Chapter Text
Anyone who has ever grown up in Gotham or stuck around the area and managed to survive knows that the foster care is corrupt. Just like most of the police force and government is corrupt. Sometimes, they even work together to split the money on kids they sell off to human traffickers. Most of the kids that end up in the system get “lost” within days and written off as runaways or pushed off into a pile of other missing kids. That's just how things go in a city like Gotham. The city is far too overrun with crime for any of the good cops to have time to bother worrying about missing kids when people are getting murdered in broad daylight by the likes of Two-face and the Riddler with bombs every other weekend or gassed into hysterics by Scarecrow and the Joker.
Arkham is a joke. No one who goes there stays for long and for kids that end up in the system, they would be better off in the asylum. At least there they get a bed and are fed every day! Sure they risk the chase of actually going insane, but if you played your cards right and stayed there, you wouldn’t have to worry about getting the crap beat out of you for breathing too loudly around your foster parents or locked in a cage to be sold like a piece of meat at an auction. You may have to look out for Batman as he tends to send the crazies to the hospital before they can go back to Arkham but he tends to go easy on the kids… most of the time. Even the dark knight seemed to go crazy for a bit after the rumored death of a robin and was more brutal in his attacks than some of the rogues.
If you are a meta-human, you are absolutely screwed. Batman hates meta-humans and doesn’t allow them in Gotham at all. He even refuses to let his own teammates from the Justice League work in his city. Although the hypocrite now has a sidekick suspected of being a meta-human called Signal, don’t count that as a sign that Batman won’t throw you out of the city himself if he realises what you are. The various robins are typically less harsh towards metas but that doesn’t mean they will go easy on you in a fight if they discover what you are. They were raised by The Bat after all and will lead you out of the city. Then again, being kicked out by a bat is better than getting caught by anyone else as you won’t have any freedom for much longer after that. Meta-humans are constantly captured and used for entertainment in fighting rings, oftentimes being forced to fight to the death if you appear to be getting too strong. Their “ring masters” have the competition take each other out or sell you off to the highest bidder.
You get assigned a number in the ring until you earn yourself a nickname and your real name no longer matters. You no longer matter, you are just a means for your trainer to make money off your fights. It is better to forget your previous life as you will never get to return and you’ll get punished if you get too mouthy… I’ve seen some learn that the hard way. The mouthy and defiant ones never last long. You are only meant to fight in the ring and if you try to fight your way out, they make you disappear before the next morning arrives. Whether those mouthly metas got sold to a mad scientist or to be someone’s slave, no one knows and no one wants to be found as that would mean they are next in line to never be seen again.
The ring owners feed you measly little scraps before a fight and you only get real food if you win. You have to earn everything in the ring. Food, water, clothing, a bed. When you lose, those things will get taken away and you may get a beating on top of the walloping you got in the ring if you do extra bad things like trying to refuse to fight in the ring. You are forced to learn the unspoken rules quickly, or die. But at least you get a chance to live in the ring unlike the poor souls that disappear. Winning and staying quiet is the best way to be left alone and lick your wounds until it's time for your next fight. You don’t really survive in the ring, you simply hold on as long as you can if you don’t already have a death wish and purposely lose your fights.
I learned several of these rules the hard way and I am now known as the hydra. I have fangs with a venomous bite that has been used to take down more than one opponent but it is risky as some are strong enough to kill in one punch. Most fighters are mostly muscle and use brute strength for animal based meta abilities and are the favorites in the ring. The audience loves watching newbies get thrown into an impossibly seeming fight and will bet on how quickly the little one will die. I was one of those unlucky kids but my newly discovered abilities saved my life. For some reason, I heal faster than most when I’ve had food to eat and am unusually sticky with the power to sense upcoming attacks. My fangs hold a venom strong enough to paralyze a grown man within minutes. I can also regrow lost limbs but I don’t like thinking about that as it is a long and painful process. There are a few other skills too but those I keep secret.
I don’t know the specifics of how it happened, but I didn't turn into this monster until after I watched my uncle Ben get shot down in an alleyway and then had my aunt May die of a heart attack when receiving the news. Personally, I think she died of shock and heartbreak as I had already been orphaned once before when a train bombing killed my parents when I was four. The death of my aunt and uncle occurred when I was eleven. Remembering them and their love for me is the only way I can rebel against my owners. I may have forgotten my own name, but I refuse to forget their faces. I may not be able to remember the feeling of a loving human touch but I chant their names in my head every night and try to picture their faces in my mind as vividly as possible. But as more time passes in this wretched place, I’m starting to forget what May’s favorite perfume was and the sound of Ben’s laugh.
I will never forget the day I was taken though, I don't think I could even if I wanted to. It had been a long night sitting in a stiff chair in the police station with a cup of coffee in my hand that had grown cold hours ago. An officer had taken a swab test in my mouth to test my DNA and search for any relatives around that could take me in. I already knew the answer would be no one but that wasn’t the only thing they were searching for. My guess is that they found the meta-human gene in my DNA as a man dressed in a black suit and brief case entered the room where I was waiting, not too long after the test was conducted. The mysterious man placed his briefcase on the desk of the officer watching me and they shook hands after the officer opened the case and flashed a wicked smile in my direction.
The man in the suit glared at me and warned me to try anything funny before harshly grabbing my arm and walking me out to a car with blackout windows. I was thrown into the back and I knew no one was coming to save me. I had been too stuck in a fog to take my chance earlier and run but a kid with asma can never run far before falling into an attack. My mind has blocked out most of the details after that but I remember vaguely being placed in a barred prison with several other scrawny kids of different ages, looking just as scared as I was. Time drifted by as we were dragged out one by one and hosed down and forced into clean clothes. Harsh lights blinded me as I presented on a stage to many men all dressed in suits and masks and watched helplessly as they bid on who would get to own me. I never saw any of those other kids again and I hope for their sakes that they died a quick death.
There are times where I wonder what life would have been like had I gone to someone else in those auctions but the other options seem worse than fighting in hopes of lasting another day. Lex Luthor is notoriously known in these parts as buying some of the best fighters at time for his experiments and even our owners seem weary when in the man’s presence. My nerves have never grown more tense than in the moment Lex’s cold green eyes glanced around our cages and stared at me for a second longer than the others. He did not try to bargain a price for me but I could not breathe until his eyes swept over to a different hanging cage and proclaimed that the girl inside would do nicely for a test he had in mind.
I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad about her being chosen over me. Gotham has a way of chewing you up and destroying anything good about you before spitting you out, leaving you broken. It turns everyone into monsters with enough time and by then, there is no fixing you. Especially for us metas, most of us had our genes awoken in us by some tragic trauma or experiment that has since forced us to become killers. As I look around at the others in their cages, I can see some who relish time in the fights and hold a permanent bloodlust like the rogues that wreck chaos across Gotham. Others have gone twitchy and terrified, they whisper to themselves in an attempt to be comforted by the sound of a human’s voice, even with it just being their own. Then there are a few like me, who do their best to let instinct take over and fight like animals in the ring and do their best to regain their humanity inside the cages to keep from snapping.
My body uncontrollably shivers as winter is just around the corner and metal cages do nothing to help fight against the cold. Being locked up underground doesn’t help either as the sun will never reach us down here, wherever here is… I know I won’t last much longer as it gets harder to move as the temperature drops each day and the absence of food is forcing my body to burn through what little fat I had left. Time moves slowly in a place like this, with only the fights as a way to keep track of days. No light other than weak flickering bulbs on the ceiling to provide any idea on if it is day or night.
The supply of water is the only way to keep track of time but how long their captures wait between drinks is a mystery. The effects that come from the water make time telling nearly impossible as his body and the others often shake and twist after consumption as it is taken straight from the sewers. They all drink from the same sponge tied to a stick that is held up to their cages from them to drink from like animals. That is all they are seen as to their “owners”, just animals as if they were dogs in a dog fight and not human beings with a little extra gene in their DNA. I don’t know if the various chemicals in the water from so many laughing gas and fear gas attacks are affecting me, but I am dying soon anyways so why should it matter if I am being slowly poisoned?
My powers have seemed to increase the longer I am here and forced to fight. It could be connected to the water but no one else is getting stronger. There is the possibility that my powers somehow detoxify the water but I will likely lose my next fight and never find out what is actually happening. I am shaken out of my thoughts as one of the lackeys rattles my cage with the drinking stick and laughs when I jolted in fear. They toss a moldy roll through the bars and yell for me to eat up as my fight is coming up soon. I do my best to do so around the muzzle that tears at my chapped lips and hair as I shove tiny morsels of bread in through the corner of my mouth. No one bothers chaining me up for the walk to the ring as I am clearly too weak to fight them, much less my challenger for the night. I try to ignore the announcer up ahead, broadcasting how this is likely the hydra’s last fight and to hurry and place any last minute bets.
The lackey pushes me forward, shoving me into the wall as they roughly tear the muzzle off me and taunt me about how I won’t be able to poison my opponent this time. Apparently they had found a Hercules, a boy with nearly impenetrable skin, to defeat me. I squeezed my eyes shut, refuting to let the man see me cry as the faces of those I had been forced to kill and others I had willingly killed, flashed in my head. I saw many of their faces in nightmares and I was likely going to be one of the ones this boy would see. An air horn pierces my ears as it is blared on the speakers the announcer is using and the lackey shoves me one more time, pushing me into the ring where several lights shine in and blind me. I can barely make out the outline for the small boy in front of me before he attacks.
Hercules, as the boy has been named, is incredibly quick and my body is still too stiff and frozen to dodge in time. Many voices ring together as they boo and cheer and I do my best to muffle their sounds as I focus on my opponent’s heartbeat. It is erratic and quick, seemingly as nervous as I am, just fighting to survive the next fight. His thick skin protects him from all the hits I sluggishly land on him. I am able to hit hard despite my slowed speed but his skin absorbs it almost like rubber. He would do well in the ring and survive longer than most, only to be put down in the end for staying alive for too long. To kill him would be merciful and that is exactly what I do. I take no joy in killing anyone, but I am going to die soon anyways and do not wish for the child to suffer like so many of us already are. I gather spit in my mouth and let some of my venom leak out, mixing with my saliva.
The boy continues his best to win, begging me to just give up. I let myself stagger back and he stops. He waits, eager for the fight to stop. This was the moment I launched my venomous mixture straight into his eye and sling it at him. He screams out in pain and is distracted as I wind myself around his body and begin to choke him out. His screams are cut off as my arms cut off the oxygen his lungs desperately need and refuse to let go until I know he is dead. The venom would have killed him within the next day anyways and I would not wish that kind of pain on an innocent child. The crowd had grown quiet as the boy dropped to the floor and burst into a mixture of cheers as many had lost money on this fight.
I don’t remember the trip back into my cage beyond the blinding pain of my shock collar going off and seeing walls of gray as I staggered my way back down the bleak hall. My body swung back and forth from the movement of my cage being raised off the floor and back to its usual place, halfway up to the ceiling. The ring owner’s voice called out my name and I did my best to wake up from the fog my head was caught in. I gasp as my cage falls back to the floor and struggle to regain my breath as the hit had knocked it out. “Are you listening now boy?” The gruff voice growled and I nodded, keeping my eyes to the ground to avoid punishment for looking up.
There was a second pair of feet next to the owner and they were of a fancy type. Black and had to have been shined recently as I could almost see my reflection on them. But it wasn’t the shows that made me worry… it was the umbrella hanging from the man’s arm that drew my attention. Most Gotham citizens are so used to the dreary weather that they walk through the rain without a care. There was only one man, one rogue, that you could always count on to have an umbrella with him even when underground. And that man was standing right in front of me, looking down with a wicked smile on his face.