Batman 2 - Batman Returns (17 page)

B
atman was in the middle of a nightmare.

First, his car had been taken out of his control. Batman punched out the instrument panel in front of him. It looked like half the system had been rewired.

How had they managed this? He had only left the Batmobile alone for a few minutes. The time and expertise to accomplish this sort of thing was staggering. They had not only rigged the Batmobile, they had also foiled those warning systems he had built in to tell him of just this sort of tampering.

And once the car was under another’s control, it was being driven at top speed directly toward the Christmas crowds. Apparently, The Penguin wouldn’t be satisfied with only the Batman’s death. He wanted innocent bystanders to die as well.

Batman had underestimated his opponent. And he would pay for it, unless he could figure out some way to retake control.

Batman ripped out a handful of the new wiring, then a second. The car sped forward. A lever hummed as it started downward. The Penguin was activating the weapons systems. Batman grabbed the lever and pushed it back up with all his strength.

“Batman!” The Penguin barked on the monitor. “I know you’re not having a swell time, but let me tell you. Taking control of your vehicle, mowing down decent people, and laying the bad vibes squarely on you—makes the hairs in my nose tingle.”

Batman was trapped.

The lever that controlled the Batdiscs slammed down again. And this time, no matter how much he tried, Batman couldn’t budge it.

Penguin glanced up at his third monitor, the one hooked into cable TV.

“Batman is out of control!” a reporter was shouting. “First he murdered the Ice Princess, and now—”

His reporting was cut mercifully short as one of the Batmobile’s Batdiscs thunked him on the side of the head. My, The Penguin thought, he’d always wanted to do something like that. Probably mussed the reporter’s hair up no end.

He turned his attention back to the Batmobile.

“Ha!” he said to his camera. “The flimsiest evidence, and all those taterheads turn on you! Hey, just relax, and I’ll take care of the squealing, wretched, pinhead puppets of Gotham.”

He looked out of his driving monitor. Screaming Gothamites were fleeing every which way in front of the marauding Batmobile. But wait! Look at that defenseless grandmother they had left behind. She stared at the on-rushing car, frozen with fear. This was the sort of victim The Penguin liked to see.

“Helpless old lady at twelve o’clock!” he announced for Batman’s benefit.

The Penguin pressed down on the accelerator.

Something around here still had to control the car, if only so that the vehicle would respond to the remote signals. The Batman just had to think it through, but fast, before The Penguin’s command of the Batmobile killed someone.

He pulled open the ceiling panel, revealing a mass of fuses, the real control center of the Batmobile. But which one? He tried to visualize all the charts he’d drawn when he’d helped to design this thing. Third one from the left should do it. Or so he hoped.

Batman reached up and pulled.

The Batmobile squealed to a halt.

The old lady, only a few feet in front of the suddenly still vehicle, ran away at last.

One saved, Batman thought. And one more to go.

T
he Penguin cackled happily on the monitor. For the merest of instants, Batman thought about disabling the monitor instead.

But that would save his ego, not his life.

“You gotta admit,” The Penguin croaked. “I’ve played this stinking city like a harp from hell!”

Not for long, Batman thought. He drove his fist through the monitor, silencing The Penguin with a shower of sparks. There. Sometimes you just needed to feed your ego.

And maybe there was another way to stop the Batmobile.

He kicked downward with his heel once, twice, three times. There. The floor panel had bent enough for him to pry it up.

He pulled it free, revealing a mass of wires and spinning gears.

He punched down quickly, trusting his glove to protect him from the gears, and popped open the bottom panel so that he could see the spinning ground below. There, mounted to the Batmobile’s undercarriage, was some sort of antennae; no doubt the heart of The Penguin’s control.

Batman reached down and snapped it in two.

Now it was time to get out of here.

Batman hit the accelerator and shot between two of the police cars and out of Gotham Piaza.

What?

The Penguin couldn’t believe it.

“Came this close to a perfect evening!” he cried in anguish. He pounded the controls. “Iced the princess. Blew away Batman. Almost got married. Killed the bitch.” He held up two black-gloved fingers.
“This
close!”

But somehow Batman had gotten away. Gotten away! It was enough to sour The Penguin’s whole day.

Luckily, he had his other plans to fall back on. The mayor’s race, for one. And after that, his masterstroke, so magnificently nasty that he could forget any small failings here.

Not that Gotham City would ever forget. No, he was sure that, once his plans were complete, they’d remember Oswald Cobblepot—forever.

Batman wasn’t in the dear yet.

Three police cars had managed to give chase. A couple of them had cops firing at him. Not that that was a worry. Even a damaged Batmobile was sufficiently bulletproof. But if possible, he needed to shake these cruisers without hurting anybody else.

He rummaged through the exposed wires on the dashboard. That was a second problem; he needed to override whatever damage The Penguin had done to his vehicle, and get the Batmobile’s functions operating at a level that would help him with his escape.

He made a sharp right. The cruisers managed to follow. The street narrowed in front of him, into a space so narrow that you could barely call it an alley. Much too narrow for the Batmobile, or the police cruisers. It was time for one of those special Batmobile functions right now.

Batman flipped a switch. Nothing happened. The switch was dead.

But the wires that controlled that switch were still here behind the dashboard. Batman pushed aside the torn instrument panel and quickly pulled the two loose wires out of the mass. He sparked their ends together. Now.

The windshield wipers began to beat back and forth. Not at all what he had wanted.

“That’s funny,” Batman murmured. How many wires had The Penguin’s thugs tampered with? He frowned down at the assembly around. But where could the wires be that he needed?

The alley was coming up fast.

“Now I’m a little worried—” he began. “Oh.” There they were.

He connected the right wires this time.

The sides of the Batmobile fell away as the wheels realigned themselves beneath him, making his vehicle a streamlined bullet of a car, narrow enough to fit through the space immediately ahead—something he called the Batmissile.

They tried to follow, but only succeeded in wedging their vehicle between the walls. From the noise that followed, Batman surmised, that the other two cruisers piled into the back of the first.

He was in the clear. He leaned into his turn, and disappeared into darkness.

He just wasn’t in the mood.

Max Shreck stood by his side, trying to be cheerful enough for both of them as he guided The Penguin toward the platform where he was scheduled to give his speech.

“—so he survived,” Max said dismissively. “Come on, be a mensch. Stand tall—” His voice trailed off as he saw the look The Penguin gave him. Perhaps Max recalled that, the last time Oswald Cobblepot had felt this way, he’d almost bitten off somebody’s nose. Of course, since that incident, the lovely Jen seemed to have kept her distance, too. Some women were just too sensitive.

But Penguin couldn’t think about women. Now
that
was truly misery! No, all he could think of was Batman—a living, breathing, totally intact Batman.

“He didn’t even lose a limb, an eyeball.” He sighed at the indignity. “Bladder control!”

Max wouldn’t listen. He waved at the cheering crowd in the plaza, and pointed at the latest banner: RECALL THE MAYOR.

Straight and to the point.

“Point is,” Max insisted as he waved to the audience, “listen to them. They’ve lost faith in the old symbols. They’re ready to bond with you, the icon of the future.” He smiled encouragingly. “If it works, don’t fix it—”

Well, yeah, they were yelling for him, weren’t they? He could hear a chant rising from the throng. “Os-wald, Oswald, Os-wald.” Yeah. Oswald Cobblepot, hero to the teeming millions of Gotham City. Not the Mayor. Not Batman. Oswald Cobblepot. He stared gloomily at the special deluxe black umbrella he carried for the occasion.

“We’ll celebrate tonight,” Shreck insisted, “at my annual Max-squerade Ball. Shreck and Cobblepot, the visionary alliance!”

But Penguin’s eyes were on the crowd. They were all screaming. They were all screaming for him. More important, a lot of them were women, screaming for him. No, they weren’t just women, they were babes; cheap, maybe, tawdry most certainly, but they were
his
babes. Screaming Cobblepot Groupies. It gave him a reason to go on. To think that a poor boy, abandoned by his parents, raised in a rotting exhibit on the edge of the sewers by emperor and king penguins, could get these kind of babes. This was America—truly the land of opportunity!

The Penguin moved to the microphone, and the cheering redoubled. He could feel the adulation of the masses, and it gave him strength. When he spoke, his voice was no longer a simple squawk. Now it was a booming squawk.

“When it came our time to ensure the safety of our city, did the Mayor have a plan?” The Penguin began. “No, he relied on a man. A ‘bat’ man!”

The crowd screamed their adulation. For The Penguin, more than just Oswald Cobblepot, abandoned child and sometime crook. No, they screamed for Oswald Cobblepot, supreme ruler of Gotham!

Yes, The Penguin could
really
get into this!

Selina Kyle stood and watched all the hoopla, and all the cheering, for the two men who had tried to kill her.

Max Shreck.

Oswald Cobblepot. A. k. a. The Penguin.

She didn’t begrudge them their few, pitiful moments of glory. She wanted them to go as high as this campaign would allow.

The heights, after all, would make their fall so much more satisfying.

Catwoman wasn’t playing anymore. It was time for her to sharpen her claws.

B
ruce Wayne found himself watching television again, and another of those never-ending media events with The Penguin.

And this time, The Penguin was talking about Batman.

“A ticking time bomb of a costumed freak,” the overblown politician exclaimed to the crowd, “who finally exploded last night, spraying this city with a shrapnel of shame!”

The Penguin was there. The crowd was there. The TV cameras were there. It was time.

Bruce walked over to his aquarium, and reached into the replica of Wayne Manor in the middle of the exotic fish. He fished out a key from an upper bedroom window.