Crocodile Hunting

Saturday 25th April 2009, 18:00.

New Jersey,

Gotham City,

Gotham Heights.

Stepping inside her home, Barbara took off her shoes and move to the living room where she collapsed on the sofa with a sigh. Moments passed and in came Jim, a scent of food filling the home as he moved towards the kitchen. "Is Chinese okay?" Barbara gave a sound of agreement as she switched on the TV and flicked through the channels until she got to the news.

A few minutes later, Jim entered with a plate held out, Barbara taking it from him as she momentarily tore her gaze from the sight of the reporter interviewing a witness of last night's massacre in the East End. Jim then moved towards the comfortable armchair, looking at the TV as they ate in silence, neither needing to say anything as they satisfied their hunger after a day's work, though Barbara had been very quiet since the fallout between her and Esau.

"You know, it was quite interesting today," Jim spoke up gaining Barbara's attention who had been unusually quiet for the past few days. "Esau came to the station with a young child, Jason Todd," Jim explained, Barbara listened intently and it pleased Jim to see that while she and Esau were having a fight, she still cared for him. "Apparently, Esau had been walking through the neighbourhood of the massacre and found Jason running down the street in just his pyjamas."

"Did he?" Barbara asked curiously, though internally she knew exactly what Esau had been doing in that neighbourhood and cursed him for his stupidity.

She was still recovering from her injuries and she had been in better shape than Esau following the conflict with the Court of Owls. Not only that, Barbara hadn't gone on to fight and lose against the Hammer, making her injuries worse by not giving them proper time to rest.

Yet, despite all those things, Esau still went on to face Killer Croc.

"Was he okay?"

"He was fine," Jim said putting Barbara at ease. "Turns out he's got himself a new job at a gym, says that it pays well. Don't know if that's true, but he certainly looks like he's been working out a great deal recently."

"So he didn't get injured?" Barbara asked and Jim shook his head.

"No, Esau looked to be perfectly healthy. There was nothing wrong with him, which fits his story. He found Jason running who had run from his house while Waylon Jones, was..." He trailed off not finishing that sentence. "Anyway, he found Jason and took the long way round to his apartment completely avoiding Killer Croc. Let Jason sleep at his house and then brought him to the police station this morning. The poor kid needed it, he may try and act fine, but he seems traumatised by it."

Barbara was certainly happy to hear that Esau wasn't injured and even more so that he had helped a kid, not that she doubted he would. Esau was an orphan himself and she doubted he'd leave a kid on his own as he ran through the streets. 'I doubt Esau avoided Waylon though.'

-X-

Saturday 25th April 2009, 22:30.

New Jersey,

Gotham City,

East End.

The night passed away relatively quickly after that, Barbara and Jim were just content to spend what rare time they had together as comfortably as possible. Due to his job as a police captain, Jim had a lot of responsibilities, more so than most due to his sense of duty which drove to him do more than would be expected of him. Barbara on the other hand was a teenage girl in High school and as far as Jim was aware, was spending her time amongst friends.

In actual fact, she was out fighting crime and making Gotham a safer place.

Thus, the time they had to spend in one another's company was small.

In most cases, this would drive a wedge between most people but for Barbara and Jim, it only brought them closer.

Even so, despite being so close there were plenty of secrets between them, she hid her identity as Batgirl and he kept the truth of how corrupt and cruel Gotham could be from Barbara as best as he could.

"Goodnight, dad," Barbara called as she closed the door.

She waited until she heard her father figure returning it and then the sound of his door closing before pulling out her phone. Quickly she scrolled through her contacts before landing on the one she wanted, it dialled and Barbara impatiently tapped her foot on the ground. "This is Wayne Manor, may I know who is speaking?" The cultured voice of Alfred Pennyworth sounded on the other end.

"Alfred, it's me." She replied.

"Ah, miss Gordon, what can I do for you?" He asked.

"Is Bruce there?"

"Just one moment." There was silence as Alfred presumably went to find Bruce and Barbara remained silent as she stared out the window.

She didn't know what she was going to do or say, Bruce would have known about Esau fighting Killer Croc and would have known about the cannibalistic killer being on the loose in general. There was no way Bruce hadn't known, not when his technology gave him access to a great deal of surveillance all over the city, which meant knowingly kept her in the dark about one of Gotham's most dangerous supervillains being out there.

He hadn't told her.

Instead, she had to find out through the news and only got more information thanks to her dad.

Then she learned that Esau had gone out to fight Killer Croc while still injured.

The fact that her dad said he was fine and looked to be in perfect health didn't put her at ease, Esau was very good at pretending with his long history of injuries. "Barbara, what is it?" The gruff voice of Bruce sounded on the other end in a way that would almost be considered rude if Barbara didn't know that this was how Bruce always talked.

"You didn't tell me." She didn't shout, no her voice was controlled and quiet. "You didn't tell me!" Okay, maybe not completely in control as she said that part a little louder than she meant to.

Quickly she strained her hearing but she couldn't hear any noise from her father's room, which meant he hadn't heard.

Or he was probably going to keep his nose out of it.

Either way, Barbara took a deep breath to centre herself.

From the fact that Bruce was remaining silent on the other end, Barbara knew that he had already figured out what this call was about.

"Why?" She asked, more hurt by the idea that Bruce didn't trust her to stop Killer Croc than anything else. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you are too emotional." His answer was blunt and straight to the point, just like she expected, but she flinched anyway. "The situation between you and Esau has caused you to lose focus, you're compromised emotionally and that would have affected your ability to make the correct decisions. That and your injuries would have meant you being in the same situation as me and Robin."

Bruce never gave her time to reply as he finished his explanations and even then, she still didn't feel happy.

She knew what he was saying, the situation between her and Esau had made her a little less patient and more rash, which in a fight was not a good thing. Esau was a perfect example of why this was a bad thing, throughout his entire life jumped into fights with the bare minimum of thought or information and even when the odds looked bad, didn't pull back.

He just continued to push onwards.

Esau was improving, but still not quick enough.

However, he could be excused due to his inexperience.

She could not.

Barbara had been trained by Batman to keep calm and look at every situation with a level head to ensure that she did not miss any important details. Fighting Killer would need a level head as despite his decrease in intelligence due to his mutation, he was still extremely strong and all it would take was one lucky blow to end the fight.

With her injuries, avoiding his strikes even with a level head would be difficult, but without one?

It was near suicidal.

If that happened, she'd either be dead or too injured to fight.

Therefore, Gotham City would be under the protection of Black Hood only and while improving, Esau wasn't quite at a level strong enough to shoulder that responsibility alone, even if he thought that he could.

Sighing, Barbara nodded her head even though Bruce couldn't see it. "Alright, I'm not happy that you kept me in the dark, but I accept what you're saying." Barbara conceded. "But that doesn't mean you still shouldn't have told me, if you had explained to me why I couldn't go I would have listened."

There was silence once more. "Very well," Bruce responded and then cut the connection.

-X-

Saturday 25th April, 16:00.

New Jersey,

Gotham City,

Sewers.

Moving cautiously, Esau wanted through the sewers beneath Gotham, eyes tracking the area around him as his body remained relaxed. He had to be careful at all times because ever since his last fight against Killer Croc, Esau had quickly realised how outmatched he was.

He didn't have the training of Batman or his sidekicks, nor did he have the technology to bridge the gap between superpowered individuals as they did. No, he was forced to fight against opponents far beyond his level with nothing but his bare hands and a few guns, not really helpful against an individual with skin that bullets bounced off harmlessly.

He had been lucky that Jason had managed to throw a stone into Killer Crocs' eye, a weak point Esau hadn't considered or even known about. The jerking revealed to Esau a weak point that he used to barely escape where he returned to his apartment, injured and with a traumatised boy who was still in shock and hadn't quite come to terms with what had happened last night.

Luckily for Esau, the boy was still recovering from his shock the next morning as it meant Esau didn't have to try and comfort a young boy. An orphan he might have been, but he wasn't quite comfortable with providing comfort for other orphans, especially a recent one like Jason.

So while the kid slept – or attempted to – he took the serum and promptly passed out.

He should have expected it really, the serum provided a regenerative ability and there was nothing quite so painful as broken bones forcibly resetting.

The next morning he awoke feeling greater than ever before.

It was difficult to describe.

He wasn't smarter, but he was just able to see things in a different way as if he was picking up on things that he had never considered before. Not only that, he could hear the cars outside as if he was there on the sidewalks as they drove by and could smell the weed and other...substances that his neighbours used. Esau could also see things with even greater detail, noticing the tiniest of cracks in the ceilings that he hadn't quite spotted before and these weren't big cracks, not they were hairline cracks that should be unnoticeable to the human eye.

Every one of his senses had been enhanced to a greater extent to the point it had almost been overwhelming.

Then came the physical changes.

With his body being enhanced as well as his mind and senses, it took Esau a little time to actually gain some measure of control. Seriously, he had nearly walked straight into a wall when he moved faster than he had ever done before and accidentally crushed the ceramic mug in his hand when going to pick it up.

Jason had been asleep for another few hours, giving Esau the time to gain some measure of control over his body.

It wasn't perfect, but he at least had a basic handle on his body's new changes.

Once dropping off Jason at the police station and delivering a partly faux story on what happened the night before and how he met Jason to Jim, Esau returned home. At which point he spent the day training and one thing Esau quickly found was that Deathstroke or whoever he really was, wasn't kidding about how useful the serum could be.

Esau had measured his speed by running along the rooftops and had managed to nearly outrun a car, though he was held back by having to jump from building to building. This in most cases shouldn't have been a problem, but when he couldn't control how much force he put into each jump, it caused him to jump higher and therefore, take longer to descend.

In terms of strength, he hadn't quite been able to test that out because going to the gym was out of the question if his improvement in strength was proportional to his increase in speed.

If that was the case, he would attract far too much attention.

As a result, Esau focused on at least gaining some measure of control over his strength by limiting the amount of force he used when jumping.

It helped for the most part, but how much still remained to be seen?

Though one good thing did come out of this and that was the increase in his stamina.

For the most part, Esau would have been able to train at a constant rate for a good hour or two before needing to rest and that was at a high intensity. Yet, after two hours he still felt fresh and wasn't even sweating, let alone breathing heavily and he had continued for another two hours only to start to feel slightly short of breath finally.

He would have continued but he had become hungry at that point.

Either way, Esau was pleased with how things had turned out and almost regretted being stubborn in his refusal to take the serum when it was first presented to him.

But it was too late for regret.

What was done, was done.

He needed to focus on the here and now and that meant finishing Killer Croc once and for all.

That's why he found himself here in the sewers.

Esau had originally deemed coming into Killer Croc's home for a lack of a better term, suicidal. However, thanks to his enhanced intellect he had been able to see some of the pros that he had refused to see or simply ignored in favour of trying a different approach.

The sewers were Killer Croc's preferred hiding spot and therefore, all one needed to do was walk for long enough in them before they eventually found the cannibalistic criminal. That was where the problems began as it was only a two-way system and it would require one to be able to outrun Killer Croc.

Considering that Esau had seen the creature's speed first-hand, he knew that would be easier said than done.

As a result, he had spent an hour studying the maps of Gotham's sewers both old and new – considering this would have once taken him days, it certainly made his life easier and began to form a plan, not the best of the plans, unless one took Esau's other options into considerations. Since there was none, it meant that this plan was the only plan viable way to end Killer Croc as quickly as possible.

Which was why he was in the sewers making no effort to keep his presence quiet or hidden.

His feet sent echoing splashes down the tunnels of the sewers as his eyes kept a lookout down the tunnel in front of him while his ears were straining to hear every minuscule sound. Most of it was the sound of cars and the ideal chatter of people above him, but he could also hear the sound of rats moving around the sewer and other creatures.

'Hmm, this doesn't seem to be making any sense. I've nearly covered all of the sewers under the East End, so where is he?' Esau questioned as he continued to search for Killer Croc. 'Perhaps a little more sound might be best.' With that thought, Esau raised his right hand to that the claws on his gloves touched the wall to his side, and then continued to walk.

The sound of the metallic claws on the edge of his gloves sent a reverberating scrapping sound echoing throughout the sewers.

Being so close to the sound caused Esau to wince as he wasn't quite used to his enhanced senses. 'I'll definitely have to sort that problem out. Right now this serum while it is a definite help, it does come with its limitations.' One such limitation was the time it took to actually get used to and master his body and senses to the same level as before. Whereas it had been instinctual, now Esau had to carefully think about each movement and how much strength he put into each movement.

It was not debilitating, but it was certainly a pain to deal with.

A few minutes later and Esau managed to pick up the sound of something large moving.

It was a simple step, but it caused Esau to stop as he focused his senses on that one sound.

*Thud*