Disclaimer: None of the League here are mine, and Eilidh, Fiona, Sarah, Kate, and Gash belong to themselves and their names are used here with their permission.
Feedback: Much appreciatedSean Malloy-1: This soon enough for you?
Rhinoa Silvermoon: Hope I didn't keep you waiting; glad to hear you're enjoying this story.
Hiril Moon: Sorry; I can neither confirm nor deny your theory until I reach that point in my story. Plus, I'm not quite clear on who the 'he' is you're referring to, so I can't be certain
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2004
The Doctor smiled a little as he finally saw the sign that showed the entrance to Zurich. It had been a five-hour drive, and the rest of the League had fallen asleep in the process, but he was here.
He opened the door to the main body of the car. "We're here!" he called back to the rest of the League, shutting the door as he heard them start to stir from their beds. He would give them a little time to get up and dressed, and then he'd check up on them again once he'd reached the Geminschaft bank.
Of course, whether or not they would find anything in the bank was another matter. After all, numbered accounts were difficult things; you could keep literally anything in them, and there was no guarantee they'd find anything in the account that would allow them to work out who their foe was and what he was planning. But, while it was a fragile thread, it was the only one they had to follow right now.
He just hoped they'd find something worthwhile.
"OK," Clark said, as the Doctor stopped the League-mobile outside the bank. "Any ideas what we do once we're inside there? I mean, what do we give as our cover story for having the account number?"
"I've already got that one covered," Elektra smiled. "We'll claim that we're business associates of Mr Griffin, who were given the account number so that we could acquire certain items from the account, for reasons which are our own. Once we're in, we check out the account's contents, and the rest is easy."
"Just one problem," Eilidh said, raising one hand. "From what I've heard, the bank has a palm scanner in order to confirm that the people accessing the account have the right to access it. How do we fake our way through that?"
"Easy," Angel said, throwing his proverbial two cents into the conversation. "Gwen pretends to be in charge of us."
"What?" Gwen asked, looking over at Angel. "Why me?"
"Your electrical powers," Angel explained. "The way I see it, all you need to do is manipulate the electrons when they're travelling from the scanner to the database, and make it turn up a positive reading rather than a negative one." He smiled. "After all, it can't be as difficult as twisting around the motion-detector lasers, right?"
Gwen sighed. "Well... I'll give it a shot," she said.
Harry coughed politely. "Just in case we need a back-up plan, should Eilidh and I be ready to erase people's memories if the worst comes to the worst?"
"You can erase memories?" Eilidh asked, looking over at Harry in surprise.
"It's not an exact spell," Harry commented. "All I can really do is erase people's memories from the present back until a certain period of time. I don't really use it that often; I had a close call with this spell in my second year of school, and I always remember the circumstances I was in when I use it."
"Painful memories?" Fiona asked.
"The woman I love nearly died," Harry replied simply.
Fiona nodded a little and left it at that. She might ask him to elaborate later, but right now, they had other matters to attend to.
"Right," Bond said, looking around at the rest of the League. "Is everyone clear on the plan?" The rest of the League members nodded. "Good. Let's go."
As Gwen entered the Geminschaft Bank, she found herself wondering what she was doing leading the League in this one. Oh, she knew all the reasons; she just wasn't sure she'd be able to pull off the air of authority she'd need to convince the people in the bank that she was in charge.
Then again, it wasn't that hard, she reminded herself; she'd taken charge of a couple of operations during her time as a thief that involved her working with someone.
Of course, in those instances she'd had the advantage of being far more dangerous than the rest of the team. After all, they were only human, while she had the power to generate electricity at a moment's notice; if things had turned ugly for her, she'd be able to deal with it quickly enough.
But here, she didn't have that option. Admittedly, the electricity thing would probably have worked on Bond and Elektra for sure, but the rest were another matter; Clark and Fiona's partial invulnerability would make it difficult for her to knock them out, and she couldn't be sure how her powers would work on the others. After all, a wizard, an alien, a psychic, and a part-vampire? There was no way of being sure what the effects of using her powers on them would be.
Of course, she consciously knew that thinking along those lines was ridiculous; these people were her friends, or at least were becoming her friends. They wouldn't attack her, and she wouldn't attack them.
Still... she was allowed to feel a little uneasy, wasn't she?
"Yes?" the woman at the desk of the bank said, looking up at Gwen as she and the League stopped in front of the desk. "Can I help you?"
"You can," Gwen replied, trying to sound fairly authoritive. "We're here about a numbered account belonging to a business associate of ours, a Mr Griffin."
The woman passed Gwen a piece of paper. "Just enter the account number here," she said.
Gwen looked over at Fiona, who nodded and wrote the number down; of all the League, she was the only one who'd memorised the number when they'd acquired it.
Gwen nodded her thanks, and then passed the form back to the woman behind the deck, who glanced at the number and nodded.
Gwen smiled with relief.
We're in.
After the trip in the lift and the required palm scan (Which went off without a hitch, despite Gwen's fear) the League found themselves facing the safety deposit box of their foe. They'd eventually managed to gather together in a more private part of the bank, although it was a bit squashed with all nine of them in it; Harry, Eilidh, and Elektra could barely even see the box.
Bond looked around at the rest of the League, and nodded.
"Congratulations, all of you," he said. "We've come this far with only the slightest of clues about our opponent's identity and purpose, and facing foes the likes of which some of us never imagined. Hopefully, with the contents of this box in our hands, we'll have a better grasp as to what our opponent's purpose behind these assassinations has been, and a better idea as to how to stop them."
He looked down at the box. "Time to see what Im Ho Tep is keeping here."
He opened the box, flipped the lid back, and the League stared at the contents...
It wasn't quite what they'd expected. The only things in the box were two leather-bound volumes, not particularly thick, and the volumes in question looked remarkably old as well.
The Doctor picked one of the books up and looked at the side. He raised his eyebrows at the title.
"What is it?" Clark asked.
"The Picture of Dorian Gray," the Doctor replied, as he opened the book at random and found something unexpected lodged in between its pages.
A bunch of credit cards. The Doctor picked one of the cards up and looked at it closely. It was a Maestro card, registered to the name Harvey Finn.
"What the... credit cards as bookmarks?" Harry asked, straining to see over the shoulders of the others.
"No," the Doctor replied, as he studied the card closely, to make sure he didn't miss anything that could be potentially helpful. Finding nothing, he put the credit card back in the book and flicked through it; he found three or four other credit cards, each one for a different branch of bank in a different part of the world. "It would appear our opponent is using these books as a means of keeping his cards safe from any prying eyes; after all, who'd suspect him of keeping his credit cards in books?"
"But don't the books draw attention to him by themselves?" Gwen point out. "I mean, who keeps books in a bank?"
Bond picked up the second book, looked at the title on its side, and then opened the book at the first page. He raised his eyebrows as he looked at the page, then glanced up at the rest of the League.
"It would appear that the owner of these books has a very good reason for keeping them here," he said, as he showed the page to the rest of the League. There was a signature on the inside front cover, done in faded black ink. It was hard to make out the name, but it was still legible.
Oscar Wilde.
"It's signed by Oscar Wilde?" Harry asked, looking over at the Doctor. "Does that look like his signature?"
"A bit," the Doctor replied. "The signature's so old it's hard to be sure, but it certainly looks like his." He looked up at Bond. "What book is that, by the way?"
Bond glanced at the name on the side.
"The Importance of Being Earnest," he replied. He looked up at the Doctor, a sudden thought striking him. "Check the cover of that book."
Nodding, the Doctor opened The Picture of Dorian Gray at the first page...
And there it was; Oscar Wilde's signature, right in the middle of the inside front cover, in the same faded ink as the signature in The Importance of Being Earnest.
Bond looked around at the League. "It would appear these books provide us with another clue about our adversary," he said, as he looked at them again. "Whoever he is, he was, at one point in his life, acquainted with Oscar Wilde, or at least met him at some unknown time."
"Well, narrows it down a bit, certainly" Gwen said, as she reached over, took The Picture of Dorian Gray out of the Doctor's hands, and flicked through it, picking out the credit cards as she went along. "So, we're dealing with someone who's got access to a great deal of cash, based on the number of credit cards he's got, and has been around long enough to have acquired Oscar Wilde's autograph? Well, that narrows it down to someone who's at least a hundred and ten, if you assume that he must have been about six or so to have met Wilde personally." She looked over at Bond and the Doctor. "Can you guys think of anyone who fits that category?"
The Doctor shook his head. "I know of a few people who are that old, but none of them would be trying something like this; it's too out of character for them. Besides, there's no reason why they'd choose Oscar Wilde's books in particular, so that idea doesn't work either."
"Maybe we should focus on a more immediate issue?" Clark asked, picking one of the credit cards out of Gwen's hands and looking at it. "Namely, do these credit cards hold a clue regarding what the motive is for these crimes?"
"Let me," the Doctor said, reaching over and picking the card out of Clark's hands. He pulled a small device out of his pocket- the rest of the League were reminded of a bar code reader, except it had a small screen on one end of it- and ran it across the card.
He looked at the information on the screen, and blinked.
"That's interesting..." he whispered to himself, passing the card back to Clark. "Give me another card."
"What?" Fiona asked, looking over at the Doctor. "You've got something?"
"I think I do," the Doctor replied, looking over at Clark as he passed the Doctor a second card. "Just let me check out one more thing..." He ran the scanner over the second card, and looked at the result. "Yes, that's it," he said, grabbing the two books from the box, slipping them into his pockets, and walking out of the small cubicle, the rest of the League close behind him.
"What?" Harry asked, as the League walked into the lift and Elektra pushed the button for the ground floor. "What's it?"
"The motive for the murders," the Doctor explained, as the elevator began its rapid descent to the ground floor. "According to the account activity information stored on those credit cards, the accounts in question recently received a lot of money from certain sources which I know for a fact are enemies of some of the targets of the assassins."
"Coincidence?" Eilidh suggested half-heartedly.
The Doctor shook his head. "Once is coincidence. This many times, it spells a definite pattern, and I'm sure that James won't fail to work out what I'm implying."
Bond groaned a little as the revelation sunk in.
"Contracts..." he half-whispered.
"Contracts?" Gwen asked, looking over at Bond curiously. "What kind of contracts?"
"Contract assassinations," Angel explained, as the lift reached the bottom floor and the League filed out, Fiona nodding their thanks to the receptionist as they walked past her. "This guy's been killing people so he can earn money from their deaths. It's the perfect crime, after all; even if you knew the truth about vampires, the Dracula class is remarkably difficult to kill. You can stake them, of course, but the difficulty lies in getting the stake to their hearts, especially when they split into bats."
"Wait a minute here," Elektra said, raising one hand as the League started to walk back towards the League-mobile. "I get what he wants money, but why? What could he possibly have in mind that would require so much money that he needs to kill of so many people?"
A loud crash was heard from behind the League. They spun around in the direction of the crash...
And stared in shock.
Coming towards them was a massive device that looked vaguely like a tank, but far more heavily armoured than any tank any of them had seen before. There were guns on almost every visible surface, and all of them were pointing towards the League. They didn't even seem to care that there were innocent people in between them and the League; they were just rolling on towards them. However, as intimidating as the tank was, the League were, at present, more immediately concerned with the ten or so figures walking along behind the tank, dressed in massive metal suits that remained some of the League of the suits used to fight the Sentinels in The Matrix Revolutions, except smaller and less clunky.
"Ah crap," Angel whispered under his breath.
Clark looked over at Elektra. "I think we've found your answer," he said simply.
Elektra just stared at the massive war machines in front of them blankly.
"They... they used the money from the murders to make... that?" she asked, almost unable to believe it. "That's... that's..."
"Yes, I know," the Doctor whispered to her, as he placed a hand on her arm.
Bond raised his voice to speak to the rest of the League. "On my word, Elektra, the Doctor and I get back into the bank as quickly as possible; we won't be much use unless you can get some of those people out of their suits, or at least damage them. The rest of you get attack those things as hard as you can, as fast as you can; if we don't put them down fast, things could get ugly."
"Right," Clark said, as he and Angel took up a combat stance while facing the tank. At the same time, Gwen raised her hands as she began to charge up her electricity, Eilidh closed her eyes and began to concentrate, and Fiona just stood still and turned invisible.
Nine extraordinary men and women were about to face technology and weaponry beyond the imaginations of many people on the planet, and they only had their own natural abilities to help them.
These guys are going down, Angel thought to himself.