"…and so, that's how we are where we are. Virus fucking up this pyramid scheme that passes for a nation for like what two years straight (don't correct me, I can't feel how time flows anymore) way past the breaking point, climate change just a few years away from flooding half the world to death while the burning takes care of the other half, and fascism bout to take over the whole world while capitalist establishment just shrugs and counts their dollars!" Jared Leto's Joker was ranting on top of a soapbox he had found. He and Joaquin Phoenix's Joker had been trying to work up a plan that would solve their respective woes in one sweep, but the planning had been severely derailed by Leto Joker's decision to reiterate that this whole mess they found themselves in was the fault of Hillary Rodham Clinton running for President in 2016 instead of Joker's Bro, Bernie Sanders.
(and more than just a little bit of that blame was also to go to the great neoliberal centrist traitor to progressivism, that establishment bendover Barack Hussein Obama, as well)
In the other room, Darkseid was still watching Netflix with Phoenix Joker's account, which was actually Joker's mom's. And laughing uproariously as he watched the episode of I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson where Tim quite hilariously plays a guy dressed up as a hot dog who drives a Wienermobile into a store and asks everyone who could've done that causing hilarity for the viewer. This was also making it difficult for Phoenix Joker to come up with a plan, because with all these damn words and sounds penetrating his skull how could he think?
Phoenix Joker stared, dumbfounded and slackjawed, at Leto Joker as he stood in front of the big planning blackboard that had been intended to plan… well, their plan. Instead, in marker, was a sprawling and intricate but totally indecipherable beyond the mind of its creator web of conspiracy that traced all that was bad in the world today primarily back to those criminals the Clintons and the Great American Satan who had shat out the hell that spawned them – Ronald Reagan.
"We need to like, build a time machine, and like train John Hinckley to like shoot straight! No, fuck that! We'll do it ourselves! Like Thanos!" Leto Joker raved as he did lots of arm-waving. "Then we'll be like living in that memey utopian society pic! You know the one!"
"Dude! Don't do that!" Phoenix Joker begged as Leto Joker took a break from his ranting and shoved two big marker tips up his nose to take a deep sniff. "I paid for those!"
"Oh, does your pansy ass metropolitan ass liberal elite ass get shook when I dose ya with reality? Hittin' ya like a cool grape soda on a hot summah day, huh? Guess what beeyotch – justice is a friggin farce and life ain't no Hollywood movie!" Leto Joker hopped down from his soapbox and grabbed Phoenix Joker by the shirt. "Face it, Bro! The world is doomed and it's just a question of if it's this virus, Nazis, environmental collapse, or some good 'ol nukes from Russian China Chinese Russia that do it first!"
"Dude, I think you need to take a break from, like… Twitter."
Leto Joker smacked Phoenix Joker.
"Shaddup bro! No more doomscrollin' ain't gonna change the fact that…" You all know what's coming next. "THAT WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY!"
"So why don't you do something about it?"
"Like what… vote?" Leto Joker guffawed. "That's what we did in 2018 and 2020! And whatta HONKA HONKA bullcrap that turned outta be! Look at the shit state of the shit we're in… vote my ass!"
Leto Joker then paused and looked directly at the reader. "You know… if I wasn't already The Joker… I woulda become The Joker by now. Cause Society!"
At that moment, a rogue boom tube opened above them, connecting to some unknown time and place in the multiverse. The two Jokers didn't react much to it. They lived in a DC universe… shit that probably shouldn't be gets normalized even faster than it does on our Earth.
A familiar voice was heard first through the furious droning of the boom tube, getting closer and closer and less distorted with each syllable.
"You… a Joker? Think I gotta take a mulligan on that!" Out tumbled Heath Ledger's Joker who landed smack-ass on the table, shattering it. To the bewildered expressions of the other two Jokers, Ledger Joker was dressed like some kind of bizarre mobster pirate of tubing and neon from a retro future ongoing-apocalypse over the decayed rags of his old Joker suit. He had grown a rather wretched and dirty hobo beard, like Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's Halloween 2.
"Oh, fuck you, Heath!" Leto Joker bitched.
"You're… just… ugh, mad… cause it's ... oooohguuuhd, true. Owww… my ass." He whined as he pulled fragments of table out of his ass while chowing down the painkillers like they were Let's Potato Chips. "Don't think I'm gonna ask em to ask me how I got these scars…"
"Where were you, Heath?" Phoenix Joker asked.
"The better question is… where wasn't I? I went to Japan to like kick Masahiro Sakurai's ass but it turns out he was a magic ninja master so he kicked my ass and stranded me unstuck in the Multiverse. It took me… legions… of worlds… to find my way home. A buncha stuff this fic's author was too lazy and imaginative to actually flesh out, so I gotta quickly summarize it all." Ledger Joker exposited to catch his bros up as he wrapped his ass up in bandages. "Shit… I'm from the grounded Nolan-verse, I wasn't made for goddamn trippy sci-fi multiverse hoppin' metafiction-breachin' bullshit."
He then noticed himself in a reflection. "Sweet Hoppin' Johns! I look like shit! When I should be lookin' like the shit!"
"Excuse me a second." Ledger Joker ran to his room, ran out of his room with a spare set of clothes, then ran into the bathroom and slammed the door shut. The two other Jokers patiently waited for him to finish his business. Ledger Joker than returned to the room, shaven and dressed like his regular old Dark Knight self again.
"So what's been happening, ya will-you won't you [HOMOPHOBIC SLUR]s?" Ledger Joker asked.
"Dude, don't say that. It's like homophobic, you know."
"Yeah right, like me stoppin' callin' people [ANOTHER HOMOPHOBIC SLUR] for no reason other than cause I can is gonna like stop the [RACIST SLUR] and the [ALSO RACIST SLUR] from like killin' all their homos. I ain't bein' a fruit-hater, I'm just being a free-speecher." Ledger Joker sneered, pullin' out that good old argument that problems in the civilized west can be ignored because they're also happening even worse in the countries where the coloreds live. You know, like how whatever the Taliban's doing to the women in Afghanistan means it ain't the time to talk about what America is doing to theirs.
"Anyways, Jared has money problems. I got political problems. We were trying to come up with a two birds one stone solution, but then outta nowhere he just had to bring up Hillary Clinton. And now…"
After some more exposition occurred and concluded, Ledger Joker burst into laughter at his fellow Jokers' predicament.
"That's what been eaten you fucks? Ha ha ha hee hoooo get fucked you fagg-"
"God! Enough!" Phoenix Joker slapped Ledger Joker, then wringed his hands cause the slapping really boo-booed. "Don't you realize this its almost 2022 and you shouldn't just spew that crap anymore?"
"Fuck that, bitch! In my heart it's still Internet circa 200X-2012 forever! Before all you socially conscientious pansies contaminated it with your Tumblrinavilles and Twitter circlejerking safe spaces!" Ledger Joker snapped back. "You fucks ever stop and think that maybe the rise of Da Donald n' Pals is like coincided with the SJW-shit? You gotta watch more South Park – respect the status quo of the 90s and early 00s! Stop tryin' to move things forward and everything will go back to bein' awesome."
Leto Joker shrugged. "Personally, I think it's the dominance of Marvel movies responsible for the surge in far-right fascism more than anything. Exception given for Iron Man 3, the only good one."
Incredulously, the other two Jokers stared at him. And decided as usual the best thing to do with a Jared Leto Joker was to ignore him.
"Anyways… Jared and I are at disagreements. But I think… we should try to improve society somewhat. And that starts with getting rid of this friggin virus." Phoenix Joker suggested.
"You wanna improve society? Yet you take part in society! How curious! Ah ho, I am very smart!" Ledger Joker complimented himself. He then erased the whiteboard, to Leto Joker's screams, and started kicking over all their stuff.
"So this is why I'm taking over! This is my plan now!" Ledger Joker whipped out one of his magic pencils and began scrawling on the whiteboard, producing horrible sounds because it was a pencil and those aren't meant to be used on whiteboards. The other two Jokers covered their ears and begged him to stop but he just laughed and called them snowflakes.
Once the noise ceased, Ledger Joker proudly presented his big plan.
"As you know, Americans are at their core a selfish and greedy lot. And that's great. Greed, selfishness – those were like the tenets of the 80s, the greatest ever decade for like anything. So how do we convince all of America to get vaccinated – simple! Just give them lots of money to do so. So how do we get lots of money?"
"I dunno, I did the math. We could rob all the banks in Gotham, hell rob all the banks all the way to that horrible hellpit San Francisco, and we still won't have enough money to cover both paying off America to get vaccinated and funding the franchise potential of Dune."
"Simple. We forget about Dune."
"But Denis Villenueve will blow my head off if I don't do it?"
"And that is supposed to worry me how?" Ledger Joker said nonchalantly. "Who gives a fuck about Villenueve and his little Dune? That lil Nolan wannabe fuckface thinks he can top the franchise potential of the The Dark Knight Trilogy? Bitch plz!"
"I won't let you!"
"Yes you will." Ledger Joker took out his pencil and stabbed Leto Joker in the knee with it. Leto Joker fell down screaming as Ledger Joker pulled the pencil out and blood began spraying out like that one option you have on your garden hose. Desperately, he pulled a few moldy "medical" green herbs out of his pants and began stuffing the wound with them.
And just like Joe Biden cutting out anything better in his Build Back Better bill because he's completely unable to stand up to one guy from West Virginia, Leto Joker was quite helpless as Ledger Joker cut out any plans for the franchise potential of Dune from their big robbery plans.
This betrayal of cinematic auteur director Denis Villenueve and his big cabal of cinema would totally not have repercussions down the line.
"You'll be sorry when the chickens come home to roost!" Leto Joker swore as he crawled to his room to get more "herbs."
"C'mon, man, haven't ya ever played one of those crap-ass Telltale or Bioware games? Choices and consequences are all the same shitty illusion, they ain't real. What happens happens, yo."
"I got some bad news." Phoenix Joker butted in. "I also did some math… I calculated how much bribe money we'd need to get America vaccinated… factoring in the likely haul of an entire nationwide bank heist, we'd probably run outta moolah somewhere in the first coupla flyover states. And that's before needing to factor in convincing people to get their booster shots."
"Wait…. We gotta get more shots now? Fuck!" Ledger Joker groaned.
"Yeah, we should probably get on that before we do anything else. Cause who knows how many super covid variants are out there now. Delta was just the tip of the iceberg, yo." Phoenix Joker then got a news alert from Twitter on his phone, you know when the algorithm decides to send you some unsolicited doomscroll-inducing news update because Jack needs some engagement or some shit. "What… what the freak is an Omicron variant?"
"Sounds like some shitty boss fight in those crappola Michael Bayformers movies." Ledger Joker snickered.
"Hey, you shut your mouth!" Leto Joker whined as he stumbled back in all herbed up. "Those Michael Bay Transformers movies are underrated genius! A saga savagely attacking the death-decline of 21st Century American Capitalism, the bloated military-industrial complex, and the inevitable climate catastrophe! That pandering nostalgia-spew Bumblebee wishes it had what those Michael Bay Transformers movies did! Except for, I dunno, Number 2. I never saw that one."
"Man, homo, you high or what?" The two L Jokers began furiously arguing the merits of movie adaptations of a poorly animated 80s toy commercial and a frustrated Phoenix Joker screamed to break it up.
"Guys! Fuck Transformers! (Go-Bots were better anyways) We need money and we need lots of it fast! Any ideas after we hit all the banks?"
A light-bulb went off in Ledger Joker's head, like it was something he'd been dying to say and just needed to right opportunity to do so.
"It's simple…" Ledger Joker cackled. "We kill the Batmans!"
On the next Three Jokers in the Pandemic:
The Three Jokers get a visit from the lawyers of Warner Bros/DC Comics and learn why they cannot in fact actually kill any of the Batmen. Yes, even Val Kilmer's.
Heath Ledger's Jokers is audited for the exorbitant amounts of money he spends on Transformers and GI Joes.
Titanic Taco Tuesdays at Wayne Manor goes sideways.