"Come on you're on fire
Another syndication dies in your arms
Another psychedelic choir
And you're dizzy from the drugs in your heart"

Freak Out, stellastarr*

The Joker's men were positioned around the Crazy Lady, ready for tonight's confrontation with Kowalski, time to deliver the punchline. Last call had come and gone, it was just about three am, time for the bar to close. The Joker and a few of his guys made their way behind the stage to the dancer's dressing area while the rest kept an eye on the remaining customers and Kowalski's employees. Women in various stages of undress were everywhere and started screaming as the Joker's henchmen gathered them together in one large group. There were about thirty of them working the club tonight. More than enough, he was certain he'd have a few volunteers.

"Good evening ladies!" The Joker greeted them, prompting a new round of screams and the women huddled closer together trying to get as far from him and his men as they could.

"Now, now, there's no need to panic. I'm not here to hurt you, I'm here to offer you a chance to show your boss just what you think of him." He smiled at them. That didn't really help calm anyone down until a woman at the front of the group who had remained calm yelled something at the other women in what sounded like Russian. They quieted down though still looked frightened.

"So listen, your boss is going to die tonight. That's not up for debate. But I get to kill people all the time, I thought I'd be generous and let some of you ladies have a poke at him. Literally." He flicked open a switchblade to illustrate his point. There were some gasps and a few cries of fear. Once again his translator in the front jumped in to explain what he said. For the first time since he'd made his presence known the women started to relax and seem interested in what he had to say.

"Would any of you be interested in helping me out?"

The Joker had enjoyed playing with Kowalski over the last year. Oh it was nothing compared to his brief experience with Batman and Gotham City but it was enough to keep him from really losing it over the last few months. When he decided he'd grown bored and that it was time to finally kill Kowalski he put a great deal of thought into how to do it. There was no point in wasting another great joke on Kowalski, the man would never get it. So he considered what would amuse him the most. The Joker personally believed that anyone would turn on their fellow man if given enough motivation. It was one of the many ways he was different from Aleksander Kowalski. Kowalski was at his core just a pimp whose success had maybe given him the idea that he was something more. And like all pimps he used deceit, manipulation and violence to control the people who worked for him. He thought that once he had taken a woman's freedom and identity and forced her to do whatever degrading work he chose for her that he had her loyalty. That she would always submit to him and that she would never rise up against him. There was nothing the Joker would find funnier at this moment than watching Kowalski find out how wrong he was.

"If we do this, what happens to us?" The woman who had been translating earlier stepped forward a little. She was standing there in Lucite high heels, a G-string and little else. Her hair was a dark honey blond, her skin tanned and she had clearly had some surgical intervention to her beauty but she was beautiful none the less.

"What happens to you? Well, honestly? I don't really care. We won't kill you if that's what you are asking. After Kowalski's dead I'm done here." What did she want him to say? He'd enroll them all in community college or something?

After the women talked amongst themselves in a mixture of English and Russian they seemed to come to an agreement. Their self-elected spokesperson walked up to the Joker and held her hand out for him to hand her the switchblade in his hand. He smiled at her and handed it over. She smiled back at him and stroked the lapel of his overcoat. It could be that she just automatically flirted with men, so used to doing it professionally, but he was good at reading people and she seemed sincere. He had met women like her before, they responded to whoever they perceived as the most powerful guy around, the alpha male. His men started handing out knives to the other women and the Joker walked away from the woman in front of him. He knew that she would only be encouraged by his dismissal but he honestly didn't give a shit. He had other things to do. They started to walk back out to the main stage area when his new admirer stopped him.

"That way has a lot of armed men, the back way has only two men. It's this way." She grabbed his hand and led him to a stairway at the back of the dressing area. He actually didn't think it mattered which route they took, they were going to kill everyone upstairs either way but he followed her anyway. She started to pull him up the stairs but he yanked her arm back pulling her down the couple of steps she had walked up. He pulled his hand away from hers and signaled to three of his men in clown masks to go up first. He didn't mind taking risks but he wasn't stupid enough to go up first, why not send up some red shirts first?

He climbed the stairs behind the cannon fodder followed by whichever women had decided to be part of the assault on Kowalski and the rest of his men. He killed one of the two guards while the men he had sent up first took out the other one. Only one of them ended up shot for their efforts, a promising beginning. The door to Kowalski's office was locked but he shot the lock off the door and kicked it in. There was no chance of them sneaking up on Kowalski after the skirmish outside of his office but again the Joker was not concerned. He also knew that the rest of his crew that were in the club had probably headed up the other route by this time and were waging their own battle against most of Kowalski's men. As far as he knew Kowalski had no way out of his office unless he flew out the window.

The Joker wasn't wrong, when he entered Kowalski's office he found standing in his office with a gun pointed at the door and three of his security team were there doing the same thing. Four guys with guns, if he weren't focused on what he was doing he'd stop to laugh at the meager assault team Kowalski had managed to greet him with. He could feel the stripper who had been flirting with him pushing up close behind him as they entered the room, it was time to disabuse her of the notion she had any chance with him. He pulled her out from behind him and pushed her hard in Kowalski's direction. While the men shot at the woman hurtling towards them the Joker took out Kowalski's security team. Well mostly, one of the guys seemed to have only been wounded and was trying to crawl away. He felt a stinging sensation along the side of one bicep, a bullet had grazed him but he was fairly certain it hadn't actually done more than draw a little blood. It did ruin his coat though, what a shame.

By now the rest of the Joker's men and the strippers had entered the room and realizing he had no chance against the number of people pointing guns and knives at him Kowalski dropped his weapon and raised his hands in surrender. Oh that was funny. Maybe he'd been wrong about Kowalski, his thinking he could somehow just put down his gun and make peace was the funniest joke the Joker had come across in a long time. Outside the door across the room the Joker could hear more gunfire, presumably the rest of his gang, led by Spider, fighting it out with whoever was out there on Kowalski's behalf. If they had known how quickly their boss had waved the white flag he was sure they wouldn't be bothering to continue the fight.

"Mr. Joker, I think we can talk this out. You obviously have the upper hand. What is it you want from me? My business? My girls? Money? You just tell me and I get it for you." Kowalski tried smiling, it didn't suit his face.

"I have a question for you instead, Kowalski." The Joker approached the man kicking the now dead stripper out of his way. He pulled a knife out of a pocket and grabbed Kowalski by the back of the head. "Do you want to know how I got these scars?"

Kowalski made no move to talk, he just stared at the Joker's knife. He was apparently aware that it didn't matter how he answered.

The Joker pushed his hair out of his face with the hand holding the knife and licked his lips before continuing. "Once I was just a regular guy with a regular job. There was a pretty girl that worked there and even though I wasn't the best looking guy or a lot of fun to be around, she gave me a chance and let me take her out a few times. So me and this girl are going out and I can't help but fall in love with her. Now I'm saving up my money and making plans for the future. I go out on my lunch break and I buy a ring. I'm going to ask her to marry me. I'm on my way home that same night and I realize I left the ring back in my desk. Now it's not a very valuable ring but it's all I can afford and I can't take the chance it might get stolen so I go back to the office. I get the ring and start to leave but I hear a voice. It's my girl's voice and it's coming from the boss's office. I get curious about why she's there so late and go to check. And what do you think I find?"

"That your girl's a whore." Kowalski answered. When all you've got is a hammer everything looks like a nail. To a man with the mind of a pimp every woman was a whore.

"That's right, I find her getting down on her knees for the boss. She doesn't realize I'm there but the boss sees me and I must have looked devastated because he starts laughing and asks me, 'Why so serious? You should put a smile on that face.' I don't bother saying anything because what can you say when you see your boss's dick in your girl's mouth? Instead I go out and have a few drinks. I get home and look in the mirror and decide maybe my boss was right. Maybe what I need to do is smile more. So I get a knife and I do this." He turned his face to each side to show off his scars. "Now I'm never serious. Now I'm always smiling."

He pushed his knife against Kowalski's mouth. "When I saw you I thought to myself, now there's a guy just like I used to be. Always so serious. Never a smile for anyone. So I've spent all this time and effort just to make you laugh, just to put a smile on your face. What do you say, Kowalski? Why so serious?"

Apparently Kowalski didn't like the Joker's story all that much, he had a disgusted look on his face when he was compared to the man with a knife to his mouth. "Mr. Joker, you and I are nothing alike. You think you can come in here, into my place and take over? You think you kill a few of my whores and their tricks and I'm going to care? You can kill me but you can't take what I have. These people who work for me? They fear me, they work only for me. They won't ever work for a freak like you."

"Oh that's a good one Aleksander. This whole time I thought you had no sense of humor but it turns out you are just one big joke. You think you have power because you step on people weaker than you and make money out of it. Money isn't power. Dominance isn't power. I am powerful because I will it. Nothing else matters. The only power you can ever have is the power you give yourself. This power you think you've taken from other people, it's an illusion. And the minute someone pulls the curtain back and exposes the cowardly little hustler you really are those people you think you've dominated will turn on you and eat you alive. But hey, don't take my word for it." The Joker pulled his knife away from Kowalski and backed away from the man.

"Ladies, time to give Mr. Kowalski a lesson on the illusion of control."

The group of strippers who had been watching the men's exchange with quiet interest seemed to understand that now was their chance to get a little of their own power back even without their translator around to explain it to them. They started approaching Kowalski with fierce faces and accusations being shouted out in a language that the Joker couldn't understand. The first woman who came close to Kowalski was backhanded by him but while he was busy hitting her another woman plunged a knife into his shoulder. Once first blood was spilled the women couldn't get enough of stabbing, kicking, hitting and spitting on the pimp. It was every bit as amusing to watch as the Joker had expected it would be. Once it was clear the man wasn't getting back up he signaled to his men to leave and walked out through the opposite door of the one they came in. Spider and the rest of the crew were just finishing up the last of Kowalski's thugs and seeing the Joker leaving, stopped what they were doing and followed as well.

It felt fantastic to finally finish off Kowalski but the Joker wondered what he was going to do with himself now. He climbed into the passenger seat of one of the cars they had traveled to the club in and turned his phone back on. He hadn't wanted it to go off during his little performance. He looked down and saw he had fifteen missed calls. All from one number and it wasn't one he recognized. Could it possibly have been her? Whoever it was didn't leave a message and it wasn't a Chicago number. He dialed a Gotham number instead.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" Eddy whined into the phone.

"Time for all good little hackers to get their asses out of bed and help me track down a number. I'm going to text it to you. You have half an hour to pinpoint a location for me. I'm headed to the hideout to grab a few things and then I'm heading west." The Joker was not in the mood for Eddy's complaints. He didn't know for sure that it was Harley that called but he had a gut feeling it was.

"She called?" Eddy sounded shocked.

"I don't know for certain but yeah, I think she did. Half an hour for a location the calls were made from and the address the phone bill goes to. Time for you to remind me of why I haven't killed you yet for helping her leave."

"Joker, uh, I know it's none of my business but if it is her….could you let her explain before you kill her? I'm not looking to piss you off but she's a friend and she seemed to really think she had no choice when she told me she was leaving." Eddy tried to plead Harley's case.

"You're right, Eddy, it's none of your business. Get me the address and don't give me relationship advice again." The Joker hung up. He'd figure out what to do about Harley when he saw her.