* J *

Part Twenty-Two: Chapter 162: A Tooth For A Tooth

The Joker lay on the bunk in his cell, eyes staring up at the ceiling. He was tired, exhausted, both mentally and physically. The shocks they were giving him kept him feeling wiped out. However, that was precisely what Arkham staff wanted. This way the Joker was as docile as house cat. He couldn't overpower the guards. He couldn't formulate any escape plans. He couldn't walk, much less run from anyone. He could barely talk. Of course the staff logged into his chart that his side effects were all due to the tumor. But the Joker knew better. The tumor caused him headaches and hallucinations, they didn't make him feel like this.

Any decent psychiatrist could see that the shocks shouldn't have been daily. In most cases there's a two week window between them. But then, Arkham had never had decent psychiatrists. Harleen Quinzel, Jonathan Crane, Hugo Strange, and of course the late Dr. Arkham, enough said about the breed of psychiatrist found in Arkham Asylum. However, the Joker has never seen a psychiatrist outside of the fine Arkham ones. It was as if the place only hired rejects that barely made it through grad school. In hindsight, maybe he shouldn't have murdered all the psychiatrists in Gotham...nah, scratch that, he didn't regret it. Not one bit.

The Joker had lost track of time. He wasn't sure how long he had been in Arkham. He wasn't sure how many times he had been given the shock therapy. It could have been a week or a month, he couldn't distinguish the difference. He didn't know how much longer he could take being there. He felt as though he might die if he had to endure one more session of shocks. He'd love to hunt down the inventor of shock therapy and shock them to death with that foul instrument of their making. But unfortunately, he couldn't concentrate on a plan to escape.

BANG! BANG! RAT-A-TAT! BOOM! KABLAM!

The Joker turns his head toward the hallway. A slight little weak smile comes to his face. If he wasn't hallucinating all that gunfire, then that meant the Calvary had finally arrived to rescue him. He so hoped he wasn't imagining it all. But as he lay listening, the gunblasts grew closer and closer to his cell.

"Clear!" He heard a voice yell, then, all of the sudden, the door to his cell blew off.

Armed men came rushing into his cell. "Boss, you ok?" Asks a voice above him.

His eyes weakly part. It was Frost. The Joker had never been so happy to see him before. "J-Johnny," he barely manages to say.

Ace comes into view with a knife as Frost pulls the Joker up. Ace cuts the straps on the straight jacket. He then grabs it and pulls it over the Joker's head. Neither Frost or Ace had to ask the boss if he could walk. It was pretty obvious that he wasn't his normal self. They each take one of his arms and put it across their shoulders. The lift him up and practically drag him from his cell.

In the hallway the Joker's clowns are executing any staff that was stupid enough to stand in their way. They get the Joker outside and put him in the back of a van. Frost and Ace get up front and speed away from Arkham as the rest of the clowns tie up loose ends. Frost makes a hard right. Ace looks back to see the boss thrown against the wall.

"Sorry bout that boss," Frost says.

"Did they drug him?" Ace asks.

"They can't drug him. It's the shocks," Frost replies.

They race back to the Joker's penthouse and pull into the alley behind the building. Frost kills the van and they quickly get out. Frost opens the back doors nd they quickly grab the Joker, hoisting him out. They take him through the back entrance and get into the service elevator. Frost sends a message to Harley, telling her they're back with Mr.J, and to open the door.

When the elevator opens Harley is there waiting. "Puddin," she says. The Joker barely has the strength to raise his head to look at her. "Oh no," Harley says then looks to Johnny and Ace. "Get him ta tha bed."