"Man-Bat failed."
At the center of the Dark Knights Against the League's base, a host of villains sat around an extravagantly luxurious round table. A video was playing in the middle of it.
The footage had been recorded from Man-Bat's perspective. At first, he was simply attacking passersby as usual, but for some unknown reason, the view suddenly swung around and hurtled toward the ground at incredible speed.
Finally, the image froze beneath Zuo Ci's unusually deep, dark hood.
"This is the last footage Man-Bat left behind. What do you think?"
Hush sat silently at the head of the table, his face wrapped in bandages. Every word of his was relayed by the assistant standing beside him, who was dressed exactly like him.
In Hush's scheme, the first step toward destroying the Batman persona was to ruin the image he had so painstakingly cultivated.
Specifically, they would first send Man-Bat out to demonize Batman, twisting his urban-legend image as the Dark Knight into a man-eating monster lurking in the darkness.
Then Doctor Hugo would appear disguised as a fake Batman and commit crimes, deliberately showing himself to cement the urban legend as reality while also destroying the network of connections Batman had built.
Once the Batman identity was riddled with cracks, a relentless series of blows would destroy it, exposing the vulnerable Bruce Wayne beneath. Finally, Hush would strangle him to death with his own hands.
But he had never expected the very first step to fail, let alone so inexplicably and utterly.
"How strange. Could something have gone wrong with your device, Tetch?"
Doctor Hugo adjusted his glasses in surprise, giving the small figure beside him a puzzled look.
He was the one who had found Man-Bat, and even then, he had confirmed that the man had completely devolved