Gotham: Gotham Village - South

Gotham Village seems to have something new and exciting going on everyday. No
 two shops, or places are alike, they are each unique and interesting. This
 part of Little Bohemia is the heart of Gotham's artistic and musical scene.
 During the warmer months artists can be seen trying to sell their pictures on
 the sidewalks. While bands, and singers compete on various stages and park
 space, people young and old travel through the village during the day along
 its spacious walkways, and green grasses. The Village is usually busy during
 the day, and safe. And even at night there always seems to be someone watching
 over Gotham's residents.

Obvious exits:

KTVU Building <KTVU> Gotham Village <NW> Chinatown <NE> Evanstown <E>
Irving Grove <W> Subway <D>

KTVU Building
        The building is made of brick, as it rises a few stories up,
housing the various studious of KTVU. A set of stairs lead to the double
doors, which lead to the inner maze inside. 

The Batmobile enters the area from northern Gotham Village.
The Batmobile has arrived.
The Batmobile rumbles in.
The Batmobile screeches to a halt.
The Batmobile slows to 0 MPH.
Batman steps out of the The Batmobile.
Batman has arrived.

Paramedics and police are on the scene, clearly the first. The doors to
the studio are wide open, and a stretcher is laid out on the steps: a pair
of paramedics administers oxygen to someone who is laughing her head off
despite a bloody head wound that pr obably isn't as bad as it looks.
Police officers are cordoning off the area, and there is a small knot of
dazed-looking, still-half-giggling employees standing nearby, getting a
bit wet in the light drizzle, and occaisionally looking back at the
building, explaining something to a tired-looking detective.

The whole scene is somehow surreal...the giggles and laughter rise above
the distant wail of sirens and the pitter-patter of rain, but the street
has been closed to traffic and some trick of acoustics has hidden the rest
of the sounds of the city from this area. 

A shadow flits up from the side of the Batmobile as it rumbles to a stop
in a nearby sidestreet. Muttering a command subvocally as he clambers to
the roof of a small brownstone adjacent to the TV Station, the Dark Knight
Detective quickly gives the situation a once over. He does not look
pleased. . o O (Joker...as I suspected. God help Gotham if I'm too slow to
catch up again...) 

The Batmobile automatically follows a subroutine and pulls into an
alleyway, security systems and scanners flicking on. 

The station's antennas, as can clearly be seen from the roof of the
brownstone, have been thoroughly wrecked, possibly by some kind of
explosion. The roof door hangs off its hinges.

Batman patches in his mask-radio to the parabolic microphone on the
Batmobile, trying to listen in on the voices of the investigating police.
He rubs a thumb across the top of one of his clentched fists as he
eavesdrops, thinking along two tracks as he surveys the destruction left
in the Clown Prince of Crime's wake. 

*CCRRZZZT bssrrrffft* "...didn't see him. They just played a couple
(giggle) reels of him...they put in a tape. One of them had a list of
instructions (heh HAheh) that he read off to get it to run..."
"Instructions?" "On how to make the broadcast. Then I don't (hehah)
remember, they were pulling us out...I think there were explosions (hehHA)
Excuse me..." "How many explosions?" "I don't know..." 

CRrrcdskskSsct...The detective's voice comes through again in the middle
of a question "...idn't see the Joker at all?" "(haheh) Just on the
monitor...He wasn't in studio...not (hahah) live." (Murmurs of
concurrence, static, static, static...) 

Batman thinks . o O (A tape. Of course. Lets see what his men left behind
on site...) 


There's a soft rustle and a slight twirling sound through the rain as the
Batman tosses a Batarang down to the roof of the TV Station. He pulls it
taut after connecting to a rooftop pipe, and takes another bat-shaped
implement to slide down the line to land atop the roof, taking care to
not be seen by the police or bystanders as he makes his landing. 

The roof is apparently devoid of life...close up, the antennas reveal that
not one, but several explosions took place. The debris and ash glistens in
the puddles of rain. 

Batman crawls across the rooftop, feeling around the broken struts of the
former-transmission tower, and taking an evidence bag from one of his belt
modules. He begins taken samples of the debris and any powder he can
scratch off of the destroyed metal that hasn't been washed away in the
downpour. His eyes scan the rough edged shrapnel for signs of detonation
devices or timers. 

A battered, but very small, box lies on it's side (?), a slight distance
from the antennae. The wiring trailing from it seems to be of a more
temporary nature, unlike the heavy-duty cables that were nonetheless
fused, melted, and flung around the rooftop by the explosion...bits of
shrapnel from the actual explosives may be present, but the rain and the
shattered metal of the equipment would make them difficult to find. 

Batman picks up the box, and studies it with a casually critical eye,
seeing what he can deduce from it as he paces towards the roof access. 

The box is definitely some kind of timer or sequencer: the lid, blown
open, has a fused computer chip in it, ruptured batteries whose diluted
acid is now largely harmless, and a number of connections that have been
twisted and burned. Except for the chip, it's clearly homemade, and should
it prove just to be a timer, the chip could come from any digital watch. 

Batman thinks . o O (...a thorough job of disabling this and the other
transmitting towers...but why? To make a statement..."Read A Book". Why?
Why not. But...where's the profit...distraction?) 

Batman hunches slightly as he begins a creeping descent down the stairway,
mouth set in a hard line as he makes his way to the interior of the
shattered building. 

Batman makes his way up the steps and into the KTVU building.
Batman has left.

You make your way inside the KTVU building.
KTVU-TV Studio 1 Control Room(#947RF)

The control room is a dark place, full of flashing inexplicable lights and
dully lit monitors showing the various studios of KTVU. Through the
soundproof thick plexiglass, the news studio can be seen: beyond the outer
door, the hallways and corridors of K TVU can be found. Here, engineers
and low level program managers skulk and sulk, drinking awful coffee from
the ancient percolator in the corner, and listen to the monotonous drone
of television, waiting either for something to go wrong, or something to
go right.

Contents:
Batman
Obvious exits:
Out <O>

The building has the eerie emptiness of a place recently abandoned. The
urge to giggle comes on faintly once in the stairwell: traces of laughing
gas must remain in the air. A spilled and shattered coffee cup lies on the
ground. The office areas are in disarray. The footsteps of the police in
the building echo through the hallways. 

Taking a few cautious pauses out of the range of the police as they search
the station, the Caped Crusader readies a rebreather. He kneels at the end
of the stairwell to look for footprints left by the Joker's goon squad as
a result of the rain outside, then looks for the administrative offices. 

There are muddled footprints of water and roofing material near the top of
the stairs. The administrative offices are well-appointed, though
completely wrecked. One of them, marked 'Treasurer' has a safe in it: 
blown open and empty. The door, again, hangs off it's hinges. There is
also the pattern of a shotgun blast in the wall, stark against the generic
faux wood paneling, though there is no blood. 

Police tape crisscrosses the treasurer's door.

Batman scowls and turns towards the control room of the station,
flattening against a wall as a Gotham police officer walks past. He waits
momentarily, then edges closer to the broadcast controls. 

The main control room is near the center of the building (at least as far
as can be told by the twisting corridors), and most of the police in the
building seem to be there, where another explosion of some kind has taken
place. A member of the bomb squad is also present, according to the
insignia on his rain jacket, though he isn't wearing any armor, and his
demeanor is as relaxed as Gotham bomb squad members ever get on Joker
investigations. They don't seem to be looking for people very hard. 

Batman frowns to himself. . o O (Looks like I'll need to discuss the
findings in there with Jim at a later date...) He turns back, and fades
out of the hallway, heading towards the back exit. 

Outside, the people have recovered...the paramedics are moving away...more
police are arriving to replace them...the surreal scene of a Joker attack
begins to take on the more prosaic trappings of an ordinary criminal
investigation... 

Batman glances around the back of the station, peering around with his
usual observance as he looks for evidence of the getaway taken by the
Joker's men. The rain spatters across his cowled face as he eyes the
streets and the police's main gathering. 

Batman thinks . o O (...all of the money in that safe couldn't have begun
to cover the overhead on pulling this stunt off...he's in this for
something else. As always...the game. The theatre of it all.) 

The back door appears to be intact, though it is unlocked. Tire marks
indicate that a car accelerated very quickly from a standstill, but the
rain has obscured anything further. This was where the getaway car was
parked, but how long it was here, or where it went is hard to say.

It's hard to put a finger on it, but it's as if you had arrived at the
Indianapolis 500 just after all the cars had left the track. Whatever
happened in the building happened fast, with literally brutal swiftness,
and what is left now is, equally literally, the pieces, still-frame
fragments of a fast-paced movie that somewhere, is still playing itself
out... 

Batman tests the status of the Batmobile's own transmitter suite, running
a check on various channels and frequencies as he paces around the back of
the station. He darts for the alleyway where the Batmobile awaits, casting
another cold look over his shoulder at the ruined broadcasting building. 

The TV channels' frequencies, with a little bleed-over, are dead, blocked
by a pure 'noise' signal. The same is true for a number of satellite
frequencies, though which satellites are being affected isn't at once
known, though you can probably guess: direct TV and cable TV proprietary
satellites. 

The Batmobile rumbles to life again, slowly pulling out of the alleyway.
The inside of the Batmobile.
The Batmobile cruises out into the street, briefly swinging out as the engine roars into overdrive. It whips around to the back of the TV Station, and begins to gain speed.
The Batmobile speeds along at 60 MPH.

The rain comes to a stop, though the clouds get a little darker.