What Do You Mean, Fangirls?
Disclaimer: The Batman Begins movie does not belong to me.
Author Notes: Hello! I'm just taking a short break from my Hellboy story A Shadow To A Heart so I can play with the characters from another fandom: Batman! But don't worry, I'll put them back when I'm done, however unwilling I may be to do so. Anyhoo, I thought more Jonathan Crane stories were needed, and I was in the mood to write comedy. The result is very…interesting, to say the least. Please review!
It was late at night and Jonathan Crane was, as usual, at Arkham Asylum in his lab, messing around with various beakers and so forth as he worked with a new fear inducing hallucinogen he was inventing. From somewhere in the asylum came a few frantic screams from one of the patients, and Dr. Crane sighed in contentment. All was right with the world.
Little did he know that his orderly little world was about to be shattered.
There was a knock at the door, and he glanced at it in slight irritation. Hadn't he told everyone to leave him alone when he was working? He strode to the door and flung it open— coming face to face with a teenage girl, whose face instantly lit up at seeing him.
"Can I help you, Miss?" he asked, a little surprised to see her, but hiding his surprise by sounding irritated.
In response the girl muttered something that sounded like: "you already have", and then promptly fainted. Crane looked down at the girl lying on the white linoleum floor, wondering what to do with her. Though unconscious, she still had a smile plastered across her face as if seeing him had made her enormously happy. Crane looked up and down the empty corridor, searching for someone he could unload the burden of the girl on. However, the corridor remained empty, and he sighed in exasperation, running a hand through his dark hair. He really didn't have time to deal with this. So he didn't deal with it, simply walking back into his lab and shutting the door behind him, leaving the girl lying unconscious on the floor. With any luck someone else would find her or maybe she would wake up and leave.
Jonathan returned to his experiment and had been working for only a few minutes when another knock came at the door. He snorted in irritation and, as another knock came at the door, he decided he would have to answer it. He was expecting it to be someone who had discovered the girl lying on the floor outside his lab, so he opened the door, already having decided to deny having ever seen the girl before. To his surprise, there were now two teenage girls standing outside his door, one standing on either side of the unconscious—and disturbingly smiling— girl lying on the floor, who the two new girls were looking at with some concern.
"Can I help you?" he asked, polite as ever.
The two girls looked up at him. The one on the left immediately swooned and lay grinning—and unconscious—on the floor. The girl on the right ignored the other girl's reaction, simply staring at him with a dreamy look on her face.
"Yes, you can help me," she said, still looking dreamy, "Though I don't think I have a problem. No, no, everything is wonderful…"
She trailed off and her eyes rolled back in her head. She collapsed and hit the floor with a thud, and then she too was lying unconscious on the white linoleum floor beside the other two girls. Dr. Crane looked down at the three, looking nervously up and down the corridor and half praying no one was there. After all, it was rather embarrassing as well as suspicious to have three unconscious teenage girls lying in front of your lab door. On the other hand, he really didn't want to—no, couldn't—deal with this right now. The experiment he was working on was very delicate and required almost constant surveillance, unlike the three unconscious girls. So once again, he looked up and down the corridor, and seeing no one there, mentally cursed the fact that his lab was in a part of the building where there were very few people. Normally this was a blessing, due to the—ah—sensitive nature of what he was working on, but when one has three unconscious teens lying on the floor and has no idea what to do with them, the deserted halls were more of a curse.
So, figuring someone else would eventually come along, he once more went back into his lab and closed the door behind him. Actually, he was sort of glad to have left the girls lying there, the smiles on their faces were just a tad creepy. And that was saying something, considering he worked with psychos who grinned manically 24 / 7.
No sooner had he reached his worktable, then another knock sounded on his door. Jonathan Crane closed his eyes for a moment, mentally willing himself to maintain his usual expressionless façade no matter how annoyed he was getting. But as whomever it was knocking at the door continued to ceaselessly pound on it, he discovered that hiding his anger was getting very difficult indeed. I am not going to answer it, he told himself firmly, they'll just go away and I can work in peace. But the knocking continued and he finally strode over to the door and wrenched it open, only to be faced with three more teenage girls. The three girls were standing in between the three unconscious girls lying on the floor and looking down at them rather nervously, no doubt wondering about the fate that had befallen their—bizarrely smiling— predecessors.
"What do you want!" Jonathan asked, exasperated. It was completely beyond him why all these girls were showing up.
"Want?" the red haired girl asked, tearing her gaze away from the girls lying on the floor, "Don't you know who we are?"
"No," he said bluntly, "Please be so good as to enlighten me."
The three girls looked shocked that he didn't know them.
"We're your fangirls!" the tall brunette said.
"What do you mean, fangirls?" he asked, not understanding.
"Isn't it obvious? A fangirl is a female who is completely obsessed with a fictional character." said the tall brunette.
"For your information, I am not a fictional character." he said, gazing at the girl through his glasses and wondering if maybe she was a newly arrived patient. And if she isn't, she should be, he thought, fairly sure she was at least slightly insane or delusional.
"Correction," said the short blond, "You are a fictional character where we come from."
He decided to humor them. "And where exactly are you from?"
"Reality," she said.
"No," he said, with a slight gasp. He had heard about this reality and how boring it was. They were telling the truth!
"Yeah, reality sucks. But it's great here—especially because you're here."
"So you all, er, like me?" he asked, slightly disbelievingly. No one had liked him since the incident where he had tried to gas Gotham City. Come to think of it, very few people had liked him before that.
"Yup!" the redhead said cheerfully, nodding.
"You mean you're not scared of me?"
The girls leaned in and whispered to each other for a moment, clearly discussing their answer. Having reached a consensus, they looked at him again.
"Well, not really," said the tall brunette.
"But we could be if you want us to." said the blonde, doing a rather theatrical impression of being terrified, which made the other girls giggle.
"Yes, if I wanted you to be, you would be beyond terrified of me," he said quietly and very seriously, which he was pleased to notice, made the fangirls look a little bit nervous.
Jonathan Crane wasn't sure what to do. On the one hand, it was nice to have someone actually like him for a change, but on the other hand, he wasn't sure he liked the fact that they weren't scared of him. A pity liking someone and being terrified of them at the same time wasn't very common, and was usually due to a mental disorder of some sort.
He looked at the girls, wondering if they were suffering from a mental disorder or if they had simply taken a temporary leave of their senses. Didn't they realize that by showing up here that they were extremely likely to end up as a test subject for his most recent experiment? After all, test subjects were hard to find, as they usually had to be kidnapped, and here these girls had walked in completely willingly. Of course, considering he was the object of their affections, perhaps they wouldn't mind helping him so much. He gazed at them thoughtfully, pushing his glasses up his nose, wondering if they might even assist him voluntarily.
That idea has promise, he decided. Not only would it help with his experiment, but it would also give him a chance to see if all three girls suffered from some sort of psychosis or mental imbalance that had resulted in not only being obsessed with him, but also, if applicable, their willing cooperation with his experiment. Clearly, someone who volunteered as his test subject while knowing about the nature of his experiments had to be insane or were being paid quite a lot of money.
In fact, he found himself already wondering just what could have induced these three girls—well, six, if you counted the unconscious ones on the floor—to choose him as the center of their obsession. Perhaps, he mused, their attachment to a villain is due to some sort of childhood trauma, like abuse by their peers. It could be that they identified with him, that they felt like outcasts or those dwelling just inside the borders of society like he did. Then again, a voice in his head said, interrupting his thoughts, It could be that they just think you're dead sexy.
At that thought, his thin lips twitched upwards in a smile. Then his smile faded as he looked at the girls, the oldest was probably nineteen, and the youngest fourteen, and fourteen was way to young for him. But then again, since he was a villain, and not exactly bound by society's rules and regulations…his thoughts trailed off as he looked back at the girls who were watching him expectantly.
Then again, he thought, perhaps not. But they would make good test subjects at any rate. This will be fun, he thought.
"Follow me," he said, gesturing to the teenage girls, "There's something I want to show you. And I want you to help me with something."
The three girls carefully stepped over the unconscious girls on the floor and then bounded forward through the doorway after him like happy puppies. He led them into his lab and through a thick metal door that led to a room adjacent to his lab.
"Wow," the blonde remarked as they passed through the doorway, "That's a really thick door."
Ahead of them, Crane smiled. The girls had no idea that the reason the door was so thick was so that any screams coming from the occupants of the room were muffled. Currently the room was empty, except for some cabinets, a few scattered metal tables, a briefcase lying by the door, and a light in the ceiling.
"Here," he said, indicating a table, "Sit."
While the three girls hopped up on the edge of the table, Crane picked up the suitcase lying beside the door. It was the same briefcase that he had used when he had gassed Falcone, and it was now filled with a new hallucinogenic gas that he had invented, one that was much stronger than the one that he had released into Gotham City. All he needed was someone to test it on before he made any plans to use it in Gotham, and here he had three very pretty and totally unsuspecting test subjects!
He set the briefcase down on a table in front of the girls, and laying his hands on the latches, started speaking.
"Of course, the three of you know about my great work, don't you?" he asked, flicking open the latches on the briefcase.
The three girls nodded.
"Well, I'm very interested in studying people's fears. An excellent way to do this is through their nightmares. So I want to study nightmares. Specifically, your nightmares."
He paused for a moment to let his words sink in, and noticed that of the three, the brunette was suddenly looking a little nervous. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, he opened the briefcase and stepped away.
A cloud of gas rose out, which promptly sent the girls into a series of multiple coughing fits so severe it sounded like they were regurgitating their lungs. A few moments afterwards, Crane was pleased to see that the three girls were now sprawled awkwardly across the metal table, their eyes half open and blinking rapidly as they stared at unseen fears. One of the girls twitched and then suddenly cried out in fear. Jonathan laughed softly and walked over to the doorway. He paused for a moment and looked back at the three girls, a smile on his lips.
"Goodnight. Pleasant dreams," he whispered before closing the door behind him and locking it.
Just as the lock clicked into place, the screaming really began in earnest. Fortunately, the thick metal door muffled their terrified screams. Jonathan Crane leaned against the door for a moment, closing his eyes and listening rapturously to the girls' stifled shrieks.
Yes, he decided, his pale blue eyes sparkling behind his glasses, Yes, they do make excellent test subjects.
Author Notes: I hope everybody liked this, I certainly enjoyed writing it. BTW, I'm not bashing fangirls, as I happen to be one! Please let me know you liked this by reviewing!