Post by lawrenceliberty on Apr 21, 2020 20:16:40 GMT
The Red Hood: Odyssey
Within an elegantly furnished penthouse in Gotham City, a portly woman in an expensive dress and sparkling jewels watched nervously at the edge of a bed where a gray haired man shuddered and sat up abruptly.
“Paul! Oh, Paul! You’ve come back to me!” she cried as she rushed forward and took his hand.
He blinked rapidly and smiled as he reached out to touch her face.
“Gwen! I’m glad to see you too! But what is all this? Why the tears? Did something happen in the night while we slept?” he asked as he glanced around their home and saw a tall man in a white lab coat.
“Mr. Getty. I fear you’ve been ill. You’ve actually been asleep for days. I have awakened you from your long slumber and I may now happily return you to your loving wife!” he said.
Mrs. Getty said, “Dr. Morpheus was the only doctor who could revive you! I’ve been so worried!”
Morpheus smiled and said, “Do not worry. All is well now! I shall take my leave!”
At that moment a costumed newcomer swung over the edge of the penthouse balcony and entered the room. He wore a dark costume with a leather jacket and gloves and a red hood that covered his head.
The Gettys gasped in surprise as he confronted the scowling doctor.
“He was able to wake you up because he was the one who put you to sleep to begin with. No doubt his new racket is charging wealthy people to miraculously revive them from his drugged induced sleep!” said the angry Red Hood (Al Draper).
“Isn’t that right, Sandman? You seem surprised to see me. Well, this could just be a nightmare! You know like the one where someone throws you off a penthouse balcony and you keep falling and falling until you wake up!” he said.
The Sandman raised a metallic device that hung around his neck only to gasp as a razor sharp projectile sliced it in half and sands exploded into his face. He collapsed to the ground and the Red Hood stood over him as the Gettys watched in silent disbelief!
“Put to sleep by your own sands! I’d say getting hit by so much of the stuff may just leave you snoring for the rest of your rotten life!” he said.
The Red Hood looked down at the Sandman (Dr. Morpheus) and remembered how the scientist had used his chemical knowledge to drug and brainwash him for years. He still had difficulty knowing which of his memories were real and which were delusions. Now, he smiled and he felt some measure of closure.
A scrapping sound at the balcony door caught his attention but lost in thought he delayed turning around until it was too late. A dart struck him in the neck and he dropped to the floor. His last sight was of a costumed woman with long platinum blonde hair, a green mask, an orange and green costume and widely spread wings.
She flew into the room and kicked him once before turning to the Gettys.
“This one belongs to the Harpy! Sandman may count himself lucky that he is under the protection of one more powerful than any mere mortal!” she said in a screeching voice.
Red Hood groaned as the drug wore off. He found himself handcuffed to a metal column and he frowned as he fought to make sense of what he saw. He was in a huge room that was decorated like an ancient Greek temple. High above the floor rose a dais and a regal looking figure sat upon it and brooded. He had brown hair and a beard. He wore a red tunic and black pants. He looked up and his eyes seemed to flash with energy and malice.
“Mortal, you face judgment dire! You have injured Morpheus the Sandman. He was one of my chosen ones. You will suffer like all who defy the gods! You will regret falling under the wrath of mighty Zeus!” he said.
Near him stood the orange and green clad woman called Harpy. On the other side of his elevated throne was a pretty woman with black hair styled in elaborate curls. She wore silvery sandals and a brief tunic. She watched the scene with interest but said nothing. A hulking man in armor stood directly behind the man who called himself Zeus.
Two metallic golden women stood by the doors of the room which on closer inspection seemed to be an enormous cabin aboard what must be a massive ship.
“You are aboard the Odyssey! This floating realm is but one of the temples of Mighty Zeus!” said the man on the throne.
Red Hood nodded slightly as he thought. “Maxie Zeus- smalltime gangster who went nuts and thinks he is Zeus from mythology. As the king of the gods he dresses his thugs like characters out of Greek myth! I guess with a name like Morpheus, Sandman has some connection to him!”
He frowned as he watched the golden woman. “Robots? The crew seems to be robots! Weren’t there gold women in one of the myths?”
Zeus smiled and said, “You admire the craftsmanship of Hephaestus? The smithy of Olympus forged my golden women! They are my crew since few mortals could withstand being in the presence of the glory of Zeus for long!”
Harpy said, “Actually, great Zeus, the mortal villain Daedalus made them for the previous owner of this ship. He was a wealthy smuggler known as Dimitrios!”
“Aye! The Bat Demon from Hades brought him down to ruin! Zeus acquired this vessel after his previous ship was claimed by the Bat’s minions!” said Zeus.
Red Hood knew Batman had beaten Dimitrios a few years before when he had commanded a massive ship called the Argosy. This Odyssey was apparently a replacement!
“I don’t care if you got the Love Boat from Gopher and Isaac! You can’t hold me!” he said as he deftly slipped free from the cuffs.
“Thanks, Spook!” he thought as he recalled how the master escape artist had trained him in his art.
“Get him, Ajak!” roared Zeus as the huge figure behind the throne jumped forward.
Red Hood circled warily as the huge brute closed in on him.
He ducked under the bigger man’s outstretched arms and kicked him twice in the chest. He grunted and kept coming. The Red Hood flipped backward and hurled a pellet at the giant. It broke apart and gas swelled out. Ajak gasped and started to lurch to one side.
The Red Hood turned and vaulted past the golden women at the door. He emerged on a wide deck and realized the massive ship was in the middle of the ocean.
“This is not good! I sure don’t have a Bat boat parked nearby!” he thought.
He wedged one of projectiles under the doors as he slammed them shut.
“That won’t hold them for long!” he mused.
He raced down the deck and thought, “Got to be some kind of speedboat on this thing for evacuation!”
He ran into a room and frowned as saw dozens of the golden metal women at work operating the ship!
“Sorry, ladies! Keep up the good work and ..stay shiny!” he quipped.
He turned again to barely avoid a swooping Harpy who dropped down at him and narrowly missed him as her gleaming talons raked across the wall.
He rolled acrobatically away from her and raised his gun. He fired twice and while her armored wings deflected his mercy bullets, they did slow
her down!
He grabbed the railing and kicked off of it to crash into her. She rolled aside and he lashed out long enough to slap a small disc on her wing. He dropped away from her and managed to flip to a safe landing.
“Thanks, Nightwing or whoever taught me that move!” he thought.
The disc generated an electric current that dropped the stunned Harpy at the feet of the approaching Zeus and the woman in silver.
“You flee with the speed of Hermes but it will avail you naught since there is no escape from the Furies of Zeus!” he shouted.
“As pleasant as it would be to witness the demise of one of the Batman’s pestiferous protégés I fear I must intervene!” said a strange man who waddled into view from the end of the aisle.
He was short, fat, and grotesquely ugly. He wore a top hair, a monocle, and a tuxedo with a long tail coat. He spun an umbrella in one gloved hand as he made his way awkwardly forward.
“The Penguin? You seek sanctuary from the Bat Demon of Hades!” cried Zeus.
The Penguin laughed and casually lit a cigarette within a long holder. He said, “Actually, my Olympian Oaf, I have come here to assert my rightful ownership of this magnificent sailing vessel!”
Zeus scowled and his face turned red. “You challenge Zeus? Be you mad?”
The Penguin said, “Actually, you are the one laboring much like Hercules under a false impression! This ship is already mine and your pulchritudinous pantheon belongs to the Penguin!”
Zeus scowled as Harpy rose up and staggered to the Penguin’s side.
“Harpy is a bird, old Bean! Birds and umbrellas and brilliant crimes are my m.o. as our Bat-cowled antagonist would readily tell you!” said the Penguin.
Zeus smiled cruelly and said, “Harpy may prove foul but Siren is my own!”
Siren, the woman in the brief silvery tunic and sandals, shook her head and said, “Siren was the name you gave me. My original name…my first name was given to me by my true master!”
Penguin chomped down on his cigarette holder and said, “Correct! I call your Siren by the appropriate name of Songbird”
She opened her mouth and as she sang Zeus screamed in pain.
“Well done, my Most Melodious Minion!” said the Penguin as he prodded Zeus with his umbrella.
Red Hood winced but he remained awake. His hood had protection for his ears, eyes, and nose. The sonic attack did not harm him.
“So, the Penguin had his gals infiltrate the Zeus gang in order to steal this ship away from him! I doubt that waddling creep will turn the place into a cruise ship or pair me up with Charo!” he thought.
Zeus staggered to his feet and hurled himself over the rail.
“Brother Poseidon, shelter me!” he screamed as he disappeared into the water.
The Penguin waddled closer and said, “Melodramatic but you can’t beat the ending, eh? Waugh! Waugh! Waugh!” he laughed.
The Red Hood reached for his belt but the Penguin abruptly struck his umbrella against the rail and electricity surged through it to leave the Hood stunned once more.
“Shall I rend him asunder?” asked Harpy.
Penguin cupped her chin in his gloved hand and said, “Be a dear and stop talking like that Mythological Madman! No, the youth wears a red bat emblem on his chest. That in and of itself makes him worth keeping. After all, should he prove to be a problem or be of no value, we can send him to a watery grave!”
The Red Hood blinked and sat up to find himself inside a cage that hung from the ceiling of another huge cabin.
“A bird cage? Electrified too! I can see the wiring!” he thought.
The Penguin sat below and smoked silently and grinning from ear to ear.
“Welcome back to the waking world, my captive fledgling! I don’t know if you realize it but you are enjoying the hospitality of criminal nobility. I am no common ruffian. I am the Batman’s most brilliant adversary. Do not presume to place me below the giggling clown or the marriage-minded cult leader!” he said.
The Red Hood said, “Yeah? Me, I like the Riddler!”
The Penguin scowled and bit down on his cigarette holder.
“Very droll! All you Bat brats make with the jokes! Still, I would say you can fry as easily as the next Robin!” he said.
Red Hood said, “I’m no Robin! You’re not that lucky! I don’t play games with punks like you! I’ll shove that umbrella down your big mouth!”
Penguin waddled closer and said, “I do believe you would at that if you could reach me but you will die before you ever leave that gilded cage!”
He gestured to where seven of the golden robotic woman watched silently.
“My pet genius Harold used a device to override their control signals. They have served me and not poor soggy Zeus for some time now! The boy is as ugly as sin but he has a mind on his misshapen shoulders!
Red Hood said, “I’m sure he’s a real chip off the blockhead.’
He studied the cage. Could he break it from the ceiling and hope the impact would shatter the bars so he could get free. He had no belt thanks to the Penguin’s clever familiarity with such devices.
Penguin gestured to where Harpy and Songbird sat.
“This proud ship will soon be rechristened as the Iceberg Lounge. I shall keep it outside the legal limits and operate a sanctuary for like-minded felons. You and your Bat-eared ilk won’t be able to touch me legally and my legion of lethal ladies shall stop any who try!” he gloated.
The air shimmered as a weird portal opened in thin air and a red and gold clad man bounded through and ripped open the cage. He grabbed the Red Hood and hurled him through the closing portal.
Red Hood gasped and said, “Who are you?”
The red and gold costumed man said, “My name is the Sandman. I am not your enemy. The man called Morpheus used my name for his criminal life for far too long. I am the guardian of the Dreamscape and I freed you since I owe you a debt for defeating him for me!”
The Red Hood said, “If you have powers like teleportation why not help me sink that ship and bring Penguin down?”
Sandman sighed. “Dark magics have saturated the realms and I have but a fraction of my original powers. I may only leave my realm of slumber for 15 minutes at a time now. I may merely thank you for defeating Morpheus and tell you that his drugs killed Al Draper a few years into his captivity. He never knew this since one of my foes the immortal Nightmare Wizard switched the body of the dead Al from this timeline with that of the Al Draper of another one..in short with you. The Wizard wished to darken that timeline by removing many of its heroes to better engender nightmares. He used you for his own gains. He switched you with the dead Draper and Morpheus never realized it. In your proper timeline, you really were a Robin to that timeline’s Batman! Your memories of cases with him are true just not drawn from this timeline! I would return you to that timeline but it is closed to me now and I fear my time here is done!”
He vanished and Red Hood realized he was back on a rooftop in Gotham City.
“I can’t help but think that guy was powerful but unstable. I don’t know if I was really Robin in some other timeline or not. In order to make peace with my past, I’ve got to put it behind me and use my skills wherever they came from to serve justice in my own way!” he thought.
He ripped the red bat emblem off his chest and said, ‘Darrk is dead. Sandman is beaten. Zeus may be dead. As for the Penguin, we may meet again…but for now he’s Batman’s problem. I’m going to find my own direction now!”
The Beginning
Within an elegantly furnished penthouse in Gotham City, a portly woman in an expensive dress and sparkling jewels watched nervously at the edge of a bed where a gray haired man shuddered and sat up abruptly.
“Paul! Oh, Paul! You’ve come back to me!” she cried as she rushed forward and took his hand.
He blinked rapidly and smiled as he reached out to touch her face.
“Gwen! I’m glad to see you too! But what is all this? Why the tears? Did something happen in the night while we slept?” he asked as he glanced around their home and saw a tall man in a white lab coat.
“Mr. Getty. I fear you’ve been ill. You’ve actually been asleep for days. I have awakened you from your long slumber and I may now happily return you to your loving wife!” he said.
Mrs. Getty said, “Dr. Morpheus was the only doctor who could revive you! I’ve been so worried!”
Morpheus smiled and said, “Do not worry. All is well now! I shall take my leave!”
At that moment a costumed newcomer swung over the edge of the penthouse balcony and entered the room. He wore a dark costume with a leather jacket and gloves and a red hood that covered his head.
The Gettys gasped in surprise as he confronted the scowling doctor.
“He was able to wake you up because he was the one who put you to sleep to begin with. No doubt his new racket is charging wealthy people to miraculously revive them from his drugged induced sleep!” said the angry Red Hood (Al Draper).
“Isn’t that right, Sandman? You seem surprised to see me. Well, this could just be a nightmare! You know like the one where someone throws you off a penthouse balcony and you keep falling and falling until you wake up!” he said.
The Sandman raised a metallic device that hung around his neck only to gasp as a razor sharp projectile sliced it in half and sands exploded into his face. He collapsed to the ground and the Red Hood stood over him as the Gettys watched in silent disbelief!
“Put to sleep by your own sands! I’d say getting hit by so much of the stuff may just leave you snoring for the rest of your rotten life!” he said.
The Red Hood looked down at the Sandman (Dr. Morpheus) and remembered how the scientist had used his chemical knowledge to drug and brainwash him for years. He still had difficulty knowing which of his memories were real and which were delusions. Now, he smiled and he felt some measure of closure.
A scrapping sound at the balcony door caught his attention but lost in thought he delayed turning around until it was too late. A dart struck him in the neck and he dropped to the floor. His last sight was of a costumed woman with long platinum blonde hair, a green mask, an orange and green costume and widely spread wings.
She flew into the room and kicked him once before turning to the Gettys.
“This one belongs to the Harpy! Sandman may count himself lucky that he is under the protection of one more powerful than any mere mortal!” she said in a screeching voice.
Red Hood groaned as the drug wore off. He found himself handcuffed to a metal column and he frowned as he fought to make sense of what he saw. He was in a huge room that was decorated like an ancient Greek temple. High above the floor rose a dais and a regal looking figure sat upon it and brooded. He had brown hair and a beard. He wore a red tunic and black pants. He looked up and his eyes seemed to flash with energy and malice.
“Mortal, you face judgment dire! You have injured Morpheus the Sandman. He was one of my chosen ones. You will suffer like all who defy the gods! You will regret falling under the wrath of mighty Zeus!” he said.
Near him stood the orange and green clad woman called Harpy. On the other side of his elevated throne was a pretty woman with black hair styled in elaborate curls. She wore silvery sandals and a brief tunic. She watched the scene with interest but said nothing. A hulking man in armor stood directly behind the man who called himself Zeus.
Two metallic golden women stood by the doors of the room which on closer inspection seemed to be an enormous cabin aboard what must be a massive ship.
“You are aboard the Odyssey! This floating realm is but one of the temples of Mighty Zeus!” said the man on the throne.
Red Hood nodded slightly as he thought. “Maxie Zeus- smalltime gangster who went nuts and thinks he is Zeus from mythology. As the king of the gods he dresses his thugs like characters out of Greek myth! I guess with a name like Morpheus, Sandman has some connection to him!”
He frowned as he watched the golden woman. “Robots? The crew seems to be robots! Weren’t there gold women in one of the myths?”
Zeus smiled and said, “You admire the craftsmanship of Hephaestus? The smithy of Olympus forged my golden women! They are my crew since few mortals could withstand being in the presence of the glory of Zeus for long!”
Harpy said, “Actually, great Zeus, the mortal villain Daedalus made them for the previous owner of this ship. He was a wealthy smuggler known as Dimitrios!”
“Aye! The Bat Demon from Hades brought him down to ruin! Zeus acquired this vessel after his previous ship was claimed by the Bat’s minions!” said Zeus.
Red Hood knew Batman had beaten Dimitrios a few years before when he had commanded a massive ship called the Argosy. This Odyssey was apparently a replacement!
“I don’t care if you got the Love Boat from Gopher and Isaac! You can’t hold me!” he said as he deftly slipped free from the cuffs.
“Thanks, Spook!” he thought as he recalled how the master escape artist had trained him in his art.
“Get him, Ajak!” roared Zeus as the huge figure behind the throne jumped forward.
Red Hood circled warily as the huge brute closed in on him.
He ducked under the bigger man’s outstretched arms and kicked him twice in the chest. He grunted and kept coming. The Red Hood flipped backward and hurled a pellet at the giant. It broke apart and gas swelled out. Ajak gasped and started to lurch to one side.
The Red Hood turned and vaulted past the golden women at the door. He emerged on a wide deck and realized the massive ship was in the middle of the ocean.
“This is not good! I sure don’t have a Bat boat parked nearby!” he thought.
He wedged one of projectiles under the doors as he slammed them shut.
“That won’t hold them for long!” he mused.
He raced down the deck and thought, “Got to be some kind of speedboat on this thing for evacuation!”
He ran into a room and frowned as saw dozens of the golden metal women at work operating the ship!
“Sorry, ladies! Keep up the good work and ..stay shiny!” he quipped.
He turned again to barely avoid a swooping Harpy who dropped down at him and narrowly missed him as her gleaming talons raked across the wall.
He rolled acrobatically away from her and raised his gun. He fired twice and while her armored wings deflected his mercy bullets, they did slow
her down!
He grabbed the railing and kicked off of it to crash into her. She rolled aside and he lashed out long enough to slap a small disc on her wing. He dropped away from her and managed to flip to a safe landing.
“Thanks, Nightwing or whoever taught me that move!” he thought.
The disc generated an electric current that dropped the stunned Harpy at the feet of the approaching Zeus and the woman in silver.
“You flee with the speed of Hermes but it will avail you naught since there is no escape from the Furies of Zeus!” he shouted.
“As pleasant as it would be to witness the demise of one of the Batman’s pestiferous protégés I fear I must intervene!” said a strange man who waddled into view from the end of the aisle.
He was short, fat, and grotesquely ugly. He wore a top hair, a monocle, and a tuxedo with a long tail coat. He spun an umbrella in one gloved hand as he made his way awkwardly forward.
“The Penguin? You seek sanctuary from the Bat Demon of Hades!” cried Zeus.
The Penguin laughed and casually lit a cigarette within a long holder. He said, “Actually, my Olympian Oaf, I have come here to assert my rightful ownership of this magnificent sailing vessel!”
Zeus scowled and his face turned red. “You challenge Zeus? Be you mad?”
The Penguin said, “Actually, you are the one laboring much like Hercules under a false impression! This ship is already mine and your pulchritudinous pantheon belongs to the Penguin!”
Zeus scowled as Harpy rose up and staggered to the Penguin’s side.
“Harpy is a bird, old Bean! Birds and umbrellas and brilliant crimes are my m.o. as our Bat-cowled antagonist would readily tell you!” said the Penguin.
Zeus smiled cruelly and said, “Harpy may prove foul but Siren is my own!”
Siren, the woman in the brief silvery tunic and sandals, shook her head and said, “Siren was the name you gave me. My original name…my first name was given to me by my true master!”
Penguin chomped down on his cigarette holder and said, “Correct! I call your Siren by the appropriate name of Songbird”
She opened her mouth and as she sang Zeus screamed in pain.
“Well done, my Most Melodious Minion!” said the Penguin as he prodded Zeus with his umbrella.
Red Hood winced but he remained awake. His hood had protection for his ears, eyes, and nose. The sonic attack did not harm him.
“So, the Penguin had his gals infiltrate the Zeus gang in order to steal this ship away from him! I doubt that waddling creep will turn the place into a cruise ship or pair me up with Charo!” he thought.
Zeus staggered to his feet and hurled himself over the rail.
“Brother Poseidon, shelter me!” he screamed as he disappeared into the water.
The Penguin waddled closer and said, “Melodramatic but you can’t beat the ending, eh? Waugh! Waugh! Waugh!” he laughed.
The Red Hood reached for his belt but the Penguin abruptly struck his umbrella against the rail and electricity surged through it to leave the Hood stunned once more.
“Shall I rend him asunder?” asked Harpy.
Penguin cupped her chin in his gloved hand and said, “Be a dear and stop talking like that Mythological Madman! No, the youth wears a red bat emblem on his chest. That in and of itself makes him worth keeping. After all, should he prove to be a problem or be of no value, we can send him to a watery grave!”
The Red Hood blinked and sat up to find himself inside a cage that hung from the ceiling of another huge cabin.
“A bird cage? Electrified too! I can see the wiring!” he thought.
The Penguin sat below and smoked silently and grinning from ear to ear.
“Welcome back to the waking world, my captive fledgling! I don’t know if you realize it but you are enjoying the hospitality of criminal nobility. I am no common ruffian. I am the Batman’s most brilliant adversary. Do not presume to place me below the giggling clown or the marriage-minded cult leader!” he said.
The Red Hood said, “Yeah? Me, I like the Riddler!”
The Penguin scowled and bit down on his cigarette holder.
“Very droll! All you Bat brats make with the jokes! Still, I would say you can fry as easily as the next Robin!” he said.
Red Hood said, “I’m no Robin! You’re not that lucky! I don’t play games with punks like you! I’ll shove that umbrella down your big mouth!”
Penguin waddled closer and said, “I do believe you would at that if you could reach me but you will die before you ever leave that gilded cage!”
He gestured to where seven of the golden robotic woman watched silently.
“My pet genius Harold used a device to override their control signals. They have served me and not poor soggy Zeus for some time now! The boy is as ugly as sin but he has a mind on his misshapen shoulders!
Red Hood said, “I’m sure he’s a real chip off the blockhead.’
He studied the cage. Could he break it from the ceiling and hope the impact would shatter the bars so he could get free. He had no belt thanks to the Penguin’s clever familiarity with such devices.
Penguin gestured to where Harpy and Songbird sat.
“This proud ship will soon be rechristened as the Iceberg Lounge. I shall keep it outside the legal limits and operate a sanctuary for like-minded felons. You and your Bat-eared ilk won’t be able to touch me legally and my legion of lethal ladies shall stop any who try!” he gloated.
The air shimmered as a weird portal opened in thin air and a red and gold clad man bounded through and ripped open the cage. He grabbed the Red Hood and hurled him through the closing portal.
Red Hood gasped and said, “Who are you?”
The red and gold costumed man said, “My name is the Sandman. I am not your enemy. The man called Morpheus used my name for his criminal life for far too long. I am the guardian of the Dreamscape and I freed you since I owe you a debt for defeating him for me!”
The Red Hood said, “If you have powers like teleportation why not help me sink that ship and bring Penguin down?”
Sandman sighed. “Dark magics have saturated the realms and I have but a fraction of my original powers. I may only leave my realm of slumber for 15 minutes at a time now. I may merely thank you for defeating Morpheus and tell you that his drugs killed Al Draper a few years into his captivity. He never knew this since one of my foes the immortal Nightmare Wizard switched the body of the dead Al from this timeline with that of the Al Draper of another one..in short with you. The Wizard wished to darken that timeline by removing many of its heroes to better engender nightmares. He used you for his own gains. He switched you with the dead Draper and Morpheus never realized it. In your proper timeline, you really were a Robin to that timeline’s Batman! Your memories of cases with him are true just not drawn from this timeline! I would return you to that timeline but it is closed to me now and I fear my time here is done!”
He vanished and Red Hood realized he was back on a rooftop in Gotham City.
“I can’t help but think that guy was powerful but unstable. I don’t know if I was really Robin in some other timeline or not. In order to make peace with my past, I’ve got to put it behind me and use my skills wherever they came from to serve justice in my own way!” he thought.
He ripped the red bat emblem off his chest and said, ‘Darrk is dead. Sandman is beaten. Zeus may be dead. As for the Penguin, we may meet again…but for now he’s Batman’s problem. I’m going to find my own direction now!”
The Beginning