The Iceberg Beneath [Open]

[Oswald Cobblepot - The Penguin]

The loss of the club had presented a difficult situation for Oswald. The Iceberg lounge was custom made, it was everything Oswald could ever need. He had his offices for his businesses and information empire, he had the main lounge to force the socialites to accept him and then he had the back bar, a place for the underworld to come and drink, where he could do deals in peace. Now all that was gone and had to be replaced except Oswald didn't want a replacement, he still held out some hope that one day he'd have the lounge back.

He'd already replaced his office space with a few floors in a skyscraper. He owned a few restaurants though his desire to be sociable had plummeted lately. All that needed to be replaced was the back bar. A hole in the wall where he could control the clientele and keep the peace between the waring criminals if just for a few drinks.

Oswald found his replacement bar in seedy part of town not far from the walls of Arkham City. It used to be nicer but no one wanted to live that close to the Arkahm so the neighbourhood had gone down hill, anyone who could afford to move had already done so.

On the outside it looked like a supermarket, you could even buy groceries there but around the back there was two back doors, one of which was marked with an iceberg and lead to a security guard who blocked a stairway which lead down to a oddly fancy looking lounge.

Oswald had part of the supermarket's underground storage converted. He'd added in a long bar, booths, several tables, he'd even managed to throw in suitably shady lighting and of course all the booze one can drink.

The address worked it's way around the under world in the usual way and a small clientele had already taken up residence as Oswald took up a booth to himself, not doing business for once, just reading the paper. Surrounded by criminals it was like Oswald had a place to relax away from home at last. It wasn't the same of course but even if it didn't fill the hole left by the club it did something to patch it for now.

[Lara Allen-Benedetti]

//so i wanted to reply with the joker and the clown was like: i'm in arkham city helloo??? so i replied with her, hope it's okay!//

"RUN!" the female voice in the ear told her. No biggie, running was her job so it should be fine...right? Wrong. Because Lara had ran in the wrong away so she had ended up in the wrong place. At the wrong time. Basically, it was wrong. Lara knew that something was wrong when she bumped into an armed man who grabbed her and pushed her against a wall "Oh...hi" Lara said with a sarcastic smile and looked at the man up and down, he seemed an henchman "Are you a thief? Hey! I think she stole this!" the henchman took Lara's bag and threw it to another henchman who peeked inside.

After few seconds he came up with a folder filled with documents inside "Yeah...about that...what's that?! It wasn't me...it was already in the bag I swear...can I just go?" still sarcastic, Lara tried to escape when she felt the henchman's hand less tightened around her arm. She succeeded to slip away from the henchman, but the other one blocked her anyway "Not so fast" then they talked about bringing her to the boss. So, it meant that they were gonna take her to the Penguin. Oh, great. Really.

Lara tried to escape again punching the henchman in the face, but that made the man just angrier. The henchman was gonna re-pay Lara with the same kind gesture when the other one stopped him "Hey! The boss will want to talk to her, she won't be able to tell him anything if you smash her mouth tho!" the henchman growled annoyed, but didn't punch her.

So, this was the situation. It was true that Lara had just stolen some documents, but those weren't Penguin's documents. The documents belonged to a hitman who was lounging in the lounge. Lara had managed to grab those documents before the hitman had entered in the bar, but she had had to enter in the building to do so. That was why Penguin's henchmen had caught her. Good job, Lara, good job. The General was going to be so happy about this...still sarcasm. The henchmen grabbed her arms, one arm per henchman and brought her to the Penguin.

[Oswald Cobblepot - The Penguin]

The commotion of someone being dragged in quickly gained the attention of several people in the bar, Oswald among them. Oswald however had the luxury of not being concerned when something like that happened since it was his men doing the dragging. He enjoyed being in control of this sort of situation again. The underworld could come to him again and had to abide by his rules or suffer the consequences. Oswald missed this since the loss of the club.

"Have you brought me something nice boys?" Oswald questions as he folds up his newspaper and finally looks up when they bring Lara to his table. He holds out a hand for the bag his men had confiscated and proceeds to tip it out on the table before him, pushing a few of the documents around as he glances over their contents "Well, well, this looks like more than a little light reading. Would you care at an attempt to explain what you are doing with this and where it is you were planning on taking it?"

Oswald had several theories already but the problem was Lara wasn't throwing up any obvious previous data, in other words Oswald didn't recognise her and the facial recognition software running off of the camera in his monocle was working to rectify that but nothing had yet come up. Oswald preferred known dangers but he was curious and held by a couple of thugs Lara didn't seem particularly dangerous.

[Lara Allen-Benedetti]

Lara couldn't really move because the henchmen were too strong and besides her truncheon was in the shoulder bag that the henchmen gave to their boss. However, the Penguin took just the documents and read them. Lara looked down at the contents of her bag on the table, although those were all the documents that she had taken, her things weren't on the table because they were hidden in secrets pockets in the bag.

The Penguin seemed losing interest in the bag once he had found the documents and Lara hoped it stayed like that. The woman was wearing her Faith's costume and the black wig, also she was wearing lens that hid the colour of her eyes so she had brown eyes now. In reality, Lara was blonde and had blue eyes, but the disguise blended in with her so nicely that it was almost impossible to see that she was wearing a disguise.

However, if Penguin were gamer, something that Lara really doubted about, he would notice that Lara was wearing the Faith's costume because Faith was a famous videogame character. But, Lara really believed that a man like the Penguin didn't play videogames so this was just how Lara looked like for him and not a costume...or maybe Oswald played videogames and knew who Faith was. Well, it didn't really matter because Penguin's eye could tell him that Faith was in front of him, yes her name was also Faith while she was in costume, and could show various pictures of her while she was doing her job, pictures taken from surveillance cameras for example. But, his eye couldn't tell him that she worked for the Government because the Army never put out such information officially so there was no information to be found. It was like if Lara worked for a ghost instead.

Lara opened her mouth to speak, although she didn't know what she was gonna say because she didn't want to reveal anything to the Penguin of course. However, the other reason why no words were coming out of her mouth was because her mind just realized that Oswald Cobblebot was in front of her, a very dangerous man who loved penguins though, so maybe there was still hope for him. 

However, Lara didn't have to think about what to say because a man interrupted her "YOU!" he shouted walking towards Lara furiously, he stopped walking only when he was facing Lara and slapped her in the face leaving a red painful mark. One of the henchmen pushed the man away, but not to protect Lara, but because their boss didn't say anything about allowing other people to slap the woman in the face.

"Ehi! Mind your own business! This woman has stolen from me and..." but the man interrupted what he was saying once he noticed that the Penguin's henchmen were in front of him. The man slowly moved his gaze and finally noticed the Penguin. Also, he noticed the documents and everyone could clearly see that he got nervous. The man's stress made Lara remember something "Page tree of the last document! There is something on it that you will find interesting, I'm sure!" Lara informed Oswald and the owner of the documents almost hit her again, but the henchmen's glare stopped him from doing so.

The page had a big eye as background, not the illuminati no, and on it there were written interesting things about...Oswald. It was information about one of his shipment of weapons, the man had the intention to give this information to someone who would pay a large amount of money in exchange. No, it wasn't the police of course, it had to be another weapon seller.

The man had thought that bringing such documents here would be an intelligent move because Oswald wouldn't have ever suspected that one of the clients of the bar was planning against him here. That demonstrated how stupid the man was, but Lara came along and ruined his plans anyway. The man looked at the Penguin, fear taking over. He was sure that he was gonna die and Lara felt a little bit guilty about it knowing that if Oswald killed him then it would be her fault too. Not that she cared about the man, because she didn't, but she cared about herself and she didn't kill, not even indirectly. But, it was too late now. She hadn't thought about that when she had informed the Penguin, she had just thought about saving herself.

The henchmen looked at their boss and waited for his orders. Did he want to kill the man? Did he want to kill Lara too? What did he want to do? The henchmen waited, instead Lara was thinking of a way to take her bag back, but without looking at it so to not raise suspicion. Meanwhile, the man started running away so one of the henchmen stopped grabbing Lara to go after the man.

Lara used such opportunity to free herself from the other henchman, pushing her fingers into the henchman's eyes. The enemy often underestimated her because she didn't look like something dangerous. The henchman screamed in pain and Lara grabbed the bag and started running away. All of this happened in few seconds, right after the other henchman had gone after the man.

Now, running was Faith's thing and she was really good at it. She kept running avoiding incoming henchmen, they were coming because of the scream. However, the other henchman had managed to catch the man and he came back, bringing the man to the Penguin.

You could think that Lara was running away from this place, but instead she was just running away. She had to take the documents first. Lara hadn't taken the documents earlier because she had had just the time to take the bag. So, she had to hide and wait the right moment to take the documents back. 

[Deleted]

He connected with Alfred back at the cave through his gauntlet communicator, "Alfred, I think I just picked up a new lead. A woman was just kidnapped in a back alley outside Penguin's bar. She was carrying documents related to one Frankie Valentino. He's the supplier moving against Cobblepot." The scream of pain when Laura plunged her fingers into the henchman's eye sockets made Batman pause. He didn't know what happened, but one thing was clear. He had to get in there.

He switched on his detective vision and scanned the room. Too many to take on in a direct assault, he needed to sneak in. He spotted a vent just about the double doors leading to the bar and used his batclaw to rip it out of the wall. With the metal grate out of the way, batman slipped into the air-shaft above the bar and waited. Scanning the room once more, he spotted a girl hiding behind one of the booths near the back of the bar. She was hidden from the goons in the room, but batman had just the right angle to spot her. She was the one who was captured in the alley. At least she was safe for now. He didn't need to worry about her, right now all he needed to do was focus on getting his hands on the file penguin was holding.

He positioned himself above the vent directly above penguin and waited. He wanted to get as many henchmen together as possible to be the most effective. He would wait until the goons brought that man over to their boss before making his move. That way the smoke bomb would blind all of them and he could take them out together.

[Oswald Cobblepot - The Penguin]

Oswald has no time or interest in video-games and if any of his security team did they weren't speaking up about it. Oswald operations focused towards identifying real vigilantes and villains not ones from games. Perhaps when he gets Lara's disguise identified that will change though and the features of fictional characters will get added but that was a never ending list though that could take a very long time to assemble, it was impractical.

Oswald's eyes turned from the papers at the sudden yelling that was coming from the man trying to interrupt in an attempt to reclaim his documents and hit the girl. Naturally Oswald's men stopped him but he'd done a very good job of drawing attention to himself and that was not a smart in to do particularly when Lara's guidance brings Oswald's eyes back to the papers and he flicks through to check what she's trying to draw his attention to as his men stare the man in to his place.

A deep frown grows on the Penguin's face as he reads through the portions on himself. He didn't like when people went around talking about him and selling his information. He gestures to his men "Take him in the back" whatever he was going to do he was going to do it in private without witnesses and prying ears.

Unfortunately Lara had to make things difficult by making a run for it and the henchmen went two ways in confusion, stumbling over tables as one tackled the man to the ground and the other fell to the ground clutching his bloody eye socket. Oswald stood and pointed at the man on the door, the papers still in his other hand "Stop her!" the bouncer blocking the door.

So far Batman had remained undetected until the henchman dragged the man back and the room suddenly filled with smoke. Oswald had been in this situation too many times before, he recognised the situation for what it was and he immediately thought of attack. While he didn't know who was attacking him this time he was usually the prime target and the one who was going to get shot at first so his first priority was to get out the way. Ducking down Oswald dived under a table, the files still in hand but his umbrella in the other.

If only Oswald still had his custom built Iceberg Lounge where he'd made sure the vents weren't big enough for snooping flying rodents to crawl through, why no one had that feature as standard he'll never know.