Chain 212: Batman The Animated Series

Chain 212: Batman The Animated Series

Location: Gotham City, 1986
Identity: Drop-In
Drawbacks: [+800] Rogue Gallery, No Killing Rule, Who's Afraid Of The Big Black Bat?, The Demon's Head

[Free]      Put A Smile On Their Faces
[Free]      Madman
[100/1800]  Nightmare
[400/1800]  Joker Immunity
[700/1800]  Clock King
[750/1800]  Money
[850/1800]  Jumper's Millions
[1000/1800] Trust Fund
[1300/1800] Batman's Superpower
[Free]      Jumper Credit Card
[1800/1800] Jumper Industries

Ah, Gotham. Just take a breath and smell that air, see all those art-deco towers. Over there is Wayne Industries' global headquarters, and over THERE is Sovereign Metasystems. But it's such a nice day out, I might as well enjoy a little stroll. Let's see here, go to check my bank account balance and they're being robbed, but it's a simple enough matter to walk through the bank and ignore the robbers, before they lose their cool - the best way to play that off afterward of course is to simply play the klutz and use my newly acquired perfect timing to use the precise instant and move the precise way to come out uninjured with a pile of thugs in the lobby.

And oh my that is a very nice bank account. More than a billion dollars a year, that can go a respectable distance... especially when paired with the slush fund I had already picked up in Tropico, which puts it over three billion a year. Of course, to an every day person that seems like a lot, but if you throw it at a business... it may go a distance for a small business, but costs increase exponentially the bigger a business gets, so it doesn't go as far as I might hope in some ways.

But that's later. For now, I just enjoy the sights of Gotham and see just what I can see. The Penguin is a good enough illicit contact as long as my name doesn't come out, and this is Gotham - my businesses don't deal with anything dirtier than Wayne Industries, and certainly nothing that I can't explain away, but it's enough to get on Batman's radar. And I'll give him a frank conversation when the time comes, but that time is not yet here. Still, there's enough insanity to go around, and it seems there are many that I had not expected to see again, people that should by all rights be in Opal City that are targeting Sovereign's subsidiaries instead of the ever-present Wayne Industries group. Blockbuster. Copperhead. The old crowd from other Earths, or rather, their local analogues. I don't know why they're here, but... well, they're here, and there's just no way around that. And while they didn't target me personally, Deadline certainly did.

So it seems I have to put the cape back on again to deal with these idiots. I'm just lucky that the writers seem to like me, considering how things started out without me dipping into my full power, but... well, let's not start talking like Wade, shall we?

In any event, another costumed hero in Gotham got the attention of Ra's al Ghul... again. And sure, I had a few moles in his organization - after all, I have deep cover agents in basically every place on the planet except maybe Bruce Wayne's mansion - and this was enough to let me know what was going on, not to mention throw a few bones to Batman in order to foil their plans as time went on. Sovereign Metasystems did its part to change the world, and it wasn't the only one. Sure, it was a gradual process, but it did a few things in partnership with Wayne Industries, even if Bruce tended to look askance at me when he didn't think anyone was looking.

Eventually, I'd just had enough, and I decided it was time for the conversation I'd been delaying. And... well, Batman tends to converse with the language of violence. When one has perfect timing, it makes deflecting and avoiding his blows to be practically trivial - see also the Clock King - but that only frustrates him further when little effort is made to have more than a running battle of fisticuffs across the rooftops of Gotham. And of course, the inevitable happened, Batman finally getting me pinned into a situation where there was no exit, typing me up with a batarang and cable, and demanding answers. We were fortunately derailed by an attempt on my life by the Society of Shadows, though the attack that freed me from my bindings sent me over the edge of a building and seemingly to my doom.

So of course I had lunch with Bruce Wayne two days later at his mansion so I could tell him everything. At this point, it was less for a matter of getting him off my back and more just to see the look on his face when I pointed out that I had been jumping universes for millennia on end, that I've been worshipped as a god and led empires, and honestly playing cops-and-robbers the way he does was relaxing for me. When he grew angry that I treated it like a game, I asked him how he would prefer I do things; what I'd been doing was helping the city, and I was coloring within the lines as it were. I'd even been trying to take some of the more dangerous threats away, with varying amounts of success - I'd poached Victor Fries on a parole agreement to work for Sovereign Metasystems - but I could hardly snap my fingers and solve all the world's problems.

"Or rather, I could," I told him. "But who wants to live in that world? If I fix everything... remove all conflict... no one has a compelling reason to do most of what they do in their lives now. Not without totally annihilating society. And I'm not Ra's al Ghul. If the world is not horribly broken, I am not going to impose myself in ways that no one else is doing."

"Define 'horribly broken'?" Wayne asked.

"Human sacrifice. Cannibalism. Mass murder. Total environmental collapse. Immediate existential threats to the species. Short of something like that... I'm not going to do more than the Batman, my company aside. I'm a fan of his work, and while a handful of superstitious cowards may try to twist what he does, many more are inspired and try to change the world for the better. I'd like to think I'm one of the latter. At the risk of sounding crazy... I find that every bit as boring as a clown trying to be scary. If I must pick up a hobby, I'd rather have a more productive one as a hero. It's easier to destroy, but I find it more fulfilling to create."

Bruce Wayne grunted noncommittally, but ... making small talk is difficult when someone makes such outlandish claims. And so we shook hands, we went our separate ways, and I found that of course I'd done absolutely nothing to assuage his suspicions considering how much he harassed me over the course of the next nine years.

That's okay though, because he's Batman. Of course he's got anti-jumper devices on his belt. I'm not going to be surprised by this, even if it means I need to adhere to his guidelines even more strongly than HE does to avoid them being used in some fashion.