DC: All for One Chapter 16 — Arkham Asylum (Patreon)

Robin sat in the chair beside the bed in the Watchtower's medical wing watching the little blip of the heart monitor connected to his mentor. He leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands clasped together so tightly that the knuckles had gone white from the pressure. Bruce had always seemed larger than live, even invincible to a certain extend. He'd never imagined that anything could come close to killing him. 

But here he was. 

Robin stared at the bandages wrapped around Bruce's head and the bruises that darkened the skin around his eyes, and he felt the weight of every failure pressing down on his shoulders until it became hard to breathe.

"I should have been better," Robin whispered as he looked at the floor between his feet and felt the sting of tears building behind his eyes. "I went in alone because I thought I could handle it, thought I could take him down and bring him in, but I walked right into his trap like an amateur. You trained me for years, and the one time it mattered I let you down. I let the whole city down because I wasn't strong enough to stop him."

He pushed himself up from the chair while he stifled a sob that tried to rise in his throat, he then walked the few steps to the side of the bed and stood there looking down at Bruce's face. The man who had taken him in after his parents died, the man who had become his father in every way that counted, now lay unconscious because of one mistake. Robin reached out and adjusted the sheet that had slipped slightly, smoothing it over Bruce's chest.

"I promise you, Bruce, I will take him down," Robin said as he gripped the edge of the bed rail until the metal creaked under his hands. "Ethan Kane is a monster, and I won't let him keep walking the streets of Gotham. He shot you, he nearly killed you, and he's still out there laughing about it while the city burns..."

"I... I...want to kill him so badly right now that it scares m. I know it's wrong but he deserves it." Robin turned away from the bed and paced the length of the room. 

The memory of that night Ethan had let him go flooded back as he walked, and he felt his fists tighten at his sides until the nails dug into his palms. He had spent god knows how long in the cargo container when the door swung open with a creak while Ethan stood there with a fat smirk on his face. "Time's up," Ethan had said. "Leave now, it's your lucky day."

Robin and Renee had tried to fight him right then and there, even in their malnourished and exhausted state. But it seemed Ethan had anticipated every move as if he had seen it coming from a mile away. He unloaded a full magazine of rubber bullets into them at close range, the impacts slamming into their bodies with heavy thuds that left bruises and knocked the wind out of them. 

The pain had been bad and before either of them could recover he had grabbed them by their feet and dragged them out of the container while they kicked and struggled. He threw them outside into the cold night air and they landed naked on the gravel and dirt. The humiliation of it all still burned in Robin's chest every time he remembered how they had been left there, beaten and exposed, with no way to fight back as Ethan simply walked away without a second glance.

Then the news had come later that same night. Bruce was in a coma after taking a bullet to the head during the chaos at the warehouse district, and Alfred had been found unconscious and tied up in the manor after someone had broken in and ransacked the cave.

 Ethan Kane was still walking free with no consequences, still living his life while the city suffered and the people who had tried to stop him paid the price.

Robin stopped pacing while he stood at the foot of the bed and looked at Bruce again. "He's bringing me closer to breaking the rule than anyone ever has," Robin said as his voice cracked slightly. "Even the Joker with all his twisted games never pushed me this far. You have a code, Bruce. You don't kill, and I follow that code just as strictly as you do, one part because I agree with it and two parts because I don't want to disappoint you. But with Ethan... I don't know if I'm strong enough to bring him in to face justice instead of ending him myself."

He walked back to the chair and sat down heavily while he leaned forward and rested his forehead against the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry, Bruce," he whispered as the tears finally spilled over and ran down his cheeks. "I failed you that night, and now you're lying here because of it. I don't know if I can do this the way you would want me to. I want him dead so badly that it feels like it's eating me alive from the inside."

The door to the medical wing opened with a hiss while Flash stepped inside carrying a tray with two cups of coffee. He walked over to the chair and set the tray down on the small table beside it before he placed one hand on Robin's shoulder. "Hey, Dick," Flash said as he pulled up another chair and sat down across from him. "I brought you something to keep you going. You've been in here for hours without a break."

Robin lifted his head while he wiped the tears from his face with the back of his hand, and he took the cup that Flash offered while he nodded in thanks. "I just keep thinking about how I things could've been different," Robin said as he stared into the coffee and watched the steam rise from the surface. "I went in cocky, thinking I could handle him alone. I should have called for backup the second I found the location, but I wanted to prove I could do it."

Flash leaned forward while he rested his elbows on his knees and looked at Robin with a serious expression. "None of us saw this coming, and sitting here beating yourself up won't change what happened. We need you sharp if we're going to figure out how to stop him for good."

Robin took a sip of the coffee and set the cup down. "I don't know if I should be out there... I feel so angry... I just want to kill him...."

Flash nodded slowly while he glanced at the monitors and then back at Robin. "I get it, man. After everything he's done it's hard to see him walking around freely. But if we cross that line, we lose what makes us different from him. Bruce would tell you the same thing if he could."

Robin stood up from the chair and walked over to the window that looked out into the stars. He pressed his forehead against the glass and closed his eyes. "I know he would," he said as his voice dropped to a whisper. "But I'm not sure I'm strong enough to keep that promise right now." He stayed there for a long moment until he finally pushed himself away from the window and turned back toward the medical bed where Bruce lay motionless. 

"I won't let him win, I promise," Robin said resolutely. 

"You heading back down?" Flash asked. "I can send back to Gotham if you want. No point staying up here beating yourself up when the city still needs you."

Robin nodded. "Yeah, send me back," he said as he stepped onto the pad and waited for Flash to position himself at the console. "I have to keep moving. Sitting here staring at monitors isn't going to fix anything, and Gotham is falling apart without him."

Flash placed a hand on Robin's shoulder before he walked away and to the transporter pad console you pressed a few buttons and in a flash Robin was back on earth in Gotham on a random rooftop.

Robin stood on the rooftop for another moment as he scanned the streets below and listened to the distant sounds of sirens that echoed through the night. Despite the uncertainty that gnawed at him about what he would do when he finally faced Ethan again, he remained resolute in his goal of catching him and bringing him in. 

The city needed that much at least, and he would not let his personal anger derail that goal. 

But sadly Ethan wasn't going to be easy to catch, in the last few months he had gone out of his way to make himself visible to the public. 

Everything was on record.

His apartment lease in the East End, the registration for the l sedan he drove around the city, even the driving school certificate he had obtained. Robin had checked the files himself multiple times, and the paper trail showed the path of a young man trying to rebuild his life after losing his parents.

'What a joke...' Robin fired his grapple line toward the next rooftop and swung across the gap, he did this multiple times as he made his way towards Wayne manor. It didn't take him even half an hour to get there once he did he slipped in through one of the side entrances and made his way into the study where he walked into the Batcave. Once inside he approached the Batcomputer that dominated the central workstation.

Robin sat down in the chair, powered up the main interface and began pulling up files on Ethan Kane while the monitors flickered to life around him. Annoyingly it seemed like Ethan had deleted the files that Bruce had been building up on him, so the only thing he had left our public records. 

He scrolled through public records and news articles that showed any information on Ethan, apparently he was in a local paper after he donated a small sum to a community center in the East End. "Why would he do that?" Robin muttered to himself while he leaned closer to the screen and studied the images. "He should know that most heroes know his identity and that he's responsible for Bruce's condition. Why bother even pretend to be a good guy?"

"Unless... it's a cover," he realised as he leaned back in the chair. 

Ethan had gone out of his way to craft the perfect image, building a narrative of a good guy trying to rise above his circumstances while he kept his criminal activities hidden behind layers of misdirection. Robin pulled up financial trails next. Ethan had not been spending large sums openly, at least not in ways that could be traced back to the cash and product he had stolen from Iron Row. 

"He must have something going on involving that, there's no way he's just sitting on millions," Robin said as he leaned forward again and opened another set of files that looked for any evidence he was laundering the money through several banks. "One of the first lessons Bruce always taught me was to follow the money. But he hasn't been spending that much at least officially so I'd need to track down his under-the-table deals or anything that he might have bought in cash, which is a tall order because cash is practically traceless if I don't already have a lead."

Robin sighed as he pushed the chair back from the console and stood up and stretched his arms overhead. It was going to be a long night, he knew he would have to dig deeper into the shadows if he wanted to find the connections that would lead him back to Ethan.

He just needed to find the money and find gather evidence of Ethan's wrong doings them nail him to the ground. 

_____________________________________

Inside Robinson Park, Ethan stood near the centre of the clearing beside the park's main fountain, which hadn't run properly in three years and sat dry and cracked at the base. 

Six folding tables had been set up in two parallel rows, and a portable industrial burner had been assembled at the far end of the arrangement where a stainless-steel pot of soup sat bubbling. Cardboard boxes were stacked beneath each table, and volunteers moved between them carrying armfuls of bread loaves, canned goods, bottled water, and packaged hygiene kits while they called back and forth to each other and shuffled around the setup trying to get everything ready before the crowd arrived.

Ethan moved among them with his sleeves rolled to the elbows, holding a clipboard loosely in one hand. "Push that table about two feet closer to the others so the line can flow without people bunching up at the bottleneck, and then we need another stack of cups over here," he said as he stepped aside for a young woman carrying a crate of producet. 

He stepped toward the burner and crouched slightly to look at the flame setting before straightening up and turning to a heavyset man named Marcus who had been helping coordinate since early that morning. "Marcus, where are we on the warming trays? Once the bread goes in the box it needs to stay at temperature or we'll be handing out cold soup with cold bread."

Marcus wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist and nodded as he pointed toward a van parked at the edge of the clearing. "They're in the back of the vehicle, we just pulled them out this morning and a couple of them need the power cables sorted before we can plug them in," he said. "I've got someone on it but they're struggling with the adapters."

Ethan handed him the clipboard and walked toward the van, moving around a teenager who was dragging a folding chair across the pavement, and when he reached the back of the van he leaned in over the bumper and looked at the tangle of cables that lay across the floor beside two stacked warming trays. 

A young man, maybe nineteen, crouched beside them with a furrowed brow and a power strip in one hand while he turned it over trying to find the right configuration. 

"The adapters are both the same type but they're backwards in the housing," Ethan said as he reached in and picked up the cable on the left, turning it over in his fingers for a moment before pressing the connector into the correct port. "There you go. The second one slots into the same configuration on the right side and then you're ready to run them both off the same strip."

The young man looked up with a slightly embarrassed expression while he exhaled through his nose. "Appreciate it, man, I've been staring at this for fifteen minutes," he said.

Ethan smiled and clapped him once on the shoulder. "Don't worry about it. Sometimes you just need a second pair of eyes," he said before he turned and walked back toward the tables.

The first people began arriving roughly twenty minutes later while the setup was still being finalized, filtering in through the park gate in ones and twos and small family groups, some of them pushing carts or carrying bags and some of them arriving with nothing at all except the clothes they wore. 

An older woman with a cane made her way carefully along the path and a volunteer immediately moved to walk beside her and guide her toward the shorter accessible queue on the left side of the arrangement. 

Two children, a boy and a girl who couldn't have been older than seven and nine, arrived ahead of what appeared to be their mother and pressed their faces against the table to look at the bread before the mother caught up and pulled them back gently and apologized to the volunteer standing there.

Ethan watched from the serving end of the first table while he ladled soup into a paper cup and handed it to an elderly man who accepted it with both hands and nodded once without speaking. Ethan nodded back and reached for the next cup. "Make sure you take a bread roll as well, they're in the tray right there," he said while he gestured with the ladle before he turned to the next person in line, a woman in her mid-thirties with dark circles under her eyes and a toddler balanced on her hip who kept reaching for the edge of the table. "How are you doing today?"

The woman shifted the toddler to her other hip and exhaled slowly. "Better now that I've seen this here, I'll be honest, I didn't know this was happening until my neighbor texted me about it this morning," she said while she looked along the length of the setup with something between relief and mild disbelief on her face. "We've been living off rice and whatever the corner store has left by the end of the day for the past two weeks, and their shelves aren't exactly full right now either."

"I know," Ethan said as he filled a cup for her and set it on the table beside a bread roll and a small sealed container of fruit. 

"The East End distributors have been getting hit by the same supply disruptions as everyone else, and it compounds fast when you're already running on margins. Take one of those hygiene packs as well when you get to the end of the table, they've got basics in there." 

He watched her take the cup and the roll before he turned and called down the line to a volunteer. "Can we get another stack of those fruit containers from the second box underneath? We're going to run low on the first batch soon."

The volunteer raised a hand in acknowledgment and disappeared behind the table while Ethan continued serving, the line already stretched back past the fountain and along the path toward the gate.

He spent the next hour in constantly moving between the serving tables, the supply area, and the volunteers who needed help. He helped an older man navigate the table setup after the man grew confused about which queue to use, and walked him through the arrangement before passing him to another volunteer. 

He was in the middle of helping Marcus reorganize the table arrangement so the line could wrap in a different direction when he heard the familiar sound of footsteps approaching from behind. Ethan sighed before he finished directing Marcus and turned.

Barbara stood at the edge of the setup in a grey hoodie and dark jeans with her hands pushed into the front pocket. She looked across the tables and the volunteers and the line of people still extending back toward the gate, then looked back at Ethan with an expression that combined visible anger with something that might have been confusion.

Ethan kept his public facade and walked toward her with a smile. "Barbara," he said simply.

She didn't return any kind of greeting. "What is this?" she asked while she gestured toward the setup behind him.

Ethan glanced back at the tables and the volunteers and then looked at her again. "A soup kitchen and food bank," he said. "The East End hasn't had consistent access to services for about six weeks since the gang war started, with deliveries only being guarded in the rich neighbourhoods there is a lot of people in the Narrows and the East end with nothing. I'm just trying to do my part to help."

Barbara looked at him for a long moment. "Trying to do your part," she repeated flatly.

"Yep just doing my part," he confirmed without any additional elaboration, and he turned slightly and walked back toward the first table.

She fell into step beside him, though not close, keeping perhaps three feet of distance between them as they moved along the side of the setup. "I'm going to ask you again because I want an actual answer," she said. "Why are you doing this?"

"I'm here to make the city better..." Ethan picked up a tray of bread rolls from the supply box and handed it to a volunteer who had run out at the far end of the table before he turned back to Barbara. "But there isn't one method to make a city better, Barbara," he explained. 

"There are many, and those methods often work better together than separately. You can't address the violence without addressing the conditions that make violence a rational choice for the people living in those conditions. You can't address those conditions by looking the other way while people go hungry."

Barbara pressed her lips together while she looked at him from the side, she pulled him by the sleeve a few steps sideways toward the dry fountain basin. "You shot Batman in the head!" she said angrily. "He is dead because of you! So I want you to look me in the eye and tell me how that is making this city better, because from where I'm standing those two things do not belong in the same sentence."

She gestured toward the tables with one hand while her other hand curled into a fist at her side. "Is this your way of cleaning your conscience? Is this what you tell yourself? Because it doesn't work that way, Ethan. You don't get to hand out soup and call it even." 

Ethan waited until she had finished before he sighed. "Batman was a positive force for this city," he said. "What has happened since his absence has made that abundantly clear to anyone. Crime is up. The GCPD is overwhelmed. Families like the ones standing in that line behind you have lost access to basic services because the infrastructure that depended on stability is collapsing without it."

Barbara let out a breath that came out almost as a sound of disbelief. "You are standing here talking to me about things you've caused while pretending that you had nothing to do with what happened," she said, and her voice cracked slightly on the last word before she pulled it back under control. "Don't do that. Don't you dare do that to me after—."

Ethan interrupted her. "Barbara," he said. "You're fighting the wrong person."

She stared at him.

"I am here," he continued, gesturing with one hand toward the park around them, "because this city needs someone who is willing to do what it takes to make it better."

"I am a hero in the same way that you are. The only difference between us is that I will not let morality become an obstacle between myself and the greater good. That is the only difference... and you should think carefully about whether that makes me your enemy or not."

Barbara looked at him for a long moment before she pressed her mouth shut and shook her head. She then turned and walked back along the path toward the gate without saying anything further.

Ethan watched her go then turned and walked back toward the serving table.

Internally he felt something close to relief, though the word was perhaps too mild for the satisfaction that moved through him. The timing of her arrival and departure and everything she had seen during the time between. 

When she reported back, and she would report it back, it would confirm that he was here at this exact time doing something charitable.

The timing made it perfect in a way that went beyond what Barbara could have suspected even if she had tried, because the young man standing in Robinson Park right now was not Ethan Kane. Not exactly. The face was his and the voice was his and every mannerism was indistinguishable, but the person behind all of it was his Doppelgänger.

The real Ethan was currently two miles away and moving through a service corridor in the lower levels of Arkham Asylum.

The Doppelgänger reached the end of the first table and picked up the ladle again, and a man in his fifties shuffled forward in the line and held out his hands for a cup, and the Doppelgänger filled it and handed it over and smiled warmly. The man thanked him and moved along the table.

The Doppelgänger ladled another portion and offered it to the next person in line.

...

Meanwhile, two miles away in the service corridors that ran underneath Arkham Asylum, the real Ethan moved through the narrow concrete passageway wearing a metal mask that covered his entire face and the suit that fit him perfectly. Getting into these corridors had been childsplay for him, he simply got a blueprint of the sewer system and Arkham Asylum and found a place where they both intersected. 

One blast later and he was in.

He had studied the asylum's internal layout for two weeks before tonight, cross-referencing the original architectural plans he had sourced through a city records contact with more recent structural surveys that had been filed during a renovation project three years ago. The low-security block, where standard patients were housed alongside those with documented mental illness who posed limited physical threat, lay at the end of this corridor and one floor up. The path there involved one keypad-locked door and a stairwell, and from the stairwell he would enter the main body of the building.

The intensive care ward, where Hit-Girl and Ivy were held, was a separate matter entirely and one he intended to address after Sofia was secured. Intensive care required a different approach, a more violent and louder one.

He rounded a curve in the corridor and the keypad door came into view. Ethan slowed as he approached and stopped in front of the panel as he looked at the mechanism for a moment before he brought his hands together in front of his chest and began rubbing his palms against each other, applying pressure until electricity started dancing between his fingers. 

The static charge accumulated between his palms as a crackling that raised the fine hairs along the back of his hands. He extended two fingers toward the keypad housing without making contact with it and released a focused discharge that jumped the gap with a SNAP and found the electronics inside the panel. The red indicator light sputtered and went dark, and the magnetic lock mechanism disengaged.

Ethan pushed it open and stepped through into the base of a stairwell, pulling the door closed behind him until it sat flush again in the frame. He climbed the first flight, reached the first landing and turned toward the door that opened into the a small room of the asylum's ground level and pushed it open 

The two guards were in there sharing a cigarette. They both registered Ethan's presence at the same moment and their posture shifted immediately, the nearer one raising his eyebrows while his partner reached for his radio.

Ethan clicked his fingers.

The CRACK of light that filled the corridor was not a flash in the ordinary sense of the word. It detonated outward from the point of the snap like a pressure wave of pure white luminescence that hit the walls and ceiling simultaneously, and the sound that accompanied it was a BANG sharp enough to resonate in the sternum, hitting at a frequency that bypassed any warning the nervous system might have sent in advance. 

Both guards went down without a sound, one catching the wall on the way to the floor and the other simply folding at the knees and sitting down hard against the wall with his radio sliding from his grip.

Ethan moved to the nearer guard first, crouching and working quickly to remove the uniform over the man's clothes, noting the name tag before he stripped the jacket and trousers and set the guard's personal items aside in a neat pile. 

He dressed himself in the uniform over his suit, which added a layer of bulk that he adjusted by rolling his shoulders until the fit was passable, then he replaced the metal mask with the guard's cap pulled over his face and kept his head down. 

He straightened and looked at the two unconscious men on the floor, then he grabbed both men and reached them both upward toward the ceiling, his arms extended beyond their natural length, as he pressed them flat against the ceiling, he held them there and then generate a barrier of ice around them. 

The ice formed in a thin layer first, threading across the men's clothing and the surface thickened over perhaps five seconds until a cocoon of pale blue ice enclosed both figures against the ceiling, solid enough to hold them in place. 

The room was warm and the ice would take two to three hours to melt completely, and when it did they would find themselves on the floor, cold, confused, and likely not entirely sure of what had occurred in the intervening time.

Ethan retracted his arms and rolled his shoulders again before he turned and walked out the door in the direction of the low-security block.

The transition from the service areas into the main body of the low-security block happened through a set of double doors fitted with reinforced glass panels that showed the ward corridor beyond. He pushed through and walked just like he belonged there, the staff member behind the corridor desk glanced up at him and then back down at her paperwork without any visible interest so Ethan was able to continue on to the cafeteria. 

The cafeteria occupied a large room off the main corridor and could be heard before it could be seen, the sound of cutlery against trays and the overlapping noise of dozens of separate conversations at various volumes mixing with the scrape of chair legs and the occasional sound of something being knocked over. Ethan pushed the cafeteria door open and stepped inside.

The room was large and with windows running along the upper third of the far wall, fitted with reinforced glass. Rows of bolted tables ran the width of the space, and the chairs attached to them were occupied by Arkham's lower-security population. 

A man near the window was constructing an elaborate tower from his food items and defending it earnestly against anyone who came near it. Two women at the far table were conducting what appeared to be a heated debate using only hand gestures. A man in the centre of the room was eating while reading a paperback book upside down.

Ethan walked along the perimeter of the room with his cap down and his hands clasped behind his back as he moved his gaze across the tables until he found her.

Sofia Falcone sat near the back left corner of the room at the end of a table, beside a woman who was talking about something that Sofia was clearly not listening to. She was twenty years old and looked like she had not fully inhabited her own body in a very long time. 

She looked lifeless and dead inside, like a zombie who had been drained of everything that made her human, her eyes were dull and unfocused, she stared at the table in front of her without blinking. Ethan wondered what she had done that her father had done this to her, but he supposed it did not matter in the end because her situation was his gain.

He activated his Diagnostic Vision, the perceptual shift settling over his sight like a filter and what it returned was not encouraging. Her bloodwork showed the residue of several different pharmaceutical compounds stacked on top of each other in concentrations that were very much excessive, sedatives layered with antipsychotics layered with a mood stabilizer that had no business being prescribed alongside the first two at the dosages being used.

Underneath all of that, the neurological damage that electroshock therapy left in the brain's patterns, a kind of interference pattern at the synaptic level that expressed itself as a degraded response time in the higher cognitive functions. 

They had not just been medicating her. They had been systematically dismantling whatever resistance was inside her until a hollow husk remained.

Ethan let the vision settle back to normal and waited.

The guard shift change came fourteen minutes later, announced by the sound of the cafeteria door opening and two guards exchanging a brief word before one of them left and the other took up a position near the serving counter. 

Ethan moved.

He crossed the floor toward Sofia's table and stopped beside her. "Falcone. I need you to stand up right now," he said, and when she didn't respond immediately he tapped the table. "Up. Now. You want to tell me what you thought you were doing with that knife from the tray?"

The woman beside Sofia looked up and several people at the nearest tables turned toward the sound. Sofia herself didn't so much as move or even react to his presence. 

"Don't play like you didn't just reach for it, I was watching from the door and I saw exactly what happened, so get up and come with me right now before this becomes something worse for you," Ethan shouted. 

The rest of the room started to get louder and more agitated at the scene, it was like a chain reaction had been caused and was spreading through like a virus. 

Even still Ethan took Sofia by the arm and lifted her from her seat roughly and moved her toward the door. He passed the second guard near the serving counter. "Get them settled, I'm taking her to her cell, bitch doesn't deserve to eat," he said. 

The guard nodded and turned toward the room while Ethan pushed through the cafeteria door with Sofia in tow. He guided her past the ward desk and continued down the corridor toward the stairwell door rather than toward the patient rooms.

He pushed through into the stairwell and back where he'd left his mask. "Sofia Falcone," he said.

She looked up at him slowly though her eyes remained dull, she automatically started to take off her clothes as if something like this had happened before.

Ethan reached forward and placed a hand gently on both of hers and stopped the motion. "No," he said. He reached up with one hand and lifted her chin until her eyes were level with him, he then placed both hands on either side of her face. 

Using Healing Touch—which was what he called one of his newly acquired abilities—was as easily as willing the sickness away from the other person. It took perhaps ninety seconds of sustained contact, and when he lowered his hands Sofia's complexion had shifted from the grey-undertoned pallor of the chronically medicated to something closer to living colour, and her posture had straightened slightly from the inside out rather than from any conscious effort.

But her eyes, though clearer now, still didn't lift to meet his properly. She looked at a point somewhere around his collarbone and stayed there.

He studied her for a moment then understood. The electroshock and the medication had not produced this zombie like effect. They had made something that was already present worse. 

She had given up. 

"Sofia I need you to wake up," he said, loud enough to draw her attention. "I'm not a guard and I am not here to hurt you."

She looked at him.

He reached up and removed the cap from his head and held it at his side revealing his face which compared to most guards here was unusually handsome snd a little young.

She looked at his face and then at the suit underneath. "Did my father finally send someone to finish it?" she asked.

"I'm not here to kill you," he said. "I'm here to get you out and free you from this place."

Sofia took a step back until her shoulder blades touched the corridor wall. "Who are you?" she asked with a slight suspicion building up within her. "And what do you want from me?"

"My name is All for One," Ethan said. "I'm here because I need you to help me change the world."

She shook her head slightly while she kept her back against the wall. "I don't understand what you mean, just take me back to my cell," she said as she started to become more agitated. 

"This isn't the time or the place to explain it fully," he said, "and I won't pretend my reasons for freeing you are altruistic. But I will tell you this much... you have two options standing in front of you right now. You can stay here and continue to be exactly what your father paid the people in this building to make you into." He paused while he let that settle. "Or you can come with me, walk out of this building tonight, and be free."

Sofia held his gaze... the silence between them lasted long enough even wondered if he had read her all wrong. Though eventually she nodded. 

Ethan felt the satisfaction of a correct assessment confirming itself, he turned and stripped off the guard uniform, before he straightened his suit jacket and adjusted the mask. He looked back at Sofia and found that she was standing slightly more upright than she had been a minute ago.

"There are two other people I need to bring out before we leave," he said as he looked back towards her. "Both of them are in intensive care, which means the next part of this is going to require a different approach and considerably more attention will be on us." 

He looked at her as he put his metal mask back on. "Stay close to me. Do what I tell you when I tell you. And don't be alarmed by what you're about to see."

...

"Backup! We need backup in the east service wing now!" one guard shouted as he pumped his arms and rounded the corner with his shotgun raised. Another slammed his hand against the wall alarm, and the harsh alarm of the lockdown siren filled the corridor while red lights began flashing along the ceiling.

Ethan kept walking forward with Sofia pressed tight against his back, her arms wrapped around his waist and her face buried between his shoulder blades. A full riot squad burst through the double doors ahead of them, six men in heavy body armor with rifles already up and firing. The bullets slammed into Ethan's chest and stomach, but they simply flattened against his reinforced skin and dropped harmlessly to the floor. Sofia flinched hard at every impact, her body jerking against him while she hugged tighter and tried to make herself smaller.

"Stay behind me," Ethan said calmly over his shoulder, even as the guards kept shooting. He raised his right arm straight out in front of him and released an air burst. An invisible wave of highly pressurized air shot forward with a deep WHOOSH that hit the squad like a truck. The men flew off their feet, their bodies tumbling through the air before they slammed hard into the floor and walls knocking them all out.

The lockdown alarm screamed louder while metal shutters began descending from the ceiling all around the corridor. Sofia's breathing turned fast and ragged while her fingers dug into his sides. "They're... they're locking us in... we can't... we can't get out..."

"There is nothing to worry about," Ethan said as he kept walking forward without breaking stride. "Breathe slowly. I won't let anyone harm you."

More guards poured in from a side hallway, at least ten of them with batons and tasers drawn, they shouted for him to stop, but Ethan just flicked his fingers outward and shot sharp bone fragments from his fingertips like bullets. The fragments sliced through the air with and embedded deep into their legs with wet THUNKS, dropping every man to the floor screaming while blood soaked through their pants.

The final metal shutter slammed down in front of them, sealing the corridor completely. Sofia's breathing sped up again. "Its... closing... we're trapped..."

Ethan stopped in front of the thick shutter and fired intense lasers from his eyes. The beams cut through the metal with a high-pitched hiss carving a jagged hole wide enough for both of them in seconds. He stepped through the opening while Sofia stayed glued to his back, her face pressed against him the whole time.

On the other side, guards were already trying to radio for more backup from Gotham PD. "This is Arkham security! We have a breach in low-security wing! Requesting immediate assistance—" one guard yelled into his radio before Ethan stretched his arms forward, grabbed the man by the collar, and lifted him off the ground with one hand.

"No help is coming I'm afraid," Ethan said as he held the struggling guard up and looked him dead in the eyes. "But don't worry, I won't kill any of you. I appreciate a man who is just trying to do his job." He threw the guard really hard at the wall with a loud CRUNCH. The man hit the concrete and slid down unconscious, blood trickling from his nose.

They kept moving while Ethan walked through the corridors, ignoring the few doctors who were frantically trying to call for help on their phones or the intercom. He passed the cell of Calendar Man, who sat on his bed muttering, then the Riddler who was pacing in circles, and Victor Zsasz who stood pressed against the glass while he grinned at them as they walked by.

Eventually they reached Mindy's cell. She was inside doing exercises, sweat dripping down her face while she shadow-boxed and threw quick kicks at the air, keeping herself in shape like she was still on the streets. Ethan walked straight to the cell door and fired his laser vision at the lock. The metal glowed red-hot and melted away with a hiss before he pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Mindy spun on him instantly and attacked without hesitation. She launched off the ground flipping forward and throwing a spinning kick at his head while she shouted, "You piece of shit villain! You picked the wrong cell to come in! I'm gonna rip your fucking balls off and feed them to you!" She followed with a rapid combo of punches. "Come on you fucking scumbag! You think you can just walk in here like you own the place? I'll carve your goddamn eyes out and make you choke on them!"

Ethan avoided every attack stepping aside or leaning back just enough for her strikes to miss by inches. When she tried to close in with a leaping knee strike he raised his hand and released a focused air burst that slammed her hard against the back wall with a loud thud. Mindy hit the concrete and slid down, coughing while she glared up at him.

"Calm down," Ethan said as he lowered his hand. "I am not a villain."

Mindy pushed herself up while she wiped blood from her split lip and spat on the floor. "Bullshit! Every asshole who walks in here is a villain. You can go fuck yourself!"

Ethan shook his head. "I am here because I share your beliefs. I believe in cutting out the rot and making a better world. The same way you and your father did."

Mindy still didn't believe him. She launched at him again with a wild punch aimed at his throat. Ethan stretched his arms forward and wrapped them around her in a tight restraint, pinning her arms to her sides while she struggled and cursed. "Let me the fuck go you sick fuck!" Mindy shouted while she kicked her legs and tried to headbutt him. "I'll bite your fucking nose off! I'll shove my thumbs in your eyes until they pop! Get your goddamn hands off me!"

Ethan walked out of the cell with her still restrained while he stopped in front of Victor Zsasz's cell. "Perhaps you need a demonstration of my will," he told her, which made Mindy pause in her struggling and look at him.

He raised his arm and released a powerful air blast straight into Victor's cell. The glass shattered with a loud CRASH and the pressurized air hit Victor like a freight train, blowing him into a bloody paste against the back wall in a spray of red mist and chunks of meat.

Ethan looked down at Mindy while he still held her. "Is another one needed?"

Mindy stared at the mess that used to be Victor Zsasz, her breathing heavy. She was listening now. "Who the fuck are you?" she asked a little curiously now. 

"Pleasantries can be exchanged later," Ethan said as he released her and stepped back. "All I need to know right now is whether you want to continue you and your father's mission of removing scum from Gotham."

Mindy rolled her shoulders and popped her neck while she stretched her arms. "Fuck yeah I do."

"Who the fuck is she?" Mindy asked as she jerked her thumb toward Sofia who stood quietly behind them.

"Sofia Falcone," Ethan answered.

Mindy glared at her immediately and looked ready to launch at her until Ethan stepped between them. "She was put in this place by her father," he explained quickly. "She's as much a victim of his machinations as your own was."

Mindy grumbled under her breath but accepted it while she cracked her knuckles. "Fine. But if she tries any shit I'm stabbing her in the fucking throat."

More guards piled into the hallway ahead of them, they shouted and raised their weapons but Ethan placed both hands to the floor and summoned a thick wall of ice that shot up from the floor and blocked the entire corridor, sealing them off completely.

He turned to the two girls. "Let's go," he said. "We have one last stop."

(AN: So Ethan has a bunch new powers that he's demonstrating, I'll give a little list of the ones he's demonstrated, he has more than those, but I like keeping them as a surprise. Anyway hope you enjoyed.)

1) All for One

2) Hyperadrenal

3) Voice Imitation

4) Enhanced Agility

5) Regenerative Saliva 

6) Scent Masking

7) Mass Adjustment (Self)

9) Expanded Vision

10) Wall Crawling

12) Explosive body parts and fluids

13) Ice Manipulation

14) Laser Vision

15) Flashbang

16) Healing Touch

17) Bone Manipulation

18) Air Blast

19) Stretchy arms

20) Static Charge

21) Durable Skin

Some of these will be given to others so he may not keep them forever.