Joker returned to consciousness only to find himself being dragged along backwards by old Batsy, who had hold of the back of his coat in a vice-like grip. Still pleasantly dazed from the psychic union and subsequent lack of consciousness, he pedalled his heels in a half-hearted attempt to halt the other man. As he did, he watched the madness he was being forced to leave behind.
The police, visors on their riot helmets pulled down and grotesque gas masks hanging from their faces, had loosed tear gas into the midst of the frenzied mob. Although this didn't seem to have done much to quell the rioters, some of whom looked as though they had succumbed to the gravity of madness, the police were still managing to pick them off in ones and twos, hauling them away to waiting vans. No doubt the situation would be under control soon. What a shame.
He turned slightly in Batman's grip, intending to tell the man that if it wasn't for that riot they'd started keeping the policemen's hands full, then they wouldn't have been able to walk away undisturbed like they were now, but found himself being dumped unceremoniously onto the passenger seat of the Batmobile. The forceful slam of the door told him that Batman was very angry.
Face pressed against the seat where he had fallen, the clown prince of crime licked his scars and chuckled dryly. His mind took him back to that night in the interrogation room, his first face-to-face meeting with Batsy and the unrestrained aggression of the crime-fighter. Aggression that the Joker had personally coaxed out and nearly pushed over the edge. It had been such a rush of power, every blow he'd received affirming that it was he who was in control, not the Batman. He wondered if the crime-fighter were that angry now, if perhaps he could make him lose control again and spat out more laughter.
Hearing the driver's door open, Joker scrambled clumsily into a sitting position. In the ensuing silence, the Batmobile's engine growled into life and then was left to idle. He glanced at the Batman's stern profile and all of a sudden anger flared up within him like a white hot spark. The Bat was putting him in the position of a child again, taking on the role of a scolding parent, making his offspring squirm at the prospect of reprimand. Did Batman still not understand? After everything, why was he still refusing Joker the respect he deserved, the equality?
"I ought to take you back to Arkham." His gravelly voice, thick with anger, was hardly distinguishable from the vehicle's motor. "What did you think you were doing? Innocent people could have been hurt. If this arrangement is going to work, then you'll have to learn to co operate with me and play by my rules."
The clown grinned, his resentment already forgotten. "Oh Batsy, you're not going to take me back to Arkham. You need me."
And then he grinned more because the silence meant that Batman knew he was right.
The engine caught and the Batmobile was easing out of the alleyway it had been parked in. Joker leant his chin on his palm and watched his city roll smoothly past the window. Because it was his city. Mister Freeze had never stood a chance of taking it to begin with, but now that Joker had the Bat on his side, he would be able to teach Freeze a lesson for even thinking he could possibly have stood a chance. Then he'd teach Gotham a lesson for thinking, even for a moment, that it could have belonged to anyone other than him.
Slowly, he became aware that Batman was talking to him and listened in, although he kept his gaze fixed out of the window.
"…Some of the plane tickets from a town in Germany famous for its psychological research centre. It's too close to be a coincidence. I think we'll find out more at Porter's."
"Not thinking of breaking and entering, are we Batsy?" Joker asked, thoughtfully splaying the fingertips of one hand across the window, as if he could take hold of the scenery rushing past, just reach out and take it. "Not very, uh, ethical, is it? Not breaking into the house of a pretty lady like Janice, all alone there, completely at your mercy." He clicked his tongue on the t's, making them into something vulgar. "Oh, but you must have felt so lonely since Rachel… hm… since Rachel took off."
He waited with twisting anticipation for the Bat's resolve to break. It would be the head first he thought, Batman would never learn, he would just grab ahold of Joker by the hair and smash his face against the window. The clown scrunched his eyes up, awaiting impact, but it never came. Instead, the Batmobile seemed to be slowing to a halt. He opened one eye and confirmed this impression. So the Bat hadn't broken. But that was okay, there would be plenty of other opportunities.
"I didn't ask for you to join me, Joker."
"You did." He considered a moment and then repeated more forcefully "You did," but no one answered because he was alone in the vehicle. He opened the door and hurried after the other man.
Batman glanced to the side as Joker came up to him, then turned his attention back to the lock he was expertly picking on Janice Porter's ground floor window. "I work best on my own," he concluded in something that was almost a threat but not quite, issuing a little grunt as he tried to force the window open from the outside. It wouldn't give, even with the lock opened.
"You know what your problem is?" Slipping a knife out of his pocket, Joker inserted its point beneath where the window met the sill and jimmied it back and forth. "You're scared to share anything with anyone in case they undermine your delusion that you're this almighty, infallible being." The knife pocketed once again, he leant his not inconsiderable strength to Batman's and together they were able to lift the window. "You're afraid of being human."
"And you're inhuman, nothing's going to change that," Batman rumbled irritably, going down on one knee so that he could give Joker a boost up through the window. Moving his head sharply to avoid a flailing boot as the other man scrambled out of sight, he added "The sooner we find out what's happened to Strange and sort out this psychic link mess, the better." A small thump from inside the house announced Joker's safe arrival and Batman easily swung himself up into the building.
In the light of a dying afternoon, the two men stood together and surveyed Janice Porter's study. It was a tidy affair, tastefully decorated, the obvious money that had been put into it speaking volumes about her ruthless ambition and determination. Just like in a lawyer's office, a large bookcase dominated one corner of the room, heaving with leather-bound books of law that looked as though they had never been touched, except by the hands of a maid when she remembered to dust them. On a side table sat a telephone, its red light winking on and off to announce one new message, whilst on a large mahogany desk covered with organised clutter, a computer peacefully slumbered.
Batman made immediately for this piece of modern technology, taking command of a handsome leather office chair as he switched it on. The machine hummed and whirred irritably, as if aware that it was being used by an intruder. "We're looking for anything that could connect her either to Mister Freeze or Doctor Strange," the Dark Knight was saying over the mechanical noises, but Joker had already grown bored and stopped listening.
Something across the room caught the clown's eye and he wandered over. It was another desk, much smaller than the mahogany one housing the computer. There was a thick scrapbook open on its surface, but the light this far away from the window was poor, making it difficult to see what had been pasted into the book. Absently, he reached up and snapped on the long, thin desk lamp affixed to the wall. Warm light flooded the small area and he found himself looking down at a face he knew very well – the Batman. Dozens of newspaper clippings about the fugitive were crammed onto the scrapbook's pages, some hanging off over the edge as they vied for space.
"Hm," Joker opined, clicking his tongue against the back of his teeth. Raising his eyes, he took in the additional clippings lying around waiting to be added to the scrapbook, then the pictures of Batman tacked onto the space of wall between the desk's surface and the mounted light. Some of the photos looked like the kind of police surveillance pictures taken by long-range lenses. There were even a few print-offs from CCTV footage. Reflectively, he popped his lips. "And they said I was crazy."
It didn't fail to escape his notice that some of the pictures had been defaced, slashes rending the Dark Knight's face in two, or angry scribbles sealing his eyes and mouth forever. Wherever there was space between the crowded clippings, a cramped hand had added in annotations, none of them with anything particularly pleasant to say about the Bat, all of them damnations. A dedicated Bat-hater himself, Joker felt a certain sense of understanding with Gotham's new DA, but the feeling didn't last for long.
Wondering, not a little jealously, what was so special about Batsy that this woman had dedicated a whole scrapbook to her hatred of him, Joker rifled through the upper drawers of the small desk. He came across an unmarked bottle of pills and upended it over the clippings, spreading the drugs amongst the slips of paper. Picking one up between gloved fingers, he examined it without much interest, then glanced over his shoulder to see how his partner in crime was faring.
As soon as he did, as if it had been some kind of unspoken signal, Batman pushed back from the computer and stood up. "I've got what we came for," he announced. "She's been renting a formerly abandoned property out under a different name." Seemingly at random he reached up and picked out a CD from the paltry collection on a shelf above the desk, it was mostly classical and easy listening – no jazz at all, Joker noted with disgust. Batman opened up the CD case and instead of a disc, a neatly folded envelope fell out. "And here's the key for it," he continued, producing the artefact from the envelope.
Whilst he fiddled about with various gadgets from his utility belt, making a copy of the key, he looked over in the other man's direction. Joker stiffened in excitement, wondering if the Bat would see the small shrine dedicated to him and how he would react to it, but apparently it escaped the vigilante's notice because he looked back down with nothing more dramatic than a growl of "Leave everything how you found it, we don't want her to know we've been here."
The clown prince of crime looked down at the mess he'd made, decided it looked fine and simply snapped off the desk light.
Leaving Bats to his own clean-up operation, he made for the phone with its waiting answering machine message. Talk about overlooking potentially vital evidence, he thought to himself, it was lucky he was here. Depressing the button that would play the message, both he and Batman jumped a little as a familiar German-accented voice filled the darkening room.
"Porter, you are never in when you say you will be." The tape relayed faithfully, the machinelike quality it gave the recorded voice completely suiting the emotionless tone of the speaker. "I am beginning to think that you are not as serious about this as I thought you were. You have been useful to me, but you have not been able to keep the Batman from interfering as you promised. Thus, I am thinking of terminating-"
At that moment, the sound of the front door being opened reached Batman's trained ears. Although the message was certainly enlightening, he'd heard enough to confirm certain suspicions and hearing the rest of it wasn't worth getting caught for. He lunged with silent urgency towards the telephone, snapped the message off mid-sentence, and then seized the other man by the elbow so that he could bundle him out of the window. He took a couple of seconds to check that everything was how it had been and then followed suit, just as he was certain he heard high-heeled footsteps approaching the room.
On the road once again, the Batmobile racing along like a shadow given life, Batman glanced at his travelling companion. "Did you hear that noise in the background of the message?"
In that moment they didn't need a psychic link to completely understand the other's thoughts. "Like thunder," Joker agreed. "The same noise we heard when the sky opened."
"Not thunder, it was a train passing. The house Porter is renting is right beside a train track. If we heard it, then that suggests Strange must be there, no doubt along with Freeze. Joker, we can end this tonight."