It was the type of night that felt eerily calm and still, save for the thumping disco music coming from the jam-packed club downstairs. The dim, silver crescent of a moon was playing a masterful game of hide-and-seek with a passing parade of thick, fluffy clouds. The perfect type of weather for an undercover operation, Bruce thought to himself.

As the slim remnant of the moon’s beams disappeared behind another cloud, he pressed the earpiece button on his helmet. “Alfred, do you copy?” he growled into the intercom. “I’m on the rooftop and in position to raid the nest.”

“Go, go, go!” Came the instructions from headquarters. “Remember, shoot to kill; your main target is the Penguin but we don’t want to leave any witnesses.”

Shattered glass rained down on the jam-packed Iceberg Lounge as the caped crusader burst through the skylight, temporarily blinding customers and security alike. That split second was all it took for Bruce to open fire, spraying bullets in all directions with the semi-automatics concealed in his mechanical suit.

There are no survivors — not even one minute later, the room is deadly quiet, a macabre Jackson Pollock painting of blood, booze and corpses. Bruce scans the room, looking for his intended target who is notably absent from the mountain of bodies.

“Did you get him?” Alfred’s voice cuts through the silence, radio static being the only sound left.

“He’s not here,” Bruce replies gruffly. “Let me check out the back office.”

“Don’t take too long,” says Alfred. “We already know that he’s guilty.”

Bruce locates the office and bursts through the door. As expected, the Penguin is seated in his comfortable leather chair, dressed in a tailored black-and-white suit, snacking on a plate of fresh tuna sashimi.

Bruce cocks his weapon, preparing to carry out a merciless execution, then in a split second moment of clarity, recognises the ridiculousness of the situation.

And as the two men stared at each other, one dressed as a flightless aquatic bird and the other dressed as a winged rodent, a glimmer of a thought flashed through Bruce’s mind: that maybe, just maybe, they were both just gullible lunatics doing the bidding of puppet masters behind.