He walks with a cane and we want in/We want to be where Fry calls kin
Eddie glared at the newest riddle as if it was a particularly loathsome species of insect. The new copycat in town had left this one on one of the giant LED billboards in the middle of downtown Gotham. (And they'd dared to put it in green and black, his colors!)
He walks with a cane...well, that was easy enough, wasn't it? It was him. And obviously they wanted in on his shtick, otherwise why would they be leaving riddles everywhere?
Fry calls kin...now that sounded like an anagram to him, but none of the answers he was coming up with made sense. We want to be where frilly snack? We want to be where fall sync irk?
We want to be where narc fill sky? Well, it was possible, he supposed, wondering if it referred to the airbus transport system for convicts. But why would they want to be there? And why would they reference him? He wasn't scheduled to fly out of town, certainly not in the hands of law enforcement, and there were no plans to ship him elsewhere if and when Batman ever did get him again.
We want to be where fans cry kill? Oh, yes, but which sport? And again, what did he have to do with it? Whoever was coming up with these had no sense of style, or propriety, or even the sense to write a riddle that actually made sense! It was immensely frustrating.
Across the room, Jackie had taken over the couch. It was covered with stacks of insurance forms, notices, letters, and claim tickets. Doing the paperwork to cover her losses from the fire was almost as bad as losing everything in the first place! She wished once again that she'd had the presence of mind to grab her purse on the way out of the house.
In order to get a new driver's license, she needed a social security card. In order to get a new social security card, she needed a driver's license! The clerk at the DMV was convinced that Jackie had to get a learner's permit before she got her license (which was ridiculous, since she already knew how to drive) and when Jackie pointed out that she'd lost her license in a fire, the clerk had told her that "Rules are rules".
She was currently in hour four of wrestling with state and national government websites, trying to find something she could reference in her next five hundred phone calls to get the whole mess sorted out. To top it all off, the ancient, battered laptop she'd borrowed from her boss crashed whenever she opened a second browser window. It was immensely frustrating.
So when the phone rang, both of them ignored it. The papers and websites in front of them demanded their complete attention and stopping to talk on the phone would result in another half-hour of work merely trying to pick up where they left off. The answering machine clicked into life.
"Why is this machine like a postman?" the Riddler's recorded voice said smugly. There was a pause in case the caller actually wanted to try and work it out. "They both need messages to work".Beep. "Jackie, hi, it's your Mom, I hope I've got the right number..." The disembodied voice on the answering machine cleared its throat as Jackie's head jerked upright in horror. No, oh no, they weren't going to... There were quiet rustling noises. "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Jack-eeeeeeeee, happy birthday to you!" her parents sang in unison. "Call us back, honey! Love you!" her dad chirped happily. Beep. Jackie ducked her burningly embarrassed face behind the shelter of her laptop's screen.
"You never said it was your birthday," Eddie accused lightly.
"You never asked," Jackie fired back from behind her barricade.
He was already gathering up their coats. "Come on. We're going out."
"But I'm busy. You're busy," she pointed out desperately, waving at the bits of paper spread out around where he had been sitting.
He sighed explosively. "If I have to look at that...that gibberish for another minute, I'm going to want to hit something. Come on, it'll be fun. My treat," he enticed, tossing a green question-marked coat so that it covered her computer.
"I suppose I don't get to say no?"
"No," he grinned. "Come on, adventure, excitement," he enticed, pulling open the door.
"And really wild things?" Jackie asked, finishing the line that the Riddler didn't know he was quoting.
"Those too."
The Riddler was nothing if not true to his word. Getting a taxi proved to be an adventure, particularly when the cab drivers got near enough to recognize Eddie in his question-marked glory. And it was certainly exciting to stroll past the velvet rope of the club that Eddie had picked for the night's entertainment while a horde of envious would-be clubgoers waited in line outside.
However, matters (and Jackie) came to a screeching halt when they walked into the nightclub. It was mostly just a normal place - tables, a bar, a dance floor...okay, so it looked like a cross between the North Pole and something out of the 1950s, but that was tolerable. The thing that made Jackie's feet do a marvelous impersonation of immovable rock was the sight of a cluster of Gotham's most infamous rogues gathered in the best tables by the bar. Really wild things, indeed. "Uh..." she stammered as Eddie tugged her along.
"What?"
"You didn't tell me there would be other rogues here," she hissed as they got closer.
"You didn't ask," he said smugly. Besides, where else would he have taken her? More to the point, where else could he have taken her?
No man is an island. Well, of course not - very few men float in the ocean and grow palm trees from their backs. Most men, upon close inspection, do not consist of sand and dirt. There is a distinct lack of wild boars roaming through their underbrush (unless you've picked a very unlucky specimen to examine).
What is generally meant by the phrase is that no one is ever truly alone. There is always someone else who knows you, or knows of you, and who would notice if you were to one day inexplicably vanish. And maybe they wouldn't do anything about it, but they would notice.
Consider the rogues' gallery of Gotham for a moment - that snarling, madness-tainted school of piranhas lurking at the bottom of the city waiting for errant cows to wander by. Perhaps it doesn't make much sense that they would form friendships. Perhaps it doesn't compute that a loosely associated group of homicidal maniacs would ever get together for a nice chat over drinks.
Then again, it doesn't exactly make sense to send riddles to the police, or to dress in spandex to rob banks, or to rely entirely on a coin to decide everything. Life does not always make sense, particularly in Gotham.
Besides, being a homicidal maniac does not automatically shut off the need for human interaction (other than the expected stab-stab-stab variety). Even mad scientists have an Igor or two around to pass the time with as they stitch together Thing-That-Man-Should-Know-Not-Of-Number-Fifteen. Sometimes, it's nice to put the toxins away, hang up the mask, and have a nice, relaxing evening with the only people in town that can truly understand you.
That the rogues' chosen bar happened to be owned and operated by a fellow rogue (in semi-retirement) was somewhat of a bonus. When you dragged in a shredded scrap of cape as a trophy, it was nice to know that the proprietor wasn't on the phone with the cops to turn you in, but with his suppliers, ordering you another bottle or two of your favorite beverage for free.
One might inquire why Batman and his cohorts would allow such a thing to go on. Why would Batman sit back and let the rogues have this little haven of sociality when he could conceivably shut the place down in under five minutes and throw the lot of them into Arkham?
If these questions are indeed crossing through your mind, you should take the time to also consider the merits of hidden microphones in a place full of liquids designed to loosen tongues and raise the volume of voices, as well as the ease of following a drunken rogue from a known rogue gathering place to an as-yet-undiscovered "secret" lair. Alcohol can be a crimefighter's best friend.
Alcohol can also be a rogue's best friend, particularly one who has a reason to celebrate. "Eddieeeeeeeee!" squealed a red and black blur as it catapulted toward the Riddler and Jackie. Jackie took a hurried step backward as Harley Quinn cannoned hard into Eddie, who caught her with practiced hands. Apparently this was not the first time she'd raced squealing at him. "Wanna hear somethin' nifty?"
"You're single again?" he teased hopefully.
She stuck out her tongue. "No, smarty-pants. Mistah J's still in Arkham. Ready?" She took a deep breath and grinned. "Red broke Bratgirl's arm!"
"How?"
"Well, Red was up in a tree, right? In the botanical gardens? And Batgirl swings up on one a those hooky things. So she's comin' up fast, like this..." Harley seized Jackie and molded her into a Batgirl-in-the-air-esque shape. Jackie, stunned and more than a little intimidated, let her. "An' Red's just standing there waiting, y'know, all serious and stuff...and then the tree branch whacks the Brat right here!" With an enthusiastic karate chop, Harley smacked Jackie right above the elbow. "Broke her arm, sent her down fifteen feet into the bushes. Whammo!" She put her hands on Jackie's shoulders and shoved downwards. "Whammo!" she repeated pointedly.
"Oh. Oh! Um..." Jackie stammered, obediently folding to the ground.
"Atta girl!" Harley beamed. "So anyway, Ozzie let us all have a round fer free an' Red's got pictures from the security cameras if you wanna see 'em."
"Maybe later," Eddie said, amused. He offered a hand to Jackie and swung her to her feet. "We've got our own reasons to celebrate."
"Yeah?" Harley's eyes sparkled. "Didja get a Bat too?" she inquired of Jackie, who mutely shook her head.
"It's her birthday," Eddie said happily.
"Yeah?" Harley said with even more interest. "Great! Hey guys," she bellowed at the entire bar, "it's Query's birthday!"
"Which one?" came a shout from the group of rogues.
"His new one! C'mon, Q, let's party!" she said, cartwheeling back to the cluster of criminals.
"But I'm not a..." Henchgirl? Minion? "A Query," Jackie muttered to Eddie as they tailed the exuberantly drunk jester.
"Go with it," he advised. "Unless you want to tell them all your real name..."
"Query it is," she said hastily.
Jackie hadn't been to a birthday party since she was ten years old. Consequently, she had no idea how much of what happened that night could be considered normal.
Well, aside from certain things. She was pretty sure that normal parties didn't feature dancing greenery displaying printouts of a blurry little broken arm or a jukebox that appeared to be set to a constant loop of bubblegum pop love songs (Harley had blown sixty bucks in quarters setting it up, much to everyone's disgust). Normal parties, she was sure, had a guest list that was not solely comprised of people that were ludicrously insane or hideously deformed (and in some cases, both).
But other things made up for it. She'd expected to be a fish out of water among the rogues. After all, they were rogues. But they'd welcomed her with open arms. All of them had approached her and made some kind of overture of friendship, whether it was simply relating their favorite how-I-almost-killed-Batman story or buying her a drink. Oh, it seemed that everyone wanted to buy her a drink and talk to her.
Jackie was unaware of it, but that was pretty much standard operation down at the Iceberg. It was possibly the only place that people like Two-Face or Killer Croc could chat with a pretty girl without the girl immediately running for the cops. (Not that Jackie was a pretty girl, she was more 'cute' really, but the rogues would take what they could get.) Besides, they had all been in this business long enough to learn everything about one another. New henchgirls meant new conversations, which meant new opportunities to spread the word about saving the plants/unearth secret phobias and fears/demonstrate the fine art of squirting flowers and joy buzzers.
In short, she was a welcome change in the scenery. A welcome, very drunk change in the scenery - she couldn't quite bring herself to say 'no' when the rogues ordered her drinks - but a change nonetheless.
And then Harley Quinn had declared it to be Girl Time and had dragged her off to sit at a table with Poison Ivy, Two-Face's girls Angelica and Demonica, and Roxy Rocket. They'd giggled and gossiped over a round of startlingly bright margaritas (dyed extra-vivid green both to celebrate Ivy's triumph and Jackie's birthday). They'd compared lime-green tongues and started an enlightening game of 'I Never'.
Jackie held her brimming margarita glass up and examined it in the cold, bluish light of the bar. "'S yer turn, Q," Harley chirruped, swirling the liquid around in her own glass.
Jackie considered the group of women at the table. A mischievous grin sparked onto her face. She hoisted the glass as if she was toasting and proudly announced "I never killed anyone."
The entire table groaned as they lifted their glasses to their lips. "I keep tellin' ya, Harls," Ivy complained, "we need to stop playin' this with the new girls."
"Hey, we beat her when she was new," Harley slurred, waving at Roxy Rocket with her drink and sending a tidal wave of green sloshing over the table.
"Ah, shut up," Roxy grumbled. "Just cuz none of you know how to have real fun..."
Harley threw a pretzel at Roxy. It bounced off of her nose and landed squarely in her drink. "Two points!" Harley crowed, throwing her arms up in triumph. The whole table burst out into raucous laughter.
If you had asked her, Jackie wouldn't have been able to tell you why she was laughing so hard. Oh, it was funny enough, particularly with the assistance of lots of alcohol, and the look on Roxy's face was priceless, but that wasn't it. It was the thrill of not being herself for an evening. She didn't have to worry about looking silly, because everyone here looked silly to some degree, whether it was intentional or not. She never had to worry about running out of things to say, because the rogues would gladly talk about their favorite subjects for hours on end and they were thrilled when she acted interested in what they were saying. She wasn't Jackie, lonely little code monkey. She was Query, sidekick to a respected man in the community. She belonged, even if it was only for tonight.
And then someone had started singing, and Jackie had blinked owlishly at the sight of a bevy of tuxedo-leotarded girls trotting out with a massive green cake topped with question-mark candles. "Happy birthday to you," they crooned in three-part harmony as they plopped the cake down in front of her. The drunken rogue women joined in, enthusiastically off-key. "Happy birthday to you!"
A handful of the other rogues, Jervis among them, swung around and joined in. "Happy birthday, dear Query..."
And Eddie leaned in over the flickering candle-flames and winked cheekily at her. "Happy birthday to you!"
"This's the best birthday ever," she said happily, equally drunk on alcohol and acceptance. With a tremendous whoosh of breath, she blew the candles out. One of them tipped over into the icing.
"Show me the way to go home," Jackie giggled as they climbed out of the taxi. "'M tired an' I wanna go to bed..."
"Lightweight," snickered Eddie, supporting her out of the car.
"Hey, you're drunk too," she accused, trying to remember how feet were supposed to work.
"S'true," he agreed amiably. They staggered away from the cab.
"Hey!" the driver snapped after them. "Aren't you forgetting something?"
"Oh. Yeah." Eddie reeled back to the open door. "What's...what's the difference 'tween a southern lawn mower an' a cab driver askin' for money?"
"What?"
"One gets hot inna shed, the other gets shot inna head," Eddie beamed drunkenly.
"You're crazy," the driver accused.
"An' you're an idiot," Jackie fired back. "Doncha know who he is? He's the Riddler!"
The driver paused for a moment to weigh his options. He could get out of the cab and extract his money from the drunken couple - Riddler or not, the guy looked pretty skinny - or he could just take the cash out of his own pocket.
A question-marked cane thwacked hard into the passenger window. Glass tinkled noisily down onto the sidewalk. "Don't ever call me crazy," Eddie fumed, readying the cane for another smash.
Ah. Discretion was clearly the better part of sanity. In a choking puff of exhaust fumes, the driver took off into the night.
"Showed him," Jackie murmured gleefully, kicking a spray of glass into the street.
"Yeah," Eddie agreed. Yeah, he'd showed him, all right. He was the best. He ruled the earth. The ruling Riddler, that was him...
They weaved their way inside. "Hey," Jackie said suddenly, snatching Eddie by the front of his shirt as he started to head down the little hallway toward his bedroom.
"What?"
"I had a really...really good time tonight," she said. "Thanks."
"Any time," he beamed. Jackie smiled and leaned in closer...closer...she was looking up at him with those big brown eyes, and it was making his throat feel like it was about to swell shut with joy...
And then she quietly passed out on his shirt front. He blinked muzzily at her. His brain was telling him through the fog of alcohol that this was not how it was supposed to go. Jackie mumbled something and snuggled in closer to his chest. He stood there for a moment, blinking, then walked her into the nearest henchgirl bedroom and laid her out on the bed. It only took him three tries to successfully pull a blanket over her.
He gazed happily at her as she slept. God, that bed looked comfortable...and his bed was so far away...well, there was room for two, right? An' she was a Query, yeah? So it'd be okay.
With a silly, drunken smile plastered on his face, Eddie rolled himself under the blanket. He stretched an arm over Jackie and turned the light off.
(to be continued)
Author's Note: It's hard enough to write riddles without trying to purposefully make them terrible. Yarrgh. "Fry calls kin", indeed. I ought to be taken out into the street and shot.
I did want to point out that there's a fairly elaborate explanation of how Ivy gets drunk floating around out there somewhere, though I don't remember where. It basically boils down to this: Alcohol's technically a toxin, and she's not affected by toxins. However, she can control the toxins in her own body, so she can let herself get drunk if she wants to. (Besides, when does comic book science actually have to work?)
This chapter's been on my hard drive for weeks and it's finally done and posted a full day before my self-imposed deadline! Yay! Time to relax and kick back with anything but a lime-green margarita. Those things are dangerous. See you on Monday!