Sith Gothic 3 - Gotham
"Without strife, your victory has no meaning. Without strife, you do not advance. Without strife, there is only stagnation" –Uthar Wynn.
Part 2
Crime Scene. Gotham.
"Same as before," said Detective Harvey Bullock "Some scumbag got killed by another scumbag. His wallet was emptied of cash, but no fingerprints from the killer".
James Gordon could hear the lack of any real interest in his partner's voice and see it in the way his fellow cops worked the scene. They didn't much care if one crook went around offing a bunch of other lowlifes and it didn't help their investigation that so far the person or people behind these killings had left so little for them to go on.
"At least we have some witnesses this time," said Gordon.
That had never happened before. The killer had left none alive in the past and what physical evidence they'd been able to gather from the scenes of those massacres hadn't amounted to much. So far it didn't look as they'd be doing any better this day despite some people having seen the killer, if only for a moment.
"I'm guessing that he killed the pimp and just let the ladies go," said Harvey Bullock.
If nothing else this told the cops that the killer probably wasn't interested in a big body count. If anything he seemed to be lowering his number of targets by shifting from gangs to loners like this dead pimp. Only time would tell if this trend would carry on.
"That or they ran before he could get to them" mused Gordon.
Given that this killer had taken out entire gangs of hardened criminals before now it seemed unlikely he couldn't have killed the whores and the pimp if he'd really wanted to.
"He's been careful up until now" Gordon went on to say "Making sure to leave no witnesses. So why go after someone if it means letting people see him?".
It didn't make sense to either of them. This killer seemed to be highly skilled, not the kind of person to make such big mistakes.
"He wants people to know about him" figured Bullock "Maybe he wants some credit for his work or at least to get some attention from the press".
That might just be the case, or perhaps the killer wanted to spread some fear among the criminal classes of this city. If so then he was going to do have to do something more than what he'd been doing so far as no one cared much about a few gangs getting taken out.
"All the witnesses saw was a man in black who was wearing some kind of body armour" reported a police officer in uniform "And a mask or a helmet. Too dark for any real details".
So there was a man in body armour and a mask running around at night killing criminals and robbing them, and no one had a clue where he'd come from. They had no idea where to start looking for this man and given how large the city was setting up a sting operation wouldn't be a good idea even if it didn't endanger cops who had little interest in catching the killer.
"You get anything for us, Ed" Gordon wondered "and skip the riddles".
Edward Ngyma was a forensic scientist, and while he was an odd duck he'd been helping with past cases, so far his strangeness was worth putting up with. Although Bullock who'd had to put with Ngyma for years didn't feel the same way.
"It's the same murder weapon as before," said Edward "Since we've seen the wounds before we know the rough shape and size of the weapon. Judging by the angle and the size of the entry wound my money is still on a sword".
Edward had been able to draw what the blade should look like.
"We got the results back for the tests we ran on the metal fragments found in the wounds" the forensic scientist went on to say "and they don't make any sense".
Gordon wanted more than that.
"Why don't they make any sense?" he asked.
He was shown a list of the elements that made up the metal the blade had been forged with. Some of them were known and some of them weren't.
"Unknown elements," said Bullock who'd just take a look "What the heck does that mean?".
Edward Nygma tried to explain, but it went over Harvy's head so Gordon gave it a go.
"All the metals we know about, iron, zinc, gold, stuff like that you'll find somewhere on the periodic table," he told his partner "What Edward is saying is that some of the metals that are part of the alloy that makes up the murder weapon aren't on that table. Which means that we're dealing with someone who has access to a weapon that either shouldn't exist according to science or its made out of metals that we've never seen before".
Bullock did not like the sound of this.
"So are we talking about some sort of prototype military hardware?" he wondered "Why would they test on some scumbags here in Gotham".
Gordon quickly thought it over.
"They wouldn't," he said, "Maybe its something they've lost, but that doesn't explain why someone would be using prototype military tech to kill crooks here in Gotham, or why they made a sword out of some sort of new alloy".
It also made no sense for someone with the resources to acquire military secrets to be robbing the criminals either. Anyone who could steal such a thing would be able to sell it for far more than they could get from killing thugs.
"Is there any way we can find out more about the murder weapon?" James Gordon asked of Ed Ngyma "Maybe we need a better lab".
The man who might one day be called the Riddler thought it over.
"You could ask the Applied Sciences Department at Wayne Enterprises" he offered.
Given the lack of any other leads due to the lack of detail from the witness statements the two detectives decided to visit Wayne Enterprises.
(Line Break)
Applied Sciences. Wayne Enterprises.
"Early interest in your power cell comes mostly from the military" Lucius Fox told me as we toured his department "They want to use them to power their hybrid vehicles, in long run, it should save them a lot of money on fuel".
Mr Fox had mentioned to me before that the power cell I'd designed, which they were already refining the design for, could be used to as part of a new generation of hybrid engines that should greatly cut down on fuel usage. Something a lot of people cared about, at least enough to make it worthwhile to make a new engine to go with my power cell. Really hybrid engines were just the start. My power cells had a range of possibilities for Wayne Enterprises and beyond. In the Star Wars galaxy, everything from sanitation droids to starfighters could be powered by such cells. I could help advance this worlds technology by hundreds of years if I handled things right. Such things could be rushed, but I could set the foundations for a new age of technology for mankind. Even space travel would become easier thanks to my power cells.
"Here is where we'll..." Fox started to say.
Before he could explain more about what was going around here two people entered the room. I knew who they both were right away and I was a little alarmed by their presence, but I was too experienced to let my startlement show. I was surprised by the sudden appearance of two men because they were Detectives James Gordon and Harvey Bullock. Since I was a wanted criminal they weren't a welcome sight, but they couldn't know that I was the guy who went around at night killing crooks because I needed cash and wanted to scare the criminal underworld. Not that I would keep needing to do that for much longer as I was planning to up my game. For now, I needed the money as making any major moves in the criminal underworld would take resources that I currently didn't possess.
"Hello, Gentlemen," my sort of boss said by way of greeting "I'm Lucius Fox, head of Applied Sciences and this Mr Stark a consultant of the company".
The two cops quickly introduced themselves and then explained to Mr Fox why they were here. They'd come to Wayne Enterprises to enlist the company's aid in solving a crime. They needed the Applied Sciences Department to run tests on some physical evidence that had their own labs stumped. As soon as Fox started looking over the file shown to him, I knew exactly what it was that they were trying to figure out. They were trying to learn about the weapon I'd used to kill the crooks, they'd try to track it in the hopes of finding the manufacturer, who was me, thinking that this could somehow lead them to the killer. It wouldn't since the sword was locked up in my vault and had no connection to anything on this Earth, but they didn't know that.
"We can analyse the metal fragments for you" offered Mr Fox "But I don't think we'll find anything that your lab missed".
I doubted that Wayne Enterprise knew about the process of Sith alchemy and it didn't worry me that two good detectives were on the case as it meant that my plan to spread fear as well as chaos among the criminal classes was working. Besides, I figured that before long something could come along to distract them from the cases I was creating.
(Line Break)
The Docks. Gotham.
As I watched the two kidnappers got off the stolen bus as four other men with assault weapons came out from the warehouse. The kidnappers they soon ordered the kids off the bus and into a nearby shipping container that was open. Selina was not among them and the vision I'd had just last night did show her among the taken children so she must be nearby. The Force didn't send people visions of the future if there was no need to act.
"There you go, kids. Don't worry, everything will be all right" the woman mislead.
She and her partner took headcounts as the kids walked into the shipping container. As the last kid got off the bus as the two kidnappers compared their numbers.
"Funny thing, by my count according to the sheet they gave us, we're one short," the guy said.
His partner had noticed this as well.
"Me too. Maybe there's one hiding on the bus" the woman wondered.
She walked back onto the bus as I watched and I saw that she had her gun out as she looked at the seats, underneath them and in the back but there was no one left on the bus. What she didn't see, and what I did notice, was Selina sneaking past her before getting under the bus.
"Nope. Weird" said the woman with the glasses as she got off the transport "It's empty".
Her partner didn't seem concerned by this information.
"Must be a miscount someplace" he figured "Don't worry, we've got more than enough".
"We did really good," the woman said as they high fived.
As they talked I watched Kat sneak off and noted that she was very well named. She moved with great stealth and she was calling upon The Force to aid her without realising it. Since this might not be enough to ensure her getaway I decided that now was the time for me to act.
"The Doll Maker will be pleased with us," the guy said.
As the woman in glasses made her way over to the old shipping container she was grabbed from behind and a gloved hand put over her mouth. The hand was mine and my grip was strong. I'd just dropped down before grabbing her and spinning her into the path of some bullets that were being fired at me by the guards. Friendly fire was not at all friendly as the woman I used an unneeded human shield discovered.
Once she'd taken the bullets for me, not that my armour would have failed to protect me, I threw her at her partner and then backflipped on top of the container. The men who were now below me opened fire and the kids screamed as bullets struck the shipping crate. Lucky for the brats they were in sturdy a shipping container so it was unlikely that any of them got shot. Not this was any concern to me I'd come to save one young person and that was it.
The armed guards came around the shipping container and that proved to be a mistake as I was armed with a vibroblade which resembled a short sword, but it had more of a high-tech look and feel to it. The weapon's handle contained a compact ultrasonic vibration generator, causing the blade to vibrate at an incredible speed, a feature that could make even the slightest glancing cut become a gaping wound.
Some models of vibroblades could be fitted with cortosis-weave, allowing them to parry the blows of lightsabers but after the Sith-Jedi Wars, the cortosis-weave became less common as the probability of fighting a lightsaber-wielding opponent decreased, and it wasn't exactly a cheap feature since cortosis was rare. My short-sword had both an ultrasonic vibration generator and cortosis-weave since I did fight people with lightsabers and the blade made quick work of the fabrics the goons were dressed in.
Then it was just a matter of using a gun to kill the man who'd been playing the role of a bus driver, only I didn't get that far as this was when the cops showed up. I left him to them and went after Cat who would end up in trouble if my vision proved to be correct. I found her tackling one of the guards, who must have spotted her before I made my move, she'd cut him up, but she was in trouble as he had an assault rifle. Not that this mattered to me as he began to choke as he got lifted into the air, it looked as if an invisible noose had pulled him up so that he be strangled to death. He didn't last for long as I'd gotten very good at snapping necks with The Force and before the cops arrived he became another corpse for them to sort out.
(Line Break)
Hosptial. Gotham.
"You have the same power that I do," I told Selina Kyle.
Rather than let Kat be taken by the police or social services I'd brought her to a hospital to get checked over after her ordeal, she had not gotten badly injured like in my vision, but she had gotten into a fight and she was basically still a kid so it seemed wise to have a doctor examine her even if she looked fine as healing wasn't something I had much skill at.
"I can't do the things you do" she stated.
Well not yet.
"That's because you need years of training," I told her "But you have great promise. You must know that you have something inside that others don't. That's why you move as you do, other people can't jump from rooftop to rooftop with such ease, or climb the way you do. Think about how you always survive, The Force is with you".
She wasn't very convinced by my words.
"Then how come I got my butt kicked?" she complained.
The Dollmaker's minions had been at the docks in greater numbers than expected, showing how much he must value the children his people had been taking off the streets. I could only imagine what he wanted with them and what I did imagine seemed cruel even by the standards of the Sith, not that I would have become involved if not for Selina who as a Force-Sensitive was far too rare an animal to let die as a non-volunteer organ donor or to die while trying to escape such a fate.
"Because you need training and I can teach you" I offered "Learn what I have to teach and you'll stop being the victim of society".
Kat looked out the window as if she earned to be out there. There something familiar about this girl, I was somewhat reminded of the Twi'lek girl called Mission, another young woman forced to grow up to fast in a world she didn't belong in.
"You told me it takes years to learn," she said.
I didn't see the problem she was young, she had the time.
"Do you have better things to do?" I asked.
She had no family or anyone who really depended on her.
"Yeah I need to survive" she replied, "No one is giving me any handouts".
That I'd already considered.
"I could foster you" I offered "Give you somewhere to live".
She seemed offended by this rather than shocked. I knew she was the independent type so this didn't surprise me.
"I'm not an orphan" she stated, "I've got a Mom".
Well, I knew that. Not that I would call that woman a mother.
"Foster not adopt," I told her "There's a difference".
At first glance, foster care and adoption seem very similar, both involve bringing a child into your home to care for and nurture. The primary difference between adoption and foster care is the type of commitment. Foster care is a temporary commitment. Adoption is a permanent commitment. This I did my best to explain.
"So when your mother gets back you can sort out something more permanent" I finished by saying "Until then you stay with me. I'll teach you to use your power, this will count as homeschooling so you don't have to go an actual school".
I had no desire to subject anyone to the horror of High School, even Dark Lords could not be so cruel, nor did I think that she'd ever really become properly reunited with her mother. I just got the sense that if Kat felt trapped by any arrangement between us she'd run off even she was much better off with me because she was for sure no house cat.
"Listen, Gothic I'm not the kind of person who has a curfew or anything like that," she said.
That was no issue.
"I have my own stuff to handle so I'll teach when we both feel like it," I told the street kid "As long as you don't bring back any strays you can come and go from my place as you please. Just make sure not to let anyone follow you home. I'll give you a roof over your head, cupboards full of food and an allowance as long as you accept me as your teacher".
A daughter was not something I desired. I needed someone who could act on their own. I wanted an apprentice to invest in, not a burden.
"And I can leave if I want?" she asked.
An unwilling student was useless to me.
"If you want to live on the dirty, wet, cold, crime-ridden streets of Gotham then your welcome to" I answered, "or you can stay in my comfortable well-heated apartment in your own room and go to bed with a full stomach".
I should get her whatever they used for video games in this dimension. Material wealth could buy her loyalty more than any amount of faked affection.
"What do you want from me?" she asked, "Because this offer of yours is too good to be true".
I could understand her concerns.
"Well for starters I need a sample of your blood," I said.
I took out the scanner and then she held out her arm. It didn't take long to get the single drop of blood that I needed. As it turned out her midichorlain count wasn't as high as I would have liked, but it was good enough to make training her worthwhile.
"Training to become Sith is not easy" I informed the young Catwoman "It takes someone with a strong will to become a true Sith Lord".
I had no intention of training her as I'd been trained, mostly because my early teachings had been messed up by the politics at the academy on Korriban, and some other stuff that had been going on that I didn't like to dwell on. Kreia had done her best to fill in the gaps of my education before taking me deeper in the mysteries of the Force, but she'd not been the best of teachers, frankly, a lot of her views hadn't made much sense, and some of her actions were downright confusing. She'd clearly been somewhat senile.
A good reason not to use traditional Sith teaching methods was that they were based around making the student hate their mentor, I didn't think this made for a productive learning environment and unlike most Sith, I didn't focus too much on using hate and anger, not when they were a whole range of human emotions to call upon for strength.
"Can you afford to keep me?" Kat enquired.
At least money would not be an issue.
"I have a consulting job with Wayne Enterprises, so yes I can afford to keep you," I said to the young thief, "and my apartment is a lot nicer than juvenile hall".
The next person to speak was neither myself nor Selina.
"Sounds like a good offer to me," a woman said.
While I'd sensed someone coming I'd felt no need to mention it, as I'd sensed no threat, but I was mildly surprised to be meeting Dr Leslie "Lee" Thompkins who might one day become the wife of Jim Gordon, the widow of the late Mario Calvi and a former medical practitioner in the female ward of Arkham Asylum. In the show, she becomes the medical examiner at the Gotham City Police Department, Jim Gordon's second ex-fiancée and the mother of their unborn child. After Jim Gordon is framed for murder and is imprisoned, Leslie loses the child and temporarily leaves Gotham City. She returns to Gotham City with her new fiancée, Mario, the son of former crime boss Carmine Falcone. She even injected herself with the Alice Tetch virus for crazy lady reasons.
After she's cured, she once again leaves Gotham. However, she returns to Gotham once more, feeling guilty for letting the Tetch virus bomb go off, and has the task of healing the wounded in Cherry's place in the Narrows. She later teamed up with Edward Nygma and Solomon Grundy. After Barbara Kean shots some woman who ran things, Lee Thompkins became the new leader of the Narrows until she was tortured and thrown out on the street by Sofia Falcone.
She would then shoot Sofia in the head as an act of revenge and because of that, she once again became the leader of Narrows once again. Lee Thompkins then began a romantic relationship with Ed Nygma and the two committed crimes together until Ed realised that she was still loved Jim Gordon and this leads to them killing each other only that doesn't take so even more strange stuff happens to the doctor. The fact that the woman was even sane after all that spoke of a strength of character that impressed even me.
"Let's get you checked out shall we," said the doctor.
I left the women to it and waited in the hallway outside until Doctor Thompkins came out of the room by herself.
"Your little friend seems fine given that she left the building using the window," the doc told me "I'd be worried, but she landed on her feet".
That sounded like Selina to me. She was being cautious, deciding not to rush into something she didn't fully understand without giving it a lot of thought. This I approved of since it showed that while she could be reckless, she was somewhat wise.
"I'm sure I'll see her again," I told the health care professional.
She seemed more concerned than me.
"If you're thinking about fostering a girl like her I don't think that you know what you're in for" warned the doctor "Teenagers, they can be a handful. There are stories I could tell you about me and my sister that might put you off the idea".
I sensed a chance to get closer to this woman, and she was reasonably attractive so I decided that I would try to bed her.
"Perhaps we could have dinner sometime and discuss it" I offered while handing over one of my new business cards "I know how busy doctors can be. So call me and I'll make time for you".
She examined the card.
"You work for Wayne Enterprises as a consultant," she said, "What exactly does that involve?".
I headed for the nearest lift.
"If you really want to know then you can ask me over dinner" I replied.
With that I heading out of the building as I had some things I needed to prepare for.
(Line Break)
Apartment. Gotham.
Since Selina hadn't made up her mind if she was going to live with me or not or be my apprentice, I still had my apartment to myself and therefore no concerns about anyone seeing what I was getting up to. This was good because I'd grabbed four crooks off the streets and now had them locked up in the vaults so I could mess with their minds.
Like most Force-sensitives, I was capable of detecting the surface-level thoughts, memories and emotions of most individuals by way of the Force, the weaker willed the person whose mind you wanted to read the easier it was to get in there and there were drugs you could use to further lessen a person's will. When used against unwilling minds, this ability could be seen as a form of telepathic intrusion, with the Force-User forcibly gaining access to their subject's memories and subconscious. When used in this manner, the probe could potentially cause those being to experience great discomfort, to the point of extreme pain, making it useful in torturing subjects that attempted to resist.
Since this ability is a variant of the mind trick, it was also possible to attempt to use it to compel the subject into compliance. In most cases, attempting to resist the commands of the Force-User would be unsuccessful, depending on the subject's own strength of mind and will as well as the level of power and skill of the practitioner. Nonetheless, individuals with the power to use the Force tended to be the most resistant, with some possessing sufficient power to render themselves immune to such mental probing. I was very not totally immune to such methods, but I could resist them well enough.
Aside from this probing, I was using Alter Mind which was the ability to shape the minds of others, to mould a person's personality so that they were totally loyal to me. To make them this way I had to strip from them anything else they could care about, to break them down so that I could rebuild them into someone that would be useful to me. This took time and if not for the drugs these guys had been using it wouldn't have been so easy. Hence why I couldn't build a criminal empire out of such people since the process of destroying and rebuilding a mind simply took too long. There had been five crooks when I started, the last of them was drooling on himself in the corner.
I was using this talent of mine to alter the minds of the thieves so that I could use them as part of my plans to seize control of the city of Gotham. I'd used these methods of control on people before, and this was something I needed to practice as the process was more of an art than anything else, the human mind happened to be very complex and messing with it could go horribly wrong. Not that I much cared if these guys became little more than vegetables in a few hours as I only needed them to last the night. Then I could do away with them.
"Stand up" I ordered.
The five men did just that.
"Each of you will now take a gun off the table," I said next.
Again they did as they were told. Saying nothing.
"Place them in your mouths" I commanded, "Then pull the trigger".
They did just that and nothing happened since I wasn't stupid enough to leave loaded guns around criminals whose minds I was messing with, but they'd not known that.
"Good," I said, "You will serve me well".
Now that they were ready it was time to process to the next stage of this plan. This involved a rented van and some crime.
(Line Break)
Armoury. Gotham.
Gotham Armory, a Civil War-era building where the Army used to store gunpowder, should have been nothing more than an interesting historical site, but it was, in reality, a vault which contained the Falcone Crime Family's fortune, this could add up millions of dollars in cash, but I would only be taking a small fraction of that wealth as stealing was part of the point of this mission.
Most the cash would be burned since this mission was less about me obtaining money than it was about hurting the Falcone crime family and destabilising the criminal underworld so as to help the man I wanted to help make the puppet king of Gotham find his throne. The money would just be a nice bonus as I felt sure I'd find uses for it.
The large iron door of the vault meant little to me as a lightsabre could carve through much tougher materials so I once I'd slaughtered the guards using normal weapons I got the vault open in short order, and this was good because I knew that if the cops weren't on their way Falcone would send people. I didn't want that much exposer so we had to be in and out fast and hard.
Since I very much needed to protect my identity I'd added an extra measure of security I'd gotten the crooks I'd mind controlled to all to wear red hoods and so did I. This way even if we were caught on camera they, the cops and mobsters, shouldn't be able to tell me from any other member of the gang. Also, I couldn't resist using red hoods since it was a sort of tribute to Jason Todd a favourite DC character of mine who might exist in this world in some form.
As soon as we had our way into the vault I started giving out some orders to the four men whose minds I'd broken and then rebuilt until they became who I needed them to be.
"Grab as much as you can put in your bags" I commanded.
While they did that I started spraying the place with a chemical that would when ignited burn very hot and fast, easily destroying any cash that we didn't take, as I did that I looked around anything that wasn't worthless bits of paper, like bank bonds, or deeds to properties, I figured that they must be stored elsewhere. Not that I would have much use for them.
"What is with these people and paper money?" I wondered.
I'd kept vaults before, and they'd been full of stuff like crystals and credit chips that have value in many places, even gold could be used as money in parts of the Star Wars galaxy, but only on Earth did people place value on bits of paper that weren't even very attractive to look at. The only advantage of them being made of paper, at least for me was that the money burned really nice.
Soon the vault was full of smoke so we had to leave and once we were outside I gave the men whose minds I'd taken over their last orders before they drove off. Falcone's minions would find them in due time and be lead into thinking that they'd been working for one of Falcone's higher-ranking people who I wanted out of the way, and they would stick to that story because they truly totally believed it to be true. Falcone would never know exactly how much money had gone missing because what the other thieves hadn't taken was now burning away so he could never know that I took one of the bags full of money back home with me.
There was always a chance that someone might connect the killer stalking the streets to this robbery despite any lack of evidence, but I was careful when leaving my apartment in my armour and I wouldn't need to prowl the streets anymore. I might still do that for fun, but not for mere pocket change.