Date: Sun, 18 Sep 1994 21:54:01 EDT Reply-To: Highlander TV show stories Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: "Jason R. Tippitt" Subject: Dark of Knight, Part 9 and 10, revised ************************************************************************ D A R K O F K N I G H T ************************************************************************ Jason R. Tippitt, 1994 A Highlander/Batman crossover Warning: Some violence Part 9: ******* Michael and Jason dueled in the shadow of a giant penny situated beside a Tyrranosaurus Rex. It stuck Michael as incredibly surreal. Jason was good; Odysseus' Quickening was making him quite the swordsman. Not quite good enough, though. Michael tripped the kid, grabbed his sword, and planted his left foot firmly in the kid's back. "There can be only only, Jason. But there's more than one way to die." The kid went up a set of stairs into "the house" to grab some food. |If *I'd* been buried alive for five years--| [Michael, I just saw something. You met the Joker when he first became one of us.] |What?!?| Michael looked inward and saw the same things Duncan had seen. He remembered the madman, now. |It should have been obvious.| An image of Duncan appeared next to Michael, sitting on the edge of the makeshift operating table. [Maybe Quentin took control afterwards, and your memory filled in the blanks some other way.] |*I'm* the psychiatrist here, Mac.| Duncan smiled at his friend. [Where do you think I learned it from? I need my body again.] |You sure you're ready?| Duncan nodded. [I have to stop the Joker; I've hidden long enough.] |It's only been four hours.| Duncan winced, not wanting to hurt his friend. [Michael, I thank you for what you've done, but I don't want to risk Quentin trying to get control. I'm sorry.] Duncan could feel his friend's pain behind the brave surface he projected. |Go on, Duncan. It was nice being alive again.| ******** Alfred finished stitching the last of Bruce's wounds. He looked at the IV fluid emptying drop-by-drop into his friend's vein. He had once wanted to be a detective, and had in fact fancied himself quite good at finding logical solutions to complex problems. Before him, and in the next room, however, lay two mysteries he could not begin to unravel. And he had to wonder if both mysteries were somehow related. How could Master Bruce be alive after these years of nightly abuse as Gotham's protector? The world's protector? There was no counting the number of times Bruce had stumbled half-dead into the cave, yet he always left the cave again the next night. Sometimes even on the same night. How? And how was Jason Todd living and breathing in the next room? How was Duncan MacLeod--and he definitely *was* Duncan, his different way of walking and different posture couldn't fool even an old man's eyes-- in the cave looking not a day older than when Alfred had last seen him, at Thomas and Martha's funeral in the 1960's? He'd looked far too young for his age even then, but Alfred had attributed that to good breeding and, possibly, hair dye. These things were going to have to be answered, Alfred thought. He just hoped his heart was strong enough to handle the answers. ******* Michael Long died on stage. His show hadn't been going too well, anyway, proof that the comedian who laughs at his own jokes is obviously the only one finding them funny. There was *one* other person laughing. The comedian before Michael had been a tall, thin man with a dark tan, and had been booed off the stage for telling fetus jokes. Just for kicks he'd shot Michael with his water Uzi as he fled the stage. The poison took six minutes to take effect, long enough for several men to discretely take their places at the doors with real weapons. The thin man took the stage again, even before Michael's body had stopped twitching. "Ooh, I slay me. But I keep coming back." The crowd murmured. "I'm a doctor! Let me through!" shouted a man in his mid-40's. The Joker pulled out a .45 and planted a slug between the good physician's eyes. "You know what they say, physician--heal thyself. But that's no reason to blow your life away!" As the Joker laughed, his long black coat fell open, revealing several pounds of explosives strapped to his body. The crowd charged toward the doors. Machine-gun fire cut down part of the horde, stopping their advance. "Nobody leaves without turning in their test!" the Joker shouted. He looked toward the film crew from the local PBS station, which was airing the night's entertainment. "And keep those cameras rolling--I'm going to make you all stars in my new film--The End of Gotham!" ******* Part 10 ******* Duncan looked around the cave. [A giant penny and a statue of a dinosaur? Where the hell *am* I, Michael?] |Barring a better word, I guess you'd call this the Bat-Cave.| "Are you okay?" Jason asked, stepping back into the room with a tray full of sandwiches. "You looked kinda shaken." "Fine. Just coming back to my senses, I guess you'd call it." /Man, his voice's changing worse than mine did when I hit puberty./ Alfred walked in from the operating room, removing his rubber gloves and throwing them into a trashcan. "Master Jason, Mas--Batman should be asleep for the next hour or so." He looked at MacLeod and the boy. "I thought miracles were only superstition." He began to walk upstairs. Duncan sighed. "You must be mistaking me for my father--" Alfred turned and eyeballed the two. "If Jason were not beside you, you *might* be able to convince this old man that his mind and eyes were marely growing worse than he thought, but I am no more a fool than you, old friend." This said, he disappeared into the shadows above. "As the centuries go by, it gets harder and harder to start over," Duncan murmured to Jason. "I don't envy you, newcomer." "We have to find the Joker," Jason said, finishing his food. "Br-- um, Batman is in no shape to fight, and besides he's not one of us. The Joker should be our concern." "Richie, it appears Bruce has more guts than I gave him credit for." Jason looked at him. "Why do you keep calling me Richie?" MacLeod shook his head. "Never mind. How do we find the Joker?" "It shouldn't be difficult. If there's one thing the Joker *isn't*, it's subtle." ******* The cameras kept rolling as the Joker sang the dirty lyrics to the _Brady_Bunch_ theme song. He did a quick tango with a 300-pound woman he'd snatched from the audience, dropping her off the stage at the end of the dance. He walked to a camera and smiled. "Welcome back to the Everyone's Gonna Die Telethon ladies and germs. We're having a killer of a time here!" One of his men shot a hostage, as they'd been instructed to do every time he used the word 'killer' for the rest of the evening. "Batman hasn't shown up yet, but--" he leaned in close to the camera, like a schoolgirl gossiping about the first girl in the class to "do it" with a boy, "--maybe he's having to recover from that *bang* he got earlier this evening." He began to howl in laughter. One of the Joker's men ran up to the camera and held up a crayon drawing of the Batmobile exploding as it went over a pier and into the harbor. "I guess he really bombed, eh, boss?" The Joker wiped fake tears from his eyes with a silk handkerchief. "Yes, Milo, I suppose some people are just not meant to entertain the masses. Whereas I *knock*'em*dead*!" The Joker beheaded Milo, sending blood onto the camera. "Nobody tries to steal my thunder! Or lightning for that matter!" The Joker let out a long, shrill laugh. "Step right up, Caped Crucible and Boy Blunder, or the whole audience goes out with a bang!" He opened up his purple trenchcoat to show his explosives, then held up a tacky three-foot wide watch. "You have one hour!" ******* Duncan looked from the television set to Jason. "He's serious?" Jason shrugged his shoulders. "I believe him; that's part of how he killed me. Can he survive being blown up?" "As long as none of the debris decapitates him. My guess is the explosives are rigged to help prevent that; he's no dummy. Or maybe the actual explosives are in the building, and those are just a visual gag." "Well, he wants Batman, but Bruce is in no shape to fight him. Want to play dress-up, MacLeod?" Duncan snorted. "Oh, yeah, like just anyone could just put on the mask and instantly be *Batman.* We'd better just do what we can." A flash of Tessa, dead and lifeless in his arms, passed before his mind's eye. "And if we can't do enough, we find his body in the wreckage and *then* we behead him, and try our damnedest to not remember the bodies every time we close our eyes." ******* Bullock smashed the front of his cruiser into the rear bumper of a hastily-parked ambulance, and he and Gordon hopped out and ran up to Montoya's side. "Montoya, has there been any word from the putz?" "Just what's been on television, Harvey. He said he'd kill three hostages for each time the phone rang, so we quit trying to call in." She looked at the Commissioner. "I assume that was correct procedure?" "Damn. It's so tempting to just kill this freak," Gordon murmured. He looked up at Montoya. "Yeah, yeah. Why isn't Batman here yet?" Bullock shook his head. "Well, the Joker's saying he blew up the Batmobile earlier. He may be dead, in which case...I don't even wanna think about that." Montoya looked at Gordon. "Maybe someone *else* can help...?" ******* Jason swung down to a ledge clad in black. He was wearing a Kevlar vest, because he knew bullets would slow him down, if nothing more. He had thought of wearing his Robin outfit, but it just didn't feel right any more. It wasn't too practical for sneaking around in, anyway. Duncan stood on the opposite rooftop, tether line in hand, trying to fight vertigo. [It's not like the fall could kill you, Duncan.] He slipped the black ski mask over his face and swung. The feeling of flight was overwhelming. He saw the ledge come up below him-- * C * R * A * A * A * S * S * H * ! ! ! --missed, and smashed through a window into the control booth above the studio. Jason dove in behind him, throwing a boomerang to knock out the Joker's guard in the booth. "Oh, *brilliant* work, mighty one. How long you been doing this?" "Shut up, Richie." ******* The Joker froze. He Sensed two powerful presences up in the control booth. "Who?" He threw his microphone into the audience, beaning a senior citizen in the head, and stomped toward the back curtains. "I've changed my mind! The Dynamic Duo have *five* *fucking* *minutes,* or I pop the cork on this champagne bottle!" Then he mumured to himself, so quietly no one else could hear, "I'm waiting, Darlings..." ******* To be continued... =========================================================================