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Inside his cell Joker endured days that scraped at his edges — bland, awful food; silence so thick it felt like a joke without a punchline. No inmates to rile, no audience to admire his antics. For a while he stared straight into the black and thought, This is it. I'm done. Then he laughed, because of course — he already was.
The guards were mute Parademons: hulking, expressionless automatons who delivered meals and retreated without a single word. Every visit was the same. Once, drunk on a sudden manic idea, Joker lunged at one. Four of them answered within heartbeats, and they taught him precisely how fragile a human fist can be. He woke bruised and delirious — and oddly satisfied. Because when he crawled back to the slab of his bed, something cold and bright had been left by his pillow.
A key. Not for the cell, a useless trinket in that context, and yet a key nonetheless — glittering proof that opportunity sometimes arrives in the form of scraped metal and stolen hope. Using the sort of meticulous, crooked patience only he could call sanity, Joker picked the lock, eased open the door, and slipped into the belly of Apokolips.
The Parademons were stunningly stupid. None saw him as a threat that warranted constant attention; they treated him like a persistent fly. His path to the exit was absurdly easy. One lone Parademon blocked the corridor. Joker snapped off a length of metal from his prison bed — a jagged, pleading thing — vaulted up, landed on the creature's back, and drove the bar into its neck with a river-of-lunacy grin. The Parademon slumped. For half a breath, silence.
Then alarms shredded the air.
"Oh—crap," Joker said, and the whole planet promptly took notice. Boots and wings thundered; legions of Parademons lurched and swarmed. Joker melted into the infrastructure, curling into maintenance ducts and crawling between walls where cables breathed like sleeping snakes. At first he assumed they were power conduits or piping, but meaning slipped away when something exploded through plaster and hauled him out.
"You maggot of a human… you dare escape?" Steppenwolf boomed, a hand like a wrecking hook closing around Joker's waist with the intent to crush.
"Oh—hi, demon boy!" Joker chirped, flailing his arms with ridiculous cheer. "I just wanted some fresh air, that's all. Nothing serious. Care to let me go?"
"If not for My Lord I would have crushed you already." Steppenwolf tightened his grip.
"A loyal puppy! Here — have a treat." Joker pressed the little trick flower he'd hidden against his chest. It squealed like a toy and spat a thin spray of acid-scented toxin into Steppenwolf's eyes. The monster roared, staggered, and in that moment Joker slipped from his grasp and bolted.
"Damn you!" Steppenwolf bellowed, axe drawn.
Joker ran blind, guided by instinct and that delicious, idiotic faith that chaos favors the nimble. Beams sliced past him; Parademons swarmed and fired. Fate — or some perverse comedy writer — steered him into a restricted wing: a lab of glass and hum where tubes hummed with bodies and greenish solutions pulsed like captive stars. At the center, a massive chamber held a narrow siphon that led to a tiny vial he recognized in a heartbeat.
Superman's blood.
"AHH! GOTCHA!" Joker crowed, and with absolutely reckless, theatrical certainty he plucked the vial free. Alarms screamed again, louder. In a blink Dasaad appeared, Mother Box pulsing at his side, eyes narrowing at the sight of the manic human clutching Kryptonian ichor.
"YOU PATHETIC HUMAN! PUT THAT DOWN! NOW!" Dasaad hissed.
"NAH-AH! Not dropping this," Joker grinned, brandishing his prize like a child with a stolen lollipop. "And I'm not falling for Granny's teleport trick either. Hand me that box and I'll—oh, I'll let you have this later. Maybe. Or—" He waggled the vial. "—I break it."
Dasaad hesitated, calculating. Then, like a war-drum, footfalls thundered from the hall. Steppenwolf came charging, axe cleaving the air.
"STEPPENWOLF! NO! STOP!" Dasaad shouted.
"YOU DAMN HUMAN!" Steppenwolf roared as he swung, but Joker twisted out of the arc. The axe missed—only for a beat. The next instant, iron arms closed on Joker and he was heaved into a vast cauldron of the lab's signature green fluid.
"You fool! What have you done? You absolute—FOOL!" Dasaad screamed, horrified fury cracking his voice.
"I had to!" Steppenwolf snapped. "That human would have ruined everything!"
"You had the vial! You've thrown away our chance for Paradooms!" Dasaad shouted. "Our process was calibrated — blood must enter slowly, drop by sacred drop. A torrent like this will eradicate it. You've destroyed our experiment!"
Dasaad lunged, peering into the boiling emerald. He expected only ruin: Apokoliptian solution overwhelmed by a single, concentrated human mistake. The Paradoom dream — for now — seemed dead.
But Dasaad had not accounted for one overlooked variable: human blood. Joker had smashed the vial; his own blood — a chaotic, unmeasured ingredient smeared across the green tide — mixed into the cauldron. The Apokoliptian solution recoiled, then reacted. A chemical scream rose from the vat, and something began to coagulate within that churning, sickly sea.
Not precisely Doomsday. Not yet. Something else — a thing the equations hadn't predicted, an aberration born from reckless human spite and alien soup. It was forming, slow and terrible, pulling itself into being from Joker's ruined gamble.
In the lab's sick green light, a new creature took shape — something wrong, and splendidly, dangerously alive.
Seconds passed—long, drawn-out, clawing seconds that stretched into eternity. The green cauldron began to churn, bubbles bursting like the laughter of the damned. A single, charred hand rose from the glowing muck, fingers flexing in twitching spasms. Then another followed, nails dark and serrated like razors. Slowly, something pulled itself free of the boiling solution.
Joker—or what once had been him—emerged. But the man was gone. In his place stood something entirely different, something born of madness and Kryptonian corruption fused with the vile essence of Apokolips. His skin was ghostly white but stretched tight and sinewy, almost metallic in texture, veins pulsing with streaks of molten green light. His once thin frame was now a grotesque caricature of muscle and bone, tall and towering, his body shaped like a cruel joke told by a god who'd forgotten how to laugh.
His hair, long and tangled, shimmered with a faint acidic glow. The grin—that eternal grin—had split wider, carved into his flesh as if sculpted by a butcher's blade, teeth jagged and blackened, glinting in the eerie light. His eyes burned like twin stars of crimson insanity, darting in every direction, alive with chaos. Around his body, scraps of purple fabric still clung stubbornly, the tatters of his former self, but beneath them the new flesh looked armored—like his skin itself had become a weapon.
He turned, his burning gaze fixing on Steppenwolf.
"What… what the hell is that?" Steppenwolf growled, taking a half step back, something close to unease creeping into his voice.
"This… was not supposed to happen," Dasaad whispered, horror painting his face pale.
The creature smiled—wide, terrible. Then it moved. In a blink, it was upon Steppenwolf, its massive hand slamming into his face with enough force to stagger the New God backward. The sound cracked through the lab like a thunderclap. Steppenwolf roared, swinging his axe in a furious arc, the blade burying itself into the monster's neck—only to stop, metal grinding uselessly against unbreakable flesh.
"Ahh…" Joker's voice came out lower, guttural, yet still carrying that familiar sing-song madness. "I feel good."
His hand shot out, clamping around Steppenwolf's throat. He lifted the armored warrior into the air as if he weighed nothing. The grin widened. "I think," he said softly, almost lovingly, "I'm going to be having some extreme fun time."
The sound that followed was sickening—a crunch, then a wet explosion as Steppenwolf's head burst like fruit. Blood sprayed across the walls, coating Joker's pale face in crimson. He blinked, then dragged his tongue slowly across his cheek, tasting the iron tang with delight.
Dasaad screamed and unleashed a torrent of Apokoliptian energy from his hands, but the creature didn't even flinch. With a lazy swipe, Joker's hand tore through the air, sending Dasaad flying across the lab, crashing into a wall hard enough to crater it.
The monster looked down, his grin softening into childlike wonder. At his feet lay a Mother Box, humming faintly. "Ohhh…" he cooed, crouching and tracing a claw across its surface. "A toy."
He pressed the symbol. A vortex of light snapped open beneath him.
And in the next instant, he was gone.
...
Alternate Title: Absolute Joker
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If you Like this story! Check out my other story ! Shadow Monarch in Danmachi!
AND
If you wish to read more or simply support me just because ? than check out my patreon at
"https://www.patreon.com/Riadooo"
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want !