Elias stood atop a gargoyle on the precipice of the Diamond District, chewing on a protein bar he'd "borrowed" from a vending machine at Mach 1. The rain had stopped, leaving the city slick and reflective, a perfect canvas for neon lights and police sirens.
He checked his mental HUD.
Ring Energy: 12 (Recharging via caloric intake).
Objective: Secure funds. Test limits. Don't get shot.
He needed money. Real money, not just loose change from a sewer. But he wasn't a thief—at least, his moral compass was still pointing somewhat north. Robbing banks was out. Robbing robbers, however? That was just asset forfeiture.
"Okay," Elias muttered, wiping crumbs from his mouth. "If I were a criminal overlord in a city obsessed with themes, where would I be?"
He tapped the side of his head. He'd spent the last hour listening. His enhanced hearing was picking up keywords across the city buzz: Iceberg, Coin, Chemicals.
"Penguin. Two-Face. Joker."
Elias grinned, his green eyes flaring in the darkness. "Three bosses. One night. Let's see if I can S-Rank this."
Target 1: The Iceberg Lounge
The VIP backroom was thick with cigar smoke and the smell of expensive brandy. Oswald Cobblepot, the Penguin, sat behind his desk, counting stacks of unmarked bills while his goons stood guard.
"Double the shipment," Cobblepot croaked, tapping his umbrella on the floor. "And if the Bat interferes—"
Crash.
The skylight didn't just break; it exploded inward. But no debris hit the floor. Before the glass shards could land, a blue blur zipped around the room, catching every single piece in a whirlwind of motion.
The goons raised their tommy guns. "Freeze!"
Elias stood in the center of the room, holding a perfectly stacked pyramid of broken glass in his hands. He was wearing a cheap domino mask he'd found in a costume shop dumpster, and his hood was up.
"Technically," Elias quipped, "you guys are the ones frozen. You're moving in slow motion. It's painful to watch."
"Get him!" Penguin shrieked.
The room erupted in gunfire.
Elias didn't run. He curled.
He dropped to the floor and tucked his head. Blue energy surged, spinning him into a frictionless buzzsaw.
Spin Dash.
He launched. He didn't aim for the men; he aimed for their weapons. Clang-clang-clang-clang! He ricocheted off the walls like a pinball, the impact shattering the guns in the thugs' hands.
He uncurled in mid-air, delivering a rapid succession of kicks. He wasn't using Super strength, just momentum. A sneaker to the chest at 80mph was enough to knock the wind out of anyone.
In three seconds, twelve men were on the floor, groaning.
Elias landed on Penguin's desk, crouching low. He grabbed a duffel bag filled with cash.
"I'm taking this as a consulting fee," Elias said, creating a small sonic boom as he zipped the bag shut. "You really need to upgrade your security. It's laggy."
Penguin stared, monocle popping out. "Who are you?"
"Just a passing hedgehog," Elias said. "Well, metaphorically."
He tapped Penguin on the forehead. Thwack. The crime lord slumped over, unconscious.
Target 2: Gotham Docks, Warehouse 4B
Harvey Dent was in the middle of a coin flip.
"Heads, you live," Two-Face rasped, aiming a revolver at a terrified rival gang member. "Tails..."
The coin spun in the air, glinting silver.
It reached its apex. It started to fall.
It never hit the hand.
A gloved hand snatched the coin out of the air.
Two-Face blinked. He looked at his empty palm, then up at the figure perched on a crate of stolen RPGs.
"I hate RNG," Elias said, flipping the coin over his knuckles. "It's a lazy mechanic."
Two-Face snarled. "Kill the freak!"
There were thirty men in the warehouse. A mix of Two-Face's crew and the buyers. They all opened fire.
Elias sighed. "Homing Attack chain. Let's go."
He jumped. In mid-air, he locked onto the nearest thug. A green reticle appeared in his vision—the system assisting his targeting.
VWOOM.
He launched himself like a cannonball, slamming into the first thug. The impact bounced him upward. He locked onto the next. VWOOM.
He didn't touch the ground. He was a blue streak of geometry, bouncing from chest to helmet to shoulder, knocking men out with precise, non-lethal kinetic strikes. It was rhythm. It was music.
Combo x15... x20... x30.
The last man fell. Elias landed in a superhero pose, steam rising from his quills.
He looked at Two-Face, who was frantically reloading his revolver.
"You can't escape fate!" Dent screamed.
Elias walked forward. He moved so fast he appeared to teleport, stopping inches from Two-Face's nose.
"Fate is just code," Elias whispered.
He grabbed Two-Face by the lapels. "And I'm rewriting it."
Target 3: Ace Chemicals
This was the hard one.
The laughter echoed through the vat room before Elias even saw him. The Joker was standing on a catwalk, holding a detonator. Below him, his clown-masked henchmen were loading crates of Joker Venom onto a truck.
"A new player!" Joker cackled, spotting Elias on the railing. "And he's blue! How dreary. Why so sad, little boy?"
Elias felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. Joker wasn't like the others. His chaotic aura was messy, wrong. It felt like a glitch in the universe.
"Put the remote down," Elias warned, his voice vibrating.
"Or what?" Joker grinned, his scarred lips stretching wide. "You'll run fast? You can't outrun a blast radius, kiddo! This whole factory goes kablooey in three... two..."
He pressed the button.
Time slowed to a crawl.
Elias saw the electrical signal travel down the wire from the detonator. He saw the spark ignite in the C4 charges strapped to the support beams.
He wasn't fast enough to disarm twenty bombs. He wasn't Superman. He couldn't absorb the blast.
Chaos Control Interface Available.
Ring Energy: 45 (High Charge).
Required for Mass Teleport: 40.
It was a gamble. He'd be drained. But he had no choice.
Elias reached deep. He didn't pull on the golden Super power; he pulled on the emerald light of space manipulation. He grabbed a green Chaos Emerald in his mind's eye.
"CHAOS..."
The explosion began to bloom. Fire licked outward. The shockwave started to shred the metal.
Elias threw his hands wide, screaming the command.
"...CONTROL!"
The world inverted. Colors flipped. The sound of the explosion was sucked into a vacuum.
A green sphere of energy expanded from Elias, swallowing the Joker, the henchmen, the truck, and Elias himself.
The factory exploded a millisecond later, collapsing into a fiery ruin. But there was no one inside to die.
The Drop-Off
Commissioner Gordon was having a bad night. The Bat-Signal was lit, but Batman was busy stopping a breakout at Blackgate. Gordon stood by his car outside the gates of Arkham Asylum, finishing a cold coffee.
"Quiet night at the funny farm," his partner muttered.
Suddenly, the air pressure dropped. The wind howled, whipping Gordon's trench coat around his legs. A blinding flash of green light illuminated the gloomy gothic gates of the asylum.
ZAP.
Gordon shielded his eyes. When the light faded, he dropped his coffee cup.
"Mother of God," he whispered.
In the center of the driveway, there was a massive, tangled ball.
It was a net made of bent steel rebar—likely ripped from a construction site. Inside the net, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, were nearly sixty criminals.
Penguin was squawking at the bottom. Two-Face was unconscious near the top. And right at the peak of the pile, the Joker was gagged with a strip of duct tape, his eyes wide with genuine confusion.
Stuck to the Joker's forehead was a sticky note.
Gordon walked over, hand on his holster, and pulled the note off. The handwriting was messy, written in sharpie.
LEVEL CLEARED.
RANK: S
TIME: 14:02
- The Blue Blur
Gordon looked around. There was no one there. But high up on the asylum wall, a single blue spark faded into the night.
The Rooftop
Elias collapsed onto the gravel of a flat roof three miles away. He was spent. The Chaos Control had nearly zeroed him out.
Ring Energy: 3.
His stomach was eating itself again. He groaned, rolling onto his back. He had the duffel bag of Penguin's money under his head as a pillow.
"Okay," he panted, staring up at the Bat-Signal cutting through the clouds. "I cleared the board. I got the loot."
He closed his eyes, a tired smile playing on his lips.
"But I think I just poked the bear. The Bat is going to be looking for me now."
He patted the bag of cash.
"First, pizza. Then... I need to figure out how to unlock the Dark forms. Because if Joker is the baseline for crazy here, I'm going to need something nastier than just speed."