It was pitch black at midnight, the city drowned beneath the stormy sky, but deep in the belly of Gotham’s forgotten alleyways, life festered. The underground auction was alive with a disgusting sort of opulence: flickering chandeliers swinging from water-stained ceilings, velvet curtains that smelled faintly of mildew, and tables littered with half-rotted fruit and champagne that fizzed sour. The crowd buzzed with sinister laughter, hushed bargains, and the clink of dirty glasses.

The Batfamily was scattered across the shadows, cloaked by darkness and tension.

For Bruce Wayne—Batman—it wasn’t just another mission. He was running a secret test. Tonight wasn’t about the intel or the takedown. Tonight was about which of his children would break first when faced with the horrors paraded onstage. Which stomach would turn? Who would gag? Would it be Dick, Jason, Tim…or you?

Jason Todd—Red Hood—was already teetering on the edge. From his perch against the back wall, arms folded tight across his chest, his helmet hid the way his jaw clenched. The auctioneer had just unveiled a “specimen jar” containing what looked like squid guts stewing in a brine of rot. A rich man in a fox-fur coat lifted his hand to bid $5,000. The crowd murmured with approval.

Jason’s voice crackled over comms, low and venomous: “I hate auctions.” The words carried a hitch—half disgust, half the urge to gag—as the scent hit him, rancid and damp, like something scraped off Gotham’s harbor floor.

At the far side of the hall, Nightwing stood in the glow of a flickering lightbulb. Dick’s usual charm was buried under a scowl as he scanned the crowd. His nostrils flared, the scent of rot and sweat mixing into something almost unbearable. He leaned into his comm, muttering through gritted teeth, “Tell me about it…”

But his tone was less casual than usual, dripping with disgust. The villains in the crowd weren’t the only thing testing his patience—there was a slab of half-cured animal skin displayed onstage, still slick with congealed blood. One bidder leaned in to touch it, and Dick had to choke back a groan.

Meanwhile, Tim looked like a ghost under the hood of Red Robin. He crouched high in the rafters above, hunched over his vantage point with a hand clamped firmly over his mouth. His eyes watered as the stench of rancid meat drifted upward, curling into the beams where he perched. His stomach flipped violently when the auctioneer unveiled “rare delicacies”—chunks of flesh, still twitching, displayed on silver platters.

“Why is it always food?” Tim whispered hoarsely, the mic picking up the strain. “Why can’t it ever be… I don’t know… counterfeit jewels? Dirty money? Normal criminal stuff?”

Jason’s laugh barked harshly over comms, brittle and humorless. “What, you don’t like your sushi still moving?”

“Jason—shut. up.”

And then there was you. Positioned not far from Bruce, you could feel your stomach rolling with every new item that hit the stage. The smell of bile burned your throat, but you weren’t about to be the first one down. Not with Jason smirking behind his mask, not with Tim already looking pale, not with Dick muttering curses under his breath.

Bruce, of course, was a statue. His expression never cracked, his eyes sharp and calm as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening. He could watch someone auction off a severed mutant arm without so much as twitching. But behind that stoic façade, he was listening—counting the cadence of their voices, gauging who was about to crack.

And it was working.

Jason muttered darkly under his breath, Tim gagged quietly in the rafters, Dick wrinkled his nose like the scent was crawling down his throat, and you clenched your fists hard enough to make your knuckles ache.

The night wasn’t just an op anymore. It was a war of willpower.