The first evidence of Other Joker was a trio of chattering wind-up plastic teeth skittering around teetering stacks of old files in the office on that side of the force fields. Further down the hall (which I swear truly did look like some 70's idea of the inside of a spaceship) was another set. "He's left us a trail of bread crumbs to follow." I shouted over evergency klaxons and not-too-distant gunfire.

"Looks like." Jay replied. We tore off in the direction of the next set, down a hall where safety gates slid down protectively over office doors as we passed. Here they had actual metal bars, not just energy fields. The priorities around here were so screwed up. We passed the dead body of a guard slumped against the wall, turned a corner, and threaded our way down another corridor, around askew desks and endless stacks of old patient files. Not to mention huge pictures of Warden Sharp every ten feet or so. Panicked rats dashed across our path from time to time. I thought we might have gone the wrong way, but now and then, confirmation of our being on the right track, was another set of teeth.

"Plastic teeth," Jay said, sounding disgusted, "I, uh, should have expected it. Y'see, the kind of mind that likes plastic teeth is the kind that goes for, uh, cream pies in the face, and whoopie cushions. Kitch." He said it like it was a dirty word.

"Except that in his case it'd probably be poisoned cream and explosive gas in the cushions. Or joy buzzers that have lethal voltage." I said. "You know, if you ever started doing stuff like that, I would lose all respect for you."

"You have respect for me? Since when? Oh, by the way, Gracie-gal, it's sling, not swing."

"Come again?" I asked without thinking.

"—Okay, if you really want it now. Up against the wall? Or should we hit one of those cots—."

"Hentai!" I snapped at him. "Filthy-minded, nigh insatiable—." I wasn't really offended. This was just how we interacted. You, oh non-existent reader, can be happy your way with your significant other, and I'll be happy mine.

"Yeah, that's you, but I put up with it. The saying is 'ass in a sling', not 'ass in a swing'."

We didn't really need to talk aloud, but when I was tangible, we generally did. Force of habit, I suppose.

Jay tripped over another body, rolled with the fall, sat up and suddenly guffawed, pointing. "Eve-ry time I think I've seen the, uh, worse around here, it gets lower. The guards' vests aren't even bullet-proof! Why did Bozo even bother knocking this place over? Shooting puppies in a barrel, because that's just what this is, is—um, I don't know, unsporting. Too easy to be worth doing."

"Even if it's to get Batman?"

"There they are! Get'em!" roared a henchman, charging around a fork in the corridor ahead. He had a friend with him.

Jay shot them both without bothering to get to his feet. "Even if it's to get Batman. Out of ammo..." He threw the gun aside. "Where's the next gun box? You check that side, I'll check this one." He went down one of the forking corridors and I went down the other.

"Hey? Who is that? Miss, over here!" A miraculously unharmed guard down at the end of the hallway waved his arms at me. "The Joker's loose. It's not safe."

"I know," I said, putting on a Chinese accent. "Did he come this way?"

"Yeah. Look, you oughtta find somewhere to hide—."

His radio squawked, and someone said, "We need back up in Pacification. Zsasz is loose. I repeat, we need back up. Zsasz is free and—Oh, God!"

"Zsasz?" I asked. Another parallel with our world. Zsasz was an inmate of our Arkham too.

"Victor Zsasz. You really need to get somewhere safe! He killed twenty girls over just three months, and that's only the tip of the iceberg—hey, where are you going?"

I wasn't sure myself. There are certain killers whose victims' anger clings to them like smoke to fire, certain special victims, those bound to them by familial ties, and when I am near such a killer I am compelled to—well, there's more than one reason I'm called The Grudge. At least since meeting Death recently I've come to understand what happens and keep hold of myself when the compulsion comes. Which family member or members had Zsasz killed? Was he protected by the laws of Story as Jay and Batman were? I would soon find out.

It was too bad that Batman wasn't coming—or at least wasn't there yet. Zsasz's skin crawled, needing, wanting, craving the mark he would carve into himself once he killed the Bat. In the meantime, he nicked his bicep to commemorate the zombie guard piggy-wiggy he had just freed from his miserable pointless life, and gazed dreamily at the blade. "I need more marks." he said aloud. "My skin doesn't feel like mine yet."

Long ago, he had permanantly removed all the hair on his body, the better to free up skin surface for more marks. He cut them in the traditional way, groupings of five with the fifth mark slashed diagonally over the first four. One mark per victim. He was approaching a tally of a hundred and fifty, and consequently was starting to run out of body space. If only he had made them smaller to begin with... Four of the longest stood out in sharp relief on his forehead, lacking the cross mark. That one, that diagonal, he was saving for the Bat, so naked or clothed he could gaze at it and remember.

Last year, he'd had a crushing blow; one of his victims had the audacity to live, thanks to his employer's infinitely deep pockets, and after Zsasz had already made the mark for him, too! One day he would revisit Alfred Pennyworth, finish the job—and then take Bruce Wayne for good measure. After he killed Batman first, of course.

For now, he was willing to play catch up with whatever Asylum personnel he could find. By mere chance he had found an office whose safety bars had stuck halfway, and so he had dragged the pig in there to have some fun with him. But he didn't yet know how to pose this victim. (Posing the subject after death was a work of art in itself.) Peering under the safety barrier, he caught sight of a lithe figure sprinting down the hallway. A woman, young, in Arkham staff scrubs and bright pink nurse's shoes, a rope of dark hair swishing against her back. Perfect. She would be worthy of his Dark Gift.

"Nurse--oh, nurse, there's a man here who's hurt. He needs your help." Zsasz called out.

She stopped, turned, and hurried over to him. That was one of the many wonderful things about women. They were programmed to respond to the words 'need help', and even when they didn't want to, when their instincts told them not to, they had to.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"In here." She ducked under the bars--and oh, she was lovely. Golden beige skin, black black hair, exotically shaped eyes. She was worthy. "He's here." Zasaz could hardly keep from laughing.

"This man is dead!" she said, checking the piggy-wiggy's vitals.

"Everyone is," Zsasz said, snaking an arm around her neck from behind and bringing his knife up so she could see it. "Nothing matters. No one matters. All you zombies, lurching around your miserable, meaningless lives--I'm doing you a favor, really. Giving you a gift, setting you free--."

"Is that so?" she asked, and her voice was wrong. She sounded cool, detached, even a little amused. "I prefer the 28 Days Later style of zombie myself--all hyped up and rabid. I could never see why people were so afraid of the slow, clumsy ones."

"What?" he asked.

"You killed your parents." she stated, and now this conversation was going places Zsasz truly did not care for. "For your inheritance. Which you then wasted."

"It was an accident--a boating accident! It happened while we were sailing--."

"But we know better." He would have killed her slowly, he had wanted to kill her slowly, but he was so disconcerted that he slashed fast and hard across her throat--.

Except she wasn't there, and he had sliced deeply into his own arm--and his neck. It hurt. The man who believed that nothing mattered suddenly realized that something did matter, terribly. His blood sprang forth as though it were eager to get away from him, but it didn't drip or spray, it billowed out as if they were underwater. It was beautiful, spreading out in voluptuous crimson clouds, but he hurt so badly and it was pouring out so fast, and then there she was again, only she was different now. Her hair was loose, waving in the water like ink in a seer's bowl, and her white dress too, like fancy goldfish fins. Her feet in their pink shoes did not touch the floor; she floated between floor and ceiling, greenish in the light.

"I--I need help," he stammered, as the blood spread. Sharks, it would attract sharks, that was why he had been careful not to spill so much as a drop of his parent's blood, because it would be stupid for him to die when he was on the verge of actually living for once. "I'm bleeding and they'll, they'll eat me."

"Why don't you ask that guard for help?," she inquired, and now he saw her eyes were bleeding too. Danger, so much danger--. "I'm sure he had first aid training. Or Doctor Sarah Cassidy, your psychiatrist here, who you stalked and killed. Or your mother and father."

"They're dead! Help me, please!" He had never been cut seriously before, and, and it wasn't as much fun as the superficial marks he made on himself. It wasn't fun at all.

"But I'm dead too. What can I do?" She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Zombies aren't known for their medical skills and helpfulness. Zombies..." she writhed forward toward him, took his face in her hands. For a moment it seemed as though she would kiss him, but instead she brushed her thumbs over his eyes. "You want zombies, I'll give you zombies. Zombies...and sharks."

I didn't find another gun cabinet, maybe because this area was all offices, so I retraced my steps and went down the other corridor. "Gracie? Come out, come out wherever you are!"

"In here!" She stuck her head out of the wall ahead, and when I got there I found it a stuck security gate and an office with one dead guard, one bleeding but living guy in what looked like serious bondage gear--his pants weren't buckled on him but locked in place--and Grace. There was a lot of blood around. She was watching as the guy in the kinky outfit gibbered and thrashed on the floor. "He killed his parents," she said by way of explanation.

"Okay. This isn't like you, though. Don't you usually, uh, bring on hideous diseases leading to horrible deaths?"

"Yes, but I'm not allowed to actually kill this one, for the same reason that Scarecrow and Ra's al Ghul are protected. That doesn't mean I can't mess with him, though."

"Did you find any guns?" I asked her.

"No, but he has a couple of knives."

"Works for me..." I found the blades, wiped them off, and pocketed them. "Time to get back to chasing teeth."

We went back out in the hall and were hunting for more teeth when the airlock doors at either end of the hall made a sound that suggested they had just locked up tight. A bank of flat screen monitors came alive with static. "Not more announcements from the warden," I said, disgustedly. "Remind me to kill him later."

But it wasn't Sharpie. Instead the screechy female voice asked, "Is this thing on?" and we were treated to a picture of jiggling cleavage at extreme close up. "Oh. Hiya! Harlequin here. That's two words, Harley Quinn. I'm Mistah J's girlfriend."

The cleavage moved backward so we could see who it belonged to. She was blond and blue eyed, with her hair in two pigtails and a nurse's hat in between, her face was painted white with two perfect circles of rouge on her cheeks, and she had a little black mask around her eyes. Going south from there, she had on a very scanty Naughty Nurse outfit over a red and blue PVC corset that shoved her tits up almost to her chin, a dog collar buckled around her neck, long gloves in still more red and blue PVC, studded black leather wristlets, and black fishnets under one red and one blue thigh high PVC boot. Her navel was out for the whole world to see, as were her panty straps.

Gracie summed it up. "Oh, look! It's a Rocky Horror Barbie! And it talks!"

I snickered, but Bondage Barbie started as if slapped. "I didn't wear it to impress you! What do you think?" She wriggled and posed for me, smiling and batting her eyes.

I said what I thought. "I. uh, have simple tastes, really. I don't mind cheap--but I draw the line at sleazy. And you're sleazy."

TBC....

A/N: Batwiki says that Victor Zsasz's wealthy parents died in a boating accident when he was twenty-five and he then lost his entire fortune gambling. It seemed to me that given his later career, it was not too much of a stretch that they might have been his first victims. Some people love Harley, some loathe her. I'm going with Harley as she seems in the game. As they say, clothes may make the man, but you can tell a lady just by looking.

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