2013.10.27 - Get 'Em In The End

"All units, a 10-30 at 1031 Dixon - the Gotham Merchants Bank. Please respond."
The GCPD dispatcher puts out the call over the wire and, in the distances, sirens begin to wail as Gotham's Finest speed towards the scene. But it's peak hour and the traffic is terrible, the twilit roads choked with cars blaring their horns at another and drivers showing that Jersey hospitality in true vitriolic form.
The bank in question is an old, gothic affair from before the turn of the last century. Resplendent with gargoyles and columns, an armored car that looks to have been painted purple with house paint is parked across the stairs blocking the door. Inside, gunshots ring out and one of the upper windows overlooking the lobby shatters and sends glass raining down into the street. A maniacal laugh follows after it.
"HA HA HA HA HA HA!"
"This is Vorpal, BSA number 534-251-2245. I am near the area and can provide assistance."
The Cheshire cat speaks into his communicator as he leaps from rooftop to rooftop, deviating from his pre-establishe route of the day to move towards the new alert code. His BSA handler confirms his message and gives him the go-ahead, informing him of the traffic problems. He's going to be on his own until the police arrives. But he's not terribly worried- he may be young, but he has become more experienced... certainly better than when he was a total greenhorn.
When the beautiful and massive architecture of the bank fills his horizon, the purple cat hesitates for the first time. In part, it is because of the brightly colored armored car, which by itself raises a red flag in the mind of anyone who has crossed paths with the Clown Prince before.
And then, most importantly, there is that laughter. The cat's very fine ears pick up on every formant, its strident and mocking clarion tones sending shivers down the young man's spine, and he locks up.
Right then and there, on the rooftop across from the bank, he locks up in fear as he relives the Arkham Asylum escape, when the Joker nearly beat him to death.
The gunshots snap him out of it, barely. Hands shaking, he takes a very deep breath as he tells himself that there are people inside, innocent people trapped, defenseless and alone with... with 'him'. And he couldn't let that happen.
Jumping off the edge, he engages his levitation and invisibility, aiming for the shattered window so he can take a look at what is going on inside the bank.
Hopefully the maniac hasn't killed anyone, yet.
~Wishful thinking...wishful thinking...~
Inside, the Bank is unfortunately full. The scheduled closing time is mere minutes away and there's more than a few Gothamites looking to get their weekend pay withdrawn before it's too late. Sure, there are ATMs but you try using one of those in Old Gotham and then have fun describing the guy who robbed you to the police. Paranoia has filled the Gotham Merchants Bank near to bursting and the Joker is taking full advantage of it.
In the center of the large, lavish and luxurious lobby is a marble fountain with a statue of Alan Wayne standing in the midst of the waters. One arm held aloft, the statue bids all welcome from it's lofty perch. Dangling from it, one lank arm wrapped about it's waist, is the Joker. From his other hand dangles a revolver, haphazardly waving back and forth as he speaks.
“How can it be so?! They came without buzzers! They came without alarms! They came without sirens, or klaxons or charms! HA HA HA HA HA HA!”
Then, quite suddenly, he squeezes the trigger and catches one of the terrified bank employees square in the chest. The man topples forward, landing slumped against one of the oaken counters with a stunned look upon his face.
“Simon certainly did NOT say press the silent alarm and summon the po-po!”
The Joker leaps from the statue, landing in the water with a splash and goose-stepping through the Fountain, across the floor and over to where the corpse lies. He crouches over it, grabbing it by the shirt and pulling himself face to face with it.
“You broke my heart, Fredo.”
Then, with an extravagant Bugs Bunny kiss to the forehead, he lets the body fall back to the floor.
Keith O'Neil's blood runs cold. The bank is full, and that's a carte blanche for slaughter for someone like the Joker. The teller never had a chance.
~Calm down. Calm down. You lose your cool, they lose their lives.~
Invisible and clinging to the window, the cheshire cat pushes himself in, gliding in the air and looking around.
~Locate the henchmen and see what they're doing and where they're located. The Joker knows you... the moment you start doing illusions, he's going to start killing people to bring you out. So you have to be smart this time.~
Where was Batman when he needed him? Wonder Woman? Superman? Heck, right now he'd run into the arms of that SHIELD agent he so loathed, for the promise of backup.
He floats close to the wall to take a good look of where the henchmen may be, finding a place to stop and observe. But he can't keep it up for too long... someone else will be in the Joker's sights, and he will kill them as well. He steels himself-- for when the Joker points that gun again, he's going to attempt to stop him by summoning a wall right in front of the most maniacal man alive... and thus revealing his presence in the room.
But he can't allow a civilian to die. Even it if means that the next bullet might be aimed at his heart.
The Joker is not alone, of course. Four men in clown masks nurse assault rifles and stand guard around the room. They're doing nothing for the moment save providing the Joker with back up, keeping the bank patrons firmly cowed. One unusual thing about them, however, are the brightly-painted oxygen tanks they all seem to have strapped to their backs. The Joker is already strolling towards the now-open door to the back of the Bank when he stops and grabs a terrified woman off the ground. She lets out a squeak of terror.
“Hello,” the Joker reaches for the name tag she wears, reading it and grinning, “Kathy Guthrie. Nice name.”
He waits a moment, looking at her expectantly. When she opens her mouth to finally say something after a long, pregnant pause he bats her viciously across the face with the handle of his pistol. She lets out a yelp of pain, her brow now cut and bloody.
“No time to chat, Kitty Kat! I've got people to do and places to see! Be a mensch and fill up this little doodad with the account files on the computer in the back there and bring it back to me.”
He shoves a flashdrive into her palm and pushes her in the direction of the office, sending her scrambling at a clip towards the door. That done, he lifts a hand to the side of his mouth and calls after her in a sing-song voice.
“Thank you, Kitty Kat!”
The oxygen tanks are a dead giveaway. The toxin, of course.
The first time he crossed paths with the Joker, the psychopath had tried to set off tanks of his toxin in the middle of a crowded street. The only way he managed to stop that was because the Joker had tried a similar stunt several days earlier on Superman, and Superman had had to deal with the victims of the gas, so Vorpal benefited from seconhand knowledge of what the maniac's intentions were.
~He's going to rob the bank, and then set off his toxin. It'll be his greatest joke, a bank full of grinning, convulsed corpses. He's immune to it, and his henchmen have those tanks, probably connected to the gas masks...~
Think, think. What would Batman do?
No, that doesn't work. He's never -worked- with Batman... but he has worked with Nightwing. What would Nightwing do?
He'd find out if his assumptions were correct. Because things could work out in one of two ways: The toxin tanks could be inside the brightly-colored truck... or those men could also simply be carrying the toxin on their backs.
Wasting no time, the cat lowers himself to ground level, close to where one of the henchmen is, to take a closer look at that tank on his back. If it has hoses connected to the mask, then the gas must be in the truck. If not, then his first priority is clear: take out the goons as fast and as quietly as he can, and then deal with the Joker. File transfer should take a few minutes, at least. 
~Dammnit, Oracle... ~ For a moment the thought of contacting Oracle comes to him. But it would reveal his position... and he did not have time to run outside and make the call. Damn, damn, damn.
The tanks are a crude affair. The kind that would probably be more at home distributing nitrous in a dentist's office in the 50's than here and now. They've all been painted purple and green in a haphazard way, a green smiley face stenciled on to add to the charm. Something about the way the thug Vorpal is investigating stands is strange, shifting from foot to foot and humming to himself irritably.
Meanwhile, the Joker sits himself on one of the counters and scratches the side of his head with the barrel of his gun. He lets out a loud breath, exagerratedly falling back onto his elbows and rolls his eyes.
“This is taking for-EVER! Kitty Kat, you're not in there calling the police or quietly weeping, are you? Because I'll be so cranky ... hey, Darryl.”
One of the Joker's thugs, standing across the room from Vorpal, turns his head expectantly to his boss.
“Want to hear a joke about a noble gas?”
Darryl looks at one of the other thugs questioningly but only gets a shrug in response.
“Nevermind,” the Joker sniffs with a wave of his hand, “It wouldn't get a reaction.”
When only the muffled sobs of the terrified bank patrons follows, the Joker's smile immediately becomes as much of a frown as it can.
“Philistines!”
He jumps down off the counter, kicking one of the hostages laying prostrate on the ground square in the face and ribs to punctuate each word.
“THAT. WAS. FUNNY.”
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. Or so they say, anyways. Although the Joker savaging an innocent made his blood boil, Vorpal had to be very careful and keep himself from losing his cool. At least he wasn't killing the civilian yet, and it was now obvious to the cat that the goons were carrying the deadly toxin upon their backs.
And so he saw his plan. Eliminate the thugs, and then chase the Joker out... he had no hubris, nor did he think he could actually put the Joker behind bars. He did it--- 'once', and it was because the Joker didn't know him and he had saved one ace up his sleeve. Now the Joker knew what he could do. No, his best strategy was to get the goons out of the game and thus render them useless to the Joker... and then simply make it easier for him to get away than to stay. He wasn't Batman, and his duty first and foremost was to keep the civilians safe and sound as much as he could.
He needed a distraction first. Concentrating hard, he weaves an illusion...
And nothing seems to happen. That's because the illusion was woven over the nearest thug to him, and the Cheshire cat created an illusion of the guard, overlaid on top of him.
Now came the very very tricky part. Positioning himself behind the thug, the cat was going to quickly become visible again and jump him from behind wrapping his arm around his neck and squeeze as tightly and as fast as he could to suffocate him with a sleeper hold. Vorpal was hoping that his stealth combined with the illusion would be enough to hide what was going on. If he could take out at least two guards...
The Joker rolls his eyes and strolls, fortunately enough, away from the beaten man and the guard with whom Vorpal is toying. He gestures to another of the guards.
“Stevie, go see what's taking Kitty Kat so long. If she's screwing around in there then shoot her in the head. Twice.”
The guard immediately makes for the back office with all kinds of hustle. Vorpal's illusion and replacement of the other guard goes unnoticed by the Joker as his back is turned.
There's his second guard. It looks as if though he must rescue Kitty. Becoming invisible again, Vorpal makes sure the illusion stays in place. If he can, he will take the tank with him... but in the short time that he has, he can't waste too much of it- if the tank is too complicated to take off, he will leave it so as to teleport towards the offices, to get to 'Kitty' before the guard does. Because the purple 'Kitty' has an idea all of his own.
He's going to knock out the other guard in the office, and then impersonate 'Stevie' with his illusion powers. That should be two guards down, and under the guise of a guard he can then move to the next stage of the plan as fast as he can.
The packs are buckled in multiple places, using the same sort of harness deep sea divers use. It's not going anywhere without some serious time and attention paid to the clips and connectors. The Joker made sure his not-so-loyal henchmen didn't ditch their responsibilities at any point.
The door is open but unfortunately it's the only entrance to the office where the thug and the hostage are. In the office, Kitty Kat is doing just what she was asked. In fact, she's almost done loading the files onto the flashdrive. She looks up when Stevie enters, holding up her hands and stammering in protest.
"I'm almost done! There's ... there's a lot of files. I had to compress them! Look, I'm almost done! You can have it!"
Stevie reaches over and wrenches the flashdrive out of the computer, putting it in his pocket before raising a walkie talkie to his mouth.
"Got the files, boss."
"Alright," the Joker's voice crackles back over the radio, "Let's make some art!"
Suddenly, the tank on Stevie and the rest of the guards' backs, begin to beep - triggered electronically by the Joker.
"Thanks for the service, boys. Parting is such sweet sorrow and all that jazz."
No plan ever survived intact. This one barely even made it out of the drawing board.
The Cheshire Cat becomes visible just as he leaps forward, an enormous mallet- glowing and purple- appearing in his hands and he swings it at 'Stevie's' head. His aim is to knock him out no matter what, and then encase him inside a man-sized, glowing purple construct.
"Katie, listen to me:" Vorpal says as he grabs the assault rifle from the fallen thug, "You and everybody else need to get out of here, now. Get out through the emergency exits, the front is blocked."
He curses at himself. He should have moved the truck blocking the entryway. Heck, he could have driven through the door and he could have ran the Joker over. The only reason he didn't do it was because of the risk to civilians...
That worked out so well, didn't it? Drastic situations called for drastic measures. "I'm going to close down this circus." 
He runs back into the lobby, kicking the ball-Stevie along with it on a general crash course towards another one of the guards. His priority just became encasing all of the four guards inside one sphere. And he knows he's not going to get away with it. But he -can- be the center of attention so that civilians have a chance to get away. As he aims the assault rifle towards the Joker and fires, the Cheshire cat's voice echoes throughout the bank, magnified by his powers of illusion: 
"Emergency exits, everybody, now!" 
With luck, the thugs and the Joker will focus fire on him. With no luck, they'll fire on the civilians... who are already between the Young Girl and the Tiger, as they may either die by the toxins or by bullets. He will try to summon walls to protect them and leave himself visibly uncovered.
It was time to see whether cats had nine lives or not, right?
“Oh, hey, I know that voice!”
The Joker seems completely nonplussed by the sudden proverbial hitting the fan, pointing and laughing as the bubble with Stevie in it goes rolling out across the floor. The two still-conscious guards lift their weapons, only to find themselves encased in bubbles as well. Uncertain, they start to hammer on them with the butts of their rifles to try and break free.
When the assault rifle is fired at him, the Joker lets out one gleeful 'Ha!' and dives to the side to take cover behind one of the counters. He looks at the shoulder of his suit, rolling his eyes in faux exasperation at the bloody bullet hole in his shoulder.
“I just had this dry cleaned,” the Clown calls out to Cheshire, “What did fashion ever do to you?!”
The thugs in their bubbles begin to panic as the gas begins to spray from the tanks on their backs. Kept in check by the bubbles, it quickly coalesces around them until they're barely visible through the sickly green cloud. They laugh, the blood draining from their faces as they beat on the insides with their fists. Their lips begin to curl back, muscles bulging unnaturally as their lips stretch and crack into rictus grins.
Kitty Kat and the other hostages do just what they're told, running towards the emergency exit and practically trampling over one another to get out first. It's an old building, possibly why the Joker chose it, and getting them all out quickly in such a panicked state is no mean feat.
OK, you've just gassed the Joker's henchmen. Try not to think about it, try not to think. You need to get these people out.
Vorpal tries his best to ignore the sickening feeling at the pit of his stomach. Every time he's crossed paths with the Joker, he has been unable to stop him from killing someone. Although the Cheshire knows he was faced with a choice between the henchmen gassing the civilian or the civilians living... he still can't stomach it.
"Grace Jones called. She wants her wardrobe back." the cat calls out, firing another salvo towards the desk. Since he no longer has to maintain the illusion of the guard, he dismisses that illusion and instead multiplies himself, with Vorpals moving all over the place, aiming identical rifles towards the Joker, bullets flying- only one set being real, of course. The illusion was meant to buy time for the hostages. That was all he cared about, right now.
“Oh, we're feeling feisty, are we?”
The Joker peeks out from behind his counter to see the swarm of Vorpals all firing at him. It's a trick, he's sure. Hell, his twisted mind might not even mark this as unusual. Instead of entrenching himself further, though, he leaps up to stand on the counter and face down the on-rushing horde with his perpetual grin.
“Get a load of this, Vorpy!”
He grabs the seams of his jacket, typically buttoned up, and tears it open. The buttons fly off and land here and there, revealing a pair of much smaller canisters strapped to the Joker's torso. He just stands there, hands outstretched to the sides without even his gun.
“Shoot me! Shoot me! Shoot me! Oh please, I've been ever so WICKED! HA HA HA HA HA!”
The shooting stops the moment the Reveal happens.
Most people make a mistake of underestimating the Joker. Vorpal has seen that insanity up close, he's heard him whisper in his ear....
Some nights, he still wakes up screaming from it. 
So, all in all, Vorpal is not the kind to do something reckless when the Joker is on the line... unless innocent lives are at stake. The cat lowers the rifle.... as much as he loathed this creature, he had to grudgingly admire his chutzpah.
"Yes. You have."
And then he shoots again, aiming not for the torso, but for the kneecaps. One thing about Keith is that he, too, isn't someone to underestimate. If it means drawing the full wrath of the Joker so that people can escape, he will do it. He's not Batman, or Wonder Woman, but if he can't live like them, at least he can die trying to be like them.
The Joker is unpredictable. He prides himself on it and it's the reason everyone else, even other super-villains, mistrusts him. One might expect him to duck out of the way or sidestep or even jump off the counter but instead he simply stands there and takes the shot. It finds the place above his knee, that sweet spot that would make any other man scream in white hot pain. Not the Joker, though, he simply laughs.
Unable to support himself on that leg, he wobbles almost comically on his healthy knee for a moment before toppling over. He lands on his side, the impact interrupting his laughter with a faint 'oof!' before he rolls off the counter and out of sight.
"Nice shot!" he calls from behind the counter, "You know, the Big Guy doesn't do guns. He's a lot more fun than you. You've got the coloring right but after that? Pfft. You're meant to lay in with the fists because of your repressed sexual urges. Do I have to tell you rookies how to do EVERYTHING? HA HA!"
A pause, and then he adds much more quietly, "I can't believe I got plugged by Tony the Tiger."
Every step the Joker takes makes Vorpal's muscles tense. The only reason he came in with the gun was because he had made the mistake of going in, fists blazing the first time he met the Joker.
And then he was joybuzzed. He spent a day recovering his normal muscular functions after that.
He keeps the rifle level. The Joker laughing at the blast... it shouldn't phase him, he saw him do just that and worse... heck, he saw the Joker break his own arm just so he could gouge at a guard's throat. But it doesn't make it any less unnerving every time you encounter it. Vorpal had no idea what could warp a mind so much that you would end with the Joker as the end result, but he hoped it never happened to him.
"...I get that a lot..." he says, trying to keep the Joker's attention on him while his yellow-green eyes watch the evacuation. When everybody is gone, he won't have a need to keep holding on to that gun. With the joker behind the counter and out of sight, there was a chance he could be doing just about anything... and that he could throw just about anything at him. He had to stay on his toes.
The Joker's laughter stops suddenly. There's not even a chuckle from him and it sounds for a moment like he's vanished. Rarely is he this quiet. That little illusion is dashed, however, when he speaks. But there is something strange about it. Something so alien to the Clown Prince of Crime.
He actually sounds scared.
"Uh, Vorpy? Are ... are you doing this?"
He's not laughing. Not chuckling between his words like he usually is. All there is are terrified words and panicked breathing.
What is going on? Vorpal's fur stands on end slightly, as something very wrong seems to be going on for the Joker to speak like -that-.Himr maybe he's playing him? Playing him like a fiddle with catgut strings? He doesn't know. And he knows he has to find out... he can't simply leave him there, as loathsome as he is. 
"Doing what?" he asks, moving towards the counter, but at an angle and with the rifle ready...
The Joker lapses back into silence save for the terrified, heavy breathing as Vorpal approaches. He is hunched low behind the counter, hidden by it until the big cat with the gun gets close enough.
“This!”
All of a sudden the Joker is laughing again, a chilling sound after the fearful act of moments ago. He props himself up on his good knee, holding one of the smaller canisters with a trail of green gas hissing free from the valve. He throws it into the rapidly diminishing crowd of fleeing hostages, throwing his head back and howling with malicious glee.
“HA HA HA HA! Don't Joker get 'em in the end! HA HA HA HA HA HA!”
"NO!"
He doesn't have time to act. The cat leaps and zaps in mid-air, trying to grab the canister. It's a tricky thing, but if he does grab it, he will teleport again to throw it into the Wayne fountain. If he cannot catch the canister, he will try his best to move people out of the gas' way as fast as he can, holding his breath. It would have been easier if he could have created a huge mallet to whack the canister away- but all of his concentrated energy was focused on the sphere that encased the Joker's henchmen.
With his preoccupation with the hostages, Vorpal can't deal with the Joker. With the fact that that truck is still against the front door and that the one superhero is desperately trying to save civilians, the Clown Prince of Crime has an escape route that basically has a red carpet rolled for it. The only thing that might make his getaway less than rewarding is the fact that the thug never gave him the USB stick with the bank accounts, which means it's in that purple ball of goon and gas.
The canister is thrown into the fountain, fizzling out as the gas turns the water a sickly green. Lit from lights beneath the water, the whole statue takes on an eerie green hue. There's enough gas still in the air to give those exposed to it a brief case of the giggles but far from a lethal dose.
The red carpet rolled out for him, the Joker obliges by taking it. Strangely enough it isn't the van parked against the door. He's not stupid enough to believe that the GCPD would not have made it here by now. No, he's got an escape plan all of his own devised and he executes it swiftly even with only one leg working for him.
How the Joker got out of the bank in the midst of the chaos is anyone's guess, but when Vorpal looks back after the madness with the canister he'll find nothing but a little pool of blood where the Clown was.
And, to add insult to injury, a small note written in the Joker's own blood:
SEE U SOON
Exhausted, with his nerves at the breaking point and his muscles aching, Vorpal sits down on the floor by the counter and exhales very slowly, maintaining the sphere until the hazard team can take care of the gas trapped inside.
He's not going to admit to anyone that he may or may not have had a small breakdown and cried just a little before he had to put himself together when the GCPD entered the bank and he had to give his report. But what is certain is that when he looked at the note, he knew it was going to be a while before he got any sleep again...
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