CHAPTER 17: "To Never Again Walk On A Summer's Day..."

*Batgirl, Kubrick District, Eastside Gotham, 2 A.M.

'The stars seem very bright tonight,' she thought sadly while sitting off the edge of a 20-story building.

She was patrolling the Eastside, orders from the Bat himself, though the activity made the patrol rather dull. Almost two months had passed since Penguin and Black Mask fought in what many called the 'Narrows War.' Two months since a few of Black Mask's men, to spite Penguin and to ruin his territory started a massive arson in East Gotham.

Though the fires had been contained from the Sprang Bridge to the Iceberg Lounge, the damage could still be seen from her high viewpoint. To no one's surprise, the Lounge itself had survived despite most of the buildings surrounding it being burnt or severely damaged. The huge cost of repairs for the area was rumored to possibly range from 2 to 3 hundred million with even that being considered too low.

Several of Gotham's more wealthy, like Bruce Wayne, had come through to provide much-needed relief funds. Even the Penguin had dumped millions into the area, though fixing buildings by buying them up at dirt-cheap prices wasn't exactly quite saintlike. Especially while profiting from the damage done in his territory, while he was being indicted and held by GCPD.

Standing, Batgirl dived off the building into the night sky. Flying down toward the ground the air blew through her hair, the rush of gravity pressed against her body with her momentum ever increasing. Finally, with just a few yards left till she hit the concrete, she unfurled her Batcloak which stiffened into a glider and changed her trajectory causing her to swiftly swing back up into the air to glide across Gotham's streets. It was a move Batman hated her doing, but one she could not help but do. The thrill and danger of a steep dive to only lift off at the last second was one of the few vices she allowed herself on the job.

After all, she was a teenager dammit! She was allowed to be a little immature with military-grade equipment every once in a while.

While gliding through the streets, keeping an ear and eye for any crime, she thought back to the night of the 'Narrows War.' So many people were killed, so much gunfire and fighting had wrecked an entire street. But that all was insignificant to the main focal point, the Hound.

Learning about Batman's encounter with the Hound and how his story had ended, not only affected Batman, who began to patrol nonstop for a few weeks, it had affected her unexpectedly. Robin hearing the news had shrugged before demanding news about the arrest of the Blackwater Chief. Ever since that night, Robin had been obsessed with the man, based on how hard he had been punching him, Batgirl knew there was history. Despite her best efforts to pester both him and Batman neither had been willing to talk about it. Even accessing the Batcomputer proved fruitless as Batman had hidden the files, which even with her skills she could not find... yet.

Sadly she had been unable to dig too deeply into this as the battle, arson, and arrest of Penguin had her and Robin working overtime.

Penguin's arrest had by no means destroyed his mob, it still maintained a dominant control over its Eastern territory. A testament to Penguin's organization and loyalty maintained within its ranks. But it had led to a power grab for all the other major criminals who swiftly began trying to assert dominance over the contested Gotham regions. With so many losses in men and the death of the Hound, Penguin's meta-human weapon, the throne of Gotham's criminal world was empty and ripe for the taking.

Thankfully, with Batman's obsession with patrolling non-stop with Batgirl and Robin jumping in to help. The fear of a city-wide gang war breaking out never came to be, and an uneasy equilibrium was reasserted, the throne being kept empty for the time being.

'The Hound may have tried to take it,' she thought, 'No... everything says he was loyal to Penguin, he probably would have just kept others from sitting in it while his Boss was away.'

Realizing her glide was slowing and she was losing her altitude she took out a grabbling hook and shot it out to the nearest building. Finding the hook secured, she deactivated her glide tool and quickly shot up onto the structure. Landing on a ledge she took a moment to orient herself and catch her breath.

'Why would someone as young as him join the Penguin?!?' Frustrated she leaned against the building.

The Hound had proved to be even more elusive than a conversation about the Blackwater Chief. At least with him, she had heard his first name, but with the Hound she knew nothing. Most of the captured Penguin mobsters told the same story, that he was a young teenager, who had black hair, and brown eyes.

She remembered her father the Commissioner raging about that, "Well at least the description does not describe the vast majority of the male population of the U.S.!!!"

It had brought some laughter to her that night at how angry he had been at the uselessness of the mobsters. That and she suspected that his rage would only be topped if he ever learned what she was up to at night. It helped that with her mother passing she had no one watching her closely. Her father always made it a point to eat dinner or attend her school events when he could, but their life was a busy one. Being commissioner meant either working late or being dead asleep when he was at home.

Batman himself had dived into finding the Hound's identity and how he became involved with the Penguin, but even the world's greatest detective had failed. She remembered the conversation she had with him a few weeks ago about it, she had heard Lucious Fox maybe had something but Batman reported that it was a false lead and not important.

Even Eddie Blade, a chief enforcer of Penguin had proved to be a dead end, literally. A week after Penguin's arrest Eddie was found stabbed to death in his cell. A lovely reminder that Penguin despite being behind bars was still dangerous.

A few other mobsters who had been busted were quick to offer testimony about the Hound and quickly found themselves shanked, beaten, or committing 'suicide.' Penguin either hated snitches or was ensuring no one dug into his associate's past, despite said associate being pronounced dead.

'Unless he wasn't?' Batgirl stared at the streets as pedestrians made their way about this night.

Shaking her head she knew that was wishful thinking. Batman himself had seen the state of the Hound before his jump into the Sprang River, he was in no condition to walk around much less cliff jump. Many had assumed he was crushed by the building he had collapsed, but after digging amongst the ruins and clearing the area, only the two murdered arsons were found. The Hound had made his choice to jump into the river several hundred feet down. Surviving that fall was impossible, and surviving the raging waters below without drowning was even worse odds.

But a body had yet to be found, when she had time she spent some time in the coastal regions trying to find it but with no luck. When casually asking her father at dinner if they had found it, her father had explained the unlikely hood of that. Either it would wash up on shore in a few weeks or it was now lost at sea.

With that, the case of the Hound had been closed and everyone had moved on. Even Batman after a few weeks finally had gone back to acting normal. Most were now focusing on other activities or ensuring Penguin would stay locked up. But Batgirl kept the investigation going.

Sighing, she shot another grabbling hook and began swinging through the streets, eventually, she made her way to the Sprang Bridge. Landing on a bit of grass, she stuck to the shadows and made her way to the still closed-off pedestrian entrance to the bridge. Caution tape was still stretched out everywhere though the area had been cleared of the collapsed building. The destroyed fence that the Hound had blasted was also replaced with a newer fence with additional signs saying 'no trespassing.'

Wandering the crime scene, she felt the same frustration building up, the frustrating question of who he was and why he did what he did. It was not like she could not hypothesize his story, maybe he was in it for money, maybe Penguin had something on him, maybe he was a psycho? The motives of rogues in Gotham were pretty straightforward and could be broken down easily. But in this case, she would never know the answer, she would never know if there was a chance to help him... save him.

Despite never seeing his face, she felt a connection to him. His eyes during their encounter had betrayed him. While most would only see rage, Batgirl could not help but admire his eyes. They were handsome and seemed to be hiding his more human side, a side with fear and pain. Eyes that suggested he merely needed a hand to escape the path he was on. But now it was too late.

'It is time to move on... we can save the next one...' Batgirl thought, though with little hope.

Standing there with the midnight sky overhead, Batgirl began making her way back to her patrol.

The stars shined brightly, that night.

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*2 Months Ago, Unknown Location

Staring intently at the wound, it was shocking to see the tissue mend itself, it was incredibly slow, if he had not been watching it for several minutes he would not have spotted it. And despite its slow pace, it was well beyond that of a standard human, even that of many meta's.

"Fascinating, and perhaps the key I need...' he murmured.

Why fate was willing to smile upon him now he could not say, but he would take advantage of it.

Standing in his laboratory, it looked similar to any hospital surgery room though this one also boasted to the side a complex series of equipment and tables covered with microscopes, beakers, centrifuges, and various computing devices. Looking further out you would see that the rooms were surrounded by jagged rocks sides and a roof overflowing with stalactites. This massive cave had been discovered by the scientist years ago and proved perfect for his experiments. Privacy, security, and being a cold cave made it nice during the summer heat wave. Even so, the scientist had inserted cooling units that push out cold mist which besides his obvious reason helped to keep his samples and other sensitive organic material preserved.

Taking a syringe he inserted the needle into the right arm, the boy twitched slightly and began to draw blood. He had already drawn five previous samples most of which were on his experiment table across the room. Taking the new sample he poured it into a test tube before marking it and adding it to a rack of other tubes. He would mess around with the material later, right now he would work on making sure his new... 'patient' would make it.

Walking back to the surgery table, he took out his tools and evaluated where he would start.

The boy was a mess, with multiple lacerations on the head from jagged to blunt objects, a concussion, gunshot wounds, broken bones in his ribs, and other appendages. Truthfully, it looked like he had somehow survived a war zone, got patched up a little, and then got hit by a truck at 80 miles per hour.

'Best would be to stem any blood lost, then I can work on the concussion.'

While not a surgeon by any means, he knew enough to confidently stabilize the boy.

Taking a moment, he stepped over to where his portable computer was, typing in the status of his 'patient' as well as a few of his initial findings he finished and began working.

Despite his cold demeanor, he could not help but feel some sympathy for the boy. Walking outside of his cave earlier that day he had taken a stroll to organize his thoughts and to take a break from his research. He enjoyed walking around what to many looked like a mini rocky island with only a few acres to boast of. It made it perfect because of its terrain building anything on top of it would be impossible, and its small size would not make it worth it. Little did anyone know that a small cave entrance would lead to a massive underground cavern that provided plenty of real estate for his work. An added bonus of his island was that it was far enough from Gotham mainland to keep his operations hidden, but not too far stealing supplies was too difficult.

Carefully watching his steps, he went to sit at his favorite spot overlooking the ocean when he was surprised to find a body washed up on shore. Finding a body in the ocean around Gotham was sadly not the rarest thing to see, but it was when it ended up on his island.

His first emotions had been... well nothing, emotions had left him a long time ago. No, surprise followed by curiosity were his main concerns. Pulling the body further onto land he had intended to find a wallet or some form of identification when he was caught off guard by two new facts. One, the body was a boy, maybe 15 or 16, the second was that he was alive!

His first reaction was to leave him there and let nature take its course. But then he worried about ships passing by seeing the body potentially and he did not want that sort of attention. Perhaps it would be best to push him back out to sea and let the tides take him somewhere else?

While pondering his options and staring at him, his attention was caught by something strange he thought he saw. A small gash near his head, he would have sworn it had been longer than what it was a mere minute ago. Perhaps it was a trick of the light that threw him off. But no, the gash really was looking smaller, but how?

Bodies healing themselves were a natural thing, but seeing them heal, at a visible if incredibly slow rate was strange. Strange enough to warrant dragging the boy to his lab, the idea being that he would solve his curiosity and then burn... or depose the body after he was done.

To his confusion, it did appear that a healing factor of some sort was at play with his new guest. Such a rarity had led him to feel some form of excitement, or maybe just interest to immediately start grabbing samples and closely monitoring the boy.

It was still too early to tell how potent this healing ability was. And even with this ability, he theorized the boy would die before the ability could heal him enough in time. In other words, he would have to save the boy and preserve his new research avenue.

It took a few hours but he finally was able to put his tools down and relax. He had been concerned about potential complications but things had worked out better then he could hope. The boy was now fully stable, and with his healing, he could make a recovery. How long? That he was not sure about, but he was intrigued to see the potential ability of the boy.

He quickly strapped the boy's arms, legs, torso and even head securely while adding a monitoring device and a few IVs that would deliver some pain medication, blood transfusions, and if need be a quick-acting sleeping drug he could manually activate.

From there he began washing his tools from the blood and sanitized his workstations. He worked quietly and methodically while considering his next few experiments now that he had perhaps his golden goose.

He began walking away to go to his personal quarters when he realized he had forgotten an important fact. The cave was cold, and his cooling units were also making it literally freezing in his lab. All his electrical equipment had been designed to withstand the cold temperatures, the boy had not. So taking a moment he spent a half hour going through his personal items to cover the boy with blankets and move him to a secure portion of the lab where he turned off the cooling units.

Looking over things he could see that the area seemed to look warm enough, and walked out of the lab to his personal quarters.

Standing in his room he had a small desk set up with a laptop, a toolbox used to help take off his specialized suit, and a small bed.

But the real standout was a massive container filled with a clear light blue liquid. It dominated a large portion of the room and had various control panels that flashed lights and other data about the object it held. The object was a petite woman hovering in the liquid with a serene look on her face as she slept.

He then spent a few moments taking off his complex suit, removing its support systems before he was back to wearing his standard grey clothes with a simple pair of slippers. Most would find the task of putting on something akin to a spacesuit horrible, but he had gotten used to the downsides and advantages of his handmade gear. Walking over to the container, he put his hand on the glass and made motions like he was caressing the woman's face.

His face took a relaxed if sorrowful expression as he stared at the love of his life and his obsession. His constant failures had made him cautious for new leads to solve his problem but with the recent 'patient' he had a new sense of confidence that there was a end in sight.

"Soon my dear Nora... soon."