snowblindrpg | [network] @gravedigger; video; Morning 120 [open] [ warnings: Joker, possibly also character death]

[The Joker looks down at the camera, which is either on a table or in his lap. His features are haggard and he's wearing a makeshift purple scarf. Outside of this, there are few details to take in. With the lighting it's impossible to tell where he is.]

Hallo, Norfin-fury, on a scale from one to ten, one being "abysmal" and ten being "I've had better" how's YOUR week been?

[He coughs into his fist.]

Well, it's about to get even better.

While the rest of you mouth-breathers have been loafing around in the snow I've been a busy little bee. Ace chemist, remember?

[He taps the side of his head.]

Sooo who's to say I haven't been concocting all kinds of wonderful toys since I got here? Maybe I even hid them around town. Along walls. In the tunnels. I'd say you have aboouuut...

[He licks his lips and rolls his sleeve back, showing a childish drawing of a watch on his wrist.]

....Oh, 24 hours, give or take a skosh.

[He drops his chin into his palm.]

After that I'm getting this party started and we'll put the "boom" in "boomtown". Thank me for the warning, by the way. Let nobody say the Joker isn't a sporting man.

...I'm sure that the hive will wake the heck up two minutes from me posting this. Don't bother looking for me. If ya do there will be another death on your hands. This time it really is a hostage situation.

Just keep your mind on the prize: Finding my bombs. All of them. Look high, look low.

Keep moving....keep moving....

[His eyes turn slightly crazed, as if haunted by a recent memory as he reaches down and turns off the tablet. The last thing he says sounds like "Follow the Spiral".]

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[How badly she sympathizes with that. If only she could tell if it was him wasting space or not. That last comment breaks tune far too much with how he had just been a few moments ago.]

Does your Batman stop you because he thinks you're a monster?

[It takes him a few minutes to respond. It's the silence of a man sitting with his head in his hands, despairing over his life and his choices.

Or at least the Joker wants her to think this but he's actually gotten up and twirled around the stripper pole a few times in the building he's in, whistling cheerily to himself.

When he returns to the tablet he adjusts his belt and sits down.]

He stops me because he values all life, that one.

[She doesn't buy it. Really, the image of him on stripper poles would be more likely, if she had more context to work with. But she wouldn't be surprised if he's sitting there, mocking her heartily behind the screen - maybe, if Clayton was still alive, he was cracking horrible jokes at her expense to the other doctor. To get a rise, or have an excuse to laugh that awful, long laugh.]

Including yours, right?

Would you ever tell him to stop pretending to value life, do you think? I think that might leave you without a dance partner.

It would leave HIM without one

but

he's not here

is he?

I don't have to do this anymore do I?

If he's here, I'm afraid he's likely dead.

You don't have to. But you're still choosing to. You could have hit a detonator and blown us all up, if you wanted to.

But I suppose there's no fun in that.

without him there is no fun in anything

anymore

Then why do you keep doing it?

I don't know

You don't know, or you don't want to say?

I don't know

I don't know why I do it.

[She doesn't respond. Not for a long while, anyway. She'd intended to just drop the conversation there, feeling like she was being played.

But then the obituaries showed up.]

You said you wouldn't hurt Clayton.

And I am a man of my word.

He's dead.

How is that keeping your word?

He died painlessly.

And quickly.

A far better fate than what waits for most of us around here.

[She had figured his answer would be something akin to what he sends her. But it doesn't dull the punch, nor does it stop her from having to collect her composure before switching to audio. Not a smart move, she will probably realize later, but she can't keep a response so apathetic and uncaring for someone who just confessed to murder.]

What... what is wrong with you?

He tried to help you... h-he went with you willingly to help, and y-you...

How could you?!

[Joker switches to audio himself.]

He wasn't following the dang spiral!

He...wasn't....

Why does that matter??

There wasn't... wasn't anything funny about this! About him, or the spiral... There wasn't any point, was there?? And you... y-you still...

[Her voice breaks. She barely catches it, the dry beginning of a sob, before she simply hangs up on him.

She still doesn't think he's a monster. But he's definitely a lunatic.]

[A wet cough.]

I don't remember....

[He grumbles that. There is no remorse to his voice, there never is, but there is a note of genuine confusion.

Killing Clayton had felt important in the moment. He was trying to guide Joker off the Spiral....

Joker remembers that intense drive to follow the Spiral. He remembers the spirit who put him on it.... But try as he might he cannot emotionally connect to the memory. It plays back in his mind's eye like a recording, something that happened to someone else.

Yes, he remembers it but not the feeling of it. Why did it matter?

It's a good question. ]

[network] @gravedigger; video; Morning 120 [open] [ warnings: Joker, possibly also character death]

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