Harry cringed at the smell that greeted him as he stepped out of the alley he had stayed in overnight, in his portable residence. The air was rancid, and he briefly arrived at the conclusion that Gotham was, quite literally, a shithole.
This decision was short-lived because Harry realised something. It had not smelled near this bad the night before, and that was strange.
How would the scent of an area change so badly in the time between him retiring and waking? Could the sewage system have ruptured in this area? No. No, that felt wrong.
It didn't smell like faeces, Harry was sad to say that he had spent a month of his life on a planet with an open sewage system and the memory stuck with him even now. It smelled more like a… a stink bomb. An extremely large stink bomb, but a stink bomb nonetheless.
That was an odd idea. It stank, forgive the pun, of something the Trickster would come up with. Harry believed that that generally harmless villain stayed in central city, though, so what was going on?
Harry felt a tickle run down his spine, and decided to err on the side of caution. This felt bad to him, and so he wouldn't go in to whatever was coming unprepared.
Reaching behind himself, he drew the gun from the waist of his black cargo trousers, loaded a round into the chamber, and felt the magic around the bullets to check that he had loaded the right magazine.
Satisfied with the piercing-imbued projectiles, he passed it into his left hand, favouring the right for casting as even now his magic was a bit too eager when channeled through that rucksack on his back drew close to him, shrank slightly, and the zip vanished until he would need it again. Harry could open it with a thought, so this was better for combat situations.
Harry set off Northwards. If something was going on, he was going to bet that Arkham would be somehow involved.
As he walked the streets, Harry's nerves were set on edge. This was rarely the case any more; he'd gone through enough to harden the weakest willed of men. But this was equally enough to put the toughest of men on edge, for the city was deserted.
Devoid of life.
Empty.
Harry saw nobody as he walked through the dirty streets. The pavements were deserted, and the cars and busses that had been driving before whatever happened happened had been stopped, opened, and left. Like all of their owners had suddenly decided to walk uncaringly away. Or maybe it would make more sense, on the surface, if they had run. If they had all remembered a desperate need to be elsewhere.
Harry moved to one such vehicle. The most interesting of them, in fact. He chose the car because of the blood across its bonnet and door as well as the ground below.
Harry looked at it with no small curiosity, trying to understand how the left side window had smashed so marvellously when no damage had been done anywhere else and the door was open. What reason would someone have had to break it? And how on Earth did they bleed so much in doing so?
The glass crunched under foot as he stepped closer and pondered.
The glass on cars was designed to shatter into as many pieces as possible upon impact, so that when there was a car crash a large shard could not impale the driver or passenger. That meant the injuries couldn't be particularly deep. So it must have been one of a few areas.
The wrists bled that much, but were not an option unless the man or woman hit the glass with them or deliberately dragged them along the remaining shards on the bottom of the metal frame. The ankles would be even less likely.
Similarly, the joints had many arteries in them but in the protected crooks of both elbows and knees. It would be difficult to open wounds on them in this situation.
The armpits were out. The veins and arteries were easy to sever with a knife, and would spurt blood at impressive volumes, but the glass shards were too small to get past the puit. Likewise, the flesh of the thighs would require deep cuts to bleed substantially.
Harry supposed that a crazy enough man, and they had many of those in Gotham, might decide to cut his penis open on the glass, but unless he left it sat on the door it wasn't likely to spray blood over such a large area. That could explain why everyone ran, but Harry had a feeling that the more logical explanation would be the correct one.
Why the person was doubled over, he had no idea, but whoever it was must have run head first into the pane. Wounds to the face, especially the forehead, bled a lot. Lots of it had to travel upwards, and the body shrank dramatically around the skull and so there were nickable vessels in the area. That explained the many droplets Harry could see, and the neck corresponded with the heavier streams running down the door itself and staining the white paint. Where cuts to the forehead would give small streams that, when stood straight-backed proved more a hindrance than anything else because they removed the most-used sense, wounds to the neck would be waterfalls of blood. A person with one would bleed out and de if not treated.
With that in mind, Harry began to follow the trail of blood.
He found the man soon. He was average in every see-able way. Average height. Average build. Neither pale nor tanned. Brown hair and brown eyes. A brown suit that was a size too big. Off the rack, Harry assumed. Black shoes. The white shirt would have been average too, before blood stained it.
And a psychotic grin stretched across his face.
"Joker venom?" Harry asked no one in particular, as the man on the ground gave a wheezing, pained chuckle and weakly grabbed for his leg. Harry stepped away, and raised his right hand. A healthy green glow spread from it to the man, and his bloodflow slowed. Then, Harry stunned him and went on his way. Hopefully the man wouldn't die, but Harry was more worried about the hundreds if not thousands that had kept going.
Soon, Harry heard a ruckus in the distance. What the voices were shouting he could not discern, but they were impassioned and loud. Promising.
Harry quickly made his way towards the noise, and a half-minute later they were clear as day to him as his magic rectified his sense's failing.
"NO MORE HEROES!"
"WE WANT THE BAT!"
"NO MORE HEROES!"
"WE WANT THE BAT!"
"DOWN WITH HEROES!"
"WE WANT THE BAT!"
"DOWN WITH HEROES!"
"WE WANT THE BAT!"
Harry slowed, with a thoughtful expression. Obviously, the Joker had orchestrated this. Even without the venom, he was the obvious example of having a sick obsession with Batman. Harry did not, and would not, understand how the villain had changed his venom to warp these people's minds accordingly. He did know, however, that the Clown had created similar effects before.
Harry stopped a street away from the activists. If they caught sight of him, no doubt they would attack. If they attacked, Harry would be in trouble. He could not beat a crowd of that size without lethal force. If he was to use a wide-effect stunner, he could knock them all down, but not without a cost. At the very best, he would cause a few of them brain damage. At worst, he would stop a few of their hearts.
Not a good idea.
Instead, Harry turned his gaze to the rooftops. With the green-grey fog that the Joker had caused sitting over the area in a heavy cloud, he would have cover-aplenty. It was simple enough to fly in a straight line.
Or it would have been, had a white, blue and red object not fallen out of the sky and landed in front of him. And started making retching sounds.
Harry approached the figure, as slim shoulders shook and a quiet voice moaned and cursed under her breath.
"What the…" Harry peered down at the girl's shirt as she turned over, and the symbol upon it. "You don't look like Superman… heh, that's a bit of an understatement. So why're you wearing his crest?" He called the information he'd gleaned from Google to mind, and thought. He hadn't come across this girl in particular in his research… but, come to think of it. "Oh, he has a cousin or something, doesn't he? Supergirl, if I recall correctly." Harry was of the opinion that they were very uncreative titles, but ignored the thought in favour of kneeling down next to her.
"Now, what's going on?" He wondered aloud, and pressed his right index and middle fingers against her throat. He found a pulse, strong and steady, and nodded silently. "Hm." Then, he placed the back of his hand against her forehead. And promptly pulled it back. "Bloody- Wow, quite the fever."
But she must have been flying before whatever this was took effect. There weren't many things that could have inspired these symptoms in a normal person, let alone a Super-person. Harry made a soft noise of realisation.
"Ah. The Joker Venom." He frowned at the sky. "I wonder how he made it work on you…" Harry didn't have any idea, and stopped thinking it through soon. "Well, it must be airborne for you, too. It's a gas, after all." Harry waved his hand over the lower half of her face, and pale blue sparks sprang from his fingers. They formed a bubble, and Supergirl stilled. "I guess it counts as a poison, though." Why else wouldn't it be affecting Harry, but be affecting an alien of the same nature as Superman? It must be down to the Basilisk bite.
"Feel better," He wished her well, assuming she was tough enough to survive until she woke even in an unconscious state. "I've got a job to do."
Harry hefted his gun again, and rose into the air. His magic gripped the building that was his target, and Harry pulled himself towards it. A few moments later, he touched down on concrete.
The raven haired wizard dropped to a crouch, and hurriedly moved to the far edge of the flat rooftop; not wanting to waste time as the chants spontaneously became interspersed with crazed yells, screams and cries.
He peered over the lip of the roof's edge, and found out why. The mob was no longer organised. It was a frenzy of limbs in the centre, like the mosh pit at a rowdy concert. The Joker Venom was, from Harry's understanding, meant to cause insanity and those in the middle were violently psychotic. Even as he watched, one man in a high-class suit, a banker or a lawyer perhaps, leapt onto a man in sweats and began to pummel him. Unscarred fists slammed into the downed man's face and temple again and again. Blood sprayed from the nose and mouth. The skin over the knuckles broke, and the two men's blood mixed even as wails of anger and pain merged also.
Harry frowned as he saw this, but what could he do against hundreds of them? That was the size of this crowd, and based on the yells in the distance there were many other groups. This might have just been the first he came across. Or something led him here?
After a moment't thought, Harry frowned. In that moment, he considered sending them off after a conjured animal. Hopefully that would have cleared the way for him. He dismissed it, though, upon realising that people would be trampled if he was to do that. That would be a painful way to go, and he would avoid it if at all possible.
That just meant that he'd have to go with stealth.
Harry ran a hand over his short-cut hair, and disguised himself as his environment. The cloak would be significantly more thorough, but it would be made less effective by what he needed to be invisible for.
One thing Harry had noticed about flying was that it was bloody difficult to do it when he couldn't see himself. Even only to the extent of being camouflaged. And, so, he couldn't do it the normal way or he'd end up mistiming it and landing on the street. He could do half of it, though, and so the wizard moved backwards and gave himself a run up while tucking the handgun back into his trousers' waist.
Harry stopped with one leg behind him, bent ever so slightly, and the other bent below to give him as quick a start as possible. His magic flared as he pushed himself forwards, and Harry failed to notice that the ground below cratered ever so slightly as he pushed off at a speed greater than what he would have achieved even in the most recent world. His muscles were more saturated the longer it was since the incident, as his core constantly attempted to refill. The adverse effects had largely ceased, and Harry was very glad that they were now few and far between.
As Harry rushed towards the edge, he directed his magic to his fingers and his arms tingled. Then his forearms burned. The pain spread to his fingertips before Harry ejected the magic, and it punched the rooftops and flung him into the sky. This time, he was aware of the damage done in his wake, but that was to be expected using his magic's rawer form.
Harry kept quiet through some great effort, as he was launched into the Joker's fog, and gritted his teeth.
Apparently, he had overshot by quite a bit. It was hard to predict the effects of the magic he called a Banisher's cousin. It was all about the roof's integrity. Had he pushed with less force, it was entirely possible the building would have simply caved in beneath him; by the very nature of magic it assumed the caster did not want to be tossed into the sky. That was why he had to use this form of magic instead of an overpowered banisher. No matter how powerful that had been, Harry would have at most gotten the backlash of the magical power and been thrown backwards a few metres. A Banisher was meant to move its target away from the caster, not the other way around.
Now, had Harry had any idea of the layout of Gotham, or a clear view of what was coming, what happened next would not have come to be. As it was, he did not have either. And so his first clue that he was approaching a tall building was the shadow in the fog, which took him a moment to process.
"Fuck!" Harry's arms snapped forwards, and his magic burned as it hastened to obey. If Harry had been less accustomed to pain, it would have been agony. As it was, he just gritted his teeth again as the fire pushed through his bones, veins and flesh. Once upon a time, it was only his skin that hurt. That was because the symbols through which he had channelled his magic were etched into skin. Not any more, though. They were extremely supernatural, and had bonded to him utterly. He supposed that that made him a proper agent of Death, even if he had apparently been dismissed. Death represented life as well.
It was stupid of Harry to try to use the raw-Banisher again. It should have been clear to him what would happen when his magic met the glass, but he did not think before acting.
The glass for which he was heading shattered when Harry was 10 metres away. He tried using Aresto Momentum, and there was no sensation of fire, but the spell failed to act in time. If it slowed him at all, the effect made very little difference.
Harry passed through the empty floor-to-ceiling pane, and hit the ground with an oof.
-()()-
"Eep!" Harleen Quinzel exclaimed, as a man crashed into her room. Or the room she had claimed, anyway.
She had not been having a good day.
Mr J was ignoring her, as he brooded over the new hero interfering in Gotham. Harry had not done any heroism just yet, but Joker was not happy about him stealing the Bat's thunder. He insisted that Gotham was Batman's turf, and that this newbie had no right to be here. No… wait, he'd said "Newbies", not newbie. He had been angry enough, already, that Supergirl was around, and that was why he'd mixed Kryptonite into the formula of his new-and-improved toxin.
Harley's once scientific mind wondered briefly how the new arrival was unaffected by the venom. Then, she stopped caring and moved on to more pressing matters; dealing with Harry, for example. Hopefully, Mr J would be happy to see him defeated even if it was by her. Or the thugs on this floor, who she called in with the push of a button before sneakily grabbing her mallet as the black haired man slowly stood, and brushed glass off his clothes.
-()()-
Harry shook his head, and small shards of glass fell out of his cropped hair. If the locks had been longer, there would have been more but they would have failed to cut him as well, Harry believed. Quite strongly, since all evidence suggested that Death's change to his body this time had take quite well. His clothes had several tears in them, as the window's glass had broken into some large shards, but the skin beneath was unbroken.
As he poked his side, where one such injury should have been, Harry forgot to check where he was. Or whether there were any enemies in the vicinity.
"Ha!" Harry first realised that there was someone in the room with him when he heard a woman's voice yell out in triumph. Then, something slammed into the back of his head, and he was sent to the floor in a daze. Then, a door slammed open and Harry heard heavy footsteps. "Sorry boys. I guess I didn't need your help after all. You can tie him up, though, and I'll take him up to Puddin'."
Harry heard the men grunt, and then the shuffle of footsteps come towards him. He recovered from the head blow far faster now that he would have in the past, and placed his palms against the carpeted floor.
He heard a grunt of confusion reminiscent of two lumbering trolls of school children, dumb as dirt, from his first life. The man must have pointed at the phenomenon because another sound followed.
"He's movin'." The second told the woman.
Harry leapt to his feet a moment later, ignoring the slight unease he equated to a headrush, and his left hand went behind him even as his right shot out and sent a bolt of light in the direction of the grunters. Flipendo was a strange spell for Harry to use so frequently, he'd learned it as one of his earliest spells, but it was definitely useful. Useful, as the thug was thrown off his feet, flipped over in mid air, and landed face first on the ground.
Harry's right hand snapped out again as his left drew the Sig Sauer from his waistband, and a red bolt caught another of the five thugs Harry counted in the stomach. The man went down, unconscious, and Harry stepped forwards towards the next man. He ducked under a haymaker, and his palm glowed scarlet. Harry struck the man with an open hand punch in the chest. He vaguely registered that a rib or two snapped under the strength of the blow as the Stupefy took effect and the man fell to the ground.
The fourth man found a gun levelled on him as he levelled a shotgun on Harry. Blam! Blam! Blam! The bullets Harry fired each caught him in the right shoulder, in a close grouping. They tore a hole in the flesh that would take extensive work to heal. The man fell, spinning from the stopping force of the bullets, and screamed.
Harry found the last of the thugs on him as the woman swung her hammer again. He noted that the last man was massive, a few inches short of seven foot, before he ducked around the man's bulk and shoved him into the path of the swinging mallet. It only stuck him in the shoulder, but Harry heard the snap as the bone broke and wrote him off as out of the fight.
By the time the man fell onto the floor, Harry had his gun levelled on the woman, and raised an eyebrow at the sight.
If he remembered correctly, Harley Quinn was the sidekick of the Joker. The outfit she wore from the neck down matched her known attire of a red and black Harlequin's outfit, but her face was bare. The pale young woman's eyes widened at the sight of the gun's barrel, and the man aiming at her, and she froze with her eyes boring into Harry. Harry wondered briefly why she was staring at him like that, before speaking.
"Where is the Joker?" Harry asked her.
"I-I won't give him up!" She said, in her Jersey accent. Her voice wavered minutely. "I'd neva betray Mistah J!"
"So he's on a higher floor?"
"What?!" Harley's eyes bulged. "I didn't say that!"
"No, but you've confirmed it now. If you aren't going to give me any more information without serious persuasion, I don't have any reason to keep you conscious." He raised his right hand.
"Wait! Don't-"
"Stupefy." The woman's eyes rolled back in her head, and she fell to the floor. At the same time, Harry heard a thud come from above. He frowned, and moved on. As he went, the wizard scooped up three small pieces of glass and closed his fist around them.. When he opened it again, they were bullets and he quickly loaded them into the SIG. It was better to have twenty rounds than seventeen, after all. And when fully loaded, and counting the bullet in the chamber, the gun carried twenty.
Harry quickly climbed the stairs of the building, while keeping an eye out for booby-traps. Then, he stopped suddenly upon hearing the sound of mad laughter coming from down the hall. He approached the sound.
"HAHAHAHA!" A man's voice, sadistic and high-pitched, reached him after the laughter. The Joker was talking very loudly. "I was doing it for YOU! He's going to spoil our FUN, how do you not see that?!"
Harry slowed down, as a floorboard beneath his feet creaked. The psychotic clown didn't seem to notice.
"Oh, don't be like that! You must appreciate my intention at least! So what, if I killed a few people?! It's not important in the long run! But him taking me away from you?! That IS!"
Harry frowned. It sounded like Joker was talking to somebody in there. Had Batman arrived, or was the clown off on one again?
"So let me d-OW! Don't do that! There's no need for violence. FIne! FIne, I'll tell you how to fix it, are you happy?! Go to the nozzle over there… NO! No, not that one! That one will kill us all!" He exclaimed suddenly. "I'm just messing with ya, it is that one. Or is it?! Maybe I'm wrong, and that one will blow us and all of Gotham to smithereens!"
Harry's eyes widened, as the gas seemed to thin outside the corridor's window.
"Oh, poo. Spoilsport, how'd you know?"
Harry heard a tzz inside the room, and found himself confused about what had just happened as the Joker fell silent.
The raven haired wizard decided that it was a bad position he'd put himself in. He had no idea what was going on, and needed to take whoever was in there by surprise. To do that…
"Bombarda." Harry said, and the door and its frame exploded into fragments of debris.
A black… object flew out of the resulting cloud of dust, and Harry ducked to avoid it. Then, he brought the gun to bear on roughly where it had come from, and fired a warning shot at the bottom of the cloud. After the gunshot, Harry simply waited for something to happen. Not for the first time, he was thankful that over the years his ears and eyes had adapted to the frequent gunfire, often in confined spaces. That meant the ringing was minimal and his vision was unimpaired so that he could catch any signs of an incoming attack that happened to come.
And, so, Harry dodged to the side as another projectile came his way. It hit the wall behind him, and revealed itself to be a smoke bomb of some kind. The gas reached him, and Harry smelled something strange in the smoke. Like… burned sugar, for some reason. Harry turned his attention back to the room without a door, and found Batman charging at him.
"Wait!" Harry yelled, as the hero swung for him. Harry narrowly dodged it, even with the enhanced speed he possessed. Then, he found a grey-clad elbow slamming into his nose, and stumbled back. "Stop! I'm not-" Harry stumbled out of the way of Batman as the hero aimed a punch at his abdomen. "Your enemy! My name's Harry, I'm here trying to help put a stop to whatever the hell's going on!" Batman stopped, and white eyes narrowed. Then, his stance relaxed. Not entirely, Harry noted, but far more than the fighting stance he had had moments before.
"How are you here?" Batman asked.
"Here? I came through the window… is that really one of the things you find implausible? That I would be able to get into the building?"
"How are you conscious?" The black-clad superhero specified.
"Oh, I'm immune to this sort of thing." Harry answered promptly.
"Hm. And did you find anything of note as you entered?"
"Yeah. A woman dressed as a harlequin and five of their hired help. I took care of all of them, but three of the guys will need medical attention." Harry thought for a moment. "Actually, two will need it, and two might."
"What did you do?" Batman asked, suspiciously, as he looked pointedly at Harry's gun. The wizard flicked the safety on, and tucked it into his waistband.
"I only shot one of them. In the shoulder, too, so he should be fine as long as he gets to a hospital in the near future. My bullets went straight through, so the surgery won't be at all complicated. The other one who will need it got hit by the woman's mallet and I heard some of the bones in his arm break. I broke another's ribs, and maybe another's nose or jaw. I didn't check, but he landed on his face." Harry explained.
"The emergency services will know to come here, but I will cauterise the gunshots," Batman said, seemingly for his own benefit. "After the riots, others will be prioritised."
"Is the Joker in there?" Harry asked, nodding to the room Batman had just exited. The bigger man confirmed it, and Harry frowned. He looked at the caped crusader, then the room, and then back again and decided this wasn't the time to start. Even if it was the Joker, Batman would see it as an unjust execution. He refused to kill, Harry knew. "Hey, I saw Supergirl fall out of the sky a while back. I gave her clean air, but I don't know what the residual effect of the gas will be." Harry shrugged. "She was… a mile-ish in that direction? Maybe less, I'm not sure how far I… flew, before arriving here."
Batman nodded, and then lifted his hand to his ear. It only paused for a moment as Harry vanished in a crack, and arrived back in the centre of Gotham. He had been quite near Arkham, predictably, and did not feel like walking. Or flying, for that matter.
Now, Harry had to figure out where Bruce Wayne's mansion was, exactly.
-()()-
Kara Zor-El was in a huff.
She'd only been trying to help, yet Bruce had contacted her cousin. The Justice League's relief effort had concluded this morning and so he had been on his way back even as the call arrived. Now, he and Batman were stood across the cave from her talking in low tones. She would have been insulted that they forgot she could still hear them, but for the fact that they intended it to be this way.
"If it wasn't for this new hero, she could have died." Bruce told her cousin. "The Kryptonite in her lungs was only been removed by forcing her to vomit. If it had entered her bloodstream…"
"I know, Bruce. I'll behaving words with her about being so needlessly reckless in the future. Ma and Pa would have been devastated if that had come to pass." Okay, Kara knew that that was only for her benefit. How was she meant to know the clown had a Kryptonite weapon?! "It was idiotic of her to charge in like that, especially after you specified she should stay put."
"It was. Even if the fog had not affected her, I expect that her appearance would have made the mobs even worse. It would have led to further frenzy, giving them something apparent to fear." Batman explained the situation. He had explained earlier in the conversation that the Joker Venom had driven the people into a place where they would afraid of damn near anything, including superheroes, and that the fear would then translate into anger, and a need to commit violence. Neither of the senior superheroes had seemed as surprised as Supergirl that the Joker had achieved this, so Kara assumed that she was simply missing something. Either he was much smarter than she had realised, or he had an ally in a talented chemist.
Superman sighed. "Hopefully that will change soon."
"Has she agreed to join, then?" Batman asked, as a follow up.
"She has." Of course, Kara knew what they were speaking of. She had been reluctant to join the Justice League, but her time here with Barbs had convinced her that it could be worth while to make some more friends. Especially since Barbs was thinking about travelling abroad for college; Kara didn't really have any friends at school. She had people that she got along with, and even hung out with on occasion, but none of them knew anything about her. Not really, anyway. "Some real world experience alongside more experienced heroes will hopefully help her mature without the hardship many of our number have had to go through."
Batman nodded, and fell silent for a moment. Superman spoke again.
"What do you think of contacting this Harry, to ask him to join?"
"We don't know enough about him to do so." Batman said, and Supergirl saw from the slight surprise on her cousin's face that he, too, was unused to hearing something so close to uncertainty in the man's voice.
"What did you think of him? Based on first impressions?"
"He seemed to have a different mindset. The attacks he used seemed mystical to me, so I intend to consult with Zatanna at her earliest convenience. But he was also using a gun." Supergirl knew how Batman felt about guns. "Based on the wounds of the man he shot, his bullets are mystical as well. I don't trust magical items."
"Is that all?" Clark raised an eyebrow.
"No. Not all." Batman seemed to frown under his mask. "I believe he wanted to kill the Joker."
"Oh." Superman nodded slowly, while Kara frowned. "Did he kill any of the others?"
"No."
"Hopefully that was the exception, and not the rule, then." Superman theorised. "It's understandable that the Joker could be an exception."
Batman nodded, as did Kara. Then, a new voice sounded inside the cave.
"Well, isn't this gloomy?"
