chapter 1: an unlikely meeting
AN: and now by my brothers request the ship that ought not exist.
A lone woman strolled into the iceberg casino, a spell had she cast on herself to keep her identity hidden as it stood she looked like a certain blond. She wore really short Jean shorts and basically a bra with an overcoat, heels and some amethyst earrings. She strode with purpose ignoring glances and approaches as she walked up to a certain black jack table. After having been dealt her hand she gave the password they told her to use, "no hearts again today, I see" the dealer chuckled and dealt a rigged hand. She received a queen and a king, as instructed she hit on twenty and got an ace of hearts. After a few more hands the dealer gave her the signal and she wandered off to look for a specific waiter carrying a very specific dish. She ended up in a secluded room with a certain man dressed in black and white with an umbrella at his side. "penguin?" she asked, "you, from the justice league? If you are I can only imagine what you want with me" he replied. She undid the spell and revealed herself to be paler and edgier then she'd looked previously, "Raven… right?"
"yup. I heard you sell information to the good guys"
"rushing straight to business when your surrounded by food, drinks, and games? I might not have time to gather what you want to know if you dive in so quickly"
"I'd rather not be in a place like this if I can help it"
"that's pretty harsh now isn't it? I invite you into this secure private place and you insult my entire establishment? Especially after all the friends I've sold out to your friends, that's not just harsh that's ungrateful"
"I didn't want to come and I'm against that two faced remark you just made. If that's how you treat your friends-"
"then just don't become my enemy" he said cutting her off, "why are you here then?"
"heroes can't just be coming and going as they please lest the villains get suspicious"
"so it was his call then"
"pretty much"
"you still haven't answered my question though" she quickly closed her eyes and took a deep breath as if resisting the urge to punch this smug looking man square in the face, "I'm here looking for information on the man who fell out of the sky last month"
"oh you mean the guy with the wings and the drinking problem"
"he has a drinking problem?"
"yeah he came into the casino one day slammed a bar of gold on the counter and drank everything behind it, then tried to sing every countries national anthem at the same time in their origins languages. Eventually we asked him to leave and he threw up in the dumpster out back it's still on fire" with the flip of a switch the lights in the room came on and showed several monitors behind him which also sprang to life. Between them was a coffee table upon which was set a deck of cards with checkered backs and a chess set. He motioned for her to take a seat and she sat down on the couch puzzled as to why the table looked the way it did behind the penguin as he sat turned away from the screens was one in particular which seemed to be showing a live feed on the back alley in which a dumpster fire was currently raging. "why the games?" she asked, he looked to her and said, "it gets tedious just sitting around and talking so I decided I'd pass the time one way or another while I talk, can I interest you in a game?"
"will you not tell me what I came to learn if I say no?"
"*sigh* I'll just play free cell then" he said moving to grab the deck and shuffle it a few times before seeing up the cards after which raven noticed something about the cards "those don't have numbers in the corners?"
"what's the challenge in a game where you can see the entire world and exactly what you need to do to win spelled out in front of you like a maze that's already been solved? This way there's an actual challenge"
"but doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of having the cards face up in free cell?"
"not when the card above is naturally as it should be and thus let's me move them both together" after an awkward moment of silence wherein raven forgets her reason for coming and just watched him play free cell on hard mode he looks at her and says, "oh right I tend to lose focus on other things when playing a game on my own, was there anything else you enter to know?"
"hmm? *looks up*(remembers reason for coming) oh um did you get his name?"
"he insists he doesn't have one" (his hands start to lose speed and he begins thinking his moves out more carefully)
"do you know what he's capable of?"
"I think the joker came in and complained about stabbing someone in the neck and losing the blade on his favorite knife, he didn't say who he stabbed but from the looks of the handle the blade was melted off"
"whose side is he on" in lieu of an answer he started down at the cards as if at a loss for what to do. She looked and saw that while he'd put an ace up top he'd also put three other cards up to the left of the ace witch [in case you didn't know] meant he could only move two cards at a time now. After some deep thought he moves some cards around sees it was a bad move and resets back to where he was when he stopped talking. A few minutes later he'd dig himself out of that hole and gotten a second ace up next to the first. At which point penguin asked, "did you say something?"
"hmm?" she then realized that she too got too invested in his game and turned away in an attempt to both appear as though she were thinking and hide her embarrassment. "I just wanted to know whose side he was on?"
"I invited him back here and gave him the usual friend or foe question but he said no as if his side were independent of both parties"
"that's… odd"
"oh how rude of me I haven't even offered you anything to drink" he said slapping himself in the face as if it were a big deal, "what would you like? Tea, coffee, a cocktail?"
"that's really not necessary"
"how about cake or biscuits? It's really no trouble"
"thanks but I'm fine"
"alright suit yourself" he said getting the last two aces up top and beginning the search for the lowest cards until all the cards were in four neat little piles effectively sorted by suit and number in ascending order. After he was done he took a pawn from each side of the board and held them behind his back before holding both fists out to her. "I really will be more concentrated on answering your questions if you play with me" after sighing as if trying to argue with a toddler she conceded and pointed to his left fist earning her the black piece and the second move though they did have to turn the board around the game went on. "do you know if he has any weapons?"
"yeah I think he used his hat to open a glass bottle when the bar tender refused to let him use hers"
"… how… how would one do that?" penguin then turned around and clicked his remote a few times before a monitor showed that he lifted the bottle up to the rim of his hat and yanked down quickly sending the bottle cap across the floor. Then he put the bottle up to his nose and literally inhaled his drink. "he also has a sword that's shaped like a Dragon and if what that poor bartender said was true at least two guns"
"you know anything about his abilities?(Takes the first pawn)"
"not much more then the joker might have stabbed him and the knife melted"
"alright I'll come back later if we can't find anything else out on our own"
"leaving so soon? (Takes knight) but we haven't even finished our game"
"do you want to finish?"
"I'd like to" he said. Thus Raven began to take the game seriously that so she might finish faster. By the end of the game both were left with only a king and a bishop both on opposite colors. Calling it a stalemate she cast her spell and made to leave, "by the way" he continued, "it'd be pretty suspicious if random people kept coming and going right before the underworld's plans were ruined, for the sake of this humble informant feel free to come back anytime for a game or two"
"sure but don't think I won't win next time"
"I'm looking forward to it"
Afterword: so there you have it an unlikely friendship in the making might be a little ooc and it seemed Herculean to add the signature defining point in all my fanfics in this one, but I think it worked pretty well. Be sure to follow if you're curious feel free to correct me on Penguin's idiosyncrasies I have my brother to help me with Raven but I got all I know about Penguin off Wikipedia last year. Anyway hope you enjoyed it feel free to tell me how disgusted you are by the pairing in the reviews if you want to see more of my oc he's in every story I write.