[closed/completed]
WHO: The Joker (sorridete) and Batman (notteoscura)
WHAT: The Joker's bank heist, incidentally Batman's first night out as the masked crusader.
WHERE: Downtown Reggio Calabria, the Vescovo family bank.
WHEN: In the middle of the night of Day 93 (August 13th/Wednesday).
Well. That hadn't been very difficult.
The Joker's men were nearly finished loading the money into the back of an old ice cream truck he'd stolen earlier that day. The Joker himself was standing off to the side, slurping at one of many the pilfered chocolate bars as he watched; its brethren had been left to melt in place of the Vescovo family's money in the interior vault of their main Italian bank, which he considered a perfectly fair trade. The five street criminals he'd hired to help with the job hadn't wanted any. The Joker shrugged as he remembered the confused looks they'd given him when he'd offered. All that perfectly good ice cream gone to waste. Oh well, their loss.
They'd been working for nearly an hour now, and the truck was nearly full. There was no way all six of them were going to be able to fit inside. Good thing it would only require one man later to hop out and open the gate to the warehouse he was going to stash the loot in. He had a feeling no one wanted to split it six ways anyway. Too bad for them, it wasn't going to be split into any ways at all.
Finally, one approached him, his voice oddly hollow from behind the dirty clown mask over his face. The Joker was the only one who hadn't bothered with one this time. He wanted his victims to know who'd dared to rob them on their own turf; had even smiled for the cameras inside. He grinned at the memory. They were going to go mad.
"That's all of it," the man informed him. He had the really really happy-faced mask, its painted lips stretching up almost all the way to his ears. It was the Joker's favorite. He nodded and handed the man his dripping chocolate stick, then brushed his gloved fingers against his coat to clean them, reaching inside for his breast pocket in the same motion. The confused thug was still trying to hold the bar without getting any ice cream on himself when the Joker shot him twice in the chest.
"One less share!" he announced in the stunned silence that followed. The unfortunate thug slumped bonelessly to the ground with a soft thump. The remaining four men stared at the Joker from their respective positions, still loading the last of the money into the truck, so he waved them into motion again, impatient . "Come on, come on, no one's getting paid at the rate you're all going." He snickered at his own inside joke as he stepped over the thug's body, making his way toward the driver's seat. "Load 'em up, load 'em up!"
--
When he'd left his expensive house with its expensive decorations and its expensive furniture, shed his clothes in favor of the new suit that had been painstakingly designed and redesigned over and over again, he'd left behind Bruce Wayne.
It hadn't been easy. Bruce Wayne had been the skin that he'd been wearing his entire life, shifting from the Bruce that could-have-been as a child to Damaged Bruce after the death of his parents. Distant Bruce, as the effect of their death set in and infected him with the darkness of their loss. Charming, Arrogant Bruce in college, until he'd been entirely re-programmed in his travels while he'd been gone.
Those lessons had wiped him clean, leaving him with nothing but himself and the new determination to become what it was that terrified him in order to let the swarming criminals in this city know that he was here to do the same.
So it was that he'd become the Batman, roaring out of the underground belly of the ground a distance away from his home as Bruce Wayne. The car was as sensitive and performed as well on the streets as he'd hoped, since he'd never had the chance to try it out in a more urban setting. It got him to the scene as quickly as he'd expected.
He materialized out of the darkness to land with a solid, heavy sound on top of the truck, the cape whipping down to land around him and pool on the metal surface. It took all of an instant for him to drop down to the ground in a flurry of darkness, before he moved instantly for the Joker with two, three, four decisive strides-
Batman would target the leader in all of this, the madman that had started the fervent and inspired wave of crime and murder, leaving bodies strewn in his wake.
If he could turn in the Joker, he could turn in the source--the rotted and chaotic centre of this new spree of activity in Reggio Calabria.
--
The Joker stopped in his tracks the instant something big and black and flappy landed on the roof of his getaway vehicle. When it hopped down and approached him, though, he started to backpedal--quickly. This was...weird, and very unexpected. The cops, sure, or members of the Vescovo family themselves, but not this...he wasn't really sure what this was. He frowned in confusion as he tried to make out the dark figure of this man in the dim light. All in black, a cape fluttering out behind him, some weird mask with pointy little ears--
He burst out laughing. A caped crusader! Here to stop him, no doubt, but without a weapon in sight. He would have been better off sniping from a rooftop; he was no match for all six of them. Or, well, all five. The Joker didn't intend to contribute if he didn't have to.
"Well don't look at me like I know who he is!" he shouted to his men, waving his arms and the gun at the new guy wildly. "Shoot him!" He would have done it himself, but at that moment he nearly tripped over the body of the sucker he'd offed just a few minutes ago. He scrambled to regain his balance as he snorted and snickered with ironic amusement. Should have waited another minute to kill him, five guns were always better than four--though four should be more than enough against one happy-go-lucky dumb-dumb. Picking himself up again, he turned to watch how his men fared as they overcame their initial surprise and rushed the black newcomer.
--
The laughter didn't faze him, and neither did the presence of guns-he'd taken precautions against that sort of thing so that in a pinch, bullets wouldn't be as fatal a problem as they usually were.
The plating in his suit didn't make him invincible, but Batman acknowledged the threat of four men headed straight for him. He'd have to take them out before he could continue to pursue the Joker. As important as it was to pick out the scraggly-looking clown, the only one that wasn't wearing a mask, Batman would have to take care of the other men first.
The first one landed a definitive blow between the shoulders from behind him, but he whirled to grip the thug's bicep and shove a palm into his elbow, shattering the joint by shoving it the wrong way. Batman pushed the now-screaming clown into one of his fellow robbers, knocking their heads together with a loud clack of their masks banging together.
The butt of a gun crashed against the back of his head, and as he fiercely gritted his teeth, his eyes narrowing behind the mask, Batman landed a heavily trained kick to the attacker's stomach.
The Joker. Where was he?
He struggled to throw off those men, the bodies that came at him like oversized swarming insects-four suddenly seemed like a very large number, the force of those blows coming through in a way that slowed him down to an infuriating pace.
Where was the Joker.
--
The Joker had retreated off to the side, stumbling a little over the curb as he finally found his way onto the street. He didn't know who this guy was, but it was obvious he could fight. A snort and a snicker tore through him as the man crashed two of his employees' heads together. Classic. He'd never actually seen that move done before.
Then he scooped up a handful of rocks and pebbles and hurled them into the fray, not expecting to do much, but amused by his own actions nonetheless. He skimmied off to the side and came up behind the attacker, elbowing his sad-face man out of the way to bring the butt of his gun down hard on the costumed man's head. It bounced off with a plastic clack; he didn't realize his finger had accidentally squeezed the trigger until the pistol flared to life in his hand, the bullet going wide and burying itself into the stone wall of the bank.
The Joker burst out laughing at the scene as he stumbled backward, the force of the recoil stinging his unprepared wrist. Ouch! He let out another whoop at his own surprise as he switched hands and raised the gun again, this time aiming for the attacker's chest. He didn't need to be ambidextrous not to miss from this distance.
--
Though the many blows and the impact they left stinging and burning into bruises on his skin had his attention enough, the actual sound of a gun being shot was what really made Batman's head whip to the side.
Those eyes, practiced to find movement and latch onto whatever it was that he was supposed to be looking for, snapped to the Joker and the gun that arced backward through the air with the force of the shot.
The clown stumbled, but he pulled back to straighten himself and point the gun at the dead center of his torso.
Batman elbowed a thug that came lunging at him in the face, and though the four of them still weren't done with their antics, he rushed the Joker anyway. The gun pointed at his chest was the most important one, the hand holding that gun was the one that had made its move over the map of Reggio Calabria and sent the entire city toppling over into chaos.
Batman was a streak, a dark and unafraid blur of movement that hurtled forward, half slighting to the side to grip the Joker's forearm in a hold that would've taken a crowbar to break.
The fist came sailing out from the other side, a tight hinged movement that landed with an audible smacking sound against the Joker's cheek. His knuckles are like a brick wall.
--
There was a flash of really bright, almost blinding light. A sharp, stabbing pain quickly followed, throbbing with the Joker's accelerated heartbeat into a deep, dull ache. He tripped over his own two feet under the weight of the blow, his gun arm going limp in that tight, painful grip, pistol falling forgotten to the pavement. Ow. Ouch. That had come out of nowhere, he hadn't even seen the guy move.
It took him a moment to orient himself again, blinking rapidly and frowning as his vision slowly returned. He cocked his head to the side and eyed his assailant blearily, then gradually more sharply as his vision finally focused correctly. What he saw confused him at first, and then he snorted, grinning, letting the man hold him up instead of trying to stand on his own, if he was going to be so pushy about it. His snort sharpened into a snicker.
"What are you, a mole?"
--
The Joker was not very heavy, and when he went limp, he felt like a bag of bones and filth sagging from the Batman's grip.
He stared down, and his eyes were black around the edges, seamlessly blending in with the mask on his face and fitting to match the way his mouth pressed into a thin, tense line as he took in the monster that spoke upward to him.
Upon being asked the question, Batman refrained from answering, his grip only tightening-as if that were possible-over the Joker's forearm until he'd be able to feel the bones almost grind together. They wouldn't snap in Batman's fist, but they were getting there. Batman suddenly lifted the Joker upward by the arm, his grip rough as he caught the clown by the collar of his shirt, his teeth bared.
The gesture brought the Joker swinging upward, abruptly, to a point that brought their faces frighteningly close to one another. Batman's eyes pinched and narrowed. They took in and absorbed the face of a lunatic that had so happily plunged the lives of so many into an icy, permanent void.
--
The Joker couldn't resist a fresh snort and snicker as the man brought their faces together. He was so serious! Why? They didn't even know each other. Well, not yet. But a masked vigilante like this one--complete with cape!--was too good an entertainment opportunity for the Joker to pass up.
"Do I have something on my face?" he teased, legs kicking freely. Ooh, strong. Inhumanly strong, almost. But his shirt was going to rip soon. He wrapped his hands around the masked guy's wrists to help hold himself up, wincing at the sting in his arm where the man had squeezed it, but ended up glancing down at the material instead, confused. He'd expected cloth or something, not hard...whatever it was.
So he was wearing a bodysuit. That explained why four of his men hadn't been able to bring him down. But it didn't explain why none of them were acting now.
"A little help here?" he asked, glancing to the side. Idiots. He didn't regret his plans to kill them all when this robbery thing was said and done. As it was, though, he let Mr. Mole distract himself by the approaching movement on either side as he wound his foot back and kicked him as hard as he could in the kneecap.
--
Batman ignored the Joker's attempts at useless conversation the way he ignored the man's swinging legs and crazily random movements. They were the nuances of someone who was obviously completely unhinged. They weren't worth acknowledging.
However, the peripheral sight of the Joker's accomplices making their move for him was enough to tear his attention from the scarred smile for a very brief split second. For the moment that it took for Batman to look away from the makeup-covered grin on the Joker's face, it was enough for the clown that he held in his grip to deliver a blow to his knee.
Unfortunately, as much as he didn't exactly double over in agony, he did give a faint grunt of pain and stagger backward very slightly. Batman's grip on the Joker barely loosened.
It was enough. And that critical second was all that those men needed to ambush him again, having temporarily recovered from the injuries he'd dealt them.
--
The Joker cackled. So he could feel pain! Oh, fun fun fun. He didn't understand the getup, but then, he wasn't one to question a man's...peculiar tastes.
He started moving, though, the moment he felt the grip around his shirt loosen. He let his men pile onto the guy while he focused instead on beating his fists against his wrist and forearm and wriggling in an attempt to wrench himself free. It worked, though his collar ripped in the process. He barely noticed, laughing triumphantly as he stumbled unsteadily backwards, tripping over his own feet for a moment until he was able to regain them.
His toes hurt where they'd connected with the weird guy's kneecap. Frowning a little, he picked his foot up off the ground and rubbed them through his shoe, letting his men distract the guy for the time being. What the hell was that, titanium? Not carbon like Greed had, but something close.
"...Hmm," he murmured a moment later, watching them fight. Or watching the caped guy fight, anyway, his men were being tossed around and pummeled like useless sacks of rice. Interesting. Some Asian techniques in there. No weapons--or no conventional ones, anyway. Nice. Very nice. He grinned.
And then he took off for the driver's seat again. He had no reason to stay, after all, and it wasn't like he'd actually told his men anything important. They could all die heroic deaths heroically defending him from the heroically hopeful mole mask man. He cracked up at the thought. Their loss.
--
He didn't necessarily let the Joker slip away as much as he felt it happen, the man's bony fists landing in a flurry of hits along his arm. It didn't make a difference to Batman, those blows, but feeling the cloth half-rip out of his hold was an entirely separate sensation.
Batman ground his teeth together, hard enough to feel his jaw give the jolt of nerves firing off. As he threw the hired men off of himself, he noticed the Joker simply…standing there. Still smiling.
Always smiling.
In the same moment that the Batman had sent the heel of his palm crunching into the bridge of a clown's nose through the brightly colored mask, he saw the Joker climb behind the wheel of the truck. Triumphantly, as though he'd won.
Batman started for the vehicle instantly, stepping over the knocked-out thugs, knowing that it would be taking off in the time it took him to reach it.
If only he had a way to attach something to the back of the truck, a way to snag the bumper. A way to hang onto the thing that was about to carry the Joker away and out of his reach.
The cape sailed out behind him as he gained on the truck, closing the short distance between where he was and the handle of one of the back doors.
Almost.
--
The Joker loved the tinkling music that the ice cream truck made. It'd amused him more than enough on the drive over, when he'd managed to thoroughly annoy each and every one of his men by making up lyrics to the tiny jingle, but now...well. Now he was so overcome with laughter that he wouldn't have been able to sing along if he'd tried. It was like a theme song to the situation at hand, and it was so perfect that he couldn't have done any better if he'd picked it out himself.
Super ninja guy was running after him, that much was obvious from the side mirrors; his own men were following a few meters behind, and falling very quickly behind. The Joker tried to reign in some of his laughter as he urged the old truck into gear and bumped somewhat quickly along the wide road. The problem with ice cream trucks, he was discovering, was that they'd been designed to slow down to serve children, not speed up to run them down. He knew it could reach highway speeds, it definitely had the potential, but getting the needle all the way around that little dial was easier said than done.
Still! It was like playing a videogame! And the way the guy's cape flared out behind him when he ran...the Joker choked on a fresh fit of laughter as he glanced back over his shoulder with a grin. Priceless.
--
Through the demented sort of melody that the truck pumped out as it sped up, Batman was aware of the two loud and metallic thuds that took place directly in front of his face.
It took him a short moment to realize that it was the sound of his fists smashing into the bumper of the truck, and as the ice cream truck accelerated, he strained to pull himself up and acquire a better grip on the moving vehicle.
His knuckles felt like they were on fire. But the Batman felt the pain subside as he barked out a hoarse breath, his lungs expanding to pull in air as he found grips and holds along the way. The mask did nothing for shielding his eyes against the flow of the breeze that blew into his face as he made his way around the side of the truck, so the man was obligated to narrow his eyes against it.
It was all picking up speed. He'd have to get to the driver's window as fast as he could to minimize the threat of being thrown off at an even more dangerous pace.
The Batman would shut this down before it spiraled. He had to.
The Joker unintentionally swerved as he struggled to keep the weirdo in his sights, leaning halfway out of the vehicle and craning to see him from over his shoulder. The side mirrors made him all funky and distorted; it was hard to tell how far away he was. He was surprised to see that it wasn't much.
Frowning, he pulled himself back into the truck and plopped onto the old seat with a squeal of its springs. Dilemma, dilemma, what to do now. The guy had bad timing. Normally he'd stop and play a while, but tonight was the one night he actually needed to get away, because he hadn't entrusted anyone else to carry on his plans in his absence. Stupid mole man. They'd have to play another time.
There was only one thing to do about him and the Joker knew it. He didn't hesitate to yank the wheel over to the side, ducking a little and snickering when the old truck bounced noisily up over the curb and onto the sidewalk. He wondered, for a moment, if that bodysuit of his would protect him against the rough scrape of brick brushing by at forty miles an hour.
Then he almost hit a Light pole and had to swerve wildly to avoid it. It took a moment to get the truck back under control, but a quick glance over his shoulder showed the man still out there.
"Whoops!" he called out, cackling. "Let's do it again!"
This time he swerved the side of the truck purposely into the nearest building.
--
For a moment that almost seemed like the end to the Batman, he felt his whole body sway and then separate from the side of the truck--the pain in his knuckles had returned. They popped from the force he had to use in order to hang on.
When the truck stopped the wide swerve and went back to shooting forward, he felt the length of his entire being--along with every single joint and muscle--slam into the metal paneling.
It knocked the breath out of him, but he continued.
And that was when the truck lurched sideways again, headed straight for a brick wall.
There was nothing he could do in time to avoid what happened next:
With a friction that shot sparks from the armor that protected Batman, the texture of the building exterior scraped the back of his suit--the cape was flying sideways and streaming to the back.
Before he could act, there was pressure that squeezed and then crushed him for a split second before he was sent flying through the air.
The force with which he hit the ground was brutal, but Batman, at the very least, had picked up a few invaluable tips on landing and falling. He rolled along the unforgiving pavement at a rate that left the entire world a blur, and when his body came to a stop, he was half on his face and half on his side.
The ice cream truck rolled away, merrily, with its crazed melody filling his ears and joining the sound of his pulse roaring between his eardrums.
He didn't even wait for it to completely disappear before he stumbled to his feet.
The Joker may be lost, but the four thugs were not.
--
The Joker nearly crashed, he was laughing so hard. He couldn't get the image of that flapping black cape out of his mind, the way it whipped around in the wind as the guy rolled to a stop on the pavement. And those ears! He got top marks for his martial arts, but that ridiculous getup he had on made it hard for the Joker to take him seriously.
Not that he ever took anyone very seriously. They were all way too amusing for that.
But he'd gotten away with the money, and that was the important thing. He cackled as he recapped how close he'd come to losing it. Wouldn't the mobs get a kick out of that. So close, but no cigar! And now the masked man was going to have a few bruises to nurse the next day, and with nothing to show for it. He could have just stayed home and saved himself the pain. Too bad! He hoped he had a fun night interrogating those thugs. He was about to give up his entire night and get absolutely nowhere.
The Joker snickered loudly to himself and began humming along with the ice cream truck's tune. This joke was turning out to be even funnier than he'd anticipated.
WHAT: The Joker's bank heist, incidentally Batman's first night out as the masked crusader.
WHERE: Downtown Reggio Calabria, the Vescovo family bank.
WHEN: In the middle of the night of Day 93 (August 13th/Wednesday).
Well. That hadn't been very difficult.
The Joker's men were nearly finished loading the money into the back of an old ice cream truck he'd stolen earlier that day. The Joker himself was standing off to the side, slurping at one of many the pilfered chocolate bars as he watched; its brethren had been left to melt in place of the Vescovo family's money in the interior vault of their main Italian bank, which he considered a perfectly fair trade. The five street criminals he'd hired to help with the job hadn't wanted any. The Joker shrugged as he remembered the confused looks they'd given him when he'd offered. All that perfectly good ice cream gone to waste. Oh well, their loss.
They'd been working for nearly an hour now, and the truck was nearly full. There was no way all six of them were going to be able to fit inside. Good thing it would only require one man later to hop out and open the gate to the warehouse he was going to stash the loot in. He had a feeling no one wanted to split it six ways anyway. Too bad for them, it wasn't going to be split into any ways at all.
Finally, one approached him, his voice oddly hollow from behind the dirty clown mask over his face. The Joker was the only one who hadn't bothered with one this time. He wanted his victims to know who'd dared to rob them on their own turf; had even smiled for the cameras inside. He grinned at the memory. They were going to go mad.
"That's all of it," the man informed him. He had the really really happy-faced mask, its painted lips stretching up almost all the way to his ears. It was the Joker's favorite. He nodded and handed the man his dripping chocolate stick, then brushed his gloved fingers against his coat to clean them, reaching inside for his breast pocket in the same motion. The confused thug was still trying to hold the bar without getting any ice cream on himself when the Joker shot him twice in the chest.
"One less share!" he announced in the stunned silence that followed. The unfortunate thug slumped bonelessly to the ground with a soft thump. The remaining four men stared at the Joker from their respective positions, still loading the last of the money into the truck, so he waved them into motion again, impatient . "Come on, come on, no one's getting paid at the rate you're all going." He snickered at his own inside joke as he stepped over the thug's body, making his way toward the driver's seat. "Load 'em up, load 'em up!"
--
When he'd left his expensive house with its expensive decorations and its expensive furniture, shed his clothes in favor of the new suit that had been painstakingly designed and redesigned over and over again, he'd left behind Bruce Wayne.
It hadn't been easy. Bruce Wayne had been the skin that he'd been wearing his entire life, shifting from the Bruce that could-have-been as a child to Damaged Bruce after the death of his parents. Distant Bruce, as the effect of their death set in and infected him with the darkness of their loss. Charming, Arrogant Bruce in college, until he'd been entirely re-programmed in his travels while he'd been gone.
Those lessons had wiped him clean, leaving him with nothing but himself and the new determination to become what it was that terrified him in order to let the swarming criminals in this city know that he was here to do the same.
So it was that he'd become the Batman, roaring out of the underground belly of the ground a distance away from his home as Bruce Wayne. The car was as sensitive and performed as well on the streets as he'd hoped, since he'd never had the chance to try it out in a more urban setting. It got him to the scene as quickly as he'd expected.
He materialized out of the darkness to land with a solid, heavy sound on top of the truck, the cape whipping down to land around him and pool on the metal surface. It took all of an instant for him to drop down to the ground in a flurry of darkness, before he moved instantly for the Joker with two, three, four decisive strides-
Batman would target the leader in all of this, the madman that had started the fervent and inspired wave of crime and murder, leaving bodies strewn in his wake.
If he could turn in the Joker, he could turn in the source--the rotted and chaotic centre of this new spree of activity in Reggio Calabria.
--
The Joker stopped in his tracks the instant something big and black and flappy landed on the roof of his getaway vehicle. When it hopped down and approached him, though, he started to backpedal--quickly. This was...weird, and very unexpected. The cops, sure, or members of the Vescovo family themselves, but not this...he wasn't really sure what this was. He frowned in confusion as he tried to make out the dark figure of this man in the dim light. All in black, a cape fluttering out behind him, some weird mask with pointy little ears--
He burst out laughing. A caped crusader! Here to stop him, no doubt, but without a weapon in sight. He would have been better off sniping from a rooftop; he was no match for all six of them. Or, well, all five. The Joker didn't intend to contribute if he didn't have to.
"Well don't look at me like I know who he is!" he shouted to his men, waving his arms and the gun at the new guy wildly. "Shoot him!" He would have done it himself, but at that moment he nearly tripped over the body of the sucker he'd offed just a few minutes ago. He scrambled to regain his balance as he snorted and snickered with ironic amusement. Should have waited another minute to kill him, five guns were always better than four--though four should be more than enough against one happy-go-lucky dumb-dumb. Picking himself up again, he turned to watch how his men fared as they overcame their initial surprise and rushed the black newcomer.
--
The laughter didn't faze him, and neither did the presence of guns-he'd taken precautions against that sort of thing so that in a pinch, bullets wouldn't be as fatal a problem as they usually were.
The plating in his suit didn't make him invincible, but Batman acknowledged the threat of four men headed straight for him. He'd have to take them out before he could continue to pursue the Joker. As important as it was to pick out the scraggly-looking clown, the only one that wasn't wearing a mask, Batman would have to take care of the other men first.
The first one landed a definitive blow between the shoulders from behind him, but he whirled to grip the thug's bicep and shove a palm into his elbow, shattering the joint by shoving it the wrong way. Batman pushed the now-screaming clown into one of his fellow robbers, knocking their heads together with a loud clack of their masks banging together.
The butt of a gun crashed against the back of his head, and as he fiercely gritted his teeth, his eyes narrowing behind the mask, Batman landed a heavily trained kick to the attacker's stomach.
The Joker. Where was he?
He struggled to throw off those men, the bodies that came at him like oversized swarming insects-four suddenly seemed like a very large number, the force of those blows coming through in a way that slowed him down to an infuriating pace.
Where was the Joker.
--
The Joker had retreated off to the side, stumbling a little over the curb as he finally found his way onto the street. He didn't know who this guy was, but it was obvious he could fight. A snort and a snicker tore through him as the man crashed two of his employees' heads together. Classic. He'd never actually seen that move done before.
Then he scooped up a handful of rocks and pebbles and hurled them into the fray, not expecting to do much, but amused by his own actions nonetheless. He skimmied off to the side and came up behind the attacker, elbowing his sad-face man out of the way to bring the butt of his gun down hard on the costumed man's head. It bounced off with a plastic clack; he didn't realize his finger had accidentally squeezed the trigger until the pistol flared to life in his hand, the bullet going wide and burying itself into the stone wall of the bank.
The Joker burst out laughing at the scene as he stumbled backward, the force of the recoil stinging his unprepared wrist. Ouch! He let out another whoop at his own surprise as he switched hands and raised the gun again, this time aiming for the attacker's chest. He didn't need to be ambidextrous not to miss from this distance.
--
Though the many blows and the impact they left stinging and burning into bruises on his skin had his attention enough, the actual sound of a gun being shot was what really made Batman's head whip to the side.
Those eyes, practiced to find movement and latch onto whatever it was that he was supposed to be looking for, snapped to the Joker and the gun that arced backward through the air with the force of the shot.
The clown stumbled, but he pulled back to straighten himself and point the gun at the dead center of his torso.
Batman elbowed a thug that came lunging at him in the face, and though the four of them still weren't done with their antics, he rushed the Joker anyway. The gun pointed at his chest was the most important one, the hand holding that gun was the one that had made its move over the map of Reggio Calabria and sent the entire city toppling over into chaos.
Batman was a streak, a dark and unafraid blur of movement that hurtled forward, half slighting to the side to grip the Joker's forearm in a hold that would've taken a crowbar to break.
The fist came sailing out from the other side, a tight hinged movement that landed with an audible smacking sound against the Joker's cheek. His knuckles are like a brick wall.
--
There was a flash of really bright, almost blinding light. A sharp, stabbing pain quickly followed, throbbing with the Joker's accelerated heartbeat into a deep, dull ache. He tripped over his own two feet under the weight of the blow, his gun arm going limp in that tight, painful grip, pistol falling forgotten to the pavement. Ow. Ouch. That had come out of nowhere, he hadn't even seen the guy move.
It took him a moment to orient himself again, blinking rapidly and frowning as his vision slowly returned. He cocked his head to the side and eyed his assailant blearily, then gradually more sharply as his vision finally focused correctly. What he saw confused him at first, and then he snorted, grinning, letting the man hold him up instead of trying to stand on his own, if he was going to be so pushy about it. His snort sharpened into a snicker.
"What are you, a mole?"
--
The Joker was not very heavy, and when he went limp, he felt like a bag of bones and filth sagging from the Batman's grip.
He stared down, and his eyes were black around the edges, seamlessly blending in with the mask on his face and fitting to match the way his mouth pressed into a thin, tense line as he took in the monster that spoke upward to him.
Upon being asked the question, Batman refrained from answering, his grip only tightening-as if that were possible-over the Joker's forearm until he'd be able to feel the bones almost grind together. They wouldn't snap in Batman's fist, but they were getting there. Batman suddenly lifted the Joker upward by the arm, his grip rough as he caught the clown by the collar of his shirt, his teeth bared.
The gesture brought the Joker swinging upward, abruptly, to a point that brought their faces frighteningly close to one another. Batman's eyes pinched and narrowed. They took in and absorbed the face of a lunatic that had so happily plunged the lives of so many into an icy, permanent void.
--
The Joker couldn't resist a fresh snort and snicker as the man brought their faces together. He was so serious! Why? They didn't even know each other. Well, not yet. But a masked vigilante like this one--complete with cape!--was too good an entertainment opportunity for the Joker to pass up.
"Do I have something on my face?" he teased, legs kicking freely. Ooh, strong. Inhumanly strong, almost. But his shirt was going to rip soon. He wrapped his hands around the masked guy's wrists to help hold himself up, wincing at the sting in his arm where the man had squeezed it, but ended up glancing down at the material instead, confused. He'd expected cloth or something, not hard...whatever it was.
So he was wearing a bodysuit. That explained why four of his men hadn't been able to bring him down. But it didn't explain why none of them were acting now.
"A little help here?" he asked, glancing to the side. Idiots. He didn't regret his plans to kill them all when this robbery thing was said and done. As it was, though, he let Mr. Mole distract himself by the approaching movement on either side as he wound his foot back and kicked him as hard as he could in the kneecap.
--
Batman ignored the Joker's attempts at useless conversation the way he ignored the man's swinging legs and crazily random movements. They were the nuances of someone who was obviously completely unhinged. They weren't worth acknowledging.
However, the peripheral sight of the Joker's accomplices making their move for him was enough to tear his attention from the scarred smile for a very brief split second. For the moment that it took for Batman to look away from the makeup-covered grin on the Joker's face, it was enough for the clown that he held in his grip to deliver a blow to his knee.
Unfortunately, as much as he didn't exactly double over in agony, he did give a faint grunt of pain and stagger backward very slightly. Batman's grip on the Joker barely loosened.
It was enough. And that critical second was all that those men needed to ambush him again, having temporarily recovered from the injuries he'd dealt them.
--
The Joker cackled. So he could feel pain! Oh, fun fun fun. He didn't understand the getup, but then, he wasn't one to question a man's...peculiar tastes.
He started moving, though, the moment he felt the grip around his shirt loosen. He let his men pile onto the guy while he focused instead on beating his fists against his wrist and forearm and wriggling in an attempt to wrench himself free. It worked, though his collar ripped in the process. He barely noticed, laughing triumphantly as he stumbled unsteadily backwards, tripping over his own feet for a moment until he was able to regain them.
His toes hurt where they'd connected with the weird guy's kneecap. Frowning a little, he picked his foot up off the ground and rubbed them through his shoe, letting his men distract the guy for the time being. What the hell was that, titanium? Not carbon like Greed had, but something close.
"...Hmm," he murmured a moment later, watching them fight. Or watching the caped guy fight, anyway, his men were being tossed around and pummeled like useless sacks of rice. Interesting. Some Asian techniques in there. No weapons--or no conventional ones, anyway. Nice. Very nice. He grinned.
And then he took off for the driver's seat again. He had no reason to stay, after all, and it wasn't like he'd actually told his men anything important. They could all die heroic deaths heroically defending him from the heroically hopeful mole mask man. He cracked up at the thought. Their loss.
--
He didn't necessarily let the Joker slip away as much as he felt it happen, the man's bony fists landing in a flurry of hits along his arm. It didn't make a difference to Batman, those blows, but feeling the cloth half-rip out of his hold was an entirely separate sensation.
Batman ground his teeth together, hard enough to feel his jaw give the jolt of nerves firing off. As he threw the hired men off of himself, he noticed the Joker simply…standing there. Still smiling.
Always smiling.
In the same moment that the Batman had sent the heel of his palm crunching into the bridge of a clown's nose through the brightly colored mask, he saw the Joker climb behind the wheel of the truck. Triumphantly, as though he'd won.
Batman started for the vehicle instantly, stepping over the knocked-out thugs, knowing that it would be taking off in the time it took him to reach it.
If only he had a way to attach something to the back of the truck, a way to snag the bumper. A way to hang onto the thing that was about to carry the Joker away and out of his reach.
The cape sailed out behind him as he gained on the truck, closing the short distance between where he was and the handle of one of the back doors.
Almost.
--
The Joker loved the tinkling music that the ice cream truck made. It'd amused him more than enough on the drive over, when he'd managed to thoroughly annoy each and every one of his men by making up lyrics to the tiny jingle, but now...well. Now he was so overcome with laughter that he wouldn't have been able to sing along if he'd tried. It was like a theme song to the situation at hand, and it was so perfect that he couldn't have done any better if he'd picked it out himself.
Super ninja guy was running after him, that much was obvious from the side mirrors; his own men were following a few meters behind, and falling very quickly behind. The Joker tried to reign in some of his laughter as he urged the old truck into gear and bumped somewhat quickly along the wide road. The problem with ice cream trucks, he was discovering, was that they'd been designed to slow down to serve children, not speed up to run them down. He knew it could reach highway speeds, it definitely had the potential, but getting the needle all the way around that little dial was easier said than done.
Still! It was like playing a videogame! And the way the guy's cape flared out behind him when he ran...the Joker choked on a fresh fit of laughter as he glanced back over his shoulder with a grin. Priceless.
--
Through the demented sort of melody that the truck pumped out as it sped up, Batman was aware of the two loud and metallic thuds that took place directly in front of his face.
It took him a short moment to realize that it was the sound of his fists smashing into the bumper of the truck, and as the ice cream truck accelerated, he strained to pull himself up and acquire a better grip on the moving vehicle.
His knuckles felt like they were on fire. But the Batman felt the pain subside as he barked out a hoarse breath, his lungs expanding to pull in air as he found grips and holds along the way. The mask did nothing for shielding his eyes against the flow of the breeze that blew into his face as he made his way around the side of the truck, so the man was obligated to narrow his eyes against it.
It was all picking up speed. He'd have to get to the driver's window as fast as he could to minimize the threat of being thrown off at an even more dangerous pace.
The Batman would shut this down before it spiraled. He had to.
The Joker unintentionally swerved as he struggled to keep the weirdo in his sights, leaning halfway out of the vehicle and craning to see him from over his shoulder. The side mirrors made him all funky and distorted; it was hard to tell how far away he was. He was surprised to see that it wasn't much.
Frowning, he pulled himself back into the truck and plopped onto the old seat with a squeal of its springs. Dilemma, dilemma, what to do now. The guy had bad timing. Normally he'd stop and play a while, but tonight was the one night he actually needed to get away, because he hadn't entrusted anyone else to carry on his plans in his absence. Stupid mole man. They'd have to play another time.
There was only one thing to do about him and the Joker knew it. He didn't hesitate to yank the wheel over to the side, ducking a little and snickering when the old truck bounced noisily up over the curb and onto the sidewalk. He wondered, for a moment, if that bodysuit of his would protect him against the rough scrape of brick brushing by at forty miles an hour.
Then he almost hit a Light pole and had to swerve wildly to avoid it. It took a moment to get the truck back under control, but a quick glance over his shoulder showed the man still out there.
"Whoops!" he called out, cackling. "Let's do it again!"
This time he swerved the side of the truck purposely into the nearest building.
--
For a moment that almost seemed like the end to the Batman, he felt his whole body sway and then separate from the side of the truck--the pain in his knuckles had returned. They popped from the force he had to use in order to hang on.
When the truck stopped the wide swerve and went back to shooting forward, he felt the length of his entire being--along with every single joint and muscle--slam into the metal paneling.
It knocked the breath out of him, but he continued.
And that was when the truck lurched sideways again, headed straight for a brick wall.
There was nothing he could do in time to avoid what happened next:
With a friction that shot sparks from the armor that protected Batman, the texture of the building exterior scraped the back of his suit--the cape was flying sideways and streaming to the back.
Before he could act, there was pressure that squeezed and then crushed him for a split second before he was sent flying through the air.
The force with which he hit the ground was brutal, but Batman, at the very least, had picked up a few invaluable tips on landing and falling. He rolled along the unforgiving pavement at a rate that left the entire world a blur, and when his body came to a stop, he was half on his face and half on his side.
The ice cream truck rolled away, merrily, with its crazed melody filling his ears and joining the sound of his pulse roaring between his eardrums.
He didn't even wait for it to completely disappear before he stumbled to his feet.
The Joker may be lost, but the four thugs were not.
--
The Joker nearly crashed, he was laughing so hard. He couldn't get the image of that flapping black cape out of his mind, the way it whipped around in the wind as the guy rolled to a stop on the pavement. And those ears! He got top marks for his martial arts, but that ridiculous getup he had on made it hard for the Joker to take him seriously.
Not that he ever took anyone very seriously. They were all way too amusing for that.
But he'd gotten away with the money, and that was the important thing. He cackled as he recapped how close he'd come to losing it. Wouldn't the mobs get a kick out of that. So close, but no cigar! And now the masked man was going to have a few bruises to nurse the next day, and with nothing to show for it. He could have just stayed home and saved himself the pain. Too bad! He hoped he had a fun night interrogating those thugs. He was about to give up his entire night and get absolutely nowhere.
The Joker snickered loudly to himself and began humming along with the ice cream truck's tune. This joke was turning out to be even funnier than he'd anticipated.