For the Innocent!!!

 Logan tried to clear his head from the impact into the barrier. He looked back and saw the flame spreading inside the Circus ring area, with an abnormal amount of smoke billowing up. The sprinklers for the arena went off but instead of putting the flame out it made them spread faster than they had been. {The flames must be chemical in nature for the water to not be able to affect them.} Logan was grabbed by his neck and slammed into the barrier by Venom. "Is this attack you're doing? We may fear fire, but you should have gotten us closer to the blast to affect us. This close will hurt but not kill. A mistake you will not live to regret!"

 Logan phased through Venoms grasping claws. "Don't be stupid Venom, if I wanted to kill you, I would use sound above what these innocent bystanders could hear. Not fire that kills indiscriminately like this. Now, do you want to continue to fight, and I get serious about ripping you out of Bane's body or do we help the innocent civilians here?" Venom looked at his hand that Logan had just phased through and reevaluated the being he faced. "No, the innocent should be protected. We will not have others suffer as we suffered when we were innocent. We are not Parker to exploit our innocence or the prison guards that let our innocence rot in a hole for actions of our parents!"

 Logan looked around and noticed many of the escape doors were still closed with only a few being broken down by security to let people out. "Venom, can you get some of those doors open so people can evacuate, maybe break some holes in the wall on ground level to make more exits? I will go to the roof and make a hole for the smoke to escape like a chimney, it's more dangerous than the flames at this point. "The Lethal Protectors will help you this time. For the Innocent!!!" Venom shouted as he bounded away to the nearest exit.

 Quickly thinking over his options Logan looked to the roof that was more than 200 feet above him, he thought about 'Waybig" but remembered he was only about 100 feet tall. Godzilla was more than tall enough but he would cause too much rubble to fall on the crowd and he didn't think he could go that size just yet anyway. {Well instead of one big hole, let's make a bunch of little ones." He increased his size to about triple the normal with his Martian powers and then flew up until he burst through the ceiling. He went back into the stadium and made another hole about five feet away and just continued to do this over and over. After doing this about 15 times he then started to fly in a circular motion to draw the smoke to himself and prime the chimney so to speak. Once the smoke started escaping, he went back to making more holes, careful not to damage the structure so much that the roof fell in. To his relief the smoke stopped drifting towards the crowds and started going up and out of the holes he had made.

*(Scene Shift)*

 Nightwing hung above the fire that was a result of the explosion set off by Saiko. "This is where it ends, HERO. Back where it all began." (Raymond... My friend, or at least he used to be. Now he is calling himself Saiko and I don't know what he is.) Swinging in the air on his grapple line, his mind running at full speed. (The fire is chemical based; the sprinklers are only making it worse. Raymond as overridden the stadium controls, trapping thousands of people in here with the fire.) Nightwing saw several doors being beaten down by security and some black demonic looking creature who occasionally busted holes in the wall as he moved to the next set of doors.

 (Come on Dick... You're supposed to be an improvisor, start acting like it!) "This is all your fault Dick. I mean if you had stayed with Haly's Circus in the first place, none of this would be happening. Saiko caught Nightwing with a swipe of his claws across his chest. Nightwing clutched his chest. "I don't know what exactly you blame me for, Raymond..." Raymond stood over him. "For leaving Dick... For letting them RUIN me. The night I 'drowned'; I wasn't even in the car they pushed into the river. Old man Haly stagged the whole thing."

 "For months, men I had never seen before in my life kept me isolated, my life confined to darkness. Surrounded by daggers and claws, nothing but pain and hopelessness... Until the day I just BROKE. Until the day I couldn't feel anything at all. I became THEIRS... Just another in a long line of kids that were RUINED. Ruined when this Circus's Ringmaster took ME."

 "Thats what this Circus really is Dick. A place that destroys children... Turns them into killers. Except... They didn't think I was good enough. So, they left me in a forest to die, with birds clawing at my eyes. Turning me into a mutant freak. But you're Dick Grayson... Nightwing. A HERO! And you wouldn't know anything about that would you?" Through the constant fight with Raymond Dick listened to his childhood friend, horrified at what happened to him. "Raymond, I have no idea what you're talking about, but I do know, killing all these people isn't going to help anything." With the last word Nightwing said he threw Raymond over his shoulder and onto the top of the score board that still hung over the center of the stadium. Hearing noise overhead he saw Logan breaking through the ceiling to let the smoke out and he jumped onto the score board with Raymond to continue the fight.  

 It's about a hundred pounds of Magnesium too late to try and talk me out of this Dick. At the rate the fire is going, you would have a better chance of putting out an oil blaze." "Is that so?" (Magnesium fires burn at six-hundred- fifty degrees Fahrenheit and can't be extinguished by water.) Nightwing threw several 'wings' as he had come to call his old birdarangs at the cables holding the 100-ton scoreboard up in the air. (The best way to put this fire out is to smother it in sand. The kind of sand you will find in the catacombs that a lot of Gotham, including this stadium, is built on.) He grabbed Raymond in a choke hold as he jumped from the now free falling one hundred–ton scoreboard.

 When the scoreboard hit the stadium floor it continued to fall into the catacombs below, taking with it the sand and burning Magnesium. With a rumble, most of the fire was no longer a threat to the innocents in the stadium. As nightwing and Raymond swung towards the edge of the collapsed floor, Raymond twisted around and cut the line they were swinging on, dropping them towards the catacombs below.

*(Scene Shift)*

 Brian Haly, the newest ringmaster of Haly's Circus coughed in the smoke and felt the heat from the fire on his face. Seeing Raya just feet away from him he reached towards her and coughed out. "It wasn't *Cough* supposed to be like this Raya! He said it was just *Cough* supposed to be GRAYSON! This is *Cough* going to kill us all!!!" Raya just watched the scene unfold in front of her with tears in her eyes.

*(Scene Shift)*

 Nightwing had managed to stop his fall into the catacombs and was climbing his way out breathing heavily. "A valiant effort, Dick... Truly." Saiko kicked Nightwing in the face as he was on all fours, knocking him back a little towards edge. "You managed to swap death by flames for death by asphyxiation. I'm sure the masses are grateful." Nightwing struggled to his feet and took up a defensive stance. "Take a look around with those new eyes of yours Raymond. Most of the people are out already, my friends managed to get the doors open and dissipate most of the smoke. The only people you are hurting now are our friends from the Circus Damn it."

 "Friends? You mean friends like Bryan Haly or Raya? Come on now Dick... Tell me you at least saw that one coming. The whispers into old man Haly's ear to give you the Circus... The whispers into yours to take it..." Dick was stunned, and his heart dropped into his stomach. "What?" Raymond grinned a maniacal grin when he saw he finally made a dent in the face of his old friend. "Raya and I are in this together, Dick... Willing to do whatever it takes to finally end this."

 Standing next to Bryan, Raya continued to stare out with tears falling down her face. "Not like this Raymond, I can't do this." She pushed a button that opened the remaining doors, allowing the circus workers to get out and escape Raymond's revenge.