2013.08.02 - Bats in the Belfry

TIME: 2:00 AM

They say that, whenever you're in doubt, go back to your roots. Vorpal had started his career fighting the gangs of Morrisania and hunting down the purveyors of poison that littered its streets. He had gotten as far as tracking the bigger distributors down to Gotham before other things distracted him-- gods of the dead, superhero abductions into Mojoworld, that sort of thing. But tonight Keith, a.k.a Vorpal, couldn't sleep. The death sentence that was over his partner's head kept him awake and there was nothing that would get him back asleep.

He figures that if you are having a miserable night, you should find someone for whom to make it even more miserable. A few tips had come in and... well, there he was. He knew he shouldn't be out, as he was still technically 'recovering'... but to hell with that. A tip had come in, and he wanted to check it out.

He jumped between buildings with his natural feline agility, moving almost noiselessly through the concrete and the bricks. He was wearing a special suit tonight- one that was completely black and only left his mouth and chin, hands and tail open as a hints of purple in the darkness. The suit wasn't reinforced (at least not yet), but it was the best way for him to hide his purple presence in the darkness without resorting to illusions or invisibility.

One of the abandoned buildings had to be it-- it looked in better state than the others, and if one looked carefully there might be hints of light teasing the windows here and there, as if from low-light sources used by people who wanted to keep a place secret. It had been one of the old canneries- one of the first in Gotham history. Now it was a hulking building with gaping windows and dark interiors... except for those telltale lights.

Vorpal smirks, "Gotcha..." he whispers, and crouches on a ledge across the street from the building.

There is a pair of men heading towards the building, doing a good job of staying in the shadows and out of sight. Except for someone who can see in the dark.

"Abandoned, I think not..."'

Sue Storm has been a very light sleeper for years. It's kind of a detriment sometimes, as often Reed's late night lab work makes enough noise to wake her even from a floor away.

Tonight, though, a different sound wakes her. The elevator. Someone leaving. Getting up and hastily throwing her gray cardigan over her PJs, she uses the faster way out of the building and after making herself invisible finds herself following Keith. Concerned for the young man's physical and mental well-being, she continued following him away from the Baxter. All the way to Gotham.

Maintaining her invisibility, she floats above and behind the dark-clad felinoid, worried about why he'd come HERE of all places.

The sky feels cramped tonight.

It's a hard feeling to describe--the feeling is not anything tangible, not really even magical even in the slightest, but there nonetheless. Unlike every other stakeout prior to this, there is a sense of calamity in the sky. It feels wrong, like someone were blowing a whistle in distress but no sound was coming out at all, the shriek of a voiceless and angry ghost on the senseless wind. The inimitable sense of focused dread is enough to give one a headache--and for Vorpal, the effect is likely particularly pronounced.

It's not unlike the kind of sense a mouse must feel before the owl descends.

Vorpal is not the only one to see in the dark. While the feline rogue shadows the men in the dark, what he might not be aware of is that the men are the subject of an entirely different investigation--for entirely different purposes. Most were middle-men, shippers and receivers moving illegal product out to the bottom-feeders on the streets. The sort of thing that goes on every day in Gotham City. The kind of thing that is abhored by entities like the Batman. But the trail that these men very obviously leave to creatures accustomed to the night is only secondary--only an afterthought compared to the subject being tracked simply by his tracking those men of ill repute.

There is no indication that anything is different at all when he arrives. It's like the night itself vomits in anger, and the sickness is given form. The buildings that reach high into the skies of Gotham are myriad. And when the dark silhouette of one becomes fluid, showing the sheathed form of a person with soulless and endlessly angry eyes, it is enough to throw a shadow onto the moon. The shadow is short lived, the subject of doubt as to the truth of one's senses--by the time one looks, the shadow is gone.

But the sense that Vorpal is being watched is almost suffocating.

Even while some are safely invisible, the dire tension in the air is thick.

Vorpal becomes uneasy, and does not know how to explain it. He thinks he sees something out of the corner of his eye... but there is nothing there to see. Perhaps he is nervous. Yes. He is injured, his left arm stinging under the suit. He is worried about his performance.

He trails the men, and they both confirm his suspicions by entering into the abandoned cannery through a side door.

"Miserable creatures..." he mutters quietly to himself. "How many people have you killed with your crap?"

Like a predator in the jungle, the feline crouches low, trying to forget the eerie sense that someone was watching him. There was nobody there, nobody knew he had come. He slinks on all fours along the ledge until he comes to the end- there, where the intersection is all shadows due to broken lamp-posts, there he jumps, slides down the lamp-post with a stunning display of agility and lands in a crouch. He dashes across the street and presses himself against the wall. Little by little he advances, until he finds one of the back doors in the alleyway. Ears twitching in the dark, he climbs up a set of piled-up crates until he can see into the building through one of the dusty, broken windows.

Inside, there is a whole operation going on. Several trucks disguised as different kinds of shipping companies are parked, and there are at least two dozen men unloading boxes from the trucks. Up on the catwalks, it seems as if there are multiple men standing guard with weapons at hand.

This wasn't going to be easy.

Sue Storm rubs at her arms, turning a full 360 trying to figure out where that uneasy feeling is coming from. Of course, she sees nothing except Keith on the move again. She drifts after him like his own invisible second shadow, even more concerned about what's going on.

No details make the source of that dire feeling make themselves known--no indicator or clue as to the foreboding night being anything more than pre-roust jitters. It's easy to think that the feeling is imagined, that it's just a sour feeling, but the only person out here is a doorman sitting in a chair not too far from the entrance. He seems normally cut of the cloth that wouldn't be moved by a full on shootout in his front yard, concerned more with the details of his newspaper than anything going on outside of the area six or seven feet from the chair and the door he's been assigned to guard. Even so, the chill of the unknown seems to have gotten to him too; he looks uncomfortable, sticking a finger in his ear and wiggling it around. Still, he has no idea that Vorpal is nearby, and even less that Sue Storm is.

The sound comes fast and solid, something indescribably fast and heavy passing inches over the heads of Vorpal and Sue, and the light of the moon vanishes for one knife-strung second as a grand and wide shadow occludes it. If you blink, you might miss it. It and what is inevitably to follow. The sense of wrongness is given teeth now, as it is not entirely clear what exactly just happened. Everything seems to be completely untouched, and silence descends on the scene once more.

Until it becomes entirely self-evident that the seat where the doorman sat is empty, teetering on one leg as if freshly jostled, and the newspaper he had clutched in one hand a moment ago is scattered all about in front of the door. One would imagine he ran. Except there is not a single trace of him--he's gone, vanished, into thin air. For a minute, perhaps just enough time for one to catch their breath, there is peace and silence outside the old cannery.

And then a body drops from the arm of a dilapidated and defunct lamppost incidentally only a few feet from Sue.

He's not dead. The doorman's body is wrapped tightly in restraining wire, and gagged with a strip of black cloth. He's suspended by his feet from the lamppost, as if a caught fish. Though his breath comes in shallow gasps around the gag, he doesn't complain or struggle--his eyes are halfway open, pupils rolled into the back of his head. He's very clearly not going to be of any use to anyone at all--whatever was done to him, he's clearly out for awhile.

Instinct is a powerful thing in felines. Without knowing what, the cat ducks, looking up with wide eyes, ears thrust back.

Nothing. Even though he heard.. he felt...

He quickly, and quietly, makes his way to the door and finds the scene. A scene that chills his blood, because it could only mean that there was someone else. Someone he couldn't see, who had done this.

Immediately Darkwing's insulting words come to his mind. Just lucky. Beneath contempt.

Steeling his shaking hands, the cat clenches his fists and scowls. Although his long-dead mother would not know Keith for the child he had been, there was still a lot of that child in him. The child that cut out newspaper clippings and put them up on his wall. The child that ran around in homemade costumes.

Heck, he was still running around in a homemade costume. This is what he knew he was born to be, and he was not going to let the shadow of the night or the insults make him step back from it. He had debated retiring, giving up, abandoning the game altogether.

And tonight he had told himself, 'one more time.' One more chance to get it right.

The cat vanished right where he was, in midair. And a door opened slowly as he crept into the warehouse proper and dashed under the guise of his spell to hide behind several crates of boxes. It was there that he became visible again, and examined the thugs.

Were they smart, or stupid? Were they the kind that would face down a mask, sure that they could kill someone with a few bullets, or were they the kind that held up their hands and surrendered?

He crept along, making his way towards a gang of three that were the closest to him. They were the farthest from the others, and so he would need to knock them out quickly. Then he could use their appearance to his benefit.

Sue Storm startles and recoils from the abrupt arrival of the bound and incapacitated guard, her sharp inhale hopefully still quiet enough to not give her location away. She doesn't have much of a chance to ponder the implications, though, as Keith moves just as quickly and she has to hurry to keep up with him and not get left outside of the buiding. It's a risky thing, but one of the few 'tricks' she's practice with Reed and Johnny and even Ben as much as possible -- following closely enough to make it through doors after someone but not so close they sense her presence.

The steel wire creaks ominously as the now-useless sentry sways in the wind.

From somewhere remote, a field of subtle red highlights Vorpal's movements in the night, an electronic reticule focused around his silhouette, delineated sharply by acutance-enhanded imaging. The red appears most strictly across the grounds of the area, as intermittent artificial pulses in the digitally-enhanced imaging send red lines across the entirety of the dark area, performing dynamic rangefinding and contour-mapping functions all in one display. Looking at it, it looks quite a bit like the fields of hell.

Though he startles at the dispatched guard, the rogue presses onward, ever more determined to do ... what? Prove himself? One can only make an educated guess. The quality of the suit, frame-captured from the few instances where the stealthy feline allowed the light of the moon to fall on him for a second too long, suggests a home-made origin. That would explain the all-encompassing desire to jump headfirst into danger, even when the signal is so completely clear so as to suggest otherwise. Rookies...

In view only when no one is there to observe, the heavy weight of the Batman perches on a broken lamppost not too far from where he hung the criminal's watchguard, crouched low enough that his cape completely guises his silhouette against casual observance as anything human. He frowns. From the angle he has, he can see directly into the window Vorpal was just looking through, but at a limited field of view from this distance. He scowls as he leans over, absently configuring a feed for his cowl quickly. It's not ideal, but it's going to have to do while he makes his approach from a different angle. This will be messier than he thought.

Batman is gone in the next eyeblink, having left for somewhere on the roof of the old cannery.

A small camera in the shape of a bat directs its lens towards the window, passively observing the situation in Batman's wake. Somewhat interestingly, the feeling of dread is removed once one is inside the warehouse with the rest of the thugs, as if the danger only lurked outside. Such a halo of security is sure to be short-lived enough. He can't be seen, but his hand was felt, if even for a moment. Even as Vorpal stalks the unawares thugs...

He himself is stalked, and something is coming for him.

The cat crouched low in the shadows and observed the three goons. focusing in the moment he took stock of how they stood, how alert they seemed to be (not very, two of them looked tired), and where they were looking at.

Under this area, they were obscured from the view of the catwalks. He had to act well and not be hasty.

Words, coming through... one of the doors is rolled, slowly as if to avoid much noise. The trucks were emptied out and now the next shipment was going to be retrieved. Vorpal's ears picked up the dialogue and he exhaled very quietly, with relief. Slowly, almost too slowly for his impatience, half of the men in the warehouse piled into the empty trucks and rolled out. The door was rolled down afterwards, leaving twelve men in the warehouse... roughly by Vorpal's estimates. It was not likely to last long, so he had to take a chance.

Invisible once more, he ducked out and looked up. Five men with guns. Seven on the ground-- three by where he was, four in the middle of the warehouse, preparing the arrival of the next shipment, moving the crates around.

Thinking for a few seconds, Vorpal finally acted as he remained invisible in the shadows.

A little round marble drops out of the roof, it seems, and lands a few feet away from the men. It is in all aspects just like a marble... except that it is purple. And it glows brightly.

The three men frown and look down.

"What the hell is this?" one of them mutters.

"Should call Charlie over, maybe."

"Nah... just looks like..."

At this point, the three of them are kneeling down, looking at the marble, not daring to touch it. Just as it seems that they are going to get up and call out, two glowing bowling balls appear over two of the goons and crash onto their heads--- miraculously providing a blow just enough to knock them out (and, perhaps, giving them serious concussions). The third goon doesn't have any time to react, because Vorpal comes out of the shadows and wraps his arm around his neck, his hand clamped tightly over his mouth, and keeps him in the sleeper hold until the man goes limp. The cat quickly focuses and, just as he lets the man fall, three illusions appear in the semblance of the fallen goons. Crouching down, the cat begins to tie them up and gag them, looking around to make sure he hadn't been spotted and thanking his lucky starts for the vastness of the cannery.

There may be something coming for Vorpal, but as of right now someone's already there fully ready to protect him. Of course, that's not as easy to do as it sounds while HE'S invisible. That's somethign she's never had to deal with -- someone else being invisible. So she drifts up to float above everyone's head out of the way... whoa. Those purple bowling balls got a little bit close there. She keeps on waiting, though, as there's not much for her to do at the moment that would not give her presence away.

The warehouse begins to empty out, the camera outside placidly recording the trucks leaving the facility, even while Vorpal takes stock of and begins to knock out the first set of thugs. In this, he is left relatively unmolested--and Sue from her vantage point is in excellent position to see him as he does his work. If only he wasn't invisible for that period of time. Of course, when he reveals himself to assume control of the guards via illusions, she'll have an easy line of sight to him. But what's of infinite more interest is the Batman, followed by that dreaded and cramped air, whom while all of this was going on has found his way to the top of the cannery conveyors, ostensibly through some ventilation shaft in the roof.

He moves quickly, and silently, and truth told if you're not looking directly at him, it can be hard to tell he's even there. He's taking stock of the guards too, and he's watching Vorpal as best he can. Five guards up top with guns, four on the ground in the middle. That makes the ones with guns a priority. Even though Vorpal doesn't know it, the ghost, at least for the moment, acts in his own best interests. Possibly tracing the hot lines in the walls, Batman moves behind a panel next to an office somewhere near the top of the cannery, and promptly disappears.

It takes only a second or two for the cannery machinery to come churning and screeching to life.

Belts that likely haven't been lubricated for upwards of a century screech ominously as they churn to life, sending piles of rusted and unused cans along the line toppling to the ground in a cacophonous affair of clinks and hums, sending them rolling chaotically all over. The horrendous sound of the machinery struggling to work even at its slowest speed is mind-churning, as the omnipositional sound echoes throughout the entire conveyor system. It likely only has a few moments to operate before the decades-old motor blows out, or a belt snaps.

It only takes one second for the Batman to draw a single aerofoiled batarang, and sling it through the air. In a lazy circle, the blurring projectile twirls through the air, looping through the catwalks on an exactly plotted course to intersect with the gun carrying guards. The whirring, and any complaint of its notice, will be drownd out from the lower levels by that chaotic sound. As it goes, it spreads a translucent blue gas through the catwalks near where most of the gun carrying guards are.

Anesthetic gas. For those directly exposed, unconsciousness comes instantly.

For those on the periphery of the batarang's curve of travel, grogginess.

And then the blurred black of Batman's fist to the base of their skull.

Vorpal grabs at his ears when the screeching begins. His sensitive hearing is tortred at first, until he can get accustomed to the sound, but it is simply horrible. It is like some monstruous machine from hell, screaming. Unfortunately for him, the screeching has dispersed the men that were at the center, each one of them trying to find a switch to try to stop the wailing-- because the sound was going to bring attention. Vorpal's illusion vanishes as he loses focus, but when he finally gets his bearings and looks up... he sees not the Batman working above, but rather a gun thrust right at his face. While he was reacting to the sound, one of the goons ahd managed to find his way over to where the three guards had been, saw that they were tied up on the ground, and clearly a vigilante kneeling on the floor, covering his ears.

And then, of course, he drew his gun at him with intent to kill. He couldn't shout to the other men, so he was going to kill him right there and then. And as Vorpal looked up into the muzzle of the gun, he realized it was going to be too late...

Sue Storm gasps and puts her hands over her ears as the HORRID noise of the ancient machinery surrounds them, but even as she's grimacing at the sound, she keeps her eyes firmly focused on Keith. So when that one goon approaches Vorpal and puts a gun in the cat's face, she does the first thing she can think of. The faintest soap-bubble shimmer of light blue appears between Keith and the goon.

It takes the Batman only seconds.

In the brief scuffle that follows, there really isn't much time or ability for any of the guards to level an alarm as Batman systematically breaks each guard. By design, really--the only thing that would carry over the din that close is gunfire. It's hard to fire a gun when you feel as if you're breathing through your eyesockets. Most of them don't feel a thing but mind-numbing pain. One, the furthest out of the angle of Batman's gas dispersal batarang, will inevitably spot the mayhem going on a little higher up, and try to train a rifle on him in the confusion.

The metallic sheen of the gun shines extra brightly in the image enhancement spectrum Batman's using.

An instant later, a batarang is protruding through the gun's trigger mechanism.

Two more, and the guard is sorely missing use of an equal number of limbs.

One more silhouette shines out of the corner of Batman's FOV, partially spurred on by alerts in his remote staged camera's viewpoint. He's been keeping an eye on the rogue in the background, and has reasonable faith in the boy's abilities not to die. But this was different. Another gun shines in sharp relief in soulless optics, and one very close to Vorpal's skull. Batman stares down from above, a feral scowl crawling across his face. He can't see the field surround and protecting him, so he has little choice but to respond directly. He siezes the one dazed guard in an ironclad grip.

A body, broken limbs pinwheeling through the air as he yells out, sails through the cannery, aimed squarely at the thug accosting Vorpal. It's not a lethal trip down. Not even really anything that poses more of a crippling risk to him than normal, the way he's thrown. Not with a perfectly good thug on the bottom to break his fall. Of course, Batman's not really aiming with laser precision. He might end up throwing the thug onto Vorpal. Or Sue. Or all three of them. Either way, he's coming.

The bend doesn't come. There is a moment right out of those documentaries on physics, where the projectile pushes against Sue's invisible barrier like some coruscating, metallic thing. When it finally drops, there is a *thud* and... well, two thugs piled awkwardly on top of each other and knocked out cold... whilst resting on an invisible surface. Sue's field, to be exact. The cat blinks and tapaptaps the field... and groans. "Miss Storm?" he recognizes that bubble sheen from her demonstration earlier. He was embarrassed. By now his sensitive ears had recovered, but he was going to hear that damned ring all night long. He quickly stands up. "If you're here... can you take care of th---" he looks up. And the gunners are gone. And then he realizes who threw that thug down, and his stomach grows colder still.

~Don't lose your nerve now. There's four left. You can take four.~

~Yeah, but who is going to take on HIM if he wants to come after me?~

~Why do you always ask the har questions? Why not 'Where shall we go on vacation this summer?~

"Better idea, Miss Storm... see if you can smack some of those fields into the other ones... I can only take one at a time..." Not knowing if she really was there or not, or if some unknown angel created that field, the cat sprints forward, gathering illusory shadows around him to obfuscate him from view while at the same time FOUR other Vorpals spring into action--- illusions that are highly visible, extremely acrobatic and which draw attention away from the one running close to the ground and heading for the nearest thug, launching into the air and delivering quite an expert Tiger style kick at him while, around the factory, the other thugs try to attack his illusory doubles.

Okay, Sue wasn't expecting the goon firing at Keith to get knocked out cold by another thug thrown from an upper floor by... "Oh my." Of course, when Keith addresses her she lets her invisibility drop as there's no long any point to it. This reveals that she's been there the whole time, barefoot and wrapped in a slouchy grey cardigan sweater over TARDIS pajama pants and thin t-shirt. Not exactly the height of crime-fighting couture. She's now splitting her attention between watching the Batman and watching Keith to make sure he doesn't get injured. Further.

For a brief moment, the Batman is visible up there, a dark and angry form perched on the catwalks. Once Vorpal's safety is assured, the Batman stares at the two coldly, noting Sue's sudden appearance, and wondering absently how long she's been observing. Glowering, the dark knight just turns, the scallops in the fringe of his cape spreading wide with the motion, and then he's on the prowl again.

In reality, the avenger just stalks across the area, a dark shadow passing far overhead, boots not even carrying the reverbations of his weight down the catwalks with his stealing movement. He's not particularly worried. Below him, Vorpal is being watched over by Sue, even while an explosion of illusions--duplicates of the rogue--were fighting the thugs. He didn't really need to use any of the sophisticated equipment to know they were intangible. Their fighting style was meant to distract and confuse, with very few attacks of their own thrown. This is a stark contrast from Vorpal's himself, who threw a kick that looked like it was designed to take someone's head off at long range. That means the other two thugs are distracted.

A few moments later, Batman moves to land on one from above, with all of his brutal weight focused somewhere into the criminal's collarbone. If he lands successfully, a concussive batarang will be thrown at the other thug, a vicious whirling throw that would go through the head of the closest Vorpal duplicate.

"That's ENOUGH." he snarls, all patience gone.

Right about that time is when the cannery conveyors choose to break down, grinding to a very timely and obedient halt, leaving only a deep churn in some locked up machinery likely in the process of burning out.

And just like that, it was over. And the 'ENOUGH' grounded Vorpal to where he was standing, far more stunned by that shout than the work that horrible machinery had done to his ears.

Which were still ringing.

The young vigilante stood where he was, uncertain of what to do or say as the last thug went down.

~This is where he comes and eats your soul, according to Booster~

~I hope he doesn't eat Sue's...~

~I don't think he will. She can go invisible better than youYou are always such a boost to my ego~

The duplicates vanish immediately, leaving only one rather forlorn vigilante. At least he wasn't as visibly purple as he usually was.

Sue Storm drifts down to float just a few inches above the floor next to Vorpal, her attention now on the Batman, and she's expecting the worst. In fact, she's ready to catch the vigilante in a force field like a bug in a bell jar the moment he so much as looks at her friend wrong.

Slowly, the Dark Knight rises, mantled fully by his cape and cowl, piercing white optics forming the only real point of focus to look at about him--everything else is either matte black and varying shades of naval, grey or gunmetal, making his suit hard to pick out even now, when he's standing no less than ten feet away.

He doesn't need to guess why Sue's out here. Vorpal looks like he came out for war, and it looks like she came out for a nap. His grizzled appearance speaks of a few days without sleep himself, and he frowns deeply. Staring at Vorpal in the sort of fashion that would greatly suggest that those duplicates not come back and add more color commentary to their impromptu meeting, he focuses on Sue Storm first.

"Your team does good work," he says, a patina of cold precision entering his tenor. The way Batman says it makes even a rare compliment seem like a final judgment found wanting. Like just about everything he decides to say. It's no surprise that his attitude continues to be anything less than personable, considering that.

"But Gotham isn't your city. Go home. Go back to bed, and the daylight, where you belong. I've got some business with your friend, here. If he tells what I want to hear, I might even let him get out of it without docking his tail..."

The Batman shoots a deadly look at Vorpal.

A very forcefield-piercing look.

Vorpal looks down, feeling the blood in his veins turn to ice. "Miss Storm... go ahead. I'll be fine."

He doesn't really believe that. But it's better than saying 'I'll see you after I get the seven hells beat out of me.'

"No."

Sue really did just tell the Batman no to his face. Keeping her arms crossed, though probably as much to keep her cardigan closed as anything else, she stands her ground right next to Keith. "I came here to make sure Keith stays safe, and I'm not done until he's on his way back home with his tail intact." And on top of that, the backhanded compliment was just a bit sour with the 'go home' thrown on top. She's THIS close to frowning.

To her own merit, Sue Storm is an extremely brave member of the Fantastic Four, and the sort of person who the Batman might consider respecting enough to collaborate with. All of that gives her the strength of character and enough of Batman's patience to get this far without actually getting too much trouble from him.

His patience terminates sharply at the exact moment she opens her mouth.

Batman cuts her off abruptly mid-sentence, expression darkening.

"--I wasn't asking. Leave. NOW."

At this, Vorpal bristles. As much as he fears the Batman, Sue basically was here because of him. "Don't speak to her that way! Susan Storm is one of the best people in this goddamned city and she deserves respect!"

Yet another example of his illusion powers triggering by themselves, the way his voice resonated like that. He had intended to draw the fire away from Sue and towards him.

"Miss Storm, please," pleads the young vigilante. "You're here because of me. It's my fault. Please." In other words, go ahead, he's going to be fairly pissed off at him with that outburst.

Sue Storm frowns at the interruption, but then startles and looks at Keith in open surprise when he yells at the Batman in her defense. Okay, that voice thing? Really cool but very surprising. But even so. "Are you sure you'll be okay? I can wait nearby for when you're ready to go home..."

"I'll be alright," Keith answers quickly, "Please, don't worry about me."

And the biggest bald-faced lie award of the year goes to....

The Batman doesn't move. Yelling at him is like yelling at the mountains: All you hear is your own voice. Even so, he doesn't move as Vorpal talks to Sue, nor does he feel any particular need to bluster. For the moment, Vorpal gets what he wants. The Dark Knight's eyes just narrow, coldly, dangerously.

Sue Storm doesn't believe Vorpal, but will accept his word, because that's what GOOD people do. She turns one last look toward the Batman as if trying to determine what he's about to do, drifts ghost-like but quickly toward the door. Yeah, SO not walking on this filthy old floor barefoot. But if Keith has so much as one whisker bent out of shape, she'll come back here and have some SERIOUS words to share.

Vorpal watches Sue go, and then turns to Batman. Well, it had been a nice life.

~At least, up until this moment, eh?~

For the most part, the Dark Knight lets Sue leave without any sort of attitude or parting comments. He just lets bygones be graviously, right up until he focuses on Vorpal again with that 'again whence come from Hell' sort of look. There is a pained groan beneath him, as a thug stirs. One mudhole later, and silence again reigns. It's really hard to tell how Batman can avoid killing with moves like that.

One lightning-strung moment passes, and Batman stalks towards Vorpal, still mantled in his cape. He is not smiling. "You've been tracking down the suppliers for the Morrisania dealers," Batman starts, his voice close enough that you might feel the heat as much as one can't see his eyes.

"But you've been using my face to do it."

Batman leaves very little room for negotiation or excuses in his words. He states them matter of factly, and not allowing for an iota of peace. There is none, not for men like him.

"I... yes." Vorpal says, his eyes on the ground. He keeps his expression as much under control as he can. But it doesn't work.

He's not going to lie. Excuses? He could give plenty, but they all would come down to insecurity. Fear.

He had summoned an illusion of Batman once, when he first apprehended Callahan's gang and got shot. He hadn't done it again until..

Well, until after the Joker. Since then, he had almost taken comfort in the fear it inspired in criminals, which was different from the derision and, at times, laughter that his appearance brought up.

But you couldn't borrow someone's face without paying the price.

The Batman would know the moment Vorpal tried to lie to him, or waste his time. There's nothing to be had in those ways, even all-encompassing as they are, and Batman fills the void with both his voice and his anger, and the deadly low suggests even more--both of the possible people who would stand a shot at stoppiong him are comtained and otherwise free from his influence.

"And what made you think that was a great idea?" Batman asks, flatly. There's odly no indignation or vanity in his arguments as he hunts down every larst piece of a person's weaknesses and objections against him. He'll know, he dares. But this is something else entirely different. As mentioned, Batman doesn't seem as concerned that someone is coopying him, but more the danger that it involves. "A greenhorn is only going to get himself hurr pulling childish stunts like that!" He glares.

"Do you know what men like the Joker do to people like you in one moment's worth of indecision?" He frowns.

"And don't think TWO-FACE gets you off the hook," he warns.

The young vigilante is aware that a question was asked of him, so he tries to answer. At first his voice doesn't seem to work, but he finally speaks.

"After the..." he tries again, "At first... it was a distraction... I ... thought it would let me know the caliber of person I was fighting..." his throat felt like chalk. Was it hot here? ".. by how they reacted... but.... later... after the... later, it was..."

Ok, try again. "Everybody laughs." Vorpal reaches up and tears the hood back from his face, letting the purple-red hair fall across his uncovered face, his eyes still at the ground. "...and I thought it'd be..." He pauses, apparently not able to form a coherent thought.

But that's not true. There's a coherent thought that has been trying to ram itself out of his brain since Batman asked the question. And it finally comes out.

"I'm a joke. I'm a walking punchline" Vorpal finally says. "... I was made a ridiculous creature without my asking, I was given ridiculous powers to match. All I've ever wanted was to help put things right in my neighborhood. The city. Wherever." He crosses his arms. By how long he has been looking at the ground, you'd think there was something interesting written down there. "I guess... I guess I was lured by the temptation. Everybody fears you. Even the ones who fight back... unless they're beyond sanity." Breath. "I guess I didn't have to deal with being... this... by riding on you." Now that the thought is formed, he doesn't hold it back and simply says what he thinks, honestly. I mortifies him. "... but I'm not you, and I should have never done it."

Something bizarre happens to him- it is as if the shadows intensify on his body, making his expression hard to read, and his general features hard to discern. It is entirely subconscious and a manifestation of his power when experiencing these emotions. That agent from SHIELD had called him a 'C-List Vigilante', and he remembered how every syllable of that had stung him like a whip.

He breaks. In the end, they all break. Whether it be a few minutes or a few hours, there have been few people in this city who the Batman couldn't twist mentally until they were completely useless. And if he were a human--if he were a feeling person--this would be different. But he isn't. He's not. The Dark Knight's eyes do not soften from that knife's edge when Vorpal rips away his hood, revealing his chaotic and mutated visage.

If anything, his stare becomes even sharper, even more focused.

"And why do you think people fear?"

The question hangs in the air for a moment. Batman never answers it. "Don't waste time moping over your circumstances. Do you think criminals will forgive you if you use someone else's name to deceive them? Do you think they'll listen to your excuses? The only thing they'll do is point a gun at your head and pull the trigger."

Batman's logic is inexorable, like a sledgehammer. "What happened to you is unconscionable. And if I find who did it, they'll taste justice as well. But the moment you step out of your house with fighting crime in mind, being fake about it will only lead to one end. Criminals fear me. And they would love to kill me. By usurping my image, you left yourself weak and vulnerable to being made a martyr for their cause and their rapacity. It's amazing you haven't been killed yet..."

The Batman stalks forward, his cape drifting across his boots, approaching the young mutant.

"If you really want to do good for your community--stop hiding behind something that isn't yours. Make your own image. Don't waste your time on a clumsy trick only fit to fool the people who wouldn't be able to kill you anyway. Guilt, self-pity and fear aren't going to stop them where tricks fail."

"Look me in the eyes."

He's tired of talking to Vorpal's hairline.

He has no eyes--at least, none that can be seen strictly, only soulless white optics. Even so, barely-restrained anger is plain. "And listen. Anyone who operates on the streets of Gotham has no other choice but to understand how to fight this way. Because if they don't..." He frowns. "...then they'll come to blows. With me. Do you understand?"

Vorpal looks up when commanded, his eyes having that luminescent quality that cats have in the dark, pupil dilated to take in as much light as possible. His ears lower as Batman hammers point after point through his skull, and there is nothing he can say about it because... well, he's right.

"I understand... You are right..." Keith says, his voice is carefully balanced between fear and embarrassment, keeping a tight control of himself. "I'm untrained, and I made a stupid mistake. I'm going to get better... I must." Another uncomfortable pause.

"You scare the hell out of me... but I also respect you and what you do here. I don't want to be on your shitlist."

He looks down for a second, reflexively, but he looks up immediately, remembering what he's doing. "I'll find my thing... whatever that may be."

The Batman leans close into Vorpal's personal space, until his eyes reflect the illumination from the orbits around his optic lenses. There's nothing about him that really knows about half-measures or mercy. Everything about him is limitless and incomprehensibly harsh. The ominous glow, at least, had something to do with the optical imaging features in his cowl, but it also had the respect of giving a very very clear indication of Batman's facial features at any given time without betraying his identity. Right now, he seems grimly satisfied, but isn't about to let Vorpal go without commanding his full attention. When he's sure he has it, he takes a moment to think about Keith's words.

"Good. Then you're smart enough to be something worthwhile yet."

Batman slowly leans up and back, and he slides a control device from a pocket of his gauntlet, flicking the safety trigger on it and depressing a plunger in it. Just like that, the tension and pressure is relieved, the sense of chaotic wrongness surrounding the Batman's proximity draining off like water from a cracked pool. The feeling was definitely not your imagination, nor was it any particular superhuman ability belonging to the Batman or the night surrounding him. It was artificially generated, just like anything else. It seems self-evident now, now that the feeling is gone, but exactly what he was doing to create it...

"Not many people do," Batman responds when Keith mentions not wanting to be on his shitlist. There is a dry edge to his voice, stopping exactly short of humor, something long abandoned when he picked up the cowl. Secreting away the device, he turns away, looking around him. Guards are still laying unconscious at all angles, some with limbs bent oddly, and others sprawling across the ground as if having slept for a year. Uncoiling a length of tension cable, Batman glances over to the half-feline.

"Now get out of here, and make sure the girl knows you're in one piece."

He has a long night ahead of him, and he doesn't need Sue Storm following him around getting in his way out of some misplaced sense of loyalty. He's already starting to tie one of the thugs up--the one Vorpal knocked out with that tiger kick not even a few minutes ago. "Oh. One more thing," the Batman notes, using a unidirectional wire clamp to cinch the cables tight.

He frowns as he works.

"I'll be watching you."

"...I didn't want to sleep ever again, anyways..." he says to Batman's last comment. He couldn't help it, he -was- a Cheshire cat. When something scared him, a little joke was his way of coping. Whistling in the dark, if you will. But he shakes his head as he starts stepping away. "Sorry... I didn't mean it disrespectfully." The cat pushes off his feet and slowly starts levitating upwards, deciding he will exit by teleporting out of one of the windows. He reaches the catwalk and lands on it, and then looks down. "I... really am sorry. I won't give you any reasons to ... yeah..." losing his nerve, the cat looks out the window and teleports to the other side, dropping down to the ground into a crouch... and, well, taking off into the darkness like a bat out of hell, his heart beating fast in his chest.

Some bats are just fine in hell.

"Hrnph," the Batman gruffly responds, cinching up another one of the criminals tightly. He doesn't pay any heed when the unconscious man groans, no doubt having a dream about something large and unforgiving trying to rip his arm out of the socket. Similarly, he doesn't really respond to humor--none of Vorpal's jokes really seem to reach him. He doesn't have time to sit around giggling when there's work to be done. As if to make made point crystal clear, Batman takes up one of the guns that was a little too close to another thug, and just breaks the bullpup rifle in half with no more than two hands. He discards them pointfully. He seems like he's already busy with other things, already doing other work. Unfortunately, that leaves Vorpal and his half-hearted but otherwise completely genuine apology hanging out to dry, dying like a burning moth.

They say in the comedian circuit that some crowds are just tough.

The Batman is one of them.

Of course, he never really did stop paying attention. It may occur to Vorpal, at least a little bit when he thinks about it, is that Batman may not have actually taken his little scheme as a sign of disrespect. The reason why he might come to such a conclusion is simple.

Vorpal did get to get out with all of his limbs in one piece.