Disclaimer: I do not own Batman. All rights belong to Detective Comics.
A/N: By the way, ClownPrincessofCrime, this is that one part of the story that is a little similar to your story Sweetie Pie in terms of plot, but I made sure that the storyline going on from this chapter onward will be very different. By the next chapter or two, that's when the slow burn stops and the good stuff with the plot starts to kick in. :)
anonymous1396, Nutella, and Guest: Thank you!
The wind cutting through Bonnie's hair swerved through the car's windows, slipping underneath the top hot that rested on the Joker's head.
He kept laughing and laughing throughout the few minutes they were on the road, lashing out on the girl's ears. Something about it made her feel even more sick than she was before.
And yet, she didn't feel sick because of the boss himself, but it was that there was just something that the Batman said about him that ate at her. Of course, Bonnie knew it was obvious that the boss' archenemy would have said something unsettling—and that she was already in danger for working with her boss—yet there was still this nagging feeling that the Batman created about the job. He made it seem like her job was even deeper than anything she ever could have imagined, that there was some type of plan that she was in denial about. He also (unsurprisingly) told her that the Joker was going to kill her, but he talked about it like she was some sort of puppet on a string. Why?
She tried to tell herself that there was a simple answer for this: he was trying to trick her into surrendering. He probably found out that she was a criminal long beforehand through his detective work, so it wouldn't have been a shock if he was planning to arrest her or send her off somewhere.
But he was also the World's Greatest Detective for a reason. As much as Bonnie hated him for how he tried to manipulate her, she had to give him some credit for finding out about everything so quickly. She didn't want to admit it, but he even had a point at times. So, maybe there was something that Bonnie didn't understand, or maybe it was that she didn't really want to understand.
Bonnie glanced at her boss, who was having the time of his life wrecking the road.
But still...
Bonnie looked behind her seat. She sighed when she saw the henchmen behind them.
She turned back forward again, thinking to herself once again.
You know what? Bonnie thought. I shouldn't be thinking about what the Batman said because it really doesn't matter.
No matter how bad this got, be it with the boss or with some of the goons, she couldn't go back. She wasn't going to leave her job behind, and it was good that way, for her own sake.
Getting out of her own head, Bonnie's ears prickled, and it surprised her that he actually stopped laughing. He just illuminated a dark, ugly silence.
Hesitating, Bonnie looked up to see his face. She almost jumped.
He was smiling at her, yet the veins in his eyes pinched together. There was nothing mirthful that reached them.
When Bonnie noticed that, the chaotic mood in the car abruptly stopped, and something different closed in.
"You know, kid, for your first night, you didn't do that bad," the Joker said, still wearing that fake smile. "You obviously can't seem to get rid of that scared, wide-eyed persona of yours. It only got worse when you were in the circus ring, and it practically contradicted the point of my little speech for you."
Bonnie's lungs hitched.
"I made a sweet speech for you, and how do you repay me?"
There was a moment of silence, until the Joker yanked Bonnie by the shirt collar.
"BY MAKING IT LOOK LIKE YOU REALLY WERE A VICTIM OF MINE! That you were NEVER a criminal at all, what with your...hesitance! Your WEAKNESS! You knew that when I told you to press the button, you would have to press it IMMEDIATELY! But no, you let the BATMAN take it from you in your panic! And do you know what that makes me look like, girl?"
Bonnie was too stunned to answer, and the Joker took the lack of an answer for a shake of the head.
"YOU MADE ME LOOK LIKE A FOOL!" the Joker boomed, his eyes burning red. "Like there was still HOPE for your morality's SURVIVAL—like I didn't do anything to you at all! Like I was weak."
Bonnie shivered in shame.
"So what do you say to that, Ring-Girl?" her boss hissed. "What do you say to that?"
Bonnie froze up, not even bothering to point out that they went on the sidewalk pavement.
"I-I..." Bonnie stuttered, pathetically. She was barely able to think straight with her words, and it was even more torturous looking at her boss in the eye. She honestly had no idea what she was going to say, and she was also going to look like a cowering mess doing it.
Then, Bonnie stopped herself. Something clicked. She didn't know what it was, but she felt a little better to do it.
"I...I am sorry, boss," said Bonnie, her words coming out in a more dignified way than she expected. "I won't embarrass you like that ever again."
Bonnie stopped herself from saying anything else, waiting to see her boss' reaction. It wasn't the reaction she expected.
The distorted gleam in the Joker's lips faded, yet there was still something off. There was still a crimson inkiness that reflected another emotion off of the Joker's mouth. It was complicated for Bonnie to make out what his reaction was, yet it somehow reminded her of how a mad scientist would look, one that finally discovered how the future trials of a rebellious test subject would work.
That feature in the Joker's face bloated, and it finally blew up once his eyes flitted to the back window of the car. The smugness in his expression transformed into something hateful, but it calmed down on the car's next turn.
He leaned closer to Bonnie. His face finally settled into the meanest sneer that Bonnie has ever seen, even putting Beatrice's smirks to shame.
"Then prove it to me."
With his hand not even close to the wheel, the Joker pointed to the back window. Bonnie looked back.
There was another vehicle racing the goons' car down—a motorcycle. Bonnie twisted around in her seat to get a closer look, and she saw the Batman driving.
"O-oh, no."
"That's right, kiddo," the Joker said, reaching for something. "Now do your worst."
Bonnie's eyes went down, seeing what her boss had grabbed. In the Joker's hand was a gun.
Batman sheered through the road as he loomed over the goons, leaving a path of road marks behind. Swerving past the hand grenades being thrown by the henchmen, he looked ahead to see the Joker's car slowing down.
Not good, he thought.
Immediately, Batman accelerated past the goons onto the right side of the car. He already expected the Joker to pull a maneuver on him with the girl, but the Joker should have also expected that he would pull a little something of his own.
Lights and explosions swarmed around as the Batcycle closed in, and the nearing laughter intensified.
"Come on, Bats! Why aren't you coming over to my side? We can have one of those roadside conversations like you'd see in the movies! But then again, I don't really see you as a film kind of guy..."
Several bullets shot closer to the Batcycle's tires, and the motorcycle veered to the left.
"See, now you wanna have a conversation! Maybe you HAVE seen a 90s comedy or two!"
The motorcycle veered again to the right, and a liquid—gasoline—flew out of the right car window, spurting right for the Batman.
"DON'T AIM RIGHT AT THE BAT!" the Joker roared, though not to his enemy. "Remember that he's MINE!"
More bullets lurched near the Batcycle's left.
"WE CAN DO THIS ALL DAY, BATS!"
The Joker screamed with laughter as a small hand poked out of the right window, throwing a match onto the gasoline.
It exploded into a fiery storm when the Batman flicked his vehicle's autopilot switch. The Batcycle backed into the frenzy behind, and Batman lunged at the car roof.
He landed.
"HA, HA, HA! Now this is just starting to seem familiar! You on top of my car, while another passenger and I are just trying to have some fun on the road...Maybe we both saw the same movie! Except I don't think it was a 90s comedy..."
The car turned violently.
"And...oh, look, there's the harbor ahead!" the Joker exclaimed. "This can't go wrong, right, Bats?"
Batman looked up, and—to his anger—saw that the Joker was...lying.
"HA, HA, HA, HA, HA! Jeez, Bats, I thought you would know that some things are never like they are in theaters!"
Batman scowled at the chaos underneath him. He reached into his belt to grab a miniature steel rod that almost looked like a ball-point pen. Batman stabbed it into the roof, and a bright red light burst out of the opening. The laser punctured the car as Batman drew a large hole behind the front seat.
The burned circle made above the car collapsed, and Batman was immediately greeted with a handgun pointed at his face. Bonnie Hatch was holding the gun.
"COME ON, KID!" screamed the Joker. "SHOO—!"
A bullet lunged towards the Batman's nose. He dodged.
The second—the third—came, and they hit square in the arm.
The Joker screeched with joy, and the girl—hyped with adrenaline—was about to shoot again, until Batman's hand grabbed hers. The bullets didn't tear through his armor.
The clown didn't seem to react as Batman nearly pulled Bonnie out of the car, and the girl wasn't yelling or screaming at him, either. Instead, she gave Batman a cold glare.
Batman saw the Joker put two objects in the girl's hand, and he had three seconds to react.
Bonnie Hatch rose her other hand out of the car interior, and she hurled two Joker toxin grenades at Batman's face.
Batman fell back. He collided with the road pavement as tires shrieked.
A sharp pain erupted from his ears when the grenades exploded on the ground. Despite this, Batman managed to get up—as he always could, after incidents like this—to see the Joker's car speeding away.
"SEE YA NEXT WEEK, BATS!" the Joker yelled in the distance. "TUNE IN FOR THE NEXT EPISODE, STARRING THE CLOWN PRINCE OF CRIME AND HIS NEW FIERY ACCOMPLICE!"
The clown laughed uncontrollably again as the car turned on the next corner.
Grinding his teeth, Batman turned at the sight of smoke and dispersing toxin. Scowling, Batman quickly took out his gas mask, and he ran to the site of the damage.
The henchmen's car was flipped on its side, and the gas from the grenades was creating a sickly green fog above. The car was rhythmically beeping and flashing its lights, and moans could be heard from the inside of the totaled vehicle.
Batman closed in on the cracked—nearly shattered—windows, and he saw a number of dust-covered men in the cramped interior wearing old gas masks, looking at him with varying levels of terror. One man, who he recognized as being the Joker's main goon for years, simply gave him a long, hateful glare.
The Batman glowered. At least I got something out of this.
Unfortunately for him, he got very little out of capturing the henchmen for the long term. None of them knew anything about the Joker and Bonnie Hatch's whereabouts, nor did they know anything about their employer's upcoming plans. Even the longest-standing henchman had little to say about his boss' scheme, and Batman was forced to resort to dead-end trails of evidence and waiting for the Joker to strike again.
He actually did strike again—much more quickly than Batman had predicted. In fact, since the circus incident, the Joker had gone from having one isolated attack to holding mass killing sprees with the girl more than every other day. With new men, the Joker and Hatch invaded the art museum, the city bank, the gala ballroom, and a number of other points of interest. What was even more frustrating and devastating to him was that he was too late—every time he came to intervene. They had left before the Joker could even gloat directly in his face—and the Joker always wanted to gloat directly in his face about the destruction he had caused. All the Joker left at each scene was a photograph of him smiling at the blazes behind him, holding Bonnie Hatch's—or the "Ringmaster's"—face in a way to make her look like she was smiling. What was worse was that the girl subtly looked more desperate and chaotic with every photo. She was getting less and less hesitant in committing heinous crimes that escalated in audacity every day, and Batman was certain that the Joker was getting closer to break her spirit completely.
The Batman was right, but much of Bonnie's personality had surprisingly remained untouched by the Joker in the next two weeks. Mainly, she was still terrified to be in the car with him.
Per usual, the Joker was joking with her and giggling hysterically, and Bonnie was still in her ringmaster costume. Still, she had a feeling that this day would be different from the others, since the Joker hadn't told her even a vague outline of what the plan of the day would be. It helped that the Joker had also explicitly said that the day was not going to be like the past few days.
Still, Bonnie couldn't help but ask what would be happening. She realized that she would be breaking Larry's rule to not ask stupid questions, but she nevertheless couldn't resist.
"Where...are we going, boss?" she asked. The Joker gave her a quick side glance and chuckled.
"Why, we're going to meet a little friend of mine!" he exclaimed, running a hand through his hair. "Well, he's not really a friend, just a nerd I have to call for favors sometimes."
Bonnie digested what the boss had said before her blood ran cold. There were very few people that the Joker could have referred to as a "friend." Unless it was a rogue.
The girl bit back a shiver. Most of the other Gotham rogues were nowhere near as dangerous as her boss, but Bonnie was nevertheless as good as dead, if she had to meet one of them—especially one from the main roster. While it was true that she was fascinated by the Gotham rogues, they were still too dangerous to encounter. And since she would have possibly have to be with a major criminal and the Joker...then she was definitely in real trouble.
Still, how much trouble would have depended on the rogue. After all, as much as she didn't like to generalize, there was a difference between meeting Calendar Man and meeting Bane.
Looking at her boss inquisitively, Bonnie asked calmly, "Who...would that be, sir?"
On an abrupt turn, the Joker laughed, "Who else, Bonnie-girl? We're going to meet Spooky, of course!"
Spooky? thought Bonnie. I know that there aren't any rogues named Spooky—which would mean that it's a nickname—so somebody the boss would make fun of for being "spooky" would probably have to scare pe—oh, no. Oh, no.
The Scarecrow? Bonnie's face remained stoic so she couldn't betray her discomfort to the boss. The Scarecrow?
If Bonnie wasn't worried moments ago, then she was definitely worried now. It wasn't that she was exactly as afraid of the Scarecrow as she was of the Joker—in fact, she was actually interested in some of his work with psychology—but she was afraid that he would humiliate her in front of the boss.
The Scarecrow was a master of manipulation—and fear. He would have read into her dread like a picture book, and he would have been able to pick at her brain with much more skill than Dr. Clara Crow did when she was younger. He was a doctor, after all, and having the Scarecrow and the Joker inside her head would have been disastrous for the rest of her left-over sanity. And if the Scarecrow brought out the fear gas...then her boss was going to laugh really hard at watching her scream at nothing.
Bonnie held back a sigh and remained quiet for the rest of the ride. It was going to be a bad day, so she didn't want to make it worse and anger her boss if she appeared weak. He had already yelled at her once for acting stupid in front of other people, and she didn't want something worse to happen for doing it again.
Eventually, the boss pulled up by a brick-layered apartment building that had seen better days, and he motioned Bonnie to get out of the car. The two both shut the car doors simultaneously, and they walked up to the front entrance.
As her boss loudly knocked on the door several times, Bonnie looked up. The windows leered down at her despite having no one behind them to stare, and the angry red bricks looked like they were going to fall on her at any second. It was like the building already made its choice to kill the girl before she met its keeper.
This is going to be bad, thought Bonnie. This is going to be really bad.
Finally, the boss stopped knocking once he heard the undoing of steel locks on the other side. After a moment of silence, the man on the other side pulled the door open, and Bonnie finally gazed at the Scarecrow.
He wasn't in his costume, but rather in an old suit with a red-orange turtleneck underneath. With that on instead of his imposing costume, he was a noticeably lanky man with messy reddish-brown hair and a haggard face. But what stood out were his eyes.
Even behind his glasses, Bonnie clearly saw a pair of irises that almost blended with whites around his pupils. Bonnie could have sworn that she saw something like rage in them, but they were too pale to analyze.
"You're a bit early," said the Scarecrow, with a biting voice, "though at least you made it."
The Joker snorted, "Oh, come on, Scaredy Cat! I only came late the last time because Freeze thought it would have been smart to give the traffic lights frostbite! I mowed down a hundred or so people just to get here—just for you, Spooks!
"Am I supposed to take that as flattery, Joker?" spat the Scarecrow, gripping the door rim. The Joker laughed in response.
"Yes," he said. "Now can ya let me in?"
The Scarecrow pursed his lips, and he looked down to the girl.
"Only when you tell me about this child you are looking after right here," he said, pointing to her. Bonnie's face reddened under the attention.
Pulling her closer with a showman's flourish, the boss laughed, "Oh, Spooks, don't tell me you haven't been watching the news—"
"I have," said the Scarecrow, "and I see that you seem to be looking after the girl for good."
"Oh, obviously," the Joker said, annoyed at being interrupted. Bonnie bit the inside of her lip without notice from the Joker, but the Scarecrow noticed.
"Well, then she would technically be one of us," he hissed, before turning to Bonnie. He considered her—examining the tiny wrinkles of unease on the girl's features—and he finally turned back to the Joker. He bowed his head with a small smirk.
"Please, come in," the Scarecrow said, darting his eyes around for one last check for witnesses. "We have things to discuss, with little time."
He walked backward into the gray lighting as the Joker swaggered inside, with Bonnie swiftly behind. Once they came in, the Scarecrow locked the door.