11234/The Light: The Shark of Gotham

The Light: The Shark of Gotham
Date of Scene:	24 March 2020
Location:	Gotham apartment complex, legally abandoned
Synopsis:	L1 offers the Great White Shark a position in the Light.
Cast of Characters:	Lex Luthor, Great White Shark

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Lex Luthor has posed:
The Light can usually find a use for just about anyone, within reason. You don't need to be directly working for the Council to be useful after all... and middle managers have become a mainstay for management of the Lights resources.

Directly managing a network as large as the Light requires at least some hands on work after all... and Lex can't be everywhere at once. So, finding people with the specific skillsets for the Council that pass vetting? That's a tall order at the best of times, and Mercy can only do so much without exposing her involvement.

So when Warren White popped up on the radar as a potential Right hand man for the Councils administrative needs (including possibly giving him control over the Enforcer Corps itself), it was a long process... one that meant indirect testing. The Great White Shark could certainly *suspect* someone was probing his businesses... his influence, but Lex was very careful never to leave 'fingerprints' to trace back to the Light.

Tonight, that all changes.

In an abandoned apartment complex (the original owner was killed, and property rights were in flux) the dining hall has been temporarily restored, and food has been put out. Warren has been given an invitation by 'interested parties' via an anonymous email... along with just enough evidence to prove to Warren that whoever was probing his business was actually the one testing him.

Inside the dining hall is a man in a business suit, black hair, and sunglasses... right in the middle of the table is a rather well stocked meal, along with a generic looking tablet computer.

Great White Shark has posed:
Great White Shark pushes a room service cart through the halls of the apartment complex, walking along in his smelly loafers and his khaki shorts, his Hawaiian shirt open a button and his grinning skull face omnipresent, a pair of black sunglasses over his eyes. There's a jangling jostling from beneath the blank white table cloth of the cart, of metal, ice, glass, and liquid sloshing about.

With a turn, he enters the dining hall, a squeaky wheel announcing his entry.

"Howdy, friend," says the Shark, and he moves about, parking the room service cart sidelong. He flips it open, and inside is three buckets, one with a bottle of expensive red wine from a vineyard in Northern Italy, one with a man's head, and one with a pair of wine glasses in antique frosted glass with Spanish lettering on them, notes to be played on guitar.

He pulls the three buckets up, one by one, setting them down on the table, the ice sloshing about in its partially melted state. He pulls the wine out, and places the two glasses on the table. He pulls the man's head out, and clamps the teeth down on the cork, twisting it off and causing a *pop* into of rushing air out.

"Thought I'd bring party favors," he shares, dunking the man's head back into the bucket and pouring a pair of glasses with an elegant ballet striding cant to his knees and arms.

Lex Luthor has posed:
The head gets a glance... but considering it's no one him or his employer knows... he just nods slightly.

When you deal with the underworld, gore and extreme measures come with the territory, and the man isn't some rookie to these sort of deals by now.

"I assume there's a reason for the head, but I'll let you get to that in your own time, Mr. White." The man smiles, before he gestures to the tablet computer, "When you're ready to begin, you can take that and turn it on. It'll automatically connect you to my employer."

Great White Shark has posed:
"Strictly for my own paradigm-based line of insight," Great White Shark explains, sitting down at the table and leaving a glass of wine for the other man, for the road. Great White Shark, meanwhile, prepares himself a plate, before he withdraws a little party-straw in a looping knot from his pocket, sliding it into the glass and slipping it between his sharpened teeth.

He takes a long draw, before he bites a meat ravioli off the plate mounted with a fork, his wrist holding the fork directly upwards with the prong curving towards him. He sets the fork down as he chews, reaching forward with a raise and pulling the table forward, then setting it down beside his plate, opposite the glass, on his right.

Flipping the computer open, he turns it on and sips his glass again, washing down the ravioli.

Lex Luthor has posed:
The tablet computer flicks on, and a blue background with a white silhouetted 'L1' pops up on the screen. There's no figure of a humanoid to infer even male or female. Even the voice is synthetic, leaving no trace elements to try and examine.

"Greetings. I am L1. I represent a collection of interests with vast resources and goals. You've been on my radar for some time, Mr. white... and I'd like to offer you a job, if you're interested in expanding your reach."

Great White Shark has posed:
Great White Shark watches from behind his Raybans, his frost-bitten face and bald head impossible to read, particularly with no nose and lips, those teeth sharp as knives and his tongue hidden.

"A job, eh? If you know me, then you know that Mr. White is not a proud name. Shark is the preference, until you work with me long enough." There's a reach to a segment of noodle on his plate, and he withdraws the spoon from the left side of the plate, carefully rolling the pasta in a delicate bit of art, despite his missing right pinky and left ring and left pinky. With a careful movement, the spoon propped articulately and artfully in his left hand, he then pulls the wrapped linguine to his mouth with a delicate bite behind his broken face's sharp teeth.

He slowly chews, considering the situation. After a swallow, his face softens from a brief stiffness, calculating his ability to function, and curtly replies, "I will make myself vulnerable. What is this job, L1. We both know that after I hear this, I am marked, by you, I presume."

Lex Luthor has posed:
"I have... notes... on you." L1 states with carefully constructed neutrality. "What I will tell you without accepting the job offer is exactly what anyone investigating us will uncover; we are global, with a Council of anonymous figures governing our network. I am L1, the central figure of that Council. Beyond that... will require a trial commitment."

"I've been watching you carefully. Your administrative and logistics expertise is solid for a man of your status and position, and we require men such as you as managers. My offer is a trial period to see if you can handle becoming the central nervous system of a portion of our operations."

Great White Shark has posed:
Great White Shark listens carefully, his eyes squinting behind his sunglasses with a rise of his cheeks, looking as if his gaunt face is hollowing and revealing his gingivitis-stricken gums, as he hears the term 'trial commitment'.

He lifts his glass, passing it to his right hand with a cup of the bell between his ring and forefinger, the odd cant to it a result of his missing pinky finger, his thumb locking in a bend at the base, tucked inwards so his thick nail props up the wine glass.

He looks away, out the window and into the city, sipping through the looping straw and into his mouth, his Adam's apple rising and falling with a single gulp of convulsion, an aggression gesture locked permanently into place by high power anti-psychotics. Without the ability to make a proper fight-or-flight choice, from the convulsive throat gesture being compulsory, he chooses fight, as anyone that's ever been on the medication at Arkham Asylum does.

"I accept," he says, a strategy groomed by doctors in maximum security facilities to make patients easier to arrest, commit, or elicit compliance from, with the simple concept of a lure into accepted challenge. "It would be a significant broadening of my responsibilities. Presently, I operate as an independent contractor with a small circle of conspirators that I pay in shares appropriate for the job."

He sets the glass down. "I will be releasing them from my official contract status. I will require a criminal network to perform as a trial agent."

Lex Luthor has posed:
"For the moment, you will answer directly to me. I just transmitted the necessary codes and client for accessing our comm network, along with a key fob for accessing some of our more specialized resources. The database will tell you more about that." Indeed, if Great White Shark starts to check the data, he will find a new list of stations around the world, including one in Gotham; a portal network for instant transport around the planet.

"For now, your job will be to familiarize yourself with east coast operations and get back to me about if you believe any changes should be made. If this goes well, you will be my representative for the majority of Light operations in the field. We will provide you with the necessary resources as we go forward."

Great White Shark has posed:
"Star Trek, eh," Shark waxes, as he watches the portal stations and the resource lists move down the screen. He removes the now full USB drive, after taking in a register.

"Do you want to know a trick, L1, as my gift? This one, is an old Confucian trick, used for Triads."

He finishes off his wine, pocketing the USB in his top pocket, before standing from his chair and grabbing the decpitated head by the hand, swinging the iced and wet head to his side.

"You pick a character role you want someone to play, and you offer a signal from that character role to them, from a secondary, your paired partner to remove from them when the time is right and you've placed them in your selected role."

"If you take me after this trial, you can call me Warren. Friends do, chum." He snickers, a sick, snorting, chuckling sound from the base of his throat, before he swings around and moves out of the dining room, his loafers flopping.