One Winter Knight | Arkhamverse

Chapter 8: The Sound of Sirens

A sea of tattoos, glares, testosterone and poor, misguided haircuts. I don't believe I've experienced a Monday night such as this since college, the detective uneasily reminisces, only tensing further when she feels an arm loop with hers.

Glimpsing to the person attached, Eve realises she must've really zoned out for a second if she failed to notice Selina return to her side, the thief sparing her an unanticipated, oddly reassuring smile for the briefest beat in time. Guiding the both of them forward once again, Isley and Quinn some ways ahead of them now, the cat burglar offers the Southerner a hushed warning. "You may be friends with their bosses, but you're not friends with them. Don't let the common men see you as a scared little bird, or they'll sink their teeth straight into you."

Scanning her face, a sultry yet sharp set of emerald eyes obscured by the crimson tinted goggles pulled down in front of them, Eve can vividly see the sincerity present in Selina Kyle's demeanour. The words sound so familiar to her, so practised, as if the thief has told herself that ten times over. The sincerity—

"You shouldn't do that, detective."

Edward's words come back to haunt her, somehow feeling even fresher in her memory than those spoken to her by Selina seconds ago. Eve knows Selina has a hidden agenda for being here, and whilst her tenuous relationship with Bruce inclines the investigator to trust Miss Kyle more than Harley or Pamela, trust is quite hard to establish when there is still an element of uncertainty and unknown between them.

Eve honestly is deprived the time to ponder the thought further when the first, brave soul voices the bar's collective unease and complaints; a rough bikie who, judging by appearances, seems to spend more time in his local tattoo and piercings parlour than with his alcoholic wife and one – no, two, Eve amends – estranged children. Leaning back in his chair, which has seen better days (rather like the rest of the bar), the hardened biker doesn't even put his cards down on the table to address them, evidently finding more interest in his poker game.

"Scram, ladies! This place is invite onl—"

Ivy doesn't dignify the man with a response, simply kicking his chair out from under him as she storms on by to the bar set up towards the back. The heavily tattooed, pierced man slams against the hardwood floor with a not so gentle thud, hardly leaning up and forward before Harley rollerblades by and swiftly swings her mallet clean across his face. This time, the result is a clear-cut knockout.

Eve noticeably winces, just as the biker's friends startle back at seeing him taken out in five seconds flat, but make no move to avenge their fallen friend, possessing the sense to keep their traps shut as the terrifying, green-skinned lady seizes the bartender by the scruff of his shirt. Terrified out of his wits, Pamela Isley unpleasantly yanks him halfway across the counter towards her, turning back to face Eve and Selina as they approach, the eco-terrorist bluntly asking "Is this him?"

Still recovering from the hard-hit she just saw the biker subjected to, Eve absent-mindedly retrieves her phone from her pocket, surveying the photo Edward sent her of Carson Wilkes. Pursing her lips, Gotham's Guardian Angel answers "Unless Mr Wilkes has found a highly-skilled plastic surgeon capable of changing his race, then no, that is not him."

Releasing the bartender, who all but launches himself back as far away from the red-haired metahuman as humanly possible, Poison Ivy's mood only sours even more, her cutting gaze turning to the wider, still crowd around her. "Well I suppose that whilst I have everyone's undivided attention, I should ask; does anyone know where Carson Wilkes is?"

The silence that befalls the room is rather like the silence that follows an explosion, one where a person is too close to the blast's radius, and has found themselves victim to a thrumming, muffled stillness only pierced by haunting tinnitus. Poison Ivy was the explosion, and now they're all basking in the in-between; not the explosion itself, not the aftermath where you're sucked back into the events and sounds and reality of the situation, but the bridge in between, where your mind and body have fallen behind and are trying to catch up to the world you.