Scarecrow's Return
"Would you drop it already, Luthor!" Oliver snapped into the phone. "I've told you already, I'm not interested in handing over anything to you… No. I will NOT allow you to assist on that dig…Because it is under control… No, that research is none of your business and offering more money isn't going to change my mind… For the last time, Luthor, stay out of my business!"
Frustrated, Oliver slammed the phone into the receiver and leaned back in his chair.
"He can be very irritating, can't he?" someone asked.
Oliver shot upright, nearly tipping his chair over. Bruce Wayne was leaning against the door, smirking.
"How did you get up here?" Oliver asked, steadying himself with the desk.
"Your receptionist let me up," Bruce answered with a shrug, moving forward toward the desk.
"I'm going to need to have a talk with Tiffany," Oliver muttered. "So what brings you to Metropolis?"
"Business," Bruce said.
"What kind of business?" Oliver asked suspiciously.
"Why don't we wait until we can be somewhere a little more private before we discuss anything," Bruce said. "How about you and Chloe join me for dinner tonight?"
"Aren't we in private now?" Oliver said. "A restaurant is going to be a little more crowded than my office."
"I was thinking somewhere more secure," Bruce said. "At least for our business discussion. We can worry about dinner afterward."
Oliver studied Bruce for a moment, not sure what to think about his sudden visit.
"So we'll meet at 7?" Bruce asked, standing up and moving to the door.
"That'll work fine," Oliver said.
And then Bruce was gone, leaving a rather stunned Oliver sitting at his desk. After a moment, Oliver pulled out his cell phone and dialed.
"Hey, Oliver," Chloe answered after a few rings.
"Hey, Chloe," Oliver said. "We have dinner plans for tonight."
"We do? Where?"
"Well," he said slowly. "It's more about who we're having dinner with. You'll never guess who stopped by my office just a little while ago."
"Who?" Chloe asked, exasperated. "You know I can't read your mind, so will you just spit it out."
"Bruce Wayne," he said. "He needs to talk to us."
"Bruce?" Chloe exclaimed. "What about?"
"He wouldn't say. Said he'd explain at dinner."
"Ok. So where are we meeting?"
"Well, Bruce wants to meet around 7, so I'll pick you up at Watchtower just before then."
"And where are we meeting him?" Chloe asked.
"Oh… Umm… Well, he never actually said where…"
"Oliver!"
Later that evening Oliver parked outside of Watchtower and climbed out of his car. Chloe was waiting outside, having just arrived.
"Any word from Bruce," she asked. "I tried calling him, but no luck."
"No," Oliver said, shaking his head. "Not a word."
Chloe sighed and turned to the door.
"Well, let's head inside then," she said. "I'm sure he'll call when we don't show up."
They headed inside and into the elevator.
"Oliver," Chloe said. "In the future, please refrain from making dinner dates unless you get all pertinent information first."
"Sorry, Chloe," he said. "But I was a little distracted by the fact that he was here at all."
"Still," she said. "He wouldn't ask to meet with us if it wasn't important, and now we may miss the meeting."
The elevator doors opened and they stepped out into Watchtower. Both Chloe and Oliver stopped and stared in surprise.
"Umm… I don't think we need to worry about a phone call," Oliver said.
Bruce was standing by one of the computers on the upper floor, looking at the screen. When the elevator doors opened, he turned to see who had come in.
"I was beginning to think you weren't coming," he said, stepping away from the computer.
Chloe and Oliver, still in shock, joined Bruce.
"How—When—I was only gone for twenty minutes!" Chloe exclaimed. "And how did you get in here without setting off any of my alarms?"
"You're security has improved," Bruce said, "but I still found at least six ways to get in."
"Great," Chloe said. "And here I thought I'd finally gotten my security up to date. Is there any possible way to keep you, and others, from sneaking in here when I'm not looking? And you didn't hack my computer again, did you?"
"There's always a way in," Bruce said. "And no, I didn't."
Chloe sighed, setting down her purse and taking off her jacket. She took a seat at the computer and started looking through the system, trying to figure out how Bruce had gotten in past the security alarms.
"So what did you need to talk to us about," Chloe asked as she searched.
"Scarecrow is back," Bruce answered.
Chloe stopped typing and turned around. She exchanged looks with Oliver, and then turned to face Bruce.
"Where do you need us and when?" Oliver asked. "We can be in Gotham as soon as possible."
"Not Gotham," Bruce said sharply, glaring at Oliver.
"Then where?" Chloe asked in confusion. "Where did he go?"
"He's here," Bruce answered. "In Metropolis."
Chloe paled visibly as Bruce spoke, realizing the implications of what he was saying. Oliver stared, not sure how to react.
"He's here in Metropolis?" Chloe finally managed to choke out.
"Yes," Bruce told her. "I've been tracking his movement for the last two months. He's getting ready to make his move. His chemicals and his men are already in the city, which means he's here somewhere, too."
Chloe leaned back in the chair and took a deep breath to steady herself.
"What do we do?" she asked. "We aren't equipped to handle Scarecrow."
"I know," Bruce said grimly.
Chloe stood up and started pacing in front of the window.
"Did you bring any of the antidote with you?" she asked Bruce, glancing at him briefly as she paced. "We can get some to Emil and maybe he can try synthesizing more. I mean it isn't ideal and he won't have a lot of time to make it, but it'll be better than nothing…"
Chloe continued talking to herself about different options while Bruce and Oliver just watched.
"Is she always like this?" Bruce asked Oliver.
"Depends on the day," Oliver said with a shrug.
"Chloe," Bruce said, interrupting her muttering. "Did you ever think that there was a reason Bruce Wayne came to Metropolis instead of just Batman?"
"What?" she said, pausing. "Well, actually, I didn't think about that…"
"I came here to make a donation of some brand new medical equipment to the hospital," Bruce said. "Along with all of the chemicals necessary to synthesize the antidote."
"Oh," Chloe said in surprise. "So do they know to start making it?"
"No," Bruce said. "But they will. They have all the instructions they need."
"Then what do we do?" Oliver asked.
"We wait," Bruce said. "And once he moves, we act."
"I guess there isn't much more we can do," Chloe said. "We don't know how Scarecrow operates."
"That's why I'm here," said Bruce.
Chloe took another deep breath and then picked her coat and purse back up.
"Ok. Ok. We can do this," she said. "Why don't we go to dinner? We can let the others know later. I'll call a meeting for tomorrow."
"You don't need to worry about dinner, Chloe," Bruce said. "I brought it with me, and everything should be ready by now."
"Indeed it is, Master Bruce," a new voice said behind Chloe and Oliver.
They both jumped and turned around. An elderly man in a suit was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at them.
"Thank you, Alfred," Bruce said. "Why don't we all sit down?"
Chloe and Oliver looked down at the table, surprised to find a full meal laid out. None of it had been there when they walked in.
"How did you get all of this in here?" Chloe asked in surprise. "You I expect, but all of this?"
"Once I was in it was easy enough to disable the alarms and let Alfred in with dinner," Bruce said, walking down the stairs.
Oliver and Chloe looked at each other and shrugged before following Bruce. They had just made it to the top of the stairs when something hit Oliver in the back, grabbing his shoulders. Instinctively he grabbed what hit him, turning and throwing whatever it was in the other direction.
"Wow, you're slow," Dick said, laughing as he flipped through the air and landed on his feet. "I could have drugged or disabled you in like ten different ways before you ever touched me."
"Would you stop doing that!" Oliver exclaimed, glaring at the boy.
"Dick," Bruce called from the bottom of the stairs, "come sit down and eat."
"Coming!" Dick called.
He ran over to the railing, hopped up and leapt from the balcony. He flipped and rolled, landing in a crouch and running to join Alfred and Bruce.
"Does he know how to use stairs?" Oliver asked as he and Chloe walked down the stairs to the table.
Chloe was trying not to laugh.
"We are working on that," Alfred answered, glancing at Dick. "But thus far, all attempts have been futile."
The group sat down at the table and Alfred started serving dinner. Once everyone had food, they started eating while Bruce and Oliver started talking business. Oliver was explaining what Lex had called him about earlier.
"He wanted to take over a dig my company's researching out in the deserts of California," Oliver said, his mouth full of food.
Alfred gave Oliver a look as he passed by. Chloe saw it and elbowed Oliver, making him cough and choke. He swallowed his food before he started talking again.
"What's so important about the dig?" Bruce asked.
"Well, not a whole lot right now," Oliver said. "Because we aren't sure what's there. But something crash landed in the area several years ago. And after all of the things we've found to be alien before, I want to make sure I know what we're dealing with before I let anyone else in on it. Especially if it's Kryptonian."
"Well, that would explain why Luthor is interested in it," Bruce said. "He's rather obsessed with Clark, isn't he?"
"Unfortunately," Chloe answered, joining the conversation. "And it is a distinctly unhealthy obsession that keeps endangering both of their lives, not to mention the general populations of Smallville and Metropolis."
"Yeah," Oliver said. "I'm going to be keeping an eye on him. If the dig has caught his attention, then it is definitely worth fighting to keep it away from him."
"Hey Chloe?" Dick interrupted. "What's this?"
He had been staring into his lap for the past few minutes and now he was holding up his handheld computer, the screen facing Chloe. She stared at it for a moment in surprise.
"That's—That's my alien encryption!" Chloe exclaimed. "How did you get to that?"
"Well, we were here for almost twenty minutes by ourselves," Dick answered, looking at the screen again. "I had to do something to entertain myself. I just couldn't figure out what this was. It's so cool!"
"Master Richard," Alfred said disapprovingly, "no computers at the dinner table."
"Yes, Alfred," Dick said, putting the computer away in his pocket.
"It was you who hacked me the last time, wasn't it?" Chloe asked.
"Duh," Dick said with a grin. "Bruce only hacks if he needs to. I do it for fun. I guess the last time was a little of both, but Bruce was distracting you from seeing me."
"I need to call Tech again," Chloe muttered.
After dinner, they cleaned up and Bruce, Dick, and Alfred got ready to leave for their hotel. Dick was still trying to crack the alien encryption as he perched on a chair. Bruce paused as they headed into the elevator.
"Call everyone else," he said. "We'll meet here tomorrow at midnight."
"Midnight?" Oliver said. "Oh great. No one's gonna like that."
"Don't worry," Chloe said hastily when Bruce turned to glare at Oliver. "We'll all be here."
Bruce nodded and walked into the elevator.
"Time to go, Dick," he called.
Dick hopped off of the chair and went running to join the two men in the elevator. The doors closed on him waving and grinning. Looking around at the empty room, Chloe sighed.
"It's going to be a long week," she said. "I just know it."
"Hey," Oliver said. "Just be glad Clark wasn't here for dinner. He would have been all over Bruce about Dick being here."
"Well, he's going to have to deal with it right now," Chloe said. "We aren't going to get through this without Bruce's help."
"I know," Oliver said grimly. "I've seen what happens when someone like Clark gets dosed with that stuff. We can't let it happen again, or he may actually kill someone this time."
Chloe walked up the stairs and grabbed her coat and purse before going back to Oliver.
"And that's all something to worry about tomorrow," she said. "Right now it's time to get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a late night."
Turning off the lights, they hopped in the elevator and headed out.