Batman's fist connected with the side of his head with precisely calculated force, not enough to cause permanent damage, but more than enough to disorient. Suguro stumbled, his vision blurring, his balance compromised.
A second strike, targeting his chest, drove the air from his lungs and dropped him to his knees.
Then hands grabbed him, strong, gloved, belonging to someone who knew exactly how to restrain a struggling opponent. In under three seconds, Suguro found himself on the ground, face pressed to concrete, arms being pulled behind his back for restraints.
"Don't struggle," Batman's voice came from above him, modulated to remove identifying characteristics but carrying absolute authority.
Suguro's hand, still partially free, twisted despite the painful angle. His Quirk activated, skin producing gas rapidly filling the surrounding air.
Batman recoiled instantly, his grip loosening as the toxin made its way into his lungs. His breathing changed, his posture shifting as the compound entered his system and began affecting his brain chemistry.
He thought the toxin was just artificially created not originally from a quirk hed have to update his database.
Suguro didn't wait to see the full effect. He rolled away, pulled himself upright despite bruised ribs and spinning vision, and ran.
Behind him, he heard Batman stagger, heard the Dark Knight's breathing become labored, heard what might have been a name being spoken—"Mom? Dad?"—in a tone of anguish that suggested the toxin was doing its terrible work.
But Suguro didn't look back. He fled through Gotham's alleys, away from the Dark Knight, the most feared man in Gotham… for now.
Crime Alley - Batman's Perspective
The toxin hit Bruce Wayne's system with devastating efficiency.
He staggered backward and the alley around him began to change.
The walls shifted, the shadows deepened, and suddenly Bruce wasn't a forty-year-old vigilante anymore. He was eight years old, standing in Crime Alley on the worst night of his life.
His parents materialized before him—Thomas and Martha Wayne, dressed in their theater finest, their bodies showing the gunshot wounds that had ended their lives decades ago. Blood spread across his father's tuxedo, his mother's pearls scattered across the pavement where they'd fallen.
"Bruce," his father's voice carried disappointment rather than love. "Look what you made us do."
"We died because of you," his mother added, her expression showing accusation rather than the warmth he remembered. "If you hadn't insisted on going to that movie, if you hadn't wanted to leave through the alley, if you'd just listened—"
"No," Bruce whispered, his adult mind knowing this wasn't real, that the toxin was manufacturing these accusations from his own subconscious guilt.
Both parents stepping closer, their corpse-like appearances becoming more pronounced. "You couldn't save us, so you're trying to save everyone else to make yourself feel better."
"That's not true," Bruce said, but his voice lacked conviction even to his own ears.
"Isn't it?" Thomas Wayne's corpse reached out, placing a bloody hand on Bruce's shoulder. "How many people have died because you refuse to kill criminals? How many victims could have been saved if you'd just Killed the Joker, Two-Face, or Bane when you had the chance?"
"I don't kill," Bruce said automatically, the rule that had defined his entire career as Batman. "I'm not a murderer."
"No," Martha's corpse agreed, her voice dripping with contempt. "You're just the enabler who lets murderers keep killing. Our deaths broke you, and you've been spreading that brokenness across Gotham for decades, creating more orphans, more tragedy, more pain."
Bruce's legs gave out, dropping him to his knees on the alley pavement. The toxin was overwhelming his psychological defenses, dragging up every doubt and self-recrimination he'd ever experienced and amplifying them into crushing certainty.
The hallucination intensified, his parents' corpses multiplying, filling the alley with their accusing presence.
You weren't there.
You weren't fast enough.
You weren't good enough.
Then training reasserted itself.
Decades of discipline, thousands of hours of mental conditioning, the psychological armor he'd built through years of meditation and therapeutic work with Dr. Leslie Thompkins. His mind wasn't an untrained civilian's, it was a weapon he'd sharpened deliberately, designed to resist exactly this kind of attack.
Not real, he told himself with absolute certainty.
The toxin fought back, trying to maintain the nightmare, but Bruce's will was stronger than most people's survival instincts. He forced his eyes open, they'd closed at some point without him noticing, and made himself see the actual alley rather than the hallucinated horror show.
Empty. Just concrete, debris, and shadows. No corpses, no accusers, no manifestation of his guilt.
Not real.
He pulled himself upright, using the wall for support, his body shaking from the neurochemical assault but his mind gradually clearing.
The hallucinations faded slowly, his parents' voices becoming whispers and then silence, the crushing guilt receding to manageable levels.
Batman stood alone in the alley, breathing heavily, covered in sweat, his cowl's internal sensors showing elevated heart rate and blood pressure but nothing that suggested permanent damage.
The toxin exposure had been significant but not lethal, this must have only been the weakest form.
But a great advantage presented itself, his cowl had collected samples of the compound for analysis.
Useful information for their inevitable next confrontation.
Nightwing arrived exactly three minutes later, appearing from the shadows with the acrobatic grace that marked him as one of Batman's most successful proteges.
"What happened?" Dick asked, moving to support Bruce's weight as they started toward where the Batmobile was concealed several blocks away.
"Confronted one of the villains responsible for the Southside Defenders massacre. New player, got close enough to restrain him but he deployed his Quirk, he's the fear toxin source, it's his quirk not just some chemical concoction."
They reached the Batmobile, and Bruce settled into the passengers seat with visible relief. The familiar environment helped ground him, pushing the lingering toxin effects further away.
"The Southside Defenders are all dead?" Dick asked quietly.
"Yes."
They rode in silence for a moment, both processing the implications. Gotham had lost five heroes tonight, reducing the city's already critically low hero population even further. And the villain responsible was still free.
"We'll stop him," Dick said finally, his voice carrying determination
"I hope you're right,"
U.A. High School - Staff Break Room - 3:47 PM Japan Time
The break room was usually a refuge for exhausted teachers, a place to decompress between classes and prepare for the next educational battle. Today it was filled with most of U.A.'s staff, all gathered around the television displaying international hero news.
Midnight sat in her usual spot, coffee cup in hand, trying to appear casually interested rather than intensely focused on the Gotham coverage that seemed to dominate every broadcast lately.
"—another devastating blow to Gotham's hero community," the anchor announced, her expression grave. "The Southside Defenders, a team of five heroes operating in Gotham's southern districts, were found dead in their headquarters early this morning. GCPD reports indicate they were killed during what appears to be a coordinated villain attack."
The screen showed crime scene footage—carefully edited to avoid the most graphic details, but still showing enough to convey the violence. Bodies covered by sheets, blood visible on warehouse floors, GCPD officers moving through the space with expressions that suggested extreme trauma.
"Authorities have released security camera footage from the warehouse, showing two individuals they're identifying as persons of interest in the attack."
The image changed to grainy CCTV footage, poor resolution, but clear enough to show two figures moving through the warehouse. One was female with distinctive red hair and green-tinged skin, the other was masked, wearing dark clothing, tall with black hair and purple eyes…
"Midnight? Are you okay?"
Aizawa's voice cut through her spiraling thoughts. She realized she'd been staring at the screen for several seconds without moving, her coffee cup still frozen in mid-air, her expression probably showing more emotion than she normally allowed at work.
"Fine," she said automatically, setting down her coffee with deliberate care. "Just... disturbing footage. Those poor heroes."
"Gotham continues to deteriorate," Principal Nezu observed from his position near the window. His high intelligence made him uniquely qualified to analyze international hero trends, and his assessment of Gotham had become increasingly grim over the past year. "Five more heroes dead, the city's total active hero count now below thirty-five for a population of twelve million. At this rate, Gotham will become completely ungovernable within under a year, maybe two."
"Why doesn't America send more support?" Vlad King asked, his expression showing frustration at the senseless waste. "They have hundreds of high-ranked heroes. Stars and Stripes alone could probably help clean up Gotham."
"Politics," Aizawa said, his voice carrying the exhausted cynicism of someone who'd dealt with hero commission bureaucracy for too long. "America has apparently decided Gotham isn't worth saving. They focus resources on cities they think can recover and write off the ones they view as lost causes."
The broadcast continued, showing interviews with GCPD officers, statements from Gotham's remaining hero agencies, and brief footage of Batman apparently responding to the attack and had been exposed to some kind of chemical weapon.
Midnight stood, needing to leave, needing space to process what she'd just seen. "I have some paperwork to finish, excuse me."
She left the break room before anyone could press further, walking through U.A.'s corridors with practiced calm until she reached her private office and could lock the door behind her.
Then she collapsed into her chair and pulled up her laptop, accessing the international databases she'd been monitoring obsessively for years. Searches for "Suguro Crane," "missing persons Gotham," "abandoned children," anything that might give her information about what had happened to her son.
The searches came up empty,
just like they always did.