When the woman pulled his head down toward eye level there was pain throughout his upper neck. The suit was not designed to move quite so fluidly, but the stiff long ears held against her firm grip as his bright blue eyes peered into her stormy blue ones. Hers were mysterious and oozed power and control. Her voice clicking out and mocking him at almost every turn while telling him her plan and making demands. As she forced his head back Batman nearly fell over due to the immobilizing drug keeping him hostage, and as the dagger sliced through his cowl and put a red stripe on his neck he could do nothing except grunt in pain.<br/><br/>He had felt worse of course, but it still stung nonetheless. He wanted to hit her, to fight back, and yet she was right, in this moment he was powerless. The rain continued to fall as he listened to her speak about the gala. He knew of it, he was supposed to attend as Bruce Wayne, but as she kept talking it was clear that was no longer an option. He had to show up as Batman, she had demanded it or someone, possibly everyone, in attendance was going to suffer mightilly if he didn't. Those kinds of odds were not favorable, but he had to go regardless, no matter what he had to try and save the lives of Gotham's elite no matter corrupt some of them might be.<br/><br/>The kiss was icing on the cake as he nearly toppled over, in fact he was extremely surprised he didn't fall over, but soon she ran off into the night and Bruce knew that he was on limited time to be at the gala, but he had to wait for the drug to wear off. The woman, who's name he yet didn't know, had said it would take at least an hour for the drug to wear off, but that was likely for the average man and indeed Bruce was correct in that assumption. It was thirty minutes later when the feeling came back into his muscles, albeit with a burn, a side effect of the poison no doubt and soon he headed back to the Batmobile to drive off to the gala he needed to attend.<br/><br/>Gotham's hero walked up to the entrance having cleaned the blood off of his suit and cleaning up the cut on his neck. The man at the door stopped him for a moment. "I know you fight crime, but we don't need you here."<br/><br/>Normally Bruce would have agreed with the man, "look, I understand, but one of your attendees ambushed me earlier and warned me that if I don't show up a lot of people inside are going to die. If you alert them now and cause panic I don't think anyone, you, me, no one is going to make it out alive. So let me in." That was all the doorman needed to hear and in Batman strode full of confidence that he was going to gain a measure of revenge as he moved across the dance floor in search of the female who had attacked him.