For most of Gotham, Victor Fries and Pamela Isley were creatures to be feared and kept at considerable distance, and not without good reasons.
One piloted half a ton of reinforced steel and was armed to the teeth with cryo weapons that'd have been the stuff of science fiction a decade prior, while the latter was a mutant who could order harmless plants to strangle the life out of her enemies with a simple flutter of her eyelashes.
But Nautilus was not most.
Nautilus had been in this game longer than either of them, and the fact that he'd only recently come into possession of the formula that had once given Bane his strength hadn't changed that. And as the former henchman who had clawed his way into Bane's seat after the man himself bled out in the now-infamous battle in Arkham, Nautilus had rather a lot to prove.
Beating two villains and the Bat's cocky sidekick to death before walking out with everything they'd come for seemed, to him, a perfectly reasonable place to start.
He launched himself at Poison Ivy, privately sneering at the reverential way Gotham handed titles to every freak with a gimmick, only to find his arms briefly encased in a shell of ice that'd almost certainly give him freeze-burns, if his temperature hadn't been elevated by the drug flowing through his veins. With a roar, he shook himself loose of the stacking ice and lunged for Freeze instead.
With one hand, Nautilus tore the vines from around his neck and tossed them to the ground like discarded rags, and with the other swung into wide uppercut at the front of Freeze's suit. Nautilus grinned as the metal gave under his mighty fist. "Careful!" He heard the ice themed nerd yell as he reached for Poison Ivy's chin and knew almost immediately it would not take more than him flexing his fist to squeeze the woman to death.
But now that he had gotten a closer look, even a man who usually prized himself on his rationality as he had to admit that her beauty alone made her worth keeping around. And moreover, it would further solidify his currently shaky position to have a villainess for a pet, would it not?
"Not bad." His hand carefully wrapped around her neck and forced her on her tiptoes as she tossed a handful of beans at him. They took but a second to sprout, less than to cover him in growth as they strained against his muscular neck and even thicker arm in an effort to break one or the other. And at last, something gave. But it was not Nautilus that did.
It was the vines that tore themselves apart trying to break him.
"What do you say to being mine?" The stunned look on her face lasted for only a second before getting replaced by a sultry smile that drew his eyes to her glossy lips.
"I do not know," She choked as her hands gently found his. "Can I get a sneak peek first?"
Nautilus would've been lying if he said he was not the slightest bit tempted to take her up on her offer, but he had been among the villains of the city for more than enough time to hear rumors of the Kiss that could kill as easily as it could dominate even the toughest mind.
"Nice try," He leaned in, his masked face remaining mere inches away from hers, "But I'm not gonna fall for that."
Sure enough, Ivy's features suddenly began to twist with hate and dark mirth in equal measure. "You should've kept your distance, you buffoon." She spat, a thick cloud of green toxin billowing from her puckered lips and hitting him in the face. Nautilus recoiled while a swarm of vines surged up his arm and forced his fingers apart just quick enough before he could snap her neck.
"You dared?!" He bellowed, slamming the button on his backpack and flooding his system with another hit of Venom and swinging his arms wildly through the drug-induced blur as he gave chase. In his pursuit, Nautilus accidentally knocked loose bottles of chemicals that doused him head to toes in the acidic substance.
If he'd been furious before, he was positively murderous now, made worse by the certainty that the two meatheads behind him had let it happen on purpose to take what was his. Why else would they take that long to deal with a third-rate villain like Freeze whom Nautilus had tossed away like garbage with a single punch?
"Argh!"
The scream snapped his lolling eyes back into focus just in time watch something connect with the side of his thug's head. What was the man's name again? Jake? Jack? He spared the mayhem behind him exactly one moment, then returned to barreling toward Ivy. The pet idea was dead. His libido could mourn it on its own time.
"You little bitch!" Nautilus swung at the blurry smear of green and red and missed by a margin due to his skewed depth perception, so he did the next logical thing and jumped at her in hope the acid that had left large patches of his skin raw and red would harm her just as severely as it had him. And to his credit, he had come oh so very close, and was only stopped only at the last possible second by 'rope' that looped his neck once, twice, three times over.
"W-Who?!" His hands flew to his throat, grabbing at what he'd initially taken for Ivy's vines, which turned out to be neither vines nor rope, but a carbon cable so fine his sausage fingers couldn't quite find purchase beneath no matter how frantically they tried. He glared behind him where the sidekick had both hands on the cable and was pulling, which should've been funny, and would've been, had Nautilus not begun to inch back.
Finally, he toppled backward, wheezing through airways that had been squeezed tight, and noted with some satisfaction that the freak's breathing was just as ragged.
Snarling, Nautilus rolled onto all fours, and found, to his surprise, that the bestial stance suited him considerably better than standing upright, letting the additional weight to spread evenly across his four limbs instead of crushing down on two.
'His lung must've partially caved from the punch earlier…' Thought Nautilus as he looped his arm around the cable, and wrenched the lanky silhouette toward him.
He's timed his fist perfectly to meet the, which would've been the end of the Imp—and what a ridiculous thing to call yourself—had the little bastard not loosened his grip precisely seconds before getting pummeled to a bloody smear. Nothing if not persistent, Nautilus didn't even try to recover from the missed punch, but rode the momentum instead.
He shot forth like a dog, teeth bared and dripping, only for something to seize his fist and yank him back down. Nautilus glared at his own shadow, which had sprouted a second head with six burning eyes and two extra arms locked tight around his.
That tiny glimpse was all he got before an electrified uppercut lifted him off the ground briefly and tossed his head back. Before he had the time to process any of it, a shadowy claw bundled up his hair and introduced the back of his cranium to the floor.
That, it seemed, wasn't enough for the Shade, who reintroduced his skull to the floor five more times every time it bounced back up. Head ringing, Nautilus could only stare blankly at the ceiling and wonder where it had all gone wrong while the freaks got chummy besides him.
"Ivy… You alright?"
"You sure took your time."
He'd never been a popular kid. Never had the athleticism for it, nor the drive to apply himself in any meaningful direction, though it wouldn't have mattered much regardless.
The kids who made something of themselves were, by and large, kids born to families worth something. His, meanwhile, could generously be described as white trash, with parents who wasted their lives combing garbage for copper wiring to sell for their next hit.
Was it any wonder he'd ended up becoming a criminal?
"Sorry, I was—coughs—late."
"What's wrong, Ro—Imp?"
When he'd first gotten the gig under Bane, he'd thought things would change.
Not necessarily for the better, in hindsight, but surely it couldn't be worse than slinging crystals in his tiny corner of the world. Bane was a renowned supervillain, after all…. That counted for something.
Only it didn't. His… Organization, and Nautilus was using the word incredibly loosely, was basically a high school clique convinced it was a kingdom. Nautilus had spent every day of his employment staring at the fools around him thinking the same thought.
He could do better, and not in the way a disgruntled employee dreams of a better job, but in the way a man looks at the person above him and sees plainly someone he could replace with relative ease.
"My lungs. I think they're a little… Collapsed."
"A little?! You're coughing blood!"
"Ah, it'll heal."
"I don't see how that will just—"
But what could he do? He was just a small-time, undervalued henchman who handled logistics, and was probably going to die one, or so he'd thought, until the day his boss went on another dick-measuring contest in Arkham and never returned.
Nautilus remembered it as vividly as yesterday.
Word had it the man had bled to death under a pile of rubber, which was a pathetically fitting end for a pathetic man who'd fancied himself a crime lord.
But credit where it was due, Bane HAD built an empire on the drug that made him all but superhuman, and when its head went, the rest of it turned on itself immediately, as empires often do.
"Pamela. Robin. The leader gave you two some difficulty, I see."
"No more than a rabid dog gives anyone."
Some had been afraid of what came next.
Others had been too busy jostling for dominance to think straight.
Not Nautilus…
Not even while he was poisoned by the Toxin the Clown and bag-headed imbecile had been pumping out of ACE Chemicals.
While the rest of Bane's people tore into each other and weakened from the lack of Venom, Nautilus had gone for the stash, secured it, and over the course of the next few instructive days, made pointed examples of everyone who thought his rule was up for debate.
It certainly hadn't been easy, but he'd succeeded where the rest failed, and had come out the other side with generational wealth and elevated himself to a seat of real authority from the nobody he was.
He should have won!
Not these freaks, who'd had their power handed to them by God or gamma radiation or whatever other cosmic accident had seen fit to skip him! His authority had been earned! Built! Bled and sweated for!
VICTORY SHOULD HAVE BEEN HIS, NOT THEIRS!
"Urgh…"
Though perhaps it might still be.
'Wakie-wakie, sleepyhead.'
Glaring daggers at the hallucination that had plagued him ever since he inhaled the first wisp of the Toxin, Nautilus rolled onto his back with a grunt. Another man might've tried to act discreetly, or lunge at the trio, but he was not stupid enough to think he could pull another fast one on them, nor believe he could reach for his backpack in secret given his size and the multitude of eyes trained on him.
The only other option was to hide the motion within another, which Nautilus succeeded.
Not even Bane had been reckless enough to push this much Venom through his system at once without weighing the consequences, but it would be well worth crippling himself, if he could drag one or two of them down with him! 'No…'
One would do.
One was enough to cement his name in Gotham's annals forever!
"Would you just stay down?" The red-skinned freak said as Nautilus spat out a slimy ball of green that had pooled between his teeth and would've startled him on better days. But what was this in comparison to the glory promised? "Lay back down, or die."
"I…" He grunted, his veins erupting in sprays of emerald. "Would sooner DIE!"
He immediately went for the freak, leading with a jab that found no purchase as the Imp tilted out of the way.
Nautilus followed with an uppercut that dragged dust off the floor on its way through the air, then wondered whether he'd thrown it at all as the freak swiveled asides. Again, the Demon's Shadow lurched for his neck, pulling him down where a knee awaited, knocking his already loosening teeth free from his bloody gums.
As his teeth clattered against the ground, Nautilus couldn't help but tear up.
'How…?'
"What do you think this is?" The Demon questioned, dragging his feet with one hand pressed to his own chest. "War cries don't win fights. They just make you loud… Loud and obnoxious."
Unwilling to lose, Nautilus tightened his muscles and went for a double anyway, which was how he ended up with both cheekbones broken… And to rub salt into the wound, he himself still wasn't entirely sure when or how it had happened.
"This is for the earlier uppercut!"
'I don't understand!'
He watched with bulging eyes as the blurring shape ducked beneath his bear hug before elbowing the side of his ribs with indifference. "And that was for the shit you tried to pull with Ivy!"
"HOW ARE YOU SO STRONG?!!" Cried Nautilus, his arms, neck and chest having swollen so incredibly out of proportion with the rest that he barely resembled a person anymore. His legs shook under the bulk he'd gained all of a sudden as his kneecaps finally surrendered to a weight they were never built to hold.
"I didn't skip leg days."
A joke… Of course it was a joke.
What had he expected…?
Blood and Venom wept from his eyes as he fell flat on the ground facing his thugs, both of whom had been frozen solid where they stood. Nautilus groaned, gums chattering away in meaty thuds as a pair of boots filled his vision. "Figured you'd put up more of a fight than this, Bane." The Demon drawled, stepping onto his leaking back.
Its cruel, haunting eyes held his as it drew a blade and severed the tubes feeding into his ribcage, shoulders and arms.
"Not…"
But it was too late for him.
"Not Bane."
It always had been.
"Nauti… Nau…" He wheezed, and breathed his last as the Venom spilled from his pores.
"Good riddance."
Rowan didn't even spare the man a second glance, and instead headed straight for the villains who'd watched the entire showdown. Neither seemed disturbed by it, though Freeze at least had the decency to look surprised. "I was under the impression that Batman didn't kill?"
"Batman doesn't," He shrugged. "And I didn't kill him. He killed himself."
Freeze's freeze gun had dropped, but Rowan noted it hadn't quite found its holster. "About what you offered earlier…"
"I figured we'd get back to that."
"I would prefer to verify if the offer stands."
"It stands. But…" He gestured at their surrounding, then pointed up at the ceiling. "You'll understand if I can't get you the resources you need just yet."
"That's… Reasonable. I do not enjoy hearing it, but it is reasonable." Freeze paused, then added with a touch of stiffness, "Cryogenics has always been my specialty. But I have, over the years, had cause to study both biology and neurochemistry well enough to be of some use to Pamela's efforts, should she want a second pair of hands."
Ivy, who had been examining a torn vine at her shoulder, looked up sharply. "You're offering?"
"I am."
"... I'll take it."
"Excellent. But I must first return to my wife. I have been away longer than I would have liked."
"Take all time you need." Rowan dipped his head in farewell, causing his ribs to start a protest over the motion. "You know where to find us once you've seen to her."
They watched the Doctor depart with the faintest skip in his step, as if he could already feel his precious Nora in his arms.
"Ya' know, for a guy stuck in a metal coffin," Rowan mused, "He's pretty quick when he wants to."
He glanced over to her, only to immediately regret all his life decisions.
"'That was for the shit you tried to pull with Ivy,' huh?"
"… I need you to make the cure."
"Uh-huh."
He trailed after her, lips twitching through a clumsy explanation she met at every turn with a variation of, "Mm-hmm, sweetheart," and "Whatever you say."