"Goddess Complex"
Arkham City
3:36:39 AM
"All GCPD personnel, this is Gordon. I have requested additional units to respond to Prisoner #181's confirmed sighting inside the museum. I suspect the initial officers on the scene are down and in need of emergency evac. If you are still inside there, reinforcements are en route. Just hold on a little longer."
The voice of James Gordon was indeed heard by many men in blue within the Cyrus Pinkney Institute.
Heard but not heeded.
Bullet casings and cracked gas masks littered the cold, stone floor lining the many hallways.
Thorny tendrils occupied near every crevice and corner, sensitive to every movement here, there, or everywhere.
Sergeant Hill was breathing and standing still in the area leading to the War Room.
Those two things seemed to be the only things he was capable of doing under his own free will as the space around him had been transformed into a disorienting landscape, bathed in a pinkish smog while the concrete ground was thoroughly overwhelmed with the aggressive expanse of vegetation.
"If anyone is still inside, let me know your status and her location if possib-"
The officer shut off his radio, along with all the other officers next to him.
And then, as if being pulled along by invisible strings, Hill walked to the exit in an almost robotic fashion.
With a nod of the head, the armed officers flanking the exit opened the door for their superior officer.
There, more officers entered carrying someone inside, an officer clearly injured with his feet dragging behind him.
Disarmed of his service weapons, he struggled willfully yet weakly in their arms as the Sergeant stepped aside with his expression ultimately unreadable.
"Let me go, let me…" The officer continued to defy their control but the effort ultimately proved futile as they passed by others with the pacifying emerald glint glowing on their naked faces.
Eventually, they brought him inside the War Room itself.
"Is this the last one?"
Where she was.
They let him fall to his knees before the plant queen aptly seated upon a floral throne in the middle of the large room that once held Victor Freeze captive.
Like most of the museum invaded by the living green around her, it was unrecognizable from what it used to be.
The display cases were overrun with pods, vines slithering up walls and her pheromones simply…everywhere.
Pink permeated the air around the kneeling officer and others also kneeling beside him.
The ones yet to come under her thrall.
For now.
"Yes mistress." Stepping forward, Hill tore the gas mask from the kneeling man's face, baring his grimacing features to the elements around him.
Ivy leaned forward, her hand on her chin as she scanned each of the officers' faces.
A devilish smirk played across her lips as she savored their emotions, palpable in the moment.
They were afraid of her. As they should be.
"So many men have been on their knees before me tonight. It really does wonders to a girl's ego," she started off with a smug declaration.
"There's more of us coming, bitch," one of the officers claimed, clinging to defiance instead of defeat.
"Good," came her grinning, gleaming response. "My children are starting to work up quite a hunger."
"Hope they like bullets," another one mocked her.
"Mouthy little monkeys, aren't you?" she sneered, right as an ambush of vines around the men suddenly sprang to life, coiling around them.
Within seconds, they were all bound, the tendrils wrapping around their mouths as well.
Muffled and incapacitated, they strained helplessly against the unrelenting grip of the vines.
"I tolerated it from the Bat, but not from the likes of you. Not anymore." Responding to her derision, the vines responded to her growing ire by dragging the men forward.
Pulling them like weeds from a garden to the foot of her throne.
Leaning forward, she waited until the first of the officers was closest enough to her before speaking once again, "Normally, I would breathe new purpose into you but it's been too long since these lips have taken life instead of given it."
Daintily placing her hands on either side of his face, Poison Ivy relished in his renewed struggles, his bulging eyes screaming no.
"Forgive me for indulging this one time, my loves. Once I'm done with this meat-sack, you can feed on the others at your leisure," she purred, preparing to deliver her fatal kiss upon…
…she paused, centimeters away from delivering death to the petrified man's face.
Not because of anything he did.
But because of the small vine quietly creeping up her shoulder and forearm, exchanging a communication that turned her face from one of delight to one of utter disdain.
Letting his head fall down, she turned to the officers standing guard around her. "Follow me. She's here."
"Anyone home?"
Selina Kyle walked almost casually into the museum from what remained of the front entrance.
To no surprise, Ivy had given the place the usual makeover.
And where the dinosaur used to be, there was now a giant tree. Because of course there was.
The master thief, on the other hand, had certainly seen better nights.
In her suit, there were rips and tears revealing patches of bare skin here and there. Ribs were bruises. Joints were aching.
Oh, and Bruce Wayne was Batman.
Can't forget about that, she thought to herself as she still was making sense of those two being one and the same.
That was certainly…something.
Something she would have to reconcile with later.
But for right now, she had unfinished business.
Nimbly climbing up on the top railing, she looked up at the giant tree with what looked like spore sacs dangling from its many extending branches.
"This is gonna be fun," she sighed, dropping down on top of one of the still upright exhibit cases.
And not a moment too soon…
The marching of footsteps from inside the only hallway leading deeper into the museum clued her in on what was coming next.
One by one, GCPD officers came out first.
With empty, emerald-eyed expressions, they all took formation with assault rifles aimed at her.
"Men with guns trying to kill me. This song just keeps repeating itself," she remarked sardonically.
"Selina Selina…"
Coming out last, Poison Ivy made her sultry yet sneering presence known.
Prompting the officers to part to either side as she sauntered to a stop.
It would be a surreal sight for some, seeing Gotham's finest standing in defense of the ecoterrorist.
For the cat burglar, well, it hardly registered at this point.
"Never figured you a big fan of history, Red," quipped Selina Kyle in usual greeting.
"You're about to be dead in less than a minute, meat-sack. If those are your last words on earth, well…" Ivy cocked a smirk, "I expected more."
"Pam I get it, you don't like me. Most people don't, understandably so because I stole money from them. But here's the thing: whatever all this is, it's just not gonna work out," Selina told her, getting right to the point.
The plant queen scoffed. "You sound like the Bat. He couldn't stop me. Neither can you."
"If you say so," came the brunette's shrugging response.
"Darlings, do what you were made for. Kill." Ivy was already done with this conversation, as the police officers prepared to-
"One more thing." Gesturing at the gargantuan tree, Selina queried next, "Just what the hell is this thing anyways?"
Reluctantly, very reluctantly, Ivy would stay her hand.
"Oh that…" The redhead had a sly expression on her face. "…is life, Selina. Life I brought into this world. Something you obviously know nothing about."
That slight barb admittedly cut a little beneath the skin for the brunette.
"A firstborn. The first of many to bring the end of man's destructive reign. And the beginning of life as it was always meant to be. Life without the disease of humanity," she finished declaring.
"Good to know." Selina unclipped her whip. "Alright, whenever you're ready."
"That eager to die?" her former partner taunted her.
Selina only smiled. "Wasn't talking to you, sweetheart."
"End her," Ivy spoke simply, turning to leave.
The officers took aim, and fi-
Ding!
Something sharp and shiny cut across the air in front of them, eventually lodging itself into an exhibit case.
A shuriken.
Ivy turned back around, and looked at the projectile.
Her face was initially of surprise. Disbelief, even.
But just as quickly, it morphed into something of a smile.
"I've been trying my best not to beat up any more cops tonight but…" The officers all looked up at the sound of the youthful voice.
Standing above them atop another exhibit case while twirling around a new bo staff just air-dropped in Arkham City for his crimefighting convenience, Robin finished with a confident smile, "…given the circumstances I'm gonna have to break that promise. Sorry in advance, guys."
"I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it," came Selina's wry quip in response.
"Lover, you're still alive," Ivy cooed at him.
"Guess you should've waited around to see if Croc finished the job, huh?" he threw it back at her.
"He served his purpose well enough. As did you, Boy Wonder," she purred in response. "As will these handsome hunks of meat when they tear through you both. Isn't that right boys?"
They all responded by leveling their weapons again at the unlikely duo.
"Be thorough, especially with Selina. Make sure she's dead for every one of her nine lives," Ivy instructed them before retreating back deeper inside the nature-reclaimed hallway.
"Yes Mistress," all of them droned out at the same time, as they prepared to fire.
"Anytime now," the brunette muttered to him through gritted teeth.
"Bang." Robin pressed the button on the detonator he had been holding behind his back this entire time.
Subsequently, the Snap Flash that had been strategically planted to the side of them exploded, immediately washing over them with disorienting, eye-averting light!
The ones closest to it were affected the most within the explosive radius, distracting the others just long enough for Robin to launch at them with his cape extended in full glider mode.
Coming down, he threw his legs out to land feetfirst, delivering an aerial dropkick to one of the officers that knocked him back against the wall.
Upon landing, the Boy Wonder brandished the staff and went back to work.
Whacking and wailing on anyone with a badge, though noticeably with a little more restraint than the last time.
Moving with a seamless fluidity of motion, he attacked swiftly and soundly- exploiting key pressure points on the body to take them down in the least debilitating ways possible.
One of them had a gun on the base of his neck but before Robin could react the leather coil of a whip wrapped around that cop's neck and yanked him to the side.
Sending him staggering right into a thrusting knee to the gut from Catwoman, then as he doubled over an axe kick to the back of his head put his face to the ground.
Expanding his bullet shield in time, Robin held his ground to withstand the initial spray of rifle rounds coming from two of the officers at once.
They had nearly emptied their magazines when the cat burglar, sprinting silently under the cover of their gunfire, leaped up and grabbed hold of them both at once from their periphery.
Her arms wrapped around one of them in a side headlock while her legs had a headscissors over the other.
Once they were captured, she twisted backwards, slamming them both to the ground in a dual takedown.
And not a moment too soon as Robin whirled around and bashed an officer coming up on his blindside with the bullet shield.
The man went flailing backwards, slamming into an exhibit case and crumpling to the floor.
Collapsing the shield back into the staff, Robin turned around to see all the others down and incapacitated for the time being.
All except one sitting up with his hand aiming his pistol at-
"Got him." Only to be knocked out by a casual kick upside the head by Selina Kyle, prompting the hooded hero to relax his guard.
For a splitsecond, he was too slow. But not her.
He nodded slightly, a small gesture of thanks for the woman he was once brainwashed against.
The slim woman maintained her usual confident swagger as she sauntered around the GCPD officers sprawled out on the ground.
"Now that I'm not on the receiving end, I gotta say…not bad, kid," the brunette smirked at him, which was probably the nicest thing she'd said to him all night.
"Thanks."
Just then, Bruce's voice came in through his comms. "Tim, give me status."
After taking in his surroundings for a bit, Robin reported back in, "Alive for now. We've made contact with Ivy in the museum. Where are you?"
"On my way," came the caped crusader's gruff, determined voice before he signed off.
The Boy Wonder took another upwards glance up at the tree, with those spore sacs glowing with a malevolent golden radiance within.
"Whenever those things explode again, we're right in ground zero," he grimly predicted.
"Not if everything goes according to plan, right?" Selina reminded him, a little uneasy herself.
"Right," Tim ultimately assured her.
"So we going after her or what?" Selina spoke up, impatiently.
"I'll take point," he nodded, starting forward with his staff at the ready.
Flora had, just like everywhere else where Ivy set foot on, become one with the infrastructure of the institution.
But they continued along, stepping over enlarged roots on the ground and navigating draping vines protruding from the ceiling.
"You know she's leading us into a trap, right?" Selina called out after him.
"Never in doubt," came his matter-of-fact response, as they went around one corner.
The humidity was growing more and more palpable, as was the scent of her persuasion.
Once, it called the Boy Wonder to her side.
That was a temptation that still lingered inside of him, however small and subtle.
But it wouldn't- no, she wouldn't control him. Never again.
Soon, they rounded another corner with the path forward leading into what once was the Penguin's coliseum pit for new recruits seeking to prove their murderous mettle.
The metal gate was torn off its hinges completely, leaving the entrance wide open for them.
Switching on his Detective Vision for a moment, the Boy Wonder saw hostiles ahead with weapons trained. Lots of them.
"Looks like they threw out the red carpet," Robin said, reaching into his utility belt.
"Don't wanna keep them waiting," Selina said, putting her goggles on.
"Here we go."