I'm out of school, and it still takes me three weeks to update this. Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! I will try harder!
Thanks for all the reviews! I love you all so much!
TotallyTropical: You can see the Joker's crazy socks while he's locked up in TDK.
Purple Ghost Sausage: Thanks for catching my mistakes. I'm normally pretty good with piece VS peace, except with that phrase.
Lauralot: Thanks for all the love. Yeah!
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"Puddin', if you don't know how to use it, put it down. You're gonna make it blow up, and then you're gonna be pickin' shrapnel out of your face. Come on, Mister J, leave Professor Crane's stuff alone." Harley said.
"It's filled with fear toxin, not propane, Harley. I don't think it even can explode. Besides, this is, uh, for science, since the stupid Scarecrow refused to just blow up decently." The Joker replied.
Harley sighed. "Mister J, you all ready know what's gonna happen. It ain't like you never saw Professor Crane dragged back to Arkham screamin' about bats, or crows, or whatever it is he's so afraid of."
If Crane wasn't so worried about his injured head, or the idea of being forced to inhale his own poison and spending the rest of the night in a waking nightmare world where everything from the couch to the malnourished shrubbery was out to kill him, he might have kindly asked Harley to shut her yap trap and not humiliate him. The lucky little clown had never been under the influence of his fear toxin, so she didn't know just how horrible it was. As for the birds and the bats, the Scarecrow was not afraid of either. All right, he wouldn't exactly invite a colony of bats to nest in his attic and hang them around the house as decorations, or touch one, or willingly venture anywhere near where they might live, but that did not equate to a fear of the winged vermin.
"Fine, I'll admit it. I don't care if this has any scientific value at all. I just want to see Johnny miserable. Is that so wrong?" The Clown Prince asked.
"Yeah, it is." Harley said.
The Joker frowned and considered lobbing the canister at Harley. She would probably see it coming and duck. Curse her and her incredible flexibility. Well, curse it now. It had been a lot of fun earlier in the day.
"Who asked you, anyway? Why don't you stop interfering in my conversations with myself and make yourself useful? Help me crack this egg." The Joker said.
"No! If you wanna torture the Professor, leave me outta it." Harley said.
"Help me right now!"
"No way, Mister J!"
"If you don't get over here, so help me-"
Thank God for unhealthy relationships. Crane desperately hoped the two clowns got into a physical brawl that ended with them forgetting all about him and having passionate sex out in the yard, where the neighbors could all gawk. That would give him enough time to crawl the ten feet to his truck, get the engine going again, and get the bloody hell out of there. It would also get the police involved, when that insane cat-collector down the road called the cops to report the Joker had taken off his pants and she was deeply offended by the act. Crane doubted if any of the other neighbors would do anything more than grab their cameras and film the action.
"And then I'll go and stay with Red for, like, three weeks, and you'll have to live with that fat, smelly henchman! And then, even if you come to visit, I'll just shut the blinds and ignore you." Harley yelled.
"I'll burn Red's greenhouse to the ground."
Harley emitted a horrified shriek. "How can you even think to do that? Red's my best friend in the whole world!"
Crane shifted his head, and the world lurched. So that was what it felt like being on a crab fishing boat in the middle of the Bering Sea while an arctic storm churned. Suddenly, the Scarecrow had a good deal more sympathy for the men on Deadliest Catch. He certainly would stop abusing them for their excessive use of the word or un-word 'ain't'.
He wouldn't be able to drive if he passed out in the driveway. The Scarecrow brought a hand up to his head, and it came away sticky with blood. Damn it. He'd have a beautiful night, finding a temporary hideout to avoid the police and the Batman, and sewing up his head while he was at it. Sewing frightening masks was a lovely hobby for a villain to have; stitching up what was underneath the mask was at the far opposite end of the fun spectrum.
"I hope Mel eats your feet right off! Then you'll have to stump around on peg legs for the rest of your life."
"Only pirates get peg legs, stupid. Clowns get bionic robot feet."
"They do not."
"Do too."
"Uh-uh, there's no way anybody's givin' you bionic feet."
It was like an argument between two especially slow and vindictive kindergarteners. Crane, was he not in danger of being attacked with his own poison, might have stayed around to see who won the verbal sparring match. Harley, obviously, was right, but the Joker was insane and utterly immune to logic. He was like the Anti-Spock. Of course, the Scarecrow would take the canister from the Joker's hand and willingly inhale the contents before revealing he made Star Trek analogies in his head.
The Scarecrow risked enduring another attack of vertigo to raise himself up onto his elbows. The Joker missed the movement entirely; he was too busy shouting about all the things he would crush when he had robotic legs. For some reason, the clown said he wanted to destroy all the places that sold coffee for more than three dollars. As far as Crane knew, the Joker didn't even drink coffee. The caffeine, combined with his constant hyper insanity would probably make his eyeballs explode from the pressure.
The Scarecrow dragged his body forward a few inches. The world threatened to hurtle out of control and send him flying into the void. That damned, foul, abusive, lunatic clown had certainly given him a concussion, and a possible skull fracture. Crane wouldn't be all that surprised if he was found by the police sometime before morning, muttering incoherently and bleeding from his ears.
The pickup stood mockingly ten feet away. If the Scarecrow hadn't been brained, he could have covered the distance in a second. At this pace, a crawl a banana slug with a defective pseudopod could have matched, Crane would be lucky to reach it before the sun crept over the horizon in the morning.
"And then I would... Hey, Spooky, where do you think you're going? Is my plot to stomp on Batman's face with robotic feet boring you?" The Joker asked.
"Eh?"
"Eh? Eh is not an answer." The Joker said.
Crane had a precious few options. He could lie, and say the Joker's violent and utterly nonsensical plan for acquiring futuristic and lethal prosthetics was incredibly fascinating to him. The Joker would probably see right through him, and add a fresh dose of pain to the Scarecrow's misery. Crane could also tell the truth, though, despite the popular saying, it would not set him free. It would likely end up putting him in a full body cast for the next three months. He supposed, legally, he could plead the Fifth and not incriminate himself. There wasn't much of a chance the Joker knew or cared about constitutional law, sadly.
"No, it's not boring. I wouldn't mind seeing his head stomped on." The Scarecrow said. "In fact, I find the idea tantalizing."
"Then why are you slithering away like a snake?" The clown asked.
"I, uh, miss my mask and want it to hear every graphic detail. It's in the truck, sitting on the passenger's seat." Crane said.
"You want your mask to hear my devilishly delightful plan? Next time the Arkham therapists say you have a problem, you should listen." The Joker said.
"Right, coming from the man who thinks it's funny to give orphaned children balloons filled with toxic gas." Crane muttered. The crazy clown didn't hear him.
"I guess having a bigger audience wouldn't hurt. Since Harley's being a brat about my brilliant plan, I'll just ignore her and pretend she's not even there." The Joker said.
Harley stuck her tongue out. When the Joker failed to acknowledge her, she began to pull a series of increasingly grotesque faces. Crane idly wondered how one of his subjects, under the influence of fear toxin, would react to the blonde's incredibly rubber face. He predicted there would be much screaming, flailing, and crying.
The Joker continued to deny Harley's existence, even when she stuck a finger in each nostril and began to snort like an angry bull. He patted Crane on the head, the slight contact enough to make the Scarecrow wish he'd just pass out already. The clown walked over to the pickup, opened the door, and retrieved the burlap mask.
Instead of handing the mask back to its rightful owner, the Joker slipped it over his right hand, like the world's ugliest sock puppet. Crane grimaced in abject horror. He had put his head, his face inside there! Now the Joker was touching it. Every time he put the mask on in the future, he'd have to remember the lunatic's long, pale fingers playing with it. The Scarecrow wanted to scream.
"Hi, I'm Johnny's mask, but you can call me Spooky Junior. I'm made from a potato sack, and I live on the Scarecrow's head. He needs to shower more, before things start living in his hair." The Joker, or the mask dancing around on his hand, said.
The voice the mad clown chose for Crane's mask would have sounded perfectly natural coming out of Barney the Dinosaur. It was the bubbly, cheerful tone that kids under the age of five couldn't get enough of, and everyone over the age of five ran away from. The voice fit the mask about as well as Cinderella's glass slipper fit the massive paw of her stepsister.
"Really? Isn't that just fascinating? And, why does Johnny love you so much, Spooky Junior?" The Joker asked his own hand.
"Because he never had a real girlfriend in his entire life. Poor Johnny spent all his days in his lab, and all his nights attacking the hookers that wouldn't sleep with him because he was such a nerd." The clown said.
Crane went bright scarlet from a combination of rage and humiliation. How dare the Joker defile his mask, threaten his sexual prowess, belittle his experiments and his motivations, and insinuate that he picked up hookers! Forgetting about how the world tended to shake, rattle and roll like California during the feared Big One whenever he moved his head, the Scarecrow pushed himself up into a sitting position. When he unwisely tried to stand, his own mask was shoved into his face.
"We're trying to have a friendly conversation about the ladies of the night, Johnny. Sit down, sit down, sit down!" The mask said.
When Crane was a little too slow in his response, his trusted burlap sack began to whack him on the head. The Scarecrow stumbled backwards, desperately trying to grab onto something. If he knocked his skull off anything, especially the asphalt driveway, he was going out. He all ready knew what kind of mischief the Joker got up to with his unconscious body. He had no desire to wake up with a migraine and find himself dressed in women's lingerie or something equally mortifying.
By some miracle, Crane was just quick enough to grab hold of his mask, and the Joker's hand beneath it. The clown was yanked forward, nearly losing his footing. For one second, the Scarecrow was sure he was going to pull the Joker down on top of him. Then he could spend the rest of his life mentally traumatized.
The Joker managed to dig his shoes in and regain his balance. The Scarecrow was still hanging onto his hand like a clingy girlfriend. For a guy who had just been beaten over the head, he had a tenacious grip.
"What'd you think you're doing? That's my hand! Give it back." The Joker demanded.
"And that's my mask. Give it to me and I'll let go." Crane replied.
"I'm having a nice chat with Spooky Junior. You'll get him back when I'm done with him. I can't promise he'll be in one piece, or not on fire, because I like to play rough, but you will get him back eventually." The Joker said.
"You're not burning my mask, you son of a bitch!" The Scarecrow shouted.
"Maybe I'll just paint Junior pink and put Harley's Disney stickers all over him. Then he can have a gender crisis, and you can deal with that." The clown said.
"My mask is not gay, or transsexual! Or any sex at all for that matter. That still doesn't mean I'm letting you touch it anymore." Crane said.
"I don't think it's very tolerant of you not to accept Spooky Junior the way he is. Maybe Harley and I should adopt him. What do you think Harley? Do you want a kid?"
Harley stopped pulling faces and let out a happy squeak. "Do you mean it, Mister J? Are we really gonna have an actual kid? Or are we gonna steal one from somebody and raise him as our own? What's it gonna be Puddin'?"
"We're taking Spooky Junior because Johnny's prejudiced against the gay community, which Junior is obviously a member of. If you asked me, Johnny might be one of those gays in denial, the way he's holding my hand. It isn't that I'm not flattered, but I've got my Harley and she's got that mallet…" The Joker said.
Harley's face fell, her pigtails drooping. "Oh, I don't even like that mask. It's ugly and kinda looks like somethin' Michael Myers would wear in Halloween. You know I don't like that movie, Mister J."
"I'm not raising a dysfunctional kid by myself. He's your problem again, Spooky." The Joker said.
The clown released his hold on the mask and pulled his arm back. He slipped through Crane's fingers, and the Scarecrow was left holding his mask and wearing a confused looked on his face. How in the world could Harley take care of a child? How did his mask look anything like the Halloween horror show? Why couldn't Batman just run over the Joker late one night? It wasn't like Crane, or anyone except Harley, would cry at the circus-themed funeral.
Since he was on his feet, had his mask, and the Joker didn't look any more murderous than usual, Crane decided now was the best time to seek greener pastures. Most anything, including a barge carrying garbage or a crack house populated by wasted junkies and strung-out gang members, would have qualified as a sufficiently green pasture at that moment.
"I'm leaving. You certainly beat me enough times, so I'm going elsewhere. Please refrain from burning the place down; at least release my lab animals before you do." The Scarecrow said.
Wobbling like a toddler taking his first steps as a biped, Crane managed to make it to his truck. He noticed the large hole in his windshield, and gave the clown a glare that could have melted sand into glass. The Joker merely shrugged, failing miserably to act innocent.
Crane could only hope the police would be too busy trying to round up witnesses to his attack at the market to worry about pulling over a driver with a broken windshield. He supposed he had enough fear toxin left to gas a cop or two, but he didn't want to risk it. The last thing the Scarecrow needed right now, or ever, was a baton to the face and a long ride back to Arkham with Gotham's finest.
After the epic battle Crane had fought to get his mask back, he wasn't going to risk letting anything happen to the hideous thing. Crane leaned through the open driver's side window and gently placed the mask on the seat. He knew it was an inanimate piece of sackcloth, but he treated it better than he treated most people.
Since the Scarecrow had hotwired the truck, the only way for him to shut it off had been to untwist the ignition wires. Now, to get the engine revving again, he had to wrap the wires around each other. He was particularly careful this time and managed to avoid the painful shock that had sent him hopping around the parking lot.
The Scarecrow dragged his slow, sore, sorry carcass to the back of the truck and propped up the tail gate. There were still several grocery bags sitting in the bed of the pickup, stuff the Joker either didn't want or had forgotten about. Crane didn't want food he had worked so hard to procure bouncing down the street and disrupting traffic. He wanted to avoid all detection until he could figure out where to make a new nest.
With the cargo secured and the engine rumbling, the Scarecrow got behind the wheel. Harley, her two hyenas lying on the grass next to her, waved energetically. Lou had the decency to look up and at least acknowledge the truck. Bud began to scratch his neck scruff eagerly.
"Bye-bye, Professor! I'll come visit you real soon!"
Crane grimaced. If Harley came to visit, she would probably bring her parasitic lover with her. Those two were like Chang and Eng Bunker, sideshow freaks who were forever stuck together. The Scarecrow wondered if there was anywhere in Gotham the Joker couldn't find him, no matter how persistent he was or how many people he tried to torture information out of. He supposed he could hide in someone's attic like Anne Frank and just hope the homeowners thought the thumping was from an obese rat.
Harley was still waving with enough enthusiasm to snap her hand clean off. The Scarecrow reluctantly brought up a hand, and gave it the smallest perceptible twitch. That only served to encourage the blonde, who now began to furiously wave with both hands. If she kept that up, she was going to achieve lift-off.
"Good luck and good night, child." Crane said.
He put the pickup in reverse, and Crane turned his head to make sure the driveway was clear of obstacles. The motion sent unpleasant quivers of pain through the Scarecrow's head. He'd have to be careful with the monstrous Gotham potholes, some large enough to eat cars whole. They'd rattle the teeth straight from his jaws, and all that shaking and bumping on his injured head would probably make him sick.
The Scarecrow was near the end of the driveway when something came flying through the windshield. Crane instinctively jerked the wheel, careening off the driveway and onto the wilted lawn. The tires, meant to grip anything from cracked city pavement to the crags of the Rockies, at least according to the commercials, tore up the grass.
The brakes must have been relatively new, because when Crane stomped on them, the truck jerked to such a violent stop the Scarecrow was nearly tossed into the steering wheel. He moaned and brought both hands from the wheel and up to his head. Damn it, he was going to end up with permanent brain damage.
"That bastard! What in the hell did he... No!" Crane cried.
A cloud of green smoke was rising like London fog from the passenger's seat foot space. All the pounding against Crane's head, pickup, and paved driveway hadn't been able to trigger the canister. Since the universe was strictly anti-Scarecrow, and wasn't about to waffle on that position, one more journey through the windshield had to activate the canister.
Suddenly changing direction and then slamming on the brakes had dislodged the protective mask, too. Crane reached over, holding his breath, only to find the seat empty. Well, bugger it. The toxin wasn't going to make his non-living mask hallucinate for hours. He would find the damned thing once the truck aired out and after he killed the Joker. The clown had shot the television to death; the gun still had to be in the house somewhere.
Crane shoved against the door, only to find it wouldn't open. The Joker was pushing against the door, keeping it firmly shut.
"Let me out of here, you psychotic bastard!" Crane yelled, knowing he shouldn't waste his breath.
The Joker was as unmoving as an Easter Island head. The Scarecrow considered trying to punch him, but then got a better idea. There were two doors in the truck, after all.
After a second submerged in the toxic green smog, Crane found the handle to the passenger door and got it open. He could hear the Joker cursing from the other side of the truck. The Scarecrow might have been a nerd, but he wasn't so stupid as to forget how many doors the average pickup had.
"How do you like that, clown?" The Scarecrow asked.
The Joker might have been stupid enough to miss an obvious escape route, but Crane was stupid enough to forget his bearings. There had been no time for the wind to dissipate the fear toxin. As soon as the Scarecrow took a breath following his taunt, he realized his mistake.
"Shit!"
Totally immune to the poison, the Joker strolled around the truck to find Crane stumbling around, waving one arm awkwardly in front of him, as though trying to ward off an attack and doing a very poor job of it. A normal human being, even one who wasn't partial to charity, would have felt bad for the Scarecrow. The Joker found the situation not pitiable, or poetically ironic, but downright hilarious.
"Hey, Spooky, boo!" The Joker said.
Crane reacted as though he had walked into his home and found the severed heads of all his friends and family lined up on the mantle. He shouted, flailing at the Joker with one arm and covering his eyes with the other. If the Joker was bad enough without the influence of the mind-altering drug, he was utterly unbearable now.
While the Scarecrow whimpered and fought with whatever twisted things he was seeing in the empty yard, the Joker's sick brain hatched another idea. Since the Mentos and Coke had been an enormous failure, it was only right to conduct another experiment. Johnny seemed in the right state of mind; actually, Johnny was waging mortal combat with a mosquito at the moment. Whatever. The Joker had never been one to worry about the boring parts of science.
"Harley, go and find me some stuff!" The Joker demanded.
The harlequin, still flanked by Lou and Bud, peered curiously at Crane. "Uh, what sort of stuff? Like a straightjacket, 'cause he's gonna need one?"
"No, I've still got half a roll of duct tape if it comes to that. I mean like common household items. Like the blender, that stick over there, one of the lab mice, and the toilet plunger. Yeah, definitely the plunger." The Joker replied.
"Mister J, even for you that's random. What're you gonna do with a stick and a mouse?" Harley asked.
"I'm going to see what scares the Scarecrow worst. Then I can haunt him with it. Chop, chop, Harley, daylight's wasting." The Clown Prince said.
"Puddin', it's already pretty dark. It ain't gonna be light again 'til tomorrow." Harley said. Her beau gave her a withering look. "Okey-dokey, I'm going, I'm going. Keep your shirt on."
While Harley went off to find another bad-news list, the Joker went in search of Crane. While the clown had been bossing Harley around, the Scarecrow had slithered under his truck. He was quite the pathetic sight, his arms over his head and violent shivers shaking him.
"Hey, Mop Man, you never heard about killer cars before? I mean, you're practically offering yourself to it." The Joker said.
Crane, who had been feeling slightly safer under the truck, shot out like a rabbit. He scrambled on the asphalt, took one look at the purple pickup, and discovered its innocuous vehicular features were gone. The headlights had become glaring eyes, the grill a grisly mouth. It was no wonder GM and Ford were going down. No one wanted to drive a monster that would eat them the moment they turned their backs!
The Joker watched, positively giddy, as the Scarecrow backed away from his truck, his hands up in front of his face in case it sprung at him. The Joker didn't know how long Johnny's poison lingered in the body, but the clown intended to enjoy every second of it.
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Author's Notes:
Deadliest Catch is about the fleet of ships that fish for crab in the Bering Sea. The sea is never all that kind to them, and they aren't that kind to grammar.
Mel, the giant Venus flytrap, is named after Mel Brooks, director of such great comedies as Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles.
To "plead the Fifth" is to utilize the 5th Amendment of the US Constitution, which prevents a person from being forced to testify against himself in a trial.
Spock, and the Vulcan race, are deeply devoted to reason and logic. And waxed eyebrows.
Chang and Eng Bunker are the original Siamese twins.
Anne Frank it most noted for her diary, detailing her life of hiding in an attic from the Nazis.