Chapter 8

Recently, there had been a subtle shift in the dynamics between her and Bruce. It probably had something to do with the fact that her mother had fallen completely off the deep end and had embraced the supervillain lifestyle, but it wasn't really surprising to Tanya: unlike the rest of the cult, the interactions between them were far more typical of a mother and her infant child; lots of cuddling and whispered words of affection.

It was nice, but it was clear that she thought of "Lilith's" future as an attack dog to cleanse Gotham of the living pus that was the Joker and other supervillains was an honor that she was proud to have contributed to.

She was a bit of a nut, is the point here. That idyllic image of a loving family just wasn't meant to last.

This other image of an idyllic family was much more resilient. Whatever Bruce's motivation, it seemed to compel him to keep both Tanya and Richard close at hand, as if Wayne Manor was no longer a secure bastion.

Which, given how many literally insane supervillains were out on the streets, was fair. It had been attacked by villains before. Not even because of Batman, but just because it was a manor with lots of expensive art and other, well-insured, valuables.

It did lead to some rather amusing situations, though. "What is the meaning of this?" Lex Luthor demanded as he glared at them.

"Now I'm sure that Delilah told you that my previous meeting was running long." Bruce said chidingly, sipping at the cup of hot cocoa. "You didn't need to come barging in."

"Yeah." Richard said, before eating the last bite of his cookie.

Meanwhile, Tanya poured some cocoa into the cup of Lex Luthor's chauffeur slash bodyguard, Mercy Graves. She wasn't sure exactly when the woman sat down to the "tea" party, but that didn't mean Tanya was going to be a poor host.

"This is not a meeting." Lex said petulantly. "This is an insult."

"You're right, I apologize." Bruce said sincerely, which caused Lex to pause, bewildered. "I should have invited you to tea. Here, have my seat."

Tanya turned to the stuffed fox that was occupying one of the seats along with the stuffed dog that used to occupy Ms. Graves' seat. "...Miss Elya and Mr. Neumann have another engagement." Tanya explained, "You can have their seat, Daddy." she stood up, gently helped the stuffed animals out of the short chair, and then threw the toys into the laundry hamper that was used to transport them into Bruce's office.

"Thank you, Princess." Bruce said as he moved from the tiny child-sized chair to the other one. "Well, Lex? We can mix the two meetings."

"You cannot be serious." Lex deadpanned.

"I never joke about tea time, Lex." Bruce said seriously. "Alfred would never forgive me."

Lex huffed. "I'm not going to discuss sensitive national security matters in the presence of an overgrown toddler," he did do his homework, neat. "-nor your charity case carny."

Tanya's eyes widened in childlike wonder. "You're gonna talk about the aliens?" Richard perked up as well. "Are they green? Daddy won't tell me if they're green."

"Different aliens." Mercy said, an amused smirk on her face. "These ones are black. The martians are the green ones."

"Wow…" Tanya said, "My videogame was right…"

Bruce winced. "Princess, the Martians didn't attack the Earth. They're nice aliens."

Lex slapped his palm into his face. "Mercy, you seem to have made yourself comfortable. Can you keep the children alive while me and Bruce go talk in a secure room?"

Bruce sighed, standing up. "Alright, tea time's over, Princess." He turned to Mercy. "Miss Graves, the daycare's on the tenth floor, take the express elevator down. Follow the signs and drop them off with Mrs. Lexington. No one else, check her badge. Then come back."

Tanya gave off a whining noise, but it was purely performative. The entire point of the exercise was to snub Lex Luthor, after all. The look on his face when he realized what the hold up was was amazing, and also recorded for later. Should she be difficult?

Tanya looked at Mercy. Mercy raised one eyebrow dangerously.

…No, being obstinate may have actual consequences this time. Just something pro forma, then. "But but but-" Tanya said, working up some crocodile tears. "Aliens!" She exclaimed.

Bruce picked up the nearly-empty tin of cookies. "If you don't give Miss Graves any trouble, you can have the rest of these."

Tanya brightened. "Deal!" She said, grabbing the tin and walking to the elevator herself, taking one of them immediately. Mmmm… peanut butter cookie…

"You're smarter than you look." Mercy commented.

Richard scoffed. "Even dogs can do that much." Pretend to be disobedient to get a bribe? Oh yes.

Tanya stuck her tongue out at the boy.

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It was Friday night, and that meant one thing: Robin got to go out and play again.

Tanya thought that letting an eight year old boy fight crime was irresponsible, but when Richard kept crushing every academic and physical obstacle Bruce put in front of him, eventually it became cruel to keep him away from the thing that he wanted so much.

So, a compromise: On nights that were not school nights, Robin was allowed to patrol, fighting the petty crime of Gotham and assisting Batman in the nastier stuff, but only as long as he obeyed whenever he was told that he wasn't ready for something and to stay back.

Also, Rhine stayed with him as insurance. In an extreme emergency, Alfred can use the summoning catalyst they left back at the Batcave with the summoning circle to evacuate them.

"...Hey, did Batman ever find that guy who killed… you know?" Robin asked as he rested while perched on a gargoyle.

"If you wish to converse, I cannot be terse." Rhine warned, but then answered his question. "Zucco has indeed been caught, Blackgate is where he ought."

"...Why didn't I hear anything?" Robin asked, curious.

"He was not put away for murder, no evidence, a missing observer." Rhine replied.

Robin's face scrunched as he decrypted their rhyme. "So he's put away for something else?"

Rhine sighed. "Zucco was a loan shark, most of his crimes were leaving marks." They shrugged. "Not much could be done, just accept the law was done." The reason the Greysons were murdered was to send a message to the ringmaster, after all.

"I dunno… seems unsatisfying." Robin commented, bringing out his grapple and starting to swing to the next stop on the patrol.

"It is what it is, not what one wishes." Rhine said sagely as Robin jump-kicked a robber. With a focus of will, black energy gripped the ones fleeing and pulled them back to the ones Robin had knocked down. "Bound in complicity, bind in elasticity." The black energy transformed into a tar-like gunk that bound the robbers together right outside the jewelry store, with the bags of stolen jewelry caught up in it as well.

Robin took out his special cell phone, which had some overengineered system to be untraceable, and called the police. "Hey, Robin again. Jewelry store robbery this time. You already coming?" A beat. "Yeah, that's the one. Rhine gooed them up, she'll take it off when you get here. Toodles!" Hanging up the phone, he grappled to the roof on the opposite side of the street and climbed up. "...You know, you're right. I should be happy that the guy's in jail. He deserves it."

Hm. Didn't expect that from him. "That perspective is quite mature, future outings it might ensure." Tanya said.

"You think so?" He asked, blushing at the compliment. "I guess I'm just in a good mood after winning that fight. I took out three of them in as many seconds!" He said boastfully.

'Taking them out' was a strong phrase for how injured they were, they were already struggling against the magical entanglement. He stunned them at best. …Eh, they'll let him have it.

A pair of GCPD squad cars rolled up, and the walking stereotype, Detective Bullock, ambled out of the cruiser with a donut in hand. "Looks like crime's not paying out tonight, fellas." He said, probably imagining himself as sounding cool. The other police break out the handcuffs, and at that, Rhine let the magical bindings sublimate back into the magical miasma that suffuses Gotham. "Book 'em."

To the overweight cop's credit, he did promptly get to work, logging the evidence and examining the crime scene, doing his part to ensure the robbers were properly put away.

"Hm. Good work." Batman said, causing Robin to jump all the way to the next building in surprise. Rhine chuckled.

When his brain caught up with the rest of him, Robin coughed, trying to compose himself. "So, Batman. What's next?"

"A few of the Arkham escapees have teamed up." Batman replied, "I could use some backup." He lied.

Robin's face lit up at the words, though. "Really? You mean it?"

"Yes."

One trip in the Batmobile later, they all arrived to Gotham Central Bank, where, as described, there were four Arkham escapees who had blown out a wall and were now making progress on the vault.

It sounded rather intimidating when put that way, but the escapees were Condiment King, Crazy Quilt, Kite Man, and the only one that was actually dangerous: The Ventriloquist.

The Ventriloquist was one of the more tragic "supervillains" among the Arkham lot, as while most of them were really just megalomaniacs, thinking they were above other people, the Ventriloquist instead had a split personality, the mild-mannered Arnold Wesker and the brutal criminal kingpin known as Scarface. The reason he was called the Ventriloquist was the curious manner in which his madness manifested: he had a puppet mockup of Al Capone that the Scarface personality acted through. Arnold Wesker was genuinely convinced that the puppet was a separate entity that bullies and coerces him into committing all those crimes, forced to do the puppet's bidding.

Robin's eyes widened. "Wow, I thought you were making those guys up!" He stage-whispered downwards, where Rhine was concealed.

"The depths of badness hold untold madness." Rhine offered.

"I feel like I deserve a fortune cookie just for listening to that." Robin groused, "I don't even like fortune cookies."

"Focus." Batman admonished, and started outlining the plan of action. "Robin, you ambush Crazy Quilt, Rhine, you disable Condiment King. Kite man will attempt to flee instead of fight, stop him. I'll handle the Ventriloquist and his men." Oh, right, the Ventriloquist was also directing eight thugs who were mostly idling, except for the one expert safecracker that was plying his trade. Getting that man off the streets would probably be more productive to protect the commerce of Gotham than any one of the costumed crazies.

The two sidekicks nodded in agreement and moved into position. Right when the safecracker, a noted henchman known as Mugsy, laughed as the safe finally started to open, they struck.

Batman struck first, of course, throwing his full weight feet-first into the largest of the thugs, who was a noted partner of Mugsy named Charles "Rhino" Daily, who fell back onto two other thugs and pinned them with his weight. From the subtle cracking noise, Rhino had suffered some skeletal damage on his ribs and/or collarbone.

Rhine had their own target, though. Condiment King used to be a comedian by the name of Mitchell Mayo, having made up the persona to mock the colorful world of Gotham's supervillans. The Joker took exception to this and somehow drove the man utterly insane. Somehow, despite having no engineering background, he developed… well, the best way Tanya would describe it is a chemical launcher that outperformed any similar technology. The ban on chemical weapons made the idea that even military flamethrowers fell short of this launcher a bit more palatable, but it was still baffling.

…and the man used this wonderful piece of technology to shoot condiments at people. Have you ever had ketchup sprayed at you at eight hundred pounds per square inch? It sucked, and Rhine completely understood why Batman wanted them to take care of the man before he could do much.

Personally, Rhine dreaded the day Condiment King decided to use hot sauce in his launcher. That could actually be dangerous. But alas, there would be none of that today. "Your chosen weapon's quite the trick, first things first, shut down quick!" Rhine intoned, a surge of magic shoving every valve and failsafe in the design shut and keeping them there with an unseen force.

Condiment King swiveled the minigun-like multi-modal spigot of his sprayer towards Batman, and groaned in frustration when he found the trigger unable to be moved, and the safety was similarly stuck. He attempted to hit some sort of backup lever on the side of the tanks, but it was also stuck.

Heh. Magic was so useful. Rhine walked up and used mage blades on their fingers to carefully cut away the straps on his device, using the crude telekinesis they can manage without using a rhyme to restrain him. It was a little bit like having another set of arms, actually, their wings twitched and shifted in accordance to the magical pressure.

"You're not even a bat!" Shouted Kite Man as Robin continued to harass him.

"Sure I am!" Robin said cheerily. "I'm an acrobat!" He added an extraneous flip to his dodge to emphasize his point. "Get it?" He asked, placing his hands on his temples and pointing upwards with them to imitate Batman's cowl.

Kite Man groaned as Robin continued to distract the colorful enemies, while Batman took out the actual threats.

"Do I need to knock you out, or will you sit quietly and pout?" Rhine asked Condiment King after fully separating him from his weapon system.

The insane man sniffled, literally crying at his efficient and bloodless takedown. Hm. Weren't they supposed to be the sulky toddler here? "I'll just sit next to Paul." He murmured, then went to the unconscious Crazy Quilt and sat down, his face buried in his knees.

Still, they had accomplished their part of the battle… Robin seemed to have Kite Man well in hand. Waving a wing, the unconscious thugs started moving across the floor to surround Crazy Quilt. They'll keep watch.

Wait… what was that? Sensing magic was… hard to describe. In the Empire, a mage's ability to detect magic was itself a spell, a scanning one that was frequently used to substitute for actual senses in high speed aerial combat. Yet another advantage the type 97's dual core technology provided them. In this life, it was more intuitive. It was closer to smell or taste than the other senses, but it was still distinct.

Well, it was distinct in their mortal form. They had no ordinary sense of smell or taste in their demon form to compare. Still, there was a higher concentration of… death nearby. The same magical stench from one of Gotham's magical hotspots, Slaughter Swamp. It was actually a little difficult to pick out from Gotham's base environment, but

Batman and Robin finished up their fights, and Rhine noted the stench get slightly stronger when… the puppet was moved away from the Ventriloquist! "Something unusual is about, that puppet may have magical clout." They said, floating closer to the puppet.

…Yes. The puppet stank of death. But was it relevant? They weren't sure. They moved their face close to the puppet and inhaled deeply, trying to improve the fidelity of their senses.

Instead, an oddly familiar rush suffused their form, the flavor rich and creamy with a pleasantly sour note, better than anything else they had ever tasted… except…

…oh. Rhine stiffened as they realized what they just did.

"Rhine? Is something wrong?" Batman asked.

"...a flavor I have tasted but once, a hidden snack within this dunce." Rhine eventually said, deciding to be honest. "I did not realize what lay inside, until my nature then applied."

"...what?" Robin asked.

Batman was silent, but they knew he was similarly bewildered. Oh, right. They never told Batman about the soul originally designated for their mortal body, devoured as part of the binding spell. Didn't seem relevant. How to phrase… "I will explain later, when we cannot fuel a traitor." They eventually said. They really shouldn't be discussing this in the presence of the criminals.

"...Alright." Batman said.

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"So what did you do to the puppet?" Richard asked during breakfast. Well, lunch. Everyone slept in, of course. Everyone was even still wearing their pajamas. Richard had some classic white ones with blue vertical stripes and a sleeping cap. He left his stuffed elephant, named after the one he befriended in the circus, in his room.

Tanya squirmed at the question, putting another spoon of oatmeal into her mouth. She slept in full body pajamas, typically childish fare. This particular one was the raccoon one, including the fake tail. As her first birthday had passed without incident and she had put on several inches of height, there had been a few changes with her act: the high chairs were replaced with booster seats on the regular chairs, although in public they still had her be strapped to her seat to 'prevent mischief'.

"Apparently, Wesker has been inconsolable, insisting that you killed Scarface." Bruce said, raising an eyebrow. "Would it have anything to do with that?" He was wearing a dark red velour bathrobe.

"...It was an accident." Tanya murmured, wilting at Bruce's gaze.

"Wait, you really killed the puppet?" Richard asked, alarmed.

Tanya nodded. "It had a soul." She said, before adding: "I didn't know until I had already eaten it." Silence. After another mouthful of oatmeal, she continued. "Whether it was some kind of ghost or a piece of Wesker's soul or something else… I don't know."

"You said you've tasted it before." Bruce observed.

"Once." Tanya confirmed. "I've explained that this body, the one with your genetics… It's not really mine, per se. It's a prison for my soul, binding me to the mortal plane." She looked at her own hand, at the obsidian black fingernails hidden behind nail polish designed to make them look normal. "What do you think happened to the original soul? It was the first thing I ate since I had died, and it wasn't until afterwards that I learned what it was."

"So you can just eat souls?" Richard asked, alarmed.

"...I don't think so." Tanya eventually said, "I think the soul in the puppet was just weakly anchored to the wood." It was really more that she hoped that was the case. "Doing it to something alive would probably be difficult."

"What were you trying to do?" Bruce asked calmly.

"When I'm a demon, my magic sense completely replaces my sense of smell." Tanya explained. "I was just… giving it a whiff." She mimed holding the puppet and inhaled sharply with her nose.

Richard laughed, apparently finding her plight hilarious. "And you ended up with soul shooting up your nose!"

Tanya smiled thinly. "Well, yes, I suppose it's a bit amusing when put that way. You are essentially correct."

"So how did the puppet's soul taste, anyway?" Richard asked.

Tanya thought about it. "...like a mixture of chocolate milk and orange juice." She eventually said, although she had never actually tried that combination, "Sweet, creamy, with a distinctly sour note, but in a good way." Richard stared into the middle distance, trying to imagine the flavor.

"...Given the circumstances, I don't think there's much to worry about." Bruce pronounced. Tanya sighed in relief. "Be careful with this newfound ability going forward."

"Of course." Tanya immediately agreed. "Now, it's Saturday, lunch is basically over… What are we doing today?"

Bruce's demeanor shifted entirely away from Batman's countenance. "Well Princess, we did what Dick wanted to do last night, so you can decide today. Let's go out and do something as a family." Unspoken, both of them heard 'That isn't beating up the mentally ill'.

Tanya thought for a moment as she scooped the last of her oatmeal onto her spoon. If it was outside, it had to be age appropriate. This wasn't as large of a burden as it sounded, as before this life, Tanya really hadn't done a lot of 'going out', beyond going drinking with his coworkers. At least, nothing that she remembered.

So instead the choices were limited to the various activities that they had already done on previous outings… The indoor snow park? Mr. Freeze's technology was not actually proprietary, S.T.A.R. labs worked with it, and as such there was an amusement park using it to keep things in wintry conditions all year round. …No, wait, it's closed. Mr. Freeze was currently at large, and the place closes down when that happens, for obvious reasons.

What else? So many choices… Unlike what Tanya had initially assumed, most places designed to be areas for children to have fun tended to be… well, fun. Something she had noticed was that the abundance of energy that children had resulted in a very strong 'runner's high', the pleasurable feeling of having exerted oneself, after pretty much any physically intensive action.

Combined with the fact that physical fun is more in line with her cover than, say, arcades… "I wanna go to the place with the trampolines." She eventually decided, using her cover voice as well. It was a large indoor playground called Amusement Mile, with many different attractions. One of which was called 'Bounce City', and it was exactly as fun as that sounded.

"Yes!" Hissed Richard, who also loved that place.

"Sure thing." Bruce said, standing up and plucking Tanya out of her chair. "Let's get ready." Tanya relaxed, idly kicking as they moved towards the bedrooms and the wardrobes within. It was good that Bruce was getting into character, it meant she didn't need to worry about doing so herself.

Nothing but a day of fun was ahead of them.

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She just had to jinx it, didn't she?

Tanya was having a good time with the trampolines, the bouncy castle, and the ball pit. Letting herself just marinate in adrenaline and the resulting endorphins. Was she being reckless? Absolutely. Was the place a breeding pit for disease? Yep. She didn't care. She hadn't gotten sick yet, and suspected that she could burn out any infection with magic even if she did.

But then, when they had a small siesta in the food court (to feed her absurd metabolism with a pizza slice the size of Bruce's head), the notorious supervillain Two-Face decided to commit armed robbery

Somehow, someone so clearly unstable managed to recruit over thirty armed thugs, dressing them up in themed uniforms, and convinced them to… actually, this place was filled with hundreds of people that had both disposable income and children at hand to be useful hostages. Between the cash registers and the wallets/purses of the parents, that would probably be a reasonable score, if absurdly risky.

Bruce grunted in annoyance as they arrived. "Tch. It's two in the afternoon, right when they empty all the food court registers and put it in the safe along with the morning's ticket income. All in one place for an easy score."

But that wasn't all. Two-face had brought a tractor to this robbery. Well, this particular food court featured an attraction, one of those monuments that drew attention just by being silly. Specifically, the 'World's Largest Penny'. Ten feet tall and weighing two hundred sixteen pounds, probably mostly made of foam or a high-tech aerogel, as the promotion for it included a regular strongman lifting it like Superman. If anyone was to make a larger penny, it wouldn't be all that difficult. She'd be surprised if Amusement Mile paid more than ten thousand dollars for the thing, it sounded a lot more impressive than it actually was.

And Harvey Dent wanted it.

The muscle Two-Face hired were wearing either white suits or black suits, equal numbers of each. The black suits had guns, and were doing their best to convey menace and violence, while the white-suited ones were much friendlier and handled the actual mugging of the customers. "Hey Boss!" Said one of the two-tone muscle after coming over to demand Bruce's wallet, a bag of wallets in his hand. "Bruce Wayne's here! You hate him, right?"

"Wayne." Two-face's voice, like he gargles gravel after every meal, said the word with as much contempt as possible.

Tanya leapt into Bruce's arms, shoving her face into his jacket's armpit in faux terror. With her voice properly muffled, she put her mind's eye squarely on the coin that Two-face had in his hand. "Rhine. Berechnung. Mahou. That coin that fills us all with dread, today its face will show a head."

Magic usually came with a bit of a light show, but with an exertion of will, that light show can be controlled. In this case, confined entirely to the inside of Bruce's jacket by focusing it on glowing eyes and an amplification of her sulphuric breath.

"What was that?" Two-face asked. Dang, a bit of power must have leaked into the visual spectrum around the coin.

"Static discharge, perhaps?" Suggested Bruce.

"No one asked you, Wayne." Two-Face said nastily. Tanya shifted to peek back at the supervillain. Ugh, he was even uglier up close.

"That's what it sounded like to me, Harvey." Bruce said smoothly.

"Don't you call me that!" Two-Face roared, "I'll kill you!" Immediately, he seized up. "No! Don't kill him!" He said to himself, before calming down. "We'll flip for it. Yes, he's earned a flip."

In accordance with her hex, the coin turned up heads. "...You got lucky." Two-Face said petulantly.

"Well, if you're not going to kill me, can I take my daughter to the restroom?" Bruce asked pleasantly, patting Tanya on the back and picking up the diaper bag at his feet. "We'll wait in there until you're gone."

Two-Face glowered at Bruce. Then he flipped the coin again. Heads. "...Go where I can't see your damn face!" He spat, turning away and starting to argue with himself.

The thug escorted Bruce to the food court's family bathroom, which was promptly locked. "Okay, what can you do here, magically?" Bruce said in his Batman voice, whispering.

"I can teleport us to the roof and summon your equipment onto you." Tanya immediately suggested. "Richard is more complicated. Hopefully he'll stay a hostage and not get himself killed."

They paused at that suggestion, then Bruce immediately took out his cell phone. "Dick." He said, still with the Batman voice. "Hide. Get to the roof if you can." After a moment, he nodded and hung up. "There. If he manages it, give him equipment too."

"Rhine. Berechnung. Mahou. If this room the thugs inspect, they shall hear what they expect." Tanya began, casting magic on the door. "Though this crisis is in the day, Batman's suit will have its way." Bruce's clothes switched places with the Batman suit in the emergency case that was prepared for exactly this contingency. "It is once more violence time, the world is ready for the devil, Rhine!" Tanya's cute overalls with a lavender shirt burned away, shifting her form into the metal skin of her devil form. "We shall need to hide the truth, so we shall enter through the roof!" The both of them were enveloped in fire and teleported to right next to the skylight.

Rhine then took some deep breaths. A luck spell, an illusion, an item summoning, a teleportation spell… Quite the list, they usually took more time between spells. Still… "One more spell to make this rote, your actions will not be worth of note." The stealth spell sunk into Batman's cloak, a basic perception filter that made people tend to disregard his actions as less noteworthy. It was well-tested effect, kind of made sneaking more like a videogame, with the typical half-blind sentries. Batman thought it made things too easy, encouraged him to be sloppy, but with hostages aplenty he needs all the help he can get.

Still, without a word Batman slunk inside to take out the gun-toting thugs out of play, Rhine took some deep breaths and tried to draw in additional power from Gotham's… ley lines? Tanya wasn't quite clear on how to refer to the miasma of magic that suffused the city.

After a few moments… "Hey." Richard said. "I'm here, now what?"

"This event will not be common, but it calls for the help of Robin." Rhine intoned, doing a similar costume swap with Richard. Then took a deep breath. Okay, that wasn't so bad. "To support the Bat-kin Knight, I require Gotham's might." Rhine intoned, using their magic to gather more magic from a wide area, then using it to reclaim power.

As when they tried this before, they shuddered as the not-quite-demonic magic suffused them. This always felt a little strange… "Observe and don't fight, until the time is right." Rhine said to Robin, who was peering into the skylight.

Batman had, using the perception filter spell to allow for greater speed, knocked out the majority of the firearm-wielding thugs, unloading the guns as he went. Most of the hostages, under the influence of the spell, focused on the thugs that threaten their lives, while the thugs pay more attention to the hostages, particularly ones that look dangerous enough to attempt some kind of heroics. Two-Face himself was too engrossed in stealing his giant penny to make a note of things.

However, the more thugs Batman took out, lowering their threat level, the less impact the spell had on the hostages, and more and more of them starting to notice Batman. While the first few reacted reasonably, shushing each other and pretending not to see him, eventually a child too young for the necessary logical reasoning noticed him before his parents.

"Look Mommy, it's Batman!"

The spell was already beginning to wear thin from the sheer amount of work it had been doing, so such a blatant violation of it shattered the perception spell completely. "Time's right!" Robin said, leaping in and using his grapple to disarm and send a flying kick to a thug who still had a gun.

Batman, no longer needing to be subtle, threw a brace of batarangs at two other gun-toting thugs, disarming them, and leapt on Two-Face himself to wrench his gun away from him.

How many guns were still in play… two. Great. Rhine dived into the open skylight themselves, wings catching the air and allowing a turn. "Floating through the air, I'm free, everyone come and look at me!" Rhine shouted, sending a magical compulsion to everyone. Clarifying their intent with focus, Robin and Batman were excluded from the effect.

Fortunately, the white-suited thugs had spent some time herding the hostages into a more compact area so they could be more easily gunned down if necessary. So with Batman and Robin finishing the process of disarming the criminals with the distraction, it came down to Two-Face shouting "Just dogpile them!" after the short-duration compulsion faded.

This was, needless to say, a tactical error. Rhine used telekinesis to bring all of the guns up into the air with them, and Batman and Robin worked together to beat up all remaining thugs in the half-destroyed food court. Whenever one of them tried to approach the hostages, Rhine floated down and smacked them back into the brawl with a wing.

Right around when the last thug was taken down, it was apparent why Two-face gave such a futile order: He had gotten away in the confusion. With the penny.

"Okay, how did we miss that?" Robin asked, scratching his head.

"I do not know, but we must go." Rhine said, as the sound of GCPD sirens finally started to sound. The guns floated into a neat pile on the floor. The instant the police arrived, after the excitement was over, right on time, Rhine touched both of their allies with a wing each. "Though this did not end as we prefer, we must return to where and how we were." With one final burst of magic, Richard was teleported back to where he was when the criminals arrived, in his normal clothes, while Bruce and Tanya were teleported back into the bathroom, in their normal clothes and form.

Tanya promptly staggered, a splitting headache suddenly appearing as the fatigue vanished. "Ow."

"You did very well." Bruce whispered as he picked her up. "I'm not sure I could have done that without any hostages getting injured without your help."

"Yes, using mental effects on so many people…" Tanya murmured, going limp. "That was dumb." It was the first thing she thought of to buy Batman another few seconds.

"We'll need to start workshopping more efficient maneuvers." Bruce whispered in his Batman voice. Going back to his normal voice, he continued. "Well, there's just one thing we forgot to do, then we can come out when the police knock on the door to let us out." What did they forget?

Bruce picked the discarded bag back up. Oh. Right.