"Making her first debut roughly a year and a half into the Batman's crusade, she had done what few of Gotham's rogues ever managed. She'd made the city afraid of its own gardens. And like all of Gotham's villains, the population had given her a cool, catchy name.
Poison Ivy.
The young and reckless called her the woman worth dying for and, if Bruce's intel were to be believed, plenty had.
Among the old and the God-fearing, she was everything wrong with the modern world wrapped in green and apparently wearing too little of it. World governments and intelligence agencies had her flagged as a biological threat of the highest order, capable of collapsing entire ecosystems or birthing new ones on a whim.
Ask every member of Gotham's fairer sex and the answer would change with the evening.
Ivy was an icon. A cautionary tale. Or the wench whose tits their husbands couldn't stop ogling on the morning paper.
As for those with the clearance, the connections, or the sheer stubbornness to dig past the redacted dossiers, buried court transcripts, and the literal labyrinth of NDAs that corporate and government lawyers had constructed around her civilian identity, they knew her as Dr. Pamela Lillian Isley—a woman who got two doctorates in Biochemistry and Botany before people her age even thought about trying for their first.
She was a researcher whose published work on plant-derived immunosuppressants and bio-reactive enzyme therapy had revolutionized two separate fields while the rest of the world was too busy arguing about which Supe looked best on camera.
She was an award recipient; a grant winner peer-reviewed and cited in journals the general public would need three degrees of their own just to subscribe to.
Dr. Isley was the kind of genius the world would have—should have celebrated, if the population paid half as much attention to the people solving their problems behind the scene as they did to the ones punching villains through skyscrapers.
For me, she was the woman who took my V-card, and the only reason that hellish month was… Bearable.
When I think of her, I don't think of Poison Ivy.
I think of Pamela.
I think of the version of her the world never got to see, and I think of how lucky I was to have been allowed a glimpse, inside and out. 'Tis a shame that—through no fault of her own, mind you—our story wasn't meant to last…"
— [HELLBRED] —
The hit to the side of the head must have knocked a few screws loose, because there was no way in hell he should have forgotten about her.
Batman might have been the one to carry Arkham Knight across the finish line, but it was Ivy who kept the whole city breathing with the longest support run in the game… It was her who cleansed Gotham's air while everyone else was seized by manic episodes, and it cost her her life to do it, too.
If there was a single soul on this planet capable of cleansing the corruption that had sunk its teeth into Gotham—if anyone was willing and able, it was Ivy.
"Nature always wins..." Repeating her last words from the trilogy, Rowan raised the canister in his palm to eye-level and studied the hypnotic swirls churning inside. He'd torn through the Kirklands' computer and found their version of the Serum couldn't be injected to the bloodstream, nor ingested due to its potency.
Every previous subject they'd injected—rats and pigs alike—had bloomed into cancerous mass, while the ones fed had expelled portions of their digestive system on the spot. Only the few that inhaled the Serum survived. And even among them, only a handful were seemingly without detrimental traits.
Rowan, however, had no such worries.
"Think you can refine this for me?"
It had been a while, but Rowan hadn't forgotten how the Shade had devoured both the Butcher and Yvonne whole and rendered their abilities its own. If Ichor could metabolize a fragment of the Rage Entity and a centuries-old Vampire, a biochemical cocktail should be well-within its capabilities.
The Shade shrugged, tip-toeing forward with a hunched back.
It took a tentative sniff of the canister, elongated tongue slithering from its gaping mouth and dragging across the rim, before unceremoniously plopping the whole thing in its mouth.
How a creature with next to no features besides hollow sockets and a mouth could be so expressive, Rowan couldn't say, but the Serum clearly wasn't very agreeable to its palate. "I'm guessing that's a 'No.'" He sighed as the Shade spat the canister right back into his palm in disgust.
"Well, wish me luck."
Ichor and the Wisp tensed in unison as he brought the canister to his lips and downed it in one go. He then wiped the corner of his mouth with his sleeve, bracing for a spike of agony that, disappointingly, never hit. "Huh." Flexing his fingers, Rowan eyed his palm and sent his Summons a look of disbelief.
"It tingles." He could feel the Serum soaking through his digestive tract, leaving a trail of warmth in its wake that was as… Pleasant as a hot meal and as comforting as a warm glass of milk in the winter. And then he began to steam, the bright garish tone of his skin darkening to a deep red wine that made him look less like a walking, talking sausage and gave his skin an otherworldly sheen, not unlike the red rubies adorning the late Martha Wayne's necklace.
He tracked the Serum's progress through his body and marvelled at how sharp the world had become, even with only two eyes doing the work of his usual six. Though he'd never tried cocaine before, even when offered by Reuben, Rowan imagined this was what those addicted children in the ring were chasing at their own expense, and pitied them all the more for it.
But he knew it wasn't pity they wanted.
He doubted it was what Gotham wanted either.
The city cried for help, but louder still, she called for blood from the people who had left her in such a state. Blood from the gilded high-rises. Blood from the gutters. Blood from the banal and the theatrical. And Rowan was all too happy to deliver. But first, he had to find Ivy… Only when Gotham was cleansed, and the Bat-family freed of their insanity could he fully put his mind to the Joker and his accomplice.
He scaled the stairs to the rooftop, his breath hitching as he stared at the unnatural forest already choking out high-rises in the distance and then, without a second thought, kicked off the ledge and glided toward the verdant mass. 'It's on fire?'
His eyes narrowed at the sight of vines—each as thick as a compact car—beating back the flames threatening to engulf the forest whole. It wasn't that Rowan hadn't spotted the flame from afar, but he'd thought it was a byproduct of the chaos.
Upon a closer inspection, however, that did not seem to be the case.
The fire was too close to the center, yet the outskirts of the forest were practically untouched. Someone had set it. But who'd have the gall to torch Ivy's domain? And more importantly, how had they pulled it off without getting torn apart by the woman herself?
He landed a short distance from the forest, eyes fixed on two silhouettes duking it out atop a writhing vine. One was obviously Ivy, draped in the leafy green she so adored.
The other hovered close with a flamethrower in his hands, and a patchy suit to hide his modesty. "Firefly?"
Garfield Lynns.
Former movie VFX artist and compulsive arsonist whose insistence on dangerous practical effects and general psychopathic tendencies had made him a pariah in the industry long before he put on the suit. Actors, after all, could hardly act when they were busy running for their lives.
At the height of his career, he'd attempted a stunt that nearly killed the leading actress and was unceremoniously thrown off the crew.
With no prospect in the film industry, and a multi-million dollar lawsuit for reckless endangerment up his backside, Garfield went from a talent to a homeless, poverty-stricken bum in less than a month. Left with no other option, Lynns turned to crime, which he took to even faster than he did special effects.
Where Joker and Scarecrow fixated on destroying the mind, and men like Pyg or Zsasz elevated murder to an art form, Firefly had no such complexity.
If it burned, it was beautiful to him.
That was the beginning and the end of his philosophy.
Tonight, it seemed he'd set his sights on Ivy's garden. Rowan couldn't decide if that was brave, crazy, or outright stupid… If he had to guess, it was probably an unhealthy mix of all three.
"Hold still, would you?! You're gonna look way better when I'm done with you! Hehehe."
"The last man who said that to me is still fertilizing my roses."
Thick coils of green swatted at the hovering pyromaniac, but Firefly was deceptively quick on those jetpacks. Every lash missed by inches as he weaved and spun, all the while looking like he was having the time of his life.
The heavier vines were too cumbersome to match his speed, and the smaller, faster shoots lacked the reach to snag him at that altitude, trailing uselessly in the heat-shimmering air.
"Stand still!" Ivy snapped, then recoiled as chemical flame erupted from the barrel of Firefly's flamethrower and melted through her plants near instantly. Nature didn't always win, it seemed.
Not without a little outside interference, at least.
'Ichor!'
The Shadow bubbled into a beast that stood nearly seven feet tall, hoisted him by the belt and hurled him toward Ivy just as the flame started to work through the last of her vines.
"[Spectral Shield]!"
Rowan called out, conjuring the Arcane barrier that caught the chemical flame for only seconds before it started to waver and forced him to throw up a second. Fortunately, Firefly was too lost in his own ecstasy to notice another player had entered the game. "Burn! Burn! Burn!" The crazed villain chanted, his finger gripping the trigger tightly.
'Seventeen…'
Rowan thought to himself.
Seventeen seconds was the longest Garfield's flamethrower could sustain a burst, from what he'd observed of their battle.
"You're—"
'Eleven…' The countdown continued as Rowan brought a finger to his visor and hushed. "Don't. Let him think you're down." Ivy looked confused but relented, willing her plants to retreat and go limp. That she trusted him so quickly caught Rowan off guard, though he supposed nearly being incinerated had a way of making people more agreeable than they usually were.
"Don't you worry, I'll use your ashes as bonemeal for your babies!"
Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Rowan snorted. 'If he doesn't burn it all down too, that is…'
The roar of the flamethrower finally died.
Garfield could have kept the trigger pinned, but that weapon wasn't some bottomless video game pickup. He knew the limits of his fuel as did Rowan.
'Now!' Ripping the Batclaw free from his belt, Rowan fired the steel cable through the haze to snag the wing of Garfield Lynns' jetpack while the pyromaniac was still squinting at the soot.
"Imp!"
"Me!" Grinning underneath his visor, Rowan slammed the third button and rocketed toward Firefly, closing the gap in a matter of seconds.
The pyromaniac buckled, firing blindly in a panic and subsequently blotting out the sky with flaming whirlwinds which Rowan regarded with open contempt.
For all his pride; for all his mania, what was Lynns' chemical fire to a Demon's?
What was it before the Breath of a Dragon? Rowan entertained the thought of showing the arsonist what real fire looked like, then shoved the impulse aside and discarded the key.
For one, it clearly wasn't the optimal choice given how draining [Halitus Draconis] was to sustain for even a few seconds.
For another, he was here to enlist Ivy's help, not make an enemy of her, and the sheer heat from the Spell would render her plants ashes whether he meant to or not…
Not exactly an ideal way to make a first impression.
'How unfortunate…' It was such a perfect moment to fight fire with fire too. 'Oh, well.' Not like he needed to in the first place.
"Let go!" Shrieked Firefly, only for Ichor to latch onto his back from behind while the pyromaniac fumbled with homemade chemical bombs stuffed in his cargo pockets.
The patchy little things detonated in a twelve-foot radius of roaring flame that lasted all of two seconds before being walled inside layer upon layer of [Spectral Shield]s projected from Rowan's hands and inhaled clean through the gaps in Rowan's visor.
[Haustus Draconis], or [Dragon's Draft], belonged to the same lineage as [Halitus], conceived seven generations after the original [Ignis Draconis] by a Mage who had grown frustrated with what he saw as the inheritance' most glaring flaw.
The man's solution was elegant in theory: A companion Spell that absorbed heat from nearby sources and converted it into Mana, creating a self-sustaining cycle where one fed the other… He succeeded… Partially. [Haustus] could leech all the heat from the sun itself, or so he theorized, provided the Mage in question had the lung capacity for it, and—predictably—nobody short of Superman did.
And that was only the beginning of its failures.
The conversion rate, for instance, was absolutely atrocious.
The speed at which it converted heat into usable Mana was somehow even worse. The effective range capped at a pitiful five feet from the Caster's mouth, meaning any Mage brave enough to use it practically had to kiss the fire to drink it.
With so many limitations, the inventor himself eventually deemed it a failure useful only for cleanup and damage control after a battle had already been won, and a poor one at that. And thus, the [Haustus] was shelved, passed down through academic tradition more for its novelty than its merit.
However, as the old adage went, 'A sword—or in this case—A Spell is only as good as the mind that wields it.'
"HOWWWW?!!"
"Magic!" Rowan answered, all tongue-in-cheek as he tore the wing clean off the jetpack.
Firefly veered into a death spiral, screaming profanities the whole way down while Ichor bent the barrel of his flamethrower into a U-shape and ripped the fuel tank off his back for good measure.
They slammed onto the surface of a smoldering vine, where Rowan proceeded to lay into the villain with a savagery that would've only made sense if Firefly had murdered his family and pissed on their headstones. By the time he was done, not even he could tell where Firefly's mask ended and his face began.
"Stop,"
He whirled around, half expecting to find Bruce there to chastise him.
But last he checked, the Dark Knight wasn't green, nor was he ever that… Shapely. Brows arched in confusion, he mused out loud. "You know, of all the people I expected to stop me, you're dead fucking last on the list."
Was his judgment of her wrong?
Was this version of Ivy a bleeding heart who—
He hadn't a chance to finish the thought when a thorny vine the width of his torso punched through Firefly's chest and, with a violent jerk, spilled his innards all over the ground.
Then, as though still unsatisfied, the vine lifted the bisected remains and hammered them against the earth thrice, splattering Rowan and Ivy alike in gore.
"There's your bonemeal."
Rowan stared at the woman, then at the blooming flytraps currently making short work of what was left of Garfield Lynns.
"Spare me your lecture, 'hero.'"
He shrugged, hands raised in surrender.
"Meh, couldn't have happened to a nicer person."
— — — — —
Quick notice: Chapters 54–62 are completely free to read on P @ tr30n. com / Regularrr. No membership required if you'd rather not wait to catch up.