Out of the Belfry, into the Fire

A Roof-hopper's Life

"What?" asked the Joker, eyes wide with an old schoolmaster's horror. "No one raises their hands?"

Then he laughed, which was worse.

Veronica did not dare turn to Pierce; though, she felt him tense beside her. Her mind was almost completely blank. She did not notice how her mouth was open just ajar and her eyes were wide and empty with her shoulders hunched over her lowered neck. It actually made it stranger to be seated on a sofa instead of being tied up or standing in a corner.

The worse thing about the laugh at hand however, was that it was only making the time stretch out longer and more painfully. She winced and cringed as the Joker stopped suddenly to swing his face right into hers. His breath smelled like he had just had tacos for dinner and she would not doubt that he had.

"Then I'll have to start choosing myself," he hissed dangerously through a wide sneering grin.

Veronica gulped.

The Joker then shrugged carelessly, almost harmlessly, and certainly humorously, if it was not for the precarious nature of this moment.

"Ladies first," he said in a sort of merry chirp. "Don't be shy."

"...I..." choked Veronica reaching down for some of that pluck she did have and had used against other crooks before like socking a brainwashed jungle man in the back with a bag; though, no one was quite like the Joker. She cleared her throat and scowled as she forced herself into submission of her courage enough to say at least as harmlessly as she could in return, "I don't know what you want me to say."

Now she really felt Pierce tense up.

"I—I mean, after all," tittered Ronnie V., "it's usually customary for a teacher to ask a question before a student gives an answer, right?"

The Joker looked even more amused, and it was not lost upon Veronica that his eyes briefly darted to Pierce. When he returned to Veronica he shook his head and clicked the roof of his mouth about three or four times.

Then he said in a light tone of voice, "And people wonder why the grade point average is so low in this country. No discipline. No discipline. Slackers the lot of 'em, I say. What a pity. Maybe we should bring back the cone of shame."

He held up his hand with suspense as though to pull something dangerous out.

"No!" squeaked Pierce suddenly.

The Joker paused with only the slightest hint of annoyance, but he was soon more amused than before.

"Now, now," he said closing his eyes and reaching again into his purple suit jacket. "Wait your turn, Chapstick. There's cones enough for everyone."

And he pulled out a strawberry ice cream cone.

Both Pierce and Veronica blinked paralyzed in their confusion. First, because they were surprised that it was not some sort of grinning time bomb, but second because it seemed like only magic could produce such an article of food from inside someone's jacket pocket without making a total mess, Joker or no Joker. Though, after a few seconds, despite its realistic detail, it was obvious that it was fake as the Joker waved it around and said, "Sorry, only one flavor, but it's guaranteed to turn that frown upside down. Remember, 'happy tastes good'!"

The Joker swung back with full intention of shoving it right into Veronica's face, but just as it was about to hit her, something happened that neither Veronica nor the Joker quite expected.

Pierce, in a strange impulse of chivalry hidden deep within his posh blood from the 'ye old days' of the knighthood when Chapman ancestors of long ago left their marketing and bartering to fight for their people with lance and shield. Afterwards even Pierce himself was not sure how he had done it or even what he had done. He shoved Veronica down as hard as he could off the sofa. She fell onto the floor with an "ooff" and a thud, and Pierce himself was left with a plush face-full of fake ice cream that exploded into a poof of hissing gas.