This is love to me

Chapter six: The plan of attack

Spencer and T-Bo looked over their map of Gotham city. They had purchased it to help their attempts to develop some kind of a strategy. After all, being prepared for the worst has never hurt anyone. They had marked down the locations Jerome had been seen, from his uncle Zachary's diner, to the radio station he and Tetch had taken over, to the old boardwalk circus. They had done research on the top speed and gas mileage of the van which Jeromes and his men had stolen. Assuming that Jerome had left on a full tank of gas, and after accounting for Gothams usual traffic, he could have gotten as far as the narrows. If Valeska was there, which would make sense given his severe criminal notoriety they'd  be unlikely to track him down.

"Well," Sam's mom said as she came in from the hallway "I tried to call the medium, but he wouldn't answer."

"It's all G, Mrs. P." T-Bo answered "We won't need him, right?" T-Bo turned to face Spencer who was deep in thought. In truth, Pams ex-boyfriend was mostly unnecessary. His help would have been a luxury, perhaps an advantage as he knew Gotham better than they did. No matter how small a luxury, however, they would need every advantage that they could have against Jerome Valeska.

The hypnotist Tetch was simple enough to deal with, they could wear ear protection and avoid making any direct eye contact with him. Dr. Crane used a fear inducing chemical weapon, they would require masks. Fortunately, in Gotham city, gas masks weren't hard to find. Given the fact that many notorious villains in the city had used airborne chemicals to wreak havoc, it wouldn't surprise Spencer if gas masks were for sale in common department stores, but they would probably be sold at an inflated price as well, given the circumstances and likely demand.

Jerome Valeska, as far as Spencer knew, had one weapon: Chaos. Jeromes weapon of choice was his ability to sew the seeds in the mind which would grow into anarchy, riots, and many horribly violent acts and atrocities. Jerome had a sea of obsessed, downtrodden fanatics who saw him as a mesionic figure, and served as his militia. They all believed his message, that sanity equated to imprisonment, thereby then had long abandoned logic. Instead, they focused on an ideology that they were all part of a greater whole: the hole in all things, the root cause of such purely chaotic evil, was the anarchistic madman Jerome Valeska himself.

That's when it struck Spencer, a brilliant, and very needed idea

"Eureka!" Spencer jumped into the air at the realization of his scheme and the dawning of this new epiphany. "Call the teenagers rooms, have them come here to discuss our strategy."

A couple of minutes later, the entire ICarly troupe had been assembled. Spencer took note that Freddie's well groomed hair was disheveled, and both his and Sam's shirts were buttoned rather sloppily. This wouldn't be uncommon for Sam, but Freddie's clothes were typically, nay, always worm in a proper and orderly condition. Spencer knew exactly what was happening between them in a trice, but he decided to put that on the back burner so that he could discuss it later with Freddie, in less of an embarrassing setting.

"Alrighty then," Freddie chimed in "what's this plan of yours, Spence?"

"Invasion," Spencer said with a smile "no, more of an infiltration." Spencer paused to let his words sink into the minds of the group.

"Into?" Gibby asked after some time had elapsed "where is it that we are to invade-slash-infiltrate?"

"I am very glad you asked!" Spencer replied "Freddie, what were your intentions behind this little Gotham City escapade?"

"To get some video footage of this Jerome Valeska." Freddie answered

"And there are only two ways to do that!" Spencer said "One, we could try to predict where he will go based on where he's been. Which is futile as he's reliant on unpredictability, and has been everywhere, from diners to asylums. This is a man who definitely gets around, and given his chaotic nature we can't act in response to a plan that we don't know that he has, or that we even know for certain exists."

"And the second option?" Sam asked, impatiently tapping her left foot while folding her arms across her voluptuous chest

"I'm getting to that." Spencer responded, raising a solitary finger as if to shush Sam, but not getting close to her as Sam was not above biting fingers that shushed her.

"Jerome has a cult of fanatics," Spencer said "if we can deduce their meeting place, then we can attend their rally in disguises. You will have video footage of Jerome Valeska either revealing a part of his plan or giving one of his "speeches" on the numerous benefits of going insane."

"That's crazy!" Freddie responded

"No, it's not," Spencer replied, sounding irked by Freddie's comment "in fact, this plan is the only one that offers a guarantee that you'll get the footage of Jerome that you want for the show. And if he is to reveal a part of the plan, we can take the video to the police to help give them a chance to catch him and give some kind of closure to Socko's family."

Everyone thought hard about his plan for a quite some time. He was right, and they had the technology to get a fairly clear video and an audio recording of Jerome. However, this plan came with huge amounts of risk. If they were to be caught in a sea of Jeromes worshippers, escape would be impossible, and he'd probably beat them all to death on stage for his followers amusement. The optimal word in that part of the plan, was if.

"I think we should do this." Freddie finally broke the silence. "But we'll all have to stay together, and in case shit is to hit the fan we should all be decently armed. These people are all completely deranged, and they have nothing to lose. If these dogs found out we were trying to put the man who let them off the chain back into some chains of his own, they would probably try tear us apart. So when the dogs of war bare their teeth at us, our best chance is if we are armed to our own enamel."

"Point made," said Spencer. "We'll all be carrying concealed weaponry for the event. Now, let's all get back to our rooms. We can afford to sleep in tomorrow, since we'll spend the rest of the day looking for either fresh Graffiti of the sign of the cult of Jerome or looking for people marking a wall with it. The meeting will most likely be tomorrow or some day soon, as Jerome doesn't seem to be the type to wait to rally his men, and a big show would be the perfect way to let his acolytes know he's back in town."

They all began filing out, but as Sam and Freddie left, Spencer grabbed Freddie by the arm and told Sam to go ahead, and that Freddie would catch up with her.

"You might need this later," Spencer said as he handed Freddie a small plastic packet, containing a condom inside of it.

"But Sam and I... we haven't even..." Freddie began with a surprised edge to his voice, Spencer was quick to cut him off.

"I know that you haven't done it yet," Spncer said, raising a hand as if to tell Freddie to be quiet and to calm him down "but, you should just keep that on hand, in case you should find yourself in need of it. Trust me, it'll be useful."

Freddie thanked Spencer and left the room in a hurry to follow Sam. Spencer just chuckled dryly at Freddie's enthusiasm, and muttered seven simple words to himself.

"It's about damn time that they did."