The dark sky outside was so normal in Gotham, it might as well been part of the forecast.
"Ah yes, so after some light rain early in the day, we're going to have partly cloudy until about 8:11-ish PM when the sky will turn into the darkest void known to man. Now back to Eddy with sports"
But like I just mentioned before, the people of Gotham were used to it. Which is why Black Mask had his people working on the docks, unloading cargo in this darkness.
Because usually they were the meanest, scariest, gun toting-ist people that one could fire for this type of work. Black Mask was rich without the crime life, he didn't mind paying whatever fine was needed to allow his men to work this late.
Besides, who were they going to complain to? OSHA? They were undocumented criminals who either would work for him, end up in prison, or end up 6 feet under. Besides he was being a good boss, making sure that they had work to do.
Despite the whole "work or die" concept, he usually kept them pretty well armed and had the police off of their back. Which is why they expected to work unabated during this particular night.
"Hello Bad Guys" said a calm voice from the dark, a pair of bright soft blue eyes glowing in the dark and out walked Naruto, his face as serious as it could be.
"Hey kid, get the fuck out of here before we turn your brain to mush leaking on the ground" warned one of the armed thugs
"Oh, is this the part where I beg for my life?" Mused Naruto as he continued to walk forward
A single gun shot rang out, echoing in the night, but Naruto merely rolled his eyes and grabbed the bullet from the slight imprint that was left in the flesh of his forehead. Holding the bullet between his fingers, he shook his head in disappointment.
"I wonder how many times people are going to shoot me before they realize that it doesn't work" questioned Naruto rhetorically
He flicked the bullets back at the shooter and it punched it's way into the gunsman's leg and Naruto tsk'd.
"Oh come on you baby, that same bullet wasn't even strong enough to pierce my flesh" mocked Naruto as the man dropped down to the ground in pain.
"Anyways, let's get to the reason of my visit" continued Naruto as he started a slow march towards the trio of men inside the warehouse, his eyes locked on the three of them and a cocky smirk gracing his face.
"Which one of you reports to Black Mask personally?" asked Naruto when they didn't say anything in response to his previous sentence.
"You can go fuck yourself, I'll die before I tell you a single thing" spat one of the goons
Naruto's eyes lit up and a smile that would make even the Joker's normally wide smile seem small.
"I was hoping that one of you would be dumb enough to say something like that" said Naruto, his voice full of glee.
By the time that Jason Todd dressed up as Robin arrived on the scene about 10 minutes later, the remaining alive goon was rocking back and forth, sobbing helplessly.
LA: Lux
Lucifer was sitting in the last place that he had expected to find himself, a bar. Well that part was not the unusual part. No, that part was actually quite normal, it was his preferred place to be while on this little rock that The Presence had created. That small tingle that ran down his spine at the mere thought of the bloody bastard made Lucifer want to shiver.
But he resisted, no point in dear old dad ruining this moment like every other moment of his existence. I mean come on, sure he was the first Angel ever made and sure he did rebel about 3 seconds into his new existence but to sent him to Hell for 10 Billion years?
Talk about cruel and unfair punishment over a little bit of fun. I mean, if he had won, it's not like he would have killed the being, The Presence was his father after all. It was never about actually defeating the man, it was almost about seeing if he could do it. But then again, nobody ever asked him for his side of the story.
Lucifer blinked and he found himself back in the present and smirked as he opened his hand a bottle of whiskey old enough to become president shot off one of his shelves and into his open outstretched hand. Ah, the perks of being an immortal Angel. He was, of course, referring to the ability to summon the alcohol, not the actual alcohol. Not to say that the whiskey wasn't great, because it was. But the ability to control reality outweighed it ever so slightly.
"You have that weird look in your eyes, like you're not mentally here" said Mazikeen from behind the bar.
Her words once again did the job of bringing Lucifer out of the depths of his own mind and grounded back into his body that was planted firmly on Earth in the bar,
"You need to stop paying so much attention to me Maze" teased Lucifer with a cocky smirk, "One might start to think that you like me"
Maze rolled her eyes, "I fought countless battles against demons in the darkest pits of Hell for you, I even ventured into the most miserable place in all of the universe for you, I went to Ohio to do your bidding. I think the ship has sailed one whether or not I like you"
Lucifer chuckled at Maze's words as she reached down and pulled up twin drinking glasses before pouring both of them a rather generous amount of whiskey.
"And there is the matter of me binding myself to you for all of eternity" whispered Maze as she leaned in over the bar and licked Lucifer on the left side of his face from his chin to his ear, giving his lobe a playful nip before she pulled back and downed her entire glass of whiskey.
"Yes there is that part" chuckled Lucifer before he downed his own glass like it was water and gestured to Maze to refill the cup.
"So what's on your mind?" asked Maze
"A lot of things, like the fact that I now own this bar and we have piano for me to play and that this is all mine" said Lucifer, a small happy grin on his face. But despite what he said, the claim of what was making him happy or at least appear to be happy. No, it was more about what he wasn't saying that was stuck on his mind, it was so deeply burrowed in there that he had no idea of how to even begin to pull it out and put it into words.
This act of buying the bar should have made him happy, hell he even put a smile on his face as if it did. But it didn't make him happy and he didn't know why it didn't. This was something that he had wanted to do, so why was it not giving him the desire result? Why was he not happy after getting the thing that he had wanted, that he had desired.
Desires, that was what he was the very best at, yet whenever he thought that he had figured it out, put a word, a title, an object or whatever you wanted to say on his own desires, it never panned out. How could that be? How could the man who the entire world revealed deep and dark secret desires to with nothing more than a wag of his eyebrows, not know what it was that he truly desired.
What is it that you desire?
The question that he asked whenever he wanted an immediate answer as to how he could grant a favor to a mortal or get them to reveal their true nature to him. But those words were nothing but a question to him, his mojo worked on just about everyone but two people. Himself and The Presence.
God and Satan were the only beings who would never fall victim to the devil's silver tongue.
Rather poetic in his opinion, but it still did not answer the question for him. What was it that he truly desired? He had all the drugs that a man could ever want to try, all without the nasty little side effects that these fragile little humans suffered from as well. He had unlimited money, another perk of being an immortal angel is your tend to gather wealth and a lot of it. He just bought the bar, so he now had access to a nearly unlimited supply of alcohol.
So, what did the man who seemingly had everything that a person could desire, actually desire?
A question that not even his universal eyes could find an answer to. Maybe it was time to admit that he was actually rather unhappy in life. Sure, ruling hell had been fun for a little while, But it was still a punishment rather than the heaven that he had tried to take rather forcibly. Being Hell was ... well hell, which is part of the reason that he had been excited to leave the place.
But now? He was here on Earth and the excitement had faded from the thought of being here. Maze was with him and while she brought a little bit of bubbly enjoyable energy to his day to day life, he wasn't happy.
No matter what he did, no matter what he had planned, there was this inescapable feeling of emptiness that he couldn't rid himself of. It was like an anchor that was wrapped around his feet threatening to pull him under the current of the vast ocean of emptiness as he struggled to tread the fine line of feeling nothing and something. And yet, despite his best attempts, he found himself feeling nothing a whole lot more than something or anything really.
Was this another curse from dear old Dad?
No, Lucifer didn't think that it was. This was not the type of thing that He would do, the man was rather direct with his punishments even if he did things in a rather awkward, mysterious way. No, this was something different, it was not a curse from Father.
Was this a carry over on the billions of years spent in Hell?
That was another possibility, but that would be rather strange that it was happening to him now when he was just deciding to make his new life here on Earth and not when he had previously taken walks on the planet.
Is it because you have a son now?
That was another thing that made him uncertain about things. He was not the parenting type, but the brat had Kurama built into a brand on his arm, That was sign that he was Lucifer's son, but the question was how much did the brat know about his origins? For instance, who was the bloody brat's mother?
No, that was a serious question, Lucifer had slept with so many women that he could have knocked up over a million of them going back to the beginning of the world. Lucifer had gotten around and he was actually quite proud of that fact, well that was until this moment when he thought about the blond kid who his son.
The mother could have been anyone and Lucifer had no way of knowing who it was. The child would have been born when he was in Hell, he had no way of knowing or sensing of the kid while down there.
Hell, he hadn't even known about the brat until that mentally unwell orphan playing dress up brought him up. He should probably do something about that, a child of his walking the earth was probably bad for the world. Lucifer would openly admit that while not even, he was a little careless because he didn't really care about anything. Father was the most powerful being in the universe, his siblings were immortal like him and while not as strong, they approached his strength. Maze was bond to him and would only die when he allowed it.
But none of them were a half angel, half human son of a him. But then again, Lucifer couldn't help but think that if he really cared, his bar wouldn't be in LA, it would be in Gotham.
Maze slipped around the bar and she knelt in front of him as her hands slipped to his waist and she fiddled with his belt before his pants slid down to the middle of his thighs.
"You seem to be getting lost in your own mind Lucifer, so allow me to blow your mind" whispered Maze before she leaned in and swallowed his member.
Lucifer did not resist the shiver that rocked his body as he hissed in pleasure as the bobbing started.
What had he been thinking about again?
What ever it was, it was hardly as important as the feeling of Maze's tongue on his balls as her hand jerked him off.
Jump City:
Barry Allen was happy that the closest thing that he had to a kid, his nephew Wally, was a normal kid. Because as he looked at the medically induced coma form of Starfire, he couldn't stop the frown that appeared on his face. It was only there for about .01 of a second but Robin picked up on the slight twitch of his mouth and growled angrily.
The teenager was so much like Batman that Barry felt a tingle in his spine when the spiky haired teen glared at him.
"What are you doing here?" questioned Robin, "Did he send you?"
"Batman has nothing to do with this, Robin" said Barry truthfully, neglecting to mention that he was called here from inside the tower by Beast Boy.
"Then why are you here?" the question was said in a much less but still heated manner by the former boy wonder.
"The Joker is here kid, he blew up parts of the city, infected thousands with his Joker Toxin. It's no longer something that we can just leave to your team anymore, this is a Justice League level threat Robin. If it wasn't me, it would be Superman, Martian Manhunter, Wonder Woman, or Batman here. I choose to come here before any of them could answer the call, you should be happy that I am here and he's not" answered Flash
Robin seemed satisfied with that answer and he turned around and led the flash from the medical ward and to their main hub where he tapped on his holographic computer built into his left wrist guard. Flash resisted the urge to chuckle at how much the kid who was at odds with Batman, acted almost exactly like him.
The screen changed and it showed a map of the city with several markers all over the map. It had the warehouse that the Titans had fought Harley in highlighted along with several locations where either Harley or the Joker had been spotted by cameras or the public, with a third kind of marker showing Joker Toxin sites.
"Based on his threat, we haven't managed to find any bombs that are explosive bombs, but there has been 3 gas bombs filled to with his toxin" said Robin
"This is a good start kid" complimented Flash before his eyes zipped around the map, calculating distances between the sighting, the time of the sightings, the location of the gas bombs, the distance from the warehouse, the time from the fight in the warehouse as well as the sighting.
It was a lot of math if you were anyone but him, but Barry was the Flash and his brain processed everything faster than you could blink.
"He's hiding in the sewer plant" said Barry as he figured out how the Joker was traversing the city so quickly, getting from one side to the other in a dozen minutes.
"Huh? How do you figure that?" asked Robin
"Look at the spot of the warehouse, it's by the waste management sight that dumps liquid waste into the ocean right" pointed out Barry
Robin nodded
"That pipe has to dump thousands of gallons per second, it needs to be large and re-enforced" continued Barry before he pointed at the first sighting of the Joker, "The first sighting was with him on the west side by that opening 2 days ago at noon, but then he pops up again in Mid Town at 12:17 PM. That's 22 miles in 17 minutes, which would be doable if he was flying a plane or on the highway, but in Jump City traffic? It's not possible"
Robin looked impressed by the Flash's ability to piece together how the Joker was traveling around town.
"So, how does that make you think he's using the sewer plant?" asked Robin, his voice and question both sounding calmer than he had been when the Flash had first arrived
"Because while it's not centrally placed in to the city, it's a little further north than most of his sightings, if you pull up a map of the sewer system, you should find that most of the places he's been spotted as well as the gas bombs detonation spots are close to the sewer lines.
Robin tapped on his computer and the map of the city changed to a map of the sewer lines and he found that the Flash was right. Several of the locations lined up perfectly, but every single one of the spots was within a mile a manhole.
"Ok, so now how do we use this info to attack him and his plan?" asked Robin to Barry
Barry scratched his face, covering up the smirk on his face, maybe the kid was a little less like Batman than he thought because Bruce would never defer to him like this. It was a nice change of pace, but the Flash needed to not steal this away from Robin or the team.
"We use that they don't know about me being here to our advantage. The Joker as you know is crazy, you have to use that to your advantage as well, You draw him out and I will comb the sewers for any more gas bombs before regrouping with you to take him down" said Barry
"I think I have a plan then" said Robin, "I am going to publicly tell the Joker that while this has been a decent joke, I have the funniest joke in the world, but he can only hear it down at the pier by the warehouse that we fought Harley in. That way you have an easy target to rejoin us at"
"You're going to threaten to beat him at his own game" realized Barry, "That might just be crazy enough to work, not bad kid"
A/N: I am happy to finish this kind of short chapter, but hope you enjoyed it. There was a decent insight into Lucifer's mindset, the Leaguer who came to help the Teen Titans was The Flash.
I felt like he would be the most hands off in helping them, I didn't want it to be Superman or Batman because they would honestly just take over.
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Until next time, HighKey_Mars out
