LibriumArcana.Games

Commissioner Gordon gripped his revolver instinctively as he stood behind the squad car, watching the Gotham SWAT team move into position around the warehouse. The Penguin was in there, all right. This sting had been months in the making, and finally Gotham's finest would have one of the city's most notorious gangsters in custody. The signal was given, and rams were applied to the front and back doors. Flash-bangs went in, their noise and light quickly followed by armored officers.

No shots were fired, and it was only a few seconds before the SWAT leader's voice came over the radio. "Commissioner, the building's secured. You'd... Well sir, you'd better come take a look at this."

"I'm on my way," Gordon answered as he approached the building. Ducking inside, he saw, rather than the expected scene of the Penguin and his henchmen collecting protection payouts from their street hoods, a strangely organized slaughterhouse. Gunshot-riddled bodies lay all over, apparently where they'd fallen, but all were laid on their backs, hands crossed over their chests, and strangest of all a penny over each closed eye. In the center was the Penguin, with an exit wound in each cheek, laid out as if for funeral, eyes covered in copper. Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot was no more. Somehow, the Commissioner failed to take comfort in that fact.
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Well, the title says it all. Connor and Murphy McManus, together with their father Noah, set up shop in Gotham City. For the purposes of this scenario, they have their normal resources, including Doc (along with his bar and the back room thereof), the crazy arms dealer, and Connor's fuckin' rope (:razz:), but not Rocco or Romeo (though if there are any likely characters for them to recruit in similar manner to Romeo, they might do so). Before them: The monumental task of ridding Gotham City of violent organized crime, all the while avoiding Gotham's finest, the vengeance of their targets, and the goddamned Batman. How does it go down? What does Batman do? Presuming they whack the Penguin first (he's an obvious choice; easier to find than the Riddler or the Joker and everyone else tends to have superpowers that would make whacking them difficult), how does Gotham's criminal underworld react? We can fairly well say what the police will do (i.e. try to catch them if they can figure out who's doing it), but are there other factors that I, not being an avid follower of Batman comics, might not have considered?

For the sake of argument let's say we're using a nominally normal Bats and not "lol preptime" bats.

That being said, the McManus brothers aren't exactly quiet. Batman will want to bring them in because they are killers, I'd put good odds on Batman catching the McManus brothers.

This is an interesting idea. Batman abhors guns altogether (even to the point of retiring once he was forced to use one), and these three use nothing but guns for their "Holy Execution" style.

I'll give the caveat now that I never followed any comic books, what I know of Batman is from Batman: The Animated Series and from the Batman Beyond pilot and Return Of the Joker movies, as well as the two Michael Keaton Batman movies (Batman, and Batman Returns), and the two Chris Nolan Batman movies (Batman Begins and The Dark Knight). I've only seen the first Boondock Saints movie, and not the second.

So, reactions.

Ridding Gotham City of organized crime: I think they're in for a massive shock. They're primarily used to dealing with Batman or the police, and only the police are likely to bring out some scary firepower. A few crime bosses getting capped along with their entire retinue, together with Batman doing his usual thing make me think that Gotham City suddenly will be much less attractive to criminals.

What does the Batman do: I think he'd treat them as criminals, for basically using deadly force as standard fare. In his mind, that would make the Saints no better than those they killed, and I think he'd spend some time researching them, and attempting to corner them out of the city. On the other hand, he could decide that they make an ideal distraction for him to start taking down some of his biggest nemeses at large without their usual backup.

How would the underworld react to the Penguin getting capped: probably complete shock. They've dealt with Batman's somewhat light-handed means of discouraging business, which has forced them to rely more on their wits than their firepower for the past couple years. When the Saints show up and effectively blow that conception all to shit, this might be the beginning of some serious infighting amongst the prominent crime groups in Gotham as they struggle to figure out how to deal with many kinds of justice at once.

That's all I have so far, but this is an interesting idea.

Charon wrote:For the sake of argument let's say we're using a nominally normal Bats and not "lol preptime" bats.

Yes. The idea is that they appear in Gotham unknown and start their rampage, just like what happened in Boston (only with no Agent Smecker and not having earlier turned themselves in for self-defense, making them more unknown than they were in the movies). Batman doesn't know they're coming, ergo Batman gets no prep time to start with, though he may get it if they keep going long enough for him to require it.

Since I don't know beans about about Boondock Saints and am not currently the official Batman anyway, I think I'll sit back and watch Richard deal with this

Without the cops running interference for them in the movies, how long can they last until they get caught? Sooner or later Gordan and his happy band who aren't incompetent will track down a witness or two and put it together.

On the flip side the boys are damn good at not leaving physical traces and frankly I think the good citizens of Gotham would be largely supportive of their efforts. I would like to see the boys debating Bats over methods. If nothing else the boys could ask how many people have died due to Bats not putting away his enemies for good.

It should be noted that they're not psychopaths. Most low level crooks seem to get a pass from them, it's the massive repeat offenders or the ones high up in the mechanics of organized crime that are their main targets in the movies.

The cops didn't run interference for them until late in the first movie, and even then it was just the three detectives, not the entire force. As for Batman, didn't the Punisher once get loose in Gotham? I'd imagine Batman's handling of that would provide a baseline for how he'd react to the Saints.

Whacking the Penguin is a smart move, as he was the leading "Information Broker" for the various families of Gotham as well as one of Batman's rogues.

The Saints have a wealth of targets: I believe there are 3 Mafia families, 3-5 Tongs, and a few Yakuza clans operating in Gotham, as well as members of the Russian mob and various Latino gangs. Batman has an eye and dossiers on all of them, but only moves on them when the Families are moving guns or other large shipments. The rest of the time he seems to simply be getting information Gordon can use to take the Families down.

On the other hand however, the kinds of targets that the Saints seem to be mostly interested in will also be Batman's number one targets. As soon as they take out their first target (which we shall assume is Penguin), then the roof's going to fall in. Batman is hardly going to ignore someone who shoots up one of his rogue's gallery as well as his top henchmen, and given that he's the "Goddamn Batman", he'll no doubt find the boys before too long thereafter.

The boys won't be shooting at Bats either. In the first movie they made it pretty clear that they would prefer to go down rather then use lethal force on undeserving targets. Recall the order on the FBI agent Smecker

"He's a good man and not to be touched."

We need to remember the boys consider themselves to be operating on divine sanction and there are hard and fast rules you don't break when doing that.