White Knight-Batman SI (Patreon)

Chapter 33

THOMAS WAYNE

The news in Gotham was all reporting on the same thing.

~Brother’s Feud turns bloody!~

~Thomas Wayne, and his Villain Fiancee! ~

~The Fight to control Wayne Enterprises! Gov. Steps in!~

~Thalia Ducard! Who is Bruce Wayne’s estranged wife~

There were a hundred different forms of the argument, yet all of them boiled down to the same thing. That somehow, in the fight for the Wayne fortune, he had killed Bruce and was now on the run.

Thomas himself was in his bunker, watching the city unravel as doubt crept into people’s hearts and the city prepared to tear itself apart. This was carnage.

“I did not know Mr. Bruce ever had a wife,” Lucius added from behind as they bunkered down in a secretive underground facility.

“No,” he replied. When news of government interference emerged, and he had not received any signal from Bruce’s tracker, he realized that something might be wrong. He had ordered the man to either relocate or dispose of all their secretive inventory as a precaution.

An action he was quite thankful for, given how everything had turned out.

“Neither did I,” he said as he watched the live feed of Thalia Al Ghul addressing the press and telling them how she was Bruce’s estranged wife and had been called back by him because he felt that his life was in danger.

“But what will we do now? The Police suspect us for murdering your brother, and without him, there is no Batman to solve this whole mess,” Lucius pointed out, and Thomas nodded.

“The league was not alone in this,” he replied, referring to the feeds from various Gotham prisons. The video showed several individuals wearing joker masks helping the inmates escape.

Thomas sighed as he plopped back into the seat.

“The league has made it so that I cannot act as Thomas Wayne, and with both Selina and Bruce captured, I have to be very cautious in how I act,” he said. Even now, he was using their recently launched satellites to look for both of them, monitoring every digital signal in the air.

“Though I understand the necessity of it all, I still find it highly inappropriate,” Lucius said as he looked over the massive screens, and Thomas sighed. He could sympathize with that sentiment.

“Truthfully, I do not like using it as well. But we are living in interesting times, and I refuse to hamper myself for my loss would mean my enemy’s victory, a victory that would result in the loss of thousands of lives,” he said as the computer pinged.

“Found them!” Thomas smiled at the first good news of the day.

“Selina is in the city, though Bruce is in a plane moving out of the country,” Lucius pointed out towards the moving dot.

Then he saw all the news networks shift and a video began to play.

~Hello, Everyone! ~  and it was the Joker. The camera shook violently as the Joker smiled into the camera.

~I Hope you haven’t missed me~ he said as he kissed the screen, smearing its edges with his red lipstick.

“Try to angulate the location of the feed,” he said, and Lucius nodded as they tried to find the location of the transmission.

~Today, I have a special guest for you. She was delivered to me by some very special friends! She is feeling a bit down, so I would like for all of you to give a warm welcome to~ and Thomas felt a chill run through him as the camera shifted and showed a face much familiar to him.

“Selina!” he gasped out as the location of the feed matched with the earlier location of Selina.

Lucius was worried as well and Thomas saw him glance towards him.

~Tadaa! I am pleased to present to you Thomas Wayne’s partner in crime, the daughter of Carmine Falcone, Selinaaaaa~ And Joker laughed and Thomas’s fists balled up as he saw the bruises on her face.

~Of course, there were little complications in this, and our friend was not wholly cooperative, but in the end, my jokes did the trick, and we became quite close friends~ and then he turned towards her placing his face by hers as he put the camera infront of them.

~ Didn't we?” he smiled, and he could see Selina nod.

~We did~ she remarked.

~And in the course of our friendship, she shared an itsy bitsy secret with lil’ old me~ Joker began, and Thomas’s eyes narrowed.

~Now tell us all, why did Thomas Wayne kill his brother~ he asked, and he saw Seline shift nervously.

~Tell us. Tell us.~ Joker sing songed creepily before suddenly his face shifted.

~TELL ME!~ he suddenly screamed, and he saw Selina’s gaze shift off the camera for a few seconds continuously, her eyes narrowing slightly before she looked into the camera and gulped.

~Thomas Wayne killed his brother...~ and she stopped again, her gaze shifting off camera once more.

~Because Batman was a thorn in his plans to control Gotham...~ she again, and for the third time, her gaze shifted to the side.

~And why was that?~

~Because Thomas Wayne is Batman~

And the silence in the bunker was deafening.

~And so here we have it, Wayne’s little secret. Bruce Wayne, the billionaire playboy, was the masked hero protecting this city~

~Thomas Wayne has robbed us of this hero. He is a villain masquerading as a messiah. And he should be brought to justice!~ he raged, and Thomas stilled as he saw a timer appear on the video.

~The city is already in his control. And so I must carry this burden by myself ~ and then he stared into the camera.

~Surrender yourself within an hour to the people of Gotham. Otherwise...~ he pointed the gun towards Selina and made a mock shooting gesture.

~Hahahahaaahaha...I will be waiting~

And then the feed cut off, leaving only a timer behind.

The silence in the bunker was chilling, much like his own rage, as he stared at the screen.

“What will you do, Thomas?” Lucius questioned, and Thomas looked at the screen once more; Bruce’s location was more than an hour away. If he were to try and rescue him, he would have to give up on Selina.

“I need to make a call,” he said and moved to the back of the bunker as he took out his special cell and dialed a number.

“What can I do for you, Thomas?” came the voice of his lawyer.

“You told me you were contacted by a Diana Prince rather recently. Is there any chance she left you a way of contacting her?” he questioned.

“Yes, she left a number,” came the answer.

“Good, send it to me.”

And with that, the call ended as he dialed the number he received, and after two bells, the ringing stopped.

“I need your help.” He got straight to the point.

“How can I help you, Mr. Wayne?” came the answer from the other side.

“I need you to crash a plane.”

There was silence on the other side for quite sometime before the answer came.

“Send me the coordinates. I will see what I can do.”

With that, the line went off, and Thomas sent Bruce’s location to the number, as Lucius added from behind.

“Who was that?” he questioned.

“A friend in the making,” he replied.

“I believe you were talking about your brother’s place. But that still leaves Miss Kyle and this whole secret of Batman’s identity,” Lucius added, and Thomas nodded.

“It does indeed, but you are missing something very important, Lucius,” Thomas added as he pressed a button on his phone, and a suit emerged out of the ground, this one much different than his white knight armor. Much darker in color and very similar to the armor of the masked vigilante that roamed Gotham’s streets.

“Anyone can wear a suit,” he said as he turned towards the suit.

“The Joker wanted a show. I will give him one.”

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Rachel Dawes sat in her room watching the news, her heart sinking with every second as both Thomas and Bruce’s phones remained turned off. She did not believe the news, but there was something wrong, something massively wrong.

And it was time that she got some answer, and so as she was about to leave her little abode with a trench coat in hand a car, a very familiar car stopped infront of her door, and a very familiar face stepped out of it.

“Alfred,” she spoke in surprise and in worry as the old butler opened the car door.

“What are you doing here?” she questioned, and the butler’s expression was somber.

“I am here for you, Miss Dawes,” he said.

“But where is Bruce and Thomas? What’s going on?” she questioned in a flurry as the old butler.

“You will soon have all the answers, but first, you need to come with me,” had it been anyone else, she would not have entered the car, yet this was Alfred. So, reluctantly she did and surprisingly the car was not empty as another person was already inside.

His face was angulated, and he had an obscure contraption attached to his eye that gleamed an ominous red.

“Who are you?” she questioned cautiously.

“I am the one who’s been keeping an eye on you and the old man for Mr Wayne.”

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