What is happening, ladies and gentlemen?
Looks like we got ourselves a team name for the rogues of Gotham City. The Injustice Lords of Gotham. I kinda took the name, Justice Lords, which were a dictator Justice League in the future, and used it to name this group, even though I OWN NOTHING.
If you guys don't like the name and want me to make another name for this evil community, leave me a comment, saying what other name I should put in. Please be respectful, though.
Also, after hearing the news about the cast for the Suicide Squad movie coming after Batman vs. Superman, this chapter kinda seemed appropriate for me to post. So, without further ado, let's get this party started!
Disclaimer: Batman and other DC characters mentioned are property of Warner Bros. and DC Comics. Enjoy!
The Prodigal Nightmare
Ch. 7: The Sirens Strike Back
The feeling inside the Batcave later that night, temperature wise, was relatively chilly, given the fact that the atmosphere of it all was filled with dark shadows and small waterfalls within the interior of the hideout. But while Barbara and Jason were at several consoles n the main room of the Batcave trying to figure out what the code on the back of the postcard with The Final Offer on it, the tension was almost nonexistent. In fact, they were acting as if they were one person: Barbara searching several databases regarding the code, believing it to be a number for a bank account somewhere in Gotham, while Jason was checking different street addresses that seemed important enough for them to consider as a hideout or future attack. Whatever the code was, they were both on it like a well-oiled machine.
"I've looked up several street addresses with that damned number, and all I've been able to find was a burger joint in Central City and the bottom of a freeway in Keystone. So far, I've got nothing," Jason complained, tussling his black hair, making it unruly. "How's everything on your end, Barbie?"
"Not good. None of the bank accounts I've looked up with the number 010115 have anything of value as far as I could tell. But I'm not giving up after one lousy night of research."
Jason smiled at that. Barbara, just like the rest of the Batfamily, including himself, was quite stubborn. She never took losing lightly, and after not having found anything with that stupid code, he knew she would never stop until she got what she wanted, and what she wanted right now was to see Hush and that loser, Killer Moth, in padded rooms with the doors bolted tight.
They spent another good hour trying to find something, anything, that would give them the slightest a clue as to what the code might be, finally ending up with some sort of evidence that could finally debunk what was so important about those six miniscule numbers, which was displayed on the Batcomputer's monitor.
"Okay, after some serious illegal hacking into major criminal databases all over the globe, which I am not necessarily proud of, I've managed to pull up some mugshots of hard-hitting criminals that could be working with Hush and Moth," Barbara said as she pulled up the photos of seven angry-looking criminals, all having the number 010115 below their faces, most likely being their prison number.
"Terrorists?" Jason simply asked.
"Some are. The one on the top left is named Luka Volk, founder of a Ukrainian mob called the Whisper Gang. He was later incarcerated for planting bombs in a Kiev Metro subway rail. The one on the bottom right is an unknown, but his allies call him Bird. Apparently, he helped Bane escape from Pena Dura back in Cuba, but that remains to be seen. All of these guys have our code as their prison numbers, but they're all in different countries. It's kind of weird that Hush would want us to investigate these dirtbags and call him back as soon as we've figured it out."
"Maybe he just wants us to take them out, given that he knows that I'm in this as much as you are," Jason commented.
"First off, we're not gonna be killing anybody, Jason. Second, even if he did wanted us to kill them, the question still remains: why? Why would he want us to assassinate these criminals when they clearly have no relation or association with him? They're all just random scumbags with the same number on their jumpsuits, so why even bother?"
"Right now, I just want to find Elliot and choke him with his own bandages than sit around here, trying to find out this stupid riddle of a code all day and…" Jason suddenly stopped, rethinking what he had just said.
"Jason, what is it?" Barbara asked with worry. He clearly wasn't listening to her, as he ran to the small elevator on the far side of the cave and turned around to face Barbara.
"Barbie, where's the Trophy Room?" Jason asked frantically.
"Sub-level 3, where it always is. Jason what's going on?"
"Follow me. I have an idea."
After entering the elevator, making their way deeper into the bowels of the cave where Batman held several monuments and souvenirs showcasing the many of his famous foes. Once the doors to the Trophy Room opened, they made their way to the very back of the room. As they were walking rapidly to their destination, they couldn't help but gaze at the monuments of the room: the Tyrannosaurus Rex, meant to resemble the villain, Killer Croc; the giant penny, Two-Face's symbol of justice and choice; a large Joker card hanging from the ceiling in the center of the room, showing the face of the madman that ruined many innocent lives in Gotham, including the two heroes walking.
Barbara stopped gazing at the plastic exhibitions within the room, only to look at Jason opening a glass case with a very intricately designed Riddler Trophy inside. Jason pulled it out and smiled at her as he made his way back to the Batcomputer, with Barbara not far behind.
The interior of the GCPD lobby room was both warm, trying to melt down the frigidness that was brought on by the cold Christmas Eve night, and loud as the criminals that were being dragged away by the cops who worked there were trying, rather unsuccessfully, that they were innocent and demanded a lawyer. It's been this way for years, but during Christmas Eve, or any other holiday, for that matter, the GCPD was always hectic with loud and obnoxious screaming from people convicted of things they don't want to admit they did. Ironically, this wasn't the work of Julius Day, AKA Calendar Man.
The holidays have always been caused criminals to come out of the shadows and raise some chaos in the dark streets of the city. Whether it'd be robbing an electronic store, or breaking into a nearby house apartment in the Bowery or Park Row, Christmastime has always been the number one day for the good men and women of Gotham's police force to put their jobs first and their families second, even for just a couple of hours.
So it was rather unusual for the commissioner, James Gordon, and his trusted "sidekick," Harvey Bullock, to find two women walk through the front door rather casually and just stood there, as if they were expecting someone. The two women were wearing dark colored hoodies with their hoods up to hide their faces, one a dark green and the other a blood red, both wearing black skinny jeans and black combat boots. If one wasn't careful, one would suspect they were a gender-bend version of Green Arrow and Arsenal, but that wasn't the case right now. Besides, who cosplays just before Christmas?
"What's with the two broads over there, Jimbo?" Bullock whispered to his buddy/apprentice.
"I don't know, Harvey. Let's just send in Diaz to ask them what's up," Gordon told him. He turned to face the rookie officer, Brany Diaz, and told him to help out the two hooded ladies at the front of the entrance. Diaz nodded and walked towards them.
"Can I help you two ladies with anything?" he asked the women politely. They did not answer, but the one in the green hoodie, who was actually taller than the one in the red one but still quite short compared to the rookie, walked over to him, pulled out her open hand, revealing a small cloud of pollen, and blew it to his face. Diaz tried to swat away the cloud, but was too late as it already made contact with his skin and his airways. He stopped trying to slap at the air and opened his eyes wide, pupils dilated and body stiff as a brick, hypnotized as he fell prey to the pollen from the mysterious seductress.
"Actually, you can help us," the woman in green said lustfully. She walked up to him until she was close enough to whisper in his ear. "I want you to pull out your gun, and point it at the commissioner." The hypnotized man did as she told him without a second's hesitation and pointed his gun at his employer, catching everyone's attention, including the commissioner's.
"Diaz! What the hell are you doing?!" Gordon asked him, with Bullock close by. The officers all around them were holding on to their pistols, ready for when the young cop decided to fire at him.
The woman in green walked up to the man's back, hands on his shoulders as if he was her lover, and whispered in his ear one more time.
"Fire."
He pulled the trigger, firing one single bullet into the abdomen of the commissioner, causing every cop in the room to pull out their guns from their holsters, ready to fire at the rogue cop, but before they could, they heard gunfire that wasn't their own. They looked at the woman in the red hoodie and saw that she had a gun herself, though it looked a bit comical to be real.
"Nuh, uh, uh. I don't think so, blockheads," the woman in the red hoodie said in a strong North Gotham accent. She pulled down her hood and revealed her face: skin painted white with blond pigtails, the ends colored in either red or black, and red lipstick shining on her full lips.
As soon as the woman in red unhooded herself, her friend in the green hood did the same thing. Her the skin on her face was a grassy green, with hair red as a rose. Her eyes were just as green as her skin, probably more so, and was now in possession of a young cop to do her bidding.
"Great. Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. Just what we needed to make this day more exciting," Commissioner Gordon grumbled sarcastically. He tore away his buttoned shirt, revealing his Kevlar vest with the bullet still stuck in it.
"Boss, you were wearing a vest under there?" Bullock asked in confusion.
"Oh, like you don't, Bullock."
"Now don't make this any more difficult than it has to be. All we want are the weapons you confiscated from Cobblepot. If you give them to us peacefully, no one gets hurt. Do we have a deal?" Ivy asked.
"Not a chance. Bullock, light up the Batsignal!" Gordon commanded. Bullock ran to the doorway leading to the roof of the building where the famous Batsignal was located. Ivy was clearly annoyed, so much so that she put her hands around poor cop's neck and head and twisted it violently, snapping his neck in two.
"This could've gotten a whole lot easier, Gordon," Ivy chastised.
"We don't make deals with criminals, Isley. The city doesn't belong to you or your friends anymore," Gordon sneered as he pulled out his own pistol, ready to fire at the green psychopath who killed one of his own.
"It already has, Commissioner," Ivy grinned. "Harley, get the fat one. We don't want Princess and Helmet-Head to get in the way."
"You got it, Bae-Bae," Harley saluted as she ran and twirled to the staircase leading to the roof.
The door to the roof of the building was flung open by Harvey Bullock, panting with exhaustion as he finally made it to the Batsignal, a searchlight the police use whenever there's some sort of distress in the city that only Batman and his many allies could handle. As soon as Bullock's finger made contact with the switch, about to turn it on, a bullet ricocheted off of the metal centimeters away from his hand, scaring him enough to turn him around to find out who pulled the trigger.
"I don't think you want to do that, Fatso," Harley singed as she threw away the rest of her disguise, revealing her classic black and red outfit, complete with smoking pistol in one hand and a large wooden mallet in the other.
"Oh yeah? Watch me, toots," said Bullock as he turned on the Batsignal, revealing the silhouette of a bat against the cloudy night sky. He admired both the signal itself and his rebellion against the Cupid of Crime, until he turned around and was nearly struck with Quinn's hammer, until he moved farther and farther away every time she swung the lethal tool.
"Come on, Fatso. Just stand still so I can give you a boo-boo. To the face!" she screamed as she swung once more.
The Riddler Trophy was sitting pathetically on the lab table, along with criminal files and blueprints of several devices Batman and his other allies would manufacture themselves. The trophy itself was somewhat simple: a fluorescent question mark on top of a steel base that literally worked like clockwork. What many of the Bats and Robins knew was that, even though Edward Nygma was a genius when it comes to puzzles and riddles, given his alias, he was not very bright when it came to the mechanics of tracing phone calls or specific frequencies found when someone would find one of these infamous question marks.
Jason knew this, which is why he was going to rip the thing apart until he found what he was looking for.
After spending some minutes just tearing the thing apart until all the gears and metal plates were skewed everywhere on the table, he finally found a major clue he and Barbara could use to find Hush and save Bruce and Damian from their clutches.
"Jason! The Batsignal is up and Bullock's in trouble," Barbara yelled as she stepped away from the Batcomputer where the monitor showed the GCPD under fire from the inside.
"Then let's get rolling," Jason said as he left the trophy and his clue to mount his motorcycle next to Batgirl and rode off to save some cops.
Oh how the mighty have fallen, Red Hood thought.
From the time Bullock ran off to turn off the Batsignal with Harley Quinn chasing after him, Poison Ivy had already taken control of four other GCPD officers to fire at Gordon, with only two others not having been brainwashed to aid him. Jim crouched down on the side of a cubicle in the Bullpen of the building. His two partners are on either side of him near other cubicles, trying to hide from the mind-controlled policemen.
Gordon peeked from the side of the cubicle to see Isley standing on one of the gargoyles, watching her minions as they violently inspect each individual section until they find Gordon and the others. He didn't plan on killing them or Ivy to stop the external influence on their minds, but he would not hesitate to knock them unconscious so they would quit trying to kill them. One of the officers, as Gordon saw, was about to reach the cubicle he was hiding at, so he pulled him in and smashed his head through the glass, followed by a foot the face after he was thrown to the floor. Gordon knew that would catch the other two officer's attention, but he could handle it. You don't befriend someone like the Batman and not learn a few tricks. Plus, if the other mind-controlled policemen are focused on him, the ones who aren't brainwashed could tackle Poison Ivy and hopefully take her out, but that difficult to do. Still, there's hope.
As predicted, the two hypnotized men in blue had the commissioner surrounded with SWAT-grade rifles in hand, pointing at Jim's head. He slowly raised his hands, feigning surrender, when he quickly looked over at the desk behind him and saw, for a second before he looked back at them, a small potted plant and threw the dreadful plant at one of the men's heads, sending him to the floor. The other man tried to mark him with bullets as he pulled the trigger, but Gordon was fast enough to snatch the fire extinguisher from the wall and swung it at the gun, knocking it from the man's hands, and swung again at his head. He heard the officer behind him stand up, so Jim fired the white, cloudy substance at him and smacked his head, as well, knocking him unconscious.
He was catching his breath when he heard two sets of screams coming from the front door of the Bullpen, so he ran out of the cubicle and what he saw was quite frightening. Large, grotesque vines protruding from the other cubicles in front of him, probably from the other potted plants, dangling Gordon's backup like ragdolls, while Poison Ivy stands there, still on the gargoyle, laughing maniacally.
"Do you honestly believe that two men could possibly bring me down, commissioner? You of all people should know that I am not someone to underestimate. Now you will pay the price," Ivy said as she conjured other monstrous vines from behind him to capture him like his partners. But before they could reach him, they were all sliced in half, spewing bright green liquid at Gordon, by a signature Batarang, which spun back to the hand of one red-headed, bat clad superheroine.
"You got a weeding problem, Commish?" asked Batgirl with Red Hood right beside her.
Coming Soon- The Prodigal Nightmare Ch. 8: Let The Games Begin
"I am Naught, The President, and I approve this message."
