Leonard hated Gotham with a passion.
The city stank, for one thing. It was like there was a perpetual layer of smog hanging over the whole place, thick enough to make his nose wrinkle in disgust every time he came here.
He had traveled the world and pulled heists in some of the most polluted cities on the planet. Loni, Chiang Mai, Hotan, just to name a few, and somehow even they didn't reek as bad.
Gotham always carried that faint smell of rotten eggs and dead bodies, no matter where he was in the damn place. He had wondered more than once if the people who lived here had their nasal cavities burned out from sheer exposure, because there was no other way anyone could tolerate this crap daily.
Leonard had been so irritated by the smell that he'd actually tried to track down where the hell it was coming from years back. A fortune-teller had even tried to explain to him that he might be smelling the literal curse on the city.
It was probably hogwash, but if there was one place he could believe was cursed, it was Gotham.
The other reason he hated this city was that it produced some of the most vile, annoying, and unpredictable criminals he had ever had the misfortune of meeting. Leonard would never call himself a good man, but he liked to think he was still a man.
Unlike some of the repugnant monsters that called this city home.
It wasn't rare for criminals to be cruel or deranged. Unfortunately, that was a rather common marker of the profession. Still, Gotham seemed to have a monopoly on producing those freaks with terrifying consistency.
So he made it a key note on his itinerary to avoid the damn place whenever he could.
Despite the obscene amount of rich snobs and big banks practically screaming to be robbed, he refrained.
Dealing with Gotham's… Gothamness just wasn't worth the payout.
Still, there was always an exception.
STAR Labs' Gotham facility had gotten its hands on some new alien meta-material. Its temperature tolerances were quite literally out of this world, and if Leonard could incorporate it into his Cold Gun, it would be a massive boon.
So he dove in despite the risks.
While there were plenty of negatives to working in Gotham, it did have one surprisingly useful upside.
"I'm in." The ski-masked henchman stood up and pushed the maintenance door open.
"Not bad." Leonard patted the man on the shoulder as they strode out onto the roof. "Dare I say your lockpicking is even better than mine?"
His recruit just shot him a thumbs-up before getting to work setting up the device.
No pissy backtalk, either? What a miracle. If he had been working with his usual crowd, there probably would have been a dozen arguments already.
Finding good help like this just wasn't a thing in Central City. Maybe it was the culture, or maybe it was the Flash's presence, but there weren't many low-end criminals around who knew how to follow instructions without turning every job into a personal drama.
As much as Gotham sucked, Leonard had to admit there probably wasn't another place in the world with so many henchmen ready for some good old-fashioned heists.
Almost made him want to check out that little Union he had been hearing about.
Something to think about in the future.
"I set it up just like you instructed me to, Captain." Zac stepped back from the device. "Although I'm not sure how you're gonna get into STAR Labs from here."
Leonard could understand the doubt. The skyscraper they were standing on wasn't the tallest in the city, but it was still much too far and high for them to do something simple like rappel down to the lab facility below.
Normally, he wouldn't bother explaining the steps, but good work deserved to be rewarded with a little trust.
"Watch and learn, kid." Leonard smiled as he pulled out the remote and pressed the access button.
A silvery wheel of gears extended from the device and began to spin. Shards of glass rose from it piece by piece, growing taller and taller until a full window stood on top of the rotating mechanism.
The freshly produced mirror shimmered, but instead of reflecting the roof, it showed a small, empty office.
"I had to pay a hell of a lot of money and call in a few favors for this." Leonard tapped the side of the device. "Courtesy of Mirror Master and Abra Kadabra, my very own mirror gateway."
"Ooo." The kid clapped, then paused. "Not to disrespect, though, but if you had this, why'd we have to come to the roof?"
"None taken." Leonard snorted. "Both of my fellow Rogues are touchy as hell about their tech, so a few caveats were expected when I commissioned the design."
"Ah, tricks of the trade?"
Heh. The kid knew what was up.
Leonard just chuckled and nodded.
"Don't worry too much. I vetted it, so there shouldn't be any issues. All you gotta do is watch this end and make sure no maintenance man or random bum stumbles up here." Leonard checked his gun, then his pack. "I should be in and out in twenty minutes tops. Then you'll leave here with a fat paycheck."
"Sounds boring, I thought I was going to do more, to be honest."
"Boring is good in our line of work, mate." Leonard chuckled. "I scoped the place out beforehand, so nothing's gonna happen."
"...Sure." The henchman winced under the ski mask.
"Superstitious, are you?" Leonard shook his head. "I ran the probabilities, don't worry. The chances of—"
"Duck!"
Leonard only had enough time to grunt before his henchman tackled him to the floor. The distinct whiz of something slicing through the air passed over him, and his instincts started blaring.
He didn't need any other reminder.
Leonard flicked his Cold Gun around and fired a blast behind him. A wall of ice erupted just in time to block another bola.
"Goddammit…" Leonard glared as three costumed forms came sprinting across the roof toward him. "Not even Batman, just his brats?"
Spoiler and Orphan rushed him from either side while the brat in the Robin costume came straight down the middle.
Leonard ducked back behind his ice wall and peeked his arm around the edge, firing off a few potshots to slow them down.
As expected of the Bat's little brigade, they flipped, twisted, and juked around the blasts with insulting ease.
Spoiler dropped into a slide beneath one beam, Robin sprang off a vent and vaulted over another, and Orphan barely seemed to move at all. She just wasn't where the shot landed.
Something sharp struck the ice wall beside his head.
A few little beeps followed.
"Shit!"
Leonard threw himself backward as his cover was quite literally blown apart, shards of ice bursting across the roof in a glittering spray.
Spoiler's fist snapped toward his face.
Leonard raised the Cold Gun and fired in short bursts. One shot, two shots, three. Somehow, she slipped between all of them, twisting around beams of freezing energy despite being a normal damn human.
"Is it in the water? What do they feed you, people!?" Leonard snapped, firing a dozen more potshots to keep the other two heroes back.
The heroine said nothing as she continued to charge him.
Leonard caught a lucky angle and clipped her ankle with a burst of frost. Ice crawled up around her boot, locking her foot to the roof for half a second. He was already shifting his aim to freeze her properly when Robin nearly took him by surprise.
The brat's staff crackled with electricity.
Leonard brought his gun up to block, but the blow hit hard enough to jar his wrist, and the taser charge snapped through his arm. His muscles twitched, pain burning up to his shoulder as his grip almost failed.
He needed space.
Leonard tried to step back, but his boot slid on a wet slick spreading across the roof. His balance gave out at the worst possible moment.
Or maybe the best.
He hit the roof on his ass just as Orphan's flying kick cut through the space where his head had been. He hadn't even seen her coming.
Leonard fired a wide spray from the Cold Gun while still half-sprawled on the ground. Orphan twisted midair, then backflipped away from the beams as jagged chunks of ice burst across the rooftop around her.
A staff whipped toward his face.
Leonard jerked aside, the end of it grazing his cheek, when something zipped past him and wrapped around Robin's legs.
A bola.
The brat stumbled hard, his momentum carrying him down to one knee.
"Run!"
His helper's voice cut through the chaos from behind him.
Leonard didn't waste the opening.
He scrambled to his feet and booked it for the portal.
His henchman was already on the other side, waving him through.
"Orphan, he's making a break for it!"
Leonard could hear the pounding of feet not far behind him.
Damn it. No choice.
He leaped through the portal and pulled out the remote, thumb pressing down on the fry button as he passed through the mirror gateway. The last thing he saw was the heroes sprinting for the portal, their shapes stretching across the glass an instant before the connection died.
The window they had come through became nothing more than a normal reflection.
What a fucking waste.
Leonard let out a deep sigh as he stared at it.
There went their exit ticket.
"Pro tip: never say that on a job in Gotham."
Leonard shot an annoyed look at his henchman before pushing himself upright. "That wasn't necessarily my fault. Jinxes don't…"
He stopped, shook his head, and sighed.
"Whatever, kid. Follow me. The Bats are gonna be on our ass, so we need to rush the vaults."
Leonard left the small office, and the henchman followed close behind.
"Thanks for the save, by the way, kid."
"No problem. What are goons for, am I right?"
Leonard snorted. "Damn right. we'll have to rely on each other if we both wanna get out of this scot-free. Once we get out of the vaults, I'll figure out our options."
"The vault's not gonna take up any time?" his supposed goon asked suspiciously.
"No. It's just research storage for unique materials." Leonard pulled out the fake passkey he'd made for this heist. "Some basic plastic lockboxes behind a fancy door. Should be easy for us to break into, no sweat."
He swiped the card across the vault reader, and the heavy metal door slid open.
"In and out, easy peasy—"
Leonard stopped short.
It was indeed a vault.
But instead of an empty room lined with shelves cataloguing metals, plants, and other research samples, there was a giant hole in the far wall, with several faces he recognized standing around it.
Captain Boomerang, Copperhead, Peacemaker, Bloodsport, King Shark, and a few other no-name villains all turned to look at him.
"Easy, huh?" his henchman said dryly.
Shit.
***
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