Chemistry, Anyone? (open)

[jackz]

Forty-Five minutes early.

Very unbecoming of him. He was always fashionably late.

He sat scrunched over his desk, papers strewn about carelessly with periodic tables and Chinese food menus. His leg twitched and moved up and down in such rapidity that he felt that it was going to leave his entire body and hop away if he didn’t stop and DO something soon.

Nail biting, hair twirling, mock grading-papers-doing, did little to alleviate his boredom. He needed something, anything – he was getting so antsy that he even began scratching himself like a drug addict; well technically he would be a fun addict in need of a full blown syringe of grade A fun! He felt suffocated, his hair was pulled back too tightly, his collared shirt was cutting off his circulation, the putty face makeup that took him hours to do felt mucky and dirty, and his slacks were simply just too hot to be wearing in this preposterously warm weather! By God man! Someone need to open a window!

He quickly skirted off to the nearest wall sized window of the Chemistry laboratory, he nearly tripped over his own feet when he did so. Barbarously he opened up the window like a man trapped in a cage and took the first sweet breaths of – garbage disposal. His smile faded as the sound of buzzing flies reached his ears and as he looked down a large vat of undesirables met his gaze. He rolled his eyes in annoyance, wasn’t public safety or cleanliness or whatever suppose to clean that mess up instead of letting it bake in the sun like a potato?

Now ultimately trapped in the mundane world of SCHOOL and REAL-LIFE, he angrily slouched over the window and looked up at the sunny sky, cloudless and overwhelming hot under his pounds of facial make up to hide his scars. Grumbling he said, “The clouds open up and God says: ‘I hate you, Joker!’”

Oddly enough this reminded him of gasoline. His mind, so skewed and knotted in all its synapses, always let his thoughts wander into various other machinations of his mind. Always thinking, always plotting, something was always rumbling around in his head – hence why he could never truly get any sleep – there were always things that needed to be done, people that needed to be slain, people weren’t going to kill themselves you know – only in a perfect world – he would suppose.

“Gasoline.” He muttered, flexing his hands and forgetting he was still hovering over the broiling pit of garbage. The smell reminded him of something, “Corpses.” He blinked. “Corpses!” He shouted in excitement and glee filled his face to the brim. The smell reminded him of corpses! And corpses weren’t as fun as live bait, they never understood when to laugh or clap or scream. They were very inconsiderate too – leaving messes all over the bathroom floor. And the smell! Pee-Eww!

Fortunately for him, his master trade in being a chemical genius taught him the overwhelming particles in a decaying corpse could be easily snuffed out by the smell of gasoline. A smell that he found actually quite pleasant. However, if you put too much gasoline on the bandanna over your face, you’ll get sick. Not enough and you’ll still be able to smell the corpses. You need to strike a balance!

The bell rung, he flinched in disrupted concentration and glowered at the clock that stood above the entrance door. He wished he had something in his hand to throw at it – teach that contraption a lesson in rude interruptions!

But instead, getting into “teacher mode” he painfully took his part in sitting in the front of the room and waited for bumbling idiot students to shuffle in and waste up some more of precious his time.

[Darcy Leone]

As the students walked on into the room, Victor Zsasz, a truly reformed man walked behind a few and glanced about the room for indications of homicidal toxins. He was dealing with the Joker as an employee and even though he had a chemist touch, it was deadly to the touch. Victor wondered what made him hire the Joker. He was indeed... Different. No special abilities besides that of a lunatic. No college experience or teacher certification. All he had was the promise of reform. At Arkham, many inmates including the Joker were given a second chance. Victor was considered the most reformed and offered the position of principal of the program. Napier was offered a teacher's position and it was Zsasz's mission to overlook it.

He walked up to the teacher as there was five minutes before class began. He had in his jacket a sedative and police issue tazer. Napier wasn't a man to fool around with and Victor knew first hand the dangers of not coming prepared. They used to bunk together in Arkham. His eyes stared with a dark melancholy at the cheerful clown man. The dark circles indicated days of stress and no sleep. A true sign of Zsasz's inability to adapt to this new position.

[red]"You are on probation Napier. Don't... fuck up."[/red]

His eyes glared maliciously as he walked a few steps backward towards the door to watch Napier's actions and teaching methods. If anything Victor knew he'd be original...

[jackz]

**VULGARITIES ARE USED!**

Playing teacher mode left him scribbling on a note pad as students made their way into the classroom, but seeing Zsasz walk into the room immediately brightened his demeanor. He nearly jumped up and patted him on the back (which would consequently leave him with a KICK ME sign behind him), but, remembered he was a “reformed” man now. Joker scoffed at the idea. No one ever really leaves Arkham. And sanity is only for people who aren’t able to handle insanity!

Hearing the malicious threat directed at him, the Joker smiled even more grandly. It reminded him of old times, sharing that bunk bed, Zsasz threatening him to make him another notch on his arm, and him simply laughing at his folly whenever he tripped Z (or ZZ as he often likes to call him) in the recreational room in front of all the other rogues. That really grinded his gears and ZZ nearly slit his throat open till the Arkham staff came and beat the ever loving snot out of him. This again made the Joker reel over with laughter and again made the Z-master (ah pet names) fume with rage.

Zsasz was Joker’s straight man when he stuck in the squirrel farm.

And it appeared he might be able to serve the same purpose once again.

Of course in a much more PG-13 setting but, ya get what ya pay for.

Before the second bell rang, he shuffled himself through the molasses of thick headed children and playfully stood beside his “supervisor”.

“I was going to tell you this over a piping hot cup of earl gray tea in the staff lounge but,” he twitched a little, “I thought it would mean more if I told you now.”

He took in a breath, held it, and then continued. “I have never made but one prayer to God,” he looked up at Zsasz with as much honesty he could muster up in his eyes, “It was a very short one.” He held his hands up close to his chest in prayer and bowed his head and closed his eyes as he recited to Zsasz, “O lord, make my enemies ridiculous.” He let his hands fall to his sides and a devilish smirk smugly sat on his face. “And God granted it.”

The second bell rang to commence class.

He immediately piped up with anticipation, suddenly eager to play his part as teacher.

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” he slightly pushed Zsasz out from the framework of the door, “I have IMPORTANT things to do, like mold the minds of future chemists who will consequently create nuclear weapons and make the world go Bye-bye!” He closed the door in Zsasz’s face waving at him through the little window. “Go away now!” He smiled, “You’re scaring away the children!”

He slowly made his way towards the blackboard. But paused midway before looking towards his pupils. Not a single muscle was moved, or sound uttered, as he stared into the abyss of faces.

“Who has a joke?”

There were slight murmurs going around the room, but people were a little to shy and a little to wary of the new teacher’s methods.

“Anybody?”

There was a squeak of a chair.

“All right then,” he sighed, jumped up onto the table top of his desk and began swinging his legs back and forth like a child. “Guess I’ll go first,” he cracked his knuckles, “A guy goes up to a girl in a bar and says, ‘You want to play 'Magic'?’” he digresses from his story, “You know, that playing card game, anyways, she says, ‘What's that?’ and he says,” he clears his throat for the punch line, “‘We go to my house and fuck, and then you disappear!’”

There was a moment of silence, were teachers even allowed to curse? A few students chuckled, lots of murmuring, but for the most part the room was dead. Quiet.

He shook his head, “Oh excusè moi, if I have offended some of your virgin ears, because I’m sure none of you have ever heard the word fuck before.” He rolled his eyes.

“Fine, fine, here’s another one:
Three drunks are standing on top of the Empire State Building.
The first one says to the other two, ‘You know, it's a funny thing about these wind currents. A person could jump off of this building right now and not even hit the ground; the wind would carry him right back up to the top of the building!’
The second drunk says, ‘You're crazy!’ The first drunk says, ‘I'm serious! Watch!’ The first drunk jumps off of the building, and the wind carries him right back up to the top!
The second drunk says, ‘Let me try!’
So the second drunk leaps off of the building and promptly falls to the street below, landing with a hideous SPLAT!
The first drunk smiles, clearly amused. The third drunk looks at him and says, ‘You know, Superman, you can be a real Jerk when you're drunk!’”

He chuckled loudly and slapped his knee; his students began to laugh a little louder now, slowly creeping out of their shells. He immediately clapped his hands, and all eyes and ears diverted to him.

“There we go! That’s what I want to see! A little nonsense!” He chuckled again, his tongue flicked against the inside of his cheek.

“I like nonsense, it wakes up brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of the telescope which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.” He smiled, emerald eyes locking on to each and every eye that stared back at him. “And you’re gonna need all the laughter you can get when you realize the reality of the situation you’re in,” he let the silence fill the room, “that this class is gonna be really fucking hard.”

The class had another brief wave of laughter and that’s when something quite strange dawned on him. That perhaps, working as a petty little teacher for petty little children, probably wasn’t going to be as boring as he thought it was.

[Darcy Leone]

Noticing that The Joker locked the door, Zsasz used his brute strength and kicked it open. No way was a clown going to make a fool of him. He walked back into the room and glanced at all of the kids who not only seemd overwhelmed by the creepy clown man, but the fact that Zsasz, a considerable muscular man pretty much knocked a door down with little effort. He let the sedative and tazer roll down his sleeves as his fingers grasped them. If the Joker was to try to grab him again, it would be a little of the shock treatment and elephant sedative. He wasn't fooling around. Victor wasn't going to let these students become endangered in his school. He stood by the opening of what was once a door.

[red]"Touch me again Jack, and it's back to Arkham you go."[/red]

He smiled evily. He wasn't going to let the number one psycho in Gotham corrupt the youth. He was there to observe Jack on his probationary period. If he was going to go against any rules, it would be up to the heroes of the school and ex-villain to take him down. He looked back at the students and smiled. It was rude to interrupt. The Joker was making a point.

[red]"As you were saying..."[/red]

[jackz]

“Anyways, I suppose it’s the reasonable time to shoot the breeze and go around playing the ‘Hi my name is’ game.” He smacked his lips. “You can call me Jack Napier, but I prefer Mistah J.” He giggled as his hands wandered off behind his back and pulled out a piece of paper that he meticulously began to fold in his hands. Without even looking and lifting a pointed finger but still keeping his other four onto the paper for folding began to start the round robin game, “You over there, with that down syndrome-y look and slack-jawed disposition. What’s you’re name, kiddo?”

But before the picked on student could even wrap his mind around the kooky chemist’s words, the door was bashed open like a bale of hay.

The Joker crushed the paper plane he was making out of sheer excitement and anxiety, but threw the lump of paper over his shoulder and frowned as Zsasz waltzed around the room as if he owned the joint.

Immediately, he jumped off the table top and walked straight up to him, neither flinching nor batting an eye. “Excuse me Mr.Dum-Dum, but this is a place of learning! And as far as I’m concerned, barging into rooms is very, very rude!” He hrumph-ed, and placed his hands on his hips as Zsasz sassed him about his conduct. “Oh ZZ, come off it! I did worse things to you back in the bin!” A flutter of laughter, “But if you want to play like that,” he pulled out his index fingers and began hovering them only centimeters away from Zsasz’s body, childishly chanting, “I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you!”

After a minute of dancing around him, nearly touching him, and making up a song about how he wasn’t touching him, he simmered down and the guffaws died away.

Wiping away an imaginary tear he took in a deep breath and replied to Zsasz’s other statement. “Now really ZZ, you need to G-T-F-O! As all the cool kids would say.” Before he could give Zsasz time to respond he interjected. “I mean think about it, wouldn’t these kids feel pressured by the fact that mother hen would be sitting right beside them breathing down their necks?” He shrugged his shoulders, “In my honest opinion, it’s like having your mother watch you have sex for the first time.” He snickered before abruptly stopping. A fleeting thought, a marvelous thought, ran through his head. “Excuse me!” In a weird kind of way, you could say he had random bouts of ADHD, and he began running towards his desk, jumping over it clumsily and nearly breaking his neck and grabbing the piece of chalk he had left at the black board earlier.

“I know we’re half way through class time kiddies,” he began scribbling something on the board so furiously and fast that the words began to get jumbled up along the way and at some points become illegible. “And thanks to Mister-I-Don’t-Know-How-To-Open-A-Door-Correctly, we have even less time. So incase we don’t get to anything interesting today, here’s something interesting you can do when ya get home.” He finished scribbling, took a step back from the board and made quite a face at his own chicken scratch.

“Yikes,” he put his hand to his chin, “Well now I know why I’m not an English teacher.” He put the chalk down and turned to his students. “Here’s the sum of what it is you need to know and what I want you to do:
1)Pop quizzes every week – you fail, you die – case closed
2)You better know the Periodic Table better than you know yourself
3)Chemistry, unfortunately, is not for everybody, and I like to make things practical and as entertaining as the masses would like them to be, so if you would – say – like to know the Chemistry of cooking, tell me, and I’ll make it happen!
Consequently if you would like to know how to make Fear Toxin and Smilex, come by after class!” He winked.

[Darcy Leone]

It was funny how the Joker thought he owned the place also. He was a plebian in a school full of patricians and the thought that he was hired for just entertainment filled the troubled man's mind. Victor stared as the Joker went on his tyrade about how he was breathing down the student's necks. He smiled only to respond with this remark.

[red]"I'm not breathing down their necks. I'm breathing down yours."[/red]

He simply stood in the same spot, his expression unchanging. Victor's pokerface and smartass comment made a few of the students laugh. It was like Jerry Springer almost. Except the Joker brought it upon himself. Victor hired The Joker. He had to make sure for the first week at least that nothing happened. The only way Victor was sure the Joker could understand that was through sheer brutality. Nothing Victor truly minded. He crossed his arms.

[red]"You break these students, I break you."[/red]

He winked with a grin on his face.

[red]"Remember that one day at Arkham? Me beating the shit out of you? The only thing that stopped me was those guards. Fuck with me clown, and I'll give people a real reason to laugh at you."[/red]

For a second and only a second, Zsasz looked insane. Perhaps it was his darker side leaking out, but with that incredibly scary grin on his face it was obvious he cracked for a moment. He regained his composure, his straight face and stood in the same place he did before. He looked at all of the students who seemed to be frightened by the two men in the room. Primarily Napier. He asked a simple question.

[red]"Anyone mind if I stay here?"[/red]

Many of the kids all shook their heads immediately. Many of them looked back at the Joker and looked back at him and acted as if they didn't know what to think. Victor nodded at the students and looked back at the clown man.

[red]"I own you. I own this place. And if I want to protect the well being of my students, I will. Get to work clown."[/red]

[Kazza]

She was late. Again. Dammit, dammit, dammit, DAMMIT! Kazza growled at herself in her head. It was a miracle that she hadn't been sent to the principals office yet, whoever the hell he was. But, for once, it hadn't been her fault; some idiot had snatched her bag and run off. It had taken her ten minutes to arrive in the corridor which had the door to her classroom. Hopefully. It hadn't taken the full ten minutes to catch the stupid boy, though. That had taken less than one. The rest of the time had been spent explaining to a teacher that she had just punched him in the face for a good reason, and no, she hadn't been deemed mentally unstable. So, now here she was, standing just outside the door to Chemistry. Ugh, Science... And then, grudgingly, she pulled the door open and slouched in, hoping she wouldn't be noticed. She was just in time to hear some of the conversation between her teacher and a man who could only be the principal. Can this day get any worse? Actually, nevermind.

"Here’s the sum of what it is you need to know and what I want you to do:
1)Pop quizzes every week – you fail, you die – case closed
2)You better know the Periodic Table better than you know yourself
3)Chemistry, unfortunately, is not for everybody, and I like to make things practical and as entertaining as the masses would like them to be, so if you would – say – like to know the Chemistry of cooking, tell me, and I’ll make it happen!
Consequently if you would like to know how to make Fear Toxin and Smilex, come by after class!”" The teacher then proceeded to wink. Now thoroughly confused, Kazza creeped to the back of the classroom, doing her best to stay out of the two teacher's sight, and sunk into a chair right at the left back corner, just as the principal spoke up. "I own you. I own this place. And if I want to protect the well being of my students, I will. Get to work clown" Wow. What a lesson to be late to... She thought, raising an eyebrow slightly as she slid her books noiselessly onto the graffitied surface of the desk.

[Victoria Cri]

Vivian skipped down the hall. "It's tha Jokeh!!!! Oh my, tha Jokeh's teachin' me mah favorite class!!!!" she was excited. Chemistry had always been a favorite of Vivian. As a matter a fact, all of the personalities loved chem. But unlike the other two, Viv was the only one that loved the Joker. He was her hero. Ha, ain't that a surprise.

She was a tad disappointed that she was a little late, but what she walked in on mad her mad.


"I own you. I own this place. And if I want to protect the well being of my students, I will. Get to work clown."

Her eyes narrowed as she walked in. "'Ey Mistah Black Hair. Our class is startin' and like ta actually learn. And don' talk ta Tha Jokeh like that." A high pitched laughter rose inside of her throat and she couldn't help but let it out. It took her a couple of minutes to calm down. Her mind was running with things that the Joker could do to Mister Zsasz.

Vi took a deep breath then smiled as she walked to a seat in the front and listened to what her new teacher had to say.

“Here’s the sum of what it is you need to know and what I want you to do:
1)Pop quizzes every week – you fail, you die – case closed
2)You better know the Periodic Table better than you know yourself
3)Chemistry, unfortunately, is not for everybody, and I like to make things practical and as entertaining as the masses would like them to be, so if you would – say – like to know the Chemistry of cooking, tell me, and I’ll make it happen!
Consequently if you would like to know how to make Fear Toxin and Smilex, come by after class!”

"Smilex?" she whispered.

'No.'

"Too bad. I'm in control, sistah," She told her other, Victoria quietly.

[jackz]

“Oh honey, you can breathe down my neck anytime you like!” He winked as he delicately touched Zsasz cheek before wiping his hand on his shoulder.

This elicited a few chuckles. But mostly raised eyebrows at the confused juxtaposition of sexual identity. Had he just revealed a sort of gaiety? But didn’t he have a girlfriend? It was confusing, as well as extremely uncomfortable. But this was the type of atmosphere the Joker thrived on. He is everything that makes you uncomfortable.

“And I didn’t say break,” he smiled back at Zsasz, “I said kill.” And he grinned even wider as Zsasz recalled the day of their incident. “Oh I remember that day very well! Before you lunged at me, do you also recall the cacophony of laughter? I do.” He rolled his eyes upward as if remembering a fond memory. “Before you decided to get all moody, I made you trip on a banana peel and fall on your face, consequently breaking your nose.” He closed his eyes, as if the photo of events lay behind the backs of his eyelids. “The whole cafeteria was laughing at you, taunting at your clumsy ways, beastly mannerisms,” he suddenly opened his eyes, poignantly staring at Zsasz, “The humiliation,” he sucked in the word as if to savor it, “I could tell you were humiliated, I could taste it in your heart.” His tongue licked past his teeth like a snake, tasting his words.

He giggled, and clapped his hands together when Zsasz decided to park is carcass in the front of the room. “Fine! Delightful! Perhaps you can raise that IQ of yours up a few notches and witness a genius at his work!”

He rolled up his sleeves. Giving his last comment before approaching the board, “Oh ZZ, you and I both know you own just about as much nothingness as I do with this place.” He grabbed a piece of chalk from of his desk, “It’s THEY’RE school, not yours, you’re at risk of losing much more than I am.” There was something eerie in his words. Mostly for the fact that there was no laughing, no particular grin, just a very matter-of-fact air. But the moment ended quickly as he smiled again, walked around his desk and began writing on the board. Slow and smooth strokes this time.

He completely disregarding the two late students for the moment – but never letting them leave his sight. Making a mental note to himself and his late pupils that he knew that they were late. His green eyes bubbled as they followed both of them to their seats. Kazza and Victoria. Exactly how did he know their names? Well simply looking at the roster (and only once, his photographic memory was very keen to remember names) of missing students he was able to use his own deductive skills (Batman wasn’t the only detective around here) to figure out who these new students were.

He giggled, at the sound of one of them snubbing Zsasz but didn’t turn around from his writing.

“Oh and by the by,” still focusing on the board, “those two girls who just entered the room. Meet me after class. I don’t tolerate late-ees.”

“Now before we get to really heated stuff, ya gotta know the really boring stuff.” His board consisted of a few items he had already written down:

John Dalton – some guy who made some atom theory
-All matter has atoms (durr)
-Atoms of an element are identical (durr again)
-Each elements has different atoms (obvi)
-Atoms of different elements combine in constant ratios to form compounds (I learned that by the age of 2)
-Atoms are rearranged in reactions (duh)
Laws: Law of conservation – atoms are never destroyed or created; Law of constant composition – elements combine in fixed ratios.

“Allright,” he pulled away from the board, looked at it, looked at the students, and then looked back at the board and shrugged. “This guy, found out this stuff, know it.” He then began to draw a circle on the board, writing on top of it “Atom Model”. He then drew another outer circle around the smaller one. Drawing minuses around the outer ring and a plus sign within the inner circle.

“Obviously negative electrons orbit a positive nucleus,” Again he shrugged, “It’s mostly empty space, and that’s that. But the real fun of it is, when you add or subtract electrons with either fission or fussion or more pleasant ways of molecular bonding, you can change regular old Uranium-235 to Plutonium-238!”

Crickets proceeded.

“That means – bombs!”

Silence.

He frowned and batted a hand at his class. “Ah what do you guys know about fun anyways.” He began to erase the board. “What does it matter to you the intricate ways of becoming alchemists? The beauty of cyanide in food?” He began writing down various computations the board. Things far beyond the knowledge of the students but he didn’t stop to explain himself as he continued on his rant. “The right combination in ethanol – the smiley happy drug and the right combination of pheromones, anti-depressants, and good taste of pie, will make a man eat himself to death!” His crazed hand writing fumbled. Notes were on the board, but clearly not for them. The synapses in his brain had once again rewired themselves to make him create a new and deadly substance. Obviously something that will cause a man to die of eating. His notes and ramblings were filling up the entire board. “Do you not understand the power? The gifts? Once you control the little things, you control everything.” He scratched out his last note.

[ Black Board Resemblance ]

He sighed, smiled at his work, and then remembered people were still in the same room as him. He turned around, almost amazed that people were still there. He coughed.

“…so that’s chemistry!” He quickly began to erase the board. The formula already stuck and glued into his memory. Able to reproduce it at a moment’s notice.


“Any questions?”