Scene 1: By the Book

It was a rainy night in Gotham City. It's always raining in Gotham Bruce thought to himself gloomily. He listened to the drops as they tapped away against the polymer lining of his suit before rolling away to the wooden boards of the rickety peer that he was standing on. Somehow that tapping noise was more audible to him than the sirens as they drew ever nearer. Then again, he figured, that was also probably due to the suit.

Bruce heard a chuckle come from the person next to him. He cast his gaze on the seated figure. He could still remember his first thoughts when he saw that man. After he had gotten over the initial shock and horror at the man's appearance, Bruce had wondered what ever possessed the man to wear such a dazzling display of purples, greens and pinks that presented an assault to the eye. Of course, whatever possessed the Joker to do anything anyway? Besides, Bruce was soon more preoccupied with the Joker's all too literal assaults to deal with anything as abstract as fashion.

There was some comfort in this reflection, though, since it meant that a large part of him still remained human, and that he had not been completely consumed by his nocturnal identity. It was more than he could say for his nemesis, and, he feared, it might be more than he could say for his good friend Jim Gordon. There was no telling if Jim would ever be able to forgive him after tonight.

Bruce couldn't even begin to wonder what it was like, being tied to a chair and forced to view pictures of your daughter naked and shot through the spine while the Joker tortured her. And then the Joker was able to turn the very photographic proof of that torture on Jim as a means of torturing him. There was one ray of hope in the whole dark affair, however. When Bruce had finally caught up with and rescued Jim, he had promised him that the Joker would pay. Instead, Jim had held up his hand and said, "No, I want him brought in by the book." Bruce liked to think that was a sign that James Gordon was even more incorruptible than he was.

Now the perpetrator of the night's atrocities sat at the end of the peer that held the abandoned wreck that used to be the Gotham City amusement park. The joker let his feet dangle off the edge, looking like an excited child as he waited to be carted off by the police.

The joker let out another chuckle and Bruce was forced to deliver a swift kick to the ribs and demand quiet. "Sorry man," the Joker apologized as he rubbed his side. "I was just thinking of a good one I heard back at the Iceberg Lounge the other day."

Bruce turned his gaze back down the peer as a host of police cars pulled up and disgorged an imposing array of Gotham's finest. As they rumbled up the peer in formation, he heard the Joker say, "C'mon bats, don't you want to hear it? At least let me see if I can't get at least one good laugh out of you before they take me away for good."

Bruce felt himself tense. After the killing joke from the other night, he knew all too well the nature of this madman's humor. Still, for some reason, he found himself turning back to look down at his nemesis. "Alright, try me," he offered in the gravelly tone he always adopted when inside the suit.

The joker looked up at him with those large, mismatched eyes of his that used to be full of mischief and madness, but now Bruce found to his surprise that they were now full of pain and regret. Somehow, he could sense the soul deep down inside of his enemy; a soul just as tortured as any of his victims.

"What do you call a magical owl?" the joker asked in his scratchy, high pitched way. When Bruce made no move to reply, the Joker answered, "Hoodini."

To his complete surprise, Bruce found himself chuckling at this. As the police began to swarm around them while the rain still fell, while Jim sat wrapped in blankets in the back of an ambulance at the end of the pear, as Barbra lay paralyzed in a bed in Gotham General, Bruce found himself chuckling, just before all these things returned to his mind. His demeanor once again grew grave, and he shot out a grapnel that wrapped itself around a far off lamp post, and carried him back into the night.