Wow, I have another chapter finished already. If I keep up like this, I'll rip a hole in space-time!
Well, any-who, I hope you enjoy reading this!
Disclaimer: I don't own Batman. It and all associated characters belongs to DC Comics and Warner Brothers, respectively.
In a dark, smoke filled room sat five little girls and a man with a doll. The girls were shackled to their chairs, and sat as if sedated. Each little girl had a doll in her hand. Out of the backs of the doll's heads were several wires. The wires went up, and connected to pads on each little girl's head. The man sat, hidden in the shadows and smoke, giggling and singing to himself. "She's all my fancy painted her, she's lovely, she's divine. But her heart it is another's, she never can be mine…"
Into the room stepped a man in a mask, carrying a burlap bag with something lumpy in it. The man in the chair stopped giggling, and a clicking sound was heard, as if he had switched something off. "Can I take it by your presence and your package that you have returned triumphant?"
The masked man carefully swung the sack off of his shoulder. "Weep not for little Leonie…" He turned the sack over, and dumped out a little girl with freckles and auburn hair. "Abducted by a French Marquis…"
"Lovely…"came the voice of the man in the dark. "I assume you have learned what you need from this one?"
The man in the mask nodded.
"Good!" replied the man in the dark. "Then you may stand down… then you may sit down… then you may go."
The man in the mask simply turned and left through the door by which he had come in.
"Oh dash it all. He never wants to have any fun… Ah well. His rhymes are amusing, and I cannot fault his work." The man got up out of his chair, and walked over to the little girl. "Lovely…" he repeated. "Lovely little Anya." He picked up her limp form, carried it to the line of chairs on the wall, and set her down in chair number six.
"Now you just stay right there," He said, placing the doll on her lap, and turning to walk away. "And I'll be right back. Those clothes you have will never do. You'll want new ones. I have just the thing!"
It was almost two o'clock in the morning, and Batman was getting nowhere. He had been to seven different shady establishments, bars, brothels, clubs, and gambling rooms frequented by the criminal element, and turned up nothing. No one had heard or seen anything of Dr. Jonathan Crane, A.K.A. The Scarecrow, since he had been incarcerated in Arkham Asylum three months ago. And no one knew of anyone else with access to Fear Toxin.
He had been to all of Scarecrow's old hideouts, and found nothing. They were all either the way they had been when Crane had last used them, or else winos or hoodlums had moved in. He was about to start investigating chemical factories for workers with names involving a play on the word "crow", when a voice came through his cowl's transmitter.
"Sir, I have discovered something that might be of interest to you."
"What is it Alfred?"
"I was using the Bat-Computer to research our old friend, Doctor Crane, and I came upon something rather odd. According to the files at Arkham Asylum, Jonathan Crane is still in his cell."
"Are you sure? He's the only one who knows how to create his Fear Toxin, and none of the usual dealers have bought any from him."
"I'm positive Sir. I just got off of the phone with Doctor Arkham, who checked Crane's cell himself."
"Thank you Alfred."
Batman crouched on a gargoyle, deep in thought.
If Crane is still in Arkham… Who has his Fear Toxin? Who am I dealing with?
Who is Batman dealing with? Who is the mysterious man in the shadows? What is going to happen to the little girls? Is this author's note completely ruining the dramatic tone of the chapter? Find out in the next chapter, coming… at some point.
Keep Smiling!
-AceOfKnaves