That apparently was the wrong answer. The Penguin began to quake with rage.
“I oughta have you spayed!” he shouted. “You sent out all the signals!”
Catwoman paused to think about that.
“Did I?” she asked. And silently answered, maybe she did. “Only because my mom trained me to, with a man—” Oh yeah. She remembered her mom’s warnings. Heaven forfend Selina should be an Old Maid! “—any man,” she added, “—all men—”
This Cat outfit had brought it out even more. Why couldn’t she look at what she was doing? “Corn dog!” she muttered, hitting herself on the side of the head for good measure.
But why was she blaming herself again? She had promised that once she had donned the Catwoman outfit, she would place the blame where it belonged—on men! She turned to The Penguin with a new resolve.
“Me, domesticated?” she asked angrily. “By you? I doubt it! You repulsive, awful—” She hesitated for an instant, looking for some sufficiently insulting way to end the remark, but there really was only one way to complete the sentence. “—Penguin!”
The Penguin hugged his umbrella close, mortally offended. “The name is Oswald Cobblepot.”
He flung the umbrella at her. She dodged the shaft, but the handle snaked around her neck, forming a noose as the ribs of the umbrella spun above her, creating a rotor that lifted her from the roof. She couldn’t breathe.
The Penguin waved sadly as the umbrella copter lifted her from the ground.
“And the wedding’s been called off.”
He was going to hang her with his umbrella!
CHAPTER THIRTY
She saw The Penguin turn moodily away as the umbrella whirled her away from the rooftop and out over Gotham City.
But she would strangle. There had to be some way to loosen this noose. She reached up with her claws, striking at the rope that stretched across the back of her neck.
She sliced through it. She could breathe.
But she was no longer being held aloft by the umbrella, which went spinning ever higher as she fell.
She saw lights immediately below. A glass enclosure on another roof. A penthouse maybe.
She crashed through the roof.
She opened her eyes. She had landed in dirt, surrounded by flowers. This wasn’t just a penthouse, it was a greenhouse.
So Catwoman survived. But was she happy?
She wailed loud enough to break the rest of the glass.
Another life down the tubes.
There were banners and posters all over the place—windows, telephone poles, even the campaign bus—and all saying, in a dozen different ways, to vote Cobblepot for Mayor.
The Penguin loved those slogans. Max’s boys were so good at those sort of things.
His supporters clustered around him, cheering. So why couldn’t he shake this gloom? Maybe it had something to do with killing not one babe, but two! It seemed like such a waste of good womanflesh—especially before he and those babes could become more personally acquainted. He pulled a handful of campaign buttons out of one of his many pockets, and started to pin them on the chests of his supporters—his female supporters—his well-endowed female supporters. Hey, he started to feel better already. What was a dead babe or two, when there were all these other babes to go around?
Still, he had other fish to fry at the moment. After waving a fond adieu, especially to a couple of blondes, he jumped aboard his bus and hurried back to his specially designed miniature Batmobile, complete with switches, meters, dials, knobs, levers, buttons, and a mini-steering wheel. What made this even more special, of course, was that every single button, lever and knob on this board controlled some function of the real Batmobile.
Hey. The Penguin cackled. This could cheer him up even more.
His body had taken too much abuse; too many punches and kicks and bullets, compounded by his crash into the alley. His body armor had absorbed some of the shock. But his body had received the rest of it.
Somehow, Batman got to his feet. Somehow, he made it to the Batmobile. He pressed a button beneath his glove and switched off the security system.
And not a moment too soon, he thought, as he heard angry voices behind him. He could make out enough of their shouts as he popped open the door to the Batmobile to figure out the source of their anger. They wanted him, and not necessarily alive. They thought he had murdered the Ice Princess. In their minds, he was already tried, convicted, and ready for execution. Now that they’d found him, they weren’t going to let him get away; a whole mob of self-appointed vigilantes.
Vigilantes. It had a familiar ring to it. What made them so different from Batman?
Only perhaps that he had the money for the proper training, and the state-of-the-art equipment. And maybe, just maybe, he had his anger under a little more control.
The voices were getting closer. The leading edge of the crowd was only a few yards away.
Now wasn’t the time to think about this. Now it was time to get out of here.
He jumped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut above him. The mob couldn’t reach him now. He exhaled, giving himself a moment’s peace before he took the Batmobile home.
The doors locked. The control panel flashed on. The engine roared to life.
Batman stared at the controls. He hadn’t touched anything.
The small TV monitor by the side of the wheel blipped on. But instead of Alfred’s face, Batman saw the gloating features of The Penguin.
“Don’t adjust your set,” the villain remarked pleasantly. “Welcome to the Oswald Cobblepot School of Driving. Gentlemen, start your screaming—”
The Batmobile slammed forward as if Batman had floored the accelerator. Batman’s pursuers jumped wildly for cover as the car careened forward and turned, tires squealing, onto the street.
The Penguin had it all!
He had two screens in front of him. One showed him Batman’s face. Very tense. Definite Type A personality. If Batman wasn’t careful, he’d get an ulcer. That is, if he lived long enough. Which he wouldn’t.
The second screen showed a driver’s-eye view of where the Batmobile was going. Very important, since The Penguin was doing the steering. And no doubt he would steer the Batmobile straight into an accident. But it had to be a spectacular accident. And the Batmobile should run over as many innocent bystanders as possible before it happened. After all, why only sully a hero’s reputation when, with just a little more effort, you could destroy it completely?
“Maybe this would be a bad time to mention it,” The Penguin said to his own personal video camera, the one whose signal was being piped to the Batmobile, “but my license has expired.”
He turned the Batmobile toward the crowd-filled plaza, and once again pressed his own personal accelerator.
“Of course,” The Penguin added with a cackle, “so have you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Batman was in the middle of a nightmare.
First, his car had been taken out of his control. Batman punched out the instrument panel in front of him. It looked like half the system had been rewired.
How had they managed this? He had only left the Batmobile alone for a few minutes. The time and expertise to accomplish this sort of thing was staggering. They had not only rigged the Batmobile, they had also foiled those warning systems he had built in to tell him of just this sort of tampering.
And once the car was under another’s control, it was being driven at top speed directly toward the Christmas crowds. Apparently, The Penguin wouldn’t be satisfied with only the Batman’s death. He wanted innocent bystanders to die as well.
Batman had underestimated his opponent. And he would pay for it, unless he could figure out some way to retake control.
Batman ripped out a handful of the new wiring, then a second. The car sped forward. A lever hummed as it started downward. The Penguin was activating the weapons systems. Batman grabbed the lever and pushed it back up with all his strength.
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“Batman!” The Penguin barked on the monitor. “I know you’re not having a swell time, but let me tell you. Taking control of your vehicle, mowing down decent people, and laying the bad vibes squarely on you—makes the hairs in my nose tingle.”
Batman was trapped.
The lever that controlled the Batdiscs slammed down again. And this time, no matter how much he tried, Batman couldn’t budge it.
Penguin glanced up at his third monitor, the one hooked into cable TV.
“Batman is out of control!” a reporter was shouting. “First he murdered the Ice Princess, and now—”
His reporting was cut mercifully short as one of the Batmobile’s Batdiscs thunked him on the side of the head. My, The Penguin thought, he’d always wanted to do something like that. Probably mussed the reporter’s hair up no end.
He turned his attention back to the Batmobile.
“Ha!” he said to his camera. “The flimsiest evidence, and all those taterheads turn on you! Hey, just relax, and I’ll take care of the squealing, wretched, pinhead puppets of Gotham.”
He looked out of his driving monitor. Screaming Gothamites were fleeing every which way in front of the marauding Batmobile. But wait! Look at that defenseless grandmother they had left behind. She stared at the on-rushing car, frozen with fear. This was the sort of victim The Penguin liked to see.
“Helpless old lady at twelve o’clock!” he announced for Batman’s benefit.
The Penguin pressed down on the accelerator.
Something around here still had to control the car, if only so that the vehicle would respond to the remote signals. The Batman just had to think it through, but fast, before The Penguin’s command of the Batmobile killed someone.
He pulled open the ceiling panel, revealing a mass of fuses, the real control center of the Batmobile. But which one? He tried to visualize all the charts he’d drawn when he’d helped to design this thing. Third one from the left should do it. Or so he hoped.
Batman reached up and pulled.
The Batmobile squealed to a halt.
The old lady, only a few feet in front of the suddenly still vehicle, ran away at last.
One saved, Batman thought. And one more to go.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The Penguin cackled happily on the monitor. For the merest of instants, Batman thought about disabling the monitor instead.
But that would save his ego, not his life.
“You gotta admit,” The Penguin croaked. “I’ve played this stinking city like a harp from hell!”
Not for long, Batman thought. He drove his fist through the monitor, silencing The Penguin with a shower of sparks. There. Sometimes you just needed to feed your ego.
And maybe there was another way to stop the Batmobile.
He kicked downward with his heel once, twice, three times. There. The floor panel had bent enough for him to pry it up.
He pulled it free, revealing a mass of wires and spinning gears.
He punched down quickly, trusting his glove to protect him from the gears, and popped open the bottom panel so that he could see the spinning ground below. There, mounted to the Batmobile’s undercarriage, was some sort of antennae; no doubt the heart of The Penguin’s control.
Batman reached down and snapped it in two.
Now it was time to get out of here.
Batman hit the accelerator and shot between two of the police cars and out of Gotham Piaza.
What?
The Penguin couldn’t believe it.
“Came this close to a perfect evening!” he cried in anguish. He pounded the controls. “Iced the princess. Blew away Batman. Almost got married. Killed the bitch.” He held up two black-gloved fingers. “This close!”
But somehow Batman had gotten away. Gotten away! It was enough to sour The Penguin’s whole day.
Luckily, he had his other plans to fall back on. The mayor’s race, for one. And after that, his masterstroke, so magnificently nasty that he could forget any small failings here.
Not that Gotham City would ever forget. No, he was sure that, once his plans were complete, they’d remember Oswald Cobblepot—forever.
Batman wasn’t in the dear yet.
Three police cars had managed to give chase. A couple of them had cops firing at him. Not that that was a worry. Even a damaged Batmobile was sufficiently bulletproof. But if possible, he needed to shake these cruisers without hurting anybody else.
He rummaged through the exposed wires on the dashboard. That was a second problem; he needed to override whatever damage The Penguin had done to his vehicle, and get the Batmobile’s functions operating at a level that would help him with his escape.
He made a sharp right. The cruisers managed to follow. The street narrowed in front of him, into a space so narrow that you could barely call it an alley. Much too narrow for the Batmobile, or the police cruisers. It was time for one of those special Batmobile functions right now.
Batman flipped a switch. Nothing happened. The switch was dead.
But the wires that controlled that switch were still here behind the dashboard. Batman pushed aside the torn instrument panel and quickly pulled the two loose wires out of the mass. He sparked their ends together. Now.
The windshield wipers began to beat back and forth. Not at all what he had wanted.
“That’s funny,” Batman murmured. How many wires had The Penguin’s thugs tampered with? He frowned down at the assembly around. But where could the wires be that he needed?
The alley was coming up fast.
“Now I’m a little worried—” he began. “Oh.” There they were.
He connected the right wires this time.
The sides of the Batmobile fell away as the wheels realigned themselves beneath him, making his vehicle a streamlined bullet of a car, narrow enough to fit through the space immediately ahead—something he called the Batmissile.
They tried to follow, but only succeeded in wedging their vehicle between the walls. From the noise that followed, Batman surmised, that the other two cruisers piled into the back of the first.
He was in the clear. He leaned into his turn, and disappeared into darkness.
He just wasn’t in the mood.
Max Shreck stood by his side, trying to be cheerful enough for both of them as he guided The Penguin toward the platform where he was scheduled to give his speech.
“—so he survived,” Max said dismissively. “Come on, be a mensch. Stand tall—” His voice trailed off as he saw the look The Penguin gave him. Perhaps Max recalled that, the last time Oswald Cobblepot had felt this way, he’d almost bitten off somebody’s nose. Of course, since that incident, the lovely Jen seemed to have kept her distance, too. Some women were just too sensitive.
But Penguin couldn’t think about women. Now that was truly misery! No, all he could think of was Batman—a living, breathing, totally intact Batman.
“He didn’t even lose a limb, an eyeball.” He sighed at the indignity. “Bladder control!”
Max wouldn’t listen. He waved at the cheering crowd in the plaza, and pointed at the latest banner: RECALL THE MAYOR.
Straight and to the point.
“Point is,” Max insisted as he waved to the audience, “listen to them. They’ve lost faith in the old symbols. They’re ready to bond with you, the icon of the future.” He smiled encouragingly. “If it works, don’t fix it—”
Well, yeah, they were yelling for him, weren’t they? He could hear a chant rising from the throng. “Os-wald, Oswald, Os-wald.” Yeah. Oswald Cobblepot, hero to the teeming millions of Gotham City. Not the Mayor. Not Batman. Oswald Cobblepot. He stared gloomily at the special deluxe black umbrella he carried for the occasion.
“We’ll celebrate tonight,” Shreck insisted, “at my annual Max-squerade Ball. Shreck and Cobblepot, the visionary alliance!”
But Penguin’s eyes were on the crowd. They were all screaming. They were all screaming for him. More important, a lot of them were women, scre
aming for him. No, they weren’t just women, they were babes; cheap, maybe, tawdry most certainly, but they were his babes. Screaming Cobblepot Groupies. It gave him a reason to go on. To think that a poor boy, abandoned by his parents, raised in a rotting exhibit on the edge of the sewers by emperor and king penguins, could get these kind of babes. This was America—truly the land of opportunity!
The Penguin moved to the microphone, and the cheering redoubled. He could feel the adulation of the masses, and it gave him strength. When he spoke, his voice was no longer a simple squawk. Now it was a booming squawk.
“When it came our time to ensure the safety of our city, did the Mayor have a plan?” The Penguin began. “No, he relied on a man. A ‘bat’ man!”
The crowd screamed their adulation. For The Penguin, more than just Oswald Cobblepot, abandoned child and sometime crook. No, they screamed for Oswald Cobblepot, supreme ruler of Gotham!
Yes, The Penguin could really get into this!
Selina Kyle stood and watched all the hoopla, and all the cheering, for the two men who had tried to kill her.
Max Shreck.
Oswald Cobblepot. A. k. a. The Penguin.
She didn’t begrudge them their few, pitiful moments of glory. She wanted them to go as high as this campaign would allow.
The heights, after all, would make their fall so much more satisfying.
Catwoman wasn’t playing anymore. It was time for her to sharpen her claws.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Bruce Wayne found himself watching television again, and another of those never-ending media events with The Penguin.
And this time, The Penguin was talking about Batman.
“A ticking time bomb of a costumed freak,” the overblown politician exclaimed to the crowd, “who finally exploded last night, spraying this city with a shrapnel of shame!”
The Penguin was there. The crowd was there. The TV cameras were there. It was time.
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