Vacations are perhaps the most necessary out of all the world's non-necessities. Vacations let you see new things and encounter new people (though you may well encounter new things while seeing new people, from living through the storm of flashbulbs that hover around the rich and famous to the rather insistent feeling of a sharp knife against your throat demonstrated by your new friend, the mugger). Vacations give you a chance to put all your worries aside and focus on new ones, like identifying the exact species of insectesque vermin that just sank its fangs into your calf. Vacations, in short, let you leave it all behind - and when that 'all' usually means running from police, running from angry ex-subordinates, or running from a vast array of caped and masked vigilante heroes, leaving it all behind is as vital as that last double-check of the wiring on your deathtraps.
On the other hand, actually getting there can be just as stressful as anything encountered in daily life. The best thing that could possibly happen on a trip is that everything goes perfectly, incidentally stranding you in a never-stopping wheeled box full of people for hours on end. Whoever said that getting there is half the fun must have been the type of person to really enjoy filling out their taxes.
The battered, half-destroyed green car had been replaced by a stolen red one, which was a lovely car in every respect but the tiny, cramped passenger area. Jackie tried to find a comfortable spot in the front seat as the little red car bounced gently along. They zipped past a sign proclaiming "Welcome to South Carolina" that promised Smiling Faces and Beautiful Places. She hoped it wasn't lying.
A nap and a few hours of thought had done a lot to improve Jackie's mood. True, there were two uninvited guests in the backseat, but that didn't mean that they were going to be there the whole time. There was no reason to think that the four of them had to stick together at all times. Besides, from the sound of their muffled conversations, they could use a little alone time as well. Myrtle Beach was a big place. Surely she could manage to fit her romantic vacation in somewhere.
Jackie closed her eyes and attempted to drift back off to sleep.
Eddie's beach house was everything that he had promised. He had promised a seaside view - and yes, the sea probably was down there somewhere forty flights below them, blocked from view by the cascade of greenery tangling downward from the upstairs neighbor's balcony. He had promised privacy - and yes, no one was in the building to bother them, possibly because it was decrepit and falling apart faster than someone being interrogated by Batman for the first time.
"Nice place," Sorrow said, eyebrow raised, as a spider investigated a long-dead chicken carcass disintegrating on the countertop.
"They're supposed to clean up before they leave!" Eddie said, exasperated. "I never should have agreed to time-share with Croc."
"What about the other people?" Jackie asked.
Eddie counted them off on his fingers. "Prison, Arkham, exiled through an interdimensional vortex, stabbed to death with a painting, Phantom Zone..." He shrugged. "A lot of them just don't have time to come down here. I haven't been here in years." Carefully prying a drawer open by the cleanest corner, he dug in it and extracted the local phone book. "Cleaners, cleaners..." he muttered. "Ah!"
With a quick phone call, the cleaners were on their way. "All right. They should be done in a few hours. In the meantime, we have somewhere else to go."
"Like a clothes store?" Sorrow said hopefully, critically eyeing her gray pajamas.
"Well, yes," Eddie said, "but there's somewhere we should go afterward."
"Where?" Jackie asked, most of her attention on a strange multilegged creature climbing up the wall.
"You'll see!" Eddie gave the group his best I-know-something-you-don't-know smile and gestured grandly toward the door.
Clothes shopping didn't take very long. Anyone who scratched out a career on the edges of Gotham's vast underworld tended to be more interested in staying alive rather than staying well-dressed. Some T-shirts, some jeans, and some jackets transformed the two tagalongs from Obvious Fugitive to Innocent Tourist. Jackie and Eddie also took the opportunity to switch into something a little less question-marked and a little less questionable.
As night began to fall, they clambered back into the car. Eddie, still tight-lipped about their destination, guided the car toward a huge spotlight stabbing into the sky. As they drew closer, they saw that the spotlight was directly on top of a large, round building that somewhat resembled a walled-in coliseum. Two stone torches stood guard around the entrance, which was surrounded by chattering would-be clubgoers in tiny skirts and shiny shirts. Above the door, green light glared into the darkness, spelling out two words.
"Club Kryptonite?" Jackie gasped.
"Isn't that a kind of...obvious spot to go hang out?" Sorrow asked from the back seat. A bit more of Jackie's resentment with the two interlopers faded away as Sorrow continued, "And aren't we supposed to be keeping a low profile?"
"Well, yes," Eddie agreed.
"And we're going to a place called Kryptonite? Why don't we just paint Hello, We're Supervillains on the back of the car?"
"We could," said Eddie affably. "No one would care, not even the cops. That's what's so great about this town!"
"And you want us to go dancing?" Jackie ventured. "I don't think we're really dressed for it."
"No, no. The dancing area's just in the front. The real action is right back here." He swung the car into a parking spot and bounded out, leaning back in to beckon enticingly at his three cohorts. "Come on, it'll be fun!"
And, surprisingly, it was. The bouncer guarding the back door had eyed them suspiciously as they approached. But after a token "Riddle me this!" from Eddie, the man had smiled with recognition and obsequiously showed them in to the lavish interior.
The private lounge had definitely had some loving attention paid to it by someone who was very fond of leather. Black leather couches and armchairs clustered in comfortable clumps underneath highly stylized paintings of great moments in history. (Since it was a supervillain bar, the great moments tended to be along the lines of destroyed cities and lightly shredded heroes.) An enormous bar framed with a mosaic of shattered obsidian stretched from wall to wall at the back of the room.
There were also people in the room. They might have been typical tourists in their jeans and sweatshirts. Then again, since the heads poking out of those outfits were either wildly colored, heavily scarred, or normally located on a selection of wanted posters, perhaps not.
A waitress in a crystalline green costume sashayed by. "Can I get anything for you?" she said huskily.
"Dinner," said Eddie decisively. "And a round of drinks for everyone!" The other villains in the room let out a scattered chorus of "Thanks, Ed," before returning to their conversations.
Eddie turned back to his companions. "We'll eat, we'll catch up with everyone, and then we'll go hit the town. Sound good?"
"Fine by me," Sorrow agreed.
"Sure," Jackie shrugged, outwardly nonchalant. Inside, however, she was trying her hardest not to have a massive panic attack in front of all the strange supervillains. Grief, who had a similar look of forcibly subdued terror on his face, nodded silently.
"Great. They serve the world's best crab here." And chattering like a tour guide, Eddie led them to their seats.
Gotham was a wonderful city to be a pedestrian in. No matter where you were in the city, you could be sure of finding a nearby restaurant or hotel or abandoned something-or-other to play Vigilante Hide-And-Seek in. And if the particular hidey-hole you were looking for was located across town, there were always a plethora of buses and subway trains and easily hijackable cars to get you where you needed to be.
Myrtle Beach was not quite so fortunate. And so, unlike any club in downtown Gotham, Club Kryptonite had a sizeable parking lot around the back. For the knowledgeable, the parking lot was obviously used exclusively by supervillains. Who else would drive a canary-yellow BMW with butter-yellow seats and yellow sidewalls on the tires? Who else but a villain would have glowing green tubes under their car that, instead of neon, were filled with a certain rare element from a certain exploded planet?
The foursome from Gotham picked their way through the dimly lit vehicles, trying to match them with the villains they'd met inside. The car with the blue icicle license plate frame had to be Captain Cold's, and the car with the little pawprint decals climbing the back windshield had to be Cheetah's.
Unfortunately, the car underneath the dark caped figure was theirs. They instinctively froze as the figure bounded off of the car at them, bursting out of the shadows to reveal -
A kid. A scrawny, fuzzy-chinned teenager with pimples peeking out from under his clearly homemade domino mask. The rest of his costume was equally as impressive. Straps covered with pouches looped limply over his bony, naked chest and wrapped snugly around his biking-short clad thighs. A cape that might have once been a red flannel bedsheet wrapped around his throat like a tiny, fraying python and dangled limply down his back to end somewhere around his knobby knees. The ensemble was completed with a pair of black combat boots laced tightly over bright red knee socks. "Stop right there!" he demanded in tones that may have been more threatening if his voice hadn't chosen that moment to break.
"We are stopped," pointed out Sorrow cautiously.
"Right. Uh...I hereby place you under Citizen's Arrest, which is legal under Act 53, section 17-13-20..."
Sorrow leaned close in to Eddie. "Who is this guy?" she asked. (It may be worth pointing out that all of the phrases one may have used in this situation were never uttered by the rogues' gallery. Who is this clown, this joker, this lunatic...these and many more were easy ways to invite bullets into your cranial cavity.)
Eddie studied the youth, who was gabbling on about their rights. "He must be new," Eddie whispered back.
"Hey! Pay attention!" the boy snapped. "You have to listen or it's not legal. Uh...where was I..."
"Who are you?" Eddie asked pleasantly.
"I am Grand Strand Man," the boy said, striking a triumphant pose that was only slightly ruined when his cape caught the wind and flipped up over his head. He wrestled it back into place and perched his hands heroically on his hips.
"Grandstand Man?" Eddie raised an eyebrow.
"Grand. Strand. Man," the boy enunciated carefully.
"Handstand Man?" Jackie asked, joining in the fun.
"GRAND. STRAND. It's the name for all the beaches for sixty miles..." He trailed off at the sight of a rising smirk in four pairs of eyes. "Forget it. Just...forget it. You have the right to...uh..."
"'You have the right to a pepperoni pizza?'" Sorrow suggested brightly.
"No!" he growled.
"Darn. I'm hungry," Jackie chimed in, almost smiling at Sorrow before she remembered that she was supposed to be mad at her for tagging along.
"You...oh, who cares. You're crazy, right? So it doesn't matter what you say, anyway," he shrugged, unzipping one of the massive number of pouches that festooned his torso like seeds on a strawberry.
Myrtle Beach in the winter is normally quite temperate. Nevertheless, the atmosphere directly surrounding them suddenly seemed to be as cold as Mr. Freeze's basement. "I am not crazy," the Riddler said with the kind of quiet menace that made Arkham orderlies instinctively reach for the riot gear.
"Sure you are," the boy said, distracted, fumbling a bundle of tangled handcuffs out of his pouch. "You're the Riddler, aren't you?"
The rogues darted startled looks at one another. "What makes you think he's the Riddler?" inquired Jackie.
The boy paused, holding the awkward metallic ball of restraints. "Don't play stupid with me," he snarled, throwing the permanently knotted cuffs to the ground. "That," he pointed at the club, "is Club Kryptonite, and you came out of the back door. The entrance to the villain room," he explained, exasperated, as the four of them looked at him with bland innocence stamped on their faces. "I saw you going in and I looked you up on WikiVillainy on my phone. You're the Riddler, and you're his girl that tried to kill Robin, and you're..." he paused. "Well, you're not Poison Ivy, and she's the only redhead I know of in Gotham," he said grumpily. "So you must be his henchgirl, only he wasn't on the wiki either!"
Sorrow, who was perfectly happy not to be as instantly recognizable as Eddie, kept her gloved hands firmly tucked into her windbreaker pockets. "And have you identified anyone else inside?" she asked sweetly.
"That big guy had to be King Snake," he said firmly.
"So why aren't you in there arresting him?" Grief asked the so-called hero who looked as if he'd been built out of matchsticks and hope.
"I...just...shut up!" the boy yelped. "I'm arresting you, right now, and there's nothing you can do about it!" He yanked a set of zip-tie cuffs from yet another pouch and fanned them out. "Line up!"
They eyed the boy up and down. He didn't appear to have any high-tech weaponry or magic gizmos. He certainly couldn't be planning to overpower them with his awesome muscles, because he didn't have any.
With a small, polite smile on his face, Eddie stepped forward. "Let's go," he said, beckoning the other three forward.
"Seriously?" the boy yelped disbelievingly. Then, remembering that he was the one in the cape, he gruffly barked "Yes. Hands out to be cuffed - get back here!" he wailed as they walked right past him and climbed into their car. "Where are you going?"
"You're the...ahem...superhero," Sorrow smirked as she slid into the back seat. "You figure it out."
"I'm not done with you!" he screamed as they pulled out of their spot. "I'll arrest you, you'll see! I'll do it!"
(to be continued)
Author's Note: Club Kryptonite is (was) a real place in Myrtle Beach. It's true!