After my exciting confrontation with the Arkham Knight, in which he revealed to me his secret identity {the details of which are hidden behind a "Read More" link in the previous post}, I returned to finally free Commissioner Gordon from his bonds. It seems he had actually managed to track Scarecrow to this abandoned shopping center before being used as bait for the Arkham Knight's trap, and we were fully prepared to ride the elevator up to the roof and finish this. Well, it turns out Jim wasn't prepared, at least not for the giant haymaker that leveled him, courtesy of a militia brute who came rushing out of the elevator as soon as the doors opened. After I cleared the room, we had a moving, spoiler-ridden conversation on the elevator ride up, where we did in fact find Scarecrow waiting for us. He was alone and not looking very prepared to face me one-on-one - could the unforeseen defeat of the Arkham Knight have actually ruined his plans and left him unprotected enough for a satisfying beatdown? But then, shockingly, Gordon turned his gun on me.
While I had certainly defeated the Arkham Knight, it was not he who set the trap, but Scarecrow himself! He had somehow gotten to the Commissioner and convinced him to lead me here for the purpose of some dramatic betrayal. But why? And also how could he have gotten Gordon to his side...? And then I saw the reason: Barbara Gordon, bound and gagged and wheeled out by armed militia soldiers in perfect cover formation. So Oracle was alive!? I have to tell you, even after I saw her pull that trigger, deep down I had a feeling it could have just been the fear toxin talking. But her being alive meant Scarecrow had leverage against Gordon. And when Crane threatened her life, Jim turned and shot me right in the chest. That's right, a perfect hit directly on the Bat-Symbol, where my armor is the strongest. I played my part and tumbled off the edge of the scaffolding.
I heard from my hidden vantage point that Scarecrow didn't plan on upholding his end of the deal, as he edged Barbara further and further towards the edge... and finally off! It's a good thing I was using detective mode to monitor everything going on upstairs, because it allowed me to perfectly time my dive off the building to catch Oracle mid-fall and use my cape to gently glide her to the ground. Well, hard enough to bruise a couple of ribs, but significantly more gently than if she had just free-fallen. Come to think of it, this was eerily similar to how I saved district attorney Rachel Dawes when the Joker threw her off a building in
The Dark Knight - but it worked so well then, why not once more? I guess Scarecrow saw my daring heroic feat, because he sent in a squadron of tanks to the bottom of the building to finish us off. And here I was with the Batmobile crushed to pieces at the bottom of a giant excavation ditch.
Here's where the limitations of the current generation of gaming consoles get in the way of telling the most interesting version of the story as I imagined it happening (granted, I was still pretty hepped up on fear toxin at the time). It's not that Lucius Fox wouldn't have had a spare Batmobile ready had I required it. But I also had access to a state of the art fighter jet, and quite frankly I was sick of dealing with these tanks on their own level. So I remotely called in the Batwing to lay down some suppressing fire and pick up Oracle and me. As we were on the way back to the GCPD, where I was going to set Barbara up on their computer systems, Scarecrow broadcast a chilling message stating that the precinct was already under attack by a drone army far surpassing any I had faced before! Maneuvering a plane through the steel canyons of the city while also targeting enemy drones and avoiding anti-aircraft fire was no easy task, but it was definitely more satisfying than getting back in that stupid Batmobile for another endless Battle Mode challenge. {Rumor has it that the developers were working on building a Batwing combat level in the same vein of
Star Fox 64, but didn't have time to complete it prior to the game's release.}
After depositing Oracle on the rooftop helipad at the GCPD, I received another chilling message: Scarecrow had used Commissioner Gordon's voice to activate the secret entrance to the quarantine cells at Panessa Studios and kidnapped Robin from where I had locked him up earlier. I guess that little voice that usually tells me stuff like, it's a bad idea to leave your crimefighting partner alone and vulnerable on a night like this, must have been drowned out by the insane Joker ramblings that permeated my psyche. Scarecrow threatened to kill my two greatest allies unless I agreed to surrender myself to him unconditionally and submit to whatever ordeal the villain had planned. I didn't see any other choice, so I traveled to the appointed place, removed my utility belt, and stepped into the back of the truck he had waiting. The journey there was riddled with fear toxin-induced nightmares, where the truck crashed in Crime Alley and I had to battle an infinite number of Jokers that wouldn't stop until I gave in and broke my one rule, snapping my arch enemy's neck in rage. But of course that was only a dream, and the real-life truck continued to its destination, which will be revealed in the "Read More" link...
That's right, the truck brought me to the old Arkham Asylum, the perfect call back to the perfect game that started it all. I was strapped to the same Hannibal Lecter-style restraints to which we had subjected Joker at the start of that game, and I was led to the Scarecrow's true lair, where he had Commissioner Gordon and Robin at gunpoint. The room also had a giant array of television screens, showing various local news channels, and a tripod-mounted camcorder, from which Scarecrow did his broadcasting throughout the night. It was also how he planned to broadcast my secret identity, after he convinced Gordon to remove my mask by putting a bullet between Tim Drake's ribs. At the touch of a button on the back of the cowl (it recognized Gordon's fingerprints, otherwise it would have delivered a painful shock) my mask mechanically loosened its grip on my skull, revealing to the whole world that Batman was actually Bruce Wayne!
Scarecrow seemed genuinely surprised, so I guess the Arkham Knight hadn't revealed my biggest secret - just the secrets of where to find Oracle and Robin. But it didn't matter, because Scarecrow had reached the last stage of his plan: injecting me with a quadruple-dose of fear toxin from his finger-mounted syringes and let Gotham watch as I succumbed to my greatest fear. Which, in this case, was becoming the Joker - using a combination of my resources and his homicidal mind to turn Gotham into a wasteland. I watched helplessly as the Jokermobile - a twisted (and
Twisted Metal-esque) parody of the Batmobile, but with live ammo instead of riot shells - killed dozens of henchmen, setting up the murder of my former supervillain adversaries via shotgun blast. Given that this fear was in imminent danger of coming true, what with the infected Joker blood running through my veins, at this point in the story, I actually felt afraid...
But just as I was about to give in to the inevitability of my failure to save Gotham, a crazy idea entered my toxin-addled brain. Recalling the words of Raiden at the beginning of the last
Mortal Kombat game ("He must win!"), I stopped fighting against the transformation, and allowed Joker to take control of my psyche. Then, just as I suspected, in the midst of the Joker's triumphant hallucination, the whole world went dark. You see, Batman had spent years honing his mental aptitude and metabolic processes to withstand the effects of Professor Crane's fear toxin, but the same was not true of the Joker. My former arch nemesis wandered through the depths of his own mind, illuminated only by the flashlight attachment on his ludicrously oversized shotgun, where he was forced to confront his greatest fear. Watching from the shadows, I saw him approach his own grave, left untended and overgrown, attend his own wake, empty save for a wailing Harley Quinn, and peruse newspaper headlines proclaiming Gotham's indifference to the Joker's criminal legacy. I began to understand that the Joker's greatest fear was of being forgotten, all his exploits lost to history. And understanding his weakness gave me the edge I needed to regain control of my mind palace and lock the Joker's mental influence away forever in a repressed memory vault deep within my mental version of Arkham Asylum.
Back in the real world, the green glint slowly dissipated from my eyes, and I was myself again, unmasked but unafraid. When Scarecrow saw that his toxin was having no effect on me, he tried to elicit fear in a more primal fashion, pulling out his gun and pressing it against my forehead. But before he could pull the trigger, the gun was knocked from his hand with an expertly-placed shot from a sniper rifle, fired by a red-helmeted figure hiding amongst the gargoyles near the ceiling, a crudely painted Bat Symbol on his chest where once was proudly displayed the Arkham Asylum insignia. That's right, the former Arkham Knight had put aside his supervillainy and become the Red Hood, a new powerful ally with a knack for showing up at just the right time. His next shot freed my arm from its restraints, allowing me to block Scarecrow as he aimed a syringe attack directly at my face. I used my superior strength to turn Crane's hand slowly back on himself and administer a quadruple dose of his own medicine right into his neck. I can only hazard a guess as to what he saw when the fear took hold, but I secretly hoped it was something having to do with me.
Part 11: Knightfall Protocol
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