A Beware the Batman fanfic – Bring on the Badguys!
Written by WDCain Man
Disclaimer: Batman was created by Bob Kane and owned by DC Comics, which is owned by Warner-Brothers. No money is being made with this story. No profit is being made from this fanfic.
A lot of people have been suggesting Egghead but I couldn't think up a story for him since his role of a super-intelligent criminal was taken over by my take of the Eraser. So I decided to redo my original Eraser chapter and make it Egghead. It's up right now but that meant I had to come up with another take on poor Leonard Fiasco. It was really tough but a stray thought hit me and this is what I came up with. Enjoy!
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Bring on the Badguys!
Part Sixteen:
The Eraser (Redux)
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Johnny Sabatino, the young son of Gotham's top Italian mobster carefully looked out the cabin window. The trees gave too much coverage if someone tried to sneak in. At least on the plus side it did make the cabin nigh impossible to spot from a distance. The only path was a narrow gravel road that a small car could barely fit on. It was made to be unsuspicious and difficult to reach and this was what was driving Johnny nuts.
"Where is the damn cleaner? He glanced behind at the dead body in a pool of blood. The longer it was here the more people would find out he just killed the head of the Irish mob. There were still four bullets left in his pistol but if anyone found out he did this…
HONK! HONK! A loud car horn sounded out while pulling up. Johnny was too shocked by the garish banana yellow mini-van pulling up to shoot. "Nnnnnggg! It took me forever to find this stupid place! Couldn't you have done this in Gotham, you loser?!"
The guy was tall and lanky, dressed in a tasteless pin-striped yellow suit and what appeared to be a pencil eraser tip as a helmet that covered his entire head. There were red plexi-glass eye holes so he could see out of to give the bizarre outfit a smidgeon of practicality. Yet this didn't stop him from banging his noggin when getting out of his van since his headdress was so unwieldy.
"Gah! Stupid tiny door! That dealer will rue the day he talked me into buying a mini-van! So swears the Eraser!" He struck a pose with his hands at his sides.
Johnny was trying to get his jaw to work. "You… are the cleaner I called?"
"Oh yeah, yeah. Like my slogan says: 'Don't take chances! Let the Eraser erase every clue from your crimes! Only 20% of job-before taxes! Write to Box 19611...General Delivery!'"
Bewildered, Sabatino was gripping his forehead. "I don't understand. My fixer told me you were the best in the business. He said you cleaned up the massacre at the Terminus Hotel in the time between the 911 call and the police arrival. What I've done here is way worse. I've just whacked Sean Riley, the Irish boss of Gotham, my friggin' father-in-law! This gets out, I'm dead!"
"You killed your wife's dad? Wow! So happy wife, happy life not in effect?"
Johnny fell to his knees in a nervous breakdown. "Both our dads had a dream of uniting the Irish and Italian mobs so they had me marry Boss Sean's little brat Peyton. I never gave a damn so I made moves into his territory. He found out so I had to kill him." He looked ready to cry.
"Okay, I better get to work before you crap yourself since those stains are always a pain to get out."
The mobster started rocking back and forth. "Pa can't protect me. They're going to kill me for this. I'm going to be locked in an ice box while Irish gangsters take bone-saws to my arms and ice picks to the eyes."
"Nothing new there. I've been paid to clean up hack and slash jobs like those before. Yours wouldn't be the first and it won't be the last." Eraser puffed out his chest. "But count your lucky stars that you got the best right here!"
Eraser opened up the van's trunk dramatically but the handle jammed. He toggled the handle a few times but still no go. "C'mon door, work with me!"
Sabatino finally curled into a fetal position as the lanky kook wearing a pencil mask started kicking his van while cursing the dealership with bloody vengeance. Johnny was shutting down. His wife Peyton was going to castrate him.
"Got it!" Eraser finally opened the trunk to show his numerous cleaner supplies and gear to the distressed mob prince. "Now to work!"
Johnny Sabatino could have sworn what happened next was the result of his nervous breakdown. The Eraser was moving super fast, leaving golden blurs while he ran all around the cabin as bloodstains, shell casings, and Sean Riley's body disappeared. Overturn furniture was set up right, curtains were hung back up, and the bed was made so the whole apartment had the feng shui of the Buddha.
The yellow blur finally stopped in the middle right in front of the stupefied Johnny with the cleaner looking around the cabin for anything out of the ordinary. "Bloodstains, wiped up. Furniture, set right. Bullets, gathered. Body, chopped to pieces and wrapped in packages to be disposed of later. Crime scene perfectly cleaned. Man, I'm good."
"Baw-wah-huh?"
"Super speed, cuts the time down so even a single man can do big jobs single handedly. Mind you, I was the best CSI examiner the FBI ever produced even before I got my powers. Can you believe they fired me just because I said I wanted to kill a guy by the water cooler? Sure, I did it 3 times a day everyday for nine months but still!"
Johnny slightly shook his head ever so slightly, eyes open wide, while his thought processes tried to restart. "Wah-weh-way..."
"YES! BRUCE WAYNE! MY NEMESIS!" Eraser cried out and threw his fist sky high. "Once we were college classmates where I was mocked for always needing an eraser to correct my mistake. Not because I was stupid, I just couldn't focus because I kept having revenge fantasies. But then Bruce Wayne insulted-nay-WOUNDED me by taking the love of my life, the beautiful and gracious Celia Smith, to the school's ice carnival! It haunts me to this very day!"
Was he insane? Sabatino didn't know. Just like he didn't know if that meant him or Eraser.
"I graduated with honors despite my heartache and even made it to the FBI. But I got canned because they thought talking about killing Bruce Wayne all the time was crazy. That psych evaluation where I ran around the room screaming 'Kill Wayne' didn't help. I was cleaning out my lab when a lightning bolt struck me and threw me next to the chemical rack. A few drops sprinkled on me and the next thing I could run mach one. Thus inspired by my old accursed school moniker, I became the Eraser!"
Eraser paused after his obvious prepared speech to ponder. "I still wonder what would have happened if I got drenched in all of the fluids instead of a little bit. I bet I could do crazy speeds then. It definitely would have made my quest to destroy Bruce Wayne a lot easier. Also then I could totally do cool stuff like run vibrate through walls or run in circles to make tornados."
"…and you do this? Clean up crime scenes?" Johnny's brain chugged back to normal by focusing on the norm for him: Power. "You can do so much and you're just a cleaner? Why?"
"Because Bruce Wayne runs a global multinational conglomerate. A gimmick super-power isn't going to be enough there. It'll take money, connections, and allies. All stuff I've been working on the last two years."
The mob prince climbed to his feet and eyed the Eraser like a bag of money. "You… you're in my gang now. With you, I'll be unstoppable. Forget the Riley Family, I could even kill the Whale himself and run Gotham."
"You couldn't afford me on a permanent basis." Eraser scoffed, trying to look like the offer was beneath him despite wearing a pencil top mask and sunflower yellow suit as everyday work clothes.
Johnny pulled out the same gun he pulled on his father-in-law and pointed it right between the Eraser's eyes. Or at least Sabatino hoped so due to the weird eye slots he saw through. "Don't tell me no. You just wiped up the blood of the last guy who did just that." He pushed the gun barrel right next to the Eraser's temple. "So the next words out of your mouth better be 'yes, Mr. Sabatino.'"
"Karate chop."
"Karate what?"
Sabatino never saw it coming. Eraser moved at full speed and karate chopped his employer's neck with one hand and grabbed the gun with the other. Johnny dropped dead, his head at an angle the living couldn't reach.
"That's what you get for trying to rub out… the Eraser!" Leonard proclaimed, the pun rolled out far too naturally that it had to have been a part of his normal speech. He moved an ottoman near the corpse so a CSI examiner would think he broke his neck on that when he tripped. But he was not yet done enacting his revenge on Sabatino.
"I'm raiding your fridge, loser! That's what you get for crossing me!" Eraser took all the best foodstuffs in the cabin.
It wasn't long before he was back in the van going back to the city. It sucked he wouldn't get paid for this but it wouldn't set him back too badly. Since Batman came to town, his skills have never been in demand more. The man was practically his business partner with the amount of work he was bringing in.
And with all this cash swelling Fiasco's bank account would make Bruce Wayne date to be erased so much sooner.
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End Part Sixteen…
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Imagine the Monarch from Venture Bros. voice every time Eraser speaks and you'll get the character immediately. I absolutely love that show and Monarch is probably my favorite character since he comes like a goober but only because he's so obsessed with Rusty Venture. Whenever Monarch sets his attention on anything else, the dude is frightfully dangerous. I wanted to do this with the Eraser. He's a doofus whenever he's obsessing about Bruce Wayne but every other time the guy is dangerously competent.
But I still had to make him a threat to Batman and his original gimmick of having a helmet that erases stuff wouldn't work. It wasn't until I realized he was an ex-CSI detective and wore yellow that he somewhat mirrored Barry Allen so I thought super speed. Naturally I can't have him be as fast as a Flash or else Batman would automatically lose so I scaled him down. Eraser's top speed is maybe 200 mph. He could dodge a bullet but not an entire clip.
It kind of amazes me how few super-powered enemies Batman actually has Post-Crisis. When I can name a dozen A-list Bat-villains who primarily use handguns then it's no wonder the Arkham games don't have too many memorable boss fights. Yet the Silver Age had Batman face lots of super-powered enemies and since I'm rebooting forgotten rogues into actual threats.
The Eraser's been on my list for a reboot for quite a while. I always wanted him to be an evil detective since the Silver Age Eraser was quite smart. Not only could he clean a crime scene so well that it would baffle Batman but he was even able to figure out the "mobster" meeting him was Bruce Wayne in disguise. It's so rare for a baddie to get a victory over the Bat, much less a goofy Silver Age one.
Since this is my last update of the year, I'll list my favorites of 2016.
Favorite new game: Suikoden 2. I got the first two Suikoden games as birthday gifts and I really liked them, making a point to get all 108 Stars of Destiny. I just got the third game and it already looks to be just as good. I can't believe Konami has let this fanchise be dead since the ps2. What the F'N hell is wrong with those knuckleheads?
Favorite new comic: JoJo's Bizarre Adventures. I picked up the hardcovers for Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency at a book sale and I'm really enjoying them. All I knew about JJBA was from my old copy of the Capcom fighting game but after reading these manga's, I can totally see why this series is so popular. On the US front, I'm loving a lot of the comics coming out of DC Rebirth like Harley Quinn, Suicide Squad, Teen Titans, and Superman.
Favorite new cartoon: The Loud House. After Legend of Korra ended and with TMNT on its way, I was ready to stop watching the Spongebob Channel but The Loud House is a last gasp of brilliance from a network that I thought lost all of it. Then along came this cartoon about Lincoln Loud and his ten crazy sisters and I instantly fell in love. I certainly hope it lasts because a lot of great shows have already been put on the chopping block like Adventure Time and Regular Show while other shows feel like it's just a matter of time (Steven Universe).
Favorite new anime: One-Punch Man and Gundam Thunderbolt are tied for this spot. OPM is amazing and I can't wait for the next season. Gundam Thunderbolt on the other hand shows the brutality of the One Year War in a way I never seen before plus the movie has such fantastic mirroring between the two armies and their soldiers that I could write a 10-page essay detailing all the subtle things this movie does right. Normally I get concern when a great movie gets an unnecessary sequel but as good as this anime was makes me think that I have nothing to be afraid of.
Favorite new novel: Star Wars Ahsoka by E. K. Johnston. I'm a big fan of Anakin's padawan (both of them) so it was nice to see what happened to her between Episode 3 and the Rebels cartoon. My biggest grip with the book was it seemed to have so many references to the new EU Disney is setting up that I didn't get half of them.
Favorite new TV show: DC Legends of Tomorrow. It's super-hero Dr. Who! Plus Captain Cold is awesome and I totally ship him and White Canary!
Favorite new musician: Wham! and not due to the tragic loss of George Michael. I got a chuckle out of the Pillar Men's names but while Joseph fought Wammu it occurred to me that I owned no CDs by Wham so I got some of their stuff and I really liked it.
Favorite new movie: Deadpool, which is a shock for a movie to come out in February though The Shallows is a close second. I honestly hope the X-Men movie rights don't revert back to Marvel because if they did than no way would Disney ever approve of an r-rated comic movie. Age of Ultron was just a carbon copy of the first Avengers movie just like Episode 7 and Ironman 3 was so farcical that it should have been listed as a comedy. Even Civil War played things too safe for my tastes. I'm quite happy with the X flicks by FOX and yes, X6 Apocalypse was a good movie and isn't just a rip-off of X2 like its critics say. That movie was awesome and I can't wait for X7 and Logan.
Happy New Year, everyone!