"In the land of gods and monsters,
I was an angel.
Living in the garden of evil,
Screwed up, scared, doing anything that I needed.
Shining like a fiery beacon,
You got that medicine I need
Fame, liquor, love, give it to me slowly.
Put your hands on my waist, do it softly.
Me and God we don't get along, so now I sing."
Lana Del Rey, "Gods and Monsters"
Relaxation was never part of Alfred Pennyworth's job description.
At least until he came to Anguilla with Bruce Wayne. The sun was baking his weathered skin, his old bones not paining him as he relaxed with a peaceful smile drawn about his lips. His hand was cold, and he sipped a mimosa he rather fancied, sitting in a pool chair on their hotel balcony. He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the summer breeze, the birds, and the ocean rushing the shore.
"Alfred!" The sudden and urgent sound of his master's voice from inside the hotel room made his eyes flash open, nearly spilling his drink in the process. He was driven to alert from an instinct born of hearing the young master's wails from the mansion's nursery, the boy Robins' crying from midnight nightmares, and even when he heard pots crashing in the kitchen when Bruce would attempt to spoil the old butler with breakfast in bed.
"A moment, Master Bruce!" He got up, pushing his sunglasses to the top of his head and hurried inside, his joints protesting as he did. He shoved the sliding door open, demanding, "The cause for alarm, sir?"
"Come look at this."
His eyes immediately focused on the distress in Bruce's, the slightness of his strong but aging limbs, how his shoulders rolled as Alfred watched him mash buttons on the remote to increase the volume on their plasma TV. The butler joined him, clutching the cushions on the back of the couch the other man sat on as he saw the live footage GNN was showing.
"This is Vicki Vale, live from the Bristol district of Gotham City, in front of what appears to be a standstill between a hostile mob force that have taken a boy scout troop hostage and the Red Hood, a controversial figure bent on rescuing the children."
A tank, a red bat sloppily spray painted on the side, over the-... Alfred's face paled as he recognized the vehicle. A Cobra tank. "That isn't-"
"-It is," Bruce confirmed, his gaze fixed on the crimson symbol on the side as the tank sped through downtown.
"It seems Master Jason is using the former instrument of Gotham's destruction now for its salvation…" A pocket of pride and warmth nestled itself in Alfred's chest, and he smiled.
Bruce did not share that, "He's going to get himself killed; driving around the city in a tank? He's drawing attention that he does not need to get the job done. Careless."
"Master Bruce," Alfred's tone was scolding, his eyebrows together. He resisted the urge to swat Batman on the back of the head. "If I may, was the BatMobile not part-tank and did you not drive it around Gotham like a madman? Not very subtle."
"The car was your idea to begin with," Bruce said, glancing at the older man sideways. "And it was you who taught me to drive one, but that's beside the point." He turned in his seat to face the butler. "Jason's been reckless since the beginning, he isn't learning. He can't cleanse Gotham by killing."
Alfred understood perfectly that Bruce was being critical from a place of love for Jason, but there was something painfully obvious that he could not be silent about. "And you have not learned any more than he has, sir. Don't you remember what I told you when he disappeared after the Joker? That if you intend to change him and mold him into something you both know he's not, you will lose him forever. He will fail and it will crush him. And it did!"
Bruce glared at him with enough coldness to supply a blizzard, but Alfred knew that he needed to hear these words. "Glare at me all you like, but you cannot argue with his results, sir."
The younger man stood and walked away from him, as Alfred knew he would, towards the balcony. In a low voice, Alfred reminded dutifully, "Grab your suntan lotion, Master Bruce."
With a light scowl, Bruce roughly seized the lotion from a stand beside the sliding door before he stepped into the sun. He watched as Bruce hunkered down into the pool chair he himself had just been lying in, settling into it.
Alfred sighed and shook his head minutely. He had enough patience for ten men with how he handled Bruce, let alone how harsh he was on the family he built. Jason was reckless when it came to defending those who couldn't defend themselves, Alfred would never deny that, but he did so with an argument that Bruce wouldn't ever be able to fully refute, and maybe enjoyed it a bit more than anyone was comfortable with.
The butler looked to the tank on the screen again. "Don't you prove him right, Master Todd. I won't hear the end of it if you do."
Okay, first thing to know about driving a tank? They're heavy, so watch going up steep hills. Second, if they're a one-man-crew tank like my girl, that just means that you have to watch everything. Thirdly, and here's the important part, be yourself.
I settled into the seat, now fully suited up, and started her. "Miss me, darlin?" I heard her power unit purring, and I grinned. "Course you did."
Now, the tanks that assaulted Gotham seven months ago were drones. Unmanned, didn't matter if Batman blew them up. This Cobra? She's special. She was a special order. A manned, carbon nanotube-armored tank with double 70 mm cannons, a smaller 25 mm gun on either side that I can play with, and a small storage compartment where the other operator would be, full of ammo for both the tank and for me. And if this got too ugly, I had four warheads that will make a good boom.
In short, she's perfect and she's mine. Can I stop gushing about my tank? Yes. Do I want to? Nah.
But the best part of her? Glad you asked. I reached under my seat for the case, unzipping it and flipping through CDs until I found the one I wanted. Scrawled in Sharpie was my handwriting: For Her. I skipped the first three tracks, until I came to the one I wanted. My lips split into a wide grin when it began and I pressed the button to lift the engine bay door.
I was three blocks out, people swerving their cars to get out of my way and blasting Billy Joel through the speakers of my girl. The tank and the song got me tons of double-takes from passersby on the sidewalks. I kept on trucking, I had people counting on me.
It was the police officer directing traffic in the intersection that caught my attention. He was standing in the center, right in my way. Mid-forties, graying from what I could see under his hat, sun beating off the leather of his police jacket and the light glaring off his badge gave me a target if he got violent. But he wasn't looking at the tank like it was a threat.
Slowly, I stood from my station and shuffled to the hatch, pushing the door up. I poked my head out, mouthing the words to 'Uptown Girl' – the song still playing as I rested an elbow on the lip of the hatch. He saw me, and did something odd. He nodded to me with respect, then moved to stand aside to let me through. I returned to my station in a daze, a part of me amazed and another part suspicious. I gave the Missus a little gas, and she skirted on by the police officer.
I'm not entirely sure I deserved that, but before I could ponder it and decide no, a call was coming through my communications.
"Hood," Dick sounded out of breath, "I've got the hostages, waiting in the back to your right."
I rounded a block onto 30th and King, and the warehouse was in view. I flicked a switch on an upper panel to my left, and the display in front of me was then tinted crimson, red 'x's over armed targets. In the upper corner, a count of armed assailants. Eight. And there was a glowing mass towards the back righthand corner of the warehouse, where the system recognized Nightwing and the boy scout troop. They've hid in the armored storage locker.
"Stay put, I'm-" I started to say, but stopped myself, cursing under my breath.
That fucking idiot.
Gordon and his men were forming a double-fronted line between me and the warehouse. The center was made up of two lines of four squad cars parked end-to-end, but I just made out Gordon's moustache under a pair of goggles in the window of one of them. Bullock….Bullock stood next to him.
Keeping me from my kill, Commissioner?
"Jay, what?" Dick demanded urgently.
"Looks like Gordon's not going to let me have fun today." I asked him then, turning off Billy Joel mid-song, "Have you seen Day yet?"
"Negative. Not a glimpse or a peep. Hurry, Hood. I won't be able to keep us undetected for much longer."
I slid my finger across the screen in front of me, bringing up a new set of controls. I threw up a radio field, splaying my fingers over the screen and snagging a frequency on the police line. I broadcasted to all of their comms, holding a button on the panel to my left and talking into the little microphone. A bullet of sweat dribbled down my forehead.
"Move your ass, Gordon."
I watched him shake his head and say into his radio, "This isn't how it works, Hood."
"Want to tell me why you're in my way?"
I could see his moustache stiffening from here. "This isn't anything new to me. A belligerent punk kid with a tank thinks he owns the streets."
Watch it, blue suit. "I. Don't. Take. Orders. From. Cops."
I saw him glance around and sigh. "Don't do this, kid. Let me take care of-."
I'm done letting people take care of shit. I rolled my eyes, cut the communications and floored it. At first, I had a minor heart attack when the officers didn't move but soon, they realized I meant business – cleared out of my way. Gordon didn't move from the end of the line, even when my tank started to overtake and trample the first squad car. I ignored him, hearing the crunching and squeaking of crushing metal beneath my feet, feeling the vibrations in the floor. I turned to the artillery panel to my left, tapping the icon for my grapple claw, and selected targets on the warehouse. The wire gun fired, titanium alloy-coated hooks punching huge holes into the enormous doors and attaching themselves to the far wall of the building. That's all I needed.
I grinned. "Engage the juggernaut."
Feeling immediately glad for the weeks it took to install this particular feature, I saw the red tank schematic dowse through to blue. And once it was complete…this baby was as good as a bomb shelter.
I let go of the gas pedal, the auto-drive kicking in and standing to a slight crouch in The Missus. Checking my guns, I kept an eye on the monitor as the tank was being drawn towards the warehouse, and when the metal doors warped and twisted as the tank's armor cut into it through sheer force, I grabbed a German Heckler assault rifle from where it was strapped to the wall.
I winced against the screeching sound of metal on metal, and my shoulder rolled restlessly under the armor. Once my tank was halfway through penetrating the wall, I smacked the allstop button.
I tapped my comms to Dick. "Coming in."
I shuffled to the exit, sucked in a deep breath while I removed a flashbang grenade from my belt. The air rushed from my lungs when I opened up the hatch and threw it up in the air despite the automatic gunfire in my direction. When it went off with a great flash of light, I cocked the bolt on the rifle and sprang from the hatch, rolling over the front of my tank onto the ground through blind gunfire ricocheting from the plating. I tumbled to a crouch and brought my rifle up, unloading rounds into the first three armed gunmen my tactical hood highlighted.
Dick would want me to choose nonlethal points on the bodies to shoot…but they put kids in danger. None of them deserve to walk out of here. A few racks of clothes that smelled like old lady perfume, which made me think the drugs they were circulating was all cocaine, were in my way of a handful of more guys. They were using the racks like barricades…I ducked behind one, getting low to the ground. The gunshots they fired burned the clothes around me, so I flipped my rifle onto my back and got my zipkick from my belt, waiting until they reloaded.
"Jonesy!" I heard shouting over the gunfire.I peeked over the pile to see a guy with a phone in his hand half-crouched behind a bunch of clothes. "Quick, call Calen-"
I flicked my hand above and aimed the zipkick at the phone guy; the hook grabbed onto his bulletproof vest, propelling him through a pile of clothes to me. When he got here, I wrestled my legs around him and cranked my thighs down on either side of his neck. He squirmed and tried to punch my legs while I got on my side to shoot at his comrades, but once he stopped, I let him go – put my feet on opposite sides of his face and broke his neck, pausing to crush his phone with my boot. Two more to go - something hot and sharp razed through my shoulder, sucking a shout of triumph back in and I barely got time to look to the higher rafters to see the laser sights of a sniper up high. I dove behind another stack, growling between my teeth. I grabbed my specialized handguns, gripping them tight and took a deep breath, catching the line of crimson going down my left arm from the wound.
This is the part in the cowboy movie when the two marksmen face off in the street at high noon…I always thought it was funny how they expected the two marksmen to be of equal skill. How one was just some no-name thug…and the other was Clint Eastwood.
I stood up and spun around, aiming both handguns at the sniper and firing until he hit the ground before I turned my attention to the two guys behind the stacks who had just gotten their guns up to shoot me. Nailed them both.
"Dick, come on!" I shouted, looking down at the white leather stained red on me. There was a strangely sweet odor coming out of my wound… Made me want to hurl, how sweet it was. A wave of vertigo hit my head, the colors in my vision melted together into a slurry…as I saw the black and bright neon blue blur come out of the storage locker, followed by a small crowd of brown bundles of nerves. The kids.
I tapped my tactical hood for the tank's back compartment to open up. Just big enough for all seven of them to sit. I shouted over to Dick, "There's a box of lollipops under the benches."
Dick's worried eyes were on me, but his priority was the children, telling them to get in the tank and helping some up onto the platform when they couldn't by themselves. Once he told me that they were all in and contented with a sucker, I hit the button again to close up the compartment and rearm the defensive plating, only stronger.
My muscles contracted on themselves, and I stiffened at the pain. Like Charlie horses popping up all over my body. I felt Dick's hand on my shoulder, "Jay, what's wrong?"
"The bullet in my shoulder…" I wheezed out a shallow laugh that did not belong there. I glanced down at the wound again, only there was a faint greenish tinge to the blood.
He made a desperate noise, before I felt myself being hoisted with a grunt over his shoulder, his body armor cutting into my gut and nausea clouded my senses. I giggled hoarsely, "Shhhiii- Dick, pu' me down."
"Not a chance," He said, and my eyes slipped closed as he got to the ladder, feeling myself elevate, and then be haphazardly helped down the hatch to the tank. He laid me on the floor of the tank on my side with my back against the wall, my stomach killing me. He knelt for a moment, mashing the button on the back of my tactical hood that releases it from my head, pulling the helmet off. Fresh air flooded my nose, but my lungs were still on fire and my muscles tightened further, punctuating laughter with gasps of pain. "Dick, wait-"
"Tell me how to get this thing out of here."
"Panel in front'a ya," I slurred, coughing and trying to prop myself up on an elbow. "Jesus, my head."
I dug my nails in the plates in the floor to pull myself towards Dick in the tank's chair, which turned around as soon as my eyes slipped closed. I heard his voice, "Let me get you to Barbara, then-"
A bubble of anger flew up my throat into a shout, "NO! You get those kids outta here, or I swear I'll gut you myself, Dickie…"
Sure, Jason…I thought to myself, losing consciousness after that burst of exertion and growing so, so tired. Threaten your only friend in this god-forsaken city.
