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seriousficTitle: Duality
Fandom: Nolanverse Batman, Superman Returns
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7,501
Characters/Pairings: Batman, the Joker
Previous Part: Chapter 16
Next Part: Chapter 18
Summary: Batman has a bus to catch.
12:01 AM
Batman felt the wind whip by him, trying to snatch his cape out of his electrified gloves and send him plummeting to his doom. Usually, he’d find the brief moment of flight a release, but not tonight. Now it felt as gloomy and heavy as the mask ever had.
Below him, the Batmobile’s AI subroutines had taken over, matching his speed, weaving in and out of traffic to stay out of him. The cockpit opened and Batman could see the seat waiting for him. He touched down, quickly slipped into place, and pressed a button on his armrest console. Safety belts slashed out from the seat and wrapped around his chest, waist, and legs like the restraints in an electric chair.
The steering wheel thrummed once as it went active, now tuned into the steering system and offering resistance. No sooner had Batman taken hold of it then he stomped on the gas pedal, exceeding the AI’s maximum safe speed. With the flick of a switch, the lights of the Batmobile blazed to life like the eyes of some monster riding out of the depths of hell.
***
Far behind him, Commissioner Gordon was shouting into his radio. “Clear a path between the Gotham Hilton and Gotham National Bank. Make no attempt to impede the Batman’s progress, repeat, clear the streets!” He clicked his radio off, watching as the distant fireworks of police lights came on with the accompaniment of their klaxons. Clearing a path.
“Godspeed.”
***
There was a line already open to the Batcave. “Master Bruce, I see you’ve taken control of the car. Is everything in order?”
“No. Patch in the feed from the bank security cameras.”
“How do I… ah, yes, here it comes.”
After a quick look at the radar to ascertain that the way was clear, Batman looked to the media read-out. It switched from the car’s status screen to show a CCTV view of the bank. Hostages, still alive. Men with guns. And the Joker.
He waved toodle-oo to the camera as police lights flashed outside the bank. In black and white, they made it look as if the moon and the sun were chasing each other every few seconds.
***
The Joker watched, eyes slanting from one side to the other, as the police arrived on the scene. They parked their cars, got out and aimed handguns at the bank. They weren’t as prompt as he would’ve expected. If he paid taxes, he would be chagrinned.
“The forces of order. What a bunch of nancy-boys. Dean, Jerry, grab the Brownies.”
The “Brownies” were M1919 Brownings, light machine guns that took .30 cal .30-06 Springfield bullets. That was what airplanes shot.
“Why do I have to use the Brownie?” Dean asked.
“Because you go with Jerry. Laurel goes with Hardy, Cheech goes with Chong, and Pete goes with Dud!”
“Who’re Pete and Dud?”
Joker threw his hat to the ground and stomped on it. “I knew it! I’m surrounded by assholes!” He pointed out at the police. “Start firing, assholes!”
Dean and Jerry, their arm-muscles near-bursting with the effort of carrying the heavy weapons, followed Joker to the door. (“I don’t see why Tom can’t do this,” Dean whined.) The Joker pushed open the double doors, stepping out into the colored shadows of the police light. Laser targeting dots swirled over his chest like fireflies, but what Joker was far more concerned with was the news crews setting up far behind the action. They scurried to zoom in on him. He raised both arms high, basking in the glow of his adoring public.
“I am not a crook! I am an artist!” The engine’s roar, like that of a charging beast, shot through the air. The Joker lowered his arms in presentation. “And this is my masterpiece!”
The Metropolitan 5 screeched through the intersection, pile-driving through the police cars that circled the bank and rumbling up the steps to crash through the bank’s doors. It missed the Joker by inches, its side-mirror knocking his already-battered hat off. The Joker caught it behind his back, then threw it out like a Frisbee.
Jerry shot it down like a clay pigeon before he and Dean opened up on the cop cars, their bullets catching engines, popping tires, exploding gas tanks. The police ran for cover, firing behind them, usually cut down where they stood. The Joker ran purple-gloved fingers through his green hair, eyes closed as if he were listening to the hook of his favorite song.
“Mmmm. That’s good crime.”
The bus doors slid open, bits of shattered glass falling from them. Joker climbed onboard, his moneybag-toting henchmen coming in after him. Jerry and Dean were the last two onboard, their Brownings still trailing gunsmoke.
“Next stop, Batman.” The clown’s grin was cut off by the bus doors closing, their glass webbed with cracks.
***
Officer Montoya had already emptied her service revolver after the bus, managing to flatten one of the tires. The Metropolitan 5 slowed down maybe a fraction. Then she stopped thinking of catching the bad guys. Survival was more than enough to fill her plate. The crooks hadn’t been good shots, but they’d fired enough bullets to make up for it. Gutshot and winged cops littered the street like they’d been discarded there.
She went to the closest one. Yeah, it would be Bullock. He was down with a bullet in his ample gut. She put pressure there, stemming the bleeding. The ambulances would come soon. They had to.
Renee heard the rev of an engine, growing louder and louder. The Joker, coming back for more? She looked up.
The Batmobile sped past her, stirring up the street in its wake like a tornado. As it dwindled into the distance, its jet engine fired. The red-hot flame carried it out of her sight.
Renee felt something akin to hope.
***
“The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round,” the Joker sang merrily.
***
Crispus Allen swung his police car into a sliding turn, jerking to a rolling stop behind the hijacked bus. Ellen Yin, in the second police car, swerved to a stop behind him. Crispus gunned his engine and sped after the bus, knowing Ellen had his back.
He picked his radio from the dash. “This is Adam-4, in pursuit. Suspect is headed east on Thomas Wayne Drive.”
***
“…round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round…”
***
Batman’s eyes briefly flitted to the GPS screen as the computer automatically generated a route. It also generated probable escape routes for the Joker. The strongest possibility was that he would turn east on Belmont and make for the East End, where he could lose himself in the decay. The police would be cordoning off the area, but it wouldn’t come to another slaughter. Batman would ram the bus head-on if it came to that.
***
“Round and round and round and round and…” The Joker checked his rear-view mirror, which instantly bombarded him with red and blue lights.
“Tailgaters!” he cried, agitated. “Cheech, take the wheel.”
The Hispanic member of the gang irritatedly responded to his codename, taking the Joker’s place in the driver’s seat. The Joker merrily skipped down the aisle, past the cringing hostages, to grab the guitar case that’d been stowed by the emergency exit. He opened it up while the leather-clad captor opened the backdoor.
The rocket launcher was waiting for him, four rockets neatly fitted alongside it, with sidewalk chalk painting a goofy grin on the side of the nozzle. He picked it up and slammed the first rocket home.
“Let’s see if this gets the Bat’s attention.”
***
“Damnit, dispatch, where’s my air support? This maniac has hostages!” Crispus bellowed into his radio. Then he saw the emergency exit on the bus pop open. The Joker stood in the doorway, coat-tails billowing in the wind, some kind of tube on his shoulder… He raised it…
“Ellen, move!”
Too late. The launcher vomited flame, a brief flare of bright smoke that led into Ellen’s police car. The hood shot up in the eruption, so far it smashed in the cab. And the entire front half of the police car simply ceased to exist. The remaining half, wreathed in flame, spun out; hitting the sidewalk in a storm of newspapers and snapped parking meters.
Crispus slammed on the brakes, was out of his car before he could even work the parking brake. He ran for the burning police car so fast that when the second rocket hit his own abandoned vehicle, he barely noticed the shrapnel lacerating his back.
The pain blacked him out, swallowed his vision. He stumbled, but the pain brought him back. The door to Ellen’s car yawed open, fierce black smoke tumbling out. He waved it out of his face as he leaned in. Ellen was a bloody mess, burnt badly. Crispus sawed through her seatbelt with his pocket knife and scooped her up, carrying her out of the wreckage.
The Batmobile streaked by him, engines hot.
“Get that son of a bitch, Bats,” Crispus whispered fiercely.
***
Patti Devine had taken an extra shift as helicopter pilot in Gotham’s Rapid Response Task Force to take her mind off her marriage. Her husband, Jim Devine, was drinking more and more. She’d come home last night to find the kids up past their nine o’clock bedtime and her husband passed out on the couch. Luckily, all her children had been up to was watching Cartoon Network (Patti hadn’t known there were such violent cartoons at night).
None of that mattered while she was airborne. Getting Jim into rehab, finding a nanny to watch the kids, it all went away when the call came over the radio. She was fueled up, her rotors were slicing at full speed, and the skies were clear.
“This is Kitty-Hawk 3, responding to request for air support on TW Drive.”
The helicopter tilted forward and, in its incredible speed, Patti found her calm.
***
The Joker was in a Zen state, the perfect storm of madness, sitting cross-legged in front of the emergency exit with the rocket launcher cradled in his arms. He rocked back and forth, watching the street fly away.
“What’s taking him so long? Where is the Batman!?”
“Maybe he’s busy?” one of his men suggested.
Joker sprang to his feet, as loopy as a jack-in-the-box. “Busy? With something else? Something more important than me!?” He pressed an outraged hand to his chest. “What kind of philistine would that make him? Surely he must know I’m not like the others! I’m no common criminal, no purse snatcher or mugger! I’m the Joker! The Clown Prince of Crime! The Ace of Knaves! The Caliph of Clowns! Nobody’s more important than me!!!”
A spotlight shone down, catching him in its beam like a fly in amber. Joker quickly puffed his chest out for the imaginary audience, slicking his hair back with his free hand. High above, a police helicopter had finally arrived.
Joker held onto a support pole as the Metropolitan 5 drifted into a turn, the helicopter banking to keep up. With an even wider smile than usual, he reached for the third rocket.
***
“This is Kitty-Hawk 3, suspect is turning west on Belmont. He’s headed into the financial district.”
Batman quirked an eyebrow at that. The financial district was suicide. Sparsely populated this time of night, with plenty of police patrols thanks to the affluent “campaign contributors” who worked there. It was a death trap for criminals, a roach motel. And his plan to head the Joker off was useless.
Jerking the wheel, he threw the Batmobile into a 180 degree turn and sped down an alleyway that was such a tight fit, sparks flew off the sides of the car. Not his problem. He burst out onto a one-way street headed west, turned on a dime, and hit the afterburner. Nitrous oxide flooded the jet engine, which flared blue-hot. Batman was shoved back into his head as the world blurred around the edges.
***
The Joker carefully lined the helicopter in his sights. The bus was going in a straight line, and so the helicopter was going in a straight line. Like a big fat balloon, just waiting to be popped.
He squeezed the trigger.
“Hope you’re insured.”
***
Patti had heard some of the other chopper jockeys, the ones that had flown in the war, talk about what it was being like under fire. To fly a copter, you had to be invincible. And once you heard the ping of bullets against your hull or the flash of a rocket launching, the floor fell out from under you.
That’s what it felt like, as the rocket streamed toward her. Like the ground had disappeared and she would fall forever. Patti closed her eyes and hoped that her husband could get sober. The kids would be relying on him from now on.
The helicopter, her body, turned into a fireball.
***
Batman saw a flash of light in the sky and briefly thought Dawn? But no. The flaming helicopter dipped out of sight into the skyline, a dying animal’s wail permeating even the Batmobile’s armor plating. Batman deftly weaved the Batmobile in and out of traffic, slowing him down only a few MPH, and he hit the intersection. Red light, cars crossing. Near-superhuman reflexes told him he could make it.
The Batmobile seemed like an extension of himself, a weapon he could wield as precisely as a samurai sword, as he sped through the intersection. Put it through a sharp turn that sheared the pain from a sedan. Then he was facing down Belmont, facing the Joker in his bus. The flaming helicopter fell between them like a handkerchief starting a duel.
No more than an instant had passed.
Batman shifted into fourth gear.
***
“Oooh, he brought the car!” Joker clapped his hands excitedly. “Chicks dig the car!” He motioned to the hostages’ minder, who was loading the rocket launcher. “Gimme gimme gimme! I wanna give that gloomy old hearse a new paintjob.”
***
Patti was on fire, heat-fire-burn, and she wondered if she was in hell, stuck in the oven, lake of fire, the helicopter jerked out of its already rough spin as the tail smashed through the windows of the twentieth floor of the Foxteca Building. She was still alive, still horribly alive, and she screamed as the ground swallowed her whole.
***
Batman angled the car slightly to the left, putting its course clear of the helicopter’s crash landing, and slammed the door release lever down. The cockpit slid open, letting a maelstrom in. A pull on the emergency release knob and his safety restraints detangled from him slackly. Grabbing the edges of his cockpit, he pulled himself upward, into the slipstream. His cowl functions moved to compensate, dampening the sound of the wind rushing by. He touched his cape to induce an electrical current, causing him to grow wings.
The wind scooped him up, treating the cape as a parachute, and Batman roughly landed behind the Batmobile. He skidded to a stop, heedlessly advanced on the helicopter as the Batmobile made a turn up ahead.
The rocket had blown one door off its hinges and swollen the other to the outside. Seeing that the fuel fire was blazing hottest in the open doorway, Batman went to the cracked door. His gloved hands wrapped around the bent steel, so hot Bruce could feel it even through the Nomex, and started to pull.
***
“What’s he doing?” Joker asked. It was all perfect, the flame from the wreckage casting a long gothic shadow from Batsy like an extension of his cape, the rocket in his launcher primed and ready, but the Bat wasn’t doing it right! “Hello, bad guy here! I’m getting away! La la la la! I hope Batman doesn’t foil my perfect getaway!”
He threw the rocket launcher to the ground, making everyone in the bus cringe anew, and stomped to the front of the bus.
“Move over, Miss Daisy, I’m driving!”
***
Much like its pilot, the helicopter was still clinging to life. Its rotors buzzed madly, kicking up the flames and wrapping Batman’s cape around his body. The pilot was still strapped in, flames eating away at her jumpsuit. Batman punched through the cracked glass, grabbing a fire extinguisher inside the cabin and emptying it onto the pilot. Over the roar of the flames… honking?
Batman looked up. The Metropolitan 5 was bearing down on him. The Joker was in the driver’s seat, waving his arms wildly and shouting “No brakes! No brakes!”
No time for blowtorches, acid, anything but brute strength. The flame had weakened the chopper’s metal; it would have to be enough. Batman braced one foot against the wreckage, centered his chi, pulled. The door gave way, ripped loose. The bus’s horn screamed, only meters away. Batman grabbed the pilot out of her seat, ripping through her safety belt, and spun away.
The bus hit the wreckage, missing Batman by a few feet. Flaming shrapnel bombarded his back, thankfully protected by his cape, and the decapitated rotors windmilled across the asphalt. The bus roared by.
“Think we should exchange information, Bats?” Joker laughed as he literally left Batman in the dust.
Even as he tended to the pilot with one hand, Batman flipped open the touchpad on the side of his belt. He’d practiced with it for long hours in business meetings, to the point where he could drive the Batmobile with it—by touch. He set the speed to fifty MPH and the AI in pursuit mode.
The Batmobile completed its circuit and turned onto his road, then accelerated. Batman crouched, counted off the seconds, then backflipped. Six feet, up and back. If he’d miscalculated, he’d be roadkill.
He landed in a crouch, feeling the hum of the car’s powerful engines through his boots. Batman had landed square on the Batmobile’s hood. He stood, feeling the wind on his face, tugging on his cape. With the flick of a finger against the touchpad, the Batmobile accelerated to top speed.
It rammed the back of the bus, rocking everyone inside. Through the emergency exit, Batman saw the Joker turn around and express… not the fear his persona had been crafted to elicit, but amusement.
The clown jumped out of the driver’s seat, leaving the bus driverless for the few seconds it took for a henchman to realize no one was driving, and ran down the aisle so fast he had to grab the edges of the exit to stop himself from falling out.
“Batman. Darling. I didn’t know you surfed!”
“Pull over and release the hostages. Before you make me angry.”
The Joker tapped on his lower lip ponderingly. “Put the kids to bed so that mommy and daddy can talk? Nah! Let ‘em watch. They’ve gotta find out some day!”
“Then you leave me no choice.”
“Oh, come off it! It’s not like someone’s holding a gun to your head.” The Joker jerked his arm and a revolver fell from his sleeve into his hand. “Well, maybe it’s a little bit like that.”
Batman was unfazed. One of the improvements he’d made to his armor over the years had been to bulletproof it. He raised his hand and gestured for Joker to bring it, strategically putting his scalloped bracer close to his face in case he had to block a shot at his mouth or eyes.
The Joker pulled the trigger. Batman juked to dodge a bullet that never came. All that had emerged from the gun barrel was a flagpole with a pendant that read Bang!
“Gotcha,” Joker said, and pulled the trigger again.
The flagpole shot out like a quarrel from a crossbow, lancing Batman’s pectoralis major. The armor wasn’t designed for that kind of penetration. The spear cut through, knocking Batman down onto the windshield. The tip must have been covered with some kind of painful neurotoxin; Batman blacked out.
The suit, monitoring his system, gave him a booster shot of adrenaline. When Batman raised his head, the bus had put some distance between them and the Joker was aiming a rocket launcher.
Batman rolled onto his belly, reaching into the open cockpit for the steering wheel. He felt the familiar circle and jerked it to the left, steering the Batmobile out of the way just as the Joker fired. The rocket put a new pothole in the Gotham street.
The Batmobile scraped against a line of parked cars on the side of the road. Side mirrors snapped off, windows shattered, doors were ripped from their hinges. Batman dragged himself into the cockpit as the line of parked cars ended.
The Batmobile drifted onto the sidewalk, tearing through parking meters like a thresher through wheat. Batman swung into his seat, ducking under an uprooted parking meter that would’ve taken his head off (coins stung his jaw), and grabbed the wheel. He swerved back onto the road just in time to miss a street walker waiting at the cross-walk.
***
“Holy shit,” Holly said.
***
They were headed into East End now, a residential district if not exactly livable. There were people out, even at this time of night. Children. Families. The Joker’s madness had to end now.
The cockpit slid shut as a punk appeared in the bus’s emergency exit. He was holding a machine gun.
Batman calmly dug out the spear and patched the wound with quick-drying sealant as bullets ineffectually splashed off the Batmobile’s armor. When they stopped, Batman selected an armament from the status screen.
“My turn.”
A net launcher extended from the hood and fired. The punk took it full in the chest, flying backwards out of sight. As an afterthought, Batman turned on the windshield wipers. They swept the deformed slugs off the bulletproof glass.
***
Dean impacted the windshield right next to Joker, wrapped up tighter than a Christmas present in a mesh net. The Joker glanced at him.
“Some people just don’t know how to use the net. Noob.” He looked to Laurel and Hardy. “Go back there and teach him a lesson for putting the rescue of some piddling plebian above me! Aim for his tires!”
The two pumped their shotguns, but before they could go the bus shook.
“What was that? A bus-quake?”
The Joker looked in the mirror. Two thick black cables had shot out of the Batmobile’s front bumper and were embedded in the bus’s rear. As he watched in disbelief, the Batmobile braked hard, tires skidding. The bus rocked again. Slowed down.
“Who taught that man how to drive!?”
Bloodshot eyes darted to the speedometer. Once proudly fixed at eighty miles per hour, now dropping fast. Bloodshot eyes widened, got more bloodshot. Then squinted as light hit them. Headlights.
The Joker smiled.
***
Batman kept a steady pressure on the brake pedal, not wanting to brake so hard the grapplers tore loose. Like a broken leg, like so much dead weight, he would drag the bus down. Then it would be his turn to have some fun.
Then the bus veered to the left, into oncoming traffic, the Batmobile dragged behind it. Batman pressed down hard on the brakes, so hard sparks shot out of the tires, but it was no good. Then the bus went back into the right lane, leaving the Batmobile in the left.
The oncoming car hit it. T-boned, since the Batmobile was following the bus. The other car got the worse of it, like hitting a tank-shaped brick wall. It flipped, back end catapulted into the air, then end over end over the Batmobile. Batman was able to look up and see the other driver, perturbed and confused, before his car came crashing down on the other side. It rolled and came to a stop, upside-down. No.
The bus drove into the left lane again. Batman shifted into neutral. Teeth clenched in rage, he threw open the cockpit and surged up to meet two creeps with shotguns. They fired as Batman ducked down into the cockpit. One blast hit the outside of the cockpit, bouncing off the lower windshield. The other went high and blew the stuffing out of his headrest. More bullets rained down. A ricochet in the close quarters of the cockpit could cause incredible damage.
Batman typed on a panel, exposing his arm to fire. Bang! A few pellets sparked off his bracer. He’d designed the grappler lines to be able to connect to the high-power car battery, to act as jumper cables. He shunted power from the car battery down the lines.
Electricity arced through the emergency exit’s doorway, shocking the bastards. They dropped, twitching and foaming at the mouth. Batman rose, ran down the hood of the Batmobile and leapt into the emergency exit. He landed in the crouch Ra’s had taught him, stood slowly. Slower was scarier than quick. Quick made you think you could outrun it, hide from it. Slow made you think it didn’t matter, because the Bat would get to you no matter what you did.
It worked. He could see the shiver running down the henchmen’s spines, freezing them before they could go for their guns. And before they could, he had crossed his arms over his chest and then thrown them wide. Four Batarangs, the new kind with the internal payload, scattered. Flashbangs. Got the idea from watching a SWAT team entry. It worked wonders.
A little burst of light, a little puff of tear gas, and the henchmen were no longer combatants. The Joker touched the flower on his lapel, sending a stream of piss-yellow acid from it onto the bus’s dashboard. It melted from gauges to pedals.
“Abandon ship, mateys! Hate to burgle and run, Bats, but you don’t get to die yet. Bruno, make our guest feel welcome.”
“Ja wohl.”
Batman turned. ‘Bruno’ had been lurking behind him, like an ape in a tree. A big ape. She was six-foot-seven, possibly not even a she, mounds of silicone covered by swastika pasties. Sometimes, just when Batman thought he had Gotham figured out, the city threw something just entirely out there at him.
If Superman were here, he’d say never hit a lady, even one with a prominent Adam’s apple. Fortunately, Superman wasn’t here.
“What about me?” the criminal netted to the windshield asked.
“First mate goes down with the ship,” Joker replied.
“That’s the captain!”
“Semantics,” Joker buzzed as he casually stepped backward out of the bus.
Batman’s opening punch ramrodded Bruno’s stomach. She let out a little grunt of exertion, hunh, and backhanded him to the floor. Closed Batarangs spilled out of the open compartment on his utility belt like black metal flower petals. Reminded him of playing marbles with Rachel as a kid. Marbles. Toxin. His judgment. Runaway bus, damnit, pull-it-together~!
He got up, tasting the blood that trickled from his lip like the run-off from a sewer, and weighted his options in the five seconds he had before Bruno was on top of him. Runaway bus, had to bring it to a stop. Obstacle: Bruno. Had to put her/him out of commission. No time for strategy, seconds count, brute force. Blunt trauma to the head, worry about concussions later. Not like she doesn’t have it coming.
Boxing. Batman didn’t raise his dukes, just launched into an offensive that would’ve made Evander Holyfield proud. It should’ve; Evander had taught him everything he knew. He laid rights and lefts into Bruno, working her backwards. Her muscles weren’t real, they were steroid balloons, she didn’t know how to carry them. Made things easier.
The bus was drifting from side to side without a driver. A few passengers had tried to take over, but the Joker had thoroughly trashed the controls. They couldn’t even turn the ignition off. And the Metropolitan 5 was moving too fast to jump off. They could only hang on as the bus clipped against cars parked on either side of the street, working its way back into the middle of the road with each jolting ricochet.
Bruno started to recover, work through the pain. Batman put a stop to that with a chop to her throat. The punch came anyway, a big right cross that swung over Batman’s ducked head. It pulped the frame of a seat to the right. Batman kneed her in the chin, then sent her off-balance with a strong uppercut. She rocked back on her heels, tripped backward toward the open exit.
Batman slapped the touchpad on the side of his belt. The afterburner on the Batmobile flared. As Bruno fell out of the bus, the Batmobile rammed her head. Unconscious, she trickled up the hood to land upside-down in the cockpit. Batman pressed the control to close it, wedging her in place.
Batman sprinted to the front of the bus, clearing the passengers out of the way like they were ten-pins. They had drifted into oncoming traffic. With a chorus of horns, cars were swerving out of the way. Ahead was a turn. If they didn’t make it, the apartment building would always stop them. Looked like they had room, even. Lucky night. Batman tapped on the touchpad.
“This is no time for video games!” the criminal in the net screamed.
“Everyone hang on to something,” Batman ordered, before turning on the Batmobile’s brakes.
The entire bus pitched forward, the tank it had been towing now having become not just a dead weight but a digging-in-its-heels-with-spikes-jutting-out-of-the-tires weight. Batman allowed himself a smirk, that lasted as long as it took for the abrupt shift in speed to rip the grappler out of the bus… along with most of its rear axis. The bus, tailless, fell on what was left of its rear bumper. The passengers held on, trying to keep from falling down the slant to open road. A few charitable souls grabbed the unconscious Laurel and Hardy, stopping their descent. A body, the bus driver’s, slid out of its resting place of dried blood to tumble out onto the street.
Batman looked up at the road. No more space. He quick-drew his grapple-gun, aimed it out the side-door, and fired. The grappling hook caught on a street lamp. Batman wound the line around the bus pole just before the line went taut.
The bus’s contents shifted to the side, like a planet-scale slap, as it made the hard right. Batman held to the bus pole, using his free hand to cut off the line at the appropriate point. The bus came out of its turn on a new, safe heading.
Moving with fast, long strides, Batman leaned out the door with a Batarang in hand. He stabbed the right front tire with it, then flung it forward. It arced back to hit the left front tire. With both out, the Metropolitan 5 rapidly slowed to a stop. The feeling of being in motion, of being in the middle of a disaster, persisted. Batman kept his hand on the pole.
“Stay in your seats. The police will be here soon.”
And it was true: sirens blared in the distance, echoed in his head. The toxin. It was going to work at his senses, hurting him. If hearing was going, what would be next? Vision? Touch? Would he never be able to touch Talia, sitting in a hospital bed… Batman shook his head. Not much time now, no time to get the bearing on that. He staggered out of the bus and back to where the Batmobile had stopped. An impossible journey. He switched the touchpad over to vocal command and detached it from his belt, raising it to his lips.
“Return.”
Time skipped, like a record player on the fritz. It was like he was falling asleep, but while still standing. He sagged against a mail box, staying there until the Batmobile pulled to a stop next to him. The cockpit opened. He dragged Bruno out by the foot and climbed, fumblingly, into it. The safety harness engaged, ineffectually bouncing off his awkward positioning.
“Home.”
The cockpit closed, cutting off the starlight, and Batman lapsed into a meditative state. He would beat this. By sheer force of will, he would beat this. He had to.
Batman grabbed for a blanket antibiotic. It flew out of his hand when the 18-wheeler broadsided the Batmobile. The Tumbler was rammed through cyclone fencing with a metallic echo. Tires revved impotently, finding no traction, as the Batmobile was dashed across the construction yard. It ended up on its side in a ditch, one side stoved in like a meteor’s crater.
The truck backed up a ways, baring its demolished grill. The gear shifted to park. Joker stumbled out. “I only had a few drinks, officer, promise!” he slurred. Then straightened, gestured to the men hanging onto the back of the cab. There were four of them, well-armed. Joker approvingly smeared their greasepaint. “Gentlemen, let’s bag us a bat!” He took a cartoonishly round bomb from the glove compartment and tossed it from hand to hand. “Artie, got a light?”
Artie leaned out of the cab, holding a lighter. Joker touched the fuse to its flame.
“Much obliged, dear boy. Stay in the car.”
The up-ended Batmobile ground its wheels, rattling like a snake.
Joker held the bomb up, then revved it forward and back like a bowling ball. “Shut the fuck up, Batty, you are out of your element!” He rolled the bomb under the Batmobile.
The blast knocked it up five feet, before dropping it onto the other end of the ditch. The cockpit was facing them, and ajar. The Joker gestured to the two clowns with tools. They hopped down and went to work on it, one with a sledgehammer, the other with a crowbar.
The ejection seat blew. It flew out of the cockpit, hitting one of the clowns and carrying him into the construction site’s safety netting. The crowbar clattered down onto the gravel.
“We’re gonna need another Timmy,” Joker said, watching his minion struggle like a fly caught on flypaper.
A scalloped hand darted out of the cockpit’s darkness and yanked the second clown inside with mad laughter. It ended with a sickening crack. The clown’s hand fell into the light.
“You like it in the dark, Bats?” The Joker hopped down, tugging his lapels. “Come on. Come say hi. You’re not afraid of me, are you?” He dropped trou, mooning Batman with bat-covered boxers. “What’s the matter? You run out of toys? Here, have one of mine.”
He tossed his gun into the cockpit. It never landed.
Batman lurched out of the blackness, one corner of his mouth trembling between a smile and a frown. “I don’t need a gun to deal with you, Joker.” He hurled the pistol aside and it shattered against the concrete embankment. “All I need… heh… are these two hands.”
“Why, it sounds like you’re starting to see the funny side of things!” Joker was holding up his pants with one hand. “Fine, then, let’s settle this mano-e-mano, man-on-man! Just you and me… and my boys!”
The second set of clowns jumped down. They landed on Batman, wrestling him to the ground in a fit of titters.
“Tickle fight!” Joker exclaimed, bouncing a kick off Batman’s ribs. Holding his arms, the clowns hauled Batman to his feet. “You might feel a little prick.” Joker laid into Batman’s chest. It hurt his knuckles more than the armor. “Gaah!”
Batman howled with laughter. Joker backhanded him across his unprotected chin.
“That’s not funny!” He shook his hand. “Hey, here’s a thought. Why don’t we spice things up with some toys?”
***
Once he’d broken the lock on the tool shed, the hard part was deciding what to use. There was no dynamite, darn the luck, but they had a big shiny concrete saw that was just wasted on concrete. And if you wanted to open a sardine can (i.e. Bat-armor), use a can opener.
“Now, if this stings, just remember the safe word: AAAAAAAHHHHH!!” Joker pulled the starter cord. The saw roared, covered up the grunt of pain when Batman rose up and kicked him in the gut. Batman’s feet jutted to either side, snapping the clowns’ legs, then his scalloped gauntlets raked across their faces. They went down crimson-masked.
When Joker had fallen, he’d lodged the concrete saw in the Batmobile’s hood. Radiator steam and hot oil spewed as he tried to extract it. He looked over his shoulder at Batman.
“Little help here?”
Batman slammed him into the hood before throwing him against the other side of the ditch.
“A simple ‘no’ would’ve sufficed…”
With a hard jab to its touchpad, the Batmobile spun its wheels. Batman held Joker near the treads. “This how you put your nose to the grindstone? You’re doing it wrong.” The tire burned his cheek. “Ooooooh! You are seeing things more clearly! Because you know, you bring me in, I’ll get out. You can’t keep me in jail anymore than you can the Penguin.” The tire spun and spun, inches from the Joker’s face. “But you can’t, can you? You have a rule. I am so disappointed in you. Here I thought we were two of a kind, lawless men in a town where the law is a bad joke, and now you’ve gone soft on me, you sell-out.” An arm wrapped around his throat, squeezed. “Gordon and Dent have you on a leash. Oh, you bark and you slaver, but you’ve been neutered. They don’t understand you like I do. I know what you really want,” he rasped. His fingers went up, hooked on Batman’s mouth and pulled it into a smile. The tension on his throat slackened. “You break your rule, just once, and you’ll see the real world too.”
Artie pumped three shots into the Dark Knight’s back. Even as the third one fired, a Batarang was lancing into his head. Both men went down, leaving Joker shuddering in frustration. “Killus interruptus. Worse than no murder at all.” He tugged half-heartedly on the concrete saw. “Joke’s on all of us, then. Welp, nothing to do for it.” He reached into his pocket. “I wrote a poem for the occasion. A-hem-hem. Wait, this is the rule card from a playing card deck.” He threw it over his shoulder.
“Well, this is anticlimactic. I’d wanted grand guinol, lives at stake, the world watching as once and for all, we determined what was superior – your ‘reason’ and ‘intellect’ (finger quotes) or the divine gift men call madness. Oh well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.” He pulled the saw free. “Say good night, Bats!” Joker held the saw high. Nothing happened. “’Good night, Bats,’” he falsettoed out the side of his mouth.” More nothing happened. “I’m really going to do it now, I’m really going to kill him!” He threw the saw aside. “Damnation! Tarnation! Evaporation! This is the biggest disappointment since anthrax! Okay, you live to stalk another day, so instead of death, you get a consolation prize!” He pulled a syringe from his pocket. “You gave me a new outlook on life, now I’m gonna return the favor. Keep an eye out for the bunny in the moon. It loves the attention. Here comes the airplane…”
Batman lapsed into a haunted sleep, laughter ringing in his ears. In the time it took for him to close his eyes, he realized it was his own.
***
Jerry, now John S. Lee since the job was over, disposed of his shit like the Joker had told him to, keeping only the backpack fulla money. He was supposed to meet up with the others at the hide-out (what’d the clown call it, his hee-hee-house? Somethin’ like that), but it’d be hours before they missed him. He had time to kill, and he was flush from pulling off such a brazen crime. No pussy penny-ante stuff, that was some serious Dog Day Afternoon shit. Fuck yeah.
He emerged from an alleyway, onto the amber-colored world of a street in the AM. Just him and a drug dealer on a street corner, wearing a Star City U hoodie. John gave him a wide berth as he settled on a stoop, opening the backpack and transferring a brick of cash into his pocket. Felt even better than a gun. He zipped up the backpack, hoisted it onto his back, started walking again. The next street had some hookers huddled together round a trash can fire with a bum, passing cigarettes around. They flaunted themselves at him as he walked by, but no matter how old they were, they looked like they could’ve been in their sixties.
The next street, run down even by East End standards, had its light provided by a flickering streetlight. Under it, a hooker was typing text into her cell-phone. Young, even by hooker standards, but not used up. Her blonde hair had some sheen and her make-up was applied with a careful hand. Probably could count the number of dicks she’s sucked on two hands. Looks weren’t half-bad either, even with the night cold causing her to zip up her top over her body. If the top matched the bottom, though… he licked his lips.
Jerry started the dance. Brushed by her as he walked by, causing her to look up sharply from her phone, then leaned against the street lamp. After apparently sizing him up, blondie turned back to her phone.
“Nice night, huh?”
“Wicked cold,” she said.
“There’s a fire next street over.”
“Nah. Buncha skanks around it.”
Jerry laughed. “Not high-class like you, neh?”
She gave him an odd look, and pressed send.
“So, how much?”
“How much for what?”
He flashed some cash at her. “I’m not a cop, babe.”
She actually blushed. Adorable. “I’m not a sex worker.”
“A sex worker. Whoa. What’s that make you, an escort?”
“A student, asshole. I’m waiting for a ride.”
“This doesn’t look like tha bus stop.”
“My dad was supposed to pick me up. He’s late.”
“How long you been waiting?”
“Long enough.” She started walking away from him. Jerry snorted, folded the cash back into his pocket. Hell, he hated it when whores got uppity.
She was headed back toward the street with the fire. He trailed after her. “Hey, think we got off to a bad start?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Hey, I’m tryin’ to be nice. What’s your name? My name’s Jerry.” Things went south, he didn’t want her to have his real name, and he was already used to answering to that.
“I said fuck off.”
He walked a little faster, getting closer. “C’mon, I just want your name. Can’t ya be nice?”
“I can be nice.” It was a voice, low and sultry as jazz, and as Jerry turned he expected to find a real hooker. Of course, he wasn’t quite sure he was ready to give up on the girl… most hookers were all worn-out and crag-lookin’, and he wouldn’t mind wiping that holier-than-thou look offa the schoolgirl’s pretty face either—
The whip circled his neck, instantly cutting off his neck, its pronged-tip scourging his cheek as it came to a rest. Jerry tried to pull the noose off, but before he could he was jerked off his feet and down to the pavement. Before he could get up, a leather bootheel was jammed into his cheek, smearing his face into the asphalt.
“I prefer to be though. Lifestyle choice. Very personal. Lots of hard thinking. Kitten, money?”
Jerry tried to get up, but the whip pulled tighter and he gagged until he consented to stay down. Then air returned. He felt hands rifling through his pockets. Slender, quick hands. The schoolgirl. Fuck!
“How’s school?” the woman holding him down like a dominatrix asked the schoolgirl, chatty as a gossip.
Steph shrugged as she patted the robber down. “It’s school.”
“Teachers giving you any problems?”
”No.”
“You giving the teachers any problems?”
Steph grinned. “Yeah.”
”That’s my girl.”
Jerry was trying, trying real hard, to think up a way out of this clusterfuck when he heard the sound of his backpack being unzipped. Icicles formed in his guts. “Hey, Cat, look at this!”
The woman with a heel in his face wolf-whistled. “Let me guess, Laundromat money?”
“Fuck you, bitch, that’s the Joker’s loot.”
“Not anymore.” The heel came off his face, to be replaced by a knee across the back of his neck. She was fucking kneeling on him, Jesus! “Tell the Joker this. In fact, put it in the next sexual predators’ newsletter. East End is my hunting ground and it’s open season on all scumbags.”
Then the whip tightened until everything went black. When he woke up, the money was gone. So were his clothes, except for a sandwich board that had Property of Catwoman blazoned on it.
Fandom: Nolanverse Batman, Superman Returns
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7,501
Characters/Pairings: Batman, the Joker
Previous Part: Chapter 16
Next Part: Chapter 18
Summary: Batman has a bus to catch.
12:01 AM
Batman felt the wind whip by him, trying to snatch his cape out of his electrified gloves and send him plummeting to his doom. Usually, he’d find the brief moment of flight a release, but not tonight. Now it felt as gloomy and heavy as the mask ever had.
Below him, the Batmobile’s AI subroutines had taken over, matching his speed, weaving in and out of traffic to stay out of him. The cockpit opened and Batman could see the seat waiting for him. He touched down, quickly slipped into place, and pressed a button on his armrest console. Safety belts slashed out from the seat and wrapped around his chest, waist, and legs like the restraints in an electric chair.
The steering wheel thrummed once as it went active, now tuned into the steering system and offering resistance. No sooner had Batman taken hold of it then he stomped on the gas pedal, exceeding the AI’s maximum safe speed. With the flick of a switch, the lights of the Batmobile blazed to life like the eyes of some monster riding out of the depths of hell.
***
Far behind him, Commissioner Gordon was shouting into his radio. “Clear a path between the Gotham Hilton and Gotham National Bank. Make no attempt to impede the Batman’s progress, repeat, clear the streets!” He clicked his radio off, watching as the distant fireworks of police lights came on with the accompaniment of their klaxons. Clearing a path.
“Godspeed.”
***
There was a line already open to the Batcave. “Master Bruce, I see you’ve taken control of the car. Is everything in order?”
“No. Patch in the feed from the bank security cameras.”
“How do I… ah, yes, here it comes.”
After a quick look at the radar to ascertain that the way was clear, Batman looked to the media read-out. It switched from the car’s status screen to show a CCTV view of the bank. Hostages, still alive. Men with guns. And the Joker.
He waved toodle-oo to the camera as police lights flashed outside the bank. In black and white, they made it look as if the moon and the sun were chasing each other every few seconds.
***
The Joker watched, eyes slanting from one side to the other, as the police arrived on the scene. They parked their cars, got out and aimed handguns at the bank. They weren’t as prompt as he would’ve expected. If he paid taxes, he would be chagrinned.
“The forces of order. What a bunch of nancy-boys. Dean, Jerry, grab the Brownies.”
The “Brownies” were M1919 Brownings, light machine guns that took .30 cal .30-06 Springfield bullets. That was what airplanes shot.
“Why do I have to use the Brownie?” Dean asked.
“Because you go with Jerry. Laurel goes with Hardy, Cheech goes with Chong, and Pete goes with Dud!”
“Who’re Pete and Dud?”
Joker threw his hat to the ground and stomped on it. “I knew it! I’m surrounded by assholes!” He pointed out at the police. “Start firing, assholes!”
Dean and Jerry, their arm-muscles near-bursting with the effort of carrying the heavy weapons, followed Joker to the door. (“I don’t see why Tom can’t do this,” Dean whined.) The Joker pushed open the double doors, stepping out into the colored shadows of the police light. Laser targeting dots swirled over his chest like fireflies, but what Joker was far more concerned with was the news crews setting up far behind the action. They scurried to zoom in on him. He raised both arms high, basking in the glow of his adoring public.
“I am not a crook! I am an artist!” The engine’s roar, like that of a charging beast, shot through the air. The Joker lowered his arms in presentation. “And this is my masterpiece!”
The Metropolitan 5 screeched through the intersection, pile-driving through the police cars that circled the bank and rumbling up the steps to crash through the bank’s doors. It missed the Joker by inches, its side-mirror knocking his already-battered hat off. The Joker caught it behind his back, then threw it out like a Frisbee.
Jerry shot it down like a clay pigeon before he and Dean opened up on the cop cars, their bullets catching engines, popping tires, exploding gas tanks. The police ran for cover, firing behind them, usually cut down where they stood. The Joker ran purple-gloved fingers through his green hair, eyes closed as if he were listening to the hook of his favorite song.
“Mmmm. That’s good crime.”
The bus doors slid open, bits of shattered glass falling from them. Joker climbed onboard, his moneybag-toting henchmen coming in after him. Jerry and Dean were the last two onboard, their Brownings still trailing gunsmoke.
“Next stop, Batman.” The clown’s grin was cut off by the bus doors closing, their glass webbed with cracks.
***
Officer Montoya had already emptied her service revolver after the bus, managing to flatten one of the tires. The Metropolitan 5 slowed down maybe a fraction. Then she stopped thinking of catching the bad guys. Survival was more than enough to fill her plate. The crooks hadn’t been good shots, but they’d fired enough bullets to make up for it. Gutshot and winged cops littered the street like they’d been discarded there.
She went to the closest one. Yeah, it would be Bullock. He was down with a bullet in his ample gut. She put pressure there, stemming the bleeding. The ambulances would come soon. They had to.
Renee heard the rev of an engine, growing louder and louder. The Joker, coming back for more? She looked up.
The Batmobile sped past her, stirring up the street in its wake like a tornado. As it dwindled into the distance, its jet engine fired. The red-hot flame carried it out of her sight.
Renee felt something akin to hope.
***
“The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round,” the Joker sang merrily.
***
Crispus Allen swung his police car into a sliding turn, jerking to a rolling stop behind the hijacked bus. Ellen Yin, in the second police car, swerved to a stop behind him. Crispus gunned his engine and sped after the bus, knowing Ellen had his back.
He picked his radio from the dash. “This is Adam-4, in pursuit. Suspect is headed east on Thomas Wayne Drive.”
***
“…round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round…”
***
Batman’s eyes briefly flitted to the GPS screen as the computer automatically generated a route. It also generated probable escape routes for the Joker. The strongest possibility was that he would turn east on Belmont and make for the East End, where he could lose himself in the decay. The police would be cordoning off the area, but it wouldn’t come to another slaughter. Batman would ram the bus head-on if it came to that.
***
“Round and round and round and round and…” The Joker checked his rear-view mirror, which instantly bombarded him with red and blue lights.
“Tailgaters!” he cried, agitated. “Cheech, take the wheel.”
The Hispanic member of the gang irritatedly responded to his codename, taking the Joker’s place in the driver’s seat. The Joker merrily skipped down the aisle, past the cringing hostages, to grab the guitar case that’d been stowed by the emergency exit. He opened it up while the leather-clad captor opened the backdoor.
The rocket launcher was waiting for him, four rockets neatly fitted alongside it, with sidewalk chalk painting a goofy grin on the side of the nozzle. He picked it up and slammed the first rocket home.
“Let’s see if this gets the Bat’s attention.”
***
“Damnit, dispatch, where’s my air support? This maniac has hostages!” Crispus bellowed into his radio. Then he saw the emergency exit on the bus pop open. The Joker stood in the doorway, coat-tails billowing in the wind, some kind of tube on his shoulder… He raised it…
“Ellen, move!”
Too late. The launcher vomited flame, a brief flare of bright smoke that led into Ellen’s police car. The hood shot up in the eruption, so far it smashed in the cab. And the entire front half of the police car simply ceased to exist. The remaining half, wreathed in flame, spun out; hitting the sidewalk in a storm of newspapers and snapped parking meters.
Crispus slammed on the brakes, was out of his car before he could even work the parking brake. He ran for the burning police car so fast that when the second rocket hit his own abandoned vehicle, he barely noticed the shrapnel lacerating his back.
The pain blacked him out, swallowed his vision. He stumbled, but the pain brought him back. The door to Ellen’s car yawed open, fierce black smoke tumbling out. He waved it out of his face as he leaned in. Ellen was a bloody mess, burnt badly. Crispus sawed through her seatbelt with his pocket knife and scooped her up, carrying her out of the wreckage.
The Batmobile streaked by him, engines hot.
“Get that son of a bitch, Bats,” Crispus whispered fiercely.
***
Patti Devine had taken an extra shift as helicopter pilot in Gotham’s Rapid Response Task Force to take her mind off her marriage. Her husband, Jim Devine, was drinking more and more. She’d come home last night to find the kids up past their nine o’clock bedtime and her husband passed out on the couch. Luckily, all her children had been up to was watching Cartoon Network (Patti hadn’t known there were such violent cartoons at night).
None of that mattered while she was airborne. Getting Jim into rehab, finding a nanny to watch the kids, it all went away when the call came over the radio. She was fueled up, her rotors were slicing at full speed, and the skies were clear.
“This is Kitty-Hawk 3, responding to request for air support on TW Drive.”
The helicopter tilted forward and, in its incredible speed, Patti found her calm.
***
The Joker was in a Zen state, the perfect storm of madness, sitting cross-legged in front of the emergency exit with the rocket launcher cradled in his arms. He rocked back and forth, watching the street fly away.
“What’s taking him so long? Where is the Batman!?”
“Maybe he’s busy?” one of his men suggested.
Joker sprang to his feet, as loopy as a jack-in-the-box. “Busy? With something else? Something more important than me!?” He pressed an outraged hand to his chest. “What kind of philistine would that make him? Surely he must know I’m not like the others! I’m no common criminal, no purse snatcher or mugger! I’m the Joker! The Clown Prince of Crime! The Ace of Knaves! The Caliph of Clowns! Nobody’s more important than me!!!”
A spotlight shone down, catching him in its beam like a fly in amber. Joker quickly puffed his chest out for the imaginary audience, slicking his hair back with his free hand. High above, a police helicopter had finally arrived.
Joker held onto a support pole as the Metropolitan 5 drifted into a turn, the helicopter banking to keep up. With an even wider smile than usual, he reached for the third rocket.
***
“This is Kitty-Hawk 3, suspect is turning west on Belmont. He’s headed into the financial district.”
Batman quirked an eyebrow at that. The financial district was suicide. Sparsely populated this time of night, with plenty of police patrols thanks to the affluent “campaign contributors” who worked there. It was a death trap for criminals, a roach motel. And his plan to head the Joker off was useless.
Jerking the wheel, he threw the Batmobile into a 180 degree turn and sped down an alleyway that was such a tight fit, sparks flew off the sides of the car. Not his problem. He burst out onto a one-way street headed west, turned on a dime, and hit the afterburner. Nitrous oxide flooded the jet engine, which flared blue-hot. Batman was shoved back into his head as the world blurred around the edges.
***
The Joker carefully lined the helicopter in his sights. The bus was going in a straight line, and so the helicopter was going in a straight line. Like a big fat balloon, just waiting to be popped.
He squeezed the trigger.
“Hope you’re insured.”
***
Patti had heard some of the other chopper jockeys, the ones that had flown in the war, talk about what it was being like under fire. To fly a copter, you had to be invincible. And once you heard the ping of bullets against your hull or the flash of a rocket launching, the floor fell out from under you.
That’s what it felt like, as the rocket streamed toward her. Like the ground had disappeared and she would fall forever. Patti closed her eyes and hoped that her husband could get sober. The kids would be relying on him from now on.
The helicopter, her body, turned into a fireball.
***
Batman saw a flash of light in the sky and briefly thought Dawn? But no. The flaming helicopter dipped out of sight into the skyline, a dying animal’s wail permeating even the Batmobile’s armor plating. Batman deftly weaved the Batmobile in and out of traffic, slowing him down only a few MPH, and he hit the intersection. Red light, cars crossing. Near-superhuman reflexes told him he could make it.
The Batmobile seemed like an extension of himself, a weapon he could wield as precisely as a samurai sword, as he sped through the intersection. Put it through a sharp turn that sheared the pain from a sedan. Then he was facing down Belmont, facing the Joker in his bus. The flaming helicopter fell between them like a handkerchief starting a duel.
No more than an instant had passed.
Batman shifted into fourth gear.
***
“Oooh, he brought the car!” Joker clapped his hands excitedly. “Chicks dig the car!” He motioned to the hostages’ minder, who was loading the rocket launcher. “Gimme gimme gimme! I wanna give that gloomy old hearse a new paintjob.”
***
Patti was on fire, heat-fire-burn, and she wondered if she was in hell, stuck in the oven, lake of fire, the helicopter jerked out of its already rough spin as the tail smashed through the windows of the twentieth floor of the Foxteca Building. She was still alive, still horribly alive, and she screamed as the ground swallowed her whole.
***
Batman angled the car slightly to the left, putting its course clear of the helicopter’s crash landing, and slammed the door release lever down. The cockpit slid open, letting a maelstrom in. A pull on the emergency release knob and his safety restraints detangled from him slackly. Grabbing the edges of his cockpit, he pulled himself upward, into the slipstream. His cowl functions moved to compensate, dampening the sound of the wind rushing by. He touched his cape to induce an electrical current, causing him to grow wings.
The wind scooped him up, treating the cape as a parachute, and Batman roughly landed behind the Batmobile. He skidded to a stop, heedlessly advanced on the helicopter as the Batmobile made a turn up ahead.
The rocket had blown one door off its hinges and swollen the other to the outside. Seeing that the fuel fire was blazing hottest in the open doorway, Batman went to the cracked door. His gloved hands wrapped around the bent steel, so hot Bruce could feel it even through the Nomex, and started to pull.
***
“What’s he doing?” Joker asked. It was all perfect, the flame from the wreckage casting a long gothic shadow from Batsy like an extension of his cape, the rocket in his launcher primed and ready, but the Bat wasn’t doing it right! “Hello, bad guy here! I’m getting away! La la la la! I hope Batman doesn’t foil my perfect getaway!”
He threw the rocket launcher to the ground, making everyone in the bus cringe anew, and stomped to the front of the bus.
“Move over, Miss Daisy, I’m driving!”
***
Much like its pilot, the helicopter was still clinging to life. Its rotors buzzed madly, kicking up the flames and wrapping Batman’s cape around his body. The pilot was still strapped in, flames eating away at her jumpsuit. Batman punched through the cracked glass, grabbing a fire extinguisher inside the cabin and emptying it onto the pilot. Over the roar of the flames… honking?
Batman looked up. The Metropolitan 5 was bearing down on him. The Joker was in the driver’s seat, waving his arms wildly and shouting “No brakes! No brakes!”
No time for blowtorches, acid, anything but brute strength. The flame had weakened the chopper’s metal; it would have to be enough. Batman braced one foot against the wreckage, centered his chi, pulled. The door gave way, ripped loose. The bus’s horn screamed, only meters away. Batman grabbed the pilot out of her seat, ripping through her safety belt, and spun away.
The bus hit the wreckage, missing Batman by a few feet. Flaming shrapnel bombarded his back, thankfully protected by his cape, and the decapitated rotors windmilled across the asphalt. The bus roared by.
“Think we should exchange information, Bats?” Joker laughed as he literally left Batman in the dust.
Even as he tended to the pilot with one hand, Batman flipped open the touchpad on the side of his belt. He’d practiced with it for long hours in business meetings, to the point where he could drive the Batmobile with it—by touch. He set the speed to fifty MPH and the AI in pursuit mode.
The Batmobile completed its circuit and turned onto his road, then accelerated. Batman crouched, counted off the seconds, then backflipped. Six feet, up and back. If he’d miscalculated, he’d be roadkill.
He landed in a crouch, feeling the hum of the car’s powerful engines through his boots. Batman had landed square on the Batmobile’s hood. He stood, feeling the wind on his face, tugging on his cape. With the flick of a finger against the touchpad, the Batmobile accelerated to top speed.
It rammed the back of the bus, rocking everyone inside. Through the emergency exit, Batman saw the Joker turn around and express… not the fear his persona had been crafted to elicit, but amusement.
The clown jumped out of the driver’s seat, leaving the bus driverless for the few seconds it took for a henchman to realize no one was driving, and ran down the aisle so fast he had to grab the edges of the exit to stop himself from falling out.
“Batman. Darling. I didn’t know you surfed!”
“Pull over and release the hostages. Before you make me angry.”
The Joker tapped on his lower lip ponderingly. “Put the kids to bed so that mommy and daddy can talk? Nah! Let ‘em watch. They’ve gotta find out some day!”
“Then you leave me no choice.”
“Oh, come off it! It’s not like someone’s holding a gun to your head.” The Joker jerked his arm and a revolver fell from his sleeve into his hand. “Well, maybe it’s a little bit like that.”
Batman was unfazed. One of the improvements he’d made to his armor over the years had been to bulletproof it. He raised his hand and gestured for Joker to bring it, strategically putting his scalloped bracer close to his face in case he had to block a shot at his mouth or eyes.
The Joker pulled the trigger. Batman juked to dodge a bullet that never came. All that had emerged from the gun barrel was a flagpole with a pendant that read Bang!
“Gotcha,” Joker said, and pulled the trigger again.
The flagpole shot out like a quarrel from a crossbow, lancing Batman’s pectoralis major. The armor wasn’t designed for that kind of penetration. The spear cut through, knocking Batman down onto the windshield. The tip must have been covered with some kind of painful neurotoxin; Batman blacked out.
The suit, monitoring his system, gave him a booster shot of adrenaline. When Batman raised his head, the bus had put some distance between them and the Joker was aiming a rocket launcher.
Batman rolled onto his belly, reaching into the open cockpit for the steering wheel. He felt the familiar circle and jerked it to the left, steering the Batmobile out of the way just as the Joker fired. The rocket put a new pothole in the Gotham street.
The Batmobile scraped against a line of parked cars on the side of the road. Side mirrors snapped off, windows shattered, doors were ripped from their hinges. Batman dragged himself into the cockpit as the line of parked cars ended.
The Batmobile drifted onto the sidewalk, tearing through parking meters like a thresher through wheat. Batman swung into his seat, ducking under an uprooted parking meter that would’ve taken his head off (coins stung his jaw), and grabbed the wheel. He swerved back onto the road just in time to miss a street walker waiting at the cross-walk.
***
“Holy shit,” Holly said.
***
They were headed into East End now, a residential district if not exactly livable. There were people out, even at this time of night. Children. Families. The Joker’s madness had to end now.
The cockpit slid shut as a punk appeared in the bus’s emergency exit. He was holding a machine gun.
Batman calmly dug out the spear and patched the wound with quick-drying sealant as bullets ineffectually splashed off the Batmobile’s armor. When they stopped, Batman selected an armament from the status screen.
“My turn.”
A net launcher extended from the hood and fired. The punk took it full in the chest, flying backwards out of sight. As an afterthought, Batman turned on the windshield wipers. They swept the deformed slugs off the bulletproof glass.
***
Dean impacted the windshield right next to Joker, wrapped up tighter than a Christmas present in a mesh net. The Joker glanced at him.
“Some people just don’t know how to use the net. Noob.” He looked to Laurel and Hardy. “Go back there and teach him a lesson for putting the rescue of some piddling plebian above me! Aim for his tires!”
The two pumped their shotguns, but before they could go the bus shook.
“What was that? A bus-quake?”
The Joker looked in the mirror. Two thick black cables had shot out of the Batmobile’s front bumper and were embedded in the bus’s rear. As he watched in disbelief, the Batmobile braked hard, tires skidding. The bus rocked again. Slowed down.
“Who taught that man how to drive!?”
Bloodshot eyes darted to the speedometer. Once proudly fixed at eighty miles per hour, now dropping fast. Bloodshot eyes widened, got more bloodshot. Then squinted as light hit them. Headlights.
The Joker smiled.
***
Batman kept a steady pressure on the brake pedal, not wanting to brake so hard the grapplers tore loose. Like a broken leg, like so much dead weight, he would drag the bus down. Then it would be his turn to have some fun.
Then the bus veered to the left, into oncoming traffic, the Batmobile dragged behind it. Batman pressed down hard on the brakes, so hard sparks shot out of the tires, but it was no good. Then the bus went back into the right lane, leaving the Batmobile in the left.
The oncoming car hit it. T-boned, since the Batmobile was following the bus. The other car got the worse of it, like hitting a tank-shaped brick wall. It flipped, back end catapulted into the air, then end over end over the Batmobile. Batman was able to look up and see the other driver, perturbed and confused, before his car came crashing down on the other side. It rolled and came to a stop, upside-down. No.
The bus drove into the left lane again. Batman shifted into neutral. Teeth clenched in rage, he threw open the cockpit and surged up to meet two creeps with shotguns. They fired as Batman ducked down into the cockpit. One blast hit the outside of the cockpit, bouncing off the lower windshield. The other went high and blew the stuffing out of his headrest. More bullets rained down. A ricochet in the close quarters of the cockpit could cause incredible damage.
Batman typed on a panel, exposing his arm to fire. Bang! A few pellets sparked off his bracer. He’d designed the grappler lines to be able to connect to the high-power car battery, to act as jumper cables. He shunted power from the car battery down the lines.
Electricity arced through the emergency exit’s doorway, shocking the bastards. They dropped, twitching and foaming at the mouth. Batman rose, ran down the hood of the Batmobile and leapt into the emergency exit. He landed in the crouch Ra’s had taught him, stood slowly. Slower was scarier than quick. Quick made you think you could outrun it, hide from it. Slow made you think it didn’t matter, because the Bat would get to you no matter what you did.
It worked. He could see the shiver running down the henchmen’s spines, freezing them before they could go for their guns. And before they could, he had crossed his arms over his chest and then thrown them wide. Four Batarangs, the new kind with the internal payload, scattered. Flashbangs. Got the idea from watching a SWAT team entry. It worked wonders.
A little burst of light, a little puff of tear gas, and the henchmen were no longer combatants. The Joker touched the flower on his lapel, sending a stream of piss-yellow acid from it onto the bus’s dashboard. It melted from gauges to pedals.
“Abandon ship, mateys! Hate to burgle and run, Bats, but you don’t get to die yet. Bruno, make our guest feel welcome.”
“Ja wohl.”
Batman turned. ‘Bruno’ had been lurking behind him, like an ape in a tree. A big ape. She was six-foot-seven, possibly not even a she, mounds of silicone covered by swastika pasties. Sometimes, just when Batman thought he had Gotham figured out, the city threw something just entirely out there at him.
If Superman were here, he’d say never hit a lady, even one with a prominent Adam’s apple. Fortunately, Superman wasn’t here.
“What about me?” the criminal netted to the windshield asked.
“First mate goes down with the ship,” Joker replied.
“That’s the captain!”
“Semantics,” Joker buzzed as he casually stepped backward out of the bus.
Batman’s opening punch ramrodded Bruno’s stomach. She let out a little grunt of exertion, hunh, and backhanded him to the floor. Closed Batarangs spilled out of the open compartment on his utility belt like black metal flower petals. Reminded him of playing marbles with Rachel as a kid. Marbles. Toxin. His judgment. Runaway bus, damnit, pull-it-together~!
He got up, tasting the blood that trickled from his lip like the run-off from a sewer, and weighted his options in the five seconds he had before Bruno was on top of him. Runaway bus, had to bring it to a stop. Obstacle: Bruno. Had to put her/him out of commission. No time for strategy, seconds count, brute force. Blunt trauma to the head, worry about concussions later. Not like she doesn’t have it coming.
Boxing. Batman didn’t raise his dukes, just launched into an offensive that would’ve made Evander Holyfield proud. It should’ve; Evander had taught him everything he knew. He laid rights and lefts into Bruno, working her backwards. Her muscles weren’t real, they were steroid balloons, she didn’t know how to carry them. Made things easier.
The bus was drifting from side to side without a driver. A few passengers had tried to take over, but the Joker had thoroughly trashed the controls. They couldn’t even turn the ignition off. And the Metropolitan 5 was moving too fast to jump off. They could only hang on as the bus clipped against cars parked on either side of the street, working its way back into the middle of the road with each jolting ricochet.
Bruno started to recover, work through the pain. Batman put a stop to that with a chop to her throat. The punch came anyway, a big right cross that swung over Batman’s ducked head. It pulped the frame of a seat to the right. Batman kneed her in the chin, then sent her off-balance with a strong uppercut. She rocked back on her heels, tripped backward toward the open exit.
Batman slapped the touchpad on the side of his belt. The afterburner on the Batmobile flared. As Bruno fell out of the bus, the Batmobile rammed her head. Unconscious, she trickled up the hood to land upside-down in the cockpit. Batman pressed the control to close it, wedging her in place.
Batman sprinted to the front of the bus, clearing the passengers out of the way like they were ten-pins. They had drifted into oncoming traffic. With a chorus of horns, cars were swerving out of the way. Ahead was a turn. If they didn’t make it, the apartment building would always stop them. Looked like they had room, even. Lucky night. Batman tapped on the touchpad.
“This is no time for video games!” the criminal in the net screamed.
“Everyone hang on to something,” Batman ordered, before turning on the Batmobile’s brakes.
The entire bus pitched forward, the tank it had been towing now having become not just a dead weight but a digging-in-its-heels-with-spikes-jutting-out-of-the-tires weight. Batman allowed himself a smirk, that lasted as long as it took for the abrupt shift in speed to rip the grappler out of the bus… along with most of its rear axis. The bus, tailless, fell on what was left of its rear bumper. The passengers held on, trying to keep from falling down the slant to open road. A few charitable souls grabbed the unconscious Laurel and Hardy, stopping their descent. A body, the bus driver’s, slid out of its resting place of dried blood to tumble out onto the street.
Batman looked up at the road. No more space. He quick-drew his grapple-gun, aimed it out the side-door, and fired. The grappling hook caught on a street lamp. Batman wound the line around the bus pole just before the line went taut.
The bus’s contents shifted to the side, like a planet-scale slap, as it made the hard right. Batman held to the bus pole, using his free hand to cut off the line at the appropriate point. The bus came out of its turn on a new, safe heading.
Moving with fast, long strides, Batman leaned out the door with a Batarang in hand. He stabbed the right front tire with it, then flung it forward. It arced back to hit the left front tire. With both out, the Metropolitan 5 rapidly slowed to a stop. The feeling of being in motion, of being in the middle of a disaster, persisted. Batman kept his hand on the pole.
“Stay in your seats. The police will be here soon.”
And it was true: sirens blared in the distance, echoed in his head. The toxin. It was going to work at his senses, hurting him. If hearing was going, what would be next? Vision? Touch? Would he never be able to touch Talia, sitting in a hospital bed… Batman shook his head. Not much time now, no time to get the bearing on that. He staggered out of the bus and back to where the Batmobile had stopped. An impossible journey. He switched the touchpad over to vocal command and detached it from his belt, raising it to his lips.
“Return.”
Time skipped, like a record player on the fritz. It was like he was falling asleep, but while still standing. He sagged against a mail box, staying there until the Batmobile pulled to a stop next to him. The cockpit opened. He dragged Bruno out by the foot and climbed, fumblingly, into it. The safety harness engaged, ineffectually bouncing off his awkward positioning.
“Home.”
The cockpit closed, cutting off the starlight, and Batman lapsed into a meditative state. He would beat this. By sheer force of will, he would beat this. He had to.
Batman grabbed for a blanket antibiotic. It flew out of his hand when the 18-wheeler broadsided the Batmobile. The Tumbler was rammed through cyclone fencing with a metallic echo. Tires revved impotently, finding no traction, as the Batmobile was dashed across the construction yard. It ended up on its side in a ditch, one side stoved in like a meteor’s crater.
The truck backed up a ways, baring its demolished grill. The gear shifted to park. Joker stumbled out. “I only had a few drinks, officer, promise!” he slurred. Then straightened, gestured to the men hanging onto the back of the cab. There were four of them, well-armed. Joker approvingly smeared their greasepaint. “Gentlemen, let’s bag us a bat!” He took a cartoonishly round bomb from the glove compartment and tossed it from hand to hand. “Artie, got a light?”
Artie leaned out of the cab, holding a lighter. Joker touched the fuse to its flame.
“Much obliged, dear boy. Stay in the car.”
The up-ended Batmobile ground its wheels, rattling like a snake.
Joker held the bomb up, then revved it forward and back like a bowling ball. “Shut the fuck up, Batty, you are out of your element!” He rolled the bomb under the Batmobile.
The blast knocked it up five feet, before dropping it onto the other end of the ditch. The cockpit was facing them, and ajar. The Joker gestured to the two clowns with tools. They hopped down and went to work on it, one with a sledgehammer, the other with a crowbar.
The ejection seat blew. It flew out of the cockpit, hitting one of the clowns and carrying him into the construction site’s safety netting. The crowbar clattered down onto the gravel.
“We’re gonna need another Timmy,” Joker said, watching his minion struggle like a fly caught on flypaper.
A scalloped hand darted out of the cockpit’s darkness and yanked the second clown inside with mad laughter. It ended with a sickening crack. The clown’s hand fell into the light.
“You like it in the dark, Bats?” The Joker hopped down, tugging his lapels. “Come on. Come say hi. You’re not afraid of me, are you?” He dropped trou, mooning Batman with bat-covered boxers. “What’s the matter? You run out of toys? Here, have one of mine.”
He tossed his gun into the cockpit. It never landed.
Batman lurched out of the blackness, one corner of his mouth trembling between a smile and a frown. “I don’t need a gun to deal with you, Joker.” He hurled the pistol aside and it shattered against the concrete embankment. “All I need… heh… are these two hands.”
“Why, it sounds like you’re starting to see the funny side of things!” Joker was holding up his pants with one hand. “Fine, then, let’s settle this mano-e-mano, man-on-man! Just you and me… and my boys!”
The second set of clowns jumped down. They landed on Batman, wrestling him to the ground in a fit of titters.
“Tickle fight!” Joker exclaimed, bouncing a kick off Batman’s ribs. Holding his arms, the clowns hauled Batman to his feet. “You might feel a little prick.” Joker laid into Batman’s chest. It hurt his knuckles more than the armor. “Gaah!”
Batman howled with laughter. Joker backhanded him across his unprotected chin.
“That’s not funny!” He shook his hand. “Hey, here’s a thought. Why don’t we spice things up with some toys?”
***
Once he’d broken the lock on the tool shed, the hard part was deciding what to use. There was no dynamite, darn the luck, but they had a big shiny concrete saw that was just wasted on concrete. And if you wanted to open a sardine can (i.e. Bat-armor), use a can opener.
“Now, if this stings, just remember the safe word: AAAAAAAHHHHH!!” Joker pulled the starter cord. The saw roared, covered up the grunt of pain when Batman rose up and kicked him in the gut. Batman’s feet jutted to either side, snapping the clowns’ legs, then his scalloped gauntlets raked across their faces. They went down crimson-masked.
When Joker had fallen, he’d lodged the concrete saw in the Batmobile’s hood. Radiator steam and hot oil spewed as he tried to extract it. He looked over his shoulder at Batman.
“Little help here?”
Batman slammed him into the hood before throwing him against the other side of the ditch.
“A simple ‘no’ would’ve sufficed…”
With a hard jab to its touchpad, the Batmobile spun its wheels. Batman held Joker near the treads. “This how you put your nose to the grindstone? You’re doing it wrong.” The tire burned his cheek. “Ooooooh! You are seeing things more clearly! Because you know, you bring me in, I’ll get out. You can’t keep me in jail anymore than you can the Penguin.” The tire spun and spun, inches from the Joker’s face. “But you can’t, can you? You have a rule. I am so disappointed in you. Here I thought we were two of a kind, lawless men in a town where the law is a bad joke, and now you’ve gone soft on me, you sell-out.” An arm wrapped around his throat, squeezed. “Gordon and Dent have you on a leash. Oh, you bark and you slaver, but you’ve been neutered. They don’t understand you like I do. I know what you really want,” he rasped. His fingers went up, hooked on Batman’s mouth and pulled it into a smile. The tension on his throat slackened. “You break your rule, just once, and you’ll see the real world too.”
Artie pumped three shots into the Dark Knight’s back. Even as the third one fired, a Batarang was lancing into his head. Both men went down, leaving Joker shuddering in frustration. “Killus interruptus. Worse than no murder at all.” He tugged half-heartedly on the concrete saw. “Joke’s on all of us, then. Welp, nothing to do for it.” He reached into his pocket. “I wrote a poem for the occasion. A-hem-hem. Wait, this is the rule card from a playing card deck.” He threw it over his shoulder.
“Well, this is anticlimactic. I’d wanted grand guinol, lives at stake, the world watching as once and for all, we determined what was superior – your ‘reason’ and ‘intellect’ (finger quotes) or the divine gift men call madness. Oh well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.” He pulled the saw free. “Say good night, Bats!” Joker held the saw high. Nothing happened. “’Good night, Bats,’” he falsettoed out the side of his mouth.” More nothing happened. “I’m really going to do it now, I’m really going to kill him!” He threw the saw aside. “Damnation! Tarnation! Evaporation! This is the biggest disappointment since anthrax! Okay, you live to stalk another day, so instead of death, you get a consolation prize!” He pulled a syringe from his pocket. “You gave me a new outlook on life, now I’m gonna return the favor. Keep an eye out for the bunny in the moon. It loves the attention. Here comes the airplane…”
Batman lapsed into a haunted sleep, laughter ringing in his ears. In the time it took for him to close his eyes, he realized it was his own.
***
Jerry, now John S. Lee since the job was over, disposed of his shit like the Joker had told him to, keeping only the backpack fulla money. He was supposed to meet up with the others at the hide-out (what’d the clown call it, his hee-hee-house? Somethin’ like that), but it’d be hours before they missed him. He had time to kill, and he was flush from pulling off such a brazen crime. No pussy penny-ante stuff, that was some serious Dog Day Afternoon shit. Fuck yeah.
He emerged from an alleyway, onto the amber-colored world of a street in the AM. Just him and a drug dealer on a street corner, wearing a Star City U hoodie. John gave him a wide berth as he settled on a stoop, opening the backpack and transferring a brick of cash into his pocket. Felt even better than a gun. He zipped up the backpack, hoisted it onto his back, started walking again. The next street had some hookers huddled together round a trash can fire with a bum, passing cigarettes around. They flaunted themselves at him as he walked by, but no matter how old they were, they looked like they could’ve been in their sixties.
The next street, run down even by East End standards, had its light provided by a flickering streetlight. Under it, a hooker was typing text into her cell-phone. Young, even by hooker standards, but not used up. Her blonde hair had some sheen and her make-up was applied with a careful hand. Probably could count the number of dicks she’s sucked on two hands. Looks weren’t half-bad either, even with the night cold causing her to zip up her top over her body. If the top matched the bottom, though… he licked his lips.
Jerry started the dance. Brushed by her as he walked by, causing her to look up sharply from her phone, then leaned against the street lamp. After apparently sizing him up, blondie turned back to her phone.
“Nice night, huh?”
“Wicked cold,” she said.
“There’s a fire next street over.”
“Nah. Buncha skanks around it.”
Jerry laughed. “Not high-class like you, neh?”
She gave him an odd look, and pressed send.
“So, how much?”
“How much for what?”
He flashed some cash at her. “I’m not a cop, babe.”
She actually blushed. Adorable. “I’m not a sex worker.”
“A sex worker. Whoa. What’s that make you, an escort?”
“A student, asshole. I’m waiting for a ride.”
“This doesn’t look like tha bus stop.”
“My dad was supposed to pick me up. He’s late.”
“How long you been waiting?”
“Long enough.” She started walking away from him. Jerry snorted, folded the cash back into his pocket. Hell, he hated it when whores got uppity.
She was headed back toward the street with the fire. He trailed after her. “Hey, think we got off to a bad start?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Hey, I’m tryin’ to be nice. What’s your name? My name’s Jerry.” Things went south, he didn’t want her to have his real name, and he was already used to answering to that.
“I said fuck off.”
He walked a little faster, getting closer. “C’mon, I just want your name. Can’t ya be nice?”
“I can be nice.” It was a voice, low and sultry as jazz, and as Jerry turned he expected to find a real hooker. Of course, he wasn’t quite sure he was ready to give up on the girl… most hookers were all worn-out and crag-lookin’, and he wouldn’t mind wiping that holier-than-thou look offa the schoolgirl’s pretty face either—
The whip circled his neck, instantly cutting off his neck, its pronged-tip scourging his cheek as it came to a rest. Jerry tried to pull the noose off, but before he could he was jerked off his feet and down to the pavement. Before he could get up, a leather bootheel was jammed into his cheek, smearing his face into the asphalt.
“I prefer to be though. Lifestyle choice. Very personal. Lots of hard thinking. Kitten, money?”
Jerry tried to get up, but the whip pulled tighter and he gagged until he consented to stay down. Then air returned. He felt hands rifling through his pockets. Slender, quick hands. The schoolgirl. Fuck!
“How’s school?” the woman holding him down like a dominatrix asked the schoolgirl, chatty as a gossip.
Steph shrugged as she patted the robber down. “It’s school.”
“Teachers giving you any problems?”
”No.”
“You giving the teachers any problems?”
Steph grinned. “Yeah.”
”That’s my girl.”
Jerry was trying, trying real hard, to think up a way out of this clusterfuck when he heard the sound of his backpack being unzipped. Icicles formed in his guts. “Hey, Cat, look at this!”
The woman with a heel in his face wolf-whistled. “Let me guess, Laundromat money?”
“Fuck you, bitch, that’s the Joker’s loot.”
“Not anymore.” The heel came off his face, to be replaced by a knee across the back of his neck. She was fucking kneeling on him, Jesus! “Tell the Joker this. In fact, put it in the next sexual predators’ newsletter. East End is my hunting ground and it’s open season on all scumbags.”
Then the whip tightened until everything went black. When he woke up, the money was gone. So were his clothes, except for a sandwich board that had Property of Catwoman blazoned on it.
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Date: 2008-11-08 04:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-08 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-14 07:48 pm (UTC)