The Bat and The Clown

All rights belong to DC Comics and Warner Bros. I do not own Batman. If I did, then I'd make Affleck's solo Batman movie come out sooner.

Gotham City. An urban cesspool of crime and villainy. It had always been that way, since the time of Amadeus Arkham and Solomon Wayne. 

The towering buildings, resembling those from out of a gothic fantasy world, casted some eerie shadows along the lightly illuminated alleys where a young couple and their child were walking on.

They had just recently watched a movie at the Gotham Cinema, and were walking home, along with their child, who skipped merrily along the alley, not a care in the world.

"Honey, do you think we really should have gone out so late?" said the woman, draping her scarf over her shoulders. "This is Gotham after all, and you know how dangerous this city can be at night."

"Relax dear, it'll be fine, there isn't a person out here on the streets for miles, and we're almost there." said the man as he put his arm around his wife's shoulders.

Suddenly, the boy stopped moving, staring ahead at a figure wrapped in shadows. The figure was quite tall, a few inches taller than the boy's father, who, being 6 feet tall, was already quite a tall man indeed. The shadows concealed the figure's face, but the boy thought he could see a stubble of moustache somewhere along the dark lines of the man's face. It was clear he was wearing a hat, an old, worn hat. This man was clearly not well-off, probably some sort of homeless bum. Gotham tended to have a lot of those.

The man and his wife quickly ran towards their son.

"What do you want, sir?" said the man, wanting to move his wife and son as far away from this other man as much as possible.

The dark figure moved, standing to his full height and walked slowly towards the family. He was clearly hiding something under his bundled clothes.

"That's a pretty diamond necklace your wife's got there, pal." said the dark man. "Mind if I take a look?"

The woman was visibly scared, shuddering, and trying to hide within her husband.

The boy however, was not scared at all. He was young, probably about 10 years old, with a mop of dark hair, but was already looking at the dark man with a hint of defiance. Despite being only about 4'11", the boy wasn't affraid to defend his mother from this bum.

"Hey! You leave my mom alone!" said the boy, making his way to the homeless man.

"Eli, don't!" said the boy's father, rushing to his son.

The dark man made a sudden movement, and pulled out a gun. It was an old thing, one of those vintage revolvers from the 70s. But though it was old, it was clearly still in good condition, as the father watched the man cock it at his son's head.

The boy was clearly scared now, but tried not to show it as he looked the dark man in the eye.

"I'll say it one last time, bub, you either give me your pretty wife's necklace, or I swear to God I'll blow your son's brains out and paint this alley with his fucking blood!" screamed the dark man. He was clearly insane, and his shaking index finger quickly pressed on the trigger.

But before he could press the trigger, a small projectile from out of nowhere suddenly embedded itself in his arm, causing him to let go of the gun.

"AHHH!! My arm! My FUCKING arm!" said the dark man, trying to see what stabbed his forearm. As he pulled it out, seething in pain, he saw that it was sleek, black, shaped like a boomerang with two sharp edges, and with a familiar insignia.

An insignia that all criminals knew. That they all feared.

"Oh--- Oh NO!" said the thug, now wanting to leave as he made a run for it.

As the boy huddled with his family, he saw a dark shape glide from out of the shadows.

'It's him!' thought the boy.

It was the very man he and his friends talked about and idolized. The man who went out of his way to protect Gotham from people like this guy. 

The man everyone in Gotham knew as The Batman.

The thug didn't even get far before he felt something slam into him, felt the familiar feel of two booted feet hitting his lower back as he fell.

'Shit, I'm done for!' thought the man as he turned around.

What he saw immediately froze him in place.

He and his buddies would often gossiped as to how The Bat really looked like. Some would say that he was just a man in spandex and a cape. Others would say he was some sort of vampire that could crawl on walls and turn into a swarm of bats. Still others would say that he was some sort of mutant bat/human hybrid that drank blood and slept upside down.

But what he saw, he would never forget.

It was huge, it looked to be more than seven feet tall. The creature had two leathery bat wings like some sort of demon from hell. Its scaly black body was covered in those armor plates that animals like crocodiles and rhinos tended to have. He could have sworn the thing even had some sort of fucking tail behind the wings. 

But the thing that frightened him most were the thing's eyes. It had some sort of demon's body, wings, and tail, but its eyes, its eyes were those of a human.

The fact that this superhuman thing that looked like Satan's secretary had human eyes scared him more than anything else.

Then, he saw the creature jump and smash into him. He could have sworn that he even saw some teeth in that thing's mouth before he saw the creature raise a fist, and felt the side of his head explode in pain as he drifted off into darkness.

One thing was for sure, he'd really have to stop mugging families for a living.