Countdown
“Nightwing, this is absolutely ridiculous; you’re telling me this Zalmoxis guy is like 4000 years old?” Peter said over the radio. They were closing in on the location of the Red Lanterns, but he could not help but be interested in the case of the mad scientist or something who had gotten him there. That’s probably because I can’t help but think that the real Batman would be doing a better job of this.
“It’s just as strange as it sounds. He’s been trying to keep out of public records, but apparently this is something that he’s been doing a lot. He’s been switching bodies with people to keep himself alive. For the most part, he stays away from well-known people. It works just fine whenever he turns into a baby, but then he loses most of his memories.”
“He goes to different worlds every time?”
“Not every time; he’s not that picky, but if he stays quiet for a generation or so he might manage to stay in the same dimension. A long time ago, he had no ability to target specific people, but it seems like more recently he can mostly narrow it down. He looks for dimensional weaknesses, whatever that means.”
“Where are you getting this?”
“Well, there were some ancient documents that Alfred looked up, and that led me to one of his former bases. I think he tries to keep his bases from being discovered, but this time he made a mistake, and his caution led to his discovery.”
That’s right. He thought he’d found some quiet, out of the way place, but Batman was basically already using that general area as a hiding place for his own operation. Things were falling into place left and right, but there were still some missing pieces. At the same time, he was busy with something else.
“Is there anyone free to help me with the reds?” he asked. “I assume you’re calling me because you’re busy with something?”
“I’ve left my city as long as I can leave it. I don’t even want to get into what’s going on over there.”
“That’s fine; I’ll handle things here.”
“No backup?” Guy asked.
“Not from him. I’ve got some other friends I trust to help me with problems in this city. Is this the place?”
They were standing just outside of a smaller office building, probably a law office for some local hack. That means the reds might have more hostages than just Zatanna. Can we afford to ignore that if there’s way more lives at stake?
No matter how he wanted to look at it, the magician was a more valuable hostage. He could only imagine what they were trying to get her to do for them, and the prospects were anything but good. The fact that they had her meant that the universe was in danger; she was that powerful, at least as far as he understood it.
“Well, nothing to do but go in,” Guy said.
“Is that what you lanterns always do?” he asked. “This is a hostage situation; we have to scout the place out. We have to look for... vulnerabilities.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Are they going to recognize you if they see you?”
“No. I’m not really that well-known. I highly doubt any Red Lanterns have ever seen me before.”
“Really? Okay, you knock on the door; I’m going to try to see if I can see anything through the walls.”
Climbing the side of the building as far up as he could go with the magnets in his gauntlets and boots, he used his grapnel to get him up the rest of the way. There was no convenient skylight, nor could he find a vent, so he went around to the other side and found an alley window, probably just required as part of a fire escape plan. Buildings in Gotham seemed to be a mixed bag of easy to infiltrate and just blatantly violating the codes and being deathtraps.
His worst fears were confirmed. Through the window, he could see a man tied up behind a desk. The Batman has to save hostages, but if I do, then it's go time no matter what. They’ll notice the hostage missing and they’ll know we’re onto them. Can we afford that? Is the hostage in greater danger the longer we leave him here?
Opening the window carefully, he crawled in without making a sound, thinking to himself that he might not be as accustomed to the suit as Bruce, but he had some experience sneaking around. The suit, if he recalled correctly, was also designed to avoid detection. Putting a finger over his mouth, he cut through the ropes tying up the hostage with a Batarang and pointed to the window.
“I can’t get down there,” the hostage whispered.
“Okay, come with me.” It was pointless to let the hostage out if they could not get him out of the building. Helping the man up to the roof from the window was a task, but at least he was not noticed in the process.
“Who the hell are these people, Batman?”
“We’re sorry; they’re here looking for a bad guy, but they’re not willing to play by the rules. Did you hear them say anything?” They might have moved Zatanna. Well, she might also be dead already.
Though it was probably not what she wanted, she might have removed the red ring, killing herself rather than allowing herself to be controlled. There was no telling what the reds were going to do with her powers, after all.
“They said that it's pointless to take it off. They’re trying to get this lady to do... something, I don’t really know- they keep saying they can put it back on.”
Think, Peter, think- what does this logically imply? He knew that she could not simply use her powers to escape them, so there was a chance that they could kill her even if she ran off, but if they had nothing else with which to threaten her, then why was it pointless to take it off? If she took it off right in front of them, they’d have to get it back on somehow. They can’t just lose their hostage. At the same time, I don’t think that her magical powers don’t work while she has the ring on. So, basically, it’s like I thought at the start and she just doesn’t want to die. She must have faith that someone’s coming to rescue her.
But if she’s in Gotham, and all my friends are busy, who could be coming to rescue her other than-
He heard a scream and went back into the office. There was a pipe that went down to the basement, probably a water main broken on both ends. A stray thought told him it was a way for a hack lawyer to get past confidentiality issues, creating the illusion of private conversations in the basement, but that was unimportant. Either way, he could clearly hear voices.
“Guy Gardner, Green Lantern of Earth. Can you believe this- the knobhead came knocking at the door, not wearing his ring, and thought we wouldn’t recognize him.”
“Careful, Jack. That might have been a distraction.”
“He swore up and down that he was working alone. He’s daft enough.”
“Well, it looks like your rescue might be getting more likely,” the alien lady said, probably addressing Zatanna. ”I could have sworn that no greens would be allowed in this city, but apparently they’re coming incognito.”
“This plan is untenable,” the magician said. “You’re pinned down with limited power in your rings, and now you’ve got another hostage to watch. Do you think no one knows that he’s here?”
“Most likely, yeah,” Jack said. “Do you really think Bleez and I haven’t been keeping up with what’s been going on in space? Radio says that the greens haven’t budged on letting the reds through and the local crimefighters haven’t budged on letting the greens come planetside. That means, he’s not meant to be here.”
“Even if no one knows he’s here-”
“They can’t track the rings. None of us can. If a lantern goes missing, you just have to look. Sometimes, when we use the light constructs, it gives off a signal, but we’ve been careful about that so far. Besides, even if the locals knew we were here, they wouldn’t tell anyone who could actually stop us.”
The situation was even worse than before, which he genuinely had not thought would be possible. Guy was just supposed to knock on the door and distract them while he collected information, but now he was captured. There’s no way that I can take on two reds all by myself.
“What do you even want, then?” Zatanna asked. “Is this some kind of delaying tactic? You know I can’t just find Larfleeze for you, not without more information. I can’t simply wish for whatever you want in the universe-”
“We’ve heard your excuses,” Bleez said, as if disinterested. “If you can’t find our target, then we’ll find him ourselves. Your crimefighting friends will realize that you’re gone at some point, and they won’t be able to find you, because they can’t get into this city. Don’t think we didn’t do research on this planet ahead of time. Jordan was right; this place is special, just not in a helpful way.”
“If they realize that we have you hostage, then they’ll realize they can’t rescue you, and they can’t afford to lose you. They’ll push the greens to allow us to search the sector, and that’ll be the last time you try to stop the Red Lanterns with red tape.”
“Batman knows where I am.”
“The one with no powers? The one whose top priority is keeping other authorities out of this city? The one who was spotted messing around on a mobile base for the blues? He isn’t the slightest bit concerned about you, sweetheart. If anything, this is kind of a relief for him. Someone as powerful as you is a liability for a control freak like-”
Zatanna was laughing. The reds would probably think that she was just trying to cut them off and trick them into thinking that she had reason to be perfectly confident in her rescue. To him, however, the laugh sounded genuine. It was possibly the first thing in several hours to give him the slightest amount of hope, even if he could not exactly say why. It was such a mood swing, he was on the verge of tears as she ignored their derision and calmly stated that they had no idea who Batman was.
“Are you implying that this vigilante has some skill, some experience, that we have discounted?” Jack asked. “He has never faced us before. Nothing could prepare him for this.”
“You have no escape route,” she said. “The world’s greatest detective will have no trouble tracking you down to this exact location.”
“We were not terribly worried about that,” Bleez said. “In fact, that would advance our plans. After all, we can hardly be granted clearance to search the sector until someone from your end realizes we have you. No skill that he has is enough to make up for his lack of ability; he will realize that he has no means of saving you and announce to the local crimefighters that he has some reason to believe that you are our hostage, but he will not disclose your location. If he fails to report your disappearance, I suppose we could simply continue to try forcing you to behave.”
It appeared the conversation was more or less over. I have fight them. He jumped behind the desk facing the door, behind which the hack lawyer had been a captive. If I choose the right time and place, then I have a chance. There were footsteps coming up from the basement. This is no different from the lessons I know I learned before. The footsteps were right outside the door. As long as I can do something, I have to try.
There was a saying that discretion was the better part of valor, and he was sure that Batman never took on massive crowds of armed men without a trick up his sleeve; he was not going to help anyone by committing suicide, but by being brave and holding onto the belief that he could win. Even out of his element, even without the powers he might have had at one point, the lesson that he had learned was about using what he had, that he was responsible for what was possible. There were many who failed to achieve what was possible, and there was no excuse for that. He took a deep breath as one of the reds entered the room and he shook the desk slightly, making it look like there was still someone behind it.
“We’ll come back to you in good time, Meyer something,” the voice of Bleez assured. “We’re not here to kill innocent people; we’re here to do justice, and that’s something that you should understand, if only as lip service. We’re moving bases. Is there someone that will come and get you?”
He moved the desk again, remembering that the man’s mouth had been gagged. The Red Lantern did not expect a verbal response, so there was a chance that she was testing to see whether someone had taken the place of the hack lawyer, and there was a chance that she just forgot.
“Fine. I’ll be back here to let you out, but only after we move the hostage offworld. We should be able to eliminate interference from regular humans, so I’m confident that I could return without being noticed.”
It was something he had never considered. Zatanna had not only been going along with what they wanted because her life was in jeopardy, but because of the lives of others. Like Bruce, she was a Gothamite and felt a duty to the city, even if its residents were not shining beacons of goodness and truth. She had allowed herself to remain a captive for the life of the hack lawyer- the fact that Bleez was telling him in confidence that he was safe meant that they had explicitly threatened him in front of the magician.
If she’s telling the truth, then she’ll be separated from the other one, Jack. If I can fight them one on one, I can have a better chance against them. She’ll be separating herself from the hostages too.
As the alien lady left, he was still not certain how she and her friend had gotten to earth without being noticed, or how they intended to leave the same way. He had been putting together a theory that it was most likely that the British dude had already been on Earth, and the other one could have been if she had been in disguise, since she looked mostly humanoid, even if she had ghastly white skin. It was therefore only necessary for the other reds to have some way of getting in contact with them, even if Atrocitus wanted other entities to think that the Red Lanterns could go anywhere they wanted and it was pointless to try to restrain them.
Even if it’s unlikely... it could be the same as before. It could be that they’re moving her offworld with something that was already here, and would be easily missed by the League and the Greens.
Getting up as soon as he was lone, he had been ready for Bleez to attack him, though his knuckles under his gauntlets were probably white from gripping the grapnel gun, because that would not have been an ideal scenario. For one thing, there was no way that the other lantern would not hear them, so even if he somehow managed to surprise and overwhelm her, she would have been able to call out and the broken pipe would have worked against him. The enemy had not one, but two hostages, and he seriously doubted he could offer either one of them a job at Wayne Enterprises.
“If I ever tell the others about this, they’re going to feel really silly thinking that I was some kind of naïve idiot,” he muttered, looking around for clues. “I’m an incompetent who relies on his powers and only knows an impressive amount about something highly specific. I’ve mostly got Conners to thank for that.”
As he decided he was going to find nothing in the office, he went downstairs, where, surely enough, the hostages had already been moved out, he was grateful that he remembered the name of at least one person from his old life, Strangely, even more than his own name, it seemed to ground him in reality. There was a note on the floor. Looks like they didn’t knock Guy out.
The note was composed with a drop of blood, a blue smudge of lipstick, and a four-leafed clover, as well as some hastily scratched symbols. It was an equation, or rather an inequation, as the blood was stated to be less than the sum of the clover and the smudge. I’m lucky that he had all that stuff down there with him to make this. He might have been carrying around the clover for luck, but he’d have to have borrowed the lipstick from Zatanna. The blood would have been easy.
If the Green Lantern had been trying to make some profound statement about luck and beauty being better than violence, or perhaps, genealogy, then the relevance escaped him. He could not see his new friend spending the small amount of time that he had for a purpose like that. What was getting him thinking was his initial observation, the happenstance of the magician having blue lipstick, though he supposed the color fit with her look sometimes. She had it because it’s blue. Guy had a clover because it's green. The blood was easy.
Though he doubted that the lantern knew about all the details of his recent trip to the blues, he remembered that to use the full power of a blue ring, it had to be in the presence of a green one, and the note seemed to be saying that they would have an advantage over the reds if they only worked together. It must be some sort of counter to red light, like how yellow light counters green light. If there’s a direct counter to red light, then we can save Zatanna with it, because it’s the red light that keeps her heart from exploding.
Even without all the details, he knew that there was too little time to delay, or even call anyone else. Finding a wardrobe, he figured that Bleez was using simple, effective means of concealing her inhuman characteristics, and that meant that she would be masquerading as a human, along with Jack and the hostages. Most likely, they were going to leave the planet among other humans, and they were not inclined to leave Gotham in the process.
“Alfred,” he said into the radio. “I need to know when the next spacecraft leaves this city or the surrounding area.”
“I must have failed to mention it,” the butler said. “A matter of weeks ago, Wayne Enterprises announced a charity event in which those who entered could have a chance at winning a set of tickets on a space shuttle. I believe Master Bruce originally used this shuttle for the construction of the Watchtower, and since the boom tubes have been in functionality, has since had no other use for it.”
That was it. The reds had used their rings in some way to manipulate the chance of winning. If it had been a live lottery drawing, as seen on tv, they could have used the red light to push the numbered ping pong balls into the holes, though it would have required precise control over a distance. I doubt Bleez or Jack did anything like that, or if they did, it wasn’t their first choice. They could have found someone who had records of the numbers and who owned each ticket, and just beat him until he changed the records to include an alias of theirs next to the winning number.
Part of the reason they chose Gotham was therefore explained. It was politically convenient, to be sure, but the secret reason was that in addition to a way of getting reds onto the planet, they needed a way of getting them off, into an environment they could more easily control. The problem with this city is that they’re more likely to run into some powerful maniac like Gearhead who’s going to kill them along with their hostage. Remaining perfectly stationary in Gotham is untenable, even if they could count on Batman not to go after them, and though they downplayed his abilities in front of Zatanna, because they want her to give in, they don’t want to find out if he’s got something up his sleeve.
“Master Peter?”
“Is anyone in the area? Can they stall the launch?”
“Yes, young Robin might be able to create a distraction... I would assume that we do not want the world to know that you intend to stall the launch of your own shuttle...”
“Yeah, that’s exactly it. There are some reds trying to use it as a way of getting out of the sector. They probably want to hijack it while using as little red light as possible. I’ll have a perfect excuse to get on myself.”
“Truly? You would make a rather obvious target of yourself if you announced that the Batman would be accompanying the citizens on their space soiree.”
“I’m going to leave the costume in the car,” he said, hearing the engine noises in the background of Alfred’s end of the call. “I’ve got an idea. No one is going to see this coming.”
“Master Peter, have you any idea how utterly insane your plans sound?”
“I’m steadily getting an idea, yeah,” he said. “For the record, they always worked on my world, or at least I managed to live through them all.”
The butler relayed with a longsuffering sigh that he was in the area and would pick him up in ten minutes, provided he did not do something profoundly stupid before then. Once again, he was reminded of how much he was testing the patience of his allies. The only reason he could imagine that they had for trusting him to wear the costume was because he had been honest with them, but he could not have lied to them if he tried. He knew it was not because everything he had tried so far had worked; he really had not expected Guy to get attacked the second the door opened, he had hoped that they could sneakily get Zatanna out and work on a new plan from there.
When the car arrived, he did not ask what Alfred had been doing driving around in the area; he had probably been over there after hearing about Clayface on the news or the police radio and thinking that Peter was sure to contact him with something else. I’m starting to see why Bruce takes him for granted; he really can afford to do that. He’s the most faithful servant in the world.
Trying to get the costume off in the backseat, he tried to think of some way to genuinely thank the older gentleman for being such a great friend, but there were no words for something like that. There was no way of making it sound real, and not an exaggeration. Maybe that’s how it is, though. Maybe schoolteachers hear things like ‘you changed my life’ and they think there’s no way that can be real, when it is. Maybe I’d better just give it a shot.
“Alfred, I don’t know how to say this, but I’m really grateful for what you do.”