Abigail Robinson walked into the docking bay with confidence, her smile evident and strong to all who saw her. Heximal had dressed her in the orange jumpsuit that the other Hippodrome employees donned, so much so that it, to her, resembled a prison garb. She let her crimson hair flow long and free, her chest exposed with a lack of proper buttoning, and every man on the dock that she passed, she casually sprayed pheromones in the air around them, making them drool after her…making them desire her on the spot… Their entrancement, such a wondrous entrapment, would play to her advantage soon enough.
Her tag read Betta Freeman. That's who she was, and who she must be for now. The contact, Willis, or so he was called tonight, was waiting for her near a loader, leaning against the machine and puffing a cigar in silence. From above them, the roar of the crowd was audible and strong. Tonight, the Raging Circuholics were storming the dome stage, leaping through fire and performing daring escape stunts with crocodiles in tanks and a cage filled with poisonous snakes. Abigail silently wished she could be up there, watching the exciting spectacle for herself. By the sounds of the crowd, things were intensely phenomenal up there.
Willis, a balding man in his thirties with dark sunglasses that obscured his eyes completely, looked up as she approached. She saw him lift a hand, nodding.
"Good to have you onboard, Betta," he said calmly in a thick Irish accent. Dublin, perhaps. "Aye, I've been asked by the boss to give you a heads up on how we do things here at the Hippodrome. Have you gone over the manual for operating the machinery?"
"Yes, I have, and I'm ready to learn everything else. Give me a heads up." The magic words. Willis nodded, jerking his head to the right, and he casually strolled away, Abigail following closely behind. The two of them went around a ceiling-tall shelf of hundreds of boxes filled with stage supplies, decorations, cleaning essentials… The smell of the chamber was high in popcorn and corndogs, the scents wafting down through the ventilation to tempt the workers down in the lower levels of Hell. When they were alone and near an elevator, Willis turned to her face and spoke quietly.
"Don't think for a moment that I'll hesitate to rat you out if you're caught," he warned her, dropping the fake Irish accent. Willis's real voice was more akin to a centralized Brooklyn. "One slip up, and it's the noose for you. We got that clear?"
"Yes, we do," Abigail sighed, preparing to spray the pheromones. She had perfumed herself with the stuff before coming, but even so, a little extra caution never hurt. She needed to have control of everything and everyone. "So I take this elevator here down one level, and enter the right-side door with the CLOSED OFF sign?"
"Yeah, that's right. You're going to enter from the east wing corridor, but you're gonna need to pass the security check in the elevator. The Myazakis had that section closed off, and only valid security identification will let the elevator go down. I have a card here." He held it up. "Don't ask me how I got it. I don't want to talk about it. You use this in the elevator, but when you get down there, you're still going to have to deal with the sentry. There's a guard posted down there at all times, armed with an Ak-47. Heximal supplied you with a silencer, right? And a pistol? He's around the corner once you get down there. He won't shoot you right off, of course. He's officially employed by the Hippodrome on top of working under the Myazakis, so he'll give you the old "You're not allowed to be down here," speech and tell you to be on your way. You'll need to act fast, while his weapon is lowered. Sionis has no quips about you killing whoever's needed, as long as you don't touch the False Faces. Like me," he added pointedly.
"Oh, don't worry, I've an army I'm bringing along." She shook the large bag that she wore on her back with a smile. It rattled evidently with a grand degree of supply. "Sionis doesn't care how I kill them or how many die in the attempt, as long as you, a False Face, remain safe?"
"That's the deal, but he told you not to make a fuss. No one is to know what's going on. People hear heavy gunfire, there's gonna be a panic."
"Which is why we're been scheduled for the 9:15 Gunpowder Pandemic," Abigail replied promptly, holding up her watch. "In five minutes, the Circuholics will begin their firearms part of the show. We take advantage of the fifteen minute time-slot, use the shots and the fireworks for audio cover."
Willis looked impressed. "Good girl," he said slowly. "You've done your research, then. I like it when one of you assholes actually do your homework. Alright, then: The Myazakis have a hold-out beneath Prop Room 3. Look for the mirror, it's two way, and will revolve if you push it on the right side."
"Right side. Got it. And security cameras?"
"Right above the door," Willis shrugged. "Just one, of course. We're leaving it up to you to deal with it. I'm just here to prod you in the right direction."
"Fair enough. So, then…shall I begin?"
"Yes. Here. These are for you." He handed her a silver identification card reading "Bottom X33287," and a single clip for the silencer. Of course, the silencer in her possession was already filled, but Abigail had her confidence about him. She was confident that by the completion of this mission, she would not have fired a shot. She was Poison Ivy, and the weapons of the mammals only befitted her so far. This cold metal thing that Heximal had handered to her… there were slower, more painful and more erotic ways to murder someone. "Get going." He jerked his head at the elevator door. Abigail stroked his chin with her finger.
"It's a shame," she cooed, her lips close to his. "It's such a shame I can't bring harm to you… you would have made a good soldier." She kissed him on the chin, and turned away, waving her rump against him as she went. Willis leaned hard against the wall, his eyes closed for a moment as the pheromones began to kick in. His mind went fuzzy… even if there his chin was suddenly feeling very hot.
Abigail walked into the middle of the room, and slowly began to strip off the jumpsuit. Employees all around turned to stare, their bewildered expressions evident. Willis watched with rough, ragged breath. The jumpsuit gave away, and those who surrounded her beheld a most beautiful, gratifying sight. Bare, slender legs wrapped in freshly cut strands of poison oak, the reds on the leaves strongly complimenting her hair. They entwined every limb, trailing a little ways past her glistening nails, which had recently been coated with a most alluring, shining green oil, the smell of which was strong and bitter. She removed her boots and was left standing free and alive, her body only covered in a simple, tightly fitted, dark green one-piece. Everyone had stopped now and was ogling at her, and the men who had already been affected earlier by the pheromones were moving forward slowly.
Without a seconds hesitation, Abigail raised the bottled pheromones and held down a continuous spray, letting it rain over her and all around the room in a stream of the most sweet smelling, alluring form. Now the men in the room, ten in all, were crowding her, their eyes wide, sweat falling from their foreheads. They could not take their eyes off of her. They were zombified beyond their capability. She had decided to finally take everything into her own hands, and show the world who she was and what she could do. She touched her lips lightly, feeling the poison on them and hoping that tonight was the night.
Abigail had spent the entire day locked away in her quarters, pulling out all the stops with her portable chemical stock. Mixtures of snake venoms and plant toxins had saturated her clothes and hair and tabletop, the room had smelled heavily of the most bitter, foul-scented anomalies… She had went out back behind the food bank tower, along the bank of the river, and had captured a few frogs. Her experiments on the frogs had yielded quick deaths, and analysis of their frail bodies had shown her that the venom samples had been efficiently amplified with concoctions of V-H8, a compound derived from the Dressfire Flower. The Dressfire had been yet another important sample that she had stolen from the labs back in Bludhaven. It was a deadly little gem derived from the Eastwind Fields in South America… not so far from where the goddess had earned her Ascension…
Creating a physically oiled compound had been both difficult and dangerous. Her lips were coated with a bottom layer of C-x9, a compound of thin, thin plastic and rubber, to protect her own lips from the deadly poison that now coated them. Tonight had to be the night. Tonight, her kiss would kill, and it would kill very painfully. She would be one with Poison Ivy. She would murder with lips. She had to know that it was going to work. The male Myazaki…
She wrapped her arms around a man to he right, stroking his beard lovingly in hand as she breathed sweetly scented breath into his nostrils.
"I want you," she whispered, touching him gently but firmly below. "I need you… will you keep me safe?" Her tongue moistened the side of his neck. The man's knees bent, his breath intensifying, his trembling hands desperately grasping around her, pulling her close to him.
"Who…are you…?" he whispered into her ear, tears falling down his enchanted eyes.
"Poison." Abigail whispered back, rubbing his erection against her leg. "Poison Ivy…"
She stepped backwards and spread out her arms, moaning loudly as she presented her vine entwined arms. "Come to me… all of you. Touch me."
And they did. All ten of them. They surrounded her like a magically enchanted flock and touched her, felt her presence beneath their hold, knew she was real. And they desired her. Abigail turned slowly, blowing a kiss to Willis, who had fallen to his knees, his expression beyond enthralled. Abigail threw her arms around two men at her sides, and slowly began to march forward with them. "Come, all of you," Abigail sighed passionately to them all. "Come with me. There's someone below. Someone who wants to hurt me. To kill me. Protect me. Protect me, all of you." As she said, her own natural pheromones began to intensify those that she wore, and she intensified the intensified, spraying the fumes in a powerful wave that washed over them all and made them positively enraptured by her existence. They were all breathing so raggedly, so intently, like dogs who had run a marathon without stopping. They all tripped over one another to keep up, and Willis stared up at her as if she were a goddess when she passed. She brought them into the elevator, compressing them tightly against her….wanting to kiss them…wanting to murder them…. She swiped the card at the front, and pressed the button to bring them down.
As they descended, the elevator moving slowly under the weight of them all, she took her bag from the side and handed the silencer to a large, dark-skinned man, who took it with a zombified, dazed expression.
"Shoot the man in the corridor," she whispered, holding his face in her hands. "Shoot him, and I'll kiss you."
"Yes…" the man breathed hard, his eyes positively bulging out of his sockets. "Yeeesssss…."
The elevator came to a stop, and the doors slid open. Abigail marched them forward, still holding onto her two original, enchanted escorts, only now one of them held a silencer in hand. They turned the corner in the dark, damp-smelling, dimly lit corridor, and there he was: short, fat and ugly, the Myazakis' bodyguard looked up in surprise from his seat on the floor, his phone dropping from his hand in the shock of their sudden arrival. The idiot had not even been holding his rifle in hand.
"Hi there," Abigail whispered seductively, an evil smile on her evil lips. "Murder him," she told the man with the silencer. The man raised the gun without hesitation.
"God, no!" the bodyguard screamed, reaching for his rifle. Doot! Doot! Doot! Three shots in quick succession, and the man fell over dead, the bullets lodged in his forehead and heart. Blood flickered up with each shot. Abigail laughed darkly, sauntering forward and using his body as a stepladder to reach the stationary security camera above the door. She twisted hard and bent the camera backwards, smashing down on the lens with a fist. The lens cracked and broke, little shards cutting into Abigail's hand. She sucked on her own blood dreamily. Enjoyably.
She fell down beside the dead man and stroked his chin lovingly. "You're plucked," she whispered, and she produced her knife. For the next minute, Abigail carved out the man's eyes, and when she had finished, she gently placed them in the man's pocket, making a note to come back for them. They were needed for the sacrifice.
"Come," she commanded of her slaves, who obeyed her without a second thought. She was alive. She was truly alive, her heart exploding with such utter joy, with such malevolent pride. They belonged to her. She had become Poison Ivy in influence. Now, she had to become Poison Ivy in toxicity.
"Kiss me," the man with the silencer begged, reaching out for her desperately. "Please kiss me! Kiss me, oh God, kiss me!"
"Me too!" someone from behind cried.
"Kiss me!" more and more began to chant.
Abigail grinned. "Soon, lovers. Soon. We have more blood to spill. There are two individuals that await us. Asians, they are. A man and a woman. We're going to find them… and when we do, you are all to kill them. Lay waste to them. After that…you shall have me," she promised darkly. To emphasize her point, she cradled her bodice arousingly.
The old prop room as empty as could, removed long ago of all clothing and weaponry used in the Hippodrome shows. But the mirror was there. The lone, human sized mirror built into the wall of the desolate room. She admired her reflection in it after flicking on the lights, admiring her perfect body with a longing. She looked like Poison Ivy.
"The time has come," she whispered to herself, and she pushed the right side of the mirror forward. The thing swung open at her touch, revealing a miniscule hall with a short stairway at the end. A strand of gold lamps and Christmas lights lit the way down the passage. "Go ahead of me," she commanded of them all. "Go ahead of me and kill anyone you find. Go!"
Her slaves ran forward at once, intent on obeying their goddess's every order. She could not help herself. She began to laugh with very audible, fierce joy, her arms above her head once more as they rushed past, enslaved and empty of who they were. Mammals: so easy to manipulate. She unzipped the bag she had carried with her as she walked.
The stairway down led to a wide chamber that had clearly once been a service tunnel. An old, broken down elevator was built at one side. A door stood at either end of the corridor, each marked with the level and part of the sewers that they led to. In this chamber, a wide collection of bookshelves had been set up, surrounding a circular couch and television station. Monitors were piled on top of monitors and there stood a table covered in ammunition boxes of several different kinds, along with an open briefcase of recently acquired money. Next to the elevator was set up a table with monitors that had been connected to the security camera, which were currently black.
Abigail saw the twins first, seconds before both turned around from their seating on the couch, aware that their lair had suddenly been introduced to a large mob of pheromone-controlled slaves. They were exactly as she had imagined them to be: beautiful, perfect in every physical way, the woman a goddess in form, the man a double for upkept prodigies. The television had been playing Mary Poppins, but the screen suddenly exploded as the man who Abigail had given the silencer to shot off a round, missing Hatsumoto and hitting the television instead. The Asian man let out a wild cry, looking frantic at the arrival of the slaves, who were charging with their own wild screams. Takada spun around in her seat, taking aim with a handgun. She fired off two rounds, and two of the forerunners, including the man with the silencer, fell backwards, blood spraying from their chests as they fell. Hatsumoto snatched up a semi-automatic rifle from the floor, and managed to fire off three rounds before he was swarmed by the oncoming crowd. He managed to take down two of Abigail's slaves. Six remaining, Abigail took no hesitation in her master plan. As expected, her pawns had distracted the twins from her presence at the door, allowing her to enact the true plan. She reached into the bag and pulled out the weapon.
It was a foot-long cylinder of glass, inside of which was a very active, swirling gray fog. Chuckling softly to herself, she tossed the cylinder across the room, letting it smash right at Takada Myazaki's feet. The gray fog within exploded outward, engulfing the woman and the remaining soldiers from Abigail's distractions. She heard the woman's scream and felt pleasure at the sound. She heard the screams from her own slaves and found those sounds even more pleasurable. The gray fog surrounded the small group and hid Takada and the other victims from view, even as the gunshots from Hatsumoto still went off, and the last bodies of Abigail's victims fell. As Abigail had planned from the start, the men she had enraptured from the storehouse had all been killed by the twins and by her cylinder, which was slowly dissipating the cloud of Nyrox-5. The Nyrox had been invented months ago, but this was the first time Abigail had used the poisonous cloud she had created to murder an entire group. She had originally tested it on two children back in Bludhaven, and while their quick, agonous deaths had been beautiful, this… this eradication of an entire group of mammals meant so much more to her.
She kept her distance, allowing the flaying, jerking arms in the mist to slow to halts. She would allow them all to die before making her move over to where Hastumoto cowered on the floor in fear, as his sister's intensely pained, terrible screams permeated the air with such song-like strength.
That's right, thought Abigail. Scream. Screaaaaaammmmmmm…..
She reached into her bag now, and pulled out a second canister, this one filled with a thinner fog, light yellow in color. Xien-9. She had created this paralytic within a day, just for Hatsumoto. She tossed the canister across the room where he lay, tightening her legs as heat enveloped her. This ordeal was beyond erotic. Above, far above, the sounds of gunshots were going off in the stadium. She had timed everything perfectly. The goddess was as good as free from Arkham.
The yellow gas exploded and engulfed the terrified Myazaki. Abigail sat down on the mini-stairway and waited patiently, rubbing her feet absentmindedly as the gasses finished their work. The Nyrox had fully dissipated by now. All that remained were the corpses of Abigail's victims, Takada Myazaki and the slaves alike, their skin blackened and pruned in. Their eyes had melted away in the sockets. Their skin hung limply off of their bones. The poisonous gas had utterly de-humanized everything about them. It was fitting to exist in this way. These people had finally served a purpose: they had entertained her in their demise.
After several minutes of quiet relaxation, Abigail stretched out, brushing her hair with tender care, and finally stood, making her move. She blew kisses to the corpses that surrounded her, ensuring to leave her footprints through the spilled blood. The blood felt so cool and refreshing underfoot. Hatsumoto lay still, unmoving and staring up, barely able to make his head jerk. His eyes widened when she approached, and he struggled to form words, "What…did…you…do…?" he gasped through compressed lungs.
Abigail smiled sweetly down at him, picking up her blood-saturated foot and pressing down on his mouth. He closed his eyes in disgust as she painted his face with the blood. When she had finished with her humiliation, she fell forward, crawling onto him and gazing down lovingly into his wide, shocked eyes. Abigail lightly stroked his chin with her fingers, tracing a line of green liquid from the chin to his left cheek.
"I've been waiting for this moment for so long," she whispered, her voice serious and intense. She closed her eyes, breathing in deep, so nervous about her first time doing this. She did not see the dark shadow crawling across the ceiling, slowly slithering in the high shadows, holding a small camcorder in hand. From the dark ceiling, Harleen Quinn watched in fascination, analyzing every body with extreme detail. Her stalking had yielded such interesting results. Abigail Robinson was cruel and extremely deadly, a genius in her dark craft, talented to an evil fault. She had trapped the souls of those poor fools on the dock and led them knowingly to their deaths. She had performed magnificently. She zoomed in on Abigail and Hastumoto now, eager to see what would happen next.
"I'm going to kiss you now," Abigail told the Asian man. "And you're going to feel pain rupture in your stomach and intestines. It will burn you from within, making you nauseous. Your gag reflex will be tripped but your throat will swell up and close. You will choke on poison. You will choke on death. Your throat will corrode. Your organs will shrivel. You will die an agonizingly beautiful death. It will be quick…but not quick enough." She lowered her head. "And I'm going to fucking enjoy every-last-moment of it…"
"No…" cried Myazaki weakly, tears falling down his cheeks. Quinn grinned, eager for her to get a move on. This was going to be exciting. She would add this to the collection of "Best Kills" later on, back at the house.
Abigail forced her lips against Hatsumoto's and kissed him so deeply, so passionately. She did not moan. She did not make a sound. She let the poison on her lips do the talking. Her lips swiveled against his and then sucked his tongue in, saturating it with the venom. Hatsumoto began to scream, water flooding from his eyes, but she did not relent, Abigail. She kept going and going, getting hotter and hotter as she killed him. As she kissed him, she dug her fingers into his eyes. His screaming intensified. The poisoned nail polish burned through his corneas and destroyed his sight, rendering him blind as he died in the most intense, burning agony. Quinn captured every detail of the murder on film, crawling more along the way to get more footage of Myazaki's face. His veins had turned a swamp-green, and were bulging. His skin had turned pale brown. Green fluid began to dribble from his tear ducts, flowing down in an unnatural falls.
Abigail pulled back, breathing hard, aroused to climax by the murder. Myazaki was deader than she could have ever imagined. His limp body felt so good beneath her. She bent her head back as she reached full orgasm, needing no sex to get her kicks. Inside, she felt an invisible spirit overtake her soul. She could feel Mother Nature, the goddess Poison Ivy, embracing her very soul, creating a new child from an old shell. In that moment, Abigail Robinson made a silent vow, forever cursing the name "Abigail Robinson" to fire. She swore her soul to the goddess, swearing emergence from this life, embracing Ascension, embracing re-birth. Abigail Robinson faded away into darkness, and in her place, there was only Poison Ivy, as she now fully appreciated in utter recognition.
Quinn was very pleased. She crawled silently back into the hall, dropped down in a cat-like grace, and proceeded slowly down the way towards the elevator. As she walked, she flicked a switch on the recorder, and an image of Roman Sionis's face appeared on the screen. He smiled, a very satisfied look on his features.
"Did you get it, then?" Quinn asked as she took the elevator up.
"Yes, I got it," Sionis assured her, nodding. "You did very well. And she…she did magnificently. I have no words to describe it." He laughed nervously. "She has a place in Gotham, and in the family. Give the boys a heads up and have them waiting for her in the storeroom. You, on the other hand, go to the Guild-house and prepare a place for her. I'm gonna have the boys take her there. I'll be waiting for you there myself, to welcome her into the family. Have Lissa cook us a nice dinner, huh?"
"Whatever you say, Mr. S."
Sionis switched off the live feed, and Quinn sighed. So… the new Poison Ivy in town had finally made her mark, and would be joining the Poisoners Guild. They now had a trio. Things were fixing to get very, very interesting.