Joker, Man: Homecoming

Auxiliary Base Alpha

Bruce grunted as he checked the makeshift stitches he had applied a few hours before. He was bleeding through yet again. It was one of several injuries he had received during the scuffle with Red Hood, but it was by far the worst. When the Venom creature inserted itself into the conflict neither he nor the Hood were very effective. Considering the damage that Hood had taken it wouldn’t have surprised him if the mass murdering vigilante was similarly holed up, licking his wounds.

Wiping away blood he tried not to think about how much easier such tasks were when he had Alfred around to help. The wound seem to throb at the thought, reminding him all the more that he was truly alone. He didn’t know if Alfred had survived the cave falling in on itself. The same went for Tim and for Cassie, both of whom were present in the manor above. For that matter he had no way of knowing if his dimension had survived at all or if it was in as bad a shape as his home had been.

Likely for the best that Alfred isn’t here. This Hood character and his claims of being Jason would only hurt him. Even worse if it ends up being true, he thought, glancing sideways at the blood sample he had retrieved.

Were he back home or even back in Chicago, the place he was trying to make his base of operations, the tests would be completed and he’d know one way or another if this was truly Jason or some elaborate mind game. For the time being however he was having to make do with the substandard facility he found himself in which meant the mystery of the Red Hood’s identity would persist for a while longer.

Events seem to be conspiring to keep me in New York. First Hood and Quinn’s gang war, then Nygma, and now this Venom creature. Plus the clown is out there somewhere…

As if he’d been able to read his thoughts, the Joker appeared across one of the monitors he had installed across the room. He watched, eyes narrowing with each word the maniac spoke. Most would have assumed that the Joker on the screen was the same Joker he had encountered several weeks earlier, but the Dark Knight knew better. Small details stood out to him, differences in cadence, the pitch of the laugh that so often haunted his dreams, and even his posture told Batman that Joker, this Joker was not the same monster that had absconded with a child after nearly killing its mother. In many ways this Joker reminded Batman of his Joker, a maniac he thought dead and gone at last check. He’d been wrong on that count more than once, but even if his death had been final, even if his home dimension had collapsed and taken his twisted soul with it, it seemed clear he’d never be free of the Joker.

For a moment he almost attempted to summon the Batmobile, before remembering Jas—Red Hood had reduced it to smoldering debris. As it was he had to hope he could scramble across rooftops and make it to the Clown Prince of Crime’s location before he decided to make good on his threats. He knew all too well how dangerous Joker was, how many graves he could fill with minor explosives and bullets, but if he had truly been able to acquire the means to make his infamous toxin, New Earth would get a real reason to fear the interdimensional refugees.

Grabbing a biofoam injector not unlike those he had managed to sell to the government in his attempt to rebuild some fraction of the wealth he had back home, he plunged the injector between stitches. Inhaling deeply as the foam filled the wound he leapt from the chair and donned the battered suit, the scratched chest emblem glaringly obvious beneath the lighting of the makeshift base. With cowl in place and tattered cape rustling as he headed topside and into the night, once again on collision course with his greatest enemy regardless of the reality.


 @thejoker

Darkness wrapped the city in its cold embrace, each shadow like a tendril from unseen squid threatening to ensnare any who wander too close. It is through this dread filled sea of shadows that the Batman ran. Leaping over obstacles and clearing the distance between buildings, he was a wraith in the night, fast and unseen, his mind blocking out the pain as his wound threatened to tear open once more. The HUD in his cowl ticked ever down, the Joker’s timetable ever-present in his mind as he once more cursed Red Hood’s destruction of the Batmobile.

Firing off the grapple and using the boost to launch into a massive glide, Batman had more than pain on his mind. He could have been focused on what happened to the other Joker he had encountered, wondering whether or not there were more than one Clown Prince of Crime roaming the New Earth, or running through how he was going to create a makeshift Bat Signal to keep the Joker placated when he lacked the resources to replace his damaged and tattered gear. Instead of these things however, only one thought was at the forefront of his mind: the Joker’s clothing.

It was not unusual for the Prince of Knaves to don odd costumes if it fit his twisted sense of humor. A Hawaiian shirt when he shot Barbara, a Batsuit to try and drive home the perceived similarities between the two men, or the occasional police uniform. If Batman was correct in what he assumed about this latest getup however, Joker had taken his theatricality to a new and disturbing level.

It means he knows, Batman thought.

But did it really? On some level Batman believed that his archnemesis had known who he was beneath the mask for years, he simply didn’t acknowledge it because it wasn’t funny or interesting. Plenty of opportunities would have allowed for the Joker to know it was Bruce Wayne beneath the mask, but it would end the joke to reveal it. After all, Wayne was boring, but Batman, well Batman was his obsession, his unwilling playmate in the eternal game. But that was his Joker, the one he had faced over and over again. Did this one view it differently? Was the Clown Prince of Crime willing to blow the Batman’s secret identity or would it remain a mystery between the two?

Or was this all a game, a shot on the dark meant to test a Batman he wasn’t familiar with? Perhaps his Batman would have reacted differently, perhaps he’d grown cold and numb to the antics of this lunatic and would merely see this as a progression of the insanity.

But I’m not his Batman, the Dark Knight thought. And he’s going to learn what happens when you cross me, when you sully the memory of my family!

Batman wondered only briefly if he was playing into the Clown’s game, allowing himself to become enraged and perhaps distracted from the bigger picture, but for the moment it didn’t matter. He was threatening thousands, perhaps millions of people, and this was not Gotham. The Caped Crusader lacked home field advantage and many of his usual resources and that meant he had to take more extreme measures to protect people, perhaps even beating Joker into a coma.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he could hear Grayson making a snide remark about him becoming the suit, Oracle scolding him for not letting anyone in, and Alfred urging him to not become lost in the bat, in the monster he had created. He knew however that they were not here, either dead or lost to the sea of endless possible realities the breaches may have sucked them to. Louder than their voices was a sound/b], a pair of thunderous booms, the dropping of bodies, and the clinking of pearls as they hit the wet pavement. Those sounds merely strengthened his resolve to not give Joker, any Joker what he wanted.


Fist tightening hard enough for the knuckles to pop, Batman came to a halt atop a building, One Police Plaza looming in the distance. Activity was at an all time high, the flashing lights of police cruisers almost blinding as they formed a perimeter. Batman was clearly not the only one to see Joker’s broadcast. Whether that meant the neo-human containment forces he’d met upon arrival to this world would be far behind or not he wasn’t sure, but it was one more obstacle to keep in mind as he patrolled the area in search of Joker.

Tapping into the police radio, he listened to the transmissions. They’d thus far been unable to track the exact location of Joker’s broadcast and considering the lack of intel they had on Joker, were unable to tell if he was a neo-human, vagrant or otherwise. A few had pieced together that Riddler too had demanded the Batman’s presence, but information on who or what Batman was remained a mystery as there had been no sign of him following the Riddler incident. Of course the distraction caused by Joker’s broadcast meant other, smaller crimes were falling through the cracks, including a report of a shot fired not far from the plaza…


 @thejoker

The inane ramblings of the Clown Prince of Crime did not fall on deaf or dead ears, because while the lifeless florist offered no comment, the Batman had plenty of thoughts about Joker’s declarations. While not exactly in the rafters, the Dark Knight was indeed already on the scene. He’d been there long enough to hear the majority of Joker’s depraved speech, the audio enhancing device he was field testing allowing him to listen through the wall, the adhesive holding it in place upon the store’s window front. While the device was merely a prototype, years away from the end product Batman envisioned, it was serviceable.

Normally, Batman would be making mental notes on the gadget and planning for the future. Ideally he would have been figuring out how to further reduce the size, perhaps work it into the fingertips of his gloves to avoid the high cost of losing the gadgets after a single use, and of course worked out how to enhance the range of the receptors and the quality of the audio. Unfortunately, the tool itself was not even a factor. All the Dark Knight could focus on was the Joker and his words.

The clown sounded like the Joker, like his Joker. He knew it couldn’t be him, not exactly. For starters, he was almost certain that his Joker was dead. Of course, that had been the story time and again after they’d clashed. Whether it was a tremendous fall from absurd heights into a watery grave, caught in the blast of an explosion of his own making, or electrocuted he always came back. Each time the universe seemed to correct course, to be done with the purple suited abomination, he returned to terrorize and kill again and again. It was as if Joker, the last being that should be associated with one, had a guardian angel sitting on his shoulder shielding him from what he rightfully had coming.

Last time however…last time had been the last time. His Joker’s demise was all but certain and just as he had feared since he first met those empty, yellow tinted eyes, things didn’t change. Crime quieted down certainly, but it didn’t last. Gotham seemed to breed something just as bad, if not worse, to continue the clown’s legacy. He was just starting to get a handle on what posthumous horrors the Joker was going to unleash on him and his city, when Nightwing vanished. Fearing that it had been part of the Joker’s plan and run ragged in the aftermath of his greatest enemy finally falling, he missed the signs. Before he knew it a dimensional vortex had opened in the cave and he was flung to this parallel reality.

Despite knowing this, despite logic dictating that this couldn’t be his Joker, despite the fact that this Joker was openly bragging about desecrating the graves of the Waynes, something he knew with certainty had not happened in his home dimension, it still shook him to the core. The voice was right, from the cadence to how he barely held back laughter as he explained nonchalantly his scheme. And the laugh…that was the laugh that haunted his nightmares, the one he heard mocking him whenever he hit a dead end with an investigation, the same one he worried in his darkest moments was an exaggerated version of his own.

It was confirmation that nothing be it the distance between time and space or even the great void of death itself would ever end this dance between the two of them. Despair at the thought of the never ending cycle renewing itself yet again was reasonable, perhaps even expected, but instead the Batman felt something else. Beneath the rage at the atrocities committed by the clown this evening, beneath the disgust that he would use his parents (even from another world) in such a manner, was something the Dark Knight hated even more than the Joker himself: relief.

In a world where things were very different than his home dimension, where his allies were scattered or non-existence, where he was Batman more often than he was Bruce Wayne, Joker was still the constant. In some ways it was as if the hole in his existence, the one he felt ever since his Joker perished, was filled once more. He had purpose, even if it was a grim one, and a reason to continue fighting. Because if the clown was here that meant the Batman was still needed to stand between his madness and the innocent. This realization sickened Batman, but closer inspection of it would have to wait. For now, as his favorite literary detective would say, “the game was afoot.”

Having carefully entered through a rear exit and barring the way behind him, Batman walked ever so slowly towards where the Joker lay with the body in a mockery of the night that had given birth to the Caped Crusader, sticking to the shadows until the last possible moment when he rolled a pair of smoke pellets across the floor…

 @thejoker

The Dark Knight ducked the wild swing, running on instinct. For a moment it was as if autopilot had been engaged and he was merely going through the motions. Even the strike to Joker's throat, the act of causing the sadistic madman pain usually accompanied by a feeling of satisfaction, failed to break through the images that flashed before his eyes.

Thunder cracks as if the sky itself were screaming in rage, but it was not loud enough to drown out a far more terrifying boom.

A second sound, same as the first, echoes through the alley as a spray of red becomes a puddle. The sound of the downpour is still not enough to block the plops of pearls as they fall to the wet gravel.

The clack of a hammer being drawn back and the click of an empty chamber does not shake a young boy who just bore witness to the end of his world nor do the sound of sirens in the near distance. Instead he remains focused, eyes glued to the limp forms beside him, their hands interwoven as if they were merely out for a stroll. Transfixed he see's in the open, glassy eyes exactly what he feels inside himself...nothingness. Vast emptiness that longs to be filled by anything other than pain...

Though the sound of Joker's gagging did not break through the fog of his memories, his taunting did. He reminded himself that even if what the Clown Prince of Crime claimed was true and it was the dress Martha Wayne had been buried in that he now wore, it was not his mother, but rather the Martha Wayne of a different version of him from a different reality. It made the act no less heinous and he had no doubt that Joker would have committed the same act of desecration had he the chance, to the resting place of his parents, but it was important to keep in mind. His Joker liked to talk, to throw curve balls and play mind games and he doubted this one was any different in that regard. Letting himself be distracted however would likely have the same consequences.

“ENOUGH!” he spat, voice booming. “No more, Joker. You are not going to spread your madness to this world too.”

Jaw clenched as he avoided stepping on the dead florist, he aimed for the Joker's knee with a kick. If the clown was telling the truth and it was a big if, he had to find them before they were blown to pieces. Chances were good that Joker had arranged for a situation that would cause their heart to race rapidly, setting off the device. Knowing him, he was deranged enough to try and make Batman be the cause of the fright that would detonate the bomb...assuming such a person and bomb even existed in the first place.

“Who is it? Who did you involved this time? Who did you drag into this insanity? Who are you hiding behind this time?”

His Joker would never answer the question. No amount of hitting him would beat it out of him. Every crack of a rib, snap of a bone, or damage to a nerve cluster would just elicit more laughter. Even in the end when he could barely manage it, he had laughed and made sure that the laughter continued long after he was buried and gone. He could only hope that this Joker was of lesser willpower or at least that he wanted his sick fantasy to continue and would thus tell him. Maybe, like the other Joker he had battled weeks before, he could be thrown off guard if he was angered.

"You really aren't him are you? My Joker never found it funny to repeat jokes and the dead-hand switch is old hat. And he never would have picked some nobody, some random passerby."


 @thejoker

The Dark Knight let the Joker talk as he remembered. He did not allow the memories to distract him, for losing focus for even a moment was a death sentence, especially when it came to the Clown Prince of Crime, but the situation brought to mind his own past, both far gone and far too recent.

The last time he was running around a city trying to find some random person with a bomb attached to them it had been the work of the Riddler, the master of puzzles challenging Batman's morals by implanting explosives within rioting criminals. For Nygma it had been nothing more than a challenge, a way of stretching out his games, and proof that he was running out of actual riddles. This however would be nothing like that. When it came to the Joker, any Joker it was never that easy and it had to be funny even if only to the clown himself.

Joker, his Joker had employed explosives and bombs on multiple occasions each more memorable than the last. During one of their earliest encounters the clown had rigged random buildings and bridges around Gotham, leaving the Caped Crusader to spend Christmas Eve trying to disable the bombs. Then there was the so-called 'Mother of all Bombs' he stole from the mob auction, an event that force the Dark Knight into working with Harley Quinn in order save the city or the time he'd managed to manipulate everyone from Arkham staff to Amanda Waller's Task Force X into helping him get a nuclear bomb inside the asylum. Perhaps the most memorable for Batman was the bomb he was too late for, the one that took Jason Todd from him. The truth of the matter was that Joker didn't even need bombs to wreck havoc. The parade he led had bombs filled with his smile and death inducing gas. Even in the absence of such advanced weaponry he'd driven the city to the brink of madness with nothing but a few sticks of dynamite, gunpowder, and gasoline.

Even if he found whatever poor fool had fallen victim to the Clown this time, the game had to be bigger than getting him to make a new bat signal. It was why he was reluctant to just give in and somehow assemble one. Giving Joker what he wants never ended his sick and twisted games, it just made it worse and pushed it to greater heights of insanity. Besides, this Joker was used to a particular Batman. If he showed a willingness to just do as he was ordered, he might consider him weaker than his previous adversary. Meaning he'd get bored, maybe decide to just kill him, and move on. A bored Joker was even deadlier than Joker with a goal in mind.

Of course he could always give Joker what he wanted in spirit if not to the letter. On the way over, before pinpointing his position, he considered the ways. Finding criminals and stringing them up as a makeshift bat signal across the street, perhaps even even Harley had there been time. Maybe slugging it out with the Prince of Knaves, using his own toxic blood to draw a bat symbol on the wall, something he figured the freak would only laugh over. Maybe even using the so-called 'Bat-Brand' that Alfred had vehemently disproved of in the final days before he arrived in this world. Ultimately though there was no guarantee any of it would satisfy the madman and it was not a chance he could take with a life on the line.

Even if his sizing up the situation and remembering past experiences with Joker had taken but a moment, Joker's next words seemed to stretch that moment into a life time. Had it been the first time he had experienced this he likely would not have been able to keep his expression as blank as he was, but the chill up his spine was still there.

He knows.

His Joker had revealed the truth, that he knew his most precious secret, and it shook him to the core. As much as this Joker wanted to claim he was a nobody and keeping up the ruse that he was ignorant of his true identity was no longer fun or meaningful, they both knew that wasn't true. If any of his allies had arrived here on this new earth, Joker could easily target them. It was not a stretch to think that if he knew Bruce Wayne was the Batman he had deduced the identities of the rest of his family. Drake, Grayson, Cain, they would all be at risk. Even his fellow Justice League members could be exposed.

Part of him wanted to mock the clown, to inform him that he was just as much the nobody in this world. A fool with green hair and lipstick with a penchant for overly theatrical crimes paled in comparison to what the world had seen thus far. The new dimension they found themselves in was dealing with the revelation that not only did super powered beings live among them, but others were capable of dropping out of the sky. If the threat of advanced humans already had them on the edge of war, with threats to round up anyone with abilities growing daily, then the resentment over what had to be seen as extradimensional invasion would cause the pot to boil over. With the recent attacks at the White House Americans were shown that men who could fly and bend metal with a flick of a wrist were capable of shattering any sense of security they had. The rest of the world was following suit.

With the chaos that's coming though, it would be foolish to write the Joker off as inconsequential. Back home even fellow villains with powers well beyond either of us are scared of him. If this world falls into war over powers, he will find his foothold and take advantage of the madness, he reminded himself.

He almost wanted to point out that if he was as unimportant to this world as Joker claimed, the authorities would have no use for a Bat Signal. They didn't know him, why they should use it, or what it symbolized. But the schizophrenic ramblings of the Joker were never required to be logical.

"You want a new Bat Signal? Fine.”



Slowly Batman pressed a button upon a gadget on his belt. It flashed red once and then the whole area turned bright. Burning sections of the ceiling began to cave in, filling the florist shop with smoke and embers, fires spreading rapidly. Though neither of them could see it from this level, the incendiaries Batman had placed before entering had exploded, the flames forming a giant bat symbol upon the roof not unlike the calling cards Azrael had left for him across the rooftops of Gotham. Similarly the face of the structure ignited, the accelerant sprayed in the shape of a bat, the flames large enough to be seen across town.

The tactic wasn't just for shock and awe, to show Joker that he had no problem being inside a burning building if it meant stopping him, but it was also loud enough to get the attention of the authorities. This close to police headquarters chances are they'd respond even before the fire department arrived.

Closing the distance between them, he found his hand tightening around Joker's throat, threatening to squeeze the life from him. He hoped that even if just for a moment, the clown worried whether or not that was what had become of the other him, but for the time being Batman had bigger concerns.


“Who is it and where are they?” he demanded, targeting a nerve cluster in Joker's shoulder. “Where's the bomb!”

While he had no doubt Joker could still fight back, he could only hope that Joker would rather prolong their game than to risk burning to death or being arrested this early into his new earth crime spree...

 @thejoker

Two thoughts went through the Batman's mind almost simultaneously.

The first was just how easy it would be to end the laughter here and now. It was an old familiar song by this point, one that he had several times a day, and more every time the Clown Prince of Crime reemerged. Even in the aftermath of his Joker's death, the idea flitted in and out of his consciousness at the most random times. He could have ended it sooner, could have saved countless lives in the process, if he had just strayed from his one rule. This was hardly the only time he had found his hand around Joker's throat. Then, like now he could have squeezed a little hard or twisted with his free hand or drawn the sharp end of a batarang across the pale throat or any number of other things that would have ended the monster and left it limp in a pile of its own toxic blood. But then, like now he caught himself. All the memories, all the images of loved ones lost and crippled, of allies tormented, and strangers dead with twisted grins upon their faces faded away to the dark recesses of his mind as a single truth pierced his baser desires, obliterating them like a bomb dropped from above: he'd win.



There were many reasons to not kill the Joker. It had been something he discussed before with each Robin, Jason more than the others. Selina, Helena, Harley, even Clark had asked him how in the face of such unrelenting, unfeeling evil, he could hold back. Only Alfred, who admitted that he himself would gladly remove Joker's head with a well place shotgun blast if ever given the chance, never asked him why. He never asked because he knew. Was it possible that he could kill the Joker and then go back to using non-lethal force on every other foe? Absolutely. Hard certainly, but not impossible, not for someone as strong willed as Bruce Wayne and while it would always be a slippery slope he would worry about since the next thing as bad as the clown may warrant the same treatment, it was something he could imagine doing. But in the end Joker would win, because when he drew his last breath and laughed his last laugh, he would die...and Batman with him.



Sure the cops could have been avoided, especially in this new world where he was an unknown factor. But everything he stood for would be wiped out. Years of struggle, sacrifice, and suffering would be for naught. It would not only destroy the Batman, crushing the man inside the cowl by eliminating his entire world view, but it would bring everything tumbling down. He'd be a hypocrite at best and a monster at worst. Those few people he trusted, those he considered family, his sons and daughter, and even Alfred, would look at him and not see Bruce, not see Batman, and not see their father. They'd see a lie, a fraud.



Most religious have a belief that there is a war going on all around us, at all times, without ever ceasing. Some think of it metaphorically, others literally, and some think of it as being at war with oneself while others attribute it to demonic forces from Hell trying at all times to corrupt and condemn mortal men. The gist of it, across all beliefs though, was that it was spiritual warfare with an individual's soul the prize to be won or lost. That was what The Batman and The Joker represented. They were at war and each time they clashed Batman risked losing not only his own soul, but those of others. Whether it was the spirit of Gotham itself, the people who looked up at that signal in the night sky and breathed a little easier, or the ones who thought of him not as the Dark Knight but as a mentor, friend, son, and father he was fighting for more than himself. The Batman was an ideal. It wasn't a bright shiny happy one, nothing so optimistic as that, not when it was wrapped in darkness and pain, but it was a port in the storm nonetheless. That was why he couldn't kill his Joker and its why he wouldn't kill this one, even if the sight of the freak in a dress identical to that which he buried his mother in made him want to pull his smiling head from his shoulders.



The second thought he had was that Joker wasn't fighting. Not really. He could have pushed him backwards, delivered a knee to his abdomen, or tried with that unexpected strength of his to pry his fingers off of his throat. Instead he was pulling Batman forward, as if he was going to whisper some sweet nothing in his ear or deliver a kiss.

It was the last part of that thought that made his grasp falter as he threw the Joker down, releasing his grip. His Joker had, in the end, begun incorporating new tricks into his ever growing repertoire. Lipstick, though typically something Batman associated with Poison Ivy instead, had been used on more than one occasion. One contained a paralytic while another was laced with a slower acting Joker Toxin and something best described as bath salts on steroids, driving the person insane with visions and perceived voices all the while they laughed themselves to death, their physical appearance taking on striking similarities to the Joker himself.. The science of it was precise and genius, but it was nightmarish to watch it unfold and since the victim was rarely in vicinity of Batman until they were already too far gone, he had never been able to cure them of the affliction. It was resistant to most of his antidotes as well. He feared that Joker would have, given the chance, turned it into a gaseous form that would transform the entire city into an army of Jokers.



A final glare at the monster on the floor of the now burning building, Batman replayed his words in his head as he turned away. An idea already forming in regards to the madman's true target, he approached the body of the florist, determined to make sure the family was able to at least give him a proper burial. It left him wide open to an attack should the Joker recover in time, but something told the Dark Knight that the clown would be pleased with the result as it meant his game could continue.

 @thejoker