Who: Batman and OPEN (someone he hasn’t met yet, maybe?) What: Vampires are dumb, so one should always throw them from buildings when given the chance. When: Three hours after sundown. Where: Downtown, Los Angeles. Rating: PG-13
The Clown was out of sight, inconspicuous, lurking just beyond the naked eye. His undetectable stance didn’t sit well with the Batman and quite frankly, it was incredible, unbelievable that he could silence himself as well as he did. Not one hundred percent convinced that the city had found enough sense to spit him out, Bruce Wayne and his forbidding alter ego could not and would not relax. It was an obsession, an unrelenting infatuation that rejected rest and refused to withdraw. He glued his eyes to the monitors, watched with a hawk’s intensity, listened and intimidated and forced answers from the mouths of lowlifes, unlucky enough to be targeted by a glowering, impatient Bat.
The supernatural aspects of the city weren’t his specialty but that didn’t stop them from getting in his way. He suited up and went out when the sun sunk down past the horizon and they flocked and flooded and stepped in his path. The vampires got in his way, some of them curious and others filled up with the appetite to take on the real Batman. The caped vigilante who shouldn’t have been there, who shouldn’t have been solid and touchable and so close to them, was a legend, a symbol that they had to see and feel to know that he was actually there, where they said he was.
Some of them, the ones who knew better, kept themselves away from him. They didn’t dare challenge the shadow in the corner of their eyes and for that they were well informed, smart, concerned about their safety and unwilling to lose a fight that they wouldn’t win.
Sharp and alert, the Joker’s whereabouts on his mind as they often were these days, Batman perched himself on the lower ledge of a crumbling structure, long robbed of its prime, pathetic next to the newer buildings that rose up on both sides. Footsteps from the back of the kneeling figure, heavy and too loud to be kept from him, created a thud that caused him to narrow his eyes, annoyed, bothered by the intruder.
Inching too close, fangs bared in a dauntless charge of half-witted courage, he was turned on faster than he could react. Batman whipped around to grab him by the shoulders with a hold that was unshakably excruciating. A bone near his collar strained and snapped under the pressure and kicking out to catch his knee, another shatter and then a fall. Batman moved in to maneuver him closer to the edge. He shoved and the wounded vampire tumbled down, landing in a painful heap, unable to get back up.
The man above him watched from his pedestal, unblinking and clutching hard at something in his right hand. Lying on his back, bawling like a wounded animal, the predator’s prey wasn’t prepared when a sharpened piece of wood was aimed and hurled relentlessly down at him. His cries fell and he crumbled into a cloud of dust that settled where he had fallen.
Batman stood straight and tall and glowering on his edge, gaze downcast, thoughts focused. He wondered if there would be more, if companions had followed the newly deceased vampire into his space, wanting a confrontation that he would give them.