'Why is it so tight all of a sudden?'
The thought nagged at Rowan as he hauled another crate of supplies toward the van, the suit pinching at his shoulders in ways it hadn't a few hours earlier.
He tried to ignore it, but by the time he set the box down, the seams had migrated into his armpits and somewhere south of his belt that he really, really didn't want to deal with at the moment.
A discreet tug at the collar bought him no relief, and neither did pulling the fabric free from under his arms. And the crotch situation was rapidly approaching a level of discomfort that no amount of pride could justify ignoring, so he went for it, and prayed nobody was looking.
But somebody was.
"You're squirming." Ivy noted from somewhere behind him, a box half the size of his balanced against her hip. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing."
"That didn't look like nothing." Her eyes darted from his visor to the hands that kept drifting south, and the suspicion on her face deepened into something closer to concern for her own wellbeing.
"It was nothing, Ivy."
"... You don't have lice, do you?" Ivy blurted, instinctively thrusting the box between them like a barricade, as if cardboard and whatever was inside it would do anything to stop lice if he truly were infested.
For a woman whose closest friends were venus flytraps and whose bedroom was a literal compost heap, her sudden concern for hygiene was a bit much.
"Do I look like I have lice?!" Rowan barked, grateful for the visor hiding a blush that had spread from his cheeks to his ears. "I bathe every day! Every. Single. Day!" It admittedly wasn't a luxurious affair, but it was perfectly standard for the average male!
"… I think it's still best if you keep your distance from me."
Nose scrunched in indignation, Rowan slapped the box down next to the unconscious vigilantes in the back of the van and retrieved two pairs of restraints designed to lock from wrist to fist. They were usually reserved for brutes, but there had been enough surprises for one night.
Afterward, Rowan carefully loosened the Impsuit and measured the difference against the seam lines, only to realize he'd grown a full two inches since the last fitting. 'But how?' He turned his hands over, flexed his fingers, and ran through every possibility until the answer came to him.
'The Serum?'
Kirkland had indeed warned him about accelerated growth. He just hadn't expected it to kick in this quickly, and during a citywide crisis while he was hauling prohibited goods into a rape van, no less.
He sighed and hurried back to the safehouse.
Every minute he spent out here was another minute for things to completely derail, and after the last three days, Rowan wasn't going to leave it to Fate, whom he knew for certain wouldn't waste a chance to fuck him up, down and sideways. And so, after half an hour of Ivy cherry-picking from the safehouse's inventory, they were finally ready to leave.
"Got everything you need?"
"There are a few things missing..." Ivy admitted, inspecting the contents of the van with a frown that didn't bode well.
"What else are we missing?" The better question was, 'How could anything be missing?!' That wasn't just any safehouse, it was Batman's, for crying out loud!
"We're missing some rare reagents and compounds…" She muttered as they pulled away from the safehouse.
"Do you know where we can find them?"
"A week ago I'd have said Cobblepot, or the black market if you knew who to ask." But Cobblepot's share of the pie, decades in the making, had long been carved up among the other kingpins. Even his black market had gone dark, pun unintended...
'Or had it?' Rowan's fingers unconsciously found his chin.
Unlike Two-Face or Black Mask, whose wares began with drugs and ended with firearms, Cobblepot's operation had always been broader than, starting with weapons, art, antiquities and, more relevantly, chemicals he was sure the other kingpins wouldn't know the first thing about unloading. Even if they did find buyers, dumping that volume in so short a window should be next to impossible.
Not to mention bulk buyers weren't easy to come by to begin with; the ones worth dealing with probably all had longstanding contracts with Cobblepot, built on credibility and privacy none of the other kingpins had had the foresight to build.
"Write me a list…"
"I still think it's better if I come with you."
"What about the lice?" Rowan asked, sarcasm dripping from every syllable.
Ivy rolled her eyes, "I'll manage, sweetheart. Just keep your distance." After several rounds of bickering that neither of them would ever admit to enjoying, Ivy's garden finally came into view, allowing them both to breathe a sigh of relief. With Rowan's help, they had the van unloaded and Ivy's laboratory stocked in short order.
But just as Ivy made to climb back into the passenger seat, Rowan stopped her. "I already told you, it'll be faster if I come along."
"I know," He replied, then nodded toward the back where Ted and Barbara still laid cuffed, unconscious and slumped against each other. He'd even tied them together with a rope for good measure. "But I've got a delivery to make first."
Ivy's gaze lingered on the restrained pair before finding its way back to Rowan. "How long do you think that'll take?"
"Couple hours at most. I'll head straight back after."
Dropping Ted and Barbara at a nearby safehouse would be more convenient in the short term, but Alfred, Dick, and Selina were still back at the Cave, none of whom were going to feed or look after themselves, which meant he'd be running himself ragged trying to manage both ends.
Arms folded, she regarded him with a glare that might've had more weight if the gesture hadn't pushed her chest into a configuration his teenage brain immediately filed away.
Whether she was aware of it or not remained one of life's great mysteries that he was naturally content to leave unsolved. At last, Ivy harrumphed. "Then don't dawdle… The sooner we start, the sooner we can put this city back together."
"I know." He flashed her a grin she couldn't have seen through the visor, hopped into the van, and pulled away.
"Rowan, huh?" Ivy murmured to herself as the van grew ever smaller. Between Wildcat crashing onto their roof and his protégée clinging to the hood, the ride had been anything but pleasant, but she'd at least walked away with a name. It was only after the van vanished completely that she caught herself still watching the empty road like an older sister sending off her younger brother to war.
Ivy had never hated the Bat the way others in her circle did.
She would go as far as to say she respected him, even.
If circumstances had been different, she'd have liked to get to know the man who braved bullets for a city that couldn't be bothered with its own salvation.
But if she were honest with herself, the Bat's protégé fascinated her far more. From his youth, his composure, to how… Disturbingly sane he'd been through all of it. Yet how could he be sane? How could anyone who put on a mask and threw themselves into harm's way every night?
Pamela had always prided herself on being mature, far more so than most of her peers, but even she had only ever concerned herself with academics at that stage in her life.
If someone had told her to put on a Halloween costume and go toe-to-toe with the worst humanity had to offer back then, she would have had them committed to Arkham before they could finish the sentence! What, then, could have possibly compelled a teenager to carry Gotham, of all godforsaken places, on his shoulders?
What tragedies could have turned Rowan into the Imp?
And more importantly, how had she been driven mad by bitterness; how had all of Gotham lost itself to insanity, when a boy half her age remained intact?
Color rose to her cheeks as she turned toward her garden, narrowly avoiding a group of Afflicted who were encroaching on the perimeter. "Deal with them," She told the vines coiling at her feet, then, after a short hum, added. "Non-lethally."
.
.
.
As the van descended into the bowels of Gotham's sewer system, Rowan couldn't help but hum to himself. He even tried talking to his restrained passengers, more to break the oppressive silence than out of any real desire for conversation. Unfortunately, both were too preoccupied with being unconscious to really hold up their end.
The hallucination, naturally, had no such reservations and had been yapping halfway into the tunnels. "My oh my! An entire labyrinth right under their noses! What exactly are the city's inspectors being paid for?!"
The human mind was a funny thing. Rowan had felt unsettled by silence after days of uninterrupted mayhem, but now that he had someone, or rather something to fill it, he wanted nothing more than for it to shut the fuck up!
"I can hear you, you know?!"
'Then shut the fuck up!'
Rowan seethed behind a sullen expression, only to forget the irritation when something slammed into the side of the van. "Stop it!" He finally blurted, but the hallucination looked as confused as he.
"Wasn't me, Boy-Wonder… Scout's honor!"
The hallucination's wretched smirk faltered when, moments later, several black shapes burst into the tunnel. Shapes so dark that even Rowan and his Dark Vision could barely make out in the shadows.
They clawed at the sides and scraped across the roof in a frenzy, shrieking like damned souls fished out from the deepest pit of Hell. And for the very first time, Rowan felt genuine fear. He had always known Hell would come collecting; he just hadn't expected it to be this soon.
Against all rationality, Rowan floored the gas, teeth bared as he drove into and over the shapes flinging themselves at the windshield until the glass began to crack and splinter.
One of them punched through the passenger window and he swerved hard, clipping the tunnel wall in a shower of sparks that lit up the swarm for just long enough to make him wish it hadn't…
There must have been thousands of them, maybe more, pouring from cracks and drainage pipes and gaps in the brickwork he hadn't even noticed. He wrenched the wheel back, fishtailing through something wet that sent the rear end sliding, and for a horrible, breathless moment, Rowan was sideways in a tunnel barely wide enough for one vehicle with no room to correct and no time to think.
The wheel jerked in his hands as he sideswiped the wall again, shearing the mirror clean off, and yet the shrieking just kept getting louder, layering on itself forever and ever… Until one of the shapes managed to get a good grip on the hood and punched through the windshield. It was small.
That was the first thing he noticed about it.
It was so very small, with limbs too thin and a torso too short and a head that lolled toward him on a neck that bent further than any neck should.
Its skin was blackened and cracked like charred bark, split along the jaw and cheekbones where something darker than blood seeped through. Its mouth had been stapled shut, with thick rusted wire punched through the lips at uneven intervals and forced wide as a result.
Rows of jagged, needle-thin teeth were quite visible between the gaps, jutting at angles that suggested they had grown in wrong or simply hadn't stopped growing at all.
It tilted its head, and the staples creaked.
He stomped the brake so hard the van screamed, and the shape catapulted off the hood, vanishing into the black.
Forehead pressed against the steering wheel, Rowan heaved, the cool of it grounding him while the rest of his body shuddered with fear that froze him stiff, until seconds passed, then minutes.
When Rowan finally gathered the courage to lift his head again, there was nothing in front of him but a deserted tunnel lit by headlights; a tunnel that his remaining three eyes could see perfectly from end to end.
"Oops…" The hallucination suddenly cooed. "Guess that was me, after all. Sorry 'bout that, Boy-Wonder."
Rowan glared daggers at the hallucination, eyes bulging out of their sockets from sheer, unadulterated rage as his mind cycled through every manner of violence he could and would inflict upon the bastard, the code be damned.
"You know what? Fuck that. You should thank me! I just did you a favor! Now you can finally admit to yourself that you never cared about the vigilantism. You never cared about helping people. You didn't even care about those kids. All you ever cared about was whether any of it would save your sorry ass from what's waiting downstairs… Ain't that right, Row-Row?"
He felt a canine chip as his teeth ground together, but couldn't find the words to respond.
The hallucination didn't seem to need them either as it tossed its legs on the dashboard like it owned the vehicle.
"You were never guilty. And honestly? Why should you have been? You were a kid, same as them. Sure, you had a grown man rattling around in that little skull of yours, but so what? What could you have done?"It slowly picked at its nails with theatrical disinterest. "It's okay. I don't blame you… Your real papa might, if only because you weren't the one doing the act. Let Uncle Jay absolve you..."
Tears burned at the corners of his eyes as Rowan leaned over and drove his fist straight through the hallucination's head, painting the seat and the window with grey matter.
And still its mouth continued to move.
Still, it laughed.
Still it howled and shrieked and cackled while he violently tore through his belt for suppressants that his trembling fingers fumbled and dropped to the floor below. He scrambled after the vial, only for it to roll deeper into the dark beneath the seat where a greying, decomposing face greeted him. Rowan threw himself back, striking at what was never there to begin with, and by the time he came to, all that remained of the vial was glass and wasted medicine pooling between his knees.
"No… Nononono!" Rowan screamed, his heart hammering so fast that what was left of his logical mind couldn't help but worry he might enter cardiac arrest.
Try as he might to scrape what remained off the floormat, there wasn't nearly enough to lick off, let alone stave off the Toxin's effects.
At last, Rowan stopped, sat back, and stared at his trembling hands and at the residue drying between his fingers while the silence pressed in from every direction, plunging him into the depths of despair.
And such was the nature of fear that the further one fell, the faster it gained. And before long, the howling shapes returned, slamming against the van and rocking it from side to side while Rowan slumped forward against the steering wheel. 'It's in my mind.' He told himself, fiddling with the ignition that kept revving uselessly.
'It's just in my mind.'
The engine caught at last and he floored it, tearing through the tunnel and through horde after horde that smeared across the windshield in viscera he refused to believe in.
'It's just in my mind.'
He kept repeating it, over and over, until the words finally took hold, forcing the fear to retreat, the hordes to thin, and his heartbeat to slow to a crawl.
"It's all in my mind." He said aloud, courage finally gaining ground on the primal fear clawing at his insides as a hulking, melting, scaly figure stepped into the headlights. Rather than slow down and give the fear room to fester, Rowan slammed his foot harder on a pedal that was already flush with the floor and drove head-on into the figure which happened to be quite solid.
"Fuc—!"
The curse had barely left his lips when the momentum launched him from his seat! The impact would have surely peeled the suit, the skin, as well as shaved several pounds of flesh off him had the Shade—had the Embodiment of Sins—not cushioned the drop.
Once again, Rowan was reminded that things, even abnormal things, weren't so scary when one was furious enough, and right now, he was livid.
"Y-Y-Yoooou…" Its regeneration had done what it could, but without proper sustenance, the results were grotesque even by Killer Croc's standards. Patches of flesh and scale had fused together in uneven slabs, pulling the skin in directions it was never meant to go. The right eye sat in a socket warped taut by scar tissue in a way that stopped it from ever truly blinking.
It limped toward him on one functioning leg, while its mouth that was broken and rehealed crooked in at least five places, hung open in a permanent snarl that both revealed and hid chipped, blackened fangs.
"Why can't you just stay DOWN?!"
Rowan punched the wall, and Ichor answered, surging from the point of impact and reshaping into an arm four feet wide and at least fifty feet long to slam into Croc before the reptile could take another step. Yet, even when embedded in the wall, the Meta kept reaching, claws scraping at air that the Shade quickly filled with another fist, before pulling back in anticipation.
"STAY DOWN!"
The next blow buried the Meta to the chest, while the once hidden pipes burst around his frame as the entire tunnel groaned in protest.
"STAY DOWN!!!"
By the third, the wall had all but consumed what was left of him, entombing him until only his head and hanging limbs were visible under the pile of rubble. Even for Killer Croc, digging out of that wouldn't be easy.
Not that it mattered to either of them…
The reptile hadn't been awake since the second hit.
—————
A/N: We're very close to the first NSFW chapter of this story, and I just want to say...
If, by then, my Scrolls (Reviews) aren't up to at least 30, I'm deleting all the NSFW parts and locking the Chapters on my P 4 tr 3on . C 0m (Slash) Regularrr...
Cross my heart and hope to die.
Imma do it!!! I swear to God imma fucking do it!!!!!