Cobblepot on edge as his men readied their pistols and Black Spider prepared to unsheathe his sword.

"You're no Batman, whoever you are. He would not announce his arrival in such a bombastic way." The Penguin replied with confidence covering the break in his voice from being surprised, slowly backing himself into the middle of his group as they looked in all directions in an attempt to pin the intruder's location.

"How very observant of you, your Honour. But there is no danger to me in you knowing that I am here," the disembodied voice spoke again, still with no way to tell which direction it was coming from. "Since you cannot tell where I will strike from."

"Is that so?" Cobblepot teased before glancing over his shoulder to his assassin. "Spider!"

The assassin then stepped forward, pushing Madson out of the way while remaining quiet and putting his sword away, keeping his focus on the quiet in the room.

Suddenly, Black Spider spun around and threw several small knives up into the darkness to the right of the group, only to hear the sounds of them impacting the far wall.

"To slow..." the voice then said from directly behind Spider, spinning around just in time to block Deathstroke's sword with his own.

"Impressive," the masked intruder then complimented his rival, before breaking their clash of swords just enough to use his free hand to equip his custom Glock and fire a bullet into the right leg of all of Penguin's men in the room, before bringing his blade to deflect the sword of Black spider who had recovered and sprung back at the intruder.

And as the two then fought, deflecting and countering each other's sword attacks, the rest of Penguin's men fell to the ground clutching their wounded legs while their boss just stood there and watched in shock.

"Get him, Spider. I want him gutted like a fish!" he spat back before Deathstroke then ducked under the other assassin's blade, making the latter overcompensate and allow the other to punch him in the side of his torso.

"Ugh!" Black Spider grunted before the League of Shadows assassin then hit him with a barrage of kicks, one to the leg, one to the chest, and then ending with a spin kick to his face.

This sent Cobblepot's defender tumbling to the ground, earning a fearful look from the Mayor as in the blink of an eye Deathstroke was right in his face with his sword at the smaller man's throat.

"Oh, okay. Easy, Mate. I think we can come to some kind of agreement here," he then replied while looking into the orange and black mask of his attacker, trying to get some kind of sign of his thoughts as he looked into his one eye. "No need to make any more of a mess, right?"

"Cobblepot, I'm not here to kill you. I just wanted to prove a point that your Black Spider here is not up to the task of taking on the Batman. But then again, you did require his services from the so-called Society, didn't you?" Deathstroke asked back, earning a nod from the Mayor as the former removed his sword and took a step back.

"That's right. What of it?"

"If you want to beat the Bat, I suggest going with someone from the League of Shadows." the masked assassin replied, bringing a knowing look to Oswald's face.

"Ah, yes. I have heard of them. I thought the group was disbanded?"

"It was, but I am here to make sure that my former master is avenged and that the Batman pays for his sins," he started to say before looking around the room. "I do have a plan already in place, but I am not one to keep all my eggs in one basket."

"I see. So you want to form an alliance against the Dark Knight. I can get behind that." Penguin smirked, which earned a shake of the head from Deathstroke.

"Not just you, Cobblepot. Of course, you and your resources will be useful," he replied while gesturing back to Black Spider who recovered and stood back up behind the pair. "I think we should widen your horizon and combine our resources with another."

"And who might you be referring to?" The Mayor then asked with a puzzled look on his face as he adjusted his eyeglass.

"Black Mask!"