*Malcom POV*
*Location: Gotham City, New Jersey*
*Date: January 5th, 2002*
It's been a couple of days since my last case, well, major/magic-related case anyway, and it's been relatively quiet, both for me and Wallace from the one time he came here. It was after New Year's, he came here to tell me that some cops came poking around, alongside a certain cowled figure, aka the Batman. Seems like the Cops didn't like him snooping around, thinking he was just a weirdo in a costume, but well, that's only surface-level knowledge, as Wallace tells me.
A few of the less...corrupted actually welcomed him down there, the detectives as well, seeing as how they themselves were stumped at what happened down there. That's pretty much all Wallace knew, and afterward we played a few games of checkers. I got a board pretty much already, didn't buy, but I did know how to make a thing or two. He also asked me what I did with the scorpion carcass, and well, I just told him I put it in a special location, aka the basement, which was sealed from the outside world with only one entrance.
The whole place was heavily tainted with the foul energy of 12 of the fifteen beings; hell with the added Corruption artifact, it made twelve. I was now missing one from The Web, which made sense; this entity was probably fully sentient and knew how to hide secrets, after all, it was the fear of secrets. The End, however, more or less made sense. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if it was barely operating in the world, only making an avatar/leaving an artifact or two due to an accident or perhaps being self-made in a way.
The Extinction was the last one; this one was the newborn amongst all entities. Perhaps it simply wasn't strong enough yet to create an avatar or artifact, perhaps only being able to taint a location, several of which I had to...shut down myself to protect the city from more of their influence. I made several protection sigils to ward off their influence, most of which were placed inside/outside their room. Think I had to buy a couple of near-pure gems just to make sure they functioned correctly and were connected to the Earth instead of my mana supply.
That took me out for a while; either way, I did eventually gain the courage to turn on my crappy TV, both for the time period and because I died in 2025, so in comparison with those ones, yeah, it was the king of crap. Either way, I flipped through the channels and landed on Gotham's very own 'Gotham Gazzette' or at least their TV equivalent, same company, different medium. Either way, sitting at a dark brown desk with papers in hand, which I was half-sure didn't have anything on it, but hey, I could be wrong.
"We'll have more on the mayoral race later tonight, but right now we'll be going to our field report, Vickie Vale, who says she has an update on the mysterious deaths in our very own Gotham Sewers."
It then changed screens to show a tall, beautiful red red-haired woman wearing a gray trenchcoat with a microphone in hand. She was smiling at the camera, classic bit, and even then, I doubted she had any update to the story. Well, maybe she did, I did hear bits about her online about her being the Lois Lane of Gotham or something like that, either way, most media portrayed her as a damn fine reporter or something along those lines.
Either way, she spoke with a New Jersey accent, certainly not a rarity in Gotham but not heard very often, though. She was currently at the docks where the murders occurred, and she wasn't smiling as several police cruisers were lined up far behind her, but with very few cops around, which certainly caught my attention, seeing as how any evidence they needed to gather should've been done a few days ago.
"Thank you, Jackson. I am currently at the site where several gruesome murders took place and where several already deceased individuals' bodies were found."
"Right now, the police have apprehended a suspect and are currently bringing him out, oh, here they are now." She said as she turned around, and the camera zoomed in on the sewer tunnel.
I could already feel a sense of dread wash over me, and my back hairs began standing. I knew Gotham didn't take kindly to freaks, people like me who claimed magic was real, even though it indeed was, but not to the average person anyway, well, that and my burnt face/skin didn't win me any beauty pageants.
Then I saw him, Wallace Jones, who seemed to have shrunk a tiny bit, which was something I did notice when I met him two days ago, I believe. Right now, he wasn't a hulking figure anymore but rahter just a taller-than-average human, but still he could crush me in his hands easily without the spells I currently had on me. The problem was that he had several bruise marks on his body, and I think I could guess what happened.
Turning off the TV, I just leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes in frustration, knowing how the mystical side of the world can be fucky, especially went it involves these entities as they leave nothing behind, well, besides the bodies and artifacts I collect for safekeeping.
Getting up, I went to my office where I had a certain ongoing protection artifact, well, more like one that simply hides a person. It wasn't meant for me, and as I opened the drawer, I spotted a batarang, a small, sharp, or well, it was sharp anyway, object shaped like a bat, only a bit more stretched out. On it was a series of small symbols, each designed to hide the Batman from the sight of the entities: The Dark, The Corruption, The Stranger, The Lonely, The Spiral, The Web, The Eye, and The Buried. Each of these entities had a possible interest in Bruce Wayne/Batman.
What they would want with the man varied depending on the nature of the entity. Right now, though, I was about to wipe it off, remove my protections from the man. Because I suspected that even the world's greatest detective could make mistakes, and unlike Wallace, I was covered head to toe in bandages, even then, my fingerprints were burnt off.
Picking it up, I began to wipe them off one by one, because even if this version of Batman believed in magic or experienced it himself, I needed him to understand the volatile nature of these entities. The fear and dread they cause in people, most of all though...most of all I wanted him to find me, to find my little agency and question me, question the existence of these entities so that he could realize that Wallace or Killer Croc as the news was now probably calling him, I didn't bother to let it run long enough.
Once Batman realized the new role Wallace was going to play in Gotham's hierarchy, I was hoping he could contact whoever was in charge/on side, maybe figure out a way to get him out of Jail. Right now, though, I didn't have a messager spell, which was...something I would need to rectify that eventually, but for right now, until I could contact the man directly without walking up to his mansion and demanding an audience with him.
As I wiped the symbols off one by one, I felt like the weight of...something fall on me, not the weight of the world or something like that. No, rather it was through the city itself grew...darker, worse, like dread itself was starting to take a tighter hold on me and this place.
Was there a better way to do this? Almost certainly, but right now I was thinking of my new...friend, and the fact that even if he became the new Killer Croc of this reality, that didn't mean he had to go down the same path as the original did. So it was the best idea to thoroughly prevent that, aka stop him from getting admitted to Arkham Asylum or Blackgate prison, it would also probably help prevent The Hunt from getting an iron-grip on him, stop him from becoming more beast than a man. Prevent a whole Jackal and Hyde situation, so to speak, or well, at least I think that's what would happen, but that's more guesswork on my part.
I mean, I was a lousy detective, heck if I was any good at my job I wouldn't need magic to cheat my way through cases, well minus divination magic anyway. Even then, I wouldn't rely on it with beings like The Web around alongside The Eye. Those beings would probably come into conflict if that particular brand of magic were used. The fear of not knowing a secret, perhaps one so vital to your being, and the combined fear of a secret being discovered would be delicious to them, even if only one of them was fully sentient.
Either way, I twirled the batarang in my hand, thinking back to the time I first discovered I was in Gotham, and well, got this little beauty.
It was November 21st, I believe, or somewhere around that time, I first popped into this universe alongside the other entities. That was the first and last time I ever saw their true forms or the closest equivalent of it anyway, or rather the form that they appeared as in my eyes. No one else saw them that night, or at least no one that wasn't already crazy anyway. Either way, that night I wrapped myself in random clothing, anything that could fit me, and hid in an alleyway as thousands of new thoughts flowed into my head, hell, even now I didn't know if I rambled or not during that time, might've got the attention of a gangster or two seeing as how I was being corned in an alleyway with three people holding bats in hand.
I thought I was going to die, that this pain in both mind/body would be the last thing I ever feel. I didn't know if they were going to kill me or not, but as the leader approached me, I saw him, the Batman, come out of the sky. Even now, most people thought of him as a legend, but right now, I knew that he was real and that I was in Gotham. How I got this little batarang, though, well, one of the thugs ran away, dropping the bat in the process.
There was indeed more to the story, though, but right now...right now I was going back on my own personal promise, to try and protect the Batman from these entities, so that he could keep doing good work. This, however, Wallace's situation was...important and he deserved to be free, to try and live his life.