Rupert Thorne's Tower - West Side Gotham - 11:12 PM
A young woman with skull-patterned skin casually strolled in
The six guards at the desk exchanged glances
"Hey," the nearest one said, hand moving toward his radio. "This is private property, you need to—"
Silver opened her mouth.
And a violent shriek sent every window in the building's ground floor exploding inward simultaneously
The guards went down clutching their bleeding ears, some dropping weapons, all of them disoriented beyond function.
Three seconds later the front wall ceased to exist.
Solomon Grundy hit it at full speed, concrete and steel folding around him like paper, the impact shaking the entire building's foundation. Black Mask followed, stepping through the gap with twelve men behind him, all wearing specialized gas masks that Jaina gave him in the armory. He handed one to Silver without comment. She pulled it on.
Two of the crew carried modified flamethrower rigs on their backs, the tanks filled not with fuel for fire but with Crane's toxin,.
"Grundy, stay here and hold the ground floor if anyone comes in that isn't with us, you know what to do."
Roman designated six men to remain with him, then looked at Silver. "Ready?"
She checked the assault rifle she'd been handed in the truck then nodded
"Let's go."
Floors Two Through Nine - 11:19 PM
The fear toxin made it almost merciful.
The modified flamethrowers swept corridors ahead of them as they climbed spreading through the air before Thorne's guards could respond effectively. Men dropped to their knees seeing things that weren't there, or fled in directions that took them away from the threat, or turned on each other in confusion. The modified gas masks kept Roman's crew insulated from the effect entirely.
Those who came at them anyway, because of the toxin or not, met an end at gunfire.
"Third floor clear," one of Roman's men reported.
"Keep moving," Roman said.
Thorne's Office - Top Floor - 11:31 PM
Rupert Thorne was a man who had survived Gotham for forty years through a combination of ruthlessness, patience, and an absolute refusal to show weakness to anyone for any reason.
He was seventy-one years old. He had outlasted three police commissioners, two crime family wars and every ambitious underboss who'd ever looked at his chair and thought they deserved it more.
He sat behind his desk when they entered, flanked by eight personal guards and four captains with their crews.
"I assume," he said, his voice carrying the particular calm of someone who'd had guns pointed at him enough times that it no longer registered as remarkable, "that whoever sent you understands they've just ended a relationship that took decades to build."
His eyes moved across the assembled crew, the gas masks, the weapons, the skull-faced girl with the rifle. Then they landed on Black Mask and something shifted in his expression, a flicker of cold recognition.
"Falcone," he said. "So the old man finally decided to move. I wondered when."
"We're not with Falcones."
One of Thorne's captains, a heavyset man in his fifties named Sal, had gone very still in a way that had nothing to do with the guns. His eyes were moving between Roman's crew and the door, calculating.
"Then who—"
"How," Sal said suddenly, his voice cutting through the room, "did you know our main force wouldn't be here tonight?"
The room shifted, several heads turned.
Thorne looked at Sal slowly.
"That's an interesting question," Thorne said, very quietly. "Almost as interesting as why you're the one asking it."
Sal said nothing.
"Crane's Wings," Silver said.
The name landed differently than most names did in rooms like this. Two of the lower level guards visibly reacted, a slight backward shift of weight, a tightening around the eyes, the stories had been circulating through Gotham's underworld for months, the convoy massacre, the Southside Defenders, the chemical attacks, the amount of people who had dissapeared.
Thorne himself showed nothing.
Roman stepped forward
"You work with us or we finish what we started downstairs."
"You work for Crane," Thorne said. "A child playing at empire in my city."
"Your city," Roman said. "Your barely top 10 these days"
Thorne's jaw tightened.
"I have never," he said, with the weight of four decades behind it, "knelt to anyone. Not Falcone, not Maroni, not the heroes, not the GCPD. I am not going to begin with a masked boy who sends his underlings instead of facing me himself."
The standoff intensified.
Thorne's loyalists had weapons up so did Roman's crew.
Then Sal stepped forward.
He walked across the room and stopped beside Silver, she took a gas mask from the bag over her shoulder and handed it to him without comment.
Sal turned to face the room, his own men, the men he'd worked alongside for years.
"Thorne's been running this organization like he did decades ago," he said, "The Falcones are closing in from the east. Maroni from the south. And something else entirely is growing underneath all of us that none of you have seen yet." He paused. "I have, and I'm telling you, you want to be standing on the right side of what's coming."
The hesitation in the room was visible, spreading through the lower level guards first, then the mid-level men, then two of the other captains. Gas masks appeared from Silver's bag, passed hand to hand across the room. Men crossed the floor in ones and twos.
One of Thorne's personal guards looked at his boss, then at the men crossing over, then at his boss again.
He crossed.
Thorne watched it happen with the expression of a man who would murder the entire world.
"There's not much time left," Roman said. "Whatever you decide, decide it now."
"I've made my decision," Thorne said.
Roman's Predator Sense screamed a warning half a second before Thorne's hand cleared the drawer, he raised his pistol and opened fire before any of Thorne's loyalists could pull the trigger.
The room exploded into chaos.
Black Mask's men opened fire at the same instant. The traitors who had just crossed over joined them without hesitation, turning their guns on their former comrades. Gunshots tore through the office in a deafening roar.
Thorne's loyal captains were good. They moved smart, used cover, returned fire with disciplined bursts, but they were outnumbered and cornered.
Quirks started flaring.
One loyalist with a hardening Quirk charged forward, skin turning to stone as bullets pinged off him, another generated a burst of kinetic force and sent two of the traitors flying backward. A third tried to erect a barrier of compressed air, but it lasted less than two seconds before Silver's focused sonic scream ripped through it.
The building itself began to suffer.
Walls cracked and crumbled under the combined gunfire and Quirk effects. Chunks of concrete and plaster rained down. A section of the outer wall blew outward entirely as a stray energy blast from one of Thorne's men struck it. Wind howled through the growing holes.
Men started falling.
A loyalist took multiple rounds to the chest and staggered backward through a shattered window, screaming as he plummeted. Another was tackled by one of Roman's men in the chaos; both crashed through a weakened section of floor and disappeared below.
One of Black Mask's men carrying a modified flamethrower rig took a burst to the shoulder. Before he could recover, a loyalist slammed into him at full speed, tackling him straight through the missing outer wall. Both men fell screaming into the night.
Silver didn't hesitate.
She let out a massive, focused scream. The sonic wave slammed into three more of Thorne's guards, lifting them off their feet and hurling them through the collapsing wall. Their cries cut off as they dropped toward the street far below.
"Everyone get to the ground floor, now!" Roman shouted over the gunfire. "Batman's probably already moving. Get out of here!"
Sal and the merged crew — traitors and Roman's original men alike — began retreating back toward the stairwell, firing as they did while the building groaned and shuddered around them as more structural damage spread.
Roman and Silver stayed.
The top floor was rapidly ceasing to exist. Entire walls were gone. The roof had partially collapsed. Cold harbor wind whipped through the exposed space, carrying the smell of gunpowder and concrete dust.
Only Thorne and three of his personal bodyguards remained.
Thorne had taken multiple rounds — chest, shoulder, side — but he was still fighting his quirk, "Last Breath" had fully activated. His veins stood out dark against his skin, his eyes were bloodshot, and his body refused to acknowledge the damage the old man's pride and sheer will kept him upright, turning lethal wounds into little more than inconveniences for as long as his body could
But he was an old man now and he wouldn't last much longer like he used to be able to..
He roared and charged forward, firing wildly, his movements far faster and stronger than a seventy-one-year-old man had any right to be.
Roman dropped through a hole in the floor a split second before a shot would have taken his head. He landed on the level below, rolled, and immediately started making his way back up via the stairwell.
When he was nearly back to the top floor was almost completely open to the sky; the walls and roof were completely gone.
Silver stood with her rifle leveled. Two of Thorne's remaining bodyguards were still fighting desperately.
She let out another massive scream.
The sonic wave caught both men and hurled them off the edge. Their bodies tumbled into the darkness below.
Only Thorne remained.
Roman finally emerged to find Silver standing with her rifle leveled, and Thorne hanging from the edge of the building by one hand, his grip on a steel rebar that jutted from the damaged concrete. Below him was a long way down.
Roman's phone was ringing across the room, sitting under Thorne's desk where it must have fallen during the fight.
Thorne looked up at them, his face showing blood from half a dozen wounds, his breathing labored, but his eyes carrying the same offended dignity they'd had since the beginning.
"Tell your boss," Thorne said, "that Rupert Thorne does not serve anyone but himself."
Thorne let go.
Roman watched the fall for a moment, then walked to the desk and picked up the phone.
"Yes."
"Thorne its Overhaul." The voice was clearly foreign "You wanted to hear about my new bullet project?"
Roman looked out at the Gotham skyline.
"Thorne's gone," he said, "but I know someone better, write down this number."
He recited Crane's secure line from memory, then hung up without waiting for a response.
Ground Floor - 11:58 PM
Silver had stopped in front of the television, where Grundy and three of Roman's men had apparently been watching the news while waiting.
The footage showed a rooftop chase across what looked like Crime Alley, two figures in motion, one in the familiar black and blue of Nightwing, the other in a red helmet and leather jacket moving with the kind of controlled violence that broadcast its own competence.
"GCPD sources confirm Batman and Nightwing are currently pursuing the vigilante known as Red Hood following a confrontation in the Narrows, where Red Hood eliminated seventeen members of a street gang with confirmed ties to the Joker. The pursuit has moved into—"
"That's why no Batman," Silver said.
"Lucky timing," Roman agreed.
"Or good planning," she said, glancing at him. "Think Crane knew?"
"Who knows?"
Crane's Wings Underground Facility - Same Time
The room was one of the newer additions to the underground network over the past three months, still empty without a purpose yet
Suguro stood in the center of it alone.
His hands were extended, palms up, and he was doing something from the outside, looked like nothing at all, internally it was considerably more complicated.
The yellow energy manifested briefly, a flicker across his fingertips, less than a candle flame. It held for approximately two seconds before dissolving into nothing.
He reset.
Then tried again
He'd accessed it twice now, both times under genuine emotional duress, Sparks electricity coming at him with lethal intent, Ivy falling from the roof. The fear in both cases had been real and immediate and the energy had responded to that reality with power he still hadn't fully understood.
He tried again.
A slightly larger flicker. Three seconds this time. Still nothing that would stop a bullet or create an attack.
"You have a call from Japan," one of Jaina's duplicates said from the doorway.
Suguro lowered his hands. "Garaki?"
"No" She paused. "This one said he was told to talk to you though."
Suguro looked at her.
"The caller identified himself as Overhaul. He said someone gave him this number and told him he was better than Thorne since he's now dead"
Suguro was quiet for a moment.
Roman, he thought. Moving faster than expected.
The two left and entered another room and Jaina put the caller on screen.
"I was expecting to speak with Rupert Thorne earlier," the voice said.
A brief pause.
"Overhaul from Shie Hassaikai, out of Japan. I had an arrangement with Thorne regarding specialized ammunition. Bullets with specific properties relevant to Quirk suppression and we are planning to make Quirk deletion ammunition soon aswell"
Suguro's attention sharpened.
"Tell me more about these bullets," Suguro said.
"That depends," Overhaul said, "on what you're offering in exchange. Thorne was providing certain distribution channels I needed in America. If you've inherited his organization, presumably you've inherited his infrastructure as well."
"I already had considerably more than Thorne ever had taking what he had is part of something greater," Suguro said.
"Forgive me for not trusting you right away, if you want to continue mine and his arrangement your going to need to meet me in person"
"In Japan"
Suguro looked at Jaina, who was already making notes on her tablet, her expression showing the particular focused interest she reserved for things with significant operational implications.
"That can be arranged," Suguro said
When it ended, Suguro stood in the training room for a moment considering the new variable that had just entered the equation.
One part of Japan had gone quiet, but another part of Japan had just opened up.
A pause on his plans could be made for an asset that could change everything, if this man was being truthful he needed to be the first to get it.