Gotham was off somehow. As they burned rubber through the streets, Joker could sense it. It was like canned applause or a comedian with no sense of timing. Just wrong. And not good wrong, like the ghoulish jester himself. It wasn't good or bad, it was a lack.
Bats was gone.
Joker could feel it all day. His usual natural high was flat, a bad acid trip. Fear had no flavor. He felt woefully… incomplete.
The Joker was a good scientist, or he had been in one choice path. He would prick the city to see if it bled, and if the city didn't respond with a prick of her own… tall, dark, and batty…
Metropolis was nice this time of year. That was a negative. But think of it…! Pie fights with Kryptonite-flavored custard! Plus a barbed-wire toupee for chrome-dome and some sex appeal from Lois Legs. It was enough to give him the giggles.
"You want me to pull out, boss?" the new guy, Artie, one of the many opening acts that had flocked behind the clown prince's curtain after the Bat's pantsing. Would that give the Dark Knight a full moon?
Joker let out another carcinogenic chuckle. "No, you third-rate heckler! We've gotta keep this show on the road! Step on it!"
Artie glanced at the speedometer. "We're going ten miles over the speed limit as is! We could get pulled over."
Joker stomped Artie's foot to the gas pedal. "Sorry, wide stance."
Artie struggled to maneuver as they redlined. Even with the sparse night traffic, speeds of over a hundred MPH turned the road into an obstacle course.
They'd taken a van from the growing fleet of Jokermobiles, with an airbrushed Sunday comic strip mural of the Joker beating Batman into a state of cartoon catastrophe – black eye, lumps to match his pointed ears, little bats flying in circles around his steak-soothed head, a full body cast, and finally Batman as a harp-playing, robe-wearing bat-angel amongst fluffy clouds and pearly gates. Among the throngs of street racers, drunk drivers, and gang cars of Gotham's night traffic, the only attention it attracted were kicks to its sticker-studded rear bumper ("Nuke the whales," "I molested your honor student," "My other car is a hearse," and of course, "Reelect Harvey Dent – A District Attorney We Can Believe In") when parked.
As Artie had worried, a wailing siren was soon at their heels. "Shouldn't all the good little cops and coppettes be tucked in by now?" Joker asked pointedly.
"Maybe we should pull over. We can tell them we're going to a costume party."
Joker twisted Artie's ear. "Arthur, Arthur, Arthur," Joker said, deadly serious. "That would be lying." Like an average dad tending to his 2.5 spawn on a long road trip, Joker turned to the clowns packed into the backseat. "Don't you worry, Joker's made a few after-market modifications to the General Rommel here. Bucket seats, bigger cupholders, and a dash of Uncle Joker's special sauce."
He pressed a button on the dash. A thick glurging sound filled the van, and it trailed white goo.
"Know what you get when you add special sauce to cops?"
The pursuing cop car hit the streak of white and instantly its wheels lost traction. It reeled from side to side, out of control, until finally it blundered through an intersection into the path of an oncoming semi.
"Street pizza!" the Joker cried over the blaring horns and dying metal. "The secret ingredient is love," he intoned sentimentally.
They sparked to a stop in Warsaw, a ghetto for Russian immigrants and a haven for the Chechen Mob. The streets were lined with big, blocky cars; all painted darkly. The buildings were the sort of ugly tenements that even Gotham had torn down, except in Warsaw where the slum lords still held the whip with Soviet authority. Deprive them of even one red cent (Joker tittered at his mental pun) and they'd come down like a hammer. So the Harlequin of Hate would be sure to take two or three or ten million.
He and the boys walked this way (they all dutifully mimicked his gait, having learned from the palooka he'd kneecapped) to the door of the local gambling den. If doors could walk, this one would've stepped right out of a Prohibition-era speakeasy. Joker pulled his fist back for a dramatic knock, then petitely rapped on the steel door.
A slot opened at what would be eye-level… for Andre the Giant. Joker stood on his tippy-toes to see inside. He found himself staring into a pair of none-too-friendly, deep-set eyes. "Hi, I'm working my way through college selling Grit; may I speak to the man of the house? I'm just kidding, you'll do fine. The Penguin sent me bearing gifts."
The man on the other side of the door got a little taller, un-stooping to look down at Joker and expose his nicotine-yellow teeth. "Are you joking?"
"Do I look like I'm joking?" The Joker preened. "Here, we've got a complimentary gift basket with a set of Iceberg Lounge notepads, a voucher for a free meal at Sizzler, and here, have a cigar."
He stuffed a far Cuban between those yellowing teeth, lit a match on Artie's cheek, then touched the flame to the tip of the cigar. The Joker turned away, arms crossed, as the Russian puffed away bewilderedly. Then a loud explosion shot blood through the eyeslot to stain Artie's shirtfront.
"Who else saw that coming?" Joker asked, jaded as a three-time divorcee.
The gang all raised their hands while pained screams and death-moans issued from inside the gambling den.
"See! I'm just no good without Batman. I'm like Jerry Lewis without Dean Martin, Penn without Teller, Turner without Hooch!" He grabbed Artie by the lapels and shook him like a British nanny. "Where is he!? At home? Washing his tights?" The door fell open, its inside splattered with gore. "Oh, goodie, they've decided to roll out the blood-red carpet," Joker said in his manic-depressive calm.
The Joker strolled inside. His men went to work tending to the wounded, using all sorts of cutlery to carve permanent smiles into their throats. The doorman had been blown clear across the room, the explosion peeling back his face to expose an eternal yellow-toothed grin. The Joker loved it so much he decided to take it as a souvenir. He bent down and worked at the skull until it was wrenched loose. "Alas, poor Yorick. I blew him well."
He tossed the skull from one hand to the other. "A fellow of infinite jest," he chimed to himself.
Two survivors with minimal injuries were brought before him. The Joker smiled at them, looking from one to the other.
"Please!" the first one begged in heavily-accented English. "I have family!"
"What, you want me to kill them too? Think fast!" the Joker non-sequitured, b-balling the skull to Artie. He caught it, and wished he hadn't. "That's the way to get a head in life," Joker crowed, before drawing his gun and making his serious face. "Now, one of you I need to go to your boss and tell him that the Penguin isn't happy, feet or otherwise. The other guy I need to kill. It cannot be corrected, but I have no other way to fulfill my needs."
He knelt before the first man, wiping a bead of sweat off the tip of his nose with the gun's barrel. "Knock, knock."
"W-w-who is there?"
"Orange."
"Orange who?"
"Orange you glad I didn't say bang, bang?" The Joker smiled all the way to his ears as he turned to the other man. "Bang, bang."
"Who's there!" the second man said quickly.
He was shot twice through the heart. "The Joker."
The clown prince of crime turned back to the first man. "Now, where's the money—hold on, I forgot the rule of three!" He put a bullet through the dead man's head. Gray matter speckled the survivor's face. He pissed himself.
"Uh-oh!" The Joker put his hands to his cheeks. "Someone isn't ready for big-girl panties just yet."
The Russian told him where the safe was, what its combination was, and his fervent wish not to die. The Joker took some lipstick from his pocket and painted a No. 23 Rouge Orange smile across the Russian's face. "You've been a lovely audience. I wish I could take you home and lock you in my basement, but it would never work out between us. We come from two different worlds, you and I." He kissed the Russian on the cheek. "Go on, run home, get out of here." The Russian ran for it. "I'll never let go, Jack!"
With a workmanly sigh, Joker trudged to the safe, punched in the combination, and was regarded with a satchel filled to the brim with bricks of cash. "Another day, another hundred thousand dollars. Remember that time we hijacked a bus and Batman chased us? Seems like yesterday."
"It was yesterday. Where's my cut?"
It was Dour Dusty, a gloomy-gus if ever there was one. Joker would prefer if all the money went into the punchline… he got giggles just thinking about it… but he realized that some money had to go to the people who didn't get the joke. Still, no reason to be rude.
"Here's your cut."
Like a card trick, a knife appeared in his hand. Unlike a card trick, it opened up a bloody line across Dusty's throat.
"Get it? Because he was referring to cut like his share of the loot, while I was saying cut like with a knife? It's funny!" Crickets chirped. Artie Brown laughed weakly. "You're right, too low-brow. Next guy who complains, I kill with French farce."
The Joker felt no joy in seeing the smiles of his new friends. He'd lost count of how many he'd made. It could've been ten, it could've been ten million. It was all the same to him. But it wasn't to Batman. The Batman kept count. And Joker loved him for it.
He staggered out into the night air, police sirens a distant serenade. By pressing down hard on the cash, he was able to make enough room in the satchel for Yorick. With sluicy results.
"How's that for blood money?" he quipped, trading the bag for a henchman's assault rifle.
The first patrol car on the scene rounded the corner. Joker opened up on it. Under his barrage, the front tires popped, the hood shot up, the radiator loosed steam, the windshield was perforated, and the cab was splashed with blood.
"I am a murderer!" he screamed into the night sky. "I am the murderer! I am evil, I am corruption, I am the Joker!" His voice lowered to a child's taunting whisper. "Twinkle twinkle, little bat, how I wonder where you're at…"
The men dragged him into the Jokermobile. More cops were coming.
"If there's one thing I hate, it's a prima donna who misses his curtain."
Jim Gordon was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes when he went out for the morning newspaper and found Harvey Dent parked on the curb. His car, a black 2002 Oldsmobile, had lost its passenger-side door to a motorcyclist and had it replaced with a white car door. Harvey had seemed to appreciate having some personality to break up the oppressive darkness of the car.
Today, however, he was in a fine state of agitation. His suit, for a workaholic like Harvey was seemingly never without his suit, was almost as pressed as always. The collar and cuffs were frayed, though, and his tie flew up like a cobra at the slightest breeze. Still, in his bathrobe and Bat-slippers (a gift from the boys one Christmas), Gordon had no room to judge.
"You see the figures overnight?" Harvey demanded. He had a fax clenched in one hand and was working a silver dollar around in the other. "45% increase in reports of violent crime!"
"Good morning to you too." Gordon stooped to retrieve the paper. "We've had worse. Remember the Riddler's crime wave?"
"You're not getting it. This was an hourly upswing, practically exponential!" Muscles were clenching on the left side of Harvey's jaw, like he was chewing back an even more explosive anger. "The only thing that stopped a full-blown riot was the sun coming up."
Gordon tapped the paper against his leg. It was too early in the morning for this. "Alright, we'll double patrols tonight, round up all the usual suspects, roust the usual dives. Maybe we can keep them off-balance long enough for the fervor to go down. We'll need arrest warrants for the Mafiosos, even if it won't stick."
"Already done, but it won't be enough!" Harvey insisted, waving the fax angrily.
"And what will be enough? Setting a curfew? Calling the National Guard?"
"It'd be a start." Harvey was dead serious. "Read the figures, Jim."
Gordon took the fax in his wearied grip. "I need my glasses. Come inside, have you eaten? Of course you haven't. We have waffles and cereal. And hurry up, too, before the sprinkler starts up."
"Sprinkler?"
Harvey wrung out his damp overshirt in the sink before handing it to Sarah Gordon for a roll in the dryer. He'd dried his skin off with paper towels, but his pants and undershirt were still dripping into small pools on the kitchen linoleum. With final scouring of his hands and forearms, he sat down in the kitchen nook.
"Here you are, Mr. Dent," Barbara said as she dropped a plate of waffles onto the table. As a girl (well, a girlier girl), she'd had a massive crush on the dashing attorney. Even though he was married and she was dating, some flames never went out all the way.
"Thanks, Barb." Harvey took a fork, but only to jab it at conversational topics. "Tonight is when the real trouble starts. As long as people are saying that Batman's off the streets, it won't matter whether it's true or not. The crooks are going to feel invincible. Unless someone puts a boot to their neck, they're going to run rampant. I may hate what the Bat stands for, but goddamn if we don't need one tonight."
Gordon reached over to steal one of Harvey's waffles, but was foiled by Barbara setting down a bowl of Kellogg's in front of him. He gave her a hangdog look.
"Remember what the doctor said."
Harvey hadn't even noticed, so lost was he in thought. "We were too reliant on Batman. Only superstition kept the crime rate down, not police work. Now with him gone…"
Gordon took a miserable spoonful of healthy cereal. "Batman works with the police," he told Harvey. "He improves our effectiveness, he doesn't nullify it."
Barbara sat down at the table, a slight but significant breach of familial protocol. "Like Superman in Metropolis. The crime rate skyrocketed when he left, but no one thinks he should leave now. Except for Lex Luthor, and that guy's a…"
"Barbara, we have company!" Sarah chided. "Anyone want coffee before I go to kick James Jr. into gear?"
"No thanks." "I'm fine." "I'll just have some OJ."
"Fridge door, and use the one that's already open," Sarah chimed on her way up the stairs.
Barbara grabbed the carton, shook it to see how full it was, then finished off what little was left. Harvey watched this with the enmity that grouchiness has for the cheerful. Before he could make any acidic comment, Gordon cut him off.
"Superman is, by definition, a special case."
Harvey nodded. "He has powers beyond the ken of mortal man. You can't compare that to Batman. He just goes to the gym a lot."
"Doesn't that make him… better?" Barbara asked. "Anyone could do the good Batman does. If he falls, another can rise up, and another, and another…"
"'Though you die, Bat-Resistance lives on,'" Harvey sang. Gordon cracked a smile that more than earned the Look Barbara gave him. "Barb, you're too young for this, but Jim, don't you ever wish we could go back to the way things were? No Batmen, no Jokers, just cops and robbers?"
"And Falcone in charge of everything? No thanks. Batman's a necessary evil to bring Gotham back."
"There's no such thing as a necessary evil," Harvey said in the manner of someone quoting a Bible verse, his fork tracing languid circles in the air. Realizing what he was doing like a man waking from a day-dream, he dropped his fork to his plate. "Come on, let's go to work. I wanna see Penguin's face when we bust his ass."
Gordon grabbed his coat. "It'll make a nice dress rehearsal for the real thing."
"This is outrageous!" Cobblepot squawked, thrusting his umbrella at Dent's chest.
"Waugh, waugh, waugh," Harvey mocked, deflecting the tip of the umbrella with the side of his hand. "We had reports that you were selling alcohol to minors, and that meant we just had to come down and investigate. Then we were shocked, shocked, to discover gambling in your establishment."
"I had my license approved months ago!"
"Really? My office didn't get the memo." Harvey gave him The Grin, the Apollo grin, the grin that'd won him the election, and he made it unattractively smug just for good measure. "That's bureaucracy for you, huh?"
The officers that had set up shop in the Lounge were checking all the guests for concealed weapons and other contraband. One twitchy-looking gambler grabbed a knife from his pocket and made a run at Dent. He was halfway through an unintelligible curse against the DA when Gordon calmly dropped him with a clothesline, then rotated his shoulder almost apologetically
Harvey smiled and lolled his head back to Oswald. "Nice clientele you've got here."
"Mock while you can, lawyer, but this will be a bad night to be a good cop. No Bat to watch your back."
Harvey's smile widened, but on the left side of his face it turned downward, spoiling into a scowl. He leaned in close. "There'll be no Batman to protect you from me. Think about that."
"Fighting in school," New Mom chided, burning away the second chance Tim had allotted her after the costume party. He'd just gotten home from school to find Dana lying in ambush.
"Disgraceful," Jack added, earning him a spot on Tim's crap list while barely looking up from his evening paper.
Tim gave thought to pleading his case. The other guy had been needling him about Batman's death, which was BS, and even then Tim hadn't done anything until the bastard had called Chloe a name. Tim had just said that she would've reported it if Batman had died, but all she'd posted were sightings of an unidentified flying man in Gotham air space… three guesses… and the guy had said that Chloe was a nut.
She wasn't.
Tim was no dummy. He knew if he told his parents all that, they would start wondering how close he was to Chloe. And no matter what Tim would like the answer to be, that would lead to trouble. So he held ice to his bruised face with his scraped knuckles, listening to Dana's lecture without telling her she wasn't his mother because she should darn well know, and finally went to his room without supper.
There was a girl there. At least, he thought it was a girl. It wore a purple rain slicker and a black ski mask that robbed the human body of all gender. As soon as he slammed his door shut, she leapt from the closet to tackle him to the bed. Tim felt more comfortable thinking of her as a she, because if she were a guy…
That night, Tim had a rather bewildering dream about Chloe, who'd been naked, jumping out of his closet.
"Timothy Drake?" she (not Chloe, the other one) asked. It was either a girl's voice or the most effeminate man this side of Will & Grace.
A wild idea of the guy he'd fought with sending a ninja assassin to avenge his honor occurred to Tim. "Konichiwa?"
"I'm not going to hurt you, I came to talk. I've been waiting in your closet for hours!" She let him up. "Do you ever wash your socks?"
"How did you know it was my room?"
The girl in purple stared at him.
Tim remembered the one or two Batman posters he'd never taken down. And action figures. And pillowcase. "I've been meaning to redecorate."
"You the head of the Batman fan club or not?"
Tim worked his molars. "It's an appreciation society."
The girl waved her hand like she was karate-chopping the idea out of existence. "Whatev. Can you get a message to the Batman? I tried the Wonder Boys, but they were too busy hating black people to be any help."
"I love black people!" Tim said in his own defense. He was still sitting on his bed, so he leapt up. After the blows he'd suffered to his pride, he felt the inexplicable need to prove himself to her. "And anything you can say to Batman, you can say to me."
"So you can get a message to Batman?" she reiterated, resting her hands on his hips.
"We're like this," Tim said, crossing his fingers.
"Good. The Joker's planning a hit on the Penguin. It's going down at the Iceberg Lounge. Bats might wanna look into it."
"Oh, he will. You just leave it all to him." The more confident Tim sounded, the faster his heart raced. It didn't help that the purple rain slicker was just tight enough to hint at the beginnings of breasts, the rounding of womanly hips… and she was alone with him, right next to his bed.
"Good. I'll be in touch if I learn anything else." She bounded onto his windowsill and threw open the pane.
"Wait!" Tim had a thousand questions and they all crashed together on his tongue. The last one in line avoided the pile-up and made it out his mouth. "Why purple?"
Her really rather pretty eyes narrowed. She pinched the slicker between her fingers. "It's eggplant. Purple would be stupid."
Barbara had only been keeping the costume until she could think of a way to get rid of it. She was pretty sure Batgirl was guilty of inciting a riot. And it wasn't like her parents would never notice. So, Batgirl no more.
Then Batman had gone and… not died, but… Gotham needed a guardian. Why couldn't it be her? Even Batman must've started somewhere.
This wasn't a costume party. This wasn't social activism. This was combat against stone-cold killers. She would have to even the playing field.
A quotation drifted to the surface of her mind. God may have made men, but Samuel Colt made them equal. And Barbara had seen her dad punch his code into the safe enough times…
She waited until mom was out to pick up James Jr., then opened the safe just long enough to grab the .380. Not a man-stopper, in this age of Kevlar vests, but she wasn't looking to put anyone in the ground. She added a holster and quick-load cylinders stuffed with ACP rounds to her belt, then waited for dark.
Barbara passed the time at the target range, aiming for arms, legs. Dad had insisted she learned to shoot after the Narrows Attack. He'd blustered and pretended it was just because "a police chief's daughter should know how to shoot," but they both knew that if another disaster hit the cops, Barbara would be protecting not just herself, but her baby brother.
Same principle here. Just with the entire city instead of James Jr.
It was night by the time she finally put the suit on. She'd modified it. More practical, more militaristic. No more high-heeled boots, thought they were kicky. Not the right kind of kicky. Steel-toed boots… now that was the right kind.
She heard the bark of her window opening. Dick. Had to be. She was in her closet, so she turned off the light and pulled the door shut. Not quick enough. Dick's voice was a whisper, but loud enough for her to tell he knew she was there.
"Babs."
"You can't be here," she said through the closet door. She heard his footsteps get closer. "Please, before my parents…"
"Your dad is at work and your mom's car isn't in the driveway."
"If my brother saw you, he'd tell them."
"He'll keep his secret. He's a little brother, I speak his language." The groan of bedsprings marked him sitting down. "Look. Word on the street is that the Batman won't be taking care of business tonight. Cops are outmatched. Hate to say it, but it's true. So I thought you and yours might be in trouble. So, I figured we would go grab a late dinner, maybe take in a show… you know, not be in harm's way. Or, uh, I could stay here with you. I'm pretty good in a fight, you know."
Barbara smiled, but worked hard to keep it out of her voice. "That's sweet of you, but the only trouble I'm in is the possibility of you getting caught. You really should leave."
"This isn't some excuse to put the moves on you, okay? You're in real danger."
Barbara's hand curled around the butt of the gun. She wanted to be reassured it was still a weapon, her weapon, and not some cancerous growth that had massed on her thigh. "I can take care of myself."
Dick guffawed. "This isn't a baked goods sale. The city you live in isn't the one I do. It's a whole 'nother beast. It's rough and dirty and…" He padded closer to the closet door. "Let me help you. Please. If not for you, or your brother, then for me."
"If you go now, I'll still be willing to talk to you tomorrow. Otherwise, no promises."
She could practically see his discontent working its way through its body, bobbing him on the balls of his feet and clenching his fists, before he nodded stiffly. "Okay. You have my number. You get scared, you hear a weird noise…"
"I'll call the police."
"…yeah. That too."
Finally, he left. Barbara considered going after him. It probably would be safer. Saner, certainly. She cracked the door a ways, saw him pausing at her window.
"Whatever you do, don't go out tonight. It's not safe."
It will be.
Oswald Cobblepot had, and the joke was obvious to him, been smoothing ruffled feathers all day. The Russians were certain he had something to do with a hit on one of their boorish get-togethers and wanted the Joker's head. Cobblepot was inclined to give it to them.
The Joker was looking more and more like good money after bad, more interested in his own hidden agenda than in removing the pugilistic pest. If the Joker knew what was good for him, he would realize his error and take his "business" elsewhere.
Even so, it was a surprise to find the Joker in his office, sitting at his desk, shuffling his set of novelty playing cards with the Escher mosaic of birds metamorphosing into fish on the back. The caged birds that provided his office with a teahouse atmosphere and delighted him with their orchestral singing were now squawking in fear.
The Joker's smile was that of the cat that got the cream. "Not that I'm not feeling homicidal, but my pa always said it was a sin to kill a mockingbird." He split the deck. "You have a lot of not-hummingbirds."
Cobblepot slammed the door behind him. He knew it was useless to tell the Joker they weren't to be seen together… the clown probably thought they were bosom buddies. "The only bird that should be in-season for you is the albatross around my neck: Batman! I want his head on a pike!"
"Will a lance do?" In a burst of rage, Joker threw the deck of cards at the one of the birdcages. It exploded in a flurry, leaving the joker card on the inside of the cage. "Batman's flown the coop. Gone south for the winter. Taken his wonderful toys and gone Bat-home. But don't you worry your balding little head about it, Pengy, I'm preparing him a warm welcome. So warm that as soon as he gets back, his goose is cooked. All I need is a little more goose to gander." He took out another deck of cards and began to extract it from the box and plastic it came in.
Cobblepot struck a match on his matchbook (emblazoned with the Iceberg Lounge's logo) and lit an imported cigarette. Extravagantly, he placed the ivory-white cigarette in an obsidian holder. The ember at the end flared to match the vein pulsing on his forehead. With a breath, a powder-puff of ashes smogged directly across the Joker's pasty face.
The Penguin hated bird jokes.
"You've let that rodent rapscallion slip through your fingers and you expect to be rewarded for it!?"
The Joker let cards drip off the new deck to tap the desk thoughtfully. "Yes. That's it exactly. Glad to see we're on the same page."
"We're not on the same page! We are no longer even in the same book!"
The Joker collected his fanned-out cards. "I take it you're upset."
"Upset? Enraged! Were I you, Mr. Joker, I would take my ill-gotten gains and leave Gotham while my legs could still carry me!"
"Well, if that's the way it's going to be… I declare war."
The Joker fell silent. He basked in Cobblepot's unease until a smile opened like the gates of hell from one end of his face to the other. Then he set the deck of cards facedown on the desk. "Well, you go first."
Cobblepot sighed in relief. The Joker was still a weird one, but better to play through one of his pranks than get caught up in violence. He took the top card. It was a joker, the eyes scratched out, the mouth an eruption of red crayon. And the face a picture of Oswald Cobblepot.
"Sorry. You lose. House rules."
Cobblepot tapped a bit of ash out on the playing card. "This running gag has become tiresome. Frick, Frack!" he called. Twin brothers dressed in identically-cut suits rushed in. Their drawn guns were the most readily distinguishable difference between them. "Escort our guest to an early grave."
The bodyguards walked past Cobblepot to flank Joker. And turn impassively to the Penguin.
"Impeccable timing," the Joker quipped. "Sorry, Pengy. You may pay them, but they fear me. Besides, I offer full dental coverage." He picked up an old-fashioned tommy gun from behind the desk. "Sal Maroni sends his regards… and lotsa lotsa bullets!"
Cobblepot snatched up an umbrella from the rack and pointed it at the Joker. Clown and new henchmen were advancing on the Penguin in a tight wedge. "Those don't work on lead rain, birdbrain. What're ya gonna do, umbrella me to death?"
Cobblepot's anxious fingers found a hidden trigger and pressed it. Instantly, a jet of flame shot from the tip. The Joker covered his face, but his purple overcoat was set on fire. He stripped it off, hot footing all the while. The Penguin made a break for it as fast as his stubby legs would carry him. The Joker stomped after him, literally smoldering.
Commissioner Gordon supposed that there were always ways for Gotham to make things worse. Take his physical, for instance. The doctor had insisted he needed less fatty foods. So when Bullock announced a donut run, despite it being the hardest day he'd had in months, Gordon only let himself be put down for one éclair and a mini-carton of milk. When Bullock got back, the aroma was torture.
"Hey, commish, good idea on the Batsignal," Bullock chuffed.
"How's that?"
"Turning it on to make the crooks think we've still got Batman working for us. Pretty sneaky."
"I didn't order the signal turned on."
A moment passed as the squad room waited for someone to claim responsibility. Then they stormed the roof.
"Please don't tell my parents," Tim Drake said, lip trembling in what Gordon would rate half-sympathy bid, half-genuine fear.
With paternal trustworthiness, Gordon hunched down with his hands on his knees in front of the lad. "Relax, kid, you're not in any trouble. Just tell us one thing. If Batman didn't answer the signal, who did?"
The Joker bore down on the Penguin until there was only a single door between them. He paused -- "Ozzy Ozzy oxen-free!" – and shoved through. Cobblepot was out of the offices and into the club lounge, bulldozing through his own guests to get to the exit. Joker took careful, but not too careful, aim.
"Duck season," he said, his finger on the trigger.
Something exploded above him. It was glass. Joker looked up as he shielded his face and saw a dark, yellow-tailed comet crashing through the frosted glass skylight. Yellow boots touched down in front of him, a black figure curled around them. It slowly erected itself, growing until they were eye to mascaraed eye.
"Wabbit season," Batgirl said.
"A window, a skylight…" The Joker brushed some safety glass pebbles off his shoulder. "Can't you ever use a door?"
He could swear he saw a smile as she sidekicked him through the door. He slid to a stop at the feet of the twins, who now wore identical fire extinguisher foam. Joker lifted a hand to point at Batgirl.
"Humor her."
Batgirl's hand slapped her belt and reappeared with a metal tube in it. A flick of the wrist and the cylinder extended into a baton. She zig-zagged it between the two men, first dislodging their guns, then ricocheting between them left-right right-left. Finally she pirouetted at whirlwind speed, slashing the baton across both their temples. They buckled. Dropped.
The baton spun in her hand like the bat of a homerun hitter, then pointed at the Joker. "And now I'm gonna stick it to you."
The Joker pointed past her. "I think they may have dibs."
While Batgirl had been fighting the twins, Penguin had returned with the nearest loyal soldiers he could find. There were seven of them, bruisers all, with automatic weaponry. The patrons that hadn't already fled quickly got out of the way. Joker and Batgirl similarly parted, taking cover on either side of the door as gunfire blitzed through it.
Joker shouted to be heard over the bullets separating them. "So, Brat-girl, how about ditching the hero and getting with a zero-survival-rate? You'd look good in purple… maybe a nice lavender. And you already know your way around a tube of lipstick…"
"…ewwwww!"
The Joker made a face like a silent film star playing heartbroken. It was too hammy to ever pass for sincere. "Unfortunately, I have a problem with rejection." He raised the tommy gun toward her. She clutched her own pistol. "Hello, cruel world!"
With that, he leapt out into the waning gunfire. One or two bullets splashed against his chest, but he was fortified by his insanity. His machine gun started blazing and didn't stop. Three gangsters and two civilians dropped dead from the first blast. Batgirl, screaming incoherently, leapt out to brain Joker with her pistol. He dropped to one knee.
The gangsters popped out of hiding as well. Batgirl yanked Joker up to use as a human shield. She felt the shock of an impact through his thin chest. Her return fire kneecapped the gangsters, dropping them in their tracks. The Penguin waddled to the aquarium and dived in. The patrons were falling over each other to get out. Batgirl hauled the Joker to his feet, wondering why his bullet wounds weren't bleeding. He backhanded her. Hard. When she hit the floor, a trickle of blood was already pouring from her lips.
"Bulletproof vest. I'm crazy, not stupid." He jerked her up by the hair. "Whereas you're too stupid to be crazy."
She tried to pistol-whip him again, but he caught her fist and forced the gun toward her face. The only thing that saved her was the groan of a gangster shot in the leg rising to his feet. Joker pivoted, like they were dancing, and fired the gun in their joined hand. The bullet blew the gangster's brains out before poking a hole in the aquarium's glass wall. Water arced out.
Batgirl roared. With rage came strength. She kneed Joker in the stomach, rattling slugs loose from his Kevlar, and wrenched the gun away. A second later it was reloaded and aimed at his head. "Hands on your head. Down on the ground."
"I'm not that kind of girl." Like he was suspended from invisible wires, Joker grabbed the back of his collar and hoisted himself back up. "Oh, those Gerber greens are pretty as a penis, but you should've covered them up. You don't have a killer's eyes. Not like me. And not like the real Bat."
He grabbed hold of her wrist in a vice-like grip and jerked the pistol up against his head. Barbara's trigger finger was so numb she wouldn't have believed anyone who told her it was still there. "Never send a woman to do a Batman's job."
Barbara didn't feel the first blow. She felt the air leave her lungs and pain knot up her stomach, but it felt too fast and too strong to be a punch. It was more like being in a car accident. The punches didn't stop, or even seem to separate. She was tossed around like a poltergeist's plaything, a kite in a typhoon. She couldn't block, she couldn't thin, she couldn't fight back. Then the battering stopped.
Anyone present would've been amazed that Batgirl was standing, including Batgirl. Her mouth was full of blood, choking her, gagging her. She spat it out just as her cape was tugged like the proverbial short leash. Dragged across the ground while blood welled in her mouth, she had a coughing fit that speckled the marble floor with machine-gun patterns of crimson.
She was still sputtering when the Joker picked her up and flung her into the giant aquarium. Whatever quip he made was swallowed up by her hitting water. The sound was a rippling chain of detonations muted against her eardrums.
Her wet cape shrunk-wrapped her, shoving her down every time she tried to tread water. She could see the Joker through the panicked yellow swirling. His face was pressed up against the glass like an ugly schoolchild. Barbara kicked out at his death's-head grin. The glass buckled outward, knocking him on his ass. It also spider-webbed at her heel.
Apparently Cobblepot had cut corners on the construction. Batgirl was shocked and appalled.
She struck her leg out again. It rammed through the fissures, becoming stuck as the cracks spread. The Joker watched, moon-eyed, as the seemingly disembodied leg flexed and wriggled above him. Then the entire glass wall exploded, vomiting hundreds of gallons of water through cracked glass teeth. The dining area was flooded, the tidal wave sweeping up tables, chairs, and corpses. Cobblepot clung to a Plexiglas iceberg as his sanctuary was emptied out.
Batgirl got to her feet, looking more drowned rat than bat. The water came up to her knees, with chairs floating among the overturned tables. The dead men's blood was turning the water a deep wine color. Batgirl slogged around, trying to spot the Joker in the minefield of furniture. Wet hair got in her eyes, muddying her vision. The sound of tables and chairs colliding were gunshots deafening her.
A hand settled on her shoulder. It was white, with purple-painted fingernails. "This day has been heck on my wardrobe."
Again the impossibly fast blow, the sudden pain. Batgirl was thrown down into the water and he scurried on top of her, holding her head down between his thighs, under the water. By the time he let her back up, her vision was darkening and her lungs were constricting.
"You've been a very naughty girl, staying out past curfew." He mockingly brushed a wet lick of hair from her eyes. "Papa will have to spank."
Batgirl spat a stream of chlorinated water directly into his eyes. He screeched and fell off her. Ran for the staircase that led out of the sunken dining area and toward the exit, his hands covering his eyes. "My face, my face! I'm melting, oh what a world, what a world! Et tu, Rosebud? Tell my wife I love her, tell my mistress I really love her, tell my kids to stay in drugs and don't do school, tell my knife she is a ladle, and tell my optometrist…" He turned on the first step of the staircase to reveal his eyes were dark pits, eyeballs bobbing out on gallows-optic nerves to hang about his neck. "THANKS FOR NOTHING!"
Barbara almost screamed before realizing it was a ghastly version of these old spring-loaded space eyes, the kind of thing that might be advertised in the back of EC Comics.
Fake eyeballs waggling back his neck like a tail, the Joker made his getaway. Batgirl would've chased after him, really she would've, but then she heard sirens.
Dick jerked awake. "But, mom, I wanna stay home and bake cookies with you…"
The rude-awakening sound came again. It was curled fingers rapping on his car window. It all came back to him. He'd decided to pull guard duty on Babs and he must've fallen asleep and now… he grabbed the handle and rolled the window down. The very tall gentleman who'd been knocking stooped down. Dick went white as a sheet. He recognized that face. He'd seen it in Barbara's wallet and bedroom: Dad.
"Commissioner Gordon," Dick gasped, brushing Xposed magazine off his passenger seat. "Hi. I've heard so much about you…"
"That right."
"On talk radio, I mean." Dick patted his car stereo lovingly. "You look good. Have you lost weight? Because I see you on TV and you definitely seem slimmer in person. But then, they say the camera adds ten pounds."
"Mind telling me your name?"
He gulped. "Dick Grayson, sir."
"Now mind telling me what you're doing here, Dick Grayson?"
"I was just out for a drive." Dick wrenched the steering wheel, smiling winningly, "when I noticed my eyelids were letting the light in, so I pulled over to check 'em for holes."
"Holey eyelids, Mr. Grayson?"
"Exactly."
Gordon lowered his glasses. "You look well-rested to me."
"And so I will be moving on." Dick buckled his seatbelt. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Gordon. Have a lovely day."
He drove off, never having noticed that Batgirl had climbed up the trellis of her house, slipped into her bedroom window, and changed out of her costume during the course of his conversation with her father.
Gordon watched the car peel out, bristling with suspicion. It was probably nothing. But just in case, he called in the plates and name.
Gordon breezed into the house, sorting through junk mail. Barbara was at the fridge, shoveling ice into a plastic bag. She wrapped it in a towel and pressed it to her face with a relieved groan.
"You alright, angel?"
"Oh, who, me?" Barbara hid her face behind the ice-pack. "I'm great. Dinah and I were just fooling around and I leaned into her punch. Oops."
"Here, let me see."
"No, dad, it's…" his fingers pried the ice away. "Looks worse than it is."
It was nasty, a purple bruised that covered her face like a large man's handprint. Gordon sighed and put the ice-pack back against it.
"You wouldn't hesitate to call 911 if something suspicious were going on, right?"
"Suspicious? Like what?"
Gordon kicked off his shoes and sagged into his favorite chair. "Found this punk kid lurking outside, name of, uh, Dick Grayson."
Barbara darkened. "Sounds like an idiot, alright."
"Real troublemaker, too. Juvie record for theft and assault…"
"Maybe he didn't start the fights," Babs reasoned.
"It's good to look for people's good sides, baby, but I'd still prefer that punks like that stay away from my family. Imagine what he'd do if he broke in and found you home alone."
Barbara blushed and hid it with the ice-pack. "I'd better go to bed before you give me nightmares. Night, daddy." She kissed the top of his graying head.
"Night, angel. And don't worry about the Dick Graysons of the world. You've got your good old D-A-D watching out for you."
Barbara started up the stairs, mentally composing her epistle to future generations.
Dear Diary, today I got my ass kicked by Mojo the Clown, got my nice leather costume soaked, and then had to run home ahead of my father the police commissioner. But on the bright side, I managed to save the city's biggest crime boss.
Damnit, Batman, where are you?
Bruce laughed, screamed when he couldn't laugh, cried when he couldn't scream, laughed when he couldn't cry. Superman didn't have trouble holding him down. It was keeping from hurting him that was the hard part.
"His body can't take much more of this," he said, glancing at the Fortress's render of Bruce's physiology. "Going into cardiac arrest… synthesize another antidote, batch seventy-three. Reset acceptable parameters at minus twenty karatheons."
When Bruce touched his cheek, his hand was cold and clammy and utterly sane.
"Clark. Let me go. Let me go to my parents, I see them…"
Clark gently took the hand and put it back in the restraint. "Not yet, old friend."