The Bowery, Gotham City, Later That Night...
In the dim light of the warehouse, the man Jack Napier saw in the reflection of the polished metal looked like a complete stranger. The red helmet felt so heavy in his hands, as he turned and flipped it around, watching as the man in the reflection distorted like a funhouse mirror. That was the word, he realized. That was how he felt inside; distorted, like someone had come along and twisted him around like a clay sculpture, until he didn't recognize himself anymore. The man in the mirror looked tired, his eyes sunken and dark, like he'd forgotten the last time he'd slept.
All he'd ever wanted was to make people laugh. Was that so wrong? Was this his punishment for wanting something more out of life? Did he deserve to be dragged into all this just for trying to follow his dream?
Jack closed his eyes tightly, pushing the feeling of resentment and unfairness back down. Yes, he DID deserve this. He'd risked everything he had, everything THEY had, just for some stupid pipe dream. Christ, he wished he could go back in time and just slap some sense into himself, keep himself from putting Jeannie through all this...
Jeannie... She's why he had to go through with this. Her and the child she was carrying. He had to stop clinging to his childish fantasies and provide for his family, like a man should. Even if he had to break the law to do it. Even if he had to put on this ridiculous costume and do what the gang told him to. He had to...
Still, it didn't make him feel any better. It felt like if he went along with this, he wouldn't be Jack Napier anymore. He'd become someone else... that distorted funhouse reflection would take his place. It all just seemed like a big joke...
"You're not getting cold feet over there, are you, Jack?"
Jack felt a surge of contempt at the nasally voice, a feeling that grew stronger as he looked up from his contemplation and into the face of it's owner, a pudgy-faced man with a stringy moustache, who'd introduced himself as "Bob" when they first met. In the flickering glow of the overhead lights, Bob's face was a naseous yellow, stained with sweat droplets from the oppressive summer night outside, like a huge hunk of cheese that had been left on the counter overnight. Behind him, Jack could see the other members of the gang lurking among the shadows of the crates, men he'd barely bothered to learn the names of, with the exception of one; a tall, almost cartoonishly gaunt man with a pointed, rat-like face, who'd been accompanying Bob when they'd recruited Jack to their little scheme. Jack seemed to remember the man calling himself "Kane", though he wasn't certain.
"N-no, of course not." Jack answered, turning his attention back towards Bob "Just... nerves, I guess. I've never done anything like this before."
"Well, just keep it together, it'll all be over soon" Bob says, grinning a fake smile that showed far too much of his coffee-stained teeth "Just remember, you're doing this for that pretty little wife of yours. Can't let her down, now can you?"
Jack felt another surge of hate, this one even stronger. This scumbag didn't have the right to mention Jeannie, didn't have the right to so much as think about her. God, how he wished he had the guts to wipe that smirk off Bob's fat face... but if he had proper guts, he wouldn't be in this situation, would he?
"Speaking of which!" Kane said, pulling back the sleeve of his suit jacket to take a look at the cheap watch strapped to his wrist "Better get that suit on, funny man! We gotta get a move on if we're going to get to the Ace building in time!"
"You heard 'im, Red Hood! It's showtime, boss man!" Bob said, chortling through his chubby lips before patting the helmet in Jack's hands. "Put the tuxedo and the cape on, but leave the helmet off until we're at Ace Chemicals, just in case we run into any cops on the way. No need to take unecessary risks, right? But you'd know all about that, eh?" Bob laughed again and strolled away towards the open doors of the loading dock, where the van was parked right outside.
Giving the man one more hateful glare at his retreating back, Jack stood up and put the helmet aside, before he shrugged out of his jacket and began to unbutton his dress shirt...
......
Jack must have taken the bus through the industrial district a thousand times over the years he had worked at Ace, yet now, sitting in the back of an unfamiliar car, crammed together with three brutish-looking men who reeked of cheap cigarettes and even cheaper whisky, knowing all too well what would be waiting at the end of their journey, they might as well have been driving through the deserted wasteland of an alien planet. The drive seemed to take hours, yet somehow felt far too short, the dark, looming silhouettes of the factories and smokestacks outside making imposing shapes against the smog-filled night sky, the lights from the streetlamps occasionally illuminating the interior of the van, casting strange shadows along the walls and the faces of his unwanted companions. He could hear the low voices of Bob and Kane coming from the front seats, their hushed conversation drowned out by the sound of the engine.
Finally, the van began to slow, and turned in through an opening in the chain link fence lining the courtyard to their right. The opening had once been secured by an iron gate and a security booth, but that had been long before Jack's time with the company, the gate having fallen victim to some bored vandals in the 1970's, and never replaced, as there always seemed to be other budget issues that took priority. Mostly bonuses for the managers and payouts for the company shareholders, from what Jack had heard. The booth had gone the same way, now little more than a graffitti-stained ruin briefly visible by the vans headlights as they drove onto the Ace Chemicals property.
"Helmet on, "Red Hood" Kane muttered from the drivers seat, and the red helmet was roughly shoved into his arms by the man sitting on his left. Jack allowed himself one last moment of uncertainty, before steeling himself and sliding the helmet over his head.
It was awful, just like he'd expected it to be. The red lenses that served as eyeholes for the helmet cast the whole world in a horrible, bloody tint, like there was some hellish fire raging somewhere over the horizon and the flames were coloring the sky as they devoured everything around them. The heat of the summer night was a hundred times worse inside the metal prison of the helmet, Jack felt like he was suffocating after just a few seconds wearing the damn thing, even the sounds from the outside world seemed dulled, muffled by the sound of his own pulse drumming in his ears. He felt one of the men who had been sitting next to him grab him roughly by the arm and drag him out of the car, Jack barely keeping his balance by grabbing ahold of the roof as he steadied himself. The new redness of the world was even worse out here, the glares from the streetlights casting the Gotham skyline in an inferno.
He stumbled as the man behind him shoved him forwards to where Bob and Kane were waiting, standing by the concrete ramp that led to the back door to the maintenance tunnels. "This the spot?" Kane said, motioning towards the steel door, which was heavily secured by a double chain.
"Uh, yes, this leads to the tunnels, but I don't have the keys any-" Jack began, only for Bob to pull a pair of bolt cutters out from underneath his greasy suit jacket.
"Come on, you think we didn't expect the door to be locked?" Bob sneered "What kind of dime-store operation do you take us for? Now, once we get the doors open, keep it down, if security is as lax on the inside as you said it is, we still don't want to draw attention to ourselves."
And then, the strangest thing happened...
Between one blink and the next, a man who most certainly hadn't been there less than a second ago, had suddenly appeared right behind Bob and Kane. He was a tall, heavyset man, with his hair cut into a scraggly mohawk, the way Jack had seen some of the street punks around the city wear, though the man seemed far older than those types, especially with the beard covering the lower half of his face. He was wearing a denim jacket, adorned with two buttons; a smiley face one, and a peace symbol, two images Jack vaguely recalled from his own youth, along with jeans and a pair of leather boots. For a second, Jack thought it might be a homeless man who'd been disturbed by their arrival, but that wouldn't explain how he'd simply appeared out of nowhere like that.
The man draped his arms around the shoulders of Bob and Kane, who hadn't noticed his presence until that moment, the two criminals nearly jumping out of their skin at the unexpected touch, turning their heads to stare in shock at the new arrival.
The man grinned "You're right, porky! Better keep the noise down, don't want anyone to know we're here, after all!" He turned his head towards Kane "Quickly now, before someone else shows up!"
Finally, Bob seemed to regain some of his composure, and scrambled away from the man, reaching into his jacket for what Jack assumed was a gun "What the fuck?! Where the hell did you come from?!"
The rest of the gang finally snapped out of their surprise and followed Bob's example, quickly drawing their weapons and aiming them at the new arrival, who didn't seem the least bit intimidated by the guns pointed in his direction. Kane glared at the man, stepping closer with the gun aimed straight at his face "I don't know who the hell you think you are, but you should've just kept hiding, maybe then you'd have lived through the night. Now who the fuck are you?!"
"I'm the last magician of rational thought. And you guys are about to have one hell of a bad day!"
.....
A Few Hours Earlier
I'm an idiot. At least when it comes to detective work. And probably a few other things.
See, scrying for Jack Napier wasn't that difficult, I already knew exactly who he was, I had his full real name, so conjuring an image of his whereabouts was easy enough. The problem was what said image showed; a dark-haired man in his early 30's, sitting around in a dark, rundown room, a location that describes maybe four fifths of the entire goddamned city. All the scrying could tell me was that Napier was still alive, and currently not at the bottom of a chemical vat, which was good to know, but not exactly helpful in actually tracking him down. As far as I could tell, there was absolutely nothing notable about wherever he was, just a random room with boxes, garbage, and flickering lights, which again, describes more or less the entire city.
Making the problem worse was that he was holding a very familiar red helmet, so unless the gang just left the costume with him for some reason, the Ace Chemicals heist would be happening sooner rather than later, giving me even less time to try and pinpoint just where he was.
It was only after about an hour or so of futility, staring at the Gotham map I had pinned to the wall, trying to make an educated guess where to start looking, that I realised the mistake I'd been making. It didn't matter where Napier WAS, because I knew the whole time exactly where he was GOING TO BE. Why run myself ragged searching every shithole in the city when I could just wait right at the spot where they were always going to end up?
Like I said. Idiot.
Unlike my previous travels around Gotham, I didn't bother going out there on foot, I already knew where the factory was, so it was a simple matter of tracing the right rune on my own wall with one hand. Once I finished the movement, a glowing symbol appeared on the fading wallpaper, the light quickly flowing outwards into the shape of a door. One quick step through the barrier, and I found myself in the middle of a trash-strewn parking lot across town, just as the sun was beginning to set over the western skyline. In front of me, the Ace Chemicals building loomed up towards the darkening sky, the factory already locked up tight for the night, if the chain over the door was any indication.
It was just a matter of waiting after that.
On a related note, here's something I learned from the actual Randall Flagg; turning invisible is a surprising pain in the ass. I didn't expect that to be an issue in this world, if it's anything at all like the comics, there's at least two alien races alone that has invisibility as a basic biological function, and that's not even counting all the other methods that exist, scientific or not, but with magic? Actual like Invisible Man/Lord Of the Rings invisibility is basically useless, every time I've tried, I can only get it to last a few seconds. But that's where Randall Flagg had the solution; it's a lot easier to "shade" yourself. You're still right there, perfectly visible, but people will simply ignore you, like any other random backdrop of everyday life. Unless you do something to draw their attention, it's like you don't even exist, people will look right through you.
Usually you have to be homeless to get that effect.
As the van rolled in through the open gate, the headlights even passed over me where I was standing in the corner near the back door to the factory, there was no way the driver shouldn't have spotted me, but there was nothing, no reaction at all. Like I was part of the scenery. A fat man with a moustache hoisted himself out of the drivers seat, saying something to the people in the back as he did, and the backdoors popped open...
Yep, that was him alright. Red Hood, tuxedo and all. And not at all happy to be here, judging by his body language.
Alright, that's enough hiding. Time to earn that dollar!