Capítulo 18: Chapter 18: Time's Up, Joker part 2/2.
More Advance chapters on P@treon.com/Saintbarbido.
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(General P.O.V)
Inside Gotham's decaying acid factory, the air was thick with the stench of chemicals and fear.
The Joker's maniacal laughter echoed, piercing through the dim, flickering light.
Twenty hostages — women and children — were bound on a platform suspended over vats of boiling green acid. Some of the children sobbed quietly, their faces pale with terror.
Joker paced in front of them, twirling a rusted crowbar in his hand, talking to someone only he could hear.
"Hehehehe...I'll be nearly unstoppable, huh?" he muttered to himself, his eyes gleaming.
From the shadows, Harley Quinn watched him warily, sucking on a lollipop. A frown tugged at her lips.
'Puddin's officially lost it,' she thought to herself, seeing him muttering to no one.
Suddenly, Joker spun on his heel, eyes bright with madness. An action that sent a fresh wave of terror through the hostages.
"Ahhh, Gotham's finest! Don't look so glum!" He threw his arms wide, laughing manically. "It's not every day you get to be part of something so...magnificent!"
Harley hesitated, biting her lip as she stared at the lever beside her. One she was supposed to pull. "Ya sure about this, Puddin'? A voice in your head? This feels... different. Even for us."
Joker shot her a wild-eyed grin. "Different? HA! That's the point!" He hopped up onto a railing, crowbar clattering to the ground.
"I've danced with the Bat for years! But this... this will make me more than a man. I'll be a demon, Harls. A high-ranking one at that! He upgraded to a flaming skeleton ya see? And I want a makeover too!" His eyes gleamed with excitement. "All it takes is a few innocent 'yuck' souls, and Gotham will be ours."
Harley clutched her mallet, shifting nervously. "But what if you're wrong? What if you're lettin' some voice lead you down a road you don't come back from?" she whispered.
Joker's smile dropped. He stepped closer to her, his voice cold. "Harley, shut up and do the thing."
Her fingers trembled as she wrapped them around the lever. She had seen Joker mad before, but this? There was something manic behind his eyes. Still, she couldn't refuse him.
"Anything for you, Puddin'," she muttered, pulling the lever to drop the hostages.
Before the platform could plunge them into the acid, the factory's doors exploded open.
Fiery chains ripped through the entrance, snapping taut around the lever and holding it in place.
Harley yelped.
The temperature increased.
A figure cloaked in flame and darkness stepped through the smoke — the Ghost Rider.
His skull blazed with an unholy blue fire, chains rattling around his leather body.
Joker blinked, momentarily stunned.
"Batsy! You made it! And look at you, all dressed up in your fancy new duds!" He waved toward the hostages. "You're just in time for the grand finale!"
The Ghost Rider said nothing, walking toward them with terrifying purpose. His boots crunched against the shattered glass and metal littering the floor.
Joker's grin faltered. "What's the matter, Batsy? Lose your voice in the whole 'deal with the devil' bit?" He taunted, stepping closer. "Well? Say something, or did you go dumb after you became the Ghost Rider?"
The Ghost Rider stopped inches from Joker, his voice rumbling like thunder. "I'M NOT BATMAN."
Joker's face twisted in confusion.
"Wait, WHAT?" He laughed nervously. "Not Batman? Impossible. A little birdie told me you switched up and I gotta say, digging the new look."
Leaning in he tapped the Rider's chest,
"By the way, hats off to you, for getting rid of the last guy. Who'd he think he was, strutting around 'our city' like a barbecue gone wrong? Jeez, some people have no manners."
Ghost Rider didn't flinch. He simply reached out, his flaming hand melting the lever Harley had pulled into a slag, fully preventing the hostages from falling.
Joker's eyes widened. "No, no! You can't just come in here and ruin my party Batsy! You're supposed to wait for me to level up too!" His voice cracked.
Before he could react further, Ghost Rider's chain whipped around Joker's wrist, searing his flesh.
"What are you doing!" Joker screeched, trying to pull free. The Rider lifted him effortlessly, bringing him face to face with the burning skull.
Green gas sprayed out of Joker's tie, right on the Rider's face.
"How's that Batman?! A little surprise I've been cooking up. Inspired in part by Scarecrow! It will drive you mad with fear and crack you apart with laughter! Hahahaha- Wait why is not working?"
The laugh ceased.
"YOU THINK YOU KNOW MADNESS," Ghost Rider growled. "BUT ALL YOU WILL KNOW IS FEAR."
"That's not in the script. You're supposed to be freaking out! It's not fair! Lemme go! Lemme go!"
The Joker desperately struggled against the hold on him.
"Leave my puddin alone, Flame head!"
Harley yelled out, smashing the mallet onto the Rider's skull. Wooden chips flew out as the oversized weapon shattered.
Harley meeped once the Ghost Rider turned her way, releasing the Joker to crumple to the floor.
"HARLEY QUINN, YOU ARE JUST AS GUILTY AS HE IS. YOU TOO WILL BE PUNISHED."
Harley barely said a word when her shoulders were suddenly grabbed, and the Rider subjected her to a full powered Penance Stare.
She screamed with great agony, eyes burning away with the glare of hellfire. Her body dropped, lifeless, holes where the eyes had been.
The factory fell silent with shock.
Joker stared at her body mutedly. Clutching his wrist, his breath became ragged.
A trace of sanity appeared in his eyes and he turned his head up,
"Youre not Batman. He never kills. Who... who the hell are you?" he whispered, barely audible.
The rider's form disappeared, leaving behind Michael, dressed in the same clothes he was wearing, when the Joker and Harley had visited him and his family. When they'd beat him up and made him watch...
Back then, Michael's face had been struck with horror and pain. But right now, as he loomed over the man he hated more than anything, Michael was grinning. Grinning so wide, it threatened to tear his face in two. "Who am I? I'm...REVENGE."
-Michael's P.O.V-
The stench of chemicals and rust, the grinding sound of mechanical parts, J'onn's scales rubbing across my neck, the dirty lighting...
I focused on everything else around me, but the Women and Children hostages. Because thinking about them, about what he had been planning to do to them...would make me lose every semblance of control and destroy him right where he stood.
Revenge is best served cold. And the Rider's flames, stoked by my hatred and anger were not appropriate for this particular dish. No, the Joker was not going to die so easily.
"Revenge?"
He chuckled a little, dragging himself onto unsteady feet.
"That's what this is about? So who did I kill? Or maim or irreversibly scar? Who did I take from you?"
His slimy words dripped with nauseaus saccharine.
"Was it a brother, parents? No no no...its someone more precious."
My jaw tightened and my smile dropped a little. It didn't go unnoticed.
"Ah-ah! A lover then!"
He snapped his fingers and pointed my way. I promised myself I would break them.
"Look, buddy-o, you killed Harls. Can't we just call it even and be friends? We can terrorize the city together. You just have to unmelt the lever, and look away as I drop these twenty women and children into a vat of acid to die horrible deaths, and in return you get to have a demon bestie. What do you say?"
"You sure about making a deal with a Demon?"
I rubbed my chin, as if thinking about it.
"But of course! One man's Demon is another clown's Best friend forever!"
"Mmmh, tempting, very tempting offer. But now I'm sure you don't remember me at all. If you did...you'd realize, my Dead Wife and Daughter are looking down right now, as I take revenge on the one who killed them. And they don't expect me to simply end you, Joker, I am going to Terrorize you."
"Oh crap."
He took a step back and tried to run away while calling for someone to 'help him like they had agreed'
It made me snicker in mirth, turning into a Yellow Lantern, while J'onn went to evacuate the hostages.
Joker had a good knowledge of the layout and made quick turns as I chased after him, not too close but never too far for him to see the yellow light glowing behind.
"No one's coming for youuu."
I projected my voice through the abandoned factory, the sound echoing off the walls.
"Let's talk about this!"
He yelled, voice followed by the blast of gunfire as I rounded up a corner.
His bleached face fell as the bullets bounced off my body, flattening against the yellow aura. Without hesitation, he was off fleeing again.
"Not Batman, not the devil and certainly not God. No one will save you from me today."
He took an elevator up, leading to the top floor, while I followed through the shute, melting a hole through the floor.
Emily and Sara rose through the hole as yellow constructs.
"Judgement is here for you..."
"N-no...no! Stay back! You're dead!"
Joker lashed out with a knife but the blade merely passed through them.
The elevator doors opened and he stumbled out in a desperate run onto the roof of the factory. Only to stop as he reached the end of the rooftop. The ground below was several feet away. A guaranteed death if he jumped.
"""You can run, but not from us."""
The wind around him whispered with his victim's voices, the memories copied from Joker's mind into my own by Martian Manhunter.
"S-Shut up! Shut your holes! Let me be!!"
He raved like a mad man, tearing out his own hair.
"I killed you! I killed all of you and I loved it! Is that what you want to hear..?"
"No. I just want you to experience the terror of being hunted. The despair of knowing you're the prey. And the freezing fear once you abandon all hope of living."
Wide eyes turned to the sky, at my descending form.
"I- I'm so scared...why am I so afraid?!"
The Joker muttered in a shaky voice, staring at his trembling hands,
"W- what did you do to me??!"
"Finally noticed it huh?"
When J'onn was inside his mind, I had him tweak something major.
"I took away your Insanity. Didn't want you using it as an excuse for your crimes. You know what they say about excuses right? They're like assholes, everyone has one and they stink."
My reveal sent him into a frenzy.
"No! Give it back! G-give it back!!"
He tried to claw at me, but a punch to the belly bent him to the ground.
My foot stepped on his head, grinding his face onto the roof.
"Behave yourself. We haven't even started yet."
"I don't want to die- Pl-please...I'm sorry..."
A cloud of fear emanated off his body, rising up for my ring to greedily devour.
All that took a backseat in lieu of my disbelief.
"Huh? You're begging?..."
"M-mercy...I won't do it agai-"
A kick dug into his side, cutting him off and cracking his ribs.
Suddenly I was beating the shit out of the Joker. Shattering bones, pulping flesh under my fists, coating myself with blood...only maintaining enough sense to not kill him.
"DIDNT YOU HEAR ME BEG YOU TO SPARE THEM?! DID YOU SHOW THEM MERCY??! NO! YOU DESTROYED OUR FAMILY! I NEVER DID ANYTHING TO YOU! WHY??! WHY?! WHHHHHHYYYY???!"
My breath came out harsh, now on my knees before a pile of meat in a blood stained purple mess.
"An -huff- Answer me Joker..."
"It's over Michael, He's dead."
J'onn said from my back. I hadn't even noticed his arrival.
'Dammit, I thought I held back...'
"No, It's not over J'onn."
I shook my head, changing my eyes into the Rider's soul gaze.
Above the corpse, Joker's spirit rose into the air, pulled by an invisible black portal that gave off a dark and fiery sensation.
A gate to hell.
"He's mine."
I growled, the Hope-Eater construct appearing between the ominous portal and swallowing Joker's soul.
A powerful presence rippled out of the portal, putting pressure on me, but I turned into the Ghost Rider and pushed back.
"DON'T MAKE ME REPEAT MYSELF. HE'S MINE TO PUNISH."
The presence trembled at my words and then retreated; along with the portal.
My vengeance was done. But the punishment had just begun.
For as long as I lived, the Joker's soul would suffer a never ending torment.
And in case you didn't know, The Ghost Rider is Immortal.
(Ghost Rider Template progress: 80%)
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Arc 1- Complete.
Give me suggestions on where you want him to go next. The first world is already decided(check P@treon)
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