Daughterof_Evil
06-27-2001, 08:32 PM
-Kon nichi'wa, guys and girls. I have to post this one in two parts because the post box only takes 3,000 words at a time. Anyway, I decided to start a new thread because the old one was getting long. This one is pretty safe, though near the end there's a brutal fight scene and I use the word "orgasmic" once. X's last comment in this part is from the movie Fight Club. I thought it was appropriate. Have fun.-
***
“ Mr. Bruce Wayne?”
He paused. His secretary, Maggie, a flustered young woman with short black hair, stopped a few feet behind him.
“ Yes?” he asked, staring straight ahead.
She was a lovely African-American woman, skin the color of cream and coffee, her dark hair braided into twists that fell about her shoulders. In one manicured hand, a gold badge gleamed beside an FBI I.D.
“ I’m Special Agent Helen Arroway with the Federal Bureau of Investigations,” she said, replacing the badge within the grey blazer of her Lana Lang pantsuit.
“ Good morning,” he said, offering a hand to her. She shook. Her grip was strong and soft.
“ I have a feeling you want to ask me about Nevig Lockhardt,” he said, opening the door to his office for her. She walked in. Following close behind her was a young man in a navy suit with red hair. Her partner, he realized.
“ Have the local police asked to see you?” she questioned.
“ Yes. They saw me at my home,” He looked around for Maggie. “ Can I get you anything?”
She declined with a quiet thank you. Her partner acted like he hadn’t heard. His face was angular, eyes deep black.
Bruce extended a hand. “ I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
He shook. “ Special Agent Marcus Carter,”
Bruce went around the back of his desk, taking a seat in his plush leather armchair. Discreetly, he pressed a button on the intercom. His two guests sat across the wide expanse of the desktop, staring at his silhouette against the bright Gotham morning streaming in the floor-to-ceiling window.
“ You were in Britain last week?” Agent Arroway asked.
“ Yes. I was visiting some new investors.”
“ And who went with you?”
Bruce folded his hands on his desk. “ My ward, Timothy Drake, and my butler, Alfred Pennyworth.”
She took notes in a small leather booklet. “ We’ve already confirmed through the GCPD that you were attending the party after the opera on Thursday evening. How did you know Isabella Mariocelli?”
“ She and I had once met in Sicily when she was working for an opera company there. A casual acquaintence, really.”
“ But an acquaintence that earned you a place at the cast party, no less.”
Bruce smiled slightly. “ It pays to have friends in high places,”
“ Yes,” agreed Agent Arroway.
“ We just need some information from you, Mr. Wayne,” Agent Carter said. “ You should understand that we’re not accusing you of anything.”
Bruce sat back in his chair. “ Whatever I can do to help.”
The agents traded glances, then went on.
“ Did Isabella ever act suspiciously around you?”
“ Never.”
“ I mean, anything,” Carter prodded. “ What did she like to do? Did she have any unusual hobbies?”
“ Other than her collection of Celtic armor, nothing much really stood out about her. She did have a beautiful voice though.” A shadow of memory flickered across his face, almost like a spasm. In a moment, it was gone.
“ What about her finances? We know she had stock in your company.”
“ All of those things were the business of her accountant. He did all the work.”
Agent Arroway nodded, taking it down.
“ Is there something you need to tell me about Isabella?” Bruce asked, leaning forward.
“ This is just the murder investigation, Mr. Wayne.” Agent Carter explained.
“ If this were just the murder investigation, wouldn’t it be Scotland Yard here instead of the FBI?”
Agent Arroway licked her black lacquered lips. “ We’ll level with you, Mr. Wayne, since you’re an outstanding citizen.”
Bruce furrowed his brow in contemplation. “ Yes?”
“ We think Mariocelli’s murder had something to do with Intergang.”
“ What would Intergang want with Isabella?”
Arroway looked past Bruce to the city outside. “ We’re not yet sure. Agent Carter and I were sent here from Washington because Gotham City is the birthplace of Geoffrey Mullen.”
“ I see.”
Agents Arroway and Carter stood, as did Bruce. A brief ceremony of handshaking and thank-yous ensued, and Bruce led the way to the door.
“ If you have any other information, just tell us,” she said, offering him a card. Bruce took it, looked at it, and bid them farewell.
Once the door had closed, he traveled back to his desk and sat down in his chair, turning it towards the expansive window. Outside, the monolithic spires of Gotham reached towards the morning sun.
“ Did you get that?” he asked.
“ Yes, sir,” came a cultured, British voice from the intercom.
“ Thank you, Alfred,” Bruce shut off the receiver with one snap.
***
“ Barbara said that some FBI guys were talking to her dad today,”
Bruce didn’t look back at him, but studied his ward’s reflection in the gigantic screen of the Batcomputer. The boy sat atop a far-off console, in his Robin suit, swinging his legs over the side. He seemed distracted, at unease.
“ Yes, she told me that too.” He hit a few random keys. A picture of a common Gotham thug popped up beside a long list of arrests. Small timer.
Robin looked down at his feet. “ Did they talk to you?”
“ They came to my office. They were looking for Bruce Wayne, not Batman,”
“ They asked about what happened in England, right?”
Bruce didn’t answer for a few moments. He ran a search on the amateur hood and reviewed a cluster of miscellaneous aliases.
“ That was what they came to me for, yes,” he finally replied.
Robin stared at the back of his mentor’s head, saying nothing. They communicated that way sometimes, without words. There was just an ambient energy in the air that must react the way dark matter does in space.
“ Isabella Mariocelli was an assassin called Belladonna,” Bruce said without hesitation. A single key cue brought up her face; a photo from some opera coinessieur magazine from a few years back. She was wearing sunglasses and waving to a crowd, a volume of gold bangles glittering at her wrist.
Robin jumped off the console and came up behind Bruce’s chair, watching the screen over the top of his head.
“ I thought she’d stopped killing for money two years ago,” he explained. “ I met her in Sicily ten years ago, when I was there investigating a mob hit on Lucius Fox. It turns out she was the one hired to do it. She must have switched over to Intergang when I wasn’t looking, though how she made the transition without any of Interpol’s agents coming upon her secret is still a mystery.”
“ Wait, what about Intergang?” Robin asked.
Bruce gave his ward a silent, unmistakable look. “ She was working for the German brigand. Nowhere near Mullen.”
“ What makes you so sure?” Robin questioned, a noticeable edge now present in his voice.
“ This,”
A French newspaper article popped up over the fawning photo of the late Isabella Mariocelli. The title picture presented an image of the charred skeleton of a private jet being towed away from an equally fire-blown airport terminal by a small cart.
“ This is in La Havre, France,” Bruce said. “ A private rental jet exploded in the hub. Interpol is saying it was a bomb to cover up the arrival of an Intergang leader named Nevig Lockhardt.”
“ Are they still looking for him?”
“ Yes, and an accomplice. A young female bodyguard seen traveling with him. She killed an Interpol agent named Claude Langouste and an informant with her bare hands before anybody could even catch a look at her face. I’ve been trying to load the video file all day, but the security system boots me out before I get a chance to complete it.”
Robin nodded. Barbara had just installed extra precautions on the Batcomputer’s hacking systems, making the trace “slippery” so that the breached security program simply kicked them out instead of actively attacking them. It was Bruce’s new favorite toy.
“ But why would this Lockhardt guy want another Intergang member dead?”
“ Belladonna belonged to the wrong type of Intergang. If she was working for the German brigand leader Hans Klirren, she was a prime target for any British-American Intergang member. Lockhardt has been trying to unify the separate Intergangs for years, and Klirren resisted. He wants the power for himself.”
“ So it’s just a matter of who dies first,”
Bruce quirked an eyebrow at the computer screen. “ If you want to think of it that way, yes,”
Robin hopped back onto the side console he’d been sitting on earlier. “ It’s just like the second World War all over again. Everybody’s sort of insane.”
Bruce shut down the program and pulled his cowl up over his head, fitting the moulded mask over his face. He strode down from the plateau of polished granite that the Batcomputer was inset into, then took a turn onto the parking turnstile, where the Batmobile patiently waited beneath a low glow of halogen wattage.
“ Go hit the training simulator,” he advised. “ I’ll want to see your score when I get back.”
Strangely enough, Robin didn’t entreat to come along on his nightly rounds. Instead, he nodded in understanding and watched as the turnstile ground slowly around. The Batmobile’s engine turned on with a purr, then increased to a roar, and a hot blue flame of jet fuel shot out the tail. It flew out into the dark chasms without even a second’s notice.
Robin immediately jumped from the console and into the chair Bruce had previously occupied in one acrobatic arc. He struck up the profiles, and filed in LOCKHART, NEVILLE with a quick type-hand he had developed in computer class.
LOCKHARDT, NEVIG popped up seconds later, correcting Robin’s spelling error. A picture of an older, snow-haired man with wizened blue eyes and the stoic features of a cultured man of the British Isles accompanied it, along with a rap sheet so long that Robin had to scroll through the boring parts.
Finally, he came upon the most recent report, filed in Bruce’s concise, business-like speech. It recorded everything Bruce had told him, except for one thing.
Lockhardt was working with Mullen.
Robin blinked. I’m sorry, Bruce, that you thought you couldn’t trust me with this. And I guess I’m betraying your trust, too.
If Mullen was in on this, it was a completely different deal. Tim had not, and had no intentions of ever, forgiving him for what he had done to her.
It had been three months. Still, sometimes late at night, he would run through the Batcomputer files, scraps of papers and news reports about the explosion in Metropolis. He knew each one by heart. At first, in the week or so after returning to Gotham, he had remained in the belief that it was only a tragedy because human life had been lost. They had never found her body, though a few pieces of charred high endurance material had washed up along the bay shore two days later.
He couldn’t bring himself to think of her name, or her face. But all at once, it had begun to filter into him after he had spent so long trying to shut it away.
Robin exited the computer program, and leaned back in his chair. He removed his mask with one hand, holding it in his palm as he rubbed his eyes. He was a fool. No matter how he struggled to forget, she was always there. She was always haunting him. It had taken him three months, but he found he could finally remember her face.
***
“ Mr. Bruce Wayne?”
He paused. His secretary, Maggie, a flustered young woman with short black hair, stopped a few feet behind him.
“ Yes?” he asked, staring straight ahead.
She was a lovely African-American woman, skin the color of cream and coffee, her dark hair braided into twists that fell about her shoulders. In one manicured hand, a gold badge gleamed beside an FBI I.D.
“ I’m Special Agent Helen Arroway with the Federal Bureau of Investigations,” she said, replacing the badge within the grey blazer of her Lana Lang pantsuit.
“ Good morning,” he said, offering a hand to her. She shook. Her grip was strong and soft.
“ I have a feeling you want to ask me about Nevig Lockhardt,” he said, opening the door to his office for her. She walked in. Following close behind her was a young man in a navy suit with red hair. Her partner, he realized.
“ Have the local police asked to see you?” she questioned.
“ Yes. They saw me at my home,” He looked around for Maggie. “ Can I get you anything?”
She declined with a quiet thank you. Her partner acted like he hadn’t heard. His face was angular, eyes deep black.
Bruce extended a hand. “ I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
He shook. “ Special Agent Marcus Carter,”
Bruce went around the back of his desk, taking a seat in his plush leather armchair. Discreetly, he pressed a button on the intercom. His two guests sat across the wide expanse of the desktop, staring at his silhouette against the bright Gotham morning streaming in the floor-to-ceiling window.
“ You were in Britain last week?” Agent Arroway asked.
“ Yes. I was visiting some new investors.”
“ And who went with you?”
Bruce folded his hands on his desk. “ My ward, Timothy Drake, and my butler, Alfred Pennyworth.”
She took notes in a small leather booklet. “ We’ve already confirmed through the GCPD that you were attending the party after the opera on Thursday evening. How did you know Isabella Mariocelli?”
“ She and I had once met in Sicily when she was working for an opera company there. A casual acquaintence, really.”
“ But an acquaintence that earned you a place at the cast party, no less.”
Bruce smiled slightly. “ It pays to have friends in high places,”
“ Yes,” agreed Agent Arroway.
“ We just need some information from you, Mr. Wayne,” Agent Carter said. “ You should understand that we’re not accusing you of anything.”
Bruce sat back in his chair. “ Whatever I can do to help.”
The agents traded glances, then went on.
“ Did Isabella ever act suspiciously around you?”
“ Never.”
“ I mean, anything,” Carter prodded. “ What did she like to do? Did she have any unusual hobbies?”
“ Other than her collection of Celtic armor, nothing much really stood out about her. She did have a beautiful voice though.” A shadow of memory flickered across his face, almost like a spasm. In a moment, it was gone.
“ What about her finances? We know she had stock in your company.”
“ All of those things were the business of her accountant. He did all the work.”
Agent Arroway nodded, taking it down.
“ Is there something you need to tell me about Isabella?” Bruce asked, leaning forward.
“ This is just the murder investigation, Mr. Wayne.” Agent Carter explained.
“ If this were just the murder investigation, wouldn’t it be Scotland Yard here instead of the FBI?”
Agent Arroway licked her black lacquered lips. “ We’ll level with you, Mr. Wayne, since you’re an outstanding citizen.”
Bruce furrowed his brow in contemplation. “ Yes?”
“ We think Mariocelli’s murder had something to do with Intergang.”
“ What would Intergang want with Isabella?”
Arroway looked past Bruce to the city outside. “ We’re not yet sure. Agent Carter and I were sent here from Washington because Gotham City is the birthplace of Geoffrey Mullen.”
“ I see.”
Agents Arroway and Carter stood, as did Bruce. A brief ceremony of handshaking and thank-yous ensued, and Bruce led the way to the door.
“ If you have any other information, just tell us,” she said, offering him a card. Bruce took it, looked at it, and bid them farewell.
Once the door had closed, he traveled back to his desk and sat down in his chair, turning it towards the expansive window. Outside, the monolithic spires of Gotham reached towards the morning sun.
“ Did you get that?” he asked.
“ Yes, sir,” came a cultured, British voice from the intercom.
“ Thank you, Alfred,” Bruce shut off the receiver with one snap.
***
“ Barbara said that some FBI guys were talking to her dad today,”
Bruce didn’t look back at him, but studied his ward’s reflection in the gigantic screen of the Batcomputer. The boy sat atop a far-off console, in his Robin suit, swinging his legs over the side. He seemed distracted, at unease.
“ Yes, she told me that too.” He hit a few random keys. A picture of a common Gotham thug popped up beside a long list of arrests. Small timer.
Robin looked down at his feet. “ Did they talk to you?”
“ They came to my office. They were looking for Bruce Wayne, not Batman,”
“ They asked about what happened in England, right?”
Bruce didn’t answer for a few moments. He ran a search on the amateur hood and reviewed a cluster of miscellaneous aliases.
“ That was what they came to me for, yes,” he finally replied.
Robin stared at the back of his mentor’s head, saying nothing. They communicated that way sometimes, without words. There was just an ambient energy in the air that must react the way dark matter does in space.
“ Isabella Mariocelli was an assassin called Belladonna,” Bruce said without hesitation. A single key cue brought up her face; a photo from some opera coinessieur magazine from a few years back. She was wearing sunglasses and waving to a crowd, a volume of gold bangles glittering at her wrist.
Robin jumped off the console and came up behind Bruce’s chair, watching the screen over the top of his head.
“ I thought she’d stopped killing for money two years ago,” he explained. “ I met her in Sicily ten years ago, when I was there investigating a mob hit on Lucius Fox. It turns out she was the one hired to do it. She must have switched over to Intergang when I wasn’t looking, though how she made the transition without any of Interpol’s agents coming upon her secret is still a mystery.”
“ Wait, what about Intergang?” Robin asked.
Bruce gave his ward a silent, unmistakable look. “ She was working for the German brigand. Nowhere near Mullen.”
“ What makes you so sure?” Robin questioned, a noticeable edge now present in his voice.
“ This,”
A French newspaper article popped up over the fawning photo of the late Isabella Mariocelli. The title picture presented an image of the charred skeleton of a private jet being towed away from an equally fire-blown airport terminal by a small cart.
“ This is in La Havre, France,” Bruce said. “ A private rental jet exploded in the hub. Interpol is saying it was a bomb to cover up the arrival of an Intergang leader named Nevig Lockhardt.”
“ Are they still looking for him?”
“ Yes, and an accomplice. A young female bodyguard seen traveling with him. She killed an Interpol agent named Claude Langouste and an informant with her bare hands before anybody could even catch a look at her face. I’ve been trying to load the video file all day, but the security system boots me out before I get a chance to complete it.”
Robin nodded. Barbara had just installed extra precautions on the Batcomputer’s hacking systems, making the trace “slippery” so that the breached security program simply kicked them out instead of actively attacking them. It was Bruce’s new favorite toy.
“ But why would this Lockhardt guy want another Intergang member dead?”
“ Belladonna belonged to the wrong type of Intergang. If she was working for the German brigand leader Hans Klirren, she was a prime target for any British-American Intergang member. Lockhardt has been trying to unify the separate Intergangs for years, and Klirren resisted. He wants the power for himself.”
“ So it’s just a matter of who dies first,”
Bruce quirked an eyebrow at the computer screen. “ If you want to think of it that way, yes,”
Robin hopped back onto the side console he’d been sitting on earlier. “ It’s just like the second World War all over again. Everybody’s sort of insane.”
Bruce shut down the program and pulled his cowl up over his head, fitting the moulded mask over his face. He strode down from the plateau of polished granite that the Batcomputer was inset into, then took a turn onto the parking turnstile, where the Batmobile patiently waited beneath a low glow of halogen wattage.
“ Go hit the training simulator,” he advised. “ I’ll want to see your score when I get back.”
Strangely enough, Robin didn’t entreat to come along on his nightly rounds. Instead, he nodded in understanding and watched as the turnstile ground slowly around. The Batmobile’s engine turned on with a purr, then increased to a roar, and a hot blue flame of jet fuel shot out the tail. It flew out into the dark chasms without even a second’s notice.
Robin immediately jumped from the console and into the chair Bruce had previously occupied in one acrobatic arc. He struck up the profiles, and filed in LOCKHART, NEVILLE with a quick type-hand he had developed in computer class.
LOCKHARDT, NEVIG popped up seconds later, correcting Robin’s spelling error. A picture of an older, snow-haired man with wizened blue eyes and the stoic features of a cultured man of the British Isles accompanied it, along with a rap sheet so long that Robin had to scroll through the boring parts.
Finally, he came upon the most recent report, filed in Bruce’s concise, business-like speech. It recorded everything Bruce had told him, except for one thing.
Lockhardt was working with Mullen.
Robin blinked. I’m sorry, Bruce, that you thought you couldn’t trust me with this. And I guess I’m betraying your trust, too.
If Mullen was in on this, it was a completely different deal. Tim had not, and had no intentions of ever, forgiving him for what he had done to her.
It had been three months. Still, sometimes late at night, he would run through the Batcomputer files, scraps of papers and news reports about the explosion in Metropolis. He knew each one by heart. At first, in the week or so after returning to Gotham, he had remained in the belief that it was only a tragedy because human life had been lost. They had never found her body, though a few pieces of charred high endurance material had washed up along the bay shore two days later.
He couldn’t bring himself to think of her name, or her face. But all at once, it had begun to filter into him after he had spent so long trying to shut it away.
Robin exited the computer program, and leaned back in his chair. He removed his mask with one hand, holding it in his palm as he rubbed his eyes. He was a fool. No matter how he struggled to forget, she was always there. She was always haunting him. It had taken him three months, but he found he could finally remember her face.