Capítulo 66: Serious Problems
The first, and it could only be him, continued to stare absently at the lens of the objective, grimacing.
"Damn it, Harley, I never heard back. Does this thing work?" He said, shifting his gaze a little higher.
"Yes, Mr. J, I have everything set up," a lifeless female voice answered him.
"How many times do I have to tell you, more joy in your voice! We're not sad clowns! Or do you think you still have a lot of fingers left on your hands?" The psycho stepped aside a little, so I could see him at full height.
Damn, he looks so much alike... Huh, although the suit on him fits lame and looks like some cheap thing bought at the nearest discount store.
"Absolutely not, Mr. J.!" said the voice with a hint of joy.
"Oh, that's much better. HA-HA-HA-HA. Hello Gotham!!!" The green-haired man waved hello, smiling creepily.
The rough stitch on the right side did burst, and a thin trickle of blood flowed from the corner of his mouth, but it didn't bother the psycho at all.
The camera moved further away, and now the frame showed a huge room with marble columns and people lying with their faces pressed into the floor and their hands clasped together at the back of their heads. A dozen bandits, dressed in clown costumes and with automatic rifles in their hands, carelessly painted in festive colors, were shuttling between the hostages.
"Yes, yes, you're not mistaken. I'm back with you! You may consider my appropriate behavior, HA-HA-HA-HA, to be a slight lapse of judgment!" The doctor's patient stopped talking and began to slowly walk around the hostages until he picked out a woman in an office suit, dragging her closer to the camera by the scruff of her neck.
"Let's take this adorable girl for example," he roughly lifted the victim by the hair, revealing a crying face with smeared makeup. - Honey, what's your name? Answer when asked!" A second, and he had a revolver in his hand, aimed at the temple of the sobbing captive.
"Mf... M-m-m-m-may," she stammered, trying to control her trembling.
"Oh, that's a beautiful name, Mei," the mad maniac said, waving his weapon in time with his words. - How would you like it if someone came along and ruined all the reputation you've built up over the years? No? HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! That's what I thought!" he took a deep breath, as if calming down.
"Tell me for the life of me, why the hell did the bastard decide the Joker had to be good? What's the point, huh? Social interaction is a disease. You put yourself in a rigid frame of mind by your own hand instead of following your heart.
~Bah~
Suddenly a gunshot rang out, and the hostage's brains decorated the people lying nearby.
"Ay, shit, it's loud!" The first one cleared his ear. - Shit, she's dead. Okay, dead people make the best listeners," he lifted the corpse as if nothing had happened, turning the remains of the skull toward the camera. - So, Mei, we've established that no one likes to have their life stolen.
"Yes, Joker," the bastard squeaked thinly, croaking in an attempt to mimic the voice of the murdered woman and puckering the rest of his head for her.
"Then why the fuck would anyone let someone steal my identity? Take away my identity! A fucking circus with a fucking trial that nobody wants! A fucking fundraiser?! Everywhere I go, I see pathetic copies of myself that don't deserve to live! In their inferiority they don't even realize that they should just die!!!!" the man was getting more and more worked up. - Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Screaming, he started firing in all directions, fortunately not aiming at the civilians, but wounding one of the underlings in the shoulder, who bit his lip in pain and hurriedly moved away so as not to incur the wrath of the inadequate boss.
Suddenly the maniac calmed down, staring unblinkingly into the camera. In three steps he was back at the device, and now the screen showed only an eye with a green iris and a pair of burst capillaries, which seemed to be trying to look into his soul.
"HAHAHAHAHA-HA, J. Arkham, I know you can hear me, know that I'm coming for you as soon as I'm done with everyone else, because there's only one left, and it's gonna be me!" he literally yelled the last part of that sentence into the lens.
~Bah~
Another revolver shot put a stop to the broadcast.
Bitch...
Rage flares in my heart, and the armrest of the studio couch crumples to dust under my fingers. This bastard wants to bury all my work to improve my reputation.
Hell, if I wanted to, I could try to start my life over with a clean slate in the company of my beloved! I could have run away from the city, changed my appearance, and, given a more or less adequate Bats, that plan might even have worked. But instead of running away, I decided to stay, blend in, and clear the Joker's name. You know? The craziest clown prince ever!
I worked hard, studying the law and similar cases, finally volunteered to go to Arkham, expecting to spend at least three months there, and then another month in the police department, awaiting trial, which is far from certain that I would be acquitted... A reformed Joker, who was accepted by the people - this is my personal achievement, in terms of difficulty comparable to the feat of Hercules! And here comes some creep trying to ruin it all. And he might succeed, because Hugo Strange has done an excellent job on his project, creating a creepy image that people will follow. Hell, he also killed a woman on live TV, and, judging by the scraps of phrases, he's trying to create his own Harley...
Honestly, I feel like the Joker, just as an image, is an integral part of the world, so the universe itself is trying to bring him back. Maybe he's really needed to restore some mythical balance that Hugo was talking about?
No, Jay, it's just a coincidence. You don't have to worry at all, because the Mouse is on the lookout and won't let the fake get away after such a high-profile performance. It's quite possible that the First and his sidekicks are fighting off a latex-clad superhero right now, and will be taken to the dungeon very soon.
"Uh. Jay, are there any comments?" The anchor asked, breaking the silence and bringing me back to the real world.
"Uh, Mary, have you heard of Hugo Strange?
"Yes, an incredibly brutal murder, but what does that have to do with the doctor?
"The police are investigating, so I'll tell you without much detail. The Doctor kept people in the casemates, brainwashing them, and this is what we got out of it," he nodded towards the screen where the studio's logo was now spinning.
"Curious... And you don't allow for the idea that the real Joker is back, who, I don't know... Was on vacation? You said yourself at the beginning of the interview about memory problems.
Oh, shit, here we go. For some reason, the doubts that I'm not really the Joker make me incredibly angry, but I'm not going to prove otherwise by providing dirt on myself, am I? Hell, what happened literally devalues all my work to rehabilitate the most famous antagonist of the DCI universe in the eyes of society! I had a crazy idea of how to fix it, and at the same time try to restore the "balance"... Or bring more chaos. Okay, I need to calm down and think this through so I don't screw up in the process. I looked over at my beloved, who was shaking a little, and hugged her.
The rest of the interview after such an event was a bit stilted, despite Mary Jane's best efforts. Yes, there were questions about the sudden wealth, the Swamp Thing, the charity event, the attitude of others, but all of it was completely different and more like a shitty amateur production, when the actors were just practicing a number. In half an hour Harley and I were already sitting in the car, trying to digest what had happened.
"Where are we going?" The girl asked, watching the Aston pull onto the road.
"For diamonds, I want to make a couple decent drives, then Zee's. Would you please check the news?
There's no point in going to the bank now anyway, because of a lot of police, and this isn't a rural area, where a criminal can be identified by footprints on the ground. The minimum we need is information from the cameras, which Mouse or Mousey can help with, the latter being preferable.
The news feed was abuzz with headlines about a high-profile bank robbery involving the real Joker, but that wasn't the worst of it. The perpetrator managed not only to clean out the safety deposit boxes, taking valuables, but also to escape with the loot!
I didn't even have time to be outraged at the superhero's carelessness before Harley read out a news story that might well have gotten lost among the robbery articles: "Attempted assassination of Bruce Wayne. Philanthropist is dead."
Great... So I'll have to deal with all this shit personally. Court of Owls, fake Jokers, Grundy. I'll have to get Leroy to help with the crazies in the caves, send Mouse to poison the Parish, and talk to Zee about search spells, though she's already helping. My unhappy thoughts were interrupted by my faithful companion, who clicked on the clickbait headline and rejoiced that Gloomy Mouse was still in action.
The attack of an unknown person in an owl mask took place in the Old Wayne Tower during a meeting between a billionaire and a candidate for mayor - Lincoln March. It was the latter who ended up dying, having received a penetrating wound to the abdominal region. Now for his life doctors are fighting for his life, trying to stabilize his condition. Wayne himself refused to be hospitalized, although he was beaten, stuck several daggers into his body, and then jumped out of the window of the thirtieth floor with him, in the process cutting him with glass shards... Only by a miracle the man managed to cling to the gargoyle statue, located two flights below, but the hapless killer was less lucky, and he went into free flight, crashing into a car parked outside the building. I'm surprised no one has drawn an analogy between Bruce and Bats after such an event. Okay, this world is fucked up enough as it is, so a little weirdness doesn't matter.
After picking up the stones at the jewelry center, we went straight to the sorceress's house, where we were tested again, standing in the scanning seal. As I suspected, my reserve had increased by almost a third over the past few days, which led to Zee's strange reaction, but I didn't expect Harley's reserve to increase by the same amount. The enchantress sincerely didn't understand why such a rapid development was happening, given the same coloring of magic and the aspect's influence remaining within the same limits. Anyway, she couldn't find the reason, so she decided to postpone the question until she could create a larger blueprint that would give more information.
After the examination, the brunette took us to the Potions room on the first floor, which, contrary to my ideas from the Scarface books, had a lot of modern laboratory equipment, and in general, the room looked more like a chemistry lab with magical reagents like kikimora liver or troll fingernails, and the only unusual things were a few rune-written cauldrons standing on ordinary electric stoves with temperature control.
Here I was preparing a potion of communication with spirits, which the illusionist had begun to modify together with my beloved yesterday. The potion in general was quite an interesting situation, in fact, it was not needed for almost five hundred years because of the availability of more perfect and simple methods of access to the astral plane, respectively, its recipe has not changed throughout this time. But the turning point in the development of chemistry, the so-called "chemical revolution", occurred about two hundred years ago, in consequence of which the subject was separated from mystical alchemy and naturphilosophy, becoming an independent science. Since then there have been many interesting discoveries and inventions in this field. Of course, magic and science are slightly different things, but this does not mean that in some cases you can not use one to expand the possibilities of the other.
My lovely assistant was not at all versed in the mystical arts, but she was a real genius in chemistry, so she saw some elegant solutions that would allow you to convert the potion into a gaseous state by making small changes. Naturally, the final efficiency would be reduced and the consumption of ingredients would increase, but this step would allow to use timed cylinders instead of having to be present in person and make people drink an incomprehensible slurry that would leave them dead for two hours. If everything works out, we need to figure out where the targets will be during the eclipse and place gas traps there, which will be aided by the tracking devices "donated" by the supervillain.
The mistress of Shadow Peak was aware of the robbery, but, as with the fake Doomsday, she refused to take care of anyone else's non-magical problems, but she gave me full access to the library and a guest room at the dragon's vein. So while the girls chemized, I sat nearby in a comfortable chair and studied useful spells, most of which were aimed at searching.
"You know, I've just realized that Grundy shouldn't go on a rampage," the sorceress's voice made me pull away from the fascinating reading.
"Zee?
She stood with the vial in her hands, staring into space, but after the question, she focused her gaze on me.
"Think about it, his abusers have been feeding the worms for a long time, and the heirs, though bastards, are hardly responsible for their parents, since their blood is already different.
I was thinking of Solomon Grundy attacking the founders of Gotham, but in the first case, which was a hundred years ago, he was trying to get to his killers, and in the second case, it was Glynolic, who was robbing houses under the guise of a dead man. Revenant is a magical creature, he doesn't care about last name and such nonsense, it's the blood of the killer that matters to him. I surfed the Internet, afraid to scare off a thought.
"So we need not just an heir, but a child whose parents might have been involved in the murder... - the text flashes before my eyes, but the search is limited to only five people whose pedigree is easy to check. - Bingo! Alastor Winslown, father Alexander Winslown, mother Violeta Winslown, maiden name Parish.
"Yes, - the brunette thoughtfully stretched out, leaning on the back of the chair and looking into the screen of the smartphone over my shoulder, - this is quite realistic and looks logical ...
"Either that, or there's a man from a famous and fucking rich family hiding somewhere, well over a hundred years old, who faked his death for some reason.
"You're right, that sounds like a load of crap. Harley, if you don't stop touching my ass, I'm gonna rip your hands off.
"I'm just a little bit. And it's your own fault for wearing such a sexy swimsuit and net stockings," my perverted companion replied, clearly enjoying herself immensely. Even a little envious.
"I warned you," there was a quiet crack as if from a taser.
Heh, now I'm not jealous.
"Ouch! Okay, you don't have to electrocute me!" the blonde shook her hands.
The sorceress returned to the concentrator with a hum, watching the liquid distillation. The blond cutie soon joined her, and I sank back into the book, continuing to pore over the spells and enjoying the fact that the number of targets was suddenly down to one, and it was in Gotham.
***
A real bat flew along the outskirts of the city in the company of its mates. Soon the flock arrived at the feeding ground and split up, hunting for small insects whose shells crunched cheerfully as they were ground by small, sharp teeth. This place was perfect for nocturnal creatures, for there was no noise of horrible steel boxes, no bright blinding lights, no stinking fumes, and no annoying bipeds killing nature with their presence. Although there were plenty of bipeds here, but they could not disturb anyone, because they were lying peacefully at a depth of a couple of meters, carefully covered with a thick layer of earth.
The mouse did not have a good hunt today, as if all the insects were hiding from her on purpose. Driven by hunger, she flew to the farthest edge of the not insignificant territory, hoping that the rest of the flock had not yet had time to frolic there, and suddenly she hit the jackpot. There were a lot of appetizing bugs swarming near the bright light source, though she was a little intimidated by the biped present, digging in a hollow for some reason, but hunger overpowered her. With a swift dash she flew past, grabbing her prey and immediately disappearing into the darkness.
"Ugh, fly away, you little shit," the gravedigger in the dirty gray robe shook his fist, startled when the evil creature hit the dim lantern with its wing.
He decided to take a short break and leaned tiredly on the shovel with which he was trying to fix the stupid prank of the teenagers, wishing he could just give up and go to bed, since the burial ceremony was scheduled for the morning.
"Eh, if it had been some vagrant, I would not be doing this now, but no, we'll have a respected "doctor" lying here, - with another heavy sigh the old man started working again, pulling out pieces of glass wool from the grave and putting them into the tarpaulin lying next to it.
//Some readers resented the POV on behalf of Babs and suggested making the POV on behalf of Alfred's hamster, but since Butler has no animals, the author decided to make the POV on behalf of the 143 bats that live in Batman's cave.//
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