Chapter 18: The Paperless Trail
Max needed a new home. He didn't have any problems with the apartment he lived in. He'd been raised there since his family had come to Gotham City, and while it had been a tight fit for a family of three with a teenager, when it was just him it had been fine. Even with him and Rose, it had still been comfortable.
But it wasn't enough for Max when it came to all of the trappings that accompanied his Null persona.
He'd been lucky so far, but the night he'd crawled back home a bloody, broken mess after fighting Batman was a wake-up call. All it would have taken was someone hearing him crawl his way up the fire escape to blow his cover.
That was just the most recent example. There had been many others since he'd chosen to begin wearing the hood.
He had a fairly effective hideout. That was a good start. Now he needed a home with more privacy. Good luck finding a place with enough of that in Gotham City though. One thing was for sure, an apartment was not what he was looking for.
Standing up from his couch, Max got away from his computer and real estate magazines, cracking his back and stretching himself out. He was still suspended from school, so his days had become a matter of independent research, both on his to-be home and on his brand new enemy; Anarky.
At night, he still went out, putting boots to the pavement and doing his thing as Null, because in the end it would all come down to him getting out and doing the legwork to find him.
Being on the street in costume was dangerous, but it wasn't like Max could do anything other than keep plugging away. Null's good name, or whatever else it could be called, was on the line.
"Can I really do this?" Max said to himself as he leaned against the window of his apartment, staring through the fire escape at the neighborhood, "I mean, yeah, I've got these cool powers, I got trained, and everything. But I'm a thief. I don't go around picking fights, and I damn sure don't know the first thing about hunting down guys like him."
It was times like this where he wished that the only friend he could go to wasn't Rose Wilson.
If he said any of those things to her, she would have called him a wuss, with a lot more emasculating obscenities hurled his way. He didn't need to give her more ammunition to use in the constant back-and-forth battle of self-esteem crippling banter that they shared.
Besides, she wasn't around for his little mental crisis to begin with. Rose had bailed on him the second he'd started pulling up real estate sites on his laptop. He couldn't blame her. House hunting was boring.
Work never really ended for her. She was out scouting more targets for eventual assassination. She'd long since told him about how she'd done in Maxie Zeus and half of his criminal outfit.
Sometimes he forgot just how scary that girl could be. He'd gotten used to her modestly homicidal tendencies over time, but she was still the daughter of – and trained by – the scariest man he'd ever met.
But for all of the training and intelligence she did have in the criminal field, there wasn't much she could do to help him with his current vendetta. Not until it came time to face down the red-garbed fool that thought he could do what he did to Null with no consequences.
And so, Max started to use his head. He wasn't a genius, but he learned his lessons well. Useful, because most of the lessons he learned just so happened to be hard ones. He learned everything he could about his target that was available to him.
Anarky had been busted before, and enough time had passed that his case files were public record in Gotham City. To know one's enemy, one had to study them as closely as possible. Max didn't have much to work with in that department, but he would take what he could get.
But more than the methods Anarky used to operate, more than the crimes he was known to have been convicted for, Max took note of the psychological profile put together for an at the time 13-year-old Lonnie Machin.
A social justice warrior. Anarky believed that what he was doing was something that needed to be done to level the playing field between the haves and the have nots. Whatever disruptive endeavor he chose to undergo was done with the principle interest of making someone higher-up pay.
Sure. Because the way you went about eradicating crime and underhanded schemes was with crime and underhanded schemes.
He'd at one point instigated a riot with a large number of Gotham City's homeless population, manipulating them into 'standing up and fighting back'. It did not end well for anyone involved.
The more Max learned about Anarky, the less he liked him. The less he respected him. He was apparently some kind of genius, but instead of using that kind of talent to actually help others, the way he actually could, he used it to run amok with the excuse that he was doing it to fight a corrupt system.
Indeed, the system sucked. It was why Max had become a thief, after all. But nothing Anarky had ever done had helped anyone at-large.
Lonnie Machin, the boy behind the mask, was just another pissed off, bored teenager who actually had the means and intelligence to act on it in a way that would satisfy both, as well as his own ego.
That ego was his weakness, and it would be how Null would find a way to get the upper hand.
Somehow, someway, Anarky was going down.
XxX
(Elsewhere In Gotham City)
Rose was torn. She didn't know whether to be ecstatic that all of the drama with Null and his frame-up gave her the chance to wreak some real havoc on the crime population in Gotham City, or angry that someone (Anarky) thought they could just use him and get away with it.
That was a mistake. Yes, she did mess around with Null, but only she could do that. No one else. Certainly not some jackass, 'V for Vendetta' looking wannabe with a too high opinion of his own intellect.
'Why do I even give a fuck?' Rose wondered to herself, walking in the port district, getting a good view of a potential target, 'It's just Sparky. If shit hits the fan, I'm out of there. He knows it, I know it.'
There was a bright side to all of this confusion though. It did seem to be bringing out Null's determined dark side.
The guy was taking on Gotham PD and threatening people to their faces now. Growing a spine when it came to dealing with a conflict was one thing. It did Rose's shadowy mercenary heart good when she saw him threaten Anarky. She actually bought it.
It felt real. By the end of it, her hair was standing on the back of her neck.
A smile pulled at her lips as she thought about how he kept surprising her. From a gutless body to fill space, to a surprisingly effective and unapologetic opportunist, to... whatever he was becoming next. Whatever that wound up being, it was gearing up to have an edge to it.
He was still too soft to incorporate into her hits on some of Gotham City's top low-lives – he would probably refrain from going for a fatal attack unless he was given a great reason and was already good and pissed – but perhaps one day...
'If nothing else, he's getting fun to keep around,' Rose thought to herself with a measure of satisfaction, 'I'll have to look him up again once this whole bounty thing is over with.'
But she was getting ahead of herself. She had groundwork to lay, and pulled out a cell phone to take pictures of one of the ships in harbor. One of the local crime families had used their connections at the docks to keep a blind eye on their activities while they put together a mobile drug lab.
It really was a decent setup. They hid their ingredients onboard on the off chance they got a ship inspection that they couldn't bribe their way out of, then waited to go out into international waters to make their product. From there, small smuggler boats would move the finished product back into the city and offload it to be sold on the street, allowing them to hide their materials by the time they reached shore again.
It was a decent way to keep the police off of them, and for the time being at least kept the vigilantes of the city off of their back. It didn't do anything to keep her from going at them though, because she didn't need a warrant. She wasn't looking for evidence that would let her arrest them. They were guys with guns, and so she would annihilate any operation she could find in order to fill her contract.
The first step was of course getting good intel on the ship itself. Then she would deduce the best way to wage an assault on it. She already had several options in mind.
But that would have to wait.
Rose's fingers brushed the handgun well-hidden on her person as she felt a car slowly pull up closer to her than any vehicle had a right to in the middle of the day. It came to a stop right next to her, the tinted window of the back seat already cracked with a pointy-nosed manacle-clad man peering out at her.
"Get in," The Penguin demanded of her, the barrel of a gun pointing at her through the window of the front seat, "Now."
The pros and cons of engaging in a shootout in broad daylight:
Pro – Penguin would be dead and she could mark off another name on her list for Bruno Mannheim. A big name. And she just knew the Penguin didn't have an actual lieutenant in his organization. It all likely ended with him. Mannheim would definitely be pleased with that.
Con – She'd done a very good job of not attracting attention to her identity despite her distinct features; eyepatch, silver hair, poor disposition. Shooting a bunch of guys in the face on a bridge where lots of traffic came through would put an end to that.
Pro – She was feeling bloodlusty today. She didn't know why. It had been like that for the last two days. She had an itch that she wanted scratched, and while it didn't feel like the type that mowing through a gaggle of mooks would satisfy, she was always up for throwing down. It would tide her over for the time being, at least.
Con – She was close enough to her target to spook them prematurely if shooting started from as close as she was. That would really mess up her plans for later.
So a compromise. She would give him an out for the time being, but was more than willing to plug him and his cronies on the spot if they chose to force the issue.
"Do you think I'm not packing, just because I'm in a miniskirt, Penguin?" Rose asked, a wide, slasher grin slowly spreading across her face, "I don't have any beef with you right now, but you can just call me the butcher if you don't tell your guy to put that gun away," She warned/guaranteed, "I don't have any problems with making a mess in the daylight."
"Stupid brat, only thinking about the hit," Penguin scoffed, "I didn't come out here to collect on your bounty, girl. If I did, do you think you would be seeing me personally?"
'Not until I killed you,' The daughter of Deathstroke thought to herself, refraining from mentioning that out loud, "Didn't think you ever even left the Iceberg Lounge anymore, to be honest."
"Did you pull the job on Maxie Zeus?" Penguin asked, getting a wide smile and a shrug for his trouble, "Of course it was you. Word on the street is, a sword did it. Not many others running around the city waving oversized butter knives. I want to talk."
Rose thought to herself before deciding to go ahead. If push came to shove, she would just kill them all, so it didn't matter.
As she opened the door on the other side and slid into the back seat, guns were leveled on her, "Ah-ah-ah," She said before she saw anyone's finger touch the trigger. Pulling her hand out of a hiding place on her person, she revealed a grenade with the pin already pulled. Theoretically, if she loosened her grip on it, the entire car would go up in flames, along with everyone inside, "Mutually assured destruction. You wanted to talk. I'm a lot mouthier WITHOUT guns in my face."
"Put 'em down," Penguin ordered, prompting his entourage to leave well enough alone. If the grenade went off, there was no chance of any of them surviving the blast, "There. Happy now?"
"Nope," Rose quipped, still clutching the grenade in plain sight, "Then again, I assume you don't have a few million dollars lying around with my name on it, do you?"
The crime lord before her grinned evilly, "We'll see."
Rose's look of disinterest faded as she sat up straight in her seat, her attention thoroughly obtained by Penguin's cryptic comment. Yes, killing him would allow her to make great headway in her mission for Intergang, but who was to say that she couldn't wet her beak a little on the side first if it suited her? No one worth listening to, "...So, is there anyone in particular that you'd like me to turn loose on?"
XxX
(With Null - Blüdhaven)
There was a certain aura that surrounded Gotham City, but the vast majority of Null's life was spent there. The sense of danger and darkness that permeated every square inch of that place, he had become accustomed to its feeling. He only really ever noticed it whenever he got far enough away from the oppressive pull of Gotham and felt the atmosphere in other places, just how... smothering and wrong it was.
Blüdhaven was supposed to be an even worse place per capita than Gotham City, but as Null prowled the city, he didn't feel it.
Oh, he definitely recognized just what an awful place it was – after all, he could hear and see what went on down in the streets around him – but it just didn't feel as inherently rotten to the core.
It didn't matter. Null wasn't there to add to Blüdhaven's crime rate.
...Well, technically he was. But realistically, it wasn't his aim. He had enough problems at home. Branching out wasn't in his plans. Not anytime soon, at least.
He wanted information. He would have gone to Calculator to get it, but he didn't feel like bugging Rose to get into contact with him again. It was for hacking information, and that was something he could bother someone else for. Selina had worked with a few of them in her time. One in particular was only a day trip away to find.
And lucky Max, with no school to keep him from doing his thing in a timely manner. Just because every other criminal seemed to wait until nightfall to do their thing didn't mean he had to. Working while the sun was up had certain advantages to it.
If you had plans to shake down another crook for information, it was best to catch them at a time when they were at their most vulnerable. For example, when they were sleeping through the day because they operated almost strictly during the late hours.
Null reached the building used as the hideout for his target and could sense quite the electronic security setup, for all the good that would do them. Just walking past anything close enough, radiating the appropriate magnetic presence allowed him to fry whatever was nearby. It wasn't something he used for most jobs because the point was to keep others from realizing he had been there. In this case, it didn't matter.
They were going to know he was there, soon enough.
Picking the lock and strolling through the front door as if he lived there, Null sauntered casually through the home, ignoring the wide setup of computers and equipment in the living room and heading back to the bedroom where he found a man and woman sleeping.
Standing in the doorway, he thought to himself about what Selina had told him in the past about some of her previous colleagues, 'Giz and Mouse. Giz is the dude. Okay,' Silently, he reached a hand up and got a magnetic hold of the sleeping man, yanking him out of bed and into his grasp before he could realize what hit him.
"What the-?" His bloodshot eyes began to focus through the shade of his messy brown bedhead, "Hey, what is this? Who are you?"
Null dragged him out and shut the door, magnetically sealing it before the woman could get up and break it open, "Giz?" She questioned from behind the door, banging on it to try and break it open, "What's going on?"
Giz tried to fight back against Null, but other than being initially caught off-guard, he wasn't a particularly strong fighter to begin with. Null bent his arm behind him and slammed him down face-first onto a desk holding a computer. Giz leaned back up, his nose leaking blood, "Gah, you little shit!"
"Little shit?" Null said, slamming his face down onto the desk again before throwing him into a chair and leaving him there, "I'm bigger that you, asshole."
Blood poured between Giz's fingers as he tried to cover his nose and stop the flow. He glared hatefully at Null until something inside of his brain clicked and he realized that he had seen his attacker before, "Y-You're that kid from the news in Gotham."
"Mmm," Null mumbled, "...Can't go anywhere without that coming up, I guess," Giz tried to get up out of his chair and dash to reach for a handgun nearby. Null shoved him back down roughly and pushed the gun farther out of reach with his powers, "We gonna keep doing this?"
"You can't keep me here," Giz said, "Someone's gonna come looking."
"If that's true, you're a worse criminal than me," Null told him, calling his attempt at a bluff, "No, I think I can stay here all day and all night-."
"Giz! I'm coming!" Mouse shouted from behind the door, before addressing Null, "You're fucking dead when I get out there!"
Null regarded her for a moment before grabbing a chair and sitting down in front of Giz, picking up where he'd left off, "-Just as long as I can deal with your girlfriend if she wants to cause problems. If she fights anything like you, I could probably unseal that door right now and let whatever happens happen. I only need you. You're the hacker."
This was super-illegal. It wasn't just him ripping off dealers for cash, or even stealing antiques and collectibles or anything that wouldn't end up with someone outright getting hurt. This was extortion. He was making someone do something for him via the threat of force.
"Do you know who you're dealing with?" Giz demanded to know.
"A two-bit hacker and his traditional thief of a girlfriend," Null shot back, "I've got thief part covered. I need a hacker. Or at least, a hacker's perspective. So how about it?" Giz just continued staring an angry hole through him. Null balled up a fist and swung it back, getting Giz to flinch, but the threat of a beating wasn't enough any longer. Fair enough, "Fine. Do you know what magnets do to computers up close?"
"What?"
"How do you think I got in here with no alarm or anything going off? I just walked past all of your security and broke it."
Giz's eyes moved to the gun on the floor that had been knocked there. He hadn't touched it to make it move. That alone gave evidence to what he was saying, "You don't have the guts," He tried to keep a strong front, "Do you know how many crime heads you'd be screwing over right now if you ruined my equipment. They'd kill you."
No matter how he tried to spin it, Null saw the fear in his eyes when he brought up destroying all of his gear. Whatever he had stored on his machines, he must not have backed up much of it on anything that couldn't be ruined.
"They'd kill you first. You're closer," Null said, "They'd have to go to Gotham City to find me. Heh, they can go ahead and get in line."
Giz took a moment to consider what he was being told. As a hacker, without any gear, he was next to useless, and that included his uses to Null. However, he could find another hacker. It wouldn't be difficult, which meant that he could and would follow through with his threat if Giz felt belligerent.
He could just take a stroll around the apartment and fry all of his computers, then leave. He didn't even need to know what all of them were for or even where they all were exactly. If he could generate enough of a charge inside of himself, and from the sound of things he could, all he had to do was get fairly close. Giz couldn't stop him. That much had already been proven.
"What do you want?"
Null smiled at Giz giving up and hearing him out, "It's nothing big, don't worry. I need to know how to find someone like you who really doesn't want to be found," He said, "He doesn't take jobs or anything like that. Compared to him, you're pretty easy to track down."
Especially since the woman who trained him knew him already, but explaining just how he managed to locate Giz and Mouse would likely get Selina into trouble and knock some intimidation points off of his score. He didn't have many to begin with.
"What'd this guy do to you?"
"All that stuff anyone actually knows me for."
"Oh."
"Yeah," Null said, swallowing down some anger as he recounted his reasons for pursuing Anarky, "He had explosives planted in all of those Wayne Enterprises buildings. Whichever one someone suspicious enough hit first was the one that would be safe, so he could have a sucker for the police to go after."
Giz clicked his tongue and turned to one of his computers to begin working, "And they tell us that ambition is good for us," He said with a shake of his head, "The guy's got to be working with more than one computer to coordinate watching over all of the security in all of those buildings."
"Is there anything specific I should be looking for to make it easier to find him?" Null said, pulling up next to the hacker. Whatever he was looking into was foreign to Null, but maybe he could learn something worthwhile regardless.
"Well, first of all, for something like what you're talking about, the guy would need a strong, reliable signal," Giz said, bringing up a map of Gotham City. On it there were thousands if not millions of minuscule dots. With a swipe of the mouse, the number of dots decreased to hundreds, then to dozens, "It would have to be an independent connection. For guys like us, it's too dangerous to piggyback off of other networks."
"So what are these?"
"I'm narrowing down the higher quality networks in Gotham," Giz said, focusing in on his work now that he was getting deeper into it, "We can go ahead and get rid of anything that would have been well-monitored, because he would have been on it constantly. So bye-bye to major companies."
Null frowned at the ever-narrowing sight before him. It couldn't be that easy. It was never that easy. True enough, the map of Gotham was soon wiped clean of every dot, "He wouldn't have used any of those?"
"Nothing active fit the criteria, so either whatever he did use is inactive, or..." Giz started to say before switching up his approach, "Hold on."
"Great."
"Don't worry," Giz explained, "The wonderful thing about this is that pretty much everything you do leaves a trail. That includes hackers. Now most of the time, you have to figure out what that trail is trying to tell you, but you can."
"Are you hacking into Wayne Enterprises?"
"Just the security feeds at the warehouse that you apparently ripped off," Giz got a glimpse of the ongoing security feeds for a second before changing tracks. That wasn't what he'd wanted to see, "If he accessed them, there has to be something to tie back to him somewhere in here."
Null just sat silently and waited. At best, he had a loose understanding of what was going on. It was the entire reason he'd sought out someone else to help him out with all of Anarky's computer activity. You had to know when you were out of your league in one regard or another.
Eventually, Giz slammed his hand on the table and jumped up in triumph, "Haha! Fuck yeah!" He crowed victoriously, "Finally! I got an IP address!"
Null perked up at the positive news, "Really?"
"Yep" Giz quickly wrote the numbers down and handed them off, "Here you go. Are we done now, or do you need my help to figure out how to use that?"
The snark didn't go unnoticed, but Null couldn't necessarily begrudge him that, given how all of this had transpired, "No-no, this is all I need," He said, nicer about it than he had been since first showing up out of the blue, "This is actually more than I expected."
Giz watched in amazement as Null dropped $5000 on the table and started to leave, "Wait, you're paying me?"
Null looked back at him with a smirk, "I didn't say I was gonna make you do this for free. I'm not that much of an asshole," His smirk turned a touch nastier as he began to radiate electricity, visible snaps of power leaping off of his body as he spoke, "But if you let anyone know I was here-."
"Alright, I've got it!" Giz said, holding his hands up defensively, "...What about my girl? She's still stuck in the room."
"That'll wear off in a few minutes," Null waved off his concern before stopping near the entrance, "And remember, if anyone asks how you busted your nose..."
Giz finished the thought for him, "I walked into a door. Yeah, whatever. Just leave already."
"Gladly. This city sucks," Null said, leaving and closing the door behind him. He spared a glance back to the hideout he'd just left, muttering to himself as he began to head out of town, "If Nightwing comes after me before I get out of Blüdhaven, I'm coming back here and kicking his ass."
XxX
(Outskirts of Metropolis)
Jefferson Pierce, the man that existed underneath the guise of Black Lightning, stood amongst a crowd of reporters and city officials as Lex Luthor stood at a podium before them.
It was an event to celebrate the completion of one of LexCorp's groundbreaking broadband towers, and many media outlets were lapping up the chance to show viewers, readers, and listeners that the project was actually taking shape right before their eyes. Cameras, microphones, notepads, and tablets were everywhere, taking own Lex's every word.
"I can think of no city better to reveal the first of these towers than the City of Tomorrow," Lex Luthor said, wrapping up his speech, "Metropolis has always led the way in technological advancement, but I want this to be a catalyst. I want a city like Metropolis in every state in our great nation. These towers are just the first step to something so much greater! Thank you."
Reporters attempted to bombard him with questions, but were ignored as he left the stage, his lead bodyguard Mercy, making a path for the rest of Lex's security to guide him through the crowd.
Jefferson kept his eyes on Lex and abandoned the crowd of reporters after catching sight of one that he knew rather well. Tall and gangly in his off-the-rack blue suit, Clark Kent cut a very unimpressive figure with his slick black hair and thick glasses.
"They send you all the way out here for this, or did you volunteer?" Jefferson asked as he shook Clark's hand upon reaching him.
Clark let out a light laugh and adjusted his ill-fitting glasses on his face, "Well it's easy to get the assignment you want when literally no one else at the Planet wants to cover it."
By now Lex and his entourage had moved away from the crowd of other reporters closer to the conversing men, prompting the business and science mogul to stop nearby and comment, "Well isn't this an interesting sight? Jefferson Pierce and Clark Kent."
"It's been a while, Lex," Jefferson remarked, "Still good at feeding America your special brand of b.s., I see."
Lex let the insult roll off of him like water off of a duck's back, "There's no need to be vulgar, Jefferson. I had hoped that you would have retained some sort of faith in me," He said, a trademark slimy smoothness to his voice, "You did work as a member of my cabinet, after all."
"You know full well why I took that job," Jefferson replied, a masked sense of loathing in his tone, "Besides, I'm not accusing you of doing anything."
A grin slowly grew on Lex's face as though the knowledge of the obvious fib amused him, "Why else would a member of the Justice League be here?" He asked before turning his attention to one of his least favorite people in the world, "And Clark Kent. You and your lovely wife only show your faces at my events to write your ridiculous claims for your paper."
"How many of those claims are really ridiculous, Lex?" Clark said, tapping his notepad with the pen in his other hand, "Besides, this is big news."
On that, Lex could agree with the wholly unremarkable man before him, "I know. It's just fantastic, isn't it?" He said honestly, reveling in the resplendence of his own moment, "I'm very excited about everyone experiencing the fruits of this initiative. I really do think it will make the world a better place."
"Well that's always the goal, isn't it?"
"Of course. If you'll excuse me, gentlemen."
With that, Lex and his company of bodyguards moved past in the direction of his transportation. No doubt, he had more important things to do than hang around in a field at the outskirts of Metropolis. That was just fine. None of them particularly wanted to be in his presence for any longer than absolutely necessary.
Once the man of the hour left, the crowd quickly thinned out, leaving the two men who were more than they appeared more or less alone to speculate over the tower by themselves, "So what do you think, Clark?" Jefferson eventually asked.
Clark took off his glasses with a sigh and stared at the tower with hard eyes that others who knew him would have called uncharacteristic, "It might just be a P.R. move. I've looked the whole thing over, this whole area over. I've checked the entire site, and I can't see anything off about it… other than the fact that it's part of a LexCorp project."
Every member of the Justice League had done nothing but level suspicion at LexCorp and his highly publicized initiative. So far, nothing shadier than normal for the company had come up. But there was no such thing as overkill. No stone could be left unturned.
"Even if we're wrong about this being some kind of damned scheme he's cooking up, the last person who should be given the benefit of the doubt is Lex Luthor," Jefferson said, sparing a look back at Metropolis proper.
"I'll keep digging until there's nowhere left to look," It was Clark's job to do so regardless. Both his as a reporter and Superman's as a hero, "I told Kara and Conner to keep their eyes open for anything strange going on in Metropolis," At that, Jefferson gave Clark a skeptical grin, getting the reporter to roll his eyes, "You know what I mean, Jefferson."
XxX
(That Evening – Gotham City)
As she got into costume to hit the town that night, Ravager had to admit that Penguin's proposal from earlier in the day had merits. As dangerous as it had the potential to be, for her and countless others, he was going to pay her well for it, and it would open a lot of doors in regards to her mission for Intergang.
And apparently Null was the one she had to thank for the opportunity, at least according to Penguin.
"The way the city started to buzz after that little idiot Null's big stunt gave me an idea. When his name came up after those buildings went boom, everything stopped. It was a welcome distraction. While it's been nice not having so much competition on the outside these days, it's coming at a cost. There's more attention on my more… illicit activities. So why not give the boys in blue and good old Batman a few more pressing concerns than simple business arrangements involving yours truly?"
He wanted a good portion of the heat off of him, to give him more wiggle room. It was as simple as that. When Penguin explained his reasoning to her, she didn't even bother correcting him that Null hadn't blown up anything. Telling him that wouldn't have done anything anyway, so it didn't really matter.
If she accepted, Ravager was to enact a widespread escape of inmates from one of the most dangerous places on earth: Arkham Asylum. This was not a decision to be taken on lightly.
After all, she was supposed to be street-sweeping. Removing possible criminal competition from the equation.
Arkham Asylum was a revolving door of some of the most dangerous and influential individuals in Gotham history. But the thing was, they would get out eventually. They always did. She was just expediting the process by aiding whichever ones got away because of her interference.
Besides, she could likely pick off a good number of them in the process to raise her own bottom line.
'Deathstroke would do it,' She thought to herself as she pondered the merits of taking on such a monumental task, 'He wouldn't have even thought about the consequences, he just would have wondered if it was a trap.'
Which was also a possibility. She had made no shortage of enemies since coming to Gotham City. Whoever she hadn't killed or had run-ins with yet had likely had their feathers ruffled in other ways because of her work. While she didn't recall doing anything to screw over Penguin, she didn't really have to if he figured he could profit off of her misfortune somehow.
It was a lot to think about. The payoff would be lucrative - with a capital 'L', but the dangers were real. The question was, did the benefits to her outweigh the risks?
"Where's Null?"
Ravager's first thought upon hearing Batgirl's voice was to reach for a sword or a gun. But if she hadn't been attacked while Batgirl had the advantage, perhaps a fight wasn't what she wanted.
In any case, whatever this was about would be a welcome distraction from pondering the various complications of staging an Arkham breakout.
Ravager's voice had a curious hum to it as she responded, "Now why would you think I know where he is?" No one who had seen them together who would so much as breathe a word to Batman or any of his kids was still alive.
Batgirl kept a stern, paranoid look levelled on Ravager, just in case she decided to lash out and attack, "He was looking for you back when all of the criminals in Gotham City went nuts trying to find you for your bounty," She deduced, "I figured that he found you since you weren't killed."
Ravager sneered at the idea of her needing to be saved by anyone, despite the fact that Null's intervention did keep her alive against the KGBeast, "I don't need Sparks or anyone else to watch my back for me," She said, turning her back on the black-clad heroine, "He's not here, clearly. So as far as I'm concerned, you're just wasting both of our time."
Batgirl could tell that Ravager was getting steadily more annoyed by her presence, but she didn't back off. Not yet, "If I'm right, he'll come find you eventually."
"Even if you are right, you must think he's stupid if he'll go anywhere you are just because I'm there. After what you Bat-people did, he's not getting within a country mile of you assholes if he can help it."
Batgirl kept up a tough, in-control demeanor and it showed in her voice. All the same, Ravager noticed that something about her had deflated with the change of topic, "So he told you what happened."
This time, Ravager grinned at the red-haired crime fighter, "You're assuming again. He didn't have to," She said, "Sparks would never do a job like that. Too messy. Anyone who's been around him longer than five minutes would have known it wasn't him."
"Why do you call him that?" Batgirl asked, having first noticed it when she and Robin had fought them during the S.T.A.R. Labs heist.
Ravager raised an eyebrow underneath her mask, "Sparks? Because I think his name is stupid and he literally makes sparks. Why do you even…?" She trailed off before her smile slowly faded, "Why did you come looking for him?"
"To bring him in. In case you haven't noticed, it's kind of my job to-."
"No-no-no, that's bullshit," Ravager cut Batgirl off before she could finish her thought. Nothing about this confrontation seemed right on the surface, "You know he didn't do it. You basically just admitted it. So looking for him to bust him would only screw up whatever you're trying to do to smoke out the real bomber."
"It doesn't matter why I'm looking for him. Not to you."
"Batman didn't clue you in on it, did he?" Ravager continued, having clued in on a chink in the armor, "Does it suck? Being left out like that? You must really look up to him to not even question what happens around him until after the fact. It must be comforting though, always taking everything at face value."
"This coming from the girl whose father put a bounty on her?" Batgirl shot back coldly, "And you still want to be just like him. How does it feel being thrown to the wolves by your only family?"
The swords almost came out. The only thing that stopped Ravager from pulling them was the thought that it would have meant that Batgirl had won, and she had been gotten to.
She took a deep breath and counted to ten. Then to twenty, "…I don't know why you're looking for Sparks. I can only guess that you figure there's something good about him. And there's something to that. He's not as much of a dirtbag as he should be considering this place. But I'm telling you now. Fuck off."
Batgirl stood back as this was punctuated by the previously expected drawing of a sword, "What did you say?"
"You heard me. Leave him alone," Ravager asserted forcefully, "You know, he doesn't even really blame you all for doing what you did. This whole hero-villain thing, he doesn't take it personally."
Batgirl could only be reminded of all of their previous interactions, including the most recent one, with a dejected and thoroughly pummeled Null sitting defeated in the back of a squad car, "I know. He said as much."
"Glad you remember," Null suddenly said, surprising both young women at his presence. They turned in the direction of his voice to see him standing upside down on a flagpole planted in the side of a nearby building, "I didn't think that meant, 'shake trees to look around for me', though. Is she bugging you?"
"Yes," Ravager said, not sure if she was pleased or not by his being there. She turned back to Batgirl with her hands on her hips, "Well what do you know? I guess I was wrong about the, 'him not being that stupid,' thing."
Ravager and Null were alleged accomplices, but no one had ever seen them together to confirm it, until now, "Null, how the hell did you even end up involved with Ravager in the first place? Don't you run from everything dangerous?"
Null seemed offended at the assumption of his cowardice, "I don't run from everything dangerous. I just run from things I think could put me in jail or kill me," Without saying a word, Batgirl silently pointed at Ravager, who waved cheekily at Null once he turned to look at her. Clearly, she classified as both, "…She's different. It's complicated."
Batgirl's body language read sheer skepticism, "I'm listening."
"Oh, don't be so hard on him. He's just a beh-beh," Ravager said with a taunting dip in her voice. She was not making any of this better.
"I am not a beh-beh," Null argued in return, "I am a man. I'm a man who pays his bills on time and makes things with his hands out of metal and wood. The kind of man that would own hardback books, well-aged scotch, and a sweet, sweet handlebar moustache. That's the kind of man I am."
Completely ignoring Null's vainglorious monologue of his imaginary virtues, Batgirl remained fixated on the more important topic at hand, namely Null consorting with the apprentice of one of the most dangerous men in the world, "Null, she's Deathstroke's daughter and she has a rap sheet in Gotham. Not one we can prove, but… going around with her isn't doing anything to help you look innocent."
Innocent.
Ravager already hadn't been in a great mood that day. Batgirl hadn't made it any better, but hearing that word come out of her mouth in conjunction with Null's situation just raised her hackles.
"That's a real laugh coming from you," She said darkly.
Null's eyes snapped over to her, as he could already see where this was going. Her fingers were twitching at her side, desperately wanting to move the extra few inches they needed to reach the handles of her handguns.
"Do you have an observation you'd like to make?" Batgirl asked, more than willing to let trouble brew. To say that she held a certain enmity for Ravager because of her affiliation to the violent end of the wrong side of the law would not have been wrong, "By all means, please."
"Ravager, let it slide." Null asked with a tone of insistence.
"No-no-no, you can let it slide," Ravager replied, not willing to play ball and acquiesce, "Go ahead and let her tell us about how hanging around me makes you look guilty for a bombing. Because as we all know, I'm well known for blowing shit up out of the blue," She said sarcasm dripping from every last word out of her mouth, "It only makes sense that it would have rubbed off on a career thief that never committed any violent crimes before this."
"That's not what I meant!" Batgirl raised her voice, "I know he didn't blow anything up!"
"Then you should know just how fucked up what Batman did really is, using him as a decoy," Ravager snapped in return, "But you don't care. I know Batman doesn't care, because Sparky isn't squeaky-clean like he thinks the people he's protecting are. Well just because he's not-."
"-Ravager," Null jumped in before she could get angrier. He knew how moody she could be, and had already seen her hand twitch for one of the guns at her waist. There was no need for that tonight, "That's enough. Let me deal with this."
"How did you know where to find me?" Ravager asked as Null jumped from upside-down across the street where he was to move between the two would-be combatants, "Were you looking for me?"
A smile came to his face underneath his hood, "Just checking in. You know how I worry," He teased patronizingly before jerking his head to the side to dismiss her, "Go on. I've got this."
Ravager looked past him at Batgirl and clenched her fists, "Sparky, I-."
Null put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head, "I know. And thank you. I mean it. But as much as you hate me doing stuff for you when you didn't ask, I do too," He said seriously, "My problems are my problems. Unless I ask for help, I don't want you to be bothered. And I don't need help with this."
Ravager gnashed her teeth in bitter recess before turning around, smacking Null in the face with her long, loose-flowing silver hair, "Fair enough," She said, angry that she even felt defensive over him, "Go ahead and let her good-girl sweet-talk you into some other mess. I'm out of here."
Null frowned as he watched her leave. No doubt he would be dealing with the repercussion of that later – whether it was tonight or some time tomorrow. In the meantime, he had a little something more pressing to deal with.
"Well?" He said, surprising himself at how cold he sounded. Apparently being cute and having good intentions only went so far. Having a hand in screwing him over, even as an associate, seemed to be that breaking point.
He didn't know quite when his attitude on Batgirl had turned. He told himself he wasn't mad at her in particular, but his feelings for Batman must have bled over into how he treated her.
"Are you searching for the bomber?" Batgirl asked, getting right to business. It was clear that she was one of the last people he wanted to communicate with.
"I know who the bomber is already," Null revealed casually, taking great care not to drop a name. If they didn't know yet, he wasn't going to give them a helping hand.
"You do?"
"We had a nice little chat," Null admitted, remembering the words he had with Anarky, "Yeah, we established that he thinks I'm worthless, and that I'm going to hurt him really, really bad when I get my hands on him."
"If you know who the bomber is, we can find him faster than-."
"No. Didn't you just hear what I said to Ravager. This is about me," He said, cutting her off, "I'll clear my damn self, after I get my pound of flesh. I'll fix this the way I wish I could have fixed the Kryptonite thing, but I'm not so helpless anymore."
Pity. He hated it. He could hear it in her voice, even when she tried to keep it out. The righteous anger that had been there the last time they'd spoken was gone. It didn't matter what his circumstances were. Hopeless or not, unwarranted or not, he would not be pitied by anyone.
His pride wasn't that important, but he still held a measure of it somewhere deep down.
"Don't worry. I'll slide him your way... after I'm done with him," Null guaranteed the vigilante in front of him, "Hopefully there'll be enough to toss away somewhere."
"People were hurt, Null!" Batgirl shouted, not willing to indulge Null's macho eye-for-an-eye outlook, "Listen to yourself. This isn't just about you! It's about bringing down a dangerous human being!"
Null nodded as though he were agreeing with what she was saying, "And I'd have agreed with you until you and him and everyone else in this goddamn city MADE it about me!" He yelled back, "That's how I am, Batgirl. It's either not about me at all, or it's ALL about me!"
Batgirl shook her head incredulously, her red hair swishing behind her, "Is your ego that big?" She asked rhetorically, "I just… I can't believe that a regular person, even a teenager, is that selfish."
At this point, Null turned his back and he began to walk away. He was done. This conversation wasn't headed anywhere good.
"You know, I don't even know why you bother talking to me," He said, "When we're not fighting, it always seems like you want something... more out of me. It's not just you either. I've noticed that in every decent conversation I've ever had with any of you heroes. You all expect something more than you or anyone else is getting. Something more than you have any right to expect."
Every time he tried to speak with her, whenever it seemed like things were going well, he would hit a brick wall. He understood why she, Robin, and every other hero he'd met did what they did and acted as they did. Either they couldn't grasp why he was the way he was, they weren't willing to, or they just didn't care.
He didn't take the ebb and flow of the crime fighting dynamic personally. The same couldn't be said for a lot of the good guys he interacted with.
Batgirl watched Null as he started to leave. She hadn't come to fight. Not tonight. There wasn't any reason to go after him. Yes, finding Ravager had thrown a wrench into that plan, but evidence tying her to several attacks on organized crime was circumstantial for the time being. It wasn't enough for Batgirl to justify going after her. Batman, maybe, but not her.
She had come to see how he was holding up. There was a light in there somewhere. She had seen it. He'd proven it before. She just hoped that the callous actions of the man who was the conscience of Gotham City hadn't snuffed it out.
"Null, if things were different, would you have wanted to be a hero?"
The question surprised him, but it was one he took the time to think over seriously. It deserved that much attention, at least. He paced around the area until finally sitting down on an air conditioning unit in front of Batgirl, "I don't think so," He eventually said, "I've noticed that for the most part all you heroes are miserable. Life sucks enough without actively living to make things harder for yourself. And I can't think of anything harder than making yourself accountable for everything that happens to everyone else around you."
Batgirl's mouth fell slightly open before she gave him a humorless laugh, "That it? So you'll throw yourself into harm's way for a killer like Ravager, but you won't stick up for them?" She said, pointing down at the city streets, "For the guy losing his life in the alleyway, or the kid watching his parents be buried because they were in the wrong place for a drug deal, or-."
Null stopped her before she could get on any kind of roll, "No. Because they wouldn't. Because they didn't. No one did. Not for me. But that's okay. I'm not mad about it. I just find it really hard to care," He looked out over the city that had more or less spawned him; the costumed portion of him, "No one gave a damn when I actually needed it. One woman did. And as much as she jerked me around, for every fault she has, she did right by me when I needed her. Twice."
She could only assume that he meant Selina Kyle, "And Ravager?" Batgirl asked, "You didn't go running around Gotham City searching for a payday that night. You were actually worried."
"I don't stick up for everyone, but that doesn't mean I won't for anyone at all," Null declared, "They just have to give me a reason."
"What reason was hers?"
"Believe it or not, she earned it."
Batgirl shook her head. This kept happening. Every time she felt like whatever good she saw in Null was part of her imagination, he would say or do something that would open the door, just a crack, "Don't do anything to the bomber that you'll regret," She warned as she prepared to swing away into the night.
Null stood up on the air conditioning unit, feeling the end of the conversation coming on, "I can't make that promise," He said.
"Why?"
"Because he gave me a reason."
"And what reason was his?"
"Believe it or not, he earned it too."
XxX
Ravager wasn't at the apartment. Null checked and found that she hadn't even been back since she'd left that morning. Apparently she'd had a full day as well. That left the question of where she could have gone.
Hopefully she hadn't gone off to stalk Batgirl down after her little near blow-up a little while ago.
Eventually though, he decided to check out the only place in the city that she would have likely felt comfortable going to all by herself in costume: his hideout at the dilapidated strip mall.
It was always the last place you looked for something…
Ravager noticed him before she saw him, not that he had done much of anything to try and hide his presence from her.
"What are you doing here?" She said, sitting on the ledge of a dried out fountain in the middle of the shopping center as she polished one of her swords.
"This is my base," Null told her, "You can't avoid me by going to the place I chose to hide out at."
"Go away, Sparks," Ravager demanded, keeping her attention on her weapons, "I've been feeling particularly violent lately, and you playing rooftop rendezvous with Batgirl didn't exactly set that at ease. You should know better by now. You really should."
"I jumped in so you wouldn't fight and lose, or piss off Batman worse. I'm not letting you cut a superhero in half just because you're moody."
"Since when does it matter to you what I do?"
"Since always," Null said, wondering just what she was so edgy about tonight. She'd been fine for the most part that morning the last time they'd seen each other. A little edgier than normal, but nothing that far out of the ordinary, "Hey, what's the matter with you? Come on-," His attempt to reach out to her almost resulted in the loss of a few fingers or an entire arm, "Whoa!"
Ravager kept her sword leveled at Null, a heated glare on her face as she threatened him, "You keep on mistaking just what this whole thing is supposed to be," She seethed, "You don't touch me. You don't swoop in for a friendly hug or a pat on the shoulder when you think I need some support. I don't need you. You're expendable."
Null's expression slowly shifted from surprise at being attacked, to a dulled annoyance. The point of the sword still aimed at his neck, he used his fingers to gesture to the side and disarmed Ravager with his powers.
Not pleased at having her weapon yanked out of her grasp, Ravager only seemed to get angrier, "You no good son-of-a…" She pulled her guns, but Null stuck them to the ceiling before she could aim them his way, taking her with them. She let go and dropped from the ceiling, pulling out her other sword to slice through him on her way down.
Null didn't move, instead enacting a wall of magnetic repulsion between them, freezing her in-place in the air, the sharp edge of the weapon inches away from his face. He raised his hand and mimed a grabbing motion before jerking his hand behind him, sending the sword flying past his head. Ravager let go before she too was sent for a ride.
"Are you done?" Null asked as the sword hit the ground with a clang somewhere in the dark of the hideout. His tone was filled with all of the patience of an adult waiting out a child's temper tantrum.
Ravager dropped to the ground and didn't think twice about lunging at Null with a punch meant to break bone. No weapons? Fine. She was still a better hand-to-hand fighter than he was.
But she was wearing metal. Lots of it. He could feel her punches and kicks coming, and even if he couldn't outright avoid them on his own, he could guide them safely out of his way.
The original plan was to let her punch her temper out of her system, but as time dragged on, it didn't seem to calm her down. An attempted shot at Null's family jewels was the last straw.
The next haymaker she threw, he used his powers to pull her past him, sidestepping her and catching her at the throat by his extended arm. With an added sweep of the leg, he knocked her to the ground and pinned her there.
"Chill out, you psychotic bitch!" Null said, holding her down with his own hands and his body. He couldn't just magnetically stick her to the floor. The bond wasn't as strong if he wasn't sticking someone to metal. She'd wind up getting away without too much effort if he didn't get physically involved.
Ravager wouldn't give up, writhing and thrashing, sometimes even trying to reach up and bite his throat, "You're starting to get some guts, huh? I wonder what they'd look like on the floor!"
She managed to headbutt him hard enough to allow her up and charged directly for him. Seeing red from anger in his own right due to the stinging on his forehead, Null grit his teeth in anger and slapped her hard enough for the blow to echo around them.
Ravager stopped dead in her tracks, not because the slap knocked her down or hurt that much, but out of sheer amazement that he had the gall to do such a thing. She was stunned into inaction and silence for the first time that day.
Null felt bad about the red handprint slowly forming on her cheek where he hit her, but couldn't back down now, "Goddamn it, Rose, stop it with the crazy bullshit already! You'd think by now you'd have figured out that you can't just scare me away," He said, giving her a hard shake to make sure she was paying attention, "You think only scary people like you or your dad can handle being around you? That only they can deal with your bullshit?"
Her eye refocused on him and the anger came back, though less explosive than before, "Shut up, Sparks."
Null did no such thing. He had the floor to speak now, and he wasn't going to give it up so easily, "I know a lot of fucked up things have happened to you. You don't need to tell me everything for me to know that but-."
"But what? What could you possibly have to say?" Ravager said, making a sudden move toward him.
Null was used to the volatile girl's outbursts by now, but that didn't mean he had ever been okay with them. Psychology wasn't his thing. The human mind could be a terrifying thing to try to get in-touch with, but it was clear that there were a lot of deep-seated issues within Rose that couldn't just be blamed on the serum that gifted her with her superhuman abilities.
"I don't have anything to say," Null said, keeping his feet firmly planted even though it was clear Ravager wanted him to step back, "I was just going to say that it's okay."
Ravager wanted to hit him all over again, but seeing as how he had managed to dodge everything she'd tried moments before, lashing out in anger would clearly do her little to no good, "It is, is it?"
Oh God. Mouth, insert foot, "That's not what I meant," Null tried to reason, but it was too late to stop the flood.
"Alright, Sparks, story time," Ravager said, shoving him roughly, "My mother died protecting me from my psychopath uncle, who I shot afterwards by the way. And he didn't die. That's why the next time I killed him, after he killed a sweet family that took me in, I used a sword. Just to make sure he stayed dead that time," She reached up and ripped the mask off of her head so she could see her face in all of its pained rage, "My half-brothers are dead. Oh, no, wait. One of them is still alive, just disembodied. His spirit is stuck in a computer file, by the way. And he wants to ruin what's left of my life too!"
What did one say to all of that, necessarily? The only thing Null could think of was that superhero stuff was weird, but he doubted that would make the unstable girl before him calm down any more than anything else he'd done. Strangely enough though, the more she got off her chest, the calmer she seemed to get.
Maybe he didn't have to say anything? Maybe, at least this time around, she just needed someone to listen?
So he did.
That was good, because it didn't seem like Ravager was done quite yet, "My dad is the only one who wants me now! The Titans didn't, even before I turned into this mess that I am now! Deathstroke is only one that can even survive around me, and it seems like he barely tolerates me most of the time! You got anything to compare to that?"
Until that point, he had only known a portion of that, and now he could see why. Everyone that had actually cared for her at one time or had even tried had been killed over the stretch of the last few years.
Null stared right back at her, not removing his gaze from hers for long enough to assure her that he wasn't going anywhere. He wasn't going to turn tail and run the moment she took her eye off of him.
"I watched my parents die nice and slow. Both of 'em, back-to-back. I put on the suit that did it every day of my life," He explained, holding up his hand and letting it crackle with electricity, "They wasted their lives trying to make this thing work. I guess it's not just the freedom I like. Maybe, I just like being Null because it means that they didn't kill themselves for nothing."
Rose was no longer outright snarling at him. Instead, it was more of a deep scowl, "It's not the same. It's not even close."
Null shrugged and moved away to flip over a disheveled crate to use as a temporary seat, "I know. I just figured, you told me something so I'd tell you something," He said, undoing his hood and taking it off of his head, "Before, I didn't mean that what happened is okay, or it's going to be okay. How can I tell you that? No magical heart-to-heart talk in some dingy strip mall is going to make you feel right. You killed the guy that ruined your life, and nothing got better. I don't have an answer for you. I'm never going to have an answer for you. And that's fine."
"What?"
Null gave Ravager a lopsided smile. Confusion was a much more palatable reaction than anger, "You're right. You are a kind of screwed up that I can't even begin to understand. I don't have some big, deep tragedy that I feel like we can bond over. I'm nothing like you at all," He pointed between the two of them expressively, "That's what I like about this. We don't have anything in common, but we get along. We like each other well enough, don't we? And no matter what you act like, you give a fuck about me. Nobody gives a fuck about me."
Ravager bit her lip, wanting to deny all of it, but she realized that at this point there was no doing so. If she denied it after everything that had happened, she would have just been acting stubborn, "So I don't want you to wind up taking a dirt nap for being a dumbass. Fine, I admit it. You happy?"
"Yes, actually," Null admitted. If he had a tail, it honestly would have been wagging. But now that he had been vindicated, it was only right that he set her at ease. As much as was possible for him, anyway, "Look, I'm not going anywhere," He explained, "You're living in my place, eating my food, annoying and freaking the living hell out of me every day. You're not going to wake up one morning and not know how to find me. Even if you leave after this whole bounty thing is over with, you'd better bet your fine ass I'll make sure you know how to get in touch."
"You're either crazy, bored, or stupid," Ravager declared, putting her bet on some unholy combination of all three, "I'm going to get you killed."
"I'm going to get me killed if anyone does at all," Null replied, "Don't be so cocky. Your baggage isn't the only thing that can put me in a grave. I do a decent job of finding my own trouble, thanks."
"I swear, I don't get you. Why?"
"Because I give a fuck about you," Null told her, "Is it really that hard to understand?"
Yes and no. While Ravager couldn't find Null's reasoning to be satisfactory, the fact that he did what he wanted was something that she had come to respect. Independent of if it was good or bad, right or wrong, whether it was meant to help someone or not, the overall guiding principle behind everything he did was his desire to take action.
Just what had she done to warrant a place on his list of things worth sticking his neck out for?
For someone who came from such a nondescript background, he was so damn confusing, and she wouldn't be satisfied until she figured him out.