“Wait! I’m not going to hurt you!”, said Eddie the hotel manager. “I need your help.There is something off about the act that I booked tonight.” Eddie slowly lowered his bat and continued. “This guy, Ralph Slap, I had never heard of him before, but I started getting these phone calls asking if Ralph Slap was going to play my club. All of these calls seemed to be from a robo-dialer or something. I would try to talk back to them, but they just kept talking until they got to the end of their message and then just hung up.
Finally, a few hours later, I got a real person on the line and they said that they were an agent for Ralph and wanted to book him. I was sceptical, but this guy says that he can guarantee a packed hotel for Ralph’s act. He says that this Ralph is a rising star and packs the crowds. So I tell the agent that Ralph could have tonight if I got at least 50% capacity booked for the hotel. Ralph says to leave it to him. Within 5 hours I had the hotel completely booked through online reservations. You fellas were the only ones to book prior to the rush.”
Eddie reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out some gum. “You fellas want any?”, he says before popping one of the pieces into his mouth. We each decline. Eddie was not what you would call, tidy.
“Anyways, all of the rooms have been booked for a week solid, but no one has shown up yet. Empty rooms cost me money. I tried to get hold of that agent, but the number he called me on just goes to voicemail. So, finally, this afternoon right before you guys turn up, Ralph appears, and he had these goons with him. Big guys with no expressions on their faces. They just seemed robotic.
Ralph says to me, ‘I promised the boys here that I would do a small show tonight first to try out my new material. Can you make sure that only hotel guests and staff come to it? Consider this an exclusive, and no phones allowed.’ Then his goons just sort of surround me. They didn’t say anything, but they didn’t have to. You don’t survive this long in Gotham without learning how to read a room. I told them that no one would be coming in. Ralph seemed satisfied and left with just one goon staying behind in the lobby. I think he was making sure I didn’t leave, and that’s why I was acting so nervous when you guys checked in. I wasn’t sure if you were with Ralph or not. I have a bad feeling of what’s happening in the hotel bar where the stage is. One goon is standing outside the entrance and none of the staff have been coming back to the kitchen. I’m worried something has happened to them. I can’t seem to use my phone either. Do any of yours work?”
We each check our phones, and none of us have a signal, and there is no wi-fi available. I show Eddie my phone screen and shake my head.
“I was afraid of that.”, he says. “I noticed that I had no signal around 10 pm. I went to check where we have our routers, but I couldn’t get a signal standing right next to it. I tried logging on with my computer and I can’t get internet. Plus, the phones are dead. There is still one goon in the lobby. He looks tough, but I have to get out so I can get to the cops. Can you help me?”
My friends and I look at each other. There are five of us, and we grew up in Gotham. We know how dangerous the city can get, and when we were teenagers we had formed an unofficial group whose goal was to “assist” Batman. Even though Batman never even knew who we were. We called ourselves, The Scroungers. We would visit sites in the city were Batman was reported to have fought some villain or another and we would scrounge the area for anything cool that might have been left behind. We scrounged up a small arsenal within months. We were always the first on the scene after the police had left. Gotham Police were sloppy. Countless batarangs were found by us. Plain steel, electric, remote controlled, gas dispensing, sonic burst, and flash bang varieties made their way into our arsenal.
That wasn’t all though. The villains left their things behind too. My friend Jose found a Penguin umbrella that shoots 12 gauge shells. Chuck has one of Mr. Freeze’s freeze ray guns. Natalie has one of Deathstroke’s swords, while Alisha found one of Harley Quinn’s baseball bats. I found a vial of Venom that I have never used.
“We can help.”, I said. I know that everyone still has their treasures with them. We never let them out of our site, even when we all moved away. “Give us a few minutes and we’ll meet you back here.” The five of us go back to our rooms to change and arm ourselves. We meet back and brief Eddie.
“Ok. Eddie, stay close behind us. We’ll take out the first goon, and clear the way so you can get some help. Don’t make a sound.”, I said as we rode down in the elevator.
The elevator door then opened to the lobby. The goon standing watch at the door glances at us, and sensing the threat quickly reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a pistol and starts to fire. I quickly throw out a smoke pellet and grab Eddie to bring him to cover behind one of the marble pillars. Chuck, Jose, Alisha, and Natalie fan out across the room in the ever widening smoke.
The goon is still shooting at us. I seem to be his main target as pieces of marble are blasted away around me and Eddie. Finally, a lull in the shots. The goon needs to reload. Chuck is the first to notice and fires the Freeze Ray and envelopes the goon in ice.
“Eddie! Now’s your chance! Run!”, I shout as Eddie moves quickly across the lobby. He reaches the doors, but they won’t open.
“I can’t get the doors open!”, he shouts.
We all make our way over to see why. When we get there we see that the doors have been welded shut. We all see the neatly made weld marks trapping us in the hotel.
“How did this happen?”, says Alisha.
Behind us, there is crash. We all turn around to see the goon, who was encased in ice, had busted out and has a flame torch for a hand, with a long blue flame coming out the end of it.
“Are you kidding me?”, says Natalie. The Freeze Ray had damaged the goon’s skin on his face, and we could see a metal skeleton underneath. The goon was some sort of robot. We watched as the robot brought the torch up to his face, and the skin healed from the applied heat. He lowered the torch and charged us.
I wrapped my arms around Eddie and dodged just in time out of the way of the robot. I grabbed an explosive batarang off of my belt and flung it at the large lobby window looking out onto the street. The explosion shattered the glass flinging it outward into the city night.
“Eddie. You have a way out now. We’ll take care of this robot.” I said as Eddie made his way over the lower half of the window.
Jose had started shooting at the robot goon with the umbrella gun. The shotgun shells were doing tremendous damage, and Natalie was able to get in close to swing her sword and neatly remove the robot goons head from its body.
This didn’t stop the robot. The head could still see Alisha and the body started make its way towards her. Alisha swung down hard with the bat and smashed in the robot’s head. The body finally stopped moving.
Exhausted, we gather around the robot head. “Well, should we see what’s going on inside the bar?”, I say.
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