E8: Superman # 10

[jtisthekey]

The Multiverse Presents...

Earth 8

Issue # 10

WORLD'S FINEST

part 1 of 4

"LEGACIES"

Written and plotted by

Russel Burlingame and Gabriel Vargas

Edited by: Gabriel Vargas

Multiverse logo created by Tony Peterson

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Noonan’s Bar, Gotham City.

The TV crackled to life at Noonan’s, around the time that the bar officially opened for business. A batch of regulars were already there, sitting in the silence and drinking before they were really supposed to. On the set was Jason Todd, billionaire and heir to the Wayne fortune, getting off of a plane in Gotham.

God only knows where he’d been, thought Tommy Monaghan. Todd always managed rubbed him the wrong way. Seemed like a prick and, of course, Tommy resented anyone but him getting that much money just handed to them. Todd was kind of Gotham’s own personal Paris Hilton; he was young, rich and attractive and it didn’t matter what he was doing—there always seemed to be a camera there. About once a week there was one of these puff pieces on the local news, carrying the caption “Todd’s Back In Town” or something equally alliterative to accompany bland footage of the boy wonder plane-hopping.

The door to the bar swung open and a smart-dressed, vaguely ethnic man wandered in carrying a suitcase. He sat down at the bar to Tommy’s right and ordered a Guinness and immediately took a long drink of it. His eyes fixed on the TV behind the bar and without looking over at Tommy, the man said, quietly and with seemingly no passion: “Wanker. I never had much affection for Wayne, but at least he had the taste to stay out of the public eye most of the time.”

“S’pose that’s true,” Tommy said, also without looking at the speaker. “But at least I don’t have much time to watch him.”

“Fair enough,” the speaker said, took another long drink and then set the Guinness back down on the bar with a rather theatrical “thwack” sound. Tommy finally looked over at him. He was young, handsome and looked completely disinterested in his drink, the bar or anything else. And he definitely didn’t look like he belonged here. “How much do you think it would take to make you take a more active interest?”

“Come again?” Tommy asked, the hairs on the back of his neck bristling slightly.

“What if I wanted to get him off my television? If the spoiled son-of-a-billionaire really just needed to be made to go away? What would that take?”

“What is it you think I do, exactly, Mister--?”

“Don’t’ be smart, Mr. Monaghan. I know just what you do. I’ve read the Checkmate files on your misadventure with the Mawzir, and there’s nobody in Gotham who cares to know, but hasn’t heard the story about Zombie Night at the Aquarium.” He pulled the black leather suitcase off the floor next to him and placed it between the two men on the bar. Tapping a small button on the edge of the case, the latches on the edge slid quietly open.

“That looks like a very expensive briefcase,” Tommy said, and then it opened, revealing dozens of bands full of $100 bills.

“Yes, Mr. Monaghan, I suppose it is,” The man said.

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The Ace O’ Clubs, Metropolis

Just as Conner finished clearing the bar from the night rush, his cell phone rang. Bibbo hated the thing, and didn’t like him having it on, but Conner had convinced him that his “Aunt” Lois, still reeling from her fiance’s death at the hands of Doomsday, would be likely to need help at the drop of a hat. The soft-hearted barman couldn’t fight that logic.

“Doggone Doomsday,” Bibbo had mused, and then retracted into himself a little—it was clear that he still wasn’t over the death of Superman, the real Superman.

When the phone’s caller ID reflected that the call was unidentifiable, Conner motioned to the door and Bibbo sighed and waved him out. Reaching the front door, Conner unfolded the flip-phone and answered it.

“Hello?” Conner said.

“Hello, Superboy,” said Iron Munro on the other end of the line.

“Please don’t call me Superboy,” Conner corrected.

“We need a hand,” Munro said, cutting through the small talk.

“And your Jupiter’s Children?”

“On a mission of self-discovery.”

“Come again?”

“The kids are in outer space, and the matter is very urgent. I can’t express enough how grateful your country would be for your help in this.”

Conner sighed, and rolled his eyes. “Hold on, Arn,” Conner told him, and put his hand over the phone. He opened the door to the bar and leaned in. “Bibbo!” He shouted, “Can I take off? Lois needs…” he couldn’t think of what Lois would need right now, so he just continued, “…something. The rush is done for the night.”

“That’s fine, kid,” Bibbo said, wiping down the counter in the nearly-empty bar. “Have a good night and be careful walking out there.”

It was nice that Bibbo was so concerned for his well-being; there was no way for the big palooka to know that his concerns were misplaced. Conner ducked around the corner of the bar—into the alley where he had first encountered Toni—and in a flash he was changed into the costume and in the air. By the time he processed that Iron was still talking to him on the phone, he had made his way into the office at Munro’s undisclosed location and was standing at the man’s desk.

“I’m here, Mister Munro,” Conner said. “What can I do for you?”

“The problem’s in Gotham,” Munro said. “My granddaughter is there doing some detective work, but I’m worried that we’re going to need some more muscle than she can muster. There’s a shady figure in town—he’s a kind of middle man for some very nasty people and we saw him jump out of a limo and wander into a bar in Gotham that’s known for being a safe house for a half-dozen or more high-priced, high-efficiency hitmen.”

“Metahuman?”

“Not that we know of, but there are two of them that I wouldn’t put it past. The place also is a known haunt for members of a spectacularly inept team of metas called Section Eight, although I don’t think there’s anything to indicate they’ll be a problem for you.”

“In what sense?” Conner asked. “You mean they’re good guys or they’re pushovers?”

“Little from column A, little from column B.”

“Sounds like some real characters.”

“Well, what do you expect with a name like that?”

“True enough,” Conner chuckled. “So do we have any idea what it is they’re trying to do?”

“Smart money says it’s Jason Todd. I’ll give you a file to read through, but the bottom line is Todd is bad news for a lot of bad people. There’s a connection that goes deep with some very dangerous bastards, and they’re the same ones who have a line to this middle man. See Damon on the way out for your documentation and a copy of Todd’s itinerary for the day.”

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Conner looked at the itinerary that Iron Munro and his cronies had printed out in the air on the way to Gotham. The files were printed out on a special acetate paper. Plastic, so that he could read and fly and the pages wouldn’t fly all over the place or tear apart. Something tickled at the back of Conner’s brain when reading about Jason Todd—he couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something familiar about the young man.

There was a story by Lois in the file; looked like the first big "Todd's in Town" story after the young executive came back from his "time away." Five years ago, Jason Todd had disappeared without a trace. Most of the tabloids seemed to think he was in Amsterdam or somewhere abroad, living the Celebrity Life. The story began to gain more national attention as time went on with no sign of where he was. An extensive police search was conducted and it was shown that a trio of thugs had planned to kidnap the boy and hold Bruce Wayne for ransom. These thugs were also connected to the attempted kidnapping of a high profile Mafioso's niece and were found dead, gangland style.

With no trace of Jason's body, he was eventually declared dead in absentia. When Jason returned he said that those thugs had indeed tried to kidnap him, but were foiled by Robin. He then ran away to Europe, fearing that these guys would come after him. Many accused him of pseudocide, but Jason had no criminal record and there was no evidence that Bruce Wayne profited from Jason's supposed death.

Conner thought maybe he'd ask Lois what she thought when this was all over--but the file and Munro both made it clear that time was of the essence and he didn't have time for a side trip home to get firsthand biographical information.

Thinking about Gotham brought all kinds of things to mind—it was like the other half of Metropolis--the half nobody wanted to look at. Not quite the same "Twin Cities" charm of Keystone and Central. Gotham and Metropolis were both huge cities and, even though they were only about 2 hours away by car or thirty seconds by cape, the tomorrow offered by Metropolis was undoubtedly more promising than that offered by Gotham's decrepit skyscrapers and depressing, hollowed-out factories. Those were secondary thoughts, because when Conner thought about Gotham, like most people around the world, the first thing that came to mind was the Batman.

The encoding that the Cadmus Project had entered into his brain was pretty specific about Batman—there’s some kind of inherent PR value to Superman and Batman’s relationship, apparently, and so they’d made sure that every documented occasion of the two working together had been imprinted.

The first time they’d met had been shortly after Kal-El’s first big public appearance in Metropolis. Some third-rate super villain called The Magpie was there and the details were sketchy but it was surprisingly hard for the two greatest heroes of that age to take her down. There’s probably still a Kryptonite ring in the Batcave. Conner remembered Kal giving that to Batman. Or more accurately, he knew what Kal had done. Conner could remember very little—it’s not as though they had any real access to Kal’s memories. The guy had been dead, after all, and anything that might still have been locked into that brain was inaccessible since the body was so hard to penetrate.

What’s a Batcave? Conner thought.

The memories were very strange—the only things that Conner could distinctly remember were the things that were public record—the events that had taken place on camera, like when Brainiac had tried to take over Metropolis the year before Kal died and the two of them had teamed with Supergirl and a gang of aliens and driven him back. That whole event—or at least the earthbound parts—was on camera. Though Batman tended to stick to the shadows, Conner could remember him talking to Kal over a radio attached to the top of his cowl, talking about how uncomfortable he was to be in bed with someone called Mongul. The media, apparently, had picked up on this as dissention between the two heroes but ultimately with Batman watching the street level threats with the Metropolis SCU, and Kal in space with the powerhouses, they managed to win the day and none of it really mattered anyway.

Before the battle Conner could recall reports that Batman had taken on a sidekick—a young man a little younger than Conner called Robin. He wore green leggings and a red tunic. He apparently not present during what the media had called the “Panic in the Sky” event—there was broad speculation that Batman had forbidden his young charge from taking part in something so dangerously out of his league, but other critics countered that it seemed unlikely that someone so willing to put a youth in danger was going to draw a hard line, and that it was more likely that the boy had no way of breaking away from his academic responsibilities for long enough to spend a week out of town fighting aliens.

Conner couldn’t quite remember whether Kal had ever met this Robin kid, but it seemed likely to him. According to Munro's files there were three different Robins reported to have worked with Batman. The current Robin has been reported as being the third one to take on the persona and the first female, replacing the one Conner remembered during the Fire in the Sky who disappeared after the Arkham breakout in Gotham. That Robin was reported to have replaced another Robin. Nobody knew for sure. The only evidence was a costume change from short pants to green leggings and a gap between appearances of a couple of years.

Connor remembered that during that gap about five years ago Batman’s methods had changed, and the few media figures who still believed Batman existed seemed convinced that something had happened to the sidekick, leading to a generally darker approach on the part of the aging vigilante.

What’s happening to our heroes? Conner thought, as he descended on the Wayne Enterprises warehouse where Jason would be doing an executive inspection.

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It was evening—probably later than most CEOs would be working, but Todd’s file indicated that he tended to keep odd hours; the implication seemed to be that most people were still so nostalgic for the Wayne era that the new guy felt compelled to do so. Tommy noticed that Todd carried himself in a strange way—he walked like he had a stick up his ass, and he seemed to be looking around all the time. Almost like some of the guys Tommy had seen on patrol during the Gulf—the ones that weren’t half-crazed on some kind of drug, of course.

Tommy cocked his pistol—this was the first time in a long time that a hit was so straightforward and simple that he was able to do it with a sidearm. This was exactly the kind of thing that a hitman waits for—big money, big visibility in the industry, not a ton of work. The middle man did pretty much all the homework for him—it was almost too easy to believe. Tommy was a bit suspicious of the whole thing—he half-expected the GCPD to come storming around the corner, except that Todd was clearly too high profile a target to make bait in a sting.

Todd was standing on the other side of the same stack of crates as Tommy. He lifted the gun to chest level and spun sideways around the end of the boxes. He immediately pulled the trigger, hoping to empty his clip into Todd and the office manager who had been walking him down the path a second before—but instead Superman was standing there between he and his target.

“Dammit!” Tommy shouted, and finished emptying his clip into Superman’s chest as he ran away. He knew it was pretty much useless, though; Supes had his hands around Tommy’s collar a second later. In response, Tommy pulled a concussion grenade out of his jacket. He lobbed it up over Superman’s head, hoping that it might still get Todd and finish the job. Superman dropped Tommy and leapt up to catch the grenade, but it went off before he could close his hand around it. Superman’s invulnerable body protected Todd and his guide from the shrapnel and the flame, but it did rip into a stack of crates that fell down in flames and smoke, cutting off the path between Tommy and Superman, and Todd and his employee.

Tommy made his way for the door—he expected Superman to take off after Jason, saving the innocent and allowing Tommy a chance to get away, and Big Blue played it true-to-form. Using some kind of telekinetic power to lift the crates and damage away from Todd, Superman hovered in the air above the men while Tommy crashed through a window and out the door, tossing smoke grenades behind him.

Tommy crashed through a gate at the end of the driveway, waving his gun at a terrified octogenarian employed in the security checkpoint and jumping over the low fences before the guard successfully managed them open. Staring over his shoulder, he was surprised not to see Superman yet--aren't these guys supposed to be fast? He got in his car and careered wildly through the streets. Still staring over his shoulder every few seconds, he failed to notice the 6'6", rotund man who ambled out in front of the car until it was too late. Screaming an obscenity, Tommy grabbed feebly at his seatbelt as the car crashed into the fat man, and the resulting loss of speed sent Monaghan headfirst through the windshield and into the street ahead. Barely conscious and bleeding, Tommy looked up and saw the massive figure towering over him. He groaned and lost consciousness.

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[jtisthekey]

Jason Todd has been fine and a quick scan of the property seemed to suggest that there was no further threat to him. Todd himself came off as a bit gruff and disconnected, and his primary focus seemed to be on Superman getting after the hitman, so after his initial examination of the place, Conner took off in the direction that the trench-coated shooter had gone.

It wasn't altogteher hard to find his target; his car was crashed in the middle of the road, with blood and glass all over. One head in the gutter, the hitman lay in a wide, round pool of his own blood. When Superman grabbed him and took to the air, there was no sign of life that he could detect. There was obvious trauma to his head, and also a particularly disgusting-looking gash at the base of the man's neck, where Superman supposed he must have caught it on a fire hydrant or something after the crash as it was almost perfectly round.

Superman flew in through emergency room doors and put the shooter on a passing trolley.

"Get this man care, and get the police. I apprehended him trying to assassinate Jason Todd," Superman barked at the orderly whose trolley he had just burdened, conscious to be as polite as he could under the circumstances--but that wasn't enough to keep the man from wincing.

"Sorry," Superman said, "I'm in a big hurry." He paused and fished a small item out of a compartment hidden in his cape. It was a watch that Iron Munro had given him before he left.

"Take this," he told the orderly. "This man needs the police to be present at all times, but if he regains consciousness, press the button on this watch and it will broadcast a signal only I can hear. Wherever I am, I'll come running.

The short, skinny black teenager finally took his hands off the trolley to accept the watch, and nodded hesitantly.

"What's your name, kid?" Superman asked.

"I'm, uh," the kid stammered. "Gavin King."

"Nice to meet you Gavin, I'm Superman." He paused and looked meaningfully into the boy's eyes. "Please. Contact me immediately if he wakes up. It's very important."

 
Back in the air moments later, Superman stopped first at the scene of the car accident and then, when that proved fruitless, the scene of the attack hoping to get something, but the shooter had been too careful to leave anything behind of significance.

"Who are you?" Superman asked, picking up a piece of shrapnel from one of the grenades and staring at it intently.

"He's Tommy Monaghan," a voice from behind Superman said, who was taken by surprise because he hadn't even heard anyone coming! "And he's very bad news."

Superman spun around and, floating, found himself looking at a dark and ominous figure emerging from the shadows.

"What are you doing in my city?" Batman said.

To Be Continued in E8 Batman #10