Mercy Graham looked around the hideout, her face entirely blank. It'd been a month since they'd first been declared on the news and they'd executed several heists since then ... but she seemed to be the only one taking this new way of life at all seriously. To the others it was just a game, something new and interesting to do, just a new role to play. No matter. It'd soon sink in for them and they could start the serious things. Mercy didn't want to attract the attention of the Batman until she knew the others were fully prepared and resolute about the new lifestyle. She knew they would accept it soon - she just had to wait.
She picked her scythe up from where it was leaning against her winged armchair and began to sharpen it, glancing surreptitiously around the room, analysing what the others where doing.
Sebastian Knight was tending to his weapons too but he had a great many more than any of the others. Knives, guns, swords, bombs and knuckledusters lay scattered on the floor around him. His white-blond hair insisted on falling into his handsome face and he had to reach up every few minutes to push it away. He was currently polishing a large halberd and looking utterly content. Mercy smiled slightly; Sebastian only ever seemed to be happy when he was either looking after his weapons or using them.
Lyn Cropper was sitting in the corner, cooing over her cage of locusts, a pair of bronze scales lay forgotten on the ground next to her. A mass of red-brown curls framed her face and her high cheekbones cast shadows over the taut skin. Mercy could see the bones in Lyn's hands shift as her fingers tapped the glass walls of the cage, teasing the bugs within. She glanced up at Mercy and grinned, showing sharp milk-white teeth. Her face was drawn and there were deep dark shadows under her eyes but Lyn always seemed cheerful.
Thomas Leach was the only one of the four at a table. He was fiddling around with vials and beakers, his long dark brown hair tied back with a sickly-yellow ribbon and a silver crown atop his head. Mercy didn't know how he was doing it but she knew exactly what he was doing. Creating a strain of diseases that would come in liquid form. Until he had perfected it he would settle for using poisons to make the citizens of Gotham hideously ill but what Thomas was working towards was a way to pass influenza and measles on without the victim going anywhere near someone infected. His final goal was the plague but for now he would also like to find some way of stopping school from organising immunisations.
Mercy smiled again at the others' efforts. They were all aiming to cause chaos - but not to kill. Never to kill. They were far too scared, far too good to ever think of taking another's life. Sebastian came closest to that line but even he would only maim or grievously injure. No, that final honour went to her, the most ruthless of all of them.
War had his sword. Famine had her scales. Pestilence had his crown. And Death had her cruelty.
Gotham City would burn.