Disclaimer: If you recognise it, surprise, I don't own it.
Chapter 38- The Target.
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"All right, Bullseye, you have led me here. Though I am not sure why you picked this place." If there was any doubt that I was in a comic world, this would probably serve as proof to convince me that I am. Like seriously, in what world but a comic-based one would someone have their epic showdown here? "There are police all around us. TV cameras focused on us. And the people-" I watch as Daredevil talks to Bullseye while looking around the surroundings.
"Are precisely the reason why I have come to this delightful arena, my friend," Bullseye replied, waving his arms around at the area. "I wished for an audience to see our fight. An audience to witness my victory. The police will not interfere since I have men stationed throughout the crowd-" Bullseye grins menacingly at Daredevil, and I find myself really wanting to break his teeth.
"-Ready to unleash a barrage of machine gun fire at the people should any law officer attempt to stop us. No, my friend, this fight will go unchecked!" I look into the crowd, and it is true that there are gunmen in it. Looking through, I manage to spot one, seeing the bulge of a gun hidden under his trench coat. Crap, all I want to do is go down and kick the shit out of Bullseye, but if there is any outside interference, I am willing to bet those gunmen will start to shoot.
"Just means this union-suited hero's got to end it that much sooner. You wanted a fight, Bullseye!" Daredevil suddenly lunges forward at Bullseye in the darkness of the stage, and it is only due to my cowl that I can see. But all I can think about is what the hell he meant by union-suited hero. Do heroes have a union? "You've got one!" Bullseye was ready for it and moved to meet him.
"The action begins at last... But, I am prepared." Bullseye scoops up a pile of rope on the floor and flings it forth with deadly accuracy. " I have prepared for this moment, worked towards its coming. And now, the exhilaration I knew I would feel is here!" The rope twirls through the air with a grace that is extraordinary, and then it wraps itself around Daredevil's neck. "Unggghhhh!!"
"You see, my friend, my plans are based on my infallible aim and my unique ability to turn anything into a most deadly weapon." Daredevil looks like he is seriously struggling down there. He should have dodged that with ease with his abilities, but now that I think about it, it is obvious why he didn't. He is at a disadvantage. There are too many hearts here and, so he can't really focus on Bullseye's movements, and he can't move fast enough when he does finally comprehend it.
"Observe how a rope, thrown ever so perfectly, can kill!" He says as Daredevil stands there and starts to pull on the ropes to stop its constriction around his neck. Taking the opportunity, Bullseye starts to address everyone. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages- turn on the spotlights!- And let the battle begin!!" He shouts, and the blinding lights come on, illuminating everything.
There is a gasp. The confused shouts of thousands, which I know surely assail Daredevil's super sensitive ears. For when the light blinks on, the crowd has suddenly discovered that instead of watching a Madison Square Garden three-ring show... they have come to be the startled witnesses to the bizarre circus of death which Bullseye has orchestrated for them.
It is only because I am high up, hidden in the darkness, that I have not yet been discovered. Still, there isn't much I can do here. At least, nothing obvious. I will have to act overtly. Also, this is being broadcast live on television, and I can't go and reveal myself for everyone to see. The Batman is a figure shrouded in mystery and fear, and so I can't just show up on TV. I mean, I could, but then I wouldn't be the Batman I want to be. Even if this is probably the last time I will be going out as Batman.
"Daredevil, I have brought you here to this circus so that we may stage our most ferocious fight to the finish," Bullseye says, picking up some bowling pins, or whatever the circus equivalent of those is, and starting to juggle them. "A fight, I might add, that only one of us will survive! And Bullseye must be the victor!" At this point, his juggling was so fast it looked like he was holding a big fuzzy circle up.
"If I lose, I die..." Daredevil removes the rope and chucks it aside, settling himself into a stance and readying himself for combat. "And if I win, his guards will open fire into the crowd watching us! No matter what happens, Bullseye will rule supreme!" He is right, even if he said it in a heroic monologue. Either Bullseye kills Daredevil, or Daredevil beats Bullseye, and then the men in the crowd get trigger-happy.
Therefore, as much as I want to be the one to break Bullseye's bones, I will have to focus on identifying and subduing the gunmen in the crowd and leave Bullseye's defeat to Daredevil. I just hope it is dragged out long enough for me to get them all. Otherwise, there will be civilian casualties.
"Now, my friend, we shall see which of us has the greater ability." Ah, I see. It was weirding me out how friendly Bullseye was being and how different he was from when he attacked me. But this makes sense. Bullseye coming after me was strictly business on behalf of Fisk, but this, now, is all self-motivated. He is doing this for himself. "Me, with my infallible aim, or you, with your uncanny acrobatics." He flings a pin forward and proves that he does indeed have infallible accuracy.
And Daredevil does indeed have uncanny acrobatic skill on account of his radar sense, which is the only reason he can dodge the bowling pins rocketing at him. And the only reason he can dodge them again after they collide with one another to change trajectories and head for him once more. An ordinary man could never hope to calculate such a thing in time, let alone be fast enough to actually dodge them. I, however, am not an ordinary man and can do both.
Still, Bullseye has Daredevil on the ropes, and all he can do is dodge as Bullseye keeps firing projectiles at him. Right now, I can see that Daredevil wants to lure Bullseye away from the crowd and bring him out somewhere open where Daredevil can move with greater ease and not worry about some innocent bystander getting caught in the fray.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
"Move man, Daredevil and I have taken over the circus." Case in point, one of the many circus performers below whom Bullseye just shoved to the floor. "Sit back and enjoy the show." Well, what else can they do? Nobody expected this turn of events, and so all of the circus people are on the stage floor, panicking and running about as Daredevil and Bullseye fight. Daredevil doesn't want that, and so he makes a break for it, Jumping on top of a cage and using it as a spring towards a pole.
"You wish to leave me already, Daredevil. A Shame I cannot allow that!" Bullseye cries as Daredevil leaps upwards, trying to climb his way out of the arena, but he can't as a whip wraps itself around his ankle. "My leg!" He shouts as he becomes off balance and falls, missing his target. He can only grab onto the bars of the cage he is falling beside, ending up holding himself upside down, but that isn't the end of it, and Bullseye pulls him down. I wince as Daredevil lands, and I can tell his arm has been wrenched. I turn away.
I need to focus on my job here and let them duke it out. Turning my gaze back to the crowd, who can only watch in stunned silence, I begin my search for the gunmen. Pressing my finger to the interface on my arm, I activate my detective vision. Thank you, Arkham Asylum, Arkham City and Arkham Knight. With this, I can see all around at everybody's skeletons and other stuff at various levels. And another thing was that weapons showed up in my vision as orange, along with other things of particular metal makeup.
The Tinkerer really came through when I told him what I wanted, and I had a good time taking it apart and figuring out how it worked. And so it comes as a great help as I look into this crowd of blue and spot numerous little dots of orange throughout the crowd. Those were pieces of metal, but it was easy to tell which of them were guns since they were much more prominent. Now, we are in America, so it was safe to say that some people in the crowd were not clued into this plan and just liked to carry guns around with them. I don't care about that.
Manoeuvring around in the darkness, I worked my way around to each and every person holding a gun. Once there, I flicked down a small round circle which attached to that person and then I moved on to the next. These were small devices that could deliver a hell of a shock and knock a guy out in less than a second. I was going to put this on every single person with a gun here, and once that was all done, I would activate and knock them all the hell out. Now, on to the next one while everyone still watches Daredevil fight Bullseye.
"This is hardly a sporting match, Daredevil. What will the publicity I have been seeking say about this?" Bullseye asks Daredevil's downed form, having managed to knock him down once again. "That I defeated a stumblebum? That I humbled an already proven loser?" He seems to be genuinely angry with Daredevil's performance, having expected more from him.
"No, that would hardly do for my image, my friend. Get up, and I will give you a second chance." Bullseye says, turning away from Daredevil and running towards a woman who was riding an elephant nearby. "Excuse me, my dear, but I have need of this beast." He lept up and pushed the woman off of the elephant and took her place riding it. I suppressed a wince as the woman impacted the ground, and I am sure she broke a couple of bones. That elephant was big, and she dropped quite a distance.
"Daredevil, my friend, you have but seconds to rise... moments to move," Bullseye called, pushing the elephant forward towards Daredevil, who was working himself up off of the floor. "Up, I say! Add some life into this contest of skill!" Even with the elephant coming straight at him, Daredevil struggles to move. He seems sluggish for some reason, and his reaction time is off.
He manages to react just in time, however, springing out of the way with just hairs to spare. He did multiple flips to get out of the way and gain some distance so he had time to do something. "Now you have done it, handsome. You have made me very angry, and when I get angry, I need to smash creeps like you into tiny little pieces!" Daredevil shouts, launching himself forward at Bullseyes, who jumps off of the elephant and makes a run for it.
"Hand-to-hand combat isn't my style, Daredevil." He says as he bounds away, Daredevil having to do a flip off of the elephant in pursuit. "Bullseye is the master of weaponry, and it will be through my weapons that you are defeated." He darts towards a cannon, and not just any cannon. The circus type of cannon that is meant for shooting people out of it. And as luck would have it, it was already loaded.
"Hey! What do you think you are doing!?" The man peeking his head out of the cannon shouts as Bullseye approaches him. The man had stayed inside his cannon the whole time for some reason. My thinking is that when the unexpected fight started, he decided to hunker down there and wait for it all to blow over, but he obviously couldn't possibly predict the actions of madmen.
"Doing? Why, my man, I am encouraging you to put on your advertised show." Bullseye responds, kicking the front of the cannon so that it is pointing in his preferred direction and moving towards the little rope on top of the cannon. "You claim to be a human cannonball? Well, show us all, my friend!" Bullseye grabs ahold of the rope, readying himself to pull it and ignite the cannon with an insane smile on his face.
"Nooo! The net isn't set up! I will crash!" The helmeted man in the cannon shouts, trying his darndest to try and pull himself out. Unfortunately for him, he had wormed himself in there a bit too much and so found extricating himself very hard. Bullseye reached behind him and pulled out a bunch of caltrops, throwing them out towards Daredevil before reaching back and throwing some knives, which cut an above net which fell down and wrapped around Daredevil.
"Ah, that would be a problem, wouldn't it, my friend? But I did take the initiative of changing your trajectory just a wee bit." Bullseyes says, adjusting and fine-tuning the angle once more as Daredevil struggles to free himself from the net. "Which means you will have a nice soft superhero to smash into instead of a concrete wall!" And with that, he pulls the rope, igniting the cannon and shooting the man out of the cannon with a big boom.
"Much better, is it not?" Bullseye laughs as the cannon man is blasted straight towards Deardevil, who has just freed himself from the net. I can see Daredevil realise his situation and know he can't entirely dodge, and so he stays still and allows the man to hit him, hoping to minimise the damage to the man. He doesn't move at all because otherwise, that man would die. All he can do is roll with the impact, slowing the both of them down without crippling either of them.
Unfortunately, the man's head directly collides with Daredevil's shoulder before sending them both careening all over the floor, and I can tell that did some severe damage. It was the same arm that was nearly wrenched out earlier, and with my detective vision, I can see that the arm is definitely broken as well as pulled out of its socket. Daredevil will hardly be able to move it now.
Still, the man without fear, rolls to his feat without a sound, his face not budging an inch as the other man lies curled up on the ground moaning. He doesn't give any hint that he is hurt or crippled, getting back to his feet and resuming his pursuit of Bullseye once more. Bullseye, seeing this, quickly runs, heading towards one of those rope ladders and begging to climb it, already getting halfway up when Daredevil reaches the bottom.
Daredevil then pulls out his billy club and points it up so it can shoot onto one of those trapeze platforms which Bullseyes is climbing to. And he does so with his left arm, the arm which is injured. His billy club pulls him up by the arm, which is most definitely broken, and he shows no sign of it. If I did not have stone-cold proof right in front of my eyes, then I wouldn't believe it, but I do. Right now, Bullseye thinks Daredevil is still in good condition, which must be why Daredevil did what he did, showing that nothing is wrong with him.
"Hey, you've forgotten something. The action is happening on ground level." Daredevil calls as he swings up, heading towards Bullseye. "Which is where you will be soon enough, my friend," Bullseyes responds, reaching down on the platform for something.
"For I sense a shifting of emotions in the crowd, and I doubt they will sit still for this show much longer." He continues, picking up a brown bag filled with something, but I can't tell what. "Which means it is time for Bullseye to take his leave!" He calls to Daredevil, who is still rising up. Bullseye draws back his arm.
"I am sure we will meet again, Daredevil. But for now-" He launches the brown bag, and Daredevil, still rising in the air and not having the ability to dodge due to his injuries, is hit straight in the face with it. There is a puff of white smoke or substance as it hits, and Daredevil's upper body is obscured from view. In fact, it looks like whatever this white substance is is solidifying around Daredevil's head. Still, the man without fear continues his accent up towards Bullseye.
"You move much too slowly to be a true opponent of Bullseye, but then, I expected little more than this shabby display of your process." Bullseye cackles, looking down at Daredevil, who is pawing at his head with his right arm. "You may be an extra special policeman, Daredevil..." Bullseye begins.
"But..."