5 After a while, Crocodile

*crunch*

As Croc jumped up, he dug all of his sharp claws into my shoulders, chomping his pointed and jagged teeth on my throat, piercing my flesh, resulting in me experiencing a severe amount of pain.

With both of my hands enveloping his entire body, I began to squeeze Croc as hard as I could, feeling the vibration of his rib cage cracking in my palms; there was a problem, though. It was almost like he didn't feel any pain whatsoever. Even while he coughed up blood on my neck, he kept a sadistic and sickening grin on his face the entire time, digging his teeth deeper into my skin.

After a few seconds of agonizing pain, my grip started to falter, giving Croc the advantage to gain leverage over me.

Forcing my grip open with his scaly and brawny arms, he somehow even dug his fingers even deeper into my arms with his gnarled nails, causing me to completely succumb to pain, allowing him to escape my grip completely.

The beast-like man then placed his feet on my chest, then launched himself backward with enough superhuman strength to knock the wind out of my chest, but because of my increased weight in my Hell-Ape form, I managed to keep my feet planted… Unfortunately, his teeth also were ingrained.

Seeing that I was still resisting, Croc then began to forcefully tear at my throat like a dog yanking apart a steak.

With his monstrous strength that bordered on the line of defying the laws of physics, I was forced to watch my skin stretch and peel off of my body like a piece of jerky.

*slick*

*snap*

With one more mighty leap, he launched himself backward, tearing out my trachea, esophagus, and larynx in one go–

Or at least, that's what I thought happened… It was what I felt happened, but seeing was believing.

What I saw was that I wasn't a normal person. The moment he pulled my skin off, several sharp blue-tipped 8-foot-long thick tentacles emerged from my neck like javelins, attempting to puncture Croc, but his jump had saved him.

As my tendrils retreated back into my body, Croc landed and stood in place surprised with a slimy chunk of me still in his mouth.

He stared at my throat in surprise, baffled by what just happened to me. In his confusion, the red fleshy pieces of me that he had in his mouth blackened and began to warp and merge into a singular thick black tentacle.

*spit*

Taken aback, Croc began wiping his face in disgust and slight intrigue while we both stared at my severed body part in stupefaction.

Although I was still surprised by what was happening to me, the discomfort in my neck superseded that, now placed in a position where I could barely think straight and was now spiraling in pain.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't speak. I couldn't think of a cohesive thought. I felt like I was just slashed with a knife, doused with lemon juice, then salted.

I felt lightheaded and began gripping my neck.

Upon feeling my injury, instead of feeling a bleeding neck wound, what I felt was hundreds of tiny tentacles caressing my palm as if trying to comfort me from the ache.

While my and Croc's mind were elsewhere, my severed piece began to rapidly slither over to me with the same tenacity a snake had while running to its prey.

As it got closer, I began to revert to my human form, losing control over my transformed state.

The tentacle wrapped around my tiny leg, making its way up my torso, then its original place of origin.

My neck began to glow a bright blue light as the tentacle began to condense, molding to the shape of skin and sealing the laceration like duct tape to a leaky metal pipe, which slowly enabled me to breathe oxygen once more, giving me a sense of relief and slightly calming my panicked state.

*gasp*

"I don't know what the heck is going on here anymore. First, Black Mask's goons try to get me, I kill 'em, then I gotta kill the witnesses, now a girly-looking alien boy pops up that I gotta kill. I mean, I don't mind it, just a lot of killing."

He said while cracking his knuckles then neck as if he was preparing for round 2.

"This is ridiculous." He chuckled, walking his way over to me. All of the damage I had initially caused the man seemed to have no effect. His body was completely fine. It even looked as if he had grown more teeth for some strange reason.

"Now really…just what in the heck are you? You some kinda Gorilla that can turn human? Some kinda human that can Gorilla? To be real, I can't even be surprised no more. I seen way too much crazy stuff in my life to go ahead and throw that out the window." He uttered as he got closer and closer, shaking the ground with every step.

"It's a lot that I wanna ask you… like who sent you, why they did, and most importantly, why you taste so darn fishy. But I don't wanna stress myself out with more bull crap. It's calamari time." He stated, licking his lip with his elongated tongue while towering over me.

There were a lot of unprocessed and raw emotions that I was feeling, but none of those feelings were fear. I felt no adrenaline pumping whatsoever. I also felt two more emotions… That was rage and an overwhelming sense of repugnance felt in my core.

I stared at the horrified faces of the pile of dead bodies feeling disgusted. The people he killed… They looked like they were tormented before they died.

It was pitch black where we were, but with my enhanced vision, I could see almost everything. For what I lacked in vision, flashlights that were scattered on the floor made up for.

There were chewed-up organs and scattered everywhere. There were bones near me that had all the meat stripped from them. In the distance, I even saw a few half-eaten brains as if Croc had some sort of odd preference for human meat.

Croc just walked past all the gore as if it was just another day to him. He didn't care about any of it, nor the disgust that I was certain that was written all over my face.

Seeing all of this… It made me freeze, imagining scenarios where I was one of his victims. The narrative of our battle had changed once more with me on the losing side… I didn't like losing. Not at all.

"Listen, lil fish nugget. I don't usually eat kids, but you hit me first… so on principle, I gotta eat you now. On top of that, I also can't leave you alone when so far, you've been the only person ever capable of hurting me since I turned into the man I am today. No hard feelings, but you gotta go. I gotta stay at the top of this Gotham food chain. I like it up here." He remarked with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders.

While still lifted in the air, my right arm was grabbed, then slowly pierced with his claw causing me to shriek in pain.

anguish.

*slick*

"Ah!!!!"

"That's right… Don't feel too good, does it?" Croc taunted.

I understood that it was my fault for ending up in the situation I was presently in… And I was also aware that this was my reality check.

This world that I now resided in wasn't a game. It was a cruel jungle where the concept of good and evil certainly existed.

*slick*

"Ah!!!!"

Seeing and experiencing what I was going through made me slowly begin to understand… In this world, superpowered psychopaths would end lives out of sheer boredom.

"Get over it, boy. Stop bitchin'. Spoils the meat," he said, while stabbing holes in my abdomen with his thumbnail.

All I could do was watch as his elongated claw punctured my belly button, making its way to where my spine was located.

This man… This human being planned on eating me. That was what this world would amount to… Not the superhero fantasy I envisioned.

"You lucky you. You ain't got no bones. I hear it hurts more when I take 'em out," he stated while bloody drool seeped from the edges of his mouth.

The more that he taunted me, the more I began to understand why people like him needed to be excommunicated from society. They belonged in cages.

"I guess nugget's more fittin' than I thought, huh?" He then sped up his tenderizing process continuously poking holes in my body causing more and more pain, torturing me.

"Ah!!!!"

"No thanks, nugget," he smiled, then licked my face, dowsing me in slobber.

"Damn…" he mumbled, looking over his shoulder, seemingly irritated about something.

"I ran all out of cajun… It's fine though. You taste salty anyway. I just wish I had a lemon or somethin'. Need some flavor," he smiled, shaking his head.

The man wasn't scaring me with his torture. That wasn't what his taunting was doing to me by any means. As he poked holes… I got more angry. Although I knew I wasn't capable, I probably wouldn't have shed a tear in my position. I was too enraged. In fact, I was boiling. I wasn't a sentient being to him. I was just something he would dispose of later.

"I'm… Going… To… Eat you," I said through gritted teeth.

When those words escaped my mouth, his eyes widened with surprise.

"Ha! Haha! That's funny. Stop playing and get in ma belly, boy," he dismissed, but I wasn't joking. I went through too much to die in vain to him… to anybody, especially to an animal man.

If he wasn't going to treat me human… Then why put up the facade of one. I would stoop down to his level.

Not taking my words seriously, Croc then began to open his mouth. He was around 10-feet tall and wide as a bank vault door. I was around 3-feet tall. He was fully capable of eating someone my size in one gulp… but that wasn't happening. I refused.

The angrier I got, the more I ignored the incoming pain I felt. I was now back to reality.

"You think I'm just gonna let you eat me like this? You think I'm gonna let you get rid of me like some sort of side character?"

Frowning, Croc began to raise me into his mouth. As he did, blue-tipped tentacles shot out of the back of my skull and shoulders, which ended up not only serving as one of Crocs fingers but pried his mouth open like a car jack.

His eyes began to tremble in a mixture of shock, fear, and confusion. Before he got the opportunity to act, I was already transforming into my next animal.

Croc thought that because of his condition, he was at the top of the animal food chain. I wanted to show him that he wasn't. Not in this life, or any of his previous ones.

He was a killer reptilian, but I intended on showing him an even more murderous one. I was no one's prey. He was mine and I planned on making good on my vow.

Visualizing a velociraptor, my body began to shift into a large, obsidian-toned, mutated, feathered dinosaur. My face began to elongate as my weight and strength began to greatly increase. I was powerful now. I was the apex even with him and I now at eye-level.

*boom*

The entire tunnel shook with tiny pieces of debris falling from the ceiling as my feet hit the ground.

Startled at my transformation, Croc took a step back and began trying to tear away at my extra limbs, but failed to do so. My grip was too strong.

*chomp*

With one large bite, I crunched the man's skull and face as easily as a child bit into a candy bar.

"Aghhhh!!!! YOU MOTHA FUCKA!"

*gulp*

The entire top portion of his face from his nose upwards including his right was consumed. Now, Croc was missing all of that and a piece of his skull that was now inside my stomach. It would have been his entire head, but at the last second, he forced all of his body weight to the ground, which ended up sparing him.

"You lil bitch. You little motha fucka."

He grumbled, holding his bleeding face.

"You know what? Imma get you. Imma heal from this… I'm most definitely gone heal from this. But you… when I eat yo fuckin guts, you not coming back, you lil piece of shit!" He wailed, lunging toward me, unexpectedly grabbing me by my waist.

Sweeping my legs, he threw me to the ground, causing me to slam my head on the ground with so much force that the concrete underneath me shattered, splashing the both of us with sewerage.

My tentacles then retracted into my body. I could feel them move while they were ejected, but I had no control over them which was unfortunate because they would have cushioned my impact.

Although I was quite larger than him in sheer mass, his strength was not to be underestimated. It was enough to knock me into a daze temporarily.

Before I could make my next move, he maneuvered his way on top of me like a professional wrestler and began to berate my snout and upper body with hammer-like punches strong enough to warp steel.

His assault was unrelenting. Even with his brain being exposed and all, he punched with more and more fury creating dents in my body, almost piercing me. Then, clasping his hands into a hammer, he slammed his hands down, attempting to shatter my skull.

Before he could hit me, I shapeshifted once more into a rat, avoiding the attack at the last moment. His hits were like grenades to the face. He was angry… but so was I.

Scurrying to his blind side, I crawled up his upper left thigh, latching my teeth where I was pretty certain an important artery was located.

His skin was tough, but that just meant I needed to bite harder.

*cruch*

"Aghh!" He screamed as my teeth had broken through his green scales and sliced through his muscles.

through his green scales and sliced through his muscles.

His blood then began to splatter in every direction, but two unfortunate things rapidly followed my actions.

I had unintentionally swallowed a mouthful of his salty blood, and the bleeding stopped almost immediately.

Jumping off of him before he got the opportunity to grab me, I ran to his blind side once more.

"Fight me like a man, you cheatin 'lil rat fuck!"

He shouted with a missing eye and blood leaking down his face.

Crawling away, I shifted back to my human form.

"I thought I was a girl looking-boy."

I taunted, causing him to snap his head in my direction.

Angered, he lunged at me again, but before he could reach, I transformed into a spider monkey, climbing the pipes of the sewers.

Sliding on the wet floor due to his momentum, he stabbed his claws into the ground gaining stability, ready to jump into the air to catch me.

Before he could get a hold of me, I transformed into a hummingbird, zipping right past him as his arm was plunged into the wall, destroying a few pipes which caused greywater to splash all over his face, rinsing some of his blood off.

Pulling his arm out, which crumbled the brick wall, quickly and unexpectedly, he grabbed my entire hell-hummingbird body, clamping his jaws down on me which almost severed my legs from my torso.

"TWEET-TWEET!"

(You big scaly eczema covered fucker! Let me go!")

I tweeted in pain which caused him to chuckle as if the battle had been decided.

Before he could force the rest of me into his mouth and begin to chew, I transformed again. This time, I transformed into a thick-skinned Hippopotamus, causing his jaw to break open, fragmenting some of his teeth in my skin.

For a moment, Croc was flabbergasted. He didn't expect one of his weapons to break so easily. While he held his jaw, I fell to the ground in my new unfamiliar gigantic body, rolling back and forth until I got on all four of my feet.

I couldn't lose my opening. If I was gonna attack, I had to do it now before he recovered. The fight was taking a lot out of both of us. I was mentally exhausted.

Opening my mouth, I grabbed Corc by the leg, shaking my head from left to right as if he was a chew toy that belonged to an aggressive rottweiler.

Then, lifting my head upwards, with all of my neck strength, I slammed him down on the floor, knocking the air out his lungs.

*boom*

"Let me go!" He screamed while being ragdolled into the sky and slammed back to the floor.

*boom*

"Let GO!"

He roared, which almost burst my eardrums, but I ignored it and slammed him against a wall.

*boom*

"Let me go! Let me go right now! Imma kill! Then imma kill yo entire fuckin family!" He screamed, but his threats had no effect. I had no family. I had no one. I was living for the sake of living which was reason enough for me to not lose. He tried to punch and kick, but couldn't cause any real damage to me. He was too busy being flung.

He had tried to kill me. I had nothing to lose and had no intentions of letting him go after what he did to me. I knew it was other people that he had hurt, innocent, and not so innocent, but this wasn't about them. It was about setting a precedent for anyone who wanted to mess with me in the future.

I had come to the realization that I wasn't a good person a long time ago. I had come to the sewers initially because I wanted to save people, but I acknowledged that the moment that the fight started, it was about my ego. There wasn't anyone to save. I just wanted to test my capabilities.

Sure I wasn't good… but I was morally just. He had wronged me with the torture, and I wanted to pay him back. I was getting just that.

With one last shake of my head, Croc's leg snapped off into my mouth, causing him to go flying as his blood splattered everywhere.

*gulp*

Without even thinking, I swallowed the entirety of the leg. It wasn't intentional either, but It was something I was gonna do anyway after he tried to eat me.

It tasted disgusting… but that was to be expected considering our location.

"AHHH! FUCK! FUCK! YOU MOTHA FUCKER!"

He wailed as he squirmed on the ground with revulsion in his eyes. He now was completely mangled, looking almost unrecognizable from the beginning of our fight.

'I won… but I feel like I'm about to pass out.'

I thought, taking deep heavy breaths.

Physically, I felt like I could still keep going… but my human side was falling into old habits which in hindsight wasn't that old. It had only been about a week since my transition.

His teeth were still stuck in my stomach. My body was hurting… but I still wasn't bleeding. It was something that I had long since noticed, but I didn't know what any of it meant. It was something I had to look into later.

"I SWEAR TO GOD, I'M GONE KILL YOU! I PROMISE! YOU TOOK MA FUCKIN LEG! I'M GONE TAKE YO FUCKIN LIFE!"

While he screeched, I stared at him with no sympathy. How could I when he was resting on a pile of dead bodies that he personally stacked as an appetizer.

While blue electricity shimmered on the surface of my skin, my surroundings lit up a dark blue that pulsated as I began to walk towards my food.

Croc was a villain in every sense of the word. The first one that I ever met. It was a good thing and a bad thing.

It was good because my situation prepared me for the hardships that I would have to experience in the future.

It was bad because I was now confused as to which side of the moral compass of society I stood on.

He was what real evil was. He tried to kill me and probably killed hundreds of others, innocent or not… but at the same time, there was a real possibility that I would become something like him if I was pushed hard enough. Maybe not to his extreme, but something close… and that fact scared me a little if I was being honest. But that was a thought for another day. Today, I had to stand on my word.

But… what would happen if I continued? Would I have to be worried about Batman? Would I have to worry about society hating me for my actions? Media was a scary place… from my experiences in my past, I knew that it had the capability of molding society. Would people really care about Croc?

'Maybe—I should let him live. If he is on the same BS later on, I can always turn into a T-Rex and just eat him… but if I do let him live, I can't have him in a state where he's able to come back and screw up my life,' I thought to myself, staring at Croc was crawling away.

He was still missing a leg, but all of his bleeding had stopped, which meant that he was capable of surviving under extreme conditions… which gave me an idea. One that didn't involve him getting away with all of his arms and legs.

As I got closer, he began to trudge faster. Right now, his instincts were telling him that flight was the best option for him… but he wasn't getting away until I crippled him more.

"GET AWAY FROM ME! STOP!"

I didn't know how much I weighed or how I looked in my hell-hippopotamus form. Judging by how Croc was looking at me, he was on the verge of defecating himself. The fact that I had glowing eyes like a demon probably didn't help him calm his nerves either… but fuck him.

*CHOMP*

*rip*

*Gulp*

"AHHHHH!!!"

*CHOMP*

*rip*

*Gulp*

*CHOMP*

*Gulp*

"Ahhhhh! Stop! Please! Stop!"

He begged with tears coming down his face. Frankly, I couldn't tell if they were tears of rage or terror… and frankly, I didn't care. He wasn't human to me anymore, nor was I to him.

Shifting back into my human form, I looked down at Croc, staring into his one good eye.

"If I taste like fish, then you taste like shit and piss-covered chicken." I said, wiping the blood from my mouth and wringing the blood out of my hair, which proved to be rather difficult.

"Don't… Don't kill me. I'm sorry," he said with exasperated breaths, which reminded me of the person I heard him killing ruthlessly earlier, which sickened me.

Spitting on his forehead, I then kicked him, avoiding getting my toes caught in his exposed brain.

In all honesty, the kick hurt me more than it hurt him, but in order to save face, I pretended that I didn't feel my toes throbbing.

"Now who's the nugget," I mumbled. To my words, he averted his one good eye, intimidated.

I was still mad… but, I wanted to ask the man a few questions before I left.

"Why… why did you kill all these people?"

I asked.

He had about 53 human corpses that stacked on top of each other. I remember what he said clearly about them, but I had to consider that maybe he only gave me the answers he did because he thought he was in an advantageous position.

"…"

Croc attempted to turn his head and close his eye, informing that he had no intentions of answering my questions, but I wasn't going for it.

"Yeah… I spat on you. Yeah, I ate your arms and legs but know this, if you don't answer my question… I'm gonna eat your entire fucking brain like a big ass Italian meatball. You don't have arms, remember, so I'm gonna take my sweet little time. You want that? If not, speak up." Widening his eye in panic, he finally looked at me in mine.

I didn't like eating live food; the taste was awful, morally, it was bankrupt, and last but not least, I was still mentally human. Even while eating Croc, I felt disgusted with myself. But, I had allowed my anger to cloud my judgment.

"They… they were hired to recruit me."

"Why?" I asked, painfully pulling teeth out of my body. As I did, my wounds started to close, just like how they did with my throat. There was no blood either, only pain remained.

"Well, shouldn't you of all people know? Isn't he paying you too?" He asked with a pained expression.

"What the hell are you talking about?" I questioned, raising a brow.

"You were hired by the same person. Don't act like you wasn't. How else was you gone find me?"

He spat in defeat.

*sigh*

"I don't know who the hell you think I am, but I'm not him. I didn't come here because I was hired. I came because I heard people screaming for their lives, you fuckin dick head," I replied.

"Ya heard what was going on down here? HA! You expected me to believe that ya heard anything from up top? Do you know how deep underground we are right now?"

"…I can turn into an 18-foot gorilla. You seen tentacles shoot out of my body twice. On top of that, you're a human fucking crocodile. Why are you questioning what's possible and what's not."

"…"

"…"

For a moment, he stared at me in confusion as if to detect whether or not I was telling the truth.

Although he was in terrible condition, with my words, he slightly began to calm down. Taking a deep sigh, he began to reveal the truth.

"You got a point… all the people down here were sent by Mask. He hired them to find me. He needs muscle. And… I was what he needed for this upcoming war until ya ate all mine. I didn't wanna be a part of any of it… he didn't like that. So they came with force this time around."

"If I remember correctly, didn't you say that you killed you like to kill witnesses. Am I just supposed to believe that all these people are from—"

"I don't. And I don't eat kids either… unless they're tryna to kill me. I was fielding you out. I may be fucked up. I may not get a spot in heaven, but I would never stoop that low. I got morals," he interrupted.

"…" for a moment, my jaw dropped in shock at his reply.

"You fucking eat people! Human beings! The fuck are you talking about morals for?! You are Literally a cannibal that tortures people before you eat them!"

I exclaimed in utter disbelief of his gall.

"So? What's yo point. I eat pieces of shit. I'm really just making the world a better place without em'. Do yo research on the people here and yo gone find that out for ya self… anyway, why you care what I eat. You ain't seem to have a problem with it when you ate my arms, face, and legs, now did ya?"

"You said you would kill my entire family… You bit a chunk out my goddamn throat out."

"And? Healed didn't it? Whatcha mad for?"

I began to grind my teeth at his reply.

"You know what… Fuck you Croc. Fuck you, fuck Black Mask,

, fuck everybody. You make me sick to my fuckin stomach."

The man at my feet made me ill. I wanted nothing to do with him… And I thought about killing, but when he had mentioned research, it made me realize how much knowledge I was actually lacking regarding the political status of Gotham's underworld as well as its overworld.

On the off chance that he was telling the truth about the people he killed and they were in fact bad people, I intend on letting him live another day and let Batman occupy his time with Croc. If he wasn't, I was gonna find him again in order to finish what I had started.

"I don't need any more questions… For your sake, I hope that you told me the truth. If not, I'm gonna kill you for lying to me," I voiced, turning my back on the man.

"That's it?"

He asked with a hint of surprise.

"Yeah… That's it. I got nothing else to say to you," I uttered, turning around and beginning to walk away.

"So you just gone leave me here!"

He yelled. Which stopped me in my tracks.

"Yeah. I am Waylon," I voiced without bothering to turn around.

"How do you know my first-"

My statement had Croc ready to ask his own questions.

"Name when you go by Croc on the streets, Mr. Jones? Is that what you were gonna ask?"

The answer to this question was simple. I used to read Batman comics. I knew about his main villains, and Killer Croc was one of them. However, I was uncertain of the B-list ones.

I didn't pick up every Batman comic, but I did absorb enough passive information in my past world to get by in Gotham… Or at least, I thought I did before arriving.

Seeing Croc eat people was definitely an unpleasant surprise to me because I hadn't personally witnessed it in any books I read, but I had a basic outline of who he was as a person.

Waylon Jones was a person who suffered from a rare skin condition where his skin started to turn into scales. His abusive aunt would scrub them off until he bled as a child. She even tried to kill him a few times. As he grew, his skin condition mutated into something, which granted him superhuman abilities like strength, speed, regeneration, and probably a few other things that I had forgotten about.

He ended up diving into a life of crime after becoming an outcast, then killed his aunt later on. That was the general gist of his character depending on the continuity one was reading from.

This was the real world now. Unsurprisingly, things were different. I had witnessed a man consuming another human being today which definitely took me off guard… but this was just my life now. If I wanted to continue living on this version of earth, I would need to grow numb to things like that. If witnessing those kinds of things made me feel bad, I wasn't powerless like before. I could make a change.

"..."

"The answer is I know a lot," he didn't respond to what I had to say, but I sensed that he was curious about what other kinds of information I had on him.

'This would be a good time to probe for information. I need to see if the information I have is still reliable.'

Looking at Croc, who was now laying on his back with his head tilted upwards in my direction, I began to pry.

"So…"

Walking back up to him and standing a few feet away from him for my own safety, I began questioning intrusively and rather bluntly.

I wanted to make it appear as if I knew the man better than himself while literally uncertain of every, so I stilled my face and stared directly at his forehead, a psychological tactic that makes humans innately uncomfortable.

"Mr. Jones… you asked me was that it, let's take a step back real quick, because it's not. You asked me a question, now it's time I ask mine. How's your aunt?"

With my question, his eye widened and his body became tense. He was obviously unnerved by my question judging from his body language.

"Oh… and remember to answer with honesty. I am still very capable and willing to eat you."

Sitting upright with his limbless torso, Croc looked at me with his one good eye and grumbled.

"Whatchu think?"

He asked, rather agitated. I obviously struck a nerves

"Well, what I think, doesn't matter. What I wanna know though was how it made you feel," I asked, crossing my arms, alluding to the fact that he killed his caretaker.

"Ha… it felt great. You have no idea. I got mine, she got her's, she maggot food, I'm not," he smiled, but through his dried and bloody tears, I could see pain behind his eye coupled with a few mixed emotions.

"Florida… must have been a rough growing up. With your condition, it must hard to make friends… that why you stuck with one… right? It's a shame that-"

Before I could even finish, Croc attempted to headbutt me with a burst of rage, but I sensed it coming so I just dodged to the right calmly while he struggled to get off the ground.

"Don't you mention her goddamn name! I don't care what you do, leave her out yo mouth."

Remaining composed, I smiled internally. Why, because I got him to confirm two facts without him knowing it. Just like in the comics, he had a childhood best friend who he cared for dearly. She ended up getting eaten by a crocodile while they were kids. Unfortunately for Jones, he ended up being the person who discovered the dead body.

The entire town, including his aunt, blamed him for killing her, and from that moment on, he was branded as a monster. This was his origin.

'It didn't change… just like how Batman is still Bruce Wayne.' I thought. Jones didn't know it yet, but he provided me with a lot of securities moving forward in the world.

'Alright… I gotta get one last thing out of him.'

I thought. I needed to know how Batman dealt with him, or if they even encountered one another yet.

"Alright… I'll let that go. I just wanted to let you know that I knew things… including the fact that it wasn't you who did it. Those Florida cops were unjustified in their actions," I voiced, nodding my head.

"No shit. Now move on. And get me off this floor," he spat.

"Nope," I replied. I wasn't stupid. He had just tried to attack me. Screw him.

*tsk*

After a bit of struggling, Jones managed to stand on his nubs where his legs once were which made it awkward now that I had to look up at him while my bare feet soaked in his blood.

Unfortunately, I was still butt naked, but that was fine. I was pretty sure that my body couldn't get sick anymore.

"Last question before I leave you alone… this is something I actually have no idea about," I said, scratching the back of my head.

I asked him what I needed to. He was similar to the Croc I knew.

"What?"

He asked.

"My question is, why thehell are you in this city… it's home to you know who. What if he catches you? What you gonna do then Mr. Jones?"

"Cut it out with that Mr. Jones shit," he spat.

"The answer to yo question is that the Bat's got better things to do. He not worried about me. I ain't bother him and he ain't bother me. He don't even know I exist," said Jones, in which I felt his judgment was probably right in the first half, but towards the end, he was definitely mistaken. If I had found Jones so easily, Batman had probably found him years prior.

And that was all I needed. I was done with Croc. I had gained great benefits in regards to the path I wanted to walk down from Croc and My conversation.

"Alright… I think we are done with this conversation here. I'm gonna leave you alone. Its probably gonna take you a while to heal back… but you got food. You won't starve," I said walking off.

"Wait! So you just gone really leave me here like this?"

He questioned with worry.

"Yeah. Pretty much. You're a piece of shit. You do know that right? You're in the place where shit belongs. The sewers are your thing anyway."

"Y-you left me defenseless! I don't got arms! I don't have legs! There's people out there tryna kill me!"

"Jones… you got this. Good luck. Also, I want you to know…" turning around one last time, I stared at all the throne dead bodies for one last time that was stacked up behind Jones.

"…"

"If I ever catch you eating another human being, I'm gonna kill you."

I didn't bother turning. I could sense exactly where he was with my sixth sense. He was completely focused on me, grinding his teeth.

"In addition to that, if you don't wanna have to deal with the police, I would suggest you take a few of those bodies while you still can. Get ya grub on my man. Because when they find you or that pile, you go away. And best believe the chaotic shit is gonna be all over the news. And if there is one innocent person in that pile whe. They start searching for DNA, I'm coming for you. I'm gonna find you, and torture you like you did to me, then I'm gonna eat you."

"Fuck…"

Croc whispered under his breath.

"Fuck, indeed, buddy. Don't forget, Superhearing," I replied.

Turning around, I rubbed my abdomen. Even though I no longer had any signs of wounds due to my body self-repairing and cuts and bruises I had, I still felt I was on fire.

I was hurting, everywhere. For some odd reason, I even felt like my hair was hurting. Not the scalp, but my actual hair. The ends and all.

I was alive… but in so much pain that I was on the verge of blacking out, but my body refused to let me.

…

…

Getting out of the sewers, I transformed into a spider monkey, grabbing my clothes from the place I hid them. Grabbing them with my teeth, I slowly climbed up the building behind.

Once I made it to the roof, I realized that I was lucky enough to find a hose connected to a faucet. I would get the opportunity to not smell awful again.

Cleaning myself off with it and washing the dirt and grime off my feet, I then found a comfy lawn chair, got dressed, and relaxed my body for the first time in my human form while the sun hit my face.

Reclining the chair back, I began to stare at the blue sky in melancholy.

*sigh*

'This is my life now… My complicated life,' I thought.

In my new life, I was gonna have to deal with situations worse than the ones I had just dealt with… I needed to be strong cause no one else was gonna be strong for me.

'Guess I should call the cops soon to see if Croc was telling the truth or not about the bodies.'

If he was, I would let him go as long as I didn't catch him. If he was lying, then I was gonna eat him; I was firm on that..