Going Out With a Bang

Part 4

“Talk. Now.” Batman said to Crane once they were standing on a roof.

“The Joker locked me up in that glass prison lab and forced me to make a powerful hallucinogen. He told me once he no longer had a use for me, he would kill me. That was enough of an incentive for me to work.”

“Do you have any idea what that hallucinogen you created did to Superman? He would’ve destroyed Metropolis if I had not stopped him.” 

Crane dropped his eyes to the ground. “I know.” Silence hung in the air for several seconds. “They say the Joker is dying, and he’s planning something big before he goes.”

The news hit Batman like a bag of bricks. “Dying?”

“That’s what I’ve heard. He’s become bipolar, turning from sadistically funny to horrifyingly cruel in the snap of a finger.”

Batman stared into Crane’s gaunt, sunken blue eyes and pitied the man. “What was in that crate?” Batman remembered seeing a murky green liquid inside a clear pod.

“It’s a drug that greatly increases the production of muscle tissue, causing the user’s strength to become nearly unstoppable in combat. It’s called Venom.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“So you know how addictive the super-steroid is?”

“Yes.” Batman said under his breath. “I recognized the fight pattern in the muscular thug. Similar to Bane.”

“As did I, that’s why I wanted to open up the crates. It seems that the Joker already has some, this was just the last shipment. Oh my God, the things that man could do with Venom…especially with his current mood swings.”

“I can only begin to imagine what he has planned.” That’s when the thought struck him. “You can go, Crane.” Batman spoke the words before turning and grappling away into the night.

Bruce Wayne sat behind the screens of the Batcomputer, analyzing the blood sample from the thug. Bruce cross referenced it with Superman’s blood, hoping there was a compound that the two shared. There was not.

Two completely different chemicals. What could the Joker be planning to do?

“Shall I prepare a bit of supper, sir?” said Bruce's butler.

“No thanks, Alfred. I’m going back out as soon as I figure out what the hell this psychopath is doing next. Crane said he was dying.”

“Dying? Now there’s something I thought I’d never hear.”

“He is planning something big, but I can’t piece it together. This just doesn’t make sense.”

“Well perhaps it isn’t meant to, sir.” Alfred said. Bruce looked up at him with curious eyes. “If you were dying and knew it, what would you do?”

“Try to get as many things done as I could before I go, I guess.” The curiosity in Bruce’s eyes was replaced with a blistering realization. “The Joker has never planned things, why would he change now? He is doing things based off of impulses. How can I stop a man like that?”

“He is unpredictable. For now the only thing you can do is wait and hope.”

“Hope for what?”

“That you can stop him when the time comes.” Alfred walked out of the Batcave and left Bruce in a puzzled state. He isolated the Venom compound from the blood sample, then created an antidote. It was enough for two people to inject themselves, but if the Joker gassed a large group there would be no stopping them.

Batman set his computer to work making an aerosol version of the antidote from the little Venom left in the thug’s blood. He walked over to the Batplane and started the engine. He knew he would need one more person if there was any chance of stopping the Joker. 

        The warden of Blackgate prison eased back in his chair. He contemplated his job, working to rehabilitate  some of the criminals in the city. The most dangerous were locked up in Arkham Asylum. Well, most of them. 

Suddenly a crash echoed through the building. The warden shot up from his chair and bounded out into the corridor. At the end of the hall was a huge crater where the door used to be. Walking in through the hole was a group of men wearing colored circus masks. The warden ran back into his office and lunged for the shotgun that he kept under his desk. 

A figure followed him into his office. He began laughing in a crude and terrifying way. The warden leveled his shotgun, but it was too late. The man had already shot him in the chest. He fell to the ground and clutched at the wound.

The man began cackling even louder now. The light shone on his face, sending an expression of sheer horror onto the warden’s face.

“It’s good to be back.” the Joker said with a wicked smile.