Alex just stood in the same spot while all the armed henchmen emptied their magazines into him. Finally, when all of them ran out of bullets, they were all shocked.

"How the Hell is he not dead?"

"Did we all miss?"

"Is he a hologram?"

"Were we using blanks?"

"Are you all done?" Zeus asked all of them. "Because now it's my turn."

He threw his rifle at a random goon, and it struck him in the head with so much force his skull cracked open. While all of them stood in amazement at the amount of his strength, Zeus formed his Whipfist, and lashed it in front of him in a wicked arch. The single swipe took out about twenty of the gunmen.

"What the Hell do we do now boss?!" an almost catatonic thug cried out to the Penguin.

"Just keep putting' lead in 'im!" their boss shouted as he fired a small rocket out of his umbrella. Zeus saw it coming at him, and dove to his left, and the missile exploded on the ground next to him.

"Don't just stare at him you idiots!" the Penguin shouted. Zeus heard the familiar sound of a large weapon being prepared to fire. He looked to his side and saw another goon about to fire an RPG at him. He launched his Whipfist at the gunman, and the grapple end struck him in the chest. Zeus made the Whip retract, and it brought both the man and his weapon towards him. As they flew towards him, Zeus made his free arm Clawed, and when the thug was close enough, he made quick work of him. He tossed the henchman aside and aimed the rocket launcher towards the Penguin and his remaining men's balcony on the upper level.

"Oh Hell," Penguin grumbled as the missile came towards him and his men.

Zeus enjoyed hearing their shouts to run right before the impact, and watched all of them fall to the floor he was on. When all of them finally landed, he built up a massive amount of energy, and when he released it, several tendrils shot out of him, and he willed them to take care of all the men except Cobblepot.

The Penguin coughed as the debris began to settle. He saw Zeus calmly walking towards him with black and red spiked gauntlets on his arms, and he desperately grabbed his umbrella. He aimed it at Zeus and fired another missile at him. When it exploded on his chest, Zeus stumbled back a few steps and successfully regained his footing. He looked even more threatening than before now that anger was in his eyes. Penguin pulled the trigger again, but he was out of rockets. His face lost all color and hope as Zeus stood over him.

"Alright, what do ya want?" he desperately asked. "Money? Weapons? Connections? Women?"

Zeus grabbed him by the neck and lifted him into the air. "You're going to give me everything..."

XXXXXX

Batman and Commissioner Gordon were the only ones still at the Iceberg Lounge. The crime scene had been taped off, checked, and cleared. All of the victims were cleared out of the building. Nobody had found any trace of Oswald Cobblepot.

"You'd think that after all the things we've seen and been through that something like this wouldn't surprise me," Gordon said as he looked at the destroyed balcony. "But still... ONE man took out the Penguin and thirty of his payroll?"

"That's just it Commissioner," Batman said over to him as he looked for anything they might have missed. "Zeus isn't an ordinary man. After all, what kind of 'man' can almost kill a serial murderer AFTER said murderer killed him?"

"I know. But that doesn't explain the lack of... everything on Cobblepot. There's literally nothing. No body, no blood, no trail, no sign that he left. It's as if he just..."

"Vanished", the two of them said in unison. Suddenly, Batman saw something that definitely didn't belong where it was. Several small drops of a strange black ooze were splattered on the floor near the front door. He carefully knelt down and collected a few of them and put them in a secure transparent container, which he then held up to his eye.

"What is that?" Gordon asked after he walked over and observed the container as well.

"It belongs to Zeus."

"That guy bleeds black?" Gordon asked with a startled tone.

"I don't think it's his blood." He put the container on his utility belt and looked right at Gordon. "I think it's an actual piece of him."

XXXXXX

"I still find it hard to believe this city keeps almost ALL the villains in one place." Mercer stood on a high rooftop looking at Arkham Island. He knew some of them were kept their, but the Penguin had revealed to him that very few of them WEREN'T incarcerated in it. "Sure makes my job a Hell of a lot easier." He tensed his legs and launched himself towards the asylum.

XXXXXX

"Batman, are you there?"

"Yes Oracle, did you find something?" He was speeding across town in the Batmobile headed back to the Cave to analyze the ooze he had collected in the Iceberg Lounge

"Well I got good news... and I got weird news about our friend Zeus."

"What's the good news?"

"Really? We're going with good first? Okay, I dug as deep as I could, and then kept going, and I found a perfect match on who he is; Alex J. Mercer. He was an important researcher for a company called Gentek. He was incredibly smart. Years ahead of everyone else."

"Gentek?" With all his business connections, he wasn't very familiar with the company.

"Yeah, those guys were the definition of 'invitation only'. Secretive to no end. From what little I found on them, they specialized on bio-weaponry."

"What's the weird news?"

"Well... according to their records... Mercer is dead."

XXXXXX

Jeremiah Arkham looked at the man who called himself Alex Mercer with disbelief. The hooded man had just told him a very... interesting backstory about his life in Manhattan.

"A virus..." he said. "You're... a sapient virus."

Alex nodded.

"And you saved Manhattan from nuclear annihilation after unleashing a deadly infectious bio-weapon."

"Was I not clear on that part?" Mercer asked dryly.

"No no. You said it with excellent depth and detail. And you also say that the reason you left was because you could no longer handle being in a place where you were labeled as a monster... by a top secret under-the-radar army, who tried to nuke the city and created an airborne poison just to kill you?"

"That is correct Dr. Arkham. Everybody hated and feared me. I guess I just couldn't take it anymore.

"Well that's..." He couldn't think of a word to accurately describe his opinion of the man's tale. He thought the man sitting across the desk from him was so out of it he could give the Joker a run for his money. He changed the subject. "So anyway, why did you choose to come to Gotham? There are plenty of other places to seek peace in, and a lot of them are further away from the place where you consider yourself a pariah."

"First off, they know I'm a pariah, because I know I am. And I choose your city because one hears things about how it's so ruled by crime that a man in a rubber suit goes out every night and beats the Hell out of crooks and freaks. I came here because I figure if I could save a city as... let's say hopeless as yours, I could achieve my redemption and make up for the whole mess in New York."

"Why would you need to find redemption?"

"Because the breakout was all my fault!" Alex snapped at him. "I killed millions of innocent people and even put my own sister in mortal danger!" He stared at Jeremiah for a long moment, breathing heavily with his teeth bared. After a silent while, he relaxed and leaned back into the chair.

"Well Mr. Mercer, I've seen and heard many things in these walls, but I have never said this to anyone within them; you made an excellent choice coming here to seek help. Welcome to the Elizabeth Arkham Hospital For The Criminally Insane."

"Do I get any treats since I made an 'excellent choice'?"

"Well, you do seem to be more stable and have more... control over yourself than most of our other patients. I suppose we could make an agreement."

"Does free reign over where I go on the island sound alright?"

Jeremiah pressed his fingers together as he went into deep consideration. After about half a minute, he looked back at Alex. "I think that's reasonable, but with a few conditions of course."

"Of course," Alex agreed flatly.

"So long as you never miss a single private or group session, never try to leave the island, don't interfere with security, return to your cell by an adequate hour, and don't kill any of your fellow patients, we have a deal."

"I'm alright with all of those." Mercer was offered Jeremiah's hand, and he shook it, sealing their agreement. And he really was alright with every single condition. He wouldn't take out any of the super-villain inmates until he memorized every single detail of the entire island, and came up with an unstoppable failure-proof plan. Manhattan had taught him that strategy should always come before first strike.

XXXXXX

Alex sat on the bed in his new cell. They had given him an orange short-sleeved jumpsuit, as was the standard clothing for patients in the asylum. He had tossed the original one they had given him and made his biomass clothes change into an identical copy, except he took the time to add a hood on it. He wanted everyone who was now trapped in the loony bin with him to know that they weren't on the same level as him and that he was more in control of his situation, and to recognize the hood as a sign that he was around, and probably intended on either maiming or Consuming them.

He looked through the steel bars that were supposed to keep him in the small square room when he was supposed to be inside of it; they would fail their purpose miserably whenever he felt like moving around at night since he never slept anymore. He looked across the hall and into the cell of his 'neighbor' as is what the term was. She had the palest skin he had ever seen, or at least he thought she was pale, and her hair was symmetrically divided right down the middle; the left half was somewhere between an very dark navy blue and shiny black, and the right was a dark cherry red. She had a carefree and giddy smile on her lips and was humming a cheerful but random tune as she looked off into space. The back wall of her cell had numerous pictures of the Joker on it, and all of them were decorated with several kiss marks left by both a red and a black lipstick.

Her random head movements eventually led her to look at him as he looked back right at her with his light scowl. "Why so glum, hoodie? Say, why do you get a hood? Why are YOU so special?" she asked in a happy and somewhat singsong voice.

"You don't want to know," he said back to her flatly.

"Alrighty then. But why are you so gloomy?"

"Why are you so happy?" he shot back.

"I'm just always happy! I don't see a reason not to be."

"How about the fact that we are inside an insane asylum? Or what about the guards can get away with treating us like rabid animals?"

"Oh I get it!" she giggled. "Your one of those guys who only looks at the bad stuff!"

"A pessimist?" he said with boredom. "I am not one. And I'm not insane either. Unlike you." He said the last part under his breath.

She laughed. "If you're not kooky, why are ya in here?"

"Because I want to be," he told her.

She laughed again. "You just sorta cancelled yerself out! You'd HAVE to be nutty to WANT to be in here!" She struggled to keep her laughter under control. "I like you. Yer weird like Mistah J."

"Really?" he said sarcastically. He figured that by 'Mistah J' she meant the Joker. "I don't see myself laughing at everything I see."

Again she giggled. "Yer funny! I'm Harley."

He looked at her carefully, and then decided to tell her his real name since she would probably forget it in five minutes. "Mercer."

He then chose to get some air. Plus he felt like the crazy girl would cause him to lose IQ points if they continued their idle conversation. He lifted himself up off the bed and gently pushed the unlocked cell door open. Harley looked at him with her eyes twice as big as before.

"How did you do that Merce?" she asked in amazement.

"I pushed it open," he said. "They didn't lock it and they don't care where I go. And please don't ever call me that again.

She looked at him with a face that was pouting and contained traces of jealousy. "Why not?" she whined.

"Because like I said, I'm not crazy." He smirked at her and walked off.

"That's not the question I wanted you to answer!" she called out to him.

XXXXXX

Alex walked out the front doors of the Intensive Treatment building. The guards clearly saw him, and they wished him a nice afternoon. He looked up to the partly cloudy sky as he made his way to Specific Treatment.

"Are all people so... feeble minded?" he asked himself. He looked around to see if anyone was around, but then he realized it wouldn't have mattered if people saw him having a conversation with himself since he was already in an insane asylum. "I tell him nothing but the truth and he concludes that it was nothing but a story pieced together by an unstable mind. I know that people have always feared things they don't understand, but would they purposely lie to themselves and say a strange truth is just a maniac's fantasy?" Even though he had once been human, he was the closest thing to an entirely sane sociopath his entire life, so he never really understood how a person's mind works. He shook off the thoughts as he entered the building.

XXXXXX

Poison Ivy was lying down in her custom cell, still somewhat damaged from her brawl with Zeus.

Suddenly, she heard knocking on the glass and a voice speaking to her through the intercom.

"Hello, mon hiver a augmenté."

She lifted herself up into a sitting position, and was shocked by who she saw. Even though he was now wearing the asylum's jumpsuit, she could tell by the hood on it and his stature that Zeus was standing on the other side of the walls of her cell.

XXXXXX

Two weeks later...

Mercer was in a small group therapy session with three other men. He really didn't want to be there at all, let alone with people who were actually crazy, but he still somewhat needed to come up with a plan to manipulate and exploit the many twisted halls and rooms of the asylum buildings to annihilate almost all the villains locked up in there with him. Plus two of the people in the session with him were on his primary hit-list. Sitting to his right was Dr. Jonathan Crane, better known nowadays as the Scarecrow. On Mercer's left was Edward Nigma, known mostly as the Riddler. On Edward's left was a middle aged, half bald man named Arnold Wesker, better known as the Ventriloquist. What made him the strangest out of the group was that he had a dummy dressed like Al Capone that he called Scarface, and had been talking through it the entire time. The four of them were sitting in a curve and were all facing an asylum doctor, who was a somewhat elderly man with very long silver hair. All of them just went to calling him Doc, and he didn't seem to mind.

"So Arnold, how are you feeling today?" Doc asked. "Calm? Happy? Nonchalant?"

"I'm feelin' annoyed Doc," Scarface answered for his holder. "An' it's all 'cause of Mr. Constantly-pissed-lookin'-fah-no-reason." The dummy waved his wooden arm at Alex and Arnold glanced over at him nervously.

"What did I do now, Wesker?" Alex asked the man, not the dummy, with boredom. He noticed that almost everyone who talked to the Ventriloquist mostly held the conversation with Scarface. That further proved his point that he truly didn't belong in there with all the freaks. He actually realized and remembered that Arnold was the one who controlled what Scarface said, and all the other inmates said that the dummy was the one pulling the strings between the two of them. He was a walking biomass of disease, and yet he was the most rational thing on the whole island.

"Yer always just sittin' there with that stupid angry and bored look a' yers, thinkin' yer so high n' mighty." If he only knew. "The freakin' Joker has more expressions than ya! Well I'm sick a' it. I bet I could kick yer ass with my eyes shut!"

"I wouldn't try if I were you," Alex said dryly. "I'd hate to send you to the morgue."

"Ya see Doc?!" Scarface turned to look at their therapist, who has been looking on with silent interest. "Even when he makes threats he keeps the same freakin' face!"

"Maybe he just doesn't care enough to give you a reaction," Nigma suggested.

"Oh yeah?" The dummy again looked at Alex. "Well maybe you'll 'care' if once I get outta here, I go find ya sistah, an' make her my bitch!" Arnold looked at his puppet with an expression of pure shock.

"You motherfucking!..." Alex jolted out of his seat, and fought with all his will to not slice both the dummy and the man to pieces right then and there. Arnold held up his free arm in front of him in fear while Scarface gestured for Mercer to bring it on.

"Alex," Doc said with a calming tone. "Remember to control your outbursts. Violence will not solve anything."

Mercer didn't believe that. Back in Manhattan almost all his problems had been solved with violence. However, he couldn't afford to expose himself now and lose the element of surprise, so he breathed deeply, and sat back down.

"I sincerely apologize, Mr. Mercer," Arnold said in an honest but nervous voice.

"You ever say something like that again, I'll throw that fucking dummy into a wood chipper, and then light what's left on fire."

"So you fear for your sister..." Crane said under his breath.

"Gentlemen, I fear we have to draw this to a close," Doc said looking at his wrist watch. "But before we depart, let me ask you something; what one word comes to mind when you think of your fellow humans?"

None of them could fathom why Doc would ask such a random question, but they all thought deeply for a minute, and then Crane, Scarface, Nigma, and Mercer gave an answer respectively.

"Paranoid."

"Lazy."

"Idiotic."

"Weak."

XXXXXX

Mercer walked down the hallway marked "Incurable" looking for two cells; one he knew was filled, and one was empty. Right behind him was the personal guard who had been hired to do nothing but follow him around and closely observe whatever he did. Apparently Jeremiah Arkham added another condition to their deal. The two of them made their way down to the far end of the hall where two armed guards stood on either side of a solid steel door. As Mercer and his shadow of a guard stepped in front of them, the one the left looked down at them.

"I request a private audience with Zsasz," Mercer stated to the guard, who then looked over to his partner. They stared at each other for a moment and shrugged their shoulders. They didn't care at all if Zsasz tore apart an inmate, just so long as it wasn't a sane person. They undid several locks on the door, and stepped aside to let him in. His private guard tried to follow him, but Alex held out his arm and blocked him from going any farther. Mercer shook his head slowly, and gently shoved him back and stepped into the room. The door closed with a very loud slam behind him and he looked around the room; there was nothing to see. The only things in the room were a sink, toilet, and a slab in the very middle of the small space Zsasz called home.

The sociopath was lying down on the slab, but he sat up when he heard the door shut. He looked at Mercer with a confused look while Mercer looked back at him with a faint scowl. He stood up and just kept looking at Mercer. He had on a straight jacket that had several more buckles and locks than a normal one. His feet were bare and shackled together. A pair of orange pants covered his legs. Several chains were connected to his clothes and to the walls.

"I've heard things about you," Alex said to him. "Had to see if they were true."

"What kind of... things?" Zsasz asked as he slowly approached Mercer. The chains on his back stopped him when he was about six feet away from Mercer. He leaned forward as far as he could, wanting to get as close a look as he could at the man who wasn't afraid of him at all. The two of them saw a trace of bloodlust in each other's eyes.

"That you are covered with self-inflicted scars. I can clearly that's true." He looked over all the exposed flesh of Zsasz, and saw lines permanently embedded in his skin everywhere. "Do they mean anything, or do you just get bored?"

"Oh no, it's not out of boredom. It's out of liberation."

"Liberation?" With all the things he had seen, Alex was still intrigued by how messed up this man was.

"Every single mark on my body represents a zombie that once walked this Earth that I released from its pointless existence." He seemed to bask in some horrific memories.

"Pointless existence?" Alex began to see Zsasz as more and more screw-loose every second. "Why would their lives be pointless?" Mercer thought everybody had a place in life, even if it was providing him with a perfect disguise.

"My young acquaintance, everything is pointless. Nothing matters. Absolutely nothing. The pigs that I free from their stagnant prison are thanking me every passing second."

"If nothing matters then why are you still here?" Mercer was now extremely interested as to why Zsasz hadn't committed suicide if he saw everything as pointless.

"Because if I don't do it nobody will. Everyone will stay stuck with this pathetic life of theirs."

"Uh huh. So what makes you think that?"

"Well it's a very long story."

"I've got time." The more Mercer knew, the easier it would be for him to kill this... animal when the time came.

XXXXXX

"And as the life left his eyes, he taught me that it all will always be for nothing. For his second reward, his mark became my very first. I'd show you if I could, but it's located on my arm unfortunately."

"Fascinating. So do you have a mark planned for the Batman?" Mercer knew that almost all the inmates in Arkham were there because they had been caught by the Caped Crusader. He would have to thank the Batman sometime in the future for putting the majority f his prey in one single place.

"Actually yes. It's the inside of my left eyelid."

Mercer, despite having just heard one of the most depressing and insane stories ever, was somewhat surprised by that statement. "... Why?"

"Because it'll constantly remind me of him. Once the scar tissue builds up and hardens, it'll scrape against the jelly of my eye like steel wool every time I close my eyes or blink, and every time I'll be reminded of what an irritating, unbearable, irrepressible nuisance his was."

Mercer smirked at him. "No offense Vic, but if you ask me, you'll never get that mark. If you've never managed to kill him before, why would any of your future attempts be any different?"

Now Zsasz had a creepy smile of his own. "I suggest that you try not to get on my bad side, boy. The only thing for me to do on here is isometrics all damn day, and you seem to have forgotten that you are trapped in here with me until the guards decide to come back."

"On the contrary, Mr. Zsasz, you have it completely wrong." Mercer's right arm shot out with lightning speed and wrapped around Zsasz's exposed neck with a force comparable to the jaws of life. Zsasz stared at him with wide eyes as Mercer made his claws cover the arm he had Zsasz in. "You're trapped in here... with me."

"You... you are..." Zsasz couldn't form words.

"That's right, Vic. The mighty Zeus is in Arkham Asylum. And the best part is..." He could hear the guards returning to the door to let him out. He let go of Zsasz and made his arm return to normal. "Nobody, right mind or not, will believe you over me." He smirked again as the huge door opened. He left Zsasz alone with a look of shock and horror. He walked off down the hall feeling quite accomplished, but little did he know that his private guard had watched the whole thing unfold. He looked around to make sure he was alone once he and Mercer were outside, and then waited for Mercer to go to Specific Treatment like he always did when he had free time. Once he was alone outside, the guard pulled out an extremely special cell phone and pressed one number and brought it up to speak into it.

"I have confirmed that Alex Mercer is Zeus, Ms. Waller."

XXXXXX

It was the middle of the night and it was raining hard as thunder filled the atmosphere with almost deafening volumes. Batman was cruising quickly all over town on patrol in the Batmobile. Something wasn't right; ever since his escape, neither the Joker nor Two-Face had done literally anything. Batman was honestly worried that Mercer had gotten his hands on them. Mercer's quietness also worried him. Mercer didn't seem like the type to just do nothing for a long time.

Suddenly he received a frantic call from Oracle. "Batman, once again I have both good and bad news."

"What's the bad news?"

"Joker just brought himself out of the dark. He somehow hacked into every radio frequency in the city, and said how he was the premiere villain with a theme, and now that every villain has one, he says they're all freeloaders who don't deserve the attention they get. He claims that he should always be the center of all the spotlights. He also said that those who have been around as long as he has also get in the way. So he said he was going to 'eliminate the competition' to get his 'royalties' or something. Do you have any clue what he's up to?"

After pondering what he had been told, Batman made the car swerve around completely and began rocketing off in the opposite direction. "I know exactly what he's planning. What's the good news? Did we finally learn something from that slime that fell off of Mercer?"

"No, Alfred and Nightwing are still running some tests, but it does involve Mercer. He used his own name to check himself into Arkham, and according to the records he hasn't left yet."

"This night can go either very smoothly, or it can end in complete disaster. I just have to get to Joker before Mercer does."

"Why would Mercer be a problem with this?"

"Because Joker is headed exactly where Mercer is waiting for him."

XXXXXX

Mercer was standing in the rain outside on the very edge of the island, watching the waves from the ocean crash into the cliff he was on top of. He couldn't stand being in his cell any longer that night because Harley began screaming with joy after she claimed to have heard the Joker on the radio. He found her extremely unbearable. He couldn't imagine how the Joker managed to put up with her.

He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. He felt the coolness of the rain impact his face. Even though he was a heap of biomass, he still had all five of his senses. He still felt emotions and wants. For example, he almost lost himself in the urge to kill Zsasz when his claw was tightly wrapped around the monster's neck, but his fear of being exposed and labeled as a monster himself yet again made it possible for him to withhold himself.

He let his mind drift off on its own. As it now always did, his brain fed his vision with memories of Poison Ivy. For a reason he knew but feared, she was almost always on his mind. For a while, he couldn't figure out what had stopped him from driving his lethal claws into her head, but now he knew exactly what did.

At that moment, his eyes shot open when an insane fit of laughter echoed all throughout the island. He changed his biomass clothes back into his usual attire and formed his claws on both arms.

"Welcome home Joker. It'll also be your grave..."

XXXXXX

Joker walked through the front gate of Arkham carrying a silver walking stick. He joyfully strolled towards the asylum's buildings with about fifty of his men following right behind him. Every single one of them was armed to the teeth.

"Boys!" Joker happily shouted over the thunder. "Let's get this show on the road!"