Free Batman 3 - Batman Forever by Peter David

years, his medals and commendations were collecting dust on a shelf at home, and his pension wasn’t even beginning to cover his simple, meager living expenses. So he’d taken a job at the Second National Bank of Gotham as a security guard.
    They’d assigned him to the twenty-second floor of the bank’s office building, guarding the company vault containing billions in negotiable bonds, stocks, and other assets of high-powered corporations. Appropriately, it was his second night on the job when he’d found himself in more trouble than he could ever recall being in during his entire tenure as a cop.
    Tully was tied up on the ground, bound at his wrists and ankles. Standing around him were six thugs of varying sizes and shapes, but all of one consistent personality type: nasty. Tully was trying not to look at them, for fear was bubbling furiously inside him and he hated the way it made him feel. Instead he was staring out the window at the great signal hanging in the sky. A bat illuminated against a low-hanging cloud.
    And then the signal was blocked out by the twirling disk of a gleaming silver coin. It passed the signal by, and then descended. A hand speared out and snagged it easily.
    A man stepped into view. He was standing in profile, looking off to the right He was rakishly handsome, at least on his good side.
    Once upon a time, he’d gone by the name of Harvey Dent. But that was a name, he’d decided some time back, that only put one side of him on display. That was no longer sufficient. He had needed a moniker that captured his duality, so that when people were dealing with him, they’d know all aspects of the man they were doing business with.
    The name had somehow come naturally to him.
    “Counting on the winged avenger to deliver you from evil, old chum?” asked Two-Face. He clutched his coin more tightly. “We most certainly are.”
    Regrets poured through Tully’s mind. All of them centered around the notion that if only he’d encountered Two-Face when he was young . . . if only he’d been facing the six thugs when he was young . . . all of it when he was young, instead of a scared old man with a lousy pension and a hearing aid which, at the moment, he would have given anything to be able to turn off. Disgusted by his weakness, he tried to keep his voice level as he asked, “You gonna kill me?”
    Two-Face didn’t seem to hear the question at first. He simply continued to stare out into space. But then, quick as a cobra, he was squatting next to the guard. He held the silver dollar under Tully’s nose. The clean side winked at him.
    “Maybe. And maybe not. You could say we’re of two minds on the matter. Are you a gambling man? Suppose we flip for it?”
    Tully said nothing.
    It didn’t matter. Two-Face was no longer listening. Instead he was speaking softly to himself, murmuring, “One man is born a hero, his brother a coward. Babies starve, politicians grow fat. Holy men perish, junkies become legion. And why is this? Why? Heredity? Environment? Fate? Karma? No, my friend. Luck. Blind, simple, idiot, doo-dah luck. The random toss of the great celestial coin is the only true justice. Triumph or tragedy, joy or sorrow, life or, dare I say—”
    He turned the coin over, and there was the scarred face of the coin “. . . death.”
    Two-Face looked to the left and the guard tried not to look away. He didn’t succeed.
    “Death,” he repeated, and he flipped the coin.
    It twirled in the air and landed directly in front of the guard’s face. Tully didn’t see what side came up and, to prolong the agony, Two-Face brought his foot down quickly on top of it. He winked down at the sweating guard, as if they were old buddies sharing a few laughs over a harmless game.
    “What greater thrill? What greater agony? Like the touch of God.” He put up a finger, waggling it slightly. “Wait. Wait. Wait. How will justice be served?”
    He removed his foot from the coin and the guard forced himself to look