Perhaps two hours after Town Hall fell and I captured the Last Stooge, I was wearing the Cloak of Darkness again and racing towards the trainyard in East End. Gotham had been quite the industrial powerhouse back in the Gilded Age, still is, to an extent, and that means a lot of track was laid to get finished goods out of the city.
Even running faster than the wind, it took me a lot longer than it should. Heaps of rubble everywhere and the quake had comprehensively fucked up my little network of tunnels. One more irritating aspect to the whole situation.
Really, I'm kicking myself. Just because the SAR situation is so important, I've been letting it blind me to side issues I could quickly and easily resolve, freeing up even more people for the search.
Then this "Quakemaster" decided to send some thugs to shake me down. That bumped him up my priority list some.
As a general rule, it is almost never a good thing to find yourself at or near the top of my "to-do" list. Tonight, this is even more true, because I am simply done with this Quakemaster shit.
Hmmm... looking around, I know they're nearby. Ah! When in doubt, head for the only building that has guards.
Invisibility, in most circumstances, is crazy broken. I breeze past the armed guards with ease, but I'm not even sure I'd have needed it. Frankly, all of these people are idiots, three have lit a fire in a barrel to ruin their nightvision and announce their presence, one has a gun tucked into his waistband, and I do believe the safety off. If Freddie were here, one Push and this kid would be removed from the genepool, one way or another.
Hypothesis: All the competent henchmen are too intelligent to get mixed up in this. "Quakemaster" needed some muscle in a hurry, and either didn't care about quality at all or actively wanted them young and dumb and unlikely to ask questions or think things through. Either way, I'm not impressed. You can tell a lot about the boss by the organization he runs, and I don't think I've ever seen an operation this sloppy in my entire criminal career. But then, Gotham favors a very Darwinian approach to criminality, the truly stupid rarely last long.
Doesn't take me long to find the bane of any invisible person, a closed door with a guard. I keep my phaser trained on him while carefully unlatch, then lightly throw the door open. I needn't have worried, as I slipped in the guy just muttered something about the wind while going to close the door. First-timer or from out of town, there's simply no other explanation. Gotham criminals as a rule are justly paranoid about ninjas in cowls jumping out of the shadows at them.
Down the hall and looking round. Seems like a generic office building, rail administration, perhaps? Empty room, empty room, empty room, empty room, hello there! Half a dozen goons loitering about, and a black guy in a GCPD uniform tied to a chair. Looks like he's taken some hits. Also, there's a huge stack of TVs at the back, presumably so Quakemaster can gloat remotely.
Hmmm... so do I help the officer out, or maintain stealth and scout ahead. I'm reasonably sure the target is, if not in this building, close by. It's probably going to be more effective, if less fun, to take down the boss first and come back. They took the cop alive, so they probably have plans and he'll be fine. In fact, it looks like they're setting up the classic supervillain schtick, so whenever they're found the hero, Batman I'd assume, runs around a corner and sees the hostage and all the TVs. Classic. A hostage situation and six of these bargain basement thugs should slow Batman for... almost a quarter second, which is about as long as it takes him to whip out a gas grenade.
Harder to say with Robins and other vigilante-types, very uneven bunch. Sometimes they'll freeze for a hostage, sometimes not. Sometimes fast enough to drop all the bad guys, sometimes not.
Now, me, personally? My preferred sidearm comes with stun and wide-angle settings. As long as I have a phaser, the only question in a hostage situation is if I care enough about the hostage to take a second and fiddle with the settings.
Question being if I really should in this case. Much as the cop is, in a roundabout fashion, my minion and thus theoretically under my protection, I'd much rather only break stealth by taking down the boss, whom I'm reasonably sure is close, if not in this very building. Yes, I can come back after I get Quakemaster. He'll be fine.
"Not so tough are ya now?" asks a guy in a leather jacket. thud. "Copper?"
He'll almost certainly be fine.
"Hey, look at me when I'm talking to you!" thud.
Dumb as these kids are, they're not going to kill or seriously hurt the man. They need the hostage. thud. Plus, their boss would be furious. thud. Corrupt as Gotham cops can be, they'll still lose their shit on cop-killers. thud.
thud. thud. thud.
Assuming these guys are smart enough to realize these things, and skilled enough to avoid lethal damage. The evidence is mounting against either of these being true.
thud.
.... Ah, to hell with it. This is beyond even your typical vacuous decision-making. Agreed, James. Doing it anyways.
I drop the leather jacket guy dishing out the pain with the sonics in my glove, and the leftmost with the phaser. A second while they gape senselessly, I drop two more then move. Faster than the wind, to another corner of the room where I shoot a fourth, then take off again. Shoot and scoot, the essential tactic for an invisible man with a highly visible energy weapon.
Leather Jacket is getting up again, can't have that. I hit him with the glove again, and as I swing my phaser on the last free and standing henchman, a wild impulse like I haven't felt in years rips through me as I do the one thing an invisible person never should in a fight, and scream out.
"Eulaliaaa!"
I drop Generic Henchman #5 while he's still trying to locate the sound. Then Leather Jacket, as an afterthought. I walk up to the cop, whose hands are cuffed behind his back. His own cuffs? Bad move, cops take that sort of thing very personally, believe me. I place my right hand around the chain and squeeze just so, the motion activating the Mandalorian crushgaunt function of the glove and easily freeing the man.
"Take it easy. You're going to be all right officer...?" The guy is just staring into space, so I doff the hood of my cloak and reveal my floating head. "Hey, are you alright? Nevermind." I fetch a book and take a few seconds to get him healing waters from the Cup of Life, immediately his eyes focus much better. "What's your name?"
"Bock. Mackenzie Bock."
"Alright then, Officer Bock. Have you seen the Quakemaster?" He shakes his head. "Alright, I'm going after him. These guys-" I gestured over them "-should be out for a few hours. I suggest you arm yourself and call for reinforcements, then maybe secure the area? This next part may get really dangerous."
He looks at me.
"You're really just making this up as you go along, aren't you?"
I shrug.
"It's worked out great for me so far." Well, now I'm kind of wishing I'd gotten Freddie for this next bit, but he's still digging people out and I was in too much of a hurry to fetch him.
While Bock starts searching bodies for weapons, as an avid gamer I will always approve of looting the fallen bodies of your enemies, even the ones who are just unconscious, the TVs all turn on. There's the same bald guy from the tapes, hidden largely by shadow and wearing these square-block sunglasses as before.
"I know you're there... Mister Mayor."
"Well, I'm so glad you can notice the painfully obvious, what with all the screaming and the rayguns. Did you figure that out yourself? Be honest now."
"How did you find this place?" He continues in an almost monotone.
"Holistic detection. It's all the rage these days, I rely on the interconnectedness of all things to lead me where I need to go." I enjoy the pause, what I can only imagine is a stunned silence. You'd think the man didn't like Douglas Adams. So, somewhat against my better judgement, I go on. "I was willing to leave you to Batman, before you sent goons after me. Once the problem of finding the Quakemaster got my undivided attention, I remembered one of the simplest rules of magic, everything is interconnected. I didn't need some high fantasy series with a million books, or a gritty urban fantasy or even a space opera to figure out who you were, and I do know, just this." I lofted a copy of Crystal Healing. "It's not all fiction with me. If enough people read and believe, I can take any New Age or Wicca book and make magic stones and herbs that really work the way they're described. So you see I'm a wizard in more ways than one. Unakite, page 341, allows the user to see through all deception, including psuedonyms. I watched the tape while holding one, and whenever you said 'Quakemaster' I heard 'Scarface.' So... Hey Arnold."
It's a terrible reference, but what do you want for your money? Probably not the wit of a sleep-deprived wizard who really should stop babbling. Oh well, it's just the Ventriloquist and not a real threat.
Arnold Wesker is his name, an incredibly meek failed businessman. I forget what first landed him in prison, but his cellmate was carving a ventriloquists dummy that Wesker heard speak to him, so he murdered said cellmate and escaped through the mostly-finished escape tunnel the man had. At all times, it's the dummy who speaks and appears to call the shots, the comics used to go back and forth on whether Scarface was a cursed doll made from wood of Slaughter Swamp and ensnaring the innocent, or just the manifestation of Wesker's repressed rage against the world. I don't really know, nor do I terribly care right now.
"And once I know your name and I've met you a few times..." I pull a crystal ball out my jacket pocket. Specifically a crystal ball with detect thoughts, because I don't have to worry about price in-game. "...I can always find you." And isn't it great that Bruce probably doesn't know I can do this, or at least specifically on him?
It wasn't entirely that easy, not that I'd admit that. Oh, once I knew it was Ventriloquist all along, I was sure, absolutely positive, that he couldn't have caused the Cataclysm. He doesn't have the knowledge, or the skills, or any way of acquiring them. But I didn't know his real name off the top of my head. Luckily, I knew someone who did, Dr. Harleen Quinzel. I found her doing triage here in East End, and while she wasn't willing to discuss anything confidential, Wesker's real name is a matter of public record and she was only too happy to spare me the trouble of excavating and hunting through the city's archives. That part, though, is none of Wesker's business and could potentially backfire on her in dangerous ways so not even mentioning it.
"You... you." Oh, 'Quakemaster' appears about to blow a gasket. "You think you're so smart, don't you?"
"Well, smarter than you, anyways. Not that this seems a great hurdle at the moment. What were you thinking, Arnold? A mere hundred million, in exchange for being hunted wherever you might go, as one of the worst mass-murderers in living memory? Do I have to explain how lucky you'll be to get out of this one alive?"
Not that I exactly have a leg to stand on, morally speaking, regarding exploiting other people's tragedies but the sheer scale of this one is at least mildly offensive and the stupidity really gets under my skin. Not even on my craziest day with my wildest plan, did I ever do anything to draw so much as one percent of the heat that will be coming Wesker's way when the ransom tapes inevitably leak.
"Not true! They'd be looking for Quakemaster, who'd never be seen again." At least he seems to have given up on the act.
"You have heard of modern forensics, right? And the Justice League has even better resources. Do you honestly think you never left any spoor at any place your henchmen could link to you that say... Superman couldn't find given an hour or two? Or the Atom, or the Flash? And before you start on them never coming here, do you think the League's little 'respecting each other's playground' rule would really apply in the face of something this huge? Helping each other out in these situations is why there's a Justice League in the first place! I can't believe you'd be so stupid!"
On screen, the Quakemaster doll is tossed aside and Scarface appears before the camera.
"What about you, eh? Ya think anyone is gonna buy this whole white hat schtick of yours? Give me a greak! I get Gatman has geen watching ya since day one, Ginder!" Ah, yes. Scarface can't really manage the 'b' sounds well. Now that I know the answer, I think I remember in the comics they figured it out because 'Quakemaster' kept pausing to rephrase whenever he'd been about to say a word with a B, like bucks.
"I am not going to take criticism of my plans from someone who knows not the least part of what I intend to do, and was dumb enough to launch this entire Quakemaster fiasco to boot! Your one, best chance of living through your own stupidity is to surrender quietly right here and now."
"Come and get me, Gookworm! Or getter yet, just die!" A metal door slams down over the entrance I came in, while several small objects start releasing a yellow-green gas with a hiss. Huh, he actually set a death trap on top of the hostage situation, slightly better than I've come to expect since meeting his henchmen at my office. Of course, there may be a metal door, but the walls are still drywall. Bet I could shoulder my way through a wall with a spirited enough effort, but meh, easier to just dial up the phaser and blast my way out with Bock. Which I promptly do.
In my day, we knew how to build a deathtrap. And now I feel old considering I can actually have a 'my day' relating to crime.
I suppose in fairness, all this must have been set up on very short notice after the quake. Thinking this actually makes me feel less inclined to be fair to Wesker though, since while I was pushing myself past exhaustion to save just a few more lives, he was setting up shoddy deathtraps as part of an ill-conceived get-rich-quick scam. Oh my! This must be how Batman feels all the time. No wonder he's always so grumpy. I should do something nice for the man, just to honor all his years of patience in not snapping my neck.
....
Worry about it later.
"Go!" I shout at Bock, giving him a shove. Then I take off for the unexplored half of this building, throwing up the hood again and running with superhuman speed.
After about thirty seconds of fruitless searching, Wesker actually does something smart, and triggers the building's sprinklers. Good way to find an invisible opponent, but if there's some follow-up attack, I'm going to fast to get caught up in it.
Okay, he's not in the building. Crystal, crystal, crystalline ball. Show me the greatest loser of them all.
Takes a round, six seconds for the philistines among you, but I see Wesker running outside, along the tracks and carrying Scarface. The water is to his left, so northbound. Got it, and I'm off.
Despite the general clutter of the trainyard, running quickly atop a train lets me see Wesker, and I can take my time positioning for a better shot, remember to dial down to stun. He goes down, hurling Scarface forward.
Huh. You know, Resident Evil made me expect far, far more from any boss battle with a dude named Wesker. I guess this universe is closer to the movieverse in being a huge letdown.
As I walk up, Wesker is inexplicably still aware and crawling very slowly towards Scarface, muttering something about helping him. Yeah, I'm having none of that.
"It's going to be okay, Wesker." I say over the quiet bip bip bip as my thumb dances over the phaser settings again. "You're going to be just fine."
Then I level my favorite raygun and incinerate that ugly fucking doll.
"Noooo!" Wesker tries to, what? Smother the flames with his own body? Cradle the burning dummy? Doesn't matter, I kick him back, hard. For his own safety, of course.
I admit, I'm breaking my own rule here, the one about being careful around the other Rogues Gallery members and their sensitive subjects. This is how you wind up with murderous arch-enemies. But a.) I'm not afraid of Arnold Wesker, not on his worst day and b.) the guy just claimed credit for the deaths of over a million people in my city. If that doesn't count as making your own bed, I officially have no idea what does. Frankly, he's lucky I don't kill him right here and now, then go out and tell the world that I killed the Quakemaster.
Actually, James' voice pipes up, the notion is not without some merit.
Well, there's a thought. I could kill him, spare myself his inevitable revenge attempt, and come out of it a hero, maybe moreso than for my rescue efforts. With the prevailing attitudes towards terrorists, I could show the tapes and probably be celebrated even if I said I'd killed him as he is now, weeping on his hands and knees. Even better, I say he had a remote for his tectonic activator doohickey, I didn't know if it was real or not and couldn't take the chance. Of course, for the second version to stick I'd really need to hunt down and kill or memory scrub that one cop before he can call in the cavalry, but that's doable.
It'd be easy. Certainly, I've killed for less. No one would ever know.
....
Nah. Not tonight. I took him down, and nobody is inflicting another quake on Gotham again, anytime soon.
What is this perverse sentimentality infecting you of late? Are you even still committed to the plan?
Oh bite your tongue, James. Sparing or killing one incidental person has no bearing on what we're doing whatsoever. Besides, I have it on good authority that mercy is the mark of a great man, I zap Wesker with the stun again, and I like to think I can at least count as a good man. I kick Wesker in the ribs. Well, an alright man, then.
====================================================================
Maybe ten minutes later, after I get bored and start dragging Wesker none-too-gently over the gravel by the rails back to the office, those reinforcements arrive. I dramatically gesture and tell them that Quakemaster is the black smudge on the ground, before admitting that no, it's Wesker.
Officer Bock apparently made a friend, an olive-skinned woman with frizzy dark hair who introduced herself as Janice Relazzo, apparently a seismologist kidnapped from her home to feed "Quakemaster" the relevant jargon to sound credible. Because I'm a supervillain, I immediately start wondering if she isn't a voluntary associate of Wesker's who is now throwing him under the bus and playing the victim. She may even be the mastermind behind this hare-brained scheme, or worse. I can't prove there was never a tectonic activator, crazy as it sounds I've certainly seen crazier...
Before I can go too far down the well-worn tracks of paranoia in my brain, James sends me a mental smack upside the head and common sense reasserts itself. The woman is probably nothing more than she appears to be, a victim. Still going to keep an eye on her though. Apparently she's really good in her field, the one person who predicted the possibility of a Gotham quake and convinced Bruce Wayne to start quakeproofing. That may make her the hero of this piece, or Gotham's version of Jor-El, but do you have any idea the percentage of top minds in their field that eventually turn to supervillainy? It's much higher than the general population, especially in Gotham. Just ask Doctors Crane, Fries, and Isley, all proud alumni of Gotham U who somehow never get their names in the brochures.
Oh yes, a named character and scientific expert in Gotham? I'll be watching Ms. Relazzo's career with great interest and a certain amount of dread. Watch her actually build a tectonic activator five years down the line.
===================================================================
As night falls the day after I took down Wesker, the National Guard rolls into town, dispensing food and medical supplies. This coincides with our suspending much of the search operations, after three days, anyone buried down there is dead unless they have access to some kind of water supply. We'll keep looking for a bit, the life-signs detectors are a huge help, but it's no longer the huge pressing project that demands all available manpower.
Wesker, Dunk and Mo, and all the goons from the rail office are whisked away by men in expensive suits. Probably for some "strenuous questioning" about whether Quakemaster's tech was real, and/or their connections to international terrorism. And nothing of value was lost.
Despite everything, the flying monkeys, Stonecutter, raising the sea to douse fires and aiding in the search, the final count stands at almost a million and a half dead or missing.
It would have been a lot worse without me. This is a fact. I did everything I reasonably could, more even, and saved more lives than I can easily count. This too is a fact. Facts mean little when you're putting the torch to another mass pyre/grave though.
Some people are relieved, and relax as soon as they get a state-issued blanket and MRE. The government is here to help, everything is going to be fine. Not I.
I have confirmed to my satisfaction, this is the Cataclysm storyline from the old world's comics. Which means the follow-up is No Man's Land, the year without a government, with Gotham torn between warlords drawn from the Arkham crowd and a handful of outsiders, trying to survive without society.
I take a moment, James would permit no more than that, to mourn what could have been. I admit I didn't come to public office with the cleanest of motives, but had figured I could make a real difference on the side. I wanted to be James Michael Curley, not Taylor fucking Hebert.
The moment passed, I head up to my new office, Gordon's old one and fetch from the shelf Beauty. Time to hit the books, and this one has an infinite library that can reproduce for me any text that exists in the world, though sadly not books that don't exist, or come from my old world and not this one. Sure, it wastes a small bit of magic, but it's incredibly convenient for a libriomancer to get any text to hand and, well, knowledge is power.
With an audible thump my pick lands on the desk. The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization In the Aftermath of a Cataclysm. How unintentionally apropos.
Time to get to work.