Arc 1: Another Brick in the Wall [I]

Chapter: The Comedian

Amanda Waller had a bad day at the office. Things were so bad that she had to leave Washington D.C. and hop on a flight to Japan and look at things from ground zero. And things were as bad as they looked. In fact, it was a real shit show. But nobody could touch her. She had her ass covered. One of the benefits of assembling a task force comprising of super villains, you could always wash your hands off of them and come out looking clean and well put together, despite the chaos they caused when they swerved off the mission parameters. Like Lawton said, they were the perfect patsies. Who would believe them? Besides, Ikebukuro had a reputation of being a crazy place. Let's see how they put up with some real psychos and nutjobs, Waller thought.

She was staying at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. Last time she checked, the freaks were all holed up in Ikebukuro. For some reason, they hadn't branched out and spread their chaos throughout the rest of the prefecture. Waller didn't like it. Something else was at play, something big, and she didn't have any control over the situation.

Waller positively hated it.

She wasn't thrilled about her living arrangements either. Granted, she didn't envy the office workers, the lab geeks and the pencil pushers who were under direct orders to provide her with live updates every twenty minutes or so; they didn't get to go home and catch up on some sleep. And Waller knew, the situation they had at hand, it smelt funny and shit was about to hit the fan.

The Suicide Squad was loose in the streets. Everyone she talked to before she assembled her team of super villains laughed it off like some bad joke. But the members of Task Force X were no laughing matter. They were killers and monsters, assassins and psychopaths and were to be treated as extremely dangerous.

It was only a matter of time, before these freaks got to someone who knew something and made him squeal. And when that happens, these certified lunatics would launch an all out attack on the black site from where she was running the whole operation.

It will be a bloodbath, a massacre.

But Amanda Waller wouldn't be anywhere near it.

There was a reason why she chose to live in the U.S. embassy during her stay in Tokyo to run point on the whole botched operation. Granted, she would have preferred an undisclosed location, a safe house, a black site with a small private army. But who was she kidding. Amanda was in Orihara's turf and the man would figure out where she was holed up in a day or two, and then he would email her location to all the members of her Suicide Squad, as a good will gesture, free of charge.

No, it was better to stay at the U.S. Embassy. Even the psychos would think twice before attacking such a high profile place. If they did, it would cause an international incident, and they would be put on the shit-list of multiple international agencies, people you don't want to fuck with. And at the end of the day, these degenerates were crazy, not insane.

No, Amanda was perfectly safe.

"What the hell?"

Amanda was in the bathroom, taking a long shower. The water was hot and steamy, just the way she liked it. But suddenly the shower water started to trickle down, and then it stopped altogether. Now she was no plumber, but she decided to give the shower head a couple of good smacks, and turned the fancy knobs which adjusted the water temperature and the flow of water. Somehow, that seemed to work, and the water was back on. But there was only one problem. Instead of water, the shower head was dousing her with gasoline.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!"

And then the lights went out and she was left fumbling in the dark.

"FUCK!"

Amanda Waller didn't panic. You can't make her admit she did. But instead of trying to grope in the dark to figure out a way to turn off the shower and stop the gasoline from drenching her further, she instead tried to stumble out of the shower. And that's when she smacked her head against the glass and found out that the door to the shower was locked from the other side.

Amanda was trapped inside, but that didn't bother her. She could easily break out. No, what bothered her was the sinking feeling in her gut, the abundance of evidence literally pouring all over her and the old MI6 saying ringing in her ears from a bygone era – 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.'

Amanda Waller was not safe, she was not alone. An unseen enemy was threatening her, thinking they could screw with her, mess her up real good and after lengthy bits of torture, kill her in the most horrendous way imaginable.

But there's one thing her enemy forgot, what they always forget when they go up against her.

Nobody screws the Wall.

Amanda Waller was a cautious woman. She wouldn't necessarily call herself paranoid, but in her line of work, you had to take extra precautions to safeguard your own personal interests and be in charge of your own safety. Depending on others, even the security detail positioned in the embassy, who were meant to protect you from harm's way was asking for too much trust and faith to be placed on unknown variables with the average military training and hope they were more competent at their job then just shooting and racking up bodies. But in their world, trust killed faster than bullets.

"We have several eyewitness accounts that suggest this was the work of a single shooter, Floyd Lawton, who goes by the name Deadshot. He is a supervillain from The US. Experts were able to shed light on how this criminal was able to make his shots ricochet from structures and kill multiple crime bosses at the same time. Lawton left one of his victims paralyzed, an alleged drug dealer with a shot through the spine and told him that if he didn't stop selling his product to kids in school yards, he would come back and shoot him with a sniper rifle at point blank range."

Amanda didn't trust easy. She was also no damsel in distress in need of constant saving. Given her paranoid nature and her formal military background, she always kept a gun nearby and never went anywhere without it. When she slept at night, she kept it safely tucked underneath her pillow. Even now while she was in the shower, her gun was kept next to her phone, on the rack above the soap and shampoo.

"Harley Quinn demolished an entire maid café by driving a semi-truck through the establishments. Several women and patrons suffered minor injuries, but nobody was killed. Victims of the attack later reported to the police that Harley Quinn reportedly carried out this attack because she thought the omurice in the café was terribly overpriced and the maids weren't wearing shorter miniskirts. She then proceeded to have what many onlookers termed 'a road rage' inside the café and shouted how she got better service from Hooters."

Since she was dealing with an enemy, she needed to be armed and all she had to do was grab her gun and shoot her way out. But the power was out in her room and it was pitch black in here and Amanda couldn't see anything. There was also the fact that the shower head kept dousing her in gasoline, and she knew it was impossible for someone to set her on fire without opening the bathroom door and throwing in a lit match. But they would be real stupid to attempt that, and so far her enemy hadn't given any indication that he was mentally retarded.

"Most Japanese people have never heard of Captain Boomerang before, but they will remember him now forever. But what has the so called criminal psychologists scratching their bald heads is that the lesser known supervillain from the US was never known to be a psychopathic killer. He used to rob banks and cause some trouble for The Flash. But the massacre he caused at the railway station, it's just senseless violence. It's like he enjoys killing people…with boomerangs."

As she was pondering on her next course of action, her mobile lit up with a new notification and in the faint light, Amanda quickly staggered, trying not to slip on the gasoline flowing over the tiles and grabbed her phone. She paid no heed to the notification, just unlocked the device and switched on the torch application to see what the hell was going on. Using the torch light from her phone, she shut of the shower head and stopped the gasoline from pouring out.

There, one problem solved, she said to herself.

Next, she grabbed her gun.

Now things were looking up and she had a handle on the situation. The door to the shower was made of glass. She could easily shatter the whole thing with a couple of bullets and if she was lucky, it would surprise her enemy and make him react rashly, which would give her a distinct advantage. But as she took careful aim, and was about to shoot, Amanda received a phone call. The torch light app faltered, Amanda lost her concentration and lowered her gun, feeling annoyed, ready to give the caller a piece of her mind. But before she could answer the phone, the call got disconnected. The caller ID was listed as unknown. Amanda realized it was done on purpose. Her enemy was screwing with her. By this point, she was beyond annoyed. She was positively livid.

"'King Shark is a shark' those were the last words many people in the aquarium heard as this supervillain ate people alive. Men, women, children, entire families, a group of students on a field trip, no one was safe from its jaws. How this monster from the US found its way to Japan is still unclear."

Without wasting any more time, she gripped the gun, cocked the hammer back, took careful aim and was about to fire the first shot, when she received another notification. This time it was a text. For the first time in a long while, Amanda Waller hesitated and instead of shooting her way out of her makeshift glass prison, she did the smart thing and checked her phone.

[I wouldn't do that if I were you.]

Amanda raised an eyebrow, not quite getting what this guy was trying to say, and that's when she received a follow up text which made a little more sense.

[One small ember can burn down everything – J.]

Amanda's eyes widened. But she refused to panic. Calm down Amanda, she told herself. Think for a second. Your enemy had showed his hand. He doesn't want you dead. At least not right now.

"At first we assumed it was the work of Mr. Freeze, the infamous Batman supervillain. The bodies frozen in a block of ice fit his MO to the T. But later we learnt from one of the victims that this was the doing of Killer Frost, a lesser known supervillain from The US. The victim who later died of hypothermia in the hospital said she left her alive on purpose, so that he could break the news to the public. Killer Frost didn't want anybody else to take credit for her handiwork."

The two text messages were starting to make sense too. The second one was a veiled threat, but it also had a hidden meaning in the form of some cautionary advice. Although she took good care of her gun, there was a chance that once she fired her weapon, the bullet could hit the metal surface, and by some freak accident, the brief spark from the ricochet could fall to the floor and ignite the gasoline and set the whole place on fire. It sounded quite farfetched, but her enemy, this 'J' had proved to be quite resourceful and a man with a fair amount of skill at his disposal. How else could he break into the U.S. Embassy, get past her security detail and do whatever the hell it is you do to make gasoline pour from the shower.

"What we first assumed was the work of Deadshot is now being attributed to Bloodsport. This no-name supervillain from The US shot to infamy by putting everyone's beloved superhero, Superman in the ICU with a kryptonite bullet. Compared to Deadshot, who only killed criminals who irked him while he was allegedly enjoying a quiet drink at the bar, Bloodsport went out looking for trouble and killed an entire gang for no reason whatsoever. This comes as a shock to some, because as experts have pointed out, Bloodsport is a mercenary. He kills for money. But none of the gang members he killed were high up in the food chain to attract this kind of heat."

The first text could also be read as a veiled threat, but in it he also sent a clear message that he held all the cards, that he had the greater advantage, that she held no power whatsoever in his presence and was at her most vulnerable, standing completely naked, head to toe covered in gasoline, second guessing herself on whether or not it was okay to fire her weapon. She never went anywhere without her gun, but when was the last time she had actually fired her weapon. It was not unthinkable to think that someone had tampered with her gun. Anything was possible. For all she knew the bastard could be ogling her nude body from the other side of the glass, because he had night vision goggles on. It would explain how he was able to send a text each time she was about to try and shoot out the door.

But there was more than one way to use a gun other than to fire bullets.

Amanda Waller wasn't as strong as some of the meta-humans in the superhero business, but she had kept up with her strength training and she considered herself above average than your typical government official with a past military background. Last time they had a friendly spar, she beat General Lane 2-1. Of course, Sam wasn't the man he once was, and had gotten out of shape, not that she would be telling him any time soon. Meanwhile, Amanda had listened to her daughter for a change and had started taking better care of her health, exercising daily, laying off the burgers, pizzas and other heavily processed food items, and although she would never have the figure of an Amazon warrior woman from Themyscira, she had shed a few pounds and Harley Quinn of all people had complimented her and said she was rocking the whole 'curvy mama look'.

"We are not making this up folks. People were attacked by Polka-Dots. And the supervillain said he went by the name Polka-Dot Man. How original. But seriously, don't take this supervillain lightly. Sources say that this man doesn't like to kill, but he pretends that his victims are his mother and then it becomes easier to kill indiscriminately. That's messed up. Seriously, the US is full of fucked up people."

The glass door seemed to be made of much sterner stuff than she gave it credit for. After the first couple of blows a crack seemed to appear on the surface. Amanda kept hitting the glass surface repeatedly. It wasn't like in the movies, where you smashed the glass with one hit from your fist. Now that was a perfect way to cut yourself, get glass shards of all shapes and sizes embedded into your arm, and bleed to death from your wounds. No, Amanda Waller was more practical, and she wasn't a superhero. She used the butt of her firearm to damage the glass surface, more or less using the gun as a blunt instrument to shatter the door made of glass.

And it seemed to be working.

One more blow and she would be home free, Amanda thought.

And that's when the fucker lit a matchstick.

Amanda's eyes widened in fear as in the faint glow of the miniscule fire she saw the hint of a silhouette. A pale white face. Dark bottomless pits for eyes. And a horrific smile.

"What's up with all these US supervillains showing up in Ikebukuro?"

Her survival instincts kicked in and she forgot all about using the butt of the firearm as a blunt instrument to break down the door and was about to empty the entire magazine on this freak of nature when she heard a kind of clicking noise.

"Tsk. Tsk."

The bastard was mocking her, clicking his tongue, as if to show how disappointed he was in her performance and he wagged the lit matchstick to and fro as if he was shaking his index finger and telling her not to make a huge mistake and let all her effort go up in flame. Quite literally.

"Is the US Government trying to wage a proxy war in Japan?"

But Amanda Waller wasn't gonna let this punk have the last laugh.

"Fuck you!"

Really putting her back into it, using all her strength and all the fear and hatred she could muster, Amanda Waller threw the gun at the glass door, where it had the biggest crack, where it was the weakest.

And it worked.

The gun went through the door, shattering the surface, breaking a sizeable chunk of the glass surface and sailed out of the bathroom and clattered somewhere in the dark. Amanda noticed the matchstick was no longer lit. He had blown it out and submerged the whole place in darkness once more.

"The US Government is afraid of Japan, the new superpower on the block. And they have sent these so called supervillains to terrorize Ikebukuro, the new capital of the world!"

Amanda fumbled and groped in the darkness, trying to reach for her phone, hoping to use the flashlight app once again. After a couple of attempts, she was finally able to grab it, but before she could use the app, she received another text.

[You spend too much time on your phone, Mandy.]

And then her phone started to glitch and fizzle, the screen was reduced to these grainy pixels and just before her phone completely died out, the screen flashed bright and showed one single large image for a hot second - It was a yellow smiley face badge with a single streak of blood across the left eye.

Amanda's eyes widened. She recognized the badge. It belonged to Edward Morgan Blake; also known as The Comedian.

It was another mocking hint. But Amanda was done playing games. It was about time she got out from this glass prison.

"Mother-"

Firmly wrapping the towel around her arm, wrapping it securely over her fist, Amanda punched through the hole in the glass, reached out and unlocked the door from the outside.

"-Fucker!"

As she had feared most of the glass shards got stuck to the towel, but luck wasn't on her side tonight as a few smaller shards somehow managed to find their way in and got lodged into her skin. There wasn't much bleeding, and the stinging pain was an annoyance at best.

The mocking clap which echoed throughout the room made her lose her temper and for the first time in a long while she lashed out in violence.

The second punch, which was completely unnecessary, did a little more damage. It shattered the glass door completely and also messed up her hand a little bit. The towel took most of the brunt and it was completely covered in glass. It also soaked up the excess blood. But her plan to use the towel to cover herself up had to be abandoned. It had way too many sharp bits of glass sticking onto it. It was also doing a much more important job of stopping the bleeding in her hand.

Guess, there was no way around it. Amanda Waller had to fight off her enemy while being butt ass naked. It will be one hell of a story to share with Sam the next time we meet up for drinks, Amanda thought to herself, as she stepped out of the bathroom.

As Amanda made her way out into the hallway, she heard a loud whistle and turning around she saw the faint flicker of a candle light coming from the dining room. Her first instinct was to head to her bedroom and find her spare pistols. It was better to be armed to the teeth, but she knew she couldn't make it in time and would be fumbling in the dark, with her back turned towards the enemy. And all he had to do was throw a lit matchstick at her and she would meet her fiery doom.

No, this dangerous game they were playing, if she had to win, Amanda had to rely more on her brain, and let the other fool think he had all the advantage with his brawn.

Having made up her mind, Amanda Waller walked towards the dining room in all her naked glory, leaving footprints of gasoline in her wake. She would face her foe head on and take him down with her clever Machiavellian machinations.

But the man who waited for her in the dining room was no man at all.

He was an agent of chaos.

"Good evening." The Joker drawled, "Director."

Author's Note: As promised, I have mashed the two chapters together and I gotta say, I love the end result. Maybe this is what I should do with future chapters too. By writing smaller chapter, I can write and update the fic more frequently, and in the end, I will just mash all the chapters together into one big chapter. I mean, that's what I did with 'A Bohemian Hikigaya's Rhapsody'.

Okay, so now it's time for some polls -

Poll#1: Who Is Behind The Suicide Squad Going Rogue?

Option 1: Damian Wayne

Option 2: Talia al Ghul.

Option 3: Ras al Gul.

Poll#2: Who Is Able To Inject Loid With Scarecrow's Fear Toxin?

Option 1: Deadshot.

Option 2: Bloodsport.

Option 3: Peacemaker.

Option 4: Harley Quinn.

Option 5: King Shark.

Option 6: A Suicide Squad Member From The Review.

Poll#3: What Does Loid Hallucinate About Due To The Fear Toxin?

Option 1: Yor Forger Being The Thorn Princess.

Option 2: Anya Forger Being A Telepath.

Option 3: Damian Wayne Being His Biological Son.

Option 4: Yor Forger Cheats On Loid with John Wick.

Option 5: Anya Erases Loid and Yor's Memories To Protect The Family.

Option 6: Loid Cheating On Yor With Talia.

Option 7: Damian Wayne Killing Yor and Anya.

Option 8: Yor killing Loid.

Option 9: Loid Becoming The Batman.

Option 10: The Joker Killing Loid's Entire Family.

Please pick accordingly

I will be back with the next chapter soon.

Take care.