Chapter 1

"…as of today, the Justice Lords' totalitarian hold on the world is over." The imposing visage of the Batman was broadcast over every television set in every nation. Across the world, people stared as if transfixed to their screens as the most removed of the guardian overlords made his announcement. "As I speak, the other Justice Lords are being taken into custody. They do not share my views, nor are they willing to listen to reason."

The screen cut to a moving scene that many only dreamed about: Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Martian Manhunter, Hawkgirl, and even Superman were all being herded into individual armored prison transports one by one. Angry. Bound. Powerless. The screen abruptly transitioned back to Batman.

"My final action is this." He held up a cylindrical trigger and pressed the button with his kevlar-covered thumb. The screen cut to a view of the Watchtower in space.

Once a beacon of hope and justice, the powerful satellite had become a symbol of oppression and fear over the last two years. Though it had loomed over the world for less than half a decade, it felt like such a permanent and immortal fixture. That's why what happened next caught viewers off-guard: in a dramatic and consuming fireball, the Watchtower exploded. With that, the dream became a reality: the stranglehold of the Justice Lords had come to an end. As the dust and debris of the once-feared satellite began to settle in space, the video feed returned to Batman.

"Our reign as demigods is over. I'm sorry."

Every screen went black as the signal cut. Batman was gone.

▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃

Gravel cracked and scattered as the police cruiser rolled to a stop. Behind the wheel, Officer Jess Harker killed the lights and shut off the car. As she took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness outside, she put her radio to her lips and relayed her arrival to dispatch. "Dispatch, this is Harker. I'm outside the sober living center."

After a moment's pause, the radio crackled back, "Copy that, Harker. Proceed with caution. Sykes and Montgomery are on standby."

Harker took a sharp sniff and clucked her tongue, upset. Those two were the last two she wanted to have her back. Montgomery was a manchild asshole while Sykes just sucked as a person all around. She was almost confident Sikes was also turning a blind eye to the rising Irregulars gang in the East End. "10-4," she said with restrained disgust before hitching the radio back on her breast loop and exiting her vehicle.

As she closed the car door with the dismissive laziness of an officer just ready for the end of her shift, she drew out her flashlight and waved the beam over the front of the building a few times and grimaced. Transitional housing was becoming a rather permanent fixture on this side of town in the last few months as displaced workers that had once worked on various Justice Lord security projects found themselves without employment after the former Lord Batman committed the most surprising, and celebrated, heel-face turn in recent history.

She trudged across the well-worn gravel path and made it halfway to the halfway house before she heaved a breath and identified herself. "Police. Is everything alright?"

She waited a few moments for a reply but when she got nothing back, she closed the distance carefully and knocked on the door. "Police. Anyone there? Got a call about…" Her voice trailed off as the front door swung partially open after the second knock. As the door creaked open, she felt her heart flutter and a desperate and weary sigh slipped out her nose. She hated Gotham.

With the steel toe of her boot, she slowly eased the door open the rest of the way, leading with her flashlight. Her beam swept over the interior entryway, illuminating a layer of dust that hadn't been disturbed in weeks along with a few pairs of worn out canvas shoes and a rather ratty umbrella.

"Hello?" She took a step inside and shivered as a rank breeze followed behind her. "Anyone there?" A sharp but distant yelp seemed to respond to her call but it didn't answer her question. The yelp sounded like a person, but it also could have been a dog. Figures I get the call about a cat caterwauling. She popped up her jacket's collar to rebuff the breeze and plodded forward, up the stairs.

As she stepped off the final stair, Harker heard the sound of scuffling and what sounded like light sobbing. No… the sobbing wasn't light – it was muffled. Harker frowned. "Everything okay?" But when the muffled sobbing grew more panicked, Harker drew her sidearm and paired it with her flashlight. "GCPD, I'm coming in, so let's have a conversation, alright?" Her off hand, now free of the flashlight, went to her radio. "Dispatch. Hate to say it, but send over the Sikes and his crooney. I–."

Crash.

The sound of shattered glass made Harker jump in her uniform and she quickly pivoted into the room with her gun drawn, and her finger dancing over the trigger. "Freeze! GCPD!" She barked out her order as her flashlight illuminated the dingy room. The moment she could make out the scene, all bravado fled from her. She felt her stomach drop and the grip on her gun weakened.

The bodies of four transients lay on the floor in pools of blood. With the harsh light of Harker's torch, it was clear to see their throats had been slashed. Next to them was a man slumped against the cracked wall with his head hanging at an odd angle and, under the now-shattered window, lay a fourth vagrant covered in jagged glass from the window pane. His hands and legs were bound and a dirty white cloth had been tightly tied around his mouth. He looked at her with wide, wild eyes in fear.

Officer Harker dropped her gun and her hands rushed to her mouth as she fought back bile. Instinctively, she curled over and retched a few times as she struggled to keep form spewing her dinner all over her boots. As she struggled to maintain her composure, her radio called out into the crisp night air.

"Harker, you there? I didn't catch that last bit. Harker? Harker?"

▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃

An hour later, a new energy was present at the halfway house. Blue, white, and red lights cast eerie and long shadows up and down the road and down alleyways as media, medical, and police all swarmed the rather tired-looking building that housed a distasteful scene. The front of the building had been cordoned off by officers as detectives combed the premises for details as to the offender while medical personnel tended to the survivors. Amid all the chaos, the media swarmed the chief of police begging for a statement.

A reporter from the Gotham Gazette managed to get his microphone over the police tape. "Chief Lee, can you comment on the surge in criminal activity?"

"I can," Goren tersely replied as he looked for Harker. He moved down the sidewalk to the stairway leading to the home where a few cops had gathered around Jess Harker.

"Some folks are chalking this up to a lack of structure and funding in the wake of the Gotham Military Police being disbanded by Lord Batman earlier this year. Can I get a word on just what that could mean?"

Goren looked over his shoulder at the man and sneered but kept his words below his breath. "First that spook drops off another gang leader at the fire escape and now this…" He sighed and combed his fingers through his hair to try and calm down.

Another reporter hovering nearby took this opportunity to throw out her own question. "Chief Lee? Veronica Newberry, Gotham Insider with Summer Gleason. What about talks of this being only one more in a string of murders by the so-called 'order of death'. Not to call your expertise into question, but have you consulted with former Chief Gordon on this case?"

Lee's jaw clenched with frustration, his patience wearing thin. "This is an ongoing investigation, and I won't have the press interfering!" he snapped, his voice a low growl. "Elden! Bullock! Get these parasites out of here!"

A balding man in a clean-pressed shirt and suspenders approached quickly alongside a burly, sloppily dressed detective and both ushered the press off of the curb and back behind the line.

"Get to movin', get to movin', c'mon!" Bullock with his trademark rough edges aggressively pushed the two back as Elden also guided the way.

"I thought suppression of the press was done away with this past summer?" the Gazette reporter cried out, doing his best to overreact to Bullock's brutish prodding. "Are you catching this, Gary?"

Bullock glared at the reporter from under the brim of his fedora. "One more peep outta you, pipsqueak, and I'll give you a headline ya won't forget!" He balled up a fist and waved it threateningly.

As the two men faced off, Veronica turned to her own cameraman and addressed the audience. "Looks like we're not going to get much out of Gotham's newly minted police chief, Summer. Again, I'm here on the corner of Bartholomew and Sticks where seven have been pronounced dead and three injured, in what I would call the worst single act of violence on this street since the Joker…"

▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃

"...And while the clown prince of crime's days are long gone, one can't help but connect this incident with the recent string of murders all through Burnley two weeks prior and wonder if a new menace is attempting to take the Joker's place."

He sat before the computer screen like a statue, unflinching in the face of the unfolding report. His breathing was measured and careful as if barely reining in a beast and his eyes were fixed to the screen. His mouth, a thin and stern line, tensed a bit more as the cameras again displayed the work of the maniac who'd slaughtered those people - his people.

He'd seen these horrors before. In fact, he'd seen worse horrors before. He'd seen people permanently transmuted into grotesque wooden statues like contorted carvings by Poison Ivy. He'd witnessed the aftermath of Joker's laughing gas attack at the New Year's Day parade at City Hall. He'd seen worse. The lurid details aren't what disturbed him, what disturbed him was how fast the evil had seeped back into Gotham.

It hadn't mattered. None of it had mattered. All the struggle and the pain of fighting the good fight, supporting Superman through his breaking point, and then taking down the whole Justice Lords regime to return power to the people hadn't mattered. Not even six months had gone by and the status quo had already reset and Gotham was burning. The power was back in the hands of the people and they'd learned nothing.

▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃

She sat on the roof of her house, staring into the stars lost in thought. It was one of the few moments recently she had time to herself to think. Of course, it wasn't one of the few times she was alone. In fact, for the past few months, she had been getting more time alone than usual. But this was one of the few times she was alone and her mind could wander. Sometimes it was simply something as trivial as 'Do monkeys marry?' or 'Just how do they pack so much flavor into Soder Cola Lite?'' But this night was different, tonight she thought about the world. As a graduating Senior at Gotham High School, she realized that very soon she would be thrust into the world with little more than an umbrella when what she really would need was a parachute.

"Kimber?" Her father's voice floated from out of the house below. "Kimber, honey, are you out there?"

"Yes! Yes, Papa," she called back quickly as she scooted from the roof to the back porch in one swift movement and landed on the ground gracefully a moment before the back door swung open. She greeted her father with a kiss on the cheek. "Welcome home."

"Thank you, Kimber." Her father, Goren Lee, embraced her. " How was school?" he asked as he followed her back inside.

Kimber sighed. "Dismal as ever. Trying to not let Senioritis win, y'know?" She answered with a giggle. "How was work?"

Goren popped open the fridge to scavenge from last night's TV dinner leftovers before bed. "You know, pretty much the same? Bullock's giving me lip for Caruso's dismissal, Burnouts are making moves to the north, and there was another incident in Burnley, all while the Narrows further fall to chaos." He took a seat at the kitchen table and stared at the cold mashed potatoes and chicken.

Kimber was silent for a moment. "I'm sorry about that, Papa." She rested a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"It's the job, kid." He started to prod his meal with a plastic fork, resignedly. "That's not fair of me," he said as he took a half fork-full of mashed potatoes into his mouth. "It's not all doom and gloom. Darby McQueen was brought in earlier tonight."

"Really? Isn't he—"

"One of the head Jokerz, yep." Goren permitted himself a small smile as he took another helping of food. "That lunatic follower of the former Joker was unceremoniously dumped on my window sill with a courtesy note from our city's guardian."

His daughter's eyes went wide and he could easily anticipate her question. "Batman is back?" she sounded almost giddy at the prospect of the Dark Knight's return.

Her father chuckled. "Sadly, no. But she bears a striking resemblance to him."

Kimber arched an eyebrow. "Wait, she?"

"Yes ma'am. I've tried to keep it on the down-low but her appearances are becoming more frequent so the bat will be out of the bag at some point." He cleared his throat. "Some woman's running around in long underwear, apparently trying to fill in the big boots of the dark knight."

Kimber laughed in partial disbelief. "Sounds like a losing battle."

"She's been out there for the past few months and she hasn't been killed yet, so that's something." Goren shrugged. "To be honest, the GCPD will take what we can get. I'm still not sure what I'm doing. Going from security guard to police chief is quite the whiplash; already the caseload is piling higher than I'd like."

"I still don't get how you became chief." Kimber took a seat on the piano bench and reached for the TV remote. "You quit the force when the Justice Lords took over. Rather loudly, if I might add."

"Yeah, well, apparently Batman remembers that little event."

Kimber couldn't help but snort. "I'm pretty sure I'd remember the deputy chief who cursed me out," she said with a hint of sarcasm.

"Yeah? Pretty sure he more remembers knocking a few of my teeth out, too." Goren absent-mindedly ran his tongue over the few veneers on the left side of his mouth.

"Perhaps," added Kimber with a smirk to cover the slight sour feeling at remembering the night her father had come home with a busted lip and in need of emergency dental work.

"Regardless, when he released the world from the Lords' hold, he put in a request that I replace Gordon as chief."

"Because you stood up to him?"

"Because I was the only one who stood up to him," Goren pointedly corrected. "Though I do wish he'd come back out of wherever he's gone off to. This city needs him now that the world isn't under martial law."

Kimber leaned back a bit from her father. "You make it seem as if the girl in the Halloween costume can't stand against the crime in the city," she commented with slow skepticism.

Goren allowed his tired eyes to close as he continued his cheap meal. "And you sound offended, Kimmie." She shoved another piece of half-reheated chicken into his mouth.

The girl laughed. "Oh, please, Papa, why would I be offended?"

Goren smiled at his daughter's laugh. "It's just a joke, Kimber. But it would be a miracle if he returned to Gotham…" He replayed the grizzly scene Harker had uncovered earlier in the night and felt a bit of his stomach give. He pushed his dish away, his appetite gone. "I have a feeling we're about to experience a storm of evil that was only possible years ago."