Free Batman 4 - Batman & Robin by Michael Jan Friedman Page B

perfection in that.”
    The Bunny pressed herself against him. “Then let’s turn up the heat,” she purred suggestively.
    Freeze glared at her from his Olympian height. “You are skating on thin ice,” he said. “My passion thaws for one woman and one woman only.”
    She sighed alluringly. “Forget your frosty femme. These lips are wet and ready to get frostbitten.”
    Freeze dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “Hop away, little Bunny. Before I cool your jets. Permanently. ”
    She recoiled at that—and well she might. His patience was limited, and everyone who worked for him knew it.
    Muttering beneath her breath, the Bunny left him alone. He watched her go. It wasn’t as if she didn’t move him. He just couldn’t allow himself to be disloyal to Nora—even if she was entombed in ice.
    Freeze wondered how cold he could make his shower. He looked around for his aide-de-camp.
    “Frosty!” he called.
    The man was by his side before he knew it. “Yes, Boss?”
    “Look at them,” he said, indicating the Icemen and their Snow Bunnies with a tilt of his head. “Everyone is always having a good time—except me. Try as I might, I can find no pleasure in life. Perhaps my heart truly has turned to ice.”
    Suddenly, Freeze had an idea. He lifted his gun and fired, freezing Frosty into a solid block of ice.
    The villain considered his work. “Well, that was fun,” he commented grimly, ironically. “There’s hope for me yet, I think.”
    Changing the setting on his gun, Freeze fired again. This time, it emitted a thawing beam. Frosty seemed to come back to life, though he was soaked and dripping like a wet cat.
    Without a word, Freeze turned and walked past his work area—and its mounting piles of scrawled schematics. He could hear Frosty following him.
    “Tell me,” Freeze said.
    The response was almost instantaneous. “Anything, Mr. Freeze.”
    “Do you think I’m mad, Frosty?”
    Frosty wrung out his sleeves. “That’s really a judgment call, Boss. Not for me to say.”
    A soft beeping sound interrupted their conversation. Alerted by it, Freeze consulted his wrist display. The power gauge was on “low.”
    “Battling the Bat exhausted my power,” he observed.
    Freeze approached a safe. Opening it, he removed three small diamonds and placed them in his suit compartment. Immediately, his power levels spiked back to normal.
    “But I was successful nevertheless,” he added.
    Freeze continued to a pedestal, atop which sat a machine powered by two giant diamonds. There were slots for two more diamonds, still empty. Smiling to himself, he reached into his tunic and removed the diamond stolen from the Gotham Museum. Then he placed it in one of the empty slots.
    “One more giant diamond of this size,” he told Frosty. “One more and my freezing cannon will be complete. I will hold Gotham ransom. Unless the city bows to my demands, it’s winter forever here in goat-town.”
    “The city fathers will cough up millions,” said Frosty, coughing even at the thought of it.
    “Billions,” Freeze corrected. “They’ll have no choice.” He turned to gaze at a frozen wall. “Then I’ll have the funds I need to complete my research. To find the cure for . . .”
    His eyes narrowed as he continued to stare at the wall. As he thought about what—and who—was on the other side of it.
    “Leave us,” he said abruptly. “We need quality time.”
    Frosty complied. As soon as his aide had slunk out of sight, Freeze opened a door in the wall and entered a walk-in freezer. There, he found a frozen-dinner box and lifted it—causing a door like that found on a bank vault to swing open.
    Lifting his chin, he stepped into what looked like a frozen mausoleum. In the center of it stood a computerized, glacial sarcophagus with a transparent face. He walked up to it and bent over to get a better look.
    Inside it, he could see his frozen wife, ineffably beautiful in near death, a snowflake pendant gracing her frigid