Chapter Text
It was a dark and stormy night.
Rain slashed down against the towering spires of Gotham. Gutters overflowed, spilling streams of water down glass and steel. The megacorp logos cut through the night’s sky; LexCorp, ANT, CatCo, Hive, Faber Industries, Wayne-Powers. Weathered gargoyles spouted waterfalls which fell down the steel canyons. Cataclysmic bursts of lightning lit the world in stark contrast, only to fade away and leave onlookers blinking. The flying car lanes were mostly empty, as drivers found an excuse to not go outside.
But there was one man out and about. The Batmobile tore through the night’s sky, a nearly invisible shape in the night. Sitting within its high-tech cockpit, Terry McGinnis adjusted the stabilisers and brought the craft into a shallow descent, circling a mega block in a spiral as he inspected each level in turn.
“It’s miserable out there,” he observed.
“Justice doesn’t care about a bit of water,” Bruce said heartlessly.
“You know, crime goes down in bad weather,” Batman pointed out. Bruce was back in the nice dry Batcave. The old man’s knee ached in wet weather, so he was even shorter tempered than usual. And his temper didn’t stretch very far on the best of days.
“Less than it used to. Plenty of crimes don’t need people to go outside these days.”
Batman gave a little shrug, checking the Batmobile’s sensor banks. “Quiet night, anyway. Ten more minutes and I’ll call it for the evening.” He checked the clock. “The morning,” he corrected himself.
The old man’s response was as tetchy as it was predictable. “Keep your eyes open. Don’t lose focus, Terry.”
Batman sighed. “All right, all right.” He levelled the craft out, swooping low through the metropolis and kept his mind on the job. Mostly. “Any more news on Power Jack?”
“Nothing new. His cyborg mob is digesting its gains.”
“You said they were pushing towards Mutietown.”
“They might, but no one has reported anything.”
“Want me to go and ask some questions there? I know the muties don’t talk much to outsiders, but it couldn’t hurt.”
Thunder boomed in the sky. “No. There’s a disturbance down on 314th Street, Level 17,” Bruce said. “Sounds like Jokerz from the intercept.”
Batman shook his head. “They never learn, do they? Well, makes sense. If they were smart, they wouldn’t be Jokerz.”
The Batmobile rose, momentarily silhouetted against the Gotham skyline. Neon-covered buildings and the vast tetrahedral supports of the megablocks covered in advertising slogans filled the night with light pollution. Then he was diving again, down to an elevated highway deep in one of the steel canyons. A dark shape fell from the flying craft, which then roared off on autopilot.
This highway was almost abandoned. It had been built when the city was lower-rise, and these days the buildings left it in perpetual shadow. Fewer than half the street lights still worked, and those which did cast long shadows against the walls of the urban canyon. The neighbourhood was ignored by the city government and as a result it was frequented by petty criminals and gangs. Gangs such as the branch of the Jokerz running along it.
They were a sorry bunch, all things considered. Only one of them had the full-face whitepaint which was the mark of a Joker who was really putting the effort in. Their accoutrements were cheap joke-shop affairs, and none of them had as much as a taser handshake joy buzzer.
“Oh dear,” said a voice from the shadows. The Jokerz froze, looking around wildly and huddling closer together. “What are you clowns up to? Late for your performance at the big tent?”
“What’s that?” asked a teenage girl who probably wasn’t even sixteen, wearing a rainbow-coloured wig. “Is that…”
“It’s the Bat!” shouted a man, trying his best to be threatening as he hefted his baseball bat. The brightly coloured handkerchiefs that had been tied to it probably wouldn’t make it hit any harder, but it was all in the service of the Jokerz aesthetic.
“Scrag off! We ain’t done nothing wrong!” shouted another.
“Good one. I nearly laughed,” said the voice from the shadows. “Almost, but not quite. You should work on your comic timing.”
“Ignore him! Just run!” shouted the girl.
“Now you’re just being nasty. Can’t we stay and chat for a bit?”
“Listen, if you don’t show yourself,” one of the older Jokerz said, pulling out a blaster pistol, “we’re g-gonna scrag you so hard you’re gonna-”
“Apparently not.”
Batman dusted off his hands. Under the street light, damp Jokerz lay scattered, groaning. One of the female members of the gang was suspended by her ankles from the pole, and the cable creaked as she swung from side to side.
“I don’t like having guns pointed in my face,” he told them seriously. “You comedians can have a rest. You certainly need your beauty sleep.”
Leaping away into the night, he crouched on a gargoyle, thinking. Something about this didn’t seem quite right and his Batman instincts, raw though they were, were telling him something was up. “Hey, Bruce. These Jokerz are the 314th Street Tent, right? I think I remember them from the purse snatching a bit back.”
“Correct.”
“What do you think they were running from? They were really scared. People usually freak out more when they see Batman on top of a lamppost.”
“They came from that alleyway. Take a look.”
Batman nodded. “Yeah, I was thinking that,” he said. Kicking off from the wall, he leapt between the two buildings. The batsuit made running along the wet concrete of the walls possible, and he’d put some effort into getting good at it because, come on, it was way schway. Bouncing down, he landed in a crouch and strode down the alley, senses alert.
The alleyway ended up on – Batman sighed as he realised what it was – yes, on the roof of an old skyscraper. Down here in Level 17, buildings from old Gotham found themselves becoming the ground level of the new Gotham. This had once been a luxury condo, with a swimming pool on the roof and good sightlines of the city. Now it was walled in on all four sides by taller modern blocks. Somewhere overhead a highway blocked out the light, so only second-hand reflected light from the Gotham light pollution made its way down here. And the swimming pool had become part of an old vandalised skate park, painted with glow-in-the-dark paint.
“This was one of Daggett’s buildings,” Bruce said over the radio. “Part of his new Gotham. Now look at it. Even more forgotten than Crime Alley.”
Terry didn’t really know the old man was talking about, so instead turned on the suit’s lights and investigated the area. Glowing HA HA HA and WHY DID THE BIRD CROSS THE SKYWAY and 314 FREE ONE FOR EVER and JOKERZ RULE decorated the walls almost as high as the windows. The biggest icon was a clown skull almost two storeys high, which had been decorated with blue-glowing paint coming from the mouth and eyesockets.
“Charming place,” he quipped. “Really like what they’ve done with the decorations. Real quaint. Good for any family looking for a fix-me-up property. No sign of what they were running from here, either. Hey, look. All the lights here have blown. Maybe they thought someone was attacking them.”
“Maybe something was,” Bruce said darkly.
“What? I can’t see anything. And no one followed them out of this place. If there was a gang fight, they’ve already gone.”
Batman poked the glow-in-the-dark paint coming out of the mouth of the skull. His fingers came away wet, covered in the same blue-green glowing paint.
“Eww,” he said in disgust. “Just what I need. This stuff is cold and wet and… eww. Slimy.”
“Clean it off before you get back in the car,” Bruce told him.
“Typical.”
Batman wiped his hand off on a rag he found, and sniffed it. “Smells like… whatchacall it?”
“Paint.”
“No, not that,” Batman said, trying to put it into words. “Kinda like flowers. Stale perfume or something.” He grinned. “Least it’s nicer than the way Jokerz normally smell.
He stretched.
“Probably gonna call it a night now, unless you have some real emergency. Got a Computing test tomorrow. Should get some sleep in.”
“… but seriously, scrag that test,” Terry groaned, head sinking forwards down onto his arms.
The computing test had not gone well. Terry sat slumped in the canteen at Hamilton Hill High School during lunchtime. He’d been bemoaning the harshness and cruelty and evilness of the questions they’d been asked since they got out of the exam.
“Are you eating that?” Maxine Gibson – Max to anyone who knew her – said heartlessly, pointing at his dessert with her fork. Max was a tall African-American girl with short dyed pink hair. She was Terry’s girlfriend’s best friend and also got on well with him, though sometimes it was a little bit hard to tell. It was mostly that her tongue was as sharp as… as… as a very sharp thing, Terry thought. But hey, he’d have failed maths last year without her help, so he could put up with her jibes and tendency to hover up any food left uneaten.
“Yes,” Terry said, moving to protect the pudding from her rapacious hunger.
“Are you sure?” she asked hopefully.
“Yes.”
“Aww. And the test wasn’t that bad.”
Terry glared at her. “Maybe for you. Not all of us can be super-geniuses at everything ever.”
She laughed. “You say the nicest things about me. But seriously, Terry, you gotta put more effort in. If you struggle with something like that…”
“Yes, mum. You sound just like her.”
“Then your mother is obviously a super-genius. Why do you disappoint her so?”
They both laughed, though the laughter was a little forced on Terry’s part.
There was a clatter from over near the counter. They turned to see that a Hispanic girl in a frumpy cardigan had tripped over and fallen onto her tray when she’d been on the way to the waste receptacle. No small amount of sniggering came from the other teenagers around her, chief among them Nelson Nash. Terry shook his head. Nelson was a bully and a right pain in the behind. He gave one in two odds that Nelson had been the reason she’d fallen.
“So, anyway,” he began.
The bell rang, marking the end of the lunch period. Terry hastily wolfed down the last of his food, and then got to his feet.
“You were saying?” Max said, as they put their trays away.
Terry frowned. What had he been saying? He’d really just been talking for the sake of talking. Oh yes. There had been something he’d wanted Max’s opinion on.
“Oh yeah, so… I have a question.”
“Make it quick, or we’ll be late.”
“It’s about that math homework?”
“Seriously? Just do it. And get more sleep so you don’t doze off in classes.”
“Easy for you to say.” She wasn’t Batman.
“Yes, it is easy for me to s-”
She was interrupted by a commotion down the other end of the corridor. The sound of metal on metal sounded out, along with a slamming noise and the sound of voices shouting.
“Run!” one boy shouted, fleeing.
“Scrag this!”
“I want my mummy!”
Max looked at the third speaker, a hulking jock on the sports team, with contempt. Heading against the flow, she pushed her way forwards trailing Terry in her wake. The lights flickered, making an annoying hum in the background. They turned the corridor and found the locker doors were slamming open and closed in a chaotic random pattern. As it turned out, not everyone had run. Quite a few students had pulled out phones and cameras and were filming it.
“Hey, schway!” one boy said, getting closer. “Watch this!”
He tried to approach, holding his phone to film himself, and got hit in the face by a locker door. Everyone laughed at him. Terry tilted his head. Something seemed off. The laughter seemed to echo strangely, and he shivered, feeling cold.
“What’s happening?” he asked to distract himself.
Chelsea answered the question with a flick of her pale blond hair. She was another friend of Max and Dana and was somewhat of a wild-child despite her very rich family.
“Don’t you know?” she said excitedly. “Everyone is saying there’s a ghost! Apparently there was a smiling face on all the oscilloscopes in the labs first thing! And someone wrote stuff making fun of Mr Briggs on the boards! I saw it! The marker just floated over all on its own! Serves him right! He’s got it in for me, you know!”
“And what makes that a ghost?” Max said cuttingly.
Chelsea stared at Max like she was an idiot. In the background the lockers slowed in their slamming. “Because it’s… like, ghostly things happening? Look at those lockers! Totally a ghost!”
“Mmm hmm. And it’s not like there are lots of ways for someone to arrange this to happen? Last month, a radioactive supervillain turned out to be the head of a megacorp. Isn’t something like that more plausible? Has anyone even thought to check for a magnetic field?”
Terry winced. That last showdown with Blight had been… hard. Oh, Derek Powers had been the one who’d ordered the murder of his father - only for his own son to turn on him - but things didn’t feel settled. He wasn’t sure how he felt. And there was still the worry that that monster might come back.
“Max, stop being such a killjoy. Look at my phone!” Chelsea said, showing the screen of her expensive cellphone. “That’s the ghost! That smudge!”
“That looks more like your thumbprint on the lens.”
“Max, you’re such a bummer,” Chelsea said wearily. “Everyone knows it’s the ghost of Garrison Jacobs, the kid who was killed when they built the east wing.”
“I am not a bummer!” Max said crossly. “I just want actual proof.”
“So you’re a total bummer. How do you think all of the coach’s trophies got mysteriously stuck to the ceiling of the hallways, huh? And how all the water in the girls’ showers went cold?”
“Hmm.” Max gave it some thought. “Superglue and a stepladder for the trophies. And a boiler failure for the water.”
“Why do you have to be like this!”
“Because someone has to.”
“You’re ruining everything!”
“If I’m running everything so easily, then it wasn’t very sound in the first place.”
Terry listens to the conversations around him. Chelsea’s opinion seemed the most common – and not just about Max being a total bummer who ruined everything. Which she sort of was, but only in a good way. Even after the locker doors stopped their slamming, all the talk was about ghosts. Max glared at her schoolmates, and stalked off, a sullen expression on her face.
“Isn’t that just typical?” she said darkly. “A few unexplained events which no one has even tried to investigate and people start talking about poltergeists. What’s next? Demons? Witches? Psychics? Claims that VW2 was started so we could steal alien tech? Hey, Terry, maybe you should ask them if an alien is the one causing the disruption.”
“I’m pretty sure that aliens have better things to do than make lockers slam,” he said. “Abducting cows. Appearing in Newfu ads.” He paused. “Exploding gorily out of people’s chests.”
“Well, yeah. But if you’re willing to pin something on a ghost without any actual proof, you might as well blame aliens for stealing all your clean t-shirts.”
Terry was far too used to Max’s comments, and reflexively checked his t-shirt. “Hey! This was clean on today!”
“Then why don’t you seem to own any t-shirts which aren’t black?” she asked.
That was a hard question which Terry has no easy answer for. Naturally, he fell back on humour.
“I like black?”
“So I should tell Dana the way to relight the flames of your romance is for her to dress up as a goth? Oh wait, she already wears black dresses and black lipstick. I think I’ve found the roots of your relationship.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say,” Terry said, with mock shock. When Max got in a mood, she tended to take it out on everyone around her and he knew her well enough that she was pretty angry about the whole ‘ghost’ business – and more importantly, losing in the court of public opinion to Chelsea.
“Horrible?” a voice came from behind as Dana Tan made her presence known. She was a petite Chinese-American girl with jet black hair. True to Max’s theory, she was wearing black lipstick, black nail polish and had on dark eyeliner. “These days I’m wondering if it’s true. Max, what’s happening here? Why’s everyone gathering around?
“The lockers started slamming, and of course the Neanderthals who go to this school decided it must be a ghost.” Max paused. “Wait, no, that’s an insult to Neanderthals.”
“Slamming lockers and a ghost? I hope he’s cute,” Dana said, sounding interested.
“Finding non-existent ghosts cute? Another data point for the goth hypothesis.”
Terry didn’t really like his girlfriend talking about cute ghosts and so tried to change the topic. “Goth hypothesis. Hy-gothesis.”
He received deathstares from Max and Dana for his troubles. Probably could have done better with that.
“And there he goes again. How do you put up with him?” Max asked.
Dana’s mood got several degrees chillier, and she turned away from Terry, deliberately shunning him. “By never seeing him,” she said icily.
There was an awkward silence between the three of them.
“So, are you doing anything tonight? You two wanna go out with me?” Max said with false brightness.
Dana glared at Terry. “I’m busy! Yes, he’s not the only one who can be busy when someone wants to do something!” And with that said, she marched off.
“Ouch,” Terry said, wincing.
“You’re really in the doghouse,” Max said, shaking her head. “You better pay her more attention, or you’ll lose her.”
“Woof,” Terry said sadly.
“I’m serious, Terry.”
“Yeah, I know, I know. But I tried asking her out clubbing yesterday, and she turned her back and was all sniffy and told me ‘no’. What am I meant to do if she doesn’t want to spend time around me? She’s been avoiding me all week!”
“Don’t ask me. I’m not getting between you two.”
“Fat lot of help you are.”
Max smirked. “Hey, maybe you can ask the Batman for help. I heard a rumour he was seen nearby again. Maybe he can swoop in and save your relationship. With… like, Bat-counselling.”
Terry sighed. Batman being able to solve problems in your personal life. “That’d be nice.”
The story of the ghost followed Terry home. When he stepped in the door, his little brother was talking excitedly at their mother.
“… and so I heard that they saw the ghost and he was totally super-scary and he appeared and all the lights in the gym went out and the ghost appeared there too! And it was all in the mirrors!” Matt said.
Terry sighed. “Hi Mum. And there wasn’t a ghost, squirt. Just some locker doors playing up.”
“Stop being a bummer, Terry! Of course you wouldn’t see a ghost! You’re too uncool! I heard ghosts get driven off by bummers!”
“Don’t call your brother a bummer, Matt. Hello, Terry.”
“What time’s dinner, mum?” Terry asked, stretching.
“It should be around half six? Why?”
“Need to get my homework done before I head to Mr Wayne’s.” He really did too. He was hoping she wouldn’t ask about how he felt the computing test had gone.
“Good boy,” his mother said approvingly. “Now, Matt, I don’t think…”
“And they said he died in a car crash and that’s why they found blood all over the car park and…”
Terry shook his head, and went through to his somewhat messy bedroom, unpacking his bag. With the hours he kept, his bed was rather underused. He booted up his laptop, checking himself in the mirror and noted the bags under his eyes. When it was running he checked if there had been any calls from Bruce. There had not. He headed through to the kitchen, only to find that Matt was still talking.
“Do you know if Dad’s a ghost? Is he? If we get a séance board, can we talk to him? Can we? I bet I could make one!”
Terry saw his mother tense up, running her hands through her red hair. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Matt,” she said sadly.
“But it’d be totally schway! We could do it tonight!”
Terry took in his mother. He could see the subtle notes of distress, and knowing Matt he’d been talking at her like this for a while. “Beat it, squirt. I just need to talk to mum about something. Alone.” If he really had to, he’d bring up the computing test. The sacrifices he had to make.
Of course, this just interested his little brother further. “Oooh! Are you in trouble?”
“No, but it’s…”
“Is it about Dana? Did you get her in trouble?”
If Terry had been drinking milk, some would probably have come out of his nose. Fortunately, he was not.
“Why don’t you go watch TV, Matt?” said their mother.
This seemed an acceptable alternative to watching Terry get in trouble, and so Matt left and headed through to the sitting room.
“You shouldn’t talk to your brother like that,” she said, chiding him. “What is it, Terry?”
“Nothing. I just got the feeling you wanted that conversation to end.”
She sighed. “I did,” she said.
Terry reached out and squeezed her shoulder in a semi-hug. “It’s okay, Mum,” he said softly.
“Thank you. It’s just…”
“I understand. I miss Dad too.”
“I… I thought Matt was coping well,” she said, sagging slightly and leaning against the kitchen counter. “But this whole ghost thing is…”
“Mum, it’s not just him. Everyone’s talking about it. Well, apart from Max, who’s mostly talking about how stupid it is and how it’s obviously a hoax.” He smiled. “You know how she gets.”
His mother perked up at that. “Max is a smart girl. If she says it’s a hoax, then she’s probably right. But… but... it’s just a mess! I… I just wish whoever’s behind this would stop it!”
“Yeah,” Terry said thoughtfully. “Someone really needs to stop it…”