Disclaimer
I don't own anything. DC Comics, and anything that it publishes, is not in anyway owned by me. It is all owned by rich, talented people. I'm a nobody. Please don't sue me.
For Fear To Be A King
Cassandra crouched in the shadows, watching the top of the police headquarters like a hawk. The police had found a spotlight and set it up, and had made a large template shaped like a spoilerang to use to make the symbol. Standing next to the light was Commissioner Avery, who looked extremely tense.
A few minutes later Stephanie arrived, landing lightly next to Cassandra and joining her in observing the scene. "What's going on?" she whispered.
"Don't know," Cassandra replied. "Something bad."
"Then let's not leave her waiting," Stephanie said, pulling out her grapple and firing it across. Cassandra quickly joined her, and she could see the Commissioner's relief when she saw them landing on the rooftop.
"What's up?" Stephanie asked. "Cool Spoiler Signal, by the way."
"Trouble," Avery said tensely. She glanced over at the light for a moment, flipping it off before explaining it. "We found one of your throwing weapons at the judge's house. I heard about the people in Bludhaven doing the same thing to get Nightwing's attention recently, and since you're from Gotham too..."
"Well, attention gotten," Stephanie said.
Avery nodded. "Good. Because we have problems."
"Lay it on me," Stephanie said.
"Earlier tonight, the mayor's office was broken into by a costumed criminal called the Scarecrow," Avery explained.
Both Stephanie and Cassandra tensed at that revelation. "Oh," Stephanie said quietly. "That's bad. Is the mayor okay?"
"No," Avery said. "Not really. He and his staff are all in the hospital. They've been exposed to some powerful drug, and it's making them hallucinate and panic."
"I know someone that might be able to send a cure," Stephanie said. "You need to keep them calm though – Fear Toxin can kill or drive you mad without treatment."
Avery nodded. "I'd heard as much. I contacted Gotham, and they're sending a shipment of the antidote, but they don't have much on hand. Apparently, he broke out of Arkham last night and had a bit of a rampage before disappearing."
"Why would he come here?" Stephanie asked.
"He left a message," Avery answered, handing a photograph to the vigilantes. "Wrote it on the walls."
Stephanie sucked in her breath when she saw it before handing it to Cass. The picture showed a large office, presumably the Mayor's, and painted on one wall was a single sentence.
"'I'm gonna SPOIL Hub City.' Not exactly subtle," Stephanie said. "But I've never even met him. Why is he after me?"
"It probably has something to do with the emergency call we got from Mandragora's mansion," Avery explained. "Apparently, everyone there got gassed as well. Mandragora had a heart attack. D.O.A. Probably connected to the mysterious criminals who broke Scarecrow out of Arkham and his subsequent disappearance."
Stephanie groaned. "Only a Gotham crook would kill his employer, and then do the job anyway."
A uniformed cop suddenly ran out onto the roof. He hesitated only a second when he saw who his boss was talking to before scurrying over to deliver his message. "There's been a riot at Irving Prison! All of the prisoners are breaking out!"
"Damn it!" Avery growled. "Get everyone down there! We need to stop it. Spoiler..."
When she turned around, she discovered that both vigilantes had disappeared. "Okay. That's really annoying."
As soon as they were away from police headquarters, the two young women dropped down to street level and found one of the few still operational pay phones in downtown Hub City. Cassandra hesitated for a moment, staring at the phone. She wasn't sure she wanted to make the call... but she knew she needed to.
"Want me to do it?" Stephanie asked gently. "You can tell me her number..."
"No," Cassandra said decisively. "I can deal."
Picking up the phone, she quickly dialed a phone number, and at a tone, she then entered a ten digit code and waited. A moment later the phone picked up, and Cassandra could hear Barbara's concerned voice through the line, for once not distorted as Oracle. "Ba- um, Silent? Are you okay?"
"Um... yes," Cassandra said. "Need help."
"Sure," Barbara said. "You can call me anytime. What do you need?"
"Scarecrow. He's here. Poisoned the Mayor... many others. Cause prison break."
"Scarecrow?" Barbara answered, typing away. "I'll send someone over right away with some antidote. You should be careful. Scarecrow is very..."
"Can handle," Cassandra interrupted. "Just need antidote."
"I know you're capable," Barbara said placatingly. "But even Batman needs backup sometimes... usually when he least admits to needing it."
"Have partner," Cassandra said. "Will be fine."
"Okay," Barbara said. "Look, Cass, I want..."
"Prison break," Cassandra said. "Have to deal. Busy... bye."
"Alright," Barbara said with a sigh. "When this is over... can we talk?"
Cassandra hesitated for a long moment. "Okay. Bye."
"Goodbye, Cass," Barbara said just as she hung up.
Cassandra looked over at Stephanie. "She's sending antidote."
Stephanie smiled at her. "Everything okay?"
Cassandra considered for a moment, before nodding. "Will be," she decided, before pulling out her line and firing it, heading back to the rooftops.
The trip to Irving Prison was made in silence, both vigilantes lost in thought. They rode on top of a bus before hopping off and roof running the rest of the way to the prison. From the amount of lights flashing, they could tell even before they got close that the police were already out in force trying to keep the escaping prisoners contained.
The two vigilantes paused on the last rooftop before the the open field around the prison. The situation was already bad, with prisoners fighting like mad in the field, trying to force their way past the police. Cassandra narrowed her eyes as she saw them.
They moved... wrong. They felt no pain. No fear. Nothing but a berserk bloodlust that sent them charging into the overwhelmed police line. A group of prisoners tackled several policemen, and rather than trying to escape, a mob formed, all attempting to beat the downed officers at the same time.
"Drugged," Cassandra said tersely as she fired a line at a streetlight, swinging out over the parking lot and crashing feet first into the mob. Spinning and kicking, she dropped several of the escapees, but the rest simply stood back up, unfazed despite deep bruising and cracked bones from her punishing entrance. She was going to have to be... firm.
Cassandra soon lost herself in the dance. Her partners were nearly mindless, and few moved with anything resembling skill. On the other hand, they didn't need skill to be a serious danger, since they wouldn't back down unless actually disabled. Despite the grace of her movements, Cassandra's attacks were by necessity unusually brutal. Bones were snapped, nerve clusters were struck, and even a few concussions were delivered when she was forced to drop someone too quickly in order to save another imperiled officer.
The skill disparity meant that the only way that any of the prisoners could harm her was with a combination of luck and numbers. Unfortunately, the numbers seemed almost limitless, and luck was too fickle to stay with her in a battle so long. Slowly her own injuries began to add up, bruises and bumps and a badly tweaked knee, but still she fought on.
She found her zone. A place where nothing had any meaning, save the battle. She not only ignored her pain, but like her opponents, Cass stopped even feeling it. Nothing existed, save the dance.
She was pulled from her meditative state by sudden blasts of water. She stumbled slightly, her injured knee screaming at her about the abuse she had just put it through. She swayed on her feet before putting down the foe in front of her and looking around.
During the fighting, swarms of police in full riot gear had arrived, and they had brought water cannons and tear gas with them. The gas seemed to do little good, as despite coughing and watering eyes, the prisoners continued fighting at full force. The water, however, knocked them around, keeping them from even getting to the police line.
Cassandra staggered to a police car and slumped against it, her entire body burning from overwork. She had been fighting without pause for over an hour, and she was shaking from fatigue and injury. She took several long, meditative breaths to bring herself back under control, finally opening her eyes and looking around for Stephanie.
Her friend was missing.
When Stephanie saw Cassandra swing into the crowd she had pulled her line out to join her before pausing and considering the situation. It didn't take her long to realize what Cassandra had meant about them being drugged. The prisoners were on a rampage, and she knew that she would be hard-pressed to stop them.
She was about to try anyway, but as she watched Cassandra moving through the prisoners like a hot wind, rescuing police who rallied in her wake to keep up the fight, she decided that her place wasn't in a melee like that. She could do some good, but she would eventually either be overwhelmed, or be forced to pull back to safety. The first would be very bad for her health, while the second wouldn't be good for the police morale that Cassandra was doing a good job of raising.
Stephanie looked around, trying to figure out something that she could do, when inspiration suddenly struck. The prisoners hadn't even managed to escape, which meant that, if Scarecrow had come himself, he probably hadn't escaped either. In fact, Stephanie suspected that he wouldn't even want to escape yet – he would prefer to watch the results of his drug on the crowd.
Which meant that he was probably still in the prison, and most likely in some place where he could see the battle unfold. Instead of swinging into the crowd, Stephanie landed lightly on a police car before firing again, this time bringing herself to the top of the prison wall. The courtyard was already almost empty with only a few stragglers remaining inside, and they were all rushing for the exits.
The prison building itself was a large concrete and steel eyesore with only one visible entrance, its doors wide open. She swung across, landing just inside the doorway, and was almost sick. On the ground around her were several prison guards, all brutally beaten. She didn't need to be a doctor to tell that they hadn't survived.
Moving into the prison, her heart began to pound. Blood spattered the walls, and dead guards lay scattered about, killed trying to stop the maddened prisoners from escaping. The further she moved into the prison the fewer bodies she found, but the worse condition they were in, until she began to find bodies that not even dental records would be able to identify.
The sounds of the riot faded away as she put more concrete between her and the battle going on outside. When she finally reached a stairway, she considered for a moment before opening it and beginning to go up. Scarecrow had to be either in a security room or actually at the top of the prison to watch the results of his efforts, and since she didn't know where security might be, she decided to try the other option first.
She slowly pushed the doors at the top of the stairs open, but found that the top floor of the prison was dark. Pulling out a tiny but bright flashlight, she shined it around, but didn't see anything immediately. Whatever had killed the lights had done so without damaging them, but when she found the switch, it did nothing.
Creeping down the hallway, Stephanie found her heart rate speeding up. She frowned, considering, before deciding that he hadn't already exposed her to his gas. It was simply good old-fashioned in-over-her-head facing-a-super-villain fear. Which wasn't much better.
While taking on Scarecrow alone wasn't a smart move, she knew that Cass would be busy keeping the police alive and the prisoners contained, and someone needed to go after him. If he escaped the prison, then he would simply strike again elsewhere, putting more people at risk. Besides, Cass had been training her hard for months, and on top of everything Tim and Batman had taught her, she felt confident that she could take someone who thought straw was a part of clothing.
She cracked open each door as she moved down the hallway, peering inside for any sign of him before moving on to the next. The cells were relatively clean, but they were still tiny concrete boxes. She smirked at the thought of her father being stuck in one.
She had just opened yet another door when instead of the empty room she had been expecting, she saw Scarecrow right in front of her, an arm extended. Before she could recover from her surprise he had already released a powerful dose of fear gas straight into her face. She slammed the door, stumbling backwards as she began to sweat, her heart pounding like mad in her chest.
The door flew open, smashing against the hallway wall echoingly before he stepped out of the cell. Scarecrow hadn't looked like much in his mugshots, but in person he towered over her, his presence magnified by the effects of the fear gas. Stephanie stumbled back against the wall as he twitched spasmodically, his every motion eerie and completely inhuman as he closed with her.
"Hello, little girl," Scarecrow said, his voice seeming to rise from the darkest places in her soul. "Are you ready to play?"
It's just the gas, she told herself desperately. He's human.
Stephanie lurched away from the wall she had been leaning against, leading with a roundhouse kick which Scarecrow effortlessly backed away from. "Ah, so much fear. I can see you'll be a lot of fun."
"Shut up!" Stephanie shouted, her attacks sloppier than they had been in years as she tried to hit him. If she could just hit him, but every time she came close he drifted away like a leaf caught in a breeze, never letting her so much as touch him.
Stephanie's desperation grew by the second, and finally she stumbled over something, tripping and falling to the floor. Before she could recover, Scarecrow was on her, kicking her in the side of the head, stunning her before grabbing her arms and binding them with police handcuffs. He then grabbed her ankles and began to slowly drag her away.
Stephanie struggled weakly, dazed by what had happened, before her eyes landed on what made her fall; she had tripped over a roll of toilet paper that had been left in the hallway sometime during the riot. "It's not supposed to be this way," she muttered, still stunned from the kick. She couldn't believe that she had been defeated by toilet paper.
She came fully awake when a bucket of cold water hit her face. Gasping and sputtering, she looked around, cringing back from Scarecrow as he loomed over her. While she had been out of it, he had undone her handcuffs before looping the links around thick pipe in the wall and reattaching them. She pulled desperately, fear lending her strength, but she couldn't make the pipe budge at all.
"Useless," Scarecrow tittered. "You cannot escape. We have so much to do."
"You won't get away with this," Stephanie said, hating the way her voice shook. "Silent will stop you."
"Oh, I'm looking forward to playing with her, too," Scarecrow said. "But she's busy right now... I'll get around to her when I get the chance. I have time to focus my full attention on you, Spoiler. It's time to find out the truth, little girl. Time to expose your true face."
She cowered back from him, but instead of reaching for her mask, he pulled a small syringe from his pocket. "What... what are you doing?"
"I'm going to peel away all of you layers," Scarecrow crooned. "Like an onion, down, down, until the truth is found. Fear does that, you know. It's the greatest equalizer. No matter how brave you are, everyone has fear, even the Bat. I've seen his true face... what he's like at his very soul. And I'll find out who you really are, too."
"You've... never seen him without the mask," Stephanie forced out, trying to resist the fear toxin already in her veins. He's just a man in a mask, she thought desperately.
Scarecrow chuckled. "No, but I don't need to. I don't care what you really look like... I only care about the real you. The you I can only find by cutting open your mind and looking inside. We're going to learn a lot, Spoiler. We're going to learn who you really are."
Stephanie tried to resist, tried to fight, but nothing worked. She was chained to a wall, helpless, having already been exposed to a full dose of Scarecrow's gas. He held her arm still, removed the safety cap from his syringe, and injected it into her.
"What is that," she gasped, as a burning pain slowly spread from the injection site.
"My newest creation," Scarecrow said, his voice reverent. "This is a super concentrated Fear Toxin variant. It doesn't last as long as most, and requires direct injection... but the effects. Oh yes, you will be immersed in a world of pure terror. Everything you are truly afraid of, shining in the stark darkness of the blackest spots in your soul. This is the true epitome of Fear."
Stephanie tried to be strong, tried to resist, but it was too much. Everything blurred and shifted, and suddenly Scarecrow wasn't simply looming over her. He was crouching on her chest, like a demon in a medieval woodcut, his distorted frame pressing his incredible weight down on her, making it impossible for Stephanie to breathe.
"Oh, yes," Scarecrow said, maggots spilling from his mouth and covering Stephanie. They crawled all over her skin, burrowing into her flesh, spreading the blaze that now filled every vein in her body from the injection. "We are going to have such fun."
Stephanie kept trying to fight, but it was impossible. Her last coherent thought before she was swept away on a wave of terror was 'sorry, Cass'. And then she began to scream.
And scream. And scream.
