章 20: Suspicions
Thursday 9th April 2009, 00:15.
New Jersey,
Gotham City,
East End.
Placing the unconscious body of Esau gently on his bed, Batman moved into the main sitting area of the young man's apartment, pausing as he looked around at the mess that greeted him. He took note of the dents in the wall, the shattered table and chairs, the upturned couch and the broken photo frames that had fallen to the ground. The sight made him frown, moving to pick them up and place what he could back onto the rusted nails, adjusting them to be straight, treating them with the care they deserved.
As he did that, Batman thought back to the earlier events of today, or he supposed yesterday considering the time it was now. He had certainly expected Esau to attack him when he first made his appearance, but he had not anticipated such a violent response from the young man. Nor had Batman expected Esau to put up such a fight, though looking back on it now, that was folly on his part for not anticipating it.
Nonetheless, he did feel guilty for how badly the apartment had been destroyed and he made a note to help in the refurbishing of the place.
A groan from the bedroom made him look to see Esau slowly dragging himself out of bed, rubbing his head to no doubt ease the headache he was suffering from. Standing quietly and giving him time to gather his wits, Batman waited as the young vigilante slowly walked into the living room, pausing slightly as he took in who was in his apartment.
"Batman?" Despite the obvious question in the young man's tone, Batman never gave any inclination that he had heard him, instead continuing to look out over Gotham city. "So what happened tonight exactly?"
This time, Batman answered.
"You inhaled some of Scarecrow's Fear Toxin and while under its influence, you attacked Batgirl allowing him to escape." Through the reflection in the mirror, Batman could see Esau was about to speak. "Robin caught up and captured Scarecrow. You were knocked unconscious by the explosives Robin set to disable the production of the Fearless Toxin."
"Did anyone..."
"No," Batman replied making sure to keep quiet about how he had to lose Batgirls trail who had been unusually motivated in trying to find out Esau's identity. Even so, he was more than capable of fooling his apprentice, he had taught her everything she knew about tracking people, but she lacked the experience to follow him. However, she had chased them for a good twenty minutes before he finally managed to lose her, a very impressive showing from Batgirl, though at the time he hadn't been thinking that.
Releasing a sigh of relief, Esau sat down on his couch and looked around his room, his gaze mostly focused on the broken picture frames that were strangely hanging neatly on the walls. But he groaned in annoyance at not just the reminder of how it became such a mess, but how much it would cost him to repair everything. That didn't even take into account the price and time it would take to find someone actually willing to come to this part of town and do a good job without scamming him out of thousands.
"I will cover the cost of the repairs," Batman spoke up and Esau went to refuse outright but Batman cut him off again. "This is partly my fault and I shall take responsibility for this. Besides I have more than enough money to spare."
Despite himself, Esau felt his lips twitch upwards at the last remark. "...Alright." He accepted, knowing that it would save him a great deal of money, effort and time, stuff he didn't have huge quantities of in the latter with everything that was going on. At least this way, with Batman handling the repairs of his apartment he could focus everything on locating the missing barrels of Fearless Toxin.
Esau was broken from his thoughts suddenly when a briefcase was put down in front of him, he looked at it and then at Batman wondering what it was, but more importantly, where he had hidden it? It was an answer he did not receive as Batman remained standing there stoically as he studied Esau's countenance closely.
While still curious about where exactly it had been hidden, Esau's curiosity for what was inside was too great to stop him from not looking. Leaning forwards, he unclipped the latches and lifted up the top half of the case to reveal some sort of body armour, one very similar to Batman's. But it was more than just that, the suit was an almost exact replica of his own Black Hood uniform, the protective body armour being a full-body one compared to the tattered bulletproof vest that he currently wore right now.
It even had a hood and built-in face mask included.
He looked to Batman once more. "It's a Kevlar bodysuit, better protection against bullets and knives than your own suit." Esau looked back at it and took a moment to run his fingers over the material.
The difference in the material was obvious even from just a simple touch and while inexperienced about such things, Esau knew right away this was top-notch stuff and he almost accepted it outright. However, after a few moments of consideration, Esau closed the lid of the case and pushed it back in Batman's direction.
"I don't need it, I'm fine with my suit as it is."
Batman remained quiet, his gaze locked onto Esau's hunched figure. "Now is not the time for your pride to get in the way. It won't protect you from a bullet or a knife, this will. It shouldn't matter where it came from." Batman growled out and Esau grunted in disagreement.
"It's not a matter of protection, it's a matter of principle." He replied. "I don't agree with your code of not killing people, to me, accepting this would mean accepting that your code is better than my own because it came from you. I believe entirely that a serial rapist can't rape another innocent man, woman or child if he's dead and let's face it, prisons aren't as secure as they used to be. The amount of times supervillains and criminals escape from them is frankly ridiculous, so killing them ends any and all attempts to repeat a crime. It's as simple as that."
"Except it's not," Batman replied. "I understand your reasoning quite well. In fact, when I first started I wanted so badly and came so close on many occasions to killing criminals. I thought the exact same way as you, that there can be no repeat offence if they're not alive to do so. But at the end of the day, that makes us no better than the criminals we are fighting."
Despite his words, Batman walked forwards and took the briefcase off the floor.
"You want to fight crime, you can't be a criminal." The masked vigilante continued. "Fighting fire with fire only burns those caught in the crossfire, the innocents. You kill criminals and you'll make them desperate enough to perform more dangerous and daring attempts to fight back that will only cause more death and destruction."
Turning on his heel, Batman headed towards Esau's bedroom where the window he had entered through was still open.
But before he did so, he turned back to face Esau. "It won't be you that suffers if you continue down this path, but it will be the innocent people caught in the crossfire of your campaign. An animal that is cornered will have no choice but to fight back and fight back violently. Remember that next time you kill."
With Batman gone, Esau ran one hand through his hair and with a groan fell back. "Shit."
He honestly didn't know what to say or do, but he sure as hell had a lot on his mind.
Batman's words played in a constant loop in his mind and the annoying part about it all; was that it made perfect sense.
He had been cornered by Black Mask and lashed out, tearing down and destroying his criminal empire and killing all those that got in his way. The Falcone Family, Scarecrow, and Killer Croc, they would all do far worse than him if put into a corner with no escape.
He couldn't even begin to imagine the destruction they could cause if they were desperate and with nothing to lose. The Joker was a man with no morals and nothing to lose, all he wanted to do was cause as much chaos as he could to draw Batman out. With no powers or anything like that, the Joker was the single most terrifying individual out there simply because of the amount of destruction he could cause and the terror he inspired.
If he cornered other villains, would they be just as bad, or worse?
-X-
Friday 17th April 2009, 21:30.
New Jersey,
Gotham City,
Location Unknown.
Groaning in annoyance as her phone once again went straight to voicemail, Barbara placed her phone on the desk in front of her and looked at the various screens displaying key locations on a map of Gotham City. Another screen showed various faces of criminals that had links to those arrested last Thursday, including those with connections to Scarecrows gang.
It had been a little over a week and Batman and the Gotham Police Department had been tearing apart the city in an attempt to find a possible lead as to where Scarecrow's Fearless Toxin was being hidden.
The idea of a city of criminals with no fear had lit a fire under even the most slothful of police officers and it was not uncommon to find entire SWAT teams raiding abandoned buildings and known criminal locations two to three times a day. All in a bid to find the caches of Fearless Toxin that still eluded them all, each of them fearful of the possibility of what chaos such toxins could cause. But it wasn't even just them, Barbara was aware that even other criminal organisations like the Falcone and Maroni Families were even helping police search the city.
Everyone was terrified of the worst possible outcome.
Yet despite all that, with even her, Batman and Robin working around the clock to find any possible clue as to where they were hidden, nothing had come up yet at all.
It was beyond frustrating.
Not to mention there was the question as to why Scarecrow had created this new batch of Toxin considering his whole path to power had been carved by inspiring fear in those that followed him.
Taking away said fear seemed pointless and counterproductive, leading to her and others to start thinking that there was more to this than what meets the eye. Johnathan Crane had been unusually quiet and almost scared as he was loaded up into a police van to be transported back to Arkham Asylum.
It was unusual and had stuck in her mind for a long while.
Could Scarecrow be working for someone else and had been forced to make a toxin that removed fear from a person?
It would certainly explain why he did it in the first place, but again she didn't have any concrete proof just yet so it was nothing more than speculation.
Sighing, Barbara picked up her phone once more and went to speed dial, selecting Esau's number. She would admit that she and Esau hadn't spoken as much recently mostly because of the whole Scarecrow debacle, something which she had explained and Esau had been perfectly fine with.
But it was mostly because Barbara couldn't get the image of Black Hood's blonde hair and blue eyes out of her head. She already knew that Esau and Black Hood had a similar shade of blonde hair, blue eyes and a near identical build but she didn't know if it was Esau for sure. Barbara didn't want to suddenly accuse Esau of being the Black Hood in case he wasn't, she didn't want to be that person. But at the same time, Black Hood had been unusually quiet, only making a few short appearances here and there across Gotham as he conducted his own search into the whereabouts of the Fearless Toxin.
Not to mention Batman had rebuffed her questions about Black Hood's identity and had even spent a long time travelling aimlessly around Gotham just to lose her and he had. She had lost him somewhere in Gotham Heights and hadn't been able to pick up his trail again and so she had called off the search for the night.
Though that hadn't stopped Bruce from berating her when he got back to the Batcave.
Whoever Black Hood was, Bruce didn't want her to find out.
Whether that was for Black Hood's protection, or hers, Bruce hadn't said.
Giving Esau's number a ring once more she groaned in annoyance as it once again went straight to voicemail. She was getting really sick of it and after chucking her phone onto the table with a careless toss, Barbara looked back at the screen.
Bruce was out at a charity ball to keep up pretences as a playboy with Dick out on the hunt at one of the more well-protected Scarecrow safe-houses. From the sounds of it though, it was going to be another bust and of course, she was stuck here being the observer of it all.
Well, she was meant to be resting having spent all last night and this morning searching the leads she had gotten only for them to be dead ends. But sleep escaped her and so she was restless and wide awake with nothing but time on her hands.
"You should really be resting, Miss Gordon." The elderly British voice of the butler, Alfred broke Barbara from her thoughts.
Turning to the right she looked to see Alfred walking towards her with a tray adorned with cups and a pot held perfectly in place by one hand. "Rest's beyond me right now, Alfred." She responded calmly with a smile on her face.
Placing the tray beside her on the desk, he gently poured her a steaming cup of tea. "And what seems to be occupying your mind tonight?" He asked, stepping back to allow Barbara to pour herself some tea and put in a cube of sugar. "Is it perhaps your suspicions upon who Black Hood might be?"
Barbara sighed knowing that Alfred had always been perceptive at picking up on what was bothering those around him. It was a talent or a skill that must come with being a butler and it was one of the reasons he was so loved by those around him.
"Yes." She replied looking at her phone. "I just, I feel like Black Hood has to be Esau. So many things match up, but at the same time they could be explained away as mere coincidence." Admitting it frustrated her more than anything and Alfred placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it slightly as a sign of silent support.
"One thing I have learned in my time working with Master Wayne, Master Dick and yourself, Miss Gordon is that your gut instinct and deductive abilities are rarely wrong. If you truly believe that he is Black Hood then I have no doubt you are correct." He replied and Barbara smiled slightly but shook her head negatively.
"And what if I'm wrong this time?" She questioned further. "What if I confront Esau, accuse him of being the Black Hood and I'm proven wrong? Esau wouldn't know it's me, but I would know what I did and I wouldn't be able to forgive myself."
"Have you searched thoroughly?" Alfred asked, frowning at seeing how this was tearing her up inside.
Barbara nodded her head in agreement and Alfred smiled slightly seeing how much she truly cared for her friend. It did make him feel sorry for the girl to see her so torn up on going behind her friend like she was, but at the same time, it showed just how much she cared for him. He knew that Bruce and Dick would have trouble finding a meaningful relationship, they were both torn up by their pasts and while Dick was certainly better than Bruce, it did not mean much.
Barbara however was different.
She had been motivated to fight crime as Batgirl for a number of reasons.
But the main reason was because of her friend, Esau.
She had meaningful relationships before becoming Batgirl and had always fought to protect those she cared about and it pleased him to see that at least one of them had a future with another. Not that it wouldn't stop him from trying to do the same for both Dick and Burce as that would no doubt be the culmination of his life's work, more so than being the butler of the Wayne family.
A crowning achievement it would be as well.
"Then perhaps you should see what he is doing tonight?" He offered as a means of directing Barbara's attention elsewhere. "Go to him, spend time with him and rest. If he's Black Hood then the more time you spend with him, the greater the chance he'll slip up and reveal himself."
Barbara hesitantly nodded her head and with a smile of gratitude directed at the butler, she turned back to the computer. "Thank you, Alfred." She said and Alfred bowed before leaving the Batcave.
Turning back to the computer, she started typing away at the keyboard.
クリエイターの想い 
Carrots123
Carrots123 So, here we are, another chapter is done and with it, despite being suspicious of Esau being Black Hood, Barabra isn't a hundred percent sure. It's a hunch based on a small number of factors, but due to the nature of her work and what she has done in the past, its this hunch based on these small factors that have led to her being convinced that Esau is Black Hood. However, her friendship with him leads her to hesitate and left being unsure. At the same time though, the Bat Family are beginning to wonder if there is something else going on behind the scenes, with Esau refusing to accept any from Batman thinking it as accepting he is right. It's an excuse because Esau is too prideful to admit he needs help. Anyway, hope you all enjoyed and if you have any questions or suggestions, please let me know.
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