Thanks for the reviews! Ninety-freaking-four. I never thought I'd see that number. Hey, you guys suppose you can bump me up to 100? Please!
the person watching you sleep: yeah, getting the weirdest possible references is pretty much my goal.
I'll do all in my power to update soon.
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The kitchen had been turned into a shooting gallery. In the confined space, Harley and the hyenas found themselves as targets for stray and ricocheting bullets. One particularly close call actually burned hair from the end of Lou's tail and sent the mutt yipping and crying into Harley's arms.
"Mister J, you're supposed to be shootin' at the big black bat!" Harley yelled.
The Joker took his eyes off Batman long enough to glare at Harley. In that split second, Batman had a batarang in his hand and was taking careful aim at the Joker's gun. Harley grabbed the nearest object—it turned out to be a skillet knocked from a cupboard in the fight—and flung it with all her strength. Batman had to leap out of the way of the killer frying pan, and the Joker avoided having his weapon knocked from his hand.
"Keep your eyes on the Bat!" Harley scolded.
"What are you, my batting coach? Shut up and throw some more kitchenware!"
Harley looked desperately around her for something heavy enough to cause damage even through Batman's armor. She spotted the toaster, but that was on the counter and across the kitchen. Close by, there didn't seem to be anything scarier than the lousy pizza cutter that couldn't hurt a hemophiliac kitten.
Now the wiser, and not willing to give the Bat a second respite, the Joker opened fire again. Bruce had no intention of visiting the morgue that particular night, so he took cover. There was limited space, so he had no choice but to duck behind the overturned refrigerator. As soon as he was concealed, he heard a bullet whizz off the fridge's metal body.
The Joker wasted several more shots on the refrigerator. The bullets were obviously not going to pierce the appliance, but only Harley was smart enough to see this.
"Indiana Jones hid in a fridge and survived gettin' nuked! You ain't gonna flush out the Batman by wastin' ammo." Harley said.
"Then what do you suggest? If you're just going to criticize me, you'd better have some plan." The Joker growled, shooting the scarred refrigerator out of frustration.
"Do we have any grenades?" Harley asked.
"No. They all went up in the old hideout. Don't you remember that big boom?" The Joker replied.
"Okay, no grenades then." Harley said.
With high explosives out of the picture, Harley desperately needed something to bombard the Bat with. The only things she could see were utterly innocuous: a red and blue plaid potholder, the toilet plunger, and the can of okra. Maybe, if she could get Batman to eat the okra he might be struck with explosive diarrhea or something. Harley didn't have a food catapult handy, though, so using the vegetable as a biological weapon was pretty much eliminated.
"The hairballs." The Joker said.
"Mister J, be reasonable. I can't believe I just said that! Bud and Lou weigh a ton, and I ain't exactly Arnold Schwarzenegger." Harley said.
"I don't mean actually throw them! I mean tell them to attack! They'll either scare the big bad Bat out, or they'll eat his face off. I don't really care which." The clown replied hotly.
Bud and Lou looked ready for more action. With Harley's command, they eagerly rushed the refrigerator and the man who hid behind it. Batman peeked over the top of the fridge, took one look at the furry duo heading his way, and wished he'd brought a string of sausages or something to distract the hyenas with. Since he hadn't come prepared for animal warfare, he supposed he'd just have to punch the mutts until they got the message and backed off.
Batman had the great disadvantage of not being able to raise his head above the fridge, unless he wanted to be able to chew gum through his forehead. Bud seemed to have developed and obsessive compulsion for the heavily chewed cape, and went straight for it. There really wasn't enough of the cape left to share, so Lou took his teeth to Batman's boot. Like a dog playing tug of war with a stick, he began to pull Batman from behind the fridge.
The Joker cheered. "Harley, those are some smart mutts you have there. I'm glad I never called animal control on them. Pull harder, you mangy stumps or I'll have you made into glue!"
"Mister J, they don't make hyena glue. Oh, and next time the Babies steal your fuzzy clown slippers, don't come cryin' to me to get 'em back." Harley said.
Everything from the knee down was now exposed. Batman had no intention of getting shot, so, once again shaking the image of a naked vegetarian smacking him with a protest sign out of his head, he committed animal abuse. While Lou yanked and nibbled on his left foot, he drove his free right foot into the hyena's snout. Lou yelped in pain, and was forced to let go.
The hyena backed away, blood dripping slowly from his snout. He shook his head, sending more droplets of blood spattering against the linoleum floor. The trickle of blood wasn't much worse than the average spontaneous nosebleed some people were susceptible to. Harley's outraged cry suggested half of Lou's face had been kicked off and his brain was visible.
Forgetting about keeping low and well away from the line of fire, Harley rushed across the kitchen. On her way, she grabbed a chair leg from the recently ruined furniture. One end was splintered, and might have been useful if she was planning to do battle with the likes of Lestat or Spike, or some other fanged menace. Since the wood had zero chance of getting through Batman's impressive body armor, Harley just intended to use it as a bludgeon and see how much he liked a nice chair leg to the facial region.
The Joker always loved it when Harley went into a homicidal rage. He found it drop-dead sexy. It was his personal belief that a woman's level of attractiveness increased the more times she beat someone into a coma. If Hollywood would just give starlets machine guns or machetes instead of plastic boobs, the Joker would be content to never leave the movie theater. He'd just stare, and stare, and do things that got Pee-wee Herman into trouble.
"Get out of the way, Bud!" Harley ordered.
Bud, who had been snacking on Batman's cape, took one look at Harley and spit out the black fabric. When the matriarch bared her teeth, it was time to listen. Keeping his eyes downcast so Harley wouldn't unleash wrath on him, Bud scurried out of the way.
"Nobody but nobody hits my Babies!" Harley said.
If not for the armor of his suit, Batman was sure Harley's blow would have shattered his arm. Acting as though she was possessed by the spirit of an extremely pissed-off Babe Ruth, Harley swung her makeshift club with enough force to crush a watermelon. Inside his suit, Batman was feeling quite like the juicy pulp of said unfortunate melon. If his protection didn't hold up, or Harley smashed that splintery chair leg into his face, Bruce knew the outcome wouldn't be pretty.
The Joker wished he had an over-priced beer, one of those giant foam hands with "We're #1" painted on it, and some popcorn. Watching Harley swing for the fences, or the Bat's nose, was about eighty-million times better than the last baseball game he had attended. Really, after five and a half scoreless innings, could anyone blame him for throwing a live grenade onto the field? Certainly not. If anything, he had done the public a great service.
"Come on, Harley! Are you going to whack him, or tickle him? I bet Bat-breath is hardly feeling it!"
Judging by the thud, which the Scarecrow heard clearly even down in the basement, Harley had no intentions of tickling. Crane wished he could be upstairs, just so he could see exactly what was going on up there. Down here, he had nothing to do but wait and strain his ears. Oh, and scratch at himself. It seemed he was developing a rash or something around that spider bite. Wishing he had some aloe, Crane succumbed to the itch's demand and scratched it.
"Note to self: invent fear toxin that drives spiders insane and then kills them." Crane said. He then scratched at his chest again.
Feeling like he had mistakenly walked through a poison sea urchin cove and come out covered in the spiny devils, the Scarecrow once again scratched. The itch wasn't so bad he needed to squirm around on a cactus to relieve it, but it had to be at least as irritating as chicken pox. The more Crane tried to assuage the itch, the more potent it became.
"I hate spiders! I hate them!" the Scarecrow growled. "From now on, when I see them, I'm going to step on them!"
While Crane plotted revenge against the eight-legged offenders, Harley found herself in a bit of a situation. Batman, being too rude to just hold still and let a lady beat him to death like a nice guy would, had decided to fight back. When Harley swung the chair leg, the Bat caught the end of it. She was genuinely surprised to find her weapon ripped from her hands and thrown across the room.
"Uh, no hard feelings, right B-man?" Harley asked nervously.
Hoping the Joker wouldn't risk shooting Harley and losing his bed-warmer, Batman rose from the relative safety of the refrigerator. He wore a scowl even Professor Snape would have had trouble mimicking. Harley's pigtails drooped. B-man apparently did have hard feelings about it.
"Harley, stop cowering and get out of the way!" The Joker said.
The blonde threw herself to the ground and covered her head with her hands. She looked like a soldier in a foxhole who expected an artillery shell to land on him at any second. The gunshot wasn't quite as loud as a bomb going off, but it was potentially just as lethal.
If not for the Kevlar armor, Batman would have been as dead as Steller's sea cow. The Joker's aim had been dead on. For a freakish clown, he was a regular gunslinger.
Despite what action movies suggested, bullet-proof vests and body armor didn't make a man completely immune to everything from handguns to laser-cannons. Even with the highly advanced armor of the Batsuit, Bruce would be sure to find a bruise the size of a golf ball on his chest in the morning. Luckily, a bruise would heal. A gaping hole in his heart would not.
"Next time I buy armor-piercing rounds. Can't be that hard to find on the black market. If they sell kidneys, they damn well better sell me some decent ammo!" The Joker said.
"Aim for the head! Ain't you ever seen Night of the Living Dead?" Harley said.
"No, but I did see Shaun of the Dead." The Joker replied.
"Same principle, Puddin'." Harley said.
Batman was not going to stick around and get shot in the head like a zombie. He couldn't make it to the living room, where'd he have the couch and some other sparse furniture to hide behind. His only real option was to see where the door just feet away led. He was quite sure the Scarecrow had dragged his pitiful self through the portal, but Batman would rather have to face one heavily damaged villain than two crazy clowns and their laughing pets.
With all the finesse of a wrecking ball, Batman plowed through the door. He had had no idea as to what sort of room he was about to come bursting into. A part of him had anticipated a broom closet or a coat room. Certainly, it wasn't totally out of the realm of possibility for Crane to drag himself into an enclosed space; his poison would be more concentrated there.
Instead of a closet, Batman found stairs leading down. A basement. He hated fighting in basements. Most basements were poorly lit, offered only one route of escape, and were filled with junk collections. There were dozens, sometimes hundreds, of places for an ambush to come from. Cellars, in their own way, could be every bit as dangerous as a villain's usual booby trapped lair.
Bruce didn't have time to stand at the lip of the stairs and grumble about how much it genuinely sucked to do battle in a cellar. A bullet bored through the door, and missed his ear by inches. Even shooting blind, the Joker would be bound to hit him eventually.
"Please, Scarecrow, be unconscious." Batman prayed. He then descended the steps, taking them three at a time.
Crane was not unconscious; in fact, he was feeling better than he had in hours. Upon hearing the door bang, roughly two liters of adrenaline had flooded his system. That chemical burst effectively tramped down the pain he felt everywhere, at least temporarily. His body was practically strumming like a live wire. The Scarecrow was as ready as he was ever going to be for the approaching confrontation.
"I don't like it when people invite themselves into my lab. Not. One. Bit."
"Your kitchen's a little too hostile for my tastes." Batman replied.
"You're not anymore welcome down here." Crane said.
Batman looked around the basement uneasily. He disliked fighting in cellars; he hated fighting in chemical plants even more. Judging from the beakers, tubes, and scientific instruments, this room was both. A knock-down brawl could certainly end with a fire, explosion, or horrible disfigurement for him, the Scarecrow, or both of them.
"I'm not leaving three of the most dangerous criminals in Gotham loose in the suburbs." The Bat said.
"Take the Joker, by all means. Don't even think about laying one hand on me." Crane replied.
"Why is the Joker here? Is he the reason you look like you've been through a meat grinder?" Batman asked.
The Scarecrow suddenly looked as though he was going to explode as extravagantly as Krakatau. His hands clenched into fists, and Batman began to seriously worry he was going to accidentally set off the canister he was surely crushing.
"That clown! I hate him! Don't even say his name in my presence!" Crane yelled.
"Calm down, Crane. I don't want to fight a man in your condition." Batman said.
"Condition? I have no condition you need to be concerned about." The Scarecrow said.
Batman took a good look at his adversary and sighed. "Have you ever seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail?"
That statement was so random all the anger evaporated from Crane's face and was replaced with blank confusion. "What are you talking about, Batman? Have you been experimenting with prescription drugs?"
"The Black Knight, I'm sure a man of your intelligence knows this skit, is dueling King Arthur. Arthur cuts off the Knight's arms, but the Knight insists it's just a flesh wound. Do you understand what I'm getting at, Crane?"
The Scarecrow threw his arms into the air, and Batman was sure the canister of fear toxin was going to go flying. "Yes, go on and cut my arms off. I'll never be put in a straightjacket again, at least. I suppose I can always play the pity angle to a grand jury. 'How could I have done such a thing, I haven't got any arms.'"
"No, that wasn't what I meant. I'm saying that you're bloodied, disheveled, and look like you haven't had a decent night's sleep since last October. It looks like a toddler could take you down, yet you still want to fight. I know you don't want to hear this, but Arkham is the best place for you right now." Batman said.
"Get out of my face before I cut yours off and feed it to the Babies. I mean the hyenas." Crane snapped.
"I'm not leaving you here. You're a danger to the community. Maybe not as dangerous as the Joker, but I'll deal with him later." The Bat said.
"If you think I'll ever come quietly, you're more insane than I am. Make one move, you flying rat, and I'll make your worst dreams come true."
"I do not want to see you in a full-body cast."
"Ah, but I'd love to see you writhing around on the ground like a worm. Really, after all I've endured today, it's the least you could do for me. I'll even promise to give you the antidote. After an hour or two, at least."
Batman could have knocked his head off a cement wall. For a man whose IQ damn near broke the scale, sometimes Jonathan Crane was a complete idiot. The Dark Knight's job was to protect Gotham, not to beat up men who were already on their last legs. The Scarecrow either didn't realize or didn't care that one more whack might just be too much.
"Be sensible. You don't even have your mask. There's a chance you'll end up poisoning yourself, Crane. You aren't going to risk that, are you?"
With all the nonchalance of a man deciding what snack to pack, the Scarecrow shrugged. "I'll take the risk if I must. Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
"How can someone so smart be so stupid?" Batman asked in exasperation.
"I don't know, Batsy, I've been trying to figure that one out for the past week. Maybe, if we put our heads together, and dissect his brain, we'll find out all the great mysteries to life."
Batman whirled around to find the Joker standing at the top of the stairs. While he and Crane had been arguing, he hadn't heard the cellar door open. Now he was perfectly trapped between a very irrational Scarecrow and a gun-toting clown. Sometimes, even for superheroes, it just didn't pay to get out of bed in the morning.
Not fair! It just wasn't fair! Crane didn't want to characterize himself as a whiner, but there were some curveballs the universe threw that even a stoic couldn't be expected to endure in silence. Having his two least favorite people in the entire planet trapped in the basement with him was one of those trick pitches.
"Just remember, Bats, no sudden movements. You might provoke me, and even a blind man couldn't miss at this range. Oh, and don't bother trying to get past me. Harley and the mutts are waiting on the other side of the door. I'd tell you what kind of weapon she found, but it would ruin the surprise." The Joker said, positively giddy with excitement.
The clown descended a few stairs, so that now Crane could at least see his shoes and a few inches of purple pants. Batman tensed visibly, but didn't make a move. The Joker was right; at less than fifteen feet, he'd have no trouble putting a bullet in Batman's unprotected face.
Confident in his threats, the Joker skipped down half the steps. He was now entirely visible to Crane, and nearly in grabbing and beating range to Batman. The clown knew this, and kept his weapon carefully trained on the vigilante. One little twitch of the cape, and the Bat was buried.
"Not too smart a move, eh, Bat-brains? I bet you didn't know that door led down to the Mop Man's secret laboratory." The Joker mocked.
"You aren't invited down here either, clown. Piss off." The Scarecrow said.
The gun swung from the Bat to the mad scientist. "Spooky, unless you want to study what it feels like to get shot in the foot, shut up."
Turning the weapon back to its original target, the Joker said, "Don't pay any attention to him. The Scarecrow has issues; he had a very sad childhood, someone barbequed his dog, his father never hugged him, etcetera."
"Shut up about my childhood!"
"One more peep out of you, Straw-head, and I'll light you on fire and use you as a tiki torch." The Joker said.
Crane looked about as happy as a skunk that had spent six hours trapped in a muddy hole. In a move Batman had never before seen, but the Joker had, the Scarecrow flipped the giggling clown off. In the past 24 hours, Crane supposed he had given his middle finger more exercise than in the all the rest of his life.
"And that's why nobody pays attention to you. You're a failure." The Joker said.
"I am not a failure!"
"All right, I won't say you're a disgraceful failure. What's the politically correct term nowadays? Success-challenged?"
"I've succeeded plenty of times!"
"You couldn't even follow a shopping list. I should have given it to the hyenas. They'd have done a better job."
As though Batman wasn't even there, Crane and the Clown Prince continued to insult each other. After hearing the words 'molested a bag of innocent spuds' come from the Joker, Bruce considered walking away and seeing if either member of the mad party even noticed he was gone. When he took a step, the Joker cocked his gun and the Scarecrow tightened his grip on the metallic canister.
Barring a miracle, it looked like he was going to be there a long, long time.
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Author's Notes: In The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indiana Jones gets in a lead-lined fridge and is tossed roughly a mile by an atomic bomb. It gave rise to the phrase "nuking the fridge".
Spike and Lestat are both vamps. Spike's from Buffy, and Lestat is from several of Anne Rice's books.
Paul Reubens, the man who played Pee-wee, was arrested for diddling himself in a porno-theater.
Nobody out-scowls Snape. Ever!
Steller's sea cow was a relative of the manatee but much larger. It was hunted to extinction. Very sad!
Shaun of the Dead is a romantic comedy: with zombies. Brilliant movie if you like humor or horror. I figure the Joker would enjoy it immensely, because it's both gory and hilarious.
Talking to the Internet-community, I know there's no need to explain Monty Python.