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Chapter 7 – The Invitation
The jet cut through the night sky, its engines humming like a low growl. Gotham spread out below like a wound that never healed, black veins of streets and flickering lights scattered like broken stars.
Bruce sat in silence. His hands rested on his knees, but his knuckles were tight. Years had gone into his training—years of pain, discipline, learning things most men would call impossible. He had returned to Gotham with a purpose, a fire in his chest that had never dimmed.
But as Alfred steered the jet towards the manor, Bruce couldn't shake the feeling that he was already late. The city felt… different. Like a circus tent pitched overnight while no one was looking.
"You've been gone too long," Alfred said quietly, as though reading his thoughts. "Gotham hasn't waited for you."
Bruce only gave a grunt in reply. His eyes stayed fixed on the skyline. Somewhere in the shadows of that city, something was stirring. Something that wasn't the mob, wasn't the petty criminals he knew. He could feel it in his bones—the storm had already started.
---
On the other side of Gotham, a single bulb buzzed in a damp basement.
Jack Napier leaned over a scarred table, sleeves rolled up, goggles fogged with sweat. Glass beakers clinked as he poured a sickly green liquid into another, steam hissing when the mix reacted. The smell was sharp, chemical, enough to make most men gag, but Jack's nose twitched like he was sniffing perfume.
He muttered to himself, half-jokes, half-formulas. "Two drops, maybe three—ah, who cares? Science should have a little surprise in it. Don't you think, Jackie boy?" He grinned at his reflection in the round-bottom flask, teeth bared too wide.
The liquid inside bubbled violently, and for a moment it looked like it might explode. Jack didn't flinch. He just tilted his head, watching the angry reaction settle into a thick purple sludge. He dipped a thin rod in and pulled it out, the fumes curling in the air.
"Beautiful," he whispered. "A joke in a bottle. Everyone loves to laugh, right? Some just… don't know it yet."
He set the beaker aside carefully, like a parent laying down a newborn. His hands, however, trembled—not from fear, but excitement. The kind of jittery anticipation that gnawed at his stomach.
He turned, eyes scanning the rest of the basement.
Half of it looked like a science fair gone wrong—wires tangled across the floor, old carnival toys gutted and rebuilt into contraptions with teeth, balloons filled with strange gases tied to rusty pipes. The other half looked like a rehearsal for madness: mannequins with painted smiles, chairs arranged in circles, a carousel horse leaning broken against the wall.
This wasn't just a plan. It was theater.
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The place he had chosen for his masterpiece wasn't random.
An abandoned circus tent on the edge of the Narrows, once filled with children's laughter and sticky candy smells, now sagged under rain and rot. Jack walked through it slowly earlier that night, boots crunching broken popcorn boxes and shards of glass.
He could still hear the echoes.
"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!" He spread his arms, mock-announcing to the empty air. "Step right up for the show of a lifetime!"
His laugh bounced around the empty space, sharp and uneven.
The rides were broken, but that only made them better. A ferris wheel leaned dangerously, its supports rusted through. The carousel creaked when the wind pushed it. Jack touched one of the horses, paint flaking under his fingers.
Perfect.
He could already see it—the mob bosses sitting in these rotting seats, the gas seeping in from under their feet, the panic rising while he stood center stage. The circus was dead, yes. But under him, it would live again.
Jack dragged crates into position, arranging things without a clear order but with an instinct that felt right. Balloons here, a stage light there, a barrel full of God-knows-what in the corner. He wasn't building a trap the way an engineer would. He was building a stage the way a comedian would.
And the punchline would kill.
---
Back in the basement, he returned to his table, mixing again. The purple sludge had cooled into a paste. Jack carefully scraped it into a row of glass spheres, sealing them one by one. He hummed as he worked, an off-key tune that made the silence worse.
When the last sphere was packed away, he sat back and lit a cigarette. The smoke curled up and tangled with the fumes, making his eyes sting.
"Almost ready," he said to no one. "Almost ready for the world to see the clown."
The word hung in the air. The Clown. That's what they were calling him in whispers already. Jack didn't hate it. Not yet. But he knew it wasn't the real name. Not the one he'd announce when the curtain went up. That would come later. For now, Clown was fine. Let them laugh—he would laugh louder.
---
He picked up a card.
It wasn't just any card—it was a playing card, but modified. A hand-drawn grin stretched across the face, the teeth sharp, the eyes wild. Jack had spent an hour hunched over it earlier, red ink staining his fingertips.
On the back, in jagged letters, he'd written:
"You're Invited.
Come laugh with me."
The recipient? Sal Maroni himself. Gotham's mob underboss, a man too arrogant to ignore an insult.
Jack slipped the card into an envelope, licking it shut with a grin. He tapped it against his palm, as if feeling the weight of the chaos it carried.
"Every good show needs an audience," he murmured. "And every audience needs a fool who thinks he's in control."
He chuckled, low at first, then higher. The laugh echoed off the basement walls, sharp enough to crawl under the skin.
---
Outside, Gotham shivered.
Batman's boots hit the rooftop, cape whipping behind him as he looked out over the city he had returned to save. But the wind carried something new tonight. Something strange. He didn't know it yet, but the Clown had already sent out his invitations.
And the first act was about to begin.