#fcs.art

At least the city’s curse-spirit-mind-whatever it was didn’t remember what he’d done, and as such no longer wanted to give him a slow and torturous End. That didn’t mean it approved of him being there, though.

Time unpaused and he’d barely had the chance to tear down some walls before Gotham slunk out of the shadows.

“Calm yourself!” He growled as he squirmed out of its grasp, wishing he could still turn his form into mist. Intangibility was of little use with a creature like this. “I’m not here for you, or any of those mortals you are so fond of.”

Gotham screeched, and if he had bones, several of them would have undoubtedly been broken. "You are Other! An outsider! You are not welcome here!" It’s voice mingled with the screams of the alarms and the shouts of inmates and guards alike. “You set the Madness loose!“

Their tussle was nonexistent to the mortals as they rolled beneath and through stampeding feet, clawing at each other like alley cats. “All in good fun, Gotham!” He snarled and bit through one of the tendrils intent on relieving him of his eyes. He grimaced at the sludgy texture. “Time Itself sends me, to play with your favored mortals and avenge your dead!”

“You are evil! You will cause harm!“ Gotham screeched.

Dan rolled his eyes. “I will kill the insect who terrorizes what is yours,” He promised as if it were an offering to her, and not something he’d been planning for some time. (Danny had been so upset when the insect who called itself the Batman and its brood were absent from one of his schemes, because they were busy with this Joker insect. It was annoying. No insect, no need for Danny to complain. Danny had even agreed to the plan!) “Decide his fate, and I will enact it!”

The city’s spirit relaxed its grip on him. “You swear it? You will rid me of him, you will leave my Knights alone?"

“I’ll leave them alive.” Unless they challenged him. Then he would destroy them. But that didn’t need to be said.

“I will watch you..." Gotham slipped back into the shadows.

“Oh, how spooky.” Dan grumbled sarcastically as he shook himself in a vain attempt to remove the lasting sensation of Gotham’s touch.

That little disagreement had eaten up much of his precious time before the heroes of this realm could catch up to him. He lifted himself off the floor, startling a few inmates, and surveyed the chaos for a moment, selecting the perfect target. He darted towards the plant themed-villain- Poison Ivy, if he recalled correctly. (He always did.)

The woman staggered, clutching at her head as she tried to force him out. Overriding her will was laughably easy, but he admired her attempt to fight.

“Ah- Hey! You leave her alo- EEP!” With a flick of Ivy’s wrist, Dan suspended the other- Harley, Ivy’s memories named her, -in the air, leaving her dangling from some vines. The baseball bat she’d tried to clobber him with fell to the floor. He kicked it aside as he strode down the hall.

“I’ll give her back.” He said with a shrug, overexerting the woman’s powers to restrain every person he could find within the prison. His plants dragged all the pitiful, trapped mortals to the largest room available, stringing them up from the ceiling in cocoons like the insects they were. There. That would make it easier to find that awful clown.

Unless he’d already escaped. That would be unfortunate. Not for Dan, of course, but unfortunate for anyone who got in the way while he searched the city. And unfortunate for that clown, when Dan caught up.

The clown wasn’t in Arkham, so Dan left the unconscious Poison Ivy on the floor and shot through the roof, grumbling to himself. He flew clear of the building just in time to see Batman enter through a window. He paused, spectral tail flicking back and forth as he thought, before diving back in after the hero.

Danny had said to see how many things he could steal from that utility belt without being caught... And it wasn’t like there was anywhere the clown could go that Dan couldn’t follow.