DC: All for One Chapter 23 — Gotham… City of the Future (Patreon)

(AN: I’ve mostly focused on this story this week so apologies to anyone expecting others. I’ll be back to normal after this.)

"The Future Phone. Available now at every Future Foundation outlet and participating retailers across Gotham City. Join the Future Family today and be part of something bigger than yourself. Free calls. Free messages. Free internet. No contracts. No hidden fees. No one left behind."

"The Future Foundation... making a better Gotham," the voice said. "A better fut—"

BOOM

A massive explosion tore through the intersection of Carver and Ninth in the Narrows, blowing out the windows of the three buildings nearest to the blast point and sending a column of smoke and debris rising into the night sky that was visible from six blocks in every direction. Before the glass had finished falling Saviour vehicles were already rolling through the smoke, black trucks with no plates and no markings moving in pairs down the main roads of Narrows territory. 

The Maroni remnants were the first to realise what was happening and the last to be able to do anything about it.

A crew of twenty who had been running a card game in the back of a laundromat on Twelfth Street heard the explosion and grabbed their weapons and made it to the front door before the first truck pulled up outside and the Saviours poured out of it. The gunfire lasted perhaps forty seconds, and when it stopped the Saviours stepped over the bodies and moved to the next location on their list.

Three blocks east a Bertinelli stash house was hit simultaneously from the front and the roof, the Saviours breaching the ground floor entrance with a charge while a second team came through the skylight and dropped into the room where four men were scrambling to reach the weapons cache in the closet. 

They didn't make it.

On Fourteenth Street four Galante enforcers who had been sitting in a parked car watching the block saw the trucks coming and tried to pull away from the curb, the driver throwing the car into reverse while his partner leaned out the passenger window with a shotgun. A Saviour sniper on the roof of the apartment building across the street put a round through the engine block and the car died in the middle of the road, and twenty seconds later the four men were face down on the asphalt with holes in their heads.

Mindy was three blocks ahead of the main assault force, sitting on the hood of a car her legs crossed and her phone held up in front of her face as she scrolled through her feed with her thumb. The bunny ears on the top of her head swivelled independently toward the sounds of gunfire coming from every direction while she typed out a response to something, hit post, then switched to the camera and held the phone out at arm's length and smiled and took a selfie with a burning laundromat visible over her shoulder.

She looked at the photo, tilted her head, decided it was good enough, posted it, then locked the phone and slid it into the pouch on her belt.

"Alright," she said to herself as she hopped off the hood. "Time to go before boss man yells at me."

She pulled the pistol from her right hip and drew the katana from the sheath across her back with her left hand and started walking toward the Maroni stronghold at the end of the block where the last pocket of organised resistance was trying to barricade the front entrance with furniture.

The first man who came out to meet her was a big guy with a baseball bat who swung at her head from behind a dumpster. Mindy ducked under it without slowing down, came up inside his guard, put the pistol under his chin and fired. He dropped while she stepped over him and kept walking. Two more came around the corner of the building with handguns drawn, one of them firing wild lyand the other trying to line up a shot. 

Mindy launched sideways, her legs launching her six feet to the right in a burst that left a crack in the pavement where she'd been standing, she then closed the distance to the first shooter in two strides. The katana took his gun hand off at the wrist and she spun with the momentum and drove the blade through his partner's throat before he could adjust his aim, the steel going in one side and out the other in a wet Schlick. She pulled it free, flicked the blood off the blade with a snap of her wrist, and kicked the door of the stronghold open.

Inside there were six of them. Two behind an overturned table with rifles, one crouched by the window with a shotgun, two more trying to load a bag into the back corridor, and the last one standing in the middle of the room with a phone in his hand like he'd been trying to call someone who was never going to answer.

Mindy came through the door at almost super speeds, sliding across the floor on her knees under the first burst of rifle fire that chewed into the doorframe above her head. She came up firing, three quick shots that dropped the man by the window, then she launched herself off the floor with her enhanced legs and flipped over the overturned table and landed behind the two riflemen. The katana came down in a diagonal slash that opened the first one from shoulder to hip, she caught his falling body with her free hand, shoved it into his partner and fired two rounds through the dead man's back into the living one behind him.

The two men with the bag dropped it and ran for the back corridor. Mindy threw the katana. It spun end over end across the room and buried itself in the back of the first runner's skull with a heavy thunk that dropped him mid-stride. The second man made it to the corridor entrance before she caught up to him, grabbed him by the collar, yanked him backward and slammed his head into the wall hard enough to leave a dent in the wall, then dropped him and walked over to retrieve her katana from his partner's skull, planting her foot on his back and pulling the blade free. 

"Please... please don't—" 

BANG

She shot the man she had dropped in the head before he could even finish begging. She then turned her gaze to the last man remaining. 

The man as on his phone, still standing in the centre of the room with his arm outstretched and his mouth open, trying to call reinforcements or anyone. 

Mindy skipped towards him. 

"Hi," she said. "You must be the new boss."

BANG

She shot him between the eyes.

She then looked around the room at the bodies and the blood and the overturned furniture and the bag that the two runners had been trying to save. She walked over to it and unzipped it and looked inside at the bundles of cash and nodded to herself and zipped it back up and slung it over her shoulder.

"Mindy twenty, Maronis zero," she said to no one as she walked out the back door into the alley.

...

Meanwhile across the city in the East End.

Ivy walked at the centre of a column of Saviours who moved through the main streets of what had been Riccoli territory until approximately four minutes ago, her bare feet leaving faint impressions on the asphalt as the ground beneath her responded to her presence. The pavement around her footprints was cracking outward in green lines where roots were pushing up from beneath the surface.

The Riccoli crew that had been holding the East End since the old man's death had set up a defensive line across the intersection of Chambers and Broad, overturned cars and dumpsters forming a rough barricade behind which perhaps twenty men were crouched.

Ivy raised one hand.

The ground in front of the barricade split open in a line that ran the full width of the intersection. They burst through the asphalt in a wall of green that was three feet thick at its base and growing, they hit the barricade and tore through it like it was made of paper, scattering the overturned cars sideways and sending the men behind them scrambling backward in a panicked retreat.

Three of them didn't scramble fast enough. The vines caught them around the waist and the legs and lifted them into the air and slammed them back down onto the pavement with impacts that left them still.

The rest opened fire.

The bullets hit the vine wall and disappeared into it, the plant matter absorbing the rounds the way a sandbag would, meanwhile Ivy kept walking forward with her hand still raised and the vines responding to her will, reaching out and grabbing rifles from hands, wrapping around ankles and dragging men off their feet, coiling around torsos and squeezing just hard enough to shatter their ribs before slamming them sideways into walls and finishing the job.

A GCPD cruiser came screaming around the corner with its lights on and two officers inside who took one look at the scene and reached for their weapons. Ivy's eyes flicked toward them and a root system erupted from beneath the cruiser and lifted the entire vehicle twenty off the ground, suspending it in a cradle that held the car immobile. The officers inside scrambled for the doors but the vines had already wrapped around the handles and sealed them shut.

"Stay in your car," Ivy said without looking at them. "This doesn't concern you and I've been ordered not to hurt public servants." She then turned and continued walking. 

The Riccoli leader was a man named Enzo Vitale who had inherited the crew from his uncle after the old man was killed on the night of the gala. Enzo had made the mistake of believing that a barricade and twenty armed men would be enough to hold a single intersection against whatever was coming for him, and he was now discovering how wrong he had been as the last of his men were dragged off their feet by the vines and deposited in dead heaps along the sidewalk.

He was standing alone in the middle of the cleared intersection with a pistol in his hand when Ivy stopped in front of him.

He raised the gun.

A vine the thickness of a man's thigh erupted from the ground directly beneath him, wrapped around his body from his ankles to his chest, and lifted him fifteen feet into the air. He screamed and fired the pistol twice into the vine but it didn't slow down or flinch, it just kept squeezing, tighter and tighter, his ribs creaking audibly under the pressure as the vine constricted around him like a living vice.

Ivy watched from below a slight smile on her face. The Riccoli family had been one of the major shareholders in one of Gotham's coal plants. It's why she took great pleasure in ending the entire family. 

The vine squeezed until the screaming stopped and his head popped like a grape, and then it released, the coils unwinding and letting what was left of Enzo Vitale fall to the ground. 

Ivy looked at the cruiser and the roots gently lowered it back to the ground and released the door handles.

"Go home," she said to the officers inside. "Tell your Commissioner the East End has new management."

...

In the building of a warehouse on the north side of the harbour district, Sofia Falcone sat in a chair with her legs crossed and a glass of red wine in her hand and watched the three men on the floor in front of her crawl.

Luca Falcone, her uncle, was on his hands and knees in his underwear with his face pressed against the concrete, making small whimpering sounds through his teeth as the pain she was projecting into his nervous system cycled through a rotation that she had spent the last three hours refining. His two underbosses were beside him in the same condition, stripped to their underwear and arranged in a line, their bodies twitching and jerking as the waves of pain that Sofia was controlling. 

"Bark," she said.

Luca made a sound that was not quite a bark.

"I said bark, Luca. Like a dog. Because that's what you are now. That's what all of you are. Dogs. My father's dogs who did whatever he told you to do, who followed his orders without thinking, who helped him lock me away because he asked you to and you were too stupid and too cowardly to say no. So bark for me. Bark for me the way you used to bark for him."

"Woof woof!" Luca barked. It was a broken sound that barely qualified but Sofia accepted it with a small nod and took a sip of her wine.

"Good boy," she said.

Behind her two dozen Saviours stood in a loose semicircle around the edges of the room, their weapons drawn and their faces impassive as they watched the scene unfold. At the far end of the warehouse a group of Falcone soldiers who had been captured during the initial assault were kneeling in a row with their hands on their heads while Saviours moved down the line executing them one by one with single shots to the back of the skull.

Sofia didn't look at the executions. She kept her eyes on her uncle. "You know what the funny thing is, Luca?" she said. "My father thought he could break me. He spent years trying. The drugs, the shocks, the waterboarding, all of it designed to turn me into something empty. And it almost worked. It came very close to working." She then leaned forward and whispered in his ear. "But what you didn't account for was god himself intervening and turning me into one of his angels. "

Luca looked up in an expression that could only be described as pure horror. 

She leaned back and uncrossed her legs. "Now. I'm going to ask you a question, and you're going to answer it, and if the answer is anything other than what I want to hear then it seems I'm going to have to do a better job training you, am I clear?"

Luca nodded frantically against the concrete.

"Where are the rest of the leadership of the family?"

He started talking.

...

The financial district was twelve miles from the nearest Saviour assault point, which was exactly the distance All for One needed between himself and the real operations of the evening. He couldn't expect his saviours to take over Gotham with the various heroes on their backs, so he decided to put on a little show. 

The bank vault door lay on the floor of the lobby where he had torn it from its hinges, a six-ton slab of reinforced steel that had hit the marble with enough force to crack the foundation beneath it. All for One stood in the centre of the lobby with three duffel bags of cash at his feet, his arms folded across his chest as he waited.

He didn't have to wait long.

Wonder Woman came through the front wall. The brick and steel parted around her like water as she drove through it at speed, her fist leading and her body angled forward in a flying tackle that crossed the full width of the lobby in under a second and hit All for One in the chest with enough force to launch him backward through the teller counter and into the vault room behind it.

He hit the back wall of the vault hard enough to buckle the reinforced steel behind him and dropped to one knee, the impact ringing through his skeleton, and by the time he looked up Diana was already on him with a second strike coming for his head. He blinked out of existence and reappeared ten feet to her left, his feet touching down on top of one of the safety deposit box cabinets.

She adjusted instantly, pivoting on one foot and launching herself at his new position with a knee strike that would have caved in a car door. He blinked again, appearing behind her, his hand already extended as a wave of telekinetic force slammed into her back and drove her face-first into the wall of deposit boxes, the small metal doors exploding outward in a shower of twisted steel and scattered contents.

Robin came through the hole Diana had made in the front wall a half-second later, his staff already drawn, Batgirl right behind him with a pair of batarangs in each hand. Black Canary entered through the side door with Wildcat half a step behind her. 

Five heroes. All at once.

All for One floated up off the cabinet and hung in the air in the centre of the vault room, his suit jacket settling around him as he surveyed the five figures arranging themselves below.

Robin came at him first, launching himself off the top of the teller counter in a spinning leap that brought the staff down in a two-handed overhead strike. All for One caught the staff with one hand, the impact sending a shockwave through the metal that Robin felt in his teeth, and he twisted it sideways and threw Robin across the room into Batgirl who was mid-throw with her batarangs, making them collide and go down. 

Wildcat charged from the left with his fists up. All for One dropped to the ground and met him head on, catching the old man's jab on his forearm, slipping the cross, and driving a palm strike into Ted's chest that lifted him off his feet and sent him skidding across the marble on his back until he hit the far wall.

Black Canary tried to lead with a kick but All for One dodged and floated backwards. He thrust his hand toward her and a focused blast of telekinetic force caught her in the stomach and folded her in half and threw her backward through the side door she had entered from.

Robin was back on his feet, blood on his lip from the collision with Batgirl, his staff in his hands. Batgirl was up beside him with three batarangs between the fingers of her right hand and a grapple gun in her left. They came at him together from opposite sides, Robin high and Batgirl low. 

All for One blinked between them and they nearly hit each other before they adjusted. He reappeared behind Robin and kicked him in the back of the knee, dropping him to the floor, then caught the batarang Batgirl threw at his head between two fingers and flicked it back at her hard enough to tear through the edge of her suits and skin.

She dove sideways and came up throwing two more. He batted one aside with a telekinetic pulse and let the other one hit his chest where it bounced off his durable skin without leaving a mark.

Wonder Woman hit him from above.

She had gone up through the ceiling while he was dealing with the others, come around through the floor above, and dropped back down through the hole she'd made with both fists locked together in a hammerblow that caught him on the top of the shoulder and drove him into the floor. The marble cracked in a starburst pattern beneath him as his knees buckled and his body was driven down by the force of the impact, she followed it with a right cross that snapped his head sideways and a left hook that sent him staggering.

He righted himself and raised both hands, a slit in his mask then opened revealing a mouth that had a grin on him. 

He then opened it and let a sonic scream erupt, it hit Diana in the chest and threw her backward across the lobby, her boots carving trenches in the marble as she fought against the wave. 

Robin came at him from behind during the scream and got a clean hit on the back of his helmet with the staff, the metal ringing like a bell, All for One cut the scream and spun and caught Robin by the throat with one hand and lifted him off the ground.

Batgirl's grapple line wrapped around his wrist before he could throw Robin, the cable pulling taut as she anchored herself against the teller counter and hauled backward with her full weight. All for One looked at the cable, looked at Batgirl, and chuckled before he lifted her up and threw her towards him. 

He dropped Robin, caught Batgirl by the front of her suit as she slid into range, lifted her and slammed her into the floor hard enough to crack the marble beneath her back multiple times until she went limp. 

Wildcat was back soon after. The old man came out with a combination that was faster than anyone his age had a right to throw, a jab-cross-hook that All for One slipped, slipped, and caught on his forearm before driving his knee into Ted's midsection and following with an elbow to the back of his head that put him face-down on the marble.

Black Canary had re-entered through the side door with a metal pipe she had pulled from the wreckage of the wall, swinging it at his head in a two-handed arc that he ducked under before catching her by the arm, twisting it behind her back, and throwing her into the teller counter with enough force to collapse it.

Robin was back up again, bleeding from a cut above his eye, his staff broken in two pieces that he was now holding like twin batons. He came at All for One with a ferocity that he hadn't shown in any of their previous encounters, the broken staff moving viciously, but All for One deflected and dodged and blocked, the two of them moving through the ruins of the bank lobby in a rapid exchange that lasted perhaps fifteen seconds before All for One caught both batons in his hands, headbutted Robin hard enough to split the skin across the bridge of his nose, and kicked him in the chest with a force that sent him flying into the vault door lying on the floor.

Four of the five were down.

Diana was not.

She came out of the rubble where the sonic scream had thrown her with dust in her hair and blood on her lip and a look on her face that certainly wasn't happy. She hit him with a combination that was faster than anything she had thrown earlier in the fight, a left-right-left that he blocked, blocked, and took on the chin, the third punch snapping his head back and making his vision blur behind the mask. She followed with a knee to his ribs that he felt through the durable skin, the impact deep enough to bruise the muscle beneath it, and then she grabbed the front of his suit and headbutted him and the sound of her forehead hitting his mask was like a hammer hitting an anvil.

He staggered, making her press forward. A right hand that he slipped, a left hook that caught him on the temple, a spinning backfist that he ducked under by an inch. She was getting faster, hitting harder, fighting with a savagery that was stripping away the tactical approach she usually brought to combat and replacing it.

He blinked behind her. She spun before he had fully materialised and caught him with a back elbow that connected with his jaw through the mask and made his teeth click together. He threw a telekinetic blast at point blank range that she braced against, her boots sliding backward on the marble but her body staying upright as she leaned into the force and pushed through it.

He raised both hands forming these white pulsing spheres on them and slammed them into Diana. 

The Quake hit the building like a bomb going off beneath it. The floor buckled outward from the point of impact in a radiating shockwave that tore through the marble and the concrete beneath it and the foundation beneath that, the walls cracking and the ceiling raining down in chunks of plaster and steel as the entire structure shuddered on its foundations. Diana was thrown off her feet by the force of it, her body tumbling across the ruined floor as the building groaned around them.

All for One floated upward through the collapsing ceiling, rising through the dust and the debris into the open air above the financial district, he looked down at the five heroes scattered across the ruins of the bank below him.

Robin was trying to push himself up off the vault door, his arms shaking. Batgirl was on her back, conscious but not moving. Wildcat was face down and still. Black Canary was pulling herself out of the wreckage of the teller counter. Diana was already on her feet, looking up at him through the hole in the ceiling with blood running down her face and her fists clenched.

He reached down with both hands and the telekinetic grip closed around a city bus that had been abandoned on the street outside the bank when the fighting started. He tore it off the ground and he lifted it above the building and held it there for a moment, ten tons of steel and glass suspended in the air above the four unconscious and semiconscious heroes below.

Then he let go.

The bus dropped.

Diana launched herself upward through the hole in the ceiling and caught the falling bus on her shoulders, the impact driving her downward as her boots cracked the rooftop beneath her, her arms straining and her teeth bared as she held thirty tons of steel above her head while the heroes below scrambled to clear the area.

All for One picked up the three duffel bags of cash and blinked away. He reappeared six blocks away on the roof of a parking structure, the bags in his hands and the sounds of sirens fading behind him. 

He looked south toward the Narrows. He looked east toward the East End. He looked north toward the harbour district.

Gotham was his.

_____________________________________

Meanwhile outside the store on Broad Street Ethan stood near the front entrance with Maya beside him, his hands in his coat pockets, watching queue around the block for their phones, while others ripped open their boxes right there on the sidewalk and power on their new phones and start taking pictures of each other.

Maya was scrolling through her tablet, refreshing the sales numbers every few seconds. "Ethan," she said. "Even at the discount, with how many we're moving, we're going to make a profit on the first run."

"I thought we'd break even at best, but we're actually selling out at every location. Every single one. That surplus you got built that I said was too much? Gone. All of it. We'll need to start the second run by tonight."

Ethan smiled at her. "And what did I say?"

Maya let out a breath and shook her head. "You said not to worry."

"And?"

"And you were right. You're always right... it's very annoying."

A woman in her forties came up to him with a phone box pressed against her chest and her teenage daughter beside her. "Mister Kane, I just wanted to say thank you. My girl hasn't had a phone in two years because I couldn't afford the contracts. Now she can call me when she's walking home from school. God bless you."

Ethan took her hand. "That's exactly why we built it. Your daughter deserves to feel safe walking home and I'm glad we could help with that. You enjoy the phone, both of you."

The woman teared up and squeezed his hand and moved on, and a young man in work boots replaced her almost immediately, grabbing Ethan's hand and shaking it hard enough to nearly pull him sideways.

"Mister Kane, I gotta tell you man, that Horizon Connect app got me a job interview already!! First one in eight months. Eight months, man. I was about to give up."

"Don't give up," Ethan said. "That's what the app is for. Go get that job and if they don't hire you, come back to the app and try again. We'll keep the opportunities coming."

"Yes sir. Yes sir, thank you."

Then another person. 

Then another. 

A stream of thank yous and people who looked at him like he'd personally pulled them out of a fire, gripping his hand, touching his shoulder, some of them close to crying, the gratitude in their faces tipping over into something closer to worship.

Ethan was kind and patient with every single one of them.

Eventually his phone started to buzz and he had to put the meet and greets on pause. When he had a little privacy he pulled it out and checked the screen. 

Sofia: Falcones handled, I got Luca to sing like a bird. The saviours are clearing up anyone else who has the power to take over the family. 

He swiped. 

Mindy: Narrows clear, was kinda boring they didn't put up much of a fight. Got the money too lol. 

Swipe. 

Ivy: East End is ours, there wasn't much of a threat and the police were present but I dealt with them non leathally.

He typed one message to all three. 

Ethan: Head back to Sanctuary when you're done, you need to all be present for the meeting tonight. 

Then he put the phone away and shook another hand.

Maya leaned in a few minutes later. "Mayor's office just called, him and the DA want a meeting. They said it's urgent."

"I bet they do," Ethan said. "They just lost their biggest donors and they're looking for a replacement sugar daddy. Tell them I'll think about it."

"You want me to say it nicer than that?"

"Say it however you want, the answer is the same."

She was typing the response when a noise from inside the store made them both look up, a few customers near the entrance backing away from something with confused looks on their faces.

Ethan walked inside only to see one of the strangest sights he'd ever seen. 

A chimpanzee was sitting on one of the display tables in the middle of the store with his legs hanging over the edge and his hands on his knees. He was wearing a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and a deerstalker cap pushed back on his head. He looked around at the startled customers with an expression that managed to be both embarrassed and completely at ease at the same time.

"I'm very sorry, everyone," the chimp said, raising one hand. "Didn't mean to cause a scene. I'm not dangerous, I'm not lost, I'm not an escaped zoo animal, I'm just a customer. The queue outside was a bit much for someone who's three feet tall so I let myself in through the side. My apologies for the fright."

The crowd was still in shock, while some were afraid most looked at him the same way they'd look at a circus animal or one from the zoo. Ethan however just stood a few feet from the table with his arms crossed and didn't say anything.

The chimp spotted him and his whole face lit up, he then hopped off the table and crossed the floor in a slow waddle, pulling a Future Phone box out of the inside of his jacket as he came.

"Oh no way, no way, do my eyes deceive me?" the chimp said, stopping in front of Ethan and looking up at him. "Ethan Kane. In the flesh. I am, and I mean this sincerely, a massive fan. I preordered this phone the second it was available. The employment app alone, I was telling a friend of mine just last week, I said this is the first time anyone in the tech industry has actually understood what a phone is supposed to be for. Connectivity. Access. Not just another expensive toy for trust fund kids to show off."

"Always nice to meet a fan," Ethan said, looking down at him.

"Fan is underselling it. Devotee, maybe. Disciple? No, that's too strong, I don't want to be weird about it." The chimp held up the box. "Would you mind signing this? I know it's silly but I don't get to meet people who are actually making a difference very often. Most of the people I meet are, well, less inspiring."

"Of course," Ethan said, taking the box and the pen a staff member held out and signing the front before handing it back.

"Wonderful," the chimp said, holding the box against his chest. "Thank you. Really."

He looked up at Ethan and Ethan looked down at him.

For a moment neither of them spoke. 

The chimp's smile stayed exactly where it was but something behind his eyes changed, the enthusiasm pulling back like a curtain and something else looking out from behind it. 

Ethan smiled back the same way he smiled at everyone but his eyes were doing the same work. Reading everything he could about the person behind the facade that this 'intelligent chimp' had created. 

Two seconds. 

Maybe three.

"Well," the chimp said, breaking back into a grin. "I should get going, it's going to be a busy day. You know how it is. Thank you again for the autograph, Mister Kane."

"I hope you find the phone useful," Ethan said.

The chimp tipped his cap. "Oh I really think I will," he said as he turned and walked out through the front door and disappeared into the crowd on the sidewalk.

Ethan watched him go for a few moments before the smile dropped off his face and his eyes narrowed as the small figure in the tweed jacket blended into the mass of people and vanished.

"We're done here."

Maya looked up. "The Channel Eight crew is already setting up outside, they want a statement about the sales numbers and—"

"Handle it."

"Ethan, it's a live segment, they're expecting you specifically—"

"Handle it, Maya. I need to go."

She opened her mouth to argue, saw the look on his face, and closed it. "Fine. I'll do the segment. But you owe me."

He was already walking toward the back of the store, he then pushed through the service door and out into the alley where his driver was waiting and told him to bring the car around. Two minutes later he was in the back seat heading toward the industrial district with his phone in his hand, typing a message to Jade.

...

When he arrived at sanctuary he headed straight for his office, pushed the door open where Jade was already leaning against the wall near the entrance with her mask off and her arms folded.

"You wanted to see me, boss," she said.

"How much do you know about heroes," Ethan said as he shrugged off his coat and hung it on the hook.

"A fair amount. I've run into plenty over the years. Comes with the territory," she said with a grin. 

"Are any of them chimpanzees dressed as detectives?"

Jade paused and looked at him for a second like she was waiting for the punchline, but when none came she straightened up from the wall. "You being serious right now?"

"A talking chimpanzee in a tweed jacket and a deerstalker cap walked into my flagship store today, asked me to sign his phone and then left. I don't believe in coincidences, and I refuse to believe that a lesser primate dressed like Sherlock Holmes showed up on the same day we took the city without a reason."

Jade shook her head slowly. "Can't say I've heard of anything like that. But I'll look into it. If he's connected to any hero network I'll find the thread."

"Do it quickly. I want to know who he is, who he works with, and why he's here. If he's a threat I want to know before he becomes one I can't deal with."

"Got it," she said, pushing off the wall and heading for the door. "I'll have something for you as soon as I can."

She walked out and nearly collided with Sofia who was walking in from the corridor wearing nothing at all and carrying a glass of wine. Jade looked her up and down, looked again, then kept walking without comment.

Sofia walked into the office and settled onto the couch like she owned it, tucking one leg beneath her and resting the wine glass on the armrest.

"Get dressed," Ethan said without looking at her as he sat down at his desk. "I need to speak to everyone tonight and I need you to gather them."

"I just finished taking apart the last of the Falcone operation," Sofia said, swirling her wine. "Luca gave us everything. Names, accounts, safe houses, the lot. I think I've earned at least a few minutes of your attention before we move on to the next crisis."

"You did well, Sofia. You did exactly what I needed you to do."

"Then reward me," she said a little more indignantly. "You promised you would, when the city was free. Isn't it free now? Didn't we just take it? Everything you asked me to do I've done, every last thing, and I haven't asked for anything in return."

Ethan turned in his chair and looked at her. "The city isn't free yet. We're close, closer than we've ever been, but we're not there. When we are, when the last piece is in place and the work is truly done, I will give you whatever you want."

She held his gaze for a moment. "You promise?" she said.

"I promise."

She set the wine glass down and stood up from the couch and walked toward the door, letting her hips move the way she always did and stopped in the doorway and looked back over her shoulder. "I'm holding you to that," she said.

Then she left and Ethan turned back to his desk. 

If he wanted to he could count to the exact second how long he sat there, but that would defeat the purpose. He instead just sat there and allowed his brain which had been racing at a million miles a second to rest for a moment. 

When he defeated Batman he had expected things to be much easier and less challenging. While that was true in some regards it wasn't in many others. Barbara exposing his identity to the Justice league exposed him to many more threats he needed to devote time and effort into countering. It also made him scrap old plans and form new ones. 

He had planned to mind wipe Renee and Robin, it would remove two pieces from the board that had knowledge of his identity, but when Barbara had exposed his identity she had made it all moot. All the heroes knew who he was even if they couldn't prove it. If he didn't let them go quickly he had no doubt Superman or the Flash would've found them and any evidence he left at the location he had moved them too. 

Freeing them was annoying but he wouldn't lie it was satisfying in a way since he had already provided himself an alibi through Doppelgänger. They were free but couldn't prove any of what they said. 

Ethan took a deep breath. He had gotten a better hold of his emotions as of late; in retrospection he had made a lot of mistakes because of them. Now he was better, now he wouldn't let minor things like emotions ruin his grand plans. 

Ethan then closed his eyes and started to rest. A few hours later he stood up and walked out of the office and up through the corridors of Sanctuary and through the concealed entrance into the warehouse above. He pushed open the double doors at the far end of the main floor and walked out onto the raised platform that overlooked the assembly area.

Nearly a thousand people were gathered below him.

They filled the warehouse floor from wall to wall, standing in rows that reflected the military backgrounds of many of them, the veterans standing straighter and the newer recruits taking their cues from them. The murmur of conversation died as soon as Ethan appeared on the platform.

He stood at the railing and looked down at them.

"Tonight," he said loud enough that everyone could hear, "we took Gotham."

"Tonight, every organised crime family that has been feeding on this city for generations was destroyed. The Falcones. The Maronis. The Bertinellis. The Galantes. The Riccolis. All of them. Gone. Removed. Cut out of the body of this city like the tumours they were. You did that. Every one of you. The men and women standing in this room tonight are the reason that mothers in the Narrows can walk their children to school without crossing gang territory. You are the reason that shop owners in the East End can open their doors without paying protection money to thugs. You are the reason this city has a chance to be something better than what it's been."

He gripped the railing.

"That is why we are called the Saviours, because it is what we are, because we are saving this city. We are pulling it out of the filth that it has been drowning in for decades and we are building something new on top of it, something that belongs to the people who actually live here instead of the parasites who have been bleeding them dry."

The room stirred and a few people at the front nodded.

"But the work is not done."

"Removing the families was the first step. It was necessary but it was not sufficient. The organisations are gone but the market they served is still there. The demand hasn't disappeared just because the supply has. People are still buying and they will continue to buy, and if we do not fill the gap that the families left behind then someone else will, someone worse, someone who doesn't care about this city or the people in it the way we do."

He turned and gestured behind him and the warehouse doors at the back of the platform opened and five forklifts rolled out carrying pallets stacked high with wrapped packages, hundreds of them, thousands, the product that had been sitting in climate-controlled storage beneath Sanctuary for months. 

The forklifts set the pallets down on either side of the platform and the drivers reversed back through the doors and the sheer volume of what was on display drew a murmur from the crowd below.

"This is ours," Ethan said. "We are going to sell it. Every gram. We are going to sell it cheaper than anything that has ever been on the streets of this city, cheap enough that every user in Gotham comes to us instead of to whoever else tries to set up shop in the vacuum. If they can afford it they buy. If they can't afford it you extend credit. I want all of this moving within the week. Every block we control, every corner, every alley, all of it. I want the product on the street."

He looked down at the rows of faces looking up at him.

"If you get stopped by the police you do not resist. You ditch the product before they can find it on you. You do not carry more than you can dispose of in ten seconds. You do not carry weapons while you're holding. You do not sell to children. Those are the rules and they are not flexible. Anyone who breaks them answers to me personally and I promise you will not enjoy the conversation."

He let that settle.

"We are on the edge of something," he said. "Something that has never been done before. Every step we have taken since the beginning has been leading here, to this moment, to the point where we stop reacting to the world as it is and start building the world as it should be. You followed me into the Narrows tonight. You followed me into the East End. You followed me into the homes and the hideouts and the strongholds of men who thought they owned this city, and you took it from them. I am asking you now to follow me one more time. Into something bigger. Into a future that none of them believed was possible."

He straightened.

"You are Saviours... now get to work."

The room erupted into cheering so loud that the warehouse walls started to shake. Needless to say every single one of the saviours would follow him to the gates of hell if they asked him. 

Ethan watched them for a moment from the platform, then turned and walked back through the double doors and down the corridor toward the stairs, where Artemis was waiting at the bottom.

She was leaning against the wall with her arms folded and her bow slung over her shoulder, still in the tactical gear she'd been wearing all night, when Ethan came around the corner she pushed off the wall and stood in his path.

He smiled when he saw her. "Hey. You alright?"

"Can we talk?" she said.

"Of course, walk with me."

They fell into step together, moving through the lower corridor toward the cavern. Artemis didn't say anything for the first thirty seconds, her eyes on the floor in front of her feet, but eventually she couldn't just let it sit anymore and she turned to him. "The drugs," she said.

"What about them?"

"We're selling drugs, Ethan! We just killed every gang in the city for selling drugs and now we're doing the same thing."

"No we are not," Ethan replied.

"So how is what we're doing any different from what they were doing? The Maronis were selling coke on the same corners we're about to sell it on. The Falcones were running heroin through the same routes. We killed them for it and now we're stepping into their shoes. How is that not exactly the same thing?"

Ethan stopped walking and turned to face her. "Artemis," he said quietly. "You know what drugs did to my parents."

She looked at him.

"You know what heroin did to my mother. You know what it did to my father. You know that it killed them both long before the gang finished the job."

She didn't look away but her jaw tightened.

"I hate drugs," he said. "I hate them more than almost anything in this world. You know that about me. You've always known that about me. So I need you to trust me when I tell you that what we are putting on those streets is not what the families were putting on those streets. I have spent months making sure of that. The product we are selling is different. It will not destroy anyone's life the way my parents' lives were destroyed. I would rather burn every gram of it than put another family through what I went through."

He stepped closer and placed his hands on her shoulders. She looked up at him and he held her gaze without blinking.

"I need you to trust me," he said. "Just for a little while longer. Can you do that?"

Artemis breathed in slowly and let it out. "I do trust you," she said. "You know I do. It's just hard sometimes, when I can see the thing and not the reason behind it."

"I know," he said as he stroked her shoulder. "I know it's hard. And I know I ask too much of you sometimes. You're the only person in this entire operation who tells me the truth, and I need that. I need you. More than you know."

His hand moved from her shoulder to the side of her face, his thumb brushing her cheekbone, and she went still.

"Ethan," she said, barely above a whisper.

"I can't do this without you," he said. "I don't want to do this without you."

She looked at him and whatever resistance had been holding her back from the edge she'd been standing on for months gave way. She leaned forward and he met her halfway, his hand sliding from her cheek to the back of her neck as their lips met.

The kiss was tender for the first second. Then her hand came up and gripped the front of his shirt and she pulled him closer, his other arm went around her waist and the kiss deepened. Eventually she pulled back just enough to breathe, her forehead resting against his, her fingers still twisted in his shirt.

"Don't make me regret this," she whispered.

Ethan held her there in the corridor, his arms around her and his chin resting against the top of her head, but the expression on his face was the same flat blank void it always was when no one could see it.

"You won't," he said.

They stayed like that for a moment and then she kissed him again and this time there was nothing tender about it. Her hand slid from his shirt to the back of his neck and she pulled him in and he let her, his arm tightening around her waist as the corridor around them stopped mattering.

She pushed him backward and he went, his back hitting the wall and her body pressing against his as the kiss deepened, her fingers in his hair now and his hand on the small of her back pulling her closer. She bit his lower lip and he felt it and responded by lifting her slightly where she wrapped her legs around him and they moved like that through the doorway of the nearest room, which happened to be his, stumbling through the dark until the back of his knees hit the edge of the bed and they went down together.

She was on top of him, her hands braced on either side of his head, her hair falling around both their faces as she kissed him again, slower this time, deeper, his hands moved up her sides beneath her jacket, she made a sound against his mouth that she would have been embarrassed about later if she'd had time to think about it. His shirt was half untucked and her jacket was already off one shoulder when the knock came.

Knock

Knock

Knock

"Boss I need to talk—"

Artemis pulled back like she'd been burned, rolling off him and onto the other side of the bed, her hand already reaching for her jacket to pull it back into place. Her face flushed red from her neck to her hairline. "I'll, uh," she said, standing up and tugging her jacket straight and pushing her hair out of her face. "I should go check on the, the perimeter rotation, I was supposed to—" She walked past the man in the doorway without finishing the sentence and disappeared down the corridor.

Ethan sat up on the edge of the bed and ran a hand through his hair, straightening it, then looked at the man standing in the doorway.

"What is it?" He asked.

The man was one of his senior operators, a former marine named Harding who had been with the Saviours since the second month and who had the good sense to keep his eyes fixed on a point above Ethan's head rather than anywhere near the bed.

"Sorry to interrupt, sir," Harding said. "The package you've been waiting for has just arrived."

Ethan's hands stopped moving on his shirt collar.

"Did you have any trouble transporting it?" he asked.

"He put up a hell of a fight," Harding said. "Even with the gear you gave us and thirty men on the grab team it took us the better part of four hours to get him locked down. The containment casing held though, just like you said it would. Couldn't change into anything that got through it." He paused. "Greg took a hit to the chest when the target turned his arm into some kind of calcium spike. Mike got a face full of acid when the target sweated something corrosive through his skin during the second attempt to sedate him. Both of them are upstairs, they'll need a hospital run but they'll live."

"Where is he," Ethan said as he stood up.

"Loading bay four. We backed the whole truck in and sealed the doors, there are also forty men on the perimeter, just like you ordered," he replied. 

Ethan buttoned his collar and walked out of the room where Harding fell into step beside him as they moved through the corridors of Sanctuary and up through the warehouse levels to the loading bay on the north side of the compound.

When Ethan arrived he saw over Forty Saviours stood in a ring around the truck, all of them armed. The shipping container on the truck's flatbed was enormous and it was made entirely of a lead alloy, all of it designed to keep certain eyes from seeing what was inside. 

Ethan walked up to the back of the truck and climbed onto the flatbed. He stood in front of the container doors and looked at them for a moment, then nodded to the two men standing on either side.

"Open it," he said.

They pulled the bolts and swung the doors wide.

The inside of the container was dark except for the emergency lighting strips that had been mounted along the ceiling. In the centre of the container, bolted to the floor and the ceiling and both walls by a framework of reinforced steel clamps that held him at the wrists, the ankles, the waist, and the neck, was a man.

Or something that used to be a man.

His skin shifted colours as Ethan watched, cycling through shades of orange and purple and metallic grey. His body was lean and muscular and the parts of him that were currently flesh-coloured were covered in a sheen of sweat that had an odd chemical smell to it..

Ethan smiled and stepped inside the container.

"I've been looking forward to meeting you."

The man thrashed against the clamps, his wrists straining and the metal groaning but holding. "Who the hell are you!" he shouted, his voice echoing off the walls. "Where am I! You have any idea what you've done, you son of a bitch, you have any idea who's going to come looking for me, they will tear this place apart, they will tear you apart, you hear me?! Let me out of this thing!"

"You caused my people quite a bit of trouble getting you here," Ethan said, walking closer. "Thirty men, four hours, two of them in the hospital. If I hadn't figured out a way to counteract your abilities beforehand you probably wouldn't be standing in this container right now. So I suppose you should take some comfort in the fact that you were as dangerous as advertised."

"I said let me out!" Rex screamed, throwing his weight forward against the neck clamp hard enough to cut the skin beneath it. "I don't know what you want and I don't care, just let me go!"

Ethan stopped in front of him and looked at him for a moment. Then he knelt down so they were eye to eye, close enough that the man could see the void behind the mask of his face, the complete absence of anything that might be mistaken for a person.

"I'm here," Ethan said quietly, "to relieve you of your curse."

The man stopped thrashing.

Ethan smiled at him from six inches away, the red emergency light catching the edges of his teeth.

"Don't worry Rex," he said. "This won't take long."

(AN: Damn what do you think boys, is Ethan becoming unredeemable? Or is he justified in his goal. Is manipulating Artemis worth it? Just who has he kidnapped and what ability has he stolen from him? I left some clues and I'm sure some of you can figure it out. Anyway hope you enjoyed.)