[ WP ] - Joker seeks vengeance for the death of Batman

Grime settled in grooves. Smog washed out color from billboards and choked the lights of skycrapers. Gotham pulled itself out of hazy slumber into listless overcast light and down into the night with cognac to chase the specters run amok. A restless night awaited the city. The monsters come out at night. 
 
 There is a pattern of mourning. A regularity. A blazing wound that oozes, scabs, pulls, flecks away, diminishes to shiny scar and a haltering story. 
 
 For the greatest nemesis, there could be no pattern. No regularity. For chaos itself, for the unstoppable force, there is no mourning. 
 
 There is adaptation. 
 
 When the citizens settled down with the parched mouth of drinking, the nemesis found the paltry monsters, the underlings. Shouts and barking cries in the night, and then the roaring quiet pooling blood. 
 
 The next night, he found the specters, higher than monsters but still small fry. They also expressed dismay and betrayal, and lamented that the chaos had taken form. 
 
 He went on, night after night. The cacophony of night time noise petered out in increments. 
 
 Until one of the denizens of the night talked. 
 
 Then, there was the kind of quiet as to be found in the trenches. The first night, the green woman kept quiet as though waiting. The organized chaos passed over her, intent on his target. 
 
 The next night, the dual-faced man waited quietly without guards. He knew about the man bent on revenge and his insurmountable connections. The man passed him. 
 
 The next night, a bird waited in a cage. He had his excuse ready but feared he could not shared it quickly enough before the gas etched a deadly grin to his face. The man passed him. 
 
 Electric quiet in the remainder of the week: the one who asked questions, the puppet thug, the feline, the frigid man. Each waited for the arrival, each hoping one of the others had killed the bat. 
 
 Then, in the dark, he found the man. A simple man, unassuming, overweight. He talked to his camera. Explained his entire method. Explained why a gun and how he would never be caught. Not a member of the rogue's gallery. Just a face in the crowd who could put a bullet through the Batman's head. 
 
 There came a squeal and then silence. 
 
 In the gray morning the man's camera and recordings waited on the front stoop of the Gotham Police Department. They grimaced as they watched the killer calmy describe the plan, then their eyebrows lighted and their chins dropped at the appended footage. 
 
 The man formerly of chaos wore a hood and muted colors of purple. He jittered just enough to reveal the man he had been and his voice came clear and at a deeper register. 
 
 `` I am Vengeance,'' he said. `` Playtime has ended.''
