Less Than Zero Chapter 11

Chapter 11: Up My Sleeve

A man in a charcoal suit leaned against a stone wall, using it to support his entire weight on his right side. His face was twisted in a grimace, stained with blood that came from the stump on his left side that used to be his arm. He held the crimson mess spilling out of the grave injury as much as he possibly could.

"You should have known you had no prayer of defeating me," A confident voice rang out through the echoing halls in a sinister tone.

The young, wounded magician cursed himself as he found it hard to focus enough to stop his own bleeding well enough to survive, let alone stand and fight, 'Of all people to come for me, it had to be him,' The man thought as he continued along, trailing blood along the wall and on the floor, 'A man like Felix Faust... it just doesn't seem as though this could really be happening to me.'

But it was, and he was nowhere near good enough to take on such an enemy. His magic abilities were not diverse or powerful enough. That much had been made clear in the first exchange that ended with his arm being torn away from his body.

He had been lucky to even be given a few more moments of life. Faust was overconfident, with good reason, as there was nothing that could be done against him. Not by this man.

No, he couldn't defeat him. Couldn't keep the artifact Faust had come for in his possession. Well he would be nothing if not spiteful in death.

Sinking his back against the wall of a dead-end, he fished a quarter of a stone disk inscribed with intricately carved runes from his suit coat and set it on the ground in front of him. He would have to send it away. He only had enough strength left to do it for the object. There was no chance he could open a portal that would fit him and allow him to survive the trip. He was not a powerful sorcerer. If he had been, this may never have happened so easily.

Curling his right hand into a fist with his index and pinky fingers extended, he aimed at the disk fragment and quickly muttered in Latin.

"To where even the wickedest of men fear to tread! Where evil will find no sanctuary in the light and the shadow alike! Be gone!"

He didn't know where he was sending it. He didn't care. Just as long as it wasn't with him, where Felix Faust would be able to relieve him of it in a matter of seconds. No, if he wanted it, he would have to find it anew and take it then.

A purple field opened on the floor beneath the disk fragment before it dropped inside and vanished without a trace.

The magician breathed a sigh of relief, but just as quickly remembered that he was not safe by any means. He was still going to die. All at the hands of the man walking down the last hallway needed to reach him.

A gaunt man with sunken eyes dressed in blue archaic robes and a headdress made his way ever closer with a smirk on his face that seemed to slowly grow wider with every step he took. The injured magician tried to fight him off, but the second he raised his hand in his casting motion, Faust lifted his own hands and tore into him with green magical bolts, "GAAAH!"

Faust listened to him cry out in agony, reveling in the pain that the strength of his mysticism brought another person, "How a rank amateur like you ever came across such an artifact is more of a crime against magicks than anything I've committed," The evil figure remarked as it stalked ever closer to its injured prey through the great corridor, "You should have been more careful in your research. The kind of questions you were asking lead to questions in turn. The kind of questions that bring... curious types like myself."

"Not that it matters now," The young magician croaked out, the object of his misfortunes no longer within his possession.

As much as Felix Faust did enjoy gloating and lording his power over others, he hadn't come to torment a weakling. He had made his way to this manor for a particular reason... and he couldn't see that reason anywhere around him. He was not amused, "Where have you sent it?"

"Somewhere a man like you will find it quite difficult to reach it by now," The magician said, pointing his index finger and pinky at his own throat, ready to end his own life. Unfortunately, this was not to be. Faust grabbed his wrist and kept him from casting his spell, runes appearing on his arm that signaled the nullification of his magic, "No. Don't."

"You've just made a terrible mistake," Faust said lowly, his eyes glowing treacherously, "I am going to hurt you until you tell me what I want to know, and then perhaps I will stop."

He did get what he wanted, and very quickly. Agonizing pain had a way of doing that.

But he did not stop. Not until morning. Not until the life of the man before him finally gave out.

Bloodcurdling screams echoed through the halls and outside into the open air as sounds of torture until sunrise. An insect of a man such as this would not stop Felix Faust from obtaining more power than he had ever dreamed.

XxX

(Outskirts of Gotham City – Slaughter Swamp)

*PLOOMP!*

The disk fragment dropped from an opening in the sky and straight into the murky waters that awaited below, disturbing some of the nocturnal wildlife that had been peacefully settled around the area. Crickets continued to chirp as the swamp waters settled to a peaceful state once more.

That peace did not last.

A shockwave emanated from the water, frightening away every living creature with any kind of survival instinct. Animals could feel when certain death was in their presence, and intelligent enough to have no desire to be anywhere near it.

A massive gray-green, decaying hand shot out of the swamp and ripped into the ground by the shore, getting enough of a hold for a second hand to reach up and drag a massive, hulking form free of its watery confines.

Garbed in a tattered suit with shocking white hair matted on its head, the creature stumbled its way forward on land, grumbling to itself, "Hurgh... gurr... born on a Monday..."

The undead monster of Slaughter Swamp had risen once more, with his lumbering steps carrying him to the only city dark enough to have spawned him in the first place, Gotham. Solomon Grundy was coming home... yet again.

XxX

(The Next Day)

Max winced as he did the last of his reps for his morning workout. The wound at his shoulder blade from the fight with KGBeast still hurt, even after getting it treated properly once the trouble had died down, but it was manageable enough to keep up with his steady exercises.

With a sigh, he let his shoulders drop and began to walk the heavy dumbbells in his hands back to his bedroom to get them out of the way. He didn't have any plans to get into any shenanigans of the Null variety that evening after school, but that didn't mean he could slack off.

He'd been feeling pretty untouchable after surviving Metallo, a villain that Superman had issues with from time-to-time. It took a beatdown from KGBeast and a night dodging death from the garden variety psychos in Gotham City to learn that he could get dropped at any time. The best thing he could do was keep trying to move forward, even if it was only a few steps at a time instead of leaps.

The first step hadn't been unlocking some new secret about himself, it had been finding someone that he could actually trust.

...Well, kind of.

Max heard the front door lock click open and rolled his eyes. He was absolutely the only person with a key, which meant that it had been picked, and he had been alone in the apartment when he'd woken up, leaving the main suspected perpetrator to be one person.

"Rose!" He called out, knowing who it more than likely was. He was 90% sure, and his assumption was proven correct when he headed back to the living room to find Rose shutting his door behind her, bags in her arms, "You know, you could always knock on the door when you want me to open it. If you keep picking the lock to get in, that'll make it easier to break."

"Aww, you're not really mad are you?" Rose asked, giving Max a teasing smirk as she carried her recent purchases inside, "But Sparky... I thought I was your b-b-bestest fw-fwiend."

This had been standard ever since the crazy night where they had almost been killed by the KGBeast and other various denizens of Gotham's illegal nightlife. Rose had found a sort of pleasure in latching onto Max's declaration that he had perceived them to be friends.

In a relationship where they deigned to establish dominance by seemingly picking on each other rather than any sense of physical superiority or dependence, he had unwittingly given her enough ammunition to fight that war for quite some time.

"Yeah, yeah," Max replied as he dropped down on the couch, having become numb to Rose's playful chiding over the last few days, "Double rainbows across the sky. Puppies licking kittens. An angel getting its wings. All that sappy bullshit. Hey, are you any good at calculus?" Right now, homework was his primary focus. He hadn't finished it from the previous night.

Rose indeed was good at it. However, she wasn't going to be caught dead doing any kind of schoolwork, "Pay attention really quick," She asked, stepping in front of Max and dropping a small bag on the coffee table he was working on. He looked up at her questioningly, prompting her to roll her eye, "Just open it."

Max reached into the bag and pulled out a video game case, the whole InFamous set, "You got me a present? I didn't think you would waste money on something like this," Or that she would ever give him anything at all, but he wasn't going to say that out loud, "Wow. Thanks."

"It's not a big deal. Forty bucks out of more than one-hundred thousand isn't really that much," Rose said, plopping down on the long couch with Max, "Besides, the guy in this game has electric powers. It might help keep you alive longer to try and study up on some of it."

Max knew that the main character in the first two InFamous games used electricity, but hearing that Rose's reasoning for buying him the games was for study material caught him off-guard. Setting aside the fact that just looking at the powers in a fictional work wouldn't help him work out any mechanics, he didn't know just what he he was capable of.

"You want me to steal ideas for my powers from a video game?" He asked incredulously.

Rose smirked at him from her seat, "Some people have stolen their best ideas from playing video games, and isn't stealing supposed to be your thing anyway?" She shot back in return, "If you can shock people, there's got to be a way you can shoot electricity or something. You should have stolen some tips from that Electrocutioner guy you beat up."

Max blinked in amazement that Rose would have even brought that person up, "That guy? Really?" He didn't want to start getting cocky when the subject was about people trying to kill him, but in his mind he possibly could have beaten the Electrocutioner without the supersuit, "You sure you don't want to take that one back?"

After being given a moment to think about it, Rose quickly scowled and rescinded her previous observation, "On second thought, never mind. Just play the damn games and see if you can do any of that crap."

Max doubted that he could, but still, he appreciated it nonetheless. A gift was a gift, and he couldn't remember the last time that he had gotten one, "Well, thank you. I appreciate it."

Rose nodded and gave him a hearty pat on the shoulder, accepting his thanks as she began rifling through the other bags filled with clothes she had purchased while she'd been out, "Don't mention it. Just trying to make your day-to-day efforts at being badass less laughably pathetic."

Whatever.

Max ignored it. He knew he'd pulled off some 11th hour hero-type noise the other night without having to be told. He'd been the man that night, and thinking about it made him feel smug enough to absorb the playful insult, "Anyway, have you figured out how you're gonna make money?"

The previous joking mood that Rose had been in flew right out of the window after the reminder on the parameters of her banishment, "Sparks, I just killed a bunch of mobsters and assorted gangsters from who knows how many different syndicates not too long ago. Even if I didn't have a bounty on my head, I'm pretty sure everyone would want to cap me now. I need some time to think."

She needed to figure out just who she hadn't managed to piss off just a few nights ago. That would have been good for starters. Then she needed to break down who out of that slim group would be the least likely to shoot her in the head. Then she needed to figure out if what they could pay would even be worth it.

All of those things could stand to be a problem. Rose was a mercenary, and a lot of that was illegal work for anyone looking to make the kind of money she was after in a short amount of time. Upsetting a good portion of the crooks in town, i.e. her target clientele, probably wouldn't stand to help in her endeavor to make four million dollars.

It was fine with Max for the time being though. If he were being honest, he didn't want Rose to have any part of dealing with the sorts of maniacs that existed in Gotham City. Granted, she was prone to her own bouts of violent psychosis from time-to-time, but something had to really set her off in order for it to kick it into gear.

"Well, how about not getting hired by any of them," Max ventured to offer.

Rose lowered a shirt she'd been holding up and preparing to sort, simply so she could grace Max with the driest stare she could muster with one eye, "...They're the ones with the money. Not getting paid by them kind of makes it really hard to fill my quota."

Max didn't mean to say that their money wasn't any good. Of course it was. He just implied that he wouldn't have done a single thing for any of them to get it from them, "I mean, they tried to kill you, so screw working for any of them. If they've got all the money, why don't we just rob the shit of them and take it? You know they don't use banks, so I know they have hard cash or assets on them. All the time. They can't get it all out of the city."

Yes, robbing criminals. It was a way to help Rose amass funds and an excuse to do more Null-related things. It was a venture much less likely to get any heroes on his case, because which criminal was going to run the police or to a superhero about being ripped off? It was a victimless crime!

The only problem with that idea was that the second half of the needed one-two punch to get it all done wasn't fond of it.

"I'm not a thief, I'm a soldier," The daughter of Deathstroke specified with a sigh, "I kick ass, shoot and stab people, and protect people for money! Stealing isn't one of my strong suits, I'm sorry to say. Why do you think dear old daddy hired you to begin with? Because it's not our thing. If it was, we wouldn't have ever met."

Max wasn't going to leave this alone though. Not so easily, "Right. It's my thing, I think. And I say we can do this. So how about it?" He asked before driving the fatal stake home, "...Unless you have any better ideas, I'm thinking this is the best you're going to get anytime soon."

Rose acquiesced, but wasn't pleased about it at all, tossing the shirt she had been appraising to the other side of the couch. "...I hate it when you convince me to do shit."

Was she... pouting? Max certainly hoped that she was, because that would have rang as a resounding victory for him in his books, "This is the only time I've ever convinced you to do anything."

"I know. I hate it."

XxX

(Brideshead – The Tin Roof Club)

Afternoon time while it was still light out seemed like the safest time of day to head into one of the worst neighborhoods in Gotham City for some personal business.

As Max made his way through his mentor's chosen territory, he stopped in front of a nightclub that was closed until sundown. He hadn't been there since his original thief training had ended under the guidance of Catwoman, and he hadn't really spoken to her since the issue over the Kryptonite had ended.

It wasn't that he had been avoiding her, it was just that he was still trying to adhere to the original condition that had been established during the training, that he wouldn't bother her again after it was over and would stick it out on his own.

That parameter to their arrangement had been dashed to death several times over. He didn't know why he kept trying to adhere to it, especially when he was the one breaking it this time around.

Max headed on inside. The front door was open despite the place being close, and he walked straight through to the back where Selina was overseeing a shipment of alcohol. The club's supply of booze of course needed restocking.

He just hung around off to the side until Selina noticed his presence. He spared her a wave and watched as she excused herself from the delivery people to speak with him.

The gorgeous woman sauntered up to Max with a wide smile slowly spread across her face, "Did you skip school just to come and see me?" She asked dubiously, "I don't believe it."

Max shrugged and walked with her back out to the front end of the establishment for a bit of privacy, "The only time I figured I could find you without being you-know-who is during the day, and going to your place just seemed like asking for trouble."

"That's just adorable, you missed me," Selina needled him in return, "And here I thought you didn't like me with how you were avoiding me."

"I never said I didn't like you," Max specified with a wag of his finger, "I just can't trust you. Besides, do you really want me hanging around, cramping your style anyway?"

That question was quickly answered with another question.

"Want a job?" Selina suddenly asked with a grin that only grew larger when she saw the look of surprise on Max's face, "A real job. Part-time, after school every once in a while. You know, just cleaning this place up before I open it at sundown. Maybe a little later if you want."

He hadn't had a real job since he'd quit working for the small corner store he'd been moonlighting at before he started stealing. The entire reason he'd started stealing in the first place was to avoid being a working stiff at the age of 16, "Really? Why?"

"So I can keep an eye on you," Selina said with an encouraging wink, "Besides, criminals come here every night. If you hang around at the right time, you'll definitely hear something good that you can use for yourself."

Now that was actually a good reason to take the job. But still, now that lent credence to the question of-, "How'd you know I came here to ask you how to rip off bad guys?"

He definitely hadn't alluded to it until right then. It was odd that she'd managed to isolate the reason he'd come to see her.

Selina quickly killed her own mystique unknowingly with blunt reasoning, "I didn't. It's just the next logical step for you," She told Max, taking the wind out of his sails, "It's not like you're just going to go back to stealing whatever isn't nailed down again. You've already seen what that gets you. The only thing you can do now to keep from getting hero eyes on you is stealing from other criminals."

A lot of that made sense. Now his move to steal from the bad apples in Gotham City's bunch seemed less like a brilliant idea and more like it had been expected of him the entire time. True enough, he couldn't really go back to the low-earning ripoffs he had been earning with before everything had jumped up several notches.

"So if I were to start robbing criminals… how would I go about getting started with that?" Max asked in what he hoped was an offhanded manner.

Selina reached over and pinched his cheek, irritating him into swatting her hand away, "Maxie, there's nothing else I could tell you that I didn't already. Just remember who you can mess with and who you really should stay away from. Anything else, and it's the same as it ever was. I thought you were done though."

Max looked at the ground, his face turning red in embarrassment, "…I can't stop," He admitted, "I like being Null."

If he was expecting more teasing, he didn't get it from the one person who definitely would have understood how his point of view had changed.

"I know," Selina told him in return.

Being Catwoman made her feel like she had power back at a time when she hadn't had any in her life. Letting go of that wasn't something that she found herself readily able to do after she had found that her existence meant something when she was in costume. She had more control in her suit than the people that she used to think were strong enough to influence and dictate her life. You couldn't push Catwoman around, or make her do something that she didn't want to.

The young man who hid behind the alias of Null happened to feel the same way.

It seemed more and more that Max had more certain things in common with her than she had originally thought. Their backgrounds were different, but their overall motivations were beginning to parallel in some ways.

XxX

(Underneath Gotham City – Old Subway Tunnels)

Gotham was a disgusting, reprehensible place. But As Felix Faust made his way through the city, he couldn't help but feel as though it were the kind of place where a man like him could make an impact. Unfortunately, one squalid city would never be enough for a man such as him.

Once he restored his powers to what they once had been, and beyond, the world itself was the only thing suitable for magic as powerful as his.

Even if he couldn't feel the magic power radiating off of the disk fragment that had been transported away from the castle, there was a trail of bodies of the homeless spread across the labyrinth that comprised the old underground.

Faust didn't blink as he stepped past the corpses, some smashed into the ground and some put entirely into the walls. He had seen death in his lifetime, had caused a significant amount of it. All that mattered was retrieving what was his.

It didn't take him much longer to find what he was looking for. The grumbling and muttering was very loud in the otherwise quiet tunnels, more similar to catacombs than any sort of traditional public work. Time and neglect had caused them to fall into severe disrepair. Dank, dark, and decrepit as it was, he navigated his way through, finally standing at the back of a human-like monster that stood nearly ten feet, built like a tree trunk.

Faust raised his right hand, generating magical lightning in his hand, but all it served to do was light up the dark. Before he could attack, Grundy raised up from where he had been hunching over, standing at his full height which allowed him to tower over the sorcerer. It didn't matter to him though.

"I can feel the Farside fragment right in front of me, monster," Faust declared. He had been following the tainted feel of whatever magic powered Grundy's reanimation since picking up on it at the swamp, "Give it to me. After that, I don't care what you do."

The zombified man seemed confused at first, before dismissing the idea of even thinking about it at all, "Grundy don't know what blue, skinny man talk about," Solomon Grundy grunted, "Blue man, shut up. Grundy kill you."

"You mean shut up or you'll kill me?" Faust sneered, trying to correct the giant's syntax and grammar, only to be forced to move when Grundy launched himself at him, his body tearing through the decrepit metal wall of an abandoned subway car, "You damned-!"

Faust watched as the creature's massive hands ripped the hole he'd created wider, snarling at him as he did so, "No! Grundy kill you!"

"What kind of cursed creature are you?" Faust knew necromancy. To him, it was just another method of magic to use to strengthen himself. He knew it well and actively participated in it. But Grundy was not something he had come across before, which was saying quite something, "It doesn't matter. Back to the grave with you. The hard way."

Putting his magical lightning to use, he zapped Grundy several times, stunning the giant before unleashing a focused blast at him. Grundy put his hands up and slowly waded his way through the onslaught before getting close enough to swing one of his massive arms at Faust.

It wasn't working. To keep from being turned into a bloody ragdoll, Faust abandoned his magical attack. Did this thing feel pain, or was it just too stupid to be roasted by his electricity? "Fine. The smell of a rotting corpse burning isn't my idea of pleasant, but in this case an exception can be made!"

In both hands, Faust formed balls of sickly green fire that he hurled, one hitting Grundy in the chest and the other hitting him in the face. He could burn at the hands of his magic until he was nothing but a pile of bones and dust. Only, he didn't.

Grundy growled and brushed the fire off of his face and chest as though it were dust. He had been blinded, if only temporarily. Faust's magic was harming him, but not as much as it should have, the way it would have harmed anyone else he used it on with no method to prevent its effectiveness. Faust was floored, and suddenly understood.

This creature was somehow absorbing most of his magic. It was the only way he could take any of it head-on. Even other magic users couldn't take endure any of his spells in such a straightforward manner. They needed barriers, charms, some sort of defensive measure in place.

Of course, the monster that now had the Farside fragment wouldn't. Because getting everything he wanted simply couldn't be easy.

Instead of focusing his attacks on Grundy, Faust used his magic to keep himself away from the now enraged monster of the undead who pursued him relentlessly, destroying walls and pillars of the abandoned subway station with powerful, lumbering swings of his fists.

This was going downhill quickly. All it was supposed to be was a matter of retrieving the fragment! He had found it! He had found two of the four and this was the third! He was so close now! All of the waiting! The leads, the blood he'd stained the ground with to get what he wanted!

A superpowered zombie was not going to be the thing that kept him from bringing his powers back to their peak and beyond! But it wasn't going to be tonight.

He had waited for ages. A little while longer for the next piece of the puzzle that would solve his woes wouldn't matter.

"I am not going to brawl with you like some drunken lout," Faust declared angrily at his turn of fortune. He would have to rethink how he obtained this particular piece.

It wasn't because he was wary of fighting and winning. No, only a fool would fight a battle that wasn't on their terms if other options existed.

During a lull in the melee, Faust slipped away into the dark, his enthusiasm to continue nonexistent. Grundy continued to rampage at nothing, tearing apart anything he could get his hands on, even after realizing that he was hitting nothing living and breathing. Nothing that would feel pain.

He needed to remedy that.

XxX

(With Null – Gotham City – Above Ground)

The self-imposed parameter of attempting to rob villains instead of generally anyone that had something worth taking was more trouble than it was worth. It was hard to find anything worth the ruckus that taking it would generate.

"I'm still looking around," Null said, traversing the rooftops as he spoke on the phone over a wireless device hidden underneath his hood, "I haven't seen anything that's worth stealing around here. Whatever we do first is going to wind up setting everyone else off, so it's got to be a heavy score."

On the other end of the call, he could hear Rose moving through the city as well as she spoke to him, "Well hell, Sparks. If you can't find anything to take, I don't know why you're telling me. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be looking for here," She was no thief. She had expressed that fact several times to him already.

Null knew Rose was no thief, but she was smart. If he could find something for them to stick their noses into, she could handle whatever they would need to do to get the job done from that point onward, "Just leave the scouting part to me. I'll find something, somehow."

"Don't worry about it. Just do what you do," That kind of belief was encouraging. He hadn't exactly expected such a thing out of her, "And while you keep looking for your big ticket to solving all of our problems, I'll do what I do and look for actual work," That part, not so much. Then again, she'd never led him on with the belief she thought he'd actually find something for them. She was a realist like that.

Still, it was sort of amazing. They had just been talking about how getting a job for anyone that wouldn't try to profit off of her murder first was unlikely, "You can get actual, paying work in this place? I thought we both figured you had no chance in hell of that after the 'bounty party'."

"It might not be something that'll even go down inside of Gotham, if I can even find the guy in the first place. I might have to knock on a few doors to get a lead on how to contact him."

"Ah, the whole guy who knows a guy song-and-dance, yeah?"

"A lot of that, probably," The girl known as Ravager confirmed, "I'll think about dropping your name if I can find him. It'll probably take a while though. Later Sparky. I'll see you around."

"Bye," Null told her as he tapped the device on his ear and ended the call.

Taking the job offer that Selina had presented him was probably the best thing that he could have ever done at this point in time. While he was at the Tin Roof Club, Max hashed out the terms of his 'working' there for her. It wasn't really a job, or if it was it was the easiest one he'd ever had.

He set his own hours, basically coming in whenever he wanted and staying for as long as he felt like on a given night. He would be paid the least amount possible, which was okay because he would likely make it up in tips, and in what he would really get out of it. Selina wanted a second pair of ears listening out for any possible lucrative scores. That was why she brought him in.

As far as experience in thievery, he was still brand-new, less than a year into the game. Every little bit helped, and this was significantly more than just a little bit.

All of this was simply a more effective way of finding out about jobs than flipping off of rooftops and running around in the dark, not that he didn't utterly enjoy doing those things, it just wasn't productive. Speaking of which, he found himself doing just that out of habit on his way home.

Max already knew where several stash locations were for drugs, weapons, and money that belonged to the local criminal elements in the areas that he frequented, both as himself and at night as Null. His first impulsive idea had just been to steal whatever he could carry from them, but the more he thought about it, the less he figured that ripping off drug handlers and safehouses would work out.

It just wouldn't do. Small-time stuff just couldn't happen here. Not for what he needed the money for this time around, much to his chagrin.

He could rob guys like these and take a few tens of thousands of dollars maybe how many times? Twice? Maybe three times? Then it would either get too hot to do it with any regularity, or things would slow to an absolute crawl because of the danger of losing money, all over the city. That would last for weeks, months even.

That would have worked if he were doing it just for him. A few tens of thousands of dollars, maybe even reaching as much as over a hundred-thousand or so, was ample for his needs. Not so much if he were doing it to try and obtain millions within a reasonably small timeframe.

Even if it were possible for them to rob criminal elements two times a week for a year, they still probably wouldn't get what they wanted out of it.

Wait. What they wanted? Since when did he start caring about what anyone else wanted?

'What am I thinking? I'm stealing for somebody else,' Null thought to himself before rationalizing it in his own head. This wasn't quite for someone else, for Rose. That would imply that he didn't want to do it otherwise, or that he wasn't getting anything out of it. He was getting plenty. Part of whatever they wound up taking along the way, and a cool $500,000 minimum whenever all of this came to an end, 'No, I'm still doing this for myself. Helping Rose is nice and everything, but it's still all about me.'

His scouting and traveling came to an end when he saw blue and red flashing reflecting into the air off of the walls and windows of a city block he had been approaching.

Police lights. Lots of them.

Null's curiosity wanted him to go over and check out just what it was that was causing that much trouble to have police out in that kind of force. Of course, survival instinct quickly backhanded curiosity across the face to put it in its place, and he immediately determined that whatever it was, it wasn't his business.

Sure, the police didn't know much, if anything, about him. That was still a chance that he didn't want to take, getting anywhere near the boys in blue and give them an excuse to bring him in.

Therefore, it was time to head the other way. Yes, he'd been out for long enough. It was dangerous at night in Gotham City! No sir, definitely not a place for an unassuming teenage boy!

"What are you doing here?"

This wasn't the sort of voice that Null was used to hearing whenever someone got the drop on him, which was getting rarer and rarer these days. He'd only heard this particular voice once before, in one short sentence. The man who told him to scram in the middle of the gigantic hunt for Ravager

Null's movement away from the police line he'd seen ground itself to a halt as he heard the voice of Batman of all people call out to him, asking what he was doing. It was an answer that Null had no problem giving him an answer to, after getting rid of the nervous lump in his throat.

"Going away from the cops!" He eventually mustered the pluck to get out, "I don't want to be in whatever this is! Tell me I didn't go towards it instead of away from it!"

Batman didn't say a single word one way or the other. He didn't have the time to. Touching at the ear of his pointed cowl, Batman's visible face twisted into a scowl and he took off.

Null had a quick argument with himself, to temporarily stick with Batman (who didn't seem to give a damn about him) until he could hotfoot it out of dodge, or run back in the direction of oh so many police, who likely would have a problem with him not only as a thief, but as someone who had inadvertently made it past their perimeter.

Batman noticed that he hadn't quite lost his electric shadow, and let him know that his presence wasn't exactly approved, "Go away, Null."

The frosty tone of Gotham's chief protector almost made Null want to turn an about face and do just as he had ordered. But he hadn't hit him yet, so until then Batman was all bark. Even if the bark by itself was still quite scary, "I will, just as soon as I find a way out that won't have police shooting at me."

It was clear. Null's efforts to make up for a mistake had done nothing to win him an ounce of Batman's favor, which was fine. He hadn't expected any hero that had heard about what he'd done to think any better of him, especially when it came to a professional hardcase like this one.

Null turned his head to keep looking around, head on a swivel for whatever had Batman on alert, just to feel something leave his static field of awareness. By the time he turned his head, Batman was gone from his sight.

…Fucking Bat-people. He was never going to get used to that.

XxX

It was quiet, and that was a problem.

Timothy Drake had lived in Gotham for his entire life. A time when everything around was quiet was a time when things were about to turn absolutely horrendous. And yet, there he was, ready to act.

Police had gotten word from the frightened homeless folks that populated the underground levels of the old, abandoned subway locations that there was a creature that seemed more monster than man, killing anyone unfortunate enough to come across his path.

Robin and Batgirl had been dispatched to search above ground for this killer, while Batman prepared to head down below to confront whatever was causing it all. An easy enough job. Besides, Batman tended to try and keep them away from the higher-profile killers in the gallery of rogues that called Gotham City their stomping grounds.

From certain descriptions of what had been doing it all, it was obvious to many in the know just what it was that Batman was heading underground to face. Robin didn't want any part of a fight with Gotham's zombie that always seemed to come back no matter what was done last time to put him to rest.

A blur of movement sent Robin instinctually into action, swinging across the rooftops only to land in front of the would-be traveler and cut off his progress, "Null?" He said, upon seeing the now familiar hood wrapping and enhancement suit, "You've got to get away from here."

Null held back a groan. He didn't want to be there in the first place now that he knew it was a hot zone, and now he was getting the same thing from Batman's little buddy that he'd just gotten from the man himself, "Why?"

"Solomon Grundy."

Null just stared at Robin for several seconds, trying to figure out just what any of what he said had to do with him, "…What the hell is a 'Solomon Grundy'?"

A massive, grey fist plunged through the street and a large figure began to tear its way out of the ground like a stripper bursting through a birthday cake. After freeing itself from the asphalt, the ghastly figure let out an angry yell.

"That's Solomon Grundy," Robin specified, taking a small, momentary measure of satisfaction at the look on Null's face. It didn't give him much comfort over what was about to happen, but at least it gave him a nice feeling for about half a second.

The young thief actually had to take a second to focus on what he was looking at, "Oh," This guy was huge. Way bigger than him. At least three times his size. And he was dead. Undead. Which was apparently a thing, "Ohhhh!" He repeated in understanding. It had quickly become clear why Robin wouldn't have wanted anyone near this damn thing, "Oh… shit."

With that, he took off running in the opposite direction. He would rather try and break his way through six police blockades rather than have that thing get anywhere near him. Unfortunately, he abandoned all pretenses of stealth when he did so, and Solomon Grundy was an equal opportunity skull-cracker. Upon catching wind of Null's movement, he leapt for the ledge that Null jumped for and smashed into it, hanging onto the edge.

Null landed on his head and jumped off, turning around as Grundy climbed his way to the roof, seething angrily. He charged at Null and outpaced him by three steps before Null took one to backstep away. The giant zombie shoulder-checked Null, sending him flying through the air.

The thief was able to magnetically direct his landing onto the top of a street light. Coughing and holding his chest in pain, Null winced at the sharp impact, grateful that he had been able to move away from enough of Grundy's attack to keep from being destroyed, "Kak! Okay, that was definitely my fault."

Grundy jumped down on the street and tore the lightpost Null was on clean out of the pavement. Null got off of it before Grundy could start swinging it around, managing to duck under and jump over several swings, each designed to turn his innards into shards of bone and organ slurry.

Noting his surroundings, Null backed up against a car as Grundy brought the light post down on top of it, smashing into the roof. Null gave the post a tap and magnetically attached the two, confusing Grundy at the new difficulty in lifting it long enough for run down the length of the post and jump into a heel kick aimed at the crown of Grundy's head.

A kick of that nature would have absolutely shattered broken demonstration bricks in a martial arts class, even before he had ever started the intense training and put on the suit that physically enhanced his abilities. When it came to killing zombies, he'd always heard that removing the head or destroying the brain was what would work, and that had been his plan of attack.

It didn't work.

Grundy rubbed the top of his head, glaring murderously at his attacker, "Little green runt hurt Grundy. Grundy squish little green runt!" He lifted the light post attached to the car overhead, prepared to swing it freely like a mallet. A bola wrapped around Grundy's legs, tethering them together and suddenly disrupting his balance, causing him to fall onto his back, dropping the improvised weapon with a horrible crash.

Null breathed a sigh of relief. There hadn't been much room to dodge on that street, and he wasn't sure how much more it would have taken for Grundy to wind up getting to him. Still, he hadn't expected anyone to stick their neck out and help him, especially Robin.

It was a confirmed fact at this point that the two young men were not fond of each other.

Robin felt Null's eyes on him and answered his unasked question, never taking his eyes off of Grundy even as he moved to stand at Null's side on the road, "I'm not going to leave you to get murdered by Grundy, even if I do think you're nothing but trouble."

"Gee thanks," Null said, fingers trembling at the sight of Grundy tearing the sturdy bolas from his legs to stand back up, "I guess dying with some company would be better than doing it alone."

Robin was not a sociable type in the slightest. Aside from the detective skills and inquisitive nature, he took after Batman very much in this department as well. Still, Grundy was out, and while neither he nor Null could take him on, even together, he couldn't leave Null to be torn limb from limb.

And he wasn't going to get himself killed here, "I don't plan on dying anytime soon, Null."

That was the kind of response Null wanted to hear, "So you've got a plan, right? How are we supposed to beat this monster, smart guy?" He asked with a nervous grin coloring his face.

"We don't."

"What?"

"We don't," Robin repeated, wondering just what kind of dumbfounded expression rested on Null's face at the moment. He needed to recognize that they didn't have a lot of a chance against Solomon Grundy alone, "All we can do is survive until someone gets here who can."

"I don't like that idea," Null complained. First of all, it relied on someone else coming to solve their problem. Null had trust issues as it was, and very few things irked him more than situations that he couldn't handle with his own hands, "Come on, there's two of us. You've got all of those gadgets and I've got... uh..." He trailed off, not knowing what he could really do against a hulking zombie, "There's got to be something we can do to put him down."

The only thing Robin could think of was to kill Solomon Grundy. It didn't necessarily go against his beliefs as a hero, because Grundy was undead to begin with, but even so, doing it wasn't exactly an easy thing to accomplish. He wracked his brain trying to think of something he had in his arsenal that could possibly do it.

He didn't have much time, as evidenced by the car that Solomon Grundy threw right at them. Null couldn't stop it, but he could direct its trajectory away from them. The vehicle barely missed them by one or two feet, slamming off of the ground nearby and sliding to a grinding halt.

This only took a handful of seconds, but it was enough time for Robin to think of something. All it required was a little bit of an opening, one that Null could help him make. He was fighting much more confidently these days, even if it was clear that he was still frightened and would rather be anywhere else than there.

"Can you help me keep him in one place for a few seconds?"

Null stared at Robin who had reached into one of the slots of his utility belt to get to something, "I can try to," He said, as he looked back at Grundy, who seemed irritated that he didn't have anything else heavy to throw within arm's reach, "Can't really do that from all the way over here I guess..."

Solomon Grundy noticed Null take a few steps forward and took it as a challenge, causing him to charge with a primal yell, and Null ran forward to meet him head-on, doing much the same in a significantly more terrified version of Grundy's cry. With a flick of his hands, he lifted a manhole cover right in Grundy's path, causing one of his legs to fall into the hole, stopping him cold.

Null never stopped sprinting ahead, instead doing his level best to try and run through Grundy, driving his knee right into Grundy's skull with as much force as he could muster. He felt nothing break, nor did he feel the monster of Slaughter Swamp collapse.

Grundy's hand wrapped around Null's leg and slammed him to the hard ground at his side. The surface of the road cracked underneath the impact of Null's body connecting with it. Robin had come in slower than Null had, and stabbed at Grundy's head from the other side with a blade extended from the end of his staff. Grundy managed to catch it before he could pierce his skull.

Even as Null lay face down on the road, body rattled with pain, he could see the smirk on Robin's face. He didn't know why, until the low hum of an engine filled his ears and a motorcycle plowed straight into Grundy.

Null felt himself fly down the street until the grip from Grundy's arm went lax. Of course he would have kept a death clutch on him after getting hit by a vehicle at full speed. Because that was just his luck. Null pushed himself up off of the ground less than three feet away from Grundy's torso.

He was now missing a leg and an arm. His eyes were wide open, and his chest cavity and skull were both caved in. If he got up from that, Null was going to steal Robin's bike and drive it straight into the ocean.

Where was that other arm? Null got the answer to that question when he looked down and found it still wrapped around his ankle. Gross. He heaved as he pried the iron-tight grip off of his foot and tossed it aside. He crawled over to the zombie to check it for signs of life, wondering why he was going against what every horror movie in history was telling him not to do.

Grundy didn't stir, even when Null had placed both hands on his chest, trying to search for some kind of heartbeat. That move probably would have been worthless even when Grundy had still been up and moving around.

He didn't get any signs of life, but what he did feel was a hard lump in Grundy's chest that didn't seem fleshy or bony. Opening the jacket of Grundy's grimy suit, he found a stone quarter-circle sticking out of his torso.

'Mine,' Null grabbed whatever it was as an afterthought and hid it in the satchel he kept on his person.

"ItcanbeyoursItcanbeyoursItcanbeyoursItcanbeyours-."

'Damn right, it's mine. Yoink,' He thought nothing of it. It might have been valuable, and it was on a corpse that he'd played a part in waylaying on the street. Possession was nine-tenths of the law, and even if he had been mentally capable, Grundy wasn't even alive to argue the other one-tenth of it.

Besides, Null felt he was owed something for all of the physical and mental distress he'd gone through tonight. And here he'd just been looking for some hapless gangsters to burgle. He hadn't been looking for a fight with an undead monster.

"I think we're done here," Null called out to Robin, finally finding it in him to stand back up, "…Did your motorcycle just drive itself?"

"Well you more or less said it yourself," Robin responded as he made his way over, "Gadgets are supposed to be my thing."

With that, the two of them shared an awkward victory moment. They still didn't like each other, nor did they respect each other even slightly. Why would they? Robin was a hard case who seemed to constantly be on Null's case, and Null was a noted criminal with little to no remorse for the problems that popped up because of his greed. It took a considerable amount of control for the both of them to even stand ten feet apart without trying to punch each other in the face.

"I'm still throwing you into jail the next time you do something stupid and slip up," Robin declared, making sure the thief knew where he stood.

Null didn't need Robin's uptight perspective to let him know that he wasn't exactly Gotham City's forgiven man, "Oh yeah? Well I still knocked your ass out cold, so how about that?" He wasn't looking for that sort of thing anyway.

The standoff continued until a figure of pure black interjected himself between the two. Null readied himself for another fight until he realized that he was just looking at the caped back of Batman. Still, he could have said something before dropping in so suddenly.

From Robin's view, the man in black was not pleased, and he could figure out why, "I thought I gave you orders to run away whenever you came across a killer like this. You don't take them on if I'm not there," Batman said. Robin's only answer was to point behind Batman at Null, who still looked roughed up, holding his ribs that were still tender from the few things that had been done to him, "Oh."

With that, Batman simply turned his back on Null fully, as if he didn't matter. He didn't, and he knew that he didn't, but that wasn't the point.

Offended at that seemingly being all the explanation that Robin needed to exonerate himself for apparently breaking one of Batman's rules for him to follow, Null blatantly flipped Batman off behind his back with both hands.

Batman apparently had eyes in the back of his head, or he knew the subtle sounds of someone sticking up their middle fingers at him, "Do you want to keep those?"

Null backed up a few steps, remembering that he was speaking to a very scary individual, "Would you really break my fingers just for shooting you the bird?" He didn't need that rhetorical question answered. He knew that it would be yes, "…I'm gonna go now."

"You do that."

And so, he did, with great haste.

At the very least, Robin couldn't say that Null was a fool. He knew when it was better to leave than to stick around in the face of someone who wouldn't have any patience for him and his hijinks. Once again, he hadn't done anything illegal. If anything, it was a case of wrong place, wrong time, and he'd taken his lumps for it.

Even so, things weren't wrapped up quite so tightly. Robin could see it in Batman's face. He simply stared at Grundy's unmoving body. Something stank, and it wasn't the corpse that had lost whatever cursed magic preserved the would-be rotting tissue whenever Grundy was active.

"You're thinking something's still wrong, aren't you?" Robin asked.

"Everything is always wrong in this place," Batman replied, "But about this in particular? Absolutely."

Yes, Solomon Grundy's resurrections were fairly random. He would rise, cause panic with killing or perhaps as hired help by a more intelligent rogue, something would kill him, and at some point down the line he would pull himself out of Slaughter Swamp ready to begin the cycle anew.

But this was different. He had already been enraged when he'd surfaced from the road, and the area that Batman explored in the old subway station had been destroyed to a degree that would have suggested a battle larger than anything that a group of frightened vagrants would have put up against someone like Grundy.

"There were signs of a fight in underground, but no one else around," Batman explained as the lights from police cars lit up the walls from around the corner. He and Robin wasted no time heading to the heights above the streets to avoid any complications, "It might have led us to Grundy, but there's someone else out there who's a part of this. We're not done tonight."

XxX

(The Next Morning – Max's Apartment)

Rose rubbed her one good eye groggily, having just woken up from catching a few hours of sleep. She stood in front of Max at his kitchen table while he sat, stuffing his face with cereal and milk. Sitting on the table in front of him was a segment of some kind of stone circle.

"What the hell is this supposed to be?" The silver-haired mercenary asked, wondering where her temporary partner had picked up such a piece of junk, "Some old-school Ouija board? Want to do our nails and summon ghosts tonight, Sparks?"

Max wiggled in his seat, feigning excitement at Rose's joke, "Ooh! Yeah! You can braid my hair and tell me all about the hot guy you spoke to yesterday!" He then stopped as a sly smirk graced his features, "Oh, wait. I'm the only guy you spoke to yesterday. Well, it still stands."

"Ass," Rose said, plopping down in a chair and resting her face in her arms on the table as she continued to scrutinize Max's latest find, "Seriously, what is it?"

Crunching on his breakfast cereal, Max let out a sound of understanding, swallowing his food before he spoke again, "I stole this off of Solomon Grundy last night," Max tapped the object in irritation at its mysteries, "I don't know what it does, or if it's worth money, but it looks old, and old stuff usually has somebody that wants it. Somebody willing to pay."

"Solomon Grundy?" Rose's head shot up off of the table with a start as she looked Max over. She was finally able to notice the wrappings he had around his abdomen, probably as a result of the previous evening's extracurricular activities, "You know what? Just forget it. I don't even want to know."

There was no way he actually picked that fight.

What did this guy get up to when she wasn't around? Well whatever it was that kept drawing him into the crap, he kept surviving. By the skin of his teeth if need be given the last few times she had been around him in a heated combat situation, but he was managing to pull through cleaner and cleaner the more he got accustomed to it.

He was a decent enough fighter and a passable thief, even if his setup was extremely low-budget. Infinitely more so than she was used to. She couldn't blame him for a lack of resources. It wasn't like he was some kind of scientist or billionaire with the means to back a top-of-the-line approach.

She wished he had top-of-the-line equipment though, because otherwise, she didn't have a clue what she was looking at.

Rose squinted at the stone segment, damning her lack of depth perception not for the first time as she leaned forward to get a better view, "It looks like a rock, Sparks. A cut piece of a rock," Though, she could definitely see the markings on it that were likely some kind of ancient language. Why couldn't older cultures write in a way that didn't just look like unintelligible squiggles, "A tablet, maybe?"

She brushed her fingers across the artifact and gasped. Over the course of several seconds, the images of every material possession she could have ever wanted flowed through her mind. Different scenarios, all with her having things that she didn't have the means to possess, at least not yet.

The clang of Max's spoon and bowl inside of the sink broke her out of her trance, causing her hand to jerk away from the shard, "Whoa," She said as a satisfied shudder rolled through her body.

"What?" Max asked absently, having noticed none of this between finishing his breakfast and beginning to wash his bowl and utensil.

Rose touched the artifact piece two more times to make sure it wasn't just a coincidence. It wasn't. Good. Because not having that much control over her own mindset without some outside force affecting it would have been a tad alarming, "I touched this thing and had like, every daydream I've ever had in my life... all at once."

Max's brow furrowed in thought as he considered what she'd said for the first time, "That's what was doing all of that?"

Honestly surprised, Rose drew herself back. She had taken Max to be more perceptive with how quick to try and avoid trouble he usually was, "You've been carrying this thing around all night and didn't realize it?"

A snort of laughter was her response as Max dried his bowl and set it in the rack next to the sink, "Do you know how much I think about all of the stuff I want?" Ninety percent of his thoughts were all 'what ifs' about what he could buy if he had this or that. He didn't even notice something else putting thoughts of desire into his head. He had enough of his own to spare, "Do it again, I'm paying attention this time."

Rose spared Max a glance before tentatively touching her hand on top of the stone segment again. If he wouldn't even think twice about those sorts of things, she would have to be the one to try it out herself.

The second time was just as good as the first. Weapon systems that no one on Earth could afford, that could bring down the entire Justice League without her having to deal with them herself. The means to garner specialized abilities from all over the globe and beyond that would give her the ability to surpass her father and make him look at her as a success.

The finest armor, blades, and firearms to keep on her person. The absolute best of everything, anything she could imagine.

"ItcanbeyoursItcanbeyoursItcanbeyoursItcanbeyours."

All it took was this. No, it required more. Three more pieces, just like this one.

Rose forcefully removed her hand from the artifact, sliding away from the table until her chair hit the wall. Sweat dotted her brow and her heaving chest from the intensity of the visions. She could feel it, smell it, taste it, as though it had been happening in reality. She could remember all of it in her head, as though it had been more than just an illusion.

Running a hand through her hair, she looked up to see Max absolutely engrossed in her reaction to the stone segment. Perhaps she had gotten a little too excited. She certainly felt bothered. The good kind. But not necessarily the kind of bothered that a teenage girl wanted to show to a teenage boy while she was wearing her sleep clothes.

"...Do it one more time," Max instructed, hoping one more time would push her over the edge so to speak.

Rose scowled up at Max and crossed her legs, just in case, "Sparks!" She cried in outrage. She was not going to be driven to a climax by some magical thingamajig. Most certainly not in front of him.

Max threw up his hands in defeat at not getting to see Rose writhe and squirm in front of him again. It had been very hot, "Alright, alright! Forget it."

Instead of provoking any of Rose's wrath, he took the time to touch the tablet piece himself. He was immediately bombarded with grandiose thoughts of possessions far beyond his capabilities to obtain.

More money than he could ever hope to count.

Girls, the caliber of which he could never get in real life.

Control over his powers that would make gods of thunder stand in awe.

…In other words, the usual things he thought about all the time whenever he had a free moment.

"ItcanbeyoursItcanbeyoursItcanbeyoursItcanbe-."

He calmly removed his hand from the shard and turned to Rose, who was grumbling and fixing herself back up after her little almost-episode, "Apparently... it can be ours. I'm guessing you got the weird whispers too."

She nodded without verbally confirming his words, "What kind of magic shit did you take?"

Max scooped the tablet piece off of the table, running through the greedy visions that permeated his mind as he took it somewhere for temporary safe keeping. To him, it was like ignoring muffled dog barks from somewhere outside, "I don't know, but I'm keeping it."

Rose gave him an odd, bemused look at how he thought he was going to somehow make this work for him, "You really think you're going to get the chance to take the three other pieces you need to see what this thing does?"

"I got one of them, didn't I?" Max said from his room as he looked around for somewhere out of the way to place it, "If this thing can really do all of that with three other pieces, why wouldn't I hold onto it, just in case?"

"Because someone might come and kill you for it?" Rose suggested, leaning against the doorway to Max's room, watching him try to hide the shard.

"First of all, people try to kill me all of the time for nothing," Max weakly justified, "Second, how would anybody that wants it even know that I have it?"

Rose let that remark go. She knew full well just how a well-motivated individual with an obsession for something in your possession could manage to ruin everything you had planned.

XxX

(Wayne Manor)

Bruce Wayne was interrupted from his late morning workout by his butler telling him that he had a guest. When he made it upstairs from where he'd been training down in the Batcave, he froze at seeing an old childhood friend waiting for him in the parlor.

Long dark hair, a black top hat, and and outfit that would have fit right in for a magic stage show in Las Vegas.

"Zatanna," Bruce said, identifying his guest. He had planned to receive someone as his day-to-day outside persona, but since this was someone who clearly knew that the playboy billionaire character was a load of crap, there was no need for the pretense, "I didn't know you were coming."

The coldness in his tone had been something that she expected after everything that had happened with the memory erasing incident that Bruce had not forgiven her for in the slightest yet. That didn't make it any easier to try and smile through it though.

"You were out when I called last night in advance," Zatanna started to explain, "I told Alfred I was coming-."

"What are you doing here?" Bruce wasn't interested in chewing the fat, even with an old friend. He knew she was aware how upset with her she still was for wiping memories and altering minds, including his own. Whatever she came for had to be worth the vitriol he had no problems providing her with.

Zatanna frowned and held one arm behind her back, her body language reading as mortification, whether it was at the memory-wipe thing, or something more recent, Bruce wasn't sure. Not that he cared, "I really need to talk to you. It's important, Bruce."

"And since when have you ever come to me before doing something you wanted?"

'That was low, Bruce,' Zatanna thought to herself with a wince, "Because this is your town. You protect it," She might have had a family home outside of the city limits, but the man who gave his blood, sweat, and tears to protect it, had broken his back and nearly died time and time again trying to make it a better place was right in front of her, "And if I'm right about what I'm tracking, it might put everyone in Gotham City at risk."

Bruce stared her down before turning around and heading straight for the Batcave, "...You have ten minutes to tell me what you're on about. If it's not good, and if it's not something that needs you involved, I'm kicking you out."

Zatanna held back a sigh and followed along behind him, the magically adept woman grateful that he could at least look past personal business, 'At least he's giving me time to talk,' "A magician on the west coast was killed, and word of mouth says he had a piece of a very powerful magic artifact. One that in the wrong hands could kill thousands in the blink of an eye."

"Magic," The billionaire vigilante said with a scoff. His attitude on the arcane arts was one of skepticism. This she knew.

Zatanna rolled her eyes at some of the man that she knew well leaking through the emotional stone wall he'd separated the two of them with, "Yes, Bruce. That thing you've seen me use a thousand times. Now tell me if you've ever heard anything at all about the Miracle Slate."