19462/Cult of the Pyg (Prologue): Meat As Murder

Cult of the Pyg (Prologue): Meat As Murder
Date of Scene:	09 November 2024
Location:	Amusement Mile
Synopsis:	A hog stampede leads to murder, mayhem and the kidnapping of Harper Row.
Cast of Characters:	Helena Bertinelli, Harper Row, Stephanie Brown, Tim Drake, Violet Paige

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Helena Bertinelli has posed:
Sometimes they call it a shooting gallery. Attractions stretched on a long boardwalk along the waterfront. Cold sea air blowing in, sharp and salt-kissed. Halloween decorations are still up in a lot of places, growing ragged with the weather and the age, those that don't get ripped down or stolen at night by the occasional gangs of hooligans that occupy most of the less than posh parts of Gotham City. Despite the weather and the season, a fair crowd has gathered, milling about, mixed in races and ages, everyone just looking for a light moment in the world even on a chill fall day.

Helena Bertinelli has brought Harper Row with her today, the two women walking side by side. Helena has indulged a corn dog, holding it out in front of her, "I forbid you to make unclean remarks about this," she says, taking a large bite of the end and then extending it towards Harper's mouth. If the punk girl tries to get a bite, Helena will snatch it away playfully, dark lips curving into a grin. "Too slow."

It's the noises they hear first. Two massive semi trucks dragging huge slatted trailers, engine revved, turn off the nearby streets and whip onto the narrow confines of the boardwalk. They don't slow, charging forward until one crashes through the lobby of the Big Belly Burger. Another fishtails violently, the trailer whipping into a row of arcade games, sending teenagers running and screaming in terror. Some of them get crushed. That's life in Gotham. Death and mayhem lurk behind every calm day, every quiet moment. This city is not safe.

Helena and Harper are in the path of the second truck when Helena shoves Harper away, the two of them separated by the big vehicle as the black haired woman barely dives to safety in her own right. You'd expect a quiet in the aftermath, but there is no quiet, just screaming, yelling, terror. And under it something else, something that's growing louder and louder, overtaking everything else.

It's squealing. Horrified, panicked, maddened squealing. Coming from the trailers of the trucks. The doors on the back of the trailers blow out, explosives obviously attached to the locks. And from those open doors, the hogs begin to pour...

Harper Row has posed:
Harper's mouth is already opening to offer a sarky salvo on the fair food that Helena's about to enjoy. She's super easy to telegraph, the way her lips quirk, her eyes alight with smart-assery being cycled and sampled through. It's a pretty good tactic to divide her efforts between taking a bite and offering a morsel of teasing. Way too slow, her quip is stalled, and she nearly bites the tip of her tongue in missing the corn dog.

"You'll pay for that. Especially when we take a spin on the hurl-a-whirl." Wait a minute, that might not be super bright if she's a bysstander." Her nose wrinkles and she narrows her eyes, like this was enough to serve.

Harper's usually not more than peeved with the sound of squealing tires, but the growing sound of the engines and proximity of those vehicles has her turn to glare. "Truh!" Much too slow, again, but thankfully she's going to avoid being street pizza. The world gets jarred violently to the side and Harper rebounds off the nearest stall to the ground, rolling along until she can get back up into a crouch and assess the madness. She just can't comprehend what would be making that nightmare noise at first. "...We're gonna need...We're gonna..." Harper coughs and grabs a snapped piece of timber from a ruined stall so she can get something weapon-worthy at the ready. The young Gothamite cues a commlink to send out a priority alert of multiple civilians wounded. That's all she gets out as she scrambles from the path of piggies and scrambles wreckage for higher ground.

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Stephanie 'Call me Spoiler (sometimes)' Brown didn't have any plans for the day. Still working at getting herself back into her own headspace after a few months of remarkably undramatic dramatic turmoil, she's doing what she's been doing for most of that time. What any socially well-adjusted Gotham vigilante would do.

Being nigh unreachable and taciturnly showing up to any of the various violent crimes and dramatic goings on in Gotham, only to sweep off into the night less 'sudden disappearance' style than the big Bat, and more 'Grumpy young woman storming off' style.

Possibly so no one can tell her she looks silly storming off with her cowl hood with two elongated bat ears that look far less intimidating than most. Fortunately, she hasn't become any less terminally online in her funk. So when someone drives a semi truck through Big Belly Burger's lobby, and hashtag 'GimmeANumberFortyFive' starts trending, it's entirely possible some shocked fast food enjoyer has yet to finish numbly dropping their burger out of shock, and already the high pitched snarl of her bike can be heard from blocks away, along with the discordant wails of horns that definitely imply she was... creatively interpreting traffic laws and signals to send herself towards the calamity as Harper's communication registers and lets her know at least she's not the only one responding.

Stephanie Brown, spunky heroine extraordinaire is burning rubber towards destiny. To, apparently, a confrontation with thirty to forty feral hogs.

Tim Drake has posed:
<< Red Robin, reporting in. >> a voice crackles over Bat-Comms to anyone currently plugged in. << Reports of a panic on Amusement Mile, I'm checking it out, over. >>

With that, the hand of Red Robin returns to the handlebars of his motorcycle, a fresh red paint job that'd been an excuse to paint over the old Robin logo for the newer Red Robin logo (the difference is that there's now -two- R's!). When he gets close enough to the scene, he pulls his legs in, his thumb flicking on a set of keys. Ejector seat engaged! Which, really, is more of a springboard, designed to give the rider a ton of airtime to make a sick entrance. Yes, sicker than on a motorcycle.

As he's launched into the air, Red Robin spreads his arms to grab his cape, a current turning the fabric rigid enough to glide on the air for a while, before landing just by Batgirl. Or Spoiler. Unclear as of yet! Settle on Steph. "Please tell me I didn't respond to runaway pigs just now." he gripes at the blonde.

Violet Paige has posed:
Violet Paige is not visiting Amusement Mile on her birthday. How very dare you for even thinking such a thing! Gotham's number one train wreck party girl would never be seen dead here.

Mother Panic on the other hand... Well she doesn't have much reason to be in the area either but she /does/ happen to by flying over on her way to somewhere she needs to snoop around. A little rodent told her Gala had been seen operating in a location and she was making her way there post-haste.

She's not the hero who swoops in to save the day sort of vigilante.

Not usually.

But the signal Harper puts out? It's something she associates with.. People who don't like Gala too. It's a little early to say potential allies but the enemy of my enemy might be my friend. Right?

She plots in a course correction. "Gonna regret this." Muttered to herself. The bike's not smart enough to talk back. Even if it is /cool/.

There's a swooping flyby to get eyes on the situation. Viewing the mayhem from above. Engines screaming as she buzzes Amusement mile at speeds which, while fast, aren't making any sonic booms.

The noise probably barely registering over the noise of the swine.

Helena Bertinelli has posed:
Helena Bertinelli wore a scarf today and a long purple coat over a black sweater and trousers, heeled boots giving her a little extra height. Not exactly combat gear. She hits the ground shoulder first, rolling a couple of times and just getting to her feet as the pigs begin their exodus from the trucks. Thinking fast, she draws the scarf up to cover her mouth and nose, black hair sweeping behind her. Not much of a disguise, but it'll do on the fly. No crossbow, but she's never unarmed and she proves it by reaching under her coat and pulling out a pair of twin nine millimeters. She flicks her eyes through the chaos, just enough to see Harper about to be swallowed up by the sea of pig, "Get to the rooftops!" she calls to the punk girl.

It's hard to say how many pigs there are. Two hundred, maybe? Three? They're close together, bodies bumping, bouncing off of each other. The rage and panic in their little piggy eyes is hard to deny - it's not just the crash, there's something wrong with these animals, they're frantic and violent, foaming at the mouth. When they come upon people, they don't just push past, they bite, they yank them down, they crush them, they trample them. It all happens so fast, an explosion of bestial flesh savaging the innocents of Gotham.

Except they're not all innocent. Because here and there, they draw out masks of their own. Pig masks. Crude things, tied with leather in the back, fleshy thing with ears and snouts and gaping maws. It doesn't take a close eye to tell they're made from real pig skin, real pig faces. And they too begin to squeal, joining their bestial brethren in cacophony. Some of them have knives and begin to slash, stabbing strangers, spilling blood that spatters over the beasts around them. Those victims might be the lucky ones. From their high perch, Drake and Stephanie can see one of them grab a young woman from behind, stuffing an ether soaked rag into her mouth and starting to drag her off to the shadows...

Harper Row has posed:
Harper gawps at the sight of so much suddenly rampaging fury. Whatever those future bacon bearing beasts she's imagined in snuffling in idyllic farms, they're a far cry from this reality. The shrill ear-torturing squealing and braying is almost stunning her, but the fear spikes her adrenaline and Helena's shout helps add urgency. "What the hell?!"

Still lucky to not be flattened, there's so much sensory overload, she's caught between fight and flight. She leaps from the wreckage she was climbing, it unable to support her and the rush of pigs crashing into and around it. Using the 2x4 to help vault her on her way, she can't quite make the rooftops yet, but she can get distance.

Coming down with the other fleeing civvies, she jams her plank into a pig-face, dislocating jaw and making only a future dentist happy as she spills their pearly whites. "Keep running! Keep going!" she screams to bysstanders caught up in the rout.

If Harper had known she'd be running with pigs, she'd have worn less Punk aesthetic, and more functional attire. But these boots will do swell. Her mind races to the nearest safe drop where she can snag equipment, making a quick list of priorities while she tosses the plank behind her to trip up another beast or bastard on her heels. "Just get safe! Don't look back! Don't pull out your phone, just run!"

"Okay mutherfuckers...We'll do this the hard way." Ms. Row balls her fists and veers off to sprint for one of the abductors of this madness, unwilling to flee the scene or gain a rooftop just yet.

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Steph's eyes are darting, tracking angles, paths, really mostly figuring out if she should park short of the deepest tangle of Amusement Mile, or risk the complications of customized vigilante motorcycle in tight quarters with panicked civilians and god knows what's going on.

But as she lays it out in her mind, that whole 'Speeding motorcycle plus panicked people' seems to pretty much be the crux of the issue. Yeah. No bike.

Brakes seize tight, tires squeal, and automated control systems lock the steering and compensate so the bike doesn't wobble and throw her off uncontrolled. Just... throws her off in a more controlled fashion, legs lifting, knees coming up nearly under her chin as she rockets over the handle bars into a forward flip, before she's stretching out while upside down, increasing air resistance to slow her minimally, enough that she's not going too fast for the grapple gun she's already pulled from her utility belt to be aimed at a neon sign and thunk home after the sharp *PAF* of compressed air firing it out, line going taut, momentum bleeding off as physics sends her arcing up in a parabola to gain height and lose speed. It might not be as helpful for an overview as one of Babs's cool drones, or one of her slightly less cool ones, but it works well enough. She gets a fine view of what's going on during that arc, only to land, mouth hanging open behind her black face-covering mask, white lenses obscure the confused glint in her eyes.

Which is why when Tim lands next to her and chimes in, she can at least hope no one realizes she's putting on bravado, "Well, it could just be that they were the easiest trucks to steal. Did you bring some Bat Pig Rodeo spray?"

That mask shifts as her lips quirk. She'd heard of a fubar situation being a goat rodeo, but apparently there's a new term in town.

And then the time for quips is over, because there's motion between people that's not just panicked running and jostling. There's some real goddamn 'That looks like a kidnapping' shit going on.

And... "Okay! So it turns out clown faced goons are thew new runners up in 'Freaky people I don't want to run into in a dark alley'!" Well, it might not entirely be past time for quips.

But that was at least the last one before Steph was leaping into action, left hand reaching back under her cloak to grab and deploy extendable staff, right reaching down to run around utility pouches until she counts off to the one that holds small flash grenades.

Time to get to work. You know, for some value of 'work' being trying to disrupt that first kidnapper she spied and engage in some concussive deterrence from his life of crime.

Tim Drake has posed:
Red Robin stops joking with Steph as soon as he spots the pig-masked thugs among the swine. "Batgirl, the alley." he asides to his on-again, off-again partner-in-crimefighting. "They're attacking people, and taking them!" In addition to telling Steph in person, Tim repeats what he'd seen to the Bat-Comm, just in case. Just, in a calmer tone. You never know whose voice will reply and scold him for having human emotions.

"One at a time, focus on the kidnappers." he suggests, though he does so firmly. He'd already noticed, thanks to the HUD provided by his lenses, two others on the ground getting combat-ready, heart rates showing they were as surprised as any innocent bystander that this was even happening, and a flyer up in the air. If they're capable, they can handle crowd control. Or.. cattle control? Stop the stabbies as well?

In a move reminiscent of when Steph did it moments earlier, Tim leaps after her and deploys his staff. In addition to that, he flings an R-shaped Batarang at the kidnapper, making sure to aim somewhere he can't just shift his victim in front of. "Batgirl, we're doing an over-under. You're over, I'm under." he calls the play. He'd seen her readying those flash grenades, and makes ready to go for the shins.

Violet Paige has posed:
Mother Panic leaps from the skybike, buzzing the ground so low it can't be safe, one arm out wide to snag a street light. Swinging around and around to bleed off momentum. Thick metal gauntlets sending a shower of sparks as she tightens her grip to act like a break. The shock of the impact causing the bulb to shatter as the street light is subjected to forces it was never intended to withstand.

Normally her involvement in a 'situation' tends to cause as much chaos as it prevents. But right now? That's probably next to impossible! A stampede of that size will simply flatten people and trample them beneath trotters. To her untrained eye it's the pigs which are the bigger threat to the people. But then again she probably hasn't spotted the kidnappers just yet. Fast flybys don't give much time to pick out fine details.

Once she's got her feet on the ground she doesn't let go of the light pole. No she grits her teeth, strains her cybernetics, and tears it up from the ground.

It's far too large to fight people with. But animals? It's probably fine.

And gross.

There's no real strategy to her approach. Put herself between the pigs and the people. And swing. Really F'ing hard.

A true Gotham hero would have found some humane way to knock the livestock out.

She smacks the pole down on another pig with a disgusting wet SPLAT. "I'm too hungover for this."

Helena Bertinelli has posed:
Helena loads her pistols with rubber bullets, not because she is merciful but because killing in Gotham is both likely to get you the wrong kind of attention and because with this many bystanders, a stray is simply too easy. Unfortunately, without the penetrative power of real ammunition, those bullets do punch plenty but can't do much against the pigs, which are simply continuing to hammer through people.

Attempts to handle the snatchers are hampered inherently by the stampede. Dozens of people are already on the ground, getting stompedd by trotters, breaking bones and getting battered and their screams only inflame the pigs more. They're strong and chaotic, making them hard to counter. Mother Panic, with her cybernetic enhancements, probably has the best luck swimming in the sea of swine.

Batgirl and Red Robin working together will manage to cut off the Pigman dragging a woman into the alleyway. He shoves her roughly to the ground and tries to attack with his knife but doesn't have much to offer them. They can take him down with ease. But he's not alone.

As demonstrated when one of them manages to get behind Bluebird and jabs a needle right into the side of her neck, injecting her with a rapid-fire sedative and hooking an arm around her throat, starting to drag her away. Helena sees this and screams out, "NO!", breaking into a run in pursuit and opening fire with her weapons, crying out as she feels a massive hog crack into her hip. That's going to bruise, but Huntress doesn't stop, shaking off the pain and continuing to chase after Harper as the drug starts to make Harper's limbs go numb.

Harper Row has posed:
Harper has a good bead on one of the buggers. Now that the initial wrong-footed feeling is sliding into fight time, she can put all that adrenaline to good use. A night seeing the sights might be ruined, but cracking heads will serve as a suitable substitute. "Hey, E I, E I, Oink, here comes Farmer Row with the haymaker."

The singular focal point of pain into her neck spears through a few of her favourite muscles. The ones that control a lot of what happens from the collar downwards. The twinge has one of her knuckle sandwiches hinging up like she was trying to rub her ear with her bicep.

The flood of ugly warmth that starts to quickly go to work on her reactions and fury is a tidal wave. A palsy has her face caught into an initial sneer before everything drains away into foggy muted snatches of chaos.
fShe slaps and then flounders with diminishing resistence as she's hauled.

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Steph's launching towards the alley with the barest nod of her agreement and a shouted "Got it!" before she's flying towards the alley, going high when Tim goes low, extendable staff swinging around in an arc to deliver the tip in what might not quite be a wrist-shattering blow to the knife-holding thug's arm, deadening nerves, follow up sweep sending the knife careening into the wall to ping and snap, even as her mid-air momentum sends her into a twisting spin, lifted leg swinging around to deliver a merciless blow to his face.

As Tim does his part of the up-top down-low combo move, there's a strange sound.

People getting struck by finely trained martial artists don't go /splootch/ like that.

"I'm... going to check /that/ out!" And grapple gun's back in hand for another PWOOMF of compressed air, and then the whining hiss of the motor retracting to launch Steph up and out of the alley towards the main thoroughfare.

Where she's absolutely going to miss the relatively subtle danger Harper is in because a strangely familiar figure is playing the grossest game of whack-a-mole.

Tim Drake has posed:
Tim's part of the Over/Under is to run full bore at the kidnapper, duck under to powerslide on his knees past him (what else are armored kneepads for?) and as Steph's kick impacts the guy's face, his staff smacks into the backs of his knees.

With the pig-mask bandit taken out, Tim takes a moment to check on his would-be victim, who's starting to come to her senses already. "Don't go further into the alley, that guy was dragging you in here for a reason." he deducts. It's more likely to lead to the bad ending than to the continue, at any rate. "Stay here, stay out of sight." It must be the bright "don't look at Batman, look at me" colors, because the girl doesn't seem to fear Red Robin and instead just does what she's told with a steadfast nod.

A touch to his ear when Batgirl's away, and Red Robin tells her << "I'm going to go see about those pigs." >> He grapple guns away with a sharp hissing noise, because his gun is Built Different, feeling out his utility belt for the smoke bomb compartment.

Violet Paige has posed:
There's going to be a lot of people too traumatised by this incident to ever visit Amusement Mile again. Probably also a lot of new vegans & vegetarians. There is a saying about not seeing how the sausage gets made. And when someone is using a street light as an improvised club? That saying needs the big font, underlined, and probably a few !'s on the end.

Rise. Fall. SMASH. Over and over sending up splatters of gore. As well as the carnage she's causing there's a terrible new addition to the cacophony. Her strikes aren't exactly clean kills. And the horrible sounds of injured animals joins the enraged animal noises.

Each time the hollow metal pole gets more and more deformed. Until eventually it's just useless twisted metal.

Hopefully she's had enough of an impact to thin the stampede but if not? She'll have to start swinging those chunky metal gauntlets.

Once again we discover why Gotham vigilantes don't wear white.

It really shows off the blood a little too well...

The only saving grace? Her costume has an enclosed helmet. So no-one can see how close Violet is to throwing up right now.

Helena Bertinelli has posed:
Helena breaks into a charge, planting a foot on the back of one of the pigs and flinging herself with reckless abandon. Another pig gets in her way, this one a woman, greasy blonde hair streaming from the fleshy mask of dried pig skin. Helena drives a knee into her gut, twisting her around, "Out of my way, freak," she says, unloading three rubber bullets against the base of the pig's spine, making her legs collapse and go numb from the shock.

Seeing the vigilantes in their midst, the remaining Pig-folk start to try to break away, either ripping off masks and vanishing into the crowd or trying to drag victims along with them as they do. The pigs are finally starting to thin out, but there's so much wreckage in their wake, not the least of which are the broken and groaning bodies of those trampled by the stampede.

Huntress feels the burn in her legs as she keeps herself going, meeting Harper's eyes as the punk girl is still in there, her body just paralyzed by the drug in her system as they drag her along. But Helena's going to save her, she's going to get her free, she's coming to the rescue.

And then the pigs start exploding.

Not all of them. Maybe a dozen, in total, explosives swallowed with their feed, detonated from a distance, a simple radio signal that leads them to beep and stand and explode, sending ragged blasts of gut and gore in every direction. Probably not going to help Violet's stomach. One of them blows right near Helena and she's thrown through the air, legs over head, crashing through the window of a shop and left bleeding and unconscious as Harper is dragged into the back of a waiting van along with a few other victims.

Harper Row has posed:
Without any control of her limbs, all those hours of training, earning bumps and bruises and increasing aptitude with being a gosh darned vigilante, Harper experiences a completely internalized panic attack. She can't even gibber, just issue out a rusty whine as she disgustingly drools from the corner of her mouth. The eye closest to the injection is derped, unfocused and veering out of alignment. The other tries to fix on Helena amidst the hustle and bustle.

It's ludicrous to be so numbed but what she can still see and hear and feel to be so altered, like its happening in a super crazy VR game. Uncanny valley type stuff, with time being distorted, and not able to have a proper freak out while trapped within herself. It's all gone to sleep, but it's a nightmare.

Another gurgle, and when the pigs touch off, she's not even able to flinch from the vicera 'splosions or flying shrapnel, while stacked with the other abductees like sacks of potatoes. She's amazed she can still draw breath. Thank goodness for those habits being dependable. It's awfully hard to come up with a plan when you're packed up like an Amazon delivery with the other packing peanuts and a head full of chemical bubblewrap.

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Steph's a few steps behind where she'd normally be. While she hasn't been letting up on her vigilantism she's been focusing less and less on complex cases, and more and more on that old standby, scaring the gatorade out of muggers and carjackers, tipping off GCPD to drug warehouses.

It's not like crime flash mobs are actually as common in Gotham as the rest of the country jokes, so pig masked coordinated attackers are already a handful. Orchestrated animal release layers on the confusion, and with the multiple attempted kidnappings, Steph utterly misses Harper's presence.

She's busy doing some mental calculus about the badass cyborg lady smashing pigs, determining she's probably not a threat, swinging in to land behind and beside her and out of the way of what's left of lightpost turned pig-smoosher.

And with her face totally covered by cowl and mask, there's no awkward 'OMG, don't I know you?' moment between them.

Just an awkward, "So... uhhh... you play that thing where you try to ring the-"

KERBOOM KERSPLUCH and other awful sounds, censored by our editors for the reader's comfort as a dozen pigs fucking EXPLODE!

That purple cape is whipped around, Steph shielding her face and body like a Dracula being caught in sunlight.

Which doesn't really do anything for the high velocity pigsplatter, as it simply splashes over, through, and around her cape.

And it drops from numb fingers as she stares around slowly.

That was a new one.

This after action report is going to be so long and so weird.

Violet Paige has posed:
Well. Shit.

Surrounded by literal mounds of dead and dying pigs Mother Panic pretty much disappears when they explode. Thankfully her suit is re-enforced enough to stop the bone fragments sent flying as shrapnel from piercing her armour. But she's going to be covered in bruises from the barrage of pig bits.

She's even more grateful for the full enclosed helmet because it's the only thing keeping the mess out of her eyes too.

The white suit totally painted red. It might be one of the few cases where jumping in the pollution of the sea at the Gotham waterfront might actually make someone cleaner...

Even with all the cybernetic enhancements and expensive armour she's still stunned by the sheer quantity of the explosions. And when she's eventually visible again? She's staggering towards the nearest wall.

Propping herself up like an unsteady drunk.

She shakes herself, trying to dislodge viscera, and wipes at the command console on her hand. Trying to access the skybike controls.

If she's lucky she might be able to program it to follow one of the vans. See where they are taking the victims. Or at least follow them enough to narrow down a later search area.

But then that assumes she can clean off the pig gore fast enough....

"Game?" She shouts. Probably a little deafened by the explosion. Her voice masked by a modulator unit in her helmet. "The only game I'm playing involves finding who thought this up. And making them eat their own teeth."

Tim Drake has posed:
In light of new developments, mainly exploding pigs, Tim decides not to decrease visibility with his smoke bombs. << "Calibrating HUD to monitor heartbeats." >> he reports, as he tippy-taps on his wrist computer. This isolates the runners and last-ditch-effort kidnappers to him, allowing the vigilante to ignore most anything else. Their silhouettes are quickly pinged to the Bat-servers and transmitted to Batgirl as well. << "Save the civilians, apprehend the pig-men." >> Easy as, right? Sure!

Red Robin goes into the crowd, twisting his staff to separate it into two halves. In the rush of the crowd, he's able to kneecap one, then another bandit, causing them to release their would-be victims before getting a second strike to the dome. Each time he downs a bad guy, he nudges the civilian off to the side, either advising them into a building or to simply hug the nearest wall to keep out of the panicking crowd.

Then the pigs start exploding, and Red Robin wishes he'd still had that cowl. At least the Roost has a decent shower installation! "Steph's gonna have jokes when she sees me like this.." he mutters under his breath. Red Robin indeed.

Helena Bertinelli has posed:
It all happens so fast.

The van takes off, tires squealing, dragging ill0gotten cargo to places unknown, drugged bodies shoved onto the floor of the van in close proximity while pig-masked deviants giggle and congratulate each other in husky, muffled voices.

Helena slowly starts to pull herself out of the wreckage of the shop window she went through. Blood is running down her face, her scalp split, broken glass leaving pinpricks of crimson on her face. Maybe she'll even get a scar or two. She doesn't care right now. She's just screaming, mostly, her ears ringing from the explosion of the pig near her, her coat ruined. The screaming only stops when she finally passes out again, blood loss and concussion leaving her stunned. Maybe one of the other bat people will recognize her and take her somewhere safe. Otherwise, she's waking up in the hospital.

There's mayhem everywhere, blood splatter, gore and guts, the weak whimpering of those left behind. And, as always, the remaining pigs, snorting and confused. Some of them just drop dead. Forensics will reveal a concoction of illegal drugs, stimulants and hallucinogenics, spoiling the meat and driving them mad for purposes unknown. And the terror, always the terror.

The only clear sound is one of the captured pig cultists, rounded up through the efforts of the vigilantes, that first man that Red Robin and Batgirl took out. He's laughing maniacally, his mask off, revealing a pockmarked face and a shaved head, a bull ring through his septum as he just screams the same thing over and over again.

"PIGS ARE PEOPLE AND PEOPLE ARE PIGS PIGS AND PEOPLE AND PEOPLE ARE PIGS PIGS ARE PEOPLE AND PEOPLE ARE PIGS!"