Museum Studies

Chapter 6: Too Late

Whatever she had to say was forestalled by the arrival of a particularly stolid thug in the Penguin's colors who was propelling before him a man in the incongruous garb of a white lab coat and a crude burlap mask over a pair of patched trousers and rag-wrapped feet.

"Dis is da guy you and youse Pop wanted ta see," rumbled the man-mountain. "He dint wanna come but I made him anyway. Without hurtin' him or nuttin, neither."

"Thank you, Rocco," Adele told him. "That was very well done, and I will tell my father so. You can leave him with me. Doctor Crane and I are old acquaintances."

"Okay," Rocco said, and let go of the Scarecrow, who sagged, rubbing the elbow Rocco had bent up behind his back.

"I'm surprised you didn't just gas him," the Riddler commented as Rocco left without a backward glance. The Scarecrow was one of the few people he didn't regard as a waste of valuable oxygen. Although intelligent enough, however, Dr. Crane's mental condition was dubious at best, and at worst…

"The normal reaction to sudden fear is the 'fight or flight' response," the former professor replied. "A specimen such as Rocco obviously would have a stronger fight response. I dislike being pummeled. However, I seem to know your voice, Miss—" He pulled off the mask, which was askew anyhow, and revealed an unexpectedly boyish face with fresh pink cheeks and clear cerulean eyes.

Drawing a pair of glasses from his lab coat pocket and unfolding them, he put them on. "Miss Chester. This is quite unexpected. You've changed your hair since I saw you last. As I recall, it was quite long."

"You two know each other?" Edward glanced at Adele. Scarecrow wasn't simply looking at her, he was scrutinizing her.

"He was the teaching assistant in my Psychology 101 class," she replied. "The new style was Two-Face's idea. He and my father were involved in a messy territorial dispute. Mr. Dent kidnapped me, cut my hair off and sent it to Dad as a warning."

"Lost the toss, did you?" the Riddler asked.

"No. Actually, I won. Bad side up, and he would have sent Dad my entire head."

"That must have been terrible for you," the Scarecrow sympathized, which was unlike him. "Were you very frightened?" That was the Dr. Crane he knew.

"Horribly," she told him. "Dr. Crane—Jonathan—The second to last time we met—. Well, you're still using the frames, so I know you remember. Did I overstep a boundary? I never meant to cause offense."

"You? No." Was Crane turning pinker? "Q-quite the revere. At the time, I could foresee—Suffice it to say, you never offended me, and my career in academia imploded for reasons that had nothing to do with undue familiarity. Anyhow, at the risk of perpetrating a cliché, what is the meaning of this? I know neither why I am here nor why the Penguin would want to see me."

Then the penny dropped for Edward Nigma. Jonathan Crane was blue-eyed, wore glasses, and had a high IQ. Arguably, he did have flexible morality and while he, the Riddler, would not call Crane's personality merely 'quirky', the man also had notable cheekbones. They knew each other and whatever had happened back when she was still in college, neither of them had forgotten the other. Now they were reunited and…

I finally meet an attractive, intriguing (in both senses of the word) woman who's turned on by brains,which would for once in my life make me a sex god, and what do I do? Do I ask her if she likes Italian food, because I know a great place on 19thSt? Do I ask her for a tour of the museum so I can see what she's done with it? No, first I tell her she's not my type and I follow that up by telling her that essentially I'd rather date the head cheerleader instead of the smart girl and ten seconds later, ten friggin' seconds, Fate in the form of Rocco delivers Jonathan Crane who wanted to get 'unduly familiar' with her back in the day.

Ten seconds! He reached for the champagne and poured himself another glass.

A riddle: What is always too late?

Regret.

And me.

"Ah," Adele replied. "I can certainly enlighten you, but first there is something else you should know. I was never forthcoming about either side of my family, and I know you were curious about exactly what my status was at the Pinkney. The truth is that my full name is actually Adele Elizabeth Chesterfield Cobblepot. The Penguin is my father, and we made a deal back when I was eighteen that if I took Museum Studies and Business Administration and kept at least a 3.0, then he would pay for college, and if I got a 4.0 or higher, then I would get to run the museum when I was ready. He more than kept his part of it."

"And you more than kept your part of it in return," Oswald Cobblepot had returned. He patted his daughter's arm on the way to reclaiming his seat and his glass. "Best investment I ever made. Glad to see you're all here. Did I miss anything?"

"Well, the Riddler shattered my heart irreparably, so I'm joining a convent in the morning and you can say goodbye to ever having grandchildren." Adele waved a hand airily. "So nothing, really."

"Can't leave you alone for one ruddy moment, can I?" he tsked. "You look like you'll get over it. Not so sure about him. He looks like someone dinged him a good one around the earhole. I understand you were one of her instructors once." He directed the last statement at Crane.

"As a mere teaching assistant, yes. She was one of only a handful of students who regarded the university as a place to learn rather than a four to eight yearlong bacchanal." the Scarecrow confirmed.

"I never did care for the sort of gathering where you have to keep a hand over your glass so as not to be roofied," Adele commented. "But you're too harsh on the majority of students. They were drunk on freedom as much as on alcohol, and most of them calmed down, sobered up, and got around to studying about halfway through their freshman years. Speaking of getting around to business, however—."

She reached for her evening bag, which opened up to reveal a top-of-the-line tablet. With a few touches, she called up a map of Old Gotham, the boundaries of the proposed Arkham City outlined in red. "The reason we are here is Professor Hugo Strange, and his plan to turn old Gotham into a prison, including the Pinkney Institute and the Lounge. I propose that we destroy him, halt his plans in their tracks and ruin whoever is backing him financially. By destroy, I don't mean kill. I mean to reduce that contemptuous, condescending son of a bitch—sorry, Dad—to the point where he will have to move to Africa and do volunteer work in an Ebola clinic in order to get any quality of life back."

"Ambitious…Have you ever killed anyone?" Crane asked, leaning and giving her an acute look.

"Yes, actually," she replied. "When Dent's men came to get me, I was at my sink doing dishes. Since I had a knife, I stabbed one of them in the abdomen. He bled out and died in the car. It was a terrible mess."

"You forget about the bloke you kicked in the temple at New Year's, three years ago," her father pointed out. "They took him off life-support six, seven months back."

"I'd forgotten about him," she frowned. "I never would have kicked him if he'd only stayed down and not made any more trouble. At any rate, I see this plan as having two fronts, the overt and the covert…"

She explained her plan to the other two supervillains as she had her father the night before. "Now I do a little hacking, mostly to check on high rollers' finances before Dad honors their signature in the casino or…elsewhere, so I know enough to know my skills are not equal to this task. Likewise, while I do know how to market and manage, I don't know how to cause mass panic. That is where you gentlemen come in. So, there it is. Are you interested, or not?"

TBC.

A/N: As mentioned back in the first chapter, imagine Cillian Murphy as he was in Batman Begins as Dr. Crane/Scarecrow. Evil geniuses have never been cuter.