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There was no place Oswald Cobblepot could hide, even if it was a hospital.

Batman had heard of the violence at the Iceberg Lounge. Many of Cobblepot's men were hospitalized in this very hospital, others at other facilities in the city, and a few that were in the morgue. Cobblepot hadn't escaped unscathed either.

The vigilante stood at the window, having opened it and leaving it open, a soft breeze ruffling his cape. The dark room only lit by the various machines in the room, one of which was recording vital signs. According to the screen, the squat man was stable.

There were bandages on the left side of Cobblepot's face, hiding the damage done to it. He had already read the Op note and knew just the extent of the injury sustained, and it didn't look like Cobblepot was going to leave here the same. There was an IV pump next to the bed, delivering medication to the man, most likely for pain.

It hadn't been hard to decrease the rate. The narcotic haze would take a little bit to lift in order for the man to actually stir. The two of them needed to have a talk.

It was some time before Cobblepot roused. The visible side of his face winced from the pain he was beginning to feel. "Medicine," he grunted out loud to no one. "More...medicine…"

"Eventually. Right now, I need you lucid," Batman said.

Normally, Cobblepot would have jumped before whipping around to look at him. This time, he turned his head, looking at him through a bleary eye. He was trying to focus his eye, sleep and narcotic pain meds making it difficult. "I know that voice," he murmured. "What are you doin' 'ere?"

"I know what happened," Batman told him. "What made you think selling to both the Joker and Hugo Strange was a good idea?"

"Spare me the lecture," the short man grumbled as he shifted in his bed, looking away from him. "I'm hurtin' too much fer it."

"Would you prefer the lecture, or answering my questions on what kind of weapons you were supplying those maniacs?"

Cobblepot remained silent. Then, "All I 'ave ta do is hit this 'ere call light and I can 'ave a nurse 'ere to escort you out."

"A good idea if I hadn't pulled the cord out of the wall. Even the one to the bed." Batman took a step closer. "You know, they did a number to you. Who was it that attacked you? Joker? Strange?"

The Penguin made to snarl, but the facial expression caused him too much pain, making him wince. "It t'was Dent, if ya 'ave ta know."

"I don't suppose you know what happened then."

"The two-faced son o' a bitch shoved a broken bottle into my face," the short man grumbled. "And the next time we meet, I'll do him worse."

"Not exactly the end of the story," the dark-clad man told him. "I read your Op note."

"Ain't that a breach o' doctor-patient confidentiality?"

"Thought you'd like to know how your surgery went."

When Cobblepot didn't respond, he continued, "Dent put that bottle in just the right place. Any deeper and it would have killed you. Any shallower and the doctors could have removed it without killing you."

Cobblepot's head perked his head up. "Are you sayin'...?"

"It's still in your face, yes. A constant reminder that when you play with fire, you'll get burned." Batman loomed over the man. "What were you selling them?"

"That...that bastard!" the Penguin weakly roared. "I'll kill him! He's dead, ya 'ear me? Dead!"

Batman slapped his hand down on the man's mouth, which caused him to moan with pain. "Got that out of your system?" he asked rhetorically, earning him a glare. "Tell me what you were selling them. If anything else comes out of your mouth, I'll save you a lifetime of pain by doing what those doctors won't."

Slowly, he removed his hand and Cobblepot snarled, ignoring the pain he felt from the expression. "Guns and explosives, alright? Nothin' too exotic aside from a couple miniguns."

All of which were missing, either Strange or the Joker taking them. That was just one more problem he needed to deal with. Damn Cobblepot for escalating things. "You know, you only have yourself to blame for this."

"Spare me," the Penguin told him. "And get out o' my room."

"You sure about that? Both Strange and the Joker know what you were doing. Both men aren't known for being very forgiving." Batman increased the rate of the pain medication to its previous rate. "Going forward, you'll have to be looking over your shoulder for one, if not both of them. You might even want me around to prevent them from making a move."

"I said get out!"

Batman turned away, heading to the open window. "See you around, Cobblepot." He then slipped out of the hospital room, closing the window behind him.


Multiple times Barbara had to remind herself to stay on ACE Chemicals. It was so easy to get sucked into the vortex that was Max Shreck. There was a lot going on in Shreck Inc. and a lot of which, she felt, needed to be investigated.

It shouldn't have been a surprise that something unscrupulous was happening behind the scenes, out of the public's eye. It was a trope of a corporation doing shady dealings and illegal activities. Honestly, she wouldn't be surprised if all of them, including Wayne Enterprises, did some under the table shenanigans.

It was just too easy, though. There were people missing from Shreck Inc. and their trails always went cold. Take Fred Atkins, one of the founders. According to Shreck Inc., Atkins was away on extended vacation, but a check on everything this man did digitally showed no signs of any activity. There were no sightings of him abroad; his social media accounts hadn't been updated. Then there was his status in the business that hadn't been changed in years, always showing vacation. So very suspicious.

This was also a fact of ACE Chemicals. However, that was also happening before Shreck bought it. The place had always been a thorn of contention. Supporters argued it created jobs and attracted new investors to the city. Opponents screamed about its environmental damage and unsafe practices. There were so many workplace accidents there, all of which were settled out of court for undisclosed sums. The opponents may have been on to something.

It was in this place that this bleach, or chemical, or whatever it truly was was developed there. That's where things came to another dead end. Currently, ACE was a husk of itself, literally, burned from the inside out and to this day was an eyesore for people who loved to look at the Gotham River for whatever reason.

The first fire, the one that had occurred during the Great Gotham Fire, had destroyed its records and hard copies. It even destroyed the server for the digital copies that were kept there. At first she had thought no biggie, there had to have been a copy kept somewhere else, in Shreck Inc. most likely.

She couldn't find any copies of the digital records.

Well, ACE dealt with other companies, right? It sold them products, so other businesses had to have records of those transactions. There were a lot and too many even for her system to handle. This was decades worth of information, and it was covering the multiple databases of multiple companies, corporations, and governments.

Barbara worked with what she could, getting names of various chemicals and products and comparing them to what was available on record. So far, she had a match for every name she found, and each identification meant there was one less thing to search for. She could hear the fans on her numerous monitors and hard drives working overtime with a search that currently had no end in sight.

It was a good thing computers were better at multitasking than humans were. There was another search she could do and currently was doing. Whenever a business had shady dealings, or illicit activities, you better bet there was a public record with the courts, be it class action lawsuits, civil suits, malpractice claims, government investigations, etc. If it ever got into a courtroom, there was a record of some kind, and the government had a nasty habit of holding onto pretty much anything even if it was impractical.

Searching for any legal records involving Shreck Inc., and more importantly ACE Chemicals, took some time of its own. There was...a lot. Hundreds, nearly getting into the quadruple digits. If you counted every business under the Shreck umbrella...well, at least she wasn't going that far.

Oh, there were so many lawsuits against ACE and so many of them involved workplace malpractice. People being exposed to unsafe work conditions, the chemicals themselves, and naturally there were the dumping practices. She refined the search for anything that had testimony involving white skin and green hair. With how ACE Chemicals was run, there had to be something. No way had this stuff not spilled on some unsuspecting worker at some point.

Right now, she was glad it was defunct. After the Joker tried to burn the city down a second time, no one was willing to do anything with it. Shreck, for some reason, refused to bulldoze it, maybe because he was waiting for gentrification to arrive in the area before truly cashing out, and so the ruins remained—ooh, a result.

And there it was. In a seal deposition, there was one worker making a complaint and demanding financial compensation. Naturally, it involved an accident, and exposure to one of the chemicals. Guess what the poor guy was complaining about, other than some nerve damage? Bleached white skin and some of his hair turning green. Finally, some paydirt.

So what was the name of the stuff? What was the name…

The name…

You gotta be kidding.

Barbara reread through the deposition, tried a few keyword searches, but...but…

Somehow, out of everything being put into the deposition, there was not one mention of the name. How? How was that possible for a legal record? That name had to have been brought up so that people could go back and look it up! She was missing it, it had to be that. There was just no way…

No matter how hard she tried, she could not find that damn name. What she did find out was that the worker claimed a story, one where another worker had fallen into a vat of the stuff, his body never recovered. It had also occurred, allegedly, on a day where Max Shreck himself had been visiting the plant. That was a bombshell; this had to go further than a mere civil suit.

Yet it hadn't. It ended in settlement, which shouldn't have happened. This was border lined criminal from what she could gather. So what happened?

The answer was that the presiding judge is what happened. It was in the days before her father became the commissioner and Gotham was synonymous with corruption. Oh, there was still corruption in the city, no doubt, but this was next level. The presiding judge was known to be corrupt as all hell, infamous in fact, in the back pocket of anyone willing to buy him lunch, and apparently Max Shreck made a habit of doing just that as well as making contributions to keep the bastard on the bench.

It was tough sometimes being reminded of what Gotham used to be. It had come a long way, but there was still plenty of changes and improvement left to be made. A reminder of the dark ages was not something she had been looking for.

However...was there a connection?

This alleged accident where a worker felt into a vat of this nameless chemical, combined with ACE Chemicals' dumping practices...was there a chance? Was it possible? No matter how small, could it…?

There was no way to be sure. Again, ACE Chemicals' records, including its records of employees, were beyond her grasp.

The coincidence, though…

Shaking her head, she took another look at her other search results and grimaced, the hacker making the executive decision to send what she had up the pipeline and see what anyone else could do with it.

Naturally, the first person she decided to reach out to might be the one person most interested in what she had been able to uncover. If nothing else, it could start as a starting point for his investigation.

Batman always had a talent for finding the most obscure of details imaginable. How long would this secret of Shreck's last with his attention firmly on it?


It wasn't easy to close her eyes and not see the fire. Her babies, her precious, innocent babies, all aflame and crying out in agony, in pain, for help she was unable to give. And the ice, the ice on her, the ice that interrupted her every attempt to reach out, to rescue, to save and soothe…

Then Strange sat her down and began talking. Then she began talking. Then it became intense.

Say what you will about the arrogant prick, when he put his mind to it, the man knew what he was doing. It was a brief form of therapy, the kind she had had her fill of at Arkham, but due to how brief it was, it meant the intensity was…

Ivy could think now. She could hold it together. The flashbacks weren't as common, or debilitating. The internal screams that echoed from before were calmer and with the plants she was growing now, they were much, much healthier.

Her eyes narrowed at some of the imperfections she saw. While she was not a perfectionist, especially when it came to the plant-life that meant so much to her, she did have a standard and the latest of her children to be produced were in no way suitable for what was to come.

Strange had another theatrical plan and of course one such as her had a role to play in it. He needed her as put together as he could get her and that felt somewhat insulting. It was like she was patchwork and not something more respectable.

She felt it, the awareness that came from her babies; they detected an intruder and were giving her the alert.

"It seems the treatment is taking effect."

The voice confirmed it. That he was so close meant that she was not at one hundred percent. When she got her hands on that clown and his lackeys for doing this to her, there would be a reckoning.

"The malformations have lessened considerably," Strange continued with his commentary. "You yourself are standing taller, no longer huddled and paralyzed. Time, however, does not present us with its luxury."

Now Ivy grimaced. "Another session, Professor?"

"We must be ready. We cannot afford one of us to be rendered inert, not when the end is in sight."

"Was not the end within sight at…" Images of flames erupted into her mind's eyes and the screams...the screams

"This time we will be ready for all threats," the quack doctor remarked. "Every action the Joker makes, the intervention of Batman and his allies, and the inevitable with Victor Fries will be planned for. Counters for any interference from Gotham's Finest are already in the works. All that is left is the unforeseen, which we must be ready for regardless. This will be the fight of our lives if we are to succeed. Nothing should be left to chance."

Damn the man, but he was right. She needed to inflict pain on those who had gifted it to her. Joker with his fire, the Iceman with his ice, they both needed to be addressed.

"Very well," she sighed. The incarnation of Mother Earth herself gave a flick of her wrists and multiple vines snaked out into the open, intertwining with one another until, for all intents and purposes, they formed a couch for her. She learned back into the vines, cooing to them through her connection to them, offering praise and love as they cushioned her body.

Eyes closed momentarily, breathing became even. Then Ivy opened her eyes and stared at the bearded shrink whom she was to allow inside her head. Oh, she was suspicious of him, no doubt. There were the stories, always the stories, about a man like this, and they came out of the mouths of both the staff and the patients of Arkham.

Hugo Strange was not a man you wanted inside your head for any reason.

But what other choice did she have if she were to avenge the horrors of Robinson Park?

"Let's get this over with," she grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest.

Strange chuckled and she didn't like the sound. It sounded like...it was so much like those little laughs she had heard all her life from the men who tended to be her supervisors and mentors. It was the sound of being appeased, the implication being you had said or done anything that was considered wrong and therefore you would always be wrong.

The bearded bastard had that same chuckle, like he knew better than her about...everything.

"Then let us pick up where we left off," Strange began.


The signal light was lit. It had been quite some time since Gordon had made the call. It wasn't as if he didn't turn the signal on during this entire crisis, but it was the first in a long while that it was turned on just as the sun set and dusk fell over the city.

That was why Batman was perched on top of the roof access on the GCPD. He watched Gordon standing with his hands jammed into the pockets of his trench coat, looking out into the city as he stood next to the signal. Even from this view, the Commissioner looked as if he were exhausted, running on empty. While he knew of Gordon's plans for retirement, it seemed his plans were constantly being put on the backburner.

It was a stark contrast to the man that had demanded to know if he could trust him when Garfield Lynns was the worst they had to deal with.

Silently, Batman dropped onto the roof and crept up on his long time ally. He came to a stop a few feet away and waited. Gordon didn't budge, seemingly unaware.

Finally, he broke the silence. "Jim."

Gordon turned his head to look over his shoulder. There was no surprised jump, or flinching. He just rolled his head smoothly, not the least bit taken back by his entrance. "Batman," he returned the greeting. "Nice night, isn't it?"

The vigilante looked up at the darkening sky. "For now."

Again, silence fell over the two. It was strange considering how no nonsense Gordon usually was with these meetings. They talked, information was exchanged, and then they departed—the shorter the better. There was less of a chance of some noisy photographer to snap a picture of them meeting this way. In fact, the placement of the signal light amongst all the A/C units and ventilation systems ensured no one could see any more than one person on the roof at any given angle. It was also why Batman stood where he did to keep himself out of sight of anyone spying on the roof.

Finally, the Commissioner sighed. "I had a meeting at City Hall earlier," he started, his weariness seeping into his voice. "The politicians are getting antsy."

The dark-clad man stayed silent.

"Hady wanted to know if you were making progress on this...whatever the hell is going on with the Arkham inmates."

"About as much as you have," Batman grunted back, his own frustrations creeping in his tone.

"Thought as much."

"Hugo Strange and the Joker are the clear ringleaders of this," Batman continued. "And if Robinson Park is any indication, they're going after each other, the reason why though, is still unknown."

"Makes sense," Gordon responded. "Each one has a massive ego and there is no way they would see themselves as someone else's underling. Unfortunately, they're tearing the city apart with this...temper tantrum of theirs."

Temper tantrum, it was hard to argue that this wasn't what was going on and the city was paying for it in blood and property damage with no end in sight.

"You've heard of the theft at Shreck's Textile Plant?"

"I have." As if this entire situation hadn't been bad, but the revelation that there was a chemical being kept at one of Max Shreck's factories had turned it upside down. What were the chances there was a chemical that bleached skin and dyed hair green? If you had asked the vigilante the previous day, he would have said one in a billion, nay, a trillion.

And he would have been wrong.

"I have my detectives looking into it, but this does present a link between Maximillian Shreck and the Joker," Gordon said, stating the obvious. "Whether it was the Joker trying to steal those chemicals once, or he was a Shreck employee that had an unfortunate accident remains unknown. Shreck's playing hardball as well, doing his best to cover his ass no doubt."

That was expected. Shreck would have this investigation buried in one way or another. He would bog down the police until they threw their hands up in surrender. That wouldn't work with someone like him though. Shreck had never gone up against someone like the Dark Knight and he was about to feel the kind of heat he could bring. Unfortunately, it would have to wait until he brought the Joker and Strange down. Compared to those two, Shreck was no one, just another rich businessman with dark secrets in his closet.

That was something that could wait.

"I'll look in it, see if I can't find something," Batman told the Commissioner. He then began to turn to leave.

"One other thing."

Batman stopped, his profile to the older man as he looked towards him. "Something I noticed since Robinson Park is an abnormal number of anonymous calls pertaining to the planned attacks Strange and the Joker had been committing lately," Gordon said.

That caused the vigilante to frown as he turned to fully face his ally. "Someone has been alerting you to the attacks?"

Gordon nodded. "And every single call has been right on the money. Montoya answered several of them personally, so this isn't some conspiracy theory. We checked the precinct logs on those calls and we found they all came from the same phone."

Shreck took another step back in his long list of priorities. Someone was trying to get caught, that was the only reason for this anonymous tipster to use the same phone over and over. To be right on every single attack meant they had access to either Strange or the Joker's groups, maybe even both.

This was a dangerous game this person was playing. They needed to be found before either of those two maniacs discovered what they were up to.

"What's the number?" Batman asked.