No rogue operated in Gotham without quickly developing a healthy respect for non-powered heroes. Some people - caped, cowled, and chiropteran - didn't need to be mutated or blessed by the gods or gifted with an alien heritage in order to make you really, intensely sorry to have been caught.
Of course, not everyone could be the superstar of the superheroes. Yes, Gotham had its world-famous ranks of heroes watching out for her. What the world never heard about were the washouts.
Every little Gotham child wanted to grow up to be Batman. As the years passed, most of them developed more realistic goals - lawyer, cashier, petty thief - and dismissed their dream as the unrealistic possibility that it was.
The handful that held on to that dream, however, spent their time in the gyms (if they were halfway smart) and in front of a mirror in their costumes (if they were not). They worked and sweated until that magical day when they went into Gotham's back streets, armed with makeshift theme weaponry and determination, and were promptly stomped into the street by whoever happened to be passing by.
The Riddler had dealt with his fair share of washouts. It had ranged from the vaguely irritating - a woman claiming to be 'Nightmask Iceheart' that had been left next to the Batsignal in a puzzle-bow trap - to the effortless defeat of the man who, spiderlike, had suction-cupped his way across the ceiling only to lose his grip and land facedown in a pile of rotten fish stinking up the back of Eddie's warehouse hideout. Nine times out of ten, the washouts ended up defeating themselves. They were nothing to worry about, and that's exactly what he told his compatriots.
"But what if he tells the police about us?" Jackie asked, trying to hide exactly how nervous that possibility made her by fussing with a frayed patch in the couch.
"He won't," Eddie assured her.
"But how do you know?" Grief asked, fingers twitching nervously together in his lap.
"I don't," he smiled affably. "It doesn't matter."
"Doesn't matter?" Sorrow repeated incredulously. "How could it not matter?"
"An easy question," Eddie smirked, settling down in a somewhat worn leather armchair. "I drive men mad for love of me, easily beaten, never free." He beamed expectantly at his audience.
The three other rogues looked at each other uncertainly. Easily beaten the Riddler certainly was, provided that Batman was his opponent. But driving men mad for love of him...he couldn't be referring to himself...could he?
Grief, who in better times had been a psychiatrist, hesitantly cleared his throat. "Um...it's been a long day. Maybe you'd...uh...feel better...if you laid down."
Eddie's amusement crumpled into annoyance. "It's a riddle," Jackie said quickly. Then, hesitantly, she turned to Eddie. "Right?"
"Right!" he nodded.
"Oh!" they chimed, visibly relieved that he was sticking to a more established form of lunacy. "So what's the answer?" Sorrow asked after a few minutes of silence.
"Gold," Eddie smiled. "Money's always the answer for questions like this. Do you honestly think that all the world's rogues could come here on vacation and never do anything wrong? This town's police force is so heavily bribed that I'm surprised their badges aren't carved out of diamonds." He sank back into the overstuffed chair. "Even if the kid did turn us in, they wouldn't dream of doing anything about it."
"Are you sure?" Jackie asked tentatively. "I mean, what if one of them doesn't want a bribe?"
Eddie shrugged. "They know that their town's safe as long as they ignore us. If they start bothering us, we'll start bothering them back." He grinned wolfishly. "And we're better at it than they are."
The first day of their vacation was spent sleeping in. Rogues were creatures of the night, and this particular foursome of night-creatures had been forced to spend the preceding day and night running from Batman, driving to South Carolina, and partying with a selection of supervillains, not to mention their all-too-brief run-in with the kid in the stupid cape and the following discussion when they'd gotten back to the apartment. Sleep had reached the top of everyone's to-do list shortly after they'd returned home.
Jackie woke up and blearily squinted at the clock. Eleven AM? Way too early to get up. She flopped back down and rolled over, wincing at the squeak of the springs. On the pillow next to hers, the Riddler slept quietly, one arm thrown up above his head as if he were dancing a flamenco.
He was cute when he was asleep. Jackie drew herself up onto her side, resting on one arm, and gazed down at him. He was cute when he was awake, too, she supposed, but there was something different about seeing him asleep. There was no look of distracted happiness as he plotted his next great idea, no expression of smug glee as he waited for an answer to his riddles, no sense of that wonderful mind of his working on twelve levels at once. He was just Eddie, sleeping and safe.
She trailed her fingers over his bare chest, hesitantly touching the spiderweb of scars that stretched across his skin. The sleeve of her silk question-marked pajamas ghosted across the remains of a long-ago burn. He flinched away in his sleep, muttering something indistinct, and rolled over.
His back was even more torn up than his chest - probably the souvenir of countless trips through windows and various encounters with bat-weaponry. Four neat holes pocked the skin on his shoulder, spaced almost perfectly to fit a...a fork? Could that be right? Long, twining scars with tiny lines railroading across them had to be from surgery. He looked like a child's toy that had been painstakingly reassembled time and again only to get ripped apart during the next playtime.
She bit her lip. The vigilantes played rough - too rough. How could they possibly justify doing this to him? That night that Robin had hurt him at the opera house - how many nights had they broken his bones and made him bleed for no reason? Okay, yes, at the time he'd been holding the MC hostage, but he'd surrendered. He hadn't even had a gun! And yet Robin had attacked him as if he was putting up a fight, which would have been difficult to do from Eddie's wheezing, wincing position on the floor.
Fierce protectiveness welled up inside Jackie. No more. They weren't going to hurt him again if she had anything to do about it. Impulsively, she clutched Eddie tightly to her.
He came awake in a burst of frantic flailing. Jackie threw herself backward, out of reach of his unpredictable thrashing, and yelped "Eddie! It's just me!"
The thrashing slowed. "You're not...oh. Sorry," he muttered, nestling back down in the blankets. "Bad dream."
"What about?" she asked hesitantly.
"Arkham. Bolton," he clarified sleepily.
"Who?"
"Not important. Go back to sleep, pumpkin." He gathered her in an arm and gave her a sleepy kiss on the forehead. Then, with a small smile quirking the corners of his mouth, he fell back asleep.
Jackie laid her head on his scarred chest, smiling at the feel of his arm around her. "Smartass," she whispered lovingly. Then, ignoring the sun, she closed her eyes and drifted back to sleep.
Their first night out called for something special. Something fun, something easy, something that wouldn't involve any effort beyond standing up and being conscious. "Mini-golf," Eddie said decisively over breakfast. (The fact that it was four in the afternoon didn't matter. Breakfast was breakfast, even if it should have been dinner.)
"Mini-golf?" Sorrow repeated.
"You'll love it!" Grief chirped, happy to contribute to the conversation. "It's like golf, but it's actually fun!"
And so, after "breakfast", they piled into the car and went on a quest for mini-golf. Myrtle Beach seemed to have hundreds of miniature golf courses, littered with everything from robotic dinosaurs to flaming volcanoes. Unfortunately, there was one thing that all of these courses had in common - the "CLOSED" signs adorning each entryway.
"This is ridiculous. There has to be one that's open!" Eddie sighed, backing out of yet another empty driveway.
"It's okay," Sorrow said reassuringly from the back. "We don't have to go."
"But you'll like it!" Grief insisted. "It's fun, you'll see. I know it's not tourist season, but there's got to be someone still open."
"There's one!" Jackie interrupted, pointing eagerly down the road at a lot full of brightly painted sculptures illuminated by bright spotlights.
The parking lot was empty except for one lone truck stuffed with gardening equipment. The four rogues crunched past it, feet slipping slightly on the gravel, and made their way onto the well-groomed path leading inside. A large wooden clock looked down on the path.
"Where do you get a twelve-foot-tall cuckoo clock?" Sorrow asked, bemused, as they walked toward it.
"The problem is getting a six-foot-tall cuckoo," Grief smiled, protesting with a yelp as Sorrow elbowed him exaggeratedly in the ribs. They drew to a halt beneath it, curiously studying the curling, swooping scrollwork that had been delicately carved in nearly every surface of the enormous timepiece.
The clock creaked as the minute hand ticked onto the twelve. A blast of fanfare blared tinnily out of a speaker half-hidden by a bush as two large doors began to slide open.
Batman and Superman burst out of the openings. Jackie yelped and dove behind Eddie, peering around his shoulder to see Sorrow ripping at the wrists of her gloves. Eddie frantically patted himself down, trying to find the weapons that he'd left at home. No gun (and no holster, either), no exploding question marks in his jacket, no deathtraps in his pockets! The heroes looked down at them, raised their arms and began...
Singing.
"From Gotham to Metropolis, no evil can stand up to this!" they sang, mouths moving jerkily open and shut with no particular synchronization to the lyrics. "Criminals will run in fear when heroes such as we appear!"
Sorrow yanked her gloves back on. "Oh, yes. Mini-golf was a great idea," she said, turning to tug Grief out from his impromptu hiding spot behind the trash can. Behind her, wooden cutouts of the Flash, Green Lantern, and a wide variety of other heroes popped out from their hiding spots around the clock in rhythm with the scratchy music.
"Mini-golf's always a great idea!" A fat man in a Justice League t-shirt beamed at them from beyond the entranceway to the course. "Name's Luke, Luke McCall, and this is my place. Like my clock? It is a lil' bit of a surprise when you're not expectin' it," he added, noticing the residual signs of panicked aggression among the four of them.
"It certainly is...unique," Eddie said, watching as the grinning Batman figure retreated back into the shadows of his hidey-hole.
"That it is!" beamed Luke. "Only one like it in the world." He leaned conspiratorially closer. "Used to be a kiddie clock. Had all the characters on it - the Super Pets, the Backyardios, Moira the Explorer...the big two in the middle were the sponge and the starfish. Kids loved it, but it drove the adults crazy with all the voices." He smiled, beckoning them toward the course. "Heroes are better. Everyone loves superheroes, and they don't have crazy theme songs. My nephew's big into art, and he fixed the clock up for me in no time. Redid the whole course to match it! So, do you want nine or the full eighteen? Full eighteen's the best bargain," he wheedled, waving them toward the little shack that housed the equipment and the register. "Winter special, half off the second nine! What size clubs can I get you?"
"The only club they need to worry about is Club Fed!" Grand Strand Man, perched on the obliging arm of a giant plaster Wonder Woman, pointed dramatically at the four rogues. He slid down Wonder Woman's combat-poised torso, pouches flapping in the breeze, and executed a completely unnecessary somersault before rolling to his feet.
"Club Fed? That's the best you could do?" Eddie said scornfully.
"Have you been following us?" Sorrow asked suspiciously.
Grand Strand Man snorted indignantly. "I happened to be on patrol," he said loftily. "And anyway, everyone knows that all the villains stay at those condos."
Luke's face glowed red with well-fed indignation. "Jimmy Velasquez," he snarled.
"Don't tell them my secret identity!" shushed Grand Strand Man, far too late.
Luke ignored the interruption. "Have you been bothering these fine folks? They're out for a nice game of mini-golf - they don't need some kid in a costume trying to scare them off!"
"But Luke," whined the boy, "they're supervillains!"
Luke looked disbelievingly at the group of city-pale tourists in T-shirts and jeans. "Don't look like any supervillains to me."
"They are!" Jimmy said urgently. "That one's the Riddler, and that one's Sorrow - you were on the wiki," he added triumphantly, glancing in her direction, "and those two are their henchmen! Well, that one's a henchgirl. Henchpeople! They...work for...them," he trailed off, wilting under Luke's disapproving glare.
"Jimmy," Luke said slowly, "do you remember what happened last month?"
"That really was Professor Zoom!" Jimmy shouted. "He just didn't have his costume on!"
"You kicked up a fuss and got just about every cop in town down here to arrest some poor man who only came here to have some fun! He wasn't a supervillain - wasn't even a villain! Never even had a parking ticket!"
"He was evil!" Jimmy wailed.
"He was a nice young man!" Luke shot back. "He didn't even press charges - which he could have done, let me tell you, and you'd have been in juvenile hall quicker than two shakes of a lamb's tail."
"He didn't press charges because he was using a fake ID and he would have been found out if -"
"Jimmy," Luke cut him off sternly. "Go home."
"But - "
"Go home," Luke repeated. "Or do I need to call your ma again and tell her what you've been up to?"
Jimmy looked at the ground, dejected. "No, sir." He darted a poisonous look at the four snickering rogues. "Don't think this changes anything," he hissed as he passed them.
"No, not at all...Jimmy," giggled Sorrow.
"Say hello to your mom for us," smiled Eddie, in the bright, cheerful tones of someone who knew perfectly well that it would only increase the hot, seething rage boiling inside the listener.
"I'm sorry about that, folks," Luke said, watching to make sure that Grand Strand Man left his property. "He's got these crazy ideas. Like the Riddler ever goes on vacation," he snorted. "Man with that kind of money wouldn't come here, anyway. Probably got his own island somewhere."
"Maybe," said Eddie thoughtfully.
"Let me get you those clubs," Luke offered, heading into the shack. "Back nine's on me today."
The course was actually quite nice, once they got inside. Okay, so it was plastered with their least favorite kind of people, and okay, it still had the occasional caped duck or talking vegetable tucked in the bushes, but at least it was private.
The four of them stood in a loose semicircle, examining the sixth hole. A giant squid loomed up before them, perched on the top of a gently sloping ramp and surrounded by an unnaturally blue lake. Tentacles stretched in roller-coaster twirls to the green, which was accessible by a little wooden bridge.
"You're up first," Eddie said, glancing at the scorecard. Sorrow dropped her ball and nudged it into place with her sneakered foot. Then, taking a wiggly moment to settle her stance, she whacked wildly at the ball, clipping it with the tip of her club. The ball obligingly rolled up the ramp, barely making it into the squid's beak and disappearing into the darkness.
It reappeared on the tentacle directly behind the squid, rolling to a halt in a small cuplike depression formed by a few gaudily painted suckers. An orange-and-green clad figure burst out of the water, splattering dyed water in a wide circle, and waved one commanding hand. The tentacle obediently creaked out of the water and formed a ramp leading directly to the green, where the ball rolled neatly into the hole.
As robo-Aquaman sunk slowly back below the surface, Eddie slunk back out from behind the handy bush that had made such a wonderful hiding spot a second or two earlier. "You're scared of Aquaman?" Sorrow asked lightly, not having moved from the tee.
"Speaking as a man with absolutely zero superpowers, yes - I'd have to say that I'm scared of a man who has the power to throw a great white shark at my head," Eddie snapped, embarrassed.
"Good point," Sorrow admitted. "You're up."
Three robo-Aquaman attacks later, they arrived at the seventh hole. The cheerful foliage on this hole was blocked by eight-foot-high dark buildings made from slabs of concrete. The rooftops were full of doll-sized vigilantes. Robin clung to the side of a giant antenna, smiling and waving at the players. Nightwing and Batgirl stood on opposite corners of one building, scanning the night for evil. A little purple-daubed Barbie doll was superglued awkwardly in the window of one building, legs held stiffly out in front of her. Chips in the concrete above her marked the home of the original Huntress, who had probably been stolen by teenagers long ago. At the top of one building, glaring steadily into the dark, was a little Batsignal. A life-sized Batman crouched menacingly behind the hole, a Batarang held tightly in one upraised hand.
"Just like home," Eddie joked uneasily. "Who's first?"
"Me," Jackie said, rolling her ball onto the little black rubber square with her foot. She glanced down at it, shifting her weight, and looked back at the hole. Batman stood there, motionless, cape carved as if it were flaring in the nighttime Gotham wind.
She scowled. If it wasn't for Batman, those other two wouldn't be there interfering with their vacation. If it wasn't for Batman, they wouldn't have had to run out of Gotham like mice fleeing a panther. If it wasn't for Batman, Eddie wouldn't have gotten all those scars or burns or -
She swung the putter, perhaps a little harder than she intended. It flew out of her hands in a perfect line drive and smashed Batman right between the eyes, leaving him with a silly, crosseyed expression better seen on a baby goat.
Wild applause from three mischievous sets of hands echoed from behind her. "Whoops," she muttered, sidling up the green to retrieve her club. As she trudged up the gentle incline, Sorrow and Grief began whispering to each other.
"This hole creeps me out," Sorrow announced, settling her club on her shoulder. "We're going to skip ahead."
"Really?" Eddie asked, eyebrow raised. After all, the plaster Batman wasn't that intimidating...
The two other rogues looked almost bashfully at one another. "Yeah," Sorrow shrugged. "You know. Just...over there."
"Oh. Have fun," Eddie said, catching on. The two rogues, sidekick and boss, walked off together, hand-in-gloved-hand. Eddie took a seat on a nearby bench, tapping his putter idly on the ground as if it was his cane.
"They left?" Jackie asked, returning with her slightly plastery putter.
"For a while." He shifted uncomfortably. "I think they wanted to be...alone."
"Really?" Jackie said happily. "Great!"
Eddie sighed. "Look, I know you're not happy they came along." He fiddled with the top of his putter. "She's...well, she's had a bad year. Him too. The last thing anyone needed was for the two of them to go to Arkham that night."
Jackie slid into the open seat on the bench. "I was pretty mad," she admitted. "But..." She bit her lip, then tentatively snuggled a little closer. "Even if they are here...I think I can be around anyone as long as I'm with you."
He smiled, wrapping his arm around her. She squeezed his knee in reply. They turned their faces toward each other, eyes sparkling in the moonlight, and leaned in for a perfect k-
"Oh, come on!" whined a voice somewhere above them. They jerked apart, leaping to their feet, to see Jimmy Velasquez in his ill-fitting costume perched in a nearby tree. "You're villains! Break a bench! Steal some money! Do something!"
"Go home!" Eddie snapped, red-faced and furious.
"I'm going," Grand Strand Man said threateningly. "But I'm watching you." He retreated, hopping from tree to tree, cursing as his cape caught on the foliage.
"I'm going to have to do something about that kid," Eddie growled.
"Not if I catch him first," Jackie said, absently throttling her putter.
He nodded, wearing a half-distracted expression that meant that someone was going to regret spying on him as soon as he figured out what to do about it. "Come on. Let's get out of here."
(to be continued)