The basement was still bone-chillingly cold.
The enormous, nightmarish shadow of a bat had dissipated, but the lingering terror weighed like invisible lead on the backs of the twelve senior members of the Court of Owls.
The chief adjudicator slowly straightened. Cold sweat covered his forehead beneath his pure white mask, and his fingers still trembled uncontrollably.
"Lord Barbatos's will... stands above all else." The adjudicator's voice was horribly hoarse. "Bruce Wayne is not to be touched."
A deathly silence settled around the round table.
"What about the school?" The female senior member gritted her teeth, her voice seething with resentment. "The construction crew is still digging! In just three days, they'll dig right through the load-bearing walls of the North District Backup Maze. We can't deal with that monster Yang Ming right now!"
"Not being allowed to kill Bruce doesn't mean we can't restrain him." The adjudicator sat back down, his mask gleaming coldly in the dim candlelight.
He picked up the copy of the Gotham Gazette on the table and slowly rubbed his fingers along its edge.
"Yang Ming's combat prowess has indeed exceeded our understanding. But this is Gotham. This city has run for centuries, and it has never relied on fists. It relies on rules." The adjudicator tossed the newspaper into the brazier, and the flames instantly swallowed Batman's photograph.
"Since brute force won't work, we'll use the trappings of the civilized society they're so proud of to drag them down."
The adjudicator turned to Grey Owl, who oversaw their infiltration of the municipal government.
"Activate our assets in City Hall. I want the Lake Street construction site completely dead before sundown today."
Ten in the morning.
The black Rolls-Royce Phantom glided through the iron gates of Wayne Manor, its tires rolling over the leaf-strewn