It was horribly unpleasant to come to. My stomach felt like someone had shoved a crowbar into it, wrapping my internal organs around it, my face hurt strangely, and my head felt incredibly heavy, as if I'd been drinking. Damn, why do I feel so fucked up? My thoughts were jumbled, preventing me from thinking straight.
I tried to shift in my seat, finding myself firmly tied to the chair.
"Wow, he's awake already," a voice full of enthusiasm sounded nearby.
I struggled to open my heavy eyelids and saw a man in a creepy clown's makeup peering penetratingly into my eyes, leaning over on his left side to do so. His tangled hair was carelessly dyed a dull green color that made it look like swamp slime, and his mouth was disfigured by two scars that stretched from the corners of his mouth to the middle of his cheeks, creating a very peculiar wide smile. The strangest thing was that this character didn't even think of hiding his mutilation, but instead emphasized it with a bright red lipstick. Huh, is this a cosplay of Batman's main enemy?
"Wonderful!" suddenly said the unknown man, straightening up and tucking a spool of coarse thread and a semicircular surgical needle into his purple jacket pocket. - I didn't bring the tools for nothing after all. You look much better this way.
"Better?" It was uncomfortable and a little painful to say.
"Exactly," he nodded vigorously like a dummy, and then took a wide step to the side, revealing a view of a small antique table with a mirror. - Ta-da!" sang the lunatic.
The reflection was a slightly pale man with bright green hair, but the most striking thing about it was the fresh, gruesome bloody wounds stretching from the corners of my mouth, which someone had carelessly sewn up with thread. Huh, but I look like the Joker, unlike this travesty. Oh, fuck.
My brains finally started working properly, and I remembered who I was and how I'd ended up in this situation.
I tried to get rid of the ropes immediately, because they were incredibly strong, and not immediately attached to the chair, which was relatively flimsy, but first wrapped tightly around my body, preventing me from tensing my muscles properly.
"Regel," I hissed, staring at the grinning face.
"Oh, I'm honored. The Joker himself knows my last name," he put his hand to his heart, bowing slightly.
"I'm not the Joker.
"Heh-heh-heh, it won't take long," the bastard glanced at his wristwatch. - You'll be yourself by tomorrow morning. That is, if your attic doesn't completely leak, because the new formula is too powerful, and no one has ever been able to survive prolonged exposure to the chemicals. But you're special.
I looked at the bastard with a hard stare, only now noticing that we were in some kind of greenhouse.
"Where are we?
"Um, didn't you recognize it?" he looked around. - It's your greenhouse. It was dangerous to stay in the house after the security systems reset. Hoo-hoo-hoo, the boss was right after all. People are too lazy to use standard solutions.
Shit, after exposure to the mixture of gases I'm not thinking straight, since I didn't recognize my own house, and I had trouble identifying myself at first. Whatever, I'll deal with my memory when I get rid of this asshole.
While I was weaving fireball charms to get rid of the ropes and then torch the psycho, feeling the gradually growing pain of the crowbar twisting in my stomach, the man pulled an empty chair closer and sat down on top of it, looking intently into my eyes.
"You know, I doubted until the last moment that the boss's plan would work. You're supposed to stand up to Batman! You're supposed to set up elaborate traps, make mind-blowing plans, and yet you don't even bother to set up your own lair. At least put a bungee cord on the front door, or a claymore mine in the hallway..." he stopped waving his arms emotionally, thinking. - No, of course, the VSO's solutions are pretty cool, but they're standard. They're fine against ordinary people, but against your enemies they can be not only useless, but even harmful if you know their flaws, as I've recently demonstrated. All it took was a strong electromagnetic pulse that knocked out all the signaling circuits and activated the gas cylinders.
"What a boss-ss-ss..." I hissed, feeling waves of pain. The timing of this whole thing is so bad.
"Ha ha ha, all in good time.
"Kha..." the crowbar in my stomach abruptly glowed and twisted, completely throwing off my concentration and destroying the weave.
Shit, I guess I can't do normal magic right now. Then we'll go the original way, because there was a reason I was so eager to get to the greenhouse, practically in the clutches of that freak.
"Abby!" I called out loudly.
"Doppelganger" he wrinkled his nose, shaking his head dejectedly.
"Yeah, it pains me to see you like this. Running from your past. You even made your faithful companion change her name to avoid remembering it, didn't you? She's good too, though, for indulging your whims instead of helping you.
"Abby!
"Just get it over with. She's sitting on your right, and she won't wake up for more than half an hour. You're the one with the stamina," he patted my cheek patronizingly, causing a small flare of pain.
I turned my head with difficulty, finding a bound Harley sitting on a chair. What a bastard.
"I'll be free, and then you'll wish you hadn't come here.
"Oh! That's the spirit!" He's clearly relieved. - But you can't avoid a second dip in the chemicals. Hmm, although Harley should be doused in them, too, maybe she'll get her mind right. Ha-ha-ha, or she'll go crazy like the rest of us.
Where the hell is the dryad? No, I realize she's getting rid of the death emanations right now, but I can take my mind off it for a few minutes. Okay, I'll try to do another spell using my memories when the pain gets too bad, but I need to distract the bastard so he doesn't get in the way.
"Why do you even need me?
~Clap~
He slapped himself mockingly on the forehead.
"Right, how could I have forgotten the standard villain speech! The Doctor kept reminding me of its importance!" Cliff coughed. - You see, the First is too dangerous, he's a real madman who won't tolerate competition in his territory. What am I telling you? You saw the show he put on at the bank. Well, we got together, thought it over, and decided to return the original. Killing each other is good, winning the first one is good too, because he'll probably be seriously weakened afterwards.
"Huh," the memories helped me continue to weave the spell, "what if I get the upper hand and finish you and your boss off?
"Well, that's not bad either," he shrugged. - This city needs balance. Order makes Chaos, and Chaos makes Order, and if you take away one of the variables, it doesn't make sense. The three of us will try to follow the true path, of course, but the real Joker will probably do a much better job.
"Tsk, damn it," the spell broke again as molten metal flowed through my veins, once again throwing off my concentration. - Hugo's brainwashed you.
Okay, magic's fucked, so we'll try the old-fashioned way, using our fingernails, and hope for Abby.
"Not Hugo, Dr. Strange. And he didn't rinse me out, he showed me the truth," the man raised a finger to the ceiling, looking at me with contrived sympathy. - We've all learned the truth. Ha-ha-ha, though maybe it was because of the drugs he kept giving us and the electroshock that opened the chakras. Ha ha ha ha ha.
There was a loud beeping sound, and Clif hurriedly pulled a phone out of his jacket.
"Oh, congratulations, the preparations are complete," Hugo's former patient said cheerfully as he read the message on the screen, and then his face darkened dramatically. - Uh, actually, I was supposed to take you to the meeting place right away, but I decided to delay a bit to make you look like a normal person. I hope you won't tell the boss about this little delay, or he'll make a big deal out of it, literally, hahaha.
"I'd love to see that, asshole.
"Well, you'll sleep through the procedure," he grinned, pulling a small canister from his inside pocket. - Sleep well.
~Psh~
A suspicious blue jet flew past my face as I deflected my body sharply, crashing with the chair to the floor. Ouch.
"Why are you being such a baby? You can't run away anyway.
"Abby, goddamn it! I need your help now!
~Skrak~
The furniture is falling apart, but the ropes are still tight around my body, limiting my mobility. And now we're crawling, caterpillar style. Fuck my pride, if I fall asleep now, I may very well never wake up again. I highly doubt this unknown boss will leave me any chance of escape.
I crawled toward the bonsai as a hard blow came to my side, flipping me onto my back. The nozzle of the sprayer was pointed straight at my face.
"Time for bed.
Well, I had nothing left to lose. I was about to spend a half-formed attack spell of prana mixed with bajillion when I noticed a red maw with incredibly sharp, dagger-like teeth looming over Rezhdal.
"Hum! Crunch, crunch, crunch.
I watched in amazement as Ivy and Abby's grown flower chewed my enemy's bitten-off head with a cheerful crunch.
It was really unexpected...
Even after losing his head, the green-haired, pale freak continued to play to an invisible audience. He collapsed to his knees, and Hugo's former patient eventually landed right on top of me, pouring blood from the gruesome wound.
He's a fucking theatrician, he can't even die properly, he needs to be pathos. Trying not to pay much attention to the plant that had saved me, I threw the dead psycho off me and started searching his pockets, trying to find a knife, since I couldn't reach my own.
Frankly speaking, with my hands tied behind my back it was very hard to do it, but despite some difficulties, in a couple of minutes on the floor were three defensive grenades, whose rings were interlocked with fishing line, a simple button cell phone, a surgical needle with thread, seven metal playing cards and a pistol.
A folding knife had been found at the very end of the inspection in the inside pocket of my purple jacket, and judging by the dried blood, it was the knife that had been used to draw my smile. Rejdel (or his boss) knew exactly what to use to restrain me, as the blade slid powerlessly through the incredibly strong ropes, much like the rope inside a cane, only a little thicker and coarser. Eh, I'd have to pretend to be a butterfly coming out of its cocoon again, but luckily the broken chair I was tied to gave me some room to maneuver.
The flower watched me curiously as I tried to free myself from the tight restraints. I don't know how I realized it, but it was very eloquent in its posture: its head tilted sideways, the unusual curve of its stem, its rustling leaves. In some ways, it reminded me of a curious puppy. It was good that, unlike my four-legged friend, the plant wouldn't leave its place, and I didn't feel like playing with the "animal" that a minute ago was cheerfully crunching a human head, calmly grinding hard bones.
"Oh, shit," I cursed as the mutant suddenly pulled four flexible, half-meter-long roots out of the pot.
~Knock~
The dusky creation of two mighty dryads jumped to the floor and, with its red tongue hanging out of its ghastly mouth, headed in my direction.
I silently crawled away, determined not to interfere with someone else's meal, but the green creature completely ignored the corpse and purposefully moved towards me.
"You're not serious, are you? Frankie," Harley sometimes called the plant, "I used to take care of you, watering you with mineral water, feeding you tasty flies. I remember you when you were just a baby.
Oh, man. Either he didn't like the water and the flies, or I looked too delicious, but "it" started moving a little faster. I rolled over onto my stomach, pulling my knees up to me, and then I got upright and started jumping away from the Flycatcher... Or the Flycatcher, since he was called by a man's name.
"He just wants to help," Abby's calm voice suddenly sounded nearby.
Because of the sharp turn toward the source of the sound, I couldn't keep my feet together and started to fall over on my side, but I was calmly held up by the green conservationist.
"What happened here?" She asked, looking around the room curiously.
While I shared the details of the assassination attempt, trying vainly to ignore the rumbling plant rubbing against my legs like a pet, the dryad was slowly removing my restraints, carefully undoing the knots. I was right, by the way; Abby was indeed working on eliminating the death emanations, having first decided to fence off a section of the forest from them, and simply couldn't interrupt the process for fear of the rot.
Then it was Harley's turn, still reeling from the effects of the gas mixture. I laid the sleeping angel on the couch in the nearest room and returned to the greenhouse, staring thoughtfully at the decapitated corpse. There were two options now: to tell Bats everything, or not to tell, getting rid of the evidence, for the Guardian of the Forest agreed to process the freak for fertilizer without any problems.
That last idea looked very tempting, but the problem was that the bastard wasn't acting alone, and thinking back to our conversation, I remember exactly three people. And who do we have that recently escaped from Arkham? The correct answer is Scarecrow and Two-Face. Although I'm not quite sure how Michael Nicholson is involved in this, handing out guns to gangsters, but it's entirely possible he's working on his own. Henry made a good point when he said that the patients wouldn't act in concert for fear of being stabbed in the back.
I pulled out my phone, discovering that the fragile piece of equipment was dead after all. It hadn't regained its functions since the EMP, showing only a black screen.
Eh, now we'll have to order a lot of sensors, since they're probably out of order, too, and it's good that the main equipment with servers survived in an isolated room. It just raises the serious question of increasing security measures and creatively redesigning all the systems. Otherwise, what is this? Some old lady working for the Court of Owls can afford the excellent security systems we've been trying to bypass for days now, while the average humble multimillionaire with a criminal past makes do with shoddy defenses? Well, you can't break it. Maybe a powerful electromagnetic pulse would have taken out Martha's house as well as some of the surrounding buildings. I'm not entirely right, though, because our goal is to do it discreetly, not to overwhelm the target and half the neighborhood.
In the end, I had to call using the surviving landline. After a few beeps, Alfred answered, and I told him that I was having a cosplay fetish party at the mansion, and I was looking forward to seeing the owner in the appropriate attire. Hopefully the butler understood me correctly and Bruce wouldn't show up in an anthropomorphic fox costume. Heh, although that would be funny.
While waiting for the superhero to arrive, I walked around the house assessing the damage. The lights had been partially restored by simply putting the blown plugs back in place. But unfortunately, some of the smart home systems were still down. Various alarm sensors had gone dead, the TV in the kitchen had stopped showing signs of life, like most fragile appliances. Eh, the asshole died too soon. Frankie should have bitten off his legs first, and then, piece by piece, eaten the rest of his body for this setup.
"We have a visitor," Abby said as I stared sadly at the nonfunctioning interactive panel in the workshop. - It's coming from the south side.
"Let's go meet him.
Next to the greenhouses, Mysh was found scrutinizing the reel cart. He could not even say that only a few hours ago he could hardly walk.
"What happened?" The man asked sternly, giving me an aura of gloom while staring me in the eye as if I'd done something seriously wrong.
"Um... You're better off seeing it once. By the way, meet Abby this is Bats, our resident superhero. Bats is Abby, the beautiful stranger who needed help with the Revenant.
The Dark Knight nodded in greeting, eyeing the green beauty closely.
After a brief introduction, we entered under the glass vaults of the greenhouse and soon stopped at the decapitated corpse.
"I'm telling you right away, it was an accident. Frankie did it," I pointed my finger at the toothy plant that had fallen asleep after a hearty meal, standing in the most trumpy spot, in the middle of the other flowers.
Mukholov turned out to be really cool, affectionate, intelligence somewhere on the level of a dog, can share natural mana, which he has in excess. However, if I want him to develop a full-fledged personality over time, it is necessary not to take away the excess, but on the contrary, to share his energy.
"By any chance, just like with Zsasz?" the detective approached the dead man.
"Um... I guess... I guess... Just a stupid set of circumstances. This is Cliff Regdel, by the way.
Frowning, Grim Mouse silently began his inspection, first connecting the maniac's phone to his wristband.
While the examination was going on, I went into great detail about what had happened, trying not to leave out any details. I didn't know whether it helped or not, but Bats didn't react to my speech at all.
At the end of his inspection, he rose heavily from the floor, his experience in the labyrinth making itself felt, and cast a brief glance at his wrist computer, which was displaying a canvas of text.
"I figured out where they are now. Come on, I'm gonna need your help.