The next couple of months passed in a flurry of activity, much of which will be of little interest to you.
I held rallies, and staged PR events, I had pamphlets on magic, on politics and on myself printed up and distributed. Starting two weeks before the election we started running calls to all Gotham's 8 million plus residents asking them to remember to turn out and vote.
The press had a small frenzy with my rhetoric and history as a supervillain. Idiots.
One of the biggest hurdles for a politician, particularly at the local level, is name recognition. If I wasn't a household name in Gotham before all the press coverage, I surely was after.
There are, however, a few standout incidents I feel compelled to mention. The first is a pleasant surprise I had on my fifth visit to my parole officer.
Specifically, an old friend.
"Mr. Binder! It's good to see you again!"
"Ah, Doctor Quinzel. You're looking... well?"
It wasn't really a lie. In professional wear, she looked nothing at all like the woman who'd tried to cave in my head with a mallet. It's really amazing what a couple of years and Water of Detestation can do for a person. You may argue that using magic to make Harley fall violently out of love with the Joker was wrong somehow, but looking at the happy, well-adjusted woman in front of me, well, what's so great about free will anyways? Why should I respect someone's self-destructive decisions? Heck, I never once yielded to temptation and duplicated a love potion, and it would have been so easy, I'm practically owed a medal for that alone.
Well, she looks mostly better, her clothes are looking a touch threadbare. It turns out, falling in love with a patient, helping them escape and going on a murderous rampage can really hurt your credibility in academia and medicine. After everything, only Arkham would hire her, and only because Doc Arkham is a huge believer in second chances. She's not allowed near Joker for fear of a relapse (fat chance, there) but she's been one of my therapists for some time now.
.... And now I've been staring too long, lost in my head, and things have suddenly gotten awkward. Sometimes I swear, charisma is my real-life dump stat.
"I just wanted to check in with you. It's not exactly standard procedure, but then, neither is what you're doing. Running for office right out of the Asylum? You realize, don't you, that forty years ago, just having been once would have effectively disqualified you from any political career, ever?"
"Well, that sounds like a boring time to have been alive. I bet people didn't even go outside in capes and wearing their briefs on the outside."
"Well, not unless they were in the circus anyways. But I hope you can understand why I'm concerned, you've spent a long time wrestling with your power and what it means for your identity, and right after release you do this. You understand how this could look power-hungry?"
I had to laugh. "My dear doctor, when you've literally, if briefly, held the power of life and death over millions, partial control over a civic budget hardly means anything. I'm merely doing as you suggested, seeking constructive outlets for my powers and skills." Ah, my parole officer is looking impatient. "If you don't mind waiting, I'd be willing to treat you to lunch and discuss everything I'm doing and why in as much detail as you'd like?"
She agreed and I admit, despite needing to lie constantly about my motivations, I did enjoy lunch with someone intelligent and not already on board. If you're quite finished with the smitten schoolboy, we do have actual work to get done.
Another major event, it turned out some weeks later that Batman's magical mystery cure for the Clench only caused the disease to go dormant and mutate into the even more horrific Legacy Virus. I'm... pretty sure that's not how medicine or biology works, but after all these years in the DCU and meeting the Metal Men, I've learned to just shrug and move on when technology, powers or origin stories make no damned sense. I mean, I'm a wizard, my power doesn't have to be consistent with anything but itself, and I feel a great swell of pity for all the more academically rigorous souls who have to try and fit alchemy, humorism, and luck glands into their models of how the universe works. Not least because James and I have been there.
But I have wandered off topic. The Clench came back, worse than before, in everyone who, for some reason, chose to take the Batman's serum over my stabbing them in the chest with a magic sword. Consequently, we had to hunt all of them down and stab them in the chest with a magic sword. It was a dirty work, lots of screaming and begging even after we'd explained the whole thing several times. We still lost almost four hundred people, and I have to say, after seeing every possible stage of the disease and bodies stacked up like firewood, these San Dumas or St. Dumas guys have earned a place on a very exclusive list. It's my Total War list, the enemies against whom any weapon, tactic and most any collateral damage is justified. Cross off all the dead people and you're just left with the Clown, the Goat, every surviving member of El Ciento, and mimes.
Just to round out my month, we learned all of this when Armand Krol, my honorable Republican opponent in the mayoral race, knelt over and died in his office. A supervillain's political rival dies unexpectedly, or a disease said supervillain had the power to cure? Hmmm. Most suspicious. So thought every blogger, forum-goer, hipster and newspaperman in three states, and I was too busy finding people so I could save their lives and limit the spread to do proper damage control for several days. The whole thing was just ridiculous, Krol was way down in the polls, if I was murdering people I'd kill Grange and I'd do it tracelessly too. Of course, discussing the details of how to murder people in a public forum is something of a no-no. I settled for having an amateur camera crew follow me around while I did more than anyone to fix the bloody problem, and it seemed to work out. Mostly.
Some scandals never truly die. I suspect I could be the greatest mayor Gotham ever had for a decade and I'd still hear the mutters of 'murderer.' And not even for any of my actual murders!
Not that I'll likely get the chance to be mayor for a decade.
So a short while after that, I'm at the campaign office rehearsing for a no-holds-barred interview with Vicky Vale when Constantine finally gets around to showing up, and he brought a stray.
Scrawny kid, black hair and glasses. I had to suppress a sudden impulse to grab a sharpie and draw a quick lightning bolt on his forehead.
"'Lo, Binder. I'm here, obviously. And while I work on your crazy plan, I have a nice, safe, not at all crazy way for you to clear up this 'not-favor." He clapped a hand down on the kid's shoulder. "This is Tim. He's going to be a big deal wizard someday. If he wants. Only thing is, some people are trying to kill him. Think you can watch over him for me while I take care of your business? Tim this is my mate John Binder, some folks call him Bookworm. He'll look after you aright."
It's not really a question. Well, I may be late for my interview but it'll be worth it.
"Not a problem. Come on in, make yourself at home."
While John was off painting runes and sigils, the kid banged around the office looking bored. I called Ms. Vale to let her know I'd be late at least, and may need to reschedule. It's only polite. Besides, I couldn't very well protect the kid from a soundbooth. Well, might be able to give him some kind of talisman, but it won't stop a creative or determined attacker. Where John is doing me a solid, and I effectively promised to protect the kid until he returns, that just won't cut it. The one thing scarier than being John Constantine's sketchy friend is being his sketchy ex-friend he has a score to settle with.
Especially since I finally figured/remembered who he is. Timothy Hunter, the Opener, Merlin Reborn etc. etc. Talk about the hero of another story, and I have zero interest in deflecting him from the trajectory he's on.
"So." Tim was apparently done studying my campaign signs stacked against the wall. He has a very... British accent, and not at all like John's.
Harry Potter resemblance intensifies. I'm going to be the bigger Mage though, and not bring it up unless he does.
"So." I agreed. After a long beat he didn't say anything. "...A needle pulling threead! La, a note to follow So! Ti, a drink with jam and bread...."
The look he gives me is substantially less than impressed. Kids these days, no respect for the classics.
"So. You're, what? Running for mayor? Shouldn't you be in a tower or something? Studying ancient books and stuff?"
"Oh no, I'm a part of the world too, aren't I? If the Greeks and Romans could teach at the public market, to show the bustle of real life, there's no reason I can't keep studying and using magic from public office."
"Yeah, but won't people think," He waved his arm towards the signs, with their purple background and stars, "that you're some kind of nutter?"
I snickered. "I think a large portion of the people in this city think I'm insane, but not because of this. They have ample proof I'm the real deal, at least as far as magic goes."
"Oh." He seemed to chew on that thought a minute. "I guess... we've been doing this thing, where we visit people and talk about magic. But now people are trying to kill me and... How do you know John?"
"Oh nothing sinister. We just met at a bar and had fun discussing each other's magic. So, how is the magical mystery tour going for you?"
"Not great." He looks down a second. "I've talked to a lot of people, and all of them have very different views on magic. Some of the things they think and say contradict each other."
"Well, that's just to be expected. Magic is an art, not a science, and how you interact with it is deeply, intensely personal. What you believe can be done has a huge impact on what you can actually accomplish."
He looks surprised, then thoughtful.
"So what about you, then? What's magic mean to you?"
I took a long moment to think through my answer. Funny how some things you just don't question until someone asks you about them.
"Magic is.... stories. Stories and belief. You've probably heard in school that the Sun is a giant nuclear fireball, which the Earth circles. Scientists have seen and measured and told you this, and they're not wrong. Ancient Greeks would have told you it was the wheel of Apollo's, or Helios' chariot on it's journey through the sky, Egyptians the Barge of the Sun steered by Ra, and, this is important, they weren't wrong either. If an objective reality exists, it's nothing like you're imagining at all, the colors for instance are just perception. Stories give a context, a framework for understanding the universe and by collective belief, we make it so. The gods of Olympus and the Tuat are quite real, as is the giant fireball sun. The story provides the mold for reality, the shape it must fit in, the belief is the wax or molten metal poured into that mold, making your stories solid, making them fact."
I was actually enjoying myself. I'd always had fun explaining things to people, and James was a college professor. Plus, there was the high of new understanding as I put word to several of my assumptions and for the first time in a long time tried to expand my framework for magic to cover the whole, instead of thinking of myself as an anomaly. When you think about it, we're all anomalies here. Zatana does things by speaking backwards fer Chrissake's. like her father before her. Actually, he's still alive and in business, isn't he?
"Of course, stories change over time. All the evil stepmothers in Grimm's Fairy Tales? In the older forms, they were simply mothers, the Grimm's tweaked that detail so as to not disrespect motherhood. Same thing with the Sun. So the fireball sun is more widely believed, and so more true, than the chariot or the barge, but that still doesn't make them entirely wrong. Reality and magic can both be confused and self-contradictory. Merlin can be the wild shaman who sleeps under an apple tree with his pet pig and the son of the devil with a magnificent hidden house. In two centuries, who knows how he will be thought as, but the essence of the story remains even as details adapt to the times."
"I don't understand. At all. How can three different things be true?"
"By thinking like a wizard instead of a rigid logician. Truth, real truth, is nearly impossibly elusive, and we are all subject to forces we only dimly understand, and that through the stories we tell ourselves about them, the personalities and predictions we assign them. Time. Death. Nature. Gravity. We give these things names, we define them and begin to understand them and our belief makes them conform more to our definition. It is a subtle effect, but a profound one."
I paused as the quote leapt to mind. Should I? Ah well, you only live once.
"You'll find most of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. But our point of view is that of mostly blind apes, living on a tiny planet and taught by experience to think of the universe in terms of discrete objects, and that's not how everything really works. Not really. And there are gods in the universe we never made up. If you would do well in magic, mind this: You don't have to, and shouldn't, accept the beliefs of others at face value. But you can gain a lot by understanding and exploiting the things they believe in and dream about. At the end of the day, people still understand the world through stories first and foremost. People want to believe in heroes and villains, in strings of cause and effect, in episodes with a distinct beginning, middle and end. Adopting a particular role in life's story can give you options, though it may restrict others.
"This is what I do, Timothy Hunter. I form tools and weapons from books, from the shared dreams and imagination, the belief, of readers. Other magi learn to speak to the universe with authority, to force it into the narrative shape they want. But we are all creatures of stories and dreams. Remember that."
We talked a little more after that. Tim apparently hadn't heard I was a supervillain, and I didn't have the heart to tell him. Which led to some interesting conversational gymnastics when I admitted that I had, in fact, met Gotham's resident urban legend and the Big Blue Boy Scout across the bay and had to tell some carefully edited stories about how. I gave him a couple of fantasy books off my shelf, more to get him thinking of the possibilities of magic than anything, before John returned.
My Sting-looking friend had been busy painting forty nine sigils, seven sets of seven, all over the city in out-of-the-way alleys and rooftops, to open up the evil faucet. To dismiss the effect, all I had to do was cross out seven of them, one of each type, or break the crab-claw charm John tied them all to. Which I was going to do at the first sign of trouble. Worst come to worst, John could unravel the whole thing within a matter of hours or days of my call. I had a plan, a contingency plan, and a little failsafe charm. This was going to work out, nothing like the time I produced a Little Maker in the Chilean desert. Or the time we stole a time machine to go back and murder Sherlock. Or- well, let's just say I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of, but at least they've taught me a degree of caution.
The last major project of my time leading in to election day, was investigating easier solutions to my problems. To this end, I got a Death Note novelization that hadn't existed when I was last locked up, and wrote that Capricorn would die, immediately after running into the nearest public square and making a grand spectacle of himself. Then I waited three days. No news. Was that because Capricorn wasn't his real name, because he had mystic protection, or because of some limitation to the Note or my recreation of it? More research was needed.
So I did more research. One great thing about being a crime boss is knowing tons of people who could only improve the world by their absence.
Well, the Note seems efficacious against the control group, less so the group without names. Mages are a one out of three, it seems as though Blackbriar Thorn did run out into the middle of Metropolis and turn into a tree, no word from Wotan or Klarion Bum Bum BUM! The Witch Boy. Null return on Joker, Joe Kerr, or Jack Napier. Hey, it was worth a shot.
Well, if it's the name, that's a problem, since his name and face are sort of both mine. No matter! I have other means at my disposal. Now where did I leave The Second Book of Swords....?
Remembering the quest for Benambra's Gold, imaging the wonder of finding the Swords, the shock and betrayal Doon felt when Mercury took his away, I reached into the book and dug out the Sword Farslayer. Straight, one meter long with a black hilt, as all the Swords.
I spun a slow circle, holding the blade out. "For thy heart!" I shouted. I pictured Capricorn, the day he was made, the times we'd spent laughing together, experimenting with every bit of magic we could find and speculating wildly about our place in the DCU. "For thy heart!" My hands seized, I could not let go the sword, I could not slow it's momentum. I saw a heap of dead, disembowled children, imagined the hundreds of innocent dead at Moscow and shook with remembered pain and white-hot fury. "Who hast wronged me!" I spun the sword around a third and final time, or maybe it spun me? I completed the incantation and the spin at the same moment, and my fingers sprang open, letting the sword streak off with a rainbow trail and a dull and distant boom of thunder. I collapsed immediately, my strength spent on this one act of spite.
Two hours later, the Sword flew back on a rainbow trail and buried itself blade first in my chest. Fortunately, Freddie was close at hand with his healing potion.
Guess that didn't work out then.
====================================================
====================================================
Farslayer howls across the world
For thy heart, for they heart, who hast wronged me!
Vengeance is his who casts the blade
Yet he will in the end no triumph see.