Chapter 71 – Distraction Pt. 1

August 26, 2010 - Happy Harbor, RI

Mt. Justice

21:10:16

“Attention, team.” 

The cowled and mud encrusted visage of the Batwoman filled a projected screen of a videolink, the image hanging above the assembled team members. Robin sat beside her, similarly filthy, in what Connor recognized as the Batmobile’s interior. They had tracked said mud across the cushy, space age fiber seats as well.

The team were all milling about, coming to attention now that the call had come through, absent Apollo. They were back in costume, and Superboy felt a strange comfort from the Jacket. This past week had been the longest he had gone without wearing it since he began his new life with it.

“Take a Zeta-Tube to Gotham City immediately and rendezvous with Robin at these coordinates.” Batwoman instructed, wasting no time or words.

“What is the mission?” Aqualass asked, hands on her hips.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Apollo?” Kid Quick interjected quickly.

“Don’t wait.” Batwoman ordered. “There’s a creature loose in my city.” She said, a grim pronouncement. “You are not to hunt it or engage it. Only to track it until I return with a solution.”

The Caped Crusader’s brusque attitude brooked no argument, but Ms. Martian and Kid shared a look, and Aqualass’ eyes narrowed. The lack of explanation and tight rules of engagement rankled them, but nobody spoke up. Across the videolink, Superboy saw Robin turn her head to look at him, inclining her head slightly.

“I have something on the ‘creature.’” Superboy offered, raising his hand awkwardly. The team and Batwoman all swiveled to stare at him, and he swallowed at the sudden intensity of Batwoman’s glare, even across a video screen.

“...And?” She probed with a growl.

“I recognize the ‘creature.’ From my world, I mean.” He said, fake coughing to cover his awkwardness. The team seemed surprised but Batwoman was inscrutable. “Things don’t always match up from there, but Robin told me about the situation, so I did some digging. I think this one is a match.”

He punched a few commands on his Eye Phone to link to the Cave’s system and shared his work. The images Robin had forwarded him popped up, along with a headshot of a handsome blonde man smiling dazzlingly, and several news articles. A glance at the scowling Batwoman pushed him to speed it up.

“The ‘creature’ appears to be a supervillain named Clayface. He’s a shapeshifter with a body consisting of something very much like clay but is more like. He can take any shape, shifting between semi-liquid and solid forms, and add more mass to himself. Very little hurts him, and he can form tools and weapons from his body; lockpicks, hammers, knives and stabbing weapons. The clay that makes up his body means he’s both big and strong, on top of being tough. The big thing is that ALL of his clay is him; any piece of him can reform his body.” Superboy explained, and saw the team were surprised while Batwoman’s glower only grew deeper.

“How do you know all this stuff?” Ms. Martian asked with a genuine curiosity.

“Uh, well, I mentioned I was pretty obsessed with superheroes back home, didn’t I? I read everything I could about them. There’s a lot of media about them and their adventures and I lived for that stuff. Plus, spending a lot of time arguing with nerds on the internet.” He explained with a nervous laugh. 

Ms. Martian looked thoughtful at his answer, but Kid looked flabbergasted.

“Heroes in your world have what, books and movies made about them? You learned from that?” She asked, incredulous.

“Uh… yes, but comic books. Mostly. And the internet.” Connor said ashamedly, incredibly aware of his friends’ attention to what had often been an embarrassing hobby in his old life. It was made more awkward for being a lie. Much more agonizing was the deep scowl of Batwoman on the video link over their heads as she silently absorbed his presentation. Further questions about his hobbies, and necessary lies to cover for the truth, were  preempted by her.

“Did your… comic books… tell you Clayface’s identity or weaknesses?” She asked, voice tight as she pinned him down with her blank white gaze.

“Both, actually. I looked up the guy here, it all matches up.” Superboy said, face starting to heat from the attention and having to bring up his cover story again. It warred with excitement of actually being able to use his knowledge to do something good for once. Knowing about Bane hadn’t stopped her from duping him. Guilt gnawed at him as he added more links and pictures to the display, blowing up the glamorous headshot. 

“Matt Hagen, actor and heartthrob. Award winning actor, mostly romances and horror movies. Classically trained actor, critics loved him, but audiences only liked him as… ‘eye-candy.’” His mouth twisted as he said it. It felt very weird to be talking about a male actor that way, but it was one of the ways Terra was a mirror image of his Earth. Hagen was apparently an excellent actor, but it didn’t earn him popularity the way his appearance did.

“Wait, I remember this guy! He was in the remake of Dread Castle! He was the cheerleader who gets murdered in the first act.” Kid said with a snap and Ms. Martian perked up.

“Oh, I love that movie! I watched it-” She began before Batwoman cut her off.

“Focus.” She commanded, and everyone fell silent. “Superboy?”

“Right, you’ll have to show it to me sometime.” He said with a smile to Ms. Martian. “But things didn’t go well for Hagen. He ‘disappeared’ into roles, so he embodied the role and nobody remembered it was him. Which was great for his craft but bad for his career; critics called him ‘the man with a million faces’. The directors wanted him to be Matt Hagen, pretty boy, and he wanted to be a method actor, but that didn’t pay. So he ended up with more roles he hated, and got pretty disillusioned. Then there was an accident…” Superboy narrated, bringing up an article showing a twisted and burned car wreck of a tiny sports car, wrapped around a telephone pole.

“Hagen was in a car accident. Cops said he was drunk driving, Hagen claimed he was being chased by a crazed stalker. Regardless, he was badly hurt, especially his face. It was… bad.” He said simply. The pictures of Hagen in the hospital were hard to look at, even for him, so he hadn’t included them.

“After the accident, he would never be the same again. Nobody wanted to hire him as ‘eye-candy’ now, or as ‘the man with a million faces’.  He took off, his publicist saying he was ‘seeking alternative treatments.’ Nobody knew what happened to him, he disappeared for years. But I checked the Guild files, and because I knew the other Hagen’s story, I think I know what happened to him.” 

The next file he loaded was a surveillance photo from February of this year, a CCTV image from the airport in Marrakesh. A blonde man wearing a surgical mask and sunglasses huddled into his coat, scars peaking around the mask and glasses. The scarred man was next to another man, with long black hair and a swarthy complexion, fine featured with high cheekbones and regal in appearance. The two were very close, the darker man with a companionable arm on the blonde one. 

Superboy was watching Batwoman closely as he put up the picture, and he saw the slightest tightening of her eyes and a hiss of an intake of breath. He schooled his own expression, but it confirmed his suspicions. Batwoman knew the other man in the photo.

  Shit. They were together. 

At least they can’t have a secret love child in this universe that Bryce doesn’t know about. That would be… implausible.

“That’s Hagen, in the mask. And next to him-”

“Ali al Ghul.” Batwoman finished, her face the image of control despite the microexpressions Superboy had picked up on.

“Son of Ras al Ghul, master of the League of Assassins. This part is speculation on my part.” Superboy admitted; this had never happened in the Batman comics. “Hagen wanted ‘alternative treatments’ so he went to unscrupulous people who could provide things like that. In my world, he worked for a corrupt pharmaceutical magnate who gave him an addictive compound that would temporarily let him reshape his face. Hagen used it to return to acting, but the magnate forced him to act as his spy and saboteur on the sly.  When Hagen tried to steal the formula for the compound, the magnate’s goons gave him all he could handle. That’s what turned him into Clayface.” 

“So Hagen turned to the League of Assassins? What could he offer them?” Ms. Martian asked, seemingly unperturbed by the grim story Superboy had related.

“Uh, his skills, Ms. M.” Kid offered. “If they could provide something like the compound SB mentioned, he could be their spy. Or train more spies with his acting skills. ‘Man of a million faces’, remember?”

“Oh. OH!” Ms. Martian said, clapping a hand over her mouth. “The acting! And shapeshifting! I’m sorry, I forget sometimes that humans can’t all… do… that.” She trailed off awkwardly as everyone turned to stare at her, turning a bright pink as she did so, in brilliant contrast to her pea green skin.

“Right.” Superboy said, trying to deflect from the Martian’s girl’s casual assumption that every human could shapeshift, as she and all her species could. “I think Hagen was trading his skills for access to-”

“The Lazarus Pit.” Batwoman finished, and he looked at her screen in annoyance. But he froze when he saw her eyes were boring into him with an intensity she rarely used. He immediately began regretting giving the briefing as he felt the weight of Batwoman’s suspicions landing on him. Frantically he tried to remember if he had covered his tracks in the Guild’s databases to justify knowing things he shouldn’t, like about the Lazarus Pit. 

Would the Justice League of Earth 0 really have put details like that into their licensed comic books? Shit, I might have overplayed my hand here.

But Batwoman’s attention shifted to another question.

“You said you also know Clayface’s weakness. Enlighten us.” She pointedly did not ask.

“Oh! Right.” He answered. “Cold.”

There was a beat of silence as she simply glared at him over the link, until he realized she wanted him to continue.

“I mean, cold powers. Freeze rays. Ultracold temperatures, absolute zero. Stuff like that. Clayface is super liquidy and active, but freezing him will at least temporarily pin him down. Enough that he can be sealed inside of something he can’t break out of.” Superboy explained and Batwoman actually seemed shocked at his ready answer.

“Batman usually used Mr. Freeze’s tech against Clayface. So just bust some of that out.” He said confidently, grinning.

There was another uncomfortable beat of silence before Robin chimed in from beside her mentor.

“Superboy… Mr. Freeze doesn’t have tech. He’s a meta-human with cold powers from a cryogenic accident.” She informed him, and he felt a sudden need for a freeze ray that apparently didn’t exist as he felt the weight of Batwoman’s gaze return.

“Oh, shit.” He mumbled, tapping his chin. “What about… Captain Cold’s freeze ray?” He asked, turning to Kid who sadly shook her head.

“The ‘good captain’ has some kind of biometric lock to his weapon. He must have more than one but nobody has ever gotten it to work without him, and it self-destructs if you try to crack one open.” She informed him, using a familiar cadence. “The Quick Museum actually has several on display, showing the evolution of the design.”

“It does? Shit, I gotta go back and see that exhibit.” He replied, stroking his chin and trying not to nerd out about supervillain ray guns.

“Eh, its not very… cool.” Kid quipped, and snapped a pair of finger guns at him. 

“Terrible.” He deadpanned, but clammed up as he felt the full psychic weight of Batwoman’s disapproval at their banter. 

“So… cryo powers are required to capture Clayface.” Batwoman stated. “Something, which suddenly occurs to me, that we have a woeful lack of on the Guild’s roster.” 

Superboy’s face fell as he mentally tallied off the Guild members he knew, reaching the same conclusion. They had a rather staggering lack of elemental power, except for Captain Atom, who was more of a ‘periodic table of elements’ than the classical elements. Unless Zatarra knew a spell for this, and the man just might, considering how free form his backwards spoken magic was. 

“Well, what about… no, those are all bad guys. Why are so many ice guys villains?” Superboy asked out loud, which made the rest of the team ponder the question as well.

“Regardless, now I have a line of inquiry on finding a solution to our ‘Clayface’ problem.” Batwoman interrupted. “So it seems I still need the team to keep tabs on Clayface, and keep him from harming any civilians. His demeanor from our encounters so far is violent and mercurial, rapidly switching through modes of speech and mannerisms. He appears confused and in pain from his condition. Find him and keep track of him while I workshop a solution. I’m sure I can find a working cryotech weapon… somewhere.” 

Superboy believed her. Probably somewhere in the bowels of the Wayne Tower building, where the security feed that Robin had shared came from. He had seen reports coming out of Gotham this morning about a monster attack at the building, and a tiny mention at the bottom that Bryce Wayne and her adopted daughter Richelle Grayson had been present at the time of the attack, but escaped unharmed.

His eyes were drawn back to the image of Ali al Ghul and then back to Batwoman.

I really hope I’m wrong about this. But if Hagen was working for the Assassins, and was ‘close’ with Ali al Ghul, and then got turned into Clayface and attacked Wayne Tower? Its a pretty easy line to draw between Batwoman and Ali being a thing and whatever is going on here. This is some fucked up ‘beloved’ romantic spat, I’d bet…

Still, this would be a chance to visit the actual Gotham City, a place he’d only seen the outskirts of while dealing with Toyman. It would definitely be an experience to remember.