See No Evil: Nothing but the Truth (ch. 82) (Patreon)

"I'll start with a softball for you, Vergil. Have you ever knowingly and willfully committed fraud?" Mercy began her questions, her voice clear and concise, the cameras firmly on us as the world awaited my answer. It was poor form for an actor, but I looked directly into the camera lens. As a favor for the Daily Planet.

"Oh, absolutely," I answered, and people actually sounded shocked by that. Wasn't sure why. I wore that sin on my sleeve every time I stepped out. "All the time, really. Hardly a day goes by without me committing fraud in one way or another." I spoke, and I could see the alarm on Mercy's face. I entered a non-guilty verdict. I just openly confessed to a crime. I did pretty much the exact opposite of what I should have done.

Lex Luthor was expecting me to go down swinging. He was expecting something. He'd be an idiot not to and Lex Luthor was everything but an idiot. He was, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the smartest people on the planet, if not the smartest. The kind of raw brilliance that could process any kind of information, solve any scientific, mechanical, or theoretical issue, then find new and inventive ways to leverage his brilliance. However, there were several types of intelligence in the world.

If Lex Luthor was the pinnacle of scientific intelligence, then I would be the pinnacle of social intelligence.

Lex Luthor could look at an unsolvable math equation and find a solution with a handful of seconds of effort. I couldn't do that. I sucked at math. Honestly, outside of doing the basics needed for tipping, I hardly used math at all. I'm pretty sure I don't even remember how to long divide anymore. Not when I had a quantum calculator to handle the math for me.

What I could do was play him into solving the math equation for me and make him think it was his idea.

Lex knew science.

I knew people.

"I prefer to use legal loopholes, however. There are a bunch of them. A lot of them get left open for the rich and powerful. For example, did you know that Lex Luthor paid less in taxes than, say, your average high school teacher? Pretty fucked up, right? The guys a billionaire. But, I guess I shouldn't be throwing stones. It's not like I ever paid taxes at all." I questioned and Mercy bristled.

Judge Arthur slammed his gavel down, looking at me, "The defendant will remain on subject. This isn't the time or place to discuss the president's tax returns."

"I'd say it's on topic," I responded. "A lot of what I do is perfectly legal but it shouldn't be. I'll give you another example, this one relevant to me," I said, giving Mercy a lazy smile as I reached up and undid bandages around my head. The crowd gasped at my smooth skin without so much as a blemish. A shocking turn of events given my injuries. "I'd like to take a moment and introduce Sainthood Enterprises' latest innovation for the medical industry -- the Med-x. The X is because it sounds cool."

Mercy didn't object. She was giving me all the rope I needed to hang myself with. She was watching me tie a noose, but she was completely mistaken on who I would be hanging with it.

"With the power of belief in the god of cocaine and nanomachines, you too can recover from nearly being beaten to death after popping a simple pill. The god of cocaine is so forgiving and tolerant, that you don't even have to worship him for the pill to work! Broken bones, shattered teeth, torn skin -- all healed without so much as a scar to show for it," I continued and I could see it on people's faces that they had absolutely no clue what was going on. "The FDA was dragging its feet on clearing the pill. Something something, experimental technology or imminent collapse of the medical industry. I dunno. I stopped listening."

I leaned forward, gazing into the camera and the people that were watching me through it. "So, I'm exploiting a legal loophole. Med-X? It's faith healing. It's alternative medicine. Meaning the FDA can kiss my ass and not do a single thing to stop me from releasing the pill." I continued, leaning forward and feeling quite satisfied with myself as I turned my attention to Mercy.

She regarded me carefully for a moment. She looked like a woman that had the sneaking suspicion that she was walking into a trap but wasn't sure where or how it was going to be sprung on her. Or, rather, Lex Luthor. Her gaze flickered to the judge, who seemed paralyzed on what to do. I'm pretty sure most of the criminals he deals with don't make sales pitches for life-altering medicine during testimony. "Thank you for that example, Vergil. However, to clarify -- you are admitting to committing illegal counts of fraud?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah, like I said, all the time," I agreed swiftly.

My lawyers were somewhat prepared for this but even they were shifting uneasily. The camera crews and guests were a hairsbreadth away from losing their collective minds.

"Does the defendant wish to change his plea to guilty?" Jude Arthur found his voice after a long second. I looked at him like he was crazy.

"Of course not. I'm as innocent as can be," I said with a straight face. I had to admit, that was probably the most egregious lie I had ever spoken. "I'm just telling the truth here like I was asked by your bailiff, Judge Arthur. I wouldn't dare besmirch the law by lying under oath." Judge Arthur seemed to pick up on the fact that I was fucking with him. That made him uneasy rather than angry.

Everyone was picking up on it. I wasn't taking this trial seriously at all. What they didn't know was why.

"I… any further questions, prosecution?" The judge asked, looking to Mercy, who considered it.

She nodded, "The prosecution does, your honor. Your lawyer made quite the case for you in his opening statement. I'm the one responsible for putting you away, and even I was moved by it. However, I wish to dig a little deeper into your past, Vergil. Before you became the head of the largest conglomerate on the planet, before there was Lowtown… what exactly did you do? Did you, by chance, happen to work with a notorious Mafia boss known as the Penguin in Gotham city?"

Ah, that was a little bad, but it was something I prepared for. "That I did, Miss Graves. For a few months. I-"

"That answers my question," Mercy quickly interjected. Seemed like she was learning to not let me speak. If she kept interrupting me, I couldn't hijack the narrative.

"Oh, so you don't want to hear about the murders then?" I asked and the courtroom exploded into chaos. Mercy's eyes widened a fraction at the admission and Judge Arthur was banging his gavel so hard it was in danger of breaking. My lawyers were playing it cool but I could see them sweating bullets.

"Murders?" Mercy questioned me, even as everyone struggled to regain a sense of order.

"There were plenty of them during my brief stay in the Penguin Mob," I answered without missing a beat. "The first one actually is what started my, ah, indentured servitude with Mr. Cobblepot. I was broke as a joke and tried to hench for the Penguin. A simple job of unloading some crates off of a ship. One of them broke, revealing Tifa Lockhart, the light of my life. She's over there," I said, gesturing to Tifa, who gave me a stern gaze. The judge called for order, but the cameras panned to Tifa.

"I had no interest in becoming a human trafficker and the gangster's wanted us dead because we knew too much. I killed them," I admitted casually. "But, the Penguin had a long reach. I mean, you wouldn't believe how many officers, judges, or senators were on his payroll. Escaping him wasn't an option. I knew he'd kill me for staining his reputation, so I went to him to make amends. He gave me the cost -- I had to pay him five million in total by doing jobs." I gave her a cocky smirk, "In a few months, I went from running dimes of weed to a lieutenant in his mob."

"During that time Sainthood Enterprises was founded, was it not?" Mercy questioned, her tone sharp.

Franklin Bash stood up, "Objection, your honor. Relevance?"

Mercy was quick to interject, "Your honor, it's information relevant to the information that the defendant himself is offering."

Judge Arthur shifted in his seat. I could see the weight of the case starting to grind him down. Already, this was a clownshow of a case, and, for his own ends, he needed to show that he was in control of the court. Otherwise, his reputation would be ruined after this historic case. "Sustained. Miss Graves, you may continue to the line of questioning until… if the defendant decided to take the fifth, where I will then decide relevancy."

Mercy turned to me, and I nodded as Franklin sat down. "Yes, Sainthood Enterprises was then formally created. Lowtown was already in its early stages in an old abandoned train station."

"And how is it that you founded a company that could support, at the time, an illegal homeless shelter while also owing a notorious mob boss five million dollars?" Mercy pressed, starting to play into her role a little, likely on. Lex Luthor's orders. She was talking to the Jury and the cameras, treating this like it was a shitty episode of Law and Order.

Just because they were blitzing me didn't mean that they weren't covering their bases.

"For two reasons -- I had an… injection of funds courtesy of the Blackgaters, who previously were one of the largest gangs in Gotham city."

Mercy interjected, "Can you clarify that? How exactly did you receive this 'injection of funds?'"

I leaned in closer to the microphone before me, "I stole approximately three metric fuck loads of their cash," I clarified, leaning back. "The Blackgaters were taking hits. Bottom feeder gangs smelled blood in the water after someone got ballsy and hit some of their safe houses. I had an information network up and running at that point, so I joined in on the fun. Stole a couple million worth in cash, which I then laundered through Sainthood Enterprises to get its feet off the ground." Mercy narrowed her eyes at how easily I was volunteering the information.

I wondered if Lex felt it yet? The noose I was putting around his neck?

"Secondly, Mr. Cobblepot made Sainthood Enterprises before it was Sainthood Enterprises a front for his illegal dealings. Money laundering and there was a cocaine delivery service with Sainthood Floral Arrangements. Flowers are a bit like art -- so easy to inflate the price and no one bats an eyelash when you pay three hundred bucks for fifteen dollars worth of flowers." I leaned in my chair, looking perfectly comfortable where I was while the tension grew in the courtroom.

Mercy paused, appearing to gather her thoughts but also to listen to Lex's orders. I knew the bait I gave them was too much, too irresistible.

"Please correct me if I'm mistaken, Vergil St. Jude, but you are admitting to Sainthood Enterprises being a front for a criminal organization and has a cocaine smuggling system within it?" She questioned, and that was the trap.

"No, not anymore. Those were necessary compromises to pay off the mob and make sure that people I cared about didn't wind up with concrete shoes and an umbrella shoved down their throats. First thing I did when I got the hand over Mr. Cobblepot was undo the damage he did. I was actually going to have him arrested at my expo, but…well, you know what interrupted that." I said, switching facts to defend my actions. The oldest trick in the book -- the trusty, yes, yes, no.

The first admission caught her off guard. The second got the ball rolling. The third made her push to see how far she could go. That's when I pushed back. Those charges were valid and I had just admitted to them under oath, but at the same time, they also didn't really matter that much comparatively. What was a smuggling ring compared to manufacturing clean nukes?

Sure, I could go the way of Al Capone and get hit with a minor charge that still put me in jail, but it wasn't likely. Not when I had nothing but aces up my sleeve.

The admissions would just paint me in the light that I had always painted myself. Someone who bent the rules for the betterment of others. Someone that compromised until he didn't have to.

Mercy saw the writing on the wall. I just yanked control of the narrative tight out of her hands. She looked to the Judge for a moment and got an order from Lex. "The prosecution does not have any more questions at this time." She decided, choosing to regroup to get a handle on my plan of attack.

"May the defense approach, your honor?" Saul Goodman questioned, standing up. Judge Arthur looked like he didn't want to allow it for the briefest of moments but he nodded all the same and gave his permission. "To pick up where Miss Graves left off -- you said you were going to turn in the Penguin? How?"

The truth was completely subjective. It was more often than not reliant on what a person heard first.

Lex had fallen for my trap. I gave him so much rope that he was certain that I was leading him directly into an ambush, and he cut his losses before I could seal the deal. That was smart of him. From his view, he just killed my momentum and restarted the initiative -- next, I imagine after giving all of my answers, he would have Mercy pick apart every word I said to reveal the lies. With as much overwhelming evidence that he had, and with my reputation, that's what he needed to do. It was the smart option.

However, it was not the best decision.

"I was. At the time, I was collaborating with Batman to bring down the Penguin. Even got my arm broken to seal the deal. I was feeding him information as I rose through the ranks pretty quickly because I arranged failures for my rivals within the mob. Things came to a tipping point just before the Expo when I stole a lot of data from the Penguin and locked him out of his systems. He responded by murdering all of his lutenitates, except for me, for failure and incompetence and I got it on camera. The video was forwarded to Batman, who would have used it to put the Penguin away, but then the Joker came back from the dead."

There. The perception of me changed just a little bit. I was still a bad guy that broke the rules, but I was a bad guy that broke the rules that also happened to work with heroes.

"The Joker, who you had killed," Saul prompted, and I nodded.

"Your honor, relevance?" Mercy interrupted, sounding displeased. It was the tool that she had to interrupt the flow of the conversation. She had an unlimited amount of them. Technically, she could object to every word that I said.

"Sustained," Judge Arthur said, his bias showing. He was a Gothamite. And I'm the man that killed the Joker twice. "Defense, continue."

"Thank you, your Honor. Oh, where was I… ah, right -- the death of a mass-murdering terrorist that routinely terrorized Gotham city and the world even before he came back from the dead and murdered millions," Saul said, looking to the cameras. "But, before we get to that, I think we should rewind a bit. Set the stage a bit for our audience," he said, looking at the cameras and not the jury. "Vergil, can you tell me about this expo of yours?"

"Objection, relevance, your honor?" Mercy interrupted, looking to the judge expectantly. And the reason why I allowed Jude Arthur to be the judge that oversaw this case made itself known. He was a well known and respected judge -- he wouldn't take a bribe, but he absolutely could be pressured to lean one way or the other. Right now, he was being pressured to support the prosecution as much as he could without tipping his hand.

However, I was making him work in a gray area. Did he let me continue and eventually fess up to some other crime I committed? Or did he dance to the prosecution's tune?

"Sustained," Judge Arthur decided, nodding at Saul. "I'll allow the line of questioning." Judge Arthur was smart enough to be a lawyer and a judge but in this game of wits he couldn't even be considered a third player.

"Thank you, your honor," Saul said, gesturing for me to continue.

"The expo was meant to put my company on the map. We were a known name in Gotham by that point, but we didn't have any international attention. Well, not counting our gacha division. Honestly, I think we were trying to bite off more than we could chew. While I had plenty of prototypes ready, I lacked the capital to actually produce most of them."

Saul made a face, like something didn't add up. "You didn't have the capital? Let me look up some numbers here…" Saul said, opening up a binder that he carried with the word evidence on it. "Your company made a profit of… wow, of nine hundred and fifty six million dollars. Not bad for a company less than six month old at the time. Where did that money go?"

"Lowtown," I answered.

"All of it?" Saul questioned as he began flipping through the binder, showing the cameras exactly what he was flipping through. "Ah, would you look at that -- of that near one billion dollars in profit, five hundred million of it went directly into Lowtown. The rest was pushed into your company -- seems like everyone got a pretty hefty bonus that quarter. However, I seem to be missing something. Your salary. It's not listed."

I smiled -- that was a bit of theater that wasn't planned, but I knew exactly where he was going with it. "I don't have a salary."

"You don't have a salary? That's what I thought, but I thought that'd be crazy! I mean, your company, in no exaggeration, has changed the world. So, I pulled up your bank accounts -- and, lo and behold, I discovered that you're broke as a joke. You're living under the poverty line in terms of income." He said, and the watchers shifted at that.

"I wouldn't put it like that, but yes. I'm broke," I admitted. The lifestyle that I had was born from having complete access to my company's resources. I had my nest eggs, but as far as labels went, even those funds were tied up.

"Why?" Saul questioned, his tone sharp. "Why not do what every other billionaire does on the planet and cut yourself off a fat slice of the pie? Given these numbers, I'm pretty sure you could bump Lex Luthor to number two when it comes to who has the most zeroes in their bank account. So, why don't you?"

"Because it's not about money," I answered. "Money is just a means to an end. Other people care about it, so I have to use it. When I make a proposal that'll tack on another zero to someone's bank account that already has too many, they'll hop aboard without a second thought." A dumb thing. However, money itself did become devalued at some stage. Then it became a matter of influence and favors.

"Money. It makes the world go around. But you don't care about it. Not enough to line your own pockets. Instead, you use it to fund Lowtown, a homeless shelter turned underground city. As leverage for other guys with too much money to help you change the world for the better… I have to say, I've been a defense lawyer for sometime now. More years than I want to admit to. In that time, I've defended plenty of drug dealers and white collar criminals -- some I got off without a day in prison, and others reduced sentences." He said, sending me a wink at me.

"Money was the motivation. But it wasn't for you. So, why else would you put a cocaine ring in your company that exists only to serve the good of the people? Why commit fraud for a criminal? If getting rich wasn't why, then we must look to the other answer: duress. My client feared for the safety of those that he cared about. Duress caused by a mobster that is well known for his brutality and unforgiving nature. My client didn't want to smuggle cocaine. He didn't want to work for the Penguin. He was afraid that if he didn't then Tifa Lockhart and himself would die a brutal death. What's more, the entire time he worked for the Penguin, it was to the end of bringing him in. He was working with Batman as an informant."

My actions prior to No Man's Land were the ones I was most worried about. The murders, the fraud, the smuggling and so on. If I was going to be hit with a charge, then it was going to be from that time. Which is why Saul was focusing on covering for me during that time -- everything I did during then was because I had a gun to my head. And even then, I was helping the good guys.

It also helped that those were the charges that no one cared about. They were the most dangerous charges, yet Saul was doing a good job of defusing them. I think he made a solid case for it, and he followed up on it.

He brought out heaps of evidence reguarding the Penguin -- the brutality of his murders. How he would shove an umbrella down their throat and open it, ripping people apart from the inside out. All of it was to drive home how scary the Penguin was. How ruthless he was. How I had every reason in the world to be scared for my life and any crime committed during that time could be explained away as I had no other choice. All the while, he commended my bravery for being willing to work with heroes to take down the Penguin. How I swallowed the fear and used the opportunity to get evidence to bring the Penguin to Justice.

Through my contacts, I saw that it was working. The reaction from the public across the world was strong. Not just on forums and message boards, but in people's houses and workplaces. I wouldn't call it unanimous by any means, but it was enough to get the ball rolling. Those that were against me in the general public were those that either always hated me, or they felt betrayed by the video that had been released.

Those that always hated me didn't matter. Those that felt betrayed did. When I got them back on side, then my reputation would be as strong as it ever had been. Possibly even stronger.

That's how I would win.

Saul went on for an hour about the Penguin, all the while asking me for specifics and input. Mercy objected a handful of times during that time, but she only got one of them to work.

"Looping back to a previous topic -- Vergil, you said you were looking for an investment during your expo. Can you tell me if you found one? Because, I have to say, Sainthood Enterprises was a different beast after No Man's Land." Saul prompted and my gaze flickered to Mercy, who had been stewing in resentment for the past thirty minutes.

"I did," I answered, my cocky mask bleeding away and becoming far more solemn. Something was quickly picked up on by Saul. It was after No Man's Land. I suppose you could say that I got an offer that I couldn't refuse."

Saul frowned deeply at that, "An offer you couldn't refuse? I find that hard to believe! You were at the top of the world after you killed the Joker. Sainthood Enterprises was rebuilding Gotham at record speeds and you proved that even in one of the worst disasters that you were a pillar of the community that everyone could lean on. Who could make you an offer that you couldn't refuse?"

Mercy figured it out first. I saw it in her eyes.

"The organization that was responsible for No Man's Land," I answered, even as Mercy objected. "The same organization that was responsible for the Day of Two Worlds, when thousands of children were killed without remorse as their parents were ripped away from them. An organization that has been pulling the strings of society for decades. That's who made me an offer that couldn't be refused."

The blood seemed to drain from Saul's face. He hadn't known about the two worlds. It drove home how powerful the Light was.

"They're known as the Light. And they are the ones behind everything."