Andals Island — Abandoned Commercial District — Afternoon
The Falcone column moved through streets that had been empty for years.
Two hundred men across fourteen vehicles, a mix of armored trucks and reinforced cars advanced through the decaying commercial district of Andals Island. The micro-island had been economically dead for decades. Its bridges were crumbling making this route risky, its buildings stood like hollow monuments, windows mostly intact but everything behind them long abandoned. This route was supposed to be low-risk, a quiet flanking maneuver to get around a large Maroni held island and strike from the rear.
The lead scouts felt the temperature drop as they made their way across the island.
It was sudden and unnatural, like stepping into the open door of a massive industrial freezer. One of the scouts turned to the other, mouth opening to speak —
Ryan Eksston AKA Captain Cold as the media dubbed him though he disliked the name stepped out from the shadow of a nearby building.
Two beams of intense cryo energy struck the scouts, the moisture in the air around them and inside their bodies flash-froze instantly. They became statues mid-motion, expressions frozen halfway between surprise and alarm, bodies turned to solid ice in less than a second.
Cold raised his radio.
"Company," he said simply.
Inside the abandoned lab at the center of the district, Victor Fries stood in front of Nora's preservation tank. The room was kept at sub-zero temperatures, the air so cold that normal people would struggle to breathe comfortably. Victor spoke to the tank as he often did, even though the thick glass and Nora's condition made it impossible for her to hear him.
"Soon we will—"
A hand touched his shoulder.
Rhea stood beside him, already pulling on her reinforced coat.
"Falcones are outside," she said quietly.
Victor nodded and moved to his reinforced suit hanging in the corner, while outside, Cold was already working.
The Falcone column had reacted quickly once the scouts went down. Two hundred armed men with clear lines of sight opened fire. Bullets struck Cold's position, but he used his cryo Quirk to make cover quickly moving around the abandoned facility and lashing out at exposed targets. Frozen soldiers became obstacles, forcing the men behind them to maneuver around their own comrades' statues.
Rhea emerged from a side exit of the building.
She raised both arms and a massive wave of huge jagged ice formations burst fowrads at sharp angles, splitting the column and dividing them up and pinning several vehicles in place. Men caught directly by the ice were crushed or impaled while others scrambled away from the spreading frost.
She drew her gun and began picking off the soldiers Cold had already frozen one by one.
The full force of the Falcone column quickly adapted and the returning fire intensified while a man with a quirk that made his fingertips able to become blowtorches began melting the vehicle loose and a man with a speed quirk was weaving through the chaos bringing frozen men to the back of the line where they could be thawed. Cold and Rhea were forced to fall back toward the main building, as they were still heavily outnumbered.
Then they heard heavy footsteps as the main entrance of the building opened.
Victor Fries stepped out in his full suit and raised both hands. Twin beams of devastating cryo energy swept across the front of the column. Dozens of men froze solid where they stood, expressions locked in terror. The beams moved faster than most could react, turning entire lines of soldiers into ice sculptures.
The Falcone forces opened fire on him, but bullets became frozen and struck in their weapons and any that made it through to the suit ricocheted off the juggernaut. Victor brought his hands together and released a fine spray of ice pellets, thousands of tiny, razor-sharp projectiles no larger than an inch. They passed through standard body armor at this velocity leaving punctures and cuts but once inside their targets, Victor triggered the secondary effect.
The pellets expanded violently.
Eighty men screamed as huge balls of ice grew rapidly from inside their bodies, tearing them apart from within in grotesque explosions of blood and frozen tissue.
Victor raised his right hand. The moisture in the air above the remaining column was drawn downward and a localized blizzard erupted over the Falcone force. Visibility dropped to nothing and temperatures plunged far below what a normal human could survive. Men stumbled blindly, eyes frozen shut and bodies shutting down.
Cold worked the flanks, freezing anyone who tried to escape the storm's edge. Rhea moved along the perimeter, using her own Quirk to manipulate the moisture of some men's skin of those who broke free, freezing it causing extreme hypothermia that made their bodies brittle and crumble apart like glass.
The last of the Falcone soldiers were impaled by ice formations and the last man alive realized they had crossed into Mr Freeze's hideout and tried to apologize before being frozen and crumbling into pieces.
The three of them looked at the devastated road. Cold and Rhea began using their Quirks to corral the frozen and dead bodies, shaping them into a massive ice bowl-like structure. With a coordinated effort, they launched the entire frozen mass in a single powerful throw. It sailed over the waterline and crashed into Gotham Harbor three hundred meters away.
Victor turned and walked back inside the building without a word.
Gotham Park — Afternoon
Rossi had entered Gotham Park with a hundred men.
Now he had thirty left.
A force made up of some of the Golden Dragons, the ruthless Hong Kong Triad operating under the Falcones had ambushed them with devastating effectiveness in the northern wooded section of the park. One of his remaining men finally spoke, voice tight with frustration.
"Where the hell is this backup you promised us!"
"Give it a minute," Rossi replied, keeping his tone steady.
A Golden Dragons vehicle came racing down the central park road toward their position, clearly intending to run them down or pin them in place.
Vines suddenly erupted from the pavement without warning. Thick, powerful green tendrils shot upward and wrapped around the car in seconds, crushing the frame and stopping it dead. The engine whined and died as the vines held the vehicle in a vice-like grip.
Poison Ivy rose gracefully from the ground, as if the park itself had summoned her. Her red hair shifted in the breeze as she looked at Rossi with calm authority.
"Follow me," she said simply, and began walking forward.
Rossi nodded to his men and they fell in behind her without hesitation, weapons ready.
The Golden Dragons came from three directions at once, they had the numerical tactical advantage moved to cut off Rossi's escape routes and prepare to finish what they had started earlier.
They had not accounted for Ivy.
A massive Venus flytrap burst violently from the central lawn. Its enormous jaws snapped shut on several Golden Dragons before they could even register what was happening. Screams were cut short as the plant began digesting its prey alive, its acidic enzymes already working.
One Golden Dragon who was eaten had a poison spitting Quirk unleashed a thick poison in the trap opening it and letting him escape. A second man with a Quirk that turned his arms into scythes could cut through steel charged forward and hacked at the stem with powerful, repeated strikes. Three solid hits found the weak point and the flytrap collapsed with a wet crackle.
Ivy looked at the two men who had killed her creation.
Her expression shifted from calm to pure, icy rage.
Vines exploded from every surface at once the ground and seized the man with the arm blades and the man with the poison breath. She slammed both of them into a massive cactus that had begun rapidly growing from the lawn. The cactus was enormous, covered in thick, razor-sharp spines the length of swords.
Ivy smashed the scythe-wielder's face and body repeatedly into the spikes with vicious, unrelenting force, then the poison user scraping his body along it and the sound was horrific.
Meanwhile, Rossi and his thirteen remaining men advanced while Ivy was occupied. They cut down Golden Dragons, reducing the enemy force to just twenty panicked survivors. The survivors broke and fled toward the park's eastern exits, running desperately into the narrow alleys beyond.
Rossi raised his weapon. His Ricochet Quirk activated and the shots bounced perfectly around the alley, striking every remaining Golden Dragon with lethal accuracy.
Rossi lowered his gun and looked at his thirteen surviving men. They were breathing hard, covered in dirt and blood, but alive.
He glanced up at the giant cactus where the scythe-wielder and poison users bodies were impaled, broken body hung motionless on its spikes.
"Let's get out of here," he said quietly.
Ivy was already moving in the opposite direction, disappearing back into the park's dense greenery without a word or a backward glance.
GCPD Central — Night
The main precinct had become a fortress surrounded by desperation.
A fifteen-block perimeter had been established using every available officer and militarized police unit the department still possessed. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were packed into the tiny safe zone, filling every hallway, office, apartment every available square foot of space. The air was thick with fear, exhaustion, and the growing panic that came from limited supplies and no clear end in sight. Children cried and adults argued over water and food while the chaos inside the precinct was only barely contained by exhausted officers doing their best to keep order.
Commissioner James Gordon had not slept in forty hours.
He stood in the center of the operations floor, surrounded by constant motion, officers running between stations, radios crackling with fragmented reports, maps being updated with red markers showing where the fighting continued to rage across the city. His eyes were bloodshot, his shirt wrinkled and stained with old coffee, his tie long discarded.
"Protect the civilians at all costs," he had ordered early on. It was the only directive that still made sense because they didn't have the manpower to bring the mob war under control. As much as it burned him to admit it, the best strategy right now was to let Falcone and Maroni bleed each other dry while the GCPD held the line for the people caught in the middle.
An officer approached with the latest update, his face grim.
"The last of our last 12 registered Pro Heroes are either out of contact, evacuated, or—" The officer hesitated. "Three confirmed KIA, sir, the rest are unaccounted for."
Gordon looked at the large wall map showing his city in flames.
"What about Batman?"
"We don't know sir, we assume he is doing what he can."
Gordon sat with that for a long moment, then moved on to more reports.
"What about Arkham Island?" he finally asked.
"The island is under control as of two hours ago. Dollhouse is back in containment, but firefly is the only one we know of that made it off the island. No Blackgate breaches either."
"Is Bane still locked down?"
"Still contained sir, we got lucky on that one."
Gordon exhaled slowly, rubbing his face with both hands.
"Then we take what we've got," he said quietly. "Keep the perimeter and feed whoever we can. The mobs are going to be at each other for at least another couple days just focusing on limiting casualties"
The officer nodded and returned to his station.
Gordon looked down at his coffee, now long cold.
He looked back at the map showing the city tearing itself apart.
The federal government had to have known this could happen. With all the funding cuts and hero withdrawals over the years… they had left Gotham vulnerable on purpose like they wanted this to happen. He was almost certain of it now, but he couldn't prove it.
But there was nothing he could do about that tonight.
Sylas Isle — Night
Sylas Isle was a small residential micro-island on the northern edge of Gotham with thirty-five thousand residents ane had survived the days of the war through pure geographic luck. Far removed from having any significant assets worth fighting over, the island had remained largely untouched. Its residents had spent the last two days in a state of anxious relief, watching distant columns of smoke rise over the main city and hoping the violence would stay far away.
That luck ended tonight.
A helicopter approached from the north at low altitude, running completely dark with no lights.
Inside the aircraft, William stood by the open side door, studying the island's layout below with the intense, clinical focus he reserved for proper field testing. Crane sat in the front passenger seat, silent, watching everything with quiet intensity.
The specimen waited patiently in the cargo area behind them.
"Now," William said.
The Nomu dropped from the helicopter.
From the air they watched the next ten minutes where their Nomu moved through the quiet streets and apartment buildings with terrifying efficiency. It tore through structures without hesitation, slaughtering anyone in its path. Entire floors were cleared in seconds and screams echoed up through the night as families who had believed they were safe were ripped from their homes. The creature's overwhelming strength, speed, and relentless aggression were on full display. William recorded every detail with clinical precision seeing what to improve for when they began to make their own.
When the ten minutes were complete, Jaina brought the helicopter down to the island's northern shore. The Nomu returned through the open door and It sat in its designated position and remained perfectly still, as if the massacre below had been nothing more than a routine exercise.
William reviewed his notes for a long moment.
"Impressive," he said quietly.
Crane looked down at the island as they lifted off again and banked south toward the harbor. Lights were beginning to flicker on in some of the surviving buildings as survivors tried to process the horror that had just descended on them without warning.
The war had found Sylas Isle but not in a way they expected.