Thanks ever so much for the reviews!
And now for some news: this fic is in its twilight chapters. I foresee either one or two more, and then the story will be told.
The Joker suddenly found himself in possession of the voice of an anime school girl. If squirrels were human, they would have had lower, less squeaky voices. Though to be fair, the squirrels would have taken better care of their nuts.
If he hadn't been in unimaginable agony, and still under broomstick bombardment, the Joker would have laughed at the nuts pun, and at the idea of squirrel/human hybrids. As was, for the first time possibly in his life, laughter was beyond the Joker's grasp.
Ivy moved like a machine. A violent, hate-fueled Jaeger whose sole function was to beat things to death with a stick.
And she was really, really good at it.
So good that she didn't even notice when her broomstick was snatched from her hands. It took two empty blows before she realized something was missing, and stopped her swinging.
Bereft of her weapon, Ivy was momentarily derailed. She stared at her empty hands for a moment before turning around to see where her broom had gotten to.
It had found a stronger, bigger set of hands to hold it tight. Ivy was less than pleased at the broomstick's disloyalty.
"I wasn't finished," Ivy said.
"I'm ending it," Batman said. "You've gone far enough."
"I obviously haven't, because he's still alive. Look, he's trying to crawl away."
Batman looked down at the Joker, who was indeed inching across the grass. He had no intention of letting the clown crawl very far, but he was not looking forward to touching naked clown anything. If he knew Ivy wouldn't resume murdering the Joker, he'd return to the house and retrieve the Joker's clothes. Or at least a blanket. But there was no way he could leave the Joker lying there and expect to return and find the clown anything but a corpse.
"I'm taking him back to Arkham."
Nigma snorted. "What you're doing is wasting a prime opportunity to rid yourself—and every other person in Gotham—of a sentient atomic bomb that has no regard for the lives of anyone. Letting him live is criminal."
It was an argument even Alfred and Commissioner Gordon had had with Batman at some point. The Joker was incurable. There would never be a new therapy, or a new drug regiment, that could keep his psychosis in check. Which would be alright, if he could be locked away and forgotten somewhere. But the clown made Houdini look like an amateur magician doing kids' birthday parties. No matter how much money the state, or private donors like Bruce Wayne, poured into fortifying Arkham's security, the Joker waltzed out of the asylum like the doors had been left open for him.
Sometimes Batman really wished he was more of a utilitarian.
But he wasn't. He couldn't kill the Joker, and he couldn't stand by idly and watch anyone, even other villains, kill him, either.
"He's going back to Arkham," Batman repeated, as much for his own benefit as for the benefit of Crane, Ivy, and Nigma.
"In a body-bag," Crane said. "You don't know what he did to us."
"Don't try to stand, Crane," Batman said. One look at Crane told Batman enough of a story. The Scarecrow was hardly capable of killing a crippled fly in the state he was in, though it didn't look like it fazed him.
It must have been torture to move, but Crane resolutely struggled to his feet. "I will not allow myself to be victimized by that degenerate again. He hurt me, humiliated me, made my suffering a spectator sport! And then he brought his entourage of psychopaths here to further the carnage!"
Batman usually had no problem beating Crane into a pulp, but someone had gotten ahead of him. And there was no way Batman could hit someone who was unarmed, bloody, and hardly able to stand and not feel bad about it later. Even someone like Crane, who deserved to have his ass handed to him ninety-nine point nine percent of the time.
If he couldn't punch Crane—and gently helping him sit back down wasn't likely to work—Batman decided the only way to end the confrontation before it escalated into three villains in various degrees of disrepair throwing themselves on him was to remove himself, and the Joker, from the situation. He glanced down at the naked, and now very bruised, clown and couldn't quite hide his grimace. There would be little job satisfaction for Batman tonight.
But a hero had to do what a hero had to do. Batman threw Ivy's broom like a javelin and then, once his hands were free, reached down and grabbed the Joker under the arms. He was about to heft the clown up when the door to the shed banged open. Batman dropped the Joker and whirled around.
"Thanks for the great rescue, Batsy!" the Joker grumbled as he hit the ground.
Zsasz staggered out of the shed, looking simultaneously drunk and homicidal. He was holding a knife, though he was pointing it at the empty space next to Batman. His eyes, while narrowed, were likewise focused just off-center of the obvious target.
"I will kill every single last one of you," Zsasz said.
He then turned his head, threw up, and collapsed next to the gross puddle he'd just made.
"Wow, Vic, that was really a wasted opportunity," the Joker said. "Everyone around here sucks at their job."
Zsasz picked a bad time to reintroduce himself—not that he ever would have faced a warm welcome from anyone. Batman had been seconds away from carting the Joker beyond their reach, so the clown's victims were ready to rampage like the Hound through a room full of chickens. In this case, evil, psychotic chickens that had done them all a lot of harm.
"Not even you, you Captain America of the night, can stand there and defend him!" Crane protested, pointing at Zsasz. "The clown's got a sense of humor, at least. Zsasz is a terminator!"
"And not Arnold Schwarzenegger in Judgement Day," Nigma clarified.
"No one is killing anyone," Batman said. Though Zsasz's intrusion made keeping his word just a little harder. Now he had to rescue two psychopaths from the three psychopaths that wanted to rip them apart.
Ivy made her move. While Batman was distracted, calculating how to best lug Zsasz and the Joker to safety, she hopped forward, propelling herself with as much might as her one good leg could manage. Batman instinctively reached out to catch her, and when he did, she went in for the kiss of death.
Batman was able to turn his head just in time to receive a far less lethal (and far less sexy) kiss on the cheek. Ivy growled in frustration and tried to wiggle free from the Bat-hug. Batman found himself painted even tighter into the corner. He was reluctant to let go of Ivy, but as long as he held her, there was no way for him to cart off either of the two endangered villains.
"Let her go!" Crane roared, showing that no matter how much damage he'd taken externally, his lungs were still in fine working order.
The outrage in Crane's voice extended beyond what seemed reasonable. After all, Batman hadn't invited Poison Ivy over for a hug. She'd thrown herself at him, and he'd only grabbed her to avoid being kissed to death. Which was nowhere near as attractive as it sounded on the surface.
Despite all the damage and the so-pitiful-it-was-laughable mismatch between them, Crane took a stumbling step towards Batman. The Dark Knight looked down at the spitting-mad villain writhing in his arms, and then looked at the equally furious villain hobbling his way. He decided to kill (or at least derail) two birds with one stone.
Batman shoved Poison Ivy at Crane. He restrained himself to using just enough force to off-balance her, and let gravity do the rest. Ivy's injured leg buckled and she fell back, taking Crane with her, exactly as Batman expected. But what he decidedly didn't expect was that Ivy would, in the brief second she had, try to turn her body so she hit the ground first.
That threw Batman for a loop. Crane was a person, not a grass, fruit, vegetable, tree, flower, succulent, or any other variety of plant. A person who, as far as Batman knew, Ivy had no reason to like. She and Harley were friends, and Harley tended to wash up at Ivy's front door whenever the Joker threw her out, but Batman had never suspected Crane might likewise have contact with Ivy. Never mind contact important enough where she'd cushion him with her body.
Neither Crane nor Ivy would be hopping to their feet anytime soon, so Batman assumed he'd bought himself a moment of peace. Until the dirt-clod hit him in the head. It just missed his eyes, and his cowl was bulletproof, never mind sod proof, but he still wasn't happy. He glared at Nigma, who had to be the source.
The Riddler whistled and refused to meet Batman's eyes. "Somebody's throwing stuff," Nigma observed.
Batman wiped away the last of the dirt. There was no use putting this off any longer. The time to engage in bodily contact with a naked clown was nigh.
Though maybe it wouldn't be as bad as Batman originally feared. The Joker had now had several minutes to recover after Ivy's bruising attack. Maybe the clown would stand on his own two feet and cooperate.
And maybe scallops would fly from Batman's pants.
Batman's attempts to pull the Joker up ended with the clown grabbing his own crotch like Michael Jackson and collapsing. The Dark Knight shook his head. By the time the Joker stopped playing around, Crane and Ivy would be ready to fight again, and Nigma would have uncovered some decent sized rocks he could lob.
"You don't know how it feels!" the Joker wailed. "You have a crotch of steel! I know! I've tried kicking you there. It doesn't work."
If he'd been less of a stoic, Batman would have clutched his head and screamed. Instead of making a spectacle of himself, he grabbed the Joker under the arms and hauled him up.
"I can't tell you all the times I've dreamed about this," the Joker said, his voice suddenly pain free. "Okay, yes I can. Only you're usually wearing less armor, and you're carrying me bridal-style, and none of these nerds are here. But I'm just as naked. It's so freeing. Maybe I'll ditch the purple suit and trade it in for my birthday suit."
Batman couldn't suppress a shudder. Dear God, please don't let the Joker be serious...
To take his mind off the Joker and his perversion, Batman pulled the clown over to where Zsasz had collapsed.
"Hey, I did that! How about some appreciation, Batsy?" the Joker said.
"You did what?"
"Pistol-whipped Vic."
That did explain why Zsasz hadn't been able to see straight. Though it didn't mean the Joker was going to get any thanks or credit. Now Batman had a whole new problem on his hands. Zsasz would no doubt be looking for blood the moment he woke up. And as he was already starting to twitch, that wouldn't be long. Thanks to the Joker cracking him over the head, Zsasz, who was already terrible company on a car trip, would probably try to rip the Joker's head off.
Batman dropped the Joker and crouched down to slap a pair of cuffs on Zsasz. For good measure, and so he could keep both hands on the clown if he got wiggly, Batman removed a length of cable from his utility belt and tied one end around Zsasz's feet, and secured the other end to the belt.
"And what's that usually used for?" the Joker asked. "Emergency bat-bondage?"
"Leaving your henchmen hanging upside down outside City Hall," Batman replied.
"You're a funny, funny bat."
Batman hefted the Joker up again and started trekking towards the Batmobile. Behind him, like a fish on a stringer, Zsasz was dragged through the grass.
Back at the shed, Crane and Ivy had disentangled from each other. They were both sitting, though neither looked all that eager to try and stand. Nigma, proving he wasn't entirely, utterly, one-hundred-percent irredeemable, had at least been kind enough to fetch Ivy's broomstick. After Crane had ordered him to do it, and then threatened him with severe and bloody harm if he didn't.
"We've got to get out of here before he returns," Crane said.
"Have fun with that, Gimpy," Nigma replied. "I still have my scooter and I am not sharing it." He patted his pocket, where the keys jingled.
"If you abandon us for the Bat, the first thing I will do after escaping from Arkham is to hunt you down and-"
"And implies a second action. Besides, as you've been so happy to tell me, my scooter is small and pitiful. There's simply no room for a second passenger. Even if I wanted to (and I really don't), I couldn't help you."
"You can fix the van," Ivy interjected.
"Which is in a bush."
"And can be pushed out with a modicum of cooperation," Crane said.
"Pray tell how the woman with the sprained ankle and the man with stab-wounds up and down his arms are going to help. Because I am dying to know."
"I can help!"
Nigma was so surprised by the piping voice directly behind him that he yelped like a little frou-frou dog. He then pivoted around—making both Crane and Ivy insanely jealous of his free range of motion—and glared at Harley.
"Don't you have any manners?!" he demanded.
"Sure I do. When people sneeze, I say 'gesundheit' and I hold doors open for old ladies. Unless me and Mr. J are robbin' those old ladies," Harley replied.
"How did you get away from Batman?" Ivy asked.
"It's a good story! Me and Mr. J were- Red, why're you holdin' you head like that? Got a headache? You sure? Okay, like I was sayin', me and Mr. J were havin' some fun and the next thing we know, Batman's kickin' the door down! Only I think we kinda scared him bein' naked and all, so I had time to hide under the bed and Mr. J jumped out the window," Harley explained. "Then B-man went after my Puddin' and I had to get dressed 'cause this package is for Mr. J's eyes only."
Harley suddenly frowned. "Do you think Mr. J will be mad if I don't try and help him? I wanna, but I think Batman'll win, and I don't wanna ride next to Zsasz. Ew."
"He'll never know," Nigma assured her.
"And we need your help considerably more," Crane added.
Harley brightened again. "We gotta fix the van! Red, Professor Crane, you're all banged up. Me and Eddie can do it. We'll be like BMO and Banana Man fixin' Hot Daniel!"
For as clever as Crane, Ivy, and Nigma liked to think themselves, not one of them knew where to begin interpreting that.
"Alright..." Nigma said. "I think."
Harley whooped and ran for the van. Nigma followed behind reluctantly. The keys were heavy in his pocket, and he didn't have so much as an altruistic toe nail in his whole body, but there was something about Harley that compelled him to not sneak away. Maybe it was the fear she'd remember this, and come after him with either puppy eyes or a mallet. He wasn't sure which one would be worse.
"I'm going to put the van in neutral," Nigma said upon arriving at the crash site.
Harley gave him a thumbs up. He pushed the door open, fending off the rose bushes that encroached on the van, and slid into the driver's seat.
Where he discovered the van had been taken over by a deformed, pale squatter.
"Can I help you with something?" White asked.
"Batman's here, so we don't want to be," Nigma replied.
"I don't want to finish this crap day back at Arkham, either. You here to play mechanic?"
"Something like that. Care to help?"
White guffawed. "Me? Fix a car? You might as well tell Donald Trump to become a dirt farmer. And even if I wanted to..." White wiggled his few remaining fingers. "I don't have the necessary equipment."
Nigma wasn't surprised with White's blatant elitism. He and Harley would have to manage on their own. Nigma shifted the van into neutral and then hopped out.
"Okay, Eddie, what do we do now?" Harley asked.
"Get on one side of the van and I'll get on the other. On my count, we'll give a synchronized push and hopefully the van will dislodge from the bush."
"Got it!"
Harley took the left side and Nigma took the right, and they pressed their hands against the side of the van. There wasn't a great deal of purchase on the smooth paint, and it soon became apparent that wasn't going to work.
"Crud," Harley said. She kicked the tire.
Nigma surveyed the van's exterior. The sides were too smooth to grip, but the door handles would probably suffice.
"The door handles," Nigma said, pointing.
Harley and Nigma reached through the rose brambles and grabbed the handles. They dug their heels into the dirt and on Nigma's cue, they both heaved for all they were worth.
The van rolled backwards with the speed of a retreating glacier. The rosebush, as though it had grown fond of the intrusion, seemed to clutch at the vehicle. The branches scratched against the windshield and then the hood as Nigma and Harley kept pushing.
Finally the van was liberated. Nigma let go of the door and moved to the front of the van. He popped the hood and took in the state of the engine.
"Can you fix it, Eddie? Can you?" Harley asked, popping up like a ground squirrel next to Nigma.
"Easily," Nigma replied.
"Then what are you waiting for?"
Nigma peered around the side of the hood and found Crane and Ivy standing there.
"An audience," Nigma replied. He then rolled his sleeves up and reached into the engine.
"There," he announced a moment later.
"The battery connection?" Crane asked.
"The cable was knocked loose in the crash. A moronically easy fix," Nigma said.
"Alright, Eddie! You're so smart and awesome at fixin' stuff!" Harley cheered.
"I know," Nigma replied, smirking.
"Don't make his head any larger, child. It'll explode," Crane said.
Nigma snorted and slammed the hood closed. "All aboard."
"Shotgun, shotgun, shotgun!" Harley shouted, racing for the passenger's side. She flung open the door and-
"Too bad," White said, grinning.
Harley gasped and shrunk back. She usually would have tried to exert her claim, but all those sharp, serrated teeth took the argument from her.
"Okay," she relented. She walked back to the driver's side and scooted to the back of the van.
Crane and Ivy followed, taking a seat in the least-cluttered spot they could find. Once they were settled, Nigma took the driver's seat.
"Wait a second, we're missin' somebody!" Harley said.
"You don't mean-" Ivy began.
"BABIES!" Harley shrieked.
Within seconds, Bud and Lou were wriggling around in the garbage that littered the rear of the van, happy as hogs there. Crane and Ivy grimaced as the hyenas rolled and kicked the foul detritus everywhere.
"Is there anything else? Bears? Lions? A horde of barbarians?" Nigma asked.
"Nope," Harley replied.
"Good." Nigma reached for the ignition and then paused. The screwdriver he'd been using as a key wasn't there. Then he snapped his fingers. Earlier, he'd tried to threaten Black Mask with it, and he'd failed miserably. He'd dropped the screwdriver just outside. Nigma pushed the door open and with a bit of groping, he came up with his prize.
He brushed a little dirt and grass off the screwdriver and then jammed it into the ignition. He twisted the screwdriver and the van growled to life.
It might not have been the Batmobile, but it was a hell of a lot better than a scooter.
Author's Notes:
A Jaeger is a giant robot from the movie Pacific Rim that was created to battle equally giant monsters.
The Hound is a character from Game of Thrones who, among other things, really enjoys eating chicken. He will literally kill for it.
Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a good Terminator in Judgment Day.
The rock-throwing and "somebody's throwing stuff" is from The Emperor's New Groove. That movie's been getting a lot of appreciation lately!
"And maybe scallops will fly from my pants" is an exclamation from SpongeBob.
In the episode of Adventure Time "We Fixed a Truck," BMO and Banana Man repair a broken truck, which BMO, for reasons unknown, decides to christen "Hot Daniel."
