View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
This isn't the bathroom, this isn't the bathroom at all.
"Excuse me I will be totally up for learning new magic stuff as is apparently required if someone will first direct me to a bathroom," Lexi says loudly to this bar full of people that is not even slightly a bathroom.
+ Show First Post
lexicality
manofmyword
[How much story do you want? If I'm gonna tell you the whole thing, might be better in person.]
incanted
Bella appears. Lexi scoots to make room for her; they squish together on the chair. "Let's hear it."
lexicality
"So basically if you ever get to the point where you don't, like, care if Brilliance lives or dies, some other Jokers will take him away and try to take care of him 'cause Jokers do super unhealthy things when people they like don't care, but it doesn't matter much how you care, like, you could date him or be friends or he could bake you cake you really liked or you could fight all the time or whatever, it just doesn't work if you go 'meh', apparently. He's not going to actually do anything too super unhealthy because this is a known thing so the other ones will deal with it if it's gonna be a thing."
manofmyword
"That's a pretty reasonable summary," says the Joker. "I could argue with 'super unhealthy', but it'd be a losing battle. And if you want an example of how we get when we love someone who hates us, I can tell you the story of me and the Bat."
manofmyword
"Okay," he says.
His aura makes the light in the room dim noticeably.
"Once upon a time, I used to live in a city called Gotham. It wasn't a nice place, but I liked it that way. And one day, a few years back now I guess, we started hearing about some nut dressing up as a bat and running around at night beating up criminals. Except the thing is," his aura shows a mugging in a Gotham alley interrupted by a flutter of nearly-invisible black cape, "it was only funny for about a week. After that," the caped figure breaks the mugger's arm and sends him flying down the alley, "it was terrifying."
The Joker grins.
"I loved it, of course. Fell for her like you wouldn't believe."
His aura makes the light in the room dim noticeably.
"Once upon a time, I used to live in a city called Gotham. It wasn't a nice place, but I liked it that way. And one day, a few years back now I guess, we started hearing about some nut dressing up as a bat and running around at night beating up criminals. Except the thing is," his aura shows a mugging in a Gotham alley interrupted by a flutter of nearly-invisible black cape, "it was only funny for about a week. After that," the caped figure breaks the mugger's arm and sends him flying down the alley, "it was terrifying."
The Joker grins.
"I loved it, of course. Fell for her like you wouldn't believe."
incanted
"This why Bells are so popular among Jokers? We have preposterous ambitions and wind up following through?" asks Bella.
manofmyword
"I've never been able to convince one of you that she scared the shit out of everybody," says the Joker, shaking his head. "But trust me, she did. You can think it's silly if you wanna, but you don't live in Gotham and you're not a criminal and you have all this magic, so she was never gonna drop on your head out of nowhere in the middle of the night and put you in the hospital."
incanted
"While dressed up as a bat," says Aurora. "Sure. Criminals of Gotham abruptly develop batphobia."
manofmyword
"Do they ever," says the Joker. "And I develop something two letters away. And when all the mob guys are starting to get together and figure out what to do about her, I steal a bunch'a their money and then walk into their secret conference and tell them they should hire me to kill her. Which they do. Mob guys," he says, "are easy to convince."
incanted
"Uh," says Bella. "...Okay. So then you've got a hit out on your crush."
manofmyword
He giggles. "Not the most romantic thing you've ever heard, right? But I wasn't gonna do it. Although I did kill some guy wearing a cheap knockoff of her costume, and I sent the video to the news, which got everybody's attention very nicely."
incanted
"Yeah, forward," mutters Bella, and with that inscrutable bit of siblinghood she's attending to the story again.
manofmyword
The Joker shrugs.
"So if she didn't hate me already, she sure did after that. I chased her around like that for a while - put the word out that people were gonna keep dying if she didn't tell everybody her secret identity, then when the assistant DA pretended it was her, I kidnapped her and her hot boyfriend and let the Bat catch me doing it," which for some reason involved an eighteen-wheeler flipping end over end along a narrow street and the Joker crawling out of the upside-down cab. Oh, there's the Bat. The Bat has a motorcycle. The Joker seems to want her to run him over with it.
"She didn't bite," he says conversationally, and indeed the motorcycle swerves at the last second and dumps its driver on the ground, whereupon tiny illusionary Joker skips toward her, cackling.
"But of course I let 'em bring me in - " if 'let' is the appropriate word for surrendering when someone springs out of the shadows in your moment of triumph and holds a shotgun to your neck " - and then she interrogated me about where I'd put her buddies, which was fun."
Apparently it was too fun for the Joker to provide any images.
"So if she didn't hate me already, she sure did after that. I chased her around like that for a while - put the word out that people were gonna keep dying if she didn't tell everybody her secret identity, then when the assistant DA pretended it was her, I kidnapped her and her hot boyfriend and let the Bat catch me doing it," which for some reason involved an eighteen-wheeler flipping end over end along a narrow street and the Joker crawling out of the upside-down cab. Oh, there's the Bat. The Bat has a motorcycle. The Joker seems to want her to run him over with it.
"She didn't bite," he says conversationally, and indeed the motorcycle swerves at the last second and dumps its driver on the ground, whereupon tiny illusionary Joker skips toward her, cackling.
"But of course I let 'em bring me in - " if 'let' is the appropriate word for surrendering when someone springs out of the shadows in your moment of triumph and holds a shotgun to your neck " - and then she interrogated me about where I'd put her buddies, which was fun."
Apparently it was too fun for the Joker to provide any images.
incanted
"Okay. You decided to do all this instead of, I don't know, just stalking her, because why?"
manofmyword
"'Cause if I did all this, I got to see what she'd do about it. What she'd do about some guy stalking her didn't interest me at all. Plus she wouldn't exactly have been easy to stalk. She definitely had me beat in the stealth department."
incanted
"...And this behavior is a template attractor thing and not a you personally thing, so I am in some danger of Brilliance doing things I'd loathe to see what I'd do if he finds how I feel about him unsatisfactory, except that in this eventuality he gets to go to the, I dunno, Joker rehabilitation program or whatever you call it, instead."
manofmyword
"He won't try that kind of thing first," says the Joker. "First he'll bake you cookies and cry a lot. Maybe even try to do nice things for you so you'll like him again. And then, yeah, I'll pick him up and give him a hug and find a way to take his mind off things."