The Bat and the Jester

Prologue

The abandoned building sat at the edge of Gotham City's industrial sector, near the docks. It had seen its share of vagabonds and vagrants, and the desks that once held inventory documents and shipping manifests only contained trash and dust. The building stood only three stories high, and amid the broken glass and boarded-up windows stood two surreal characters.

The first was a man in his late twenties, wearing custom-made Kevlar body armor. It was form-fitting, and accented with a long cape and a belt containing multiple pouches. The charcoal-colored armor had a matte finish, and contained only one emblem: the image of a bat on the breastplate. His face, however, was covered by a cowl, forever concealing his identity from the outside world.

The second man, however, took this standoff to an even stranger level. He wore a purple suit with white pinstripes, fashioned in the double-breasted style of the Chicago mobsters during the roaring twenties, and his face bore the makeup of a clown. But not the happy or sad face of a circus hobo, this man's face-paint was used to barely conceal his hideously disfigured perma-grin; the corners of his lips cut to the middle of his high cheekbones. His makeup hid more than his identity, however, as the man's name, age, and origins were a complete mystery... possibly even to himself.

A man who used the darkened image of a bat to instill fear into the hearts of his prey, and a man whose psychotic paranoia had turned him into the antithesis of a child's laughter now took their battle to the roof of the decaying building. Bat versus Clown; the very notion would be laughable were the fight not so deadly... and so evenly matched. The Bat, armored and well-trained, could not best the insane techniques of the homicidal Clown, and on the reciprocal, the Clown, for all of his dirty tricks could not defeat the cold and calculating Bat.

Hand-to-hand combat usually consisted of threats and insults, one combatant trying to madden the other into throwing blind or wild punches, but tonight, on the chat-covered roof, the only sound in the cool air was the insane laughter of the psychotic Clown. The Bat, however, only offered the occasional grunt as he kicked, vaulted, or threw the occasional punch. But as the seemingly endless fight went on, the Bat began to succumb to exhaustion while the Clown seemed to draw energy from an unseen source; most likely chemical. As the Bat retreated to catch his breath and assess his situation, a third party entered the battlefield.

"Hi'ya, Batsy!"

The Bat had absorbed every type of training imaginable, from multiple martial-arts to a tour of duty with the Army Rangers. He had conditioned himself to expect the unexpected, to react before thinking, to avoid the inevitable. But tonight, he had to admit to himself that it was pure, blind luck that allowed him to duck just as the oaken baseball bat whiffed by his head. His cowl was fashioned from Kevlar, but unpadded. It was designed to prevent blades from entering his skull, but a collision with a wooden bat swung at full force would have put him in a coma. He rolled to his right and glared upwards at the new combatant.

The woman standing before him was a lesson in opposites; her long hair parted in the middle and dyed black on one side while being completely red on the other. Her outfit followed suit, yet the red and black theme switched sides as it went downwards from her bustier to her leather pants to her boots. She stood smiling like a disturbed child; chomping her gum and holding the aforementioned baseball bat on her right shoulder as if she were on her way to the batting cage. "Did'ja miss me?"

Without so much as a word, the Bat swung outwards with his legs, tripping the woman who seemed to have adopted the persona of a deranged Jester. She recovered quickly, however, and vaulted backwards... landing on her feet while throwing her arms upwards and smiling like an Olympic gymnast after a successful routine.

"Ta-Daa!"

The Bat ignored her and immediately turned his attention back to the Clown, who had heard the distant sirens and began plotting his exodus. He lunged upwards, but the Clown had used his cohort's arrival to his advantage; jumping to the ledge of the crumbling building.

He stopped at the ledge and looked over his left shoulder at the seething Bat. "Toodles, Bats. We simply must do this again sometime!" The jovial and sarcastic nature of his tone stood in stark contrast to the gravelly texture of his voice, which seemed to emanate from the back of this throat. He offered a mocking wave goodbye, and stepped off of the ledge... disappearing into the murky water below.

The Bat momentarily considered going after him, but the police sirens were getting closer. And considering that his current status with local law enforcement was "vigilante", he decided to make his escape as well. He picked up the Clown's bag of loot that had started this entire ordeal, and shifted his gaze back to the smiling woman. "Again, he leaves you behind to cover his escape," he growled. "Why do you let him do this to you?"

"It's the way our relationship works, Batsy. He is the criminal mastermind," she replied innocently while continuing to smack her gum, "and I am the lovable sidekick!"

The Bat looked down at the black bag in his hand, which contained thousands of dollars of raw, uncut diamonds. "Your criminal mastermind just left you and the loot behind. Have you ever considered that he doesn't do it for the money?"

"Well, duh! We do it for the kicks, Batsy!"

Although not a police officer, the Bat reached behind him and retrieved a set of military-grade, flat-black handcuffs from his belt. "I'm sorry, Doctor." As he stepped toward her, she removed a large caliber revolver from her shoulder holster.

"Never gonna happen, Batsy," she replied while leveling the firearm at his head and pulling back the hammer. Her stereotypical Jersey accent had been replaced with the calm and cool demeanor of a confident yet unstable individual; regardless of the fact that that she held a PhD in psychology. "If I end this now, maybe he won't leave me behind anymore."

The Bat stood stoic, focusing his gaze on her trigger finger... preparing to leap if he saw the minutest flex of her muscles. But instead, she drew her arm back towards her, slowly releasing the hammer as she did.

"As much as I enjoy handcuffs and big, burly men in uniform, I gotta run, Batsy." She kept the weapon drawn as she circled away from him; never breaking eye contact as she did. When she reached the rusty fire escape, she holstered the weapon and began her descent to freedom.

The bat slowly shook his head as his gaze returned to the bag of diamonds. He removed his calling-card, a standard business card with a holographic image that matched the bat-logo on his chest, and placed it on top of the bag. He then placed the bag in the most obvious location in the center of the room and turned toward the ledge. He grabbed each side of his cape at arm's length, flicked his wrists, and an internal support rod extended outwards giving the outermost portion of the cape a rigid edge. He then spread them like wings and glided into the night.