"What are you planning to do about Bruce Wayne?" Harvey asked, pulling Gordon's attention from the window. "The evidence of his Falcone connections could devastate them. But honestly, I'm conflicted. The Wayne Group did a lot for the children this winter."
Harvey's opinion of Bruce Wayne wasn't terrible. If circumstances were different, he might have reached out to the playboy philanthropist again. Tried to forge an alliance.
But that was before.
"Green," Gordon said abruptly, still staring out at Gotham's perpetual gray. "The iconic color of St. Patrick's Day is green."
Harvey waited. Gordon had that faraway look—the one that meant he was thinking about something that hurt.
"When I was a kid in Chicago, we looked forward to St. Patrick's Day every year. They'd suspend school so we could go downtown for the parade. The city would dye the river green, and we'd all pretend it was magic. Irish gnomes, leprechauns, the whole mythology."
He turned from the window, face drawn. "St. Patrick's Day meant green. Now? All I can think about is red. Blood red."
A pause.
"The holiday's in a few days, Harvey. And we're no closer to finding this maniac."
The weight in Gordon's voice was contagious. Harvey felt it settle over him like a heavy coat—that particular burden of responsibility that came with being one of Gotham's few honest men. As the White Knight, he'd never advocated for victory by any means necessary. He wanted fairness. Justice, not just results.
But fairness was getting harder to define lately.
"So what about Wayne?" Harvey pressed. "What's the play?"
"Take it slow. Focus on Maroni first—he's the weaker breakthrough point."
"Maroni and Wayne. Two birds, one stone?" Harvey smiled slightly. "I like that."
Their voices faded to muffled murmurs through the office door. Just audible enough to be understood if someone was listening very carefully.
And someone was.
Vernon Wells stood in the hallway, pressed against the wall in his cheap white shirt and department-store slacks. His breathing was shallow. Controlled. Every word filtering through that door got filed away in his memory, ready to be sold to the highest bidder.
Which, currently, was Salvatore Maroni.
"Do you really need to do this?"
Jude looked up at the shadow in the corner of the safe house. Batman's silhouette barely qualified as presence—more like an absence of light shaped vaguely like a man.
"It has to be done this way." Batman's voice was gravel and certainty. "You've helped cure people from this state before. You're the only one who can."
"Before" meant Bruce Wayne and that cursed rose. Different mechanism, same principle.
"And quickly," Batman added. "Before they're controlled into doing worse things."
"He doesn't look particularly enthusiastic about chocolate," Jude observed dryly.
The man tied to the chair in front of him was struggling with desperate, animalistic intensity. Expensive gold watch. Italian leather shoes. Tailored suit that probably cost more than Jude made in a month. Well-defined muscles from regular gym visits—clearly an elite professional. Gotham's upper-middle class.
But that wasn't what drew the eye.
His chest—visible through the torn-open suit—wasn't smooth human skin. It was covered in green vines. Living, growing plant matter had spread across his torso like a parasite, tendrils burrowing deep into flesh. The vegetation covered his chest, abdomen, limbs, back. In a very literal sense, he was a vegetable.
Every time Jude brought the white chocolate close to the man's mouth, the vines tightened. Squeezing. Drilling deeper. The man's struggles intensified, teeth gritted, head shaking violently. His body rejected the chocolate with the force of someone fighting for their life.
Which, Jude supposed, he was.
"How long has he been like this?"
"At least a week."
"How's he surviving? Photosynthesis? Because those leaves aren't exactly getting sunlight." Jude gestured at the windowless safe house.
"Anyone parasitized by these plants refuses all food," Batman said. "Except chocolate and milk."
Jude studied the vines more closely. They pulsed faintly, like veins carrying blood. "If I just tear them off—"
"Don't."
"Yeah, I figured. Probably peel his skin off with them."
The vines had penetrated too deep. Ripping them out would kill the host faster than leaving them in. Could he pour milk directly onto the plants? Maybe dissolve them before they strangled their victim? But the risk—
Too dangerous. Too unique. Anyone would know who did it.
Poison Ivy. Real name Pamela Isley, though she went by "Ivy" in most contexts.
Plant manipulation and pheromone control were her signatures. Her power source was technically magic, though she dressed it up in pseudo-scientific explanations about hormones and botanical chemistry.
Didn't matter. Superpowers were superpowers.
And Poison Ivy was known for two things: loving plants with fanatical devotion, and destroying anyone who harmed them.
"Hard approach won't work," Jude said finally. "But maybe a soft one will. If we can keep these plants alive—convince them to let go—they might be more useful than just withering."
And it'll prevent Poison Ivy from hunting me down for plant murder.
He'd heard stories about Gotham's plant-obsessed eco-terrorist. She was categorized as an extreme environmentalist with the emphasis on extreme. Anyone who hurt vegetation became a target. Her mental state could charitably be described as "aggressively botanical."
Fortunately, Jude generally treated plants well. He didn't want to end up on a supervillain's hit list just for helping Batman.
And he had the tools for this, actually. The Valentine's Day mission had given him a discount card.
SYSTEM ITEM: Special Language 80% Discount Card
Applies to: Intermediate Nature Language Proficiency
Original Cost: $300,000
Discounted Cost: $60,000
Jude selected the card. Clicked confirm. Watched his balance drop from 140,000 to just over 80,000 in a single transaction.
You get what you pay for. This better be worth it.
The skill download hit like a freight train.
Information flooded his mind—but not in any language he'd ever learned. Not English, not Japanese. This was different. The rustling of leaves outside the window suddenly had meaning. Bird calls in the distance carried actual messages. The faint scratching of ants crawling along the baseboard became comprehensible communication.
And the green vines pulsing on the man's chest? They were talking.
Language of Nature.
Jude gritted his teeth, white-knuckling the edge of the table as his brain tried to process the sensory overload. Every living thing within earshot was suddenly speaking to him at once—a cacophony of biological conversation that threatened to drown his thoughts entirely.
But he'd done this before. Purchased skills, endured the download, adapted. This time was faster. The chaos organized itself into something manageable. Comprehensible.
When he straightened, the world looked different. More alive. Every plant, every insect, every blade of grass—all of it connected in an ongoing dialogue he could finally understand.
SKILL ACQUIRED: Intermediate Nature Language Proficiency
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