Flickering lights glowing from the giant computer monitor of Batman's bat cave lair flashed across Batman's glass orb encased eyes on his black cowl. It had been a while since he took it off, it was practically molded onto his face lately.
It was impossible to tell what time of day or night it was in the dark depths of Batman's rocky dark cave as darkness engulfed the dank shadowy cave walled interior, completely sealing it off from the Earth's surface and the changing sky outside and any light save the glow of his monitors and artificial light from his devices and electronics steadily humming and beeping away as the night wore on.
Alfred silently dropped by leaving a silver tray with a pot of black tea and a mug for Batman and left wordlessly, retreating to his quarters to rest and spend his time in leisure.
Files on files of various Gotham villains flashed across the screen as Batman swiped away one after the other, his eyes hidden behind the opaque glass masked eyes scanning each one rapidly as he had been doing for hours.
He was trying to solve a riddle, much like one of his nemesis's namesake the Riddler, trying in vain to piece together the mad man Joker's jagged senseless puzzle pieces of crime sprees and actions and words that seemed to plague the dark city invisibly permeating in its streets and gutters with random chaos and malice.
The only problem was that unlike the novelty themed Riddler, Joker had no method to his madness, made no sense ever, and did not stick to a structure or give clues. He was literally insane, and his actions had no seemingly plausible plan or forethought to chunk together neatly into place.
His murders and damages did not seem to have any clear-cut purpose or scheme. It was all just brutally senseless.
That was what made the tragedies that affected the grief inflicted victims he left in his path all the worse. Innocent lives to have died for nothing, taken or sabotaged for no reason, not even a crazy man's hatred or grudge. He maimed and killed without bias. There was no piecing together haphazardly broken and torn out pieces that held no logic and had no cutouts to fit with.
Batman thought that maybe just maybe if he found clues in other villains that seemed to be dragged into Joker's mad crime sprees, he could find a foothold to start forming some idea of the maze of endless and illogical crimes Joker committed.
At least those other villains had motives and faulty but present allusions to why they worked with Joker one way or another.
Perhaps they would have a clearer idea of why they aligned with him, even if he purposely kept them in the dark about his own reasonless reasoning.
Batman felt a sharp rock bounce off his rubberized hardened head mask and turned to face Red Hood, his failed former Robin, Jason Todd whose entire head was encased in a ruby red opaque shining hard featureless blank helmet with only two white eyes shining through.
He wore a red bat symbol on his chest of rubberized gray armored torso and a shiny tanned leather bomber jacket over it, concealing several guns.
He wore the bat symbol in ire of his former hero who had disappointed him to death, and back, and strapped guns to his body in rebellion and necessity, using the one weapon Batman was afraid of to use himself. His ideology conflicted with Batman's vow against using guns and taking lives, Batman never killed which Jason saw as a handicap, a get out of jail free card for the many villains, especially the one Joker who had turned Todd into who he now became, for the villains to take more lives endlessly.
Batman's origins, the birth of the masked dark knight, from his childhood scarring when his parents had been fatally taken from him murdered in front of him with gunshots by petty criminals, creating a phobia and vengeance against guns to fight crime and take down criminals, prohibiting anything they used to never become like them, like the ones that took his parents and created a lone orphan whose obsession with criminals encroached upon every fiber of his existence.
Jason Todd was different; he embraced the darkness and evil that brutally destroyed his body until he succumbed to death and when he reawakened by the Lazarus Pit Talia Al Ghul had placed him in.
His new moniker Red Hood and his red head concealing helmet was literally ironically mocking and embracing the identity Joker had originally taken on back in the day before he became the Joker.
Instead of swearing off the very things and super criminal who had been his ultimate end, he came back fortified and more reckless and wrathful completely immersing himself in the very person he hated who took everything from him that meant anything, and seeing guns as a more efficient and economical ends to a mean, with the literal power to end lives that should never have been allowed to exist in the first place and which he saw would have potentially saved him a whole lot of grief and pain in the first place.
Red Hood was his redemption and one he saw and continued onward with without his senior partner, the Batman
. Batman had been his hero, but now he saw the tough crime fighter as a useless obstacle in the goal and dream for humanity, to end evil and create peace where there could be if there weren't such obstacles in the way, blocking peace makers like the violent destructive Red Hood.
Jason's voice rang out from somewhere in his mouthless smooth shiny red helmet, "You keep letting him go when you lock him up in Arkham Asylum, all you're doing is providing him a place to reconvene with more bad guys to come out stronger and allied. To wreak more destruction on the world you coward. You fucking loser. When will you learn? What is it they call insanity? When you keep doing the same thing over and over again despite it not working.
Like a moth to a flame. Joker's your flame. All you have to do is extinguish it and you refuse, and you won't let any of us decent honest ones do that either. You're a control freak and random people have to keep paying for your sins.
I saw the latest victim Nightwing brought into the precinct. Not even old enough to know what an ugly world exists out there with derranged monsters like the Joker let alone beyond a playground. Even Gordon looked like he was going to get sick. And he's the most hardened cop in all of Gotham where the worst terrorism occurs everyday on the streets he patrols."
Batman said, "Not now if this is my guilty conscience and sleep deprived hallucination talking. I have work to do. To fix what Joker did."
Another rock landed on Batman's hard helmet like mask even harder, "You mean end his life so he can't do it again? There's no fixing this, you can't fix death you can just make sure he doesn't do this to anyone else again.
You're just as insane as he is. I'm not a ghost, I was resurrected remember? No thanks to you. Look at what he did to your most faithful sidekick, Robin's dead now, but I'm alive and I'm here to grate on your conscience.
Look what he did to Barbara, and you just used that to turn her into Oracle until she got use of her legs back. Again, no thanks to you
. She did that all by herself like she had to do everything, even face him alone. A fucking talking not walking computer system to aid you and instruct you in your ear everywhere you went.
You say people like me are the ruthless and thoughtless rage driven killers but we actually get things done and clean up the world and make streets safer for everyone even the defenseless. All you do is defend the criminals and churn them out to a corrupt legal system in their favor, Harvey Dent has more integrity than you, you might as well join a law firm and be their best criminal defense lawyer
. If it weren't for your enabler Nightwing you'd be all alone caved in your little make believe world of fake justice, Damien's going to leave you, he knows he's better than the both of you put together, and he may be young but he sees through the world better than you can at your age.
Barbara's devout to you so she can't even see what your so-called honor did to her, your commitment and loyalty to Joker over her or any of us who followed and obeyed you blindly and helped you fulfill a mission that can never be fulfilled.
You don't want to stop crime, or mad men you don't want this to end, Joker plays cat and mouse games with you, you don't want the endless villains and criminals to ever be stopped and cease, otherwise you wouldn't have a purpose anymore, you don't want to hang up the cape and cowl for good, you don't want to live in a world that no longer needs heroes like the Batman, a world where he can retire for good.
If you did you would have done what the world needed a long time ago, to extinguish lives and stop going back to him.
When will you learn. Insane people never change, don't want to change, don't want to and can't learn or be rehabbed or locked away.
Their persistence to hurt and destroy and take is just as relentless as your drive to temporarily stop them and put them away to cushy cells where they are provided 3 meals a day and roofs over their heads and beds to sleep in until they feel better enough to get back out there and provide your job, your living, your livelihood for you.
Sure even if you lock them up and give them a life sentence, look what they do to the ones in these legal systems whose intentions were to aid justice, he just makes more of himself look what he did to Harleen Quinzel, and turned a criminal psychologist provided by the very jail and asylum and legal system you work for into just another super villain like him.
Someone who wanted to help the world become a better place and solve the unsolveable minds of criminals by going through the bureacracy and process of higher education and courts to only end up completely converted to evil and Joker's whims.
You put him in there and he corrupts from the inside out, or as he sees it, unlocks and frees their truths. Spreading his virus of evil to those meant to contain and reform him or treat him. Look at what he did to Harvey Dent, Gotham's best district attorney who fought against villains like Joker, the legal way. Your way.
What he does to people whos entire life goals and aspirations and missions were to stop people like him. You just don't get it do you? He has one laugh over you every time and you still don't get that you're the punchline to his joke on the world. Dent is more honorable than you, that's why he became the way he did. Dent cared for the people and life and morals he lost to Joker.
You're something else Bruce, and you never learn because you're not the one to pay for it, others do with their lives and everyone they care about. All you're doing is reenacting the trauma of losing the parents you cared about the most on everyone else, day in day out with your refusal to let someone else with the guts to kill Joker for everyone else's sake or their own. You think your world ended that day and became the Batman but all you do now is make everyone else who has something or someone left to live for just relive your childhood trauma.
You're no better than any of these supervillains who turn mad because they lost their purpose or their worlds and all they cared for, in fact they're better than you and they are in on the joke now too by living the way they do with nothing to lose.
I thought becoming like you and becoming your Robin would help me save my only family and look what you let Joker do and get away with scots free while we live with the aftermath, or in some cases like mine, cease to live.
He is liberated and freed in his lack of caring, his lack of accountability and he ruins the lives of those who do care and suffer more because of that. I hate you more than I hate Joker. Joker was just living his code that he fearlessly embraces, and you let him because you're afraid to go against your code which is really his code he loves using against you. Isn't that the point?"
Batman whipped his head up staring hard at Jason, "Where did you hear that? That's what he said in the video tape he left me. You're becoming more and more like him every day, you don't even have a soul any more after your resurrection, its painted black by him and corroded by your obsession with revenge against him. You weren't always so corrupt, there was hope for you, goodness and justice. Potential. You could have been my best Robin."
Jason's blank white eyes on his shining red helmet stared hard at Batman, "It's like you're literally talking and looking at your own reflection you foolish hypocrite. Gordon should refuse to work with you after what you did to his daughter who only looked up to you was your most loyal foot soldier."
Batman sharply replied, "What I did? You mean what Joker did. I didn't do anything."
Red Hood laughed, "That's the problem Batman. You didn't do. Anything. When she was immobilized and completely in his mercy because YOU let him go. Let him live and continue to breathe when all he does is breathe malice and harm. He always finds a way; you should know that by now. And that still wasn't your breaking point, didn't push you there because you thought you lost it all when your parents died.
I've actually died and that was enough to enrage me enough to go after him with guns and an execution order. To restore the order, for Barbara's sake.
You always protected him. Instead of honoring them and seeking vengence you just continue to allow scum like these killers to live and breathe and keep taking and taking from the innocent, you have done nothing to stop or even thwart or slow them down, you just incite more violence with your refusal to put them away in Hell for good.
You got that lesson young and you're still their biggest defenders, you really will never learn, will you? That's why people like me exist, to stop you, and you won't let us. You created the Redhood just as much as Joker did. The original Redhood, Joker. I wasn't much older than you were when your parents died, when you let him get away and kill me and everyone I lived for."
Another dark figure swooped in to where Redhood stood perched on a protruding cliff on the tall ceilinged rock cave wall of the Bat lair, a figure with a blue bird emblazoned on the entire chest, "That's enough Todd, we get it, you're angry, as always. Leave Bruce alone, he's had a lot to deal with lately, we're under a lot of pressure right now. Unless you want to help or add anything useful you should go back to your activities."
The faceless white eyed obscured mask turned toward Nightwing and said, "Damien's going to be the last Robin, there will be no more Robins, and he will be the end of Nightwing. Jump this sinking ship before it's too late for you too Grayson, and before you end up like him." Jason Todd nudged his arm toward Batman who sat hunched over his giant keyboard with blankly staring Gotham criminals flashing across his giant screen.
Nightwing snorted, "Why? So I can end up like you? A zombie with a grudge to end all grudges?"
Jason's hand twitched irritably near his gun holster toward one of his guns on his hips but he seemed to think better of it, thinking that would be an overreaction.
Nightwing had been infuriating him lately or so it seemed. For a guy who faced death and lived to tell the tale, being murderous was kind of a state of mind that he usually didn't take two thoughts on like those who feared it. Sometimes he had to remind himself where he was. Among the living.
Jason said, "Damien's a better Robin than you ever were. He's already more effective than Batman could ever be and he's just a little kid."
Redhood jumped up and scaled the tall walls of the cave and exited out the hole Batman's flying crafts usually came through.
Batman numbly said, "Ignore him, he's always been hot headed even before..." He couldn't bring himself to say it.
Nightwing jumped down, bouncing off the walls nimbly with his feet, and landed next to Bruce at his computer. Nightwing reproachfully looked down at his mentor and seethed, "It's hard not to when he just intrudes where he hasn't been welcome since then... The things he says..."
Batman cut in, "Don't think about it too much. He's just trying to get in your head."
Nightwing restrained himself from punching Bruce in the head thinking that was something more characteristic of Jason Todd, not knowing where his sudden irrational anger was coming from, and instead pounded his fist down on the desk, "Why didn't you say more? Defend yourself or argue with him? Do you agree with him or something?"
Batman scowled, "It sounds like you're starting to or he did get in your head a little bit. That's not like you Dick."
Nightwing stepped back and apologized, "Sorry, no sleep, there was a lot to do at the morgue and I guess I have to admit Joker's latest stint has me pretty rattled and from what Alfred said, you too."
Bruce looked at Dick's hand, thinking if he were more sensitive he would have reassuringly held it, or his parents would have if they were still alive, but instead restrained himself and held his gaze through his mask, "It's ok to be rattled. This is too far even for the Joker..."
Nightwing looked startled, "You're surprised? After what he's done to...to lots of people?"
Batman did not answer and went back to staring at the motionless photographs of criminals rolling across his screen, reflecting across his solid glass eyes in his mask.
Nightwing knew how much the attacks and death of his unmentioned best sidekicks and partners weighed on him daily.
In another part of Gotham, the glow of a sleek thin metal laptop screen flickered and reflected across the solid ruby glasses lens of Scott as he typed away at its slim metal keyboard, flat against his dorm's thin slab of desk that stuck out of the wall, conjoined to the dark gray wall, a floating desk that needed no legs.
A message alerted on his screen and he maximized a minimized tab, a new email alert popping up on his Gotham University email mail account.
He slid his thin slightly curved wireless mouse across the desk and clicked open the new email that had just come in.
At first he panicked that he had opened one of those spam virus emails as his entire screen lit up in a frenzy of flashing lights, colorful and reminiscent of circus light bulbs that blinked around carnival signs in rotation.
A huge pixelated cartoony head of what he now learned to be the Joker's face colors smiled devilishly and widely at him, taking up the whole screen.
The pixelated jaws opened and closed shut in mimed laughter animation and a canned electronic laughter sounded repetitively.
Scott panicked, a little afraid of this huge and creepy glaring and laughing pixelated cartoon head taking over his laptop screen and jammed at buttons, desperately trying to close the screen or exit the animation.
Once he calmed down enough to take the time to look for the exit to the email, he frantically searched for the delete button, his fingers scrambling over his mouse.
He breathed hard and heavily, his heart jumping and sweat forming in a light sheen at his temples.
He was terrified and he knew he should try to decipher and see if there was any message or note to the email but he did not want it in his mailbox, as if it would contaminate his laptop with a virus or as if it were some spyware and he did not want a scary and unpredictable criminal being able to see him and it was as if the cartoon head's pixel eyes could see him through the screen.
He figured maybe it was a prank mass sent to random email addresses, but the title of the email in his inbox indicated that it was a personal message just for him from the Joker, and using his identifying name, Scott Summers.
He breathed in again, trying to calm his nerves but to no avail, so he got up, slamming his laptop shut and put as much distance between him and the device as he exited his dorm room and down the long corridor of Gotham Golden Hall dormitory.
Modular lights lit up the ceiling ahead of him in neat uniform rows and he briefly thought he imagined one flickering ahead of him, eerily. Burnished gold wall sconces encasing glows from within followed his every step straight down the hall.
He quickened his steps and opened the glass door of his dorm and ran down the solid gray stone staircases.
Burnished gold wall sconces, thin smoothened flat sheets of metal curved and cupped against the polished shining concrete gray bare smooth walls containing glowing white illumination lined the narrow steeply cut flat and smooth blocks of steps in descension, lighting the way in a diagonal line of lights.
Once Scott reached the outside entrance of the great university halls, he bent down, clutching at his knees and resting his chin against them as he breathed heavily, and not from his excursion down the stairs.
He stared down at the ground beneath him, granite flecked with darker grays throughout the stone cut slightly bumpy texture as if the stone had been roughly cut sliced off the face of a rock mountain wall in one solid massive chunk and laid down there.
The large, tall gray stone cathedral like neo gothic building behind him with its high monochromatic burnishing and color scheme, and pointed long narrow skinny spindly roof tips, towered sinisterly behind him, casting a deep and tall elongated black shadow, perfectly accenting the dark gray stormy sky above and behind it, thick with billows of still and heavy clouds variegating in grays much like the rock ground beneath his hard soled shoes.
He shivered at the cold and was glad he had been wearing his charcoal gray Gotham University hoodie with the school's name and mascot as well as collegiate symbols printed on it in a lighter almost silver gray, for he had forgotten to put on a jacket before leaving his dorm, in his frightful haste.
He had experience being exposed to and clashing with mutant villains back in Bayville and other parts of the world with the X-Men, but he had never quite seen anything quite as disturbing and dark as the Joker, save for some brush ups with ancient Egyptian Apocalyptic mutants, but those definitely were not the norm for the mutant team, and as far as he knew, Joker was a contemporary invention of a deranged man whose villainy knew no limits.
He knew, as a responsible mutant leader of a criminal fighting team, he had to face the email and see what it was all about and why it was sent to him, not just ignore and junk it like he wanted to on instinct. He wasn't sure the X-Men or even the all-seeing Charles would be the ones to go to for this though, as Joker wasn't exactly a mutant like they were used to fighting, although his soul was mutated more than anything he had ever seen.
He pondered going to Hank for help and answers, or maybe even just a friendly face to assist him in opening the dreaded email, but even mild-mannered Hank despite his super genius seemed too tame for this.
Scott sat there crouched like a gargoyle in his stiff thick, and quality material charcoal gray hoodie, adorning the high tops of the tall gothic biuildings and skyscrapers around Gotham and the campus, on the stoop a long time as the cloudy sky darkened, chilling him through his sweater. Something made him not want to go back to his dorm where the laptop containing the email sat. A sense of helpless violation crept in.
He looked up to the sky and saw a faint answer in the shape of a round yellow circle lighting up the night sky against gray, white and black clouds at the end of a ray shaped pillar of strong bright yellow light, with the famed blacked out bat symbol in the center of the circle.
The sky light either symbolized hope and protection for the citizens of Gotham, or fear and warning for the wrong doers and criminials littering the skyscraper encrusted streets, alleys, and sidewalks.
Batman might know what to do with this email, or find use of it, he was afterall the city's dark knight, the detective of the nightest night.
The city skylines silhouetted by night blackened skyscrapers with tiny lined up rectangles of yellow lit up windows dotting them and points stood out in Scott's ruby vision, as Scott recalled hearing Batman referring to Joker in his pursuit of Harley when he had broken through Harley's dorm window. It seemed the Batman was looking for answers and trying to solve something, on his own trail after the Joker.
Scott stood up and went back up to his dorm room.
Later that evening his roommate Dick came shuffling in hoisting his backpack over his shoulders and hanging it on his chair, Scott looked up from a map and blueprint of the city around his college he had drafted and asked, "You know that bat spotlight in the sky?"
Dick glanced out the window, eyes searching for the skylight his roommate was referring to and casually shrugged, "Yeah what of it?"
Scott intoned, "Where does it come from? Do you know how anyone can get a hold of a guy like the Batman?"
Dick laughed out loud, "He's not exactly someone anyone can just contact, not like he has an official email or P.O. Box or anything, that would kind of defeat the purpose of a masked vigilante with a secret identity who hides in shadows and fights crime in secret."
Scott probed, "What if I need to reach him somehow? Like if I had eyewitness information of something from one of his enemies like the Joker? You know like how news channels ask viewers to text a certain number with eyewitness footage of something they just witnessed before the stations are even aware?"
Dick surveyed Scott suddenly, and thought out loud, "Well, maybe, you could go to the police with that. Are you saying you have something from the Joker?"
Scott nodded slowly, "I need help to be honest. Something came up and I have no clue what to do. What if I had like, evidence or something and I don't know where else to get help for it or submit it to? I don't want it and maybe Batman could handle something like this."
Dick replied, "Well for starters, that light is turned on by Commissioner Gordon or the GCPD on their rooftop. Rumor has it its kind of a way to summon the dark knight. For Comissioner Gordon to directly touch base with him when he needs to. You might want to try them first.
Tell you what, why don't we pay my old friend Barbara a visit? We could maybe ask her for help, her dad is Commissioner Gordon afterall and he has it in with the Batman, he's the only cop Batman personally works with and is in personal contact with.
This sounds serious. Try not to mention Joker around her though unless she asks what we are up to, she has some trauma from the sicko himself. You have my full attention now, I'll help you as much as I can, this is something I would not take lightly."
Scott smiled in relief, "Thank you Dick, you have no idea how much of a weight you lifted off my chest today, I was really worried about what to do. This is crazy stuff I'm dealing with."
He began packing his backpack for any necessary items that could come in use for this mystery solving expedition. He held up a thin floppy disk in between his fingers and gestured it toward Dick, "The evidence." Before dropping it neatly into one of his backpack's pouches and zipping it securely in.