LOOTING DC #13. Gotham (K)night
Damian Wayne never took kindly to losing.
Not to his father. Not to his mother. Not even to his grandfather.
And certainly not to a meddling little insect who thought he could swing in, sow chaos, and slip away without consequence.
The humiliation of being outmatched - helpless - against the Spider had lingered since the BatCave. Now, it festered, gnawing at his nerves with the persistence of rot.
He couldn't rest. Not yet.
Not until he found the Spider and balanced the scales.
Gotham's night air bit against his skin as he moved across the rooftops, focused and silent. He tracked signs that no ordinary detective could read - dissolving filaments of web, the erratic flight of specific fowl, a scent half-remembered from their last encounter.
The cold wasn't just physical. It felt... foreboding. As if the city was bracing for something darker than the night itself. In all his years here, Damian couldn't recall Gotham ever feeling quite like this.
It was worth investigating.
But not tonight.
Tch.
He had a mission:
Find the Spider.
Make him regret ever crossing paths.
Damian dropped to a crouch on a rooftop ledge, posture like a coiled spring, eyes scanning the city below. All appeared... normal. Too normal.
"Where are all the criminals?" he murmured. Gotham didn't do quiet.
Were they holed up at some gathering?
Or had Batman somehow frightened them into hiding for a night?
He dismissed the idea with a scoff. Gotham's thugs were too bull-headed for that. Break their bones and they'd still crawl back the next week, same alley, same attitude.
Whatever the reason for the stillness, it didn't matter.
He re-centered his focus, tapping into the interface on his wrist. Holographic windows bloomed around his arm as he navigated data, cross-referencing intrinsic information.
"I will find you," he muttered through clenched teeth. "This world isn't wide enough for you to hide from me."
A voice interrupted the silence behind him, smooth and familiar:
"Isn't it past your bedtime… little brother?"
Damian didn't flinch. He'd heard the footfalls a block away. Read the gait. Tracked the breath pattern.
Nightwing. Of course.
Damian didn't turn. He kept working.
With a girlfriend like Starfire, Nightwing had no business skulking across rooftops at midnight. He ought to be basking in her interstellar glow, not meddling in his affairs.
Tt.
"You know," Nightwing continued, stepping closer, a smirk threading through his tone, "when I taught you to use a keyboard, I may have left out a little something called patience."
Damian didn't respond.
Unbothered, Nightwing pressed on. "If you don't start practicing it, you're going to slide from focus into full-blown obsession."
Still silence.
Nightwing sighed. "Come on, man. You and I both know that Spider's clever. He knows how to mask his trail and vanish off-grid. You're not finding him tonight, and you know it."
"Stop smothering me!" Damian snapped, his voice rising with a low growl. He shut off the interface with a flick of his wrist and turned to face Nightwing.
Nightwing only grinned wider. "Still easy to provoke. How exactly do you plan on beating him if you're this rattled?"
"Want me to show you?" Damian hissed, unsheathing his katana in one swift motion.
"Whoa - special gear. Nice touch," Nightwing quipped, eyeing the blade. "You're really going all-in on this."
Then, more seriously: "Still. Going solo? Your odds are next to nil."
"So that's why you came?" Damian asked, voice low. "Another lecture about the power of teamwork?"
"What? No." Nightwing raised both hands in mock surrender. "Learned that lesson the hard way. I wouldn't dare preach it."
Damian arched a brow.
"I came because I know you," Nightwing said plainly.
"You don't know me." Damian cut him off, sharp and certain.
Nightwing didn't flinch. "Maybe not. But I know you better than most."
He stepped beside Damian, gaze fixed on the horizon. "I knew you'd be out here hunting him before anyone else. That's why I came to warn you."
"Not interested."
Nightwing let out a soft chuckle. For someone so small, the kid carried enormous arrogance. But now wasn't the time for a lecture.
"Alright," he said, turning away. "I'll get off your back."
He stepped toward the edge of the rooftop, then paused.
"But just so you know-" he glanced over his shoulder, tone suddenly grave, "-there's a predator out tonight. You're not the only one hunting."
And with that, Nightwing vanished over the ledge, swallowed by the night.
Damian stood still. His jaw clenched behind the Robin mask, expression tightening.
Suddenly... it made sense.
Why the night had felt colder.
Why Gotham had gone quiet.
His brow furrowed. He frowned.
So. He finally snapped.
🕸️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕸️
The wind didn't move around him anymore.
It no longer stirred his cape, no longer swept across the rooftops in his wake.
Not tonight.
It only moved in places he wasn't - as though it had learned, somehow, to avoid him. When he was in this state.
The night exhaled slowly, cautiously.
Gotham's pulse - usually measured in shattering glass, distant sirens, and the wet slap of footsteps in alleyways - had dulled to a murmur.
Not because peace had taken hold, but because something heavier had pressed down on the city.
He moved through it now - not just a man in a cowl, but something colder, redefined.
A myth, newly whetted on the edge of fury.
Batman didn't run, didn't leap, didn't swing.
He fell - from ledge to pipe, from cable to gargoyle - with a silence so absolute it felt more like absence than movement.
Surgical. Precise. Hollow.
He wasn't after all of them tonight.
Just the ones bold enough - or foolish enough - to think Gotham still belonged to them.
At 9:13 p.m., a mugger on Park Row reached for a purse and never saw the blow.
His jaw shattered in three places.
Later, he'd tell no one why his hands wouldn't stop shaking, even under the haze of hospital-grade sedatives.
At 10:47, three men attempted to move a crate of unregistered weapons through the Narrows.
The first was unconscious before the van doors even swung open. The second's arms were broken backward in swift, measured violence. The third was untouched - just left there, sobbing, wordless, unable to stop shaking. That one was for the message.
By midnight, the city had begun to whisper again. The word moved through rooftops and back alleys, slipped into the spaces between barstools and confessionals.
The Bat was out. And something in him had come unmoored.
No warnings.
No speeches.
No symbols scrawled in chalk.
Just direct, unforgiving, punishment.
The kind of punishment that made seasoned criminals stare at their hands and wonder what line they'd crossed - as if vengeance itself had stopped pretending to be masked.
At 2:41 a.m., a warehouse in the Tricorner District came apart in silence.
Twenty men. A cache of stolen tech.
One lookout who blinked - and saw nothing.
Sixty-three seconds later, nineteen men were on the ground. Broken. Bruised.
Breathing - more or less.
The last one crawled from behind a crate with blood in his eyes and despair on his breath.
He looked up and saw a figure standing above him like the silhouette of a cathedral on the verge of collapse.
And then, nothing.
No words.
No noise.
Just disappearance.
And in its place, dread.
Not just in the hearts of those left broken.
But in the city itself.
Gotham knew Batman.
Knew the cadence of his justice, the rules he imposed even on himself.
But this… this was something else.
Something pulled from the farthest corner of the cave - sharpened by the insult of trespass, tempered by the scent of silk and arrogance.
Whatever had changed, they didn't understand it.
But they felt it.
He wasn't just patrolling. He was hunting.
🕸️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕸️
By 4:02 a.m., a spider hung by a thread - literally - swaying gently above the city that refused to play.
He'd scoured every rooftop, every alley, every shadow Gotham had to offer.
And found… nothing.
No car chases.
No muggings.
Not even a jaywalker.
The night, for once, was uncooperative.
Now he dangled upside-down above the sidewalk like a misplaced ornament, wind rustling through his mask.
Still. Silent.
Eyes closed. Fingers limp.
Snoring.
Zzzzz...
From a distance, you might've thought he was dead.
From up close, you'd just be jealous he could sleep like that.
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