VIP Shoutout: Massive thanks to Lee Smith, Ryan & Hassan Albousaleh for joining the Inner Circle!
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"Oh? And what information are you looking for?"
Penguin stared at the man in the red jacket for a long, measuring moment. The thin cigar between his fingers had burned down to a stub, but he hadn't taken a single pull since the stranger sat down across from him.
"Two-Face," the man answered without flourish. "I want to know where I can find him."
Penguin's small eyes narrowed behind the tinted lenses of his monocle.
"You're looking for Harvey Dent? Why?"
The stranger—Lupin III, or so he called himself—gave a small, almost playful smile.
"That doesn't seem to have anything to do with you, does it, Mr. Cobblepot?"
"Of course it does." Penguin leaned forward slightly, the tip of his umbrella tapping once against the polished floor. "Harvey is an old friend of mine. How could I possibly hand over his whereabouts to someone whose origins and intentions are completely unknown?"
The indignation in his voice was practiced, theatrical, but not entirely fake. In Gotham, old alliances still carried weight—even crooked ones.
"Um, true~ Then what will it take for you to tell me?" Lupin asked, tone light, as though they were discussing the price of a drink.
Penguin's lips curled into something that was half smile, half sneer.
"It's simple. We just need to become… friends."
Lupin's eyebrows lifted just enough to show he understood perfectly. Friendship, in Penguin's dictionary, meant leverage. Employment. A favor owed.
"How about this?" Lupin said smoothly. "I can help Mr. Cobblepot solve a small problem right now. Consider it proof of my sincerity."
Penguin snorted, genuinely amused.
"What kind of trouble could I possibly have that I haven't already handled?"
"Not long ago, while I was playing cards in your casino, the dealer quietly activated the secondary electromagnetic pulse trigger under the table. Unfortunately…"
Lupin spread his hands. "It was completely ineffective against me. Aren't you the least bit curious what flaw I found in that mechanism, Mr. Cobblepot?"
The amusement vanished from Penguin's face.
The Iceberg Lounge Casino had been running its hidden systems for over twelve years. Millions had been spent on consultants, engineers, and crooked technicians to make sure the house always won—quietly, invisibly, and legally deniable.
The idea that a complete stranger had spotted a flaw in under an hour was insulting. And therefore, probably true.
"You're telling me," Penguin said slowly, "that you can point out the flaw… and fix it?"
"If I can do both, will you give me what I want?"
Penguin studied him for another long beat.
"Very well. Show me. But understand this: you fix it tonight. You breathe a word of what you saw to anyone, and you'll wish you'd never set foot in Gotham."
Lupin only smiled wider.
"Naturally."
...
Forty minutes later, in the dimly lit underground control room beneath the casino floor.
The bank of monitors flickered with live feeds from every table. The air smelled faintly of ozone and cooling electronics.
The security manager—a thin, perpetually nervous man named Kessler—stared at the opened panel Lupin had indicated, mouth slightly open.
"…So the secondary sensor array was picking up interference from the overhead LED chandeliers on a specific frequency band. Because the calibration never accounted for the new lighting upgrade three years ago, the system was occasionally misreading the dealer's hidden pulse as ambient noise. That's why it didn't fire properly tonight."
Kessler blinked several times.
"We've been running this configuration since 2013. Not a single audit ever caught that."
"Of course not," Lupin said cheerfully. "It only manifests when someone is winning consistently enough to trigger the secondary layer. Most people lose long before that point."
He stepped back and gestured at the console.
"Shall we?"
After ten minutes of recalibration—new frequency filters, a slight adjustment to the sensitivity threshold, and a quick firmware patch—the system was tested.
Three consecutive "perfect" hands were dealt. Each time the mechanism should have activated, the indicator light stayed dark. Clean.
Kessler looked almost reverent.
"Mr. Lupin… truly impressive."
Lupin gave a modest little bow.
Penguin, who had been watching silently from the doorway, finally stepped forward.
He extended a gloved hand.
"Pleasure doing business with you."
Lupin shook it once, firmly.
"Then I believe you owe me an address."
Penguin chuckled, low and dry.
"You'll have it before sunrise. My word on it."
...
Outside the Iceberg Lounge, the Gotham night was damp and restless.
Lupin the Third walked with the relaxed stride of a man who had nowhere urgent to be. Behind him, shadows moved—two of Penguin's quieter trackers, keeping pace at a careful distance.
"As expected," Lupin murmured under his breath. "That sinister old bird never trusts anyone."
He turned left at the next intersection, then abruptly picked up speed and slipped into a narrow service alley squeezed between two high-rises.
The trackers followed seconds later.
And stopped dead.
The alley was empty.
No doors, no fire escapes, no open manholes. Just wet brick walls rising smooth and sheer on both sides.
"What the hell…?"
They sprinted the length of the alley and burst out the other end onto 47th Street.
Nothing.
No red jacket. No cocky grin. No trace.
"I swear I saw him duck in," the taller one muttered.
"Unless he can fly…"
They both looked up instinctively. The buildings loomed thirty stories high, windows dark. Impossible.
"We lost him," the shorter one said, voice cracking slightly. "The boss is gonna skin us."
The taller one rubbed his face.
"No point running. In Gotham, you don't hide from the Penguin. We go back, we tell him exactly what happened, and we hope he's in a forgiving mood tonight."
They turned around, shoulders slumped, already dreading the conversation.
...
One block over, in a different, even narrower alley, a figure dropped lightly from the low rooftop overhang.
He landed without sound, knees bending to absorb the impact.
After a quick glance in both directions, he reached up to his neck, pinched the edge of the skin, and peeled upward in one smooth motion.
The exaggerated, almost cartoonish monkey-like features came away like a rubber mask.
Underneath was a young man with messy black hair and sharp blue eyes.
Darren exhaled once, rolled his shoulders, and tucked the mask carefully into an inner pocket of his jacket.
The Lupin persona had done its job.
That's right. The Lupin III who had appeared at the Iceberg Lounge Casino earlier was none other than Darren himself.
And the purpose of the disguise was, of course, to obtain Two-Face's whereabouts from the Penguin.
"Heh~"
He pulled his hood up, stepped out of the alley, and melted into the late-night crowd of Gotham's never-sleeping streets.
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My sleep cycle is cooked... Gonna delete League of Legends...🥲🥲