Gotham: Panic Attack

Pan Pipes

I take just a moment to screech the contents of my lungs into the ruthless fog, as if that would do anything against the soulless killer mist.

From inside the sulphuric clouds I hear choking, and bodies begin to drop. The woman with the red eyes laughs at my feet. A jolt jets up my spine as her body is dragged out from underneath me, and thrown at a lamppost where it audibly snaps.
The Ragdoll stares at me, wearing his signature completely expressionless mask.
'Stay here! I'm going in!' I yell at Merkell through the misty air, and pull my cloak over my mouth before running into the fogbank. Ragdoll doesn't nod, or do anything else to even vaguely acknowledge my existence - instead he runs off into an alleyway and leaps up onto a building. He stares at the slowly spreading mist; and then jumps onto the roof of a police car zooming toward the scene.

He crouched down as his red, dreadlocked hair billows behind him. With the momentum that he'd gained from the car-ride, he takes a massive jump over the cloud and then slips his body into a tiny crack in a window in the town hall.

I stare in awe for a moment, and I have genuinely no idea if I can save these people. My phone crackled in my pocket, and I clutch it as if it were a rubber ring in this sea of rapidly-unfolding disaster. The screen informs me that Winn is trying to talk to me. What a moment.

I clasp the phone to my ear, and Winn's voice starts dancing through my eardrums with happiness.
'Hey... The news! C'mon Panic!! You can S-sss-save them! I wanna help.' He stammers with his classic childish excitement.
'Stay at home, Winn.'
'Too late. Look up!' Giggles my half-brother.

Indeed, when I look up, I'm relieved that Win did stay at home - but his skills didn't. A drone with a fan strapped to it buzzes like an extremely helpful hummingbird in the sky.

'How many of these things are there?'
'3!'
'Excellent.'
'I know-w-w!' 
'... could you, y'know, clear the gas?'
'Yep!' Cackles Winn, and the drone above my head whirs victoriously as it beetles off into the cloud - fan blowing.

I hope that this one is just a prototype.

The gas begins to shift back around the building - chased backwards by the drones - revealing Ragdoll crouched over one of the bodies. He'd been putting gas masks onto the unconscious police officers. We might just have prevented a city-wide disaster.

Ambulances whoop and call like birds on the way to a watering hole, and some of them start skidding around corners, paramedics armed to the teeth with gas masks and disturbing little things that look like surgical pumps - or something.

My hands brush across my face underneath the mask, and are rewarded by crinkled, brittle flesh. Maybe I need some of that pump.

I search around the scene to see if I can see Ragdoll - but lo and behold - he's gone, leaving only the mad gasser tied to a lamppost, unconscious, by a pretty little ribbon.

With a swift little scurry, I launch myself up onto a roof where I relax; feeling safe from being grilled alive by press.