To say that the Arkham people were shocked is a gross understatement. I can only assume that they had developed some kind of ingrained panic response to the combination of green(ish) hair, a purple suit and a dead white complexion. Instantly Jay was at the center of a ring of gun muzzles, their safety catches off, and the guards behind those guns had gone almost as white as his make-up.
"Ah-ta-ta-ta," he said, waggling a finger at them, and then pointing his finger at them each in turn. "Ree-lax, people, relax. I know it's already been a rough night, and it's probably gonna, uh, get rougher, but shooting little ol' me won't do you any good. I'm not the guy who's putting you through the wringer here."
"Then why are you—?" Dr. Whistler asked.
"Why am I dressed and made up like this? Short answer: To piss Bozo off. Longer answer—this is about him and me, and tonight one of us throws down. Which one—you'll have to wait and see. He didn't see this one coming—all his plans were set up with the Batman in mind. He wasn't expecting us."
"'Us'?" she asked.
I stood up. "Thank you for making me that offer, Dr. Whistler, and if I were who I said I was, I'd say yes." I didn't add that given the general disorder, filth, and wretched mismanagement of this institution, I would not work there for any money. "But I'm not."
I shifted from Arkham scrubs and nurse shoes to the party dress and the natural state of the Shoes. Then I went further, through my murder and death, and I did not leave a good-looking corpse. Boiling will do that to you. "I used to be a normal person, but that was before I met Dr. Crane. Now I'm the stuff of nightmares." True, but in a different universe...
"But you'll always be my dream girl," Jay mugged, putting an arm around my waist and drawing me to him.
"Thank you, my gallant prince of baloney," I snarked at him, just before he planted a big kiss on my lips in the classic Hollywood fashion, despite how I currently looked. (I could hear some of the guards making 'Eeeeww' noises in the background, but others had whipped out their camera phones and were taking pictures.) It was a good kiss, the knee-weakening kind, the kind that usually led to more.
The mood was broken immediately. "When you say, 'throw down', do you mean that you intend to kill him?" Dr. Whistler asked, her aged face severe.
"Kill him? No, I don't intend to kill him. Not that it might not, uh, happen, you never know. I intend to break him. Killing him would be much too easy—and no fun."
"No fun?," asked a guard, "You think something like that ought to be fun—say, who are you?"
"Aaah, names, names," Jay brushed it off, "Jay, like the bird, is good enough. And this is my wife Grace. As for who I am—well, do you think it was chance that she and I wound up here the same night that Bozo got dragged back? Do you think I'm challenging him on a whim?"
'That is exactly what you're doing, smart-ass.' I told him mentally. 'Don't think I'm not keeping track.'
Yeah, but they don't know. I'm putting together a legend here, sassy girl. And they are going to eat it up.
He was right. I heard one guard say to another behind us "—it has to be the Joker's son, I mean, not that they look that much alike but—."
Another whispered conversation:"—how come we've never heard of this guy or seen him before—."
"How old is the Joker? I know nobody knows but he has to be at least forty-five, fifty. This kid looks like he's on the young side of thirty, so maybe—."
"—everybody knows some people wind up with weird powers where most wind up dead, that could be what happened to her with the fear gas, and they found each other. And she's all right, you saw what she did—."
"—I can believe the Joker would cut his kid's face open like that, he'd think it was funny—."
Jay cut through all the rumor and innuendo. "I'm going after him, and whatever goons of his happen to get in the way, that's their tough luck. I'm not after any of the Arkham staff or guards, unless they're double dipping for him. You have nothing to fear from me. I give you my word—and I am a man of my word."
"He is," I confirmed. "I've never known him to break it deliberately, and if circumstances force it, he goes to any length to make it good." Such as killing someone named 'Harvey' and another named 'Dent' when he said 'Harvey Dent' would die, but they didn't need to be burdened with such details right now.
A few of the guards were nodding now, looking more secure. A few were even smiling. Dr. Whistler was not. "What you are proposing is not only wrong but dangerous. Unhealthy, too, in many ways. Yet I think you know this already, and I do not have the power to stop you."
Abruptly the airlock doors at the far end of the room opened, and over the loudspeaker we heard other Joker grouse, "I'm getting tired of waiting around for you two. Will you get a move on? I haven't got all night!" Beyond the door were, yes, more chattering teeth, and a neon green arrow spray painted on the floor.
"You ready?" Jay asked me.
I nodded.
The guards were clapping and cheering for us as the door locked behind us.
"So," I began as we followed both teeth and arrows down the corridor, "you got the make-up off one of the Blackgaters with a clown face, I guessed that."
"Uh-huh. One of them had the tubes in his pocket." Jay replied. "Plus with all the knives I got off the bodies, my pocket lint isn't lonesome anymore."
"And you dyed your suit and your shirt with the stains they keep around for prepping slides of cells, I figured that out too—but how did you get it all dry so fast?"
"You should have taken a better look around that room, sassy girl. They had all kinds of stuff for killing germs—not to mention their hosts. There were microwave chambers and autoclaves, radiation booths, all kinds of funny stuff. My kind of funny stuff, the kind that, uh, hurts more than it cures. Not in what you'd call apple-pie order, either. Oh—and I also threw this together."
He took out of his pocket—a weird spray gun with a pressurized canister on it. "In about twenty minutes, once the mix has a chance to, uh, emulsify, it'll be a gel that explodes about thirty seconds after you spray it on something. It's not that strong, though. It won't blow up a well-made wall, but if it's coming apart already, that'll be enough. It'll knock a guy down, but it won't blow off his foot or anything else. I thought it might, uh, come in handy."
"You might be right," I replied. "You just threw that together with materials they had there in Decontamination?"
"I just have a knack for it, that's all."
"Blah-blah-blah-blah!" interrupted Other Joker. "You're keeping me waiting, and I don't like it!"
Wherever it was he was leading us, we had reached it. There was a neon green Joker face stenciled on the floor in front of the doors.
A/N: So the next chapter of 'Crashing' will also be posted under 'Can't' with the info that further chapters will be found only here. The confusion overrules the convenience. Thanks for the reviews, if any!