Three punks were zip-tied in the alley two blocks back, he didn't even hit them that hard. Just enough to teach the lesson without knocking out teeth—too much paperwork when there's dental trauma. One of them had tried to swing a rusted crowbar, and Batman had thought: You idiot. You absolute mouth-breathing cretin. Then he'd broken the guy's wrist with a twist and a crunch and left him face-down in spilled garbage. The old woman had been too shaken to say thank you, but that was fine. That wasn't the point, she walked away still clutching her purse like it was her baby. He counted that as a win. Now, the night stretched open again. Gotham was a sick dog that never slept, just twitched through its fevers and coughed up new symptoms. Batman didn't sleep much either. He vaulted over a narrow gap between apartment buildings, black boots scraping metal as he landed on an old HVAC unit. The stench of hot copper wiring and burnt oil filled his nostrils. Someone had been up here recently—kids, maybe, tagging walls or filming a half-assed TikTok dance. He could smell the cheap vape juice and Axe body spray. His comms crackled to life, a dry rasp in his ear. Reports of gunfire in the Bowery. Two blocks east. I'm on it. He broke into a sprint, cape catching the wind again, grappling hook already spinning loose in his hand. His muscles moved from memory though his mind stayed elsewhere—half in the past, half in schematics, always crunching patterns. Why that corner? Why tonight? Why those some idiot on that particular street, mugging someone who probably had twenty bucks and a bottle of aspirin in their bag? He fired the grappling line again and it caught fast against a rusted fire escape. He yanked, swung hard into the arc, then landed like a phantom on the opposite roof. Knees bent, controlled impact. Asphalt and mildew hit him in the face. Then watched for the crime that will inevitably show itself.