A pink pony crouched miserably on the roof of a large, grimy building, looking out over the decaying city with what might charitably be described as a thousand-yard stare. Her ebulliently frizzy mane was nearly flat, moreso than the drizzling rain could reasonably account for.
She had probably been there for quite some time before the towering bipedal figure emerged silently from the darkness, to loom beside her radiating unintentional menace. The silence between them was broken only by the rain for a few dozen breaths, before he broke it with a raspy baritone.
"I need to know what you did to him."
She hesitated for a long moment, groping within the tumult of her mind for a way to describe having done something unthinkable. He waited with the silent patience of a predator as she haltingly began to speak, in fits and starts, as the question dragged her mind unwillingly back a few scant hours....
"So? What do you think?"
The room was a chamber of horrors, a perversion of everything she loved and stood for. Streamers and balloons intermixed with blood and bodies, a scattered hoof-full of survivors gasping out their last in (never let Fluttershy see this) twisted parody of laughter. Her eyes derped about in shock, unable to find any safe place rest devoid of a sight that felt like a violation of innermost self. But it was still better than closing her eyes -- oh, blessed Celestia, the sounds--
Her questioner was suddenly there, nose-to-nose with her (pouncing out of nowhere the same way she always did to her friends), smile like a bloody gash in his chalk-white face beneath that bilious green mane. And between, the eyes, gleeful and mad and oh so familiar--
"You're speechless! Wonderful!" He capered about her horror-struck stillness, a nightmare in purple (Rarity would faint at the color scheme), chortling with glee. "Oh, it's wonderful to be appreciated by a fellow expert!"
"You hurt them." The words trickled out of her mouth like water and pooled on the floor (Twilight would say that was silly, words weren't fluids) around her hooves. Her host faltered in his madcap dance a moment, but recovered with panache and spun to face her again, grinning broadly (madly) enough to let her see all of his teeth.
"Moi? All I did was throw a party!" He spun to survey the room. "I suppose my parties are a bit... intense... for some people. But if they can't take the heat, they shouldn't play with the napalm party poppers!"
She wanted to make herself forget that his metaphor wasn't... metaphorical, but the stench in the air wouldn't let her. She knew, distantly, that she should be afraid, but the shattered glassiness of her mind seemed unable to put together the right pieces for that. She was starting to shake, but not from fear.
"You made a party to hurt people." Her voice was starting to regain volume, but it didn't sound like her voice anymore in her own ears. Something was coming together inside her, pushing the words out, and it was getting bigger. Stronger (like Applejack). Hotter. "You made them hurt themselves laughing."
His grin shrank, giving way to a sullen anger that still pretended at joviality. "Hey, is it my fault if they can't take a joke?"
"This is a bad party." The thing inside her solidified into crystal clarity, growing to fill her mind and pushing away shock and horror and fear in favor of implacable resolution (it felt a bit like Rainbow Dash).
His expression turned sour and vindictive, mixed with a sickening joy at being handed an excuse to cause (more) pain (again). "Well, if this one is a letdown for you, I'll just have to try harder." That nauseating smile again, predatory with anticipation. "And this time, we can collaborate! Won't that be fun?"
"No." Her inner Dashie was on the wing, flying like the wind to retrieve what she needed now. "No more of your kinds of parties, ever. No more hurting people. No more bad laughter."
He goggled, dumbfounded, before throwing his head back and braying with hysterical guffaws. "Oh, really! And just how are you going to do that? Even Batsie's never been able to pull that off!"
Her Dashie was back, her errand successful (as if there could have ever been any doubt). The necklace that was the symbol of her special gift settled about her neck, and she met his suddenly wary expression with glowing eyes. "You'll see." Because even though her friends weren't here in the flesh, they were with her in the way that counted most. And that meant that she could draw on enough power to do... this....
"...I took his laughter away."
The looming figure in black waited patiently. The rain drizzled and made little rivulets that swirled past his boots and her hooves.
"I made it so it won't be funny for him any more. Hurting people. Making them laugh in bad ways. Throwing bad parties." Finally she looked up at him, tears mingling with the rain on her face. "I didn't want to, but I could feel it inside him, all twisted up and broken. There wasn't any good laughter left in him, just... mean laughter. Bad laughter." For all that she was equine rather than human, the anguish in her face was plain to see. "I'm supposed to fix things with laughter. But not him. I couldn't... there wasn't..."
Her head dropped limply onto her forehooves. "So I took it all away."
"Well," he rumbled eventually. "That explains a few things."
He got her into his vehicle, tucked a survival blanket around her with brusque solicitude and turned up the heat to full blast. She'd been in the rain long enough to be soaked through, and that on top of shock was a bad combination.
"Where are we going?" The question startled him -- she'd been wordlessly following his directions in a near fugue state since the rooftop.
"One of my associates contacted me. They've figured out how to send you home. We should be able to do so within the hour."
She shrank into the blanket, shivering slightly. "I need my friends." Two blocks later: "Will they still be my friends?"
After what I've seen. After what I've done, he filled in. "Yes." A red-and-blue costume flew across the view of his mind's eye, and a chiding pair of penetrating blue eyes that impelled him to say something more (dammit, Clark, I'm a detective, not a therapist). "Friends... real friends... Never give up on you. Ever." Which was totally not the right thing to say. But it seemed to help anyway.
They were parking at the laboratory when he became aware of her eyes studying him closely. He ignore the weight of her eyes with the unconscious ease of infinite practice. "We're here."
"Someone tried to take your laughter away, didn't they? A long time ago. They got almost all of it, too."
His hand paused on the door handle. His knuckles turned white under the black armored gauntlet. "I don't need laughter. In my work, it merely gets in the way. Laughter is... for other people."
Somehow she was suddenly in his face (and nearly punted reflexively through the windshield), eyes boring into his with a desperate intensity that was frankly worrisome. "No!" she blurted, sounding frightened (for him? That was unusual). She grasped his face between her forehooves (windshield). "Brucie, you have to laugh. You can't let go of that little bit they didn't take. You have to." Her voice dropped, saturated with prophetic terror. "If you give that up... if you lose all your laughter...." She shivered, and what he saw in her eyes was enough to silence even him for a moment. "It'll be bad. Worse than Nightmare Moon, worse than the Joker, worse than... than the worst thing you can imagine." She stared into his eyes, obviously willing him to believe. "I've seen it."
Ludicrous. He wasn't going to dignify this with a re-- "How?" Dammit.
She shrank back into her own seat, closing her eyes and shaking. "When I took the Joker's laughter... away...." She cringed openly at saying that. "I saw him. And you. All mixed up together. I saw all the times you nearly lost all your laughter. And I saw you. What you would be, with no laughter. No happiness. No friends." She opened her eyes and looked at him again. "It was bad."
The description was all the more effective for its lack of adjectives. He groped for a response for the moment, his normal silence feeling inappropriate. "I'll... keep that in mind."
"What's going on here?"
The Boy Wonder Brigade, encamped on the couch in Wayne Manor's media room, scrambled as if they'd been collectively caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Dick fumbled the remote and switched stations with admirable speed, but not quickly enough.
"Bruce!" Tim blurted. "Hey, we, ah, didn't hear you come in."
Bruce cocked one eyebrow. "Obviously," he stated, using the Bat-voice.
"We were channel-surfing, looking for the pregame show," Dick lied smoothly, suiting action to words.
"You were watching a TiVo recording of 'My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.' The second-season premier, I believe."
Watching their jaws drop in unison held a certain gratification, he had to admit. Even if he didn't let any of his amusement show.
Tim recovered the power of speech first. "How did you...?"
Damian made a scoffing noise. "The World's Greatest Detective makes note of everything. Even mind-rotting dreck like this, which by the way explains the rapidly accelerating decay of this nation's intellectual resources."
"Oh?" Tim shot back smugly. "This from the guy who said Applejack was 'attractive, in a rough-hewn unsophisticated way'?"
As Damian was reduced to incoherent red-faced spluttering, Dick turned around on the couch to eye Bruce with a rather evil grin. "Well, maybe the WGD can settle this question for us. So, Bruce: who is the Best Pony?"
"Pinkie Pie." The unhesitating certainty of his replay obviously floored them, more so than the actual answer. The Robins (current and former) eyed each other uncertainly. Bruce placed a mental wager on who would speak first.
Tim (as predicted). "Um, Bruce... not to hit too close to home, or anything, but... doesn't she, like, remind you of the Joker a bit?"
"Oh, yes, certainly. But she's only similar to the Joker in being different." Utter bewilderment. "That is... Pinkie is the polar opposite of the Joker in every way that matters. In D&D terminology, if the Joker is Joyous Evil, then Pinkie is Joyous Good. So to speak."
Honestly, he hadn't seen them this dumbfounded since the last time he'd come back from the dead. "Think about it. You'll see what I mean." He turned to leave. "Oh, and call me when the game starts."
Behind him, he could hear the confused jumble of whispers:
"Bruce? A Brony?"
"...cannot believe I am related to that...."
"...used a D&D metaphor. Should we call the Martian Manhunter and have him check for... stuff?"
Bruce strolled down the hallway, allowing himself a grin where no one could see. It wasn't Pinkie's style, but she would understand that sometimes the best laugh was the one you kept to yourself. Now, to get back to his plans to prank Clark. The Boy Scout would never see it coming from Batman....
She had probably been there for quite some time before the towering bipedal figure emerged silently from the darkness, to loom beside her radiating unintentional menace. The silence between them was broken only by the rain for a few dozen breaths, before he broke it with a raspy baritone.
"I need to know what you did to him."
She hesitated for a long moment, groping within the tumult of her mind for a way to describe having done something unthinkable. He waited with the silent patience of a predator as she haltingly began to speak, in fits and starts, as the question dragged her mind unwillingly back a few scant hours....
"So? What do you think?"
The room was a chamber of horrors, a perversion of everything she loved and stood for. Streamers and balloons intermixed with blood and bodies, a scattered hoof-full of survivors gasping out their last in (never let Fluttershy see this) twisted parody of laughter. Her eyes derped about in shock, unable to find any safe place rest devoid of a sight that felt like a violation of innermost self. But it was still better than closing her eyes -- oh, blessed Celestia, the sounds--
Her questioner was suddenly there, nose-to-nose with her (pouncing out of nowhere the same way she always did to her friends), smile like a bloody gash in his chalk-white face beneath that bilious green mane. And between, the eyes, gleeful and mad and oh so familiar--
"You're speechless! Wonderful!" He capered about her horror-struck stillness, a nightmare in purple (Rarity would faint at the color scheme), chortling with glee. "Oh, it's wonderful to be appreciated by a fellow expert!"
"You hurt them." The words trickled out of her mouth like water and pooled on the floor (Twilight would say that was silly, words weren't fluids) around her hooves. Her host faltered in his madcap dance a moment, but recovered with panache and spun to face her again, grinning broadly (madly) enough to let her see all of his teeth.
"Moi? All I did was throw a party!" He spun to survey the room. "I suppose my parties are a bit... intense... for some people. But if they can't take the heat, they shouldn't play with the napalm party poppers!"
She wanted to make herself forget that his metaphor wasn't... metaphorical, but the stench in the air wouldn't let her. She knew, distantly, that she should be afraid, but the shattered glassiness of her mind seemed unable to put together the right pieces for that. She was starting to shake, but not from fear.
"You made a party to hurt people." Her voice was starting to regain volume, but it didn't sound like her voice anymore in her own ears. Something was coming together inside her, pushing the words out, and it was getting bigger. Stronger (like Applejack). Hotter. "You made them hurt themselves laughing."
His grin shrank, giving way to a sullen anger that still pretended at joviality. "Hey, is it my fault if they can't take a joke?"
"This is a bad party." The thing inside her solidified into crystal clarity, growing to fill her mind and pushing away shock and horror and fear in favor of implacable resolution (it felt a bit like Rainbow Dash).
His expression turned sour and vindictive, mixed with a sickening joy at being handed an excuse to cause (more) pain (again). "Well, if this one is a letdown for you, I'll just have to try harder." That nauseating smile again, predatory with anticipation. "And this time, we can collaborate! Won't that be fun?"
"No." Her inner Dashie was on the wing, flying like the wind to retrieve what she needed now. "No more of your kinds of parties, ever. No more hurting people. No more bad laughter."
He goggled, dumbfounded, before throwing his head back and braying with hysterical guffaws. "Oh, really! And just how are you going to do that? Even Batsie's never been able to pull that off!"
Her Dashie was back, her errand successful (as if there could have ever been any doubt). The necklace that was the symbol of her special gift settled about her neck, and she met his suddenly wary expression with glowing eyes. "You'll see." Because even though her friends weren't here in the flesh, they were with her in the way that counted most. And that meant that she could draw on enough power to do... this....
"...I took his laughter away."
The looming figure in black waited patiently. The rain drizzled and made little rivulets that swirled past his boots and her hooves.
"I made it so it won't be funny for him any more. Hurting people. Making them laugh in bad ways. Throwing bad parties." Finally she looked up at him, tears mingling with the rain on her face. "I didn't want to, but I could feel it inside him, all twisted up and broken. There wasn't any good laughter left in him, just... mean laughter. Bad laughter." For all that she was equine rather than human, the anguish in her face was plain to see. "I'm supposed to fix things with laughter. But not him. I couldn't... there wasn't..."
Her head dropped limply onto her forehooves. "So I took it all away."
"Well," he rumbled eventually. "That explains a few things."
He got her into his vehicle, tucked a survival blanket around her with brusque solicitude and turned up the heat to full blast. She'd been in the rain long enough to be soaked through, and that on top of shock was a bad combination.
"Where are we going?" The question startled him -- she'd been wordlessly following his directions in a near fugue state since the rooftop.
"One of my associates contacted me. They've figured out how to send you home. We should be able to do so within the hour."
She shrank into the blanket, shivering slightly. "I need my friends." Two blocks later: "Will they still be my friends?"
After what I've seen. After what I've done, he filled in. "Yes." A red-and-blue costume flew across the view of his mind's eye, and a chiding pair of penetrating blue eyes that impelled him to say something more (dammit, Clark, I'm a detective, not a therapist). "Friends... real friends... Never give up on you. Ever." Which was totally not the right thing to say. But it seemed to help anyway.
They were parking at the laboratory when he became aware of her eyes studying him closely. He ignore the weight of her eyes with the unconscious ease of infinite practice. "We're here."
"Someone tried to take your laughter away, didn't they? A long time ago. They got almost all of it, too."
His hand paused on the door handle. His knuckles turned white under the black armored gauntlet. "I don't need laughter. In my work, it merely gets in the way. Laughter is... for other people."
Somehow she was suddenly in his face (and nearly punted reflexively through the windshield), eyes boring into his with a desperate intensity that was frankly worrisome. "No!" she blurted, sounding frightened (for him? That was unusual). She grasped his face between her forehooves (windshield). "Brucie, you have to laugh. You can't let go of that little bit they didn't take. You have to." Her voice dropped, saturated with prophetic terror. "If you give that up... if you lose all your laughter...." She shivered, and what he saw in her eyes was enough to silence even him for a moment. "It'll be bad. Worse than Nightmare Moon, worse than the Joker, worse than... than the worst thing you can imagine." She stared into his eyes, obviously willing him to believe. "I've seen it."
Ludicrous. He wasn't going to dignify this with a re-- "How?" Dammit.
She shrank back into her own seat, closing her eyes and shaking. "When I took the Joker's laughter... away...." She cringed openly at saying that. "I saw him. And you. All mixed up together. I saw all the times you nearly lost all your laughter. And I saw you. What you would be, with no laughter. No happiness. No friends." She opened her eyes and looked at him again. "It was bad."
The description was all the more effective for its lack of adjectives. He groped for a response for the moment, his normal silence feeling inappropriate. "I'll... keep that in mind."
"What's going on here?"
The Boy Wonder Brigade, encamped on the couch in Wayne Manor's media room, scrambled as if they'd been collectively caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Dick fumbled the remote and switched stations with admirable speed, but not quickly enough.
"Bruce!" Tim blurted. "Hey, we, ah, didn't hear you come in."
Bruce cocked one eyebrow. "Obviously," he stated, using the Bat-voice.
"We were channel-surfing, looking for the pregame show," Dick lied smoothly, suiting action to words.
"You were watching a TiVo recording of 'My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.' The second-season premier, I believe."
Watching their jaws drop in unison held a certain gratification, he had to admit. Even if he didn't let any of his amusement show.
Tim recovered the power of speech first. "How did you...?"
Damian made a scoffing noise. "The World's Greatest Detective makes note of everything. Even mind-rotting dreck like this, which by the way explains the rapidly accelerating decay of this nation's intellectual resources."
"Oh?" Tim shot back smugly. "This from the guy who said Applejack was 'attractive, in a rough-hewn unsophisticated way'?"
As Damian was reduced to incoherent red-faced spluttering, Dick turned around on the couch to eye Bruce with a rather evil grin. "Well, maybe the WGD can settle this question for us. So, Bruce: who is the Best Pony?"
"Pinkie Pie." The unhesitating certainty of his replay obviously floored them, more so than the actual answer. The Robins (current and former) eyed each other uncertainly. Bruce placed a mental wager on who would speak first.
Tim (as predicted). "Um, Bruce... not to hit too close to home, or anything, but... doesn't she, like, remind you of the Joker a bit?"
"Oh, yes, certainly. But she's only similar to the Joker in being different." Utter bewilderment. "That is... Pinkie is the polar opposite of the Joker in every way that matters. In D&D terminology, if the Joker is Joyous Evil, then Pinkie is Joyous Good. So to speak."
Honestly, he hadn't seen them this dumbfounded since the last time he'd come back from the dead. "Think about it. You'll see what I mean." He turned to leave. "Oh, and call me when the game starts."
Behind him, he could hear the confused jumble of whispers:
"Bruce? A Brony?"
"...cannot believe I am related to that...."
"...used a D&D metaphor. Should we call the Martian Manhunter and have him check for... stuff?"
Bruce strolled down the hallway, allowing himself a grin where no one could see. It wasn't Pinkie's style, but she would understand that sometimes the best laugh was the one you kept to yourself. Now, to get back to his plans to prank Clark. The Boy Scout would never see it coming from Batman....
![[Image: all_that_and_aliens_too_by_pixelkitties-d4opbdb.png]](http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/035/3/4/all_that_and_aliens_too_by_pixelkitties-d4opbdb.png){kind=tracking}
![[Image: banana-dance.gif]](http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/forumimportfiles//banana-dance.gif)
![[Image: mlp__ocarina_of_time_set_1_by_ryuukiba-d48ea3r.jpg]](http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2011/242/c/2/mlp__ocarina_of_time_set_1_by_ryuukiba-d48ea3r.jpg)
![[Image: the_great_and_powerful_trixie_consulting...4oycim.png]](http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/038/c/8/the_great_and_powerful_trixie_consulting_unicorn_by_pixelkitties-d4oycim.png){kind=tracking}
![[Image: mad_little_pony___lina_inverse_by_bebopa...3em1kx.jpg]](http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2011/231/8/d/mad_little_pony___lina_inverse_by_bebopanimebabe-d3em1kx.jpg)
![[Image: my_little_gargoyle_by_bri_chan-d4bcmia.jpg]](http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/273/3/7/my_little_gargoyle_by_bri_chan-d4bcmia.jpg)
![[Image: strikersetcfinal9_th.jpg]](http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/uploads/strikersetcfinal9_th.jpg)