The city crouched under low clouds and sodium lamps, orange light puddling on rain-sheened streets. Gotham National Bank loomed like a mausoleum for money—granite ribs, brass doors, a clock that had been five minutes fast since the '20s.
It was late enough that the sidewalks were thin and the night watch inside had started counting minutes instead of hours.
A black van rolled to a stop half on the curb, tires chirping. The passenger door opened with a creak that sounded like a laugh. Men in discount clown masks piled out, jackets too big, gloves too new, rifles held like promises they weren't sure they could keep. Their steps were quick, jittery. Streetlight caught gloss paint: red grins, blue teardrops, eyes that didn't blink.
Then He climbed down from the back.
He didn't hurry. He slid to the pavement like he'd dropped out of a painting—hair the green of a mossed-over dollar, face a white ruin under greasepaint, black-rimmed eyes that drank in the building as if it were a dessert he'd ordered for himself.
He stretched, vertebrae clicking audibly, jacket hanging loose and purple and wrong. He rolled his neck, tongue dragging thoughtfully along the inside of a scar.
"Home sweet home," he rasped, looking up at the carved stone letters: GOTHAM NATIONAL. "Let's take their temperature."
A goon with a mask painted like a weeping clown swallowed. "Boss, you said easy in and out."
"Mm." Joker's head bobbed, indecisive. "In and out. Yes. We go in. We go out. Somewhere in there," he wobbled a hand, "we rearrange the furniture."
He clapped once, sharp as a starter pistol.
The back doors of the van banged open. Out came the battering ram, cheap welds and borrowed bolts, and a duffel of charges that smelled like a fireworks stand that had decided to grow teeth. Joker hefted a canvas bag marked with a cartoon dollar sign somebody's joke, and slung it over his shoulder.
"Remember your lines," he sang softly. "We're doing a comedy. No one shoots unless I laugh."
He didn't wait for replies. He strutted toward the revolving brass doors. A gloved hand jammed a wedge of steel into the rotor. The ram swung—one, two—and the glass burst inward in a spray of bright stars. Silence inside cracked.
The security guard on duty—late middle age, paunch under a too-small belt—blinked awake with a shout that died in his throat when he saw the masks. He got the pistol halfway out. A goon surged at him and would've fired if Joker's single tap on the rifle barrel hadn't angled it into the ceiling.
"Hey," Joker murmured cheerfully, pushing the muzzle down with two fingers. "Manners. Count to five. Inside voices."
He leaned across the counter toward the guard, close enough that the metallic scent of his breath pushed past the bank smell of wax and paper. The knife flashed and rested, leisurely, against the guard's throat. "Let's not be tragic, Gary." He peered at the name plate on the desk.
"Gary. Good. Gary, would you like to live to retire?"
The guard stared, Adam's apple bouncing under the blade. He nodded, tiny, terrified.
"See?" The Joker beamed at the room. "Consensus!" He lifted the knife, patted the guard's cheek with the flat of it, then pivoted and vaulted onto the teller counter with a suddenness that made three people yelp. He slid along the marble, boots squeaking, spreading his arms.
"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!" Joker's voice cracked through the air like broken glass wrapped in velvet. He clapped his hands, mock applause echoing through the chamber. "Welcome to your… early retirement fund redistribution program!"
He kicked over a guard who tried to crawl away, planting his foot firmly on the man's chest. His tongue darted over his scarred lips.
"Now, now… don't be shy. This is a bank, isn't it? Where money comes in… and occasionally goes out. Like right now."
Guns swept the lobby with shouts to get down. Tellers raised trembling hands, customers flattened themselves to the floor. A mother clutched her teen son; a man in a gray suit muttered "Oh God" on a loop. The oversize clock ticked. A fountain burbled. Somewhere deep, a phone started to ring and wouldn't stop.
A banker pleaded. "Just take the money, don't harm anybody."
Joker crouched, face inches from the trembling banker. "See, I don't really care about the money. No, no, no… money is… boring."
His eyes widened, intensity radiating like a fever. "But you know what isn't boring? Watching the look on your faces when the rules you cling to… stop working."
Joker hopped down and strolled through the middle of the chaos, humming a children's rhyme off-key, letting his fingers skate along polished surfaces as if he were blind and reading by touch.
He paused at a bronze plaque listing donors. "Names," he breathed, almost lovingly. "So much heavier than numbers. All this to make a column taller on a piece of paper somewhere."
Behind him the crew worked. Two masked men dragged the ram to the inner steel gate; another pair zip-tied wrists, stacked phones in a satchel, kicked them under a desk. One hustled across the floor with a coil of plastic explosive, teeth gripping a pull-strip, eyes too wide for sanity. They weren't smooth, but they were motivated—fear made a tight choreography.
At the security desk, the guard slid his panic button hand toward the underside lip. The Joker, already ten feet away, didn't even glance back. He lifted his left hand at shoulder height and snapped his fingers. A goon's boot crushed the guard's wrist to the desk with a wet crunch and the guard howled.
"Gary," Joker said without turning, "we talked about retirement."
The guard bit off more noise, teeth pink. The goon looked sick under his mask. Joker drifted along the line of tellers, head cocked. He stopped at a young woman who couldn't stop crying. Tear tracks cut little roads through powder.
"Hi," he said, peering at her name plate. "Madison. Madison, this is your lucky day. You get to help me with a magic trick."
He slid a single chip-like disc from his sleeve and clicked it into place on the counter. "Hold this button if anyone decides to be heroic. You'll know it when you feel like pressing it."
He leaned close, conspiratorial. "Trust your instincts. They were screaming for a reason when you married Kyle."
She blinked, thrown through her fear. "H-how—"
He tapped the disc. "Listening device. Secured. You people talk too loudly in break rooms." He walked away, making her sigh in relief. But he suddenly spun back and returned.
"Oh, almost forgot to ask. That's not good manners now. Pardon me Madison, Do you wanna know, how I got these scars, hmm? Maybe you want a facial surgery to smile more, like me? Kyle would love to see you smile more." Joker asked her as if he was kindly offering help.
Madison cried in fear. " N..no! I don't want to ! P-Please, don't hurt me."
Joker sighed. " Party pooper. No wonder he is sleeping with your best friend. This marriage is a bad joke." Madison widened her eyes in disbelief as she stared at her friend who flinched away.
Joker giggled and spun away, trench coat flaring.
****
At the vault corridor, the crew slapped charge putty into seams, hands shaking. One of them, the smallest, checked his phone, cursed. "Cops'll be here in three—"
"Two," Joker corrected softly, drifting behind him. He plucked the detonator from the man's belt. "The police admire punctuality, which is why they're always late."
He patted the man's shoulder and sauntered back toward the lobby center, speaking without raising his voice, and somehow everyone heard him: "We're on a clock boys, and the clock is being rude." He casually shot the big clock making it shatter. "There now, all better."
The vault charges thumped—four dull, concussive blows that made the building grunt. The heavy door didn't so much open as admit defeat, its locking teeth surrendering with a grind. Hot air gusted from the vault like a machine exhaling.
"Go fetch," Joker waved. Three goons disappeared inside with sacks.
He didn't follow. He found a spot under the clock, put his back to a marble column, and stared up. He licked his lips slow, eyes tracking the second hand as if it were a small animal he might pounce on. He spoke to the empty air beside him. "He's late."
A goon muttered, "Who?"
Joker didn't answer. His head tilted. He smiled without happiness. "Showtime."
The vault door groaned open under another henchman's work. Cash spilled like a flood. Joker twirled, arms spread wide, as though conducting an orchestra.
Then—
The lobby went dark. (Imagine if someone played Undertaker theme music 💀)
The sound of glass cracking high above drew every gaze upward. A single shape dropped from the shadows and landed with a thundering crash on the marble floor. The figure rose slowly, cape spreading like the wings of a gargoyle.
"Oh Batman, it's rude to keep your friends waiting." Joker whispered, his grin stretching impossibly wider.
"End of the line, Joker, give up now. " Batman growled, voice a low rumble that shook the hostages from their paralysis.
A second shadow followed, faster, younger. Robin dropped in a three-point landing that snapped into a spin, twin sticks in his hands flashing steel. The yellow of his cape's lining flashed under the cold lights and went dark again when he settled it.
Joker clapped delightedly, spinning on his heel. "Oh-ho-ho! I knew tonight was going to be fun! Robin, too! What's the matter, Bats? Didn't trust yourself to play with me alone anymore?"
The room gasped.
Joker clapped, polite and delighted. "He brought a plus one," he said brightly. "We should've made more cupcakes. Someone, please order a kid's meal from McDonald's."
Robin stepped forward, staff extending with a metallic snap. "You're done, Joker. Put the money down."
Joker tilted his head, mock hurt on his painted face. "Money? Money, money, money… did I say this was about money? Oh no, bird boy. Tonight is about fun. About chaos." His voice dropped into a guttural snarl. "About watching your city bleed from the inside."
Batman advanced, his cape sweeping the floor. "You're not leaving here." His eyes already scanning the bank for plans.
Guns snapped toward the caped pair. Joker didn't move to stop it. He watched. He wanted the music to start.
It started.
The first rifle cracked and Batman moved, not away but toward—two steps, a twist, the shot smacked into his raised gauntlet and died. He slammed the shooter's wrist, the rifle clanged away, a knee drove up into a floating rib, the man folded.
Another goon fired wild, Robin's stick flicked and the muzzle jerked aside, the ricochet bit marble, the second stick slid under the man's forearm, leverage popped shoulder, the scream was high and shocked.
"Left," Batman said. Robin spun left without needing a reason and intercepted the butt of a rifle, rebounded with a heel to a knee. He didn't look sixteen; he looked like a blade that had grown legs.
A third goon charged Batman from behind with a knife and met darkness—cape wrapped, sight gone, the knife whipped harmless in the shroud, two punches broke ribs through Kevlar, a head-butt turned lights out. Batman let him tumble unconscious and turned with the cape's trailing edge snapping like a flag.
The vault team came sprinting out, sacks slamming against their thighs, and saw a demon in their way. One panicked and squeezed the trigger of a submachine gun, the muzzle firing.
Batman moved through the burst, armor taking a few sparks, the rest spatting into the floor. He caught the man's forearm and shoulder, twisted, and the gun went flying.
He used the man to knock the next down, then stepped into the third with an elbow that lifted teeth from jaw like a magician stealing coins. The sacks sprawled, money flowed like confetti.
Joker watched, charmed. He clapped twice, faster. "God, you're good at this."
Robin barreled through a pair that tried to flank Batman, sticks beating a rhythm—wrist, temple, hip, a sweep, a stomp—and then he was between a screaming teller and a trembling goon trying to look big. "Walk away," Robin said. Calm, firm. "Now."
The man's finger tightened by reflex. Robin's stick crunched the trigger guard in a spark-shower and the man yelped, dropped the weapon, held his hand like it had bitten him. Robin lifted the stick and the man raised both hands, backing toward the floor with the others.
Joker didn't join immediately. He danced backward, clapping and laughing as his men fell one by one.
"You can stop now. We can get you the help you need." Batman said across the room without raising his voice.
Joker tilted his head. "Oh, I can stop lots of things. I stopped drinking dairy." He wagged his eyebrows. "Sadly, chaos is lactose-tolerant."
He reached into his coat and with a sudden flick of his wrist tossed a metallic device across the room. It clattered against the marble.
Batman's eyes locked on it—a tear-shaped device with too many seams.
"Get Down!" he shouted.
The explosion tore through the far wall, a deafening roar of heat and flame. Hostages screamed, ducking as rubble crashed around them. The blast didn't hit Batman or Robin directly, but the shockwave staggered them both. Smoke filled the air, choking and thick.
Through the haze, Joker's cackle split the night.
"Can't have you ending the party too early!"
From his pockets, Joker produced several small canisters, painted crudely with mocking smiles. He hurled them to the floor, one after the other. Green gas erupted instantly, spreading in rolling clouds across the lobby.
Scarecrow's Fear toxin.
Batman yanked his cape forward, shielding a group of hostages, his respirator kicking in. Robin snapped his mask tighter, filtering the air. But even with precautions, the toxin burned in their lungs, clawing at their minds.
"Breathe it in!" Joker shrieked, arms wide, spinning amid the chaos. His laughter grew wild, unhinged. "Smell that? That's the scent of truth! When you strip away the rules, the masks, the lies—you see what people really are!"
Hostages screamed, some clawing at invisible terrors. One banker curled into a fetal ball, sobbing about demons in the shadows. A guard fired his pistol at nothing, eyes wide with madness.
Batman pushed through, determined, his voice hard even as the gas tried to worm into his thoughts. "Joker! Stop this now!"
Robin fought back panic, his staff swinging at hallucinations before he forced himself to focus, grounding in his training. He shouted through the haze, "He's getting away!"
Joker was already backing toward the broken wall, his silhouette framed by smoke and fire. He bowed theatrically.
"Thank you, thank you! You've all been a wonderful audience tonight! But the curtain must fall, and the clown must crawl…"
His voice dropped, chilling. "See you around, Bats."
Batman took three quick steps to Madison, whose hands were frozen above the panic button Joker had left her. She couldn't breathe, pupils blown. "Madison." Batman's voice cut through the fog, low and steady.
"Look at me." He put a rebreather between her hands and made her hold it to her face. "Slow breaths." She did, with a choked sob. "Good. Stay down."
Robin waded into gas and chaos. He dropped to a knee beside the mother and son, pressed filters into their hands, wrapped his cape around them to shield them from the worst of the cloud. "You're okay," he said, flexing his voice into something soft. "Big breaths. It's a bad dream. That's all."
The boy stared up at him with dilation and awe, nodding. Robin squeezed his shoulder and rose in one smooth ignition of motion, eyes up.
Batman cut the distance between him and Joker.
Batman's first jab went to the shoulder to scatter balance; Joker let it hit and rolled with it, grinning, and slashed up. The blade scritched along the armor where the plates met and left a superficial kiss of silver on matte black.
"You changed the stitching," Joker crooned, delighted. "Somebody's been reading their fan mail."
Batman's counter was brutal: a forearm to Joker's knife wrist, a grab, a twist. The blade flashed away, skittering across marble. Joker didn't go for it. He leaned in close, breath sour with chemicals, and whispered like they were conspirators: "You can't fix people. You can barely fix plumbing. Wanna hear a joke?"
Then he head-butted Batman. The motion was sudden and nasty; it rang a little behind Batman's eyes. Joker giggled and flowed out of reach with a boneless drop to his back .
Behind them, two last goons stumbled out of the vault with sacks. Robin planted himself between them and the world. "Don't," he said.
"Kid, you don't want—" one started, raising the bag as if it were a weapon. Robin stepped in and sideways at once, the bag whooshed over his head, his stick tagged the man's knee, the joint buckled, and Robin's second stick rapped the back of the skull. The man dropped bonelessly. The other blanched and tried to run, found Batman in his path, and put his hands up so fast the bones cracked audibly.
Joker peeked around Batman's shoulder like a child at a theater trying to see above grown-ups' heads. "You got yourself a pet bird," he sing-songed. "Didn't you learn? Birds fly away when you open the cage."
Batman didn't look back at Robin. "He's not like you," he said simply.
Something knotted in Joker's expression at that, something unreadable that went quick and gone.
He tutted once, twice, tempo rising. "I was going to take the money," he said, more to himself than anyone, and then louder, to the room, "but loot is so… yesterday." He pulled a small remote from his pocket and waved it, tiny red light blinking. "What matters is headlines."
Batman lunged. Joker laughed and thumbed the button.
Joker stood at the base of the ramp, framed in the hard rectangle of street lighting, as if he'd arrived on a stage that had been waiting to be born. He had one hand in his pocket and the other lifted in a little wave. "We should do lunches," he said brightly. "Do you like Thai? I love Thai. The spicy stuff makes me feel alive."
"Put it down," Batman said.
"Put what down?" Joker asked innocently.
"The remote."
"Oh." Joker produced it between thumb and forefinger like a magician revealing a coin behind your ear. "This old thing?" He rolled it across his knuckles. "You're not listening, Bats. I don't need it anymore." He tossed it. Batman snatched it out of the air by reflex, read the design in a blink—there were no more paired frequencies. Joker grinned, knowing exactly what Batman had seen.
Robin's escrima sticks hummed softly as he rolled them in his palms. "You're not getting on that bus."
"Oh, I am." Joker rocked on his heels, pleased. "I love public transit. The little ads. The smells. The way strangers pretend you're not there while you bleed on their shoes."
He whistled. The bus door hissed open. Inside, a driver in a clown mask sat too still. Two more masked men were already in seats, hands visible, empty.
"New friends?" Robin asked, glancing quick.
"Old friends with new jokes," Joker said. "I'd invite you, but you'd ruin the punchline."
Batman stepped forward. Joker didn't back away. He lowered his voice to something intimate and cruel. "Do you ever get tired? Rushing in, hauling out, patching leaks in a boat made out of rules?" He leaned forward, eyes hungry. "What happens the day it breaks and you finally swim?"
Batman stopped a yard away. "It won't be today."
"It's always today," Joker whispered.
He flicked a tiny glass sphere down at Batman's feet, a bead no bigger than a pearl. It was magical in origin. The burst wasn't sound or heat. It was worse: a metal-taste that made sinuses burn and eyes water and muscles twitch out of command. Batman stumbled a half-step. Robin did too, teeth clenched.
Joker laughed, delighted. "Ah, magic ! Where would we be without it. A little gift from my new friends."
He threw his calling card down at Batman. " And for my next trick, I'll make myself disappear! Hahahahahaha" He threw a smoke bomb and left with the people who came to pick him up.
Batman and Robin walked back into the bank's high hall after recovering, cape dragging water that drew black calligraphy across the marble.
He took everything in: the sprayed cash, the crater of the first explosion, the chemical sheen on puddles, the trajectory of the bus's tires outside across the alley's wet. He knelt by one of Joker's canisters, picked it up with tongs, and sealed it in a capsule from his belt. He glanced up at the clock. It was still five minutes fast.
Robin trotted to his side, breathing steadier now that the worst of the gas had thinned. "We almost had him."
"We interrupted him," Batman said.
"Feels the same until it doesn't."
Police lights strobed red-blue beyond the shattered doors. The wail of sirens hit the lobby and bounced, dizzying. A shouted command from uniforms in the street, then the measured thunder of boots.
Commissioner Jim Gordon's voice cut across , sharp, already pissed. "Batman! You're still inside? Anyone injured?"
"Multiple. Fear gas exposure," Batman called back. "We contained it. You'll need medics with charcoal kits and respirators."
Gordon moved into view, jaw tight, eyes doing calculus on the chaos. He took in the trussed goons, the unconscious ones, the civilians breathing through filters, Robin's steady presence by the crowd. He exhaled through her nose, a non-laugh. "Clown again?"
Batman nodded once.
Gordon lit up a cigarette. " You reckon we can find him tonight in Gotham?"
Batman's eyes lifted to the skylight's ragged mouth, where the rain had just begun to fall in tin-prick points. "No," he said, and the certainty was worse than doubt. "He's already somewhere else."
Somewhere else was a bus threading through late-night traffic, heater rattling, lights flickering, three clown-masked men sitting too straight, the driver's hands at ten and two in a grip that had nothing to do with safe driving.
The Joker stood in the aisle, swaying with the motion, peering out the slatted window at skyscrapers sheening rain, at pedestrians scurrying with collars up and heads down.
He licked his lips and checked the looped feed on a cheap phone: interior bank cameras replaying on delay, the moment Batman dropped through the skylight, the exact instant the cape spread like a threat. He paused it there and looked at the frozen frame. He smiled, but it wasn't joy; it was appetite.
"See you soon," he told the tiny, unmoving Batman on the screen.
Behind him, two goons finally exhaled. One found his courage. "Boss… you could've… I mean, we could've—"
"Won?" Joker finished, turning his head slow. He let the word hang until it went sour. "I'm not interested in winning."
The goon swallowed. "Then… what?"
Joker's smile widened, cracked greasepaint flaking at the edges. "Growth."
***
Back at the bank, Batman and Robin stood on the marble beneath the broken skylight. Rain tapped the floor in staccato circles. EMTs moved through the shaken, oxygen masks blooming like plastic flowers.
Gordon gave orders without raising his voice, and they were obeyed because he was tired and reasonable and exactly the kind of cop who didn't get medals.
"Go," he told Batman without looking at him, which was how you spoke to a ghost you used. "Before the cameras get a good angle."
"We'll send the fear gas analysis," Batman said.
Gordon snorted. "Already cleared a desk for it." He glanced at Robin and softened a breath. "Good work, kid."
Robin gave her a quick nod that tried not to be proud and failed a little.
They fired grapnels in sibling chords. Lines sang; boots left the ground. For a heartbeat they were only black arcs passing through open space, the rain making halos of the lines, the city opening its throat to them. They rose through the jagged mouth in the glass the way a note rises through an octave, and then they were gone, the wind swallowing them up.
Robin turned to Batman. "Are you going to contact the Clock tower?"
"Someone is giving Joker new tools, and Clock Tower deals with magical things." Batman said with a frown.
Somewhere a bus door hissed open, rain came in sideways, and the Joker stepped down into a puddle like a king descending into his kingdom. He raised his arms to the weather, face tipped back, tongue tasting the sky. "I love this town," he said to no one. "Reminds of that good joke. It's so funny that it always makes me laugh. Hahahahahaha...haha...hah..ha."
He walked away wobbling. " Soon Batsy... I'll prepare a killer joke for you..."
Then he disappeared into the darkness.