The Punchline

"I'm swingin' in the rain! I'm swingin' in the rain!" I sang as I swung through, well, the rain. Sure, my suit was incredibly wet, but it was still fun to swing through the rain, on my way to beat up some bad guys who thought a thunderstorm was the best time to rob liquor stores or gas stations or...

Apparently, comic book shops.

I landed on the wall of the building, which the two crooks took no notice off and watched as they loaded up their van with boxes upon boxes of comic books. Seriously. These guys were probably the most creative crooks I've ever seen, it's pretty funny, actually. I hopped from the building wall to the top of their van, which finally made them notice me.

"It's... it's...!" one of them said, dropping his box.

The other one pulled out his gun. "A dead man!"

Thank you spider-sense! I dodged each bullet and then landed in front of him and knocked his gun out of his hand. I webbed his feet to the ground, but thanks to the rain, that didn't last long. At about this time, his buddy decided to get in the game, and tried hitting me with a crowbar, but I jumped out of the way and shoved him against the side of the van.

By the time I finished off the crowbar man, Mr. Gun-toter had picked up his gun again and took a couple more potshots at me, but I again dodged them and ripped the gun away from his hand with a webline. I kicked him into the van and webbed him to the van this time, instead of the ground. A lot more webbing, and he just was not moving.

Crowbar Man was back on his feet again, but I dodged his little tackle maneuver and webbed him to his buddy. These two were not gonna be any more of a problem. I walked over to the back of the van and looked at all the boxes of comic books inside, then peeked around the side at them, still webbed up. "You guys are really smart, y'know that? Everybody else steals money or guns or drugs." I shut the van doors and walked around to them. "I seriously stopped a couple guys who robbed a pharmacy just to get a truckload of band aids. Band aids!" I tapped one of them on the head. "But you guys? No, nononono, no, you go after the comics."

I opened the closest box and found nothing but copies of Batman, Detective Comics, Batgirl... I checked another box and found the same, all copies of the various titles that featured Batman or his Bat-family. All this for a bunch of Batman comics? "Hey, why the bias on Batman, anyway?"

One of them looked like he wanted to shrug, but, of course, the webbing. "Our boss just wants 'em. Anything with the Joker, he said."

That just seemed weird. I walked around the van, back toward them and asked, "Which one of you had the gun?" One of them whimpered. "When I showed up, you called me a dead man." I pointed to my chest. "See, these? These are the things that men do not have!"

He made a raspberry noise. "You think you got big tits, kid? My cousin Louie, worked on the docks his whole life, then he decides he's through with that life, got himself a sex change, now he's working over in Larsen City at The Open Book, brings in seven K a day in lap dances alone."

"Ew, gross! I'm sixteen, you really think I wanna hear about that crap?"

"You were the one braggin' about your tits."

I weblined away just as the police pulled up to arrest the two comic book thieves. This was gonna be a weird one to tell Mom and Timmy about.

***

Melissa Harkins set her son back in his crib and sighed. Twelve-thirty, and Charlie still wasn't back. She was about to call the super teen when she heard a knock on the apartment door. She walked out into the front room and opened the door, finding Charlie standing there, holding a wet box of donuts. "I promise they're not wet," the girl said. Melissa moved out of the way and allowed her daughter to come inside.

"I was getting worried, baby," Melissa said, hoping the strain in her voice was obvious.

"Well, after I beat the crap out of these two guys stealing comic books - "

Melissa cut Charlie off. "Comic books?"

"That's a story for later. Anyway, I got a call from Timmy, who was working late at the Brigade, and he asked me to swing by so that he could show me something regarding that whole Gustav Hammond thing, so I stopped by and then - "

"Charlie, slow down, you're talking a mile a minute."

She blushed. "Sorry. Anyway, after I left the Brigade, I stopped by the Dunkin' Donuts on Forty-Sixth and picked those up as an apology that I was out late."

Melissa sighed. It was quite the mess they lived in, thanks to Charlie having woken up with powers that fateful day three months ago. Their lives had taken quite a few twists and turns in those months, the hardest to deal with was the death of her husband, Charlie's father. Hardest to deal with, and the one that made their bond as mother and daughter much stronger than it had been since Charlie had gotten her powers.

An hour and a half of conversations later, and Charlie was laying on her makeshift bed, the couch. She had been using Melissa's bed, but after she came home to find Melissa asleep, she'd chosen to grab some blankets and turn the couch into a bed. When Melissa had found her the next morning, Charlie had said that she didn't need a real bed, since she didn't sleep much.

Melissa walked into her own bedroom, checked on Christopher, and then laid down to go to sleep. It was a long time before she did, she laid awake thinking about Charlie. The girl was becoming just as big a help to the city as her father had been. It made her nights waiting for the girl to come home hell, but the thrill she felt when she allowed herself to think my daughter's a hero was well worth it.

***

I didn't go to school anymore. I dropped out way back when my mom left my dad and I, and I haven't gone back since. I sorta regret it. Sorta. I'd been a solid B student before I became Arachnya (and a girl, sometimes I have to remind myself of that, feels like I've been one forever, now), but after that, and all that web-swinging later, my grades had been steadily dropping. I was gonna fail my sophomore year of high school anyway, if I hadn't dropped out.

So, with a very deep breath, I walked back into school. I wasn't there to learn, I was there to find my friend Cindy Cooper, because we were going to have lunch together, not something I'd done in awhile. As soon as she saw me she threw her arms around me in a hug that would have been interpreted completely differently if we'd both been boys, but she'd never been one and I haven't been one in months.

"Hey, Spider-Girl!" Cindy sort of half whispered. At least she didn't say it loud enough for anybody but me to hear. "How's the web-swinging?"

I shrugged. "Still fun, a few months in. A lot of hard work, though."

"Hey, I never got a chance to tell you after it happened, I'm sorry about your dad."

I shook my head. "It's okay. The bitch who did it is in jail with her powers removed, and the city knows it wasn't me who did it. I really miss my dad, but... it was a bittersweet win."

She patted me on the shoulder. "Well, let's get the hell outta here and snag some lunch. There's a certain Mr. Timothy Saul that I keep hearing Frank talking about."

"I need to stop telling him things," I growled.

Cindy giggled. "Hey, I think he just finds it cute that you have a boyfriend, Miss I-Used-To-Be-A-Boy."

"All 'cause he's never had a girlfriend."

We made our way to the nearest fast food place, which was only a block and a half away from the school. We talked about this, we talked about that, anything involving my secret identity and the keeping thereof required us to whisper, which we did. It wasn't easy to do, and people probably thought we were freaking crazy

But our nice, pleasand little talk about all the things that have happened to me in the past few months was ended by Timmy rushing in and stopping right beside our table, breathing heavily like he had just run a thousand miles to get here. I just stared at him for a little bit all the while Cindy was giggling her brains out.

I waited for probably seventy seconds before I finally said, "Tim, you okay?"

He held up one finger, telling us to wait, again, and then he eventually said, "I just came here... To tell you..." He looked between Cindy and I for a moment. "Oh, sorry, I forgot you were meeting up with your friend today."

I raised an eyebrow. "Wait a minute, how did you know to find me here?"

He held up his phone. "Ms. Adamsen asked me to hack into your phone's GPS, I'd tell you why, but I really don't know why."

"Well, Tim, meet Cindy; Cindy, Tim."

Tim nodded to Cindy, Cindy waved to Tim. "Nice to meet you," Tim said. He looked back toward me. "Anyway, I came to tell you that..." He stared at the wall like he couldn't think of what it was he had to tell me, then he said, "I can't remember."

I facepalmed, Cindy giggled, Tim looked like he was about to stab himself with the nearest plastic fork.

"Well, whatever it was, I hope it wasn't too important."

He shook his head. "It wasn't. It was something that Ms. Adamsen wanted me to tell you. Maybe it was just that she wanted to talk to you..." He shrugged. "I can't remember."

I sighed. "Fine." I stood up from the table. "Sorry, Cindy, I've gotta swing."

Tim looked nervous. "Um... swing? What'cha talkin' about, Charlie?"

Cindy giggled again. "I've known longer than you, Mr. Boyfriend, don't worry about it. Besides, swing could mean anything, doesn't necessarily mean swinging from a web."

He blushed. "Oh. I didn't, um... I didn't know."

I rolled my eyes. "Okay, Tim, let's get going."

***

Timmy and I exited the elevator just as Ms. Adamsen was being yelled at by Mr. Brindleson. "C'mon, Adamsen, this gun racket can't be as big as your source says it is! The Larsen City PD hasn't said anything to their own papers about this crap!"

Ms. Adamsen stopped, turned on her heel, then poked a finger at Mr. Brindleson's face. "Shut it, Barry. This is big, we have the exclusive, and this story is gonna sell papers as fast as that Clinton scandal back in the nineties." She looked over at me and smiled. "Now, Charlie and I are headed out there, we'll get you what it is this paper needs to be one of the biggest sellers at the news stand," she added the next part with a smirk, "and there's not a damn thing you can do to stop us." She walked over to me, grabbed me by the arm, and said, "C'mon, kid, get your camera out of the little photographer's room and let's get going."

We walked into the photography department and then Ms. Adamsen shut - and locked - the door. "Um... What's goin' on?" I asked.

She grabbed my bag from around my chair. "Your camera's in here, right?"

"Yeah. What's goin' on?" I repeated.

"You got your costume on under there?" I think I must have turned beet red from surprise. "Look, Charlie, you've fallen asleep on me in here plenty of times, I caught peeks at it under your clothes. Then, one time when you were out with Keith, I took a look inside your book bag and found it in there. The only ones who know about it here are Timmy and I."

"And you waited until now to tell me this?!"

She shrugged. "I didn't think it was important. I know and I've been keeping your secret just that, secret. I'm only telling you now because you're probably gonna need it when we get into Larsen City. There's plenty of gang trouble out there. That's what we're getting into."

"We are?"

"Yup. Tell me, Junior Detective Harkins," she said with a smirk, "how many stories did your dad tell you about going undercover?"

***

My dad only went undercover a few times, and never for very long. One time when he was a temporary police liason to the FBI, and had to sneak into the Russian mafia (because, hilariously, among his many qualities, my dad could speak fluent Russian), and once when he had to pretend to be a drug dealer for a sting operation. I was really little, so the details were pretty much left out, save for I snuck in and helped take down the bad guys, so I knew even less than I pretended to know.

Despite all of that, when Ms. Adamsen and I got out of the cab on the corner of 3rd and Grapevine in Larsen City, I was given a crash course on the basics of the Larsen City gang community.

"Now, the guys you're gonna be scouting out have a thing for underage girls, so - "

I cut her off. "Whoa, what am I doing here? Whoring myself out?"

She shook her head. "No, nothing like that. They just have this compulsion for hiring teenage girls to do their gun running. Who'd believe a sixteen year old would be packing some Desert Eagles in her purse, that kind of thing."

"So, what? I'm just gonna be a delivery girl?"

"Pretty much, if my source is on the money, and he always has been before."

I sighed. "Okay. What do I need?"

She pulled a bag from some clothing shop out of the trunk. "Well, first of all, you're gonna havta dress a little more provocatively than you normally do."

I rolled my eyes.

***

Shelleye Nakamoto wished she was somewhere else. She was in a very quiet room, only one light on, directly over her head, and tied to a chair. She couldn't see them, but she felt eyes staring at her. She looked around the small area that she could see and tried to pinpoint the source of the eyes that she could feel, but she just couldn't see anything.

But she did hear something.

She heard someone breathing, walking around, occasionally stopping for a moment. She couldn't tell where in the room they were, but just the fact that she knew they were there frightened her to the point where she wanted to wet herself. Fearing a potential rape, she kept her knees right up against one another. She was more and more frightened by the second.

"Don't worry," a calm voice, a voice that sent shivers down her spine, said. "We're not into that sort of thing here." She heard the footsteps again, and then she heard a chair being pulled across the floor. The edge of the chair came into the light, then whoever it was sat down in the chair. "Matter of fact, I wanna tell you a joke." Whoever he was, he was wearing purple gloves, his pants a similar color. "Y'see, there was this girl, and she was very unique." He clapped his hands. "And this girl, y'see, she just felt like she had to help each and every person out there, like it was her job." Shelleye could almost feel the pee about to burst out of her. "And so, she takes a little trip from where she lives to a place she doesn't live, and she tries to help those people." She watched as the man pulled out a butterfly knife. "And then, this girl," he said, with an odd growl on the word girl, "found out she couldn't help people. Found out she couldn't help each and every person out there." Her eyes never left the knife in the man's hand, not even when he pushed it into her kneecap. "Would you like to know what the punchline is?"

Shelleye screamed. The pain shot through her like lightning, and then her bladder exploded.

"Now, now, now, sweetie," the man leaned forward, the light showed her something that would never leave her, thanks to the fact that her life would end shortly, "I didn't finish telling you the joke."

***

I had never worn a skirt my whole life. Granted, from birth to age fifteen, I was a boy, so it wouldn't even make sense for me to have worn a skirt, but even in the three months since I became Arachnya, I've never worn a skirt, despite my mom's attempts to get me to try (I said I would, if we ever got the chance to go shopping together, but a job at a newspaper and a part-time position defending the city as a super hero kinda put a hold on those plans). I've kinda wanted to, occasionally, but my preprogrammed male-despite-my-current-situation feelings on the subject keep pushing it off and pushing it off, so I've never worn one.

Until today.

There I was, wearing a camisole top, a skirt, sandals... and no underwear, because whoever the hell this gang is that Ms. Adamsen has me sneaking my way into requires that their gun runners don't wear underwear. I don't know why they ask this, they just do. I complied simply because I was told they'd know. Thankfully, I know enough about wearing skirts (thanks to some training from Ms. Adamsen) to not accidentally flash my privates at anybody, but this was still freakishly embarrassing and I didn't want to do it.

But, if it would bring down some bad guys and it earned me a paycheck (I wasn't being paid enough for this, however), I guess I really didn't have much choice. I walked along one of Larsen City's grimiest neighborhoods, which looked a suspicious amount like a downbeat version of my own neigherbood in East City, right down to the bum sitting in front of the apartment building that looks an awful lot like the one I used to live in, before I moved in with my mom. This bum, however, was cradling a newspaper-covered soccer ball like it was a child. I felt sorry for him. And for little Wilson, there, because you just know he named the soccer ball Wilson.

I sighed. I think I passed a hundred different people who wanted to rape me as I slowly walked to my destination, which was a warehouse just a few blocks away. I think the whole point of this was to make me seen, so that these guys who were staring at me with rape eyes could see that I was off-limits. I didn't know or care, I just wanted to get the hell away from there. I slightly quickened my pace.

The warehouse that I ended up at had a giant letter J graffitied on the door. I sighed, adjusted my bag, and walked inside, already ready to piss myself, which would be even worse, since I wasn't wearing panties. On the one hand, though, it would be the first male thing I've done in three months, since I'd be peeing standing up.

I knocked on the door, it opened, and two guys packing assault rifles motioned for me to come inside. I did, then my fear intensified significantly. The warehouse was pretty much dark, with only a few lights on, none of them illuminating the whole expanse of the building,so it looked much larger on the inside than it did on the outside. One of the two men led me to a chair in the center of the warehouse, and told me to sit down. Great. Now, if I were to piss myself, I wouldn't even have the luxury of standing up.

I looked down at the floor and saw some blood on the floor. Moved my leg a little and saw some on the chair, old and new, in both places. There came that urine I was waiting to start building up. Dammit.

"You're new," a voice said, an eerily calm voice, "and young, too. You can't be older than fifteen, sweetie." A chair was suddenly brought into the light, but only just.

I gulped, audibly, and said, "I'm sixteen, actually."

"Sixteen?" The voice whistled. "And you're pretty." Whoever it was sat down on the chair. I saw purple pants and gloves, but nothing else. "You remind me of someone I knew, when I was your age."

I gulped again, then sat the bag down in front of me. "Well... here's your latest delivery. They didn't tell me what it was, just where to go."

"They never tell you girls. I've seen a dozen of you, and none of them have ever known." He swung out a butterfly knife, and I didn't even need my spider-sense (betcha forgot I had one, didn't you? No. No, you didn't) to know that he planned on using it on me. "It's like... like telling a joke, but leaving out the punchline."

Even if I didn't need it, I was glad I had my spider-sense in this situation, because I swung my legs out of the way just as he was about to stab the knife into my knee. I hoped nobody saw my privates as I jumped out of the chair, but considering the only two people in the light were me and the weirdo in purple, I didn't think there was much trouble of that.

At least until the guys with guns dropped by, and I had the barrels of two automatic weapons pointed straight at my head. I was not telling my mom about this one.

The man in purple stood up, walked toward me, but I couldn't really see him, since he stuck to the heavy shadows. "You've got some fight in you. I like that." He clapped as he walked toward me.

"Good for you," I spat out. "Now, let me go. I did what I was told to do, nobody ever said anything about being stabbed in the knee by some crazy guy."

Mr. Purple Pants must have gotten right up to me, because somebody slapped me in the face before my spider-sense could warn me. "Don't call me that. Don't." I rubbed at my face. "You've got spunk, kid, so I'm gonna keep you around a little longer."

"This wasn't a part of the deal."

"Shoot that," he said, to one of his men. A muzzle flash lit up the room for a moment and the bag of guns that I delivered practically exploded. As the flash lit up the room, I caught sight of Mr. Purple Pants' face and realized that I've met guys who work for him before. He walked over to the bag and picked it up. "Tape recorder, huh? Which paper do you work for, sweetie?"

I didn't answer his question. Instead, I asked, "You sent a couple guys around last night to steal comic books, didn't you?"

He laughed, much like I expected he would. "Somebody's pretty good at what she does."

I hoped the two guys with the guns hadn't moved. I shot weblines at both of their guns and pulled them towards each other. By the grunting they made, I assume I hit my targets, but that's when he hit me. A kick to my shin knocked me to my knees. Why the hell wasn't my spider-sense working?

The man knelt down in front of me. "I'm willing to bet... Arachnya? Even in the dark, you're pretty obvious." He pressed his knife against my chin. "So, I'm gonna leave you alive. I'm gonna make you a message."

He stood up and walked into the light and I got a nice, full look at him. I was right. I knew why this guy wanted comic books that had the Joker in them. My lips quivering, I asked, "What's the message?"

He turned around, and I saw his face. He smiled, and said, "The punchline."

***

Anna Adamsen paced the floor of her source's apartment. She kept looking at the clock on her phone, knowing that Charlie was overdue. She looked over at her source, Ronny Miller, a forty-something man who had worked for the new gun runners on the block for about three months. He was sitting on the couch, watching the clock as anxiously as she was. If it weren't for the ridiculous amount of money he raked it working for the gun runners, she'd actually think he had a heart somewhere in there.

She was about to walk out the door when she heard a knock on it. She opened the door and saw two police officers standing in the hallway, one of them taking off his hat. "Ms. Anna Adamsen?" the one who took off his hat asked.

"Yeah?"

"We're here to escort you to Saint Mary's Memorial Hospital."

"Why?"

"Your friend, Charlotte? She was dropped off at the hospital an hour ago by a gray van. When she could finally talk, she asked for you."

Anna felt the color drain from her face. "I'll get my coat."

***

Timmy wanted the elevator to move faster. He couldn't tell if Mrs. Harkins wanted the same thing, but he assumed she was going out of her mind with worry. When the elevator doors finially opened, Ms. Adamsen was standing there. The tears in her eyes spoke volumes about what they were about to see. Oh, God, Charlie, please be okay... Tim thought.

It felt like time was slowing down as they walked toward the room where Charlie was. As soon as her mother saw her, she left the room, tears streaking down her cheeks. Tim managed to make his way into the room, but only just. He immediately turned to walk out before Charlie called his name. He walked over to her, and looked down at her in the hospital bed. Tears started falling down his cheeks as well.

Charlie was covered in dozens of cuts, though none on her face. Whoever had done this to her had left her face alone, maybe as some sort of message or something, Tim didn't know. Most of the spots that weren't cut were bruised, however, again, save her face. The only wound on her face was a single black eye. He took her hand and held on tightly. She groaned from the pain.

"Who did this, Charlie?" he asked, his voice low.

She closed her eyes, probably trying to stop tears of her own from seeping out. "He's a monster. He did this to me as a message to other heroes."

"Why?"

She coughed out, "A joke. That's all it was. I was just the punchline to a fucking joke."

"That's sick!"

"I know..." She coughed again. "The doctors say I'm gonna recover, but not quickly, and probably not psychologically."

"What else did he do to you?!"

She shook her head. "Nothing rapey, so don't worry about that. Just... the things he said, the slow way he dragged the knife across me..." He could tell that she couldn't stop the tears at all. "'What happens when a super hero and a psycho meet in a warehouse?'"

"Huh?"

"That was the joke. 'What happens when a super hero and a psycho meet in a warehouse?' The worst part was the punchline."

"You don't have to say anything else."

"No... I don't... because this," she motioned to her injured body, "was the punchline." He let her sob for awhile after that, and then she finally said, "Don't let my mom come in here. Not yet. Not until I've healed some. This was already too much for Ms. Adamsen, I don't want my mom to see me. Go find Frank, talk to him."

"Frank? That Seeker guy?"

"Yeah. He's got family in Larsen City, he should be able to track down leads pretty fast." She tried drying her tears but it didn't seem to be helping. "I wanna see that sonuvabitch suffer. Not because he did this to me, either, but because he's done this to a lot of girls."

"How many?"

"He said I was number fifty-four, and he handed me that," she pointed to a playing card on the table beside the bed. Tim took it and flipped it over.

A Joker.

***

Frank Holden didn't get many visitors on school nights, which was something he always prided himself in. He managed to maintain his grade point average because he had time to do his schoolwork before he threw on his costume and leapt around the city like a freak in spandex does when they're bored.

So, to his surprise, his mother called to him that he had a visitor, then he heard her tell the visitor where his room was. He told said visitor to come inside after they knocked on the door. The visitor was a guy his age, sort of average-looking, wearing a dark brown jacket that looked like it crawled right out of an Indiana Jones movie.

"Frank, right?" the guy asked.

"Yeah, wanna tell me how I can help you?"

He pulled a newspaper out of his jacket and tossed it on Frank's bed. His eyes widened in surprise.

"EAST CITY TEEN NEARLY MURDERED BY LARSEN CITY CRIME LORD!"

Underneath the headline was a picture of Charlie Harkins, covered in bandages and looking like complete and total crap.

"What the hell is this?!" he asked the guy in the jacket.

"Charlie sent me here. Well, actually, she sent me to find you, and I asked her mom where you lived." He pointed the way he came. "And I gotta tell you, it was damn near impossible to get here, too. I thought all that stuff about Luther being totally anti-white was crap. My girlfriend sends me here to find her friend, and I nearly get mugged every other alley." He reached into his back pocket. "And clearly it worked at some point."

Frank rolled his eyes. Didn't anybody ever see Die Hard With a Vengeance? "You said Charlie's your girlfriend? You that photographer she talks about?"

The guy nodded. "Yeah. Tim Saul. She told me all about how you two used to be a buddy act before you started splitting up and taking different parts of the city. And, her dad always made jokes about how I was her second boyfriend in two months."

Frank smiled. "Charlie and I never dated. So, what's she want me to do?"

Tim reached into his pocket and handed Frank a playing card with a joker on it. "She wants you to head over to Larsen City, use some of your family connections to find this guy, and beat the shit out of him for her."

"What? She thinks my family's a bunch of gang bangers over there, or something?"

"No, she was specifically talking about that cousin you've got in the Larsen City PD."

Frank raised an eyebrow. "I don't remember telling Charlie about her."

Tim shrugged. "She probably found out some other way."

Frank walked over to Tim and patted him on the back. "I'm doin' this for Charlie, y'know. Girl's been my friend since we both became Chosen. I owe that to her. She'd do the same for me. I'll drop by the hospital and talk to her."

Tim nodded. "Thanks. You need anything from me, just tell me."

"You just console your girlfriend while I'm out there beatin' the shit out of bad guys."

***

I laid there in bed, staring up at the hospital ceiling and hoping beyond hope that I didn't just send Frank out to die. I couldn't stop thinking about that damn guy, those purple clothes, that disgusting, disturbing grin on his face, the clown make-up.

The scars, extending out from his mouth into a permanent smile literally from ear to ear.

Whoever this guy was before, he had decided to pattern himself on the Joker, in every way, shape and form.

Which meant that he was one hundred percent batshit crazy, and sociopathic.