"So yeah. Long and short of it is, I think that gun deal've yours is off."

Myself, Golden Glider, Mirror Master and Captain Cold stood in the shattered remains of Harry Cooper's office. Blood and stray meat littered the floor, and we all gathered around staring at the pile of discarded skin that had once been Harry Cooper.

Mirror Master was poking at it with a stick. Or at least, with the leg of the broken chair that had beaned one of the poor security guards.

"Aye, bit hard to debate prices with a pile on the floor, eh? Though…" He stuck the chair leg into the mouth hole of the skin-mask, miming a deep, growling voice "Aye, you can have all the guns, just gimme a fiver an' call it even!"

"Don't be gross." Golden Glider tutted, folding her arms. "This does leave us with problems, though. We spent a lot of time on this deal, and you said there might be more monsters?"

"He said he replaced 'enough for our purposes', or something like that. I-" I give them all a look. None of them reeked of diabolism the same way Harry Cooper did… but he wasn't even trying to hide it, was he? And he was a big fuck-off bastard, a smaller one would be harder to sniff out. "...They're shapeshifters 'n ambush predators. Anybody who's been alone more'n a minute or two could be one at this point."

"Which means anybody but…" Glider starts

"The two of us." Captain Cold finishes.

I nod, firmly. "'N maybe Mandragora and -" I stopped myself before saying her name "His companion. Whatsername- Miss Bertinelli? Those two have been pretty joined at the hip."

Captain Cold went quiet. He stared long and hard at the pile that had once been a prospective business partner, then stared long and hard at me. I could see cogs turning behind those eyes. A big, bulky, metal machine, churning through information and coming to a conclusion.

Coming to a plan of action.

"I'm going to make an assumption here, Constantine. I'm going to assume you have some kind of way of detecting these demons, right?"

"Sure, I-" His expression darkened at that, and I sensed that was somehow the wrong answer. There was a hint of violence in that stare, but I only missed a step, plowing on through "Simple ritual. Little blood magic, theirs is different, I can test it. It'll take time to set up, probably a little scrounging. I didn't exactly bring me damn exorcism kit so I'll be rummaging around bedrooms, somebody 'round here's bound to be religious, and…"

"Good." He grunted, before saying "Then you're helping us round everybody up and testing them. Consider yourself drafted, then-"

"Woah, woah, woah." I cut him off, waving my hands. "Hell makes you think I'm sticking around? I got what I wanted - Harry cooper out've me damn hair. I'm maybe warning Freeze and Penguin-" And Huntress, I refrained from saying "- And then I'm getting the hell out of dodge, i'm not sticking around with that kind of monster here!"

"Hate to say it, boss, I'm with Johnny-boy, here. What're we sticking around for? Deal's gone sour, let's round everybody up and bounce." Mirror had my back, at least… but it was us two against both his bosses.

Glider cut in next. "Because my Captain is the one pulling the purse strings, and he says so, Mirror. And John, we could afford to pay you very well. Very well indeed." She purred

"Can't spend money if you're dead!" I threw my hands up in frustration, pacing on the spot. Cold looked at me a little confused, like he didn't get why I didn't want to have my innards torn out through my spleen. I waved at the pile of bloody skin in a silent explanation, gesturing insistently at it, miming 'see what'll happen if I stick around?'

Glider and Cold exchanged a look, a little subtle set of nods and shakes of the head. And then they turned back to me as one.

They had an argument prepped. I spoke up before they could deliver it.

Glider got as far as "What-" before I interrupted

"Hell do you care, anyway, if a bunch've demons run loose? What's it to you?"

Cold blinked, losing a step. Glider didn't. "We want to make sure our teammates aren't infected."

"And the rest? Look, if it comes to that, just freaking round 'em up and come to my place, I'll have actual wards and defenses, and check you all up fine. Why's it need to be now?"

"We're not leaving!" Cold growled, turning aggressive, fast. Glider put a hand on his shoulder gently, softening him, and he justified "If they outnumber us already, we'll be done for before they reach your apartment."

"And we can't risk any of us getting ambushed in the interim even if we aren't outnumbered. Trust will be low, we wouldn't be able to afford to stick together or stay apart. And frankly, John, we can handle this now. Waiting is... We don't want to be stuck waiting so long to know if our friends are already dead."

Now that, at least, tugged at my heartstrings. A little. Not enough for me to risk my neck, but…

"Fine. I'll stick around just long enough to warn my lads in here. If, and this is if, you get all your people together before then, I'll test 'em before we make for the hills, yeah?" I set my jaw at that, intent. And Captain Cold just stared right back at me with that mechanical look, that thoughtful look. That turn of grinding gears and turning cogs.

"He's not going to reconsider, is he?" He said after a moment, sounding exhausted, turning his head just a fraction to look at Glider.

"No, love. No he is not." She shook her head, sadly.

And then Cold slung his gun from his back and stormed out of the room.

"What in the-" The double-doors slammed open as he strode through into the main hall, lowering his freeze ray. Everybody else scrambled to follow, as without a word Captain Cold levelled the freeze ray at the big double doors and opened fire, black ice forming, welding the front doors closed, and the windows to boot.

"Nobody leaves until we're sure everybody remaining is human!" He declared, tone cold as ice. The words echoed around the huge, empty hall. A declaration. Final.

The rest of us could only stare, slack-jawed. Fuck. Fuck! Now I was trapped inside this damn manor with an unknown number of demons and a batch of costumed maniacs. Sure, that's just fine, when has that ever gotten everybody brutally murdered before?!

Whilst the rest of us gaped, Cold turned. "Me and Golden Glider will go room-to-room freezing windows. Priority one is now going to be securing Heat Wave, he's the only one who will be able to get us out once we're done.."

"Only one to get us out of the bloody cage you're putting us in! Maybe you should've thought of an exit plan before trapping us all in with the bloody monsters?!" I hissed. "Look, I get we need to trap 'em but some of us want an escape route!"

"Do you want them getting loose on the city?" he snapped in return, and that… stopped me, a moment. Even Mirror Master and Glider looked surprised, though Glider smirked pretty quickly after, pleased.

"...ain't you a bloody supervillain? Pretty sure that's meant to be my line."

"Yeah, then why weren't you the one saying it?" he said. "Now give me a headcount. Will they be targeting staff?"

"Come t'think, where are all the staff?" Mirror Master looked to try to spot them, but most of them had vacated during the, y'know, all out metahuman brawl.

"Doubt it, but it's possible if it's to survive. They mostly sounded like they want people in position of power, yeah? But we oughta round them up anyway, make sure they don't do something stupid."

"Good. You and Mirror Master are rounding people up." He waved a hand dismissively at us, and Golden Glider went to his side. "Test them as you go if you can, else, we'll meet back here as soon as we're done."

Right. By my count, that meant we had to gather… "I know where Freeze 'n Penguin are. Huntress and Mandragora will be in the bedrooms… Weather Wizard got lost in the fighting?" I turned to Mirror.

"An' the rest are probably playing poker still. Join 'em first?"

"Nah. Those guys are probably safe. In a room together playing a game involving keeping a close eye on each other? Yeah, mate, they're cool. The demons steal memories to emulate your personality but nobody's getting a chance to sneak off to get taken." I chuckle. "Mandragora and Miss Bertinelli first."

"Y'sure the fat bastard ain't a demon already? Or the girl, from the looks she was giving me. He don't look exactly fully…"

I shrugged at that, not really able to give a solid answer. "No clue what his deal with him is, sorry, mate. Though he sure is a bit too pale and stocky to be totally…" I waved a hand, trying to figure out a polite way to phrase it. "Y'know…" Human, I meant. He seemed to get the message.

"Sounds like you two have things figured out." Captain Cold grunted, taking a few steps towards an already icy corridor, the one the demon had torn through during the fight whilst following Mirror. "We'll see you soon, then."

"And do try not to die!" Glider waved at us, before heading forward, exiting to the first door on the right, looking for exterior windows to close.

I waited until they were out of earshot to breathe a sigh of relief. Mirror seemed to sense it, clapping me on the back. "Yeah, they can be a… lot, when they're in work mode. Boss decides he wants something, he gets… intense."

"Like locking us all in here?" And that look he gave me beforehand… "What's their deal, anyway? All Bonnie and Clyde. Did they found the team like that, or get hitched whilst working?"

"Got hitched whilst working, but they've been a couple since forever. Villains have weird personal lives, count ourselves lucky they seem pretty steady, even if she does tend to, uh… egg him on a bit."

"He decided to lock us in all on his own! That weren't her egging him on. If anything, she seems to be attached to him at the hip. Sure we're talking about the right people and not some other superpowered power couple?"

"Aye, mucker, i'm talking about the other pair of maniacs who're joined at the hip." He smirked, snickering. "Just you wait'n see though. They're both bad enough as it stands, but when push comes to shove? She's the real terror, there, not him."

The good news was, we found Mandragora pretty quick.

Found him just about everywhere, actually. On the roof, the floor, the walls…

Somebody'd torn him to absolute shreds.

"Good news is, he ain't one of the demons." I muttered, kneeling down and swiping a finger through a small splash of his blood. Fresh. We'd been maybe five minutes late, at most. His guts were still steaming. You could taste the metal on the air.

Though most of the limbs were missing, his torso ripped open for meat, the head was still attached to the body, at least. Something jumped out at me, when I looked at it closely..

A puncture mark under the chin. The kind that would be left behind by an arrow, or a bolt. Cleaner than any of his other wounds, by a wide margin.

It wasn't proof positive, but given who was distinctly missing from this scene, who we knew full well should have been with Mandragora…

It painted a picture.

"Looks a lot like one of the monsters tried to nab him but he fought back, eh?" Mirror mused, not seeming too disturbed by the body. I figured he wouldn't be, but I'd been preparing to do another round of holding some lad's hair out of the sink whilst they spewed their guts. That was the usual reaction to a demonic killing. And this really looked like a demonic killing.

"Must've been Bertinelli." I couldn't see any way it wouldn't be at least. She'd tried to kill him with the crossbow and it, what, didn't take? That was her signature weapon as Huntress. Then the demon wearing her skin…

Fuck. I'd liked her too. She'd helped me in Gotham. Beat the shit out of me before that during the Red Lantern fiasco, but even so…

She'd been a mate.

I closed my eyes, taking a quiet moment to mourn, but I had Mirror's eyes on me, now.

"Yeah. Knew there was something suspicious about her, chick was always digging for info, lurking around the damn corner." He groused, staring at one of the mirrors in the fancy mansion bedroom. That made me pause. Not because I wanted to know if he planned to do anything with it, given his powers, but…

"Bit of a lack of collateral damage though, no?" I asked, looking around. Oh, sure. Mandragora was in pieces. Chunks taken out of him everywhere, but… nothing else. The bed he (or at least his torso) was lying on was creaking under his weight a little but that was the extent of the damage to the furniture.

"These things strike me as ambush predators. Nasty as they are in a brawl, they're shapeshifters. You don't bother with all the cloak-and-dagger if you can get the same results out of a punch-up, yeah?" Mirror said, but it was a question, not a statement. Hypothesizing.

"Then why's he in chunks? Mate, guy was butchered. They'd want to assimilate him, not just kill him, right?"

Mirror stopped admiring himself and started rummaging through drawers… plus the deceased's pockets, grinning from ear to ear when he found the guy's overstuffed wallet.

"Yoink!"

"I hope you're planning to give me some've that. My expert help in all matters demonic don't come cheap, you know." I told him when he started waving it in my face to brag.

"Not on your life. Finder's keepers." He dropped it on the floor and shot the floor under it with a gun, vanishing the cash into a mirror dimension where I couldn't just pickpocket it later.

Smart lad. Didn't trust me. Almost like he'd met me before or something.

It wouldn't do to let him get all the goodies. I started looking for, ah, clues, too.

"Don't get me wrong…" Mirror muttered as he saw me extracting a rosary from one of the drawers. "Mandragora doesn't strike me as the catholic type."

"You clearly don't know enough mobsters. They all bloody play at being religious. In-group-ism's important, gives 'em an excuse to go at the Protestants, salves their ego. Let's just say confession can be relieving for some types… 'n the rest like one more reason to claim their gang's family." I explained as I pocketed it. It'd be useful for ritual work. I nabbed a few candles from the counter, too. They'd been meant as decorative, but I could put them to much better use than that. Was it enough for an improvised demon test? Not quite, but we were getting there. Needed more candles, plus…

"Tell me if'n you spot any crosses? And a knife, and anything like a bowl or cup that looks like it might be silver."

"Got it, boss." He gave me a mocking salute before portalling away a lovely ruby necklace from a jewelry drawer, the lucky fuck.

We found a lot of little souvenirs like that, but nothing that might be counted as evidence of what the hell had actually happened in here.

I racked my brains for ideas. The door? No signs of forced entry. No windows to climb in or out of, Cold would be happy to know. No blood that looked demonic.

"Dead end, then. Oughta warn the others to watch out for the lass, though, if we see 'em." Mirror muttered as we stepped back into the hall.

The mansion was laid out pretty geometrically. Two long hallways full of doors left and right from the stairs on the upper level, two long hallways left and right on the lower. Like a hotel, the modern kind, not the sort that was a redecorated asylum from the 1200's or something like you see half the time, that were laid out like bloody labyrinths.

It wasn't too claustrophobic, much the opposite. The damn place was too open, doors were bloody everywhere. And that made it all feel a lot less safe.

You were barely ever out of arm's reach of a door, going down the halls. Something nasty could jump out at any time.

Mirror Master was feeling it too. We sort of naturally fell into a weird walking pattern, him a little behind me, glancing back, literally watching our backs whilst I watched the front.

"So where next?"

"Penguin 'n Freeze. Those two… they should be mostly safe, but don't want one of them wandering off on their own, too easy to split up." I replied as we made our way back to the top of the stairs, staring over the demolished hall over the balcony. I hadn't seen hide nor hair of any staff since the fight, maybe they'd all ran?

"Yeah, that's gonna be a reunion. Freeze ain't… ain't too happy with me, right now." He rubbed the back of his neck. We started heading downstairs, making for the cellar they were holed up in, walking and talking.

"How come? What, you hit one of his hideouts or something? Supervillain drama stuff, or…"

"Nah, mate, nah." Did I detect a little bit of… actual guilt on his face? He looked away, going quiet a little.

"Well spit it out. I don't want to be walking in there if having you two in a room together's gonna end in a bloody punch-up!"

"He's pissed at me over Gotham. Me'n him share, ah… some stuff in common, at least. Shouldn't've taken that bloody job, an' I bailed as soon as I realised what Scarecrow'd done, but he ain't really listening about that, now, is he?"

"...So Scarecrow did have you hit one of-"

"No, mucker! I-" He chewed on his lip, embarrassed, before finally spitting it out. "Me 'n him ain't exactly the kind who usually goes after wives 'n kids, y'know? Or parents. I think he respected me for that, until, ah… until he didn't, yanno?"

Huh. That made me stop and think a moment. Scarecrow… back in Gotham he'd gone after a family member of mine, whilst Mirror Master had been working for him. He'd killed my father. Even I hadn't thought it was Mirror's fault, we'd already… apprehended… him by the time it happened, but…

The memory made my throat tighten a little. Soured me. But I nodded, saying "Yeah, that I can get. I- it won't come to a fight, though?"

"Nah, mucker, won't come to a fight." He says, right as we reach the door to the basement.

I heard bottles breaking, crashing from inside.

That killed the conversation stone dead. Both of us stopped talking and stopped thinking. A fight? Trouble? I hesitated, but Mirror had his mirror-gun out and had kicked the door down in seconds.

Once more, I thought, into the breach. Right before he stepped into chaos and I started hiding outside the door hoping not to get me guts torn out.

Notes: Full disclosure: This was a writer's block chapter. Does it show? I think so. The length is short even by this story's standards, which are already a little shorter on average than the rest of my work.
But the little interactions with MM are cool, and I enjoyed writing Captain Cold, I think I'm finally figuring out how I want to characterise him.
But what do you think? Maybe you loved it! Let me know in the comments.
And yeah. Poor Mandragora, we hardly knew ye. And poor Huntress! We hardly knew 'er either!