Bruce stood amidst the cast of strewn bodies, switching off his detective vision and taking note of the property damage the battle had created. Some smashed glass, bloodstains, and a few chipped floor tiles. All in all, not as much as usual thanks to the lack of bullet holes.
He turned around to face the only other conscious person in the lobby: the potential leader he had strung up earlier by his leg. He was still struggling, trying to shake himself free of the claw locked around his leg.
Batman approached him cautiously, observing how he shifted from trying to free himself to trying to reach for the vigilante.
Bruce caught his wrist and twisted it to the side. There was a cry of pain, magnified further when Batman walked around the dangling robber, spinning him in a painful circle. He let go of the man’s wrist, allowing him to spin back around the other way before he grabbed the upside-down robber by the throat.
“Who are you?” Batman threatened.
He didn’t respond, instead electing to punch at Batman’s stomach. His blows futilely bounced off of the armor, but that didn’t deter his efforts. Annoyingly, he only stopped when Bruce grabbed his other wrist and snapped the bone inside.
“I said, who are you?” he repeated.
Again, no response other than some forced straining and growling. Even with two dislocated wrists, he was trying to swing his arms to hit him.
“Fine.” Batman stepped back, then tossed a Batarang at the rope dangling him from the ceiling. He crashed head and neck first into the ground, putting him to sleep with the rest of his men. The police could interrogate him later.
“Alfred,” Batman called, raising his gauntlet and recalling the blades from one of the criminals’ hips with the push of a button. The magnets within each piece activated, causing the blades to shake themselves free and fly to their slots in the raised gauntlet.
“I assume all of the intruders have been dealt with,” came the reply. “Shall I call the police now?”
“Not yet,” Bruce said. He took a look at the skylight. Some of the glass was still there, but heavily cracked. With the assistance of two more Batarangs from his belt, the glass came free. “I can’t be sure of what was in the vault, and I can’t be sure of whether or not they managed to open it. One of them got a hand on it.”
“Sir…” Alfred said nervously. “You don’t think there was some type of contagion in the vault, do you?” His detective vision was capable of identifying some toxins in the air, but not with nearly enough accuracy to be trusted. Lucius was still working on making the cowl capable of detecting Scarecrow’s fear gas.
“No, but I’m not taking any chances.” He checked out the nearest windows leading out of the bank. They were farther away from the vault than the skylight, so they would not be of much help to him.
“Well, can’t you just… just,” Alfred sputtered. “I mean, why not just close the door and call for hazmat teams?”
“If I get close to it, I might catch it, and any toxin concentrated enough to be in the vault and not get filtered out by the air vents can be dispersed by the wind. I need it out of the bank.” There were a few men close to the vault that Bruce used the Batclaw to drag away. “If there is anything, of course.”
Alfred sighed audibly into the microphone. “Well, you know best sir.”
“Of course I do.” He turned around and searched for whatever object they had tried to use against him. “I’m going to investigate. We’ll call Gordon once I leave.”
“Of course,” Alfred said tiredly. “Please try not to contract any diseases.”
Bruce nodded, then recalled that he had shut the power to the bank’s cameras. “I’ll bring to you anything I find.”
He swept around the large desk in the lobby. Whatever that soccer-ball-shaped device had been, it might have gotten kicked around during the fight. Or one of them might have recovered it and hidden it somewhere while he was distracted.
He trailed off, noticing that crystal on the floor from where the flashlight had cracked open. Without any distractions, he could examine it more closely. It appeared to be a quartz diamond shaded blueish-white, more than a few imprinted rhombuses lining the inside. The gem did not cast a shine from the emergency lights, but it looked sharp enough to be able to give off a brilliant luster.
As he was about to go retrieve it, he finally found the object that they had attempted to hide from him. Next to the wooden wall of the desk, a potted plant stood perfectly on top of the tiles, never mind the few soil stains on the ground beside it. A split rock succulent, by the look of it.
A plant? Bruce looked back and forth between the plant and crystal. What had these men been planning?