A/N-It's time for the World's Worst Sing-a-Long!

And the winner of the 'suggest the song for the sing-a-long' contest is...Protagonist of Life from .

Everybody, follow the bouncing ball...

"Thank you," the Joker drawled out, as he slid his newest acquisition up his sleeve. It disappeared from site, held in place by the carefully folded material.

To anyone else, the Joker's shirt sleeves appeared to have been folded haphazardly to keep them out of the way. Only Joker knew how to arrange them so that some of his favorite toys could be kept on himself—in plain sight of the guards, if only they knew where to look—tucked away so that they could slip into his waiting hands at the right moment; remaining unseen and secure until then. A private little joke that never failed to put a smile on someone's face.

This latest item was the last one he required before making his—officially—unexpected departure from Arkham Asylum. He could leave whenever he wanted, now. There was nothing to hold him back...except possibly curiosity and boredom.

Arkham was boring—there was no denying that—and waiting around was pointless. He should make his way off to more interesting, more fun places and people to visit. The news was filled with people he wanted to meet...

The Joker stopped, reflecting that there was one person in Arkham he still wanted to meet. The songbird had promised him a sing-a-long, after all. It would be rude to leave just before the festivities began. Joker had asked her almost a week ago if she still planned on having the sing-a-long. He had told her that he would find something to take the place of the bouncing ball if she did; he didn't like breaking promises of that sort. Man of his word, and all that...

Besides, it sounded like it would be fun.

Timing, the Joker thought to himself, was the key to a good joke.

In the end, he wasn't that surprised by the date and time of the performance; the songbird, like any true performer interested in perfecting their art, had chosen the venue and surprise guests carefully. Well, the guests were certainly surprised.

Showing real talent for timing during improv theatre, the songbird had picked the one night that the worst, most corrupt of the asylum's officials and personnel (a pack of killjoys, if you didn't cast them properly; the Joker thought) would all be able to join them. The first to be cast for parts in the sing-a-long had been the guards that had beaten the songbird four nights ago when one of the guards took offense at a song lyric.

The guard hadn't cared much for the first song of the sing-a-long, either.

In fact, the asylum's chaplain—a notorious lecher that welcomed all, no matter who or what gender, to 'partake of the church's boundless love'—did not seem to be enjoying it as it was repeated, either.

Personally, the Joker didn't think that the boys were doing that bad with the song. They were managing to stay on key, after all.

That was harder to do than it sounded, considering that at the moment they were dragging the chaplain down the hall that ran down the center of the cell block to the open cell door waiting at the end.

Killer Croc's cell.

Dear ol' Crocky could be heard all the way down the hall; throwing things that both clattered and thudded wetly when they hit the floor or walls while complaining that he was still hungry...

"I said, I wanted something filling...give me something fresh, with a bit of fat on it to chew..."

Dear Crocky, such a hungry boy! Well, Joker's boys seemed to have dinner plans well in hand. He could hear them coming closer, raising their voices so the song could be heard better.

The chaplain, an overweight, florid-faced man, was struggling to get free—or stop moving down the hall, at least. The smooth leather soles of his shoes were scuffling madly on the worn brown linoleum flooring of the hall as he attempted to backpedal with every step forward. Large drops of sweat formed on his bald pate, occasionally running down into the thin, close-cut fringe of hair surrounding the dome of his skull, shining under the florescent lights as though he had been coated in a thin sheen of oil.

"You will pay for this, you blasphemers!" the chaplain was screaming, "God will punish you for this heresy!"

Or something along those lines.

It was hard to hear exactly what he was yelling with the boys singing at the top of their lungs. You really had to hand it to them, they were very good for untrained singers. Every word that they sang could be heard clearly.

"It's priest. Have a little priest." the first one was singing.

"Is it really good?" came the next verse, sung by the inmate with a grip on the chaplain's other arm.

"Sir, it's too good, at least!" the first inmate was singing again. "Then again, they don't commit sins of the flesh..."

"That's a crock even Killer Croc can't swallow!" came a jeer from one of the cells they were passing in response to the latest verse.

"So it's pretty fresh..."

Natural talent for singing, if you asked the Joker. Where had he recruited that particular member of his gang?

"Try the priest!"

The chaplain and dinner party seemed to have reached their table; from the sounds of it, Killer Croc was happy with the meal recommendations. Hopefully, he would remember to tip his waiters.

There were so many different songs going on a once, it was hard to pick just one to listen to. The songbird had kept her word and managed to get the sing-a-long started; she didn't limit herself to just one song, though. She had picked several songs and taught them all to small groups scattered all around the asylum—not just on their cell block. It meant that when the sing-a-long began, control of the asylum had slowly shifted to the inmates instead of the officials. As the Joker walked past a gate closing off one of the hallways connecting the different cell blocks, he could see two inmates that he did not recognize. They were using a guard's head as a battering ram to try to open the lock on the gate separating two of the cell blocks. The inmates were singing 'London Bridge is falling down', keeping time to the music with every swinging blow.

"London Bridge is..."

Slam!

"...falling down..."

Slam!

"...falling down..."

Splat!

"...my fair lady..."

They might never manage to open that gate, but they had definitely opened the guard's brain up to new musical experiences.

Working away with a spoon at the chest of a clerk that would list restricted privileges on your file unless you told him where you might have stashed one of your stockpiles of 'pocket money', an inmate was bellowing off-key and tunelessly, "C'mon, take a piece of my heart, now...sing louder, man! This is supposed to be your line in the song...C'mon, you know you want to, if it makes you feel..."

Now, that guy needed more singing lessons before the next sing-a-long was scheduled.

Only a few more cells until the Joker reached the one he wanted. He needed to meet and greet the composer and conductor of tonight's musical performance.

"Boss!" The voice came from the cell to his left. "Hey, boss! We got an issue...need ya' help with it; you always know how to deal with problems like this..."

Oh, his boys. Loyal like dogs, they were. Dumb as the flea-ridden mutts, too.

A quick step under the dulled lights of the cell and he was facing the problem. Two of his gang had managed to catch the shift leader for the guards; a big, muscular fellow that was close enough to Joker's height to look him in the eye.

Now, that eye was just too serious for words. This definitely was a problem. The boys had made a good start of things; they had dislocated his left right shoulder—probably while subduing him—and instead of staring into a face that held an angry, red flush from the roots of his close-cropped red-gold hair, the skin of the guard's face was pasty-pale from pain.

Those faded blue eyes, while still too serious for Joker's taste, rolled wide and panicked as the guard made a sound. It might have been a curse, might have been a plea for mercy; it was impossible to tell while he was gagged with his own tie.

"...we've been trying, boss, but we can't get our song right. We can't follow the bouncing ball when it just won't bounce..."

The Joker flashed a hyena's smile, all teeth and silent snarl, giving his forearm the little twist needed for one of his tools to slide out of his shirt sleeve and into his waiting hand. The switchblade flashed in the light as he reached for the head guard's belt buckle.

"Of course the ball will bounce, boys," he told them, watching the guard's eyes as the man gave a drawn-out, muffled scream of pain, "...you just have to take them out of the sack first..." The guard was still making noises, tears and snot running down his face as the Joker held up his hand.

"See?" Joker said, tossing the small, bloody piece of flesh out into the hall. "Bounces just fine, doesn't it?"

His boys beamed up at him.

"Thanks, boss," the shortest of the two was speaking, "You always know how to handle these things."

"That's what I'm here for, boys," the Joker replied, "To do all that deep thinking for you. Now, carry on. I have someone special to meet."

"Hello, beautiful," the Joker said, appreciatively. He stopped in the open door to the cell and leaned against the doorway's steel framework, brushing his green-dyed hair back into order as he did. Thankfully, one of his boys had brought him some make-up they found in a cafeteria worker's purse; he would have hated to meet the songbird face-to-face without looking his best.

It wasn't that she was conventionally beautiful. Oh, she was pretty enough, in a bland, forgettable girl-next-door kind of way. Dull blue eyes and dirty blonde hair. Body wasn't too bad, though. You might smile as you passed her on the street and yet forget all about her before you reached the end of the block.

The girl might not be beautiful, but the songbird was stunning. You just needed to look at her from the right angles.

Not her face, but her work...she was truly an artist at her chosen field; turning songs into the glorious music of chaos. Look what she had accomplished tonight with one musical, some children's rhymes and a country-western tune or two!

Why, when Scarecrow had been spending time in Arkham they had a few discussions about whether or not it was possible to achieve chaos like this. Joker and that lanky nerd Crane had both agreed that it was; however, neither one of them had imagined that this wide-spread of an effect could have been caused by so little. It was like she had spooned out some fast-growing thing onto its favorite food...and then spiked its food with Miracle Gro.

What was it Crane had said...'a robust, fast-reproducing bacterium on an enriched growth medium...'? Yeah, that was it. Exactly what Joker had said.

Crane could go on with his technical terms and his 'observed effects of a tested hypothesis' all he wanted; Joker knew that if the two of them had ever run into each other as schoolkids...it would have been while sneaking into the science lab to shake the ant farms and see the insects scurry in panic. Crane, even as Scarecrow, was so predictable that it was almost tedious.

The songbird was a joy to behold in action. Watching and listening to her work, the Joker had seen a food-fight, learned of staff psychologists that had demanded to be transferred to avoid dealing with her, observed gleefully as guards lost control of inmates, inmates lost control of guards, and both parties lost control of themselves, only to have all of those incidents eclipsed by the on-going riot.

Even the Joker had gotten into the spirit of things, right from the beginning of tonight's riot!
It had been a lot of fun checking to see what would bounce. He had been right; heads and hearts bounced just fine, livers...not so much.

It was impossible to get a really good look at the songbird as she sat on the bunk in her cell. Shadows cast by the bars and the frame of the cell's sink shrouded her. In the dim light, the Joker could just make out the songbird looking up at the sound of his voice.

"Hello," she replied, leaning forward and out of the shadows. She was smiling as she did so.

And what a smile!

Not as wide as his, unfortunately—although that could be easily remedied, whispered a little voice in the back of his mind—but with that same delightful shade of madness to its curves.

"Love your work," he told her.

The songbird gave a small 'hmm' sound of acknowledgement and then seemed to ignore him, looking as though she was listening to something, some song or music that only she could hear.

The Joker felt his face wanting to twist into a frown. Of all the reactions he had anticipated, being ignored, even a little, was not one of them. There was something a bit off about this meeting, something that niggled at his thoughts that he couldn't quite put his finger on. He had thought about how to handle this meeting if she screamed, or yelled, or wouldn't stop her usual constant singing—

That was it.

The songbird was silent. The only thing she had said was a reply to his greeting. She always sang; non-stop, continuously, at times annoyingly...so why was she not singing now? The Joker would have thought this would be her big moment; that maybe she had planned a solo as a highlight to the evening's music. The woman sitting on the cell's bunk, however, seemed to have no interest in singing at all.

"Why aren't you singing?" he asked her, curious. Joker wanted to know the answer; he had to know what was more interesting to the songbird than singing.

She raised a finger as if trying to 'shush' him.
"I'm listening," she told him. "Can you hear it?"

He cocked his head.

"The sing-a-long?" he questioned.

The songbird shook her head. "My boys," she said, happily. "They're singing to me again..."

Huh. Maybe the songbird had her own gang in here with her. He never would have expected it.

"Yeah, there's a lot of singing going on out there right now. What song are your's singing?"

She giggled at that. Giggled! Oh, Joker liked her even more for that giggle.

"No, silly, " she said. "They don't sing like the inmates do...they sing like the asylum workers." She turned away again, listening raptly to the 'songs' she was hearing.

He considered what she said for a few moments before realizing that she had never really answered his question. Why wasn't she singing?

"So, you're not singing because...?"

"Because I don't need to right now. I taught my boys how to sing, and now they are singing again...so I don't need to. I have to sing if they don't. I tried to tell the man with the bat on his chest this, but he didn't listen." Her face was thoughtful as she added, "I should have taught him how to sing, too. That would have sounded nice."

Joker's grin grew a bit more when he heard that.

She wanted to teach Batman how to sing? Batsy? That was something he would pay money to see...pay almost anything, actually.

Wait...the songbird had said that her boys sang like the asylum workers. The asylum workers and officials weren't singing—they were screaming.

She was saying she didn't need to sing as long as she could hear their screams.

Not that he didn't approve; however, the Joker had not realized that she was singing because she HAD to sing. He had thought that she was singing because it was fun.

No, this 'I have to sing' business sounded serious. Someone as talented as the songbird should only be singing for the fun of it.

"You make it sound as though you needing to sing is rather serious," he remarked casually.

"It is," she told him, not bothering to look in his direction as she spoke.

"Maybe what you need," the Joker suggested, "is someone to help put a big smile on your face—like mine, for example."

Now the songbird was looking at him, the tiniest beginnings of a smile on her face.

"Perhaps we can arrange a trade," she said. "I'll teach you to sing...that always makes me smile."

The Joker let out a soft chuckle. She was more fun than he had earlier realized!

"I'm not much of a singer. You might not be able to teach me."

"I'm not much of a smiler...but you can do your best to change that." The songbird was slipping further into the shadows as she spoke.

"Well then," the Joker said, straightening up from where he had been leaning against the doorframe. "Let's get started, shall we?" He took the first step into the songbird's open cage.

It took almost three days—with Batman's help—to put an end to the rioting and chaos in Arkham Asylum and bring it back under the control of the authorities.

They had undertaken the assault in stages; bringing one wing at a time under control until they had all of the inmates in a cell. Perhaps not the correct cells; the 'clean-up' squads were separating inmates and moving them to the proper wings and cells in the asylum now. No one was looking forward to the final wing...that was where the worst offenders and the most insane patients—the ones that were just as dangerous—had been housed. Since the clean-up squads had not found them in the less secure wings it was safe to expect them to either be in this wing unless they had escaped. If they had escaped, well, that would be the Batman's problem...not theirs.

The 'clean-up' squad members all returned; faces pale and shaken. A few of them had stopped mid-way through their reports to vomit; undeniably upset by what they had witnessed. The rumor was that those squadmembers had been in charge of dealing with Killer Croc and his cell.

On one side of the room, a squadmember had begun sobbing as he related what he had seen.

And then there was the last cell that they had checked...

It should have been the easiest of the cells; the one belonging to the patient/inmate that had been nicknamed the cell block's 'songbird'. She had never been violent in the entire time Arkham had been housing her. The worst things that the guards and officials had ever dealt with from her had been the songs; some of those songs were incredibly annoying.

But what they had found when they opened her cell...

None of the squadmembers would talk about it. They went white when asked and simply said that the helmet and body cameras would show everything. The sobbing squadmember on the other side of the room was the one they had pushed for more answers. He had described going through the wing, only to break down when he said he had been one of the first to enter the songbird's cell.

The asylum officials were frustrated. The body and helmet camera footage would take several more hours to be available. At the moment, the only information that they had regarding that cell came from a damaged CCTV camera in the hallway.

It showed the songbird still in her cell during the riot.

It showed the Joker entering the cell.

It didn't show who left...

A/N-I hope you all enjoyed this as much as I did!

The songs used in this chapter were: A Little Priest from 'Sweeny Todd' the musical

London Bridge Is Falling Down

Take Another Piece of My Heart by Faith Hill