With an audible rush of wind, I burst into clean air, leap over a car and cross the street in an eye-blink. Not much I can do about the wind of my passing, and honesty, I don't care. Which are people going to think, that a scrawny invisible wizard just sprinted by at highway speeds clutching a severed hand, or that there was a sudden gust of wind?
Takes me no time at all to cover the distance to the unremarkable office building with the big secret. There's still some lights on, some people working late? No business of mine. The door is locked but I have cracked their security, the code is 2200. Easy to remember.
Inside I quick-march through the lobby with the very impressive marble floor and the desk and stairs of, what's the reddish wood? I know this....
Dammit, this is going to drive me crazy all night. Because you're already so very sane?
Anyways, I go into the elevator, pull off the cloak and quickly hit 7-6-2-6-5-3 in sequence. Well, on the second try, I had to pause and visualize a phone pad to get the numbers right. The combination tells the elevator I really want to go to the secret sub-basement. My face is exposed so the facial recognition software in the hidden camera will recognize me as a friendly and hopefully disable the deadly traps at the bottom. Hate to get offed the day I got out.
The elevator starts down and doesn't fill with nerve gas or whatever, so I guess that part worked out. Been a while since I felt that slight dropping feeling. Hey, I've been in Arkham a long time. Everything is new again.
Doors open and still no sudden death, I think I'm going to be okay. Knock on wood. Fumble a bit for the light switch, ah! Somehow I'd thought or hoped this place would become less creepy in my absence. Glad to see that didn't happen, it'd shake all my faith in universal constants.
In the now dimly lit room, among tangles of esoteric and incomprehensible machinery is a glass tube. And in it is a person, frozen.
Dr, Fries and I go a ways back, ever since the first time I sold him an ice-nine crystal. We tend to think of ourselves and each other as the only sane men in this business, which is kind of ironic given what happened with that bit of polymorphic ice. Not that I'm one to talk. But as the closest thing Victor has to a sane and responsible friend, I long ago promised that if I was ever outside the Asylum while he was in, I'd check up on his Nora for him. I've offered before to try and heal her with magic, but Victor is a man of science and doesn't believe, maybe can't let himself believe, that it will really help. I've never pressed the issue, in this town and especially in Arkham you need to step lightly around someone's deepest issues. There's not a ton to do, the system is fully automated, else she'd have thawed and died a long time ago. I go over the computer records, see that power consumption and so on are all in the normal range. I haul out the filters, which look surprisingly like those on a dryer and check them. They won't need cleaning for a good long time, but I hurriedly scrape them off anyways. I only know how to fix the most basic problems and check there's nothing wrong. Nothing seems wrong, so I'm outta here.
Creepy place.
I don my cloak of darkness again and rush out when the elevator doors open, over the marble floor past the reddish desk (Mahogany, maybe? Or is it actually just Redwood?) pausing only at the door to let myself out.
It really is a beautiful night, with the moon out and a cool breeze off the sea. And I am so very happy to be out and about. There's nothing like free-running after a long stretch in confinement, and I sprint along the riverbank dodging traffic, pedestrians and inanimate objects. Sure, I could fly instead of running to and over the bridge, with invisibility there wouldn't even be any trouble but it'd feel.... different. Still freedom, but not like other people experience it, if that makes any sense? It doesn't. Other men cannot run like this.
Anyways, up I go on the bridge, over the river, aren't any woods, and grandmother's house is far, far away. Oh well. It's usually really easy to tell when you leave one district of Gotham for another, but doubly so for East End. You can pretty much see the line where the commercial buildings suddenly get a whole lot shabbier before giving way to housing. Less people on the streets here, as I run past a rusting gas station that looks like the set of a horror film. I can just see the killer walking very slowly towards the shop.
Takes me only a few minutes to get where I want to, and by then I'm struggling to breath. Cloak doesn't do anything to improve my stamina, just the distance I can cover. For a lot longer than I've been here, Dr. Leslie Thompkins has run a free clinic in East End. All are welcome, even supervillains, provided they adhere to her zero violence policy. For her long years of toil and sacrifice, and her impeccable character, I entrusted her with one of my few bits of permanent magic to give to Gotham. Specifically, a bottle of healing cordial one given to Lucy Pevensie, with my little amber charm inside to keep it from ever running out. Plus a nasty little curse effect, anyone who tries to steal the bottle or strong arm the Doc for it swiftly comes to a messy end. I'm not sure she'd approve of that part, but I didn't really mention it when I handed her the bottle. Anyways, it's probably my responsibility then to make sure she's alright.
The exterior of the building is shabby, like all the buildings in Crime Alley, but the inside is meticulously clean, obviously maintained with love and.... yeah, thinking about the scenery to put off dealing with the people. Bad habit of mine, but I'm done now. There's a secretary, young girl, I'm guessing college, paging for the boss. And here she comes.
Have you ever met an old woman who was thin and frail looking, but still put you in mind of nothing so much as a battleship bearing down on you and about to show respect with a nine-gun salute? If so, you have some context to imagine Dr. Leslie Thompkins. I mean, I've laid Superman on his ass and I'm still nervous about how this meeting will go.
"John Binder! I thought you were still in Arkham." She sounds stern, but not too mad, I hope. Still, my inner Victorian gentleman bristles, confused and frustrated by my reaction to her, and I need to bite back my first three reactions.
"Doctor Thompkins! Just out today! I'll be out of your hair in a minute, I just wanted to stick my head in and see how you were doing."
"I'm fine, thank you very much." she said. "Other people are less so, following your little stunt."
"I'm... afraid you're going to have to narrow that down for me."
"That... that thing. The bottle." Okay, now she's mad.
"I gave that to you to help people!"
"And it has helped so much. First we saved twenty or thirty people, than we had twenty-three deaths in seventeen different break-ins. Not to mention almost losing my license and the clinic for distributing a non-FDA approved medication. Now aside from all the trouble it's brought, I can't even use it except on dying people, and then only if they sign a waiver! Dammit, John, why didn't you tell me about whatever you did to kill anyone who tried to take the bottle?"
Oh. I certainly wasn't expecting that.
"I.... figured someone would try and take it at some point. Of course someone would. Every human being has a reason to want health, so everyone has an interest in controlling it. I just wanted you to be safe."
"Oh, well in that case... I've certainly never felt safer than when a knife was held to my throat! I-" She paused and seemed to reconsider whatever she was going to say. "Listen, John. I believe that you're a basically decent person, and you want to help. I do. But you need to start thinking about whether your help is needed or wanted."
===============================================================================================
Well, I left the clinic more than a little troubled. Giving away a panacea had been, like, the single most noble thing I'd ever done for the city and the world. Of course it rattled me a bit to learn it hadn't all worked out like I wanted. I'd need to think about this. Sentimental twaddle. If you're to castigate yourself for every failure, we'll never do anything else. Move on. Or... I could not think about it. It's not like I'm best buddies with the Doc, or have any reason to go when I can easily score magical healing for myself and my minions.
Yes. I like this plan. Repression and denial, my old friends. I'd be a helpless wreck without you.
Cloak on and I'm once again a part of the night, outracing the wind unseen in moonlight. Dodging cars and people alike.
I do swing quickly by Jerry's Diner, where I get a much warmer welcome. I met Jerry years ago, when I was duplicating money and running numbers for the Falcones. After I struck out on my own, he and his buddy Thomas asked for my help getting out of the life. I bought out their sort of unofficial contracts from the family and set them loose to have their dream of opening a restaurant together. I even gave them a pot of infinite stew and Finn MacCumhail's knife of division, on condition that the poor and homeless of Gotham would never be charged for a bowl. They had no major problems with myself or my gifts, and the only trouble I had was they kept trying to get me to stop and eat.
A lot more running, enjoying that cold wind in my face, over another river and into Diamond where the traffic got a lot heavier for the nightlife. There's the Iceberg lounge and with a quick round of the block I find Freddie, whose found a nice suit somewhere.
It's a point. I can hardly go into such a fine establishment dressed as I am now, in khakis and a t-shirt. Well, I could and not care one fig for the aristocratic pretensions of the upper class, but this is my first public appearance since I was locked up. Impressions matter. So I wave to Freddie, hold up my finger to indicate one minute and duck into a nearby alleyway to think on what I'll need.
I have to fumble a bit to read in the light coming from the street. First, a pair of magic scissors, that snipping one thread off any clothes, however shabby, turn them into a most magnificent suit or dress of gold, as gender appropriate. One snip and I have to all appearances an expensive suit, perfectly tailored gold suit. And an inarticulate howl of rage in my head about how tacky I must appear. Look, I've never really bothered with a costume before, in favor of just wearing whatever works for the magic benefits it may have, but politics is a lot more superficial than supervillainy. Point is, I'm making this up on the spot.
No tie, and for a moment I'm at a loss. Then James briefly takes over and flips through my book of fairy tales until he finds a girl playing with a ribbon, which he pulls out and fashions into a cravat. Okay, fine. But just for tonight. I'll get a tie later. Anything, so long as we fix the suit. I can move my arms again!
Alright, one pragmatic consideration and then I'll make it all better. I pull out a tiny ragged Star Wars book, the Glove of Darth Vader, and give myself the present of... well, the glove of Darth Vader. Aside from the fanboyism, and believe me, part of my brain is still bouncing and giggling at the thought of wearing it, there are two benefits here. First, the glove was created after Anakin lost his second hand, to be an eternal symbol of evil and is as close to completely indestructible as Imperial science and Sith Alchemy could produce. Second, Trioculus was so disappointed when the glove didn't have the power to strangle people at a distance, so his associate Moff Hissa had the thing fit with a small sonic weapon that would look like force choke from the outside, activated by the same motion.
"I find your lack of faith disturbing." I point my right hand at a trash barrel, thumb wide like I was gripping a throat and cock my head. There, at the edge of hearing, I can make out the faint whine that tells me it's working. Good.
Now for the final element, to tie it all together. King Arthur and his knights, the Knighting of Lancelot. When Lancelot is preparing to stand vigil before being knighted, he bids farewell to his adopted fairy mother, who escorted him to Camelot and she gives him a magic ring. Turned left on the finger, it grants invisibility. Turned right, it changes the colour of his clothes and armor. Black to green to his signature pearl and silver. A trick he used mostly to fight disguised in tournaments, but it works to change the color of my suit away from gold, and to match even the cravat and the glove.
All the colors are just slightly eldritch. When black, the suit absorbs the light so fully as to appear almost made of shadow, he green gives the appearance of depth as though I were one giant emerald, and the white is pearly and iridescent, it isn't hard to see a small rainbow. Ultimately, I decide on the white, to evoke the image of old-school "clean" politics. Well, now I have a distinctive look, and between the force ring, the invisibility ring and the glove, I feel secure enough to return the cloak of darkness to it's book. I should be alright if trouble starts.
Of course, if anything does happen, Plan A is to run and hide and read myself up a better arsenal. The wizard who doesn't fight but runs away, will seriously fuck up your shit when he comes back with fresh spells prepared.
Still, I'm ready and I walk out of the alley, meet up with Vinny and we head inside. There's a line at the front desk, but everyone in it quickly decides to stand somewhere else. Ah, Gotham. Where a man who acts or dresses unusually gets instant wary respect. At least, I don't think anybody recognizes us. I make to sure to smile for the person behind the desk, though. Public figure now, impressions matter.
"A table for two, please, name of John Binder. And I'd appreciate it if you'd ask the proprietor if he'd like to speak with me, if it's convenient?"
"Oh! O-of course, sir!" The kid looks scared. Maybe he recognizes me? I don't know him. Could just be the effect of Gotham. Either way we get a table in record time, and a very attentive server to fetch our supper.
It's while we're waiting on my prime rib and Freddie's cordon bleu that he leans in.
"Boss, I have to know, what you said before, in the car? Were you really being serious with us?" He says.
I nodded.
"Yeah, Freddie. I was."
"Okay." He settles back in his seat. "You know I'm with you, no matter what. And I'm sure you've thought this through. But just in the couple hour since, I've thought of three major problems. Getting people to accept you and your history, the high chance that Capricorn will come back to kick sand in your face, and Batman. It'd do a lot for my peace of mind to hear you say that you have a plan for these."
If there's one thing I love about Freddie, well, it's his loyalty. But the runner-up has to be that he's not a toady. He has a brain of his own, he's willing to use it and if he thinks I'm going off the rails, again, he'll tell me. Only thing I can do is repay both his faith and honesty in the same coin. Don't get complacent. All connections have their limitations, and the unseen blade is the most dangerous.
"I have a plan. Well, several plans. A couple things will depend on my meeting here, but the essential points are that I've been out of sight for a while, while all the politicians have been in the open and annoying the electorate the whole time. They're ready for radical change, and I have a few ideas to tilt the odds my way besides. I'll need you and Vinny for several of these, and we'll talk about them in private. The Bat will suspect something's wrong, of course, but he won't be meddling in the election or cracking our heads until he knows what we're doing and how. In this way, we're already ahead of the curve. As for point two... let me worry about Capricorn. I've had a lot of time to think about how to approach him too. Besides, he's gone in search of bigger things. Perhaps he'll never find his back here. Stranger things have happened." The server, looking rather nervous, sets our plates in front of us, looks for permission to leave and half runs away. Huh. "Anyways, I'm more curious about our final Musketeer. Did you see what became of T- of Tommy when I got pinched?"
Poor timing on my part, as he had the first bite of his pretentious stuffed chicken in his mouth. He takes a minute to chew.
"Nobody's seen Tommy since right after. He flew off, I figured at the time either he was busting you out, or you'd given him some kind of secret instructions. Now I think he just came unglued. He's always been a bit lost without you, and none of us could find him. Fifty-fifty we don't see him again for a good long time."
I chewed on that one for a bit, and also on my steak. Does rib count as a steak? I want to say yes, it comes from a cow. But not all beef is steak, is it? What makes a piece of beef a steak? Hmm...
We're getting an awful lot of stares. I'm convinced it has to be the slightly eldritch formalwear, because I don't think the average Gothamite can recognize me. Dolt, open your eyes. This is a self-selecting sample of the wealthier part of society. I do believe several, like that couple near the corner, were involved in the Gotham Ways fundraiser fiasco.
Ah, yes. Several years ago, in my "Robin Hood" phase of trying to do good through my crime, I attended a fundraiser ball for an unusually crooked charity with a small unplanned twist. Namely, I swapped the lettuce in the salad for a magic lettuce from Grimm's fairy tales that turned whoever ate of it into a goat until they ate the antidote lettuce that only I could create so I could auction off a restoration to humanity and raise some money for real charity. I have to admit, seeing so many of the powerful and haughty elite bleating on the floor almost makes up for the humiliation of being beaten down by Batgoat. To this day, I have no idea how he fit a cowl to a goat so quickly.
I bet I could use that in my campaign advertising somehow. The first part, not how it ended.
We eat in companionable silence for a time. As we're wrapping up, someone comes to fetch me to the boss' office.
The meeting with the Penguin goes fairly well. Oswald is a businessman, now that his days of running around with the funny umbrella weapons are behind him, and I came to him with a simple business proposal. Act as my agent in spreading around to the cabal who really control Gotham that rhetoric aside, I'm as much for sale as anyone. I don't want the money so much as for them to not organize against me in the race, and whether I tend to heed their wishes or not, that I can decide on a case-by-case basis. Good to get an idea of who they are and what they want in any case. I'm not so naive as to believe that popular support alone can win an election in America, you need some friends among the people whose vote actually counts.
For this, Oswald gets a fairly generous finder's fee, and I'll owe him a favor. We've worked together before, so he knows I mean it.
I'll cheerfully double-cross anyone as unreliable as the Joker, that's just me doing unto him first. But when I offer a favor to a businessman dealing with me in good faith? That's solid as the law of gravity. More solid, considering the world we live in.
So we wrap up fairly quickly, and I step out to meet a nervous-looking Freddie in a noticeably emptier restaurant.
"People started leaving about a minute after you went in. New people haven't been coming in since just after our food arrived." He pulled a glass phial from his belt and slugged it back. "I think we've been made. What's the plan, Boss?"
Well. That is certainly a thing. Almost reflexively I think on my sins since I got out, trying to sort what's provable from what isn't before remembering in half a second that, yeah, I've been out for a day and haven't actually done anything wrong yet. Somehow in that moment my gloved hand found the invisibility ring, and I make myself let go.
"We're going to settle up, leave a large tip, and then we're going to walk right out the front door. Like we own the place. We're just ordinary decent folk, enjoying an evening out, aren't we? Just keep an eye out for steel lines, okay?"
We leave a hundred for the meal, should more than cover things. Then head out to find six police cars in the road, a dozen cops facing us, and behind them three camera crews. Is that Harvey Bullock in the front?
Well. This will certainly be fun.
================================================================================================
================================================================================================
Confession time, I'm not very good at writing dialogue. More, I wind up stressing endlessly over it and trying to tweak it. I had this thing half written when I started the thread and meant it to come out that very day.
It was also going to be slightly longer.
Ice nine is, of course, from Kurt Vonnegurt's Cat's Cradle. A form of super-ice with a melting point in excess of a hundred degrees, that instantly freezes any water it touches, or any human, into ice nine. One tiny chip can start a chain reaction that freezes all the world's oceans.
The amber charm has appeared already in this story, the healing cordial is from the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and from a fairly famous scene where Father Christmas distributes weapons to children in need, but Lucy got a healing potion instead. The curse effect I promise I'll bring up again soon and explain, I didn't pull it from my butt but this is the one time I plan on tweaking the described qualities of magic. And there's a reason for that too.
A pot of limitless stew appears in many Irish fairy and folk tales, most famously as one of the Four Treasures. Also considered from the very same fairy tale book were piglets that grow up each day and respawn each morning (Norse myth has a pair of goats that do the same) and a golden table bearing limitless bread and mutton. The first were turned down by Tom and Jerry, the second couldn't be fit through a book-sized portal, no matter how John tried.
Fin's knife of division, which is lost and stolen and stolen back several times, can cut through bone as easily as butter. And every slice and sliver of bone so cut off becomes a piece of meat of the creature whose bone it was, the very best meat, each slice enough to feed a man. So the Fenians of Erin enjoyed the best of eating, and hunted only for the pleasure of it. Until the knife was lost or stolen again. Being able to produce lots of high-quality meat from soup bones keeps the diner's costs down.
The golden scissors are also from an Irish fairy tale The Three Daughters of King O'Hara. As I believe I mentioned, Lancelot's ring is in King Arthur and his Knights, while the glove of Darth Vader is a central part of the Glove of Darth Vader.
As always, your thoughts are welcome.