The Universe's Mixer

Mel was leaning on a gravestone, the scythe in her hand, one boot touching the stone.

Supposedly there was going to be some lurk action here tonight, but it wasn't doing yet. And Mel was bored. She sort of missed the zombies. Because that? NOT boring.

The hair on the back of her neck stood up, and the slayer turned her head toward the feeling. She didn't say 'hello' or 'who's there?' or any of that. She just got ready to swing if she had to.

Who hung out at a graveyard after dark, anyway?

Gary trudged through an expanse of the City park covered in snow, a red bundle under his arm. His breath was short and wheezing, as he hadn't stopped moving since he left the Asylum. Now, finally spent, he slumped into a snowbank and did not move for some time.

"Gary..." called a familiar voice, sounding far away.

Confused, Gary struggled to bring up the bundle. He unwrapped the red jacked he'd stolen and revealed the blood-drained visage of his friend, still wearing his cowl and mask.

"Gary..." the voice squalked softly again. The head was no more alive than it had been a moment ago.

"Roy?" Gary wearily asked the head.

"Over here, fatass," the voice beckoned, dreamily.

Looking further ahead, Gary saw the blue, spectral form of his recently dead friend. With sudden energy, he declared, "Holy shit! Roy, you're a Jedi!"

"Gary ... I died a violent death. My spirit can't rest until I've been avenged. You must..."

"Wait, why are you wearing your costume?" inquired Gary, interrupting.

Roy looked at himself curiously at first, then in disbelief. "Aw, what the hell is this?" The colors were indistinct, but he was clearly wearing the uniform of a Monarch Henchman. Roy attempted to grip his clothing, but his hands passed right through his body. "I don't believe this! Don't I get an angel gown, or a ghost sheet or anything?"

"I know, right? It's not like your clothes died," Gary agreed.

"All right, that's it. I'm gonna kick that clown's pasty ass. I am not showing up to the afterlife in this getup." He seemed to have a little trouble making a fist, as his fingers kept passing through his hand. "New plan, Gary: you find me some way to come back to life so I can get my revenge."

"Sweet!" cheered Gary. "Just hold on a little while, okay? I think I gotta collapse from hypothermia for a bit."

"Oh, no way. Tell me you didn't forget your keys," Gary said, incredulously.

Roy scrounged around in his tunic. "Why is it always me who has to remember keys? Are your pockets filled with Twizzlers, or something? Anyway, I could swear I picked up the keys before we left the asylum."

"Come on. It's always been like this. You're the brains, I'm the muscle." In desperation, Gary tried jiggling the handle of the rooftop door, which barely elicited a rattle. "Jeez, what did they make this place out of? Adamantium?"

"It's a home for the criminally insane. It's supposed to be secured. No way in or out. Aw, crap! That jester chick stole my lockpicks, too!"

"Well hurry up and think of something. I gotta take a wicked dump." Gary was performing an improvised ballet.

"You and your pooping. You know, you wouldn't have to go so often if you ate something besides Nutty Bars. Why don't you just go over there?" Roy pointed to a far corner of the roof on which they stood.

"It's fucking freezing out here. I can't ... it won't ... I'm all secured."

"Well what do you want to do? Knock on the front door and hope the Joker takes pity on us?"

Gary considered this, silently.

"No! No!" Roy slashed at the air with a hand, cutting off the possibility. "We are not crawling back empty handed. That dude is a psycho. He will totally murder us. You didn't see his private stash. You didn't see the Batman and Robin robots. They were anatomically correct," Roy emphasized with horror. "And they were doing things to each other..."

"If we don't go inside right now," Gary threatened, "my intestines are going to explode out of my abdomen, and it'll be on your head."

"God. I hope not literally. All right, fine," Roy acquiesced. "But if the Joker murders me, it'll be on your head."

"I can live with that, as long as I get to poop in a real toilet.

The two henchmen landed on the pavement at the front gate of Arkham Asylum. Gary hammered insistently on the huge door with the butt of his silk gun.

This sitting around stuff was crap. Just… crap. Harley was not very good at sitting on her hands and waiting things out. So long before it was truly safe, she had ventured back out. She had been cleaner, but not in a much better frame of mind, and that had sunk even lower when she was forced back into her hiding place by the hordes of zombies still roaming the street. There was impatient, and then there was stupid. Harley wasn’t stupid.

But she was irritated and restless. There was nothing to do here, and no one to talk to and she was going out of her mind wondering what was happening. It had been a while; was it safe yet? ( Only one way to find out. )

Jack was giggling to himself. This was going to be a riot. He'd been up for days working on this. First the idea had come to him while he'd been watching television in the rec room. He'd jumped up on the couch and bounced for a while before running around madly trying to gather all the things he'd thought he'd need. From makeup to clothing.

Then he'd started to put it all together.

It had all turned out more brilliantly than he could have ever imagined. And the people outside the walls of the asylum were going to run screaming in panic at the very sight of him. It was going to be his best prank ever. Oh, if only Punch and Judy were around. Or Harley. They would have joined in.

Jack tried out his look and role in the mirror for a while before leaving.

At the gates of Arkham Asylum, he got into character.

"Mrrrrrarrgh." He said, shambling toward a group of people. Just like he'd hoped, they screamed and turned direction. Beauty. He went forward again, hearing the sound of dozens of feet coming toward him.

What he saw was about nine people. All dressed like him. Jack felt the rage bubble up.

"YOU!" He screamed at them, stomping forward. "This was MY idea! You're RUINING MY PRANK!"

He shoved the first one he encountered. "I demand you stop now! Stop it right now!"

They started to crowd in on him. Each one moving slowly. Jack frowned. "Oh. So you think you can gang up on me, do you? I'll show you. I'll take you all on! You won't stand a chance. Hey. You're crowding back there. I don't know you well enough for that to be okay. Well, okay. It tickles. Do it again."

Then they started the biting. "HEY! Hey hey! That's just not nice! You guys have to stoaaaaaarrrrrrrg!"

The real zombies took the zombie-dressed Jack down to the ground until he stopped moving. When they were full, and he was dead, they shambled off in the next direction. Forgetting entirely about the man and even what he'd tasted like.

After a moment, Jack got up. A smile on his face. "Urr hurrr hurr hurr" it was a sick noise. Something like along the lines of possible laughter. But most of his throat and face were missing. Hard to laugh like that.

"Hurr hurrr hurr hurrr." Jack turned toward the center of the City and shambled off.

It felt like forever since he'd been out here, like this.

Watching everything. Waiting. But it had felt fruitless before now. Bruce realized that he'd given up. Barbara gone. Maxine gone. Everybody gone. Gone back to where they'd come from, was all that he could assume. Everything had changed very quickly. Everybody had vanished on him. Clark had gotten himself turned to stone. He hadn't known what to do.

Never before had he given up as completely as he had the past few months.

But now?

Now a good chunk of the City had been murdered, brought back, but murdered. Now Tim was back. Now Jack Napier - The Joker - was back in his life, making his subtle threats with giant penises on the front of his buildings. Now there had been sightings of Harley Quinn and even Poison Ivy.

Now things were turning back to the way that they had been when he'd been really needed. Before everything had fallen down.

He felt like he needed to reconnect with this city. With this place that had become his home. It needed him again. He needed to stop feeling sorry for himself, stop missing the scores of friends and compatriots that he'd lost in the big shift, and do his job.

This was his job.

Sitting above the City, keeping a watch. Protecting. This was him. Bruce Wayne was the mask. Batman was his essence. He'd changed, sure. People had gotten close to him. He'd allowed that. He'd opened himself up. And he found he'd be willing to do it again. He was changed, and yet different. He knew in his heart that this man that he was now would never have been had he not been pulled here. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad. But it was what it was, and he had to live with it. Accept it.

He was Batman. And The City was his home.

"Oh, friggin' sweetness! Check out that bathroom on the second floor," said 21 - or Judy, as the Joker had taken to calling him - scoping out Wayne Manor with his binoculars. "He's got one of those giant showers with three showerheads! You could bathe a polar bear in that thing!"

"Let me see..." 24 - Punch, now - grabbed the binoculars from his colleague. "No way! Does he have two toilets in there? Jeez! Forget going out and fighting crime - why does this guy even leave the house?"

"I know, right? If I was a multi-millionaire playboy bachelor, I would spend all my time just in that bathroom. Just give me a couple smoking hot babes and, like, round-the-clock gourmet pizza delivered to my door. I'd be set for life."

The night was cold, and the hill overlooking the Manor was growing damp. Punch pulled out a Kleenex from his tunic and blew his nose with a very sloppy sound, then suddenly started fidgeting with his mask. "Oh ... Gah! It got under my mask. It's on the lens!"

"What? How did you even do that? Do your nostrils point up or something?"

"I don't know." He took off the mask and began cleaning the lens with the clean corner of the tissue. "Urgh. That's the last of the Kleenex." He tossed the trash aside and put his mask back on. "All right, I'm sick of this. Come on, let's just report back to the Joker."

"Yeah, I gotta take a wicked dump, and if that's the last of the Kleenex, I'm not going in the woods." Judy looked through the binoculars again. After a pause, he continued. "Or..."

"Or what?"

"Come on." He stood up and unfolded his wings, grinning with glee.

"You're gonna take a dump in Batman's toilet, aren't you?" Punch's tone made it clear that he thought this was a really dumb idea, but it was too late. Judy was already soaring toward the house. "Aw, dammmit," he said with resignation, and took off after his friend.

Jack woke up just the way he'd gone down.

Laughing.

There was some confusion as to where he was at first, and then he realized he was right where he'd died. In the alley. In a dirty, disgusting, filthy, rat riddled alley. There was humor in it, and of course some sadness. Nobody had moved his body.

Neat.

Jack pulled himself upward and thought about what had just happened. He'd died. He'd really, really and truly died. The only great adventure in life, and he'd done it now. And now he was alive again.

What did this mean?

Oh. This meant chaos. That's what this meant. This meant a revived desire to do horrible things to people all over the city and a need to make sure nobody slept soundly at night. It meant a renewed need to torment Bruce Wayne and the little boys he had sex with. Along with whomever else might have been prancing around in fancy bat-related costumes.

Jack caught his appearance in a broken shard of glass. Black hair cut in a mohawk. Eyeliner. Black suit. It was nice, but he felt something was missing. Something that had always been him. Maybe, just maybe, for a while he'd go back to the purple. The makeup. The green. Just for a little bit, to remind the good citizens of this fair city what they should be afraid of.

Clowns.

And himself of course.

And everything that had anything to do with purple. And smiley faces.

His first task was to break into a store and find himself a lovely dark purple suit. Then break into another one and find himself some whiteface and other makeup. It was quite handy that there was a gentleman's clothing store right next to a costume shop.

His next task was to get home and find those lovely butterfly shaped henchmen he'd acquired himself before his death.

Jack burst in through the front doors of the asylum with a big smile on his face.

"Boys!" He yelled. "Daddy's home!"

"Aren't you gonna eat your bread sticks?" inquired Gary.

"Not hungry," answered Roy. He lifted one of his elbows off of the Formica table from where it perched. "Aw, dammit! I got sauce on this shirt. This was the only one in Arkham that fit me. Everything was sized for that little creep." He attempted to wipe the red sauce off his elbow with a paper napkin. "Which begs the question, where did you find a size lardass in there?"

"Oh, dude, there's a whole wardrobe in the west wing. Musta been personal effects for all the crazies that were locked up in there. They had every size and color and style you could imagine." Gary took another healthy bite of pepperoni pizza. "I swear, it was like the dressing room for a high school drama department," he said amid a muffled mouthful.

"Is that why you're dressed like Uncle Pennybags?"

"Totally." Gary modeled his fancy suit. "This belonged to some guy named Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot. Can you believe that name? It's like his parents were trying to raise a supervillain."

"Or the douchiest kid in school." Smiling now, Roy took a bite of bread stick.

"What do you think Jack's story was? I never found out."

"Who knows? Maybe his mind got fried by a joybuzzer or something. He seemed pretty b-list."

"I don't know. I think he was pretty intense. We coulda had a good thing there."

"Maybe. What do we do now that he's gone?" Roy put down his bread stick.

"I dunno. I guess we'll have to work for a living again."

"That totally sucked!" moaned 24, tying his glove around his leg to stop the bleeding from his gunshot wound.

"Oh, yeah, boo hoo," 21 scoffed, peering out of the dark alley where they hid. "Why don't you cry into that giant assload of cash we just stole."

"Giant ass...? There's like four hundred bucks in here! I can't even get my leg treated for that kind of money."

"Well, don't get shot at so much, Ow! Hey, that was metal!" 21 rubbed the back of his shoulder where the rusty aluminum support bar had struck him. "Okay, okay, so we screwed up. Maybe we do need some help in the planning department. I still say we're a force to be reckoned with, and any villain with half a brain will recognize that. We just need to get out there again, make a name for ourselves, and then ..."

"Then what? How is a villain going to find us, genius? We wear masks specifically so nobody knows who we are." 24 began counting the bills in the bag.

"I don't know. Maybe we take out an ad in the local alt-weekly. Damnit! I wish the Monarch was here." 21 slumped against the wall next to 24 and picked up another stack of bills. "Man, you're right. We didn't get crap."

"I know. We suck big time."

Carl was having a bad day. He'd missed lunch because the sandwich counter misplaced his order, and he couldn't wait around to get another. When he held the door open for the lovely young woman and attempted small talk with her, she had shot him down coldly. The pants of his guard uniform were too tight, indicating he had to go on a diet again. And now two men in butterfly costumes had touched down on the sidewalk just outside the doors of the bank.

"Great. Longjohns," he thought. "Lame, evil longjohns."

Angrily, Carl slammed the emergency lock button next to him. One of the butterfly-men, attempting to burst through the door, found it closed fast, and crashed into it. He bounced back, dazed, his mask slightly askew. The tall one laughed at his clumsy partner. The fat one yelled something in response, and the tall one, still snickering, trotted over to the nearby window. He pulled something from inside his unitard - a small metal thing like a pen - and pressed the tip against the glass. It made a "pop," and the entire window collapsed into tiny blue chips. Carl had his gun drawn and trained on one of the men by the time they were both inside the bank.

"Freeze!"

The tall one drew a tiny, yellow gun and, pointing it at Carl, went into a roll. Carl managed to squeeze off a shot, catching the intruder in the calf, and making him squawk like a frightened sheep. At the end of his roll, the tall one fired and something hit Carl's neck. He pulled it out - it was a little dart with yellow butterfly wings. As he felt his eyes closing and his limbs grow heavy he saw the other intruder perform a timid (and pointless) somersault in an attempt to prove his own prowess. Carl collapsed on the floor and saw no more.

"All right, people," said 21, standing up from his acrobatic feat, "this is a stickup!"

"What gives? I thought the Monarch was supposed to send us an escort." 21 pulled at the leg of his yellow shorts, which had ridden up on him during the long bus ride.
"You wish," droned a weary henchman 24. "The Monarch wouldn't shell out for expanded basic cable. What makes you think he'll send us a prostitute?"
"No, an escort. Like a ride back to the cocoon so we don't have to schlep these bags all the way there. We haven't even seen the new place."
24 regarded his shorter cohort with skepticism. "Schlep? What are you, Jewish now?"
"Schlep is a good word. I'll use it if I want. I heard you say 'grok' the other day."
"'Grok' doesn't belong to a historically oppressed people."
"I beg to differ, my good man."
"Whatever. I'm gonna give the Monarch a call."
( Read more... )