"You feel okay?"
Are you seriously asking me that?
Ren stared at Drake, completely speechless.
A thousand complaints raced through his mind like bumper cars in a demolition derby—but in the end, he said nothing. He just… stared.
His gaze slowly dropped to the Glock in his lap.
Drake noticed and chuckled sheepishly. "I was gonna give you my gun, but then I remembered—Old Jack's got a sale going on today."
"A sale."
"Yeah. You got lucky," Drake said, like they were talking about bagels. "Turns out he had a barely-used Glock 17 left. Full 9mm mag, clean safety, extra clip included. Whole deal? Three hundred bucks."
"Wait. Wait, wait, sale? Glock 17? Are you telling me the bus driver is also a gun dealer?!"
Drake shrugged. "You're in Gotham. Half the city moonlights. Old Jack's got a solid reputation. Some of the Glocks come outta the precinct, though, so sometimes they're hot. But this one's clean. Jack wouldn't stiff me."
As he spoke, a few tatted-up men boarded the bus, sleeves rolled up to flaunt their ink and muscle. They barely gave Ren a glance.
Ren, meanwhile, found himself cradling the weapon like it was a cursed artifact. Drake helpfully stuffed a spare clip into his coat pocket.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ren noticed something… off.
The driver—Old Jack—was casually piloting the bus one-handed while having full-blown conversations with the people lining up beside him.
His other hand?
Tossing out pistols.
One after another, he took cash, handed out weapons, and somehow managed to drift the bus through an intersection while barely touching the wheel.
This man is doing gun deals mid-drift.
"Okay, okay—real question," Ren said suddenly, looking toward the nonexistent windshield, "why the hell doesn't this bus have any glass?!"
As if on cue, a group of leather-jacketed gangsters swaggered aboard through the front.
Drake didn't even look up. "It did. But after the fifteenth time it got shattered, the owner stopped replacing it."
"Fifteen times?!"
"Well, yeah. It's the East End route. There's always a little… friction."
Ren's expression froze.
"Hold on—we live in the East End?"
A small group of women climbed aboard, laughing loudly in lipstick and fishnets.
Ren wasn't a Gotham history nerd. He wasn't one of those Batman fanatics who could list every Robin's blood type or recite the Arkham inmate roster from memory. But even he knew the East End.
Being famous was hard.
But infamy?
The East End was Gotham's most infamous district—and that was saying something.
Gotham already held the title of "most crime-ridden city in America." It was the armpit of society's nightmares, a place so plagued with corruption, violence, and madness that even hell might look at it sideways.
And within Gotham, the East End was the darkest corner of that hellhole.
It was ground zero for poverty, drugs, weapons trafficking, prostitution, and organized crime. You couldn't throw a rock without hitting a junkie, a dealer, a gang enforcer, or a freelance killer. And if you walked through Crime Alley—yeah, it had a name—you might just trace the same path where Thomas and Martha Wayne had been shot dead all those years ago.
If you didn't know who they were? Just remember—the Waynes were one of Gotham's founding families.
"Where'd you think I was living?" Drake smirked. "Diamond District?"
Ren didn't answer. He just watched a few twitchy junkies stumble past him, barely staying upright as they collapsed into the back seats.
The mood in the bus was… combustible.
A sealed tin can of flammable personalities. A few sparks away from becoming a murder mixtape on wheels.
He glanced around. "This is a goddamn powder keg…"
SCREECH—BANG!
The bus jerked violently as Old Jack slammed on the brakes.
Everyone on board went flying.
And then—CRASH!
The bus smashed into the side of another bus.
Bodies hit the floor. Heads smacked windows—well, where windows should've been. Half the passengers ended up sprawled across the aisles like a pile of broken mannequins.
"HEY! YOU FREAKING SON OF A—"
Old Jack was already screaming out the front window.
Ren, dazed and upside-down, watched as a second bus driver—an older Black man—leaned out his own busted windshield to return fire.
Verbally, not literally.
Yet.
What followed was not an argument.
It was performance art.
An unholy combination of profanity, freestyle battle, and violent threats shouted with the intensity of a rap battle and the cadence of two chainsaws fighting over territory.
They weren't just yelling. They were dueling.
Every curse word had weight. Every insult was a combo attack. Ren swore one of them rhymed something with "fire hydrant."
And yet—no traffic jam.
The other cars on the street?
They just swerved around them.
Reverse lanes. Sidewalk detours. Gotham drivers didn't blink. They just kept going.
It was clear—people here had long since mastered two critical survival traits:
1. Advanced driving skills.
2. Zero emotional investment in anything not their business.
In Gotham, morality was optional. Momentum was mandatory.
"YOU STINKIN' CLOWN—!" Old Jack was foaming at the mouth now, spit catching in his beard. "I'll SHOW YOU how Gotham handles disrespect!"
Then he reached beneath his seat.
Ren's eyes widened. "Wait—wait—don't—"
CH-CHUNK.
Old Jack pulled out a shotgun.
BOOM!
Ren screamed. "OH MY GOD IT'S HAPPENING—!"
The bus rocked with the blast. Shells flew. Someone else on the bus started loading a revolver. Two gangsters ducked behind a seat. A woman cackled while adjusting her makeup.
Ren, shaking violently, clutched his Glock like it was a childhood teddy bear.
They'd only known each other for fifteen minutes, but in this moment?
They were family.
Drake gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "Don't worry. We'll hop off and hide for a bit. Once Jack's done shooting, he'll keep driving. You'll still make it to work on time."
Ren slowly turned his head. "I'm sorry, what? 'Once he's done shooting'?"