Uh, I really shouldn't have told Harley where we were going, because now I was a little deaf in one ear and the steering wasn't very comfortable, because of the enthusiastic and anticipatory girl pressed up against me... Ha-ha-ha, who am I kidding? That's exactly why I love her.
After half an hour of driving through winding tunnels, following the navigator's directions, our transport passed the last gate disguised as a cliff, and I was finally able to park the Batmobile on a circular platform with a bat symbol.
"How cool is this place *-*!" The blonde looked around the cave with eyes shining with excitement.
"Ours will be just as good, especially since there's no sex swing here, I guess... I haven't had a chance to look around here yet.
"Then what are we waiting for?" she was the first to get out of the transport and, walking to the fence, looked down carefully, trying to see the bottom of the cave. - Wow, there's a dinosaur statue in here!
"Seriously!!!" Picking up the suitcase with the laptop from the spider drone, I approached my favorite, discovering that not one hefty statue could boast the secret lair of Bats.
When I first got to the place, I was a bit perplexed as the setting was rather poor. Not in the sense that cheap equipment was used, but in the sense that there was relatively little of it.
A platform with costumes and gadgets, a central platform with a batcomp, a parking lot for vehicles, something remotely resembling a state-of-the-art laboratory, and a training area. In principle, even this is enough for some average superhero with metapowers, but we are talking about Gloomy Mouse, and gadgets and technology are an integral part of his image.
Now I could see the true scale of the bat cave, which was as large as the mansion on the surface, maybe even larger. Still, I don't have X-ray vision and can't see what's behind the heavy steel gates, deepened into the rock, and the lack of lighting slightly reduced visibility, but I could still get a good look at the wide bridges with various equipment along the walls, as well as something resembling a museum or "room" for trophies, where the largest exhibit was a life-size statue of a Tyrannosaurus. One hundred percent, the TSO was definitely not involved.
"Let's take a closer look, - while I was calculating how much all this splendor cost, my companion took a batgagot out of her pocket and hooked it to the railing, intending to use the shortest route.
"Okay, let's wait for Alfred," I intercepted the pretty blonde, ready to jump. - I don't think we can go in there with the lights out. I don't want the security systems to suddenly activate.
"Eh, bad luck... Let's take a look around here then, I think there are some old Bats suits on display over there," she nodded towards one of the upper platforms.
"Come on," I shrugged.
It looks like Selina decided to make another attempt to break into the mansion, and the butler went to prevent it, or he just didn't make it downstairs in time. Either way, with no automatic turrets firing at us, the air not filled with neurotoxin, and no red lights flashing around us, we have some sort of guest pass.
The wait was a little longer, and not only were we able to see the entire upper level, but we were even able to turn on the batcomputer. That's what I respect Alfred for, his foresight. How else can you explain running a machine with a guest account?
Dividing the screen of the big monitor into two parts and giving one of the sides to Harley, I decided to check the idea I'd had about Martha renting rooms to unsuspecting blind black man from China. I had a small hope that Bats had already checked out the strange old lady, who might have something to do with the owl assassins, but even if he was able to dig up something, unfortunately, I had no access to that information, and the publicly available data I found, such as residential address, year of birth, and driver's license number, were of little interest.
"Mr. J, I need your help.
I was distracted from my fruitless search by the strained voice of my beloved, who couldn't take her eyes off her part of the screen.
***
A soft beeping sounded as the elevator arrived.
"I'm sorry I'm late, Ms. Kyle was too persistent and tried to sneak onto the estate," the older British man said, confirming my thoughts about Cat's character.
"It's okay, we didn't miss you," I replied, taking my eyes off the action on the monitor for a moment, which I immediately regretted. - Damn it, sunshine, don't let that bastard get hit!
"If it weren't for the stupid controls, I would have killed him single-handedly!" The girl exclaimed excitedly, attacking the boss of the location with her character.
Thanks to a concerted interaction, we still interrupted the debuff, after which we were quickly able to finish off the monster and save our progress by returning to the desktop.
"This is the first time I've ever seen a batcomputer used for such a purpose," the man shook his head, stepping closer.
"Huh, it's not porn," I replied, turning the incredibly comfortable high-backed chair so that I was facing the person I was talking to, then trying to look cool and mysterious. - We don't have access to anything normal anyway.
Alfred flinched a little, looking at me with a very strange look. I'm still dressed in my stylish purple suit, and behind me is a supercomputer screen with the Dark Knight symbol on it... I think that would have been a scene that the elderly Briton would have had only in his worst nightmares. Huh, that's funny.
The slight smile made the butler tense up, but he still managed to pull himself together and carefully clarify:
"What's "normal" in your definition?
"Access to police reports, medical servers, street cameras... I want to check out one individual who may be connected to the Court of Owls.
"It can be arranged," Alfred cheered, walking over to the dashboard and placing his palm on the special notch.
Bats was paranoid, because even his closest person, who literally replaced his parents, didn't have full access to the batcomputer's systems. Fortunately, the expanded functionality, compared to the guest account, was enough to find out some curious details about Martha Norris's life. Service in the army, and then in special forces, performing delicate assignments, excellent physical and combat training, mastery of cold weapons, repeated participation in local conflicts, sabotage, and this is only a small part of what I was able to find out about this mysterious eighty-year-old woman, who has a lot of white spots in the biography. On the one hand I began to suspect her even more, and on the other - it would be much stranger if an ordinary pensioner frightened the local gopota and could make a martial arts master speak of herself with respect.
"I think I can prepare another drone to set up surveillance equipment inside the house," the butler said thoughtfully as he studied the information on the screen, which included a plan of a building that could survive an air raid.
"Yes, that would be the best option, - I answered, realizing that in this case it would be unlikely to get answers by force, and without evidence I didn't really want to do it. So the only thing left is observation and parallel gathering of rumors about the mystical organization through Bats' informants, what Alfred hasn't stopped doing since the disappearance of his master.
"Okay, we're running a little late. I hope there's a secret tunnel out of the garage, because I don't want to give Cat any food for thought," I rose tiredly, giving my hand to my charming companion, who was already starting to peck her nose after a busy day.
"Don't doubt it," the man was the first to head for the elevator, showing the way. - By the way, while you were saving the city, I realized that steel cables alone would not be enough to effectively secure Solomon Grundy, so I designed portable harpoon cannons, which the assembly line has already begun to assemble. They should be ready by morning.
"Fine, but what about those consecrated napalm grenades you mentioned?
"They're a little more complicated. The Master didn't make a large stock of such a specific thing, so there are only ten of them left, and I don't have full confidence in their effectiveness against the reanimated dead.
"Napalm is napalm," I shrugged, following the butler's lead with Harley. - That's the kind of thing that comes in handy.
"Good, then tomorrow all the prepared equipment will be waiting for you at the rented warehouse," he made a note in his notebook. - I'll send the exact coordinates to your e-mail.
After climbing up and traveling briefly through the corridors of the mansion, we had to descend again, but already with my car on an incredibly slow cargo platform. It was this moment that our escort chose to bring up the issue of one heroic hero's appearance.
I was expecting a fair lecture, but instead the older man shared his concerns about my true identity. There had been only one "good Joker" in Gotham until now, and at the moment I had neither a good alibi nor a good reputation, and my companion had escaped imprisonment in a less than honest way, and the dramatic improvement in the financial situation of a seemingly innocent supercriminal with weak metapowers raised certain questions among people with a bit of brains.
Loaded with this information I almost did not notice how we passed the secret tunnels and reached the house, where after a hot bath we went straight to a warm bed.
***
I woke up three hours later, rested and full of energy.
A short sleep and memories of the inter-world, which fired up my brain, helped me to put all the information in a box and realize that there was no point in worrying about the appearance of the good Joker. Yes, I may not have an alibi, and I'm a rather suspicious person, but in order for the police to charge me with anything, they need evidence, because the presumption of innocence has not been abolished, and they simply will not care about it now, because the city is full of other clowns-psychopaths, who are much more threatening to the safety of civilians. Hell, maybe one of Hugo's miscarriages could have short-circuited something in his head because of a bunch of dubious drugs, and, after all, I was wearing a very high-quality illusion, which simply wouldn't allow them to identify me if they wanted to, even if they had video camera footage, which they didn't, as Alfred had kindly taken care of.
I gingerly disentangled myself from the arms of my faithful assistant, who had been drooling on my shoulder in her sleep, and replaced myself on the curled blanket. After stretching out a slightly stiff limb and making sure Harley continued to sleep sweetly, I headed for the gymnasium located in the west wing. The high score of the fourth beginning was paying off, so a regular workout slowly but surely allowed me to develop my physical shell without investing free points, the number of which was almost approaching a hundred.
After strength exercises and a little stretching, it was time to practice strikes on the dummy, combined with attempts to activate a kind of trance, when the body begins to act on reflexes. Still, such a state gives some advantages and can be decisive in a fight with a strong opponent, but you need to learn to control it. Of course, if I don't want to kill someone inadvertently.
When I was done with my workout, I moved to the control room and began to sort out what Mouse and Harley had been up to last night. While we were relaxing on the roof, drinking alcohol and admiring the sunrise, Babs pleased me by telling me about the absence of bookmarks in the security systems of the estate, and boasted about the written algorithm, which, in theory, should create unrecoverable logs on the secure server. After testing the created program a bit and finding no errors, I ran a compliance check on the records and turned on my laptop, launching a browser to surf the net.
The news feed was full of headlines about the Dark Knight's return and last night's riots, and there were small articles about two brave and beautiful superheroines, but no mention of the superheroine Joker. This is quite a shame, by the way, because the news is really cool and unusual.
After looking at some of the articles, I got the feeling that Bats never left the city even for a couple days, and he's a billionaire and has to make the occasional business trip... Though it's unlikely that Mash left Gotham when there was some kind of global fuck-up going on.
After ten minutes of purposeful search, I managed to find information about myself on a couple of forums, but it did not contain anything useful, so after making sure that the connection was secure, I wrote an article about how the Joker heroically saved a citizen from robbery. I realize that the act is not the smartest, but in this way I restored justice!
By this point, the system had just reported that it had completed its check, which showed no abnormalities, so with a sense of accomplishment I slammed the laptop shut and headed for the workshop, where a huge touchscreen was waiting for me. The plan was for it to act as a very distant analog of Tony Stark's holographic desk, for designing all sorts of cool stuff, but today it would be used as an interactive map of the city.
"Places of Power"... Despite the fact that I'd chosen my future targets carefully, analyzing a lot of information from newspapers, news outlets, yellow press, and even local groups, there were still too many of them. Banal cemeteries, of which there were as many as five in Gotham, and not the smallest area; wastelands, where legends say bloody rites were performed hundreds of years ago; abandoned shacks on the outskirts of the city, which were once inhabited by maniacs of various caliber; apartments with a bad reputation, which had outlived more than a dozen owners; there were even the ruins of an ancient church, which for many years could not be put in order, as if there was an evil fate hanging over them.
"If even a quarter of this stuff is true, I wonder why the city hasn't turned into a necropolis or fallen into some magical dimension..." I muttered under my breath, pensively looking at the map, dotted with markings.
"Good morning, Mr. J. - a blonde hottie in a nightie walked into the shop. - What are you doing?
"Trying to solve the mana problem.
"How's that going?" The girl took a springy gait and walked closer, looking at the plan.
"The good news: I found a lot of places where we can probably charge mana diamonds. Bad news number one: ninety-five percent of them are likely to be empty. Bad "number two": some of the remaining ones might be occupied by hostile mages who definitely won't be happy to see us. And bad: it's far from certain that we'll be able to use our mana properly, since we're naturally colored.
"Why don't you use natural mana then?" The blond cutie asked, tilting her head amusedly.
"I've thought about it, but it won't work. Plants contain too little of the energy they need, and if we extract it, they'll die quickly. Ivy's gonna rip me a new one when she gets back.
"No, I wasn't even thinking about plants," she said. - Remember when you asked Zee about the Heart of the Forest? It's a break in Nature's plan.
"That's right!!!" I slapped myself on the forehead, realizing that I had overlooked such an obvious option, fixated on the "dark" mana. - Pack up, we're leaving in five minutes.
Naturally, the Swamp Creature would hardly let us go to the Heart, but the monster is a magical creature and has a stable connection to the Nature Plan, so if it needs help with Grundy, let it share its mana! My imagination immediately began to paint the prospects of combining shields and illusions.
After a quick gathering, during which I cleaned up all the stockpiles of empty diamonds, without stopping to dream, my Aston rushed towards the marshes, and only fifteen minutes later (that's what it means to live in the Bristol area) we are already standing on a familiar clearing.
"Swamp Thing!" I shouted once, listening carefully to my surroundings, covering my eyes.
This time I really wanted to catch the fucking ninja, and for that I decided to rely on my hearing, which paid off. The ground to our right rustled quietly at the edge of hearing, and I immediately turned slightly to collide with the beautiful dryad slowly appearing in the shadows of the trees. It must be some analog of teleportation.
"Ivy?" My faithful companion stared in surprise at the attractive monster. - Or was she?
Oh, crap, I forgot to tell my sweetheart about that little detail. Okay, Jay, it's okay, you're here for the mana. You got what you need and you're outta here.
"It's a Swamp Thing, I'll tell you about it later.
"Why have you come?" The green creature asked in a rough male voice, coming closer.
It doesn't seem to be satisfied that I was able to detect it in advance this time.
"That's awful," Harley grimaced a little. - Could you make it sound like a woman?
Before I could even get a word in edgewise, I heard a melodious voice almost immediately:
"Right?
Holy shit.