The gun was cold. Guns are always cold. Not like knives, no - knives had fire, they lived with you, enjoyed the moment as much as you did. Sadly, he was out of his beloved knives, through circumstances nearly too strange to recount.
Cold gun in a cold hand.
Down on the dark streets of Gotham, a man stood in an alley, framed every one and a while by the scarce headlights of pathetic machines calling themselves cars - no one important at at the wheel of any of them. Drug dealers, pimps, men with firearms too big for their tiny brains.
"What a waste."
The man tossed the gun aside, a clattering in the darkness the only sign it still existed as far as he was concerned - it had served it's purpose, no longer useful. A useless as this garbage dump of a city he had landed in, a sickening mass of people too fat and lazy to do anything for themselves.
So why had he come here? 'Cause he caught wind of, perhaps, here there was someone who got it, like him. A sane lunatic in a sea of the crazy - you had to be pretty nuts to dress up like a bat, right? I mean, what the hell is up with that, anyway?
The man laughed at his own, private joke, shoving his hands into his pockets as he exited the alley, taking long strides down the dirty, disgusting street. Nothing but whores and crack dealers on every corner, all too close and too loud for his liking - they're all lucky he had done his killing for the day, albeit with a tasteless, boring gun.
"Hey, man, you sellin'?" a scrawny, grungey kid squeaked when the man passed, scrambling up from his perch on a box, his eyes hungry for whatever his fix was. The man turned, smiled, watched the boy's face pale but he didn't run - druggies see weird stuff in their time, real or not, and cheap fixes had given him worse hallucinations before, he was sure.
Still smiling, the man shook his head, wishing he could show this waste of air what real danger and fear was, not this tough guy shit he thought he was because he shot God knows what in his arm, sniffed powders he couldn't even pronounce. But - not tonight. It wasn't time yet - soon, though.
"Look, man, I'm in a bad spot- Hey, don't walk away!" the junkie muttered a few words under his breath as the man walked off, slumping back on his box in a fit of tremors and jerks. What a freak, the boy thought angrily, attemping to pick up a rock, but his shaking hands couldn't grasp it, what kind of weirdo wears make-up like that? Some sort of clown fetish, sa'freak.
The boy was lucky the man didn't hear him - he didn't like being called a freak.
Though, he did stick out a little, not so much in the poor district - a purple suit might catch an eye at the fancy restaurants. Along with the paint on his face.
The man crossed the road and the buildings gradually started to look a little more put-together, granted not by much. The general mess of the place almost made the man trip over a discarded box in the middle of the sidewalk, resulting in quite a few snarled curses as the man regained his footing, stomping over to the box to give it it's required punishment.
Masks - the box was full of masks. Those old-fashioned clown masks, with sad eyes and exaggerated mouths - perfect.
He couldn't help it, he doubled over in a fit of violent laugher, thoroughly amused as his own blind luck - God must be in a good mood today. Or, maybe not God. God certainly wouldn't wish that man on any city. He was like a cancer, the kind your can't cure.
The man found a better box and dropped all of the masks into it, taking it with him - he could use these. This dreary hellhole could use a few laughs - and that's what he was here for, now. To wake Gotham up from it's coma - by means of the violent persuasion.
Soon enough, he came across of a group of ragged looking people - morally weak, emotionally drained, phsyically strong. The man giggled as he dropped the box at his feet - those were his favorite types of people. He could work with this.
One of the men, the tallest one, stepped forward with a dying ciggarette on his lips nestled in a scowl, "What do you want, Clown Face? Get out of here. We don't want whatever you're sellin'."
The man frowned, licking his lips out of habit, the taste of the paint something that quit bothering him a long time ago, "I want to make this city something worthy of existing. I want to draw out the loonies and see what kind of soul this smattering of buildings really has." The group of men stared blankly, the man smirked - he guessed he should of used smaller words. The tall one, though, at least understood that he didn't understand.
"Translate for us simple folk."
"Guns, a place to sleep, money, and whatever else we come across." the man muttered as he shuffled through his box, coming up with one of the clown masks - he offered it to the man, all his buddies watching apprehensively. A pivatol moment for all of Gotham. They could of saw this man for what he really was, what he was going to be - they could of killed him on that backstreet and ended everything, stopped death and tragedy on down the line.
The tall man took the mask, his buddies soon crowding around and peering in the box, relaxing into friendly arguing over who got what and what looked best on who - the two leading men watched, our man straightening his purple jacket as looked at the squabbling and squawcking if the generic thugs.
"So, what do we call you?" the tall man asked, studying his mask - it had sad eyes with a tear drawn on, and a mouth twisted in a forlorn way. He thought about his wife, found dead in their apartment two years ago, heroin needle still clenched in her limp hand - this mask was perfect.
"Boss is fine." the man, our man, replied, resting his hands in his pockets, missing the familiar weight of knives - he'd have to get more soon.
"And what is Gotham going to call you?"
"Joker."