Batman: Chase - Chapter 5

I hope you enjoy this story It is kind of different from the other ones I did. This is my dream Batman story I want to do.

Please let me know if I should write more chapters. Thank you for everything.

Chapter 5

We’ve searched Nightwing for hours and when we finally found him, he was out of breath. 

It looked like he had been in a major fight, I guessed that this wild creature was a lot more difficult to deal with than it originally appeared. Nightwing's suit was torn in several places, several long cuts showing through the shredded fabric. He had taken some basic first-aid steps to stem the bleeding, but it easily looked like he would need more patching. As bad as he looked, though, he was still up and in one piece. This was what mattered the most. The reason why he was no longer able to communicate with us? His communicator had been destroyed by the creature, which was what he told us. 

Nightwing was found near the Gotham dock, but the winged animal was nowhere to be seen. One minute, Nightwing was fighting for his life, the next, it had simply slipped away into the night.

“What was it?” It was one of Batman’s first few questions he had for his partner. It was understandable, but not exactly the most reasonable and urgent one to ask considering the alarmed state we found him in, in my own opinion. 

“I don’t know, it looked like a giant bat,” Nightwing said with a grunt. 

“I know it sounds absurd, but I don't know what else I can say just how much I felt like it was absurd when I was reading the various reports surrounding this strange case. Batman stayed silent after that question. It was time to move on and for Nightwing to be taken care of. Alfred needed to see him as soon as possible. He was still bleeding all over the place and—hold on, there was a strange noise coming from behind me and I didn’t even have time to turn my head and something was coming for me! 

The creature from earlier was back! It had been lurking around. It was never gone. I had no idea that it was still there. I didn’t have time to get away from it. Furthermore, I still tried backing off a bit by jumping to the side, but even that was not enough to ever hope to slip away from the grasp of the flying animal that was coming straight toward me. Nightwing was too injured and exhausted to fight now, which meant that it was only Batman and I who were still standing. Batman was the only one standing between me and the wild creature. 

As it came into direct view, everything that Nightwing said earlier made more sense than ever. The creature was, indeed, a giant bat made of flesh. No way, this was a costume or some kind of subterfuge. It wasn’t a man or a woman in a bat suit, it was something else. I had never seen anything quite like this. It was still coming for me. I was afraid it was going to take me, and I was, even so, frightened that I shut my eyes at the very last second before it caught me with its claws because I was too afraid. 

As soon as I closed my eyes, I suddenly heard a metallic sound that I recognized. It was the sound that a bat-grappling hook would make when activated and that hook part of it would be launched. When I re-opened my eyes, the terrifying creature was still right here in my face with his jaws wide open, begging to take a bit of my face, but it didn’t. It froze. What was going on? I didn’t understand why it would possibly stop all of a sudden. 

Then, everything clicked together: It was he who was preventing the creature from taking my head off with his fangs. Batman stopped him right at the last second using his grappling hook. The hook itself was rigidly wrapped around the torso of the flying animal and using his brute strength, he was able to hold him off. He used his grappling hook as a rope to trap the creature. That didn’t prevent the absurd horror from frighteningly snarling and screeching to my face. I was so scared. I didn’t have any bat grappling hook, rope, or anything like that holding me in place, but I was just as frozen in place as the monster. 

Come on. Move out of the way, Chase. Batman was buying me time to move out of the way. Why couldn’t I move? I needed to move as soon as possible. Move, Chase, move!

I struggled to move for the longest time, but then before it was too late and Batman lost control over the beast, I finally and barely managed to avoid the grasp of the creature. I was out of the way, but that didn’t mean that the atrocity was any further way. It was still right there. From this position, I could see how Batman operated behind the creature and held it in place with the help of his grappling hook. 

It became clear that he wouldn’t be able to hold him off for much longer. 

It was already a miracle that he had been able to hold it off for as long as he did.

“Batman, it’s about to break free!” I tried warning him, but he already knew. It was a given.

“Batman, let go of it!” Nightwing cared so much for his mentor. 

Clunk! 

The bat grappling hook broke, exactly as expected. The winged creature broke free, but to my surprise, instead of attacking us again, it fled into the night, never to come back that night. It disappeared with its leather wings flopping into the night, turbulent and foggy night. 

It was over. 

Or so I thought so…

When I looked back at Batman, I was easily able to determine that something was wrong.

It didn’t take a trained psychiatrist to understand that he was going through something horrible.   

“Batman?” I asked him as I slowly stepped toward him. 

“...” he didn’t say anything, and instead he stood there, looking all dark and brooding, like he usually did, but there was something off—he looked horrified behind his mask. Something was not normal.    

“Hey, Batman, are you okay?” even Nightwing noticed.

“I saw that thing before,” this was the only bit of information he gave the two of us that night.