A Fair Warning
It was only a matter of time, and a long awaited and well deserved comeuppance, when Joker tried to hurt the wrong person or people.
Not everyone was going to play his games like 'Batsy' does. Not everyone will hesitate or let him live should he put his hands on someone to hurt them. Not everyone will believe Arkham could 'fix' him, he just needed more time and help.
No.
This time Joker bit off more than he could chew when he kidnapped the newly hired Arkham psychiatrist Jasmine Fenton (and he had plans, so many plans, for her. With her mixture of Harley's mind and her looks matching Gordon's daughter would sure to cause some chaos and pain in memories) and the girl's visiting sister Danielle 'Ellie' (and did he laugh when he noticed the 'Wayne' adoptive looks the girl had, on the fun he'll have, maybe he'll beat her the way he beat the second Robin just for funzie's, it'll no doubt upset Batman) from Jasmine's apartment.
He had plans to keep the Bats guessing where he was and by the time they reach him it'll be far to late for them to save either of the two girls, he had just sent the little video he taped to the Bats and the police to get the ball rolling...
So...
So why did a shiver run down his spine for the first time in years when they both looked unafraid (it was their eyes that made him shiver, a look of already dead yet somehow alive, something he never seen before. He's seen the light fade from people's eyes before yes, he's even laughed as he watch people desperately cling onto life only for it to fade into nothing as they took a final breath but never have he seen someone, something alive yet dead at the same time before. It, their eyes, held a natural yet unnatural sense as they stared at him, stared at everything that made him Joker and it unnerved him), honestly they looked very bored, and one of them (the youngest of the two, and the one with more of the look of death than life in their eyes) said with a chill tune in their tone.
"Last chance to back out of this Freakshows Reject. You wont like what'll be waiting for you."
The tone alone was enough to send another bone deep chill down Joker's spine.
But instead of listening to his natural instincts, the deep inkling of run blaring at him, Joker merely placed a grin on his face, ignoring the strain he felt from doing so, and said as nastily as he could in order to scare the two girls (BOTH OF THEM STILL LOOKED BORED WITH HIM?!?! Not even a twitch of fear!)
"OH? And pray tell what is awaiting little ol' me hum?"
His mocking question got a wide feral grin from the smaller girl, a grin with sharp teeth and iris eyes beginning to bleed slowly from sky blue to neon green with each second he stared at her and he barely stopped himself from jumping in his spot when Jasmine answered his question.
"Your end."
-x-x-
By the time the Bats get to the warehouse Joker had taken Dr. Jasmine 'Jazz' Fenton and Danielle 'Ellie' Fenton they were prepared for anything and everything to go wrong. As much as they held the tiniest bit of hope that the two young women were still okay they knew better than to really do, this was the Joker that had them after all.
They had manged to narrow down his location much quicker than normal when they gotten Joker's first video and his little 'game' he was setting the Bats on, most locations he gave them were going to be red herrings or traps to keep them busy and it would had worked. Batman and the others would had been searching for hours for even a hint of the clue of where the Joker and his hostages were actually being kept.
It was nearly, not really, a shame all of Joker's plans went to waste when Red Hood had stumbled onto something when scooping out Jasmine's apartment with Red Robin.
You see, not only were they looking for clues at first but something about the apartment Jasmine rented seemed off, Red Robin noticed it first and called in back up encase there was more to oldest Fenton than what they could dig up (oldest daughter of Dr's. Jackson and Madeline Fenton, grew up in a small Illinois town, straight A student and a goal to become a psychologist, has two younger siblings, etc etc) and their suspension raised up more when the moment Red Hood entered the apartment and seemed to freeze for a moment.
Red Hood couldn't really explain it but he said it felt like something was... strange. Not evil bad danger strange but it felt familiar? Like he was a kid again on the streets and had walked into someone else's territory but knew the person wouldn't be too much of a hardass about it as long as he didn't stur up trouble or disrespect. A kind of... as long as you don't fuck around you won't find out feeling.
It was because of this feeling that Jason had manged to stumble across something in the room, his instincts telling him there was more to it, and they had discovered a clunky old custom PDA hidden away in a false floorboard in the office room. Thankfully Red Robin, was there in person because the old thing apparently had a rather ingenious firewall to keep others (aka Hackers) OUT but it did nothing against someone who held the main thing.
But still it took Red Robin almost frying the damn thing to get to open up, turns out the ghost and star stickers on the PDA was a rather large hint of the pass code. Once Red Robin was in the PDA he noticed some rather interesting files, one of them labeled "Gremlin Tracking" with a tiny green blob with red eyes and a green outlined star as the icons.
Curiosity taking a hold on the most curious of the Bats he opened it up, hoping it would need another password, and watched as the screen split into two maps, one was... strange, there was no land marks or anything but the star icon seemed to be right in the middle of wherever it was and the only hint of anything was the name "baby brother" and the map labeled as IR.
The other one showed an above map of Gotham, before zooming into the city, heading towards some abandoned warehouses Red Robin knew of and stopped right at one. This was the green blob icon, the short abbreviation for Gotham in the corner of the map, and the name for the icon was 'baby sister'
Red Robin immediately got onto coms to tell the others of what apparently was a tracker for Jasmine's younger siblings. Some questioned why the young woman had trackers on her siblings, though some of the others snarked back that "oh didn't know keeping trackers on each other wasn't normal. Mind if I loose the one you got on me than?"
After a quick sweep into the warehouses camera feeds, the very few up that could be accessed, done by Oracle they quickly discovered that yes the tracking on the younger girl of the two, Danielle Fenton, was correct and that was where they and Joker were at.
Despite this, Batman decided that in order to make sure Joker didn't have suspicion that they already know his actual location he made sure to send a few of the others to the fake locations.
So here they were now, staking out the warehouse where they could see a few of the Jokers goons walking around and looking for a way into the building without alerting any of them. As they talked low into coms, Robin mentioning a possible way in for Red Robin by how small it was, Red Robin hissing back a "just because you got a growth spurt doesn't mean you can poke fun at my height you little-"
"Wait!" Red Hood suddenly hissed shouted, his tone startling the rest of them and they all turned their heads to him. Batman made a quick and harsh grunt as a way to say "report."
Under his helmet Jason's eyes were wide and wild. He could feel something, something huge was on the rise, like something was out of sight but the energy of it was felt.
And if Jason could feel it from his spot, the Jokers goons all felt the same thing from the way they all dropped their weapons, turned toward the warehouse and looked ready to bolt like scared animals.
Jason opened his mouth to explain but fell silent when the feeling suddenly popped. Whatever was causing the feeling was here and like the calm before the storm he could only watch as the first drop of rain fall.
The next thing they know, was the noise and the screaming.
It was inhuman, a mixture of noise and sounds to hard to explain. The closest they could explain was a thousand voices coming in all at once mixing with radio static that kept changing volume so only few words could be even hinted at, and the angry cawing of crows along with the flapping of their wings as they took flight. The noise was so bad that many who heard it nearly ripped their coms out, or covered their ears. Thankfully it only lasted a few seconds.
Then, the air itself shifted. It felt like the coldest of winter nights and bone chilling shivers ran down their bodies for a moment. The air was suddenly that sharp cold that hurt to breathe sometimes.
The goons surrounding the warehouse fled in fear. Many scrambling to get far, far away from whatever was happening. If they felt even a fraction of what Jason could feel, he could understand. He honestly felt like a small animal cornered by a predator and there was no escape.
Then just as suddenly as it happened, everything shifted again. The noise of Gotham returned to normal, cars honking, a stray cat hissing or a dog barking, police sirens in the distance, hissing steam from a nearby factory. The air went from winter cold to a chill mid winter harbor feel now.
Once everyone registered what had just happened and not wanting to waste anymore time they bolted towards the warehouse, cautious and alert in case they needed to fight. Batman went in first, quickly making his way to the area he knew Joker would be with the Fenton sisters and wondered just what the fuck was that? Did Joker do something? Was he messing with things outside of his usual MO?!
He walked into the room and stopped.
There was nothing.
The room was in fact the room Joker had used to record his first message to them, the layout was correct and the evidence of two people who had been tied up were still there as well, ropes that weren't cut sitting on them, a lone lamp light above shining down from above no doubt to emphasize the two girls were meant to be the 'stars' of Jokers latest show. Thing was, the two weren't there despite the fact Oracle swore she could see them a few mins ago from a camera set up in the room, she would later explain that she heard the noise as well and that all her tech had glitched hard.
The only other thing in the room was, sitting innocently on one of the chairs was a green sticky note and on a tiny pillow was a tiny sickly green orb with hints of purple, white, and red swirling in it.
A note they would later read the following message written on it after carefully examining it over.
'Joker learned not to touch what is mine to protect. Sorry not sorry, but hey one less killer clown and he was warned not my fault he didn't take it seriously... The massive amount of souls wanting to rip apart the Joker's soul into nothing was quite a sight to be honest.
They were so ruthless. Best not mess with the vengeful dead am I right?
PS. I left a tiny gift for Jason Todd aka Robin Two. It's the tiniest piece of Joker's soul left over after everyone else got done. He can finish it off since he's a reverent and all, and well they need their revenge filled in order to peacefully move on later or else they'll be stuck forever in a loop of madness and revenge. So yeah. Hope he likes the gift.'
D.P.'
It took Jason less than a second after those words were spoken out to reach for the orb, ignoring the cautious and alarmed cries of the others, and could feel deep, deep, deep in his own soul the absolute pure weeping joy as he threw the orb onto the floor, the bottom shattering thus it didn't roll away and stomped hard with his reinforced boots. Crushing the broken orb into more pieces and if one listened closely they could hear the pure screaming terror that came from it.
And Jason for the first time in years felt his rage finally leave him.
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thinking abt bellum v hard. (fyi there are 1658 words under this cut)
there's not a lot of concrete stuff to think abt but there ideas. he's kind of already won by the time link shows up on the scene. he's not really actively antagonizing the world of the ocean king, he mostly just has the ghost ship to go around collecting prey for him while he has the yook and anouki turned against each other and seems to have infested the different temples and whatever with monsters to delay any opposition. is he the one who destroyed the cobble kingdom? they're meant to be supporters of the ocean king so i think we can guess that bellum is the one who tried to eradicate them.
maybe he was the one who... mind controlled? or otherwise meddled with the yook to keep them from checking out the ice temple and keeping the anouki occupied with dealing with them. (tbh theres some untapped potential in the relationship between the yook and anouki) he doesn't really do anything to the gorons but maybe he doesn't see them as a worthwhile threat since they see the crimsonine as more of an artifact and not something they should really do anything with, and link has to pass a test to even be allowed to go to the temple. the cobble kingdom is already destroyed, and it can be assumed that he mightve mimicked their engineering based on eox being the hostile boss of the last temple and turning into sand, suggesting a relationship to bellum, and maybe that he's trying to hide the fact that he's the one fucking with everyone. i'm not even sure if characters (besides the main group) even know that bellum exists until link's quest is more known.
taking a note from the manga, where bellum says something along the lines of feelings of love and friendship creating more worthwhile life force for him, so taking that into account with stuff in the game suggests that he maybe doesnt make his presence well-known to avoid something like a mass panic or a persistent fear in people, which could downplay positive emotions that makes their life forces more worth taking to him along with other worthwhile forces maybe being ones connected to divine power (like his taking of tetra and seeming desperation to keep her specifically, since she's most likely a descendant of hylia's mortal form), so he likely is very hands-off with how he's affected the world in order to preserve the value of his prey, somehow. idk why he turns people into statues maybe its a preservation method. maybe hes saving tetra for some reason or maybe trying to bait link in as well. maybe he wants to grab link, too, but failed to catch him the first time and resorted to allowing him to go down the path of dismantling bellum's work all so that bellum can try and capture him himself.
the spirits he does manage to capture and left alive and instead just sealed away within their temples, which i believe is because spirits and gods and whatever in loz can't really die unless they explicitly permanently become mortal (hylia) and can only really be sealed away temporarily in some form, mostly due to a lot of them being a sort of representation of some part of the world (i like to imagine that demise is the god or whatever who created monsters, he's the father of monsters and opposes hylia due to the way her favored creatures [hylians ig] attack and kill monsters and he wants the world to be habitable and safe only for his creations)
it's probably safe to say that the ghost ship (like. the whole thing) was created by bellum, and in some form is perhaps some kind of living being, hence why bellum is capable of effectively possessing it the way he does, since it's an extension of himself like the boss monsters, it just maybe takes parts from some existing ships, or maybe it's not alive and bellum is capable of creating large structures like that he is compatible with.
bellum himself turns to sand when he is defeated, as well as most of the other boss monsters, but the cubus sisters (who certainly have a relationship with bellum due to having the same eyes and being connected to the ghost ship) do not turn into sand, which makes me think that bellum didn't actually create them; maybe they're corpses or something being remotely puppeted by bellum.
bellum is clearly made up of the sand of hours, a crystallization of life force, and oshus is said to have used those sands to create the phantom hourglass, and the sands are also mentioned to have been created from the force gems connected back to oshus himself, so bellum was probably created from those force gems and therefore those sands of hours at some point somehow (i enjoy the idea that oshus was the one who created bellum; with oshus being our main source of info on bellum, i think it'd be interesting if he was the one who originally made bellum but obscures this fact by just talking about how he 'appeared' and whatnot).
bellum seems to have a weird sort of... inverted? perverted? ability to create life (perhaps a sort of parallel to the one we can assume the ocean king has if we assume that he created the three spirits as well as bellum maybe) but only in a hivemind or derivative sort of way, only able to create things that follow simple commands and when he possesses something else he takes it over. (i like to take him in a more biological or physiological way rather than magical, when he is removed so is the control, but there might be little remnants, but his influence is gone. i take bellumbeck aftereffects to be terrible sickness rather than others going with the idea of taking on some bellum-like traits or residual controls. the things bellum creates can only follow simple rules unless he is directly in control therefore he can use it as he wishes, but if he takes control of something he did not create, it's a bit more of a battle, he has to contend with that other being's subconscious or whatnot and has no effect unless he is physically connected. his control is more limited and ends up incorporating some of the hosts' subconscious desires with some guiding from bellum himself to achieve a favorable outcome.)
with the world of the ocean king being a sort of parallel/separate world to link n tetra's great sea, it's interesting that the ghost ship can be physically present outside the world in which it was created. definitely there can be contact between different worlds in loz (like hyrule and the dark world/lorule in alttp/albw and a little bit with termina if you take that as a literal place and a little bit with koholint and then the twili realm and whatever i'm missing) but it's interesting to see bellum as a villain capable of (in some way) contact and interact within other worlds and drag inhabitants of those other worlds into his own (oshus can send people out of his world, so i assume he can also bring them in, maybe that's how link gets in despite falling off of the ghost ship, unless somehow the ghost ship is still within the world of the ocean king but is also present in the great sea but the area around it is a fragment of whatever part of the world of the ocean king its in superimposed over the great sea... idk) so it's interesting that bellum could bc considered a villain able to tamper with or at least interact with world boundaries to let things in and out, maybe it's something that he is only capable of with whatever power he's attained by the start of the game.
whatever relationship he may have to oshus and the other spirits is not at all a part of the game, but at the same time we don't learn a whole lot about them anyways. there's also stuff with the chief of the golden frogs as another ally of oshus, but i imagine bellum didn't bother with him because he has no relation to the spirits' locations and the pure metals, and zuaz was left alone perhaps because his location is secret, while astrid and kayo were maybe found due to living on a more populated island (more prey for bellum to go after, more people to know about astrid and kayo). a lot of the monsters in the dungeons were probably already there, while the bosses were specifically made to protect what was hidden there, or maybe the bosses came first and their presences attracted other monsters.
i think bellum created the two monsters you fight overseas on the spot; they existed specifically to try and kill link because at those two times (link going to get the final spirit and link going to get the first pure metal) bellum suddenly panics and decides to try and eliminate link at the cost of the loss of a possible worthwhile piece of prey. bellum was probably also the one to begin the rumor of the ghost ship; i imagine he can take a sort of human form the same way oshus can, and spent a bit of time after defeating oshus and creating the ghost ship integrating him within some pirate crew and using them to grow and spread the rumor of the ghost ship, eventaully leading them towards it and taking them has his first victims (and along the way taking the time to foster good relationships with them in the hopes that their positive emotions and feelings would make them more worthwhile prey, back to the manga snippet idea of feelings of friendship and love [and probably positive emotions in general] being another form of better life force).
bellum's cool
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✨
Give you and your writing a compliment. Go on now. You know you deserve it. 😉
AA this is the last fic writer ask question fr :o again it took me a while to get to all of them pfft but i appreciate them a lot!! this question especially is really sweet wkdndn but yes!! and hope anyone reading my answers to these questions found it interesting at least pfft
hmm…. compliment….. im a MAJOR stickler for detail :O i literally cant turn my brain off i have to get EVERY detail i can right whenever possible wjdnd. not that im always right bc im very much not but i try very hard to be!! and i absolutely adore trying to put a lot of detail and nuance into things in my work esp since i focus on characters mental thought process so much hah. i try very hard to do a lot (or at least i consider it a lot widjdj) of research :o for example i wanted to write astrea fic so i devoured every heinkel and reinhard related side story possible and now they give me intense brainrot. cries. since i write a lot of character study i HAVE to look at everything possible before i finish a fic or ill cry inside if i miss one (1) detail i couldve taken into account hah. so i do think im a hard working writer :o !! analyzing things for fun especially when i admire a work of fiction runs in my blood wjdnd it just Happens. i try my best!!
as for um. that one crack treated seriously gluttony if fic i did once (selfcest…). is it accurate to who gluttonybaru is as a character? no in the sense that hes written purposefully in that fic to be like. pushed to his Most Extreme. but also i did try to at least be kind of accurate bc. i combed through SO MUCH of arc 6 and the gluttony if to write him fr 😭😭 there was TOO MUCH analysis in that fic thats why its got a novel length wordcount HAH. hes always had a hate love relationship with “natsuki subaru”….
uhhh uhhh oh yeah something else vaguely related to this that just came to mind—for example my multichap pride otto fic has me like really wracking my brain bc pride otto has screentime for exactly 0.2 seconds (im totally good at math) so its like. i wanted to like analyze how he most likely thinks and what sort of behaviors he has and how hed even react in All the new shenanigans im putting him in. but im also working off of 0.2 seconds of screentime so i had to also go and look at how main otto thinks and try to make Many Educated Guesses on how otto goes from point a (main otto pre-meeting subaru) to point b (the otto we see in pride if). which is something i do every time i focus on an if character in general anyway HAH bc i think it gets easier to understand if versions of characters, no matter how different they seem from their main route selves, once you examine who their base character is and THEN you look at the if events and how its warped them away from their base character. if that makes sense. i think its really fun hah.
i also recognize though that it wouldve been maybe Easier to make pride otto in my fic a little more. dead inside. empty. bc i know that ive been writing a lot of his anger and irritation hah. and it wouldve made sense for him to be a little more tired kind of dead inside in his internal dialogue!!! but i figured that i might as well go a little differently with it to yes maybe subvert expectations a little bit (and bc. ok after arc 8 Confirming Many Things About Otto, no way pride otto wasnt angry at some point. fr.) but also bc. you know when a person whos been in a traumatic situation they couldnt escape for so long is forced to change themselves to survive? if that person manages to finally escape its like. now they gotta try and unlearn any trauma related lessons theyve learned now that the danger is over bc what helped them survive is now maladaptive bc the danger is Over. thats kind of how i approached the fic fr T^T but also i try so hard to write pride otto as the jaded ass he definitely is. theres so much jades in him for sure. (this sentence totally makes sense.)
oh!!! uh uh one small detail with pride otto—when characters have titles, he will almost Always call them by their title in both internal and external dialogue. reinhard is sword saint and julius is the greatest/finest knight and felix is blue, etc etc. otto is well. 1. emotionally constipated 2. distant from others 3. Going Out of His Way to distance himself from others 4. hes very fixated on power and hierarchy and 5. he is Very aware of the role hes played in crushing each knight in the knight trio. main otto Absolutely feels guilt even as hes being ruthless. i figured pride otto likely at least Used to feel guilty. if hes not still guilty deep down.
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