Club Mystery (Open thread)

[Edward Nygma]

'Electric' was the only way to describe the atmosphere in Club Mystery. Pulse-pounding music blasted from the expensive sound system, leather-bound dancers - male and female - gyrated in cages suspended over the green lit dancefloor, and a plethora of clientele in outrageous (and sometimes too revealing) outfits graced it's neon stage.
The DJ, a woman in a low-cut black PVC leotard with green fishnets, a choker, and wild gravity defying hair, amped up the volume. She killed the lights, and the dancefloor was illuminated only by the multitudes of neon green question marks which suddenly flared brightly.
In the East End of Gotham, Club Mystery was quite literally a shining beacon for those who wanted something better than seedy bars and run-down clubs to ply their trade. Drug dealing was one of those trades; the club staff almost openly encouraged it, though for the sake of public image and lawfulness, they acted as though they condemned it.

The back rooms were the primary breeding grounds for illicit activities. Curiously unwatched (citing under-staffing as a reason), the back rooms played host to everything from orgy's to drug hand-offs, prostitution to BDSM. Nothing was against the rules, unless the cops showed up. Nothing but murder.
Murder was something Edward Nygma would not tolerate on his turf, under any circumstances. He even chose -publically- to remain ignorant of the activities in the back rooms, though from time to time he would make a special appearance. Often, his appearances were unquestioned; whatever Nygma chose to partake in was his business, as long as he kept the club open.
Tonight, however, was not one of those nights. Tonight he remained in the basement, an area strictly off-limits to the customers. Here, in his hole, he was protected from the noise of the world above.
Here, he could keep an eye on the entire club (and an ear if he chose), and issue instructions to his staff without having to mingle with the 'little people'.

He had other things on his mind though. The club was running smoothly, as of his last check-up. And for some reason, locked in his basement, with his cameras and his security traps, he felt concerned. Concerned over recent reports, defiling the Batman and raising the late Harvey Dent on a pedestal that he no doubt deserved.
The man had the courage to put away half of Gotham's criminals. And the public is ]surprised [ihe was killed?[/i]
Something about the media scandal didn't ring true, but he'd had customers breaking down the doors all week trying to get information on the whereabouts of the Batman. Either they wanted revenge before the cops caught him, or they were hoping for a moment of glory and a get-out-of-jail-free card by beating them to the gold.

The door buzzed. Edward's eyes flicked to the security monitors, and he saw one of his entertainers waiting at the door.
"Come in Cherise" he spoke, releasing the lock via a switch in his desk.
"Mr Nygma, there's a customer complaining that his drink was watered down" she sighed. She looked almost comical; her green hair was twisted high above her head, and her make-up had been applied to resemble that of a gothic clown, masking her exasperation with a permanent black grin. It reminded him of the Joker incident that had recently overtaken Gotham, but he pushed that grim thought from his head.
"Very well, make sure he gets an additive in his next beverage" Edward muttered, loosening his tie. "Speaking of which, are we shifting those drugs?"
"The defective ones the Chechen loaded off on us?" Cherise asked, leaning against the doorframe.
"Precisely those" Edward replied; he'd have thought it was quite obvious which drugs he was speaking of.
"The back rooms are full of people freakin' out, Mr Nygma. Dunno what was in those substances, but it sure as hell ain't MDMA" she laughed.
"How observant" Edward muttered, and opened a newspaper; he skipped the dreary articles on the Joker, and the supposed man-hunt for the Batman. Such news was becoming old and over-hyped.
"Cherise, dear, have the affected patrons escorted from the club and keep it quiet. And make sure to use the back door" he said, not looking over his paper.
"Yes Mr Nygma" Cherise said quietly, and left the room. The door buzzed as it locked behind her.
Edward turned his attention to the monitors once more. The back rooms were, typically, dominated by fornication, and the dealing of substances. Most of the dealers were planted by himself, to shift a batch of defective substances left in his posession by the Chechen. Upon discovering the effects of the drugs, he'd attempted to contact te Chechen and demand reimbursement, but the foreigner had disappeared along with his dogs.

As predicted, several of the back rooms were full of people in the throes of a full hallucinogenic panic attack; not too dissimilar from those affected by the attack on the Narrows a year ago.
Rolling his eyes, Edward returned to his newspaper. How predictable.[/color]

[Batman]

The Batman was nowhere to be found. Tonight, Bruce Wayne was in party animal mode even if he was technically slumming. His suit was immaculately tailored and in the neighborhood of blue. On the surface, Bruce was hitting the Gotham clubs. Sitting at a table drinking with a particularly fetching lady friend, Gotham’s heir-apparent downs a shot of something or other and his eyes move about the bar as one of his companion goes on about something or another. He is not here to have fun despite all appearances. He is here to observe the rats as they scratch on the walls. He had gotten a tip from a gentleman who had just suffered a sudden seven story fall that there was something off about this place -- this being Gotham that meant that it must be truly horrid.

“-- and then she said, ‘Why do I have to pay for it? It was supposed to be on the house!’ Well anyway, at that point I just lost it.”

“Excuse me, Chastity, I need to get away for a second. Could you be a dear and ask for another martini? This one’s about half water.” With this, he excuses himself and heads for the restroom. Walking past endless throngs of humanity dancing in unison to repetitive block-rockin’ beats, Bruce just so happens to make a wrong turn and heads quite unintentionally toward the backrooms.

“This isn‘t the restrooms. And I don’t think I’m drunk enough to -” As he wanders around trying to find his destination. One of the rooms, opens up and a man steps out who seems quite unusual. His pupils are massively dilated and he seems to be in a cold, panicky sweat. Everything, his own hands, Bruce’s face, the tiles on the floor seem to terrify him immensely. Wayne watches the man stumble about in abject panic before approaching him. One hand in his pocket, he palms what would ordinarily seem to be an inhaler and uses it to inject antidote into the man’s arm as he appears to help him up. "A little too much to drink?” Bruce narrows his eyes as he thought of how long it took Doctor Crane to get out of Arkham. Unless of course the underworld was still using his toxins, but this entire place reeks of the good doctor, what better place to spread fear than an area with mind numbing sound and flashing bright lights.

He heads to his former table where his date moving toward a corner in the room, screaming. He mutters under his breath and escorts her outside. With a quite shot of anti-venom, he hires a nearby taxi to take her home, stating that he still has some drinking to do. The taxi driver calls him a few choice names and Bruce moves toward another illustrious club.

In time, Bruce returns to the club. His entrance now is just as flashy as the one before where he started handing out rolls of 100s to random patrons as he made his way to the bar. This time, he cost Eddie a few hundred dollars to replace a skylight as he burst through it in a shower of glass and a wave of cape and cowl. He immediately got into a defensive position as he yelled out to nobody in particular. “Where’s Crane?”, still assuming the Scarecrow to be the man in charge.

[Edward Nygma]

Nygma found himself in a slight dilemma. The Batman, on his premises. Half a club full of toxin-induced citizens. If he called the police, they'd likely arrest him too, and close down his establishment. Unless...
He radioed one of his bouncers.
"We have a rodent problem. Take whatever is left of the Chechen's stash and remove it" he ordered. "Keep your face covered".

On his security monitors, he watched the Batman, and the crowd of people backing away from him. The DJ must have stopped playing when the skylight went through; either that, or the Batman's voice carried enough weight to stop an entire dancefloor in it's tracks.
Using the master controls at his console, he dimmed the lights once more, and switched on the neon-green question marks built into the walls and floors, setting them to pulse on and off; a nauseating effect for anyone with too much toxin in their system. People began to panic.
He activated the speaker system; he was safe enough down here in the basement, with it's 6 inches of reinforced steel running through the walls, ceiling and door. Nevertheless, as he spoke, he began pulling off his clothes and putting on an alternate outfit.
"Welcome, Batman" he said, his voice ringing throughout the club. "An unexpected, and not entirely welcome guest, I must say. Word has it you're a hunted criminal these days".
He put on his green trenchcoat, leaving it unfastened, exposing the ring of question marks tattooed on his stomach.
"If you can find Doctor Crane, you're very welcome to him, though how does one find a man who is nowhere and everywhere at once?"
He applied chalk-white foundation and green-black make-up, to disguise his features.
"Think quickly, Batman. Even though I haven't called the law enforcement services, I imagine a few in here aren't as generous with uninvited guests" he laughed, slipping on aviation goggles to mask his eyes. He finished the look by loosing his red-black hair from it's ponytail, and fished his cane from the closet.

On the security monitor, he watched his bouncer stashing the remaining drugs into a canvas sack, and pulling a mask over his face, a simple burlap bag with eyeholes.
Oh, you poor fool, Nygma thought to himself, as the masked bouncer ran out into the club, past the Batman, heading for the doors. Should have used the back doors.
The Riddler sat back comfortably in his chair, and decided to watch the spectacle unfold via the security monitors.

[Batman]

He heard the voice welcoming him and gave the security camera a cold stare. “You’re not Crane. You’re just pushing his product.” The Batman growled at the disembodied voice.

"If you can find Doctor Crane, you're very welcome to him, though how does one find a man who is nowhere and everywhere at once?"

The Batman’s eyes narrowed as he glances from the speaker to the crowd cowering around him. So far none have been stupid enough to attack. “I don’t have time for games.” He spoke too soon. A small timer trying to make a name for himself tries to hit him in the back of the head with a well-placed fist. It doesn’t work. As his backhanded jab is intercepted by the Batman’s fist, the Dark Knight begins to squeeze, forcing his opponent into submission. Unfortunately for him, his body uses this brief distraction to swing a chair into his back sending a loud thud through the dance hall as the metal furniture slams into Wayne’s back. He reels letting out a groan falling to his knees from where he slides a leg into his attacker’s knee. An elbow to the neck as he comes down to the Batman’s level is enough to finish him off. The Caped Crusader spits as he stands cracking his neck.

"Think quickly, Batman. Even though I haven't called the law enforcement services, I imagine a few in here aren't as generous with uninvited guests"
“And bring down the wrath of Gordon? There’s enough good cops to put every one of you away for a long time. I’ll just make sure they’ll need an ambulance.”

Dum dun dum dun dum dun UWF Thud.

For those not versed in onomatopoeia, that was the sound of Nygma’s stooge’s boot treading across the tile as fast as his legs would carry; the Batman extending his arm and closed fist for a clothes line and the bouncer falling on his back. Not a group to let the Terror of the Underworld rest on her laurels, the DJ draws a handgun and begins to fire it. The Batman darts behind a support beam before flinging a Batarang at the unfortunate’s weapon knocking it out of his hand. This is not before the twin calamities of having one of his wild shots grace his shoulder and his previous perpetuator gaining his wind back and trying to run again. Having none of that, the Caped Crusader channels his inner line backer and tackles the bouncer falling onto a metal table with him as a cushion. The Batman wastes no time and strikes the man’s fast with a furious barrage of fists.

“Who was that over the speaker?”
“I don’t know!”
“Liar!”
He gets ready to strike him again when he hears the unmistakable wail of sirens. He’s already a shoot-on-sight target so it would be in the Detective’s interest to make himself scarce. The Batman reaches to his belt sending a grappling hook from it which zips him to the roof top.

[Edward Nygma]

Edward sighed, watching with passive amusement at the Batman's attempts to bring some order to chaos ultimately failed.
"Games are all we have, vigilante. If not for the games we play, we'd all simply be freaks in masks" he retaliated, then made a hasty retreat as the camera's over the entrance picked up the arrival of squad cars.

The club wouldn't be shut down, this much he knew. Despite the do-gooder Gordon, the GCPD still held little sway over the courts. Most of the law was still entrenched knee-deep in money from the mob.
Besides, Edward Nygma didn't even exist in the eyes of the law. If they wanted him, they'd have to link him to Edward Nashton, and he'd seen to it that all traces of his former identity had been silently washed away.
Taking the back doors, Nygma found himself in an alley, full of sick clubbers. Evidently, the fear toxin - for that's what it had to be, surely - had spread further than initially thought.
"I want the rest of that stash destroyed" he said to one of his bodyguards, who was overseeing the dispersal of the clubbers. "It's already brought the Batman down on us. That's the kind of attention we don't profit from" he sighed. Already he was planning on smoothing things over with the mob, who would in turn see to it that the right people handled this case.

"Your car is ready, boss" the bodyguard said, gesturing at a beaten-up Volkswagen Beetle at the end of the alley. Nygma preferred not to travel expensively; it attracted attention.
"Good. Keep your eyes peeled... the night-rat will probably be around still" he said in a hushed tone, then headed for his car, escorted by his bodyguard.

[Batman]

He saw them yes, perched from on high but, he let them be for now. He could swoop down, break some jaws and give the boys down in county a few more last minute inmates. But with that much drug money, the big fish, the one on the speaker would be able to make bail, through normal means or passing illicit materials to the bench. Dent had started to clean up this city but it didn’t go far enough before that bastard turned him.

Instead, the Batman did a fly-over. He spread his cape as he leapt between buildings. There was a three-fold reasoning behind this. First, if the new guy’s underlings were stupid enough to allow the Dark Knight to draw their fire, the audio cues for firearms would draw in the law. Secondly, he could, if he was among them, get a look at this new enemy. Finally, and most importantly from the Batman’s standpoint, it allowed him time to give this new threat a present. From his palm, Batman dropped a homing device on the roof of the car.

From his new perch the Batman made his way to his own car. Eschewing the cape and cowl, as he hadn’t driven to the club in uniform, the Batman moves home in his own down market vehicle, for similar reasons to Nygma. Even Batman’s playboy half wouldn’t be stupid enough to drive a Lexus into crime alley if he planed to go home in it. It would help with his flaunting but still. “Scarecrow’s M.O. combined with the Joker’s face paint. This one’s going to be interesting.”

He contacted home base.
"Alfred, I'm coming home."

[END]