He called himself 'Scarecrow'...

Friday Morning, October 30

Kara walked into the kitchen to the sight of Bruce watching Alfred swatting Dick with a newspaper.

“Alfred, I think he gets the point,” Bruce said from his coffee, “Dick get the idea? Don’t be Jason when you try to be a fop.”

“I get it,” Dick said.

“I am highly disappointed in your behavior,” Alfred said much too calmly for the swatting he had just given Dick.

“Man, you screwed up,” Jason said as he yawned and shuffled into the kitchen, “You made the mustache twitch watching your antics.”

“That’s really bad,” Kara admitted.

“You have no idea,” Bruce said, “It didn’t twitch that hard since… well a long time.”

*

Bruce was seated in the terminal of the remote cave under the Wayne Building in the city center. Stromwell and Thorne were seated at the table fixing their coffee to their preferences. Everyone seemed surprised when Carla Viti (formerly Falcone) walked in with a police officer holding the door for her. Carla walked to the table with Thorne and Stromwell. Bruce was interested.

“Such a nice young man holding the door for a lady,” Carla said smiling.

“And a cop just happened to be coming in at the same time?” Thorne asked.

“Actually yes,” Carla said, “his partner was talking to a passer-by, she should be in shortly.”

“And you are talking on behalf of your family?” Stromwell asked.

“For now, yes,” Carla said.

Bruce brought up the chart of the Falcone family and noted that she was the sister and oldest of the surviving members of Carmine Falcone’s family. She had come in from Chicago where she lived with her husband Felice Viti and their children Johnny and Lucia. There was a note from Question that Lucia might be pregnant. Bruce noted another man entering the dinner with a duffle bag. He went back to the corner booth and gestured for a coffee. The other police officer, Sergeant Mallory entered. Jessica Mallory was dirty, but she wasn’t on the pay roll of any of the mobsters.

“So,” Thorne said, “What brings up together today, besides coffee and pumpkin pie? Speaking of which. Miss? Can I get a slice of pumpkin pie?”

“Sure thing, anyone else?” the waitress said as she walked by with the pot of coffee

“Can I get some decaf?” Carla asked.

“Pumpkin and decaf,” the waitress said, “Be right back.”

Bruce watched the other people in the dinner as he turned the directional microphone at the mob elders’ table.

“So besides pumpkin pie,” Stromwell said, “The man in the bird costume is the problem… Well not just him, but all of them.”

“Ozzy too much for you?” Carla asked, “Thank you.”

The waitress walked back over with a different pot of coffee and a plate of pumpkin pie. The mobsters all smiled.

“Thank you miss,” Throne smile and handed her a twenty, “I don’t expect change.”

The waitress smile and went back to the register.

“That should keep her out of the way,” Throne sneered with a smile, “Now, what about Cobblepot?”

“The problem isn’t so much Cobblepot,” Stromwell said, “Cobblepot speaks our langue, he might not play by the old rules, but he speaks our langue. No, the problem is the Cat, The Clown, that riddle nut… and hell all the other freaks springing up everywhere else. I fear that the new freakshow criminals are going to springing up more and more here in Gotham too. And I don’t want to wait on some Gargoyle to deal with them.”

“What are you proposing?” Carla asked.

“Kill on sight,” Stromwell muttered as quietly as he could so others at the next table wouldn’t here, “Any of these freaks trying anything in Gotham with anything more theatrical than a ski mask gets a boat ride into the swamp…”

Rupert Throne stopped eating for a second. Carla arched an eyebrow.

“I know you were hoping to congratulate me on a retirement Thorne,” Stromwell said, “But unless we fight back against these freaks, we will all be ‘retired’ by the freaks.”

Bruce noted the man in the corner booth with the duffle answered his phone. Bruce cued a directional microphone and frequency scanner to target that conversation… But he kept the focus on the mob bosses.

“Are you saying we should off the freaks in Gotham and off any more that try to move in?” Thorne asked.

“Would you rather get retired by some knock off of the clown or that boomerang guy in Central City?” Stromwell asked.

Bruce noted the man in the corner booth hang up his phone, then get up and leave… without the duffle bag.

“What do you think as lady of the house?” Thorne asked, “Will you be staying in Gotham or heading back to Chicago?”

“That hasn’t been decided yet,” Carla said flatly but then took a deep breath, “But, I will admit… The Freaks are becoming a problem in Chicago as well.”

Bruce made a mental note to check in on activity in Chicago and check that data against the JL and FBI data.

“We can all agree that these freaks will try to replace us if we give them the chance,” Stromwell said, “Cobblepot is just the one we can talk to.”

“I have to agree on both points,” Thorne noted.

The waitress over went over to the booth. Bruce saw her notice the duffle bag and then go over to the police officers. The cops came over and checked the bag. Bruce enhanced the camera feed of the officers and the duffle bag. Inside the duffle was a plastic bag for an auto-parts store and inside was a box for an AC re-charging bottle and hose. The Police officers looked at each other.

“What is going on?” Carla asked pointing at the cops.

“No idea,” Thorne said, “But maybe we should leave…”

Thorne dropped the fork and got up with Carla and the pair rushed out of the dinner as Stromwell turned to look at what was happening. Bruce was concerned. Something told him this was some sort of trap. The box erupted and a pinkish cloud shot out into the cops face and the pinkish cloud spilled out into the dinner and enveloped everyone. The gas turned green as it seemed to react to the air and then everyone started to react with shock. Bruce watched with a sense of panic…

“Spiders, spiders, spiders, spider!” Sergeant Mallory shouted as she pulled out her police issued pistol and put the muzzle to her left arm, “Get off! Get off!”

Bruce stood up as the police sergeant shot herself in the arm again and again and then in the leg. A thought came to Bruce, in Mallory’s personal file it noted that she is an Arachnophobe. Stromwell started shouting about a train! A woman screamed about her companion rotting in front of her. Another man looked at his dinning companion, a man, and attacked them while screaming about a demon. Around the dinner people started to attack one another in panicked frenzies.

Bruce felt helpless for a second as paralysis over took him and he was stuck watching the unfolding horror and carnage… But then he snapped out of it and took control. The small electrical devices he planted the night before on the firealarm system came to lift as he brought up the controls for them. He activated them and the gas was cut from the air as the water from the fire sprinklers washed the inside of the dinner. Bruce brought up the messengers override program and sent the alert to Gordon. They would have to send in riot teams in hazmat gear. All the people, including the two cops were who had their duty weapons were suffering from psychotic episodes and attacking people at random. Bruce then brought up the information on the man who left the bag.

*

“What do you mean hold back?” Bullock shouted into the phone, “Form a perimeter? What is going on?”

“Hay is that old man Stromwell?” the uniformed officer driver next to Bullock asked.

Bullock had just jumped in the closest cruiser when the alert of a riot in a diner broke. They had been at a shop a few blocks over responding to a call about vandalism. Now the head of the Stromwell mob family was limping out to his car, attacking his own people and rushing into the trunk of the sedan… AND PULLING OUT A GRENADE LAUNCHER!

“SHIT!” the driver screamed.

Stromwell limped out into the street and fired at cars. His aim was wild so he missed the cars with people but hit a few parked cars. Both men saw Stromwell turn and point the grenade launcher right at them. The driver wanted to try and swerve out of the way, but Bullock saw the options and reached over, he grabbed the steering wheel and screamed at the driver.

“GAS!” Bullock shouted as loudly as he could in the younger cop’s ear.

The response was automatic, the driver slammed his foot into the gas pedel as hard as he could. Time seemed to diolate for Bullock as the adrelin kicked into overdrive. He looked out the corner of his eye as the cylinder of the multishot grenade launcher rotated and a puff of muzzleflash denoted the shot being fired, the black dot coming right at them and lining up to strike Bullock in the temple, the spider webs erupting across the windscreen as the grenade bounced up into the air having struck before the distance fuse activated and then the impact into Stromwell and his face slamming into the windshield as the police cruiser struck the manic old man and the grenade launcher went flying. The driver slammed both feet onto the brake and Stromwell flew off the hood of the police cruiser. Both officers in the cruiser took a breath. As if to punctuate the scene like a Michael Bay film, the grenade shell exploded as it hit the ground behind them where the they had been.

“How… how… how did you know?” the driver gasped.

“In Vietnam the dumbass marines killed themselves trying to use those things as a shotgun,” Bullock said, “So they put a minimum arming distance in those things.”

“How far?” the Driver asked.

“No idea,” Bullock said, “Lets get that street pizza off the pavement.”

“What?” the driver gasped.

*

It hadn’t even been an hour since the drop and the runner was sitting in the interrogation room of the police headquarters. The runner hadn’t said anything. He was surprised when the door opened and the four uniform cops and three plainclothes detectives all left only to be replaced by the red haired man with grey streaks around his temples. The runner didn’t say anything as the new man in the room put a folder on the table. The mand opened the folder and pulled out a print out and put it in front of the runner.

“This is you entering the dinner with your duffle bag,” the man said.

The man pulled out another print out and put it down.

“This is you leaving the dinner with-OUT your duffle bag,” the man said.

The Runner said nothing. The man put another print out in front of the runner.

“This is my officers checking out the duffle bag,” the man said before putting more print outs in front of the runner, “This is bottle in the duffle bag spewing gas into everyone. This is the sergeant under the effects of the WMD you put in that dinner. This is what a customer did to their friend under the effects of the WMD. This is what a mobster did when he rushed out side and got a heavy weapon while under the effects of your WMD…”

The last page was a print out of a text message picture of three body bags next to burned out car. Two of the body bags were folded over indicating they had short bodies in them…

“Now I am going tow walk out that door and in are going to come Federal Prosecutors ready to charge you with ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity’. Do you have anything to say?” the police official asked the runner.

“I was hired to drop off party drugs for a dealer who dressed up in a weird Halloween outfit,” the Runner said, “At first I thought he just didn’t want to be IDed, but when he talked all weird I thought maybe he was sampling his own shit. These are real?”

“Taken from the internal security cameras of the dinner,” The Police official said.

“Then he must have been whacked out of his gord,” the runner said, “Can you make a deal?”

“What are you thinking?” The police official folded his arms.

“I give you this guy and nobody asks for the death penalty,” the Runner said, “I can retire in prison, I don’t want to rot on death row.”

“You hear that?” The police official asked.

A few lawyers came in and they put a generic deal memo in front of the runner.

“We can live with you getting life,” the oldest of the lawyers, “but we want the monster behind this. Thank you, Commissioner Gordon.”

*

Jonathan woke to the punch in the gut. He reacted and found the barrel of a shotgun pointed in his face… well just past the googles of a mask he was wearing. He had no idea where he was and what he was wearing.

“Take that shit off!” an angry voice shouted.

Jonathan was hauled up and the mask was ripped off. He looked around and saw that he was surrounded by people in FBI marked body armor and gas masks. Jonathan and looked at the mask that the agent had ripped off of him and gasped. It was a gasmask with a burlap sack hood over it.

“Take him away,” one of the FBI agents shouted.

*

As soon as the alert of the attack had gone out, Gotham Academy had gone into Lock Down, Bruce was forced to wait it out in the penthouse of Wayne tower surrounded by security, and the Community College has locked down as well… Fortunately Kara wasn’t in the school when it happened. Dick and Kara now sat at the terminal of the “Batcomputer” while Alfred went over chemical weapons defense systems.

“Dick Grayson love machine,” Dick said as he answered the call on the terminal.

“Dick, where are you?” Bruce asked.

“Home, Kara is here with me,” Dick said, “Where are you?”

“In the penthouse,” Bruce said, “Why is Kara at home?”

“I had a free hour so I was getting a coffee, and the campus locked down so I came home,” Kara said into the speaker.

“Am I on speaker?” Bruce asked adding a little flop.

“Indeed you are master Bruce,” Alfred stepped over, “The news coverage on the Telly isn’t very clear as to what happened, only that it was bad…”

“Well I suppose I am safe,” Bruce said in his flop tone, “I have security guys in gasmasks with machine guns protecting me.”

“I am sure that must feel very confident with your phobia of firearms,” Alfred noted.

“You can say that again,” Bruce said, “What do you have? Where is Barbara?”

“She had a class so she is locked down on campus,” Kara said.

“All they are saying is there was an attack of some sort down town and everyone should stay off the streets until further notice,” Dick said, “Do you have that fancy phone Lucius gave us?”

“Yes,” Bruce said, “Right here in my other hand.”

“I will put what ever comes up into the family cloud folder so you can see what we find out,” Dick said for the ears of the security people.

“Have you heard from Kate?” Kara asked.

“She is fine, she went to Hartford this morning and is outside of town,” Bruce said.

“Ok,” Dick said, “Let me get off and load up what reports I have so far.”

“Ok,” Bruce said, “I will talk to you later.”

The call ended, and Dick started uploading the files from Gordon’s computer to Bruce’s phone. One caught his attention, an email from a judge for an arrest warrant for one “Scarecrow… alias unknown…"