Chapter 20: Return of the King (Part 1)
[Clock - 21:]0 | 09:00 PM]
[Calendar - 12/02/2003]
[Location - Foundation Station - Old Gotham, Gotham City, New Jersey]
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Timeskip - 18 Days
POV Change
Waylon Jones - Killer King Croc
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'What the fuck happened here.' Those were the very first thoughts that came to mind when Waylon saw what was in front of him. He had spent a few weeks away to not get attention back to his budding and growing kingdom after his escape (...after being rescued) from Arkham Asylum. He expected to come back to the same abandoned subway station that had been repaired by Atlas, but when he left the sewers of Gotham and crawled his way out of the hole and into the aboveground, using the shadows of the night to hide his movements, he did not expect to find guards at the entrace of the abandoned subway station! He approached as silently as he could, his footsteps barely audible (walking on sewers while trying to hide from a guy wearing a bat costume does teach you good stealth skills) as he approached, but the moment he got close enough to the entrance, someone stuck their heads out and looked at him.
Now, Waylon has been meeting many homeless people. They were kin to him, having spent a little bit of time on the streets of Gotham taught him that homeless people of Gotham see each other as both friends and foe depending on the situation. Survival is important, but so are groups! He has had meetings with different groups of homeless people and offered them a place under him, but the majority of the rejected him out of fear, dislike, or had their own reasons. Therefore, he went for the desperate and lonely ones, finding people he had met once before (Like the old man Adolf) or people he knew needed help (that single mother and her child... when he met her, she had a purple eye), and others too. Desperate people that saw him reaching out to them with wary eyes, but their hopelessness meant they needed to accept his help- those were the ones he sent to Atlas. He went looking through almost the entirety of Gotham, and whenever someone accepted his offer of "I will offer you a place under me. A place where you no longer need to worry about food, water, or if you're going to be killed by a random gangster in the streets, a place under me... King Croc" he would bring them to Old Gotham and tell them the directions of the place to go before giving them one of his scales, telling them to wear it like a badge.
He sent about 55 people? Well, since he wasn't around, he didn't exactly know if they all had been accepted by Atlas- that guy was weird, but Waylon trusted him enough to handle such trivial matters -but if they hadn't, then that's okay too.
"Oh, the king is here!" The guard- who was a teen, no older than 15 -smiled wide enough for Waylon to see he missed three teeth before he gestured to the other side, where another head popped out through the hole that lead into the abandoned subway station used as their base of operations: "Dude, hurry- call Mr. Jester!" Waylon stepped forward and ducked to enter the subway station, and his eyes widened when he saw the particular lack of a train on the station. The station itself didn't seem very different from what he remembered, and besides the lack of train, there wasn't much that changed. He turned to look at the kids, one of them fumbled with a stone that had these weird carvings on it, and when he brushed his fingers over them, the stone glowed.
"Ergh- Mr. Jester sir, the King has arrived, he is at the entrance right now." The other teen- lanky and thin, almost like a toothpick -spoke those words to the stone, and once three seconds passed, the stone stopped glowing and Waylon stood still... Is this it? Speaking to a ston-
"Waylon!"
"Argh-" Taking a step back from the sudden appearance of the one and only Atlas, Waylon was not ashamed to admit that he jumped a little. "-holy fuck, jesus, don't do that." He was, thankfully, able to stop himself before his claws had sank deep into Atlas' throat, but he was- awkwardly, I might add -holding Atlas by his throat. He hanged there, looking at him with a smile and not really caring that Waylon almost killed him: "Hey Atlas... What is this Mr. Jester thing I've been hearing about?" He was going to put Atlas down, but the guy simply smiled before he vanished in a puff of grey smoke before appearing right on his shoulders, holding onto his head as he sat up there. Waylon, once more, had to restrain himself and not instinctively attack his helper and... Jester?
"I am the king's Jester. The only one allowed to mock the king, question the king's decision, tell jokes about the king's dick size, and act as a trusted advisor." With a hint of lavander laced flamboyance, Atlas twisted his body around and to fall a bit into Waylon's arms, who caught him easily enough; "Also, I've been more than just the damn Jester this entire time- fuck, I've been the architect, the magician, the healer, the polices, and whatever else I was just this day... And now I've also gotta be the cook, because a king doesn't come back to his kingdom without a feast." He turned to look at the kids, smiled and pointed to the left with his thumb in a "go on" gesture as he said: "Go and find your brothers, I'll seal the entrance for the night. Tell everybody to gather at Isis Fountain because today we'll have a banquet and a coronation. Also, tell the cooks of the House of Hathor to prepare the alcohol too... Hey Waylon, what should the drinking age of the Croc Kingdom be? This is your first day as a king, and I'm throwing all the legal shit in your face because I don't wanna deal with that."
"Urgh..." Waylon hadn't ever thought about it! He paused for a moment... When was the first time he ever drank beer? He narrowed his eyes as he thought about it for a few moments: "Huh... I think the drinking age should be about 16? I think that's good enough to drink, and 18 to buy." Yeah, he was 16 when he drank his first beer, and it tasted like piss. (Trust him, the first few weeks of living in the Gotham sewers were a nightmare)
"Neat." Atlas hummed- the two guards had rushed ahead with excitement clear in their eyes, making him sigh: "So! A few patch up notes on this update, but Croc Kingdom has a population of 56 people, all of them have homes. It was a pain in the ass to get the plumbing system right and I am still working on it, so everyone has to go to the public bathroom where they are obligated to use the [Prestidigitation] wands to clean after themselves... Anyway, there is a water system and we've been dealing with food issues, but I have some ideas to go over that-" He paused for a second before looking at him in the eyes, making Waylon stare at those deep amber colored eyes for a few moments before Atlas smiled, saying with such a relief that it made Waylon almost want to hug him: "-...welcome back, King Croc... C'mon, I'll give a tour of your growing kingdom. I've been working on some things here and there, and we have room for more 500 people. The residents have already started taking up jobs and hobbies to help the community too. We got four main buildings or points in the growing kingdom- we got the Isis Fountain, the House of Hathor, Sobek's Crocodile Farm, and the Halls of Ptah."
"...gods?" Now, Waylon might not have received the education everyone else might have, but he wasn't completely ignorant. If you name something after someone, they were important people, and he recognized one of the names on the list almost immediately after Atlas said it- Sobek. It was a god, but a god of what? "Why do we have places named after gods?"
"Oh, that's easy-" They went down this dark tunnel, stepping over rails, and when they crossed into this underground cavern, and Waylon was speechless. There was an orb in the ceiling that imitated the sun, although it wasn't glowing enough to disturb the rather dark and quiet place down there- Waylon saw what could only be described as a village of stone. Houses made of rock and earth with streets made out of yellow bricks, various of these poles that had light coming out of the bulb of glass on top of them, and a goddamned river!? Following the water, he saw this beautiful statue of a horned woman wearing a veil with a pair of wings holding a water jug where the water of the river was coming from. He could see stairs going down to the houses, and he could see this street that led on to this big house with a giant H as the columns of the front. He tried to pin point the other places Atlas told him, and he could see this open "field" with the fake river going around it. "-ah, don't worry, I'll give you a tour." From up here, he could see that his kingdom was nothing more than a neighborhood of blocky houses: "I was thinking, once the population is too much and we can't expand outwards, we could expand upwards make the houses like these stackable towers, with stairs on the outside going up in a spiral- oooh, and to get down we could make a system of rock slides, like in Avatar the Last Airbender! But the slides can be used by almost everyone with a degree of caution, of course."
"I see you're having fun with this." Waylon couldn't help but comment. He saw those normally lifeless eyes almost burn brightly whenever he was talking about his kingdom- their kingdom? "And, well, this is much more than I expected..." Waylon saw people arrive- he recognized some of them as the people he sent, the majority of them were people he sent, but there were some that weren't sent by him at all! "And these must be my... subjects."
"Oh, right-" From sitting on his shoulder, Atlas was suddenly floating (Since when can he do that?) and staring at the people: "-Citizens of-" He turned sharply towards him, stage whispering: "...what's the name of the kingdom? I can't officially name it, I'm not the king or queen of this place, you gotta do it big croc boy- If you want, I do have a list of suggestions that you might spur some ideas-" He pulled out of nowhere this notebook that had this (¤) symbol on the back and began to list off a few names: "Niwt Sobek, Croc Kingdom, Ovulation Station, Under Gotham, Devil's Desires-"
"...Can I decided that later? Just use the name you've been using till now." Waylon could feel the future headache that would come from ruling over people- why did he even want to do that again? It was almost like an instinct, not one born out of arrogance, just one that simply was with him the moment Atlas opened his mouth and offered to make him a king- like a switch being flipped within his head and it was over from there. "I'll think of something till then."
"Okay~" Atlas saluted him (o7 ) before he turned to look at the others, shrugged, and said: "-citizens of Croc Kingdom, it is with great pleasure that I announce, our king has returned from wherever the fuck he went to! And better yet, he's intact and ready to rule. So, here's the deal: We're gonna have a banquet in his honor, I'll get the food, ya'll set up the tables and mingle a little. Talk to your king and make sure he knows how much work I've been doing while I go get the milk-" he turned around, looked at Waylon, and did a sideways V with his fingers before simply vanishing, leaving Waylon to the others.
"...hi?"