Rogues Gallery Vol.1

The Mask

December 9, 2019.

I made a promise many years ago.

That I would leave and never return.

That I would never go back to the city I loved.

But now... I have to break my promise.

I have to return to

Gotham City. Wayne Industries.

From the very top of Wayne industries, one could see all of Gotham laid out before them. They could see every tower, every slum, every nook and cranny from that height. Any normal person would have been in awe at the beauty of the city before them.

Thomas Elliot, however, was no normal person.

To him, the sight of Gotham was almost...boring. It wasn't anything he hadn't seen before and he certainly would see a sight like it again.

"Why Bruce insisted on being able to see this drab little city of his every time he looked outside," Elliot said to himself as he poured a glass of whisky. "I'll never understand."

Maybe it was because he wanted to see all the poor little people scurry about, begging for his help. Maybe he wanted to see a city that he thought he could save even though it was already a lost cause.

"Or maybe," Dr.Elliot thought as he took a sip, looking out the window. "The Batman wasn't as good as we thought. Maybe he just liked being above the rest of us."

It was a thought that had nagged Elliot for years. The Waynes, always the lucky ones. Even when his parents died, Bruce somehow found a way to use it to his advantage and build a better life for himself.

Elliot had always envied Bruces luck, always envied how he was better than him.

Envied that he had a loving and caring family. A father who didn't beat him. A mother who loved him and wasn't a coward.

Elliot had lived with those kind of parents. Lived in a household where a bruise was almost common place. A place of fear and evil.

Until one day, he'd had enough.

Until one day, his mother was injured and his father died in a freak accident.

Elliot chuckled at that. Accident. He still found it so funny that no realized that it had been his doing. That and his mother suffering a "heart attack" years later.

And yet... Wayne still flourished. Was still better than him. And when Elliot found out who he really was, the Dark Knight... he snapped for the second time in his life.

And made it his life's goal to silence Bruce forever as the villain known as Hush.

He'd come close to. Nearly destroyed Bruce's life and everyone he'd held dear.

But he never revealed his identity to the world. Always saw it as poor sportsmanship.

It still baffled him that the person who'd revealed Bruce's identity hadn't come forward. Then again, if they did, then they would be torn to shred by most people. Even Elliot wouldn't mind a piece of the person who revealed Bruce's secret.

But that was in the past. What mattered to Elliot now, was the present and the future. He smiled, pouring out another drink, taking in the large office space as he leaned back behind the desk that Bruce had once sat at.

He had plans for this old building. Plans to make it his own. To ruin what was left of Bruces good name by building Thomas Industries in Wayne's place. Sure, he was a criminal. A convicted one at that. But he was reformed. A changed man. Or so the idiotic Jeremiah Arkham thought.