INTERLUDE

Taylor sat cross-legged in her rented apartment, the dim light from a single lamp casting deep shadows across the walls. The space was sparse—barely enough room to spread her legs between her bed and couch—but it was enough. The room smelled faintly of coffee and ink, the byproducts of hours spent staring at the wall where she had pinned maps, blurry surveillance photos, and hastily scribbled notes. She’d spent the past two days trying to make sense of what she and Robin had uncovered at the warehouse, and now, at last, the pieces were starting to fall into place.

Black Mask and Penguin were pawns. Dangerous pawns, yes, but pawns nonetheless. The real mastermind behind the influx of high-tech weaponry was someone far more insidious.

Ra’s al Ghul.

She closed her eyes with a frown, tapping her pen against her notebook. The name had come up in whispers, buried in fragments of intercepted communications and encrypted files Robin had managed to decrypt. A name that carried weight, even in a city as jaded as Gotham. Taylor leaned back, her fingers drumming against her inner thighs. She didn’t know much about Ra’s al Ghul—most of what she’d uncovered read like mythology. An immortal leader of a shadowy organization. The Demon’s Head. A man with a vision for global balance, no matter the cost.

Her first thought was that it couldn’t be real. But she realised though it was as much myth as fact, the breadcrumbs led nowhere else. From the markings on the crates to the advanced weaponry distributed across Gotham’s underworld, everything formed a web, with Ra’s at its centre.

Gotham had a way of making the impossible seem plausible, and the sheer scale of the operation she’d uncovered was too calculated, too precise, to belong to anyone else.

. . . . .

Taylor spent the next day combing through her network of contacts in the Narrows, gathering scraps of information wherever she could. The rumors were contradictory—Ra’s al Ghul was dead, Ra’s al Ghul was everywhere, Ra’s al Ghul was just a story. But the one thing that everyone agreed on was the League of Assassins.

Not directly, of course. People like these didn’t leave breadcrumbs unless they wanted to. But the symbol of the League of Assassins had been unmistakable, almost hidden at the bottom of a shipping manifest she’d pulled from the warehouse—a coiled serpent encircling a burning tree.

Their name came up too often to be a coincidence. From the docks where the weapons arrived to the warehouses where they were distributed, the League’s influence lingered in the shadows. They weren’t just arming Gotham’s gangs; they were orchestrating chaos, feeding the gang war like fuel to a fire.

The why, though—that was the part Taylor couldn’t fully grasp.

It wasn’t until she stumbled upon a transcript of a meeting between Black Mask and a League operative that the truth began to emerge. The operative’s words were chilling in their indifference:

“Gotham’s disease is not its crime but its stagnation. To break the city, we must let it destroy itself. Then, and only then, can it be rebuilt.”

Taylor’s stomach churned as she read the words over and over again. This wasn’t about money, power, or control—it was about ideology. Ra’s al Ghul wasn’t destabilizing Gotham for profit; he was doing it because he believed it was necessary. To him, Gotham was a blight, a festering wound on the world that needed to be excised for the sake of balance.

She’d always believed in the necessity of balance, in her own way. Back in Brockton Bay, she’d tried to fix a broken system, to make things right in a world that seemed to resist order at every turn. But this… this was something else.

Something almost… demonic.

The weapons were just the beginning. If he succeeded, the city wouldn’t survive.

That night, Taylor returned to the rooftops, stopping at the edge of one and sweeping her gaze over the chaos below. Fires burned in the distance, the gang war raging on without pause. People were dying, families were being torn apart, and the city’s fragile infrastructure was already beginning to buckle under the strain.

Taylor clenched her fists, the weight of the revelation pressing down on her. She had been fighting to make a difference, to protect the people who couldn’t protect themselves. But how could she fight someone like Ra’s al Ghul? Someone who wasn’t just using Gotham but actively trying to destroy it?

Her swarm stirred around her, responding to her agitation. It wasn’t enough—not yet—but she could feel it growing stronger, more controlled. She would need every ounce of strength she had to face what was coming.

. . . . .

As the city burned, Taylor made a decision. She couldn’t stop Ra’s al Ghul on her own, but she didn't need to. For now though, she could expose him, pull back the curtain on his plans and force Gotham’s heroes—and its villains—to see the real enemy.

She would start with the League of Assassins, tracking their movements and disrupting their operations wherever she could. It was a dangerous plan, but she didn’t have a choice. If she failed, Gotham would fall.

Taylor pulled up her hood and disappeared into the throng. Gotham didn’t need another vigilante, or a hero that operated in the dark. it needed someone who could see the web of shadows for what it really was.

She wasn’t sure if she could win, but she knew one thing: she wouldn’t let Ra’s al Ghul have the city without a fight.