AVATAR OF DEATH

She thinks of all the people that are about to die because of her and feels nothing. In the grand scheme of things their lives mean nothing to her.

She smiles, "Let the chaos being,"

Man can walk upon the moon. He can build fine cities—Explore the Ocean depth—And make the Deserts bloom. But when the great Rock plates grind together, and the very Earth itself moves—All man can do is suffer.

At Wayne Manor, Bruce walks over to the entrance to the Bat cave. He walks by Alfred who's carrying cleaning supplies.

"Time to go, Alfred," He tells him as opens the Grandfather clock.

"Very good, sir. And while you clean up crime in Gotham City—I'll clean up the family silver,"

Bruce smiles and walks down the stairs. Once he's in his suit he walks over to the Bat computer and calls Barbara Gordon aka Oracle.

"Oracle, any luck with your computer searching for Angerona Wilson?"

"Negative, Batman," Barbara tells him, "All I could find is a hospital record which states that she died from a cancerous Brain tumor. Why the sudden interest in a dead girl?"

"Because the description Penguin gave me for Hël matches her," Batman tells her, "She and her mother have always been good at covering their tracks, keep searching,"

Barbara nods, "I'll put phone taps on some of the Falcone's old henchmen and see if--,"

"That's the structural alarm—The seismic sensors!" He exclaims before...

!RUMBLE!

A roar like a turbine from hell fills his ears. The stone floor of the Bat-cave lurches beneath his feet sending him to the ground, as thousands of tons of solid rock are violently shaken.

The computers automatically retract into their protective recesses. Kevlar canopies seal them in.

Typically, his first thought is for the safety of others.

"Alfred! Damian!" He exclaims as he runs for the exit but he is forced to jump back as the giant penny rolls over. It destroys Jason's Robin suit memorial on its way.

If the cave is so badly affected... What about the house above? Batman thinks to himself.

"Batman? Batman?" Barbara calls out as the call cuts out. She tries calling again, "All the lines to the cave are down, but how?"

Suddenly the building starts to shake violently.

"What's happening?" She asks herself before she's launched out of her wheelchair causing her to hit her head on the table knocking her out.

"♪How we danced, on the night♪" Alfred sings as he sets the dining table. He looks up and sees Damian walking towards him, "Master Damian, if you are—" He stops as he feels something.

The house starts to shake as the floor starts to crack, "Oh, my giddy aunt!"

"Alfred!" Damian shouts as he runs towards him but the floor gives away taking them both with it.

Wayne Manor is only a mile from the epi-center of the quake. Its beams and bricks groan and buckle under the intolerable stress created by the heavy rock beneath it and it topples into the abyss below.

Stalagmites that took millennia to form crack like glass, plunging into the cave below like a rain of destruction.

'The exit tunnel is still intact, barely. Perhaps I can drive out' Batman thinks as runs to the Batmobile. He looks up just in time to see boulders falling and jumps away as they crush the Batmobile. 'There's only one way out now. The passage that leads to the Drake house next door'

But even that is denied him. An underground stream has been diverted by the shifting rock. It bursts over him with the force of a tsunami. He tries to swim but a rock hits him in the back of the head knocking him out and the current carries him to his fate.

(Three minutes earlier)

His love of cigars has brought G.C.P.D.s, Sergeant Harvey Bullock to a Midtown Mall.

"It's my lucky day friend! I just won fifty bucks on the city lottery." He picks a Double Corona Cigar and sniffs it, "Figured I'd stand myself an upgrade on my usual stogie's, mind if I light up and try it?"

"Sorry, city ordinance," The shop owner tells him as he points to a no-smoking sign.

"No smokin' in a smokin' shop?  Sheesh," Bullock says before seeing someone from the corner of his eye, "But my luck's still in! If that creep ain't Billy Wildman,  wanted for murder, I'll eat my hat,"

"Bag up five of the Double Coronas, I'll be right back," He says as he takes out his gun and walks out.

Perched high on a Gargoyle, the teenage vigilante Anarky mutters beneath his mask, "My information was good! That is Wildman's crew, all right," He sees Bullock going up to them with his gun drawn.

"Wildman has nothing to lose! He won't think twice about taking on a cop!" Anarky says before he swings down.

Back in the mall, Wildman goes for his gun but before he can take it out the ground starts to shake.

"AAGH!" Someone screams as glass rains down on them.

"The dome!" Bullock exclaims before taking cover under the fountain. Wildman and his crew were not so lucky.

"My line!" Anarky shouts. The Gargoyle he anchored his line on has broke causing him to free fall, "I'm sushi! Unless..." He says to himself as he goes through the broken Dome of the mall. He looks around and luckily spots a flag post he could use to slow his momentum.

The Quake has taken mere seconds to reach Gotham's midtown.

Built on bedrock topped with shale, a potent amplifier for seismic waves as undulate up and down, from side to side. The entire district is torn apart as if it were cardboard. Its people swatted as if they were flies.

"I need cover," Anarky and Bullock say before taking cover in the same place. They see each other and Bullock aims his gun at Anarky.

"This may not be a great time to say it, kid. But you're under arrest," Bullock tells him before they feel the ground stop shaking.

"Sounds like it's all over," Bullock says as they get out of their hiding place and look around. They see the mall is absolutely destroyed with rubble everywhere and electrical wires dangling around still spark with electricity.

Bullock sniffs something in the air and his eyes go wide, "Oh no, there's gas escaping!"

Then theirs an explosion behind them. The shock wave throws them out of the destroyed mall.

"I don't believe it..." Anarky says in shock as he gets up and looks around. He hears the click of a gun behind him and turns around to see Bullock.

"You're still an escaped criminal, kid. I have to take you in," Bullock tells him.

"How? Going to call a cab?" Anarky says.

"Help!" "Help us!" They hear people calling from one of the buildings.

"People need me. I must go to them," Anarky tells him before walking away. "Shot me if you must,"

"Yeah? Gimme a break," Bullock says as puts away his gun. "Wait for me, Ya brat,"

"Uhnn," Barbara groans as she comes to and gets back in her wheelchair.

Since she was crippled by the Joker. Oracle's eyes and ears on the world have been electronic. Now all her systems are down. The phone lines are dead. There is no power.

"Oh my God," Barbara says as she looks out of the window to see Gotham in ruins.

Her building is owned by Bruce Wayne. She remembers suddenly how he was mocked all those years back. When he fortified all his properties against earthquakes.

"After all," They said, "It can't happen here,"

She wonders, where is Bruce Wayne now? Where is the Batman? And her father?

Fortunately, her wheelchair's power pack is freshly charged and all Wayne-owned buildings are fitted with ramps.

She exited onto the streets. A weight like lead in her heart. She feels so numb. She can hardly take in what she's seeing.

The city she's known since a child. The view she thought would never change. Are all gone, in the twinkle of an eye and a shrugging of the earth.

Something strong like an anchor has been snapped in her life.

"Marjory! Marjory!" A man yells desperately as he lifts rocks off of a crushed car, Blood flowing from under it like a river.

"Can... Can I help you?" Barbara asks but he doesn't hear her.

"I'm coming, Marjory!"

It's obvious no one in that car could have survived. She doesn't try to tell him.

"I'll get you out!"

He wouldn't hear her anyway.

Police H.Q. looked as if it's been bombed. If Jim Gordon had been inside--. She pushes the thought away. Time enough to think later. For now, she has to act.

A single cop sits crying, his entire world exploded by a trauma he never suspected could happen in Gotham.

"Officer," She calls out but gets no response. "Officer!"

"Gone—it's all gone! All of it—gone," He mumbles.

Barbara Gordon has known much adversity in her brief life.

"Snap out of it, man! There are other survivors. You're needed now like never before,"

She longer since learned that, to survive, you have to fight back.

"Here's what we're going to do--,"

The tortured roar of rock grinding on rock is over. A deathly silence hangs over the remains of Wayne Manor.

The house which has stood for more than a hundred years is virtually unrecognizable. Things will never be the same again.

In the Batcave, the work of a lifetime is in shards. The only sound is the faint rasp of an old man and a young boy's labored breathing.

Less than a hundred yards away, the world's greatest detective hangs precariously over the yawning chasm that has been ripped in the cave floor mere seconds away from doom.