Chapter 7: Deep Roots:
A/N: For the FanBase I have that like my Arkham Knight story, forgive me! I'm sorry for being MIA for 3 months, but a lot of stress in my life happened, College combined with other personal issues and etc, but since life is easing up on Ole Me now, I can begin to post more frequently now , Here's the seventh chapter now, please forgive me y'all :)
Ivy couldn't believe what she was seeing and hearing. Batman, actually found a way to track and free her plants from their long slumber. A part of her actually doubted that The Dark Knight could actually pull something this great. Something this spectacular. She was happy to hear the roars of her plants as they rose from the ground. Ivy was both amazed and surprised that Batman pulled the impossible.
There was also a minor inconvenience from The Militia, which threatened the well-being of her newly revived plant, but Batman surprisingly willingly defended and protected her plant from them. This only gave Ivy another reason to strike vengeance upon Crane and his allies. This attack on her plant angered her very greatly and swore that she would execute vengeance upon an act she personally deemed as treason. The first act Ivy upon Ivy's long list of revenge would be use her powers to listen in on The Militia's comms and conversations so she could ruin their plans and operations down the line.
Ivy also figured that she would learn more information from them and give it to Batman in return for defending her plant against them. After all it was the least she could do for The Dark Knight. Ironically, Ivy was beginning a path of vengeance, but for her own personal reason.
"Okay, let's see what you annoying little men are up to." Ivy then began using her powers to listen in on The Militia throughout Gotham City. Her newly revived plant could now make that process much, much easier for. The first conversation she heard actually surprised her greatly.
"SIR! I just got word that the men that were assigned to blow that giant plant sky high were taken out by The Bat!" As the right hand man and lieutenant was trying to communicate with his leader, The Arkham Knight, he wasn't even aware that Poison Ivy could hear and and every last word they were saying.
"I know..." The Knight said, grimly. He sounded more annoyed than infuriated in Ivy's point of view. "Looks like The Bat is improvising...I'm not surprised, Batman always has an insurance plan when his strategies fail. Shame, Poison Ivy would've made tonight go by so much faster and easier...Hell, I'll say The Bat would've been dead if she had joined us."
"Such a major disappointment sir. What are your orders for us regarding the plant bitch?"
This piece of the conversation raised more awareness for Ivy. While she wasn't afraid of Crane, his allies or these hired buffoons in uniforms, she was smart enough to know how to act upon a possible dangerous situation. She continued to listen in on the nearby conversing Militia and Arkham Knight.
"Put out an all-points bulletin on her, when we find and kill her, Batman won't have a backup plan for what's coming later on!"
"Yes Sir! I'll get right on it. When we find her she'll be as good as dead."
"Good." The Knight said in a dark manner. "Seek to it. Batman & Gotham by the end of this night will be dead and in ruins."
The two finished their conversation and an APB was placed out on Ivy through The Militia's private comms channel. The ecosystem powered mistress was now on high alert as now not only Batman was number one on this Arkham Knight's hitlist, but she was now number two with almost if not the entire militia now looking for her.
While Ivy for sure wasn't afraid of them, she knew better than anyone that it would be foolish for her, a practically 'wanted' woman to be casually out and about on the streets of Gotham. Especially on a night like this with this many rouge people outside running rampant.
It pained her to accept the cold hard facts. Even with her powers, she'd still be little to no match against all the firearms these men possessed. Ivy was now putting two and two together. This Arkham Knight fellow seemed to know more about The Batman than he was letting on. It seemed like he must've been studying Batman for long periods of time. Yes, It all started to somewhat make sense. It explains why there are heavy patrols on both the ground and skies.
"A Bat without wings is simply a helpless and poisoned rodent in it's final moments running from a snake.." In Ivy's head, this made perfect sense to describe the current situation between Batman and his newfound enemy.
About a half an hour had passed and Gotham had seemed to grow even more out of control. Ivy decided it was time for her to do one more thing...
Finding and locating her friend...Harley Quinn
The semi-humanized villainess began to use the plants within the area to try and locate Harley to see what she had been up to during the night. It didn't take much of an effort or that long to find her.
"Alright Harley, what are you up to?" Ivy then began to listen in on Harley and her henchmen through the plants that were nearby.
"Move your lazy dumbasses!" Harley shouted at her henchman. Harley was busily making her henchmen work and get the final preparations for her revenge plan ready. She screamed, shouted, shot and yelled at them all to hurry up.
But unknown to her, her best friend in Poison Ivy was using her powers to listen in on her and her entire entourage of The Joker's henchmen turned hers.
Ever since The Joker died, Ivy had felt bad. Not necessarily because the clown had died, but because of what it was doing to Harley's already rapidly deteriorating sanity. As much as she didn't want to admit it, The Joker was what unfortunately kept her sane.
Now that he's gone, Ivy is both happy and fearful for what could happen with the jester girl down the line...
Ivy then decided to listen in on her thugs.
"Harley's been losing her mind since Arkham City and the boss's death man."
"Yea you said it, I never thought I'd live to see the day Harley would genuinely scare the shit out of me."
These two thugs were talking about Harley while moving a bunch of equipment around on her orders. Ivy listened in on this because the information from them would be useful for later into the night.
"After J died, she's lost her mind even more than ever."
"Harley's always been crazy, I've known her since she first came around to J and the rest of us..."
Ivy continued paying attention to them. Before the thugs could say anything, Harley appeared before them, scaring them.
"What the hell are you two bozos doing? Get back to work before I feed you to one of them! Preferably the girl! She's just like me and him..." Harley said that last line in a dreamy manner, whom ever she was referring to was enough to scare the Joker's former men back to working before Harley could either let the mystery woman kill them or she'd do it herself.
The two conversing petty thugs got back to work with the rest of their fellow criminals.
"HA! My secret inside contact was right! This is like taking a cave from a Bat!"
Harley was outside of Penessa Studios smiling happily at the fact that her plans were going according to plan faster than ever before. She had weapons being loaded into the studio rooftops every few minutes or so.
The Clown Queen Of Crime felt like she was honoring The Joker's legacy in a way that he would be proud of.
Before Harley could get another thought out, one of her servants came to her with some news.
"Harley, some of the guys just told me something good."
"This better be good! Or else your gonna pay for interrupting my me time!" Harley said as she pointed her gun at the now scared henchmen of hers.
Ivy, who's still listening in, automatically assumed he was as good as dead...it's not like he's doing mankind or god's green earth any favors.
The thug gulped nervously before regaining some form of his composure to talk to his boss. What he was about to say next would either determine if he lives or dies...
"Don't kill me Harley!...the guys told me something I think you'll like to hear!"
Harley began counting down quickly. The rage could be heard in her voice.
"5432.-"
The Clown Queen's hand was nearly gonna pull the trigger and end his life once and for all...
"WAIT WAIT! Harley, the guys told me that they apparently found Robin hanging out down there in the Bat's little playhouse!" The thug was praying for his life...
Harley stopped and paused, taking the time to process this new information. Robin was all alone while Batman's playing hopscotch with Scarecrow and the other villains.
Her henchman's heart was racing like never before. She eyed him curiously before lowering her gun.
"Well why didn't you say anything sooner dumbass?! She shouted in annoyance. "Now we've got a dead Robin out of his nest, all thanks to me! Now get outta here before I really send ya to say hi to Mister J."
Harley shoved the thug to get him to move away from her. She was now aware that Robin was practically at her mercy.
"Dumbass blonde." Harley's goon whispered under his breath, but this would prove to be a fatal mistake for him.
Harley looked at him before angrily questioning what he just said under his breath.
"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST SAY?!"
The thug now fearful for his life tries to play it off, but Harley wasn't having any of this. "I said lump bond! PLEASE DONT!"
Harley then pulls out her baseball bat and hits him directly in the gut, causing him to to drop to his knees in pain and agony. Then he looks up only to be brutal hit in the face by her bat, breaking his nose and jaw. The rest of Joker's old gang look on in horror.
"Anyone else that wanna piss me off?" Harley looked around at all the men on the roof, who where shocked in in silence. "Thought so."
Harley continued her gazing over Gotham City, hoping that Joker in "heaven" was terrorizing peoples thoughts and dreams. She looked into the distance and noticed something.
Ivy's giant blossoming plant...
"Looks like Red decided to come around after all, Wonder if she'll make a giant fifty foot high killer plant monster or something."
Little did Harley know, her plant based best friend was actually willingly freed by The Dark Knight himself, or the fact that she was practically eavesdropping on her right now.
"Oh Harley, If only you knew the truth." Ivy said as she continued spying in on The Clown Queen.
After about two minutes of Harley staring into the night, she decided the first thing she'd do in her revenge...
"ALRIGHT BOYS! Listen up, in honor of Mister J we'll break The Wings off of bird brain, but don't kill 'em just yet! Just rough him up a little bit, giving B-Man some time to get here, then WE'LL KILL THEM BOTH OF THEM AS REVENGE FOR JOKER!"
Some of Harley and Joker's men cheered in excitement, most of them only cheered because they knew Harley would probably threaten and kill them if they didn't.
"Boys, get down there and let's have some fun, remember, just rough up The Bird until B-Man gets here! Tonight, B-Man and Bird-Brain pays for what they did to Mister J!"
...
"Oh no Harley, not this again! God, haven't you learned your lesson after Arkham City's nonsense?" Ivy was fearful for her friend's antics, of course she knew there was little to no chance of her actually killing Robin, but she was afraid of what would happen to her if she failed.
Ivy didn't want to deal with that again, She knew it would just equal another embarrassing failure in Harley's revenge quest.
So the plant based villainous decided to use her powers and see what Batman was up to.
"He's probably on his way to pummel Harley right now." Ivy thought to herself. "Maybe I can convince Batman to take it easy on Harles...maybe."
Ivy used her powers to listen in on The Bat. From what things sounded like, Batman had just helped two GCPD Officers stop two psychopathic Gotham scum joyriding and causing mayhem.
Ivy first heard what sounded like one of the criminals resisting Batman's interrogation for information on something.
"Screw you Batman! I ain't scared of you!" The clearly arrogant thug yelled as Batman held him by his throat with one arm.
The GCPD officers and the other arrested thug just looked on. They knew better than to interfere in Batman's interrogation.
"You're wasting my time." Batman replied menacingly. "You either give me the location of Nigma's trophies or so help me...I'll break every single bone in your body..."
The thug, who Batman could tell was starting to fear him, for some reason still decided to foolishly defy him. "I ain't telling you shit Bats! I'm getting payed good to keep quiet!"
"Fine!" Batman threw the thug down onto the cold and moist streets of Gotham City. As the criminal was trying to catch his breath, Batman grabbed him again and began to drag him down a nearby dark and empty alley, clearly to use much more brutal interrogation techniques.
The other thug, whom was arrested and the back of the cop car, began ranting about the two officers, 'hypocrisy'.
"You two pigs are hypocritical as hell!" The criminal shouted. "I literally saw The Bat drop off the plant chick at the Gardens! He's clearly in cahoots with her!"
"I don't like supporting criminals man, but old fireball here is right." The first officer said. "Why did Batman release Ivy, she'll just make more problems for us and himself to have to clean up later."
"SEE?!" The criminal shouted, causing the Gotham policemen to look at him like he had two screws loose.
"Nah." The second officer said. "If Batman released Poison Ivy, it must be for a good reason. And besides, I overheard her agreeing to help Gotham when Bats was back at her cell."
"Looks like her seductive pheromones are starting to corrupt Batman."
"Again Nope." The first officer says again. "Ivy's a plant junkie. She'll just kill us all man, Ivy's too complicated compared to the other psychos we deal with..or dealt with."
The second officer than began to make a good claim, supporting Ivy. "Ivy is much more sane than the other freaks Batman has thrown in BlackGate and Arkham, I've physically seen about eighty percent of The Bat's foes before, Quinn, Joker, Zasz, Nigma, Dent, those guys are far more complicated than Ivy, they're downright insane. With the right influences and resources, I think Poison Ivy could be rehabilitated and redeemed."
Ivy, who was listening in on this, was shocked that there was a police officer that didn't want to take her head off. She couldn't believe that there was an officer that believed that she could be redeemed. "I'm shocked to say the least." She thought. "If a cop is willing to forgive me, where does that leave me on Batman's radar?" She thought once again.
Not to long after this, Batman had returned to the two officers with the other joyriding thug, who looked much worse, he had a swollen eye and a broken nose.
Judging by his coughing up of blood, he probably had many more things broken inside of himself.
After Batman had gotten the information he needed on Riddler's trophies he left the broken and battered thug for the police.
Ivy on the other hand had much more things to think about now, involving Batman, Harley Quinn and most importantly herself...