The Joke's On Me

by LilLolaBlue

Meet the Harlequin, Batman’s ward & the Joker’s little girl. She likes booze, blues, cars, guns, & men. She wants to be a hero, but she’s too bad for her own good. Only one hero's villain enough to show her the ropes. Is the joke on the Comedian, at last?

6. Get Up, Stand Up

(Author's Note: This chapter is really long, I know, but if you have to, gentle readers, read it in two sittings. Suffice it to say that this is where things get interesting, and in the next chapter, well, that's where things get nuts)

Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine, but doesn't everybody know a guy who reminds them of Eddie Blake? Hmmm. Maybe I've just been associating with the wrong class of persons. ;)

VI: Get Up, Stand Up

First Day of 34th Annual Superhero Summit in Washington DC- Monday

New York City, 1974

I: Liv:

So, after all the dust cleared and everything was finally out in the open, Eddie was off to the Summit, and it was up to me now, to find out Paulie was really on our side of the cape, get the low-down on his plan, and make a plan of my own to trump his.

In other words, Eddie and maybe the Old Man and Bruce had already set Paulie up to make a patsy out of me, and if I didn't want to end up looking like some kind of two-bit schmuck, I had to make a patsy out of him.

Yeah, that was a real good deal.

If you wanna know the truth I was still mad at Eddie, not about that dumb fight the night before when he was drunk off his ass, but the more I thought about this trip he'd laid on me, the less I liked it.

After I said goodbye to him at Grossmann's, I went home for awhile, I had to drop the dog off, anyway.

I needed some time to think.

Bruce was already gone, so it was just me and Alfred and my dog, Baldur, and I was tired, I went right to bed, again. I figured I'd leave Baldur with Alfred, in case I had to do some woke me up a little later, he'd made lunch for me, and after I ate, I went and sat outside on the balcony outside my bedroom with my dog and talked it over with him.

Yeah, like you don't talk to your dog. Fuck you.

I was just talking to the dog for awhile, but then I got a big surprise when Dick came out to sit with me.

You could have knocked my ass over with a feather.

"Dick, what the fuck are you doing here?" I asked him.

"I'm boycotting the Summit this year, because I think Bruce's plan is really shitty. You may be a lot of things, Liv, but you're a damn good mask, and you don't need some kind of half-assed final exam to prove it. Besides, there may not be blood between us, but you're still my little sister, and as your big brother it's my job to stick with you, no matter what."

"Dick, I saved your life a coupla times, didn't I?"

"Sure. And you've saved mine."

My big brother, he can be a stuffed shirt and a real square john, but he's a good Joe, he really is.

Which made me feel better, at least I wasn't living under the same roof with two traitors.

"Then there sure as fuck is blood between us, big brother. If there's any part of this that ain't too dirty for you, I'll let you in on it."

"C'mon, Liv. I work with Bruce. His hands are only slightly less bloody than yours. Whatever it is, I can take it."

"Even if I have to snuff Paulie Blake?"

That knocked Dick for a loop.

"How the hell did Paulie Blake get into this?"

Now I know I can trust Dick, so I told him the whole story.

"Holy shit, what a mess!"

I could tell Dick was really upset, because, for him, he was cussing a blue streak.

"Liv, Paulie's just crazy. He's no supervillain. All that crap about fate dealing him his hand; the guy reads too many comic books and he thinks that's the way it is."

"But what if he is a bona fide supervillain?"

"Then we send him back to Arkham and let the doctors straighten him out. You can't just kill him."

"You're probably right about that, Dick."

"I'm right about Paulie. He's just doing what his Uncle tells him to do. So, do you have a plan?"

"Not really. Normally, I'd go to the Batcave and access Bruce's files and his mainframe, but that would give me away, because if you so much as move a piece of dust off of a file cabinet, Bruce knows about it. Makes me realise that I really need to get my shit together, and make the Funhouse more than just the room where I keep my guns and fix my cars."

"What about the computer in Dr. Manhattan's lab? Doesn't he have access to pretty much everything, including S.H.I.E.L.D files?"

"Yeah. He does. And I have the clearances to access it, but I can't do it right now. Eddie's gonna to talk to Nick Fury, and see if he can make Paulie's adventures as a supervillain officially go away. You know. Like that whole thing up in TO when me and Logan went after Slim. Now, if I'm using a federal computer to access Paulie's records at the same time Eddie is trying to get his mess cleaned up, that looks suspicious. The last thing I want to do is fuck Paulie over any more than he's already fucked himself."

"Well, why don't you go work on the car? And when you figure out what you're going to do, you know where I'll be." Dick suggested.

That was a good idea.

Doing some mechanic work always calms me down and helps me think.

I took the Wildcat over to Hollis' shop so that him and Joe could help me out. Now that I had to get all this shit done, I was going to have to finish up the car in a rush.

So there I was under the hood, working on something completely unrelated and thinking about how I was working my ass off, and pretty much every other mask in America was out there having a good time on Uncle Sam's nickel.

That's when it occurred to me that I was a fucking idiot.

If I wanted the goods on Paulie's plan, I didn't need a supercomputer.

I needed to use my big, jumped-up brain and all of those Sherlock Holmes-grade detective skills that Bruce has been drumming into my head since I was eleven.

Elementary, my dear readers.

Why not ask Paulie about his plans?

After all, who was one of his best buddyroos in the whole world?

Liv Napier.

And who was personally related to the President of the Society of Supervillains and could help him make his plot look real kosher?

Liv Napier.

And furthermore, who was his link between his Uncle Eddie and the Big Bad Harlequin, whose true identity remained unknown to him?

That's right, Liv Napier.

"Joe, what the fuck am I doing this monkey-ass shit for that you could finish up for me when I got bigger fish to fry?" I asked Joe.

He shrugged.

"That's what I've been thinking." He said.

"I gotta go get some shit together. Then I gotta to DC. You got my back?"

"Always."

Good old Joe Mac.

"I'll be back for the car on Friday. Tell Hollis I said thanks, in advance. And, as for you, Joe, after all this shit blows over, I'll hafta show ya how thankful I am to youse."

"It'll be ready, Liv." He promised.

I can always depend on Joe.

Now, as for getting around my lack of background information on who or what villains might be climbing into the pot with Paulie, with or without his personal knowledge and my inability to use Bruce's resources, I happen to know another millionaire superhero genius who really is the kind of lust-crazed, debonair, good-time playboy that Bruce pretends to be.

Fuck yeah, I'm talking about Tony Stark.

So, Tony has been trying to get me to at the very least quit my government job and come work for Stark Industries, and he's also hot to have me in the Avengers. He wants to get his mind into my mind and vice versa in the worst way, and yeah, extracurricular activity is on the agenda.

Someday I'll have to tell you about the time I ended up in the drunk tank of the lockup down in TJ one hazy weekend back in '71, and how I ran into Tony there and we busted out.

My point is that if anything even remotely resembling a supervillain sneezes anywhere in the known world, they get a box of Kleenex by messenger about ten minutes later with the complements of Stark Industries. And in New York, right in Tony's backyard, they're still sniffing when Iron Man shows up in person to hand them a tissue.

I went home and I called him, and I got his answering service, and I was on hold for a thousand years and then they patched me through to him on his goddamn plane to DC.

Actually, they patched me through to Pepper, and she handed the phone over to Tony after I commented that he was a little late and she said better late than never and we had a laugh.

"Good evening, Napalm. Let me guess. This is about that little family problem your partner is having."

"What little family problem?"

"The one that I got a call about earlier this morning from Nick Fury. He had fixed it, and I was supposed to make it look like nothing had been fixed. So, technically, I agree with you, completely. What family problem?"

"You're a devious son of a bitch, Tony. Who's flying? You or Rhodey?"

"Rhodey. I never talk and fly at the same time."

"Well, tell him to turn around. You can fly into DC a little later. I need you to come back to New York and meet me at Grossman's at midnight, so you and I can discuss the possibility of me doing some work for Stark Industries."

"What?! Napalm, don't tell me things like that unless you mean them! Just thinking about having your brilliant mind working for my brilliant mind gets me hard. Now, how the hell am I going to get the suit on?"

"Carefully? Look, I'm serious about this, Tony. I got troubles."

"I'm serious, too. I could hammer a one and a half inch nail through a two-by-four at this point. Rhodey, turn around. It's an emergency."

I could hear Rhodey saying that wasn't what he called an emergency.

"It is when you have to put on iron underwear. Napalm is capitulating. Well, at least I think she is. What's the catch, Napalm?"

"I'm not talking about anything permanent. Let's just say I'm thinking very seriously about taking you up on that offer to fund me for that genetic research project. But, you gotta do me a favour, first."

"I see. Now who's a devious son of a bitch?"

"C'mon, Tony, you know what a shark I am. So, you gonna show up?"

"Certainly I am. And I'm buying. In all seriousness, though, Napalm, this could get heavy. You know what I mean."

"Unfortunately I do." I said.

"Twilight of the Gods? Superman, the Comedian, and Captain America, and the Superhero Summit" Rolling Stone, April, 1974

Every year in Our Nation's Capital, or at least every year since this writer was a little boy, the sitting president calls a summit of all Our Nation's Superheroes.

It's part Red, White and Blue patriotic fashion show, and part diplomatic conference, and part flexing of American muscle in the face of the world, but it's all theatre.

Some people say it's a contest between who's on top, Superman and the Justice League or Captain America and the Avengers, and some will say its about whether Superman or Captain America are the real face of the USA, and some people say it's so that the X-Men can put a good face on mutantkind, and others just want to skip over all of that and get to the part where the Comedian and Wolverine, old army buddies from their days slaughtering Nazis with the Invaders, get drunk together and make something interesting happen that makes the tabloids.

I remember being a kid and watching the superheroes get off the planes at the airport on TV, and cheering for my favourites.

Superman, Batman, and the first Night Owl, from the Minutemen.

They were called the Minutemen, then, not the Watchmen.

My older sister, on the other hand, didn't seem impressed with those guys, she was always waiting for one man and one man only to appear.

The Comedian.

I wasn't old enough to understand how my sister could think a mere mortal was cooler than Superman, but times, and I have both changed.

Superman hasn't.

This year I was there at the airport when one of the planes from New York touched down and I saw everything they put on the TV and everything they don't.

I saw my boyhood hero, the All-American Man of Steel, ageless, forthright, friendly and stalwart, wading into the crowd to shake hands and sign autographs and talk to awestruck little boys.

I found myself enthusiastically shaking his hand, telling him I was from Rolling Stone and that I couldn't believe I was really meeting Superman.

"I read your magazine. I know your generation doesn't think so, but the Justice League cares about you, and your concerns, and what you want for America. As an organisation, we have always supported civil rights for blacks, and women's rights, and I personally support those causes. We're also concerned about your problems. Drug abuse and addiction isn't new, but it seems to be attacking you kids in a bigger way than it got to people my age us. It's not as if these this don't affect us, just because we're superheroes. I almost lost the Harlequin to alcoholism, after all. Do you think we could arrange an interview?" he asked me.

The man was genuinely concerned, and I was genuinely touched.

I babbled my hotel phone number and my room number and wrung his hand again, and he moved on.

Around then, the Comedian stepped off of the airplane.

He seems oddly ageless, too.

There's a scar on his face that wasn't there on our old black and white TV, and he's got some grey in his thick black hair, but the man looks as strong and formidable as ever, smirking with a cigar in his teeth in his stars and stripes, black leather and big guns, his brawny arms still crossed resolutely across his chest.

And, even though he's been branded everything from a rapist to an assassin to a reactionary, girls my sister's age when we sat around the teevee together, jaded, liberated, post-Vietnam teenyboppers who mob Robert Plant and Roger Daltrey and Mick Jagger still love him.

Their older sisters wet their poodle skirts over him, and he made their mothers bobby socks stand on end, and I watch as the crowd of thirty or so screaming, clamouring teenyboppers cream their hip-huggers for the Comedian as they press against the fence.

There are more of them than anybody else.

The police struggle vainly to keep them back.

The Comedian laughs from around his stogie.

Clearly, he doesn't want the cops to ruin his fun.

"That's okay, officers. Let 'em out of the pen. There's plenty of me to go around. I mean, what the fuck are they gonna do to me?" He yells.

The police release the girls in a clamouring stampede that envelops the Comedian in jostling, shoving, swearing, squealing, sweating young girls.

"Hello girls! Come and get me!" he encourages them

Thirty pairs of hands are grasping, pawing, touching, and he handles it like an old pro, signing posters and smacking asses and giving out none too chaste kisses, laughing and encouraging the girls, egging them on.

They've got their hot little hands all over him, and the Comedian has his big paws all over as many of them as he can, too.

Looks like everybody is having a dirty good time.

They're all rubbing up against him like slinky cats in summer heat and they all desperately want to fuck him.

You get the distinct feeling that he wouldn't mind fucking each and every one of them, either.

Most of them have felt up or gotten felt up and are departing with their precious autographs and cherished memories, but one girl, a red-haired girl of medium height, hands the Comedian a Magic Marker and unties the tie on her blouse.

It falls open and there is nothing underneath it.

The Comedian laughs loudly and lustily.

She does have some nice tits.

They're not that big, but they're still nice.

Perfectly formed.

"Very nice, honey. Which one do you want me to sign?" he chuckles.

I can scarcely believe it, and neither can the Comedian's fellow heroes, or the press, or the crowd.

I watch him cup the girl's right breast in his left hand, casually rubbing her nipple with his thumb as he used his right hand to autograph her flesh.

The girl moans, audibly; she is incredibly excited.

If I were the Comedian, I'd be pretty excited, myself.

He gives her back her pen, ties her top shut for her and says something to her, quietly, laughing as he puts his arm around her shoulders and points towards one of the waiting limousines with the hand that holds his smouldering cigar.

The girl nods, avidly and turns to go.

The Comedian gives her a smack on the ass as she walks to the limousine, then he returns to satisfying the remainder of his fans as a driver gets out to let her into the back.

One girl, a short, plump blonde with long curly hair and tits as big as her head, not so perfectly formed but unbelievably huge, stand on tiptoes and reaches as if to kiss him.

Abruptly, he draws her close to his black leather armoured chest.

She squeals, and he bends her way back and really lays one on her.

Like in the forties movies.

They both look happy as they pull apart.

He writes something down on the notebook she has and tells her something, and as she goes , he smacks her on the ass, too, a little harder than he smacked the last one, but it's only understandable, she has more ass to slap.

Probably setting up a little something for tomorrow, or the next day.

I look at the faces of the other heroes as they too view the spectacle as they interact with the crowds.

Batman gives the Comedian an odd look, and the Comedian shrugs.

He looks as though he has had to stop the Boy Wonder from confronting the Comedian.

Superman turns to Captain America; he's pointing at the Comedian.

Captain America is trying to get Superman to calm down, but nothing and no one, however, can stop an angry and outraged Superman from confronting the Comedian.

He stalks by me with his cape waving mythically in the breeze.

I can't hear what's he's saying to the Comedian, but he's clearly upset, pointing at the limo, and then the crowd, and pounding his fist into his hand.

The Comedian seems unmoved, he just stands there and absorbs the verbal assault with his usual smirk on his face, stogie in place.

When Superman is finished speaking, he takes the cigar out of his mouth, spreads his arms wide, and I hear him ask, "Well, Supes, whaddya want me to do?" in his thick Brooklyn accent.

Then he puts the cigar back in his mouth with one hand and tugs meaningfully at his belt buckle with the other, chuckling.

For a minute, I thought Superman was going to sock him.

Captain America comes over, too.

The Comedian and Wolverine served under Captain America in the Invaders during World War II, and it's been his unofficial job since 1941 to dissuade either of them from doing anything too crazy, wild and unforgivable.

At least in public.

Cap puts one arm around Superman and one around the Comedian; he's making the peace here.

The Comedian is ready to shake and forget about it; Superman takes his hand a bit grudgingly.

Captain America leads his old comrade at arms towards the waiting limos, which will take them and the other heroes in secret to whatever hotel in the area the Summit will be held at this year, where they, in the guise of their secret identies will stay under what won't be a completely false pretence.

But Superman stands there, implacable, outraged, his cape still flapping behind him in the wind.

All of the press has gone; and the crowd is dispersing.

But I am still there, watching.

He strides over to me, an all-too human look of anger and embarrassment and outrage on his famous face.

"I'm sorry." He says.

I am the only one left to apologise to.

I have no idea what I should say.

"Oh, that's okay. I mean, he's just a man, right, and, ah, boys will be boys." I awkwardly reply.

"No. Not really. It's not that I'm a prude. I am a married man, after all. But when we have this mask on, we're not just men. We're supposed to stand for something. Especially the Comedian. A lot of people think of him as a symbol for America. I wish that someday, that man would learn how to behave like one."

Batman comes over and puts his hand on Superman's shoulder.

"I think he is behaving like one, Kal-El. You're much better behaved than the average American man." he says.

I guess one pillar of the Justice League doesn't leave the other standing around with his cape blowing in the wind.

Superman introduces me and the magazine; he talks about our interview.

He bids me goodbye.

They get into the last limo and drive off, and it's time for me to go, too.

Batman's comment gets me to thinking, which one of these three iconic men in Red, White and Blue is truly the symbol of America?

They all are.

Superman is the personification of honest, decent, just plain folks America, the nation who treads on high moral ground with open arms to all of those who are honest and decent and hard-working, and God-fearing, who exports freedom and democracy to the world.

Captain America is everything we want our soldiers and our policemen to be. He's a fighter on the side of what's right and what's just; if there's blood on his hands, it's the blood of our evil enemies, the blood of the enemies of the free world, Nazis and Commies and other supervillains from the Good War, and the shinier part of the Cold War, where we're fighting for the survival of the Free World.

And the Comedian is their shadow.

He's the black ops spook, the Green Beret, the Delta Force Marine who goes in with black paint on his face and a dagger in his teeth to get his hands dirty. He's the personification of America the Boozyful, the world's big, brawny, brawling bad boy. On one hand we're a loveable rogue, the big dumb guy you want on your side in a fight, on the other, perhaps, a violent thug, a hair-trigger gunfighter capable of anything.

The Comedian is Vietnam and Watergate and MK-ULTRA and the CIA, but also James Bond and the Man With No Name and cars with machine gum mounts and lear jets and fast women who are deadly, but only after they fuck you senseless.

"You can't have Captain America and Superman without the Comedian. It's not that kind of world."

I hear that a lot.

It's probably true.

Does he mean well?

Do we mean well, as a nation?

Does it matter?

Is it fair for us to love the men in Red, White and Blue who embody everything we want to think of ourselves as a nation, and hate the man who's feet are in the mire, holding the pedestal they sit on upon his very broad and yet, unlike Cap and Supes, very human shoulders?

After all, the Comedian is the only one out of the three of them who is just a man.

Just a man.

A man like you and me.

Now, there it is, maybe that's what we don't want to face.

If I had a bunch of girls lusting after me, I'd want to let them do it.

If a girl wanted me to sign her tits, and another girl wanted me to kiss her, I sure as hell would feel up the first girl and kiss the second girl, and if I had a hotel suite I'd take them both back to it, and, as the Comedian is rumoured to do, get drunk, put on some Chuck Berry, smoke a little of what they used to call reefers when he was a young man, and fuck the shit out of both of them.

After all, I'm an American, and I'm just a man.

And so is he.

That is the scary part.

II: Liv

Tony was about ten minutes late and so was Paulie, with Rosie, so everything worked out.

He was acting more like himself, again, I figured Eddie must have told him about his shot at the big leagues.

Paulie did what I told him to, he sat in the corner while it appeared that Liv Napier and Tony Stark were having an important business meeting about Stark Industries offering her funding to do some research on the hypothesis she put forth in her graduate thesis regarding the non-existence of homo superiour, and the theory that mutants were ordinary homo sapiens whose mutations were an ordinary, natural, and necessary part of the ongoing process of natural selection and Darwinian evolution.

Iron Man stacked some papers in a businesslike fashion.

"And then he lined the other one up for tomorrow. No flies on Eddie. So, now that you know what he's doing, what are you doing tonight, and why isn't it me?"

I pretended to look at the papers, but meanwhile, my pussy' s jumping around in my pants like a fish out of water.

And it's not just the part about him being a good-looking son-of-a bitch. He's an even better-looking son-of-a-bitch than you might think he is. Tony's pictures don't do him justice. He's kind of a cross between Errol Flynn and Sean Connery.

Which means that if you're a woman and you're not dead or a lesbian, about two minutes after you meet Tony Stark, you're imagining what it would be like to be underneath him with your legs wrapped around his waist.

You know what they say about catching lightening in a bottle? That's Tony. The reason why energy cannot be created or destroyed because Tony's using all of it. His picture is in the dictionary next to the word dynamo. And he's not a geeky, drunken asshole. Sure, he drinks, but he's not some kind of gutterball alkie. And he's incandescently fucking brilliant, but he's no poindexter. Nor is Tony an asshole. At least not the kind of asshole they make him out to be in the scandal sheets. They never get that perfect blend of superior sarcasm and smooth charm that makes Tony the kind of asshole you'd want to call your friend.

He's got style in spades, and a rapier wit, and you want to talk about class?

I'm just some shanty Mick from Brooklyn, guys like Tony usually don't pay a lot of attention to chicks like me, even if I didn't have ten tattoos and about as many scars as your average Ranger. I'd be crazy to tell him to peddle it elsewhere, and I'm not that crazy.

In one of his more modest moments, Tony informed me that he was the God of Fuck, and I can't say I have a lot of arguments with that, although, honestly, my money's on Eddie.

But I'm telling you, Tony Stark and bad sex shouldn't even be in the same sentence.

You gotta be kidding me!

I mean, you need knee pads and elbow pads to get it on with Tony. You could never do it in a single bed. I had to fix the suspension in my car after I took him on in it. You ever see any of those old Errol Flynn swashbucklers? The way he swordfights? Effortlessly, with a grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye, knowing he's got you right where he wants you? That's what it's like to make it with Tony. You're this way, you're that way, you never knew your leg could do that, and yeah, sure, maybe he popped his cork, but that doesn't mean his dominos are going down any time soon. By the time Tony's out of bullets, you're out of breath, you can't remember your name, but your spine's back in place.

So here I am, trying to do business and Tony's talking to me about fucking.

And I'm always horny.

And I got it like, twice in the last month.

And the SOB knew it.

"You'll do anything to get me to come work for you, permanently, won't you? This is serious shit, Tony. I'm talking about my friend's life, here."

"Don't be so dramatic. It doesn't suit you. And what's a little fucking between friends? Well, between us, far too little fucking. Jesus, there's Paulie. His face looks like it's been through a machine. Although, even beat up you can see he looks just like Eddie. No wonder you decided to stop beating him and try to rape the poor boy. I'll bet you'd been waiting to have at him for years and you just couldn't resist a chance to screw him when he didn't know it was you."

"I did not!"

"Oh yes you did! Don't lie to me, Napalm. You can swear up and down to Eddie that you had no designs on Paulie and he'll believe it. Mostly, because he needs to, and I have no doubt you felt guilty about it about thirty seconds after you tried it on with Paulie, but I will never believe the thought didn't cross your mind. And besides, everybody knows you don't like to take no for an answer from a man. No double standards, Napalm. If I was fighting some sweet young thing and no one was around and I decided to slide her panties off while she was bleeding and terrified, that would be rape, and they would quite rightly send my ass to jail."

I didn't even want to think about Tony being right.

"All I did was make him an offer. I never touched the guy."

"Semantics, Napalm. Well, Paulie's never seemed like the supervillain type. That Magneto thing, I think it's just a fluke. But he could be cleverly hiding his true diabolical nature under the guise of an eccentric young budding comics and fantasy writer. It would be a good cover. Especically considering his family problems."

"Exactly. And you and I both know that considering how close he is to my partner, if he was going to go up against us, it could be damaging. Not just to me and Eddie. To all of us."

Iron Man was suddenly very serious.

"You'd have to…"

"Take him out?"

"Don't say it! I'll get on this right away. What exactly am I getting on?"

"I can get the goods on his plan. I need to know if he's in with any other villains, purposely or accidentally. Paulie's good at keeping his lips zipped, unless it's about some scheme he's got going down. Then he's bragging all over town, flappin' his fuckin' jaws to no end. If he does that, even if he is just letting Eddie make a patsy out of him, he could still be in big trouble, and I could go walking into a trap."

"When do you need it?"

"Wednesday."

"Plenty of time. I'll meet you at my place, here, in New York of Wednesday night. Just drop over any time and Jarvis will call me and tell me when you've got there."

Tony looked over at Paulie and Rosie's table and Paulie nodded at him, and then winced in pain.

"What the fuck did you have the poor guy drag his ass out of bed at this hour for?"

"I promised him I'd talk to you about helping him become a mask. Seeing as you know Iron Man, and own the Avengers Mansion. He wanted to be here to talk to you in person."

"You know who I see him working with? Dan. They'd go together like Batman and Robin."

"I hope you're right. Look, do you have to be in DC right away, Tony?"

"No. Why?"

"Because I don't want to be sober or alone, tonight. When I pass out, take me home and put me to bed, okay?"

"Napalm, I can't do that. You and I got reasonably sober, together and I'm not going to help you fall off the wagon when times get rough. Why don't you come home with me, tonight?"

"But Paulie…"

"You look almost as bad as he does. I'll go talk to Paulie. You go get us a cab."

I just wanted this day to be over, too.

I got a cab and then I did something weird.

Really weird.

I told the cabbie to wait for Mr. Stark and tell him I was okay, I just decided to go back to Eddie's place, but I was lying, because I didn't go back to Eddie's place.

I just wandered away.

***

"Where's the lady who hailed you?"

"Huh? Hey you really are Tony Stark, ain'tcha?"

"Yes. I am. Where is she?"

"She said she was goin' back around the corner to some guy's place, you go ahead. So, you people need a ride, or what?"

Tony got in the back of the cab, and Rosie sat beside him, and Paulie got in on the other side.

"Is it worth checking to see if she did got to Eddie's?" Tony asked Paulie.

"Naah. She ain't there. Don't worry about it. When Napalm's gotta think, she's gotta be mobile and alone. Prob'ly just went to Eddie's long enough to get her bike and took a long ride. She'll turn up." Paulie assured him.

***

I didn't even go back to Eddie's and get my bike.

I just walked the whole way across the Brooklyn Bridge and back again.

I'm sure you know what a Devil's deal is.

It's when you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

If the "good guys" were setting me up, then that meant that my fellow masks were setting Paulie up too, setting both of us up for some kind of confrontation. To what end I didn't know, and for what reason I couldn't figure out, either.

And there I was, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, praying that Tony was right and that Eddie and Bruce had decided to double cross Paulie and me.

Because the alternative was that Paulie Blake, my friend, my crazy goofy friend I've known since I was thirteen or so, who had "Live Freaky, Die Freaky" tattooed on his chest had gone over the wall and become a genuine supervillain, maybe even the newest member of the Society of Supervillains.

Then I thought about how Eddie would feel if that was the case.

Now you probably think a guy who could attempt to rape a woman he professes to love and shoot down a pregnant woman armed only with a broken bottle is capable of damn near anything and you would probably be right.

But one thing I knew Eddie couldn't handle would be killing his own nephew. If he had to do it, he would, but that would shatter him like a glass goblet. Eddie puts a lot of stock in the basic truth that he may be a mean motherfucker, but he's not the same kind of low-life criminal psycho motherfucker his father was.

It would still be true if Paulie did go bad and Eddie had to take him out, but Eddie wouldn't think so, anymore.

That meant only one thing.

If I found out that Paulie had switched sides, I was going to have to take him out, before he could do anything to hurt me, or my partner, or any of our colleagues.

I decided, as I approached what looked like an abandoned building down by the docks that if I had to do it I would make it look like it was an accident, for Eddie's sake and his family's sake , and they would never have to know Paulie went bad, or that it was me and not fate who sent my friend Paul Blake off into the Great Beyond.

I felt responsible, after all. If I could have faced up to it sooner that Paulie was the Jackal instead of getting drunk and getting into a brawl and almost getting my stupid ass killed, maybe I could have helped him.

Kept him out of Arkham, where they turned him.

Where maybe my own father turned him.

The sheer volume of double and triple-crosses this whole thing involves was beginning to make me feel sick in the soul.

But, if I had to take Paulie out, I was prepared to do that, because I know that when you're a mask, you have to do what you have to do without complaining, and take the consequences of your actions without shirking.

You gotta stand up.

But just because you gotta stand up, it doesn't mean you're made of stone.

I was tired, and my feet hurt and my legs hurt.

So tired I couldn't walk anymore.

I know the docks pretty well; me and Eddie go on patrol there, a lot, and I was pretty close to this pay phone down by this one joint where the wiseguys unload their swag from hijacked trucks, and make all their phone calls back to their bosses, and all.

Now, its okay with them if I make a call there, after all, my father's Crazy Jack Napier.

But I had this funny feeling about calling Alfred and asking him to come and get me.

He would have; Alfred's used to that kind of thing, and Dick probably would have come too, but that wasn't what the funny feeling was about.

It was the same reason I didn't just go back to Eddie's place and go to bed.

After what they'd done to me, neither place felt like home anymore.

I was still tired, though, bone-tired. All I wanted to do was rest, so I just sat down on the sidewalk, with my back against the wall of the building, just for a minute.

I was so goddamn tired, I didn't even realise that I had arrived at the first home I ever had.

Tuesday

II: Jack

Waking up in his own bed, in his own home, Jack Napier observed that it was certainly a lovely morning, even for a Tuesday.

Yes, God was in His Heaven, and all was Right with the World.

It had been only a few days since the Joker was paroled from Arkham Asylum, and he was still in the transition process; he'd only just presided in-person for the first time in more than a year at a meeting of the Society of Supervillains.

However, after nearly two years at Arkham with few conjugal visits, there were other social activities on his mind, and he had been considering a night on the town, but he just couldn't bring himself to disappoint Harley.

The Joker was a lot of things, but a freaky-deaky perv wasn't one of them. He played it pretty straight, which would have been a great disappointment to the innumerable legions of panting masochists and bondage babes that ate up the kinky superhero porno comics he drew, wrote, and mass-distributed himself, just for fun.

And profit.

Dr. Harleen Quinzell, a woman for whom psychiatry and Arkham Asylum were both too limiting , was a big fan, not so much of the sex comics, but more of his press cuttings, had been just one of his passing fancies. Someone with whom to while his time at Arkham away in mischief. Since the death of Liv's mother he hadn't bothered to have any women around for longer than a day or two, before sending them packing with cash, which kept them far quieter than a bullet.

In New York, with the Bat around, dead men told lots of tales.

But there was something about Harley Quinn, who had been all her life just waiting to burst out of the boring Dr. Quinzell that he found charming. Whether it was her latent psychosis that he had nurtured into full bloom, her cheerful devotion, her undying love, or perhaps her clever usage of a pipe wrench and a cheese grater to loosen a man's lips, he had gotten rather used to having her around.

He had been in Arkham, this time for eighteen long months, with only the odd conjugal visit with Harley he could arrange, and although he could have simply looked for one of those Joker comics hanging out of the purse or knapsack of some lovely young miss and showed her a less kinky than expected but nonetheless straight but not narrow good time, when he came home and found that Harley had cleaned the whole place and made an elaborate dinner with a special Bat-Symbol with an axe through it shaped cake and had even bought some new lingerie for the occasion, he didn't have the heart to let her down.

Indeed, he didn't let her down until the sun began to come up, when he despatched her to go up to the surface and buy him a newspaper.

That was around the time the day began to go downhill.

"Mistah J! Oh, Mistah, J, it's Miss Livvie! She's just lyin' in the street! I woke her up and she said she was too tired to move, but she's lyin' in the goddamn street!"

The Joker brought the Harlequin into the bunker where she had spent her childhood, and sat her on the parlour sofa.

She didn't wake up again when he picked her yup, and when he put her down on the couch, she just rolled over.

Harley wrung her hands and fretted.

"She don't smell like booze. And she's breathing okay."

"I think she's just exhausted. I'll put her to bed, and when she wakes up, I'll find out what's going on. Be a good girl, Harley, go get me my newspaper, then go and make some breakfast. Scoot."

Harley went off to do his bidding, and Jack carried his daughter down the winding hallways to her old bedroom.

He took off her clothes and put her to bed in her undershirt and boxers, and when he pulled the covers over her she rolled over and pulled them up further, snuggling into the pillow.

He sat on the end of the bed and patted her on the head, like he had when she was a child, and a troubled teenager.

"Don't worry, Livvie. Whatever's wrong, Daddy will fix it. And if somebody's harmed you, Daddy will fix him, too. Personally."

The Joker was a busy man, he had places to go and people to kill and plots to hatch, but his daughter came first and he decided to take the day off.

He sat down in his usual place at his table and Harley brought him his newspaper.

"Cancel all of my appointments for today, Harley, my dear. I have to take care of my daughter. And bring me the phone."

"Okay, Puddin'. Does that mean you want Joey to take care of that guy in the back room?"

"No. He'll keep for awahile. I mean all my other appointments. Hello, Erik? It's Jack. Did I wake you and Raven…I'm afraid we're going to have to re-schedule that meeting about the new project, and do you think you could have somebody take care of that record promoter, the one who's making trouble…yes I did have a lovely plan for him involving an open door, a bucket of cold oatmeal, a Slinky and a Ginsu knife, but my daughter needs me…no, nothing like the Troubles, she's just tired and overworked...yes, I think sending Victor would be excellent...tell him to write something on the wall in the blood…yes you had better tell him what to write, the man is such a fool, he'll scrawl the combination to his luggage…so hard to get good help in this business…thank you so much, Erik. I'll see you tomorrow, then. Toodles."

The Joker hung up the phone, snapped his fingers and Harley came to get it and put it back on the counter.

"How's your breakfast, Puddin'? Okay?"

"Fine. Now shoo. Go do what I told you to. Dishes first."

The Joker read his paper and ate his breakfast as Harley scampered about the kitchen, doing his bidding.

"You know, Harleykins, I'll bet it has to do with that silly plan of Eddie and the Bat's. I told Eddie to forget about it. I only hope she hasn't killed him. Either of them, actually."

"But Mistah J, Batman's your arch-enemy."

"I know. And my life would be terribly boring without him."

II: Liv

I felt pretty good while I was sleeping, warm and safe and happy and I realised why when I woke up to find the sun high in the sky and I realised I was back home.

I don't even know how I got there. I didn't plan to go to the docks.

I didn't go in through the ruined doors of the old warehouse, lifted up a section of floor and turn my key, make the an elevator pop up out of the ground and get in it by myself; I must have fallen asleep in the street and the old man or his crazy girlfriend found me and put me to bed.

It was the first time I'd ever done that sober, but not the first time by far.

The Joker's bunker is probably one of the most fearsome places in the world to most people, but to me its a place as safe and familiar as a nice bowl of Frosted Flakes with cold milk on it to sit and watch the Saturday morning cartoons with.

I got out of bed and walked down the old familiar hallway past the open door to the room not unlike the Batcave, the Command Room, to the place where I had sat with my Frosted Flakes and watched kiddie cartoons on TV when I was just a little girl.

Funny how so many people hate my Old Man and fear him, and so many people probably died in the soundproof rooms just down the hallway from this one, but I was just happy to be home again.

I almost ran into Harley, she was on her way to the bedroom, and she had cleaned and ironed my Levis and my Rolling Stones baseball shirt .

"I was just bringin' you your clothes, Miss Livvie." She told me.

I stood there in the hallway and got dressed while Harley burbled on, happily about the old man getting out of Arkham and me being there and all of us being like a happy family until I couldn't take it, anymore, and I gave her a few bucks that she'd washed in my pocket and asked her to go out and get me a half a dozen donuts, just so I could get some peace.

Since I'm her beloved "Puddin's" daughter, she was off like a shot.

I can only take Harley in small doses. The Old Man must really like her, because I don't know how else he can keep from wringing her neck.

Meanwhile, I sort of shambled into the TV room, which is where I located the Old Man, and I must have looked like ten pounds of shit shoved into a five pound sack, because he almost turned a little whiter and he sat me in a chair.

"Livvie? You look terrible! Not as bad as you did when I brought you down here, but terrible, nonetheless? What's the matter?"

"I am completely fucking screwed." I said.

"I'm sure you aren't. Shouldn't you be at that Superhero Thingy, being exalted above mere mortals? I thought this was your rilly big shoe? No tears, now. Come on, let's go in the living room, and we can sit down and have some coffee. Then you can tell Daddy what's wrong and we'll fix it."

I started to feel better almost immediately.

Sometimes, there's no substitute for family, you know?

"I'm between a rock and a hard place, Daddy. I've been double-crossed and triple-crossed so many times I feel like a chick in a porno movie. I don't know who's fuckin' me, an' I can't tell which end is up. Are you in on this plot?"

The Old Man laughed at my joke, and then he got serious.

Well, serious for him.

"Up to my eyeballs, Livvie. The whole damn silly thing was my idea. But, before you commit patricide, hear me out! I'm afraid it's mutated beyond what I originally had planned. I don't think you need a test. I thought you needed your own arch-nemesis. But in that Greenie has turned out to be Paulie, well, the whole thing's gone to Hell. All my plans go to Hell for the same reason. Too complicated. And it started out so simply. I wanted to set up a nice little friend for you to play with, and I was just trying to lure an inconvenient fellow supervillain into a trap. Let me explain. When I first met Paulie, I was struck by how much he looked like our Eddie. So much so that there had to be some relation. And when Oswald and I had to practically knock him out to keep him from throttling Edgar…Jacobi, I mean, Moloch…I was sure of it. Now Edgar is really a two-bit excuse for a supervillain and he's becoming tiresome. No one in the Society is fond of him; he's so…second-rate. Fooling around with drugs and hookers like some kind of common street thug. Now if he was going to be paroled on schedule, I know his ways, he would have crashed the little party that your friends are having Greenie throw for you, and I was counting on you not having that little espirt-de-corps that heroes and their arch-nemesis have and simply getting rid of him for me, instead of putting him away like Eddie always does. But then I said to myself, Jack, you can't ask Livvie to do away with the man for you. Why should she do your dirty work? So then I changed my plan. You see, I can't just kill him. Where's the fun in that? And how would it look to the rest of the Society if I was to start simply shooting members I didn't like, as if we were the Mafia? True, things were easier in the old days, when I used to work with the Italians, before my little impromptu makeover, but still, they'd ask me to step down as chairman, for doing a thing like that. There has to be some kind of diabolical plan, or it's not in comportment with our high standards of villainy, which I personally set for everyone. But, if you make Edgar look very bad in the press, if you make a real joke out of him, then, well, I have an excuse to toss him out of the Society, in which case I can just kill him, because then he would be nobody. But, as Edgar had been turned down for parole, and I was approved, that plan's kaput. Then again, it would be terrible for poor Eddie if I deprived him of his arch-nemesis. But I would have liked to have at least had him out of the Society. That was my plan, at least."

I had to go over it a few times in my mind, and like most of the Old Man's plots, it made a sense if you used Alice In Wonderland logic.

"So where does Eddie fit into all this? And my stepfather?"

"Bats? Oh, that's easy. He's such a worry-wart. He thinks you need a test. Now, Eddie and I noticed you seemed awfully depressed after your meeting with Greenie and we thought it was just because you found and lost your arch-enemy so quickly. Now that we know that Greenie is Paulie and Paulie is Greenie, everything has become incredibly complicated. Eddie has led Paulie to think he's testing the Harlequin, which is you, but Paulie doesn't know that, when, really, you're testing Paulie. So, actually neither Eddie or I are double-crossing you, unless you consider it a double-cross that Eddie's making you double-cross Paulie, which I think he's only doing to see if Paulie has the balls to be a mask, which I don't think he does. Speaking of which, why are you thinking about whacking Paulie out? I think that would only complicate things more?"

"Because I'm worried he's a real, genuine supervillain." I answered.

The Old Man's lip trembled, and his eyebrow twitched, and then he couldn't help it any more, he just started to laugh.

Hysterically.

"Paulie? Paulie, a real supervillain? Don't go killing Paulie on that account! He's no villain. I only invited him into the society as part of my plan, and he only accepted because I lied to him and told him he could be a supervillain without harming anybody. The only reason he ended up on my side of the cape at all is his own stupidity, which, I suppose, his encounter with you is going to rectify."

I felt a whole lot of things.

The first thing was sweet, flooding relief that I probably wasn't going to have to kill my friend, who was my partner's nephew.

The second was hurt.

Real, genuine hurt.

And let me tell you, when somebody like me feels hurt, they don't cry, they get mad.

Real mad.

Incandescently psychotically full of wild uncontrollable fucking ultraviolent rage.

It had been building up in me for a couple of days, but hearing the whole scheme put into words, that really made me boil over with fury.

I jumped up and started pacing the room and raving.

"Uh-oh." The Old Man said.

"How could they do this to me, Daddy? My step-father! My partner! And to Paulie, who's as much a supervillain as Mickey Mouse is? How can they be so fuckin' cruel to both of us?" I demanded.

The Old Man did his best to frown.

"Personally, I think Eddie just wants to set you on his nephew and teach him a lesson he'll never forget in how he never, ever wants to be a supervillain. Somebody has to teach the kid a lesson, and as you've said, you're his friend. Your fellow heroes know that, and they know you won't really harm him. Just scare some sense into him. And Bats is such an o ld lady when it comes to you. He's seen you at your worst so often he needs extra assurances that you are really going to be alright. Honestly, I wouldn't mind them either. You forget, Livvie, Daddy knows where all your bodies are buried. Literally, and figuratively. It's been embarrassing in the past for both of us. Hello, Bats? It's Joker. Livvie's turned up here. Penguin found her lying in the street in front of the building and brought her in. No, she's just drunk. And it was only a flesh wound. Another binge, I think. I'll take care of her and send her home as soon as I can. Toodles. Very embarrassing, indeed."

The Old Man had a point, there.

"So, what should I do, Daddy?"

"For one thing, I absolutely forbid you to murder most of the founding members of the Watchmen, the Avengers and the Justice League. You'll put me and my associates out of business. Play their silly little game and beat them all at it. Do them one better and show them that my little girl is nobody's fool."

"Without killing anybody? Goddamn it, I wanna kill somebody for doin' this to me!"

The Joker waved his hand, dismissively.

"Anybody can kill someone. I was nine the first time I killed someone, and you were eleven. A child can do it. Or a dumb cop or a dumb hood. Not anyone can be a mask, though, on either side of the cape. No, my dear, you have to do something big. Something dramatic. Flashy. Devious. Unforgettable! Something I would do, except, the good guys version."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Well, I know that Paulie's going to resurrect some old Flash Gordon kind of plot to lure you, and I know you have to come up with something better than that. I have faith in you. Now, it just so happens I know all about Paulie's hideout…because I used to own it. You see, Livvie, I planned for this contingency. You don't plan to fail, my dear, you fail to plan. Harley! Bring me those warehouse plans! Harley? Where the hell did that girl go?"

"I sent her to go get me some donuts. If she didn't stop chirping at me, I was going to break her face."

"I know the feeling. Nevermind, I'll get them myself."

III: Joe Mac

Joe McClatchey, otherwise known as Joe Mac had a pretty ordinary New York kind of life, and had Liv Napier not fallen into it when they were both seven years old it would have stayed that way.

His family still lived in Brooklyn and his father owned Trivelino Mac's, named for Liv, as it was their gift from her father for having taken care of Liv for four years.

Joe Mac lived in an apartment on the upper floor of the brownstone one Nite Owl owned in Manhattan, and worked for another Nite Owl at his garage, which was in walking distance.

Hollis Mason was pretty much the go-to mechanic for every mask in New York, and Joe was his heir apparent.

Liv had set him up with Hollis, as well.

Having grown up poor in East New York, Joe was a practical man, and he never mistook what he had with Liv for romantic love, even though she was the first girl he ever slept with, a continuing situation.

But he did love her; Liv was his best friend in the whole world and he had loved her the longest. Before she met Logan who was loyal and true, and Tony who was always trying to lure her and ending up with an empty trap, and Eddie whose fierce midnight in a coal mine black heart muttered her name with its every beat, there was Joe Mac, her best friend since she was just a little girl.

And Joe also looked out for her; he was Liv's eyes and ears on the street.

Joe was the strong, silent type.

He was a tall, lanky man with strawberry-blond hair and a dark blond moustache and sideburns, with a reputation of being quiet and stalwart. He knew how to keep his eyes open and his mouth shut, and he listened carefully at all times, to anything he heard which might affect any of the masks he knew, especially Liv.

Like Benny Grossmann, Joe Mac knew where all the bodies were buried, but, unlike Benny, he never breathed a word about it.

He was surprised when he came in at ten the day the Superhero Summit was set to begin in DC that Liv was already there, under the hood of the Wildcat in her coveralls that said "Napalm" on them.

Joe Mac never called her Napalm, like Eddie, he didn't like it.

It made him suspicious that she wasn't at the summit; she was supposed to be inducted into the Justice League as a full member in the second week. SO what was she doing working on the car, doing minor shit after it was already ready to go.

Then there was the way Crazy Paulie had been acting all year.

Some nut had been jumping around Joe Mac's old neighbourhood in Bensonhurst in a second-rate green mask costume and was jumping around his new neighbourhood in same, until Liv and Eddie put him away.

Only a month later he was back on the street in a fancy new costume, which meant that when he went upstate to Arkham he got some of the big boys to put money behind his crazy ass.

His crazy ass that had disappeared and reappeared around the same time as Crazy Paulie returned from supposedly working for wages in the snow with his face rearranged for him.

Joe Mac didn't like it.

He waited for Paulie Tuesday night, he knew the corner where Paulie went down to get the A-Train to go back to Bensonhurst and Joe jumped him and pinned him to the wall.

Joe Mac was as tall as Paulie, but not as heavily built; but he was wiry and strong and spent the time working that Paulie spent lying on his ass; he was sure he could take him.

"Joe Mac? What the fuck?" Paulie asked.

For his part, he'd already had his ass beat by his uncle this week, and he was just beginning to feel like the pain might go away, someday, so he didn't want to get into it with his friend.

Joe slammed Paulie against the wall, again.

"Shut the fuck up, Paulie! I know what you been doing and who you are and I hate to do it because we're friends, but I'm gonna stop you before you do what you're gonna do to Liv."

"What? Jesus, Joe, look at me, I'm already all beat to hell! My Uncle Eddie got there before you did. Look man, it's a put up job. I'm supposed to set the Harlequin up. The Bat and The Comedian are behind it. It's like a training thing, and if I pull it off, I might get to do this mask trip for real. I swear, Joe, I'm on the level, man. And Napalm has nothing to do with it. I'm not bein' a pussy, Joe, but I'm hurtin' man. Look at my face. Gimme a break, huh?"

He didn't know that Liv was the Harlequin.

Joe almost laughed.

"Oh yeah? How do I know you're not bullshitting me, man?"

"Just let me live long enough to get to that pay phone. C'mon Joe Mac, you know me. You know I ain't the villain type. Cut me a little slack."

The two young men walked across the street and Paulie got on the phone.

"I had to page him."

"We'll wait."

"Joe—"

"Don't talk to me, Paulie. What the fuck were you thinking?"

"The wrong shit."

The phone began to ring and Joe answered it.

"What?"

"Eddie? It's Joe Mac. Paulie just told me a story about something really stupid he's done and I wanted to know if it was true."

"It's true. Paulie's on the up and up. You got eyes and ears for this, Joe?" the Comedian asked.

"Yeah."

"For me and the kid?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Watch him. Watch her, too. I'm goin."

"Okay Eddie. Bye."

Joe hung up.

"Okay Paulie. You and me are going to my Dad's joint, and you are gonna tell me what kind of shit is going down here? You dig?"

"You know who the Comedian is?"

"I know who everybody is, Paulie."

"It's a long story, Joe."

"I got time."

"Yeah, but where's your end on this?"

Think fast, Joe.

He doesn't know that Liv and the Harlequin are the same person and it looks like Bruce and Eddie want to keep it that way.

"You're messin around with Eddie's partner, and Eddie is Liv's old man. That's close enough to her for me."

"Okay, Joe. I can't tell youse my plan, but I'll let you in on what's goin on."

"Cool. C'mon, we'll take the truck from the garage. Bein on the subway this time of the night ain't safe even for the Green Jackal. Man, that s one serious fuckin' pounding you took. Didja pass out?"

"Fuck no."

"So, Eddie got that mad at you, huh?"

"Not really. He got mad at the Green Jackal. I didn't tell him it was me. I tried to disguise my voice and kinda sound like Clint Eastwood in those Man With No Name movies, but when he really started pounding me and I was yellin' at him if he wanted me to roll over he'd hafta kill me first, I was hurtin' too bad to keep up the act."

Joe Mac and Crazy Paulie got in the truck, and Paulie took a bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol out of his pocket, and took two.

"Paulie, you really are fuckin' crazy, you know that?"

"Runs in the family, Joe."

Wednesday

II: Liv

When I woke up in my old bedroom at the Joker's bunker, I woke up choking on a scream, that's how mad I was.

I thought maybe I might sleep it off a little, but I went to bed mad, tossed and turned for half the night, got a few hours of nightmares in and woke up furious.

This was supposed to be my time, yunno? After eight years of hearing from all directions that I was never gonna make it as a mask, next week I was being inducted into the Justice League at the Superhero Summit, in front of almost every mask in America.

I had planned to finish up my supercar and show it off to the press, sit on the hood in my Fuck Me, Daddy costume with women's underwear on, smile and be famous and have everybody kiss my ass for me, for once, then go up to the suite that was provided to us under the aegis of the good old US of A, and have a good time with Eddie peeling the whole works off me.

Instead I had this Green Jackal shit to deal with, and I didn't know who I was madder at.

Paulie for becoming a half-assed supervillain and making me and Eddie look like fucking chumps, Eddie and Bruce for setting up this little scam for me to fight Greenie, or Eddie for thinking I betrayed him by getting into some weird costume party good cop, bad cop, sex thing with Paulie, just because Paulie was my age and he looked like him.

I mean, what the fuck did Eddie really think of me that he figured I'd see Paulie in a pair of tights and go, oh boy, it's my friend Paulie, and he's beat up too bad to say no and he doesn't even know its me, tee-hee, he looks just like Eddie, lemme get some of that? Like it would never occur to me that fucking Eddie's nephew who was like a son to him and also a supervillain would be professionally embarrassing and personally devastating?

Like I really was some kind of two-bit, no good, drunken shanty Irish whore who would do just about anything for a dirty cheap thrill.

Maybe Tony was right. Maybe the thought did cross my mind for about three seconds, but, Jesus, a lot of thoughts cross a person's minds when crazy shit happens that they'd never do anything about, and tearing off the mask of some supervillain and thinking it might just be your friend who looks like your partner who's also your ol' man under it is some pretty fucking crazy shit.

As for Bruce, he never wanted to give me the goddamn benefit of the doubt, not since I was 16 years old. I'm his arch-enemy's daughter. Yeah, I look more like my Ma than the Old Man, but Jack Napier's my father. Who the fuck am I gonna look like? The milkman? Every time Bruce looks at me, he sees the Joker. He can't help that, sure, but I can't help it, either, can I?

Like that time down in TJ. Okay, so nobody tried to kill me, or Tony Stark, we were just smashed out of our gourds, but Bruce never even gave it a thought that somebody might have been after us and I wasn't just drunk. He always assumes the worst about me. He looks at me and he sees my father, he can't help himself, I guess. Still, all these years and all this training and after he's seen how far I've come and how hard I worked to get here, he wants me to take a final exam in being a mask because he's afraid that blood is blood and blood rules out and that if he lets me into his precious Justice League and I fuck up, it's on his head.

You know, he's your dog, Charlie Brown.

And you want to know who trusts me, implicitly, who's confident in my abilities and who believes in me, wholeheartedly?

My father.

The Bad Guy.

The Absolute Dictator of the Society of Bad Guys.

The Old Man planned the whole thing to set me up with my own arch-nemesis and remove Moloch.

Not only didn't he doubt my abilities, he took it for granted that I could snuff the guy.

I'll bet I could get into the Society of Supervillains in about a minute, with no bullshit at all.

My fucking enemies fear me, sure, but they respect me, too.

How come I can't get the same respect from my friends?

From my step-father?

From my partner?

I thought about driving up to Arkham and giving Eddie's arch-nemesis two in the head, just to fuck with him.

I mean, how do you really think I felt? My partner and my stepfather, both who have professed to love me, one thinks I'm some thoughtless cock-hungry whore and the other thinks I'm a witless, irresponsible drunken thug and a congenital psychopath.

Fucking great, you know?

The good part of the day was that Old Man had a lot of information for me, good information. He owns the warehouse Paulie's operating out of, so I got plans, keys, codes, a map, the works.

At least I know somebody has my back in all this.

And even though it was all his fault, the crazy son of a bitch, I felt bad for Paulie. Like the Old Man said, he was everybody's fucking patsy in this scheme, and here I was, having to make a patsy out of him, as well.

I was so goddam mad I considered giving him his chance to ball the Harlequin. If I left the mask on, he'd never know it was me. Just to spite those fucks, I should make my whole plan consist of getting incredibly fucking drunk and making a good show of it, and just fuck the shit outa good old Paulie, right in front of everybody.

He oughta get something out of it, the poor bastard.

But then when he found out the Harlequin was me, he'd be guilty as hell and we probably wouldn't be able to be friends, anymore, and I'd just be convincing Eddie and Bruce I was everything they thought I was, so I figured that was no good.

So here I was in a situation I couldn't fight my way out of or fuck my way out of, which is usually what I do when I'm mad, but this time I had to calm myself down and think my way out of it.

Which was hard to do, because, if you want to know the truth, I had this feeling like I was unstuck in time.

You know the feeling.

When something happens that's so weird and radical and completely fucked up that it just knocks you right out of the normal orbit of your life. All those places you went to in your mind that were safe, all the things you thought of to make yourself able to not hide under your bed with a bottle of whiskey all day, every day, they're all gone.

Stripped away.

And places all around you that you've seen every day of your life look like they might as well be from another planet, and you feel like you are another planet, alone and naked in vacuum of space, spinning into the cold stars.

I was walking again, this time to the nearest subway station.

People always look at me on the subway like I'm some kind of criminal, which is pretty funny, considering.

I didn't really know where I was going, I just needed to ride around and get my head together.

I was only on the train a few minutes when I saw Paulie get on.

The bandages were off his face, and the swelling had gone down, so he didn't look like the Mummy, anymore, he had just the piece of tape on his nose, but the stitches were still in, so he'd moved on to looking like Frankenstein.

Like Eddie as Frankenstein. Now that he'd had to shave off his whole beard because of the stitches in his chin, he looked like Eddie in a long wig.

Paulie saw me sitting there, and I guess I must have looked as bad as I felt, because there he was, his face all banged up and tape on his ribs and today being the first day he could open his left eye and he was worried about me.

"Napalm, you look like hell! Are you alright? Whatever it is, you can tell me. Trust me. You know I'll keep my mouth shut."

That's when it his me like a ton of bricks.

Yeah, I could get Paulie to level with me, if I levelled with him, and, why shouldn't I level with Paulie?

Paulie had learned everything he knew the same place I learned a lot of what I know, at Eddie's knee.

And I had known Paulie longer than I had not known him.

I could trust Paulie.

He would keep his mouth shut.

Bruce wanted me to use my brains, my devious detective-type brains to work this out, and not my fists or my guns, that was what I was being tested on.

Okay, Bats, you want it?

You fuckin' got it, man.

"Paulie, you don't know it yet, but you and I have been, by my count, triple-crossed."

"We have? By who?"

"Everybody. Let's get off at the next stop, we gotta get on a different train and get back to my place. You and me, we gotta talk."

For the double cross on him, I was fine with being under my stepfather's roof, just fine.

III: Paulie

Paulie was pretty quiet on the two trains they had to take to get to Long Island, and he just sat on a bench with his hands jammed into his pockets while Napalm went to the pay phone to call Alfred and ask him to pick them up.

It all went back to that terrible day he went off half-cocked and fucked up everybody's life, including his.

Paulie used to relive it, almost every night in his bed at Arkham, and since he got out of the joint it was bothering him even more.

He was fighting with the Harlequin, and he lost Rosie's knife, and she had him pinned, and punched him in the face and ripped his mask off, and then…

Then she stopped.

And he rolled her over and pinned her, to try and get away, and then she made that mocking pass at him, and knocked him out.

But when she saw his face, she stopped.

And when he came to, his mask was on.

He thought he'd put it on, but he couldn't remember.

But maybe she had.

Why the fuck would the Harlequin put his mask back on?

Unless, for some reason, she didn't want the Comedian to know who he was.

Or she didn't want to face it, herself.

Napalm came back and sat beside him.

"Alfred should be here in a few minutes. Now you look upset. What's the matter?"

"I'm afraid of what you're gonna tell me."

"You should be, Paulie. You and me, we are in some serious shit. But don't worry. I'm a fuckin' super-genius, right? I can think our way outa this, an' I still got some friends in high places and aces up my sleeve. You just gotta be cool. Ya dig?"

Paulie nodded.

He fished for a cigarette, and found he was out.

Napalm offered him one of hers.

***

They sat around in the living room of Napalm's "wing" of the mansion, and watched a little TV and Napalm let him have one of Logan's expensive imported German beers that he kept in her fridge and they sat there and watched a re-run of an old Beverly Hillbillies episode, and then, when it was over, she turned off the TV.

"Okay, Paulie, here it is. I'm gonna give it to ya straight. You know how Eddie's the Comedian, right?"

Paulie nodded.

"Yeah, well, I'm the Harlequin."

Did she say that?

Yes.

She did.

"Paulie?"

"I thought you might be, but I didn't want to believe it."

"Yeah. That's how I felt about you being the Green Jackal."

"Jesus, now I'm glad I didn't ball you. That would have made everything a lot worse."

"You don't have a thing for me now, do you, Paulie?"

"No. Jesus, you're my uncle's old lady, no, hell no! So why are you telling me this? Wait! Wait a fucking second! If you're the goddamn Harlequin, and you know all about my plan for the Harlequin, then why the fuck do you need a test from…unless…What the fuck is Uncle Eddie up to? What is this, some kind of double cross? What's he tryna do, make a fucking patsy outa both of us?"

Paulie was mad, and the more he thought about it, the madder he got.

"That's what I said. It's a real cosy plan him and, uh, Batman have cooked up. One more test for the Joker's little girl before the JLA deigns to accept her, and let's try Paulie to see if he has what it takes to be a mask. They're trying to play us off each other. Make a fuckin' horse's ass outa both of us, in fronta everybody in the whole mask world. You think you gotta put on this supervillian act to test the Harlequin, and I gotta find a way to test you all by myself and prove I'm worthy. Worthy, my rosy red Irish ass! Yeah, well, I gotta good mind to join the goddam Avengers, instead."

"But they didn't count on us pullin' a double cross on them, right?"

"Right. They never figured we'd get in on this, together. So, I say, let's give 'em the ol' rilly big shoe. Show 'em that we both got what it takes and leave 'em with egg on their faces."

"So, what do you want me to do?"

"Just what you were doin'. Don't let on you know nothin' about nothin'. Let 'em think I'm a dumb whore who thinks with her pussy and her fists and that you're some kinda overblown comic book fan. That works to out advantage. Now, tell me, you got your shit together you need for your plan?"

"How do you know what my plan is?"

"I talked to my father."

"Whaddya think?"

"What happened, Paulie? Why not tie 'em to the train tracks and curl your moustache as the 6:10 to Long Island bears down?"

"What can I say? I gotta flair for the dramatic. That's pretty much all I got, though."

"Yeah, I thought so. Don't worry. See, nobody knows that you know I'm the Harlequin, and who else would you go to for help but your good buddy Napalm, who knows a lot of masks, and works in a lab? I got a mask friend of mine involved in this already, between the two of us, comin' up with a heated mixing tank, a shitload of dry ice, a lift chair on a pulley system and a guy to install it at your factory is child's play. And I know two masks, right now; I can get to be your superhereoes in peril."

Paulie was beginning to catch on.

"Oh, I get it! You, as Napalm, fix me up with them, and I lay it on thick, you gotta help me, I gotta prove myself to the Harlequin, I'm so hot for her, oh my God, I'm just some dumb punk who's led around by his dick. Right?"

"Riiight. And meanwhile, you and me and Rosie and Skinny, we plan this thing. I mean like a fucking play. Are they at the warehouse?"

"They will be, tonight."

"Right. We'll write the script tonight, and tomorrow, after I get my source to put everything in place, we rehearse. Then, on Friday, the curtain goes up on our little show. And the surprise ending."

"What surprise ending?"

Napalm smiled her Jack Napier smile.

She told him.

Like her father had said, something dramatic.

Flashy.

Devious.

Unforgettable.

Paulie's face went slack with shock for just a minute and then he smiled a real Eddie Blake kind of grin.

"Oh man, that is evil! Fuckin' diabolical!"

"So, are you in?"

"Fuck yeah, I'm in. Nobody makes a patsy out of Crazy Paulie. After all, I'm the Freak King of New York. If I'm gonna run this show, someday, I gotta reputation to maintain."

"Sure do. And nobody fucks with Napalm. Nobody. Go get us a couple more of Logan's beers. I'll replace them."

Washington D.C., Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Site of 34th Annual Superhero Summit

III: Eddie

Eddie had spent the afternoon with the pretty red-haired girl with the slow, lilting, sleepy Southern accent that a lot of these DC broads had.

He'd had the blonde girl over the second night and decided he liked the redhead better and called her back.

She was a real nice kid, not like some of these nuts who glommed onto him, and he would rather have still been in bed with her than at a goddamn black-tie dinner in a roomful of people in tuxes and dresses wearing masks.

Unlike most of the other masks in the room, Eddie had his costume on.

If he had to sit around all night in a suit, he wanted it to be the one he was most accustomed to.

Contrary to the shit that the papers published, that whole Justice League versus the Avengers shit versus the X-Men versus the Watchmen superhero rivalry shit was just that, shit.

You had enough problems with the goddamn supervillains and the goddamn cops wo were to clean to play along or too dirty to do their jobs and the goddamn people yelling they didn't want vigilantes at the same time as they read every piece of shit magazine article about the personal lives of masks without taking it out on each other.

Everybody was pretty social at these things, and everybody was ready to have a good time and they usually had it, too, and on Uncle Sam's dime.

The Comedian had been attending these little shindigs since FDR threw the first one in 1941, and there was a lot of shit that went on that never made the papers.

A whole lotta shit, and he was in a position to know, because he and Lucky Jim had personally caused a good bit of it.

But in-between enjoying the little two week Satyricon the good old US of A threw for you in appreciation of getting your ass kicked and saving the world all year, there was all this formal shit, and the formal shit was boring as hell.

Last year had been boring as two hells because Logan never showed up; it made Eddie wish he hadn't showed up, either.

Steve stick out like a sore thumb, he was wearing his costume, too.

"Where's ya tux, Sarge?"

"It's with yours at the cleaners, Eddie. You look bright-eyed and bushy tailed for a guy who's been shacked up with a girl half his age all afternoon."

"How'd you know about that?"

"My suite's next to yours. Me and Bernie had the TV up all the way and we could still hear her. I don't know what you do to women, makes 'em scream like that."

"Professional secret, Steve. The poor kid. She was pretty worn out. So, I hadda send her home. She was no Liv, I can tell you that."

Cap laughed.

"So, how is Naplam? I heard it was bad."

"It was. The kid found out that death wasn't all that sexy when he was comin' for her. She healed up good, but she's got this project she's workin on."

"She'll be here before Monday, won't she? I thought Napalm was coming with you. She's still being inducted into the Justice League, right?"

Eddie looked into his glass and laughed in a way that didn't sound like the thought anything was very funny.

"Yeah. She is. If I know the kid, she's already got her entrance planned. So, where the fuck is Logan?"

"I'm not sure. Nobody's sure. You know how he can be. Oh, no, here they come. The so-called gentlemen of the press. I'll talk you you later, alright, Eddie?"

"Goddamn vultures. I'll be at the bar."

That pissed Eddie off. He got to talk to Steve for all of ten minutes about before fifteen reporters came along with Captain America this, and Captain America that, so Eddie just went to the bar, and sat down at the furthest corner stool there was, and commenced drinking with both fists.

"Jesus, a guy can't even talk to his own fuckin' friends with all these fuckin' reporters crawling up your ass. Fuck 'em. They wanna story? I'll give the sonsabitches a fuckin' story." He told his glass of Guinness.

The Comedian had been at it about a half-hour before the thing that almost every superhero invited to the summit had been praying not to happen, happened.

"Hey, bub. That's my goddamn seat you're sitting in."

"Logan! Ya ol' sunnvabitch! Ya made it! C'mon, siddown, siddown!"

All eyes were on the two men who had slipped far below the dress code, Eddie in his costume and Wolverine in jeans, boots and an undershirt, none of which were altogether clean, sitting at the bar, getting louder and drunker with the dwindling of every cigar.

The Comedian and Wolverine, however, were oblivious, they were just having a good time.

"Where the fuck is Liv? This is her big deal, ain't it?"

"Somethin' came up. She's got some work to do before bullshit, Logan. Ya wouldn't believe it even if I toleja. Thing is, I might have a little job to do, some the end of the week. What are you doin' Friday night?" Eddie said

Snikt!

"Usin' these to give the business to whoever's fuckin' with our Liv an' your family."

They had met, wounded, in a trench in 1943, and since then, Eddie Blake and Jim "Logan" Howlett had each other's backs.

Sometimes Eddie wanted to tell Logan about Weapon X, and his part in making sure nobody snuffed Lucky Jim as he wandered in the wilderness, but, some things, a man is better off not remembering.

The Comedian wished he could be so lucky.

"What would Charlie Xavier say about that?" Eddie grinned.

"He'd have to understand."

They both started to laugh.

Whereas Superman didn't touch alcohol, Captain America wasn't above having a drink or two, especially with two old army buddies that he knew he'd better keep an eye on.

"More war stories? Are you two going to sit here and tell the same war stories all night? Because if you are, I've got a few I'd like to tell."

"We're tellin' war stories about the kid. You don't know some a' these. G'wan, tell Steve about the kid's summer vacation in Canada."

"I heard it, Eddie. I heard it in detail that if Logan told it in front of you, you'd break both his legs. Besides, Bruce is sitting right over there. I'm sure he doesn't want to hear it."

"My hat's off to ya, Eddie. That girl is fuckin' mad, bad and dangerous to know. Still. She woulda killed a lesser man than me. If I had any sense I would have just run like hell the night after I met her, but I figured, what the fuck, this is supposed to be a vacation, I might as well have some fun. I spent the rest of the summer until we got back down here drunker than I had ever been in my life. We must have busted up every dive bar between here and Vancouver. All it was for two weeks was drive, fuck, drink, and fight. And that was without the Troubles. In that order. I, me, the goddamn Wolverine had to give the kid a lecture about her shocking use of excessive ultraviolence. By the time I got outa that Wildcat with that wildcat I was ready to kiss the ground and thank God that I was still alive. It was a helluva vacation, though. I had a real good time. Every Thursday, I gotta spend the day in bed with the shades drawn and an ice bag in my lap. Here's to you, Eddie. To your health. You need it."

Eddie and Logan clinked half-empty bottles of Jack Daniels and had a drink.

"You bet your ass I do. And it's not as easy as it looks. The kid, she's a strange bird. She's like two people, and ya never know whick one of 'em or combination of 'em your get on any fuckin' day. For one thing, she's incredibly fuckin' smart. She leaves these fuckin' books around, I pick 'em up, and they might as well be written in Chinese. On the other hand, she reads superhero fuck books. Collects 'em. You gotta knock on the door to her bedroom, because she might be in there readin' one of 'em one–handed. But, she sits there and talks to the Doc, on his level, and she knows what he's sayin. On the other hand, sometimes she's like a goddamn wild animal. She goes outside and howls at the full moon, and when she gets really mad, she snarls. Roars like, too. And she sniffs everything. Sniffs her food before she eats it, sniffs the air, sniffs at people. Makes goddamn funny animal noises sometimes insteada talking, and I know her so well, ya know I know what they mean? But she's a good kid. Helluva mask. Helluva broad, too. It took me awhile ta get used to her, but, yunno, now, things are goin alright. I think. The kid don't drink as much as she used to, and she doesn't have the Troubles. At least not until all this shit happened."

"You mean the Green Jackal thing?" Logan asked.

Eddie looked up from his glass.

"Did I tell you guys about that?"

"Eddie, you got so drunk last night we had to put your ass to bed. You told us the name of the first broad you ever gave the time to." Cap told him.

"Yeah, well, this shit is gettin' to me. I nearly killed both of 'em. My partner and my nephew. In one night." He confessed.

"Jesus, Eddie, why don't you call this shit off? Me an Jimmy both think you're full of shit. Somebody named Napalm doesn't need a final exam in being a mask." Steve said

"It's not for her, goddamnit! It's for…you guys know who. I'll bet I didn'y tellya the punchline of life's latest joke on Eddie Blake. The dumb bastard kid wants to put his sister's tights back on and bat for our team."

"Oh shit!" Wolverine opined.

"They'll murder him!" Cap agreed.

"Yeah, I know that. And you know that. But he don't know that. This test is for him. If he seems like he has what it takes I'll hand him off to the Boy Scout. He won't get in too deep that way."

"That might work. Until Magneto takes over and makes him the King of New York." Logan chuckled.

"Whaddya think, Sarge?" Eddie asked.

Cap frowned as he stood up to take his leave.

"I think I know why you look so goddamn miserable. Have another drink, soldier. This one's on me."

***

Eddie and Logan had a few more drinks, together and then a real hot-looking blonde in one of those skin-tight X-Men uniforms you could see her nipples through came and sat at the bar with him.

She was built kind of like the blonde girl he'd met at the airport, one of those Fritz broads who had tits as big as your head.

She kind of reminded him of Sophie.

Crazy Jew bitch had kept her figure up pretty well, but, back when they were both kids, and he first met her, she looked a lot like the this doll.

"Man, is this party a fuckin' drag." She complained.

"Yeah, this is the boring part, Mel. You ever meet Eddie?"

"Not officially."

The girl leaned over Logan and put out her hand.

One of Logan's.

Natch.

They didn't used to call him Lucky Jim for nothing.

When Eddie shook the broad's hand he got this funny sizzling feeling that went from the back of his neck down his spine, his balls seized up and he got hard so fast that his codpiece cut him off at the pass.

He felt like if he didn't have this girl, right now, he was going to tear his own skin off.

"Honey, unless you want me to do something I know neither one of us is gonna regret, you better let go of my hand." He announced.

"Oh, did you feel that? Sorry. I'm Mel Reinhardt. They call me Femme Fatale, because I have a real bad effect on most cats. Sorry about the thing with my powers, but, you're really extra-sensitive to them. I had them under enough control that most guys who weren't mutants wouldn't even feel it. Maybe I'm just drunk."

"Doll, I ain't most guys, I'm Eddie Blake. Me and your old man usedta kill lotsa people together." Eddie replied.

Logan laughed into his glass.

The broad laughed, too.

She was giving Eddie the old eye.

He figured she could tell that whatever she had wasn't going to kill him, either.

"So, how come they call you Femme Fatale?" he asked.

"Because men have an unfortunate habit of finding a way to drop dead if they've had so much as a handshake from me. When I turn on my powers."

"Oh yeah? Well, I shook your hand, and I feel just fine."

Snikt!

"Hey, Eddie, do you fuckin' mind?"

"I'm just drunk, Jimmy. Don't mind me. I'm just drunk."

"Hey, Logan, relax, man. I just zapped the hell out of him. That's my powers talking."

"Yeah. Right. You don't know Eddie. Speakin' of drunk, darlin', you are really drunk. I better get you upstairs, before you start sparkin' every man in the room."

Logan got up and helped his girl out off of her barstool.

"Sorry, Jimmy. But that's some kinda mutation she's got."

"Yeah. I know. So, I'll be seein' you, Eddie. Tomorrow, lets go out an show 'em how we useta do it."

"Yeah. Put these jokers through some changes." Eddie agreed.

Time passed.

Everyone had left the bar but Eddie.

He had a lot on his mind, he just kept sitting and drinking, and thinking about his problems. He was already in a lousy fucking mood, and now, thanks to that Femme Fatale broad's powers, he was incredibly horny.

He felt like he could have hammered a two inch nail into a board with his dick.

All that would be around this hour of the night would be the real hardcore mask groupies, the freaks, the kind of broads you wouldn't want to fuck with a stolen dick.

And there wasn't much chance of beating this down.

Oh well.

Any snatch in a storm.

"Hey, is this a private pity party or can anybody join in?"

She sat down beside him, and goddamn if she didn't still look good in that costume.

Good enough to make the dark clouds hanging over him part a little.

"Sal!"

"Got it in one, Eddie. You look like I feel. Pissed off, fucked up, desperate and ready to screw anything that moves. So, how about buyin' me a drink?"

"Hey, Sal, I ain't in the mood tonight to do a little dance, shake hands, an' say I'll seeya round."

"Hell, Eddie, I'm too old for that shit. I didn't put this goddam costume on for nothing, did I? I'm gonna give you a run for your money, old man."

"You really need that drink, Sal?"

"Not especially. Let's go upstairs. I always did think your costume looked better on the floor."

III: Steve

"…Edith, stifle yourself…"

Click.

"…killed three people before turning the gun on himself…"

Click.

"…heyday of the sexual revolution…"

Click.

"…heeeeey, maaaan, don't bogart that joint…"

Click.

Jesus, I'm on ice for a few decades and the whole country goes crazy. What the hell is happening to America?

Click.

Steve Rogers turned off the television.

Eddie was at it, again.

He scowled.

Good old Eddie.

Gets up bright and early in the morning, puts whiskey in his coffee, eats a whole lot of food that doctors nowadays say will kill a man his age, shows up late for morning session, makes some sarcastic comments, takes a nap, leaves early, has three double cheeseburgers for lunch, with fries, and spends the afternoon going at it hammer and tongs with some girl half his age. Then he shows up late for evening activities, reeking of stout, reefer and sex, makes some more sarcastic comments, takes another nap, has three dinners for dinner, drinks all night long, then retires to bed with yet another girl, screaming her head off.

Did he just call her Sal?

Good old Eddie.

He never changes.

And it doesn't bother him.

Some people said that Eddie Blake was the "real" Captain America, and there were times that Steve felt like they were right, and he wanted to just hand Eddie his shield and retire.

Eddie was only five or six years younger than he was, but he didn't seem fazed at all by this strange, new America, because this was Eddie's America. Raised in an atmosphere of sick and brutal violence in a hardscrabble slum, when Cap met him at eighteen in the Pacific, the Comedian had already allegedly murdered his own father, albeit in self-defence, and attempted a violent and brutal rape on his would-be girlfriend, the Silk Spectre.

A woman with whom, it became obvious to anyone who ever knew him for longer that a day, he was genuinely and completely in love.

Sitting in a trench, with his mask on, and a few days growth of beard, smoking and eating Corn Flakes and beer out of his helmet, with a big silver spoon from God only knew where, with blood smeared all over the front of his uniform and two broken knuckles on his right hand.

He was always a good friend, and though Cap couldn't say Eddie was a good man, he was a good soldier.

There was goodness in him, it was just hard to find.

They were both born and raised in Brooklyn. Eddie had grown up in East New York and Cap in Red Hook, but they might as well have lived on two different planets.

Values, morals, it was all a joke to Eddie, who in 1944 liked to drink and smoke cigars and smoke a little tea now and then and listen to horrible jazz music and run around with loose women. In 1954 it was horrible rock and roll and they were calling them reefers and in 1964 they were calling it pot and in 1974 rock and roll had been shortened off to rock, and Cap still didn't like it, but Eddie was still a member of the record-buying public and he hadn't changed a bit.

He had always sworn like a sailor and ran around with loose women, and even though he wasn't a bad man, not completely, he was always laughingly amoral.

Liv Napier had been a nice girl. In many ways, she still was. Cap remembered her from when she was a little kid in pigtails and Keds, too. Actually, even with the years of drunkenness, brutality, ultraviolence and promiscuity in-between, she still wore pigtails and Keds, and she still had that same spunky little grin.

Liv was still a nice girl, and she was alive because Logan, a man who some people thought was no better than an animal had befriended her, and Eddie, a man who some people thought was little more than a vicious murdering psychopath hiding behind the stars and stripes, had taken her under his wing.

He loved her.

That Melanie Reinhardt girl, Logan's girl, she seemed like a really nice girl, too. And her parents turned her out in the street at 13 because she was a mutant. Just abandoned her to her fate, which was to end up broke and homeless at 20, recovering from a heroin habit, with only an 8th grade education, on Charlie Xavier's doorstep, begging for sanctuary.

It wasn't fair, and it wasn't right.

What kind of America was it that turned nice kids like Liv Napier and Mel Reinhardt into junkies and drunks and lunatics?

Maybe Eddie was right, about what he had said around the time Jack Kennedy was assassinated.

Around the time, they say, Eddie assassinated him.

"The world ain't the way you think it is, Steve. It's the way I know it is. Between the Depression and the War, that was the end. The end of Western fuckin' Civilization. People just like to play nice. Pretend nothin's wrong. But they know. Take Jack. Everybody thought he was such a fuckin' saint. Sure. He drank as much as I do and swore as much as I do, and he went through broads like most guys go through asswipe. I treat my broads better than he treats his. That's the way it is. Everybody pretends to be moral and forthright and honest and then they do whatever the fuck they want, because they know it's all a joke. And you know what the fuckin' punchline is? World's getting crazy, Cap. Everybody's losin' their marbles. Pretty soon they're all gonna stop playin' nice and just let everybody see what they really are. When that happens, everybody's gonna see there's a lot worse guys around than me. An' I can't wait for it. It'll be nice to see a little fuckin' honesty in this world."

None if it bothered Eddie. Not the youth of America turning into crazies using drugs and having sex in the streets and the parks, not the My-Lai massacre, not the tidal wave of drugs and crime, not rock music and its young stars dying like flies, not promiscuity and insanity or any of it, because that was the America that he always knew existed, the one he'd always seen.

And still he loved his country, and fought for it, even knowing it for what it truly was.

Steve knew that Clark struggled the way he struggled, but Clark still believed that it was just a phase his country was going through, that it could recover its innocence, be saved.

Not Steve.

The kids said, "America. Change it or lose it."

And his generation replied "America. Love it or leave it."

Steve Rogers thought it would have to be a little of both.

Cap shook his head.

Snap out of it, Steve. You may not look it, or feel it, but you're an old man and you had too much to drink, tonight. These kids today didn't invent drinking and fooling around, or reefers and coke and horse, for that matter. Not like you're a priest. You brought Bernie with you, didn't you? What do you think you're gonna do when you get up off this couch and go to bed? Play cards with her? You can probably still catch a Twilight Zone re-run, or maybe I Love Lucy. Just put the TV on, quit thinking like a bitter old man.

You can't do that, you're Captain America.

"Steve? Are you going to sit there all night?"

He didn't turn around.

"Sorry, Bernie. I've got a lot on my mind."

She walked in front of the TV and turned it off.

"You always got a lot on your mind. Why don't you come to bed?"

"I'm not tired."

"I'm not tired, either."

IV: Eddie

Somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1966 or so Sally Jupiter stopped promising herself she was never going to touch Eddie Blake again, so she didn't go with him to his room under any illusions that they were just going to watch some TV.

It was always the same with her and Eddie, and the fact she moved to California didn't change things, they had plenty of flights to New York and Sally had plenty of money and plenty of free time.

She wouldn't hear from him, or see him for awhile, a long while, because she was furious with him, and then she'd get so furious with him she'd call him up so she could scream and yell at him and hang up on him. And he'd call her back a few days later laughing at her over it and they'd get to talking and then she'd be calling him on a regular basis and then they'd meet up someplace. Then meet up someplace a few times. Then meet up at his place.

After that they'd meet up about once a week, for awhile and then he'd do or say something that made her want to break his face and she'd get mad at him, and she wouldn't hear from him, or see him for awhile, a long while, because she was furious with him, and so on and so on.

They were at the beginning part, but the look on Eddie's face as he sat there, nursing his drink made her skip right to the end.

They didn't even make it to the bedroom or out of their costumes the first time, the second time they made it out of their costumes but not to the bedroom but, like they say, the third time's the charm.

Three turns at bat with Eddie and Sally was ready to go to sleep, but whatever it was that was bothering him was still bothering him, because he was wide awake.

"Alright, Eddie, I know you're not asleep, because ya snore like a fuckin' goat, and you ain't snorin'. Spill it. What's botherin' you?"

"It ain't you, Sal."

"Yeah, I figured that. C'mon, who the fuck am I gonna tell? Ya gotta talk to somebody, right?"

"I got troubles. Big troubles."

"How big?"

"The night before I left New York, I came pretty fuckin' close to murdering my partner and my nephew Paulie. With my bare hands." Eddie reported, matter-of-factly.

Sally sat up in bed.

"What? Why?"

"I went up to Arkham, to pick up Greenie, get mine and Jack and Bruce's plan going. I beat him up pretty good for trying somethin' funny with my partner, and goddamn Paulie didn't tell me it was him. Then I saw what was left of his face in the light. I ain't felt so goddamn low since that night in the trophy room; and sittin' there gettin' drunk at the house in Bensonhurst, just like I did that night, I suddenly figured out what made the kid so hot for Greenie once she got his mask off. I couldn't believe it. She broke my fuckin' heart. So I went home and unlucky for the kid, there she was, waitin' up for me. I was drunk, I was furious, and I called her a dirty fuckin' shanty Irish whore and I think that broke her fuckin' heart, and we ended up with my hand around her throat and her ready to break my arm. As it turns out, she wasn't after Paulie and he wasn't after her, and we made it up some, but the way things lie I'm not sure we're all done with tryin' to kill each other. 'Cause I know she feels like I stabbed her in the back with this test and that now me and Bruce are makin' her stab Paulie in the back, and I'm not so sure that I don't believe that just for a second when she found Paulie in that costume, beat up and terrified, whatever it is in her that made her sit on my cock and put a gun to my head didn't tell her just for a minute that he looks just like me and he didn't know it was her under the mask and he wasn't in a position to say no, so why not just take him?"

Sally thought for a minute about that terrifying night in the trophy room.

Liv had that same streak in her, the one that told her that if you had a shot at something you wanted and nobody would be any the wiser then you'd be a fool if you didn't take it, and by any means necessary.

"So what are you gonna do, Eddie?"

He shrugged.

"Wait for the kid."

"What if she's coming to kill you?"

"You know what Pop said to me and Edie, right before we put out his lights? He said it would rather be us, his own kids, than the law. Pop knew what kinda low-life sunnuvabitch he was, and he knew what kinda death he was gonna get. Me, I may not be the same kinda scum as he was, but I know what kinda man I am and I know what kinda death I'm gonna get, too. Better my partner than some low-life sunnuvabitch like Pop, right? Besides, Sal, I got 25 years on the kid, I'm bigger, an' older an' wiser than she is and I know just what kinda crazy she is. I'm pretty sure I can get around her."

"You sure, Eddie?"

"She's my partner, Sal. I don't need no help."

The part where she had to leave Eddie, knowing they would always be ships that passed in the night was the part that hurt the most, so she always got past that part, quickly.

Eddie wasn't all that crazy about goodbye, either; he went to take a shower.

This time, though, she stood outside the door to his suite for a long time

Sally had trained Liv since she was 11, she had been there the first moment Liv laid eyes on Eddie just as Sally was dropping her off for that Crimebusters meeting back in '66.

She still remembered that look Napalm had in her eyes when she commented that she was going to have that big bad sunnuvabitch even if it killed them both.

Sally resolved to keep her eye out for Liv.

Those two weren't going to murder each other on her watch, no matter what they had in their sick, twisted minds.

IV: Laurie and Sally

Jon did not consider Laurie's outbursts of temper; he had learned, while working with her father in Vietnam that feeding the fire only made the outbursts worse.

So, when she came crashing out of the bedroom of their suite, pulling a tee shirt on over her panties and cursing, he didn't say anything.

"How the hell am I supposed to sleep in this goddamn hotel with all this fucking racket going on? Don't any of these people screw at home? Is the only two weeks out of the year they do any fucking? Or is it just that we're next door to that fucking degenerate Eddie Blake! I can't wait until Napalm shows up! Then nobody in the whole hotel will get any peace? Of course, considering that they're all drunk off their asses and balling it up with their little fans, they won't notice, either!"

Jon was about to suggest that perhaps she was just feeling left out, and conduct her back to the bedroom, but Laurie crashed out the door.

He didn't go after her.

Yet.

***

"OH MY GAWD!"

Sally put her head against the door to Eddie's suite.

There had to be some reason that fate was never kind to her.

She squared her shoulders and began walking to the elevator.

"Mom? MOM! Are you just going to ignore me? Are you going to pretend you didn't just come out of that room with that animal?"

He's not an animal, Laurie, he's just a bad man. But I like bad men. So sue me? And he's your father, show the man some respect.

"Laurel Jane, if you are going to parade around half-dressed in the hallway, screaming like a maniac, well, you're a grown woman and I can't stop you. It's your business. Just like it's my business who's room I'm in. Right now, I'm going back to mine."

Laurie blocked her path.

"I cannot believe you! You were just telling me on Monday that was it, you were done with him! Do you know how many times I've heard that?"

"Yes. And I'm going to stop saying it."

"Mother! What the fuck is the matter with you?"

"Don't you talk like that to me! I'm your mother, goddamnit! I raised you! I trained you! You treat me with respect! And stay out of my private life! I'm not so crazy! Half the broads in America are crazy over Eddie. What about Liv? She's his partner! How about Sophie Grossmann? They've had a standing date on Wednesdays since 1945! I'm not the one who's sleeping with a big blue nuclear reactor, am I, cupcake?"

"That is not fair! Jon is nothing like that monster, that animal!"

"No. You're right. Eddie kills somebody if he hasta, or if they ask for it, and he does it with a gun, or with a knife, like a human being. An' he has to get mad, first. He can't calmly make himself the size of Godzilla and wave his hand and make people explode like a bag of wet mush!"

Laurie shut up, abruptly.

"Hit a nerve, did I, sweetie? Maybe yours doesn't do as much bellowing, or drinking and maybe he's got a better reputation, but he's not so different from mine, is he? And for that matter, neither are you. And neither am I. Now go back to your room. You can't stand out here in the hallway in your underpants. It ain't decent."

Sally was mad; she'd had just about enough of her own daughter trying to tell her how to run her life.

The elevator came, and she got in it.

Laurie was about to get in with her, but that was when the big blue nuclear reactor showed up, in the flesh.

"Come on, Laurie. I think you may have had a little too much to drink, tonight.

***

Jon didn't give her a chance to protest; he teleported them both back to their suite.

"I wasn't done yet!"

"Yes. I know. Laurie, you have to get over this fanatical hatred of the Comedian. I'm not too fond of the man, myself. I don't know what your mother sees in him, and as for LIv, I'm sure in the course of the past four years she's seen him do worse than even I've seen him do, so I don't know what she sees in him, either. But you can't make up their minds for them, are we are all expected to work together."

"That doesn't mean I have to like it!"

"No, but it does mean that you can't beat up an elevator in your underwear at two in the morning while screaming and foaming at the mouth in a fit of rage. Myabe you should go back to bed."

"I'm not tired!"

Jon shrugged.

"Well, you know I don't sleep."

Laurie thought that was a come-on, you never could tell with Jon, he was so emotionally remote.

Was he smiling?

Yes, he was.

"Why didn't you say something before I left the room?"

"Because I just wanted to watch the end of this movie. It wasn't very good, but I had never seen it before and it's a real novelty for me, not knowing how something is going to come out."

"You're a strange man, Jon. But I love you, anyway. How did the movie end?"

"I don't know. I've missed it."

IV: Tony

"Tony, just what is it that fascinates you so endlessly about my stepdaughter? I know she saved your life, and I know the two of you have become friends, but, what is it? The clean version, please."

Tony Stark, the Invincible Iron Man, he of the swashbuckling grin with that in like Flynn twinkle in his eye and a liver to match was quite good at gesturing with his drink.

He looked at Bruce Wayne, thoughtfully, and swished his drink around, clinking the ice cubes against each other and against the glass.

"She's the only person I've ever met who may be as smart and as crazy like a fox as I am. And she's a woman, to boot. I've never met a woman like her. Come to think of it, I've never met anyone like Napalm. Admit it, Bruce, she's wasting her time and her mind working for the feds. When's the last time anything remotely interesting ever came out of a government laboratory? Whatever she's working on in that dingy iron tomb that's most likely filled with carcinogens, I'll bet if she came to work for me she could finish the project in half the time. And under much better conditions. Not that I want to cut Jon off at the pass, but he's had her long enough! And I think she has superior ability as a mask. When's the last time the Comedian had a partner? Never. And who else do you know that has no powers or mutations who spars with Wolverine for fun, three days a week? There's no one like Napalm. No one in the world. So I want her. Working with me, I mean. You can't blame me."

Bruce Wayne laughed a little, and raised his eyebrow, archly.

"No, I can't. After all, I trained her. And we've worked together many times. But, what makes you think if Liv joins the private sector, she'll come to work for you when she'd have a better stake in coming to work for me? After all, I'm not leaving control of Wayne Enterprises to the dog when I shuffle off this mortal coil."

Iron Man downed his drink, emphatically, turned the glass over and smacked it on the table and then slapped his hand on to of it, resolutely.

"Doesn't matter. What you do and what I do, business-wise, it's apples and oranges. But, what kind of capiltalist would I be if I didn't take advanatge of an opportunity when it presesnted itself?"

"What opportunity is that?"

"I know what you and her partner are up to, and I think it stinks, Bruce. You'll be lucky Napalm doesn't walk the hell out on you and the Justice League for it." He announced.

He flipped the glass over, and banged it on the table.

"And if you can shift a little blame onto Jon, oh, say for being an emotionless bastard and not telling her a thing, well, then Stark Industries and the Avengers will be waiting with open arms, is that right, Tony?" Bruce asked.

The bartender set them both up with another drink.

"You laid this trap for yourself, Bruce. It's not my fault if Napalm decides she'd rather become an Avenger on Monday that a full member of the JLA. None of us have ever questioned her methods, or her motives, or expected her to jump through hoops to prove herself."

Bruce Wayne slammed his glass down so hard that he broke it.

"Where the fuck do you get off, Stark, talking to me like that? What the hell do you know about Trivelino, anyway? What, she slept with you a couple of times? That doesn't mean shit to her! So she uses you as a source of information because she knows all she has to do is crook her finger at you and you'll be there with your tongue hanging out like a junkyard dog? So what? I raised her. I trained her. I've worked with her. I'm more of a father to her than that maniac who sired her is. She's not about to stab me in the back over a little training exercise. A mere formality. You're obsessed, my friend. You want to stand next to the fire? Go right ahead. They don't call her Napalm for nothing, and you are about to get your ass burned!"

Tony was somewhat taken aback by Bruce's sudden fury, and he realised he must have touched a nerve.

Of course I touched a nerve. I'm sitting here telling the man that he may have irreperably damaged his bond with his step-daughter by betryaing her.

Why is he acting like it never occured to him?

Perhaps it hasn't.

"I'm sorry, Bruce. I assumed that when you came up with this plan that you had already thought of this. Did it ever occur to you that Liv doesn't see it as a little training exercise? I've sopken to her, and she's very upset. I called a cab to take her home on Monday night, after a meeting we had, and when I went back into Grossmann's to ask Paulie Blake and his girl if they wanted to ride along, Liv had already wandered off into the night. She feels like you've stabbed her in the back, and she just might decide that she doesn't owe you shit, anymore." he replied, as gently as possible.

The stricken look that passed over Bruce Wayne's features told Tony that no, he hadn't thought about that at all.

"You may be right. And you may think I'm a bastard for doing it to her. But I have to be sure she's ready. She's the Joker's daughter. Worse, she hasn't severed relations with her father. And what about the other masks she's close to? The Comedian. Wolverine. Rorschach. The most respectable hero she works with is me, and you know what my reputation is like, and I founded the Justice League with Clark. Sometimes I think they'd kick me out for my methods if it wasn't for him. I don't want Liv to be in the JLA beacuse she's my stepdaughter and I vouched for her. I want her to be a member on her own merits. If the price I have to pay to show the world that Liv Napier is not Jack Napier is losing her, then that's what I have to do. It's late. I'm tired. I'm going to bed."

That was typical Batman.

Cryptic and abrupt.

Tony looked down the bar, to where the Comedian and Wolverine were putting it away like the two ex-dogfaces they were.

You could tell it was bothering the Comedian, he was drinking like tomorrow wasn't coming.

Or like tomorrow was coming and Napalm was coming with it.

He overheard snatches of the conversation Eddie was having with Logan, things like "Only a few broken bones" and "just a flesh wound."

Logan knew something; he was closer to Liv than anybody in the mask community other than Eddie Blake.

Wolverine knew what Napalm knew; it was a cinch they were in it together, whatever Liv's counter-plan was, but that was a dead end, Logan would never tell.

Poor Bruce.

Poor Eddie.

But not him.

Because he was in on Napalm's plan.

He looked at his watch.

It was just about time to get into the suit, and fly back to New York for the secret rendezvous.

Okay, maybe it was a bit of a triple cross, but Napalm would forgive Eddie, eventually, he's her partner and they're in love.

Scary thought.

Extremely frightening.

She'll forgive Bruce, eventually, he's her stepfather and she lives with him.

He's just being melodramatic, and I have had too much to drink, tonight.

I'll have to get back to that five drinks a day regimen after the Summit.

And there's absolutely nothing written in stone that says you can't be with the JLA and the Avengers, and when she was done with school she'd have plenty of time to work with him and Jon.

One thing Tony Stark learned at his father's knee was that only a fool doesn't answer the door when opportunity comes knocking.

He finished his drink and walked by Logan and Eddie, and then out of the bar.

***

He told just about every girl that he was remotely interested in to drop over any time and make themselves at home, and most of them never got as far as dropping over, they were so overwhelmed by the invitation.

Those who did usually got all decked out like they were going to the Oscars to accept their statuette.

Models and actresses and starlets and debutantes.

The most beautiful and desirable women in the world.

Women most men would kill to get their hands on.

Liv took him at his word.

Sometimes he would return home at night and Liv was there, waiting, casual and impatient, acting like she owned the place

No wonder Bruce wanted to know what it was that fascinated him about a little heavily tattooed, red-haired Irish girl who had about as many battle scars as your average career black-ops operative, wore boxers under her Levis and a series of undershirts and rock band tee shirts and fatigue jackets, topped off with jump boots or dirty sneakers, capped off with some combination of blood, engine grease, and motor oil.

She had long hair and she was built like a brick shithouse, and she was pretty.

And a real red-head.

So were a lot of girls.

But none of them were Napalm.

None of them had that mad, mad, mad savoir faire, that merry and mischievous lust for life, that special joie de vivre that only comes from the kind of complete insanity that true genius breeds.

And this was without mentioning sex.

You know a woman is special when she has just saved you life and helped you break out of a Mexican jail, and you are flying her through the air in robotic body armor and she asks you if it is possible to get it on in mid-air while wearing said armor and if it is, have you ever done so, and if not, would you like to, right now?

And what would he have done when they were in rehab and he got to the second week where you not only really want a drink but you are so horny you could hammer nails into a board with your cock had Liv not been there?

Not to mention the disappearing act she had pulled a few days ago.

He owed her for that.

And when he found her with her feet on his expensive furniture, watching an old Bogart movie on his expensive Betamax and drinking his expensive Scotch, well, that was just Napalm.

But, tonight, they had an appointment.

Business before pleasure.

"Checking in, Napalm? Would you like turndown service? Or a mint?"

"Well, I was in the neighbourhood a little early, so I figured I'd just drop in. Jarvis said you wouldn't mind."

"I don't. So, tell me, what's your plan?"

Liv took a notebook out of the pocket of her military-issue shoulder bag.

"I'm going to need an industrial sized heated mixing tank and the appropriate hookups, and a chair lift on a pulley system. I can hook them up myself, and I've already got a water source at the warehouse and the dry ice. But what I really need are some of those latex prosthetics Stark Industries makes for theatrical purposes."

"That's what you need, Napalm. It's not your plan."

"Paulie's plan is already all over town. It's not that I don't trust you, Tony, but all walls have ears and I don't want anybody knowing my plan. Not even Nick. I don't know where he stands."

"You really think I'd let S.H.I.E.L.D bug my place without my knowing?"

"No. Not without your knowing."

"Napalm, you're so devious. You know what it does to me, when you get devious."

"I know."

Oh, that look of lust.

Heavy, naked, molten lust.

Napalm burns things down.

Bruce is right.

You can't kill Logan, she'd never kill Eddie, but someday, if the wind's blowing the right way, she might burn me down, but I don't care.

"Well, if you want to bring sex into it…"

"Jesus, Tony, if you like that expensive tux, don't start talking dirty to me. You do it so well, and I ain't had it too much in the last month or so, as sick as I was." Liv warned him.

"Actually, I do value this tux, so I'm going to go change, and when I come back, you can tell me what you already know."

***

Liv knew that he wasn't just fucking around when she saw the size of the folders Tony had with him.

He started spreading documents all over the coffee table.

"That looks bad, Tony."

"Only because it is. Whatever your plan is, you have a problem. As you've pointed out, Paulie's plan is all over town. Every superhero worth his salt has heard it. Unfortunately for you, so has every supervillain. The word is out that all the big masks are away at the Summit and the Harlequin is taking a stand against this rookie, the Green Jackal, and that there's ransom, involved. Now, nobody wants to fuck with the Harlequin. But, after she leaves, and this nobody kid has all this money, what's to stop them from muscling in? He's a supervillan who just grabbed two heroes and held them over a vat of boiling acid. Who's he going to call? The police? The Justice League? Ralph Nader?"

"Shit! Fuck! I never though of that. But there isn't any fucking ransom!"

"You know that. I know that. Paulie knows that. You enemies don't. And what about Moloch? The Comedian's off in DC, and here's his partner, pulling off some big operation, all by herself. It's a chance for him to get some big time dough, and well, I don't have to tell you what he might have in mind for you to spite your partner."

"The Joker did it to Batgirl and the Comedian tried to do it to the Silk Spectre and Moloch figures he'd really show Eddie just what he thought of him if he did it to me?"

"Yes. Did he really? Your father, I mean."

"Yeah, but it was consensual."

"You have to be shitting me!"

"I'm not. I came to visit my father at Arkham one Friday and, I don't think Babs was supposed to be there for a conjugal visit, but when I walked in, they were conjugating hammer and tongs, yunno? She's got a thing for him. Don't tell anybody. Especially not Dick. That's his girlfriend."

"We really are a bunch of degenerates, aren't we?"

"Sure are."

"Oh well. So it goes. Now, the only good news is that Moloch is locked away at Arkham. But, you never know. Now, as for the rest of the motley lot, you have an ace up your sleeve. Or rather, a Joker. The members of the Presidium Council of the Society wouldn't stoop so low for a cash grab, and the rank and file don't sneeze unless they ask your father if they can. If I were you, I'd contact him and have him put the word out that this is hands off. Especially to Sabretooth."

"What's Creed got to do with it?"

"I'm afraid that when you ripped his heart out, it may have grown back, but you stole it away, forever. He has a thing for you, and if he thinks its Legs Up For Supervillains Day, he'll be there. And he's roaming free right now."

Tony could tell that the wheels in Liv's mind were spinning.

"Should I handle him the smart way, or the fun way, do you think?"

"I know I'll regret asking this, but what would the difference be?"

"Well, the fun way would be a little of the old ultraviolence. The smart way would be when I talk to the Old Man I should ask him to inform Magneto to keep a tight leash on Creed this weekend."

"Well, Liv, considering you ripped the man's heart out the last time, I think any further violence would just be anti-climactic. I'd go with the smart way."

"Probably. I got enough on my plate, and now I have to arrange backup for Friday in case anything goes wrong. But Dick's in this with me and so is Rorschach, Eddie has him shadowing me, so I think I can handle that."

"What do you mean, shadowing you?"

"I mean shadowing me. Why do you think the window's half open?"

Tony went over to his window, and opened it up a little more, and there was Rorschach, standing on the ledge.

"Did you get all that?" he asked.

"Affirmative."

"I'm going to close the window and draw the drapes now. You might want to go and wait in the lobby. Tell the doorman Mr. Stark said it was alright. Or else, you'll be out there all night. Understand?"

The patterns on Rorschach's mask altered, almost imperceptibly.

"I'll wait till the lights are off." He said.

"Fine."

Tony shut the window and drew the drapes.

"He's an odd duck, isn't he?"

"Not when you get used to him. What was all that about?"

"Are we finished with business?"

"Yeah. I think so."

Tony pushed the coffee table forward, and actually knelt down on the floor in front of Liv.

"Napalm, I won't take no for an answer. You're wasting your life and your big, beautiful brain working for the feds and your talents listening to Clark talk about Mom, Apple Pie and Ozzie and Harriet at Justice League meetings. You have to join the Avengers, give up that shitty government job and come work for me. Or at least just come to work for me. Look at me, I'm on my knees. I'm begging you."

Before Liv could reply, Tony deftly unzipped her jeans, and pulled them and her boxers out from under her, and lifted her dirty-sneakered foot out of one pants-leg.

"This isn't fair!" Liv yelped.

Tony gently nudged her knees apart.

"I never negotiate fairly. That's why I'm so successful…I'll…mmm…give you a raise…your own office…"

"…don't…need…ooh!...money."

"…you can share my office…"

"…Tony…"

"….and every day…don't pull my hair…that's a good girl…I'll have you for lunch…"

***

They dozed, briefly and when Liv woke up she realised that she had actually fallen asleep with her head on Tony's thigh.

And he was out like a light with his arm around her waist and his head on her belly, pointed in the other direction.

She stirred back to consciousness and righted herself.

Liv picked up the folder, again.

"Wake up, Tony. We gotta finish working on this so we can get to bed."

"I'm not that tired."

"Neither am I. That's why I'm in a hurry to get to bed."

Liv read the neatly typed words, and then she read them over again.

"No wonder Eddie wants me to put the fear of God into Paulie. It's a great plan, if you're a mad scientist or a comic-book character or a villain from an old Republic serial, but in real life?"

"I like the dry ice and hot water for sulphuric acid. It really is a nice touch. It would fool most people who didn't know shit about chemistry and its shows that Paulie really does have something of a brain."

"But that's where his slip is showing. It's a real relief, now, I know for sure Paulie's no villain. He's making sure nobody gets hurt."

Liv put the folder down.

"Maybe I'll be able to sleep at night, now."

"What were you going to do if he was bona fide?"

Liv put her forefinger and thumb to Tony's temple and mimed pulling the trigger.

That chilled the atmosphere in the room a little, something Liv didn't want.

"I'm not so ruthless, Tony. I was going to give him what he wanted before I sent him on his way." She said.

"You're so bad, Napalm. I love it. Let's go to bed."

"Where is it?"

Liv shrieked as Tony picked her up and slung her over his shoulder.

He smacked her on the ass.

"This way. You know, I just got this book from China, it has some very interesting positions in it that I never even thought of. What do you think?" He said.

"I think as long as I know you, I'll never have to see a chiropractor, again."

Thursday

II: Paul

In his own quirky, Crazy Paulie Blake sort of way, Paul was really getting his supervillain shit together.

To the outside observer in Bensonhurst, a month in Arkham hadn't done much in the way of reforming Crazy Paulie. You still found him slouching around the streets with his oddball buddy, Skinny Donazio, who had the general appearance of a degenerate Led Zeppelin roadie, and sometimes with Rosie Juarez, who was nuttier than both of them, and sometimes all three of them together, looking like a couple of degenerate Led Zeppelin roadies and a sleazy groupie.

Not to mention that crazy Napalm Napier, Jesus H. Christ.

At Grossmann's, where the attendance was lighter because of the summit, those masks who didn't attend, or were retired noted his return, and the progress of his face towards normality, and idly speculated as to where the kid had gone and who had rearranged his face.

Benny refused to have any part in it.

He knew better.

What the neighbourhood, and most of the masks who went to Grossmann's to eat didn't know was that it was all part of Paul's plan to appear to launch himself as a supervillain, with Skinny as his Henchman and Rosie as his lovely assistant.

Paul had turned the envelope full of money over to his Uncle Eddie, but he did manage to get permission to use some of his supervillian seed money to buy his friend Skinny back from the Gambinos.

They wouldn't meet with Paulie, but they would sit down with Napalm, on account of, in the old days, when her father was still Crazy Jack Napier, the chieftain of the Irish rackets, he used to work with the Italians.

They gave Skinny up to Napalm as a favour to Crazy Jack, and no money changed hands, so that left the Green Jackal with enough money left over to pickup the costumes he'd had made made for Rosie and Skinny, too.

Benny really liked the costumes.

He said he was in if they switched to the other side of the cape.

And a little bit left over to get the utilities turned on at the warehouse, which turned out to come with a very posh and fully furnished penthouse/loft.

Paul was kind of hoping he could at least keep the warehouse after the deal was done.

The costumes were everything he had expected.

He had a green suit that was moderately armoured, and over it a belt which attached on the green garment that looked like a modified pharoah's skirt.

Around his neck was an Egyptian collar, and he wore Egyptian wrist and armbands, all of which contained various gadgets.

On his head was a hood and mask modelled after the head of the Jackal God, Anubis.

No cape.

Skinny's costume was about the same, but made out to look more like an Egyptian general, and no Anubis head.

Rosie wanted something that was little more than a bikini, but Paul insisted she just have a more feminine version if Skinny's costume.

This supervillain shit was pretty serious, and she looked plenty sexy in the short skirt and boots and tights, anyway.

Dressed in their costumes, the three of them met up in the penthouse of the warehouse to go over the checklist Paul had made.

Sidekick with complementary costume?

Check.

Lovely assistant in sexy costume?

Check.

Sinister hideout?

Check.

Evil and dastardly supervillainous plan to lure the Harlequin into his clutches?

Check.

Now, all he had to do was meet up with the masks Liv had set him up with to be the decoys, and play it as the kind of schmuck that Uncle Eddie obviously took him for.

Paulie didn't blame him for it.

Ever since he failed out of school he'd been acting like a Grade A Number One Schmuck, a real asshole.

Well, not for long.

Paulie was ready to prove to everybody that he was goddamn well Mick the Merciless grandson and the Comedian's nephew.

In spades.

III: Hollis

Hollis Mason was a regular at Grossman's; it wasn't too far from his shop and it was open at all hours.

He ate there by himself often, and sometimes with Dan, and on quite a few occasions they noticed the striking resemblance between one of Benny Grossman's gang, and a certain mask of their acquaintance.

You couldn't miss Crazy Paulie. He was big, loud and cocky, and when he wore his mountain man beard he looked like a hippie freaky version of Rasputin.

On the other hand, right down to the way he stood and the way he moved, the kid was a perfect replica of a young Eddie Blake.

The resemblance was remarkable, but Paulie was the Comedian's sister's son, and she looked a lot like him, too.

More remarkable was that even though Eddie Blake was like a second father to the boy, he hadn't grown up to be an amoral psychopath.

That was the thing that nagged at Hollis Mason about Eddie Blake. He was a horrible, brutal man, in some ways every bit as horrible and brutal as his monster father who died trying to escape from Death Row. But his brothers and sisters who he raised insisted they never saw that side of him. Sally forgave him and had a child with him, Liv's life had improved a hundred percent since she started working with him, and millions of Americans on either side of the political spectrum called him a hero.

And this young man, who looked so like the Comedian, was like him in almost every way, but yet, so unlike him. He had the same casual air of cockiness about him, putting his feet on the table, chain-smoking and cursing and vowing that he would never cut his hair and sellout and that anything was better than wages. But there was no malice behind the boy's bravado. He was an eccentric lad, but you could tell he was a good kid.

Unlike his Uncle Eddie.

He was actually a little worried when the boy disappeared for a little over a month, and reappeared with an unsteady gait, stitched and bandaged and wearing the signs of a serious beating on his face.

The lad's personality was un-changed, but there seemed to be something bothering him.

Perhaps something had happened to him.

Something terrible.

Something that Hollis bet had to do with him seeing the side of his beloved Uncle Eddie that the Comedian had tried to keep from him, all these years.

The former Night Owl was sitting alone at Grossmann's when "Crazy Paulie" came in.

The bandages were off his face but even with the stitches out, with the long beard and goatee gone, wearing just his moustache, the boy look even more like Eddie Blake.

"Mr. Mason, can I sit with you for a minute?"

Hollis wasn't surprised.

He often sat and talked with Paulie, but the boy had been avoiding him since he returned from wherever he had been to get his beating.

"Is this about what's happened to you in the past few months, Paulie?"

"Yeah. I need your help. Your, uh, professional help. And not with my Beetle."

"Well, then we'd better go talk at the shop."

Paulie was pretty quiet along the way, and he just sat on Hollis' couch, looking at his walls.

"How about a beer, Paulie."

"Thanks. After last night and today, I need a drink."

That seemed to loosen him up a little.

"Did Eddie do that to your face?"

"Yeah. He didn't know it was me at the time. He thought he was beating up somebody else."

"Like who?"

"It's…complicated. Look, I'm in a lot of trouble, Mr. Mason. I know you don't think very well of my Uncle Eddie, but he's been real good to me and my mom and my Aunt Aggie and our whole family, and I did something bad to him, bad to you, bad to the memory of the Minutemen, just bad in general. I need help getting out of it, and you the only person I can think of who can help me. And Mr. Gardner, too, if you know where we can find him."

"I'll give him a call."

Hollis Mason hurried to his phone.

"Nelly? It's Hollis. No, the car's not ready for your retirement, yet. Before you retire, our services are needed one more time. I'm here with Paul Blake, and there's something he wants to get off his chest, and I think him and that son-of-a-bitch Eddie need our help one more time. "

***

Eddie Blake's nephew was so well-schooled in the fine art of keeping his mouth shut that it took more than just a few beers for him to talk even when he knew he had to.

Over quite a few beers, Paul laid out his tale of woe to the two retired Minutemen.

"I'm not too sure why I did it. I had this crazy idea that fate would show me her cards and tell me whether I was going to be a hero or a villain. Good idea in theory. Lousy idea in practise. I suppose I figured, fuck it, everybody thinks I'm a freak anyway, even now, in this crazy world where everybody's a freak. That's something I just can't stand, yunno? Fake freaks. They aren't like the real ones, they always let you down. But, what I was saying was, everybody already thinks I'm a freak, so I might as well get someplace with it. Except I wasn't real villainous. Or all that heroic. All I did was run around in my costume and go to Times Square and ball my crazy Old Lady in her peep show booth. I got mad when she opened the window for business while I was right in the middle of things, and I got madder when she said I should put the costume on and do porno. I wanted to show her I was a real villain, so I took the knife out of her purse and I went running out into the street and I just held up the first place I walked into. A drugstore. Now if the first thing I saw would have been an old lady getting mugged, I would have used the knife to chase the muggers away. By such slender threads our destinies hang. Can I have another beer?"

Hollis Mason opened another bottle of Coors.

The kid was so busy talking, he hardly realised how drunk he was getting.

"Thanks, Mr. Mason. So the guy behind the counter presses this button, and as I'm on my way out I run into something as big as me. I looked him right in the eye and I recognised my Uncle Eddie. It took me a few seconds to realise that my Uncle Eddie was the Comedian and the Comedian was my Uncle Eddie, and then I figured, fuck, I really screwed the pooch, so I started running. And the Harlequin came after me. I ducked around the back of the porno shop, but she found me and she just smacked me all around the alley. I swear I didn't even know what happened with Rosie's rusty old knife; she wasn't acting like she had a knife in her. So she had me, and I thought she was gonna knock me out cold and she tore the mask off my face and I'll never forget the look she gave me. Like a goddamn wild animal. Her eyes had this funny light in them like she was somewhere between killing me and tearing my tights off and I wasn't sure which one she was going for, so I rolled her over, just so I could get away and then she put her legs around me, and she started taunting me to do it to her. Jesus, I wish I did. I was too scared, I thought she was gonna kill me, but I wish I had it to do over again. At the time, fucking was the furthest thing from my mind, but that was one of the few times fucking was one of the furthest things from my mind. I know Naplam and Uncle Eddie told me the Harlequin wanst nothing to do with me, but I can't help it, I'm so hot for her. Man, it felt good havin' her legs around me, she had good, strong, soft thighs. I think about it all the time. Sometimes even when I'm with Rosie, I think about her. I can sit there and jerk off all day, thinking about her, and no matter how tired I am, if I think about her s'more, it's hard again. I'd walk on my lips through raw sewage to get ten minutes alone with that woman. She's like a force of nature."

Paul was also too drunk to realise how badly he had embarrassed himself, and the two retired superheroes kept a straight face.

"I guess she knocked me out, because when I came to she was dragging me down the street. When I came to I was in a straitjacket at Bellevue. They kept me there for a few days, and made me take a lot of tests. I ended up getting sentenced to six months in Arkham, and I decided to do my time quietly, get out, try to forget about the Harlequin and maybe go back to school. Try to become a mask in my own right, get some hero to show me the ropes. But while I was in, some of the other villains talked me into some crazy shit, and I ended up coming out to a costume and money and a lair and Uncle Eddie. He sprang me early so that I could get a plot together for the Harlequin to foil, and he wasn't too happy when I came clean and told him it was me, but we're square now. So, pretty much all I need you guys to do is show up at the warehouse, get on this lift chair that's above a tank of dry ice and bathwater that's supposed to be sulphuric acid and pretend to be in peril while the Harlequin rescues you. And if God is good to me, she'll like my new costume and maybe she'll get horny for me again. Jesus, I am really drunk. I don't think I can make it back to the Subway."

Paul finished his story, finished his beer, burped and sat back in his chair.

"That's alright, son. I'll drive you home." Hollis volunteered.

"So, you want us to be kidnapped superheroes in peril, and presumably the Harlequin will come to rescue us, and when she does, she single-handedly foils you, and the way the Comedian sees it, that gives her the extra vote of confidence to, well, graduate from superhero college?" Captain Metropolis asked.

"Yeah. I guess. Then I might have to hang up my tights. And that's what scares me. I put my whole life into masks. Knowin' everything about them. And when I put a costume on, myself, and became the Green Jackal, even though I was just a half-assed supervillain, I felt somethin' crazy. I felt like I finally figured out what I was supposed to be doin' with my life and that was wearin' a mask. Just like my uncle is the Comedian, I am the Green Jackal. Except I don't wanna be a villain, I know that now. I'm in way over my head, here. In the past 24 hours I had my best friend put a gun to my head because she thought she was going to have to take me out for betraying my uncle, and I got into a gunfight with some wiseguys and got shot getting my, uh, henchman away from them. I guess I got in at the dirty end of the pool, and I want out of it. I gotta start from the beginning, but if I don't make this shot, I'm done. With blood on my hands. For nothing." Paul replied.

"Son, if you want, to be a hero that badly, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be. But, as for this crazy idea of Eddie's, I don't like it. First of all, the whole idea of staging a final exam for a masked hero is ridiculous. I know the Harlequin, personally, and I hate to admit it, but Eddie Blake has been a positive influence on her. I think she can "graduate" all on her own without this charade. Second, you know yourself that she plays for keeps. And as for being in at the dirty end of the mask game, I'm sorry to say it, but you got a little taste of what the worst of our profession can be. You are in over your head, son. You see you can get seriously hurt." Hollis warned him.

"I got no choice. For better or worse, I am the Green Jackal."

Hollis Mason felt sorry for the boy. For one he knew that everything the lad had been through was all staged, and when he found out that Liv Napier, his uncle's girlfriend and one of his best friends, who had staged it, and the Harlequin were one in the same, it was only going to get worse for him.

"You do realise we're going to have to contact the Comedian, and make sure all of this is on the up and up?"

Paul nodded.

"Nelly?" Hollis asked.

"Just as long as our hands aren't actually tied. If it gets too rough or something goes wrong or it looks like the Harlequin is actually going to kill you, Hollis and I will put a stop to it."

"You will? Really? Thanks. Thanks a lot. I gotta go home. I don't feel so good."

Paul stood up, and the room began to go around and around.

"Oh man, I had too much to drink." He said, and passed out.

Captain Metropolis caught him.

"Do you know where he lives?"

"I know where the Comedian's penthouse is. I'll take him there. Do you think this boy has what it takes, Nelly?"

"They're throwing him in at the deep end to see if he floats. He hasn't sunk yet, but I think the kid's on his way down."

***

"What?"

Hollis Mason looked at his phone.

How little things change, even after decades.

"You still haven't learned how to say "hello", huh, Eddie?"

"Mason? What the fuck are you calling me for? You wanna write a sequel that alleges that I fucked my own daughter, or the family dog, or something like that? Look, I got a lot of shit going on right now. I'm not interested, whatever you want."

"I got a visit from your partner today. She's been gaslighting the hell out of your nephew, who I also met with today. He told me a big story about his secret identity, and some screwy Flash Gordon plan that he's cooked up that he wants me and Nelly in on."

The Comedian cursed under his breath.

"He's on the level. Just go along with his crazy fuckin' scheme and don't let my partner kill him."

"For what it's worth, Eddie, it's not your fault. You know how these kids their age are. They're all crazy."

"You know, Hollis, sometimes I wish I woulda stayed a fuckin' construction worker."

"Probably about as often as I wish I was just a retired cop."

Prelude: Conspirators

That evening, around midnight, Paulie and Napalm met at Grossmann's, as they often did.

And she offered to give him a ride home, as she often did.

But this was not their usual meeting.

"Can we talk, here?"

"In my car? Fuck yeah! How did the meeting go?"

"I played dumb. Hollis and Nelly bought it. I hate to pull the wool over their eyes, too, but, I guess we gotta do what we gotta do. Didja set everthing up at the warehouse?"

"Yeah. You got your lines memorised?"

"Perfectly. And the chest piece fits perfectly, too."

"Good. Don't worry about it, Paulie. This time, tomorrow, it'll all be over, and we'll be laughin' while they're cryin'. Joke's on them." Liv reminded him.

"Yeah. Joke's on them." Paulie agreed.

"Good. Now let's go rehearse this thing."