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ENTER from Audra Ailith


C.J. didn't beat her father by too much. Not long after Batman had called out to her again, another green streak shot across the sky.
As Hal Jordan got closer, he frowned. Something felt...wrong. Really wrong. He didn't hear the boy say it was Doomsday. And he wasn't aware just yet that it was a Black Lantern that they were going to be dealing with. But...he could tell something was bad. He felt like he'd blacked out for months and this is what he wakes up to? Typical.

Terry backed off immediately. Well, the cat was out of the bag, now, and the lanterns clearly had more of an idea of what was going on than he did; all he could do was hang back and provide backup if they needed it. Yeah right--what kind of backup could he hope to provide that wasn't halfway across town?

[Enter ?????? from Surrounding Area of Gotham]

Danny Marini, a Capo in the Falcone Crime Family, was sitting unconscous securely strapped to a chair in the basement of his own house, when a black caped man entered the room after making the 'adjustments' to the basement he required. The cowled man struck Marini across his face, waking him up. As Marini roughly came to, this fake Batman held up two sharp rods in the Capo's face, "I need you to be focused!!!"

'Batman' stabs both rods into Marini's thighs, and the gangster screams in agony. Then, the cowled man clamps the ends of a pair of jumper cables to the rods imbeded into the Capo's thighs. Looking directly into Marini's face, the cowled man asks, "Are you focused yet? Now I need to know where the meeting is between Falcone and D'Amico."

Danny Marini simply spits in the cowled man's face.

The fake Batman stares at Marini and takes a rag, wiping the spit off his face and mask. Suddenly, he stuffed that rag in Marini's mouth. Then, he calmly walks over to the light switch where the other end of the jumper cables are attached and turns the light on. As the light flickers to life, Marini twitches and screams through the gag. After a few seconds of this, the cowled man seemed to have a bored expression and turned the light off again.

The cowled man then began to pace behind Marini who was wheezing painfully in his chair, "You know, I heard that when the CIA outsourced this kind of thing, they found that the countries they outsourced to had unreliable power grids. Very Third World. You'd turn on a switch - power wouldn't come on, and then tempers would get short. People would resort to pulling fingernails. Acid drips on bare skin. The whole exercise would become counterproductive. But here, the power's stable. Here, there's a nice even flow. Here, you can flip a switch and the power stays on all day. Where is the meeting?"

Marini snarled at the fake Batman, "@#$% YOU, YOU BATMAN WANNBE!!! I AIN'T TELLING YOU $#^%!!!"

The cowled man sighed and stuffed the rag back into Marini's mouth, and walked back to the light switch. After turning the switch on and off, making Marini scream through the gag again and again, the fake Batman then turned off the power and walked back to the retrained gangster, "You either give me what I need or this switch will stay on until they turn the power off for lack of payment on the bill! Where is the God@#%$ meeting!?!"

"Alright, you @#$&#xsu;cker!" Marini wheezed between breaths, "It's at the old Astoria Hotel."

The cowled man nodded and wrote down the location on his small notebook. Looking back up at Marini, "When and how many guards?"

Marini thought for a minute, still breathing hard, "Eight thirty tonight. Carmine's gonna have at least forty guys there. I got no idea how much D'Amico's bringin."

The cowled man nodded and wrote down this. Without looking up, he asked, "Now wasn't that so easy? All you had to do was tell me this in the first place. Now then.... To my next subject."

Marini looked at a photograph shoved in his face. "Where is this girl? You're the expert in trafficking. She dissappeared in your territory, and you handle the real young ones. So, where is she!?!?"

Marini shook his head, "I don't know. I don't know."

The cowled man rolled his eyes and started to walk back to the light switch, and Marini continued to shout at him in panic, "I don't know!! I don't know!!! Please!!! I don't know anything!!! NO!!! NOOOOO!!!"

As the cowled man's hand rest on the switch, Marini whimpered at him, "Please.... I don't know... I ain't seen that girl... I swear....."

Marini's voice trailed off, while the cowled man considered the Capo's sincerity, "I believe you. But that won't save you."

The cowled man turned the switch back on and left the basement and Marini house with the gangster's screams fading behind him....

((Enter Arell, Antigua and Dundee.))

Arell smirked. "You an' me both . . . you'd think wid' all dat food we eat, we'd be a ton each." he said, looking at the place. "Smells great, too!"

Meanwhile, the pickup truck was rocketing through Gotham, Antigua smiling and singing along to Bunny Wailor . . . Dundee however, was a little sick to be singing.

"I doan' feel soo goood." Dundee groaned.

Arell smiled. "Dat's de only thing stoppin' me from saying let's stop fer a bite, che'. We ain't been on a decent date since Arkham." Arell said, keeping the idea in his mind for a good moment. Maybe they could go to the boardwalk after the Bat was captured.

Meanwhile . . . uptown.

"Mon, how much did you eat?!?" Antigua asked as Dundee pulled his head away from the trash can.

"I forgot . . . can you drive a little safer?" Dundee asked.

"We were only going 25 over da limit, mon!" Antigua responded.

"Don't remind me . . . " Dundee said, a little green . . . then faced the trash can and puked again.

Crystal sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose through her mask and describe Azrael as best she can from memory. "Is that a better description?"

Sung tilted her head in confusion, "I ... do not remember one like that. You have picture?"