***BARRY***

I suggest to Grayson that he tell me and Kara the way to go so we can get ahead and scope the place out. He agrees, then says, "You can't really miss the ferry terminal, though. It's the only building on the waterfront that was designed anytime after 1939."

He's not kidding - alone among all the waterfront buildings, it's the only one with any glass. And it has tons of glass - it looks more like Central-Keystone International Airport back home, with its sweeping modern design.

Kara and I arrive in front of the building just as a ferry does the same on the other side. We can both see it through the glass at both ends of the terminal. More importantly, that means a crowd will soon surge through - commuters are already gathered in front of the doors, waiting to take that same ferry back to Metropolis or wherever.

Toyman and Trickster can take advantage of that crowd and blend in. God knows, in business casual, they'd be invisible.

But we can be invisible too.

"Kara, we need to change back into our civilian clothes," I say. "Did you leave yours in the apartment?"

"Yeah, next to Thea's, I think." She watches as the crowd moves into the building. "You're gonna go get it?"

"And my stuff," I say. I then turn on my heel and zip back to Grayson's place, grabbing both my clothes and Kara's. I also pull off the quickest of quick changes before returning to the terminal and handing Kara her stuff. She climbs off the ramp leading down to the terminal from the street (the terminal itself is built on an artificial island, with about fifteen feet of water separating it from Gotham Island proper) and changes underneath it. There's a net stretching out from both sides, most likely to deter suicides, and that's where she can stand.

"I'm just a little afraid to leave my suit there," she says, "'cause it's all dirty and covered in graffiti."

"You'd destroy any tagger you find," I say after I run onto the net and leave my suit next to hers.

"So could you," Kara says. "Doesn't make you any less freaked out by them, does it?"

I shake my head. "Not really. Central City's not known for its taggers."

As we come down the ramp, Kara takes my hand. I'm a bit resistant at first, but then I relax. We're supposed to be blending in, and if we can convincingly pass for a couple, that would help. And besides, this is Kara we're talking about. I'm more than happy to hold her hand.

"So," Kara mutters, "If I were a pair of playful supervillains, where would I hide?"

"Wherever's the most dank and damp section of the basement for maximum ambiance?" I suggest in a Cisco-level deadpan voice.

Kara laughs to herself. "That's not exactly up to code, is it?"

"That's the villains' favorite design theme," I say. "Just look at Penguin's cannery. May he rest in peace."

"Yeah," Kara says with a sigh. "For a bad guy, he didn't seem all that bad."

"By Gotham standards, I guess he must be a saint." I bring us to a short stop in the middle of the terminal. Then I tug on her arm and lean down, whispering into her ear, "Don't look now, but I just saw the Trickster."

To her credit, Kara keeps on staring ahead at the ferry sitting in front of us, out on the water. "You sure?" she asks.

"I dunno if a guy with that kind of name should be running the information desk," I say.

Now Kara looks. "Don't worry," she says when I tilt my head at her. "He's got his back turned...I think. Is he the one with the icky long hair?"

"Not that long," I say, "but he's pretty trollish-looking."

"Tell me about it," Kara says. "Okay, you guys hearing this?"

"Loud and clear," Felicity says. "I just got into the cameras. That's our Trickster, all right."

"One down, one to go," I say, looking around the terminal. "Where's Toyman? Bet he's posing as a janitor or something."

"Or a security guard," Kara says. "I've seen him wear phony military-type uniforms before."

"Looking for security guards now," Felicity says.

"Grayson, how far out are you guys?" I ask.

"Maybe a minute," he says. "Or two. The Scottish Highland dancers are out and about again, and they're blocking half the sidewalk."

"Oh God," Peter says, sounding like he's about to puke. "I think one of them just had a wardrobe malfunction. I'll, uh, pretend I never saw that."

"Like you don't know what one of those bits looks like," Gwen says.

"Thanks for stealing my joke," groans Drake.

"Okay," Felicity cuts in. "I've isolated a few security guards and janitors, but none of them really match Kara's description. They're either too old or too fat or too...insert adjective here."

"I've seen him wear sunglasses before," Kara says. "Doesn't that kinda screw with facial recognition software?"

"Garden-variety stuff," Felicity says proudly. "Not my techie toys." She clears her throat before adding, "Yeah, that means I'm taking sunglasses into account. Still no sign of - oh wait. Ding ding ding, we have a loser!"

"Where?" asks Kara. "No, wait, I see him!" She's fighting to keep her voice down. "Barry, don't look, but he's going up to the information desk right now."

I look around faster than she, or anyone else for that matter, can catch me. "What, is he gonna kill him?

"I don't think so," Felicity says. "Not unless one or both of them secretly have plague viruses on their skin - they just shook hands."

"Well," I say. "That's not much of a surprise." I do another accelerated turn-around. "They're on the move. Basement, you think?"

"Yeah, and our little Trickster left a package under the desk!" Felicity says.

"Kara, follow them!" I run to the desk, find the package, and pick it up. It's gift-wrapped in loud orange-and-purple-patterned wallpaper - a Trickster specialty if I remember correctly; it's the same pattern he wore on his garish supervillain costume back in the 90s, around the time I was born. Unwilling to delay any further, I leap over the desk and race outside, stopping on the ramp to toss the Trickster's present into the water. Then I see Peter, Grayson, and Thea coming in at last. They approach me and watch the spot where I threw the package away, the ripples spreading across the water and fading.

"Bomb?" Peter asks.

"I didn't wanna stick around long enough to find out," I say.

In the next five seconds, I individually speed our three remaining friends into the building, where we gather with Kara near a door marked (of course) "Maintenance." "Don't tell me there's no cameras on the other side," Kara says as we all hear Felicity suck air through her teeth.

"I wish," she mutters.

"We're on our own," says Thea.

"Hasn't stopped any of us before, has it?" asks Grayson.

"It's just occurred to me that you and Kara aren't wearing your suits," Peter points out.

"Oh yeah, that reminds me..." I grab those two suits from underneath the bridge, and Kara and I change hella fast once again.

"Now we're ready," she says, fixing her cape - it's bunched up a bit on one of her shoulders.

"Once more unto the breach," Grayson says with (somehow) a straight face. Then he opens the door, allowing us to cross through a small closet full of cleaning supplies before going through a back door and down a flight of steps.

"Are we under the water table yet?" Peter asks. "Because I'm starting to feel a little more damp than usual."

"Damp in all the wrong places, am I right?" Grayson jokes.

"'Fraid so."

Kara raises her fist, military-style, and we all shut up while she listens around a corner at the bottom of the stairs. "They're just talking," she says in a faint whisper.

"What about?" I ask, scooting closer to her so I can listen in myself. I lean over her, my chin coming close to the top of her head - even though, not twenty-four hours ago, she accidentally head-butted me right there.

"Bane," she says. "They think he's coming to Gotham."

Behind us, Grayson gasps, and I turn around to see him quickly covering his mouth. "Oh shit," he whispers. "If that's true...I've heard stories of this Bane dude from Bruce. He's pretty lethal."

"And these two think they can stop him," Kara says. "Apparently they teamed with Penguin to get rid of Bane's Venom. Half of it went into the water through his cannery. And the other half, they used it as a secret ingredient in the Gotham City Ghost gas." She stops, then adds, "And I think they just heard us talking. Crap."

Before any of us, including me, can make tracks away from this scene, the Toyman and Trickster make themselves known to us at last. And they're looking none too happy to see us. Especially Trickster, whose smile is, as usual, demonic as a bat out of hell. (No offense, Bruce.) Toyman, however, looks every bit as dour and ironically-named as he did in the picture Felicity showed the rest of us when Kara had her look him up.

Trickster turns his gaze on me first. "Ahhh...the Flash. Long time no see, huh? You still remember the m-"

"-the movie Speed?" Peter jumps in, crossing his arms.

Cue the Trickster looking up at him critically - I never realized until now how much shorter than average he is, but his tendency to hunch over doesn't help. "You sound familiar," he says. "If I could see your undoubtedly fine cheekbones, I'd probably identify you lickety-split. I never forget a face!"

As for the Toyman, he looks like he'd rather be anywhere but here, if his epic eye-roll is anything to go by. "This creature may be repugnant," he says, talking mostly to Kara because she's the only one he knows by sight, "but his performance artistry was exactly what I needed to enact my plans."

"Your plans?" Trickster rounds on Toyman, screwing his normally bug-eyed blue peepers nearly shut with wary suspicion. (Oh God, I can't believe I just called them "peepers." Kill me now before Ollie finds out how milquetoast my internal monologue is.)

"All you can plan is chaos," Toyman counters. "I lend you the control and the guiding hand you so desperately need in order to succeed."

"Uh-buh-buh, you made a rhyme!" Trickster crows, holding up one finger and sticking it right into Toyman's face. "Careful, you're starting to sound like me now!"

"Succeed at what?" asks Peter. "Poisoning the city? And why this city? Isn't this a little out of you guys' territories?"

Toyman grinds his teeth. "Bane is bad news. If he enacts his world-domineering plans in Gotham, it'll seriously put the rest of us at risk - even back west."

"So..." I raise my eyebrows. "You think you're gonna be bad guys who stop worse guys? Is that it, huh?"

"Sounds screwy to me," says Thea.

"Especially after you killed Penguin and all," Grayson says. "Like I told these guys - that's gonna bring chaos to this city like you wouldn't believe. No offense, guys" - he nods to everyone else but Peter - "but our East Coast criminal ecosystem is a delicate thing. Take out the linchpin and-"

"We didn't kill Penguin," Toyman says.

"Yeah," Trickster chimes in, vibrating with the beginnings of some pretty angry excitement. "Give us credit where credit's due, but not where it ain't!"

"But you do admit to working with him?" Grayson asks.

"We swear to God we're not recording this," says Kara, doing her cross-her-heart thing again.

"We're only trying to flush Bane's people out of town," says Toyman. "That's why we put together our Ghost simulations. Your friends being collateral damage wasn't our intention."

"They weren't that damaged," says Grayson.

"Unfortunately," mutters Trickster.

I bring everyone else back to the foot of the steps for a quick football-style huddle. "Do we believe them?" I ask. "Or are they just bullshitting us?"

"One of them's called the Trickster," Peter says pointedly. "That should, uh, kinda warn us."

"I don't wanna believe them," says Thea, "but that's only 'cause I work under Starling City rules. Our villains are always warped psychos with warped plans. They never wanna help anyone but themselves."

"Which is basically what these guys are doing," Kara says. "Except in this case, if they're telling the truth, they're also helping tons of other people."

"Try telling that to Aquaman," Grayson laughs, tilting his head towards the wall - which probably has the bay on its other side. "Or Penguin."

"We didn't kill him!" yells Toyman insistently.

"Okay, so we know they can still hear us," I say, smacking my forehead. "Great." I break the huddle and report back to our two villains. "Proof. Now."

"Or what?" Trickster crosses his arms. "You'll turn us in to the police?"

"Maybe," Grayson says, drawing out a pair of short but menacing metal sticks. "Or we could beat you into submission."

Now we're all tilting our heads at him. "You serious?" asks Peter.

"Slow your roll," says Kara.

Grayson ignores them both and approaches T&T, pointing his sticks at different sensitive sections of their anatomies. "I dub thee" - he lays one stick on Toyman's shoulder, close to his neck - "Sir Cumsised" - he points the other at Trickster's crotch, making him wince horribly - "and-"

"Dude!" I rush in and pull Grayson back, and take his place so I can act as good cop. "Just talk," I tell the villains, "or we might have to deploy our Blood Knight again."

"Is that really what we're calling him?" Peter asks.

Grayson blows a raspberry, then says, "Welcome to Gotham, dipshits. I mean the bad guys, of course."

Toyman nudges Trickster, who cries, "All right, all right!" and sticks his hand into his jacket's inner pocket.

"Nothing that's gonna hurt me, right?" I ask, making myself sound more than a bit like Joe.

"No!" Trickster sounds genuinely aggravated that I would have a good reason to ask him such a thing. "I'm sure by now you can recognize some of our mutual handiwork when you see it, huh? Huh?" He hands me the contents of his pocket - another one of those waterproof speaker pods. Flipping the switch, he has it play the familiar hyena sounds of the Joker's laugh.

"You could've gotten that from anywhere," says Peter.

"Or we could've gotten it from here." Toyman steps aside and opens a door leading to what looks like a secret lab full of spare parts. Some of them have been put together to form more pods, and there are several jugs of chemicals as well. Including more than a few labeled "nitrous oxide."

I walk in and examine the lab, picking up several more pods. At least one or two, I throw out into the antechamber, ignoring T&T's protests - and cheering silently when Peter catches them with his webs. It's a fun little game to vent the mild frustration of knowing that this whole Gotham City Ghost mystery really was just a silly Scooby-Doo hoax.

"You know what?" Grayson says, stepping into the lab. "I think I might need to have a little chat with these guys. See what they know about Bane."

"That sounds like a good idea," I say, putting down another pod. "But what about the rest of us?"

"I'm staying for a bit," Thea says. "You never know - I could learn a thing or two and pass it along to Ollie."

"And as for the rest of you?" Grayson says with a twinkle in his eye. "I promised my brothers they'd get to have ice cream with you, and North Poles Apart is open twenty-four hours."

I make eye contact with Peter and Kara before leaving the lab at last. "I dunno about you," I say, "but I could do with a bit of a distraction from this mess."

"Exactly," Grayson says, clapping me on the shoulder as he passes me by. "Now, gentlemen, about our masked, mouth-breathing friend..."

That's all I hear out of his mouth before I link arms with Peter and Kara and speed them out of this cramped little basement room. Ice cream, here we come.