Author's Ramble: My first stab at comic book fanfiction, although this is more based on Batman Begins/The Dark Knight then the actual Batman comic books. Takes place during Batman Begins, when Crane's drug has seeped out into the narrows. I just pictured the Joker watching all this, and deciding it was high-time to show his face to Gotham. Sorry for any holes in the actual plot of the movie. I took liberty at making Jim Gordon's son scarred for life (almost literally). And as a disclaimer, I only own a bunch of Batman stuff, not the storyline, characters, etc.

I've also been thinking about writing an alternate origin story for Harley Quinn set in the Christopher Nolan universe, with similar writing styles to this. Tell me what you think! (Oh, and the title is thanks to Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. A few months ago I put on this production, and the song titled "City on Fire" made me think of a man with a very distinctive smile...)

"Some men... Just want to watch the world burn."


It 's a magnificent sight.

The Gotham City slums, stretching out along the border of the City of Crime, glow with the eerie light of streetlamps. Block after block, the slums creep out like rot on a corpse, eating away at the city it encases. A woman wearing rags and a tattered umbrella shuffles past, eyes kept downward, or flickering from side to side. There are plenty of things in the dark here. A man in a stained business suit enters one of the decrepit duplex's, his face lined with age though he's only twenty-three. A handful of men stand around a fire in a side street, guns poking out of the pockets of their stolen coats. Two shadows speak quietly as they exchange money for a baggie. A child in a distant house begins to cry at the sound of breaking glass. A vicious snarl from a dog echoed down the streets, warning intruders.

And something… something moves with almost delightful ease along the rooftops of this hole in the world.

This is Crime Alley.

And it's beautiful.

The streetlamps' lights flickered as a thick fog begins to ascend over the forgotten city street. Above the fog, along the rooftops, the figure steps from roof to roof. It stares down with patronizing eyes framed with dark black blots of makeup. The beady quality of the pupils themselves is lost in the swarm of black that stands stark against flaking white paint that covers the clown's face. A stretch of scars line his mouth, accented by the bloody red paint smeared along the lips and over the ridges of scarred skin. A dark red tongue flicks out and moistens the lips and scars, flashing briefly over yellow teeth.

"So this… is Gotham," he mutters to himself, his whole face twisting and contorting into a wicked smile. He holds up two hands gloved with purple leather and frames the scene before him, the disgusting water visible just beyond the encroaching fog. He closes one eye and looks out through the frame his forefingers and thumbs are making, tongue darting out to lick his scars once more. "Not exactly your Metropolis…." He slumps his shoulders, one hand falling to his side to nervously play with something in the pocket of his dark purple trench coat. The other hand reaches up and runs itself through greasy dark hair, the messy green dye highlighting it against the pale face.

The men standing around the barrel that contains the fire make a sudden noise. The clown's attention turns towards them in the alley just bellow his feet. The fog has swarmed its way into the narrow passage, and it appears the men have all taken deep breaths of it. They are now screaming profanities at each other, and stumbling away from the flames and their colleagues. One pulls his gun with shaking hands, aims and fires. The bullet ricochets off the old brick walls as he misses. With a delighted cackle the clown jumps to the floor of the rooftop, stretching out on his stomach as his head peers over the edge down into the alleyway.

The others are running now, stumbling, falling, over themselves as they run from something. The clown cocks his head to the side, curious. He sniffs the air, then makes a face and shakes his head wildly as he pushes himself off the pavement. He wets his lips and smacks them together loudly. He'd caught a brief whiff of the apparent "fog" that had moved from the bottom of the street and up. He staggered over to the other edge of the building, staring off at the sight he'd been observing previously.

Crime Alley had changed—it's now utter chaos.

And it's stunning.

The woman clad in rags now holds her umbrella to her as if it is her only weapon as she fights off an invisible attacker. The screams coming from one of the duplexes echoes throughout the alley as people begin crawling out of their homes like termites. They're all terrified--screaming, crying, shouting, convulsing. A child is sitting on his doorstep; lips stretching over his teeth almost impossibly so as an inhuman sound comes curling out of his throat like a steady poison leaking into the already toxic air.

The clown lets out a series of laughs, the pitch changing with each one, and his face contorted into a mask of pure mirth. The scars ripple as he smiles, the laughter emphasizing the background sounds of chaos as Crime Alley succumbs to the power of a drug synthesized by its very own Dr. Crane.

"Looks to me… like we've got ourselves a party," he laughs in a whisper, smoothing his hair out of his face, expression suddenly serious. With a purposeful walk he begins to step from building to building once again, making his way down the blocks from above. He remains untouched by the airborne toxic enticing the streets to madness. The clown's expression is completely serious now and his voice brings on a growling to his words.

"I don't recall… being… invited."

A sudden commotion in an alley just bellow him causes him to pause. A group of the terror-struck citizens have gathered in a riot, drawing close to two individuals. The clown's eyebrows crease his already wrinkled face as he cocks his head to the side, a joint in his neck cracking. The two characters—a young woman and a boy—are not hysterical like the rioters slowly trapping them in. At a second look, the boy is cowering in fear, but it is hard to tell if it is for the same reasons as the lunatics surrounding them. "Funny…" the clown growls.

There is a sudden commotion down the alleyway. The clown's head snaps to the left, just as he hears the sound of hooves making their way down the concrete. From the mists of the fog, a man mounted on a horse comes galloping into view wearing a mask over his head that appears to be made out of an old potato sack. The clown inches forward towards the edge of the building, a hand smoothing back his hair as he surveys the scene below them. The rioters seem to disappear back, hissing and crying at the sight of the horseman. Caught in the stirrup, a policeman is dragged by the ankle behind the horse as the masked man makes his way down the alley.

"Crane!" the girl cries, head snapping towards the approaching horse then back to the man beside her.

"Scarecrow," the mask hisses in reply. He spurs the horse forward, the animal rearing back just above the two quivering victims. The girl reaches for something in the blink of an eye, and releases a taser in the scarecrow's face. The clown's laughter is drowned out by the sound of the horse letting out a wild squeal as its rider spasms and falls from his mount. He is caught in the remaining stirrup, and as the animal bolts from the scene it drags along the dead officer and the convulsing and screaming scarecrow. The sight quickly disappears back into the fog.

"And I thought my get-up was bad," the clown chuckled to himself. With a gleeful grunt he jumped over the alley as the mob began swarming around the girl and boy once again. He kept walking, but paused when there was another commotion in the shady alley. Dark eyes glinting in the light of flickering streetlamps, the clown turns back sharply as he sees a huge car shove its way into the narrow street through a brick wall. The clown's eyes narrow, eyebrow quirking as something jumps from the vehicle. A cowl covered its face, and it appeared to be clad in black body armor, with two razor sharp points coming out of its mask as if they were ears. The clown took all this in, slowly turning back to look at the scene with an expression of incredulous amusement fixed upon his painted face. The creature moved fluidly, a huge dark cape flowing out behind him like wings. It's making its way towards the woman and the cowering boy.

A sudden brick breaks the masked creature's stride as it crashes against his shoulder. He glances around at the lunatics staring at him, unfazed by the onslaught of bricks, rocks and bits of glass coming his way. As the creature turns back towards the girl and takes her up in his arms, the clown strains to hear a faint whisper from the boy left on the ground.

Batman.

The clown steps into the shadows as he sees the cowl-clad creature fire a gun upward, the grapple catching hold of a taller building's fire escape. Suddenly they come flying upward through the mist, disappearing into the dark above. The clown scowls after them, a dark tongue flicking out and running along his scars and yellowed teeth.

"The Batman…" he mutters, testing the title on his lips. Slowly, he reaches into an inner pocket of his trench coat, pulling out a lint-covered knife. Meticulously, the clown picks out the pieces of lint before setting the tip of the blade between his teeth and picking out the grime that had accumulated between his gums. "The Batman…"

The blade is slipped back into a pocket, and the clown's tongue runs along his teeth once more, moving the blood from his gums to coat his teeth. "I think I'd like to get… acquainted with this… Batman."

The clown lets out a wicked laugh, shoulders convulsing with it as he slowly steps to the edge of the building. He grabs hold of a rickety metal ladder and slides his way down to the street. The smog is disappearing, but he takes a deep breath of it nonetheless and shakes his head wildly, smacking his lips together as the scars and paint break into a wide, permanent smile.

With ease, he strolls down the streets, immune to the gas around him. He comes across the little blond boy whom he'd seen with the young woman who'd just disappeared with the Batman. He is bent over his knees, huddled on a doorstep. The clown approaches, his bottom lip jutting out mockingly.

"Oh, sh, sh, shh…." He fakes comfort. The little boy lets out a scream at the sight of him, and the clown's expression becomes villainous with rage. "You, you're, you're afraid of these?" He staggers forward, gesturing madly at the scars along his face. The boy begins to stumble backward up the steps, crawling away like a frightened mouse. "You know," he says, pausing, as his face suddenly becomes thoughtful, head quirking to the side, eyes looking upward a bit before rolling back to the boy in front of him. "The world… would be a lot more… pleasant, if children smiled more." Slowly, he pulls out from the folds of his coat a single knife. The boy trembles as he lets out a desperate mewling noise.

"Let's put a smile on that face…"

Leaning forward, the clown places the tip of the blade in the child's mouth. He stoops closer, his left hand digging into his pocket again and pulling something out. He takes the kid's hand, the knife suddenly vanishing from the boy's mouth and shoves a card into the tiny hand.

"Why don't we play a game?" the clown says, his eyes half closed as he nods to his own words. His hands keep an iron hold of the trembling boy. "You… take this card… and keep it. Just keep it, that's all you got to do." The child nods, just wanting the demon clown he is seeing through drugged vision to go away.

What he doesn't know is that this clown is more real than he will ever imagine.

"The one day… you'll understand why I gave it to you. But sh, sh, shh… it's a surprise." He places a finger against his red lips, slowly straightening up. He steps around the boy, turning back towards the streets. He ignores the fact the small child has wet himself and is now crawling desperately towards the door. The clown half turns to look back at the stoop, not really caring that the boy has disappeared into the house now. He smiles, those scars rippling and warping into the smile of the devil, and begins his way down the streets filled with recovering mayhem.

"This town needs a new breed of villain," he laughs, voice echoing off the buildings of the Gotham City narrows. The only people to remember these words think of it as a spell of madness.

And with that, the clown disappears into the fading fog, not to be seen again until a bank robbery six weeks later. And the chaos to ensue would be more beautiful, more magnificent, more stunning, than the likes of which Gotham or its Batman had ever seen.

* * *

Later, Jim Gordon's son will see that he escaped from the lunacy of the Scarecrow's drug with a playing card in his hand. He will not remember how or why it got into his possession, and he will throw it into his box of collectable cards out of habit, unaware that it will soon become a prime piece of evidence for his father's latest case.

He will forget it, and forget the jester's face upon it, framed by the words the Joker.