Remember my friends, you can't spell Mark Hamill without Arkham.
The night is generous in Gotham.
It is a time and a place wherein the monsters come out to play. It is a time where no one is truly safe. It is a time when the inner darkness of the souls of men are given a cover to express and commit their wickedness towards their fellow man. All are held equal in this jungle of concrete and brick. Guilty, innocent, rich, poor, it doesn't matter.
At night in Gotham all people are potential victims just waiting for the shadows to come and get them.
The blood red sky over Gotham looks down upon these ants who struggle and fight and steal. The more superstitious amongst Gotham's criminal population often hold to the rumor that the crimson sky above them is the result of all the blood that has been spilt in Gotham City, the crime capital of this world. They say that even now the blood of Gotham's victims evaporates into the air and hangs over the city like a crimson cloud. Those with a little more intelligence to their credit simply attribute it to light pollution, but the first theory somehow has more staying power.
It is in this wretched cesspool that a trap is laid, a trap that shall commence the beginning of the most memorable show in all of Gotham's history. Tonight Gotham shall offer up as a sacrifice one of her protectors to one of its greatest demons, and in a city of millions, few will notice his disappearance.
The night is generous in Gotham to those who wait, and in a dark corner alley hidden in the shadows a man waits and watches.
A piercing shriek echoes through the night.
"Help! Help! Somebody please, help!"
A woman is in danger, her back to the wall in an alleyway, cornered by two nameless thugs. Their precise intentions are unknown, all that anyone needs to know is that they mean her harm. It is a situation that no good hero could resist.
That is precisely what he is counting on.
Sure enough, out of the night a flash of red and black appears. With a sense of acrobatic flair a young man appears, no older than his mid to late teens, and smashes the two crooks heads together, rendering them unconscious. He lands with his back to the woman and surveys the two felons.
"That evens things up a little." He says.
"Not really Bird Boy." The so-called victim said while pulling a large hammer from her voluminous trenchcoat. She moves faster than the young Robin can react, slamming the vigilante in the back with all of her strength. The force of her swing causes the hat and wig she was wearing to fall off, revealing a black and red jester bell hat and domino mask, the hallmark headgear of one Harley Quinn. From a nearby doorway a purple suited man appears and observes his girlfriend's handiwork.
Robin lay unconscious in the alleyway as the two clowns looked at their newly acquired hostage.
"He, he, he, he" the Joker darkly chuckled, "A bird in the hand."
Quinn moved to kneel by Robin's unconscious form as she reached out to pull off his mask. In a blink and you miss it moment the Joker leapt from the doorway, over the guardrail separating the door from the alley and slapped his henchwoman's hand away.
"Ow, I just wanted to see who he was sweety." Quinn said with a hurt expression on her face as she held the aforementioned hand.
"No one is who you think they are my dear." The Joker responded. "Besides, in time he'll tell us who he is."
"I always thought that Batman and his kids would rather die than tell anyone who they were." Harley responded.
"You would indeed think that Harley my dear." The Joker returned. "But I have a little game in mind, a game that should be loads of fun for you and me."
"What kind of game Puddin?" She asked as the Joker turned to leave. The Joker looked over his shoulder and answered, "We are going to add Robin to our little family Harley, now pick him up and let's get going."
Robin was given a sedative to ensure that he would not regain consciousness too soon and was unceremoniously thrown into the trunk of their car. With a screech of burning rubber the two clowns and their hostage sped away into the crimson hued night, leaving two unknowing and unconscious crooks behind, the only whisper of what had occurred
"Where are we headed Puddin?" Harley asked. "…the hideout in the factory district?"
"Certainly not. For this little game I have in mind we will need to be left absolutely alone until I am ready. Batman has figured out where most of our hideouts are by now. No, we need a new locale, somewhere where no one will think to look." For a moment they drove in silence, the gears of the Joker's mind spinning. In the supervillain business location is everything. Where is the one place that Batman would never think to look for them? And then it came to him.
Turning sharply off of the exit, the Joker left the City limits behind and drove into the hills. In the dark of the night a dilapidated and looming form stood upon a sharp and jagged hill in the distance, a blight upon the land.
Arkham Asylum, or rather, what was left of it.
The Asylum had been closed down the year before and had been partially demolished. The construction team responsible for the demolition had evidently refused to continue with the operation, something to do with the local union and contract disagreements or some other nonsense.
For years Arkham had held quite the reputation. Many a shopkeeper in Gotham, whenever they would go out to lunch would put up signs in there shop windows that read, "Been committed to Arkham Asylum, be back around two."
The revolving door nature of Arkham was the butt of many a joke and the subject of many an outraged conversation when one of the Asylum's regular inmates became particularly violent. The law was relatively clear on the matter. The vast majority of Gotham's super-criminal population had been deemed legally insane, and therefore was not responsible for the crimes they had committed in the eyes of the courts. Ergo they could not be thrown in jail. And so the freaks (as they were labeled by the civilian populace) were shunted into Arkham.
The problem with this arrangement was relatively straight forward and easily revealed early on; Arkham was a mental hospital, not a prison. Despite its rather Gothic architecture and dark lighting Arkham was never intended to hold high caliber criminals who were dedicated to escape. The meager security forces that patrolled Arkham's halls were not trained to handle criminals of such resource, and the budget was strained so thin that the Asylum's Board of Directors could not afford to train the guards to handle the super-criminals they interacted with on a daily basis.
One could successfully argue that Batman's Rogues Gallery was composed of the mentally ill and other hardcore psychotics, but the one constant that separated the costumed crooks from the more "normal" inmates of Arkham was the simple fact that each and every one of the Rogues possessed a method to their madness. Insanity did not get in their way when it came to plotting an escape. Rather, madness complimented and in many a case fueled the thought process, resulting in many an escape attempt that was so insanely dangerous that no sane man would have ever been able to devise or attempt it.
The criminal justice system had been rocked with protest. The Joker alone had murdered at least a thousand people in his "career" and the body count for the other Rogues, while not nearly as impressive, was none the less staggering. But the bureaucracy had refused to budge, claiming that the law was the law and that the Rogues could not be sent to a maximum security jail due to their questionable mental health. When the irate public had turned from the justice system to Arkham itself, the staff gave the same excuse that they always had, they didn't have the budget to beef up security or train the guards better.
And so the quagmire that was Arkham Asylum continued. Despite generous and regular donations from Wayne Enterprises into the Arkham coffers the money almost always found itself mysteriously disappearing at annual budget meetings. Whispers of general corruption and embezzlement echoed through City Hall, but the Arkham staff always managed to find a loophole that let them out of trouble.
But the public refused to keep quiet. Mass demonstrations practically became a daily event. By this point it had been nearly two decades since the first of the Rogues started to walk the streets, and since then the poorer parts of Gotham had become a constant warzone reminiscent of a third world country wracked by Civil War. The collective nerve of the people was frayed to the breaking point. They demanded action, and they wanted it now. As the death toll continued to climb drastic measures were finally taken. A newer, more secure facility was finally built and the inmate population was sent there.
While breakouts did still occur at the new facility they were far fewer than they had been at the old Arkham Asylum. Arkham was subsequently abandoned. The vast majority of people tried to avoid it, some believing the building to be cursed.
It was to Arkham that Joker had returned. Arkham; the closest thing to a home that he had ever had, his little get away where he could rest and relax in between performances. The Joker allowed himself a laugh as a funny thought came to his mind. For most of his life he had been trying to bust out of this place, and now here he was with a pair of bolt cutters opening the lock to the gate, tring to break in.
The Joker returned to the car and drove through the gates and up the hill, parking the car just outside of the entrance.
"Home sweet home, isn't it Harley." The Joker exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear as if he were a potential buyer surveying a nice house in the suburbs.
Harley looked about at the collapsed roof, the shattered panes of glass, the rusting bars and the pieces of debris that lay about the property.
"It's a bit of a fixer upper, but I'm sure we can make something of it." She said.
"There's the spirit. Let's set up shop." The Joker responded. Harley opened the trunk and lifted Robin out, carrying him into the Asylum. The Joker stood back for a moment, looking over the crumbling building before nodding in approval. In a way the crumbling structure of Arkham was symbolic of the state of Gotham's super-criminal population, crumbling and badly damaged. The Joker was a forward thinking man, enough to realize that the best years of villainy were behind them. All of the greatest jokes had been told, the best plans had all been foiled. So many had given up all together, locked away, never to have their fun ever again.
They were getting old. A new generation would surely rise to take his place, but his generation, the greatest generation of criminals ever to grace Gotham and the world was slowly but steadily dying out. Thanks to the concerted efforts of caped crusaders like Batman villains no longer had a chance. They were being run out of business. Unless they struck back hard with a vengeance.
The Joker was never one to be slighted. He was a determined and relentless man by nature. He knew deep down that he was right and Batman was wrong.
He knew that all it took was just one bad day to put a man in a position that would reduce the sanest person alive to lunacy.
Today was Robin's bad day. Batman's bad day would come soon. Joker could feel it in his bones. It would take time. The boy needed molding (what kid doesn't though?) but the Joker was more than up to the task.
As the Joker walked up the steps and through the door to the ruined reception lobby he remembered something. He remembered the many times that he had been escorted back to the Asylum by Batman or the guards. As he would be dragged to his cell he could always hear the more disturbed residents of Arkham screaming as their minds plagued them with visions and hallucinations. But now the halls of Arkham were eerily silent. It wasn't natural for the Asylum to be so quiet.
The Joker would soon rectify this.