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Hello all! Welcome to the most violent chapter to date! Seriously, you twelve year olds might want to clear out.

Spoiler: Chapter 28 - Collapse

WARNING. VIOLENCE. LOTS AND LOTS OF VIOLENCE.

“Sora!” Kairi screamed as her friend slumped lifelessly to the ground. But her attention was forced back onto the Dark Thorn. It was thrashing around, extremely angry and swinging its head back and forth. She knew Sora had done some serious damage, but it wasn't defeated yet. Riku was already being pressed on all sides by Invisibles, and they were closing in on her as well. She had to play her advantage while she had it. But it was hard to stay focused when she didn't know how hurt her friend was. Biting back tears, she sprinted ahead, right at the Dark Thorn. Unfortunately, it saw her, but she knew what she needed to do, and blocked its claws as best she could while focusing on her target. She knew she wasn't entirely successful in avoiding its attack when she felt something sharp tear into her side, but luckily, the adrenalin was keeping the pain at bay. Now close enough to its head, she thrust her Keyblade up in a wide arc, smacking the Heartless's head and causing it to rear up on two legs. Now was her chance. She leapt forward, yelling a battle cry in the heat of the moment, and brought her blade down on its belly where there were no armoured spikes or rough skin to protect it. The Dark Thorn bellowed in pain, then fell to one side causing the ground to shake as Kairi almost lost her footing.

She leaned down, placing her hands on her knees and breathing hard, staring at the evaporating Heartless.

“Are you freaking nuts!? Riku called. “That was suicidal!”

She turned around to face him, a huge smile on her face. “But I'm still standing and he's not, so maybe I'm not as crazy as I look.”

Riku only groaned half in frustration, and half at the effort of blocking two Invisibles swords at once. “Well if you're not too busy, mind helping me take down the rest of these guys?”

Knocking the monster’s swords away and striking out at their now exposed chests, he ducked another sword and sidestepped to get himself into a better position. He looked back to see what Kairi's response was, but didn't spot her at first glance. “Kairi?”

He had to refocus on the Invisible's in front of him again as four or five of them closed in. He jumped up and slashed downwards in a few successive strikes, pulling of an impressive combo. Landing, he ducked another sword before slashing at their legs. Caught off guard, the Invisibles fell to the ground, and it was easy to finish them off from there. Riku looked around, ready for the next challenger, but it dawned on him that there weren’t any. He knew he hadn't taken them all out. Had they left when the Dark Thorn was defeated, or were they waiting to sneak attack him?

Suddenly Riku's eyes landed on Kairi and all thoughts of Invisibles were swept from his mind. She was lying on the ground, obviously passed out, and freely bleeding from a serious wound to her side. She must have collapsed while he was fighting!

“Kairi!” Riku yelled, panic overloading logic as he ran towards his friend. He knelt down next to her and instinctively cast a healing spell. He had never been very good at them, but what else could he do? And where was Sora? Was he injured too? Riku could feel his magic seep away from him even as he thought it. This night just kept getting better and better.

~*~​

About two hundred yards away, Jason was having problems of his own.

The massive dog thing was surprisingly difficult to pin down, despite its burden. Dick was still between its teeth. He’d manoeuvred himself carefully so his legs were wrapped around the dog’s neck in an attempt to lessen the damage to his shoulder. But with the way his spine was twisting, his back had to be killing him. His other arm was trying to jab an escrima stick in the thing’s eye, but the angle was wrong. Hood had to be careful when firing at it. Hitting Nightwing accidentally when he’d already lost this much blood would probably kill him.

After a dozen or so bullets lodged themselves in the dog’s hind, Nightwing finally got a good shot at its nose, electricity sparking off the end of the stick. It roared, dropping Nightwing. Hood moved in as Nightwing rolled to safety, squeezing off shots like no tomorrow. The dog got a lucky swipe at his left leg before he delivered two full into its face. It dropped like a rock.

As the dog started dissipating, Jason dropped beside Dick, roll of bandages and bottle of disinfectant already in hand. He didn’t know if the Heartless had even had germs, but he wasn’t risking it. He dumped a quarter of the bottle on the punctures on the front of Dick’s shoulder and another quarter on the back. As he did, he realized with a sinking heart that the shoulder cuff was broken. The dog must have bitten down hard to do that. He wrapped the bandages around the injury quickly, set the bone and strapped the arm to Nightwing's chest to prevent the shoulder from moving. Hopefully, that would stop the bleeding until one of the kids could get a spell on it. He finished up and pulled Dick over to where Sora was still unconscious. A quick glance at the kid showed blood running down his face. Checking his pulse and sighing with relief at the strong beat, he wrapped Sora's head in bandages. He then administered the same treatment to his leg.

Nightwing’s eyes fluttered open, then widened. “Hood, behind you!”

He turned, heart dropping at the sight before him. The dog hadn’t been dissipating, it had been changing. The beast before him was massive and feline, with two heads, and split down the middle with its colouring. On one side, it was striped black and white, with a tiger head that looked ready to devour whatever stood in front of it. The other side was pitch black and rabid. The head was similar to the first, but with long, vicious canines. A rabid saber-tooth tiger. Great.

Two Face, having stood up and recovered his assault rifle, nimbly leapt on top of the cat thing, straddling it just behind the shoulders. He slung his AK-47 over his shoulder and pulled his standard semi-automatic pistols from his jacket.

Hood stood, half a block’s distance between him and the monsters, gun in one hand, All Blade in the other. Nightwing stood shakily beside him, an escrima stick clenched in his good hand with his other arm bound to his chest. Resisting the urge to argue – Hood knew he would need all the help he could get with this one – he waited for the cat to make its move.

It wasn’t a long wait. With surprising speed it lunged forward, claws extended. On its back, Two Face was letting out a steady hail of lead in front of it. Both vigilantes leapt aside, Red Hood only slightly slower. They had both been trained to fight despite injuries. Their own individual experiences had made them able to fight well, injured. Nightwing’s blood loss and injured arm would slow his reactions, and Hood wouldn’t be doing any fancy flips or roundhouse kicks with his leg – not to mention the one or two cracked ribs – but hopefully, they would be able to last and might even win. Then again, against two uninjured enemies who would be formidable on their own, they might not.

Could definitely make Two Face and his newest lackey work for their victory though.

Pulling back his arm, Hood grabbed Nightwing and flung him towards Two Face and the Two Cat thing. The acrobat twisted in midair, barreling into Dent and knocking him off of the cat. They landed a few feet away, but the cat, unable to stop its momentum in time, continued towards Hood. He dived to the side, plugging a few good shots into each of its legs as it passed him. It wasn't a creature of flesh and blood, but it probably still wouldn't do well with holes in its legs.

Sure enough, Two Cat stumbled, its front legs collapsing and sending both of its heads tumbling to the ground. Hood spared a glance at Nightwing. He was doing pretty good against Two Face, despite the arm. Two Face wasn't easy to go against though. With nothing to do in Arkham but stare at walls and chill in bed, Dent tended to practice martial arts in his spare time, which both of the former Robins knew very well. Batman had only shown them the security footage a million times.

Flicking his gaze back to the cat, Red Hood barely dodged in time. It had gone from being twenty feet away with its face in the dirt to right in front of him claws extended in half a second. This would be the last time he underestimated its speed.

Rolling to his feet, he grabbed a tuft of the cat's fur and pulled himself on its back. Immediately, it started bucking, trying to get him off. Turning the All Blade around in his hand so that the blade was coming out near his pinky, he plunged the sword into Two Cat's back, right on the line between black and stripes. The cat roared in pain, intensifying its efforts to dislodge him. But with the sword hilt-deep in its spine (or it would be, if the cat had had a spine), Hood had the best handhold he could ask for in this type of situation. Pulling his gun, he pressed it against the base of the tamer head and tightened his finger on the trigger.

Just as the gun went off, something long and furry smacked into Hood's arm. The shot went through the cat's ear instead of its medulla and the force of the hit knocked him halfway off its back. What was...? The tail, waving back and forth challengingly. Stupid to forget about it, but he could fix that.

He left the All Blade in the cat's back and pulled his knife. Holstering his gun, he summoned his other All Blade and used the two blades as climbing hooks, stabbing into Two Cat as he moved towards its rump. Unfortunately, from here Two Cat could and did reach back with its front claws. He twisted, trying to avoid the grasping paws. Finally making it to the tail, he slashed quickly, cutting it off at the base. The beast yowled again and contorted its body further than before. It hooked its claws into his already injured leg and flung him away. Hood crashed through a wall, breath escaping his lungs, right arm screaming. Shakily, he stood and tried to walk, his bad leg almost buckling under him. Looking out of the hole he made, he was pleased to note that the cat was pawing at its severed tail, trying to push it back onto its stump. That gave him a moment to check his injuries. Both his thigh and his calf shredded, right humerus broken from when he went through the wall, at least two cracked ribs. Two limbs out of commission, and the ribs would slow him down more than anything else. On the other hand, he had managed to cut off the cat's tail (more of a spite thing than anything else), put a few shots into each of its legs, and inflicted a few deep injuries all the way down its body. Still, things didn't look good for him. He pulled the last of his medical supplies from his belt, wrapping the leg and strapping his arm to his chest.

Pushing himself out of the wall, he started towards Two Cat. It looked up at him balefully, studying him. Could it study him? Did it have the intelligence to? Apparently so, because it huffed at him and turned away, towards where Nightwing was still fighting Two Face.

Hood felt his blood boil. It thought he was injured enough to be harmless? Clearly, it didn't know him very well. Giving off a malicious grin, he pulled his gun with his good arm and fired. The shot landed in Two Cat's neck. As the cat turned towards him with a downright murderous expression on both of its faces, he holstered his gun and pulled his grapple, shooting off towards a building far away from Nightwing's fight, then hit retract. The cat, predictably, followed him. He might not be able to win this fight, but he could keep the cat far away from Nightwing until he had beaten Two Face.

Once he had reeled himself in, he fired again. Three blocks from Nightwing's fight, he landed on a fire escape. The cat was right below him, prowling, waiting for him to be a good little meal and come down. Yeah right. Pulling his gun again, he unloaded the rest of his clip into its torso. The cat, angry and impatient (and really, who would have guessed a Heartless could feel? Probably its connection to Two Face), snapped. It started attacking the building Hood was sitting on. It took a moment for his slightly slugging brain to figure out what it was doing.

Then he felt the building shift beneath him. The entire face of the building dropped a foot or so. Two Cat jumped back, surprised. It probably hadn't expected this, only wanting to take out its frustrations on the building. Before Hood could jump clear of the fire escape – not that he could anyways, not with his leg – the entire wall fell forwards, burying him and the cat under a few feet of rubble. If Jason hadn't been busy, he would have seen the black smoke curling out of the scattered bricks and glass as Two Cat dissipated. He probably would have smiled and boasted his victory for a bit. He would have, if he hadn't been busy being unconscious and bleeding out under the wall of a building.

~*~​

A few blocks away, Nightwing was having a hard time. The fight with Two Face had started bad and gotten worse. After tackling Two Face off of his cat-thing, he had landed badly (on his arm) and received a kick in his stomach for his troubles. Thrusting out his legs, he kicked Two Face's out from under him, using the momentum from his spin to twist himself into standing.

For the next few minutes, he had the upper hand. By moving constantly, he was able to prevent the villain from landing a shot on him, although one or two came close. He flipped in range, landing a hit with his escrima stick before vaulting off of Two Face's shoulders and out the other side. He raced up the side of a building, the wall exploding with gun shots a half a second after his foot left the space. He arched his back, twisting away from the wall and diving towards Dent feet first. He landed hard on his shoulders, ploughing him into the ground. Stepping back, he allowed himself a small smile.

A shooting pain piercing his side wiped it off of his face. It took him a moment to process the loud gunshot, to see the gun in Two Face's hand pointed at him. He would have sworn that Two Face had been very unconscious, but now he was pulling himself up. Looking down at his chest, he saw the hole near the bottom of his ribs. He took a breath and felt one of his lungs falter. So. The shot had hit his diaphragm, probably grazing the lung in the process. He pulled his last compress from its compartment and pulled his suit away from the hole, slapping the white square over the injury. He barely had time to wince (slapping an open wound was probably not a good idea) before Two Face was up and swinging.

He dived backwards, jamming his escrima stick between his teeth. Hand free, he pulled a few batarangs, tossing them at the villain before him. Landing with his feet under him, he reversed his momentum, launching himself back at Dent and pulling the escrima stick from his mouth. He flicked on the electric setting, plugging a few thousand volts into Two Face's chest. The villain screamed, yellowed eyes closing in pain before the gun came up again. Nightwing ducked back, escrima stick coming off of its target as he avoided another bullet hole.

Two Face hadn't spoken yet, but that didn't mean Nightwing couldn't. “What's wrong Dent? Wake up on the scarred half of the bed this morning?” He dodged an angry swing. “Whoa there, shouldn't you be checking with your coin? Who knows. My luck is normally pretty good.” Leaping out of the way of a few bullets, retaliating with batarangs. One landed in the muzzle of Dent's left gun, rendering it useless, but, predictably, he didn't release his grip on it. “Tell you what. Scarred side and I have to go through all the trouble of beating the crap out of you. Clean side, you surrender and we both get home before bedtime. Well...” giving a mock look at the sky, he shrugged his good shoulder, “maybe before dawn.”

Through all of this Two Face didn't speak. He seemed a little beyond words at the moment. His eyes were wilder than usual, and any vocalizations he made were strictly limited to grunts and growls. Actually, he sounded a bit like his demon cat thing. Landing both feet on Dent's head, Nightwing risked a glance at Hood's fight. Hood was grappling away, the cat close on his heels. Turning his attention back to his own fight, he kicked both guns out of Two Face's grasp, then booted them far down an alley way. He ax-kicked Two Face across the shoulder blades as he tried to stand. A crash resounded in the distance as the villain landed in the dust and finally fell unconscious. Nightwing fell back into sitting, wincing when he jostled his shoulder.

Someone shouted his name and he shot back into standing. He swept his eyes over the street until he saw Riku and Kairi. She had a very tired looking Riku's arm slung across her shoulder, but besides that, they seemed fine. “Hey guys!” Dick gave a tired wave. “Sora's over here. He has a nasty bump on his head, you might want to look at that.” If they had enough magic after that, maybe they could fix his side. Or his shoulder. Both would be nice too.

Kairi gasped at the sight of Sora, laying motionless on the ground. She gently lowered Riku to the ground and ran towards the other boy, summoning her Keyblade as she went. Dick sat down again, next to Riku. Well, closer to laying down. He didn't think he could hold himself in a sitting position for too long, not with a hole in his abdomen. He knew that Sora had cast a wide-area spell on them before, but he also knew that Kairi wasn't advanced enough yet to do the same. She had told him herself on the walk to Gotham. So he would wait, and hopefully not bleed out or pass out before she got to him.

Riku started when he sat, probably noting the copious amounts of wincing between vertical and horizontal. “Sorry.” Dick raised an eyebrow at the apology. For what? that one gesture said. “My magic is still recharging. It'll be a few more minutes.”

“Ah. It's fine. I've had worse.” Shifting to a more comfortable position and regretting it when his shoulder screamed, he continued. “I probably won't be able to fight a horde of Heartless or an Arkham regular like this, but I could limp myself home and stitch myself up.” It was Riku's turn to raise an eyebrow, and he did so. Dick simply shrugged his good shoulder again. “I've done it before.”

Thankfully, Riku let it go at that. It wasn't that he had a problem with talking about all of his previous injuries and subsequent ministrations. But it hurt to breathe and it hurt more to talk and he just kind of wanted to lay here for a bit.

When the green glow faded, Sora sat bolt upright. The bandages Jason had applied fell away. His wildly flailing eyes landed on Dick who gave out another tired wave. “Nightwing! Hold up, I'll heal you!” He scrambled into sitting and cast. Dick closed his eyes in relief as he felt the bones and torn muscles in his shoulder pull together and mend, the hole in his side fill, the graze on his lung stitch itself shut. For the first time in too many minutes, he breathed deep. And stopped breathing when his head cleared and he remembered.

“Hood. We have to find him!” Standing was easier this time. He looked in the direction Jason had gone, vaguely amused at the half-destroyed building. Jason simply couldn't do anything without breaking a building or two. He pulled Riku to his feet and started pulling him towards the building, Kairi and Sora following. As he got closer, his amusement turned to horror. He hadn't noticed any injuries when he had spotted Hood earlier, but there were splashes of blood stretching across the street in a zigzag. There was dark smoke coming from under the rubble of the building face. If Jason had dropped a building on the cat thing to beat it, he would have been on the roof across the street, laughing and waiting for the others to catch up. He got to the edge of the debris, letting go of Riku so he could climb in and check it out. As he had thought, the dark smoke was from the cat thing which was still dissolving. But where was...?

A shape sticking out from what had been a window caught his attention. He knew that shape. That shape had kicked him in the face numerous times a few years ago, before Jason had come home. That shape still kicked him regularly during sparring.

It took a moment for him to reconcile that shape with its implication. The shape that looked exactly like Jason's foot led to a leg that was buried under the building. And if that leg continued, that meant that Jason was buried under the building.

Yeah, truth and beauty are the less used names. But when I heard them, this was the first thing to pop into my head.