A Talon's Warning, a First Close Encounter!

Gotham was cold and damp beneath the night sky.

Link walked back to the base alone, without any of his men.

He had just finished a multibillion-dollar financial gamble aimed at Gotham City's oldest, most secretive power bloc.

He knew he hadn't merely tossed a stone into a pond. He had pulled a tooth straight from a crocodile's mouth.

And crocodiles bit.

So he waited.

He deliberately took a deserted alley, putting himself where an ambush would be easiest.

Even the finest hunter sometimes had to disguise himself as the juiciest prey.

The air was so still that even the wind seemed to have stopped.

As he turned into a dead-end alley piled with trash cans, that chill of being watched returned.

This time, the gaze wasn't coming from hundreds of meters above.

It was right behind him.

Link didn't look back.

A dark figure emerged soundlessly three meters behind him, as though seeping out of the shadows on the wall.

The man wore an old but sharply pressed black suit. His movements were stiff, yet strangely coordinated. On his face was that familiar, deathly white owl mask.

He held two oddly shaped short blades. Their edges reflected not a glimmer of moonlight.

No killing intent. No breath. No heartbeat.

He simply stood there like a puppet dragged from its grave, its strings held by an unseen hand.

The next second, the puppet moved.

A shadow flashed, faster than any human could move.

The two blades crossed in a streak of cold steel, aimed at the back of Link's neck and his heart.

The strike was vicious, precise, and meant to kill.

But just as the blades were about to touch his skin, Link shifted half a step to the left like a ghost.

That half step sent both deadly blades skimming past the edge of his trench coat.

Without even turning, he drove his left elbow backward into his attacker's chest.

With Batman's complete fighting techniques at his command, Link knew every weakness in the human body. That blow could have shattered a strong man's ribs and knocked the breath out of him.

Thud!

The impact sounded dull.

But to Link, it felt like striking a steel plate wrapped in leather.

The assassin known as a Talon barely faltered. His blade twisted at an impossible angle and stabbed toward Link's side again.

Link finally turned to face him.

There was no surprise in his eyes, only growing interest.

He slipped past the attack, swept a kick at the Talon's legs, and jabbed two fingers toward the eyes behind his mask.

The Talon made no attempt to dodge. He let the kick strike his knee with a muffled crack of displaced bone while raising his blade to block.

Link's fingers struck the blade, throwing off a spray of sparks.

They exchanged more than ten blows in an instant.

The Talon attacked with broad, lethal strikes, as if defense meant nothing to him. He seemed unable to feel pain. Even a deformed joint did nothing to slow him down.

Link's frown deepened.

He seized an opening, closed in, and drove a fist hard into the Talon's abdomen.

This time, he used all his strength.

The Talon flew backward as if struck by a battering ram and slammed into the alley wall, cracking the solid brickwork.

Anyone else would have been reduced to a broken heap.

But the Talon slowly rose from the ground.

His clothes had torn where Link's fist struck his chest, exposing pale skin and a deep indentation left by the blow.

Strangely, the dent was slowly filling in before Link's eyes.

The Talon twisted the knee Link had kicked, though it was badly warped.

With a sharp crack, he snapped it back into place himself.

"A monster..." Harley's voice trembled in Link's Bluetooth earpiece. From a nearby high-rise, she had watched the entire fight through a sniper scope.

Link didn't answer.

His gaze turned icy.

He understood now. Conventional physical attacks were useless against this thing.

The Talon could regenerate at extraordinary speed.

"If I can't break you, I'll fry you to a crisp."

Link glanced at the exposed old electrical box at the end of the alley.

A plan took shape in an instant.

He deliberately left himself open, as though fatigue had slowed him down.

The Talon took the bait. A flicker like a stream of data passed through the dark eyeholes of his mask, and he rushed in, both blades stabbing straight for Link's heart.

Now!

Instead of retreating, Link charged into the blades. He twisted his body to its limit, keeping his heart clear while letting one blade pierce his shoulder.

Pain tore through him, but he ignored it.

He trapped the Talon's weapon fast in his pierced shoulder.

Then he grinned, showing his teeth.

"Got you."

He wrapped his arms around the Talon and hurled them both into the electrical box at the end of the alley with all his strength.

Boom!

High-voltage current erupted. Blue-white arcs writhed like frenzied snakes, swallowing them both.

The acrid stench of burning flesh spread through the alley.

The instant the current hit him, Link wrenched himself free and rolled aside. Blood streamed from his shoulder, and smoke rose from his body.

The Talon, meanwhile, was held against the electrical box by the powerful current. He convulsed violently, thick smoke billowing off him as his suit turned to ash.

Seconds later, the overloaded electrical box exploded.

The Talon's charred body fell to the ground like a rag and lay still.

Clutching his shoulder, Link rose to his feet, breathing hard.

Then a finger on the charred "corpse" twitched.

He still wasn't dead.

He struggled to get up, a rasp that sounded nothing like a human voice scraping from his throat.

But he did not attack again. He only raised his head and fixed his hidden eyes on Link. In a voice like metal grinding against metal, he forced out each word:

"Gotham... does... not... welcome... you..."

Then his body went limp. Like sludge, it sank into the shadows on the ground and vanished.

Only Link remained in the alley, along with the tip of a short blade that the current had burned off.

Link picked up the searing piece of metal. His gaze was cold as ancient ice.

The Court of Owls. The Talons.

The game had just become interesting.