2013.04.22 - His Master's Voice

Several nights ago, the nominal boss of the Voda Bratva (the Russian Mob), Vyacheslav Degtyaryov, was kidnapped while overseeing a shipment of drugs at Gotham's waterfront. His right hand man was brutally beaten and strung up nearby, later found by police and taken into custody. Since then, Gotham's underworld has been abuzz with talk of the Red Hood who has waged a personal crusade against it's leadership.

Shaking a few trees reveals information that could be of use. Strange sightings of the man in the red mask who has been coming and going in Glendale. A few nights ago there were even reports of a late model Citroen C1 - Degtyaryov's car - parked outside one of the buildings. The trail is there for those with the skill to follow it. No body has turned up yet, and the Hood has not been known to shirk from killing his targets at the scene.

The building is an old brick factory, seven storeys tall, that has been converted into apartments. Or will be, as refurbishment of the interior is only half completed and tenants have yet to move in. Nevertheless, a dim light flickers from time to time in one of the grimy windows of the top floor. Something has taken up residence there.

It's a rare clear and bright night in Gotham. Nights like this are when criminals run rampant. It turns out there was something to the myth of lycanthropy--though the rumor itself is steeped in slight hints of truth in this strange world, a lot of the common stringers of the story of monsters running loose during the full moon is from the simple fact that humans--and by extension, criminals--can see better in the moonlight.

It's quieter in the city than usual, especially around these parts. Things like that tend to happen when major mob bosses get kidnapped in the night, only to turn up dead. It was the sort of thing that spooked the underworld--powerful figures seldom disappear that easily. There are only a handful of people who can operate with such impunity. One was this new character, the 'Red Hood.'

The other is the person who's attention he attracted with this homicidal spree.

A shadow darker than black passes over the dimly lit window.

A second later, a tiny device lands against the very corner of the window, making a sound no more provoking than a single wayward raindrop. The Batman lands atop the roof, little more than a black clad ghost in the moonlight. Soundless, he trains his formidable senses and technology on the planted device, which measures the vibrations in the glass using a tiny laser. A kind of microphone bug, it pipes the information to his cowl, which can then convert the vibrations into audible sound. A clear field of view through the grimy windows of Gotham can be hard to come by. Regardless, he wants to find out what's going on inside..

Inside, a single voice whimpers as though in great pain. Though the light does not grant any visibility within, the sound is easily picked up by the microphone. He is muttering in prayer, repeating the same line in increasingly desperate Russian over and over again.

“Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on me.”

The sound of wooden joinery creaking accompanies it, as though he is rocking back and forth in a chair.

A voice, distorted and metallic, cuts the prayer off midway through it's third recitation.

“Please,” the voice scoffs, his disgust and anger almost palpable, “Show a little dignity. What makes you think any god'll listen to you?”

“You've got the wrong man,” the other voice pleads through a thick Russian accent, “I swear. I don't know anything. I don't even know who you are. Just let me go, okay? I'll go. I'll disappear.”

It's either a high-dollar escort visit, or he's found his missing mob boss.

It takes only a few moments to stream the sample scheme and get a voice biometric analysis done with rudimentary extrapolations done for the side and shape of the room. 76% certainty based off of previous samples from the Batcomputer that the Russian voice is Vyacheslav. The certainty is relatively low because of the high stress pattern in the vocal print. The rest of the certainty is supplied by Batman himself.

He knows what every major criminal in Gotham sounds like.

He knows what many of them sound like, scared out of their wits.

He saves the stream, with the kind of long-viewed attention to detail that he is known for. There is a new criminal in Gotham, as far as he's concerned, but there's not much time to look into it. Based on secondary acoustics filtering, he can get a general idea of how large the room is. A standard apartment bedroom, based on what he knows of the kinds of units in refurbishments around the area. The sound of wooden beams shifting against eachother catches the Batman's attention though. Based off of prior situations and what he knows of the kidnapper's modus operandi, he highly doubts the mob boss is secured to a rocking chair. Vigilantism is something that can go awry very quickly, and the Batman isn't in the business of making mistakes that will cost a man his life.

He lowers himself down to the side of the building. Though warehouses are commonly left uninsulated, that wouldn't do in this area, because the apartment units would tend to get too cold in the icy Gotham winters. The insulation in the roofing, however, is going to be of a naturally higher grade--usually R-32 or so--than the ones in the walls themselves. What that means is, better thermal imaging through walls than the roof. With an entry into his wrist, Batman's cowl adjusts filters through several bands until he reaches the infrared spectrum. It will be hard to see exactly what's going on, but by comparing acoustics and the infrared, he should be able to get a rough idea of where both potential victim and vigilante are standing in the room.

Just enough information to get in and possibly save a life.

He has no reason to believe he has much time left. He'll have to make his move soon.

“Bit late to get back on the straight and narrow,” the modulated voice of the Red Hood quips, even chuckling at the notion, “I know you. I know about Nura. I know about Samashki. You can hide from your past, but you can't hide from me.”

The thermal imaging tells the tale of the room fairly well. It is bare, unfurnished and unfinished for the most part. In the middle of the room the short, averagely-built figure of Vyacheslav Degtyaryov sits on a chair – the only bit of furniture in the room. Behind him and to the left, standing in the corner, is another man who is both considerably taller and more powerfully built.

“We didn't know what we were doing,” Degtyaryov argues suddenly, a higher note of panic creeping into his words, “I swear it! It was the drugs – “

“Oh,” the Hood asks, his voice angry once again, “So now you /are/ Vyacheslav Degtyaryov and I /haven't/ made a terrible mistake?”

He's toying with the man. Playing on his fears. By the way the victim's heart is racing, he's quite good at it, too.

Surprising. He wouldn't have expected there only to be a chair, based off of prior scenes. It's a valuable glimpse into the vigilante's mind. Though brutal, his actual operation--if this is the person he's looking for and not some satellite co-conspirator--loses the elements of dramatics. It was a manipulation with only vague resemblance to an interrogation. Using that information, he can judge how the vigilante will respond. Some think that they're smart. Others don't bother. The mention of his involvement in the massacre at the border of Chechnya confirms what he's already suspected. The Hood isn't out for just common street thugs. The irony of the balance struck between theatricality and deception is not entirely lost on the Batman.

The Russian seems about ready to tell Red Hood anything he wants to know. But it doesn't seem like information's the taller man's interest. He already seems like he knows what he wants to know. he'll have to be careful. The room could be rigged in any number of ways to kill the mob boss. The Red Hood's also close to Vyacheslav. Close enough to kill him with a sword or a gun if Batman isn't fast.

Luckily, he is.

Having exhausted all of his patience with Red Hood's method, Batman moves.

The moonlight is extinguished entirely from the window, the only viable entry point into the room from outside. Batman lands soundlessly on the sill, and an instant later, the glass shivers, as if being rattled apart. The pane breaks in slow, elaborate spiderwebs, that crack in elaborate relief around the symbology of a Bat in the window. And then the entire pane of glass blows apart into tiny shimmering pieces, scattering them throughout the room in confusing, glittering array, along with several of the devices that ostensibly shattered it. The broken window lets the night in.

Batman less enters the room and more pours in, cape splashing across the floor as he lands in a fluid crouch, soulless white optics staring. You can't see his arms, drenched in the black of his cape and mantle. His voice is an angry thing, a predatory thing, grim, commanding and worn short with years of Gotham's worst streets and all of the ill things that live there. He only says two words.

"That's _enough._"

The Red Hood is quick, hand moving to the small of his back even as the first glimpse of a shadow forms on the window outside. He doesn't know for sure who it is from the sudden, encroaching darkness but given the situation it could not be anyone else.

A weighty pistol, a Desert Eagle, is drawn from it's place tucked into his belt and is already rising as the glass breaks and the Batman speaks. But he doesn't fire at the sudden intruder, instead levelling the weapon at the back of Degtyaryov's head and holding it there. The mob boss lets out a sudden, terrified yelp before lapsing into stunned silence.

“Not enough,” the Red Hood growls back through his mask's vocalizer, “Not nearly enough.”

His voice has taken on an entirely new property. Where before it was merely angry, now a cold and heavy fury has crept into it like poison. It is as though laying eyes on the Dark Knight has wrenched up some malice and hate from the very depths of him.

But he stays his hand, merely keeping the muzzle pressed against the back of the Russian's head. It seems as though he wants to say something, as though the brief moment of silence is filled with a thousand words that he can't or won't utter. Instead, all he can say is the obvious.

“Batman.”

He can read the subtle differences in pitch that differentiate between anger and hate, even through a synthesizer.

Facing off against the Batman in this kind of a situation is a little bit like trying to terrorize the moon. There is simply no word that describes the futility. His form elongates as he stands to his full height, his dark silhouette a contiguous liquid whole against the harsh light. Never do his eyes leave Red Hood's, and in the gathering, it's likely that Degtyarov is the worst off in the room. It's very plain he could care less as to the subjugation of the criminal between them.

The criminal's life, on the other hand.

He's got all eyes on that trigger.

"Red Hood," Batman acknowledges. He knows his handle based off the nonsensical gibbering of a few doubly terrified thugs. But despite the decent job the Hood is doing at terrorizing the criminality of this dirty city, Batman does not seem pleased in the slightest, and a raw, primal anger seethes in his voice. It's something that is far and away from being specific to Red Hood. It's an anger general to everyone in Gotham who has ever pulled the trigger.

"Let Vyacheslav go."

Batman isn't asking.

"No one kills in Gotham without facing justice. No one."

“The fucking rule,” the Red Hood growls, as though the very notion disgusts him, “It's a bit much, isn't it? Does it help you sleep at night? Does it not hurt so much because at least you're not killing?”

The man in the mask jams the muzzle of the gun hard against the back of Degtyaryov's head, prompting him to yelp in pain. Beneath his mask his teeth are gritting, his jaw is clenched and his eyes are narrowed slits. His free hand grips the back of the chair tightly, even going so far as to splinter the wood beneath his vice grip.

“What justice? Five years in Blackgate? Ten? Then what? Right back into the waiting arms of his Bratva.”

Once again, the Red Hood jams the gun against the back of the man's skull with misdirected rage, “You're not fast enough to keep me from pulling the trigger. I'll paint you with his brains and you'll glare and maybe you'll even bring me in. But he'll be dead. And what? Are you going to mourn him? Go to his funeral? Put flowers on his grave?”

His voice races, shouting now as though the Batman's very presence offends the foundation of his being, “THIS. IS. HUMAN. GARBAGE.”

"This doesn't have anything to do with garbage like Vyacheslav."

Fundamentally, he agrees with Red Hood about the criminal between them. The Batman exists to eradicate evil wherever it hides. The only disagreement they have is what, exactly, constitutes evil. He watches Red Hood splinter the wood in his bare hands. That anger, that rage, it burns too fiercely to be anything but specific. That anger is vengeance. Batman knows the sensation intimately in all of its forms. But for the sake of the man standing before him--and the criminal he threatens, Batman is insensible to that rage, his attention focused to a razor point as he keeps the hooded avenger's trigger finger within his sightline.

"It's not your place to decide what justice is. Put the gun down."

He's already glaring at Red Hood, and the Batman takes one menacing step forward.

There is no compromise in his voice, no trace of feeling, as if there was never anything kind in him. There is the sense that he knows that Red Hood isn't acting just on whim, knows that there is a secret that the young man hides from him. And there is the pervasive sense that he simply doesn't care as long as he's holding a gun. He doesn't explain himself, and he doesn't console the vigilante. The Red Hood tells him he's not fast enough, and he just steps forward, slow and methodical, predatory. It's very, very clear that right now, there's no difference in Batman's mind between Red Hood and the man he's pointing the gun at. And he wouldn't compromise with the Russian, either. When the Batman speaks, it's not a negotiation. It's a command.

"...because you're never going to get a chance to use it."

“You don't understand,” the Red Hood changes gears once again, sounding almost pleading, “Why can't you just /understand/?”

This isn't how he wanted it to go. He had such grand visions of making Batman see the error of his ways. How he would finally know what had to be done. Foolish pipe dreams. The last vestiges of a stolen childhood.

“Why can't you just understand, B-”

The man in the Red Hood cuts himself off, keeping himself from speaking the name. But something about the weight of it, the shape of the sound and how heavily it sits in his throat before he ultimately fails to speak it. Something suggests that the name wasn't 'Batman'.

But then he stops, his own rage clearing for a moment like clouds passing over the moon. It is almost as though the command has gotten through. It reaches a part of him that once took those commands as gospel. It sits up to respond, like a trained dog, before the savagery of his more primal nature takes over.

“No. No. NO!”

The Red Hood shouts the last word, tearing the back of the chair away and causing the Russian to teeter slightly. The Russian falls backward, the Hood stepping back with him to let his victim collapse unharmed to the floor as the chair collapses beneath him.

In his rage, the Hood lashes out. What was a cold, calculated plot to make Batman see the error of his ways is at once consumed by hate's fires. He can't hurt his soul, he'll hurt his body. The gun, with the Russian no longer between it and the Dark Knight, barks a report as the trigger is squeezed. A high calibre round directed at the Batman's midsection.

Somewhere behind that soulless mask, Bruce's eyes narrow as Red Hood's appeal dies in his throat.

He never compromises. It was part of his plan all along. Batman knew specifically the anger that Red Hood felt. It was the kind that lost something. Someone. As such, Batman would make no attempt to talk him down, make no attempt to soothe him. It has a lot to do with Bruce Wayne. That child that died so long ago knows more than anyone that pain can't be talked away. Instead, Batman stoked his anger, knowing where it would lead. And he knew the gun that Red Hood carried was of the kind of caliber that could pierce his body armor.

Batman will shoulder that rage. He was designed to do nothing less.

"--Agh!"

When Red Hood snaps and throws the Russian to the ground, Batman begins to move, stepping towards Red Hood slowly, deliberately. Then Red Hood levels his gun on him, and Batman bolts towards him, only recognizing that the bullet isn't a lethal shot when he tries to move out of the way. That much was enough to assure a hit--the truly massive round slams into Batman's midsection, spraying his blood on the ground with cataclysmic impact. An explosive, primal growl of suppressed pain erupts from the living shadow as he staggers, seemingly inexorable advance checked. One shot, and a second's worth of distraction. It's enough to reveal his card. When Red Hood sees Batman shift away for that dead instant, he'll see underneath the dark knight's cape. And notice that the Batman is holding a trigger switch.

He wasn't just counting on manipulating Hood into targetting him.

The button devices that shattered the window turn out to have actually had very little to do with shattering the window, merely being spread into the room. They split in half as Batman triggers the switch, setting off a series of flashbangs in the time his brutal advance is checked, filling the room with stunning light and sound. And then Batman comes for Red Hood, a wounded surge of black in the flashing white.

If that Hood doesn't have any built in protections against the triggered flash, Batman is going to capitalize on it in every single way by tackling the Red Hood and trying to overwhelm him with his martial weight, pinning his gun arm to the studs in the wall with the set of Batarangs in his left hand. The ones he was going to throw only a few seconds ago if Red Hood pulled the trigger at anyone but him.

The Red Hood lets out a shout of anger and frustration, the sort of sound one makes when flashbang goes off in one's face. But it is affected, the technology of his mask reacting to protect his senses from the sudden and brutal assault. The eyepieces polarize suddenly, blacking out long enough to protect him but leaving him blind to the tackle. The earpieces shut a second too late, leaving his ears ringing and his head filling with blinding pain. Inside the helmet, blood trickles from his ear as one of his eardrums ruptures.

But he is not quite as helpless as he makes out to be as he is tackled against the wall, letting the gun clatter to the ground and immediately moving to fight with his hands. In such close quarters there is little room for martial finesse, instead there is only brutality. He lifts an elbow, attempting to drive it into the join between the Bat's neck and shoulder. His other hand jolts his palm upright, seeking to catch his assailant under his jaw. It is not just his hands that fight, his knee lifting to drive at the wound made moments ago with the gun.

Even in the blurred fury of the fight, the martial style is not an unfamiliar one. There are elements of that style taught by the Batman to his own pupils. But changed, barbed and bloodied by time. Most would fail to notice. But not the one who notices everything.

The Hood continues to struggle, aiming to give himself the slightest fraction of space between him and the Dark Knight. That is all he needs to get away. Out. Escape. Regroup.

In the aftereffects of the flashbang series, the world spins.

Batman's cowl technology is considerably more advanced than most, having been slaved to the trigger sequence, which dampened his sight and sound receptors well before the effects of the grenade went off. Even so, he is under his own haze, mostly because of the hot lead still embedded in his body, the blood staining his midsection. But that pain.. it doesn't stop him. It doesn't drive him off. It doesn't distract him from what needs to be done. He fights like a demon tied to the Red Hood's back.

Even so, the Batman finds himself somewhat removed from the fight in a way that even he can't explain. He blocks low, stopping Hood's elbow, while rotating into his body range, crowding out his palm uppercut by trying to pin his arm against his body. The motion is almost effortless for Batman, to control the struggling vigilante. But that's exactly the problem. The Red Hood is a very strong fighter. It's just that Batman knows everything he is going to do before he does it. He knows because it's only a stone's throw from being exactly what he would do in the same situation. It goes beyond his already elevated martial awareness. The fact is not lost on him, and the sensation is nonplussing.

By driving his knee into Batman's midsection wound, the Red Hood finally introduces an element that Batman can't account for with unparallelled viciousness, doubling over the Dark Knight and causing him to groan with angry pain. But even that isn't enough. Batman will sieze Red Hood by the weaker stanced leg at the knee and the ankle while he's doubled over, and try to pull the vigilante off-balance by twisting viciously. He will lower the Hood's stance by potentially coming very close to dislocating the vigilante's knee. Then, releasing him, Batman will whip a straight right fist towards and into Red Hood's midsection, coming with his entire weight behind the blow from below, resulting in a punch strong enough to put him through at least a layer of drywall. The second blow, a left cross to the ribs, might send the Hood tumbling free, perhaps over Vyacheslav.

But the Batman, disoriented as he is by the bizarre synchronicities (and also being shot,) is fighting sloppier than usual. He's shocked and elemental right now, fighting to knock Red Hood down and out in a few key blows, not to keep him pinned down or play a game of attrition. While he hits like a cannon, therein lays the one advantage that might give Red Hood those precious few steps he needs to escape.

The Red Hood moves to turn on his heel but he is not swift enough, not expecting Batman to react as swiftly as he does after the cheap shot to the bullet wound. He lets out a shout of pain as his knee jars, a blinding jolt that will no doubt punish him for days to come. He collapses onto his good knee, deliberately falling to the side and planting an arm on the ground so that the first punch might miss him. He takes the second on purpose, gritting his teeth as his ribs crack beneath superior strength. But he achieves his goal, using the second blow to disengage himself and tumble towards the window.

Even as he rises to his feet, he's drawing his escape plan from an inside pocket of his jacket. In his hand he holds a fragmentation grenade. Nothing fanciful, just standard military issue among most of the world's armies. He pulls the pin as he moves, tossing it behind him and onto the stomach of Vyacheslav who still reels from the pain of the flashbangs going off in his face. There is a choice to make: hold the lever and dispose of it, or give chase. The Hood knows all too well what choice the Batman will make.

He is limping, favoring his other leg and keeping one hand pressed to his side. A ruptured eardrum, several broken ribs and a viciously jarred left knee. But the greatest wound is to his ego. He had not expected to have to retreat. But he still has one more card to place. But not tonight. Not here.

He doesn't hesitate to launch himself over the window ledge, a grappling gun of his own drawn from his belt and drawing him across the street to the neighboring rooftop. He lands with a grunt of pain, taking off at a limping gait into the night.

Missing his first blow, Batman's gauntlet buries itself in the drywall, only for the sword-breaking knife fins to tear through the thin wall with a white trail of powdered gypsum as the detective throws his second punch, knocking Red Hood free. Holding a arm tightly over his midsection to staunch the bleeding, Bruce tries to squint through the haze of pain after Red Hood. The fight is aggravating his injury, but the Batman's heavy boots drum across hastily constructed floorboards ominously as he stalks past the Russian mobster after the vigilante, doggedly intending on putting a stop to him regardless of how much he's bleeding.

He's like that. The Dark Knight doesn't seem to acknowledge pain, as if the Batman was something that was beyond that all too human frailty. He steps after Red Hood as he tumbles away. His arm lowers from his wound, his fists balling so tightly the creak of leather and twisting Nomex is audible in the still air. Liquid stalking movements punctuated by the sound of his boots and his heavy step, it's like the heartbeat of the night comes nigh onto the young man. A heart that demands answers.

"Give up," Batman growls, voice filled with bile. "Don't make me break you to find out who you are."

It's just before the Hood shows what kind of a wily opponent he is.

Batman only has a few precious seconds to make the decision. Unfortunately for him, the decision was made for him, years ago, by Joe Chill. There would never be a world where that grenade was ignored in favor of the retreating shape throwing himself out the window. Still, it takes all of Batman's considerable willpower to drag himself away from the infuriatingly familiar and onto the task at hand. Even as Red Hood escapes, Batman's own grappling gun unfurls from his utility belt, a device attached to it within an instant. Batman falls on the Russian with all of the urgency of the dying dark, and grips the grenade as if Vyacheslav's life depends on it. It does.

Air compression clamps the grenade tightly inside the claw fitted to his own grappling hook, at which point Batman surges to the window and fires it into the air, disengaging the claw only when he's sure that the grenade is out of harm's way. A second later, the explosion lights the night sky.

Furling his cape, Batman stares out of the window after Red Hood, a chiseled frown crossing his face. He escaped, and Batman is no closer to finding out who he is than he started. Not knowing who is killing people in Gotham, especially someone so familiar to him--that angers him the most of all. He will find out. Inevitably. And he will catch him. The Batman won't accept anything else. A shallow breathing noise, calmed panic, registers to the Batman just behind him and on the ground, a mob boss collecting himself. He frowns even more deeply, the whites of his canines showing.

"So, Vyacheslav."

The Batman turns.

"Let's talk.."