Late night at the Gotham docks. The salty, briny sea breeze mingled with industrial exhaust, whistling through the gaps between shipping containers like a leaky bellows.
The fog was so thick it felt like it could stick directly to your lungs.
Deep within the container yard, several stark white searchlight beams cut through the dense fog like scalpels.
Atop the distant crane towers, several mechanical birds rotated their eyes. Eerie green electronic dots blinked in the night, looking very much like scavengers crouching in the dark, waiting for a feast to begin.
Bruce Wayne--or rather, Batman, now clad in his dozens-of-kilograms-heavy carbon fiber armor--was stepping onto the damp concrete.
The tracking signal from the arms deal was right ahead in Warehouse 3. The frequency was jumping lively, as if throwing out a challenge.
He stopped in his tracks.
The warehouse doors were wide open. Inside was a cavernous black hole, without even a guard dog in sight.
It was too quiet.
In Gotham, silence usually meant some lunatic was brewing up trouble.
It was hard to say exactly which one.
There were too many lunatics in Gotham. Well, it could also be several lunatics teaming up for a massive move.
Overhead, a pigeon fluttered its wings and flew past, stirring up a subtle current of air.
At that exact moment, the hairs all over Batman's body stood up without warning.
He violently sidestepped, letting his momentum carry him into a roll toward the gap between the shipping containers on his left.
Bang!
A sniper round drilled straight through the concrete where he had been standing just a second ago. Rock fragments flew everywhere like shrapnel, creating a scorched smell as they frictioned against the air.
Immediately following that, the dull roar of gunfire erupted into a continuous sheet of noise.
Three fire points from above, two lockdown positions on the ground. Tongues of fire spewed frantically through the dense fog.
Bullets struck the sheet metal of the containers, producing a dense clatter. Sparks flew in all directions, turning the scene into what looked like a massive fireworks show.
Batman pressed his back against the cold iron wall, his breathing steady.
Closing his eyes, his ears twitched slightly.
Two o'clock direction, atop the high containers. That was a light machine gun, firing at six hundred rounds per minute. The trajectory was steady; it was a veteran.
Eleven o'clock direction, another light machine gunner. His reloading movement was a bit clumsy.
Three o'clock direction, the sniper had already cycled the bolt for a second time. The metallic click remained clear even amidst the noisy background din.
On the ground, two sets of footsteps were rapidly approaching. The frequency of the boot soles scraping the ground indicated they were flanking him in a fan formation.
The net of crossfire was tightening, like an iron cage closing in.
A burning pain flared up from his left shoulder.
The bullet from just now had grazed the edge of his armor, shaving off a layer of paint and plowing a gash through his flesh.
Blood seeped out, a warm sensation sliding down his arm.
Batman pressed a hand against the wound, throwing this judgment-blurring pain straight into the deepest recesses of his consciousness.
The loudspeaker above the yard suddenly crackled to life. The Penguin's distinct, quacking voice echoed across the desolate dockyard, sounding both pretentious and dripping with a politeness that made one want to slap him twice.
"Welcome, my dear Bat. Look at this grand turnout. I spent a fortune just for this 'retirement ceremony.' I don't actually expect these useless trash to really turn you into a colander. I just need to show that old man Falcone that the legendary Dark Knight bleeds too, and pants behind a container like a stray dog. You understand me, right?"
The laughter from the loudspeaker was grating.
As soon as he finished speaking, the strafing from the light machine guns grew even more frantic. The bullets punched a neat row of dents into the metal sheet above Batman's head. Metallic debris showered down, landing on his pitch-black helmet.
He was waiting.
Waiting for that gap during the reload, waiting for that vacuum in the laws of physics that lasted only a fraction of a second.
The machine gunner at the eleven o'clock direction finally emptied his magazine. The gunfire suffered an extremely brief breakdown.
Now.
Batman pulled a cylindrical smoke grenade from his utility belt. With a flick of his fingers, the casing instantly ruptured upon impact.
The grayish-white, thick smoke exploded like blooming cotton candy, instantly swallowing a twenty-meter radius.
This specially formulated chemical smoke carried a powerful disruptive electrical charge. On the screens of the thermal night-vision equipment high above, only a sheet of snow-white could be seen, resembling an old television that had lost its signal.
The machine gunners panicked, beginning to blind-fire blindly into the smoke. Bullets darted wildly through the dense fog, but they could no longer find their target.
The sniper's scope searched frantically along the edges of the smoke.
He held his breath, his finger resting on the trigger, trying to capture that passing black shadow.
However, a hand clad in a black Kevlar glove extended silently from the shadows behind him.
The hand clamped onto the back of his neck with precision, its grip as powerful as an iron vise.
The sniper didn't even have time to let out a muffled groan before his face made intimate contact with the hard roof of the container.
Batman pressed his knee against the man's spine, drew the sniper's rifle strap with his off-hand, and locked both of his hands securely behind his back in a couple of swift motions.
The second sniper position lost contact immediately after. Only static remained in the radio, like the chirping of a dying cicada.
At the eleven o'clock direction, the machine gunner who was clumsy at reloading was sweating profusely as he stuffed a new ammunition belt into the feeding slot.
A Batarang sliced through the fog, pinning itself precisely into the sheet metal beside him.
Bzzzzz--
High-frequency electronic noise erupted instantly. The machine gunner shrieked, dropping his gun to cover his ears tightly as he rolled around on the ground in agony.
The primary fire point went silent.
In mid-air, a grapple gun line stretched diagonally across the yard.
Batman was like a giant bat gliding through the dark night, his cape billowing behind him with a sharp snapping sound.
He released the cable the moment he zipped past the last fire point, letting himself fall in a pure free-fall.
Bringing his knees down with the full gravity of his body, he slammed heavily into the machine gunner's chest.
Bang!
The two of them crashed onto the container's roof together, the dull impact making one's teeth ache. The light machine gun flew out of the man's hands, tumbling over the edge and hitting the ground below with a crisp metallic shattering sound.
All the fire points had fallen completely silent in less than two minutes.
The smoke slowly settled, and the yard plummeted back into a dead silence.
The gunman at the last ground-lockdown position was pressing himself against a container wall, his barrel twitching neurotically back and forth through the fog.
He was sweating.
Sweat slid down his forehead and into his eyes, stinging sharply, but he didn't dare wipe it away.
A very faint sound came from behind him, like the sound of a boot sole scraping against an iron plate.
He spun around violently, his finger squeezing hard on the trigger.
It was completely empty.
Nothing was there except the swirling fog.
The next second, a grapple gun line dropped down from high above, wrapping precisely around his ankle.
"What the..."
Before he could even pull the trigger, his entire body was violently yanked into mid-air by a colossal force.
The world spun upside down.
He was left hanging upside down between two stacks of containers, the other end of the line pinned securely to the iron wall by a Batarang.
His rifle dropped to the ground two meters below, making a mocking sound.
He dangled in the air, watching the black figure slowly walking out on the ground. He was so terrified he forgot to even cry for help.
But what he didn't forget to think was...
Did Batman learn a bad habit from that spider? Why is he hanging people upside down too? Can't he just bind people up properly without making their brains rush to their heads? Being hung upside down like this the whole time is making me a bit dizzy.
Inside the Penguin's radio channel, there really was nothing left but static now.
"Hello? Is anyone still standing? Answer me! Answer me!"
The Penguin roared into the microphone, his voice becoming even more shrill with rage.
Responding to him was the half-uttered scream of the last machine gunner as he was dragged into the shadows.
And then, the communication cut off entirely.
The entire yard was left with only the whistling of the sea breeze passing through the gaps, like a requiem playing for these unlucky bastards.
Batman stood on the edge of the highest container, looking down at this jungle of steel from a commanding height.
The blood from his left shoulder was still dripping, sliding down his pitch-black forearm and landing on the rusted iron plate with a tap, tap.
With an expressionless face, he tore off a strip of fabric from his cape, wrapped it cleanly around the wound, bit one end with his teeth, and tightened it with one hand.
The proficiency of his movements was enough to make one's heart ache.
Batman, the peak human without any superpowers, began to confiscate the scattered weapons one by one. He checked the casualties, and then dragged the unconscious or incapacitated gunmen one by one, like dragging sacks of grain, to a safe zone that wouldn't be caught in the crossfire of the upcoming engagement.
Having finished all this, he melted back into the shadows.
Deeper within the docks, the sound of real gunfire was becoming increasingly dense.
Maroni's men had already taken advantage of the chaos from the Penguin's ambush on Batman to launch a raid on the actual warehouse district.
Falcone's garrison troops were fighting back desperately, and the sound of explosions made the ground tremble slightly.
Batman was in no hurry.
The ambush just now had proven one thing: though the Penguin, that dead fat man, could calculate well, his plan was riddled with loopholes.
The arms deal was a fake; it was a bait.
But the turf war between Maroni and Falcone was real, and its scale far exceeded expectations.
He did not continue to pursue that so-called arms lead ahead.
Batman turned around, nimbly leapt down from the container, and slipped toward the warehouse district where the gunfire was loudest.