Penguin: ?

Batman raised a hand and swiped lightly across his tactical eyepiece. "Those are Penguin's elite flanking troops. The False Face Society was just bait he threw out to lure everyone here."

"So everyone was playing Russian nesting dolls this whole time? Why didn't anyone tell me beforehand? Before I left today, I thought this was just an ordinary night patrol. I didn't prepare anything." Chen Mo slyly took a jab at Batman. As fellow vigilantes, shouldn't they share major firsthand intel about the villains?

Forget it. It was obvious Batman would never share his intel.

The underground surveillance room at the Iceberg Lounge.

Penguin elegantly swirled his glass of red wine. On the wall of monitors, green dots representing his men densely filled every shadow of the stronghold. "That idiot Roman thought a few lunatics on motorcycles could draw out my trump cards."

He let out a shrill laugh, like a duck being strangled.

"Once Black Mask's main force arrives, my children will show him who makes the rules in Gotham."

Believing himself several moves ahead, Penguin sipped his wine, his eyes brimming with the arrogance of someone certain of victory.

The next second, one image on the monitors burst into static. Then a second, and a third. The curve of Penguin's lips froze.

The skylight above the stronghold shattered with a crash. Glass shards rained down. Batman descended like a black panther. As his cape spread, the broken glass reflected the firelight, bursting into a dazzling curtain behind him. He landed directly on two elite soldiers about to open fire, crushing them beneath him.

As he landed, his knee was already driven into a third man's chest. The man didn't even have time to scream.

Chen Mo hung upside down from a beam, his hands blurring. Three strands of webbing stuck precisely to several infrared-triggered bombs in the corner. With a backhand flick, he slapped them straight onto the faces of several burly men about to pull their triggers.

"Don't move. If those go off, there won't be enough pieces left to put you back together."

One of Penguin's elite soldiers turned with a furious roar, his submachine gun only halfway raised.

Batman's fist was already there. A straight punch without any flourish. With a crack, the ballistic helmet caved in. The burly man flew sideways like a puppet with its strings cut, smashing over two iron tables piled with weapons.

Ammunition crates clattered to the floor. In the Iceberg Lounge's surveillance room, Penguin's wineglass fell from his hand and shattered. Expensive red wine spilled across the carpet like a glaring pool of blood.

"Batman? Why is he there?!"

He shot to his feet, his corpulent body trembling slightly with rage. His carefully arranged ambush, the ace unit he had kept most deeply hidden, was being torn apart one by one like lambs to the slaughter.

Flames blazed inside the stronghold. Chen Mo used his Spider-Sense to twist through the dense hail of bullets, his movements as bizarre as a boneless noodle man.

In reality, he was moving too fast for ordinary eyes to follow, leaving afterimages.

"You on the left, did your grandma teach you to shoot? You missed by three centimeters!"

He shot a web onto the ceiling and swung in an arc, driving both feet hard into a sniper's chest. The man was pinned against the wall before he could even scream.

Chen Mo casually added a glob of webbing, sealing him into a cocoon. "Done."

He landed and saw Batman mowing through enemies a short distance away. Every strike came with the dull sound of breaking bones.

After inwardly marveling at his own mercy, Chen Mo told Batman not to steal his kills.

"Leave a couple for me! I'm not done playing yet!"

The moment he finished speaking, his Spider-Sense suddenly went wild. It wasn't coming from the enemies before him, but from malice deeper within. "Bats, something's wrong! Could you answer me at a time like this?"

"Fine, you don't have super-hearing. You didn't hear me."

The stronghold's top floor. The flanking force's commander was screaming frantically into his communicator. "Backup! We need backup! Where the hell are the snipers on the tower crane?!" Only grating static came from the other end.

The next second, the wall behind him exploded without warning. Amid flying bricks and rubble, Batman smashed straight through the wall and stepped into the command room, his cape spreading behind him like a patch of darkness torn from the abyss. His eyes beneath the mask were icy cold.

The commander drew his sidearm in terror.

A hand covered in Kevlar armor instantly clamped around his wrist and applied a little pressure. His scream rang through the entire floor, and the pistol fell to the ground and skidded far away.

Batman snatched the communicator from his hand and casually tossed it to the floor.

The communicator remained lit after it landed. The other end of the channel could hear everything happening here. Batman's breathing was steady and cold. He was making Penguin listen as his elite troops were cleared out one by one.

High on the tower crane.

Penguin's last sniper adjusted his scope, sweat covering his head.

His crosshairs finally locked onto the dark figure by the stronghold's window. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, a spinning Batarang flew toward him, sliced through his scope, and took off part of a finger along the way.

Before he could scream, a strand of webbing wrapped around his neck. It yanked him off the tower crane, dozens of meters above the ground.

"Having fun on the flying trapeze?" Chen Mo crouched at the edge of the tower crane, watching the unlucky man swinging in midair. "You're welcome. I'm your friendly neighborhood guy. I'm astonishingly friendly."

Every screen in the surveillance room fell silent. In just a few minutes, all the green dots representing the elite troops had turned gray.

Penguin slumped in his chair, his face as pale as a corpse.

The trump card he had been so proud of had been shattered until not even scraps remained.

In the shadows on the rooftop opposite the stronghold.

A man wearing a pitch-black skull mask quietly watched it all.

Roman Sionis, Black Mask, elegantly trimmed the cigar in his hand. A flame danced in the darkness, illuminating the cruel smile in his eyes.

"So that's the full extent of Penguin's strength? How disappointing." He exhaled a smoke ring, the smoke forming a mocking curve in the air.

He didn't care about the destroyed weapons at all. What he wanted was to use Batman to completely cripple Penguin's henchmen.

His goal had been achieved.

Profit or revenge?

Black Mask's position was that getting both would be best. If he couldn't have both, he would pocket the immediate gains first, then figure out how to take revenge later.

Black Mask turned, stirring up a gust of cold wind, and disappeared into the night.

In the distance, Gordon's police sirens drew closer. Chen Mo crouched on the lightning rod atop the stronghold, watching the busy red and blue lights below.

"When the police get here, I don't have the money to pay a trespassing fine."

Chen Mo turned to Batman. "What are you looking at?"

He followed Batman's gaze but saw only a pitch-black rooftop. "Forget it. We can't catch up anyway. Seriously, could you pay me something next time we clear a place out like this? Doesn't Gotham have some kind of friendly neighborhood award?"

Chen Mo paused and jerked his chin toward the street below. "Come to think of it, I don't think I've met Gotham's famous righteous police commissioner yet. Gordon, right? Introduce me sometime. Not today, though. I'm so sleepy I can barely keep my eyes open."

He shot a web onto the water tower framework opposite and launched himself into the air. His red-and-blue figure traced an arc through the murky night, quickly vanishing among the shantytown's overlapping tin roofs.

Batman withdrew his gaze and turned toward Gordon, who was getting out of a police car.

Gordon glanced up at the alley sealed off with webbing by the stronghold's entrance, then toward the rooftop where the red-and-blue figure had already vanished.

"Your new partner? Finally made a friend?"

Batman didn't answer.

Gordon sighed and put his pipe in his mouth.

"All right. I won't ask."

The strand of webbing above the distant shantytown still caught a faint glimmer of light. Batman glanced in that direction, then walked toward the Batmobile.

The engine started, its low rumble gradually fading down the quiet alley.

The entire dock district finally fell silent, leaving only the mournful sound of the sea breeze passing through gaps between shipping containers and the alternating red and blue glow of police lights.