Tales From the Trash Bin #3. Survival is Compromise. · 5:42pm Nov 19th, 2020
Hey everybody, I wanted to thank all of my followers for being patient with waiting for the next update of SMoTE. I've been able to write a bit more for the story in between projects, so I'll hopefully have a few buffer chapters ready when I begin updating the story again. In the meantime, I thought I'd share another story that was taking up space on my computer. I forget when I wrote this, but I do remember the premise and direction I wanted the story to go in. I won't be attempting to continue this, even though this is one of my favorite beginnings to a story I wrote, so it's anyones if they want it. Once again, read it, ignore it, enjoy it, poop on it, do whatever. I hope everyone's doing well out there. Stay safe and enjoy yourselves.
Chapter 1. Heads or Tails. (The beginning of the End.)
Life is a game of risks and chances. Sometimes, the god of luck and fortune smiles down upon those who beg hard enough for their dreams to become reality. And other times, the god of misfortune will sneer down at the worthless beggars and strike them down with a wrathful vengeance.
Luck and misfortune, good and bad, paradise and destruction, are all the same in the eyes of the true god, the one who delivers the will of luck and carries out the anger of misfortune; random chance. The true decider, the one who holds no compassion nor animosity towards those who beg for chance to step in. Not many know or believe in the choice of chance, simply claiming that, “life is unfair,” or “The world hates me.”
The ultimate truth in life is that chance is not unfair or fair, it is not sympathetic or hostile, it simply exists. Chance is everything, and it can do anything.
For example, chance could one day let you find a five-dollar bill on the sidewalk, or it could open up an extra-dimensional portal right under your feet and swallow you whole. A typical Tuesday in Gotham for some, especially for those who tended to associate with people who claimed to wield the power of the cosmos. It was unlikely for something like that to happen to just anybody, but there was, and always would be, a chance that it could.
In all honesty, it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to happen in Gotham, it wouldn’t even make the list of the weirdest things to happen on a Tuesday in Gotham. That was just how the world worked for most people who called the city their home. One minute, you could be plotting to kill a certain bat themed vigilante with a large coin, and the next, you’d suddenly fall unconscious and hit your head on a nearby table for seemingly no reason. Such was the fate of the representative of chance, the one who walked the line of right and wrong by letting fate decide his path, Two-Face.
Two-Face, or more precisely “Big Bad Harv”, woke up before his counterpart, Harvey Dent, to an unfamiliar setting. The first thing he noticed was how cold he felt when the gentle touch or consciousness stirred the villain from their slumber. A delicate breeze kissed their skin as the harsh rays of sunlight shot into their eyes, causing Harv to feel more confusion as he dragged his limp companion upward.
The stale air of Gotham was gone, the dark clouds and smog that loomed over the city had disappeared, and the concrete jungle had been replaced by Poison Ivy’s wet dream. A flush forest full of life surrounded the pair in every direction with no hint of a human’s touch on any tree or any dirt paths that he could see around them. The fresh scent of dew and various plants tickled their nose as another breeze brushed past them, allowing a small memory of Harvey’s date with Poison Ivy to come to Harv’s mind. The memory of the poisonous bitch caused a brief pang of anger to stir inside Harv as he looked at the forest with a new feeling of distaste and disgust.
His mind began to wander towards their last shared memory before their blackout. He could remember coming up with a plan to finally rid Gotham of the Batman alongside Harvey, and he could easily recall Harvey’s nagging persistence that a revolver that had every other chamber loaded would have been a good plan. Harv resisted the urge to scoff at that. Shoot Batman, of course! It wasn’t as if every other criminal in Gotham tried that. Oh wait, they did, and they failed each and every time. Harv was thankful that their coin flip allowed them to put Harvey’s idiotic plan on the back burner. The less of a say that moron had in their decisions, the better.
Harvey Dent wasn’t cut out for a life of crime, working as an attorney for most of his life had softened him up too much for Harv’s taste. His plans were usually too complicated and, quiet frankly, stupid.
Harv could still remember the ridicule from the other criminals after their botched “trial” for Batman. If he hadn’t lost the coin flip to Harvey that day, then they could have just slugged Batman with a bullet at point blank range. But noooooo, they just had to hold a trial for Batman instead of just shooting him in the head. If it weren’t for the fact that they shared a body, Harv would have undoubtably shot Harvey in the head long ago.
Still, it was useful to have Harvey Dent acting as the more reasonable one from time to time. His history as an attorney allowed them to be sent to Arkham Asylum instead of Blackgate Penitentiary on a number of occasions. The insanity defense really helped when you were able to stage an argument with yourself in the middle of trial. Their insanity plea had only failed once, and once was more than enough for the pair. The cold stone walls of Blackgate Penitentiary were a foreboding memory that still caused them to feel a pang of fear whenever the looming shadow of Batman would approach. It was only by sheer luck that the Joker’s antics had caused enough damage for them to escape the hell hole known as Blackgate, and their subsequent “visit” to the judge had assured them that they would never be returning there again.
“Ow… What the fuck?” The annoying voice of his other half asked as consciousness soon returned to the pair.
Harvey Dent, the other half of the villain Gotham had labeled Two-Face, slowly supported his half of their body with his arm before taking control of Harv’s left arm to brush a hand through their hair. The blue and warted appendage dug into the alabaster half of their split hair, lingering on the line between Harvey’s shorter black hair and Harv’s messy white hair. Their hand traced the border of their split head, following the divide between them until his hand finally reached their faces.
Harv’s other half stared in horror at their mutated hand, comparing it to their unsecured and normal right hand before he patted down their custom black and white tailor suit. Harvey desperately searched for something on their person until the wandering hands of Harv’s partner found their faces. Their hands blindly fumbled over Harv’s side of their face, pinching the warts that dotted his side and tugging on his mangled lip.
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” Harv irritably asked Harvey.
“Who said that?!” Harvey demanded in a panic as their body shot upright and Harvey’s eye darted around. To no one’s surprise, the only thing to answer his question was the silent wind that drifted in the air.
“What? Who said what?” Harv asked after waiting in silence for a few moments.
“Gah!” Harvey exclaimed before spinning around to look behind them. “W-where are you?”
Harvey turned around to look at the tall wilderness that surrounded them, tall pine trees surrounded them in every direction, leaving the duo completely alone in the middle of a seemingly vast forest.
“Harvey, where the hell else would I be?”
“Who—“
Harv interrupted the attorney with a firm slap to his right cheek. “Damnit Harvey, get your yourself together!” Harv reprimanded.
“What the Fuck?!” Harvey exclaimed after he began to reel back from the slap.
The old attorney pressed their body against a tree as he began to hyperventilate, sucking in oxygen with a feverish thirst for air. Harv could feel their heart pounding loudly in his side of their body, beating against his ribcage with the force of a jackhammer that threatened to burst their chest open.
There was no shortage of criminals who employed the use of hallucinogenic drugs in Gotham. Scarecrow’s fear toxin could easily explain Harvey’s panicked state, though if Harvey was under the influence of Scarecrow’s gas then Harv should have been experiencing a similar delusional state. A new concoction from Poison Ivy could have also explained Harvey’s insanity and Harv’s subsequent rationality. The mistress of plants had a way of influencing people that went beyond normal means of understanding allowing her to strike at vital parts of the mind to make humans behave however she wanted.
“Harvey, what is wrong with you? You look like you’ve just seen Batman.”
“Shut up, shut up. Just shut up!” Harvey demanded, clutching the sides of their skull in fear as he pulled at their hair.
“Just leave me alone!” He desperately begged.
“Alright Harvey, we’re not going anywhere until you calm the hell down. Just take a deep breath and try to relax.”
“You went to a comic book convention dressed as us?… I don’t know if I should be flattered or insulted.”
fishing out a single silver coin from his pocket.
“Insulted it is,” Harv decided before punching the imposter’s half of their stomach.
“So, you’re not Harvey then. But you are in his body. Well, technically my body now. Heh. I kinda like the sound of that.”
“Who… Who are you?”
“Harvey always called me, ‘Big Bad Harv’. But, you can just call me Harv. Anyway, tell me more about this comic thing,”
“Wait, wait, wait… You know who Batman is?”
“Well, ye—"
“THEN SPIT IT OUT!”
“B-but—“
“But nothin’! Either you tell me who he is, or I pull out one of your molars,” Harv threatened.
“B-but they’re your molars too,” his other half tried to argue.
“Not on that side of my face, they aren’t. So, spill it kid.”
“Bruce Wayne is Batman… Do you think I’m stupid or somethin’?!” Harv asked with anger lacing his voice. “Bruce Wayne is a playboy that has a threesome every Thursday night, and you’re telling me that he has time to dress up as a bat and fight crime?”
“Harvey was a wimp, but at least he respected the rules! We flip the coin, and we respect the coin! No arguments, no disagreements, just. The. Coin.”
“There. Now, make the call.”
“We're sorry, when placing this call it is now necessary to dial an area code and a seven digit telephone number….” The robotic voice replied.
“What the hell?” Harold questioned as he looked at their phone to make sure he called Nine-one-one. After making sure that he didn’t fuck up pressing three numbers, he dialed it again to get help. Pressing it to his ear, they both heard the same robotic message play again.
“Damnit. I’ll try again,” Harold said as he began to dial the three digits for a third time. Before his thumb could hit the second digit for the emergency line, his thumb froze and hovered just above the button as Harv took control of their right hand.
“You already tried twice now, kid. Give it up.”
“Then flip the coin again.”
“If you ignore the rules again, I won’t hesitate to put a bullet in you.”
“You can’t shoot me, you’d kill us both!” The idiot argued.
“I’m not a moron. I wouldn’t shoot you in the head, but I will shoot somewhere on your side, like your arm or something. It wouldn’t kill us, but it’d sting like a bitch.”
“How are you not absolutely fucking terrified?!”
“Of what? That thing? Kid, I’ve seen scarier things than Man-Bat’s fursona,” Harv reasoned as he kicked the corpse of the lion and bat amalgamation.
“We need more bullets, that’s for certain.”
“We only have two more magazines, and I’m pretty sure we’ll need a lot more if we run into one of… Those things.”
“He learned a lot about guns in court, and I picked up a few things because of it. Ever since we became Two-Face, I started to collect and read about guns as a hobby.”
“Huh. I didn’t expect you to have a hobby,” Harold observed.
“Listen here little… lady?”
“Here’s the deal. I’m not going to decide what to do with you, my coin will. Good side, you’re set free. Bad side, well… I think we all know what that implies.”
“Come on, Harv, can’t we just—“
“SHUT UP!” Harv barked. “You know the rules, kid. The coin decides her fate, not you, not me, no one decides it. You want to let her go? Then pray that it lands Good side up.”
“Well, looks like today is your lucky day, Mrs. Rarity. BOYS! Take her topside and let her go.”
“Are you questioning me, punk? Cause if you need a reminder about why I’m in charge, then I might give you a demonstration.”
“So, what’ll it be? Do you want to take the chance of a coin flip, or do you want to do as you’re told like a good little boy?”
“Of course, I understand perfectly. If these diamond dogs have broken any of your laws, then you’re free to do your duty as upholders of the law and arrest them. But, I’d like to make it clear that I was not, nor would I ever be, affiliated with their criminal deeds. If they have broken any laws, then they broke them while they weren’t under our employment.”
“Well, that depends…”
“Depends on what?”
“Chance,”
“Ooooh. No dice, boys. The rest of the cavern is off limits for now.”
Tales From the Trash Bin. (Dani Phantom. Pt. 1)
Tales From the Trash Bin. (Dani Phantom. Pt. 2)
Tales From the Trash Bin. (Scott Howl)
Is it wrong of me to hope that this one day does become a story, because I'd love to read what happens with a Displaced who ended up as Two-face.
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There's no reason to think that's wrong, one of the points of these blog posts is so that happens. You could take this if you want, or maybe some other writer will see it and decide to write something with it. The reason behind these blog posts is that I'm giving them away for free. Anyone could take the concept, use the dialogue, or just copy and paste a line of the story and cram it in their own work. I've washed my hands of these stories because I don't know what to do with them.
A Trash Fic that I wrote evolved into SMoTE when I decided to expand the description of one scene, and I'd like to think that giving someone else the same opportunity could help them take the first steps to creating works of art that are purely their own.