A.N.

We're getting close to the end here, thanks so much everybody for the reviews and continued support!

CHAPTER NINE – IT BEGINS

ACE CHEMICAL PROCESSING

Jack gazes down into the murky drainage reservoir, a freezing shower of winter rain dampening his suit and obscuring the chemical plant's name.

This is where those bug-eyed shrimp came from. Jack thinks, noting the multicolored sludge dumping from a wide drainage pipe in to the river, there was probably a menagerie of other mutated creatures lurking in the toxic waters.

Those bug-eyed shrimp.

He shudders, watching as his rippling reflection follows suit.

"Hey c'mon!" Frank calls impatiently, fumbling with the worn carpetbag.

Jack doesn't move, letting the rain wash down his face in place of the tears he had no more strength to weep. His eyes are gritty and dry, and there's a dull throbbing in the back of his skull.

No, he had shed all the tears he was able to in the hospital morgue; the fat droplets had soaked everything, his shirt front and Jeannie's hair which had appeared silver in the lab's harsh fluorescent lights.

She didn't look real, not like vibrant smiling Jeannie; she was grey and cold.

Cold. Jack couldn't erase the memory of her freezing skin from his mind, from where it had touched his palms as he cradled her face.

It was quick. The mortician had informed Jack as he stood hunched over his wife's body, weeping softly into her neck.

Jack had wanted to scream at the man, 'Quick? Quick! She's dead! She shouldn't have died, she should have left that damned bottle heater in the thrift store where it belonged!"

Instead he presses his face harder against her cold flesh, trying to bring back the warmth somehow into her, the life.

There had been forms to fill out, papers shoved beneath his hand as he limply held a pen whose ink was starting to run out.

Sign here and here. A nurse in a crisp white uniform instructs, tapping a red taloned finger against the line where Jack was to scrawl his name unseeingly.

He didn't see much of anything. What was there to see? He would never see his baby. The tiny life snuffed out with Jeannie's when the electrical current had passed through her body.

It had been quick.

"Quit daydreamin'. Are we doing this or aint we?" Frank snaps angrily, glaring impatiently at the comedian's bowed silhouette.

"Uh, Yes. Yes, of course." Jack answers mechanically, shuffling over to Frank and watching as his reflection glides along beside him in the black water, "I was, I was just remembering…I used to walk along here on the way to work each morning…"

Why'd I quit that job? Would things have been different if I had stuck with it? If I passed along here Monday through Friday and sometimes Saturday?

"Yeah, yeah, now put this sucker on, man, an' shut up." Frank orders in exasperation, finally tugging the long metal helmet from the bag and lifting it up.

It's garish. Jack thinks, embarrassed suddenly by the odd costume with its long scarlet cape. The ensemble is brighter than Jack remembers, a vibrant red like a fire engine.

"What, right now? I mean…I mean, are you sure it's okay?" He asks as Frank begins sliding it down over Jack's head, "Will I be able to breathe?"

"Hey, mam, everything's cool. Jeez…" Frank answers pulling and pushing on the rain slick metal, adding with a chuckle, "Y'know, you got a funny shaped head…"

The hood slips into place and Jack blinks in the cramped space, teetering backwards a step as Frank grins, "There. You still see okay man?"

"Wuh, well, yeah. I guess, except everything's red…"

Like hell. He thinks dismally sucking in a breath and wrinkling his nose at the queer smell that lingers in the helmet, faintly reminiscent of blood or vomit or both.

"I-It's kinda stuffy too, and it smells funny. Does my voice sound echoey to you?"

Frank laughs and Smiles grins, "You sound great. Now…how about guidin' us through this stinkin' factory to the joint next door?"

"Sure. Sure thing." Jack mumbles lurching toward the access steps, "Y'know this feels kinda weird. Like a dream. I keep remembering Jeannie…"

What is she thinking of him right now? He's sure she's watching from above and he cringes at the thought.

I'm sorry baby.

"Watch out, man, steps." Frank exclaims as Jack trips over the cement blocks, catching himself with a low sigh.

Once inside he instinctively turns left in the direction of the wall separating the chemical plant from the card factory,

"Okay…we go through here, past the filter tanks and then Monarch Playing Cards is just beyond a partition."

He glances nervously around at the tall vats of bubbling toxins, "Y'know, this place…it looks even worse in red. It looks like…"

"HEY YOU! FREEEZE!"

"Oh shit." Smiles growls as the security guard trains his revolver on the startled trio, "C'mon, c'mon, get 'em up!"

"You asshole! You said there was no security!"

Frank screams in Jack's ear as the former lab assistant stands petrified in terror, "They..they must have altered things since I left…"

"Altered things?" Frank bellows yanking a pistol from his coat and taking a shot at the security guard, "I'm gonna alter your stupid horse face, man!"

The gunshot echoes off the steel vats and reverberates inside the helmet as Jack grabs in vain at his ears, "AAAA! That noise! It's so loud in here!"

He wants to sink to his knees and cradle his throbbing head but Smiles gives him a rough shove in the back crying, "For God's sake, RUN! This is all screwed up!"

The security guard has ducked out of sight but the men can hear him readying his pistol as he yammers into his radio, "Murph, get some men over to the rear bays. We got the Red Hood Mob in here."

Jack follows blindly after his fleeing companions, sliding on the wet cement floor as they pound franticly through a maze of hissing pipes and vats leeching fumes.

"Oh Jeez! Which way is it? How do we get out?" Smiles asks in a panic as Jack tugs helplessly at the slippery hood, "I…I don't know! This mask…Can't see where I'm going…"

"I'm gonna kill you, you useless son of a bitch! When we get out of here, I swear I'm gonna-" Frank's wrathful shout is abruptly cut short when a bullet tears through his skull, spattering bits of brain and a spray of blood over Jack.

Frank squeezes the trigger of his pistol as he falls sideways over onto Smiles, the bullet ricocheting off a nearby steel plating as the two men fall hard to the floor.

"Aw hell. Aw hell…" Smiles groans, his own and Frank's dark blood mixing together and soaking the front of his trench coat.

"What? What is it?" What is it, it's all over me…" Jack gasps, feeling the warmth of the blood soaking though his suit as he stands over the fallen mobsters, trying to see what it is that's covering his gloved hands.

Smiles musters enough strength to yell at the advancing police and security, "You guys…you don't want me. You want him. He's the ringleader, he's the Red Hood-"

Ringleader? Jack wants to hold up his hands and say, 'This is all just a big mistake, can't we just forget about this and try again tomorrow?' but instead he lets out a yelp as a shout rings out from overhead, "Watch out! He's pulling a gun!"

And a barrage of bullets rain down on Smiles, narrowly missing Jack as he scrambles desperately up a matinence lander with another startled cry, "Oh no. No, no, no, no…"

Rain is still falling, a heavier drizzle than before making the metal flooring of the catwalk treacherous as Jack runs blindly, searching for an exit.

"The ringleader's taking off across the catwalk!"

"He's still in range-"

They're going to kill me! Jack realizes in horror, the helmet suffocating him.

"No. No more shooting." A new voice interrupts the others, "I'm here now."

What now? Jack cries inside his head stumbling into the railing as the catwalk makes a sharp turn and the voice finishes, "I'll take care of it my way."

There are mixed exclamations from the police followed by a thud of something landing heavily on the far end of the catwalk, "So, Red Hood, we meet again."

Jack turns shakily around to face the speaker, a hand gripping the railing to steady himself, his breathing so ragged he's sure it can be easily heard everywhere in the factory.

His blood runs cold, a masked figure dressed like a bat is glaring at him, the pointed ears on top of its head appearing to Jack like the horns of a demon,

"No. No no no. This isn't happening. Oh dear God, what have you sent to punish me?"

The thing comes closer and Jack backs up against the railing, heart slamming in terror against his ribs, "D-Don't come any closer! Don't come any closer, or I swear I-I'll…"

Jack struggles to pull the helmet from his head, to show everyone it's just awkward nobody Jack; no bloodthirsty criminal mastermind, just a comedian who forgot his jokes.

Then his foot catches on the cape, and he feels himself jerking backwards over the railing, suspended momentarily in midair before plummeting like a rock toward the bubbling vat below,

"…jump…"

"NO! Damn it!"

Jack hits the acid and sinks instantly towards the bottom, the helmet weighing him down as it begins filling with the searing noxious liquid.

God no! He gasps and sucks in a lungful of the terrible green fluid, choking and swallowing more as he thrashes in a wild panic; the cape twisting and wrapping itself around his flailing arms as he bounces against the bottom of the vat with a metallic thud.

He was drowning; he couldn't breathe, his chest feeling like it was tearing itself in two as the acid sears his skin and insides.

Everything is pitch black and he can't make it to the surface, sucked ruthlessly along on a gurgling current; tumbling head over heels, forced through the narrow tube by the sheer force of the mounting liquid behind him.

Just as Jack is sure he's about to lose consciousness he's violently thrown from the pipe into the drainage river.

He kicks with the last remnants of his strength and breaks the surface of the black water with a gurgling gasp,

Finally his feet touch the silty river bottom and with trembling arms he slowly heaves himself from the cesspool, sinking into the slick, foul smelling mud on it bank.

For several minutes he doesn't move, gasping and filling his burning lungs with much needed air as he lies in a drenched exhausted heap among the scraggly yellowed weeds.

His skin is on fire and for a sickening moment Jack is sure he's blind. Slowly he sits up and grips the hood under its brim, crying out in agony, "Aaugh. I'm stinging, itching, my face, my hands…something in the water? Oh Jeez, it burns…"

His voice, its different, harsher somehow as he continues his muttering, "Get this stupid hood off. Get it off so I can…"

He yanks it from his head with an angry cry and finds himself faced with his distorted reflection in a mud puddle, "…see."

Jack sits in stunned silence, gazing in horror at the face staring back up at him; the chalk white skin and the lips, it was like they were bleeding, such a vibrant hue of red.

"God, no." He hides his face in his hands as the rain washes the acid from his hair and suit, the cloth of which is now purple.

How would he be able to face Jeannie? He was a monster, a freak.

He staggers to his feet, desperate to get away from that awful face and then remembers, Jeannie was dead.

Wasn't she?

What had happened to her? A heart attack or something, right?

Who was Jeannie anyway?

Jack feels his mind tearing loose from sanity, teetering on the verge of madness just as he had teetered over the brim of that vat.

Oh that was ironic, such a foreshadowing. He smiles, slowly raising his head with a small delirious chuckle.

Colors were brighter, the edges of things sharper, like a curtain had been pulled back from over his eyes, from his mind.

He lets out another chuckle, this time louder.

Jack doesn't know whether to laugh or sob and for a moment he doesn't do either, making sharp noises in the back of his throat as he looks in dumfounded curiosity at the tendrils of green hair hanging before his face.

Green hair.

It was funny, wasn't it?

His voice it was weird, it wasn't him at all…then again…who was he?

A suppressed guffaw escapes his ruby red lips as he grips his wild hair and lifts his face to the clouds hanging low over Gotham a full blown howl of laughter torn from him.

He feels his burning skin stretching as his face widens into an uncontrollable grin, the leer of a madman, blood dripping from his lips.

Everything he had ever known, held dear, was stripped from him.

Such comedy.

Jack cranes his head back and lets out a scream, a wild roar that quickly morphs into hysterical laughter.

It was a killing joke.

A.N.

It's DONE! Whew! I'm kind of sad it's over.

Thanks so much for reading my first Fanfiction ever!

Hopefully there will be more stories to come!

Please R&R and I will love you forever.