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I'll try to have the next chapter up within 2 weeks.

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Batman might have kicked in the front door with all the bravado of an action movie hero, but he froze as soon as he caught sight of the house's occupants. He had been expecting Crane, and only Crane. After all, not one of the witnesses from the supermarket attack had so much as mentioned the two clowns. They'd all been very adamant in their descriptions: one man, dressed in gray clothing with a sack on his head had been the only assailant. If Harley and the Joker had been involved, they had been inconspicuous. The Joker could not fail to attract attention.

"B-man! Nice to see you again." Harley greeted sweetly.

"Yeah, Bats, long time no see. Been keeping busy? You never know, in this economy, jobs have a way of disappearing. Glad to see the ole Dark Knight's still running around." The Joker said.

There was no way his luck could be this rotten. Crane hadn't done anything bad enough to deserve the day he was getting. Even if he was the reincarnation of Hitler, he might deserve the torment the Joker had inflicted, but the Bat barging into his house was too much.

The man Batman had actually come to see, and drag back to Arkham, was hardly in the picture. Crane looked like he'd all ready had the fight knocked out of him. Though the Caped Crusader was too smart and experienced to neglect watching the Scarecrow, his main concern had to be the Joker and Harley. They were both standing, after all.

"What are you doing here, Joker? Aren't the suburbs a little mundane for your tastes?" Batman asked.

"It's not my house. It's Johnny the Mop Man's. He's the male Martha Stewart. He cleans, he cooks, he complains. He's just like a wife, except, well, he couldn't legally be in any place except California." The Joker said.

"Shut up." The Scarecrow muttered. Ah, the joy of two word phrases again.

"Come on, Spooky, it's a compliment. I could never hope to live in such domestic bliss. All my hideouts tend to blow up after a week or two of occupation." The Joker said.

Bruce Wayne had seen some odd partnerships arise among the villains, but this was something new. Crane was, almost without exception, a loner. What had the Joker done, or threatened to do, to get the Scarecrow to accept him as a roommate? Knowing the Joker, it was probably something very painful and highly illegal.

"Any way, Bats, we're not looking to rent out a room, or share the sofa. So, unless you're in the mood to fight the four of us, five if Johnny isn't too concussed, you'd better get your bat butt back out the door." The clown said.

"The four of you? Even with Crane, that's only three. Or do you have some goons hiding in the refrigerator?" Batman asked.

Harley took a deep breath and screamed. "Babies!"

Bud and Lou came barreling down the stairs like the hounds of hell. They both were snarling, their lips pulled back to reveal impressive sets of teeth. When they got the order to kill, they lost all signs of teddy bear sweetness and became the kind of creatures National Geographic loved to feature at every opportunity.

"Get the Bat!" Harley ordered, pointing her finger at the masked vigilante just in case Lou and Bud didn't get the message.

"Bud and Lou, sic balls!" The Joker said. He then broke into a fit of laughter.

Neither hyena paid attention to the Clown Prince's command, because they both knew he was a moron. There was no good reason to attack the prey's crotch. Especially not in this case, because the prey had armor in that region. A lot of armor.

The hyenas circled Batman, waiting for an opening. They were veterans of skirmishes with the Bat, and Bud and Lou knew how much it hurt to be punched in the jaw with a Kevlar-covered fist. They weren't going to rush in and get their stubby little tails torn off.

While the hyenas provided plenty of distraction, Crane began to pull himself across the floor. He realized with disdain he'd spent more time on crawling today than he had since he was a toddler. He felt like something that had crawled out of the sea too early, without bothering to evolve knees first.

Harley cheered on her two brave Babies, and expected her man to be equally supportive. However, there were no excited cries encouraging the hyenas to bite off a bat body part. Maybe that was because the Joker had fled the scene.

"Mister J! Where'd you go? You gotta root for the family!" Harley cried.

The Joker popped up like a whack-a-mole target from behind the sofa. "Keep your socks on, Harl. I'm looking for my gun. I can't remember where I put it."

"Did it fall between the cushions, like the remote always does?" Harley said.

The Joker smacked himself in the face. Of course! Crane had a remote control eating couch, instead of a kite-eating tree. Since the TV had been destroyed by gunfire, the hungry sofa hadn't been able to eat the remote lately. The devious furniture obviously decided to be opportunistic, and eat whatever was at hand. The buggering thing must have devoured his weapon.

Sure enough, wedged between the couch cushions, was his gun. Grinning, the Joker pulled it free and pointed it at the bat.

"Say bye-bye, Batsy!" The clown taunted.

Batman turned just in time to see the Joker pull the trigger. Instead of the bang, or the little joke flag that said "bang", there was only an empty click. Confused, the Joker pulled the trigger a few more times, and was rewarded with the same click.

"You imbecile. You never reloaded the damned thing after killing the television." Crane said.

"Oops. Oh well. I guess I'll have to go to plan B." The Joker said.

"There's a plan B? What is it, Puddin'?" Harley asked.

"You stay here and fight the Bat, while I run for it!"

Laughing at the staggering genius of his plan, the Joker ran for the back door. Batman wasn't about to let the most evil clown this side of Derry get away. As much as PETA would scream and demand his blood for it, Batman had no choice but to get rough with the hyenas. He kicked Lou when the hyena darted forward to bite at his foot, only to have Bud take advantage of the opportunity and grab a mouthful of the hero's cape.

With all the tenacity of a pit bull, Bud locked his jaws onto the black fabric. He could no longer do much in the way of fighting, but the Bat wasn't going anywhere fast with 130 pounds of dead weight hanging onto him. Harley, who had thrown herself at Lou even though he didn't appear hurt in the least from the blow, encouraged Bud to chew off Batman's ears.

"Get off!" Batman commanded. Bud growled at him and dug his claws into the linoleum.

The cloth Batman's cape was made of was fire retardant, light, and extremely durable. It hadn't been made to stand up to the 1000 pounds of force Bud's jaws were capable of producing, though. Eventually, the cape tore and Bud was left with a tattered piece of fabric. Bruce took the opportunity to propel himself at the retreating clown's cowardly back. He'd have to worry about Alfred patching the cape later.

The Joker was inches from escaping when the Batman slammed into him. Seconds after that, Bud and Lou flung themselves at the hero's back. He was pushed against the Joker, who was in turn plastered against the door and flattened considerably.

"I. Can't. Breathe." The Joker gasped.

"If you can talk, you can breathe." The Batman responded. He opened his mouth, doubtlessly to say something stupid and self righteous the Joker was going to ignore anyway, only to be jerked backwards. Bud had once again gotten his chompers in the diminished cape and was pulling for all he was worth.

Crane had reached the cellar door. Like the aliens in an M. Night Shyamalan film, he was having trouble with the door knob. Grasping the door knob, and turning it, was proving to be more difficult than beating the Riddler at Trivial Pursuit.

"You kept a 4.0 grade point average through medical school, and you're going to be defeated by a door knob? What happened to your brains? Did they turn to straw?" Crane berated himself.

Self-depreciation proved to be the key. The Scarecrow was able to get the door open, and then find himself faced with the monstrous dilemma in front of him. Just how in the hell did he intend to get down the stairs? Was he going to slide on his tummy like a penguin or an otter?

The Scarecrow looked down, and realized nineteen steps had never been so scary. There were a millions way this could go wrong. He could break any number of bones if he fell, snap his neck, his back, end up paralyzed or dead. Crane had learned a great deal about the cruel whims of hap lately; he wouldn't doubt, not for one second, that his uneventful death at the bottom of the stairs wasn't a grave possibility.

"Coward. It's just stairs. That centenarian from the grocery store probably lives on the tenth floor of the retirement home and considers the elevator a demon. Are you going to let a fossil do what you can't?"

Climbing the stairs still looked as frightening as scaling the outside of the Petronas Towers. Apparently, Crane was going to have to get nastier with himself.

"What kind of villain is afraid of stairs? You're more pathetic and less deserving of fear than Killer Moth." The Scarecrow said.

Being wimpier than Killer Moth, who was about as frightening as low-calorie diet Jell-o, encouraged Crane to at least grab hold of the banister and haul himself to his feet. He swayed dangerously, nearly toppled forward, and ended up wrapping his arms around the rail and whimpering. At least if he was Killer Moth, he'd have the Boba Fett-like jetpack and wouldn't have to worry about breaking his legs going downstairs.

"Fool. Weakling. Stupid git. Nerd."

That was the magic word. Still hugging the banister as though it was the only thing that kept him from defying gravity and floating off into the sun, Crane began a slow and painful descent. Taking it one step at a time, he was able to make it half way down the stairs before he lost his grip and fell on his ass.

"Damn it!" The Scarecrow growled. It felt like his tailbone had been jammed up into his neck. Times like this made him wish he had an actual ass, like most people, that could offer even meager protection in a fall. Once again, being a scrawny stick figure of a villain was a major drawback.

Wincing at the matching pain in his head and in his butt, Crane forced himself back to his feet. Upstairs, he heard something crash to the ground hard enough to rattle the entire house. By the sound of it, the refrigerator had just capsized. After all the misery he had endured to steal a half ton of food, the fridge was destroyed. The Scarecrow believed he had just surpassed every citizen of North Korea and had become the most wretched thing on the planet.

"My Chocolate Therapy! Okay, B-man, now you asked for it!" Harley screamed.

Crane smirked. Hell hath no fury like a woman without her chocolate ice cream. If the Bat had any brains, he'd scurry back to his Batmobile like the winged vermin that he was, before Harley ate her Ben and Jerry's out of his hollow skull.

More things crashed above his head. There was a splintering noise, and Crane assumed one of the kitchen chairs had just been reduced to kindling. He managed down another step before something far heavier than a chair, likely the table, was destroyed. The Scarecrow could only hope the table hadn't been ruined when Harley was thrown onto it. If the Joker had been used as a wrecking ball, Crane could live perfectly well with that.

With the continued support of the banister, the Scarecrow was finally able to make it to the basement floor. His lab mice began to squeak in what Crane interpreted as anger. He supposed even something so small could learn to hold a grudge, if it was tormented long enough.

The mice gave Crane an idea. Plenty of people were afraid of mice, rats, and other members of the rodent family. A bat, known to most people as a rat with wings even though bats were not related to rodents in the least, might just have a little phobia of his own. Certainly, if Crane could poison his latest uninvited guest and manage to slip an irate lab mouse into his suit, that would provide plenty of time for him to crawl back up the stairs. If Harley was still conscious, she would certainly assist him in escaping.

Moving like the Frankenstein monster if the Frankenstein monster had just been beaten over the head with a nail-studded club, Crane got to the table that supported the mouse cage. The little white mice squealed it what was certainly panic now. His image, and the fear associated with it, must have been imprinted on the primitive mousey brains.

"Ready to crawl up some more pants?" Crane asked the mice. They all scurried over to one side of the cage, stepping over and on each other in panic.

The Scarecrow opened the cage and stuck his hand inside. Upon further examination, he came to realize it was a stupid move. Several mice, all sick and tired of being poked, prodded, and gassed, had their vengeance.

His fingers bleeding from a half-dozen mouse bites, Crane yanked his hand back. He pulled his wounded hand up to his chest, and glared at the mice. The pink-eyed albino bastards needed their pound of flesh too, did they? So help him, he was going to put the mice in a box, put a bowtie on the box, and give it to Catwoman as an apology gift.

Crane left the cage door open, hoping the mice would emerge on their own and flood the basement like the Egyptian plague of frogs, only with less slime and more bucked teeth. He wrapped his smarting hand in the bottom of his shirt, and then began to kvetch when he realized his only remaining shirt was now blood-stained. Stupid mice. Next time he was going to experiment on something that couldn't gnaw on him, like old people or goldfish.

Terrorizing the retirement home worse than a shortage of prune juice would have to wait. Right now, there was a giant flying pest in serious need of swatting. The Scarecrow had to find a canister of fear toxin before the Batman noticed he was gone. If he was unarmed, hurt as he was, he wouldn't be able to so much as punch at Batman. All he'd be able to do was lie down on the floor and curl up like a pill bug whose rock had just been overturned.

If all the commotion—swearing, barking, snarling, crashing, and unnatural laughter—was any indication, the Bat was still plenty occupied with the clowns and hyenas. Even for a masked avenger with obvious control issues and powerful fists, the Joker family, if such a mélange of freaks and critters could be labeled a family, had to be a resilient opponent. They might even be able to subdue Batman and kill him, though Crane never expected his luck to be that good.

"I hope that clown didn't molest my fear toxin. If he did, I'll kill him. Who am I trying to kid? He'll laugh in my face and then beat me with the nearest available toilet plunger, miscreant that he is." Crane said.

The universe, which had long ago stolen all of Crane's luck and locked it away, allowed a few wisps of kindness to grace him. The Joker hadn't destroyed the Scarecrow's frighteningly extensive stores of poison. He had obviously ruffled through a few of the caches, while Crane had either been shopping or unconscious. The clown hadn't been able or motivated enough to search out and juggle with all the canisters, though.

Shuffling along like an old woman with a bad hip, the Scarecrow eventually got to the table that held a majority of his network of tubes and beakers. He crouched down under the table, and yanked at the underside of it. After some tussling and swearing, Crane emerged victorious. In his hand sat a ball of duct tape. Inside that duct tape cocoon, somewhere, there was a canister of fear toxin.

In Crane's opinion, whoever invented duct tape should have been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He severely disliked being tied up with duct tape, but throughout his life and career, he had discovered a million and three uses for the magic silver tape. Need to stick something to a table? Duct tape! Test subject won't shut his trap and the walls are thinner than anticipated? Duct tape! Fight with the Bat ended badly and that injury is really bleeding? Duct tape!

Even without the pseudo-medicinal properties of duct tape, it truly was a spectacular invention. Wistfully nostalgic about all the times duct tape had come through for him, the Scarecrow began the process of peeling his poison free from the cocoon. Maybe, in his enthusiasm for both his fear toxin and his favorite tape, he had overdone it a little.

Back upstairs, the party was still in full swing. While Bud and Lou kept Batman busy, the Joker hunted around the living room like a Niffler on the trail of something shiny. The clown was willing to bet money, not his money, maybe Harley's, that there were spare bullets within five feet of him. Problem was, he couldn't find them. Living the relaxed life of a mooch, he hadn't needed to shoot anything except the television. Now he couldn't reload his damn gun. The NRA was going to be sorely disappointed in its most aggressive and public member.

"Harley! Where're my magazines?" The Joker asked.

"Now ain't the time for Jugs!" Harley said.

"My gun magazines!"

"Guns & Ammo has to wait, too!"

"I mean the goddamn magazines that hold bullets for my empty gun! Harley, I'm going to lobotomize you!"

"Oh! Did you try your coat pockets?" Harley suggested.

"They aren't going to… Wait a second. Thanks Harl, you can keep your frontal lobe after all!"

If Batman didn't have enough problems with Bud and Lou, who had effectively reduced his cape to half its original size, the Joker with a loaded weapon was the last thing he needed. Fighting in the streets and alleys of Gotham City, where there was room to dodge gunfire, was one thing. Fighting in the kitchen of a suburban house with nothing except the table to use as a shield was far more dangerous.

"Let's try this again." The Joker said.

At the first explosion of gunfire, Crane nearly leapt cleanly out of his skin. The fun and games were apparently over upstairs. Batman and the Joker were getting down to the nitty-gritty business of thrashing each other senseless.

After two more gunshots, and no heavy thud that would signal a body falling wounded to the floor, the Scarecrow began to wonder exactly what options he had. If the Bat was killed, as unlikely as that seemed, what would the Joker do? Celebrate? Mourn? Blow up the Batmobile and dance around the fire like a worshipper of Pele? If Batman, as in nearly all past encounters with Harley and the Joker, trounced them soundly and shipped them back to the loony bin, where would that leave Crane? Hog-tied in the back of the Batmobile, most likely.

Either way, Crane didn't think his life would improve significantly. With Batman dead, the Joker would become even more unpredictable and spastic. He probably wouldn't leave, but would insist the Scarecrow help him stuff Batman's corpse so it could be hung on the wall as a trophy. Locked up in Arkham, Crane had nothing to look forward to except Rorschach blots that looked vaguely like people being mauled by pissed off sea horses and food African refugees would politely but vehemently refuse.

For the Scarecrow, there never was an easy way out. It was just his luck.

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That was faster, huh? Yay!

Author's Notes:

Yes, I know California no longer allows gay marriage. The Joker wouldn't exactly be on top of the news, though.

The Kite-Eating Tree is from Peanuts, and it is a tree that eats kites.

Derry is the fictional town that was home to the It monster.

The 1,000 pound hyena bite force came from a National Geographic study.

In the M. Night Shyamalan film Signs, the aliens could make their spaceships invisible but had trouble opening a door…

A Niffler is a creature from Harry Potter. It is a furry creature the size of a small dog that madly loves shiny objects. Consult Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Pele is the Hawaiian goddess of fire and volcanoes.