"Rowan..."
"Yes?"
"What... What is that?" Ivy asked, pointing an accusatory, yet shaking finger at the Gollum-like creature crouched and chained beneath her basement.
"That... That's our Author," Rowan reluctantly admitted.
"That thing is the Author? Surely you jest?"
She asked, looking every bit as dumbfounded as she ought to feel.
"Unfortunately not…"
"And the… Things he's holding?"
"Power Stones and Reviews… Apparently, he can digest them," Rowan answered, rubbing the bridge of his nose, yet just as he turned away, Ivy jumped as she saw the Author put a few ten-dollar bills into his mouth.
"PrecioUssSSSS! My PReeeeeciousssSSS!!! Yes, yesSSSH! It'SssSss P 4 tr3on . C0m (slash) Regularrr?! P 4 tr3on (dot) c0m / Regularrr!!!! Gimme mOAAAARRR!!!"
"Row… Rowan?"
"Yeah?"
"I think he's eating money…" What she couldn't understand was where he had even gotten those, since she clearly remembered him holding only the glowing Stones and glinting Scrolls earlier, while Rowan, realizing what his Creator was doing, could only jump to stop him. "Ay, ay, stop! Fuck, stop it!!!"
— — — — —
The room Ivy brought him to sat deep in the forest, accessible only through a passage of intertwined roots that parted at her approach and sealed shut behind them.
The space inside was wider than Rowan expected and roughly rectangular, though the walls had long lost its sharp edges beneath the greenery that covered them.
The ceiling was almost entirely glass, a patchwork of industrial panels and mismatched skylights that barely let the muted glow of Gotham's poisoned sky bleed through, casting everything in a dim, shifting green that made the room feel submerged.
There was no furniture, Rowan quickly noticed, at least none in the traditional sense.
There was only a raised platform of compacted root and soil that dominated the far wall, shaped into a bed which doubled as a throne, draped in broad, waxy leaves that overlapped like scales of a mighty Dragon. Beside it was a slightly smaller mound that served as a holder for what appeared to be glass vials and clay pots, each containing samples Rowan couldn't quite identify from the doorway.
Along the left wall, a cascade of hanging plants descended from the ceiling in layers, their tendrils long enough to brush the concrete floor. Some flowered in pale whites and muted violets that seemed to glow faintly in the low light. Others bore no flowers at all, just dense, dark foliage that shifted at Ivy's presence like a pack of dogs perking at the sound of their owner's return.
The right wall was more functional. Thick vines had been woven into shelves cradling jars of dried herbs, sealed containers, and what looked like hand-bound notebooks swollen with moisture. A basin of sorts sat below them, carved from a single root structure and filled with water so clear it looked empty until the light caught its surface, filtered by one of the thicker plants.
Every surface pulsed faintly, and the leaves, ravenous for whatever sunlight survived Gotham's smog, angled themselves toward the glass ceiling. "... Nice place." Nothing in the room was decorative intentionally, yet all of it was beautiful in the way only nature left to her own machinations could be.
Taking a deeper sniff of the air, Rowan's expression suddenly got funny. "Is... Is that the Devil's lettuce I'm smelling?"
"This was a grow-house before I claimed it." Ivy strode toward a smaller room at the back, which was little more than a space walled off by dense vegetation, and glanced over one shoulder as she parted the curtain of hanging vines. "It used to belong to low-level dealers who peddled their crop on street corners and high schools and colleges… Bottom-feeders, really, but their handiwork with the ceiling was passable. I'll give them that."
"And the kingpins didn't take offense?"
"To cannabis? It's an entry-level drug. The profits are laughable compared to cocaine or methamphetamine," Ivy sounded amused as she turned on the light behind the partition of leaves. "But it does serve a purpose… Every addict starts somewhere, and a steady supply of casual users eventually cultivates a clientele hungry for a stronger high."
Rowan hummed, disturbed at how neatly the logic held together, then stiffened as the rustle of clothing being shed reached his ears and the sight of her silhouette pressed against the thin curtain of vegetation that did absolutely nothing to preserve her modesty.
Lord, the news really had done her dirty with those camera angles.
He coughed, spinning on his heel and, in a desperate bid for any thought that didn't involve the curves he'd just seen, blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "So... Yhe dealers. Where are they now?"
"Where do you think?" Ivy giggled softly, her voice a blend of charm, malice, and idle curiosity. "I'm curious, though. You recognized cannabis by scent alone?"
Rowan cautiously glanced at the surrounding flora, which suddenly seemed a touch too interested in his proximity for comfort, and took a step back. "You'd be amazed what you pick up living on the streets." Never mind cannabis.
With his enhanced senses and years on the street, he could probably identify which drug a person was on just by walking past them…
Though now that he gave it some considerations, that wasn't nearly the flex Rowan thought it was.
But it couldn't be helped.
Some childhoods came with piano lessons and summer camp; his happened to come with a front-row education in pharmacology, courtesy of Reuben and his sacred ritual of meth in the morning and cocaine at night and alcohol for every waking hour in between.
How the bastard hadn't overdosed continued to be one of life's greatest mysteries, but Rowan wasn't going to complain. He'd have never gotten the chance to beat the brakes off Grin otherwise. And as it turned out, 'Good ol' Reuben wasn't so immune to chemicals after all…'
The thought brought a bloodthirsty grin to his lips which he wiped clean the moment he heard Ivy's footsteps leaving the smaller room.
Staring at clothes that looked more painted on than worn, he tilted his head.
"What's the matter? Disappointed I wasn't naked?"
"... No. Just wondering why you're dressed like you've got somewhere to be."
And, for once, Rowan truly meant what he said.
"We're going shopping... You didn't expect me to whip up a cure with what I have here, did you?"
He glanced around the room, which was beautiful, thriving, and utterly devoid of laboratory equipment. "Fair enough. How long will it take?"
"The shopping, or the cure?" Ivy hummed, tilting her chin up as she traced dark green lipstick across her lips.
"Yes."
"The shopping might take a few hours depending on how fast we can procure the equipment. The cure?" She pressed her lips together, vainly inspecting the result in the mirror. "Two weeks. Three, perhaps."
His eyes narrowed behind the visor. "Can't you figure it out faster based on your own immunity?"
Ivy looked at him like he was stupid, and for once, the expression seemed entirely divorced from her usual theatrics.
"My immunity stems from the fact I'm a humanoid plant. You sure that's what you want for Gotham, Boy-Wonder?"
"That…"
Rowan sighed, habitually reaching to crease his furrowed brows, and instead finding his visor in place. "What about a deactivation agent for the airborne toxin?" The gas was heavier than oxygen, which had kept it mostly contained to Gotham for now, but all it'd take was the right gust of wind to carry it toward the mainland, and the moment it crossed that line, this would stop being Gotham's problem and start being everyone's.
And that wasn't even the worst of it…
Thunder cracked overhead, and Rowan flinched.
Chemicals didn't just vanish into thin air.
They bled into the water table, saturated the earth, and eventually rose back up as clouds that wept acid.
The rain barely bothered Rowan, but what about the Gothamites still huddled in whatever shelter they could find?
"Sooner than you'd think."
"Define 'sooner.'"
"A day or two, provided I can get my hands on the Toxin in its purest form, which is where you come in."
Scratching his chin, Rowan nodded. "I think I know a few places where we can get the equipment you need. As for the Toxin, I'll see what I can do." He'd barely made it two steps toward the exit when it occurred to him, "What do you need exactly?"
Ivy immediately rattled off a list, some of which Rowan recognized; others so foreign they might as well have been spoken in Kryptonian.
"Hold on. I've got a call to make."
The Meta's eyes trailed his silhouette for a moment and not a second longer before she dropped onto a throne of tangled vines that bent to accommodate her weight. "Try not to dawdle, sweetheart. I'd hate to start without you." Her lips curved at his clumsy misstep, but Ivy did not call him back.
.
.
.
With a grunt, Bruce kicked a child away and lashed out at the boy's manic mother in the same motion. "My son!"
Brother Eye had confirmed both were innocent of any major wrongdoing.
Most of the Afflicted were the same.
They weren't squeaky clean, because who in Gotham was, but they were far from deserving the violence he usually reserved for the city's worst. He pulled his strikes accordingly, though maintaining that discipline was getting harder with every person hurtling themselves at him.
"Die, Bat!"
Another charged him with a baseball bat that exploded against his gauntlet, only to be swatted away by the tendrils woven through his cape. Nearby, one of the Afflicted suddenly produced a gun from his sleeve and leveled it at the Dark Knight's chest.
Joke was on him, because the Bat symbol was actually three layers of bulletproof glass, and its perceived fragility existed for no other reason than to draw fire where it could do the least damage.
[Name: Peter Grey. Age: 37. Convicted of three instances of armed robbery. Let out on a bail.]
Peter Grey's criminal record scrolled across his vision, and unlike the others, this one warranted no restraint. A blunted batarang shot from his belt to his fingers and left his hand a nanosecond later, pulverizing the man's wrist on impact. But since Grey's finger already rested on the trigger, the jolt ended up squeezing it for him.
The bullet went wide, on a trajectory that would have buried itself in an Afflicted bystander had Bruce not pulled the man behind him and caught the round himself. He braced instinctively, only for the ink coating his gauntlet to splinter into countless tiny tendrils that surged to meet the bullet halfway.
'I could get used to this.'
On any other night, the Dark Knight would have questioned relying on such power. Tonight, though, even he couldn't deny the Symbiote had more than earned its keep. It would have been an invaluable asset going forward, if Bruce didn't already plan to turn himself in once this ordeal was over…
Even while occupied with his thoughts, Bruce didn't let his guard down, swatting away a cluster of chattering teeth that bathed him in chemical fire. Hours of fighting alongside the Symbiote had taught him a few things beyond its transformative properties.
First was its reach, which could extend up to seven feet from any point of contact with his body.
Second was that while it listened well enough, it was still a creature of instinct that would panic and burrow into him the moment it felt genuinely threatened.
And lastly, the only thing capable of threatening it, besides sustained force that outpaced its regeneration, was the great equalizer. Fire.
As such, it didn't surprise him in the slightest when the Symbiote seeped between the crevices of his armor and left him to deal with a chemical blaze that couldn't be extinguished through conventional means.
Sweating beneath his suit, Bruce grappled to the ceiling, broke through a window, and latched onto one of the many gargoyles that watched over Gotham from above. Then he reached for the cryogenic spray on his belt and killed the fire, though not before it had warped sections of his armor into molten slag.
It was these mechanical teeth that had drawn the Bat here in the first place.
Nobody would use such gimmicky gadgets besides the Joker, whom Bruce never expected to find in person. But if he could trace the source of these toys, he'd be one step closer to finding the clown and ending him… For good. Stealthily, he stalked the group from above, before leaping off the ledge and dragging one of the Afflicted into the dark.
The man was screaming still, even as he dangled from the roof.
So were the following five Afflicted who shared his fate, many of whom clearly couldn't decide between crying and laughing.
Soon enough, the last of them—Grey himself—was left on his lonesome.
Firing blindly at the rooftop, the scum roared. "Come out! Come out, you coward!"
Neither his crime-hardened nerves nor the Toxin's hold on his sanity could smother the fear Bruce had taken good care to carve into his visage. And then, without warning, Grey brought the gun to his own temple in a last gesture of defiance. "Fuck you, Ba—"
He might have succeeded too, if the Dark Knight hadn't descended twenty seconds earlier and been practically breathing down the scum's neck. Bruce wrenched the gun upward, emptying the entire magazine in Grey's place.
"I need information."
"I-I'm not afraid of you!"
The jittering and stuttering would suggest otherwise, but unlike his wayward ward, Bruce had never made a habit of playing with his prey.
"Do I look like I'm in the mood for games?" He felt the Symbiote's presence return at last, allowing it to envelop him whole. And where there had once been eye lenses, there was only a flat, featureless surface that pulsed in the dark.
"You're not gonna kill me anyway! You can't—
The criminal had barely finished when a fist buried itself in his sternum, cracking precisely three ribs.
He was right.
Even if Bruce had resolved to kill the Joker, he wasn't going to kill Grey.
But everything short of that was fair game. "I'm going to do something worse… I'm going to break every bone in your body, and then I'm going to break your neck." A broken neck wasn't nearly as fatal as movies would have people believe, provided the one doing the breaking knew what they were doing.
He didn't even need to go that far.
His master had taught him acupuncture techniques that could paralyze anyone short of the greatest martial artists in the world, but a broken neck sounded far more intimidating, and intimidation was what he needed right now.
"Where did you get these gadgets? Who supplied you?"
"I-I… I'm not gonna—" Pete stammered.
"Wrong answer." Bruce was gearing up to make good on his promise when Brother Eye flagged an incoming call.
Rowan's, it seemed, and by the looks of it the boy was quite a distance away from the Batcave. Glaring daggers at the criminal, Bruce planted a boot on his nape to hold him in place.
"Imp? Where are you? What's your status?"
He listened carefully as the boy recounted Alfred and Dick's antics, his reasons for leaving the Cave, the state he'd found the Kirklands in, and finally his meeting with Ivy, during which he had allegedly been 'aura-farming' the entire time.
The bugs planted on the Imp suit, which Brother Eye helpfully summarized, told a different story altogether, one involving tears and pleas.
Bruce didn't bring it up.
He'd been that age once and knew exactly how mortifying it would be for the boy.
"Yes." He answered curtly.
"—Yes to what? I haven't even asked you anything."
"Yes, you may bring Ivy into one of the safehouses." Bruce didn't trust Ivy as far as he could throw her, but she was the only person capable of engineering a cure fast enough, and the only one willing to try. "There's one near your location. I'll send the coordinates along with a list of chemicals Joker and Scarecrow stole from Penguin."
With any luck, she might be able to reverse-engineer the Toxin and produce a deactivation agent from there.
"—Wow. Can't even let me do the pitch, can you?"
A breath left him that, under extreme scrutiny, might have passed for a laugh. "Good job, Imp."
"—… Watch yourself out there, Br-Batman."
"You too,"
He muttered, gaze drifting to the struggling criminal as he ended their call.
"Now, where were we?"
— — — — —
Quick notice: Chapter 65 is free to read on P @ tr30n. com / Regularrr. No membership required if you'd rather not wait to catch up.