Freddy
There's nothing that interesting about me. Just another Gotham boy, better fighter than most, not so great at school. Had little as a kid, less when the factory closed and left Dad waving in the breeze, so I was running numbers and packages for the Falcones since just before I started high school. Before graduation (which took me an extra year, but I was busy and had a lot going on at home) I'd moved on to bigger, better crime.
The first time I met the boss, I nearly beat him up for his lunch money out of sheer reflex. I was expecting to meet up with some counterfeiter who'd made a big name for himself on the inside and been welcomed in, what walked off the Blackgate ferry was a slightly short, painfully skinny guy with a hug nose and messy brown hair, all he needed was glasses and a pocket protector and he'd have been every nerd you ever saw or heard of wrapped up into one person.
Basically, I wouldn't have bet on him to outlive the weekend in the Falcone crime family.
But I was wrong. He might seem this kind of dopey, naive weakling, but once it was time to get work, he'd turn into an entirely different person, ruthless and vicious as anyone who'd grown up in the life. More, even.
I was assigned to be his minder for the first few weeks, later I was often his partner. It was Tony Zavras who started calling him 'Bookworm' because he always had his nose in a book unless he was working or addressing the bosses. Not even helpful 'how to' books, science fiction and fantasy. The name stuck.
His first week with the Falcones, he went off on his own and came back with a cool six million's worth of gold. The job didn't make the papers, and no heat came on us for it.
I'd say it took us all an embarrassingly long time to figure out the whole magic angle. For a year and a half he was one of us, did what he was told and did it well, and contributed more money with solo sidejobs. Oh sure, sometimes he'd do something where we couldn't see and pop open a door or something like that, but it took Mikey actually catching him pulling something from a book for us to really catch on.
There was discussion and debate, I wasn't so much a part of it, but the decision was made that he'd worked faithfully for us for a long time and his abilities were a resource we could exploit.
Enrico Inzerillo apparently felt the same way, a few of his boys picked us up one day shortly after. I guess they thought I'd give them leverage, and the boss would whip up treasures from nothing for them, chained to a desk.
Now I know what you're thinking: What kind of moron kidnaps Bookworm and gives him an armload of books? But you have to realize, people didn't really get the boss at this point. His powers made him a freak or a resource, or a curiosity, but we we didn't know yet what he really was.
I understood, for the first time that night when he came in the door and shot the guy guarding me with a flintlock pistol. It took me a lot longer to find the words to describe it, still not perfect but...
Okay, people outside our kind of niche community really don't get us. They tell bad jokes about dental insurance, they ask "how can you work for the Joker? Don't you know what happens to his people?" and then assume we must all be dumb or insane or truly desperate for work. And sure, there's people like that in the business. For the rest of us, things get a little more complicated.
Before Maxie Zeus went out with his particular brand of crazy, I guess ever since Superman started going out in a cape and leaping tall buildings, people have compared the modern age to that of mythology, and metas to gods. But years before that happened, we had our own pantheon in Gotham. Archetypes and paragons, a god of fear, Scarecrow. A god of wisdom, Riddler. A god of chance, Two-Face. A god of wealth, Penguin. And if they were kind of dark and twisted or perverse, well, that just made them authentic Gotham gods. And men have served crueller and more capricious gods since time began.
I mean, I don't think of the boss as a god, not in the conventional sense. I don't think he's immortal, or all-powerful or created the universe or anything like that, I've seen him beaten too many times. But there is something more than a man to him, and I'm not talking about the magic. It's the way he thinks deeper, knows more, the intense stare, the way he understands everyone around him on a really basic level without living anything like our lives. The boss has an ambition that would see him challenge the real gods, and a charisma to make you think he can really do it and you want to be a part of that legend. That's what drives men like me to work with supervillains, if that makes sense.
I saw it that night, when we went to war with the Inzerillos. We didn't head back to base, didn't regroup or plan or raise the alarm. The boss decided we were going to eradicate these motherfuckers from the face of the Earth, and we went out and did it.
We took one prisoner at the safehouse they were keeping us, drove out to of all things a supermarket and while I watched the guy, the boss went in and fetched the new Harry Potter book, the one where Dumbledore died, and, I later found out, a lottery ticket worth $700 million. He pulls out a phial of something we force-fed the guy, and he couldn't tell us about all the Inzerillo operations and bases fast enough. We hit them all before dawn, with rayguns and pulsers and obscure magic tools, smoothest job I ever was a part of, every possible break broke our way. And when the Inzerillos gathered by daylight to fortify and discuss this, I took out all the guards with some silent knife-work while he ran around tapping every window and door of the place with a big fancy clock hand. And in front of the last window he fishes a glass jar of something green out of book, gives it to me and says I should throw it in the window.
I got the idea, it was a kind of molotov cocktail. I'm not dumb. "No fuse?" I asked.
Then he gave me a flat cold look that put me in mind of a shark.
"Wildfire doesn't need a fuse," he says, "it barely needs an excuse."
"If we burn them out, they'll just get out another way."
"It's not my first arson, Freddy, the windows and doors are sealed tight. The only way out if through this window, and they're not getting out this way. Now throw the damn thing before someone realize the security goons aren't checking in."
So I threw it.
We retreated to a safe distance to watch the Inzerillo Manor burn to the ground, with green flames I'll never forget. The fire department came plenty quick, but couldn't douse the flames or force their way in. Eventually they gave up on saving anyone inside and just tried to keep it from spreading over their huge yard to the neighbors.
And that's why you never see an Inzerillo, to this very day.
And seeing the boss' face lit by green flames, uncaring as to the distant screams of his enemies, I was hit again by the feeling that this guy wasn't like any other. I mean, we wiped out one of the oldest and most powerful crime families in Gotham in one night together! And I understood, somehow, that he'd outgrown the Falcones. We wouldn't part from the family for another year, when the leadership was jailed and Bookworm took over operations, but it was coming ever since that day.
And I knew who I'd choose when the time came to pick between the family and this weird little geek.
So that's the story. I stuck with the boss and good things have come my way as a result. Boss believes in soft power, in supporting the community instead of just squeezing it, and it's nice to be a part of that, to turn our muscles to building things. Even when he goes to Arkham, the boss' holdings and people are fairly safe, same as Two-Faces. Maybe he can't protect you from the inside, but he will wreck bloody vengeance when he gets out and that keeps all but the stupid and the crazies from trying to exploit his moments of weakness. He's a proper Don, he is, generous with the carrot and never afraid to pull out the stick.
And he gave me superpowers. The ability to burn metal for power, a magic sword that appears in my hand and'll dice anything. Even bullets don't leave a bruise you can see.
I'm hopeful about this going straight business. I'm sure he's keeping something secret, but I trust him. It's good to be thinking more about ways to help people.
But there's a little voice in my head that whispers maybe the boss is finally outgrowing the business. Maybe he's outgrowing Gotham, maybe outgrowing all of us. But that's the chance you take with people of ambition and vision, and I can't get upset at him for the very reasons I work him now can I? My mother didn't raise no fools or hypocrites.
Vinny
Hey, what's the difference between a vacuum cleaner and a lawyer riding a motorcycle?
The vacuum's got the dirt-bag on the inside.
Every lawyer loves lawyer jokes, unless they happen to be one.
You think I wanted this to happen? Do you seriously believe my mother scrimped and saved and borrowed to put me through law school so one day I could be the mouthpiece-slash-accountant-slash-confessor for a crazy magic gangster?
No. Don't be ridiculous.
After the Bar Exam, I put in my time as a public defender. Nobody likes it, the case load is insane, the clients can't pay so you get a pittance from the State, and there's certainly no glory. But when you're fresh out of school with student loans, you've got to pay your dues and accept some scut work while you work on some amicus briefs to put your name out there.
So I wound up defending this guy on a counterfeiting case, complete open and shut, GCPD caught him with a suitcase full of fake bills, only thing keeping them from a perfect case was not finding his press. I had about fifteen minutes to hear his story and give him advice, and I told him to plea guilty for a lighter sentence and put him from my mind. Just one more of the thousands of cases I had. How was I supposed to know that freaks can imprint on you like a baby duckling? Because three years later, this guy I'd completely forgotten about comes back, says he has a friend in trouble and needs my help, and offers me more money than I'd made in my entire legal profession to this point to take the case.
Legal ethics are a funny thing, a step outside most people's. Maybe that's why there are so many lawyer jokes. Everyone is entitled to a competent defense, so when you take a client's money, you keep his secrets, and you fight your hardest for them, even if they're a serial-killing pedophile. So this wasn't the first or even the hundredth obviously guilty person I'd gotten off. But then he came to me for the next one of his workers to get busted for dealing. And the next. And then started coming over to my house to ask really gonzo questions about the laws surrounding superheros, like would it be assault if Zatara turned a guy into an inanimate object. And then he started talking about his various illegal operations, his plans and sometimes his doubts.
Some men, they have a best friend they talk to when times get tough. Some see a preacher, or a headshrink. But John Binder doesn't trust the discretion of a priest or a therapist or even his best friend and number one as much as the pact of secrecy between a lawyer and his client. I still have no idea why.
And the worst part of all of this, at least in those early days? My dear sainted mother, the woman who never compromised with evil, who put her everything into getting my sister and me the best start in life, well she just loves him to pieces. Invites him over for supper, every Sunday night he's free. And yeah, we always get together on Sundays. Ma is old-fashioned like that and none of us has the heart (or the courage, really) to say no to her.
And it's through that family connection that Bookworm won my loyalty forever, the frigging psychopath. Oh, not because of any threat to my family, though for months I agonized over the thought that if I told him I wanted out, he knows where my mother lives. Because one sunny day in June, the family and guests gathered at Gotham Cathedral to welcome my baby niece, Sonia, into the loving embrace of Mother Church. Only some joker (the Joker, I have no doubt. Who else would?) had swapped the water of the baptismal font with acid. While everyone else was screaming and running around, though, Bookworm, he acted. Elbowing people aside, he raced to the front of the church, fishing a paperback out of his pocket, then he pulled a bottle of something out, poured it over and dripped a little in her mouth and Sonia was fine. Whole and unhurt, she even stopped screaming.
He saved my baby niece. No doctor could have done what he did. Even if she'd somehow lived, Sonia would have been blind, crippled and scarred all her life, but now she runs and plays and does all the stupid, wonderful things little girls do. She started school last year, and I know that Bookworm has set up a college trust with five million dollars in it. He made me the manager of it, after all.
And there's one more thing Bookworm gave me that no other man could. When I walked out of the hospital where Ma was arguing with the doctors ("She's perfectly fine!" "She was burning!" "That's not possible!") there was the old Volvo Freddy was driving those days, the two head crazies sitting up front.
"We're going clown hunting." He said. "Hop in."
So I did. I'd had a couple hours at that point to stew on what had happened, and why and who. Attacking my niece to get at him seemed unlikely, and dramatic acts of random violence in Gotham points to one name.
That night, while Freddy and Bookworm did their best to keep Batman off me, I put three rounds in that motherfucker and saw him go down into the river. Right before Batman broke my jaw.
Six months later, he came back. He always comes back, no matter how sure we are that we finally got him. Bookworm calls it 'narravitium,' I've always been afraid to ask what he means, even as I kinda think I get it. Best to let that particular sleeping dog lie. Killing him again didn't bring me any satisfaction, I think Bookworm is still a lot angrier than I am over the whole thing.
It's really different to be up in front of a judge as a defendant, but by this point Bookworm could afford a real good lawyer, better than me, even, and we easily skipped on the charges.
Funny, I've seen Bookworm work his recruitment spiel on dozens of people, making his enemies into his loyal minions. Usually he opens with an overwhelming display of force, showing off his capacity for ruthless violence, then he follows it up with a show of kindness and mercy, and now the gangbangers are eating out of his hands. It was kind of the reverse that day, and I knew once I had time to think it over that it had happened. But that didn't matter.
He saved my baby niece. He let me get my revenge. He's part of my family that comes to Sunday dinner and makes everyone laugh with his stories and corny jokes and overblown quotations.
Sure, they never see the monster behind the mask. I'm not as certain as I used to be that it would matter though, it doesn't for me. Not anymore.
Bookworm likes to play the old school gangster, the Godfather whose a pillar of the community and a swell guy who gets loved by the whole neighborhood, but he's always ready for violence at the drop of a hat. He'll kill a man without hesitation or guilt, then come to my house and sneak my niece fizzy lifting drinks.
He's insane. One hundred percent, certifiable.
And I'm his Igor and his Quasimodo, his faithful henchman. Faithful superpowered henchmen even, ever since the day he spiked my soup with something (he still won't say what) that gave me the power to read minds. Not his though, never his. I'm afraid of what I'd find in his addled brains anyways.
So I spy on the police, I manage the accounts, I know where too many of the bodies are buried, because I've buried a few. And when my conscience rears it's head late at night, I tell myself I never really had that much choice.
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Aren't alternate character interpretations fun?
Confession: normally an interlude comes at the end of a story arc but lately all I've had off the next chapter is frustration, and this was fully formed in my brain, so I figured "what the hell?"
People have asked about Freddy and Vinny's abilities and I've put hints out there, but for the moment the definitive list is this. They both have the Mo Fuqian. Vinny has consumed toxic waste (Others See Us) that makes him telepathic. Surface thoughts are as easy as hearing voices, actually viewing memories or changing things requires a dive into a metaphor-riddled mindscape. He's actually had several doses to strengthen the gift. Plus an emblock (A Million Open Doors) which is an external memory drive, like a black penny that connects just behind and below his ear. It's entirely secure and gives him near-infinite memory, with the price that it often takes a second or two to retrieve data.
Freddy's powers come largely from the works of Brandon Sanderson. His Shardblade is a sword that appears in his hand five heartbeats after he calls for it, slices through any inanimate matter without resistance, and slices the souls of living things. At best, it will cripple a limb, hit anywhere remotely vital, people die with their eyes burning out and no visible marks, another mystery for Gotham coroners. Freddy's Mistborn powers let him ingest 17 metals, usually flakes in an alcohol solution, and burn them to get a power/effect. Tin enhances the senses, pewter grants extra strength and toughness, brass and zinc let him manipulate emotions by enhancing or dampening selected feelings. Steel and Iron let him sense metal in the form of ghostly blue lines radiating from his core to every metal object in range, and to push or pull on these. He can only attract/repel things directly towards/away from himself, and only by throwing around the equivalent of his full weight and strength, which can be enhanced with pewter. Basically, he can make a penny or a cufflink into a bullet, or pull himself directly to any large metal object, or push off of. Bronze lets him sense other Mistborn/Allomancers, who don't by and large exist in DC, burning copper hides him from bronze users and secures his mind from reading/tamperng. Aluminum clears his system of metals, and is the one metal he can't effect (aluminum foil hat will also protect form his emotional effects) and duralumin lets him burn a selected metal all in one super-strong burst. Chromium and Nicrosil act as the last two, but on others by touch, again not a lot of use when you're the only one. Gold gives him a trippy vision where he sees himself as he was/would be, and is the other self seeing himself, it can grant some perspective but is really freaky. Electrum gives him precognition where he sees a shadow of himself a couple seconds into the future, racing ahead and doing what he was gonna do. Bendalloy and cadmium let him create bubbles of slow/fast time, but only as long as he stays in them.
The last metal, atium, is entirely fictitious and available only through Bookworm. It grants combat precognition and bullet-time. If you asked John Binder, he'd vigorously deny trying to keep Freddy controllable by giving him powers and making him totally dependent on himself for the best power of all. James would say while it wasn't his intention, it's a nice bonus to have extra assurances of loyalty.
There remains a third lieutenant, as yet unseen, who went really overboard with the power-ups. To the tune of burning through a black elfstone and a stack of DnD/Pathfiner books. But that's a story for another day.
Cheers!