Future State: The Next Batman #2 (2021)

A dark alley, in Gotham City Batman approaches a fresh body: he needs to discover what happened, but he needs to do it fast. There is a surveillance camera of a shop which might have images of the killer, but it also means the Magistrate's forces will be there in two minutes, and he's the number one target in their hit list. Batman finds the images he wanted: two thugs, they do not seem professional hitmen, but they were incredibly brutal with the victim, hitting and kicking him far after he was dead. They also wore polygonal masks, to trick the face-recog software the Magistrate uses in the whole city. Not professional killers, but for sure professional criminals. In that moment, several of the Magistrate's soldier get to the place: they are quicker than before. Batman must run, so he sends the images to Vol, someone who is assisting him from a remote place. Then, Batman goes dark: the Magistrate is using the phone to track him down, and sent drones against him. He will wait for Vol to analyze the images and find out what he can, while he escapes from the grasp of the enemy. Meanwhile, Tanya Fox is in the office of the mayor of Gotham City, Christopher Nakano: she is there to battle against the "shoot on sight" order the Magistrate is following against masked people. Tanya is completely on the Magistrate and Mayor Nakano's side, regarding the battle against both masked criminals and vigilantes. After all, how couldn't she? They ruined the life of her husband Lucius, and especially ruined the life of her poor daughter Tamara, still hospitalized right now. But using brutal, unnecessary force is not something that sits well with american law. Nakano tells her that if it is the firepower she is concerned with, she should speak with Lucius: it is Foxtech, after all, that supplies ammo and weapons to the Magistrate. Also, would she like to try stopping this new Batman with just a normal gun? Tanya, in that moment, becomes furious: she would enjoy taking a shot at this new Dark Knight herself, after all. Back to Batman, he was able to escape the Magistrate's foot soldiers, but not without a gash in his side. He asks himself how much can he do against the Peacekeepers, if he struggles to keep the simple soldiers at bay, but he must go on and ignore the pain. He contacts Vol, to know if there are any updates on the images he sent him: Vol found nothing on the victim, and the criminals were not associated with any known criminal activity. But he was able to run a body-tracing algorithm, and thanks to it he has, maybe, spotted the assailants. Bats tells him he will check the position, but Vol warns him: he's injured, shouldn't he stop and recover? Jace tells him he walked away from justice once, and he will never do it again. That man, the victim, had been not only killed, but viciously abused after death: he has to go on. At the same time, on the crime scene, the police and the Magistrate are trying to understand Batman's actions there, and his current position: after telling the soldiers they will be subject to far worse pain when Peacekeeper-01 finds out that Batman tore through them, a Magistrate's officer answers to Detective Chubb that he couldn't care less about the corpse in the alley. He's payed to take out masks, and the new Batman is the biggest mask of all. As he leaves, Chubb's new partner, Tellez, asks her how the Peacekeeper can be so much stronger than the masks, but she answers that some question are not made to be asked. Thanks to Vol's algorithm, Batman was able to track down the killers: he easily defeated both, and they really fought like it was the first time in their life. Soon, Batman discovered it was: they were two young parents, who killed that man because he was a pedophile. He found their daughter in the net, lured her into a trap, and after he took her, they never saw her again. They wanted justice, but the police ignored them, so they acted in another way: they turned to the dark web themselves, and found a man who will help you plan one crime, just one, whatever it might be, and then will ask you to stop. They accepted his conditions, and decided to punish the killer of their daughter by their own hand. Batman thinks that the criminal got what he deserved, but still, he cannot let two murderers unpunished. Also, the body was never found and their accusations never proved: how can they be so sure that the man they killed was truly responsible for what happened to their daughter? But while he tries to decide what to do, the Magistrate forces reach the place, with both Batman and the killers in their sight...