The Joker's Last Laugh

Robin struggled. Taking a deep breath, he calmed himself and took in his surroundings. He sat on a hard, concrete floor of a dirty warehouse. Ropes bound his wrists behind his back. Ropes bound his ankles in front of him. Ropes bound his neck to a metal pole, which, as far as he could tell, ran from the floor to the ceiling. The warehouse was dimly lit, just a handful of low-hanging lightbulbs lit a good hundred square feet around him. He smiled. He could already imagine Batman bursting from the surrounding shadows to save him. If these guys were smart, they would've turned the lights on throughout the entire warehouse. Though, if they were smart, they wouldn't have kidnapped Batman's sidekick.

"Hey, boss, why is he smiling like that?"

Turning his head as much as he could, Robin took in the rest of the scene. He counted just five men in black uniforms all armed with automatic rifles. He could hear two distinct sets of footsteps behind him. Not to mention a woman and The Joker himself sitting on the edge of a desk just five feet away. Unfortunately, these guys were smart enough to take his utility belt or he could've taken them all down single-handed, finally arresting The Joker for good, and maybe even getting out of Batman's shadow. Instead, he just smiled and said, "You guys just made the biggest mistake of your lives. Just wait until Batman shows up."
There was originally a part here which visually showed how people were being drugged through the water system, but due to length, I needed to cut it out. I really liked it, but I think it was a good section to quickly cut due to length as well as time.

The Joker got off the desk, putting down the file he'd been reading. "Well now," he said as he closed the distance between Robin and himself in just a couple of nice, even strides, "I must first say we are extremely impressed that you found us out. When my men reported seeing you tailing their truck two nights ago, well, let me just say that no one in the division believed the circus clown without a high school diploma would be the first to start tracking us. Personally, I had my money on that question-mark guy, Nigman or whatever his name is."
 I liked writing this part. I have no idea if Dick Grayson ever went to high school, but I just assumed if his family was a bunch of circus folk, he might not have gotten the best education. I also liked throwing in The Riddler reference.

"From where I'm sitting, there's only one clown here!" Robin struggled again, but his ropes held tight.

"But I'm being rude. Please allow me to introduce myself. We are JOKER Division, in charge of protecting society from, well, people like you. You could say we are in charge of protecting the status quo."
 I also had an idea to make JOKER an nonsensical acronym and then all the words that made up the acronym were actually an acronym. An acronym made up of 5 other acronyms, but I just couldn't figure out the words to put it all together.
 
"I don't care who you are," Robin said, still struggling against the ropes, "Batman is still going to come for you."

The Joker strode calmly over to Robin and backhanded him across the face. "There is no Batman. We made him up. Once you get that through your birdbrain this will go a lot faster."

"Oh yeah, well who's stopping all of the bad guys in Gotham if Batman isn't real?"

The man pulled a vial from his jacket and held it in front of Robin's face. "We've been tainting Gotham's water supply for decades, making everyone just a bit more paranoid. A hallucinogenic of my own design that causes an individual to see shadows moving in the darkness. Basically the criminal element in this city has been scaring itself into foiling their own plans."

"What about the super villains? Surely they're smarter than that?"

Laughter came from all eight of the other people in the room, including the man they had handcuffed on the ground. "Do you even pay attention to the plots those idiots come up with. Most could be stopped by a kindergartner with a spoon," said the Joker. "And the ones that actually make it past the first phase. Well, you'd be surprised at what a team or two of ex-Special Forces operatives with disciplinary problems can do with just fists and boots and the basic element of surprise. After all, all of them prepare for just one man, not a squad."
I loved writing this part. I thought it was fun to think about all those old cartoons and even some of the comics where the villains had such insane and convoluted plots and the plan to stop one guy who might come to stop them could easily be foiled if there were two of him.

"And the rest of the world," continued The Joker, as if reading Robin's thoughts on his next question, "The rest of the world believes he exists because the people of Gotham believe he exists."

With his heart pounding like it might burst from his chest at any moment, Robin thought he might be having a heart attack. But there was still things that he needed to know. He gasped, trying to get the words out , but failed.

"Let me guess," said the Joker, "you want to know why. Everyone wants to know why. To keep that status quo. The governments of the world can't have you people fucking things up. So we invented the Batman to keep you people in line. People who the people in charge think can make a difference. He became their nightmare."

The man walked over to the desk and grabbed the file. He pulled a stack of papers and tossed them to the floor at Robin's feet. "Barry Allen. The man can run so fast he can travel through time. What's to stop him from rewriting history as he sees fit?" The Joker tossed another stack of papers. "Diana Prince. Originally from a world that abandoned ours, she now seeks to change our world. But where do her loyalties truly lie?" Another stack of papers. "Hal Jordan. A man given an alien ring and authority which does not fall into any command structure recognized by any government on Earth, as well as able to bend reality, to shape matter purely through his thoughts." He pulled a chair from behind the desk and placed it in front of Robin and took a seat. He pulled one sheet of paper from the still thick file and held it in front of Robin's face. It was a man in a blue and red suit, a long red cape billowing behind him as he floated in the air. "Superman. Clark Kent. Kal-El. This man has power. He is power. And yet, with all that power, he's nothing more than a bully. He sees right and he sees wrong, and whatever he decides is wrong he destroys. Regular, everyday people, we don't have the kind of power to see the world in black and white. We accept that there is wrong in the world and we accept that."
 And this was the plot I was eventually aiming for with The Sovereignty, a group of supervillains who are actually protecting the world from superheroes.

The Joker dropped the photo and the rest of the file onto the floor. "Let me ask you, could Batman ever defeat Superman in a real fight? Like a real, fight to the death kind of fight?"

Robin hung his head. "No."

"Exactly," The Joker said, getting up from the chair, "No he could not. And yet Batman is the fear that holds him and every one of these people in check."

From his restrained position, Robin looked at the pages he could see and put all of the pieces together - and it all made sense! He looked up to see a wide grin on the Joker's face, a grin that said that he already knew what question he was going to ask next. "Why are you telling me this?"

The other man laughed and Robin jumped. The deep laugh of an older man. "You see, Mr. Grayson, I'm dying. Maybe it's the chemicals finally taking their toll. Maybe it's just plain cancer. That's not the point. The point is that I'm looking for a successor and I want you to be that person. Some in our organization wish to promote from within, others believe one of the other Robins might make a better fit, whether it be Mr. Todd, Mr. Drake, or even Ms. Kelley. But I believe you are uniquely qualified to be the new head of the JOKER Division."
 I needed to look up who some of the different Robins were in the Batman universe. The only ones I really knew about were Dick Grayson and Carrie Kelley.

"And if I refuse?" asked Robin, already knowing his answer.

The other man just shrugged his shoulders. "We'll just find someone else. There must always be a Joker after all. You, of course, won't remember any of this conversation and will go back to being the boy wonder of an imaginary man. It's all up to you."

Robin hung his head, staring at the floor. It was a tempting offer, but there was still one, final question that he needed an answer to. "One more question. Tell me about the dead people. What about all of your casualties?"
 
He watched as the Joker paced back and forth for a while. The other men shifted uneasily, the grips on their rifles slackening slightly. The woman wiped a single tear from her eyes. Finally the Joker spoke. "There's a downside to every job. As much as we try to protect people, we can't save everyone. As everyone knows, as long as there's a Batman there must also be a Joker, and the Joker must do terrible things in order for the Batman to be the hero Gotham and the rest of the world needs. And yes, you will be expected to do those terrible things."

"Then no deal!" Robin shouted as he lunged forward at the Joker, finally slipping from the ropes that bound him. Unfortunately, he wasn't faster than the bullet which hit him in the leg. He sprawled to the cold floor and ended in a slide at the Joker's feet.
 It actually took me a while to figure out why Robin would turn down the Joker's offer, especially with everything he had just told him. This was actually part of the re-write. Originally, I predicted the Joker would change his mind and recruit Robin.

Quicker than Robin thought possible, the Joker had his foot on his neck and a switchblade in his hand. "I was afraid you'd say that." He motioned to the rest of the men in the room and they all put gas masks over their faces. "Well, please allow me to give you one final piece of advice: the whole yellow-green-red outfit thing is a little childish. I think it's time to grow up and get yourself a real suit." The Joker put a gas mask over his own face and tossed the switchblade over to the woman who began to cut the ropes on the ground. The Joker pulled a smoke bomb from his jacket. "Now, let's put a smile on that face," he said as he pulled the pin and dropped it to the floor. Green smoke filled the room and Robin's vision. It filled his lungs and made it hard to breath. The Joker waved his hand in the air and a figure in black dropped from the ceiling. Someone dragged Robin back to the pole while the figure in black threw punches and kicks that never connected but still managed to drop the thugs to the ground. Robin lost consciousness just as the figure stepped up to the Joker.

Robin awoke to find the ropes that had bound him were cut and he could now move freely. Moreover, tied all together in the center of the warehouse was the Joker and his gang. Batman must've left them there for the authorities to collect. He could already hear the sirens. "Let that be a lesson for you," he said, "the Batman will always prevail."
 I'm really hoping it was clear that the entire previous fight was staged and due to the drug, Robin is not remembering it correctly.

Before he disappeared into the streets, he heard Joker's high-pitched laugh once more fill the night air and wondered, for the quickest of seconds, why it sounded just a little rehearsed.
There's a different word for "rehearsed" that I wanted to use, but I just couldn't find the word. The word should connote a fakeness, maybe I should've used "hollow"?


I know, I said that I hate writing fan-fiction, but the idea came to me so quickly once I saw the prompt that I had to take it. Once again, this story was inspired by the prompt "The greatest trick the Joker ever pulled was convincing the world Batman existed." which can be found by following the link. A couple of the other stories were good, too so I would definitely recommend them, especially the top voted one (it's up there for a reason). But, as I was saying, I know I hate writing fan fic, but the story came so fast. It literally took me just a night to write the majority of this thing, then an hour to type it all out and make some corrections. It is slightly shortened from it's original due to the character limits on reddit, but that's fine. I think I could've tightened it up more if I'd take more time proofreading, but I was in a rush to get it done. Also if you're wondering how I got this done in just a day rather than the typical week, this was actually the basis for "The Sovereignty". Yeah, that horrible superhuman story was supposed to turn into something like this, but I could never get it going. Maybe I'll go back to it. Oh, and if you're wondering why I wrote it in just a day, well, recently I've been feeling the way I usually do when I feel like quitting. I'm doing my best, for own good, to try to keep up with the writing this time because if I stop this time, I'm more than likely, not coming back. But anyways, this fulfills another week of writing. Oh, and once again, since I didn't get it quite right, I used the blue notes for things that I could've done better.