2013.06.26 - We're All Mad Here

Whatever the room actually says, the setting is somewhere in a nicer, less grimmy, part of town. The player of the clown is just too damn lazy to move and too excited about rp to bother getting unlazy to accomplish the first. 
It's paradoxical, in fact, that he can manage to type. He does. 
Or will. 
Mostly after this long intro pose, most of which will make absolutely zero sense. 
So. The Joker. 
A parade. It isn't a very big parade, but he's having one right down the middle of one of the nicer, less grimmy, streets of Gotham. 
Now, it isn't your usual parade fare, no not at all. Instead, he has gone for an 'old timey' feel. So, it was, and is, that his single 'float' is being drug by several large african fellows. To be fair, there is another african fellow in clown makeup whipping them (I mean Paula Dean is about to lose her career over this kind of thing, so even the Joker has to mind his P's and Q's.), but the facts are the facts. 
While, upon this float, sits the Joker. In a rocking chair. Wearing an old timey dress he probably stole from the Gotham Musium of art, knitting. With Old hymnals playing over loud speakers. 
"What the eff---" 
Vorpal has seen a lot of things recently, many of which have caused him to pause and do a double take. But this? This?
This was madness.
"This is... insane."
He squints his eyes where he is, from one of the nearby rooftops while on his patrol, having only recently left a rather pleasant lunch with Justin and that Tommy fellow whom he had tormented a little. He felt a sick feeling at the pit of his stomach as he saw this. His lunch wanted out. As his keen feline eyes adjust, trying to see who is in the Betsy Ross getup, and...
He know exactly who that was. And he knew exactly why his spine went cold as ice.
Not him. He wasn't ready... not ready at all. He had read the news over what happened to Superman.
And because he had read the news, he knew he couldn't let this go by.
"Alright... let's see what you're made of..." 
The cat grins, and suddenly he disappears into thin air, becoming invisible as he runs across the telephone cables lining the street until he places himself at a good one. It is then that he focuses his powers of illusion and....
Smoke. Yes, smoke. Rising from that manhole cover, just up ahead. He projects the plume of illusory smoke up ten feet before it begins to dissipate, but also creating an expansive cloud that obscured the manhole cover from sight.
'Let's see how you react to this, clown....'
The one float parade continues unbashfully towards the cloud of smoke wofting up from the manhole cover. See, the individuals whipping and being whipped, they lack the cognitive (and stats, let's not for them) skills to comprehend 'danger(tm)'. 
Joker, on the other hand, notes these changes with a curious sort of eye brow raising up from over the always staring manic stare. "YOU THERE NIGRO! GO INVESTIGATE!" 
Pointing with his knitting needles at one of the two strapping young bucks afront of his parade. 
People, there's people out and they do not look amused. They look terrified, actually. They see the Joker and some of them actually swear out loud and run into the first building they can find with an unlocked door. 
On another day, without smoke to investigate, he would probably amuse himself by forcing a smile on their face. Instead he haphazzardly tosses little tubs of 'cant believe it's not butter' at them. "Fresh churned!" 
One even splats against the side of some ladies head. 
"You wont believe it's not butter." 
 
Oh, and the fellow goes about investigating as told. That would have been in there, if the player weren't too busy making cheap jokes. 
The smoke clears slowly as the henchman investigates, and the plume dissipates. Suddenly, another manhole further down the street starts spouting the same smoke.
'Let's add... some variety...'
A fleeting shadow, the flutter of a cape, barely perceived down an alley near where the manhole is smoking. 
The cat carefully levitates from one post to the other.
'Shall we play a game, Joker? Let's see how you act when you think you know who your opponent is...'
The Joker is just about to hurl another tub of butter at someone when he spies the fluttering of a cape off down one alleyway. Pausing in mid windup, he tilts his head from one side to the other. His eye brows tell the tale his twisted, always smiling, face fails to convey. 
"Hrm... shadowy capes, smokey manhole covers..." The butter bounces from hand to hand as he jumps down from his float and over to one of the few who were unable to escape into a building. "Hold this." 
He tells them, holding out the tub of butter, which they take only so he wont hurt them... all very nonplushed, he reaches into his bra and pulls out a very long barrelled pistol from his cleavage and puts the barrel right to the man's head. 
"Is that you Batsy? Are you trying to be intimidating? That's so adorable... who do-" His finger comes up and covers his 'hostages' lips. "Stop, shh.. no no, stop crying..." 
The Joker glances around, rubbing his finger across the man's lips, pushing them around with one white, green nailed fingertip. "Tell Batsy you have kids." 
'But I dont', "Tell him anyways." 
The cat runs silently along the telephone line, eyes narrowed in determination until he is more or less above the hostage situation. He focuses and projects an illusory voice--- that of the Huntress-- directly behind the Joker: 
"Typical clown. When the pies start flying, you're nothing but stale meringue."
At that same moment, he Sidesteps, teleporting in the blink of an eye to ground level and crouching. He focuses hard and will become visible willingly, jumping towards the gun with a swift Tiger kick to attempt to, hopefully, knock it out of the clown's hand or force him to shoot to the sky. He only hopes that the Huntress' voice distracts him enough.
The Huntress? 
Seriously? This is who they're sending these days? The Joker almost doesn't even acknowledge the voice and he certainly doesn't raise to the challange... okay yes he does, who is he kidding? 
"Listen kid, I'm sure your daddy issues have you convinced you'd look smashing in purple.. god knows we need more World of Warcraftian approaches to armor, with your boobs showing.. but let's keep the banter to the professionals huh?" 
He does turn, finds there's nothing behind him, and perks a brow... Then his gun goes flying from a cat kick and he's spinning away jumping in the air dramatically waving his hand in the air, "OU OU OU OU!" 
The man, now free, runs so damn fast you would think hell was chasing him... And the Joker? He narrows his eyes and looks up at his assailant. 
"If you start quoting ninteen sixties Catwoman, we can't be friends." 
"I have news for you, Joker, dear...." says the cat with a horrific cheshire grin. It seems to grow even bigger than the Joker's, if that's possible. "It's your Unbirthday."
The cat activates his invisibility again at the same time that he casts an illusion of himself over him, so that when he steps back it looks as if he were still there, talking. As his illusion talks, his eyes begin to glow bright purple, his claws to elongate, and his jaw to dislocate to the point that he looks capable of biting a man's head off. Did I mention he also grows a good number of feet? "Let's open your presents, shall we? I think I left them... inside your chest."
The cat quickly runs over to the float in his invisible state, leaving the illusion to distract the Joker while he goes searching for what he knows the Joker MUST have with him.. the canisters he unleashed when Superman tried to stop him.
'I have to be fast, I have to be fast' he thinks while he moves quickly and silently, thanking the Cheshire Cat for making him the way he is.
The illusion. The Joker doesn't seem to see through it, but then neither does he run off in some crazy or frantic manner... We're talking about someone who regularly faces down the Batman and has tasted Crane's fear toxin... not to mention enough smilex gas to kill a small nation... 
When the 'cat' runs at him, he grabs either side of his dress and pulls it open over his heart. "Not so fast pussycat!" And pulls out one of those laser pointers thingies that cats love so much, directing a beam down the sidewalk. "Go get'it!" 
The canisters are there, under the float.. 
So are those big African fellows that everyone forgot about. Apparently there's a reason he wasn't worried about the cat. Since the one who was doing the whipping opens up on the illusion with a fully automatic assault rifle. 
The other two jump from either side of the cat illusion trying to grab hold of it. Keep it from getting Mistah J. 
"HAHAHA!" 
Vorpal thinks quickly and makes the illusion stagger back--- and then, with a *pop*, there's this little purple kitten in its place, meowling and prancing around in the way only hyperkinetic kittens can. It darts all over the place, seemingly dodging the bullets due to its tiny size- just as it seems to run away from the two thugs trying to chase him.
Up on the telephone pole, a man dressed in the most colorful clothes and an enormous hat appears into existence, sitting on the telephone wire as if it were the most comfortable of chairs. He holds a little cup and saucer in one hand, and a teapot... with a dormouse peeking out of the top.
"No, no, no, my good man!" the hatter hollers downwards, "You must kill TIME, not cats!"
Weaving the illusions, and seeing the thugs moving towards them, Vorpal moves into action as he crawls under the stopped float to gather all the canisters together. If he can do this, he will create a glowing, purple sphere to encase them and keep them hermetically sealed.
If he can manage this... then he can stop playing puppetmaster with the illusions...and start the *real* fun.
The Joker glances up at the man on the telephone pole with a scrutinizing sort of expression. Then around at all the mayham someone else is creating. Finally, down at the laser pointer in his hand. 
"OKAY!" Holding his hands up and out to the sides. "You." Pointing at one of his henchmen, "I need to make an example of someone." Pulling another pistol from his under garments, having lifted the dress up high enough to show he's wearing a garder over very hairy white legs. 
Then shoots the man right in the face, spraying the sidewalk, the street, and the float with brain matter. 
"Wait... did you say 'time' or 'Tyron'?" Scratching his wigline with the barrel of his pistol... 
"Aw well, guess it doesn't matter now..." 
His hand wiggles and in it is the trigger for the canisters, most of which (but not quite all) are gathered up by Vorpal. 
Barely clothed black dudes, dispite one of them being shot, both of whom are wearing clown make up, chase an imaginary cat and there's a dude drinking tea on a telephone pole. 
"I will /not/ be out crazied. Not in my town." 
BEEEEP 
"Whatsa matter, Pusspuss?" says the Hatter in a very distinct Ed Wynn voice, "Can't handle competition? Relax! Let's do some bowling!" 
And suddenly, there is a purple glowing ball rolling on the ground at breakneck speed towards the Joker- the ball containing the canisters, oh if only the Joker knew. Vorpal is furious. More than furious, he is aboslutely livid about the murder he has just witnessed. Punishment is about to come from the hands of the Cheshire cat himself. 
The purple kitty runs as fast as it can, dashing away into an alley--- Keith' way of isolating the Joker from his henchmen, and to keep the brainwashed men away from the man's murderous gun.
He wants him alone. All to himself.
"Oh no you don't!" The Joker stern walks after his henchmen, shooting at them as if they are the very source of this craziness. He is, it should be noted, NOT shooting at the things appearing around him... 
Instead, he only smiles up at the man on the telephone pole. 
Shooting another of his hench persons right between the shoulder blades. The man lets out a yelp and crumples to the sidewalk. 
The rolling ball, that's something... he's not sure yet what kind of something, but it's very clear he's starting to think someone is cheating. 
So instead of shooting the last of his henchmen, he grabs him by the harnass he's wearing and throws him right in the path of the bowling ball. 
"STIIIIIIIIIIIRIKE!" 
And grabbing his radio to speak into it, "Send more henchmen. I have to send a message... Also, No more Alice in Wonderland references. Tell everyone." lowering, then raising the radio, "Over." 
'Looks like you've caught on. Very well, Joker... now we tango.'
The cat sprints, moving as fast as he can while still invisible, knowing that the moment he attacks the Joker his invisibility will disappear. he has planned for this. In fact, he has noticed the Joker isn't attacking the illusions. 
'Joker Joker Joker, you should be more careful.'
Another illusion. An enormous rabbit bounces over a car, screaming "I am late! I am late! Oh my paws and whiskers, I am late!" 
Vorpal plans the trajectory of the rabbit so that it intecepts his own, that he may enter the illusion. Just as he is about five feet away from the joker he jumps into the air and prepares to srike in the Black Tiger Fist style with both hands, claws drawn, muscles flexing like a predator. He becomes visible at that instant, but couched inside the illusion, five feet away from the Joker.
And out flies Vorpal, seemingly bursting out of the rabbit's stomach, aiming to strike and shred at the Joker's gun wrist with his claws to disarm him.
 
The Joker has a lot of things going for him, but he's got no super powers to combat the more able of the heroes. When the cat appears, shread the Joker's wrist he does, but it puts him entirely too close to the clown's OTHER hand... which slaps around with a big metalic joybuzzer ready to close down on the exposed portion of Vorpal's hand. 
He doesn't even flinch at the shreaded nature of his arm... the muscle hanging exposed.. instead he stares at the hero who finally makes an appearance... and grins sadistically, tongue sticking out from between his (mostly wooden (because we're doing a period peice)) teeth. 
"OUCH!" 
Screaming, voice going gravelly and violent in an instant. From smiling to furious in the span of a milisecond. "You just... do... how am I suppose to conjugally visit myself now?! You... disrespect.. this is..." fury. 
The cat screams at the joybuzzer---
'GODDAMNIT, you got too close!'
---the shock causing his muscles to spasm violently. All he can think of is 'OUTOUTOUT'- and he Wills himself somewhere else. He disappears from under the Joker's hand. Fifteen feet away, precisely, in the middle of the street and crouching to his knees, as his muscles remained unresponsive through the shock. 'You're open, DO something'
Four other illusory Vorpals appear, in the same position, but spread around a wide fan. It's all he can think of to buy himself time, as his muscles lock up in spasms.
It should also be noted that now Vorpal's fur makes him look, more or less, like a purple Koosh doll.
The Joker is way beyond finding this funny mode. This is the Clown Prince nobody wants to meet... the one who pulls off his wig and throws it off to the side and scoops up his pistol in his left hand as he stalks right towards the first Vorpal that appeared... His eyes are wide and dangerous, even though he's smiling. 
"I thought that it was all kind of cute at first... new fangled hero wannabe comin' to play, hide the pussy with the Harlequin..." a bullet is sent into one of the illusions. 
"But you had to go and push it too far... you kids.. you never learn." Another illusion. It doesn't matter if they fall, he's still walking towards Vorpal. Shooting the others seems to be just to prove to himself what he already appears to be convinced of. 
People under estimate exactly how smart the Joker is, thinking beneath the gimmicks and dangerous humor beats the mind of a moron. 
They're wrong. 
"So now and then, you have to beat someone to death with a crowbar... send a message to your pals.." BANG another of the illusions shot. 
"Do. Not. Fuck. With me..." 
"You're not even a g-good joke, Joker. You're a post-modernist joke. People only laugh because they want t-to fill the silence."
A dangerous game. But now that he had his enemy in a fury, he had a chance. But only if he could pull it off.
His Sifu had drilled it into him---
-Stay calm. Let your enemy lose his calm. Then he is yours.-
To be honest, Sifu never in his wildest dreams would think that his advice would ever be used on the Joker. The Joker wasn't to be 'his', or anyone's. The Joker was madness and nihilism, hatred hidden behind a smile. He was the other side of the Cheshire Cat.
He was smart. Vorpal knew he was smart. Nobody who could pull what he had pulled could be stupid. He had already seen through his illusions and crippled him. And he knew that he was not going to be fooled or evade any more illusions.
Oh god, he hoped he wouldn't. It was his only chance.
Above the Joker, the disembodied head of the Cheshire Cat materialized, looking down at him with an enormous grin. The head was gigantic, hanging in the air and looking down at him with eyes that were far more than Vorpal's.
They were the Joker's eyes.
"We're all mad here, after all, aren't we?"
The mouth opens wide. So wide that it seems impossible... and an anvil drops from his mouth, falling down towards the Joker. It looks like a regular anvil, albeit with 'ACME' written all over it, and a little rabbit riding upon it as it falls. More illusions
But what was traveling inside the illusion was a real anvil- a glowing purple one, the second construct he could create of this size while still maintaining the sphere. He had to knock the joker out... because there was no way he could move, his muscles were refusing to cooperate.
'Oh, Cheshire Cat...' Keith does the nearest thing he's ever done to praying... to the creature he believes created him '... make this work... please...' he thinks, as each illusory Vorpal disappears after being shot.
The last illusory Vorpal disappears with a gun shot through the back of it's skull, until all there is is one psychopath and one purple cat. 
The attempts to rile him... that is a very dangerous game. His eyes go hard, harsh, and full of the kind of insanity that sends shivers down peoples spine when they look too deep into his manic stare. 
The kind of stare that has driven 'doctors' over the edge in therapy. 
"That's where everyone seems to miss the punchline. I'm the one laughing." 
The barrel touches against the back of the cats head, he's got all this time to shoot his victom before the bobbling cheshire appears above him. Instead of doing so, he explains things. 
Because as smart as he is, he's still the Joker... and he cannot help it. 
So he twists the barrel against the base of Vorpal's skull, so even in his paralytic state, he knows exactly what it is touching his skin. 
And he slowly pulls the hammer back, so the hero knows exactly what the sound is. Kneeling down behind the cat so his lips are moving right next to the purple haired ear. "For what it's worth, I'm going to remember this..." The anger is gone. His raging furnace of anger just.. gone. Replaced by that giggling sing song of a voice. 
"I hope cats have souls, kid... B-..." Glancing up when the cat appears. 
The Joker narrows his eyes and takes a step back seeing his own eyes staring back at him. 
"Lewis Carole was a quack religious nut.. and you're throwing your hat in with this guy? And you say 'I'm' not funny?" 
Anvils falling? Please... this is old hat. And he's not buying it. 
BAM, the anvil hits him right between the shoulder blades and crumples him like a paper made man. Groaning when his face hits the cement. 
"It was real..." Laughing, strained, painfully strained. "That's hilarious... hehehehe..." 
What a scene -- the bodies of some of the Joker's henchmen lying dead on the ground... a glowing purple sphere in the middle of the street, and the Joker crumpled on the ground with a purple glowing anvil on him. And a kneeling, purple-haired anthropomorphic feline in tights who looks for all the world like a Cheshire cat.
It seems like an eternity passes before he can move again. And when he does, he slowly stands up to turn around and look at the Clown Prince. There is fury in his eyes...
But there is also another thing: Respect. Not the respect one gives to someone they admire, but rather the respect one gives to a natural disaster or a vicious predator against whom one must defend himself. 
"Lewis Carrol was a dream. I'm the reality," he says quietly. He presents well, having the statuesque indifference of cats.
But under the surfae? Under the surface he is hanging by thread. But he is not going to let the Joker know this. This is where the inscrutable quality of cats actually comes in handy. There was a job to do... and the nightmares and horror were going to haunt him. But not now. Not right now.
Vorpal taps his communicator.
"This is the cheshire cat, requesting special units to apprehend the Joker and henchmen. Also requesting a hazards team to evacuate a set of contained canisters and block off the area. I don't think I got them all. Over."
He lets his hand fall and he keeps his yellow-green eyes on the Joker, waiting for backup to arrive as his transmission to the BSA is relayed over to all available authorities.
Jimmy Olsen is in Gotham on a job, to meet up with a contact about a series of tech-crimes occurring in New York and leading here. So, he's in ragged clothes, quasi-undercover, and just looking like another burned-out member of the lower classes. The sounds of conflict draw him, however, since here there could be a story as well. He turns the corner at a trot and slows, then.. freezes. He takes in the scene, and the camera is out before he knows it, recording: video and stills. The closer he gets, well, the more exciting it is. One of the lesser know metas, and over there ... Jimmy is not a guy that knows fear very well, but there is Fear laying under that anvil. An icepick of fear stabs the youth in the guts, and he maintains his ground, but he keeps the camera on the fallen Clown Prince of Crime. To make sure he's fallen. And stays fallen. "Wow," he manages to say at last, as he clicks off several pics of the cat-man.
The Joker is not unconscious, but neither is he particularly in a position to go about making more of a fuss. His wrist is shredded from Vorpal's claws and his shoulder is probably broken from the anvil, but does this stop the laughing? Hell no. 
This just makes it more amusing to the Clown. 
Even more amusing when Vorpal calls Lewis Carrol a dream. 
Coughing and ouing painfully with each chortling, demeaning, laugh... the sickening sound of it saturating the alleys and ringing down the street like a tornado siren. 
The GCPD were already on the way, called by one of the luckys that got away before the clown had a chance to start holding hostages... Pulling up with their white and blue sirens whirling above the padded wagon that is meant to hold creatures like Killer Croc... and men with enough fire power to invade a small nation. All of them creeping towards the temporarily crippled clown with the caution he has earned. 
His eyes roll to the side, watching them come... then up at Vorpal. Then back again... cackling like a maniac as he springs up at one of the officers so suddenly it catches the others completely off guard. 
His fingernails dig into the man's throat and severe his windpipe... eyes glaring over the bleeding cops shoulder at the others.. But he's surrounded and they have tasers. The prongs hit him from every direction and send volt after volt of paralytic electricity through him. At first he laughs it off, tap dancing, 'Ou ou ouing' dramatically, but even the Clown has limits... and he's well passed them. 
Down he goes, back arching painfully as the close in and kick him over onto his back. Assault weapons pointed down at him. Someone comes to get Vorpal's statement... 
"HAHAHA..." Hes still fighting them, laughing at them, daring them to shoot him... swatting feebly at their weapons and headbutting them. He even manages to bite one of their ears off before they finally get him into handcuffs. Only for him to break his own hand to slip free and limp off away from them at about the speed of a dying turtle. It isn't a very long escape and they're not taking anymore chances. Slamming the butt of their rifle into the back of the clown's skull with enough force to knock him out... 
The Joker also has wooden teeth. That's an important point of note. 
Because this is a period piece. 
The cat stands there-- he moves forward to try and stop the Joker from attacking the police-- but they had surrounded him, he had no leverage...and he was still slow from the shock. He gives his statement to the officer, his eyes following the Joker's trajectory with such contained fire that it is a miracle the clown doesn't combust on the spot.
Next time... he is going to play things differently.
Once the Joker is unconscious and he has given his statement, he can't hold anymore. The cat falls backwards, not cracking his head on the pavement only by virtue of there already being a car there. As he basically fall-sits on the hood, he sets off the alarm. But he doesn't care. As soon as the Joker's lights had gone out, his eyes had changed, and a vulnerability that he hardly let anyone see appeared in them. He closed his eyes and held his head in his hands.
Jimmy Olsen almost runs. He hasn't run from mad Apokoliptian soldiers, WarWorld minions, or The Devil. But those were not as bad as this. But he does stay his ground and gets those pictures, those horrible, horrible pictures that only the sleaziest of magazines would buy. He'll have to do some... cropping to get some sellable or even publishable material out of that series, a back-part of his brain tells him.
He sees the young hero and also gets pics of him in this moment of vulnerability, part and parcel of this entire tableau. He has the story, has has the evidence. So at the end, he puts the camera away and walks over to the striped hero and puts a hand on his shoulder. "Are you OK?" he asks levelly. "Well, shoot, you're not, but I mean..." Yeah, there are really no words, are there. "Coffee?" Lame, perhaps, but what could have any real impact against what just went down, here?
The cat looks up at Jimmy, kicking himself for not being able to hold back his meltdown. "W-what?" he asks, looking at the young reporter, almost as if he didn't understand English.
The Officers bind the Joker in a way that is probably overkill, but well worth every extra chain and lock they apply before lifting him up as one to take him to the padded wagon. His head hangs forward, the dress he's wearing (he's wearing a dress, by the way) is hanging down and dragging along the cement. They force toss him into the wagon and slam the doors... 
Half of them wish they could just execute him on the spot. The other half are worried they might miss and wake him up if they tried. 
Everyone of them, in the back of their mind, knows there's no way the walls of Arkham can keep the Clown held. They just hope they do. It's really all they've got going for them. 
The vehicle pulls off, sirens whirling and men in hazmats show up to collect the canisters of Joker gas. Blocking off the street until they've done a thorough search for any more. Everyone vaguely wondering why he chose 'this' street... there was a reason right? 
It's going to be a long night for the GCPD. They've got a lot of work to do, between cleaning up the bodies of the Joker's henchmen and the EMTs seeing to the fallen officers (who will probably make it, all things considered.) Can you say free early retirement? 
Obama Care. 
Joker voted for it. 
Category:Log