Remembrance (Oz)

Participants: Edward Nigma | Oswald Cobblepot

Open/Closed: Closed

Location(s): The Iceberg Lounge

Time of Day: 1:11am
Weather: Cloudless but nightmarishly cold outside
Summary: As Eddie drinks away his frustration with his fading detective ruse that is proving to be far too easy for him, events from his past will trickle to the surface and tie into a war that even a mind as creative as his own could never possibly fathom.


??????

The young boy was dipped into pure darkness over and over again as the hallway light outside his room struggled to stay on but continuously short circuited. He could hear the muffled voice of his father on the phone in a room a few feet down from where he sat on his bed. This wasn't going to end well. But of course, nothing ever did when he was dealing with his father. He had wished that his mother would just show up one day and take him away from Gotham. Away from his school. Away from the stupid adults that lived there. Even away from his friends. Wherever he went, he could always make new ones. Like most kids his age, he was savaged on by older and bigger kids occasionally, but unlike others, Eddie was usually keen enough to see when trouble was coming and veer out of its way before things went down. There was one mean soul that could never avoid though. The one that slept in the same house as him. The one that told him that he was worthless, just like the woman that birthed him. The one that left the marks all over him.

He rubbed his fingers over a curved scrape that ran down his opposite arm. The top of it resembled a handle and the remaining half slid straight and smooth. Part of the scab was peeled away towards the end of the shape, making it resemble a certain punctuation mark that was most often used to end sentences. The sound of the phone hitting the receiver filled the air. Footsteps came closer and closer to him and he could hear his father swinging the liquor bottle he held back and forth as he made his way closer and closer. He tried to come up with a way to get Ms. Kessler to leave his parents alone. But she was so enthused. So amazed by what he had done. All of his teachers and the school's guidance counselor had such high hopes for him now. They had no idea they were setting him up for his own private execution at the hands of his drunk, abusive father. 

The light in the hallway now remained on, but it was completely drowned out by the hulking figure that stood in front of him now. Total darkness once again. The sun being blocked out. "You pulled a fast one on them teachers, didn't ya?" The liquor bottle dropped to the floor beside the figure's two massive bare feet. "You got them thinkin' that your some kinda smart kid...some kinda kid that deserves to be treated special, cause of stupid test scores or whatever they think is so important...I know the truth about you, though..."

"Dad, please..."

The man's empty fist began to clench. Light seeped out from behind him as he walked forward. The view of the hallway was no longer blocked, but there was no way around the obstacle that stood in Eddie's way. "You cheated...you're a lying lil' con artist just like your mother was...you'll probably do anything to get what you want, just like her! And now, I'm gonna show you the error of your ways!"

"You've gone too far this time, Nygma!"

??????

Bruce Wayne's voice echoed around his ears as he moved the upper half of his body off of the countertop he rested on in the VIP section of the Iceberg Lounge. He wasn't quite sure how long he had been out for. He held up his pocket watch. "Only 1:15am." He could drink for another hour at least before he called it a night. His smartphone had been buzzing in his pocket on and off since before he rested his green carcass on a barstool. He had on set of fingerless gloves and a pair of black khaki pants rested around his waist. His usually green jacket sat on his shoulders. Normally he tried to dress elegantly, but the drab life of a private investigator was slowly making him care less and less about things that had always mattered to him before. 

One of the Sirens had been trying to reach him all night, but he wasn't really interested in whatever they had to say. The thing that he felt like he needed to do, for the first time in at least a few years, was outsmart and kill Batman. The Dark Knight. The only one worthy of the game, as Eddie often dubbed him. Eddie tried to make others think that his criminal past was behind him, but he always remembered. He still knew. The dip in the Lazarus Pit. Bruce Wayne, so elegantly close to death. There were many times before that, sure. Death traps, civilian casualties, priceless artifacts that were almost gotten away with. Eddie had smelled victory before many times, and he had even tasted it before, too, but like many of the costumed opponents that came to blows with Gotham's vigilante, true success was limited. 

He ran one of his jacket's sleeves up and scratched at his elbow. The spot where an oddly shaped scab used to be now had a stylized tattoo of a question mark inked onto it. "There he is...this guy's been asleep here for almost an hour!" An overweight bouncer pointed a finger at Eddie, showing his colleague what he had received complaints about. "The Vreeland lady said he was sawin' wood over here. Snorin' too loud...said it was disgusting...her whole posse just stormed out the door without tippin'..."

"That's the Riddler..." The other man responded. "He's a friend of the staff, we don't tell him to leave..." Eddie turned to the man that was initially disgruntled at his presence and promptly raised a middle finger. "You need anything else, Mr. Nygma? Some appetizers? A ride home, perhaps?" 


The Riddler picked up a bottle of bourbon that was sitting at his table in front of him and held it up. "I have everything that I need right here...thank you." He took another swig and then slammed it back down again. "We'll get you another one, house compliments!" As the two morons scrambled away and left him undisturbed, Eddie took a moment to ponder what he had been dreaming about. He remembered seeing a family member that he had decided he had simply forgotten the name of over time. Naturally, it was impossible for him to forget anything important, but this man was such an insignificant excuse for a human being that even though he fathered somebody as brilliant as himself, he was still a stain on the loins of history. A coward who retreated into drugs and alcohol to cure his resentment for his own foolishness. A bystander would say this was similar to what Eddie was doing now, but in Eddie's mind he was just trying to get rid of his own boredom. 

It was interesting, though, how the absence of Bruce Wayne's father made him into the self-righteous, tortured vigilante that he was, while the presence of Edward Nygma's father made him into the rightfully narcissistic, unstoppable force of intellect that he was. Would he have liked to have had a nice childhood in his mother's presence free of the abuse that he endured at the hands of a less evolved primate? Admittedly, yes. His father was just like Batman. All shouting and fists. But without him, what would he be? A drone in some office somewhere making a good living but slaving away to line a richer man's pockets? 

There was also a song that he had heard in his childhood that he recently had heard playing somewhere. Earlier today, before he arrived at the bar. He couldn't remember exactly where he was, but it may have been around the subway station by his apartment when he was commuting to a client's residence. Something about a court of birds...not penguins, of course, but owls, maybe? He took another swig of his bottle and wiped his chin with a napkin. Even as a boy, he always felt that song was connected to what he found after his teacher called his house and his father had beaten the life out of him. That set of walls underneath the railroad tracks in one of the city's abandoned business parks. His cane rested against his chair at his side. In a few minutes he would probably leave and grab a taxi back to his side of town.

Billowing smoke wavered and danced in the air, trailing out from towering distorted brick walls leering high and jagged. The trail dissipating within the soaring heights of snarling fanged gargoyles and twisted spires of steel and cobble. Crisp air tangoed with the frolicking billow of smoke, fading it into the stiff but frigid nothingness of clear but dark skies. Monstrous blimps soared through epic heights, with a star shine of spotlights gleaming down eerily into the slums and alleyways below. The brisk miasma illuminated by the glimmer of these looming blimps and neon street lamps echoed back down, ruffling out peacefully from a stick of chalk white.

Sickly greenish-black lips shrewdly perched a black stalk, as dark as the night sky, cased between a putrid vermillion border, and an oral commissure which looked as though it were caked in noxious stomach bile. A pointer finger and thumb were veiled beneath black linen, and lightly pinched the stalk of black which branched out and ended in the chalk white of a cigarette. Nicotine air breathed out as naturally as the frigid cold. The Penguin leered over a gaunt fellow, amidst his kingdom of chain links, trash, debris, dumpsters, and brick. A king of kings graced his apostles, five apostles, in a cozy nest of trash outside. Well dressed men, cloaked in pricey black coats and suits and ties huddled around a derelict man forced into a fetal position upon the dirt and rubble of the king’s kingdom. The man was stripped naked in the freezing air, tightly grasping his arms and legs as sneering vile men leered over him. But, in a form of twisted mercy and torture, he would not suffer from the cold of the elements, not from the agonizing skin biting cold... No, his skin sizzled and boiled, the dagger of heat piercing through his flesh and gnawing at his entire body feverishly. Fresh pain, slashing over every outer orifice, for molten black wood tar had been splashed over him, snarling heat sizzling away at flesh. Finally, sprinklings of black and white feathers were splashed in for good measure. The horrific guffaws of these sinister apostles echoed all around him, handfuls and handfuls of posh feathers tossed at him with cruel snickers all around.

The Penguin chuckled viciously, the glinting reflection of tobacco smoke billowing in the air clouded his monocle like the pride and ego which riffled in his mind. Torture and mutilation were soothing hobbies, a way to vent past frustrations and reflect on ones place in the universe. Black lips twisted and writhed into a crooked smirk, one which was beautiful and proud like the faint shimmer of smug pride seen in the Mona Lisa, but also profusely grotesque and licentious like Odilon’s cyclops. Self reflection varied from person to person. For some, it meant brooding grimly and fierce, leering over the scum of the earth with an unfathomable amount of grief and misery. Like black tar seeping over stone and writhing pillars of cobble and steel. Other souls might simply press a sacred tool to his forehead, a thumb pressed to the scratched side caressing it, lost, confused, and desperate for an answer from an unseen omnipotent force. Another soul might repress self torment within the inner id and ego. The unconscious misery tucked away beneath ones own inflated self worth, inner screaming and turmoil drowned out with the flow of liquor like a rush of the tides. Some have it easier than others, for a simple grin in the mirror is all it takes. A smile a day keeps one well dressed and ready to fight emotional turmoil. Finally there was Oswald Cobblepot, a pathetic fat little bird who hadn’t learned to fly. Vile ooze seeped from his lips like a squeezed sponge, drooling foul smelling green dribbling down with the writhing heights of his gaudy grin. The fresh aroma of human suffering entangled itself with the sashaying miasma of nicotine, and this was the cure to his ailments.

Perhaps things could have been different. For all of them. Perhaps the sizzling fire of black tar needn’t strike the sinew of flesh and rip through an anguishing youth. Perhaps the blast of gunfire needn’t have roared through the streets like the voracious roar off thunder with the trickling of pearls like rain. Perhaps a splash of life changing cruelty didn’t have to split a kind soul in two, ripping a good heart asunder and shattering some glimmer of hope in a lecherous rotting metroplex. Perhaps a timid soul should’ve had the approval of a bitter envious soul rather than the nightly beatings from homo neanderthalensis. Perhaps a bizarre creature abandoned by society shouldn’t have fallen into a pit of despair, with the following devil clawing it’s way out of green hellfire. Then there was little Oswald... Perhaps he could’ve been born with five plump and cubby digits. Fingers, something so small and inconspicuous, but something the good and average take for granted. Plump little fingers and not the mottled fleshy syndactyly which felt like leather strewn tight upon three spindly bones. Or a nose, tiny and cute, something a sweet and kindly mother could delicately pinch which the delightful giggle of a happy little boy. Not a jagged hook which leered long and fowl over putrid lips slathered I’m noxious green vomit, with a snarling squawking cackle like the coughing howls of an old man with terminal cancer. Maybe a lean and sensuous form with a scalding chiseled stomach or at the very least a formal human body rather than the sagging lump riddled mass of lard with leathery a lizard like hide. ”Y’er umbrella, Mr. Cobblepot!”

With a dainty flipper, Penguin’s cloth gloves delicately seized an antique parasol with a bronze hilt with a carved floral pattern and only a slight curve giving some vague resemblance to a fencing rapier. The linen of his arm length gloves danced around the handle, tracing the intricate carvings with the mangled tip of his thumb. The umbrella’s ribs were cozily draped within a black tarp, with the entire rod wrapped up such that it was only a black stalk with a copper hilt. Finally there was the very tip of the umbrella, the ferrule. It was not your typical conic shape, with either the sharp or flattened tip at the very end. It was an iron circle with the emblem of a cartoonish Adélie Penguin with a little tie around it’s neck. Oswald’s thumb slithered up the umbrella’s shaft, caressing the bottom spring with a firm press. But, rather than unfurling the ribs like a normal umbrella, there came a glowing red hue at its tip. The tiny iron penguin at the rod’s end shimmered a dark red, as though it were just resting in a pit of burning embers. A colorful pinstriped gangster grabbed the tar-feathered nude man’s curly brown hair, fingers firmly and painfully clenched within the fellows rugged mop such that his beaten and bruised face was brought to attention. A delirious gaze saw only a glimmer of red, and then the agonizing seering pain of iron burning through flesh cascaded across his forehead like a roaring volcano. "Heh-heh-heh-heh! Wrrnk-heh-hrrnk-wenk!"

”M-Mister Cobblepot....” What came next was a meek little weaselly creature by the name of Penn. A butler of sorts, Bruce Wayne has his strong fierce and snarky war hero, and Oswald in turn had his subservient timid little cockroach. He was a short little fellow, but still taller than Penguin. He wore a grey checkered suit with a tiny pin on its right breast, the pin being the emblem of a familiar arctic bird. Beneath he sported a similarly colored vest and slacks with a light blue button up and a bow tie made up of carved wood and a pressed fabric at the center. The sheepish fellow slithered up to Oswald’s ear, but Cobblepot paid him little mind. ”I-I sincerely beg your for the intrusion, sir... But, it would seem as though Ed-Edward Nigma is currently nesting at the bar....” Nothing unusual there, Edward (being an upstanding pillar of the investigative community) was more than welcome at Oswald’s establishment. Joker, Riddler, and Two-Face were special guests, meant to be catered to their every whim (though Harvey and Joker still being criminals meant they could only be served in the back). ”And he’s, well, he’s frightening away your cherished clientele, sir...” That changed things. Penn’s frail form finally caught the ire of Oswald’s monocle. Neon blue glinted out of the glass as a shrewd ire carefully glanced at the weasel. "Oh? And who has the emerald enigma frightened off, Monsieur Penn?” Penguin took in a huff of his cigarette, jovially admiring his own handiwork groveling on the pavement. An evil grin crept across his lips. ”Veronica Vreeland ~ and-and her entourage” Good news indeed. Oswald despised the miserable harpy... For, personal reasons. "Then I should personally thank him for this generous service he’s done for me." With a sneer, Oswald handed Penn his truck umbrella and waddled his way into the lounge.

The fresh aroma of seafood gripped the air, a heavenly waft to his jagged beak. With a right leg dragging across the Lounge’s carpet, Penguin limped a waddle through his palace. The black linen of his flippers caressed a posh lilac bowtie, tightening it such that he looked prim and proper for his cherished friend. For his part, Penguin wore a black tuxedo which shimmered gallantly in the sparkling white halls of his castle. On the right breast of his tuxedo was a yellow pocket square folded triangle and tucked snugly into his jacket. Beneath snugly pressed dinner jacket was a white pleated dress shirt and yellow cummerbund which was tightly wrapped around striped lilac slacks. To finish the ensemble, Penguin’s frazzled black hair was nestled under a large top hat with a lilac band around it, and the cuffs of his sleeves were topped off with ebony eagle claw cufflinks. Oswald waddled along, slipping behind the bar to greet the Riddler warmly. He held his arms out wide, but soon cringed at the disgusting drunkard before him "Edward old boy! You look-.....” Like a s#!% stain smeared across the walls of Arkham. He looked like a s#!%stain smeered across the walls of Arkham. He looked absolutely dreadful, but... A proper gentleman knows how to beat around the bush (as the saying goes). "Well, you certainly look....” From the look of things, this reformed lifestyle was not as well suited for the Riddler as Oswald had hoped. To see the only other cultured criminal within a four hundred mile radius in such disrepair was disheartening, and frankly? Disgusting. Cobblepot’s crooked nose winced upon an immediate whiff of whatever crawled up and died in that lime blazer of his. “Egads, Edward...” Penguin’s flippers reached for the pocket square nestled upon his right breast. With a cough and wheeze, he pressed it firmly to his nostrils with an appalled sneer. "Rrrrnk, you smell like Cornelius Stirk! I should know, I can intimately recount the rancidity from when I recruited Croc.” Yes, that short venture to the Asylum was no vacation, that much is certain. That filth riddled cesspool is no place for a civilized supervillain, especially one of his standing. But, back to the Riddler, this was disgraceful... This drunkard was not the criminal compatriot the Penguin was once proud to associate with. Perhaps a good pep talk was all he needed? "Tell me, what brings the Padishah of puzzles to the Penguin’s nest, anyway?”

| Edward Nigma |

Droplets of rain could be heard bouncing off of the roof above him. Perfect. Just as he was about to pick up and leave, the downpour of bad weather that he had heard Summer Gleason babbling on about earlier today had begun, and naturally, he was without an umbrella. Perhaps another few hours of soaking his sorrows away in alcohol would be alright? After all, the mighty Iceberg Lounge was opened all day and all night, and killing himself with drinking would be far less of a crime than killing himself with the sheer boredom of his job as a private investigator. 

It all started when Eddie first realized that Bruce was back in town. Alive and well and still under the mask of his dashing playboy billionaire facade, Gotham's favorite son had once again taken up the mantle of the Caped Crusader and was parading about the streets and dishing out justice like old times. When Eddie first encountered the new bag of flesh that was inhabiting the wings of the bat in Bruce's absence, he could immediately tell that he was dealing with somebody completely different. The rumors had been true. The Dark Knight had, indeed, bit the dust and Eddie had been robbed of his ultimate goal. The imposter left in his place (who was obviously Dick Grayson) was nowhere close to being his intellectual equal. Edward had no motivation to return to crime because, without the true Batman, there was no challenge. 

He could live happily in his average, ordinary world without needing to torture, kill, extort, steal or vandalize because he knew that the only threat to his intellectual capacity was no longer alive anymore. He was perfectly fine running circles around the police, dealing with whatever trouble Selina and Harley had gotten themselves into, and helping suspicious trophy wives discover what their husbands were really off doing when they weren't coming home from work on time. Was it a means to an end that he was settling for? Yes. But he had nothing to prove to anyone else. Bruce Wayne was dead. He had no competition. There were times when he had thought about heading over to Metropolis and challenging Lex Luthor, but it would be hard to do any damage in that city without that pesky Superman getting in the way of things. 

"Edward old boy! You look-.....”

As the voice of an old friend interrupted his internal ramblings, he sipped at his bourbon bottle again before realizing that there were also a pair of shot glasses within arms reach at one of the tables next to his. He needed to mind his manners. He grabbed the two shot glasses and filled each one about halfway. 

"Well, you certainly look....”

"Come on, Oz...out with it..." He thought to himself. The notorious Penguin had never been one to mince words, and this had obviously proven to be a hindrance to him whenever making an honest effort to bend the truth. 

“Egads, Edward...” Eddie shook his head as his friend began coughing and wheezing uncontrollably. Yes, he had forgotten to put on deodorant earlier this evening. Something he never would have forgotten before, but honestly, he just wasn't too prone to caring about much of anything these days. "Rrrrnk, you smell like Cornelius Stirk! I should know, I can intimately recount the rancidity from when I recruited Croc.” Eddie chuckled and took his entire shot without waiting for Oz to sit down. "I would imagine that I feel about as bad as I smell, I suppose." Oz was an old friend of his (probably his best) and, in Gotham, his most trusted comrade. His new friendships with Catwoman and Harley Quinn were alright, sure. But he couldn't really discuss sawing somebody in half in a deathtrap or flooding a building with nerve gas and challenging the people who were trapped inside to escape with them. While not always known to be a killer, the Penguin, like himself, was indeed a sadist. His style of crime did not mesh very well with Edward's, but they still had much in common. "It's good to see you, my friend." He reached over and patted Oz on the shoulder. 

"Tell me, what brings the Padishah of puzzles to the Penguin’s nest, anyway?”

Eddie threw his arms above his head with jovial sarcastic excitement. "Why, my thrilling ventures as a productive member of society, of course!" He pointed to the wall-mounted television across the room. It was a reshowing of footage from earlier today about the swift justice that Batman had delivered to a group of motorcycle gangs earlier in the week. Summer was shooting her mouth off about how great the Caped Crusader was, as usual. Although it was disgusting, it was, sadly, typical nonsense for the city's television stations. "Have you noticed anything about him, recently, Oswald?" He would never tell anyone what he knew. What he remembered. But, of course, he could let his friends know that he was smart enough to know that the original was back and more bad than ever. He reached a fingerless glove out and lit Oz's smoke for him with a dirty vintage zippo that was covered in fingerprints and rust. "The way he...grapples more than he glides...the way he moves in combat...the tone of his voice...his response times to crimes that are reported...the way...his...cape...hangs off his shoulders..."

Eddie was obsessed with Batman and he could see every detail. Every deviance. Every single thing about the imposter that was different from Bruce's image. "It almost feels like the return of an old friend..." He poured another shot into his glass and downed it. "But as long as he's here and I haven't killed him, I simply cannot stay away from...crime...violence...traps...puzzles..." He wiped his mouth off with the arm of his shirt. As the words left him in a twisted whisper, he could feel relief. Telling somebody about his need to return. His explosive desire to do what was forbidden by the law again. At that moment, nothing would fancy him more than setting up a meticulously detailed forensics scene where the police and Batman would have to analyze every fallen hair and every single bit of dust in order to determine what he was up to. Just the thought of it almost had him salivating. 

"Have you killed anyone recently, my dear friend?" Oh, the thought had crossed his mind earlier. Had his old friend Oswald been having any fun lately? Generally, the Penguin was not the most murderous villain in Gotham, but when he did away with someone's life he certainly made a show of it. Eddie was not ready to return to his old handiwork just yet, but in a meantime he could live vicariously through a demented comrade.

There was also something else he needed to ask him. Something, arguably, of much greater importance. Some of Penguin's men had recently reported that there were a few drug shipments in the harbor that had been missing some inventory. Helping to solve this mystery would surely make for an excellent way to start back in the swing of the things on the opposite side of the law again. Oswald surely did not like things stolen from him, and would of course, appreciate any assistance offered.

"I also heard that some of your drug shipments had been broken into...any leads on a culprit? I think I could be of some help..."

Oswald Cobblepot

There were several bar room areas scattered around key points of the Lounge, but this particular one was perhaps Oswald’s favorite. It was in a quiet reclusive section of the casino and main dining room area, far away from the hustle and bustle of the trendy young trust fund children which made the bulk of Penguin’s clientele. But it was also quite close to the Jazzy Live Orchestra which made for a soothing ambience in the late evenings. Then of course the small space made the luminous chill blue aesthetic the Lounge offered pop just that extra tiny bit. All in all it was a snug little slice of heaven only an intellectual like Edward Nygma could truly appreciate.

The pitter patter of rain droplets amidst a rhythmic piano accompaniment was an all too warm and welcoming experience. It all left a cozy feeling in his belly which already made the evening quite unforgettable. Lately it became a very rare thing to treat himself with a soothing nonchalant evening with a close confidant, which was honestly a crime. A sophisticated intellectual evening with a good friend was a highly coveted experience to the regal restauranteur, one which he’d never ever want to pass up. Edward passed a glass of whisky bourbon his way, and though Oswald often preferred a fruity cocktail, he did also enjoy the slight singing fire in his throat from Whisky. For a brief moment, the garishly dressed gangster considered offering up a fine vintage to share with his comrade, but... The smell of Nigma’s breath alone said enough that the bretwald of bewilder hadn’t a clean enough pallet for fine wine.

Penguin, despite Edward’s horrid stench, slid in to the stool seat just beside his comrade, which was frankly a testament to how much the nefarious baron of birds enjoyed Nigma’s company. He slid his top hat off and let it nestle just beside himself, allowing greasy slicked black hair to fall unfettered unto his neck. He then slid an ash tray from the counter to their slide, snuffing a warn bud around a short mound of ash. In his heart of hearts, he knew deep down it would not be some monstrous bat creature or rival gangland overlord that would topple his empire, but rather his own bad habits... Cancer was a real b#%$&, after all. A smooth black box was pulled from his pocket, a case of Treasurer Luxury Blacks, only the best for the king of Gotham. But he was more frugal than that... These were only for special occasions, Oswald more preferred the also quite luxurious but far cheaper Nat Sherman’s for his day-to-day bad habits. Peeling back the gold foil, Cobblepot perched one of ten thin black stalks with gilded tips to the end of his cigarette holder, which Nigma so graciously lit with a ratty looking zippo. In turn, Oswald extended a second ebony cigarette to his cherished friend and simply lent an ear as Edward prattled on about that damned rodent like some deranged intellectual lunatic; and that’s precisely what the Riddler was in this instance. Not a deranged lunatic in the sense of Jervis Tetch with his inane ramblings of turtles, tarts, and the tweedles two, but more in line with The Question’s proposals of a technocratic elite hellbent on world domination. At first glance it all felt like hogwash and lunacy, but creep past Edward’s obsessive chattering, and you’ll find an element of truth and clarity to his thoughts. But all the same, Penguin most certainly did not share the Riddler’s obsession. ”Friend might be pushing it, old boy.” Oz replied quite dryly with askance half-lidded eyes. They both had the scars to prove that point true. “Are you insinuating some... Credence to Harvey’s hypotheses of multiple batmen? Now don’t you go expunging Waylon’s robot theory as well...” Cobblepot snidely remarked knowing full-well Ed would not enjoy the comparison to Killer Croc.

”Have you killed anyone recently, my dear friend?" What a loaded question that was. Death was a very.... Powerful force, not something Penguin took lightly. Unlike, say Joker, a fellow who faked his own death on a bi-monthly basis, Penguin found a certain art, beauty, love and fascination with life. The poetry found in something so fleeting and wonderful, slipping away within a moments notice... There was also the fact that he was a somewhat legitimate man of commerce now, not the common art stealing hood of years past.

”An upstanding bird such as myself? Never...”
**Bang!**

By the sounds of it, Penguin’s gentlemen outside grew tired of their plaything. Quite possibly due in part to the sudden rainfall. Cobblepot feigned shock and horror with a crooked grin, putrid lips stained green could not hide the twisted morbid delight he felt. The crooked king of fowl arose from his stool and waddled towards two gentlemen partaking in the sport of darts, young men having a casual night out not unlike what Edward and Oswald were now having. The first snickered with folded arms as the second tried and failed successively to even hit the dart board. Oswald chuckled, offering the untalented lad a sincere pat on the back as he passed by. He waddled his way behind the bar, and past a display of various liquors towards an umbrella stand with intricate diamond bars molded into it. ”You know me, old boy ~ an umbrella for every occasion.” He reached into the rack for a fairly thick parasol with a very defined ridge. His flipper traced along the bottom line of the shaft towards the button spring which was shaped like the trigger of a powered drill. With a slight one eyed squint, he aimed the umbrella between the two lads and at the dartboard, pulling the trigger thrice, with three nails pelting the dart’s bullseye right beside each other almost perfectly. With jaws agape in awe, both lads exchanged astonished glances towards the connoisseur of chirp. Oswald gave a smug grin, and danced his three fingered glove along the tied panels of his parasol nail gun. ”Thieves.” Not to say it was for the thieves he fenced for, but ones which stole from him. The implication being, a nail would be fired at every digit of an unfortunate fellow with sticky fingers in the Lounge. Strung up by ten well placed nails like the Lord Jesus Christ upon the wall. The parasol was sheathed back into the rack, and Penguin delicately scanned for the next. His flipper coiled around the hilt of a black umbrella with the nickel head of an eagle. He pointed it again at the dartboard, pressing the shaft’s trigger and allowing the umbrella’s canopy to unfurl. He pressed it a second time, and the canopy was immediately shredded apart by rotating helicopter rudders. ”Stool pigeons.” There was a particular hiss of malice with that one. Penguin deeply and passionately loathed snitches... He himself snitched on his fellow rogues quite often, but he despised with often brutal retribution when it happened to him. Though this particular brand of tool was most infamous for his quick escapes, it also made for a powerful and painful weapon. In the inferred example it was most preferable for the irony of having a tongue sliced off for tattling, but the most realistic worst case scenario was simply having a face ripped to shreds by the fierce rudders of a helicopter blade. Both were perfectly acceptable. The two lads timidly stepped back from the moving blades as penguin collapsed the rotters and sheathed the mechanical umbrella back into its nest with its siblings. He then reached in and pulled out a third umbrella, this one with a bright velvety tarp and strange cylindrical muzzle with three holes at the end. ”Even the odd voluptuous hen.” He honestly did not take rejection well. With a click of the trigger a burst of flame roared from the umbrella’s muzzle towards the dart board, which was quite enough for the two young men who immediately fled the room in a panic.

”I also heard that some of your drug shipments had been broken into...any leads on a culprit? I think I could be of some help..." The bird of a thousand umbrella’s took on a neutral expression when the emerald enigma revealed this knowledge to him. Penguin preferred to keep a tight lid on matters such as that, any sign of weakness such as that could prove not only detrimental, but quite possibly fatal in his line of work. But, of course know-it-all Edward Nigma would know this little tidbit. So it was matter of how he acquired this intel... “Mm... Spies nestled in the Penguin’s roost, old boy? Or was this just in the metaphorical grape vine?”

“The cartels have held a monopoly over illicit pharmaceuticals for quite some time. I dare say it’s high time for a bit of old fashioned American trust-busting, ha-ha!”

“I suspect subterfuge on their end, but I’m stretched far too thin to investigate the matter, but by all means, it’s not as though the Bat could be of aid.” There were so many matters which needed to be tended to, and this made the nefarious king of the Gotham underworld quite pressed for time. There were matters in Central City which called for his attention, not to mention Cobblepot’s heated rivalry with Bruno Mannheim and Intergang, on top of global affairs and various dilemmas which loved to rear their ugly mugs. The missing drugs just seemed to be a minor problem in a sea of massive ones. With perhaps the biggest problem of all being that ebon-winged wretch from before.

”Speaking of, what do you make of all his cowled cronies running amuck? Not Harvey’s aforementioned hypothesis, but of this Batman Incorporated nonsense? I grow rather ill of robins, ravens, and other vigilante reprobates scouring every gargoyle across town.”
| Edward Nigma |