Victor returned to his small apartment and dropped his bag on the couch. He sat on his bed and rubbed his eyes. Car horns were blaring out of the open window, some screams too, gunshots, nothing unusual in this part of Gotham. He lay on his bed and just took everything that had just transpired in. Victor would be working for one of the most respectable companies in Gotham, the light that Gotham hadn't deserved, but needed badly. No scandals, no corruption, Wayne Enterprises was a blank slate as far as he was concerned. Just as he was about to stand up the phone rang. He peeked over at the number display and decided to not pick it up.
"This is Victor, I'm currently occupied, please leave a message after the tone." He heard himself say. Victor closed his eyes as the voice he so dreaded left a message.
"Listen up, Fries. I'm gettin' impatient. Me and my boys helped ya with your small problem, and today, lemme tell ya, today I went to check my bank account, and still no damn deposit!" The voice screeched. "Now, I just won at poker, so I'm feelin' generous, 24 hours, Victor, that's all you're gettin'. If I don't see anything after that, well, I'll just have to start making house calls, now won't I?"
Oswald Cobblepot was one of the more established criminals in the city. Some say he just showed up the moment Gotham was founded, took over the city and never let it go. They are, of course, uneducated. Victor researched the Cobblepot family ever since he contacted Oswald about the problem. The Cobblepot's had always been there. From father to son, the family was notorious for corrupting Gotham officials and dealing with families such as the Maroni's or the Falcone's.
It was a cold winter day when Victor made the worst decision in his live, to walk into the Iceberg lounge. The bar had been beautifully decorated. Blue lights were hanging from the ceiling and decorating the walls, a large dome of what appeared to be ice served as the roof of the building. Red carpets were layed out on the floor, covering what looked like some of the finest wood Victor had ever seen. The smell had quite ruined the illusion of a well mannered establishment though. Booze and smoke filled the crowded lounge, and in the middle of it was the filthiest of them all, Penguin himself.
Somehow Victor had expected him to be hidden away in some sort of secret basement, what Victor didn't realize at the time was that Penguin was making a statement, a statement that he had nothing to fear. Security was tighter than Arkham and Penguin's men were paroling the entire bar.
Oswald was smoking a cigar and observing a game of Blackjack the moment Victor first layed his eyes on him. "Oswald Cobblepot?" Victor inquired. "Who's asking?" The small man asked. Oswald was wearing a black coat decorated with fur and a large top hat. He was also donning a monocle at this point in his career, whether his eyesight was truly bad was a mystery even Victor couldn't solve.
As Fries approached the man a huge guard blocked his path, his eyes staring straight into the very soul of Victor. "I-I'm Victor Fries, I work for Gothcorp?" Victor had hoped that name meant something to him. "Gothcorp? Ferris Boyle is sendin' his lackey's down here now? What's the matter, boy?" Penguin asked. At a quick glance Victor was likely older. "There's stuff going down there, stuff I'd like to see put to a stop. I'm willing to pay for it." Penguin looked at him and suddenly bursted into a fit of laughter, the entire crew he had surrounded himself with joining him. "You want me to take down Gothcorp? Do ya boy?" Another fit of laughter. "And how much we're offerin' here?"
"Six million dollars." Fries mentioned calmly. The laughing ended abruptly, and Penguin motioned for his guard to let Victor pass. "Six million? That's a lot of money, son. May I ask where you're goin' to get it from?"
"No. All I can tell you is that it's going to be there the moment you need it." Penguin scoffed, looked at Fries for a good minute, and clapped his hands together. "Suppose we've got ourselves a deal here. 3 Mill up front, 3 after the job is done." Victor nodded and the pair shook hands. Now had been the time to finally expose his best work to the world. Behind everyone's back, Victor worked on a project he had been most passionate about. A project that had the ability to reduce the temperature of an object to sub-zero in a matter of milliseconds. Ferris had no idea Victor had been developing this, Johnson had no idea Victor had been developing this. Even that prick Mendez had never picked it up at the metal detector.
Victor returned to his apartment that day and grabbed all his Gothcorp credentials. Getting into Gothcorp after its opening times was easy, actually getting the 3 million necessary however, was a different story. Victor called a cab and was dropped off at the tall skyscraper that functioned as Gothcorp's headquarters. Various scientists often entered the building after closing hours to further check up on their projects or develop entire new one's instead. Ferris supported the occurrence as long as it was absolutely clear they weren't getting paid for the extra hours.
Victor grabbed the now called 'Freeze Gun' and headed back to the exit, this time things didn't go as planned however. The metal detector roared an alarm and Mendoza asked for a quick search. Victor panicked and fired his project, effectively freezing Mendoza's arm to the wall. "What the,-" He fired again, freezing the head as well. "You'll understand." Victor replied calmly, before using the gun to smash the head in.
Gotham Museum seemed like the most obvious target. Various jewels there would go for millions. The entire heist went without a hitch, some guards had to lose their lives, naturally, but other than that no problems whatsoever. What Victor hadn't counted on was another one of Gotham's residents planning a heist the exact same day. This femme fatale, later to be known as Catwoman, robbed Victor of half of his heist when he wasn't looking.
To this day, Victor hadn't been able to pay the other 3 million to Oswald. Security had been upgraded since that faithful heist, and Oswald was getting impatient.