No Land for Men

Claustrophobia {EP-3}

They didn't even get the honour of being put into body bags. Men, women, children. The dead were just left on the streets, crushed beneath the rubble and debris of fallen buildings, cars and scrap that crushed their bones. The city wasn't safe, the night was even worse, the worse it had been ever. You couldn't move an inch at night without brushing up against something you didn't recognise, whether debris, a body or something darker and sinister that could end your life.
They had taken the majority of the asylum back after the second day of the quake, some of the cell blocks were cut off due to rubble and such, and other larger cells for the rogues were kept off limits as smarter members of the GCPD deep cleansed them for hints on where they would go once escaping, the task was to attempt to bring order back to the city, they had no idea how they'd do it though.

The Penguin, that was his nickname given to him as a child, he was plump and stubby like the bird and was teased endlessly about it at school. Well, now he's known as Penguin Sr. with his son known as The Penguin now, with his signature tuxedo and limp, as well as wearing a Venetian plague style mask, just like his gang did. They had control over multiple clubs throughout the city, both before and after the quake hit. The buildings were on Wayne foundations, and any building that had those support took a lot less of the damage from the tremors and any abuse they received in the aftershock. Oswald Cobblepot and Oz Cobblepot. The mother had died in the Crisis back when it hit, as did a lot of people, but that was long enough ago for them to be over it and continuing with their endeavours in the black market.
They had converted the strip of nightclubs into a compound, rubble and debris of vehicles stacked up into junk walls at either end of the street. The Ice Berg lounge was smack bang in the middle of it, with the other clubs they owned such as The Purple Umbrella and Moonshine Alley, still intact and running as strip clubs and places for criminals to hang out freely, since the law was almost non-existent. They were sheltering criminals that had nowhere to go but something to offer, whether it was clothes, money, food or labour, if you could give it up then The Penguins would take it from you. The neon lights from Gotham's former strip of nightclubs were flickering on and off, power was on absent in certain areas of the city, a lot of the power lines were intact, the posts were bent, some knocked over completely but most of the wires in enough condition to still carry a current.
"So, that's the Penguins, who else?" Babs asked, speaking to Grayson of course as he sat on top of one of the tallest points in the asylum. They had Jason and a Harper with a group of guys inside trying to get through to Calendar Man in Ivy's cell, that was the only thing they hadn't accessed that they needed. With Ivy's cell, they could grow food at increased rates since her modified plants and soil were in there.
"The Docks?" He asked back, using his nightvision and enhanced zoom in his mask to scan over the city.
"No no, we have those logged, that's Black Mask." She replied as she finished typing up the information they had gathered on the Cobblepots.
"You can bet that Ivy's in the park or gardens." She said with a simple shrug, taking a shot in the dark at that one.
"I don't think she's a threat, not yet anyway. What about people like Crane, Zsasz. The murderers?"
"No sign of Crane, not much left in his cell either." The rain hadn't stopped since the last tremor, it had put out a lot of the fires, and the sky was now naturally a dark grey from the amount of smoke and rain clouds there were. "Again, taking a guess that Croc is in the sewers, he's probably out of the city." He spoke, still scanning as she typed, searching through the GCPD's databases for everything they had.

"We're almost in" Harper said, glancing over at Jason with a small smile. "What do we do once we open it? Tell Nightwing?" She questioned with a small frown, knowing that Jason knew Nightwing on some kind of personal level, possibly because they were similar ages or even because he knew who Nightwing really was. "Yeah I guess so." He said simply, he had been quiet ever since they raided the asylum, besides from when he and Harper were first introduced the previous night. "So what was it you were really doing in here? And cut the bullshit about seeking shelter. In a time of crisis, no one runs into an asylum for help." He said bluntly, crossing his arms as he watched her work with a couple of the other guys on breaking the lock.
"Visiting someone. I came to visit my father in the morning during my break from classes. Nightwing, he put him in here." She sighed some and looked up at him.
"Ah, so you didn't just say that to him because...?"
"An earthquake hit, I didn't know what state of mind he was in, for all I know he coulda knocked me out and dumped me in a cell and left me there for someone to find or to starve this out." Harper had a point, times like this did mad things to people.
"So, why did Wing put your dad in here? What did he do?" Jason wanted to see if he could get inside of her head a little more, it was clear just by looking at her that she was a bit of a social outcast.
"He used to beat my brother and mother."
"Not you?"
"Only once. I hit him back with a hammer and he never touched me ever again unless I tried to stop him attacking them."
"Shit, that's rough."
"Yeah, when the Crisis happened, he enlisted and wanted to fight, wnated to try and make it up to us. He went away, fighting freaking aliens for weeks at a time. He came back alive, but worse than before. He was attacking random people in the streets, using the anger he used to take out on us, and applying it to assaulting strangers."
"Kinda see why he was locked up now."
"Yeah, the quakes hit, I was trapped in the visitor's room, the other side of the glass was completely crushed under rubble, any inmates in there were killed. I held out with staff until some managed to dig a way out, they hid out front where they are now with the cops, and I went for a walk, figured there was no point worrying about falling debris and such."
"You said your brother got out?" Jason asked
"He refused to come visit with me, said he would rather leave Gotham than support our father. He was already leaving when the evacuation started, he rang me a few minutes before Nightwing showed, I had to give him some addresses of distant family, then I lost signal."
With that, the lock on the cell opened, the glass was steamed up with some kind of green fog, and inside was pure silence. "Well, looks like we should tell Gr- Nightwing" Jason spoke with a slight stutter, cheeks turning red as he watched, noticing she had backed off anyway to try an get some signal on her phone.

"So that's the Hatter encounter logged, do you think his gang is out there?" The ginger asked, pushing her glasses up her nose.
"Probably split and joined up with other gangs. Im interested to know where Dent and Nigma are." He said and before she could respond, she recived a call from Jason.
"Gray, they got through to Calendar Man, no ones gone in yet, they're waiting for you first."
"On it."