Reformatted Croc Fight

“I don’t kiss and tell,” Croc said.

“Let’s be real,” Batman said. “You didn’t kiss anybody.” That was when Croc rushed him.

Batman had run through the scenarios and expected a bull’s rush, because Croc could never stop himself for long. His bloodlust pushed him beyond any rational control. Now that it was happening, Batman was ready. He jumped straight up, kicked himself into a backflip, and landed with both feet squarely on the top of Croc’s head.

The impact jarred Batman’s bones straight up into the small of his back, but it also dropped Croc to his knees. The creature lashed out with a backhand sweep of his right arm, and Batman leapt to the left, avoiding it neatly. He caught the arm and torqued it into a hammerlock, planting a foot in the middle of Croc’s back and driving him forward headfirst into one of the steel girders that supported the stairway.

The girder snapped off at floor level, and the whole staircase sagged. Batman dodged back before his own momentum could thrust his face into the frame, but that cost him his hold on Killer Croc’s arm. He skipped back and Croc reared up, tearing loose the entire stairway and landing. The popping rivets and welds sounded like a fusillade. The beams hung over Croc’s shoulders, and he lifted the structure up with a roar.

Batman tensed in preparation to duck, anticipating that Killer Croc would come at him swinging the stairway like a club—but he’d guessed wrong. With both hands Croc threw the stairway at him, and Batman just had time to duck his head and take the impact on his shoulders instead of his face. His left arm went numb and he was knocked over, landing in a tangle of broken beams and bent sheets of steel grating.

With one arm he tried to push himself up, but he didn’t have time to avoid Croc’s follow-up. Leaping into the air, Croc landed on the grating with both feet. Beneath it, Batman was pounded into the floor.

“You want to stomp?” Croc roared. “I can stomp, too!”

Heaving himself to the right so he could keep his good arm under him, Batman shifted the heap of metal and unbalanced his assailant. The creature toppled off and smashed into an edge of the control console, as the force of his own shifting weight slid the remains of the staircase across the floor.

Batman threw it off and scrambled free. He was starting to get some feeling back in the fingers of his left hand, and he was going to need it.

The console looked undamaged, and that was a good thing. He didn’t want to risk damaging it in the course of their combat, so he ran toward the far end of the control room, away from where Croc had appeared. There was a railing there, and beyond it a ten-foot drop to four exposed water pipes, each perhaps five feet in diameter. One of them was broken open, with a steady stream of water pouring through the break onto the floor below.

A thick cluster of cables ran down from the ceiling. Some of them ran to the console, and others to an electrical closet with the familiar warning sign of a human figure reeling away from a lightning bolt. If the generator was still providing power…

“Nowhere to go, Batman,” Killer Croc growled from behind him.

Batman turned. “I was about to say the same thing to you,” he said.

Croc charged him again, and this time Batman let him come. Reaching out with an insulated glove, he chose one of the cables and ripped it out of the junction box set into the floor. A shower of sparks burst from the end of the cable and some of the emergency lights went out… but not all of them, and the lights on the control panel still glowed.

Croc tried to cut his momentum, but it was too late for him to stop. Batman jumped up and back, bracing himself on the railing. He held out the spitting end of the cable as the juggernaut came within arm’s reach. It jabbed into Croc’s chest as he smashed into Batman and through the railing, sending them both over the edge toward the pipes below. A blinding flare of light burst from the cable end as thousands of volts of electricity crackled through his body.

Batman held the cable steady as they fell, insulated from the current by his suit. Croc roared, trying to say something, but the muscles in his jaw spasmed so violently that the sound became a long uh-uh-uh-uh that ended when both of them crashed onto one of the pipes, and then slid off to splash into the puddle that had collected beneath them.

As they reached the floor, the cable was jerked out of Batman’s hand. Its live end hung halfway between the floor above and the surface of the water.

Killer Croc lay face down in the water, and ceased to move. Despite his incredible bulk, Batman turned him over and heaved him around so he would be looking up at the cable when he came to his senses. He reached up and pulled it closer. As he did so, several metal mounts broke loose with a pop-pop-pop sound, then landed with a clatter on the concrete.

He didn’t have to wait for long.

Croc’s eyelids fluttered, and his hands balled into fists.

“Easy,” Batman said. He was standing over Croc holding the cable high.

Croc kept still. His slitted reptilian eyes focused on Batman, full of violence.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Batman said. “You tell me what I want to know, I’ll let you slither back down into the sewers, and we’ll forget all about this little dance.”

Croc’s eyes narrowed.

“The Dark Knight letting a bad guy go?” A hint of a smile played across his face, looking more like a sneer. “You got something else you need to do, huh?”

Batman leaned in close, braving the rotting-meat stink of Killer Croc’s breath. “Do I need to convince you?” he growled. As he did, he pulled the sparking cable even closer.

“Lighten up, already,” Croc said. “You got a deal.”

Batman: Arkham Knight: Riddler's Gambit, Chapter 10, Pg. 102