Te Joker wasn't much of what one might call a... people-person.

Oh, sure, they were an enjoyable enough part of his life. They lived their meager little lives oh so predictably, like they were in a dull TV program that rewound itself when it was done, repeating itself endlessly. They treated it like some kind of disaster whenever he came along and took it upon himself to break that monotony for them. They would struggle feebly against him each and every time, and all those times he would simply laugh in the face of their pathetic efforts - except for when they chose instead to cower, in which case he would just laugh at their faces. But it was different than actually liking them - or connecting with them at all, for that matter, though doing so was hardly on the top of his list of priorities. Usually he only appreciated them the way a predator might appreciate the existence of its prey. Indeed, that was exactly what others were to him: his food, mere items used to help make his own existence possible and drive it forward.

But every so often, his fellow human beings pleasantly surprised him.

The Batman, for instance. Now there was a one-of-a-kind specimen. Most human beings might choose a life of shallow tedium, but oohh, Batman... he knew how to live. Anyone else would have labelled someone who took to dressing up like a bat and prowling the streets of Gotham every night to fulfill his own purposes as insane, but the Joker wanted nothing more than to shake the man's hand at the mere thought of it. The Batman was another child of chaos and the random nature of the universe - that was why people were so shocked at the mere concept of him. As such, Batman was the one person on the planet the Joker could truly call an equal. And he was incredibly glad to have such an individual as an enemy, because he was quite possibly the only thing that kept the Joker's life from slipping into the same monotony as everyone else; even giant explosions and mass murder wouldn't be able prevent that. Anyone else in the Joker's place might have made it their number one priority to exterminate such a formidable adversary. But he knew better; his little Dark Knight was something to be prized and, above all, preserved by whatever means necessary, unless his ultimate defeat was so perfect that it actually counterbalanced his death. Until then, the Joker was perfectly happy to forever play with his toy without breaking it.

So perhaps there was one person the Joker was able to respect (if such a word could be used in conjunction with him). But what about the rest of the masses out there? Surely they were unable to rise above their current positions and do something exceptional or worthwhile, right?

He had to admit, it was not the easiest of tasks, teaching them. He could show them again and again how useless it was to resist the entropy for which they were all destined, yet again and again his messages bounced off their thick skulls. He never stopped trying, of course, if for no other reason than it entertained him so, yet sometimes he could not help but fall into despair at the thought that they might never realize the truth (though slapping around Harley usually helped raise his spirits a little).

That is, until... that day. That day that had been one of the defining ones in his life, nearly on par with the day he had gotten his scars or the day he had his first showdown with the Batman.

The Joker had been taking a short vacation from his usual brand of recreational activities - that is to say, he'd been "locked up" in Arkham again, since everyone else apparently derived some sort of comfort from the delusion that he couldn't waltz out of there whenever he felt like it. He'd been in the rec room, sitting on the couch and watching the news, since there was nothing else to do; they'd removed the chess set in the corner after he'd used one of the pieces for the purposes of a certain magic trick he had graciously opted to show one of the orderlies. The coverage was boring him nearly to death, and the inability to change the channel was causing him to halfway-regret getting the remote taken away from the rec room as well (due to yet another magic trick, this time with one of the remote's batteries). Just as he'd begun to formulate a plan to shatter the TV screen and introduce the nearest orderly to several dozen glass shards, though, a story about his most recent caper came up. Great stuff, of course - it was about him, after all, and seeing the family members of the people he had killed weep for their lost loved ones was always worth a good chuckle - but what really made the report was the last part. That was when they spoke their title for him for the very first time.

The Clown Prince of Crime.

He'd thought at first it must be one of the voices in his head playing another trick on him. Upon concluding otherwise, he burst into wild, uncontrollable laughter, so powerful that he fell off the couch and rolled around on the floor for several seconds before the orderlies, nervous at this act of apparent mental instability, surrounded him and dragged him back to his cell. And all the while he kept laughing and laughing, even after they threw him into his cell and secured all four of its locks. He knew then and there that his efforts had not been wasted.

It was human nature to give titles to things they valued; it was a mark of honor. If it wasn't, then nobody (or everybody) would possess one. Instead, only those who had done something extravagant and worthy of attention within their lifetimes were rewarded them. Ask someone on the streets if they've ever heard of Alexander III of Macedon, and they'll have no idea what you're talking about. But Alexander the Great they'll recognize immediately. The same held true for countless others throughout history; Batman himself, as Gotham's alleged "hero," had his own slew of titles.

And now they had done the same for him. They had called him the Joker because he had chosen that name himself and told them to use it (or at least used his joker calling cards to push them in that direction). But that wasn't truly a title, since they had nothing else they could call him. And they'd also used other words to describe him - criminal, madman, terrorist. But those didn't count either, because there were thousands upon thousands of people to whom those words could be assigned. There was nothing unique or defining about them. But now he had a title, a true title. And it had been their idea to do it, not his. They might not have realized it consciously, but in giving him his own title, they had set him above everyone else, made him something greater than merely human.

There were other titles given to him as well since then. The Harlequin of Hate. The Ace of Knaves. All great names, mostly because, just as before, it had been the masses that had awarded them to him. But the Clown Prince of Crime was and forever would be his favorite for a great multitude of reasons.

And not the smallest of which was that the name marked him as royalty.

The title's very existence not only lifted him on top of everyone else's shoulders, but, just as with Alexander the Great, the title itself underlined his grandeur. What was more, they had declared him a prince rather than a king. Less intelligent people might have found that belittling, but the Joker understood it perfectly; they were acknowledging that he would always be there to terrorize Gotham in endlessly more creative and destructive ways than before, just as a prince would someday move up to become a king.

Even better than calling him Prince, if possible, was clearly establishing that he was a Prince of Crime. The word "crime" could apply to any number of things, whether it be stealing a pack of gum from a pharmacy or pumping a building full of nerve gas; that meant that his exploits knew no limits, and they knew it. For another, the word had a negative connotation, especially for Gothamites - and yet they had used it in a title that not only raised him up by its very nature, but spared one precious syllable just to assert his greatness even further.

The people were not simply accepting his role as the embodiment of chaos that he was; they were embracing it.

He knew he wasn't a villain or a monster or a psychopath, no matter what some might say. He was just there to show the world how things were supposed to work, and how they did work, no matter how much they tried to deny it. If anyone was Gotham's great savior, it was him, not the Batman. No matter how obvious it was that Batman was just as chaotic in nature as the Joker was, no matter how hilarious it was to watch him deny that truth, no matter how fun it was to tangle with him over and over again, to call him a hero made the Joker want to force-feed gasoline to a small child. Batman couldn't accept what he truly was, just as the rest of this miserable city couldn't. At least, that was what he had thought before they had bestowed that wonderful name upon him.

Maybe there was hope for the people of Gotham after all.

And there was hope, the Joker knew it. He would never stop his quest to take Gotham City, not now. Not now that it had finally begun to embrace him as its true hero, even while it knew that he was the predator and they were his prey. Because that was who he was, now and forever.

The Clown Prince of Crime.