The massive screen in the city's central plaza flickered to life. Simultaneously, every device capable of receiving a signal auto-switched to a single broadcast.
"Ha—ha—now we're gonna play a game! Me and this... this..." The Joker was dressed in his usual getup—purple suit, vivid painted lips. He scratched his head, apparently unable to come up with a suitable name for the Batman Who Laughs.
"This even more ridiculous Batman! Gotham is mine, and you're nothing but a shoddy knockoff. Remember that..."
The Joker was still rambling when Batman locked onto the Batman Who Laughs' trail. The TV broadcast was a diversion. Wayne Manor, the GCPD—all traps, just waiting to see who'd take the bait first.
Three minds of equally towering intellect, and none of them bit. Batman didn't know what the Joker was up to now, but through a trail of breadcrumbs he'd already pinpointed the enemy's location.
Like a black phantom, he streaked through the urban wreckage and quickly found his target.
An abandoned chemical plant, derelict for years. In the dead of night, not a single light burned. Compared to the chaos downtown, this place was silent as a tomb.
Batman located five perimeter alarm devices, their coverage leaving almost no blind spots. He slipped past them anyway.
The plant's grounds were vast. He had to pick up the pace—ground-level tracks suggested the Joker had already gotten in ahead of him.
Batman feared the Joker might actually defeat the Batman Who Laughs, might defeat this nightmare of his own making. If the Joker defeated this nightmare version of himself, it wouldn't just affect the godhood situation—it would shake Batman's own conviction to the core.
If madness ultimately triumphed over reason, then every principle he'd upheld for all these years meant nothing. That was something Batman absolutely could not accept.
But neither did he want to see the Joker lying in a pool of his own blood, beaten by an even crazier version of himself. That would burden him with a guilt that felt like he'd killed the Joker with his own hands.
Conflicted as he was, Batman stayed sharp. He didn't let his guard slip for a second as he crept deeper into the plant.
The factory had been abandoned for ages. A crudely dug tunnel led straight down into the earth. Batman inspected it, then slowly lowered himself in.
The passage was long—it felt like it descended hundreds of meters underground. When he finally emerged from the winding tunnel, he found himself in a sprawling network of underground caverns. Batman paused, taken aback. He had no idea whether Gotham's subterranean layers in his own world concealed a cavern system this vast.
Visibility was poor, but phosphorescent stone pillars scattered throughout cast a faint glow. The light refracted several times before reaching his eyes, lending everything a slightly distorted quality.
After a quick survey of the environment, he listened. Wind carried the faint ring of metal striking metal. Judging the direction, the fight wasn't far. Batman moved toward it on silent feet.
"Trash! Hehe. Vermin of the human race. Freak! Your very existence is a tragedy!" A voice barely above a whisper cut through the cavern—soft but loaded with force, audible even at a distance.
Batman pressed himself behind an enormous stone column and watched. In the center of the clearing, the Joker had been completely overwhelmed. His purple suit was drenched in blood.
He lay flat on his back, blood streaming from the corners of his mouth. The sleeve of his left arm had been ripped away, the elbow grotesquely swollen.
Standing over him was a tall, gaunt figure. Black leather hugged his lean frame. Over his eyes sat a spiked metal visor, savage and terrifying—like some fiend crawled straight out of hell. His mouth stretched beyond any human limit, the grin splitting his face ear to ear. Crimson gums and bone-white teeth sent an involuntary shudder down the spine.
This was a Batman who had inhaled Joker Venom. Now he called himself the Batman Who Laughs.
Unlike Batman's solid, muscular build, this one was on the thin side. His jawbone jutted downward into a sharp chin, radiating malice.
The Batman Who Laughs held an iron rod. He swung it straight into the Joker's cheek. "Scum! Society's maggot! Freak! Hehe—I don't know what world you crawled out of, but I've killed you before. Snapped your neck. And I have to say, that feeling was absolutely exquisite! Hehe—"
Another blow. The left side of the Joker's face caved in. Teeth flew through the air in bloody arcs.
The Joker answered with an even louder cackle. "You're a complete idiot! Always have been! Ha—ha—is a Batman without rules even a Batman? This game of yours is no fun at all!"
A metallic clatter. Apparently deciding that weapons weren't satisfying enough, the Batman Who Laughs tossed aside the rod. Having the Joker right before his eyes for so long stirred something deeply uncomfortable—his old personality seemed to flicker back to life. He forced the sensation down, face twisted in a savage grin, and drove his fists into the Joker again and again.
"Go on, laugh! Hehe—let me tell you something! Strip away those childish rules and self-imposed restraints, and only one truth remains: Batman always wins!" He attacked in a frenzy. His knuckles split open, exposing raw flesh. He didn't care.
The Joker, on the receiving end, was in even worse shape. Not a patch of unbroken skin remained on his face, blood weeping from every pore. One eye had gone blind. And yet the beating only made him happier—he kept yelling for his tormentor to hit harder.
"It's over! I don't have time for your little games, you bastard. Hehe—" The Batman Who Laughs was winded from the assault. Without Batman's monk-like discipline, long-term physical training had lost its purpose. His stamina was a far cry from his prime.
He pulled an antique revolver from inside his coat and leveled it at the Joker's skull.
"Recognize this gun? The very one that killed Thomas Wayne and Martha Wayne! Dying by it should be an honor!"
"Hm?" Just as he prepared to pull the trigger, he noticed the Joker had produced a gun of his own, aimed squarely at his heart.
Before the Batman Who Laughs could stall with some clever remark, the Joker squeezed the trigger.
Click. The imagined shot to the heart, the collapse, the death—none of it happened. Instead, a tiny flag popped out of the barrel. In the cavern's faint breeze, the little flag fluttered back and forth, its soft rustling almost mocking.
"Hahaha—idiot!..."
The Batman Who Laughs blinked. Then he laughed too—doubled over, gun still pointed at the Joker. "I'll give you this: as an opening act, you're perfect. You've got more life in you than the Joker I knew. Hehe—but I'm the punchline. You get that?"
"So shoot already! Haha—"
The Batman Who Laughs' grin stretched even wider. "Glad you've finally made your peace."
A split second before his finger closed on the trigger, he heard the sharp hiss of movement behind him. The Joker's laughter rang out: "Haha—idiot! I wasn't talking to you!"