InsaneJournal

"If there was one thing to be learned from living in Gotham city--one lesson to be gleaned about the pitfalls in the dark, sprawling metropolis--it was that there were certain places you just didn't go if you wanted to live long enough to see your children graduate high school. Dark alleys were one that the sharper citizens deemed unsafe--but another locale, one that didn't make the news quite as often as alleyways did, was also avoided by people with an IQ higher than that of a rutabaga.

Laboratories.

Gotham was famous for some of its labs, and even more notorious for its lab accidents.

Accidents of the 'Super Secret Government Testing Facility'/Mutant Super Power Granting variety.

Even most of the more famous faces in Gotham only dealt with labs on an as needed basis because it could be rather distracting to find yourself suddenly hybridized with a molecularly unstable variety of limestone when you were trying to plan the crime spree of the century.

Thusly, labs were about as desirable as villainous playgrounds as a field of shattered glass was for use as a dance floor. General convention in Gotham stated that these places were off limits to even the most desperate of criminals and thieves.

The Captain, Al and Techie were neither desperate, nor thieves, and while whether or not their combined intelligence was greater than that of a common garden vegetable was a matter of some debate, they still decided late one night that poking their heads inside Darck Labs new Gotham facility would be an interesting way to break up the monotonous pattern that they'd fallen into since their big city debut.

It's not that they didn't enjoy their time with Edward Nygma--quite the contrary, they adored him and doted on him in a manner that would have most likely made other villains question just how he was staying warm at night (and perhaps raise their opinion of him in the process of pondering the possibilities when three young women with adventurous streaks were involved)--whom they'd stayed with over the past two weeks; instead, it was the fact that they were the sort of characters who grew restless very easily.

Edward was a planner. The girls--with a few exceptions--were doers. Occasionally, they thought out what they were going to do, but for the most part, they just reacted in whichever way the situation called for, opting to deal with the consequences later rather than plan ahead more than a few steps.

It was that ambitious nature--some would say fool-hearty-go-get-'em attitude--that found them outside Darck that night.

Nygma had refused their offer to accompany them on their madcap caper (though they hadn't told him what they intended to do inside Darck, provided they gained entrance at all), deciding that two weeks had been a long enough recovery time for him to start slapping together some fresh riddles for his next brilliant scheme. The three had been invaluable when they rescued him, had proven very apt protectors and even the occasionally engaging chess partner, but he had work to do.

He thought he'd be glad for a bit of quiet, used to being a more solitary creature by nature, but after a little while, he was aware of the fact there wasn't anyone looking over his shoulder curiously or making offhand comments about palindromes and anagrams that could be formed to suit whatever the task at hand was.

Edward rather missed it...but he shook it off and returned to work, reveling in the opportunity to craft some choice riddles and clever puzzles to baffle the Bat when he decided to strike again.

He stayed that way for several hours, hunched over the small rickety table in his latest lair, drawing up the master plan to end all master plans (or at least, the plan to end all master plans until he came up with the next one), and finally, sometime around three o'clock in the morning, the girls returned.

The smelled like pesticide and were covered in blue goo.

He didn't ask.

He wanted to--inquisitive nature and all--but they looked like all they wanted out of life at that particular moment was a good hot bath and some quality sack time, not incessant questions about what had happened at Darck.

Besides, Edward knew from experience that there's never been a question that couldn't wait to be answered until morning...

Though his curiosity was liable to eat him alive by then.

----

The next morning, Nygma found things to be much the same as they had been since the three had leapt into his life (literally, that had been quite the daring rescue on their parts) but by afternoon, things were starting to get...strange.

Even with his extensive vocabulary, strange was the best word that he could come up with to describe it.

Lunchtime had been an interesting affair, for it was then that he first noticed the...strangeness.

The Captain was staring at her glass of water as though she were trying to intimidate it. Her eyes flicked with interested every few seconds to any other movement in the room, but she stayed primarily focused on her water glass.

She stayed that way for close to twenty minutes, just staring, before she declared she didn't want water, she wanted a glass of milk.

She wanted a glass of milk right then. She couldn't seem to get across just how much she wanted that milk.

Though the Captain's desire for dairy was odd in its vehemence, it was nothing in comparison to Techie's acrobatics. She flexed her shoulders, she twisted her neck to one side...she bent her back at angles Nygma didn't think possible before exclaiming that the chair she was in wasn't 'Damn cushy enough!' and slithering out of it into the floor to curl at his feet, still shifting her shoulder blades predatorily.

But weirdest of all ---"

Weirdest of all what?! WHY DID I STOP SCRIBBLING IN MY SEMI-SLEEP RIGHT THERE?! Does Al catch a mouse? Does she start sneezing wildly because she's allergic to herself? Does she go into heat? Does she scratch up the furniture? WHAT HAPPENS?!

And why am I asking you?

I hate that I don't know how it ends. When I woke up long enough to scribble that excerpt down, I was so pleased with the fabulous ending I had planned...

And now I don't remember it.

GAH!

I suppose I should be thankful I could make sense of my scribble at all...I used a smeary pen and when I'm half asleep I have a tendency to lay my face on the paper while I scribble, resulting in drool tracks and slimy ink trails.

It's such a glamorous life I lead, isn't it?