Tonnage

Falling.

>>

Tom is in for a shock when he arrives for sparring on Monday evening.

Robin, Spoiler, and Orphan are there. But for reasons that completely escape him, So is Black Canary. He stops under the garage door he had just thrown up to pass through, his new and even larger canvas bag thrown over a shoulder.

“Oh. Hi.”

Canary's melodic giggle trips about the room like a frolicking pixie for a few seconds as the Bat-Family looks on in amusement.

“Hello, Tom. I told you I was interested in trying my luck. Didn't you believe me?”

Tom shoves the bag under the stairs as normal and can see that on the stairs there are a number of containers similar to the one that Q sent last week. So, food is handled. He wonders for a moment what it is. Probably something awesome.

“Not really? I figure anybody who lives on the floating tower probably has better things to do than beat on me. I don't know what they told you, but I'm really not very good at fighting. I kinda make do with just being strong and hard to hurt.” He smirks. “I know because Robin can't shut up about it when we are going at it.”

The bird in question bristles and opens his mouth to reply, but stops as Canary has held up a hand to forestall him and has stepped forward.

“Tom, I hate to burst your bubble, but I'm not here to learn from you. I am here to see where you are at, and possibly teach you something. But mostly, I'm here to have some fun.” She tosses him a roll of bills, and he tosses it back.

“Actually, um. I was going to bring this up anyway when we ate and they usually fork over the dough, but my situation is maybe not as bad as it was.” He looks lost for a minute, but shakes his head and continues. “I guess that thing at the Gala really stirred things up because I'm on the Wayne Enterprises payroll now as a security specialist for a place that doesn't exist yet.”

Canary hides a smile and Spoiler cheers while the other two remain stoic.

“Woo-hoo! Red Robin told you the Gala would pan out!” Then she tosses him a roll of bills. As does Robin. Orphan. Then Canary, once again.

Tom is now holding four rolls of bills, and Robin answers his confusion. “When I proposed this deal and said that this was cheap for the services of a meta with your capabilities. Did you think me a liar?”

Tom sits on the steps he's next to, careful not to disturb the food. “Well, no. But I mean, I thought you were mostly doing this to help me?”

Black Canary steps up to him and motions him to stand. “Tom, he's right. Granted, we could get similar experiences from other members of the League. But what you are missing here is that those other members have better things to do than yawn while we play-fight with them. You are probably the only meta-human of your strength and resilience that doesn't either have heroics to be doing or evil to perpetrate.”

Tom shakes his head. “Okay. If you say so. I'm not going to turn down your money. I just...”

He sighs. “Okay, then I guess... Let's do this.”

As if by prophecy, or perhaps a curse on Tom's life, as he says the word 'this' there is a loud 'WUMP-BOOM!' from somewhere north. They are guessing no more than four blocks, near the water. As they are trying to sort out what it is, all three bat-kids stand stock still for a few seconds, and Robin's eyes narrow.

“Firefly. It has to be Firefly, who else would randomly decide to torch the Gotham Point building for no reason?”

Tom's eyes go wide at that and he scrambles to his suit. The others in the room who are already heading towards the door see him doing this. Spoiler stops during her sprint to the doors.

“We can handle Firefly, Tom. Batman's already on the case. We're just going for backup.”

Tom is at this point throwing on his suit and all but yelling in his haste.

“I don't care about Firefly. The Gotham Point building has been occupied for years by entire families. They come to the yard for things once in a while. They got kids and pets and stuff.”

Then he's out the door. Sprinting.

>>

Gotham Point is a seaside apartment complex that hails from a bygone era. Overlooking the channel and built with, for the time, every luxury imaginable, the now decrepit old structure has sat unmourned as a casualty of the Great Depression. Having failed a city inspection, and then also the following one a few months later for lack of funds to fix the issues, a rather rabid judge had declared the place condemned with the approval of the local fire department.

The worry was that the ocean and the channel had begun to undercut the structure on the coast in the fifty years since its initial construction. Of course, the fact that there was no documentation as to whether or not the undercut predated the construction is unknown, and looking likely at this point as the building is still standing where it always had. A mere seven stories tall, it isn't much by modern standards. But for the time, it had been an immense construction, particularly to put directly on the ocean like that. It takes up half of a city block, and at some point had been modified from having a stable to having a parking lot. But aside from that, it appears from the outside much as it has for the last hundred years and more.

Other than the bottom two floors being on fire, anyway.

As he makes his approach, he can see somebody leaving via a jet-pack, with at least one person following using a grapple line.

The Bat-Kids are already making their way up the sides of the building, trying to get at people who are screaming and choking, hanging out of windows for air. The rot and dampness are slowing the fire, but the amount of flame at the bottom tells Tom that this isn't just a matchbook left in an inconvenient location. This is being fed. There was fuel of some kind used. And that means that if this goes long enough, it'll dry out the rest of the structure in short order. And as that starts to happen, all that old, rotted wood is going to go up like a tinder box, making the entire thing a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

Tom has seen other buildings go up like this. Even without the villain, once they get to this point there isn't a lot of hope. And the Gotham City Fire Department isn't going to waste a lot of resources putting this one out. They'll let it burn rather than risk life and limb.

If he didn't know better, he'd agree. Instead, he ducks as he goes through the door. The fire extinguishers go full tilt as he stomps through the building at breakneck speeds. Through the fire, plowing through doors without regard. His speakers constantly broadcast his call.

That he is here to help.

That he can get them out.

That there is a way to live.

So far he's found three corpses that were most likely caught in the initial blast. Sad and broken things. So small, in comparison to him. Two men and a woman. They look like they had been seated around a table, but the explosive incineration that took place flung their table, cards, and selves against an interior wall.

He doesn't find anybody else on the bottom floor, and he is pretty sure nobody came out. Which means that the fire was set around the base and people had to climb to live. He doesn't realize it. He has far too much on his mind right now for it to register. But as he climbs the concrete and steel steps to the next floor through the blazing inferno he has tears rolling down his face.

>>

Tom: Oracle? I need help. I have dead people on the first floor and visibility is really bad on the second. Smoke is horrible here. I'm doing what I can to fight through it but I can't find anybody. Anybody that's alive. Do you have any way to find them? It's bad.

Oracle: Audio indicates that the screaming starts on the fifth floor, Tom. But that structure isn't stable. It wasn't before, it sure as hell isn't now, and it wasn't designed to hold someone like you when it was new!

Tom: I know.

>>

Based on Oracle's statements, he runs back to the main staircase and up to the fifth floor. The Bat's are right. This is where he starts finding live people. Screaming, desperate people who are finding to their horror that the fire escapes that they had always been skeptical of won't hold them. The first two attempting to scramble down the one on this side managed to snap the corroded metal on the fourth floor, leaving the shattered remains of the two poor souls in a tangle of old steel, and limbs that will never move of their own volition again.
But the gap through the oversized window and the lack of the fire escape being in the way give him an idea.

>>

Tom: Robin! If I use my big grapple and hit something metal down there, use myself as an anchor, can you manage to turn it into a zip-line kinda? I got at least fifteen people here. Some of them are in pretty bad shape. They'll need help.

Oracle: Bat-mobile is a minute out. The tools are on it to make that happen.

Robin: Good call. I'll get it sorted on this end.

Spoiler: Orphan and I will try to get as many as we can to you for evac before the fire reaches you.

>>

He takes the shot and hits a massive old iron gate stand near the entrance to the lot. The angle is a little steep, but it's the best he's got. Most everything around is concrete, asphalt, and stone.

He's just getting himself braced since using his gravity ability in here would be moronic when Robin appears in the window and without even asking, just grabs the nearest person, clamps them around the waist with some kind of self-ratcheting strap, and shoves them out the window. Where the man screams, for about a second. Then he realizes that Robin is using his own grapple line to slow his descent to the waiting firefighters who are just now arriving.

In the end, Tom doesn't really do much. He stands there like a big rock, holding the line and watching his instruments warn him that the temperature is rising. That the air quality is worsening. That death for these people is approaching.

It's when there are maybe eight left in the line and the fire is making its way up the interior stairs to just outside the door of the apartment that he's working within that he gets the news that makes everybody's blood run cold.

>>

Spoiler: Bomb! I have a bomb in a closet on the sixth floor. Looks like some kind of propane and TNT abomination. No timer. No way to know.

B: Get out of there. If it hasn't already blown, then they are waiting for something.

>>

There are three more to go when the blast happens. Robin is out on the line helping a child who was late to the party, having been found under a bed. Spoiler and Orphan are down on the ground to assist with unhooking people. There are another two men and a dog in the room with him.

The pressure wave from the explosion is immense. Most likely the propane, Tom decides clinically as the floor beneath him collapses. As a last thought before the inevitable, he releases the catch on the grapple line he's using. It won't stop him falling anyway, but if he feeds out line while he falls then maybe Robin can make good his current rescue. After that, he doesn't have time to think.

The fourth floor gives way reluctantly. He almost manages to get his balance before the next one falls. After that, there are no more chances. Floor after floor gives way and he crashes down, two, three, four... and more. He lands in water. Looking up, he can see the spray trickling down. Most likely from the Fire Department attempting to handle the situation as best they can.

He's startled by a sudden sound that doesn't belong. He has no idea where the men are that fell, or if their part of the floor even collapsed. But the dog is here with him. Whining and barking, swimming in the soupy mess with its eyes sparkling in the firelight from above.

Tom can stand in this. He's guessing he's on the foundation at this point. The dog can't, and so Tom does the only thing he can. Starting by using the release on the grapple that will cut the line, he takes the coffin off of his back. Shoves a mutt into it. And seals it up with the dog inside, ratcheting the thing back into his pack.

Based on the sounds, this animal is very pissed off. But at least the most likely rottweiler mix has a chance at life.

Assuming Tom can work out how to get out of here himself. That's when he realizes that his phone has been busy for the last thirty seconds. He just couldn't hear anything.

>>

Oracle: Tom! Where are you?

Robin: Tom. I need your location to try to get you out of there.

Spoiler: Don't you dare be dead, where the hell are you!?

B: I'm on my way.

>>

He groans as he stretches. There must have been a sub-basement to this place because there is a solid concrete wall that goes up at least twenty feet he thinks. It's hard to tell. His spotlight didn't survive the fall intact and the headlights he uses don't live in a ball joint. The floor above him is more or less worthless, it had most likely been rotted completely through decades ago.

Think, Tom. This place is old. Really old. It was expensive then.

Coal. There'll be a coal chute on this place somewhere to feed whatever boiler they had down here. Probably outside stairs built into the concrete, they did that a lot back in the day too. Finding anything in this nightmare is nearly impossible. But he has a lifeline he can use.

>>

Tom: I'm here. Ended up in the sub-basement. No risk of fire, I'm standing in five feet of water. But I can't reach the foundation edge and this place is looking more and more like it's coming down. Need a staircase, coal chute, or something to climb on that'll hold me.

R.Robin: South side, Tom. Staircase to the sub-basement in a concrete housing. I suspect the stairs were steel based on the blueprint I have, but once you're there you'll have a shot outside. The grapple will get you out then.

Tom: Gotcha. Gimme a minute.

>>

The poor dog is barking up a storm, though the sound is pretty broken up by everything else going on. Sitting in front of a fireplace in a cozy study just doesn't prepare one for the roar of a fire out of control. The high-pressure hoses, the screaming and crying. Falling debris. It takes a few seconds to orient himself. He has a compass, of course. But there are rooms in the space that he is in, and he is having to crunch through these interior walls hoping that none of them are structural.

Based on the snapping sounds from above, he's betting at least a few of them were. The water is deeper, not that it impedes him much as he finds the south side concrete wall. Fortunately, it doesn't take long at that point to find the iron-bound door that was intended to secure the basement from outside intrusion. A hard push takes that off its hinges and it hits the far wall of the basin the stairs live in with a rattling crash. As he steps through and leans back to peer at what is above him, he sees a handful of faces looking over the lip of the hole he's in. The metal stairs look disturbingly similar to the ones used for the fire escape, so Tom doesn't even bother with them. Instead, he tosses up the end of his 'lesser' grapple to Robin, who runs out about forty feet of line, and then Tom hears the most beautiful words ever.

“Okay! I have you hooked onto the axle of the fire engine. Try it!”

As the building begins its final collapse, the interior structure crumbling under its own weight causes a sudden rush of air to precede Tom's armored head breaching the edge of his temporary prison. Sparks and steam choked by smoke surround him as he pulls himself over, stands up, and steps away.

Sadly for the news crews on the scene, the building manages to hold on for just that next two minutes and stops what could have been an award-winning video segment of him stepping away from the big show. When the building's outer walls give up, he is opening the coffin and pulling out a terrified animal that leaps out of his hands and rushes a family that had been one of the earlier ones to get out. Ones that had looked at their animal in horror, as they had known people took precedence.

Ones that had, until this moment, thought they had lost a member of their small family. Like so many others.

Tom looks around. Sees the people. The Bats. The firefighters and the reporters. All he can think about is the ones that died before he even arrived, and the two men he lost in the fall.

“I think I am going to skip sparring tonight, guys. I... I think I want to go home.”

They watch him leave. Unsure of the problem, but knowing there is one. But nobody knows how to handle it.

>>

Author's Note:

Okay. Manchester of Twisting the Hellmouth decided that this story needed a bodycount, and they went ahead and wrote this for anybody that read my little entry in which Lian's mother stopped by and were all “Oh, she's such a sweetie, look at her!”

Yeah. I won't say that is inaccurate. She loves her kid. That's canon to DC mainstream. I can see what happened in that chapter being completely accurate to the character.

But so is this.

If you'd like to read more of their work, an activity that I heartily recommend, it lives here:
https://www.tthfanfic.org/Author-14201/Manchester.htm

(As an aside, Manchester uses a more standard format in their writing than I am prone to and I am loathe to modify their work. So you get what I got. Though I did slap a title on it as there wasn't one. Enjoy!)

>>

For The Children.

>

Harvey Dent was abruptly roused from his uneasy, pain-wracked slumber in the Gotham Central high-security hospital ward by feeling like every drop of blood in his veins had just been replaced with ice water.

His eyelids flying wide open at where he was lying in bed, Harvey then experienced an equally alarming sensation of every other muscle in his body being utterly paralyzed, as if they had iron bands wrapped tightly around them.

The man with one side of his face horribly scarred tried to scream for help with his heart beating rapidly in absolute panic, only to produce the merest puff of air from between his lips.

A woman’s unfamiliar voice came from his left side, “Don’t bother. Even if my concoction I just put in your IV wasn’t working which it most certainly is, the nurses and police guards on duty tonight are all unconscious from my aerosolized sedative.”

Harvey tried to swivel his eyes over there to see who’d spoken to him, only to fail in this.

Instead, he heard the strange voice continue, “They’ll be fine, as a reward for the young man who unknowingly did myself a great kindness and later on, another but lesser kindness. Oh, if you’re hoping someone else in the hospital will notice you’re awake and under incredible stress through your medical telemetry, I’ve already put it in a continuous fifteen-minute loop from when you were fast asleep. Nobody is going to come to your rescue.”

The female speaker then sauntered down Harvey’s bed to turn and face him from the foot of this piece of furniture.

Luckily, his catheter managed to contain the massive surge of urine which just flooded the flexible tube down to a plastic bag swelling up to nearly its full capacity.

In Harvey’s limited circle of acquaintances, the phrase ‘killer psychotic bitch’ covered more people than usual for virtually anyone else. His newest visitor unfortunately made the top of that list, being none other than Cheshire, perhaps the world’s most dangerous woman alive.

The only way things could become even worse now was if she’d been Lady Shiva, who was in a fatal class of her very own.

Harvey frantically wondered what he’d done to attract Cheshire’s attention tonight, only to be told the answer in a very flat tone from the Asian woman standing at the foot of the bed.

“You endangered my daughter.”

If he could’ve moved a single muscle on either side of his face, Harvey would’ve gaped at Cheshire. What was she talking about?

“Thomas Wierzowski. I’m sure you know the name and have seen by now the little girl hugging him at the Gotham Gala.”

Harvey’s vision turned red with rage. Oh, yes, he remembered the fat meddler who’d crippled him. Just earlier this morning, a bored madman saw on the hospital room’s television the clip with that rugrat declaring her rescuer to be a real hero. At that point, Harvey had thrown the remote right at the tv screen, shattering both.

The woman spoke again, distracting Harvey, “Your pair of thugs who took Lian hostage, I’ve already terminated them with one of my most special mixtures. A combination of boomslang venom and LSD, so they perish in incredible agony from internal bleeding while their time perception stretches out so even if death comes in minutes they felt it happen for days.”

Cheshire smiled at Harvey, who managed to find another couple of drops remaining in his bladder to further piss himself.

“You, on the other hand… I’m going to turn you into a thorough object lesson for anyone who thinks they can strike at that unusual boy through Lian. I don’t care about him. His fate is his own, whatever it may be, but Lian is not to be touched by the rest of the criminal lunatics in this ghastly city. Nor may she be imperiled by those further away who are for hire to slaughter their victims. Should they even consider taking on such a contract, what I’m planning will definitely persuade them otherwise.”

If he could’ve uttered an intelligible sound, Harvey would’ve been begging for his life at the top of his lungs. Instead, all he could do was watch Cheshire turn around and reach for a small object lying on a wall shelf.

The court-appointed lawyer for Two-Face managed to argue before a particularly credulous Gotham judge his client required in his presence for psychological stability his famous double-headed coin. The judge ordered the coin to be provided to Mr. Dent in his patient room but at least the hospital administration flatly refused to allow the acid-mutilated villain to actually hold onto it, citing staff safety.

Picking up the defaced coin, Cheshire spun on her heel and headed towards the bed, a slim dagger materializing in her other hand. Bouncing the coin upon her palm a few times, Cheshire smirked at a paling Harvey.

“You like to flip this to decide who lives and dies. Well, your death will happen no matter what, but we might as well toss the coin to see which eye I’m going to stab through into your brain. Ready?”

>>

Author's Note:
Bruce will be finding out about this soon. He's just a touch distracted this second.

Take care!