Prologue#2: A Moths dream of light

Drury Walker was not a heroic man.

At a young age Drury, like many of the poorer citizens of Gotham, took a life a petty crime in order to survive the dark city.

Drury had not been the most successful citizen so like many, he chose an easier path and chose to work under a local mob boss by the name of Tony Bressi. Now Bressi had outlasted many of his other peers in organised crime. His success would help him land the the nickname 'Tony "Tough" Bressi' due to his particular trade being to labor. Although not the most charismatic, Tony knew what to say to the avenge street-thug to gain another underling.

Drury had not been special in any regard at the time of his recruitment, if only that Drury had a talent in mechanics. As such Drury would often get paired up with the other grunts to preform the more 'questionable' jobs under the Bressi family.

It had been a rather cold night in February when Drury had been asked by Tony Bressi to move a kind of 'product' from one warehouse to another. It was the kind of "Don't ask questions" job that Drury had gotten used to while under the 'protection' and employment of the mob boss. It was this night that Drury's already bad life spiralled downwards.

Now, it had only been rather recently, but a masked vigilante by the name of 'Batman' chosen to appear in the dark city of Gotham. And with the appearance of many blizzard 'supervillains' taking over territory around Gotham, organised crime was getting harder to organise.

With it still being rather early in his career, Batman noticed the rise in supervillain, as if to balance his good deeds so he chose to move fast and put a stop to some of the more dominant crime families before he got stuck battling a supervillain of the week instead.

After a few stake outs, Batman had found out about the product movement and went to put a stop to it. Though, being the inexperienced crime fighter that he was, Batman was unable to cleanly take out the grunts as he would assassins. After all, Batman had been used to fighting with well-trained assassins during his time training for the time to wear his mask. Batman had to restrict his every punch for low-level street thug as too much force could prove to be lethal for the untrained.

Drury was no exception for this beat down, bar one simple moment. Drury wasn't a common grunt, for he had dreams of frame and fortune, and he knew you wouldn't get either if you stuck to the bottom. Having a more trained body, as well as minor experience with pain, Drury had tanked the first hit Batman had thrown at him in hopes of a silent takedown. Reacting rather fast, like many would while in a Gotham, Drury threw a counter-punched at the dark bat-like creature exiting the shadows.

Though Drury did not feel much better after the second strike ran into him, neither did he feel well after the fourth. This of course was traumatising for Drury.

Drury as well and various of the other grunts had to be sent to hospital before prison could even be considered. But, wanting to prevent any weak links or traitorous thoughts, Tony had paid off members of the medical staff in order to have his thugs sent Blackgate Penitentiary. Blackgate Penitentiary is located on a small island in Gotham Bay, Gotham City. Unlike Arkham Asylum, Blackgate was where non-insane criminals, and various henchmen, mobsters, and mafia bosses are incarcerated when captured.

Believing that he could have his grunts make connections with other criminals as well as being able to silence them at any time, Tony Bressi was content on ignoring his loss in power and instead find a way to re-direct The Batmans on his rivals.

Drury however did not make the same trip his fellow grunts made to Blackgate. The blunt force trauma to the head, combined with the horror show of Batman appearing out of the shadows, had spread an irrational troubling fear of the dark. Drury's daily screams and panicked moments had forced the payed medic staff to have a therapist examine Drury.

Jonathan Crane was the man sent to examine Drury as he was experience with the psychology revolving around fear.

Jonathan only sent two minutes in the room, before declaring Drury legally insane with various mental disorders related to a mix of brain trauma and a growing irrational fear of the dark.

As such, Drury was sent to Arkham Asylum, becoming one of the many patients under Jonathan Crane and Hugo Strange.

Now from an audience view point; We should know that Jonathan Crane was a rather dark man. After all, Jonathan Crane is the Scarecrow, a criminal in Gotham City who takes pride in spreading fear using his specially-designed fear toxin. This makes him an enemy of the city's protector Batman. Though many don't know about Hugo Strange.....

Professor Hugo Strange first gained fame as a psychiatrist who declared that he had fully analysed the Dark Knight from afar, and would lent credence to his own claims by deducing Batman's true identity as Bruce Wayne. However, his interest in the Batman turned into a deranged obsession, and he used his medical expertise to hatch a series of bizarre plots based around genetics and mind control in order to defeat the hero and possibly take his place as Gotham's saviour.

But from the view point of the common Gothamite at this time, even Batman should he feel the need to investigate would see nothing wrong with these two men. Neither of the two psychiatrists have yet turned down the path of evil(Publicly), and were instead seen as heroes helping the criminally deranged.

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Both psychiatrists had their own goal for getting involved with Drury

For Jonathan, it was the fear Batman had provoked on the man. The fact that a man had been able to cause such an irrational fear that Drury was unable to stand being in the dark was intoxicating for the future Scarecrow. Jonathan wanted to play around with Drury's fear and learn about how to manipulate it.

Meanwhile, Hugo Strange had started to become rather instead in Batman, wondering what could drive a man to embrace Bats and run around, fighting criminals.

Hugo Strange wanted to such a thing could be repeated and study the development over time, so he used Drury for an experiment.

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Under the combined experiments Drury broke as a man. He hated the dark cell he was left in. A single flicking bulb was the only light source that he had. Drury had seem to fixate on the bulb as a faint buzzing was the only sound to grace his ears.

Hugo's experiments tended to be full of gaslighting. Even in it's broken state Drury knew that something was wrong with how his therapist look at him.

Hugo had ironically done something strange with Drury. But Hugo had been implanting an obsession with Moths into Drury. It started small, having pictures of moths in his offence while talking with Drury, mentioning something about them in passing. But now it had gotten obvious, going as far as to import moths into Drury's cell to constantly fly around him.

It was messy but combined with Jonathan Cranes own experiments it worked wonders on Drury's physic.

Course all 'good' things have to come to an end.

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As Arkham Asylum faced a growing reputation for inefficiency, Hugo Strange decide to take drastic measures to ensure he would hold his position, to avoid revealing what he ha been doing behind the scenes. So he needed an exemplary patient to be present, so people can believe that Arkham works.

Hugo choose to preform an experimental and selective lobotomy to erase Drury's traumatic memories of both Batman and his own experiments.

After only half a year of recovery, the operation was deemed a full success. Drury Walker was declared sane, and allowed to be released as a healthy citizen of Gotham.

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Of course that wasn't exactly true now...

Drury had changed. Even without the memories, he felt haunted. The experiments that Jonathan Crane and Hugo Strange had done have taken a troll on his body and he started to suffer from insomnia. Being unable to relax in the dark, even avoiding shadows during the day as visions of a bat-like demon lunging at him happened daily.

His apartment soon became cluttered with lamps, lightbulbs, LEDs, if it could produce light Drury got it. This would continue as Drury fell back into his insanity, when he saw something on his tv. The news was playing a story about the infamous Batman. The image of the supposed hero resounded in Drury's head until he felt a sense of clarity. This 'hero' had been the dark figure haunting him from the shadows, this Batman was the reason for his insanity.

Drury decided at that moment that if the common Gothamite could have a protector then so should the avenge lawbreaker.

Being surround in bright lights, Drury had attracted a lot of moths, some of whom had crawled on him. Looking down at the winged insects Drury gained an idea. He shall be the Killer Moth, that Anti-Batman, a mirror image to protect the fends of this world from justices cruel fists.

Drury felt that his future was looking bright....