La Noche: I--- Batman Caballero De

The slash in his chest emblem is not a bat, but the jagged silhouette of a murciélago —a spectral, long-tongued nectar bat, sacred to the old ways. His cape is not Kevlar, but a stiff, midnight-black capa woven by the blind weavers of the Sierra Oscura. It deflects bullets with a sound like shattering obsidian.

"Mercy," the priest whispers.

He leaves the man screaming, his gang dissolved, the Junta ’s ritual broken. As dawn bleeds over the adobe rooftops, Diego climbs the bell tower. He looks out over his city—his ugly, beautiful, cursed Gotham del Sur . The mariachis are playing a sad, hopeful tune. i--- Batman Caballero De La Noche

He presses it to the back of the priest’s right hand. The flesh hisses. The slash in his chest emblem is not

His name is . Not the fictional Zorro of old California, but his great-great-grandson, who watched his father—a reform-minded alcalde —gunned down in the zócalo by the corrupt Federales of the Junta de los Buitres (The Vulture Council). The last thing Diego saw before the blindfold was the shadow of a mission bat flitting across the moon. He took that shadow as his oath. "Mercy," the priest whispers

I--- Batman moves. Not with the silent glide of the American comics, but with the crack of a bullwhip—his látigo , a braided cord of piano wire and horsehair. It wraps around a federal ’s rifle, yanks it into the abyss. He lands on the altar, his boots scuffing the blood-rusted tiles.

I--- Batman looms over him, the zarape dripping with oil and blood. The single bell in the tower above begins to toll midnight, pulled by a ghost (or by the wind). Each clang is a gunshot in the silence.