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Travel by Zeta tube is always a bitch, stomach flipping, head swimming, and inconvenient too, only going between two places. But portals? Portals are much better. Now if only The Batman would allow it. But no, of course not. The Batman himself, Mr, Paranoid, would never disclose the actual location of his little sex dungeon, so no portalling today.
“Constantine”, Batman greets, “thank you for coming.”.
“Made it kinda hard to refuse there, Batsy, offering up that relic you mentioned in the last JL meeting. Been after one of those for ages ” Constantine drops into a seat, head still swimming slightly. He pulls out a flask and takes a swig before continuing. “Now let's make this quick, I’ve got some pubs to crawl”
Batman slides over a notepad, “A supernatural being triggered silent alarms at a Lazarus Pit underneath Gotham at 8:06pm on–”
“Let me stop you there Bats, I don’t care. Just skip ahead a bit yeah? What’d they say, what’d they look like, and most importantly, what did they ask for in return?”
“The being mentioned cleaning up the corrupted water, as a favor to a “Lady Gotham”, and taking it back to their ‘realm’. The entire Pit was drained—including residual ambient radiation.”
Constantine looks over the notes, of course The Big Bad Batman would write in cursive, little try hard.
“Hmm and no mention of cost? Maybe they’re extending the favor from Lady Gotham to cover all related corruption.”
“Lady Gotham is real then.” It’s not a question, but Constantine knows Batman is wanting a real confirmation of what he’s heard.
“Right then, lesson time, yeah? So, you’re familiar with other dimensions and universes, yeah? Even been to a few I’ve heard. And you know there’s an afterlife, well multiple afterlives. Those are all found in a place called the Infinite Realms, and just like it sounds, it’s infinite. Every dimension, every universe, every afterlife, can be found in the realms. It’s the glue between worlds, the fabric of the universe, if you want to get poetic.
Now, in the Infinite Realms, you have beings. We call them spirits, ghosts, gods. And city spirits, they’re just as they sound. The Spirit of a great and powerful city, and Gotham is nothing if not great and powerful. She’s got quite the sway when calling in favors, so getting a cleaning crew out here would be relatively easy. Probably even got one of the stronger ghosts to do it too”
He leans back in his seat, pulling his flask out again to drink. Constantine has dealt with a few city spirits over the years and Lady Gotham was definitely the most powerful, the most sentient.
“What danger do they pose?” Batman asks.
“As much danger as any regular spirit could, but highly unlikely unless provoked, so don’t piss ‘em off. Bloody impossible with your bedside manner”
“How do I handle it?”
“Oh no, Nuh uh, don’t you start Batsy” Constantine takes out a cigarette, Batman takes it from his hand. Rude much? “You don’t handle spirits. There’s no fighting them, no managing them. You leave them alone, or you call me. We’ve done bloody enough to piss off the Realms, don’t need to start a war we can’t win”
A slight frown crosses Batman's features, “I don’t like that answer”.
“Well you better get used to being disappointed, cause the Realms are a whole shit show you don’t want to mess with and I’m not getting into it. This is likely some lower level, if stronger, spirit, helping clean up Lazarus Pits. If you see them again just–pretend you didn’t.”
“It said I could call upon it if I had more ‘corrupted water’ for it to cleanse”
“It—what?” Constantine sits up, flask thunking to the table, “You got permission to personally summon a ghost for clean up duty? What did you promise it?”
“Nothing.”
“Not possible Batman. You may not think you promised something, but ghosts are tricky like that. Any hint at repayment, or quid pro quo, and bam, that’s a contract.” Constantine pulls out another cigarette, Batman takes that one too, wanker.
“I know how binding and verbal contracts work, Constantine, it’s not my first time.” Batman levels a glare at him, but once you’ve faced the devil and lived to tell the tale, the infamous batglare doesn’t do much. “It mentioned it was cleansing the water as a favor, but also mentioned the corruption was their responsibility. Do ghosts have roles or jobs in the Realms?”
“Oh loads of ‘em” Constantine says. “Couriers, wardens, cleaners, warriors, just about any paper pushing position you can think of. The Realms are infinite after all, takes a lot of people to keep that running smoothly.”
“Hmm, and could their attire signify their position?”
Curious. “Depends, spirits are beings of energy and emotion. Their physical bodies are tied to their living life, if they had one, and what they seem themselves as, their identity.”
“That makes sense. He wore a crown, I’m assuming it was ceremonial or symbolic then”
Now isn’t that suspicious. Royals don’t get put on cleaning duty, favor or not. “A crown, you say?” Constantine asks.
“Yes, of what looked to be ice, or cold fire? It was difficult to tell, it shifted, and was almost hard to perceive.”
Oh no. No no no.
Constantine takes another swig from his flask, his hands clench, itching to grab a smoke. “Batman. Show me the summoning card it gave you.”
Batman pulls out an evidence bag, and takes a small business card out of it—slides it across the table.
“You’re having me on,” Constantine mutters. “This is a joke. It has to be. This is you having a laugh, right?”
Batman only glares in response.
“Bloody fuck,” Constantine sighs. Hands shaking, his restraint breaks and he pulls out another cigarette. “Of course you don’t joke." He smacks Batman's hand from his cigarette, lighting it with a snap, "and don’t you touch this fag, you spooky fuck. If you knew what I knew, you’d be smoking too!”
“Constantine. What aren’t you telling me.”
“Did you insult them?”
“Constantine–”
“Did you look them in the eye? Oh god. You spoke to them. They gave you this card. Oh what the hell does that even mean?”
“Constantine–”
“The terror of the afterlife gave you his number. Why. Why is this my life”
“CONSTANTINE” Batman forcibly grabs his shoulders, shaking him out of his stupor. “I need you. To. Explain”
Constantine takes a deep breath and levels a glare at Batman.
“That is the bloody business card for the High King of the Infinite Realms.”
A beat.
“What do we do”
Constantine takes a drag on his cigarette, blows it out. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
He sets the cigarette down. Doesn’t finish it. “You don’t touch that card, you don’t call that number. You don’t go looking for more answers.” He gets up to leave.
“Constantine–”
“And you pray, Bats,” Constantine says, already turning away. “You pray he doesn’t come back.”
One portal later, and he’s gone.