Hush's Last Stand
No Right Answer
As his unplanned allies came through the front, Batman circled around the back. The time for messy fights would come soon enough. For now, a little strategy would go a long time. In this dark eerily familiar place beneath Sprang Mission, he saw a trio of rooms. One looked like a laboratory, the other a surgery room and the last an execution room. The last grabbed his attention, for in the seat of the electric chair, he saw an eerily familiar face.
Melting the lock with a blowtorch, he rushed to see a delirious Harvey Dent, his face disfigured into its monstrous half-face. Not even acknowledging his entrance, he kept repeating the same phrase over and over again. "Kill me. Kill me. Kill me." A small part of Harvey Dent still remained untainted by Two-Face's dualistic nihilism. A small part of him wanted to die rather than spend one moment reduced to his former condition.
Despite the invincible urban legend persona Bruce Wayne had created for himself, he too blundered into situations which had no right answer. If he killed Harvey Dent, even in the name of mercy, he would have broken the promise he made to his parents. If he allowed Harvey Dent to live, he would condemn his best friend to a fate worst than death. Neither decision in Bruce's mind felt like the right one. Batman placed his hands around Harvey's head, positioned behind him for a clean neck break.
As he prepared to do the unthinkable, the unthinkable walked into the room. "Jeez, Bruce, get on with it already. At this rate, I'll die from old age before Harvey dies from a broken neck." In that single word, his connection with the Joker changed drastically. Even the stoic Batman could not suppress the look of surprise on his face.
"Surprised, Batsy? You should have seen my reaction. I mean, a billionaire and a superhero. How lucky can you get?" The Joker reached into his pockets. "But seriously, I think you've lost your marbles. Here, have some of mine." Unable to remove the straps to the electric chair in time, Batman jumped out of the way as the explosive marbles ripped Harvey Dent apart. The sight of his best friend dead left his heart aching with inconceivable suffering. Imagine how he would have felt if he had actually killed Harvey himself.
"Still don't know how I found you out, huh? C'mon, the world's greatest detective. Please, my brain-dead grandmother wouldn't have figured it out by now." The Joker fired the "BANG!" sign from his spear-gun. "You came to Wayne Manor too quickly. Someone called you. I think the butler did it. Hah, hah, hah, hah!"
He fired again. This time, the trigger released the harpoon. He missed on purpose. His archnemesis deserved a perfect punchline. The Joker needed a little more time to think of a closing act. "Plus, I knew I recognized Timmy from somewhere. You know, Bruce, you really shouldn't keep replacing them because I'll just keep killing them."
That last comment drove him over the edge. Any reminder of what happened to Jason Todd brought out the beast in Batman. Before he knew it, his hands had smashed the spear-gun out from under his grasp and continued a violent campaign against his bodily health.
Batman had neglected his training. He sacrificed a solid defense for a wild offense. It didn't take long for the Joker to have Batman beaten within an inch of his life. The Joker whispered into Bruce's ear. "Hello, Bruce Wayne. I'm the Joker. I'll be your murderer this evening."
The Joker began a narration to an imaginary crowd. "Come, one! Come, all!" He slipped on a joy buzzer. "And witness this shocking conclusion. Watch as the Joker, the Harlequin of Hate, the Ace of Knaves, the Clown Prince of Crime, attempts a feat of homicidal ingenuity ten years in the making. Before your very eyes, he will deliver a continuous stream of electricity into Bruce Wayne, the man who thought himself a bat. I must ask anyone in the audience with weak constitutions to leave the building. This will get ugly. Hah, hah, hah, hah!"
During his incessant rambling, Batman had gotten his second wind. He broke the Joker's left hand at the wrist before tossing the joy buzzer into the all-consuming darkness of the cave. Their fight tampered off on the edge of a cliff facing an immense vertical drop. The Joker reached into his pocket with his good hand and waved the white flag. Regardless of all the shots to the face, the Joker had lost only one tooth.
"You win, Bruceman, I mean, Bat Wayne. Just gimme a chance to stop bleeding." Batman shouldn't have let up. The Joker had pulled this trick on him before. False surrenders gave the Joker his edge. They worked best after particularly brutal thrashings. It fed on his guilt.
To make matters worse, Batman had looked away if only for a moment. Switchblade opened and its blade sliced through the Kevlar padding of his right knee. Reacting on instinct, he slammed the Joker across the face, sending him flying into the gorge giggling like a schoolboy. If anyone else had plummeted into a bottomless pit, he would have assumed that he had accidentally killed him.
The Joker though always had an ace up his sleeve. Even Ra's al Ghul, the immortal leader of the League of the Shadow, didn't defy death as often as the Joker. While the Joker survived by freakish coincidence, Ra's al-Ghul needed to access the Lazarus Pits, the true origin of myths about the Holy Grail and the Fountain of Youth, hidden places that could restore the dead and the dying to perfect health at the risk of permanent brain damage.
As pain stung at Batman, he reached into his utility belt and applied a generous dose of clotting agent onto the wound. He stood up, a feat he barely accomplished. He fought to block out the crippling agony of his injury. A normal man stabbed in a fight had the luxury of getting immediate medical attention. Batman didn't even have the comfort of knowing how or if he would get out of this situation alive.
As he contemplated these deteriorating circumstances, Batman turned around to face a nightmarish sight. The Scarecrow, Mr. Freeze and Hush stood in the threshold. Batman deployed a smoke pellet and vanished from sight. He narrowly avoided a direct hit from each of their trademark weapons. Exhausted and wounded, he could not fight them all at once. He needed to take them out one by one. In short, the Caped Crusader needed a plan.