Issue# 3, Mar. Yr. 2

The Festive Season (Part 2 of 3)
"In the Name of the Father"
By Rory O'Sullivan

---

The deed was done.
He was surprised. The impression he'd gotten from his father's journals was that his first kill should've been unnerving. He was, in fact, serene, although a--- saner?--- no, inferior--- an inferior person in his position would be quite sickened.
All this occurred to him as he arrived back at his apartment under the first rays of the new dawn.

---

"I don't get it. What's the significance of it being a holiday?" Terry McGinnis had practically to jog to keep astride Bruce Wayne, as the old man marched toward Wayne Manor's Batcave entrance.
Bruce paused, allowing an overhead lamp to cast an eerie glow across his face. "Decades ago, before you were born. My second year in the job. A man named Alberto Falcone began a rash of serial murders under the name 'Holiday.' He died in Arkham Asylum, half a dozen years ago." Before Terry's eyes, pent-up emotion seemed to course through his mentor. "It took me a year to find him. When I did, I almost killed him." Bruce's voice tightened, as the corners of his mouth turned down. "He... cost me a friend."
Rage at the brutality he'd witnessed was morphing into determination for Terry. "We'll shut this new guy down. I promise you."
Bruce almost smiled. "I don't doubt that. But right now we could both do with some sleep. Go home."

---

The next week was rough on both heroes. Terry toiled with schoolwork, all the while turning the Vale murder over and over in his mind. In the meantime, Bruce kept a constant vigil at the BatComputer, reviewing his case files, and 'borrowing' GCPD reports on the murder. In the odd moment that he slept, it was fitful at best. It was as if each of Holiday's victims taunted him, cursed him for allowing a re-manifestation of such evil.
And while the heroes honed their obsession into a quest, the killer basked in pride. He was doing it, carrying on the work of his father. After all, he was Carlos Falcone, and he had a name to defend. The frenzy had already started, according to the headlines. It was time to up the ante, he decided as he glanced at the calendar.

---

Batman rocketed into the slowly falling snow that was swaddling Gotham City. "Did I have to come out tonight?" he asked his radio as he completed an Immelman Twist, "I have a term paper due---"
"You didn't notice?" Bruce inquired. "It's Veteran's Day, Terry."
Batman's expression hardened. "Y'know... we could be barking up the wrong tree here. There isn't really any connection between the Vale murder and Holiday, if you think about it---"
"Terry," Bruce retorted, "I was Batman once. I know. Call it... intuition."
Terry sighed. "Okay. Coming up on City Hall now."

---

He wasn't the only one.
Carlos Falcone tugged his ski mask into place, nestled as he was in an alley across the street from City Hall. Who, he thought, would be the unlucky person to step into his line of sight this fateful evening?

---

Barbara Gordon hustled out of City Hall, a bundle of case files under her arm. She turned up the collar of her trench coat against the cold, and her eyes darted around for a cab home. She'd been working the Vale case herself, practically twenty-four seven, since Halloween night. A break could only do her good.

---

The scene unfolded before Batman's eyes as if in slow motion. The commissioner negotiating the snow-strewn steps, then the masked man in black leotard charging forth from his hiding place. The flash of a knife between them, Gordon twisting to avoid the assault, and falling to one knee.
In a second, the vigilante was between them, planting a snap-kick on the point of the attacker's chin.
Falcone was panicked now. An interloper, a meddling punk, and one who could ruin his whole scheme. He had yet to learn appreciation for the bat symbol that had destroyed his father.
Batman's senses were afire with alertness as the two hurled themselves into combat with a flurry of almost superhuman movement. Batman, the younger and weaker of the two, gave as good as he got, despite being denied the time to use some of his costume's resources.
The battle raged on, until the sound of an approaching security guard drew Batman's attention. In the split second that followed, the man he thought of only as 'Holiday' landed a punch that toppled the young hero.
Splayed across the ground, Batman rocked back, raised his feet, and fired his boot-jets.
The blast took Holiday in the upper chest, and catapulted him into the air. Even before he'd begun to plummet, Batman was beside him, and hauling him upward.
They touched down on the roof of an old brownstone. This was more to Batman's liking, free of civilian bystanders. Now he could focus on---
Holiday shot his knife-bearing hand forward, faster than the hero had anticipated. The blade pierced his neck, where the armor of the shoulder jointed and was weakest. He felt energy flow from him along with the blood. Must've grazed an artery, he decided, before fading into unconsciousness.

---

Bruce Wayne sat bolt upright, watching as various images and diagnostics, spread across the BatComputer's mighty Cray monitors, died. "Terry!" He yelled hoarsely, "Terry! Damn!"
Fumbling to gather his cane, he started out across the cave. Something was seriously wrong. Terry had been fighting Holiday, and suddenly the suit had given up. The power pack must've been severed. He owed it to the boy to get out there, to help however he could.
Bruce considered the array of costumes across the Batcave wall. A disguise was necessary. It always had been, hadn't it? But which one?
He glanced at the Gray Ghost costume. It had served him well recently, it fit. But, with a little research, anyone who recalled the old movie-serial hero would discover that Bruce Wayne owned the only remaining Ghost suit. That was out. He decided instead on the Nightwing uniform. He felt strange wearing it, though, and imagined he looked stranger, the sleek modern look clashing with his wrinkled, balding face. But the mask was effective, and that was enough.
Fully garbed, doing his best to maneuver without aid of his cane, he slung himself into the Batmobile, and catapulted out of the cave into open skies. Later, perhaps, he would have the chance to reflect on the nostalgia of the moment. Not now. Now he had a young man to rescue.

---

Bruce worked the Batmobile's collective with skill borne of urgency, and 'parked' it atop the roof of the old brownstone. He'd been able to follow the fight through Terry's vid-link, up until this point, when everything had gone black for both of them.
He clambered out of the vehicle, and gave the roof a cursory visual inspection. The only thing he could note was a pool of blood near the edge.
Fighting to stay detached, the old man stooped, and gathered some of the blood in a test tube. Inside of a few seconds he was back in the Batmobile's cockpit, and running the coppery substance through a portable chemical analyzer. It was indeed Terry's.
He let out a breath, at a loss for what to do next. For him, the costumed vigilante game was a thing of the past. For now, all he could really do was to leave things in the hands of the police, and in the meantime do what he could as Bruce Wayne.
Helplessness began to eat at him.

---

Everything was black. Pitch black.
Was he dead? Already? Wow. No more Dana, no more Mom, no more Mister Wayne...
Flecks of red appeared. He blinked, and began to focus. He could blink, the young hero thought. That was a good sign. Slowly, feeling crept back into the rest of his body.
As he became aware of his surroundings, his alertness began to return. He was in a small room, no larger than his bathroom at home. It was evidently a kitchen. He tried to move, and failed. He was strapped to a wall hand and foot, rather crudely, with titanium bonds.
Next he glanced down at himself. The costume was still intact, save, he noted, the power pack, obviously forcibly removed, which now lay partially disassembled on the counter.
"You're awake."
It took almost all Batman's energy to swivel his head, and take in the source of the comment. Holiday, still dressed in black to the neck, was well built, forty-ish, with a mildly diluted Italian complexion and slightly thinning hair. His only unordinary feature was his wolfish smile, which caused the Dark Knight to shudder ever so slightly.
"Yeah, I'm up," he managed in return. He was so tired. How much had he bled? In fact, his whole body felt like one big bruise. He decided the killer must've given him a bit of a beating while he'd been unconscious, and he longed for the chance to return it for an instant, before deciding he was above such things as vengeance. More or less.
"Good, then. Welcome to my humble home. Water?"
"No." God, he was thirsty.
"Sure? All right."
"What... are you going to do with me?"
Holiday paused, phrasing his words just so. "Well, you see... it's about six hours to midnight. Now, if I'm to keep my schedule, I have six hours to kill someone. Someone important." Again with the smile. "I think you'll do."
Batman smirked. "Thanks."
"Ironic, isn't it?" Holiday seated himself on a gel-chair in one corner. "My father also had a Batman to contend with. His beat him, but it took the vigilante a year. Mine found me almost immediately, yet I'm going to eliminate him just as easily.
Stir it up, Terry. "Uh... That's not irony."
"Oh. Well... Well, it's something... it's..."
"Yeah, you work on that. Lemme know when you figure it out."
"Quiet!" The killer surged forward, and slapped the vigilante across the face. Even through the cowl, it stung just enough. "I should've gagged you, shouldn't I?"
Batman's vision swam once more. Focus, he thought, focus. "So you're the monster who killed Andrea Vale."
"I suppose I am." The smile. Just then, Terry wished to God he were anywhere else. Even school.
"That was really sick, y'know that? You're one sick puppy."
Holiday resumed sitting. "Didn't I tell you to be quiet?"
"Yeah, well. Kinda wish I was still unconscious."
Holiday began polishing his knife. "That could be arranged. But I'd prefer you're awake for this."

---

"Please, Mrs. McGinnis, calm down!"
"Calm down!" The woman sobbed, all the while pacing. "Calm down! You can't be serious, Officer!"
Her small, trendy inner city apartment was now the arena for the beginnings of a neighborhood search. The two uniformed policemen did their best to comfort her as they asked a few routine questions. But trying to get information from a worried parent was like pulling teeth, especially in Missing Persons cases.
"When did you last see Terry?" one inquired, as soothingly as he could manage.
She paused for a moment. "Today, before school. When he didn't come home from Mister Wayne's, I knew---"
"Mister Wayne? Is he the boy's father?" the second tried.
"His employer," came a gravelly voice from the doorway. Bruce Wayne hobbled in, playing up the part of his cane, and briefly embraced Terry's mother. "Terry left at his usual time, gentlemen. Something must've happened to him on the way home.
One of the cops finished scribbling out his notes on a small palm-top. "All right, well, we'll do what we can, ma'am," he managed, less than reassuringly. "But a person has to be missing for at least twenty-four hours before we start looking. And things are busy right now. The whole force is being mobilized to look for this 'Holiday' person..." His explanation didn't go over well, he saw, and, at a loss for anything else meaningful to say, he repeated, "We'll do what we can." Awkwardly, he led his partner out into the hall.
Bruce fixed Mrs. McGinnis a glass of water, sat with her awhile, playing the part of kind old man, all the while running over and over facts in his head. He just couldn't for the life of him formulate a plan to locate Terry. But he had to, faced with the alternatives of waiting for the next holiday to try to apprehend the murderer, or having faith in his young protégé to find his own way to freedom. Both smacked of helplessness, though, something he could not deal with.

---

Having set up an alarm clock, Carlos Falcone had drifted off in his gel-chair, leaving Batman alone with his thoughts.
The boy, still weak from blood loss but keeping a cool head, let his eyes dart back and forth rhythmically, in the hopes that some sort, any sort, of escape plan would somehow spring into being. He settled his line of sight on the power pack that rested nearby. If he was going to make any sort of attempt, it would lie with that cracker-sized little black circuit board.
The power pack was fairly nondescript, except for a series of small buttons and even smaller lights. The lights all glowed red, signaling inoperative. Batman had never seen the pack, which was normally encased under the armor plate that ran up his back. Still, he assumed that a combination of switches could activate the pack, a combination he should be able to find fairly rapidly thanks to his Compu Sci courses. They'd scoffed at him for taking such a 'sped' course, when he should've been taking Introduction to Quantum Physics. Now he thanked whatever God might be present that he'd been that extra little bit lazy.
Belatedly, he realized that it was too early to get religious. He still had to find a way to get to the pack.
As if in answer to his silent plea, a cockroach skittered across his right hand. He swung his head to regard it. It had evidently slipped from a crack in the plaster just alongside where his bonds had been fastened to the wall.
A crack in the plaster.
Here he'd been straining against the titanium straps. He should've been fighting the wall.
Rhythmically, but quietly, keeping an eye on the snoring killer, he began flexing his wrist, batting the wall with increasing force. Finally, the cheap plaster crumpled inward, allowing him room to slip his hand free. He repeated the exercise with his other hand, pausing only when Holiday stirred for a moment.
Both hands freed, he began to stretch forward for all he was worth. Slowly, as if he were forcing himself to grow, he advanced on the power pack. It was a difficult exercise in balance, considering his feet were still held fast.
Finally, his hands closed around the circuit board. Instantly, he dialed in a series of combinations on the buttons, until one by one the lights flickered green.
Now all he had to do was reinstall it at the small of his back---
Strained, the plaster at his heels suddenly gave way, and he found himself spread-eagled on the kitchen floor, the power pack skittering away out of reach. Cursing, he began to rise.
Holiday's foot solidly shoved him back down. "Nice try," came the killer's quip.

---

Bruce Wayne decided the best thing he could do would be to get some sleep. He smiled at the thought. Must be going soft in his old age.
He slid out of the BatComputer's swivel chair. The monitors were mostly dark anyway, since the diagnostics and link-ups of the costume they supported were all inactive.
All of a sudden, the computer lit up like a Christmas tree. He darted to it, scanning each monitor, specifically the one labeled HOMING DEVICE. Quickly, his brain made a note of the position, a building on the corner of Molsen and Third, near the docks.
Just as suddenly as it had sprung to life, the monitors fizzled out once more. The power pack must've been activated, then shut down again. Bruce paid them no heed, busy tugging the Nightwing costume into place.
The night was not yet over.