Hi, everybody. It's been *checks date* about a year since I updated this fic. Yikes! I wish I could have updated this sooner but trying to juggle graduating from college, internships, family time and planning this has been a struggle this past year. However, like I said, I did promise I would finish this fic, and I plan to keep it. So far, I have an outline in my head of how this story is going to go, and luckily enough, we're getting towards the end of the first act and into the transitionary period towards Arkham Asylum and Arkham City/Knight. It feels like its been forever since I started this thing, and the sad thing is, its practically been forever. *stares at start date of the fic with embarrassment*
So, I may have a few details wrong in the last couple of chapters about specific events of Batman: As the Crow Flies, and that is because I have never actually read the comic myself. Oops. However, I did look up the plot synopsis on the Batman Wiki, so I did at least know the gist of what happens during the comic, or at the very least, the Scarebeast parts. While I know this is an AU story, I do like to keep the details of the comics I am lifting events from canon as best as I can, and if I mess up, I'm sorry, I tried my best.
Please leave a review if you like the story. I can only get better with your help and input.
"-ky? Can-hear me?"
She struggled to open her eyes, the blurry image of a black and red figure and a figure cloaked in green starting to swirl into her view. Her ears rung with the sound, the words jumbled and missing as she struggled to drag herself back to consciousness.
"How many-holding up?" She could see the black and red figure waving her hand in front of her face, holding up three fingers, although to her blurry vision, it looked more like four fingers.
She strained her ears to piece together the words and figure out what they were trying to say, the loud ringing in her ears starting to die down as she started to understand what they were saying.
"Give her a bit of space, Harley!" Ivy reprimanded, shoving her gently out of the way as she helped lift Becky into a sitting position. "She's gone through enough right now."
With a pout, Harley backed a step away from the woman, giving her enough space as Becky slowly lifted her head, rubbing her eyes as she blinked, before her eyes cleared and the blurry image of Harley and Ivy came into focus, the blaring sirens in her ears finally silenced.
"What…What happened?" Becky mumbled, slowly but steadily getting back to her feet, using her cane as a crutch to prop herself up, stumbling a bit as she straightened, shivering as the cold wind sliced through the tattered holes in her dress.
"Here," Ivy said, holding out a thigh length, navy blue coat, draping it around her shoulders. "It looks like you need it."
Becky pulled her arms through the warm coat, hastily buttoning it as she said a brief "thank you" to Ivy.
"Well, we don't really know what happened," Harley said thoughtfully, absent of her usual pep. "One moment you collapsed on the ground, then the next you were…something else, and then you were rampaging through the Lounge and made your way out here."
"Something else? What do you mean, something else?" she asked, confused. "And is everyone okay?"
"Oh, yeah. Yeah. Everyone's okay. Just a few cuts and bruises," Harley replied quickly. "But…um…" she hesitated, nervously biting her lip, before looking towards Ivy for support.
"You may want to come see for yourself," Ivy finished, as she lowered herself onto the edge of the building and shoved herself off, down onto the next building below.
Becky raised an eyebrow, finding it hard to believe that something could leave the normally bubbly and impulsive Harley hesitant, but following along behind them regardless.
Along the way, she noted long claw marks gouging the concrete and the bricks. At one point, she stopped at a particularly long set of gouges in a vertical concrete barrier of a construction site. From a distance, it looked like the scratch marks of an animal, like that of a bear or a bobcat, but as she got closer, she could see that the lines of the scratches were too narrow to be that of an animal, even if that animal had the strength to claw through solid concrete and climb up the column. It almost looks like human fingernails, but that can't be right, Becky thought, perplexed at the size. Not even Catwoman could make claw marks like these, nor could they be as big. Just what kind of monster caused this?
She heard Harley calling for her. With one last glance at the odd sight, she hastily took off after the villainesses.
The Penguin growled, puffing on his cigarette pipe furiously as he stormed towards the Scarecrow, his stubby legs stomping towards the master of fear. Around him, his henchmen were busy trying to cart away what remained of the broken tables and shattered chandeliers around him, keeping a wide berth away from him to avoid his wrath.
"Crane! Just wot in the bloody 'ell was that? You never said anything 'bout Becky having your condition," Cobblepot huffed as he looked up towards the tall man, his raspy voice grating on Jonathan's already frayed nerves.
He let out a bark of laughter. "Like you said anything about my condition when you allied with Friitawa?" he hissed darkly, turning to look down at Cobblepot from his perch on the third floor, his amber eyes aflame with anger. "You should be one to talk, Oswald! How do I know you didn't previously conspire with Friitawa to mutate her?"
"Wot are you talking about? I 'ad nothing to do with this!" Penguin snapped, steamed at the accusation, his Cockney accent becoming more pronounced with anger. "I 'aven't bargained with 'er in over a decade."
Crane's eyes narrowed. He could tell that Cobblepot's last statement was a lie. It was evident in the slightest twitch of his left eye, barely noticeable under the glass bottle trapped in his skull. "Is that so? Then how do you explain the bullet wound? That shot was precisely lined up to hit Becky's heart if she was just a millimeter shorter, so don't you dare accuse this of being a misfired shot. This was calculated!" he roared, his fist slamming into the stone railing that he was perched on, leaving a dent.
"Why'd ya think I bloody know? I didn't hire whoe'er shot that gun, and even if I did, do you honestly think I woulda tried to assassinate someone in me own Lounge?" Cobblepot snarled, stamping his umbrella tip harshly against the tile floor.
Crane was silent. The waddling stout man had a point. If he had wanted to assassinate Becky, he would have used subtler means of killing her, such as slipping in pufferfish bladder into her seafood. It could be passed off as an accident and would let him frame the head chef for the crime, thus leaving him free from any accusations of foul play. A gunshot hitting one of the patrons in his establishment, on the other hand, would cast a suspicious light onto the Iceberg Lounge, given its criminal history, and in extension, onto him. And with how much pride the man had, he would rather turn himself over to the Bat than give himself a bad reputation, especially among those as cutthroat and fickle as the Gotham's Rogues Gallery.
"Then if you didn't hire whoever tried to kill her, then who did?" Crane asked calculatingly, the color of his eyes slowly fading back into cerulean as he calmed himself and started to assess the situation. True, he knew he had made a number of enemies over his years as the Master of Fear, but only a handful that knew of his involvement with Becky Albright, and of those, only one bold enough to try to kill her in such a well-known location. And yet, even someone as petty and insane as Linda Friitawa would hesitate to make an enemy of Oswald Cobblepot.
The Penguin didn't get a chance to answer, as the back doors of the Iceberg Lounge slammed open as Harley walked in, leading a tired Ivy and a shivering Becky inside.
"Becky," Crane called, his long legs propelling him quickly down the nearby staircase until he was practically flying towards her, his arms wrapping around her torso as he hugged her tightly to himself, afraid that if he let go, she would disappear.
"Jonathan," Becky acknowledged wearily, her posture slumped with exhaustion and cold. "What's going on? What—" she caught herself as she glanced behind Crane around at the large room, just now realizing what she had just stumbled into.
The Lounge, or what was left of it, was in shambles. The tables were nothing but shattered shards of wood and glass, the tablecloth stained red with wine. The banners that hung from the edges of the wooden railings were shredded in half, the fancy iceberg tapestry adorning the banners torn in two. Birthday cake was splattered around the stage, icing slowly dripping down the walls. The chairs, or what was left of them, was nothing but crumpled pieces of metal scattered haphazardly around the ground floor, with the broken glass around it creating a minefield for anyone trying to navigate the area. The iceberg, the main centerpiece of the area, was tilted precariously on its side, huge gouge marks torn out of the ice as if by an enormous ice pick. From her viewpoint, she couldn't see much of the second or third story floors, but she assumed that they were in just as bad of shape as the ground floor.
"What happened here?" she asked, sounding lost amidst the carnage of the Lounge.
That's wha' we're tryin' to figure out as well, sweet'art," Cobblepot said, using his umbrella like a vaulter as he leapt from the side, his umbrella unfurling into a gently rotating helicopter to slow his fall into a gentle glide as he drifted down towards them, folding it up and stashing it into his suit as his feet reached the floor. "Startin' with wha' happened to you."
Becky looked at the Penguin with disbelief. "What are you talking about? What does this have to do with me?"
"Ya mean ya don't know?!" Cobblepot squawked in disbelief, his eyes widened incredulously as he gestured to his destroyed restaurant. "Look 'round you! How could you not remember?"
"Hey, just what do ya think you're accusing her of?" Harley butted in, shoving off Ivy's attempts to keep her restrained as she stormed towards Cobblepot, a finger lifted to level with his pointy, beak-like nose. "Becky didn't intentionally cause this mess. Sure, she was kind of…out of it, back there, but she didn't hurt anyone. Not too much, anyway," she added, the last part said under her breath.
"Roight now, I aint accusin' 'er of anythin'," Penguin barked, his hand lifted to bat her finger away from his nose. "The only thin' I want righ' now is some answers, so someone better spill!"
Not many knew of the hidden tunnels that spiderwebbed beneath Gotham City like a maze, and even fewer knew of the secluded section that housed the grave of Cyrus Gold, the notorious mass murderer from the late 1800s that used to haunt the streets of Gotham the way the masked villains and vigilantes do in the present day.
However, out of those few who knew where the grave was located, even fewer could reach it, and out of those elite few who were brave enough, or, more likely, foolish enough to reach it, only two were lucky enough to witness the waking of Solomon Grundy, rising from his grave in the shower of pebbles, dirt, and concrete, his arms digging out of the concrete slabs as if it were nothing but cardboard. All the while repeating the nursery rhyme that coined his name.
From the shadows of the entrance to the sewers, Friitawa and Talia watched the rising of the giant with disbelief and a hint of incredulity.
"That's Solomon Grundy?"
"Yes," Friitawa said confidently, smugness in her whispered tone. It felt nice to finally know something that the all-knowing Al Ghul woman did not.
"And you want to give him to the Penguin because…?" Talia hissed with disdain, questioning herself why she would question the mad scientist's motives beyond carnage and fear.
Friitawa rolled her eyes. "While it may surprise you, I can't exactly do everything alone. While your father and his ninja army have their uses, there is only so much they can do. Forging an alliance with the Penguin would not only have him looking the other way while we tunnel through his territory, but we also have a supply runner for our new formula."
"And yet you failed to mention this negotiation to me, once again proving yourself suspect before the League of Assassins. Tell me, Linda, do you ever think of anything besides your endless lust for blood and fear? Or do you like to dance the line between ally and traitor?" Talia growled, her hand leaning against the pillar in from of them, only to realize as she touched the pillar that it lacked the slimy concrete of the sewer.
And instead felt like the worn leather of tattered rags, aged with the rot and grim off hundreds of years.
Talia and Friitawa both looked up at the giant form of Solomon Grundy, the glowing veins of electricity in his veins outlining his form in the dark as he raised his ball and chain.
Off to the side, Crane clenched his fists, unable to look at the trio.
"Crane, ya wanna explain some things to those out o' of the know, or are ya just gonna stand there?" Penguin said, taking a step towards the tall man.
Scarecrow muttered something unintelligible.
"Whot's that? I dinae think we 'eard you right. Care to speak up a bit?" Cobblepot taunted, cupping his ear as if to hear him better.
Another mutter, louder this time.
"Care to try tha' again, Crane? Or are ya really goin' leave the lady hanging? Surely, she deserves to know just whot she is?" he spat, gesturing to Becky as she glared at him.
"Stop it!" she hissed at him.
"No," Crane said, defeatedly, his shoulders slumped as he unclenched his fists. "She…She deserves to know."
"Deserves to know what?" Becky said softly. "Jonathan, what are you trying to say?"
Jonathan looked at Becky, then Harley, then Penguin, then back to her. "I…I miscalculated."
Becky's eyes widened, hardly believing her ears. "What?"
"I thought," he whispered, eyes wide and full of fear and shame as he couldn't look at her, only the floor. "I thought that you were only exposed to one formula. I didn't think…" he paused, clenching his fists again as he turned towards Penguin, Harley and Ivy, his eyes hardening as she tried his hardest to hide his fear.
Harley and Ivy both looked at each other, a worried look shared between them for their friend. They knew the effects of the original formula, but now there was two. And who know what both could do in one person if the first one they had such colossal effects?
Penguin looked intrigued, the butt of the umbrella tapping against his chin. "Hmm, I suspected 'ere was another variation, but I dinae know fur sure."
Crane glared at Cobblepot, his face twisted into a snarl before putting a hand over Becky's shoulder and walking out the door. "You've got your answers, Cobblepot. If you're quite done, then we'll take our leave."
"Oi! Whot about my payment for the damages she caused?" Penguin hollered after them, stamping his feet as the door slammed behind them.
The mysterious figure watched as the supervillain and his henchwoman exited the Lounge. It seemed that this one henchwoman was more important than he thought. Perhaps he better keep an eye on her. It wouldn't do to have a potential player in this game of cops and robbers get away.
With that, the figure jumped from the rooftop, the only trace left of him a helmet and mask with a chunk taken out of it.