Chapter 33: Interlude.

Discord: discord.gg/ydnYFQynZ2

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Vampire Rule N°: When the author is back, don't question it and just enjoy the chapter…Alucard, put the gun down.

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Seventy-nine. 

That's how many men died that night as a direct result of the massacre in Redhook.

Most left the world in those dirty warehouses, surrounded by the bodies of their fellow gangbangers both living and dead.

Others cramped up in ambulances that arrived just a moment too late, or passing away on Wayne-funded beds at the nearest emergency hospital, their bodies pumped-full of drugs harder and stronger than any package they worked on the streets.

It was almost poetic.

The police got busy, the people got scared, the press in general got a professional orgasm that was only rivalled by the local security equipment and gun peddlers.

For one night, the world cared about a bunch of dead street rats who only ever amounted to a statistic.

A number on a paper that was passed around from the first time they got socially promoted because the schools were too overwhelmed to give a darn about some illiterate son of a junkie, if they even knew who their father was, that is. 

It was passed around from depressed teacher to perverted superintendents to corrupt directors to even more depressed social workers who left it neglected for many years, before being inevitably taken in by some sadistic cop who was all too happy to make an arrest, blow up the crime-rate and police efficiency in one go so the mayor can make a speech and the commissioner keep his arse on a fancy chair. 

Their death was in a way, the peak of their existence, the moment when that damned paper was put in a folder that shall never be opened again, when all the citizens read about them, cared about them.

For one night.

And then it was all gone.

The media were quick to call it 'A short but bloody conflict between local gangs led by maladjusted deviants', the police made some token arrests and sent a few more patrols to the area, just long enough for the journalists to snap some pictures and write a story about the efficiency of the GCPD. 

Less than a week later, twice as many people were killed in incidents, murders, arsons. 

People who were underage, students, citizens who paid their taxes and walked their dogs, said hi to the neighbour and sure as hell didn't deserve to be assraped by Victor Zsasz in his latest attempts at freeing life.

People who deserved to be avenged. 

But that didn't matter to one self-proclaimed busty brunette who ran a bakery on the better part of town, lived in a condo she couldn't afford if she made twice as much in a month, had people who cleaned it for her, did her taxes and invested her savings and made sure she never had to think twice about the future if it wasn't to plan a vacation.

Her student loans were paid, her stock portfolio managed—she had a stock portfolio, that sentence alone should never be associated with someone who once finished two bottles of whiskey before going to school.

Nor did she care about the way the most rotten, drug-ridden neighbourhood in Gotham was plagued by a parasite who fancied himself a symbiote.

A parasite that was dead-set on turning things around for the better, pushing forward the economy one raid at a time, laundering money and running businesses, funding rehab and forcing people to go there even if he had to wrap their minds.

Closing strip clubs, gentlemen's bars and all sorts of fronts for players who were either scared off or too dead to care about their assets.

She didn't care about how many junkies, criminals and other outcasts were finding their way back into a society that was no longer that repulsed by them…the free showers, food and clothes might have helped with that part.

And the number seventy-nine meant absolutely nothing to her formerly broke self.

Not when it has been more than a month since she last saw the man who made all of this happen.

But she couldn't complain, wouldn't complain.

Not when he gave her this life.

So she sat back on the most comfortable couch in the world, eating the expensive ice cream that didn't taste like cardboard, and watched Vicki Vale talk on the television without truly registering her words.

'Still, it would be nice to spend some time together. ' She sighed as the chocolaty goodness melted in her mouth, it reminded her of the first time they met.

Until she could no longer ignore the tv, that is.

"We've just received breaking news—the Joker has escaped Arkham Asylum." The pretty blonde girl looked utterly terrified, and Max would bet a hundred bucks that she was making the same face.

The last time the Joker was out, he and his psychotic girlfriend ended up blowing up a school bus, robbed two sperm banks and somehow killed someone in Nebraska without leaving the city.

All in one night.

She and everyone with a brain went stark raving mad when he was denied the death sentence yet another time, and was sent back to the loony bin so that he could 'get the help he desperately needs'

They all knew he would break out again, but it was much easier not to think about it.

'It could be worse, he's the only one who broke out, and he might go into hiding for a while' Max tried that thing called optimism she heard about every so often, which in itself was a pretty good indicator of how bad the situation was getting. 

"Breaking news tonight from Arkham Asylum—reports have just come in that the Joker has truly escaped custody but has yet to leave the island. It's unclear exactly how he managed to get out, but only moments after the first alarm was raised, chaos erupted throughout the facility. Witnesses describe the situation as 'all hell breaking loose,' with explosions and power outages reported inside the asylum."

It wasn't working too well. 

To that, Max could only say one thing.

"F*ck."