What happened

Harvey Dent screamed like a skinned cat and leapt out of his hospital bed. The IV stand toppled over and clattered to the floor. Frantically looking around, trying to get his bearings after coming out of his coma, he spotted his relfection in the glass covering a painting on the wall. Bandages covered most of his head and all of his left arm. He hobbled across the room, dragging the IV behind him, and went in for a closer look.

He remembered it all now - the monstrous miscarriage of justice that put Jack back into Arkham instead of the chair, where he belonged. God only knew what Jack might do once he was back in the asylum. He remembered Jack throwing acid in his face, and the sudden resurgence of the traumatic memory caused him to instinctively claw at the bandages covering his face. Pulling them free, he looked at the two faces staring back at him. One side was Handsome Harvey Dent, the dashing district attorney and defender of law. The other side was Big Bad Harv. He recognized the face at once, as if he'd known it all his life - curdled, purple skin, uneven tufts of bleached, white hair, a skeletal sneer, and that wide, staring eye permanently shot through with angry blood.

An orderly burst into the room, responding to the noise. Harvey's head snapped around to look at the young man who choked back a shriek of horror at the twisted visage. Without thinking, Harvey picked up a lamp on a nearby table and hurled it at the orderly. He went down immediately.

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Right after this

Guilty guilty guilty.

Of course he was guilty.

The insanity judgement was just oh so much better. Back to Arkham he was going. Back to right where he wanted to be. Could life get any better than this? No. Yes. OF course it could. Life could always get better.

Jack had ways of making his own life better. Even if it was at the expense of others.

"Sally! Don't forget me Sally! Wait for me, Sally! I promise good things are on their way!" He grinned over his shoulder. They hadn't put him in a straight jacket yet. It was something they refused to do in the public eye. He'd done his best to not laugh in their faces as they told him this. Because it was fucking hilarious.

Jamie had brought him a thermos of cold water. It was a thoughtful gift. The last purified water Jack would taste for at least a month.

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City General was a busy little medical hub, something like what one would expect to see on those TV dramas about hospitals. Green scrubs and cold sterile white walls, the smell of alcohol and bleach, the faint buzz of florescent lighting and the low rumble of hundreds of voices made up the soul of C.G.

Tucked off in one quiet corner a dark haired woman lay in a clean clinically white bed, under clean clinically white sheets, in a clean clinically white gown. Inara Serra had been down graded to stable condition and awaited only a few blood tests before her release. The incident which had brought her in had raised more then one eyebrow in the C.G.E.R. She wasn't the first to come in, she had however been the first to be brought in alive.

A dozen or so like her were in the morgue, disturbingly three of those had decided to go missing a number of days after their arrival..and more disturbingly, their autopsies. Inara offered a chance the hospital had not yet seen and they jumped on it. While she was slumbering away her blood was being tested in every batch of blood work that they could think of. City General was about to discover the truth of the existence of vampires.

For her part in the matter Inara only wanted to be warm and safe and among friends. Perhaps that was what drew her in her dreams to the dining hall of Serenity. Warm friendly faces smiled to her and food..real food not just protein shaped like food, filled the table. Kaylee was smiling brightly, Simon seemed to catch her eye with a blush of his own. Zoe and Wash were doing some not-so-subtle flirting under the table, even Mal seemed in rare form. They were all there, regardless of Books death or Jayne's desire to leave or Rivers..being River.. all of the crew that had been was together. As joy full as she felt, something nagged in her dream mind that this was not quite entirely right.

(OOC: Ok, great for any Firefly'ers to jump into the dream. Even Dream himself. Feel free to take surreal turns with it. Feel free for others of the waking world to step in as well. Have fun!)

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With the opening statements out of the way, the judge took a deep breath and decided to proceed. He knew it wasn't going to go very well, already it had started going badly. Jack Napier was all too glad to be here, and the amount of people who had showed up were only making it worse.

Sensationalism at it's best.

"We will hear from the witnesses. One at a time, please, and no interruptions from the others in the room. Each lawyer will have their time with the witnesses. Please, let's just try to do this in an orderly way."

McRiley sat back in his chair, tired already. Wanting to get this over with as soon as possible.

"Mr. Dent, your witness."

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It had begun like any other trial. Smoothly. Calmly. The judge entered and the people silenced. The baliff called for everybody to stand, and they did so, respectably. They sat just as silently, just as calmly when the judge called for them to do so. Judge Scott McRiley presiding...

It was just as the judge was settling in that the first mishap occured.

Jack Napier stood up to introduce himself to the court. And to the audience of people attending. He did so with a flourish and a bout of laughter so nerve-wracking that it took Judge McRiley a good ten minutes to quiet everybody down again.

"That is the last we'll have of that, I hope." He stated, looking Jack directly in the eye as he spoke.

Little did the poor judge know that this was only a pre-cursor to the sorts of things that could go on in a trial like this. A trial against Jack Napier. Maybe the only truly insane genius The City had ever seen. The misguided fellow might actually mistake to think he'd be able to control The Joker.

Jack himself spent a good few moments blowing kisses at Harvey Dent while Judge McRiley tried to call for order and the beginning of the trial.

He looked out at the lawyers and nodded. "Prosecution? You may begin."

And then he sat back, ready to hear this fantastic case.

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Harvey Dent began to wonder if perhaps he was going overboard in preparation for this case. He knew Murdock was a great defense lawyer - he'd sat in on portions of the attorney's cases since being instated as DA - but was it really necessary to go to such lengths? He had contacted no less than four doctors, collected mountains of physical and photographic evidence, expected to call on the testimony of everyone from the arresting officer to the asylum janitor, and he had constructed opening and closing statements that would make Inherit the Wind look like schoolyard namecalling.

To be fair, he couldn't remember the last time he'd had a really juicy case like this. He was so excited he hadn't slept in a couple of days, and had only showered once in the interim. Maybe he was making up for losing that CX debate in the final round at the High School National Championships. That smug little jackass ... he could just rip that kid's eyes out ... cut off his nose ... bite his fingers off one at a ...

Focus, Harv.

He walked briskly down the hall to the meeting room at City Hall to prepare for his guests. One last big meeting with his team before the trial.

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The screams still rang out every so often and unspeakable smells floated on the air. The gothic, stone structure of Arkham Asylum, straight out of some centuries-old nightmare, was surrounded by modern police vehicles, flashing their lights. Cars on the bridge and boats in the water shined spotlights on the walls and blared warnings and reassurances. Harvey stood on the single bridge to the island, just behind the formation of riot trucks. "They must be terrified in there," he heard himself say.

He had already read enough police reports to know the usual routes for escape from Arkham. He doubted the city's SWAT team was as familiar with the building's history. If he could get inside, he might be able to calm some of these people down. He had personally processed almost half of them, and was familiar with the cases of several more. No sense getting the SWAT team excited about a back entrance they could use to assassinate the poor nutcases.

Resolving himself, he quietly slipped over the side of the bridge and into the water.

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In all his wanderings over the past week or so it had not occurred to Harvey to visit City Hall to see who might be District Attorney here. Maybe he or she could pull some strings and get him a job.

Just inside the door there was a directory. Almost immediately, something caught his eye...

District Attorney Harvey Dent . . . . . . 512

His mind reeled, thoughts bouncing around in his skull like ricocheting bullets. If Bruce was already part of this world, why not me? This must be some monstrously complex test of my character - I hope I haven't already failed. Is it my office, or is there another Harvey Dent waiting behind my desk? I hope my hip flask is still there.

Determined to find some answers, he made his way up to the office by way of the old marble staircase just down the hall from the entrance.

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Harvey Dent had yet to master the navigation of the City, but he had a sixth sense when it came to finding the bars where business folk went to unwind.
This one, nestled at the foot of the City Industries Tower, was unimaginatively named "the Foot of the Tower." It was largely decorated in flat black and mirrored surfaces, and filled with all sorts of important-looking people. Harvey walked up to the bar, ordered a scotch on the rocks, and found a seat where he could see the people coming and going. There had to be someone here he recognized.

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It was only after the smoke cleared that anyone in the city might have noticed anything different. The explosions stopped that day, but the cleanup and effects lasted the week. The City had things very carefully planned out. Though emergency crews, construction companies, and law enforcement worked throughout the week to clean up the mess and help the wounded by Saturday evening The City had seemingly reset itself back to it's previous state. All was as it had been before. The Voice building was back in working order, as were all the other bombed buildings. The debris had been cleaned from the streets and things were running smoothly again.

To the untrained eye, The City looked just as it had before. To the untrained eye.

But for anyone who was really looking, truly searching around and trying to figure out why those explosions had gone off, there was a slight change to the landscaping. Right on the very outskirts of the city. A new plateau area had formed, much like the one Wayne Manor sat on, but this was on the opposite side of the city. And whereas Wayne Manor was generally a very bright area with little sense of foreboding to those approaching, this place was almost the exact opposite. The weather wasn't any different here than it was in the rest of the city, but for those inside it seemed that way. It was colder, darker, damper. And there was most definitely a sense of foreboding.

What was this new building The City had chosen to create in the wake of chaos? Those in side may have called it prision, the fun house, a loony bin… all manner of names were possible. The doctors referred to what they did there as 'mental rehabilitation with the goal of seeing their patients fit to reenter the civilized world'. The sign outside of the building, bright and new, proudly proclaimed, 'Arkham Asylum for the Mentally Ill'.

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