The Knight is the darkest just before the dawn
Part Two: Two mad men
The Joker knew that the accident which had disfigured him was the cause of his madness. He also knew that the chemicals that he had been exposed to were slowly leaching away at his body, and his mind. A pile of doctors, their corpses now rotting in a Gotham landfill, had examined the Joker, and all of them had told him more or less the same story, he had less than a year to live. In his few saner moments, the Joker used his considerable skills as a hacker to search the Internet, looking for a way to cheat the grim reaper. He soon found the required bits of technology, and the brain trust required to extend his existence beyond the death of his body.
The satanic clown had it all figured out. He would persuade several top scientists to work for him against their will in his quest of eternal life. He still had to obtain the indestructible robot body he needed, but he now knew where one could be found. True, it was literally on the other side of the planet, and its location known only to its mad inventor, but that wasn't a problem. He'd broken into prisons before.
Dr. Tenma's cell was more like a gilded cage. He had his books, television, a deck of cards, paper and pencils. He wasn't allowed a computer, though after some careful considerations he was given an MP3 player. Tenma busied himself writing and listening to his music. Once in a while he did have a visitor, Astro was allowed to see him every other week for twenty minutes. They'd play cards or chess, and engage in simple conversation. Umataro Tenma couldn't understand how Astro was able to forgive him for all the pain and suffering he had caused him. Then again, he never did really understand Astro at all, just like he had never understood his only son, Tobio.
Tenma had been placed in the secure wing of the mental hospital after giving himself up to the police following the events that almost lead to a war between robots and humans. The hospital Tenma was now confined to was also a low security prison for inmates that were under control, and deemed not dangerous. Tenma's rebellious spirit had been broken, and he was comfortable living out the remains of a life sentence in a 100 foot square room.
Tenma had taken a few secrets with him. The secret underground laboratory where he had hidden out after trashing his house and burning down the facilities at the Ministry of Science where he had built Astro, was still intact, it's entrance hidden and know only to him. It was here that he had plotted to start a robot rebellion, and where he'd built both Pluto and Atlas. He had also built, but never completed an even more powerful robot. His insane mind had conceived of a new body for his Tobio, one that would make him the most powerful and deadly force in the world, but Astro had refused to go along with the plan. Tenma had forgotten about that robot after locking it up deep underground in his former lair. Unfortunately, the secret of that robot's existence had been hacked from a computer system that the doctor didn't know he'd ever been connected to.
The Joker held up a blurry B&W photograph and addressed the three henchmen.
"Gentlemen," he said "we have a little job to take care of in Japan. We need to break this man out of a low security mental prison, and ask him to hand over some hardware that I need."
"What makes you think he'll see things your way." asked the tallest of the three men.
"Oh I can be very convincing when I have to be, you know that!" The Joker replied. "Besides, I have this." he said holding up a vial and a syringe. "This is my own special truth serum. It will bring suppressed thoughts to the surface and out of the mouth very effectively. It does have some nasty side effects, when it wears off it leaves you with one hell of a headache and a slight memory loss."
Three men in prison guards uniforms pulled up in an armored truck to the rear of the prison by a door closest to the wing where Dr. Tenma's cell was located. Handcuffed to two of the guards, and walking between them, was the Joker. The third man spoke to the gate guard.
"New Prisoner transfer." He stated bluntly.
"Paperwork?" the gate guard asked.
While the guard was distracted, the Joker slipped out of his cuffs and produced a gas canister. He released the valve and a huge cloud of vapor quickly overpowered the guard. The Joker and his men and been prepared, having previously swallowed antidote pills to counteract the effect of the gas.
The four men entered the prison. There were only two guards inside the cell area, and the Joker overpowered them with a spray can of the same knockout gas. They quickly located Tenma's cell and the Joker opened the lock with the key he had snatched from one of the now unconscious guards. Tenma had been sleeping, but quickly woke to the noise of the break in.
The Joker gave Umataro a whiff of the knockout gas and his men carried him out of the prison and into the waiting armored truck. Once they were a good distance from the prison, the Joker injected Tenma with his truth serum. Tenma woke up in a haze.
"Listen to me, Dr. Tenma." The Joker said in a soft voice. " You are going to tell me the location of your secret laboratory. We need to obtain a certain robot body."
Tenma described the location of the laboratory in a zombie like voice. His mind was off line to his brain, and he had no control over what he was doing.
The armored truck drove on into the night over the few hundred kilometers distance. They stopped at a deserted, desolate field in the far outskirts of Metro City that looked like it had once been a war zone.
"OK doctor, lead the way." The Joker asked nicely. "If you don't mind."
Tenma slowly walked back and forth over the rough ground looking down. The Joker managed to be patient, he knew the drug would do its work and that it might take time for the required memories to surface and register. Finally Tenma stopped and pointed to a spot at his feet. The Joker pulled a powerful flashlight from his pocket and pointed the light on the spot where Tenma had pointed. A large steel cover was screwed into a concrete slab just inches below the surface.
"Bring the tools!" the Joker ordered. The two strongest of the Joker's henchmen attacked the cover with wrenches and pry irons. It took them ten minutes to remove the cover to reveal a metal ladder leading down into the void.
"After you, doctor!" The joker ordered.
Tenma started to climb down the ladder, followed by the Joker and his men. The shaft was fairly wide and the climb was not at all claustrophobic. Along the back wall of the shaft was a vertical track along which could run a lift. When they finally reached the bottom of the ladder they were in fact standing on the floor of a primitive freight lift.
"Lead the way sir!" the Joker told Tenma. Umataro reached up and activated a switch that turned on the lights. He then lead them through a long winding corridor which ended at a large steel door which resembled a bank vault. Tenma keyed in a combination and pulled the door open. They entered a large room filled with scientific equipment. In one corner of the room was a large steel box held closed by a long hinge in the back and several bolts in front. The bolts were locked in place by a series of combination locks.
"I think what we want is inside here." The Joker guessed. "Would you mind opening this for me, Dr. Tenma?"
Tenma worked the combinations of the half dozen locks and removed the bolts. Two of the Joker's henchmen pulled the box open to reveal a glass case. Inside the case stood the most magnificent robot body imaginable. Its polished armor plated skin gleamed in the modest light of the laboratory.
"Wow!" the Joker whisted. "I am going to be so unbelievable in that!"
The robot body was removed from the glass display case and was quickly repacked in a large canvas bag.
"Are we going to take him back with us, or kill him?" one of the Joker's men asked, waving a thumb at Tenma.
"Now that is the question!" the Joker said. "While I really could use his help activating this robot body, Dr. Tenma would be of little use to us, I fear. He is just as mad as I am, and can't be trusted. On the other hand, ending his miserable life might be exactly what he might want. I think it would be better if we were to lock him in this place for a few days with no food or water, and then call the police to take him back to his cell."
The Joker bound Tenma's hands and feet and left him sitting on the floor. They smashed as much of the equipment in the lab as they could, leaving broken glass and metal all over the floor. The four men then carried the sack containing the robot body back the way they came. On their way out, the Joker smashed the locks to the large doorway at the lab's entrance to lock Tenma inside. This time they used the lift to bring them up to the surface. They loaded the sack into the truck, and then the Joker ordered that the lid to the shaft be welded closed.
"I think we need to be going now, we have a plane to catch!" The joker laughed.
Sitting in the back of the aircraft, the Joker hacked away on his laptop computer.
"What are you doing boss?" one of the hired low lifes asked.
"I'm going to need the help of a certain Japanese robot expert, and also that of an infamous surgeon." The Joker answered. "Dr. Tenamann put their names on his shopping list. We could have made a side trip to pick them up before we left Japan, but I had a better idea. I'm going to have Bruce Wayne invite them to my lair!"
Dr. Tenma awoke with a splitting headache. He fought to get his eyes to focus in the dim light of his surroundings. With his ankles and wrists bound he crawled along the floor cutting himself on bits of broken glass. He managed to get one of the shards of glass into his hands and used it to slowly cut though the rope binding his wrists. With his hands now free, he untied the rope around his ankles. His vision was clearer now and he started to recognize where he was.
"How the hell did I get here?" he asked himself. Tenma racked his brain trying to remember what had happened. He recalled the hidden room at the far end of the laboratory, and hoped that it was untouched. His fingers probed the wall and found the hidden panel. He opened it and released a latch revealing a door. Inside the hidden room were emergency supplies; food, water, and first aid. Tenma found a universal antidote in the first aid supplies, and hoped it would counteract whatever drug he had been given, and restore his memory.
He walked about the wreckage of his laboratory, taking inventory of what useful items remained. It was then that he spotted the open storage vault, and realized what had been removed. A vague image of a face materialized out of the fog in his mind and he slowly put the pieces together. "I've got to stop that mad man!" Tenma cried out, "But how?"
Umataro dusted off an old laptop computer that lay on the floor. He was happy to find it still worked, and booted up. He quickly connected it to a LAN socket, and prayed that the Internet connection into the laboratory was still working. It was. Tenma cross referenced everything he could find on the Joker, and Gotham City. A ton of hits came up on the Wayne Foundation, including their upcoming technology summit forum. Tenma remembered meeting with Bruce Wayne years ago trying to convince him that robotics was the wave of the future. Bruce Wayne's foundation funded research into the betterment of the human condition, and they were heavily into fighting global warming, world hunger, and disease. Wayne had turned Tenma down on his suggestion of developing advanced robots to aid in these causes.
So, it came at a complete surprise to him that this year's conference actually had a series of events and lectures dealing with cybernetics and A.I. Tenma hacked into the Wayne foundation website and drilled down into the server to access the list of invitees. When he found Dr. O'Shay's name on the list, things suddenly clicked.
"That sneaky bastard!" he muttered to himself. "So that's the Joker's game!"
There was one remaining link left unopened in his web search. Tenma clicked on it and laughed.
"Looks like there is an Anime, Manga and Comic convention in the same hotel on the same weekend as Wayne's little shindig." Tenma laughed to himself "Astro's little sister would blow a gasket if she knew about it." As that thought bounced around in his head, Tenma suddenly realized what he could do, but first he had to escape from this prison.
Tenma realized he wasn't going to be able to leave by the way he'd been brought in, but he knew there was another way out. In the back of the hidden storage room Tenma opened yet another secret door leading to an access way to a launch pad. Hopefully the escape vehicle he'd left there was still operational. Tenma quickly loaded the aircraft with as much useful equipment and spare parts that he could find. Thankfully the Joker's men hadn't broken the most useful treasures hidden in the lab.
Later, under the cover of night, Tenma returned to the remains of the bordered up house he had left behind years ago. He set up his equipment and waited.
Zoran skipped happily along on her way to school. Halfway there, as she turned a corner, she came to the creepy abandoned house. The city should have torn the place down years ago, but for some reason they never did. Something about it being a crime scene, she had been heard. The yard between the sidewalk and the house was full of tall weeds and the front windows of the place had all been broken by boys throwing rocks. Before she reached the end of the rickety fence separating the yard from the sidewalk, several robot dogs jumped through a hole in the fence and surrounded her.
They were clearly robot dogs, large and menacing looking, made out of gun metal, with mouths full of sharp teeth and having glowing red eyes. The largest of them opened its mouth wide to reveal what looked like the barrel of some kind of cannon. Suddenly, Zoran's ears were attacked by a hypersonic whistle that tore through her brain like a hot knife though butter. Her vision grayed out and she felt herself going limp and falling to the concrete.
She woke up in a strange room full of electronic sounds and flashing lights. She tried to get up, but discovered that she'd been strapped down to an operating table. Except for the illumination of scientific instruments just out of her field of view and an overhead light above the table, the room was dark. She could see that she had been undressed, and lay naked on the hard slab. The panel on her chest was open, and several cables had been inserted. Zoran then panicked to discover that both of her legs were missing below the knees, as were both of her forearms. "What's happening to me?" she wondered.
"I see you're awake!" a nearly familiar deep voice said. "Well no matter, I'll be putting you under for the final procedures. Don't worry, it will all be over very soon, and you will be better than new, and you will remember nothing."
Through the glare of the overhead light shinning in her eyes, Zoran could almost make out the face of the man talking to her. He had a distinctive roman nose and a bushy patch of beard below his chin. She couldn't see his eyes, they were concealed behind a pair of dark glasses. The man reached inside of her chest and yanked at something. Zoran's vision went hazy and she lost consciousness.
Zoran once again found herself outside the creepy old house. She blinked her eyes and looked around. From the position of the sun in the sky she knew it was now late in the afternoon. Where had the day gone to? She could not remember anything that had happened at school that day at all. She didn't even remember leaving school or getting back here. The last thing she did remember, was a sharp pain in her ears on the way to school, then nothing until now.
"Boy, I've had boring days in school, but this one takes the cake!" she muttered to herself. "Oh well, I'd better hurry home." Zoran ran quickly to get as far away from the old house as possible. She decided that tomorrow she would find a different route to school, she never wanted to pass this way again.
When Inspector Tawashi's men found Tenma hiding out inside the old house, they were surprised when he quickly gave himself up. Tawashi had received calls from the occupants of the surrounding homes about strange noises and lights coming from the abandoned house all day.
Tenma had been reported missing following an apparent break in at the prison where had been locked up for the past year and a half. Three night guards had been overcome by sleeping gas, and none of them remembered a thing. Tenma refused to give any information either, claiming he had no idea how he'd gotten out. Reports of the incident were toned down and didn't make the front headline news. Tawashi was glad the way things turned out. He didn't need another panic on his hands flamed by a mob of robot haters.
