THE DARKEST KNIGHT
Chapter 1
Batman had never felt so much fatigue and pain before, as he weakly pulled himself from beneath the metal and brick debris that, moments before, had been a bank building in downtown Gotham City.
Though nothing was broken, thanks in large part to the latest layers of protective padding he'd recently added to his familiar blue-gray outfit, who's dark indigo cowl, covering half his face and skull wherein lay that brilliant brain. Batman nonetheless felt as if he'd gone at least 15 rounds with Mike Tyson and Mohammed Ali combined. Gone 15 rounds with his own hands probably tied tightly behind his caped back.
Wiping away a trickle of clotted blood from his broken and bruised face, Batman immediately looked up into the night sky to make certain his unanticipated adversary was nowhere in site.
At least, long enough to let him both catch his breath, work out the kinked muscles in his arms, legs, and the broad of his back, before having to once again defend himself against a friend. Or, at least, someone who used to be a friend...before this insanity.
Batman thought, How could this have happened? What could be responsible for such a twisted perversion of truth? Of justice?
Batman began to limp away, at least until he had fully recovered, from the site of devastation while simultaneously recalling how this horrible night began...
It had began innocent enough: Batman had been patrolling the seedier sides of Gotham City in his Batmobile, listening to the onboard computer system which, at the moment, had been keyed to pick up, correlate, and relay only the most unusual instances of criminal activity. After all, the Joker was still on the loose, having escaped Arkham Asylum less than six hours earlier, so tonight would be a night of ignoring lesser crimes and perps to concentrate, instead, on the archenemy, the number one nemesis, from Batman's tormented past.
"...bank being broken into by what witnesses called 'colorful characters' but could not elaborate because..."
"This is it", Batman had said under his breath with more than a little anger. "You're mine, Joker."
As a slightly sadistic smile formed on the exposed face of the Dark Knight, he promptly pushed the turbo-engine of the Batmobile, its bat-like appearance creating the proper image for the nighttime cowl-and-cape crimefighter, in order to get him to the GPS located bank being violated by the Clown Prince of Crime.
"Heheheheheheheheheh!" Joker, once again wearing his purple-and-green outfit, maniacally laughed, while rubbing purple gloved hands together as his sickeningly white face was dominated by the impossibly wide grin and framed by the green of his curiously coifed hair. "With you at my side, no bank vault can keep me from getting to all that lovely money. Not to mention how no one person...or group of persons...can touch me. Hahahahahahaha!"
"I'm not just a person, Joker!"
Joker knew, before spinning in the direction of that husky voice, who had just happened upon his not-so-quiet scene of nighttime bank robbery.
"Well, well, well...if it isn't my old friend...Batman. Did you miss me, Caped Crusader? Hahahahaha!"
"The only thing I missed, Joker, was feeling your face beneath the blows of my fists. By the time I'm through with you, you'll wish you'd stayed where I helped to put you...Arkham Asylum!" said Batman as he crouched just inside the unlocked by Bat-picks second floor window of the major bank branch in downtown Gotham.
"Ooooo", the relentlessly grinning Joker said, "I don't think so, Batman. Not this time. You see...I've finally found someone to help me do anything and everything I want. Including...destroying you."
Batman hurled a Batarang and, once it had secured itself about a chandelier's slender support, promptly used the grapple-line to swing down to the ground floor of the closed-for-hours bank, even as the Joker clapped gloved hands together in a signal for his as-yet-unseen costumed partner.
Out of the bank vault, whose door, Batman now noticed, had been literally ripped off its thick frame, came someone that Batman would've never believed to be assisting the likes of the Joker.
"Superman", breathed Batman with genuine astonishment, as he temporarily froze to one spot longer than the Dark Knight would normally have done.
Superman, his familiar red, blue, and yellow immediately capturing Batman's hesitant attention, had two ponderously stuffed-with-cash canvas bags, which he slowly sat on the bank's polished floor. Most striking, to Batman's mind, was the expression on this Metropolis-based superhero's handsome face.
It was a vicious scowl aimed right at the Caped Crusader and told him that he would now have a helluva fight on his Bat-gloved hands. Batman tried, nonetheless, to reason with his old friend and crimefighting colleague.
"Superman...don't you remember me? Don't you remember the years we've been teammates? Of fighting the likes of Lex Luthor or Intergang or...?"
"Enough talk!" the Joker said harshly as he stepped from behind the taller and much more muscular man in blue, red, and, yellow, instantly recognizable red "S" shield on his broad chest, while producing from his purple coat's pocket, clutched in one purple-gloved hand, the reason for Superman's bank-robbing action.
"Red Kryptonite!" exclaimed Batman in instant recognition of the reddish-glowing meteorite and what it meant in regards to what might happen to him and, if the Joker so inclined, all of Gotham City.
"Time to die, Batman! Heheheheheheheheh!"
END OF CHAPTER 1