A/N: Well, I asked and you responded. This is the last chapter of the crossover story-within-a-story that will be posted in CGYOOMH. All subsequent chapters will be posted as a separate fic under a new title, Involuntary Man's Laughter (was briefly Crashing The Party.) If you would like to continue reading about Jay and Grace's adventures in Game!Arkham, be sure to bookmark, fav, alert, whatever Involuntary Man's Laughter. Why did I change it? Well, it doesn't work very well if you say it out loud, but if you take out the apostrophe and shove the last two words togther, you get Involuntary Manslaughter. Which I thought was clever.
Oh, and I added a link to an anime clip on Youtube to my profile. Check it out!
Before us lay another large, grim room like the elevator lobby, with two guard stations, their force field doors still powered up. Several dead men lay around on the floor. A guard rail divided the room in two: beyond it was a deep drop off. In the center of the open area, something like a bank vault hung from the ceiling on heavy chains. Other Joker stood on top of the bank vault, and as we entered, he uncrossed his ankles and stood tall, squaring his shoulders. "What took you so lon—" he sneered, but stopped when he saw Jay clearly. "Oh, so that's how you're going to play this! Copy-cat!"
"Uh-huh." Jay said. "Except from my point of view, I'm, um, not copying, and I would never—could never wear my pants that tight. I'm not surprised you can, though." He shook his head, but the subtle implication—that Other Joker was not anatomically correct, so to speak,—passed right over the other clown's head. "And that, uh, giggle gas of yours? More kitch, like those plastic teeth."
"What's wrong with my happy gas?" Other Joker snapped, offended.
"Well, to, uh, explain, I've got to start with a metaphor. It's like cake. Cake is good on its own, but frosting is good, too, so you put some on it and make it extra, uh, yummy. Real frosting, that is, made of simple stuff like butter and sugar and extract. Then somebody decides to get fancy with the frosting, and they put all these swirly blobs around the cake, and maybe make roses, and that's okay too, but then they take it further, and the next thing you, uh, know, there's a 3-D replica of, uh, Washington crossing the Delaware on top the cake, and because butter melts too easy, they make the icing out of all this fake shit with stabilizers and preser-vatives and food coloring that tints your shit funny colors—never eat anything that doesn't get digested on the way through, that's my rule—and artificial flavors, and nobody likes it."
While Jay offhandedly delivered his build up to a blistering critique of Other Joker's work, I took a moment to look at the two of them in the same frame, and it was hard to choose between the two as to which was the more disturbing. Other Joker had the advantage of just looking so strange—his height and thinness alone made him stand out, and his face only added to it, with his long, long chin, let alone his coloration--he was like a portrait by Toulouse-Lautrec. Deformed himself by a bone disease, Lautrec could look at a beautiful young singer and draw her as a simpering, leering corrupted old harridan. Some similar alchemy was at work in the person of Other Joker. Like a two-headed kitten, the sight of him brought on an involuntary shiver of revulsion.
But Jay, who could wash his face and walk almost unnoticed in the everyday world, was equally disquieting. It was partly the scars, of course, and the slouchy way he stood, rounding his shoulders into almost a hunchback, but also his mannerisms and idiosyncratic way of speaking. Add to that his smeary, slap-dash make-up, not to mention that aura of personality, a power all its own, and a different sort of wrongness crept up on you, an intellectual horror, because for all of that he was human. He was human, and he might kill someone because he thought it would make for a good joke, and that was horrible. For all that I cared about him, I never forgot or tried to excuse what he was.
"Will you get to the point?" Other Joker needled.
"That's what I'm do-ing," Jay told him. "Your gas is, uh, like the fake frosting--it's crap, only you can't scrape it off and just eat the cake. When you decided people should literally die laughing, you traded effectiveness for effect. That pea-soup fog is barely toxic. How many cannisters did it take to fill that room? Ten? And most of the guys lived. My wife's, uh, accessories are more dangerous than that!"
"Well! If you don't like my happy gas, here's something of mine that might impress you a bit more." His voice dropped to a whisper of menace, and he kicked open a catch which in turn opened the 'vault.'
Something inside roared. A massive head and mismatched set of shoulders muscled out, and then it leapt toward us, landing squarely on the floor. "Ooooh, he's a big one, isn't he?" cooed Other Joker.
He wasn't wrong. The first word that sprang to my mind was grotesque, followed by huge and toxic mutant gorilla. Covered in livid green pustules and about eight feet tall, it looked like something Dr. Frankenstein might have made while badly hungover. Its right shoulder and arm were thick and lumpy with muscle, while the left were normal sized. Conversely, its left leg was like a tree trunk, straining the dirty canvas pants it wore, while its right was only a twig in comparison. Feral green eyes looked out at the world from under a brow like a shelf, and two bony ridges ran back over its skull. Wheezing, it beat its chest, gorilla-fashion, and roared at us again.
'What is it?' I asked.
What are you asking me for? I dunno. A really weird case of that Elephant Man disease, maybe? While we were communicating, the thing shuffled over to the nearest dead guard, picked up the body, and slung it at us.
Jay jumped aside. What I want to know is, how do we kill it? I don't, uh, know if my knives are long enough to reach any vital organs on that thing.
Seeing that throwing bodies had no effect, the creature charged. It was big and fast, but not especially agile; Jay leapt and rolled out of its way, and I simply went intangible. 'Ugh, did you see its spine?' I asked as Jay pulled himself up again. The vertebra had sprouted up into bony spikes that broke the skin, revealing raw and angry meat. Raw but curiously enough, not bleeding.
Yeah. Listen, I don't think that, uh, monster is gonna live very long. It's alreadly wheezing like a two pack a day smoker, and if it's deformed like that on the outside then the inside must be worse. If it hits me it'll flatten me like a pancake, but that's, uh, not what's gonna happen.
'Okay. You have my attention. What's the plan?'
Did you and a friend,uh, ever play ball with a lively young dog, just to wear it out? The behemoth beat its chest again and roared some more.
'Yes, but it was a long time ago.'
Same idea. You're gonna go on over to that side and jump around, waving your arms and yelling to get its attention. When it charges over to you, I'll start doing the same over here. Ah, there's a fire extinguisher, good, I can use that. We'll just keep doing that until it keels over.
So that was what we did, and it made for one of the more ludicrous battles I've ever been in, and by that time I'd been in a few. I'd holler and wave, it charged over, swinging its hands like flippers, and try to knock me around. Thanks to my intangibility, all it got was frustrated. Then Jay would do the same over on his end, sometimes spraying it in the face with extinguisher foam, which made it even clumsier, and when it had cleared its eyes, I would start in on the jumping jacks again. Although Jay did get winged once with another thrown corpse, he wasn't hurt badly, and after about five or six locomotive charges, it was staggering around the floor with fatigue.
Suddenly it stopped and clapped both hands to its head where large green veins pulsed like they were about to burst. Then it reeled a few steps, grabbed its chest and fell over backward. I could hear its death rattle from clear across the room.
"Well, that was unexpected, wasn't it?" Other Joker asked cheerfully. "Note to self: Need to choose stronger test subjects."
"Shoddy work again," Jay said under his breath, but Other Joker was already burbling on.
"Seeing as how I'm feeling generous, I'll give you this one for free." He let go of the chains and stepped up to the front of the vault, spreading his arms as if for his crucifixion. "Knock me off, I dare you. Kill me. Pull the plug. End this for once and for all!"
Jay shrugged. "Okay," and let fly with a knife, which hit Other Joker in the shoulder and stuck there.
"AAahh!" Other Joker cried out, and nearly did fall. "You hit me! You stabbed me!" He sounded more outraged than hurt as he pulled the knife out. A dark stain appeared on his jacket and slowly spread out.
"You did, uh, ask for it," Jay pointed out, reasonably enough.
"So I did," growled Other Joker. "I won't make that mistake again. I'd just love to stay and chat with you about that, but I have to run. I've got a party to organize. There'll be plenty of other guests flying in from all over Arkham who are just dying to meet you, to be sure. You'll see..." The vault which hung from the chains began to move backward, away from us, running on tracks in the ceiling. "You'll see." A pair of massive doors slid apart to admit the vault and clanged shut behind it.
We looked at each other. "Is it just me, or does it seem like he's reading lines from a different script than we are?" I asked.
"One with Batsy as his, uh, sparring partner. But I think he's gonna rework it in a hurry."
There were signs of life in one of the guard booths. "Hey--is someone there?" a young man's voice asked.
"Yes," I called back.
"...okay. Lemme get the security field down before any of them come back."
"So was this a human being?" I toed the huge body on the floor. "He did say 'stronger test subjects',"
"Unless gorillas have started tattooing 'Mom' on their arms, I'd, uh, say yes." Jay knelt down and twisted one arm until the markings showed. "And the pants are the same as the ones the Blackgaters are wearing. Don't go getting het up about it, sassy girl. This guy was dead from the moment Bozo gave him the stuff, whatever it was. I gotta say that if this is all he's got, tonight is going to be a disappointment."
"I think not." I disagreed. "There is Scarecrow--and Killer Croc. Who knows what else or who else he's got in his holster?"
TBC....as always.