Date: Sun, 18 Sep 1994 14:15:57 EDT Reply-To: Highlander TV show stories Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: "Jason R. Tippitt" Subject: Dark of Knight, Parts 3 and 4, with revisions and corrections ************************************************************************ D A R K O F K N I G H T ************************************************************************ Jason R. Tippitt, 1994 A Highlander/Batman Crossover Warning: Lots of Senseless Deaths (but hey, no one said the Joker was a nice guy) Part 3 ******* Duncan stared at the ghoul whose toxic take on laughing gas was finishing off the last humans in the room. He was starting too feel a bit light-headed himself. "Who are you, and why are you doing this?" The Joker smiled. "Who writes your dialogue, the guy who does the Bond pastiches? I'm a philanthropist, sir, just like Mr. Wayne, only no one ever thanks me for *my* good deeds. I cure all these fat, stupid self-serving pigs of their empty and meaningless lives, and no one seems to appreciate the effort." He looked over to his henchman. "Georgie- Boy, I'm a nice guy, aren't I? I make people laugh, don't I?" Georgie-Boy shifted nervously. "Um, whatever you say, boss." "Why don't *I* ever get invited to these black-tie affairs, then?" Duncan tried to fight the comment. "Because you're wearing a purple trenchcoat, Smiley." He didn't find the joke funny, but he laughed at it anyway. [It's too late...] The Joker snorted. "And people think *my* jokes are bad? Oh, sir, you're jumping my train! *I'm* the one who gets to be the death of the party!" He slapped Georgie-Boy on the back; the henchman's finger twitched, and Duncan felt bullets rip open his left arm. He heard the window shatter behind him as bullets struck it, and the winds from the nighttime sky swept into this room a thousand feet above the streets of Gotham. Duncan laughed at the scene-- [Maybe that'll help some of them] --then his heart stopped. ======= 1944. It seemed ages since Amanda and the doctor had flown out of Berlin for London. He could only hope they'd gotten out and arrived safely. Duncan had been underground when things began to get really bad in the Nazi territories--as bad as when the Bolsheviks took over, or worse. He'd heard rumors about gas ovens and mass graves that took more lives in one day than died in entire wars three hundred years ago. The world was moving on, but toward darkness, not light. Traveling by night, he arrived in Paris. The city was still under siege, and he hooked up with the Resistance as quickly as possible. He met some Brits who were helping with the fighting, one of them an actor named Alfred Pennyworth. He and Alfred were on patrol once when they entered an area that had been hit with mustard gas. Alfred threw up when they got far enough away for him to safely remove his gas mask. Duncan cried for the first time in this war, the first time he could remember, thinking of the children he'd seen lying on the ground, faces frozen in pain and terror and confusion. "Damn it, Alfred, humans only have one life. Why do they spend so much of their time and energy thinking up new ways to shorten it?" Alfred opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it. Then opened it again and said, "You talk as if *you* yourself were *not* human, my friend." [Alfred, you're too smart for your own good. Watch him, Duncan; he has already seen you play kamikaze once or twice.] Duncan smiled at the tall, thin Englishman. "Excepting present company, you'll understand if I don't think too highly of the species at the moment." Alfred put his mask back over his face. "Agreed, sir. Frightening, isn't it? The very air can kill us now. And we have made it so." Duncan took one last look over his shoulder and nodded. "Let's get back to base. We've had enough nightmares for one day." ======= Duncan awoke in tears; the physical pain was mostly gone, but the memories of Paris were still vivid. He looked around the room, saw the paramedics covering bodies [god, so many bodies] with sheets. He seemed to be the sole survivor, with the exception of Ms. Vale who was being railroaded out of the room before she could take any photographs. [Well, how do I explain *this* to the police?] "Oh, my God, Detective, one of them's still alive!" [...] Duncan let his head hit the floor. He snickered as Detective Harvey Bullock approached. He was a sloppily-dressed man of great girth wearing a badly soiled trenchcoat. He stood over the Highlander, a cup of coffee and a jelly donut apparently his weapons of choice. "Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle. I thought that gas was supposed to be 100% lethal. You must have one hell of an immune system, buddy. Are you some kind of superhero or something?" Bullock rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Gee, there I go, letting it show that I just got out of bed for this one. Why'd I ask the man if he's a superhero? Did I actually *expect* him to tell me if he was?" Duncan slowly sat up. "What the hell happened here? I left Ms... um...Ms. Vale in some alcove and come out to see if I could smash open a window, and the next thing I know some green-haired freak and his goon were taking shots at me." Bullock looked at Duncan's arm and let out a low whistle. "You really *are* one lucky S.O.B. That doesn't look like anything more than a scratch. Could you come downtown with us and make a statement?" [Why do I not like the sounds of that?] "I'll be glad to escort him," Bruce Wayne said, strolling over to the two men. "Glad to see at least *someone* survived, Duncan." "So nice of you to return," Duncan said, turning away from Bruce. "Long line to the men's room, I see." "I was calling the police." Bruce looked at Harvey. "Where is Ms. Vale? Is she--" "Oh, she's alive," Harvey said, "have ye no fear. She was taking pictures like it was a dying art until our men kindly escorted her out." "A dying art." Duncan snorted, trying to fight back laughter. He felt reassured on one thing--the Joker was the Immortal he had sensed earlier, not Bruce Wayne. Bruce was a coward, not even half the man his father had been. His muscles must have come from a trainer, not steel and blood. If he had been an Immortal, Duncan supposed, he would have accidentally decapitated himself the first time he picked up a sword. Bruce looked to the detective. "Might I have a moment alone with Mr. MacLeod?" Harvey spoke through the last bite of donut. "Sure, sure, whatever. I have a crime to investigate, anywho. You two go get the mine's bigger than yours tomfoolery over with while I'm takin' another peek around." He turned and walked a few steps away. "But as soon as a doctor takes a look at you, I'm afraid I really *must* insist you come down to the station and make a statement, Mr. MacLeod." Bruce looked at the Immortal. "Look, I was calling the police. You should have stayed where you were; it was a no-win situation, and now it looks like the police suspect you're some kind of metahuman." "Why didn't you lead *everyone* out the way we went, you elitist bastard?" Bruce hesitated a moment, just long enough for Duncan to know he was trying to cover something. "If I had, the air in the passage wouldn't have been filtered quickly enough, and everything else would have been contaminated. Besides, they were doomed already--until today, that gas has killed everyone it touched. Breaking open a window only would have spread it out in the room more quickly, maybe contaminated more of the city. At least I was able to save the three of us." "No, you saved your own arse and Ms. Vale's. It's already been quite firmly established that the gas didn't do much to *me.*" "And speaking of which, how--" Duncan turned and walked toward Bullock. "Detective, I'm ready to go now." ******* Part 4 ******* The Joker sat at a table in the warehouse he had rented, counting the loot he'd gotten from the stiffs at the benefit. "Less than ten thousand dollars, Georgie! The jewels, I don't know about, but what kind of world do we live in, where people stop carrying cash?" "A world of madness, Joker. I'm sure you know all about that." The man who spoke these words with such an edgy British accent stepped into the light. He was of average build, with closed-trimmed brown hair; he wore a long brown trenchcoat over slacks, shirt and tie. "Wouldn't you like to be a ruler in this dawning age of madness?" The Joker stood, pulling out a pistol. "I *am* the king of madness already! What I want to know is who are *you*?" "You are but a prince with dreams; *I* am the man who can tell you how to gain a Prize, and power beyond your wildest imaginings." The Joker laughed. "Oh, how trite. Besides, I have a pretty vivid imagination." He walked around the stranger, looking him over. "You came here unarmed." "I am a mere mortal. We both know you are something. You could kill me far more easily than I could kill you, but that would be *very* counterproductive, oh yes. And you're far too intelligent to do that when *I* know how you can reach your full potential, Joker." He smiled and held out an envelope. "If you don't believe me, I can prove what I say easily enough. In this envelope is a picture of a man who lives in this city--a fallen prince, one might say. I know the secret, how you may kill him and take all his power and strength and knowledge for your own. If you want to be a monarch, here's your opportunity." The Joker pulled out the photograph and chuckled. "Him? Oh, sir, you do me a disservice! But I suppose it's possible. And if it's *not* possible, that'll make it even more interesting. But what do *you* get out of all this?" "Your next target will be an enemy of mine. A man named MacLeod; you met him at the little incident last night. I believe he gave you some trouble. He's occupied at the moment, but he'll be coming after you soon enough, whether you look for him or not. And he'll most likely have Batman in tow." The Joker's mouth fell open. "The man with the ponytail?" "Yes, Duncan MacLeod." "Then it's true, what that doctor told me...that the buzzing in my head is the feeling of another close by. I strangled the poor man to death after he told me only one Immortal could kill another. My poor dead mummy always said I had the nastiest temper--I put a stop to that with a fireplace poker. Now you say there's only one way to kill, one to die. Maybe that's why the good doctor told me, 'There can be only one.'" The Joker looked up at the man. "I don't believe I caught your name, coach." "Just call me Horton." ******* It was around midday when Jason felt as if a migraine had suddenly hit him. Something burned inside his mind, as if his brain had been set afire and were about to explode. He dropped to his knees and braced himself against a wall, then vomitted. Ahead of him in the alley, a homeless man awoke in a cardboard box. "No! No more killing!" He sprang from his box with a long sword in hand. "There will be no dueling here! This is Holy Ground! This alley is sanctified in the name of the God of the City!" /What the hell? Does he feel my presence?/ The homeless man looked around wildly, then his eyes rested upon Jason looking up at him in terror. "*You,* little one?" The tall man walked toward the boy, his sword falling to the concrete to lie beside his other meager belongings. "What is your name, squire?" "J-Jason." "A noble name, that of a great voyager and hero. My friends call me 'Garrett,' the others call me '*Crazy* Garrett.' My real name ceased to have any meaning a long time ago. Come, eat with me, boy; we are the same breed, and have much to discuss." ******* Duncan never finished his statement. A doctor at the site of the attack took had taken a blood sample and tested it there on the spot, found the Joker's gas still present, and warned Duncan that he might feel aftereffects; he was right. Bullock started by asking Duncan where he came from. Duncan told him, "Oh, a little bit of everywhere," feeling far too giddy for such a potentially disastrous predicament. When Bullock asked him to elaborate he'd started to tell him the whole thing--village, year, everything. He hadn't actually *said* any of these things--just thought about it. And then thought about what expressions might cross Bullock's face were he to tell him the truth, thinking of how Bullock would react were his cigar to fall out of his mouth and land in his lap. Within moments, Duncan was laughing so hard that he fell out of his chair. Bullock made the mistake of trying to help him up. Duncan's katana fell out of its hiding place, and then all hell broke loose when Bullock asked why MacLeod had felt the need to carry it with him to an art show and asked furthermore why he'd brought it concealed into the police station. Duncan lost control at this point, snatching the sword back. By the time the officers held him down long enough for a sedative to be injected and take effect, Duncan was convinced that Bullock was the Kurgan. He was still yelling, "You must fight me one-on-one, demon!" when he passed out. "Sad, ain't it?" Bullock asked Commissioner Gordon as they watched MacLeod being loaded into an ambulence. "As he was challenging me to a fight, he was yelling out this peculiar phrase--'There can be only one' --over and over and over. Now what the hell is *that* supposed to mean? Damn the Joker, there goes what was by all accounts a pretty decent guy, and now he'll probably be in Arkham till his dying day." ******* Bruce heard and saw MacLeod's skirmish with Gotham's finest via the audio/visual equipment he'd secretly installed in the interrogation room at the precinct. He shook his head and resumed scanning the computer entry he'd compiled on MacLeod, looking for some sign that he might be a metahuman of some sort. "This makes no sense, Alfred," he said as his butler brought him dinner. "No one has ever survived a full-strength hit of the Joker's gas before now. When he spiked the water supply at the orphanage two Christmases ago to paralyze those kids's facial muscles, he used some variation on the original toxin. And besides all that, unless someone goofed up, MacLeod didn't have a pulse when the police arrived. But now he's walking around... This just doesn't add up." "Well, sir, I was afraid I was losing my mind when I saw him, but he looks exactly like his father. It's not just my eyes, then; he could be the very same man." "Well, yes, Alfred, but such close resemblances aren't unheard of. I mean, people have mistaken me for *Clark*--and we're *definitely* not from the same neighborhood." "You're probably right. It's an absurd notion; maybe he's just inherited his father's luck along with his face." He left Bruce alone with the food and the computer. A few moments later, Bruce looked up. "What do you mean by 'his father's luck?'" He looked around and didn't see Alfred. He and the screens resumed their game of stare-out, each waiting for the other to give some kind of clue. ******* To be continued... =========================================================================