Arkham's rec rooms were normally the quietest places in the entire asylum. The one on the fourth floor, the one reserved for the rogues, tended to be even quieter, since criminal masterminds do not appreciate annoyances that might distract them from plotting their next big coup.
At the moment, the rogues' rec room was certainly not quiet. Every rogue in the place, from the Joker all the way down to Captain Stingaree, was sprawled limply on whatever furniture they could find. When the furniture ran out, they spread out on the floor, soaking up the chill from the linoleum on their sweaty, battered bodies. Groans and gasps of pained hurt rippled through the room as the inmates did their best to find a position that eased their complaining muscles.
The rogues were not happy about the situation. They were not happy in an arm-dislocating, asylum-torching, world-ending kind of way that would have caused Gotham a lot of trouble if they weren't flat to the ground with exhaustion. They didn't know why they hadn't been allowed back to their cells, and they didn't care. All they cared about was the sweet, sweet absence of people in black shirts shouting at them.
One group of barely-qualified rogues on their first trip to Arkham commiserated with one another in the corner. "Is this what it's like all the time here?" moaned one, propping her throbbing feet up on a nearby table.
"Don't be stupid," muttered her compatriot, wincing as he tried to massage his aching calf muscles. "You think the big guns over there wouldn't'a bought themselves out of it if they knew about it?"
"Yeah? Well, they didn't bring Freeze out," the first muttered rebelliously.
"Freeze'll die if they put him in the sun."
"Lucky bastard."
Things were not much cheerier on the far side of the room, with one notable exception. Harley Quinn, who had endured worse workouts daily as part of her gymnastic career, perched perkily on the arm of a sofa and examined her nails. The Joker, slouched comfortably on the cushions next to her, looked the room over with lazy eyes.
"We gotta stop this," Mr. Scarface announced from his armchair. Arnold Wesker, sitting limply on the floor below him, nodded tired agreement with his wooden boss. He'd had it a bit worse than most, since no one else had to carry ten pounds of splintery tyrant in a Snugli as they ran.
"And how do you suggest we do that?" the Scarecrow asked acidly, rubbing a sore spot on his neck where the bunny-ear elastic had chafed him.
"You're askin' me?" the puppet said bitterly. "You should ask Chuckles over there. 'Yes, sir, no, sir'," he sneered, doing a half-credible imitation of the Joker. "I thought you'd at least have the balls to try an' kick someone's ass out there!"
The room went quiet. Some might say that the room was dead quiet, and they'd be right, because 'dead' was what happened to people who spoke to the Joker like that. As one, the inmates slowly revolved to stare at the jade-haired jester in question.
The Joker regally drew himself upward. Arnold, white-faced with terror, dragged himself behind the armchair and peeked around the back. Slowly, deliberately, the Joker paced across the room, through the aisle of inmates hastily scrambling aside, and came to a halt in front of the tattered old armchair.
"Please, Mr. Joker, sir, Mr. Scarface was just -" Arnold stammered into the silence.
Lightning-fast, the Joker swept the puppet up into his arms. Then, with a careless tweak to its nose, he dropped it headfirst back into the seat. "Shut up," he instructed. The room relaxed slightly. "As it so happens, I did consider introducing a few of our new friends to some of my classic repertoire. But then I thought, Joker old boy, your adoring public deserves a bit more. They need style! Wit! And where's the joke in one or two fists to the face? Where's the panache? Where's the punchline?"
Eyebrows began to raise. His adoring public? He sure as hell better not be referring to his fellow rogues in those terms. A stormy look began to cloud a few faces.
Harley coughed politely. "Um, Puddin'?" she said hesitantly. "Your...public?"
He smiled down at her calmly, like a preacher addressing his flock. "But of course, pumpkin pie," he crooned. "You didn't see them?"
"...No?" she said, gingerly, as if he might backhand her through the wall for the wrong answer.
He clambered up onto a nearby table, theatrically exaggerating his worn and exhausted state with a few well-placed groans, and reached for one of the many art-therapy-produced decorations adorning the wall. This one was a papier-mache mask covered with sequins of all sizes. He popped it off of the wall, peered at the crowd through a hole carved into its middle, and tossed it aside. In the area that had been hidden below the mask, a hole had been hacked into the ancient bricks, just large enough to hold a camera. A wire dangled uselessly from the disconnected device.
"It's just a security camera," Poison Ivy snarled, flopping back into her cushions.
"Au contraire," the Joker smiled. He yanked it out of the wall, taking some of the rotting brickwork with it, and tossed it to her. The Scarecrow intercepted it and brought it close, examining it as he spun it in his long, white fingers. There was a label on its underside.
"Gotham Broadcasting Service," he read aloud in a tight, angry voice.
"WHAT?"
The room exploded. If GBS was here - if GBS had hidden their little cameras in the yard - they'd seen the whole day. They'd seen Ivy, bedraggled and sweating - sweating - lurching around endless laps in a circle around her dead plant. They'd seen the Scarecrow being shoved into a straitjacket and having bunny ears strapped to his head. They'd seen Scarface's Snugli. They'd seen the rogues running and jumping and obeying meekly and being punished in a variety of humiliating ways for not obeying meekly enough. And not only had a television station caught their humiliation on tape, but it had been GBS, the place where everyone did their best to make people look like complete idiots.
The roar of defiance was loud, furious, and not what you'd expect from a crowd of people that were still too tired to do more than shake an angry fist from their seat. "And you just sat there an' let 'em do this to us? To you?" Scarface demanded, still upside-down in the chair.
The Joker hadn't stopped smiling. True, he smiled approximately twenty-four hours out of every day, but now he meant it.
"Children, children," he chided gently. "You seem to have forgotten something."
The rogues quieted. "Huh?"
"Editing." The Joker grinned, arms spread wide. "It takes time to put a spectacle like this together. They have to interview the staff - yes, our beloved Dr. Carlson and his merry pack of medical pranksters - not to mention all the time it takes to snip a frame here and a soundbyte there to appropriately set the scene. We won't be officially on the air for weeks." His grin pulled a bit wider. "Time enough, I think, to have a bit of fun."
The next day dawned bright and clear. The sun rose, warming the concrete just in time for the double line of rogues to take their places. The pairs of handlers attached to each rogue stood at rigid attention as they waited for the main door to open.
In just twenty-four hours, the lineup had changed substantially. Poison Ivy, instead of rolling her sleeves and pant legs up and undoing her top to expose as much skin to the sun as possible, had instead buttoned her jumpsuit up to her chin and unrolled everything until she was covered with grey from neck to toes. The other women had done the same, covering every glimpse of femme fatale flesh and tying their hair back in plain, unappealing ponytails. The men, who didn't generally have to work at being unattractive, concentrated on looking as unemotional as possible.
The main doors slammed open and the man in black stalked out. "All right, people! Let's start the day off right. Drop and give me twenty!"
The rogues sank obediently to the ground, where they laid down on their stomachs, getting comfortable with seemingly every intention of staying there and possibly taking a morning nap. The handlers assigned to each rogue reached down and hauled them back to their feet, twisting their arms slightly up behind their backs to encourage them to move a little faster. The rogues stood again in their lines, a slight smug smile on each face.
The man in black narrowed his eyes and glared at the group. "Apparently there's been a little miscommunication!" he bellowed. "When I say to do something by god you're gonna do it!"
He glared at them again. They had been instructed - repeatedly, at length, in volumes suitable for communicating across a football field - that when he spoke, they were to answer with a brisk and hearty "Yes sir!"
Instead, they answered him with nothing more than that smirky little grin. "Let's try this again! Down and give me twenty!"
Again, the rogues folded to the ground, stretching comfortably out on the concrete as if it was the softest of down-filled mattresses. And again, the handlers dragged them up with twisted arms and perhaps a little more force than necessary.
"I guess we've got some folks who think they're smart today!" The Riddler, face carefully set in a friendly smile, allowed a tiny touch of smugness to settle on his features. "Maybe a nice five-mile run will wipe the smiles off those faces!" The handlers immediately tugged everyone into a circle and set off for a run.
That is, they tried to. The handlers ran, shouting threats and curses at their charges as they pulled them forward. The rogues, every one, stayed limp, letting their feet trail on the concrete as their handlers dragged them along.
Somewhere beyond days and weeks of mind-knotting stress is a tiny, peaceful valley where nothing matters anymore. Dr. Carlson, hands wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee, had been floating there for hours.
Peacefully sipping his coffee, he watched the security feed from the yard from the little monitor perched front and center on his desk. Bills, letters, memos and reminders cluttered his desk. He ignored them in favor of watching the rogues taking their first baby steps into the world of nonviolent protest.
His door slammed open. The director of the TV show - which was going to be called either The Gallery or Payback, depending on the results from the focus groups - stomped into the office, followed by an almost supernaturally calm production assistant. "You've got to do something!" the director snapped.
"Would a hello be too much to ask for, Mr. Trent?" Dr. Carlson inquired, taking a sip of his coffee.
Mr. Trent's face turned the mottled red of someone that had mixed too much caffeine with not enough anger management. "Hello," he snarled. "Now what are you going to do about them?"
"Hmm?" Carlson asked.
"They're not doing what they're supposed to!" the man screeched.
This was hardly a new trend among the members of the rogues' gallery. Nevertheless, Carlson attempted to look as if he found it just as troubling as the director did. "I see," he said solemnly.
"Well, what are you going to do about it?" Trent demanded. "Can't you put 'em all in straitjackets or throw them in the hole or something until they shape up?"
Carlson set his coffee cup very carefully in the center of his desktop and gazed levelly at the director, hands folded. "I'm sure that I don't have to remind you that this is an asylum. We are supposed to be providing a safe place for our patients to heal themselves." He held up a hand, cutting off the director's indignant snort. "Admittedly, you and your crew are not exactly standard in an asylum - but then, this group of patients is not exactly standard either. In answer to your question - no. I will not authorize the use of restraints in this situation."
"But you used them yesterday!"
"Jonathan Crane ended up in a straitjacket yesterday because he thought he could get away with punching one of his handlers in the face," Carlson explained patiently. "And I'm sure you have ample footage of Ms. Quinzelle's martial arts bout with her two guards. Straitjackets, in short, are only used when a patient is a danger to himself or others." He glanced at the monitor, noting the Riddler sitting cross-legged and smiling into the distance as a pair of handlers harangued him. "Standing still and refusing to cooperate does not appear to fit those criteria."
"Listen, doc," Trent snarled, slamming his fists down onto the desk. His red face shoved itself up to Carlson's, filling his vision. "You make them behave right now or we're pulling the show."
Carlson eyed the man quizzically. "If I could make them behave, do you believe that they'd still be incarcerated here?" The director scowled at him and hauled himself off of the desk. "My advice is not to worry about it."
"Don't worry about it?" Human faces should not be purple, and yet the director's was clearly heading in that direction. "We've dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars on cameras and crew and handlers and you're telling me not to worry about it?"
"Yes." Carlson smiled gently at the director. "None of our charges take well to being passive. The Joker's been known to shoot his henchmen over bringing him the wrong kind of sandwich. How long do you think he'll put up with this kind of treatment?" He gestured to the monitor, where the Joker was barely visible behind a cluster of black-hatted handlers shouting directly into his face. "They won't stay calm for long. Enjoy it while it lasts."
The silence lasted for a full week. For seven days, the rogues remained limp and uncooperative. For seven days, the men and women in black shouted themselves hoarse at their unmoving charges. For seven long, hot, sunny days the yard echoed with useless threats and unheeded orders.
Of course, that wasn't the only problem with the shoot. There were always problems with any taping, whether it was dead microphone batteries or blown out lightbulbs, and the filming inside Arkham Asylum was no different. Cameras bolted to the walls behind disguising artwork went missing and weren't noticed until someone attempted to use them. Tapes left in the monitor room overnight vanished without a trace.
On the eighth morning, the rogues were herded into the yard as usual. But, unusually, their handlers were nowhere in sight. On the walls, no snipers peered down at them. The rogues gathered in a loose group and waited, silently watching the door.
The door slammed open, and a man in black stormed in. Not the man in black - no, this pudgy specimen of t-shirted manhood didn't have a wide-brimmed hat or shiny shoes. Instead, it was the director - the director who had carefully removed every hint of his directorial day job from his wardrobe before walking into the yard. His incandescently red face glowed furiously at the rogues as he glared at them.
"What did you do?" he snarled, slamming the door behind him with a kick of one sneaker-clad foot. "They're all missing. What did you do?"
"Us?" the Joker twinkled, putting an innocent hand over his heart. "Why, what could we possibly do to our loving helpers while we're locked up in this highly secure asylum?" Stifled chuckles rose from the carefully nonchalant group.
"Don't you play stupid with me!" The man stalked across the concrete and grabbed the Joker, shaking him by the shoulders before slamming him to the ground. "You did something! Bring them back! You're ruining everything!"
The Joker rose to his feet, gently brushing dust from the sleeves of his grey jumpsuit. "Did we spoil your little television show?" the Joker said softly.
The director's white-hot rage abruptly cooled. "You...knew about that?" he stammered.
"Indeed, Herr Director," the Joker said, a slow grin stretching his mouth. "But I think we can give the folks at home something to be entertained by. What's that saying?" He tapped a finger thoughtfully on his lips as the rogues began to close in around them. "Ah yes. If it bleeds...it leads."
"No. No, wait, I can - don't!"
The director disappeared in the sudden swarm of grey-suited rogues.
(to be continued)
