@riddle-me-this-riddler
“Mor, d’ya rememb’r when I said ya could only spook scum?”
Morel nods seriously.
“Well,” Wil grins, “I got’a friend who needs an ex scared straight. Ya up for it?”
Below: A video attachment labeled “Frightened Flightless Birds”
[TW: minor violence, threats of murder, minor psychological torture i guess?
Let me know if you spot an error or if I missed a TW]
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Oswald Cobblepot, commonly known as “The Penguin.”
Morel’s target.
Morel is silent as he follows Cobblepot. Father told him that the inferior bird was “tryin ta date someone, but then gettin’ pissy when he got excited about somethin’ and proved he ‘as more of’a personality than just ‘is pretty face,” so Morel is going to scare him.
Well, terrify is a better word for what Morel is going to do.
Finally, Cobblepot enters an old, grimy apartment building not too far from the Bowrey. He has enough money for something better, Morel knows, but this was all he could get on such short notice.
The man’s apartment is on the fourth floor. Morel quietly scales the side of the building and cracks open a window to the apartment, slipping inside. Cobblepot doesn’t notice them.
Morel is silent as he sneaks behind the couch his target is face-planted on.
“Beware the Court of Owls”, he rasps, the sound seeming to come from all sides. (So what is he installed tiny speakers all over the room beforehand for extra Spooky Factor. You can’t prove shit)
“That watches all the time,”
Cobblepot has sat up now, scanning the room for intruders.
“Ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch,”
“Where are you?! Show yourself!” Cobblepot shouts. Morel can hear the fear tracing his words.
“Behind granite and lime.”
Cobblepot is standing now, scanning the room for anything amiss. He doesn’t spot anything.
“They watch you at your hearth,”
“Is this about the lounge? I didn’t blow it up! That was all Eddie’s fault-“
“They watch you in your bed,”
Cobblepot is shaking now.
“Speak not a whispered word of them,”
Morel draws two of his knives, the sound echoing around the room.
“Or they’ll send the Talon for your head.”
Morel flips out of his hiding spot, landing on the back of the couch with a knife in each hand.
“Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot.”
Morel didn’t go quite so far as to put on the old costume, but he is wearing all black and a specifically painted mask, so it’s not real far off.
“You have been weighed,” Morel moves closer. “You have been measured,” Closer still. “And you have been found wanting.”
Cobblepot still stands frozen five or so feet in front of Morel.
“The Court has sentenced you to die.”
Before their target can react, Morel dashes forward and jumps to draw a long, shallow line across his throat. Nothing that would require anything more than neosporin and a bandaid.
“But not quite yet.”
And then he’s gone, disappeared into the night.
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Echo’s world has gone decidedly… wobbly. Blurry. Fuzzy at the edges, and what-will-you-else. He can’t feel his fingertips, is his first thought. Kriffing overdid it on the glowing green shots, is his second.
“Holy kriff, Echo, that manhole-cover underneath you is moving!”, Fives exclaims, third. Or more like slurs into Lt. Jesse’s shoulder, who is himself moaning indistinctly into the Captain’s pauldron, who is in turn swaying back and forth gesturing at Commander Cody.
And it really is - the manhole cover, that is, once Echo stumbles off it with a shriek. Jumping up into the now open air with sudden force, steadying and then scraping across paveme-
“Are those kriffing hands?!”
In an instant, seven highly drunk pairs of fists and one blaster, courtesy of Commander Cody (the only one present who’s sober enough to be legally handling it) are aimed in a circle around the cover slowly being shuffled to the side, then the hands reaching up to palm at the edges of the hole -
- and are slowly being lowered again when two white-red painted helmets are heaved into view, along with chest-deep groaning and grunting. Two armored Corries collapse in a heap at Commander Cody’s feet, who stares down at them in open-mouthed shock.
Slowly, Echo blinks. Slowly, he raises a hand to snap his fingers in front of his face. No, still there. Slowly, Fives grabs for a piece of flank underneath his blacks and twists. Echo yelps, and slaps his hand away hard enough to hurt himself. “OI!”
“B’have, boys”, Captain Rex makes a brave attempt to slur out as he sways on his feet, still staring down at the trembling heap of armor at their feet. Whoa, Echo didn’t know they had those kinds of funky armor designs in the Guard. Very avant-garde.
“That’s blood, Ey’ika”, says Appo.
Oh.
Slowly, Hardcase raises his right foot, inching towards-
“Don’t even think about it”, Commander Cody snaps, and Hardcase’s foot whips back to the ground next to its companion. Fives chortles. “Yeah, genius, those are Commander kamas - they’d put you down in a second flat!”
“Why would two Corrie Commanders go crawling out of holes in front of 79’s, huh, genius?!”, Hardcase retorts, somewhat justly, Echo feels. Next to him, Commander Cody frowns, and kneels carefully. “Good question, trooper. Fox, can you hear me? Fox’i-“
Which is when one of the bodies - Commander Fox, Echo realizes with a shudder, The Marshall Commander Fox - convulses on the ground, and an arm rears up to nail Cody face-first with the back of a hand, sending him sprawling back into the pavement with an undignified squawk.
“Thorn”, the sad figure that is the highest decorated clone in existence groans, still faceplanted into pavement, “Thorn, I’m hallucinating Cody. Thorn, tell him to shut up.”
“Shuddup”, Commander Thorn heaves, loyally. Cody makes an affronted noise, braced back on his shebs. “Sdubid Codeh.”
Commander Fox’s visor scrapes against the ground with his nod, a sound that sends the surrounding vod’e cringing. “Yeah, you go, Thorn. You’re my favorite.” A considering pause. “Oh, kark. I need to call in medevac - Fox to Stabby, Fox to Stabby - the kriffing Narglatches are back on the lower levels.”
The Commander’s comm crackles to life, as he heaves himself over with a punched-out moan - oh, yup, that dark patch’s definitely not paint, and are those teeth marks?! On plastoid??
“I’m going to wring Senator Hliii’s neck, and then I’m going to twist him into a human kriffing meat-lasso to catch every last one of his little pets with”, sounds through Fox’s comm, who just hacks out a laughcough in response. “Pinging your location now. Where’s Thorn?”
“Pr’snt”, slurs Thorn.
“Concussed”, adds Fox, “We crawled out forty levels to behind 79’s, so no one would see us.”
Awkward silence follows.
“Uh, about that”, begins Rex, only to be interrupted by a deep groan from Fox.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kriffing kidding me! As if Cody’s ugly mug wasn’t - WHAT THE KRIFF ARE YOUR KRIFFING ARC KARKHEADS DOING IN MY HALLUCINATION, REX?!”
“Shuddup, Rex”, Thorn moans bravely.
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Missed opportunity to represent it as such in-game, but the Undercity where the temple of Bhaal is situated isn't in the sewers; it's in an ancient, abandoned city buried in a series of caverns well under the modern city, and the entire ruin is populated by what's left of the undead residents and the Bhaalists (and presumably any of the Bhaalists' victims that they've added since have joined the undead crowd).
The Undercity also connects to the thieves guilds and the Undercellar, allowing connections with the rest of the Gate's criminal underworld.
Durge and Orin don't live in the sewers (that's further above them), they live in the haunted corpse of the city that was.
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YOU GUYS STINK!
(Danny 0.3 seconds away before smelling the Heroes he just met.)
So I've been pondering about how ghost have the ability to sense one another out when close enough, but now I've been thinking of something for the living. Fanon has something like this in a few fics, making it how Danny can tell who the Leaguers are in/out of costume by calling it Death Touched.
I offer: The Stench of Death.
When a person comes close to a deadly encounter, the event becomes a smell is akin to the near experience. Say if someone survived a fire? The smell would be close to burning the materials being burnt and the smoke for example.
Think like food and how you can smell all the things that go into the dish.
The more you get into deadly situations, the more smells you can pick up on as well as getting stronger. Ghosts can sense the Touch of Death on the living, but not the Stench. Danny, who is a Half alive, can. If he focuses hard enough, he can pick up the scent and sniff people out like a bloodhound.
Now take the Justice League and all their branches/allies, organizations who fight to stop bag guys and world-ending events every couple of months...their smell is prominent enough for Danny to easily pick it up.
Now enter one Daniel Nightingale who has left Amity for [reason] and in [Hero's City], trying to keep a low profile because heroes exist now, he's retired now after sorting out the business between the ghostly and living worlds, and wants to have as close to a normal life as he possibly can before taking the throne.
But one day, he stops a known rouge that would've caused some serious harm to the populace if someone didn't stop them, gaining their attention. They try to get information on Danny, but there's nothing out of the ordinary on his file, so they decided to do the next best thing; watch him.
The young man is very guarded and observing his surroundings often, so the idea of him being a new meta struggling to handle his newly awakened powers or a new alien on Earth are possible theories.
The only problem is that, when they get they close, he tends to leave the area and head home. It's like this for a while until they realize they haven't seen him in some time now and find out he packed up his things and moved to another town...a different city a Leaguer call their hometurf, so they notify that hero of Danny's presence and the cycle repeats itself a few times before Danny is getting tracked by multiple Leauge members.
The latest Leaguer is trying to keep an eye on Danny without spooking him until Danny gets the jump on them and calls them by their civilian name while peltong them with hygiene products.
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