The Tale of Nemesis: In The Beginning…
Part VI: The Wickedness and Snares of the Joker.
I was out patrolling Gotham, dressed in my now familiar garb as a super hero, though it still felt a tad ridiculous. Little did I know that this was about to be my first night where I would get a real taste of what it was like to actually come face to face with the full malice of a villain. I was trying to be careful where I went, cruising around on my bike. Suddenly I stopped, hearing a faint, yet slightly familiar maniacal laughter, and I stopped dead in my tracks, turning off my bike and trying to strain my still decently good amount of super-hearing to find the source. But….oddly enough, it sounded like it was happening all around me. It made me twitch with paranoia, and my eyes strained to see in the darkness.
Suddenly, about three canisters of laughing gas were thrown out of the alleys around me and I tried to jump back, pulling up a mask over my face and knowing instantly who I was dealing with at this very moment. The Joker had decided to come out and face me. But, that was not the only surprise I was about to find out.
There was a maddened laugh, and then a howl, and my eyes widened, because a huge gray wolf came out and completely tackled me, his eyes a maddened red and it was obvious by the modifications to his skull that he was being mind controlled by someone, or he'd been forced into being driven absolutely mad. He was part wolf, part plated in a complex machine that made him look absolutely cyborg-like and madder than a mad hatter. I tried to fight him off of me, finally striking him straight in the snout, getting him off of me partially, and then kicking him against a wall.
Then, and only then, when he spoke, my mind flashed back to someone that I was always told was in private school somewhere distant from Gotham, why I was never told, but I had always suspected it had to do with the scars that I grew up having since I was little, scars that oddly didn't heal. I gasped, my brain pulling free the long-repressed memories of a night where a brother I had forgotten the existence of ever since that night when that terrible accident had happened. I stood there, bewildered and stunned, not paying attention to what was going on.
"…Oh, so the little pup has grown, has she? Yet she doesn't remember me…" he said in between insane laughter, then he grabbed me and picked me up in his massive male werewolf form that was half machine, obviously he had been experimented on, and he looked quite evil with the new additions, and he was not in his right mind. "Do you remember me, now? Now that I'm talking to you, my dear little Astrid…..?" He growled menacingly and dug his claws into my shoulder blades as he held me off the ground, the other clawed hand grasped tightly around my neck.
"…Heinrich…what on earth happened to you?!" I gasped out, eyes glazed over as the slice from his mechanical side of his body, for now I noticed he was half and half, stabbed in poisoned blades into my body that immediately began paralyzing my body. I couldn't even defend myself anymore, and there was no way in hell that I wasn't going to be captured now. My only hope was my communication feed, and it was going nuts right now, but I couldn't respond. I was paralyzed, you know.
"Astrid! Hey, Astra, you okay? Astrid, talk to me, you seem to be in trouble. Need help Astrid?" Said the familiar voice of the Flash, sounding pretty damn worried about me from the voices and sounds that were coming from my communication link.
"Oh, she'll be fine." Said the hyena-like-voice of my long lost brother that until now, had been hidden in some dusty cobwebbed part of my brain because of the events that happened that caused his departure. He then roared into the link, then laughed at it and smashed it on the ground with uncontainable amusement. "I'd like to see you find her now…" he said, as my consciousness began to fade out into blackness.
The two-faced wolf bounded through the laughing gas, which made him react even more insanely than before, towards a suited figure not far off that was waiting for him with a large bone in hand.
"Good boy, Fido! Good job retrieving what I sent you to go after! I hope she wasn't too shocked by your change in appearance, we do have Luthor to thank for that, you know, since we caught you coming back to this city so early and what not, just in time to change you into such a deadly little pooch at that! Now, we'll see if we can't torture her and teach her to trifle with the likes of the villains that are around here. You know, I really do think more people shouldn't underestimate us, especially if they're such a pathetic beginner like she is. Come now, let's go hang her above a nasty unstable chemical vat, shall we!?" He said, getting in a truck of which my long-lost-brother, now an experiment gone wrong, jumped into the back of with me. The triumphant laugh of the Joker rang through the streets, and though the Justice League received the distress beacon from the destroyed communications link, it was long after the trail had gone slightly cold.
What had I really gotten myself into this time? I guess this was going to be my first true superhero test, my first really battle, the first time I really tangled with a villain. It was a test I was willing to endure, but not under the circumstance that they had completely destroyed something that was sacred to me twice; family. First my parents, now my brother were completely and disrespectfully taken from me. You can bet that I was not on the edge anymore; I was going to snap when I came to, and whatever hell I brought, they better hope they were prepared for it. Because fool me once, shame on me, mess with my family twice, is a one way ticket to the depths of hell.
That and I really didn't appreciate them taking a cheap shot and knocking me out. I'd rather have them fight me like men than knock me out to torture me like sissies. SISSIES, I tell you. Plus, did they really count on the members of Justice League not being able to find me? That's just ridiculous. Of course, I could be underestimating them. Which is likely.
"Don't go outside, Astra."
"Why mommy? Why? There are fireflies out! They are the best part of July!"
"Don't, sweetie, your brothers and father are out there doing something very important. You might get hurt…"
"But mommy, I want to catch the fire flies! Plus, daddy and my brothers wouldn't hurt me! I'M going outside!" I ran towards the door knob and I pulled it, found it locked, and quickly worked the lock with my little fingers and bounded outside.
"ASTRID! NO! COME BACK! YOU COULD GET YOURSELF KILLED!"My mom ran after me, but it was too late, a gray furry mass rapidly moved towards me and tackled me in my little white summer dress, blood dripping from his claws, until he immediately realized what he had done and he backed up. Then two more black-large-furry-forms bounded up and pinned him to the ground.
I was screaming in pain, a little ball of torn up white fabric, blonde hair, and blood. My mom picked me up and hugged me to her now fully transformed furry body and growled at my brother.
"I tried to keep her inside, but she got out regardless. Who taught her to work the locks!?" My mom bellowed angrily.
"I think she figured them out herself." Said my father, looking at me with concern. "She was always too smart for her own good, even at the age of twelve."
"Father…" protested Heinrich from where he was being held down, because today was his birthday, his sixteenth to be exact, when werewolves matured enough to transform for the first time. He was a rare summer-born werewolf, whereas most were born in the colder months since we were more likely to breed then, and females went into a human-hybrid-wolf-version of "going into heat" during December. Heinrich, however, couldn't contain himself at first transformation, and had no intention of hurting me, it was just that his instincts were stronger at this time than when he was more like a rational man in wolves' skin any other time he transformed. It was a horrible accident, one that scared him so much, he'd been knocked into his rational state again by the sheer horror of it.
"Yes, son?"
"I can't stand to be by Astrid now that I've hurt her, I can't be here. I want to be sent somewhere else, this is too much for me to bare. Send me away, please. I won't come back until I've grown up and she has, too. I want her to forget this, and meet me again when she can handle it properly and forgive me." He pleaded, tears coming down his eyes, because werewolf or not, he could still feel emotions.
"Is that what you truly want, my son?"
"I refuse to have it any other way!" He sobbed.
"…I see. I can't change your mind."
My memory faded out and I became conscious again, the effect of the paralysis poison wearing off on me, and indeed, just as promised, I was chained and hanging over a vat of very unstable and questionable chemicals, I was a bit beat up but healing, blood crusted my lower lip as if I'd been struck there and I had received a pretty bad bloody lip, and I think I had a black eye, because one of my eyes just really hurt. I was healing, but I sure didn't feel good right now. Oh boy, and here comes that bat-shit-crazy Joker. Fun, fun, just what I wanted to wake up to…
"Are you ready to be boiled and fried to death until you can't recover anymore, you stupid little mutt?" He said, smiling happily at me. "It also looks like you gave us some trouble since we had to sedate you again when you transformed, but no matter, you've been kicked into submission and you can only hope that your precious little League can come and save you in time. We'll have to see! I haven't ever deep fried a werewolf before, so this is indeed a new recipe to try!" Was his malicious, cackling response to me being awake at last. Good morning to you too, you crazy-ass-mother-fucker. Well, looks like this was going to be my first time playing the damsel in distress. I hated being the damsel in distress already. Any tomboy would hate that if they really were so, and I despised it. Please, Clark, Bruce, Wally, Aural…..anyone, come save my ass before I suffer the same fate as my parents, or so help me, I'll save my own ass if I have to. That is, if I can figure out a way to do that.