Alfred warns you that “a Mr. Dent” is apparently on his way, so you quickly change into something pseudo-formal.

***

“Bruce! You’re looking well. It’s been a while, huh?”

Eager to renew old connections? You’re sure this has absolutely nothing to do with money.

“It has, Harvey. How are you? District Attorney, now, I hear?”

“I’m great, I’m great … lots of work, mind you.” He flashes you a quick grin. “Which is why I wanted to talk with you, actually. Lots of work in my line is … not exactly heartening.”

On the other hand, maybe he just wants to get down to business?

“You’ve been hoping I could fund your department.”

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt, yeah. But actually, I was kind of hoping I could make some suggestions for your own … line of work. You’re heading your father’s Foundation now, right? You have your own lobbyists?”

“I haven’t actually pushed for any laws myself, but yes. I understand the Foundation was instrumental in giving us some of Illinois’ labor laws, for example, and the minimum wage, to encourage people to seek legal employment. That was before my time on the board, of course. We also fund legal representation-”

“Yes, Wayne, I’m fairly familiar with the Foundation’s legal work.”

Whoops. Slipped into lecture mode there.

“Anyway, Gotham needs laws, Bruce. Better laws. I have a lot of influence on the enforcement end of things, but that’s not much use to anyone if the laws I’m enforcing are occasionally insane and the people enforcing them are corrupt. the incentives for people are all wrong.”

Huh. Interesting.

“Well, I think I can help you with that.”

***

“So you’re suggesting we launch some kind of terrorist attacks on criminals? I don’t think the public would go for that, Bruce.”

“Of course they would. Just takes the right ad campaign. Or heck, recruit one of those post-Superman vigilantes we’ve got running around; they have to be good for something, after all. Just have them publicly announce that they’ll blow up the property of anyone making enough money off crime, and there you go.”

You recognize the look on Harvey’s face. It’s a lot like the look your family priest had, when you started arguing against God.

“Laws, Bruce. Laws. Adding our own brand of untouchable criminal is not going to have a good effect on society.”

“It worked for Superman … although he followed the laws, admittedly, until he killed that crime boss and disappeared.”

“Well, unless one of us goes crazy, I think we can rule out blowing our enemies up.”

“How is that different from … fine, fine. It doesn’t even have to be property damage, it’s about incentives. We should be tuning the fines and prison sentences to cancel out the profits they make. Hire some people who know statistics, have them calculate how much money these people are making and how often they get arrested for them. Suddenly crime doesn’t pay anymore.”

You recognize that look, too.

“Hot damn, that might actually work.”

+1 ally (sane), +1 influence (legal system). Excellent.

***

“Carrying radios? Really? What, as a backpack? The things are bad enough to lug around in cars, for .”

“Well, we’re working on making them smaller. But we could probably make one small enough to carry, with a transmitter in the car to act as a repeater, and towers throughout the city. Actually, that has market applications, I’ll probably have R&D look into it anyway.”

“I bet it does. Do you have anything to drink?”

***

“Bribes could be dealt with by increasing wages, perhaps. I could lobby for that.”

“I think we just need to beef up Internal Affairs, honestly.”

“I’ll research how well various things worked out elsewhere. Gotham isn’t the first place in the world to have people taking bribes.”

***

What do you want to do?

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