I woke slowly. My whole body ached and my eyelids felt like they had weights on them. I was tied to a chair by leather restraints holding my arms, legs, and body in place. The room was pitch black, but I could tell we were probably in a building in the narrows from the moldy smell.

The light bulb above me flickered on, blinding me for a few seconds. Now I could see that I was in what looked like an old hospital room. The age was shown via the tiles missing from the floor, the rusted wheelchairs and beds piled on one side of the room, and the mold growing on the wall. Speaking of the wall, it had an unnatural amount of bloodstains on it. The floor was even worse. I imagine the tiles used to be white, but now they were too stained for me to tell.

A door opened behind me, followed by the sound of footsteps. Then the chair I was restrained in spun around and I was facing my captor. His mask was held in place by a nose and he wore a wide brimmed witch's hat with his patched up duster. Underneath this he wore the top part of his prison outfit and a pair of pants that looked like they were made from several different pants all sewn together. "So this is the al-mighty scarecrow." I laughed, despite being totally unnerved at his mask. "Got to say, I imagined you being shorter."

"Who sent you?" Crane growled

"Come again?"

"Who sent you?" Crane repeated with a tone of anger in his voice." The cops? The mafia? The bat? It's not that hard of a question, even for some grunt like you."

"No one sent me." I said "I'm a bounty hunter. I was just looking for you because of the price on your head."

"Why is it I don't believe you?"

"The hell if I know. Daddy issues?"

"I could just gas you right now and watch you slowly die. You know that, right?"

"If you were going to kill me, you would have done it already."

Scarecrow chuckled a bit under his breath before returning his attention to me. "Says who? This is an interrogation, but that does not mean I'll let you leave here unless you're in a body bag. After all, I can't have anyone know where I' hiding can I?"

Ah crap, I was in some deep shit now. "Besides, I have big plans for gotham, and you're going to help me."

"No way in HELL am I helping some homicidal maniac."

"You forget, boy." He said, pointing my revolver at my head "you don't have a choice."

I backed down. Getting my brain sprayed all over the wall wasn't the answer to getting out of this god forsaken shit-hole. Maybe the help he was thinking of would get me out of here.

"Fine what kind of help do you need from me?"

He smiled through his mask. "That's better. It's always nice to have volunteers." He said smugly, removing the revolver from my forehead. "As for the nature of the assistance you will be offering me, you're going to be my human guinea pig."

Well, there goes the escape plan.

Scarecrow moved to the side, revealing a desk with several beakers and vials. In truth, it looked like a chemistry set from a mad scientist's lab. how appropriate. He moved behind the desk and started to mess with the vials. "do you know what this is?" he asked, holding out a glowing green liquid.

"No, I can't say I do." I replied

"you should. Do you remember when the inmates took control of arkham asylum?" He said, mixing the green liquid with purple one."Well, it was all because of this little chemical. It has a long, unpronounceable name, so for your sake, we'll just use the name that the media used. This chemical is called TITAN."

"Doesn't that stuff disfigure who ever uses it? I mean, it does give you a temporary boost of strength, but from what I heard, the people who changed back had damn near all their bones broken!"

"I know, which is why I'm developing a new strain. More powerful than the joker's strain, but without all those nasty side-effects. After all, whats better than god like powers with no risk?"

"So you're going to test some entirely unknown compound on me?"

"Its not entirely unknown. I had about 20 test subjects before you, each better than the last. I'm convinced that you will be the last, then I will able to proceed with my plan."

"what kind of plan are you talking about?"

He looked up from his chemicals. His smile was easy to see through his mask."why, the plan to destroy the bat, the joker, and the entire city of gotham." He laughed."what else?"

"So you're going to waste all of gotham with just a little of this TITAN stuff?" I laughed "You must be insane."

He smirked, grabbing a needle and filling it with a yellow chemical. "there's a reason no one ever accused me of being sane." Scarecrow said as he walked around the table with the needle."Do you know why that is?"

"Because you're not?"

"Precisely."

He injected the needle into my arm, and it released it toxic payload. As soon as it was removed, a blinding pain spread from my arm over my entire body. The pain was unbearable. I screamed in pain until I couldn't even feel my lungs. But over it all, I could hear that sadistic bastard laughing. then, for the second time that day, I ended up blacking out.