Devil's consultancy 21

The aftermath of the Thanagarian invasion was relatively simple. The aftereffects, on the other hand, were much more impressive. 

As part of their takeover gambit, the Thanagarians essentially released information on how to make a functioning cold fusion plant. Within a year, scaled-down versions were developed. LexCorp actually managed to get a working model a month ahead of Waynetech and Queen Industries managed it a week before, but given that each model was subtly different, and a UN resolution pushed by J’onn ensured that the original designs were unpatentable, this was not a huge problem, given the absolutely massive demand and long construction times. 

A single full-sized model, equal to the one fueling the planetary shield generator, s going to be erected by Las Vegas, but it was hardly a surprise that an energy hungry city in the middle of the desert could find a use for that much electricity. That same plant will also create a massive amount of hydrogen fuel because no they couldn’t, and when that creates an incredibly inexpensive combustible, it will fuel, pun intended, a revolution in the car industry. 

No one hated the Thanagarian invasion more than the oil and gas companies. Well, she supposed those Middle Eastern despots who relied on those oil supplies might hate them more… But oil is still used in a lot of things, and people don’t just switch their vehicle choices on a dime, so it’ll take several years before the full effects of that come online. 

Of course, cheaper electricity and better computation mean that cryptocurrency once more becomes popular; it’s a scam, a perversion of free market principles that only works because the vast majority of the populace lack the education to see through their buzzword-laden bullshit, and the benefits it does have are useful to… primarily criminals, to be blunt. In fact, the Darwinian pressures on this iteration of Earth’s criminal element, making them more sophisticated, probably had more to do with the popularity than anything else. Particularly when the most popular one is LexCoin. 

But the year is now 2009, and all of those consequences aren’t quite here yet. Instead, interstellar matters were quiet, and each individual member of the Justice League conducts their ordinary business. Even their newest members, Static and Gear. They weren’t very busy in Dakota, though: a cure was developed for the Quantum Vapor, or “Bang Baby Gas”, and unfortunately the administration of it, and the resulting permanent power removal, was ruled by the Supreme Court a valid measure for containing powered beings. Francis Stone vs. Dakota was now a hallmark precedent-forming case that permanently removing metahuman abilities was a reasonable security measure in prisons. 

Truly, a dark day for civil rights. At least, that was the official position of the Justice League on the matter. There was still hope that some of the other cases with different power sources would overturn it, as other, similar cases were currently tied up in the courts, but Bruce did not like where it was going, and Tanya was inclined to agree. The good news was that it was basically confirmed that if you took the cure, another dose of Quantum Vapor could re-activate the same meta abilities as before. Which was why they kept that canister that Green Lantern gathered up in the Batcave’s vault under a stasis spell, just in case. 

Not that such matters were terribly relevant in Gotham. There weren’t very many metas there, and the few that did exist generally had physiological dependency on their powers, so you couldn’t, for example, remove Dr. Isley’s connection to The Green without killing her, as she had used enough of it to heal her body over the years that she’d practically fall apart without it, somewhat similar to scurvy causing scar tissue to dissolve, opening old wounds back up again. Such matters mostly served to remind her that despite the Justice League’s hard work, they only enforced laws; they stayed as far away from the judiciary and legislation as was possible. It was… irritating in a way, but there wasn’t really anything that could be done about it. 

What can be done, on the other hand… was making sure that magic’s proliferation didn’t create more supervillains than necessary. “Meht dnib!” Zatanna shouted as she magically enchanted the grapple lines that Robin tossed out to wrap around the perps. 

Zatanna Zatara was a fifteen year old magician that her father, Giovanni, really did not want to become some kind of vigilante. However, she still lived in Gotham, just four houses away from Barbie. She noticed Batgirl driving off, and followed her with a tracking spell to the Belfry, and basically blackmailed Barbie into joining up. 

Batman also didn’t approve, but not so much that he interfered with Zatanna’s teenage rebellion, instead simply turning a blind eye to the whole thing. By now, given that Barbie was 19 and Richard was 14, he was generally willing to let them fight crime without his or Rhine’s direct supervision, as long as Rhine augmented Robin magically before they left, and they did so together. He said nothing about bringing Zatanna along.

Tanya, on the other hand, was just taking the opportunity to play a strategy game, specifically a 4X one set in space that she enjoyed in her past life. The presence of known alien civilizations in the expansion pack that released last year really spiced things up. Next to her gameplay, the scrying mirror she had set up to monitor Robin was showing off the action. “Robin, you know that my spell focuses on what you’re paying attention to, right?” She asked over comms. It didn’t only do that, the magic’s heuristics on what it displayed was a mixture of what both her and Robin thought was important, so if there was nothing that Tanya would find interesting, it tended to default ot that. 

“So?”

“Stop looking at Zatanna’s butt so much.” She said chidingly. 

Robin’s body seized up in embarrassment, causing him to trip over a ledge he had grappled up to, falling on his face. “Shut up!” He hissed. 

Zatanna, on the other hand, giggled. “I don’t blame him, my butt is very nice.” She said teasingly while posing seductively. Truly, among teenage girls her real superpower is her ego. Kids these days… Wait, is she gonna have to start doing that in a few years to fit in? Questions for later. 

They continued to bust small time criminals, and also the Mad Hatter. Batman, on the other mirror, instead was rescuing hostages from the Riddler’s latest scheme. And it wasn’t even midnight yet. 

Ugh, those damned Tamaraneans… she knew intellectually, as a student of history, that she should be critical of the biased viewpoint she learned of the warrior race, and as it was a strategy videogame, she should know that heavily militarized warrior cultures was a niche that needed to be filled, but… they just keep declaring war! Also, after the Almerans and the Thanagarians, she’s learned that sometimes stereotypes are right. It’s time to start blasting them back to the stone age… 

Still, genocide was a step that took a while in this kind of game, so she opened up the ship design interface and started on making the perfect laserboat to destroy those damned armored jackasses. 

“Do I need to know what that evil laugh was for?” Batgirl asked over comms. Urk. 

“No.” Tanya replied, “Do you think I should make the laser boat look like sharks or birds?” She asked, deflecting the inquiry. 

“Birds, no question.” Robin replied, with obvious bias. 

“What are you doing anyway?” Zatanna asked. 

“Rhine’s just playing video games.” Robin explained, “She’ll pause it and help us if we need it, she can hop right through those scrying mirrors to our location.”

“You just enjoy meting out justice or whatever you want to call it.” Tanya said a little condescendingly. “I’ll just stay here, cozy in my chair, while you walk around at eleven at night, in New Jersey, while wearing fishnets and heels, to keep the company of men who likely find difficulty in otherwise acquiring female companionship.”

Zatanna scowled straight at Tanya’s scrying sensor. “What’s your deal?” She practically shrieked. “All night you’ve been passive aggressively telling me I should quit. Did my Dad get to you?”

“Giovanni Zatara would have a stroke if he even knew you were talking to me.” Tanya said bluntly, “He has a very poor opinion on demons.”

“You aren’t giving Batgirl this kind of treatment!” Zatanna complained. 

“Actually…” Batgirl interjected. “No, she did this to me too.”

“She’s just hazing you.” Robin confirmed. “Testing your conviction, you know? Heroics is a thankless job, and you gotta be tough to keep at it. If Rhine talking about how comfy she is not going out is enough to stop you, you’re not cut out for this.”

“Well, I am!” Zatanna insisted, “So no matter what you say, I’m going to be a superhero!”

Tanya sipped her hot chocolate. “On a related note, this is a good time to get in some food before the places servicing the bar crowds close. There’s nothing notable on the police bands right now, better hurry before… who’s at large right now?” Tanya checks the files. “...Two-Face does something. He might go for a 12:12 heist tonight, after all.” The recurring villains, who could be predicted, did have a tendency to mix things up a tiny bit. Not so much as to go out of theme, but Two-Face using 12:12 instead of 2:00, 2:02, 2:12, 2:22, etcetera, was well within possibility. 

“No, we should wait until 11:11 has passed first.” Advised Batgirl. “They sum to 2 each, after all.” He hasn’t done that yet, but… good point. 

“Well, Batman hasn’t found any hints as to his planning, so he might not hit anything at all tonight, but that’s a good idea anyway.” Tanya said, “Do you have a suggestion as to what to eat, Zatanna?”

The comms were silent as the newbie heroine thought about the practical concern. “I could go for some Thai food.” She eventually said. 

“We’ll be cutting it close, but nothing that can’t be forgiven with a good tip. I’ll call it in for you.” Tanya said, “Your order?”

After handling the logistics of a set of child vigilantes getting a midnight snack, Tanya went back to her game. Just a normal evening in Gotham, for the most part. 

-----------------------

ArcWayne’s expanded by a lot since its creation: not only were there the original five medical rituals fully functional, with efficiencies and standardization worked out, but they had since expanded to even more potentially profitable endeavors. 

For example, bespoke enchanted objects. There were large quantities of practitioners that, given the opportunity, would love to make comfortable livings plying their skills, there was just a gap between that desire and the ability to find paying customers. Under the auspices of ArcWayne, the artisans could focus on their work, while other employees handle things such as vetting clients, sourcing materials, and handling negotiations. 

This meant that Tanya Wayne, rich heiress to the parent company of ArcWayne, could go around with any enchanted object she wanted without anyone questioning things like ‘how could she get this’ and ‘they don’t advertise that particular toy…’.

There was, however, no escaping ‘that couldn’t possibly be safe’. “Wheeeeee!” Tanya exclaims as she skates across the park, her enchanted ice skates creating tiny strips of ice ahead of the blades. She put her years of figure skating to use, dancing around obstacles and adding in flips and spins aplenty. 

Ironically, it was around now that she actually resembled her temporal age… mostly. It was plausible that she could be eight years old at this size. 

“Be careful, Princess!” Bruce shouted from the sidelines, looking nervous. 

“It’s fiiiiine, Daddy!” Tanya shouted back, skating backwards as she circled the man. “I’m an expert!” She skated away, where some other kids were playing. One of them got in her way, but she jumped over the brat before she could crash. Richard intercepted her leap, catching her and going into a spin. 

After a quick pose for the cameras that had inevitably pointed in their direction, Tanya scrambled up Richard’s back and sat atop his shoulders. As the boy was now 14, it was only a little ridiculous-looking. “Hmmm… You’re too short!” Tanya concluded, before pointing. “It’ll have to do. Onward, noble steed!”

“Noble steed?” Richard questioned, using his own magic skates to slowly travel around. 

“You’re right, that’s inappropriate.” Tanya agreed, “Onward, common donkey!” She jabbed his sides with her skates. “¡Endale!” 

“Ow.” Richard complained, “You’re lucky you’re cute.” He grumbled, but sped up just the same. 

Why were they wasting time in a public park? Well, partially because Tanya wanted to not just enjoy, but show off her cool skates, potentially drumming up interest in ArcWayne’s products, but also because Bruce had to actually do things as Bruce Wayne in order to maintain his reputation. Given that he liked having the ability to use his children as an excuse to avoid doing things when they interfered with his activities as Batman, this meant he couldn’t just use money and remote attention to keep her and Richard satisfied, he had to publicly demonstrate his parental affection, and while Richard had already started to sour on that stuff, because he was a teenager, Tanya had no such out. 

However, it being early evening meant that the criminal element still made attempts. Several vans drove into the park exits, blocking them off, and thuggish men poured out, taking out guns. By the looks of the henchmen’s outfits… crap. 

A high-pitched laugh rang out as The Joker revealed himself, perched on the jungle gym. Huh, this was the first time she got to be face to face with the murderous jackass. Bruce had gone through a lot of effort to avoid this meeting. 

Effort that wasn’t ending. Richard skated as fast as he could to the park’s wall and threw Tanya over the wall, only her figure-skating training allowing her to catch the ground without falling flat on her face. She quickly skated at a blistering, technically-impossible pace directly to the limo, where Alfred had put down his newspaper and taken out his shotgun, loading it with what appeared to be one buckshot and one dragon’s breath round. Truly, the best butler anyone could ask for. 

Alfred noticed Tanya skating, and opened the door for her. She dove inside, and crawled into the back seat, out of sight. “Rhine. Berechnung. Mahou. Bringing out the backup bat, we need to squash a gnat, the clown seeks to tempt the fates, for that moment I will brace, send me forward to make a splash, turn his victory into ash!” She was getting better at layering multiple rhymes together off the cuff. 

More complex rhymes with multiple couplets could increase the power of her spells, up to the limits of her power (which was a lot higher than she typically used), but it was generally better at allowing her to make more complex, multi-layered effects. In this case, it transformed him into his adult body, which was already suited up with the Batman suit, it teleported him to the nearby crisis, and sent him forward in time to what the flow of destiny determined to be the most inconvenient time for the Joker’s plot. That last bit was a new trick, he had been studying some materials from Themyscira that Diana had brought over about the tapestry of fate and destiny, and how one could use it to guide magical effects. 

He could hear the Joker’s words before his arrival: “I gotta tell you Brucie, you really know how to treat a date! But I don’t think putting yourself first in line to get killed is really going to work out as well as last time. After all: Batman’s not here.” He brandished his crowbar, winding up to smash the kneeling Bruce Wayne in the head. 

“Good joke.” Batman rumbled as he burst out of the storm sewer, his magic emulating shaped charges spent to break the grate. Bruce’s eyes widened as he slammed the Joker’s face into a light pole, the crunch of broken bones incredibly satisfying to feel. 

The shadow puppet that was Rhine’s presence rose up. “Do it, make him quit.” They intoned. 

Joker laughed despite being pinned to the ground. “Yes, do it!” He dared. “If you don’t… BOYS!” He shouted, and the thugs readied themselves to shoot. 

Magically, he suppressed Joker’s words and had the Rhine puppet, who didn’t have actual vocal chords to limit what they sounded like nor suffered from the geas in this state, shout in his voice: “KILL YOURSELVES!” before intoning more quietly: “With the leader barking mad, obedience now sounds rather sad.” Magically disarming that many thugs was beyond their power while using a mortal form, so they had to resort to trickery instead. 

Joker, immediately realizing what Batman had done, just started laughing hysterically as his thugs paused, scowled, and just started going back to their vans and started leaving, the mental suggestion smoothing over the possibility that they’d actually obey the fake order. “That’s a good one, Bats!” His grin widened even further, a feat that Batman didn’t think was possible. “Or should I say: Rhine? A switcheroo, quite the con you have going on! Let me guess: The squinty-eyed hobo was some long-dead burakumin whose soul you own.”

Batman was surprised that Joker even knew what that was, although not nearly as surprised that he saw through the deception. “Not very smart, are you?” He whispered. 

Joker’s face clenched at the simple insult, furious at the approach that Batman would never take. As he didn’t immediately retort, Batman continued: “If I’m not the real Batman… then I don’t have to take your bullshit.” A magical spike severed the Joker’s spinal cord, paralyzing him from the waist down. The stench of him immediately evacuating his bowels filled Batman’s nose. “This’ll slow you down.” 

The criminal wheezed in laughter, finding his joke hilarious. Batman smirked. “Enjoy your official meta designation, by the way.” It was true: The Joker stank of magic, of death. He could kill the bastard dozens of times and it would barely put a dent into whatever sacrificial life force bullshit he had going on: He suspected it was some kind of ghost-fueled proxy effect, passing on damage he takes to his murder victim’s souls. Seeing as how had also bound himself to Gotham’s magic and his own myth as Batman’s destined foe, it would take some major effort to dislodge his immortality. Effort that he’d now officially begin. “Regeneration opens up so many options when it comes to restraints…”

As the police were now approaching to take Joker into custody, Batman pulled the Joker to his feet, letting the excrement drip out of the clown’s pant legs. “Here.” He said, handing him over to the cops. “He’ll need a change of clothes, I scared him there.” He gestured to the dark spot on the clown’s pants. 

Joker looked affronted. “No I wasn’t!” He insisted, “Bats-”

Batman interrupted him, the Rhine shadow puppet putting their hand over the Joker’s mouth. “I should have remembered he was a clown, I’ll keep the banter appropriate to kid’s birthday parties in the future. I didn’t realize that he had trouble with the toilet.”

The cop chuckled. “Didn’t realize you got a sense of humor, Batman.” 

The Joker was walked to the cop car, his severed spine already healed, screaming to everyone that he did not have toilet troubles, and Batman ruined his pants. 

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Batman.” Bruce said, holding out his hand to shake again. “What did you say to him?”

Batman smirked. “I shouldn’t share the grisly details. Rhine?”

“The day is saved, the work’s not done, Batman away, the night’s begun!” The Rhine puppet intoned, and by channeling magic into the words, Batman teleported back into the limo, wordlessly returning to her true form. Fortunately, she didn’t teleport far, or such a deceptive incantation would have limited her ability to exert her full magical power. 

Alfred started removing the shotgun’s shells. “Matters have been resolved, I trust?” He asked. 

“Batman showed up.” Tanya assured him, then started summoning tears. “Ahem.” She began, cueing to Alfred that she was just getting into character. “It was so scary, Alfred!” She screamed, crawling back to the front of the limo and hugging him. “I never saw Joker before, and he didn’t sound that scary, but he is! He’s so ugly and mean and Dick threw me to safety but he’s still in there and, and…” She started crying, which is how she was when Bruce and Richard returned to the limo. 

Once the teary reunion was sufficiently caught on camera and they were once more sequestered in the limo’s privacy spells, Tanya stopped crying and conveyed her intel: “Joker’s immortal.” She began bluntly. “His vitals heal a lot faster than the rest of him, so much so that any medical examination merely detects that the damage he sustained was not as severe as it could have been, and I assume that he can throttle it on purpose, too.”

Bruce seemed disturbed by this news. “So when he survived-” He began

“Yes.” Tanya agreed, knowing exactly what he was talking about. “You remember Solomon Grundy, right? They use essentially the same magic, it just differs in details. Without attacking the spells that keep his flesh moving, it is theoretically possible to kill him, but only in the sense that you can drain a lake with a water pump.” Or a swamp, in the case of Grundy. “You’d have to continually execute him for weeks if you want to do it the stupid way.”

“All this time…” Bruce murmured. “He wouldn’t have even died…”

On that note… “I would like to apologize, by the way: I was wrong.” Tanya began. 

“About what?” Richard asked. 

“You were correct that capturing Joker alive was far more optimal than any amount of violence against him.” Tanya admitted, “I will do my best to find a way to cut him off from his magical power, but until then, interning him in Arkham is the best option.”

That seemed to do the trick, Bruce perking up and making some private oath to himself, his resolve affirmed. 

She’ll need to talk to Constantine…