The system chime pulled Jude's attention away from traffic. He slowed the bicycle just enough to avoid clipping a taxi and pulled up the notification.
[MISSION AVAILABLE: Deadly Poison Ivy]
Introduction: Those who travel the world should know some ancient teachings. First: Don't enter the forest, don't cross the water. Second: Don't mess with beggars, monks, women, or children. If some unlucky people commit both of these offenses simultaneously, here is a third, relatively new warning: Sooner or later, you will have to pay for what you have done.
Note: Poison Ivy is not an easy character to talk to. Although she is a vegetarian, she is extremely strong and resourceful.
Status: To be completed (0/6)
Reward: Advanced First Aid Mastery
Jude read through the mission twice, his expression settling into resigned understanding.
Save six people. That part was clear enough. The "unlucky ones" who committed those crimes were obviously the gangsters he'd sensed through his natural language connection. They'd gone into a forest—the botanical garden—to mess with a woman. Specifically, a woman who could control every plant in a three-block radius and had violently strong opinions about ecological preservation.
The system wasn't wrong. Poison Ivy really wasn't easy to deal with. Even in his original universe, her reputation for environmental terrorism, botanical murder, and city-wide hallucinogenic pollen attacks was legendary. Just your average Tuesday for Pamela Isley.
Jude mentally mapped the location he'd sensed earlier. Three kilometers away. At his current speed? Just a few minutes.
"I hope this can be resolved peacefully," he muttered, angling the bike toward a side street. "With words rather than violence."
Even as he said it, he knew the odds were terrible. This was Gotham. Peace was just what happened in the three seconds between gunshots.
The bicycle flashed through streets and alleys at a speed that would make traffic engineers weep. Jude wove between cars with precision, pedestrians barely having time to register his passing. One moment an empty sidewalk, the next a blur of movement and the faint hum of spinning wheels.
Behind him, Gotham's chaos continued its usual programming. Sirens wailed, glass shattered, and a street preacher shouted about the end times. Jude pedaled faster.
The Batcycle's engine roared through Gotham's streets, a sound that made criminals reconsider their life choices and GCPD officers instinctively look the other way.
"Alfred, is there any sign of the Joker or the Riddler?"
Batman had only debuted a year ago, but being a vigilante in Gotham already meant a shattered routine and patchy sleep. Last night, he'd failed to catch the Joker. This afternoon, he'd been forced out early because of the Joker's attack and the Riddler's subsequent escape.
"I'm afraid there's no new information on either of them for the time being, Master Bruce," Alfred's elderly voice carried the patience of someone who'd spent decades managing impossible situations. "The Riddler disappeared from street surveillance after leaving his question mark in the square. I suspect he knows the camera blind spots. As for the Joker—there's absolutely no news."
Which meant the Joker was preparing something catastrophically theatrical. Lying low wasn't his style.
Batman's mind worked through the problem in reverse. The Joker couldn't laugh right now, which meant he fully understood the weight of the Riddler's sarcastic, bloody message in the square. The Joker was hunting him. But how? The Joker wasn't a detective; he relied on chaos, manipulation, and leverage.
"Master, let me remind you again," Alfred interrupted with perfect timing. "Carmine Falcone has ordered his entire family to search for Mr. Nygma. They are to produce his body within the hour. Twenty minutes have already passed."
Batman's hands tightened on the handlebars.
The Riddler and Carmine Falcone had no prior connection. Why was the Roman so desperate to hunt him down? Falcone was calculating; he didn't issue family-wide kill orders on a whim.
"It's the Joker," Batman said aloud, the pieces clicking together.
Using an opponent's force against them. It was classic Joker. He needed the Riddler found, and Falcone had the resources to search the entire city in an hour. So, the Joker had grabbed someone Falcone cared about and made a brutal, effective offer.
"With Falcone's manpower, they can probably find Mr. Nygma within the hour," Alfred noted, his professional neutrality carrying underlying concern. "If we're not quick enough, the Riddler will be shot dead."
"I know, Alfred." Batman took a corner hard enough to make the tires scream. "Check Falcone's family situation. See who went missing after that TV broadcast. They're the leverage."
"Understood, sir. I'll begin checking immediately—oh," Alfred paused. "Master, it seems the Falcone family is very fast. A team has already gone to the Botanical Gardens. If you want to save Mr. Nygma, you'll have to hurry."
Of course they had. Falcone didn't build an empire by being slow.
"Send me the location."
The Batcycle's heads-up display updated instantly. Northeast sector. Batman calculated his routes. If the hunting team was already there, he had maybe five minutes before things turned lethal.
"Master, there is one more thing," Alfred's voice took on that particular tone that meant he was about to say something either very important or very British. "A reminder, if you will."
"Go ahead."
"You may want to bring an axe." A perfectly timed pause. "According to the surveillance video, Mr. Nygma appears to have gone there to look for Ms. Pamela Isley."
Batman's mouth twitched. Barely noticeable behind the cowl. Alfred's suggestion of using forestry equipment to fight a woman who practically was the forest was a very cold, very British joke. Batman never laughed on the job, but the corner of his mouth might have shifted microscopically.
"Noted," he said dryly.
When Jude arrived at the wall of the botanical garden, about ninety seconds had passed. Had he been in a car, he would have been stopped for doing seventy kilometers per hour through city streets.
He scanned the area. No cameras visible. No pedestrians. Satisfied, Jude stored the bicycle in his System space and approached the three-meter-high chain-link fence.
He cleared it easily, his enhanced physical fitness making the jump feel completely natural. For a moment he was airborne, the evening air cool against his face. He hit the grass and rolled, dissipating his momentum smoothly and silently. Advanced Climbing Mastery included knowing how to land without sounding like a sack of bricks hitting concrete.
He came out of the roll in a crouch, already moving. His natural language sense pulled him forward like a magnetic compass pointing toward aggressive botanical manipulation. His body moved on autopilot, dodging surveillance cameras through pure instinct.
After sprinting for ten seconds, Jude reached his destination and stopped dead.
Thick green vines spread out from the forest edge like a nightmare of sentience. They were piled in intertwined layers, creating a fortification that bristled with long, hideous thorns. The kind that didn't just puncture—they tore.
Six ragged men hung suspended in the mess.
Their black suits were shredded into strips of fabric. Their discarded guns lay scattered on the ground below, as useless as children's toys.
The vines wrapped around them were constricting tightly. Thorns pierced their arms, legs, and torsos. If the men struggled, they would suffer the equivalent of a death by a thousand cuts, flaying a layer of flesh off their bones.
But they weren't struggling. They weren't moving at all.
The vines were poisoned. Of course they were—this was Poison Ivy's territory. The toxins had already rendered all six men unconscious. Their breathing was shallow and irregular, their skin taking on a grayish pallor as the poison shut down their organs one by one.
They were dying. Slowly. Inevitably.
Jude shook his head, exhaling quietly. "I knew it was like this."
Dealing with Poison Ivy in a botanical garden was like dealing with Aquaman in the ocean. You were fighting someone in their element, on their territory, with their rules. These Falcone thugs had walked into a green fortress and expected to win through firearms and intimidation.
They had no desire to survive. They just didn't know it yet.
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