"We've had enough."
It was impossible not to recognize the deep and raspy hiss of Killer Croc. In truth, there were a few at the long table, deep in the depths of Gotham's underworld, who had voices comparable to the large reptilian man, but few who could fill their words with that level of vitriol.
The Joker, lounging sideways in his high backed chair, was largely unaffected by his words or tone.
"Enough?" asked the Joker, his voice flushed with giggly disbelief. "But we're just getting started!"
"I'm not talking about the meeting," said Croc. "I'm talking about how you are running things. You're not in this for the money; you're in this for the fame and the glory. And, frankly, you can't spend fame and your plans haven't been too glorious as of late."
"Your plans have come off worse and worse," said Black Mask. "Batman has hit you harder and faster with every new job. It's only a matter of time before he finds this place or starts taking us in or worse. You may be perfectly alright with living in that hole they call a hospital, but I ain't a fan."
Joker rolled with laughter, nearly overturning the chair.
"You think Batman is going to kill you?!" he wheezed between guffaws. "You don't understand him at all, do you?!"
"The point is, you calamitous clown," said Penguin, "we don't like your methods. We are not interested in incarceration, but remuneration. Perhaps a degree of restructuring is in order."
"Oh, deary me," mused the Joker with a nearly singsong tone, "you all really are so transparent. You don't care about getting caught. You don't care about the money. You care about power. You care about control. What do I have to do to convince you people that what your trying so hard to steal away from me doesn't actually exist? Wait! I know!"
He tugged at a heretofore unnoticed cord from the arm of his chair. A panel burst open in the top of the chairs high back, revealing two large canisters of some unknown chemical, ready to mix at the triggering of the radio receiver. The Joker raised the deadman's switch in his hand, and everyone at the table jumped back.
"There!" he cried, standing up in the chair and stamping a little jig, the chemical jumping wildly in their containers. "Now that's more like it. You all think that I am in control, that anyone can be in control, but no one is. There is always something, just out of view, ready to reach out and smack you sideways, to prove to you just how little your supposed control is actually worth."
There was a sound like ringing metal, and suddenly, a spinning gleam of black flashed in the low light, the iconography of a bat etched in dark steel slicing the tubing below on canister. The contents of one canister streamed down the chair, the Joker stepping up on the table, staring. Taking a deep breath and smiling, he dropped the switch. The two chemicals could no longer mix, absolutely nothing happening.
"See?" he said. "Just like that!"
With two flashes, the opposite corners began to fill with billows of smoke. The room was in chaos in seconds. And then, he was there, the Batman, seemingly everywhere at once. He dropped from the ceiling, landing atop a man, striking him into unconsciousness before he hit the ground, leaping off the falling body to land upon another man who was clobbered by Croc as the Batman ran up the large man's arm. Leaping from his shoulder back into the rafters, there was a pop of compressed air, and he sailed back down, in time with a man across the table sailing upwards. Swinging from a nearly invisible cord, he was able to dodge a thrown knife and the discharge of shot from an umbrella while able to kick three mean with incapacitating force. He dropped to the floor, as did the other man fell from the rafters, each taking down another for before Batman turned his attention to Croc. Pulling two quad pronged tasers from under his cape, he fired all of them into the man at once. The batteries ran dry before Croc was stopped, and while the electrodes themselves were not enough to put him down, his constricted muscles kept him from pulling them out, letting the encapsulated tranquilizer flow. He got two steps after the power died on the tasers before his step wobbled and he clutched his head before tripping and slumping to the floor. After that, even those who considered themselves fighters were running. And, at every single entry into the room, just out of range of their lookouts, Gotham's finest was waiting.
The takedown was clean. Any gunfire was short-lived, and with Batman behind them and swat before them, most gave up without a fight. They were well informed and prepared, able to take into custody ever individual they arrested, able to make allowances to compensate for strange or dangerous cases, including Zasz and Jones. Unfortunately, there was one set of restraints that remained empty.
"Where is he?" called Bullock. "Where's The Joker!?"
"Here, sir," called one of the swat officers. He was kneeling at the arm of the high backed chair, his weapon trained downward. It had been slid back, revealing a square opening in the floor.
"That wasn't on any of the schematics!" yelled Bullock. "Who's fault is this?"
"Bullock," called Gordon, walking in. "What's going on? Where's The Joker?"
Bullock gestured and Gordon's face fell.
"All of you!" yelled Bullock. "We told you! Joker was priority one!"
"That's enough, Detective," said Gordon, his voice quiet, but carrying enough weight to cut through Bullock's tirade. "This was my raid. If anyone is going to take responsibility for this, it's me."
"Commish," said Bullock in low protestation.
"I said enough," repeated Gordon, his voice hard. "Now, clear the room."
Tight-lipped, Bullock sighed and turned to the officers standing around, "You heard the commissioner; let's clear the room."
Gordon had the room to himself in moments, which was less time than it took for him not to be alone.
"How did you miss him?" his voice empty of accusation.
"A lack of knowledge," the Batman said, kneeling at the square space in the floor. "He fashioned this himself. It's crudely done and leads to a spillway. Water is waist high right now, moving quick, with any number of possible branches. I can't tack him from here, There is no obvious exit he might take, and he found the tracker I placed on him."
"So what now?" asked Gordon. "You made it sound like we would have to start from scratch if we missed him here."
"We will," said Batman. "But The Joker isn't low profile. Now, he has fewer men and resources. He'll either implement a plan that's already in motion or do something seeming desperate. Either way, we won't have long to wait. It will be soon and it will be higher profile than anything he's done yet, and it will be all him."
Gordon nodded, "If you have time tonight, we just got in a body to the morgue you may want to look at. Might help with a lead on the Joker."
Bruce accessed the GCPD database, cross-referenced and pulled up case photos, which narrowed it down to one possible case.
"John Doe four forty-eight?" asked Bruce.
Gordon stopped short, "I swear, someday you'll have to explain how you do that."
Bruce nodded, "I'll come by later tonight."
The alert went off, and Bruce added, "if I have time."
He made it to the rooftops in record time, ready for whatever this visit warranted. He needed something to get his mind off of his unacceptable failure. The Joker was not only still loose in Gotham, but it would likely mean more death and carnage before the end. Bruce needed something to do to get his mind off the guilt. And when he arrived, he was almost unable to hide his shock and dismay.
His visitor hung in the air, a slight drifting to his movements. The solid, almost palpable sense of immobility was gone. He was pushed this way and that, almost as unsettlingly so as his expression. Bruce took minutes to run through every word he could think of to describe it. Desolate, ravaged, destroyed, despairing, bereft, torment, lost, forlorn, and nothing, absolutely nothing fit. Everything fell short. Superman was utterly defeated.
Bruce stepped from the shadows, not sure where to begin, how to begin. This was not a mission he knew how to succeed at, a problem he knew how to solve. His calculations began, but before he could find a better opening remark than "What happened," Superman spoke.
"Do you know Lex Luthor? Do you know what he is?"
Bruce knew more of Lex Luthor than most. He had not simply allowed the deal with LexCorp to end but had gone on and found as much evidence of Luthor's wrongdoings as he could before breaking away. What he had found was not only dismaying but definitive. Lex Luthor was undeniably one of the most intelligent and devious human beings on the planet. He was in some ways smarter than Bruce, motivated by power, and had, by all accounts, achieved every end he sought. But, what was more, Luthor was a corrupt bully.
"I know what men like Luthor are capable of," Bruce said, none too pleased with where this conversation was heading.
Superman seemed drawn down, pressed slowly to the rooftop, his toes skimming the concrete for several feet before he found his footing. He seemed unable to stand straight, his hand propped against the wall supportingly. He was morally defeated in every sense of the word.
"Luthor," Superman said, his words faltering. "He... discovered who I really am."
Bruce blinked, keeping his eyes closed for a long while behind his cowl. He had considered the possibility that Superman was living among humans as though he were one. His mannerisms and comfortable speech were learned at length, nor was his customs or trains of thought particularly foreign, even by Earth's standards, let alone alien ones. He had to be functioning as a citizen of Metropolis, and despite curiosity and demanding need to know, Bruce had not yet run the program that would give him Superman's alternate identity.
"What did you expect?" he said, stepping up beside Superman. "There exists countless images of you from all over the world. Someone with Luthor's resources could compile data points and make comparisons until they figure it out eventually."
Superman nodded, almost absently, then seemed unable to raise his head up again.
"I spend so much time worried about other things," said Superman. "I didn't think... I hadn't considered... Having this knowledge means that Luthor can keep me at bay by threatening the ones I care about, and it has already cost one man his life."
Bruce grimaced for less than a second. He knew that there was little he could do, even if he was prepared to leave Gotham unattended and help.
"If it is any consolation," he said, "I would have offered to remove as many of online images as I could, but that seemed contrary to your way of doing things. Being seen in all that you are would only help those you defend. For me, on the other hand, the less I am seen, the more it hinders those who prey on the people I protect."
Superman shook his head, "I don't know what I am going to do. Luthor is right; the legal system can be bent, and those with know-how and power can indefinitely thwart it. I have no moral right to stop him unless he breaks the law or threatens those around him. But I don't even know how to qualify what he has already done and if it truly is a threat, or to whom. Really, what choice do I have?"
Bruce thought about it for a long moment. If his identity was discovered the following day, he was sure that three lawyers and a psychologist would be enough to keep him from doing one day in jail. He understood Superman's point; despite the different means and ends, he and Luthor were not so different from a general and broad point of view. But ultimately, that notion was true about most people. The means were nominally the same. The end that means got you to was the telling thing.
Bruce realized that Luthor, despite his means and power, was no different from every other crook he knew, every other thug. And thugs he understood.
"You always have a choice," he said. "The belief you are entertaining right now, that you don't, is a lie Luthor wants you to believe. You are allowing the man free will, to do whatever he wants, even if it is immoral and technically illegal, but you are denying yourself that same right. If you do believe that you don't, then you are giving him what he wants-"
Bruce looked over his notes, and went on, "-and you might not stop what comes next."
Superman looked up for the first time, "What comes next?"
Bruce looked over the information he had found while digging through LexCorp to find all the dirt he could before breaking ties with it.
"I am still working on it," he said. "Luthor has set up a lab of sorts, in a subbasement in LexCorp Tower. The servers are off the grid, the shielding around it mattes out any sensor I have tried to use to penetrate it, even sound. I have been digging through shipping orders, but all the technology that has come in from outside contractors has been typical since the building opened. Unless he is either using usual tech in unusual ways, he must have used secondary sites to construct whatever he is keeping in there and has had it transported off the books by a method I haven't been able to trace yet."
Superman nodded, then looked out over Gotham, dropping his head again, "I don't know what to do."
There was a long pause. Bruce collected his thoughts, knowing he wouldn't be able to speak the words without his own emotions seeping through, "Fear is powerful. When we are afraid, we lose sight of ourselves completely. We act, stupidly, often repetitively, out of habit rather than by thought and deduction. Fear is the reason crimes happen, and it is my greatest weapon. It keeps those who hurt others locked in predictable patterns and keeps criminals from making smart decisions. Don't let Luthor use that weapon against you."
Bruce's words twisted and it took a moment to get them out. He knew what he had to say, but such words were not his strong suit. But he reminded himself that the words were true, and said, "You are better than that."
He added silently in his own head, better than me.
Superman took a shuttering breath. As he did, he stood, straightened, finally standing tall and returned to his usual demeanor.
"Thank you," he said, extending a hand. "I needed to hear that."
Bruce shook, and as he did so, Superman smiled and said, as in introduction, "Clark Kent."
Bruce could feel the calculations, the risks being weighed, the tabulations, and with a mighty effort, he shoved that part of his brain aside, and, keeping his hand from trembling, said, his voice still steady, replied "Bruce Wayne."
"Pleased to meet you," Superman, Clark said.
"I will keep you informed if I find anything out about Luthor," said Bruce. "Do you still have the tablet I sent you?"
"Yes," Clark said.
"Check it periodically," Bruce went on. "I will keep it updated. If you need any additional help with Luthor, let me know."
"That's appreciated," said Clark, lifting into the air. "Good luck."
Bruce felt his face go flat behind his mask, "I don't believe in luck."
Clark couldn't suppress his smile, "Take care, Bruce."
And with a blur of primary colors, Clark was gone.