BLI has an incredible Child Protective Services Department.
The number of homeless, abused, or neglected children is very low in Battery City; its orphanages are cramped but comfortable enough, and almost every home that wants a child has one.
To the outside eye it might seem like there are nothing but benevolent intentions, but there are a select few who know differently. Every child who passes through those doors is evaluated thoroughly, but though itâs said that itâs to assess what each child needs in their new home, the truth behind the matter is that theyâre looking for children with very specific traits. Those unlucky children arenât heard from againâor, at least, when they are seen again, theyâre all but unrecognizable.
Any average Scarecrow will tell you that thereâs only so far you can get through promotions alone. The elite, the best-of-the-best, the most skilled and dangerous, they didnât rise through the ranks to get thereâthey were assigned their positions. Not many see them at all before theyâve been trained sufficiently and are ready to step into the public eye, and even fewer know where they come from.
But if one knows where to look, deep in BLIâs files, they can find the truth. Records, from Child Protective Services, telling of a teenage boy taken from his abusive father, a young girl plucked from a failing Zones orphanage, a little tousle-haired boy pulled off of the streets, and countless more through the years, some dating back even before the Fires and even before Bat City itself. All vanished for years without a trace, before returning as something different, something terribleâŠsomething deadly.