Death, as it turned out, was incredibly boring.
Marcus Chen had always imagined that dying would be more... dramatic. Maybe some pearly gates, a long tunnel of light, perhaps even a sarcastic British demon offering him a deal. Instead, he got darkness. Pure, unrelenting, boring darkness.
One moment he'd been crossing the street in downtown Chicago, minding his own business while internally debating whether the 2018 Ghost Rider comic run was superior to the 1990s stuff (it wasn't, and he would die on that hill—well, he supposed he already had died, just on a different hill, specifically the hill of "not looking both ways before crossing"). The next moment, a bus had introduced itself to his ribcage at forty miles per hour, and Marcus had learned a valuable lesson about pedestrian safety approximately 0.3 seconds too late.
And now... darkness.
This sucks, Marcus thought, though he wasn't sure if he was actually thinking or just existing in some nebulous state of cosmic disappointment. I didn't even get to finish my coffee. That was a seven-dollar latte. SEVEN DOLLARS.
He floated in the void for what felt like an eternity but was probably closer to fifteen minutes, contemplating the unfairness of the universe and whether his browser history would haunt his grieving mother.
Then the darkness spoke.
"MARCUS CHEN."
The voice was everywhere and nowhere, resonating through whatever passed for his soul with the subtlety of a foghorn in a library. It was deep, ancient, and vaguely annoyed, like a cosmic entity that had been woken up from a really good nap.
Uh, Marcus thought-spoke back, yes? That's me? Was me? Is me? What's the proper tense for dead people?
"YOUR SOUL HAS BEEN... MISPLACED."
Excuse me, WHAT?
"THERE WAS A CLERICAL ERROR. YOU WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO DIE FOR ANOTHER SIXTY-THREE YEARS. ACCOUNTING IS VERY EMBARRASSED."
Marcus would have blinked if he had eyelids. Are you telling me I got killed by a BUS because of a CLERICAL ERROR?!
"THE BUS WAS A COINCIDENCE. THE ERROR WAS IN THE SOUL PROCESSING DEPARTMENT. REGARDLESS, COMPENSATION IS REQUIRED."
Compensation? Now THIS was interesting. Marcus had read enough web novels during his lunch breaks to know where this was going. Like... powers? A new life? A harem of beautiful—
"YOU WILL BE REBORN IN A NEW WORLD WITH YOUR MEMORIES INTACT. THE POWERS... WERE ALSO A CLERICAL ERROR, BUT ACCOUNTING HAS DECIDED IT WOULD BE MORE PAPERWORK TO REMOVE THEM THAN TO SIMPLY LET YOU KEEP THEM."
Wait, what powers? What world? Can I get some specifics here, Mister Cosmic Voice, sir?
But the darkness was already receding, or rather, Marcus was falling through it, tumbling end over end through layers of reality like a sock in an interdimensional washing machine. Colors he couldn't name streaked past his consciousness. Sounds that shouldn't exist rattled through his non-existent teeth. He felt himself being compressed, stretched, folded, and finally—
"OH, AND MARCUS?"
WHAT?!
"TRY NOT TO DIE AGAIN. THE PAPERWORK IS TRULY INSUFFERABLE."
And then Marcus Chen was born again.
THREE MONTHS LATER
Marcus stared at the water-stained ceiling of his cramped Gotham City apartment and contemplated the sheer cosmic absurdity of his existence.
Three months. It had been three months since he'd woken up in this body—his body, technically, since the cosmic reshuffling had apparently recreated his original appearance down to the small scar on his left eyebrow from that time he'd face-planted into a coffee table at age seven. Three months of navigating a world that should not exist, a world of capes and cowls and a frankly concerning number of clowns.
Gotham City, of all places. Not Metropolis with its optimistic sunshine and friendly neighborhood Kryptonian. Not Central City with its relatively chill speedster. No, the universe had dropped him in the one place on Earth where the average life expectancy was calculated in dog years and the local news dedicated an entire segment to "Today's Supervillain Rampage."
Marcus had done what any reasonable person would do upon finding themselves in a comic book universe: he panicked, hyperventilated into a paper bag for approximately forty-five minutes, and then immediately started working on his survival strategy.
Step one: Get a job. Accomplished. He was now a night-shift data entry clerk for a company that was almost certainly a front for some kind of criminal enterprise, but hey, the pay was decent and they didn't ask questions about his total lack of work history or references from his previous dimension.
Step two: Find an apartment. Also accomplished, though "apartment" was a generous term for the shoebox-sized unit in one of Gotham's many crumbling buildings. The walls were thin enough that he could hear his neighbor's constant arguing with what appeared to be a pet ferret, and the hot water worked maybe sixty percent of the time, but the rent was cheap and the landlord accepted cash.
Step three: Keep his head down and absolutely, under no circumstances, get involved with the cape community. This was the most important step. Marcus had read enough comics to know that civilians who got involved with heroes tended to end up as hostages, love interests, or very attractive corpses. He wanted to be none of those things. He was going to live a quiet, boring life, collect his paycheck, and absolutely NOT think about the strange burning sensation that had been building in his chest since he arrived.
That last part was proving difficult.
The burning had started small—just a flicker of warmth behind his sternum that he'd attributed to acid reflux. But it had grown. Every day, the heat spread a little further, sank a little deeper, until Marcus could feel it coiled around his spine like a living thing. Some nights, he'd wake up drenched in sweat, the sheets smoking slightly beneath him, with the fading echo of screams in his ears—screams that weren't his own, voices crying out in languages that had died before humanity learned to write.
The powers were also a clerical error, the cosmic voice had said.
Marcus was starting to suspect that "clerical error" was a significant understatement.
He rolled out of bed with a groan, his joints popping in a way that reminded him he was technically still in his late twenties even if his soul felt approximately eight hundred years old. The clock on his nightstand read 2:47 AM in angry red digits. Another night of fractured sleep, another night of dreams filled with fire and chains and the thunder of a motorcycle engine that seemed to resonate with something deep in his bones.
The apartment was quiet except for the distant wail of sirens—a constant background noise in Gotham, like crickets in the countryside or car alarms in New York. Marcus shuffled to the tiny kitchen, bare feet sticking slightly to the linoleum, and poured himself a glass of water from the filter pitcher. The burning in his chest pulsed in response to the cool liquid, like a beast turning over in its sleep.
What ARE you? Marcus thought, not for the first time. He pressed his palm against his chest, feeling the fever-heat of his own skin. What did they put inside me?
He didn't get an answer. He never did.
Marcus was halfway through his water when the explosion happened.
The window facing the street lit up orange-white, and a shockwave rattled the glass hard enough that Marcus thought it might shatter. He dropped into a crouch on pure instinct—three months in Gotham had taught him that much—and covered his head as car alarms began screaming in chorus with the sirens.
What the hell was—
He didn't finish the thought. A second explosion followed the first, closer this time, and Marcus could hear screaming now. Not the generic background screaming of Gotham's nightlife, but the raw, terrified screaming of people in genuine danger.
Don't do it, the sensible part of his brain warned. Don't go to the window. Don't look outside. This is not your problem. You are a data entry clerk. You are BORING. You are—
Marcus looked outside.
The street below was chaos incarnate. Three cars were on fire, sending pillars of black smoke into the night sky. People ran in every direction, some carrying children, others simply fleeing blindly. And in the middle of it all, standing on the roof of an overturned police cruiser like a conductor before his orchestra of mayhem, was a figure that made Marcus's blood run cold and his chest burn hot.
The Joker.
Even from five stories up, Marcus could see the gleaming white face, the shock of green hair, the smile that stretched too wide to be human. The Clown Prince of Crime was wearing his signature purple suit, though it was currently accessorized with what appeared to be a bandolier of small explosives and a comically oversized mallet that crackled with electricity. He was laughing—of course he was laughing, the bastard was ALWAYS laughing—and gesturing grandly as his goons spread out through the street, dragging civilians from their hiding spots.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" The Joker's voice carried with unnatural clarity, probably through some kind of amplifier. "WELCOME TO TONIGHT'S SHOW! I CALL IT 'HOW MANY PEOPLE CAN THE BAT SAVE BEFORE THE PUNCHLINE?' SPOILER ALERT: THE PUNCHLINE IS EXPLOSIVES!"
He cackled again, that distinctive laugh that had haunted Gotham's nightmares for years. One of his goons shoved a terrified woman to her knees, and Joker hopped down from the cruiser to cup her face in his gloved hands, tilting her head up to meet his manic grin.
"Don't worry, sweetheart. If Batsy doesn't show up in... oh, let's say ten minutes... you'll get a VERY special prize! Harley, show her the prize!"
A figure in red and black cartwheeled into view—Harley Quinn, twirling a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire with disturbing enthusiasm. "Sure thing, Mistah J!"
Marcus should have looked away. He should have backed slowly from the window, grabbed his emergency go-bag (every Gotham resident had one; it was practically a requirement), and gotten the hell out of the building before the violence spread. That was the smart play. That was the SURVIVABLE play.
Instead, he watched the Joker stroke the woman's cheek with a knife that had appeared from nowhere, watched her tears cut tracks through the dust on her face, watched the goons laugh and jostle each other as if this was all just great entertainment.
And the burning in his chest ROARED.
Marcus gasped, doubling over as heat erupted through his body like a supernova being born in his ribcage. His skin felt too tight, too thin, like something was trying to claw its way out from the inside. His vision flickered, normal sight layering over something else—something that saw the street in shades of red and black, that saw the SINS of every person below written in fire across their souls.
Oh, Marcus thought distantly, even as the first flames began to lick up his arms. Oh, I know what this is.
He'd been wrong. The burning wasn't illness, wasn't some cosmic side effect of his rebirth. It was a PASSENGER. A force that had been sleeping inside him since the moment he'd arrived in this world, waiting for the right trigger, the right moment of righteous fury to wake it up.
The Spirit of Vengeance.
I'm the Ghost Rider, Marcus realized, and then the fire consumed him whole.
It didn't hurt.
That was the strangest part. Marcus had expected agony—his flesh was BURNING, for crying out loud, he could see it blackening and peeling away in the reflection of his window—but instead he felt only heat, only POWER, only an all-consuming hunger for something he couldn't quite name.
His skin sloughed away like old paper, revealing not muscle and bone but FIRE, pure hellfire compressed into a vaguely humanoid shape. His skull emerged last, bleached white and grinning, wreathed in flames that shifted from orange to blue to white-hot and back again. He looked down at his hands—skeletal now, each finger a perfectly articulated bone wrapped in ethereal flame—and flexed them experimentally.
"INNOCENT BLOOD," a voice said, and it took Marcus a moment to realize it was coming from HIM, resonating up from his chest cavity in a register that shouldn't be possible for anything without lungs. "SPILLED IN THE NAME OF MADNESS."
The Spirit of Vengeance—no, Marcus corrected himself, HE, because they were one now, merged in a union that felt as natural as breathing—turned toward the window. The glass melted before he even touched it, running down the wall in thick rivers of molten sand. The cool night air rushed in, carrying with it the scent of smoke and fear and something else, something ROTTEN.
Sin.
The Joker's sins painted the air in colors that mortal eyes could never see. They trailed behind him like a cape of writhing shadows—every life taken, every mind broken, every child orphaned, every dream destroyed. The weight of it was STAGGERING, a monument to cruelty that stretched back years and years and showed no sign of stopping.
Marcus, or what was left of Marcus wrapped in the Ghost Rider's burning shell, felt his jaw clench. He'd read the comics. He knew the Joker's body count. But seeing it, FEELING it, was something else entirely.
"GUILTY," he growled, and the word carried the weight of absolute judgment.
He needed a ride.
As if summoned by the thought, something answered from the street below. A motorcycle—some rusted Japanese model that had probably been sitting in an alley for months—suddenly SCREAMED to life. Its engine roared with an intensity that no mortal machine should produce, and Marcus watched in fascination as hellfire spread across its frame, transforming cheap steel and rubber into something LEGENDARY.
The bike burst from the alley, wheels leaving trails of flame on the asphalt, and CLIMBED THE WALL. It defied every law of physics that Marcus's Earth had held dear, racing up the side of his building as easily as it might cruise down a highway. It reached his window—his now-glassless window—and stopped, hovering in midair like the world's most metal taxi service.
Marcus mounted it in a single fluid motion, hands finding the handlebars like they'd been made for his grip. The engine purred beneath him, a sound like a tiger waiting to pounce.
"LET'S RIDE."
The Ghost Rider dropped five stories and hit the street like a meteor.
The Joker had been in the middle of a truly excellent monologue about the nature of chaos and the futility of hope—one of his best, really, he'd been workshopping it for WEEKS—when the night caught fire.
One moment, everything was going according to plan. His goons were keeping the crowd sufficiently terrified, Harley was doing that thing with the baseball bat where she menaced people without actually hitting them (yet), and the little timer in his pocket was counting down to a truly spectacular finale. Any minute now, the Bat would show up, they'd do their little dance, and maybe—MAYBE—this would finally be the night that things got INTERESTING.
Then something FELL out of the sky, and Joker's smile flickered.
A motorcycle—on FIRE, somehow still functional despite being wrapped in flames that burned blue-white at the edges—crashed into the street maybe thirty feet from his position. The impact left a crater in the asphalt, and as the smoke cleared, Joker saw the rider.
He was a skeleton. An actual, literal skeleton, except skeletons weren't supposed to BURN like that, weren't supposed to radiate heat so intense that Joker could feel it from here, weren't supposed to have eye sockets that blazed with hellfire that seemed to SEE straight through him.
Joker was, for perhaps the first time in years, genuinely thrown off his rhythm.
"Well," he said slowly, his smile stretching back into place through sheer force of habit, "this is NEW. I didn't know Halloween came early this year! Love the costume, bony! Who's your tailor?"
The skeleton didn't answer. It just sat there on its impossible motorcycle, those burning eyes fixed on Joker with an intensity that made something in the clown's chest feel... uncomfortable. Not afraid—Joker didn't DO afraid, fear was for the AUDIENCE—but uncomfortable, like being watched by something that saw more than it should.
"Boss?" One of his goons—Frankie, maybe, or was it Dennis? They all blurred together—was staring at the flaming specter with undisguised terror. "Boss, what the hell IS that thing?"
"How should I know?" Joker snapped, annoyed at the interruption. He pulled out a knife, twirling it between his fingers. "But it's CLEARLY trying to upstage me, and we can't have THAT. Boys! Shoot it!"
The goons—there were maybe fifteen of them tonight, a nice round number for mayhem—opened fire. The street filled with the thunder of automatic weapons, bullets tearing through the air toward the burning figure on the motorcycle.
The Ghost Rider didn't move.
The bullets hit. Joker watched them strike home, watched them punch through the flames and the bone and...
...and nothing happened.
The skeleton slowly looked down at its chest, at the smoking holes where the bullets had passed through, and then looked back up. Its jaw opened, and a sound came out that was less a laugh and more a tectonic event given voice—deep, resonant, and absolutely TERRIFYING.
"IS THAT ALL?"
"Okay," Joker said, his smile now somewhat fixed in place through growing uncertainty, "Plan B. Harley?"
But Harley was backing away, her usual manic enthusiasm replaced by something that looked disturbingly like self-preservation. "Uh, Mistah J? I don't think this is—"
The motorcycle ROARED.
The Ghost Rider launched forward with impossible speed, hellfire trailing behind like the tail of a comet. The nearest goon—Dennis, it was definitely Dennis—didn't even have time to scream before a skeletal hand closed around his throat and LIFTED.
"LOOK INTO MY EYES."
Dennis looked. He couldn't help it—the flames were hypnotic, pulling his gaze in like a black hole consumed light. Those blazing sockets filled his vision, and then—
Dennis started screaming.
Not regular screaming, not the healthy "I'm about to die" screaming that Joker had come to appreciate over his career. This was something ELSE. This was the sound of a soul being shown every sin it had ever committed, every harm it had ever caused, every life it had ruined, all compressed into a single moment of absolute judgment.
Dennis's eyes rolled back. Blood vessels burst in intricate patterns across his face. And when the Ghost Rider finally released him, Dennis crumpled to the ground, his expression frozen in a rictus of horror that somehow made Joker's own smile look HEALTHY.
He wasn't breathing.
"Well," Joker said slowly, "that's... hm."
The Ghost Rider turned to the next goon.
"YOUR TURN."
Marcus—or the thing that had been Marcus, merged now with the Spirit of Vengeance in a union that felt like coming home—worked his way through the Joker's men with methodical precision.
The Penance Stare wasn't pleasant. Even from this side, even delivering the punishment rather than receiving it, Marcus could FEEL each man's sins unspooling as their souls were judged. He saw the murders, the beatings, the robberies. He saw wives hit and children neglected and strangers killed for pocket change. He saw the CHOICES these men had made, the moments where they'd stood at crossroads and chosen darkness.
And he showed them all of it. Every single moment. Every sin burning through their consciousness like acid, making them FEEL what their victims had felt, making them UNDERSTAND the weight of their crimes.
Some survived—the ones whose sins were smaller, the new recruits who hadn't yet waded too deep into the mire. They collapsed, sobbing and catatonic but breathing. They would never be the same—the Penance Stare didn't leave room for easy recovery—but they would live.
Others... didn't.
The veteran criminals, the ones who had killed and tortured and broken minds for SPORT, they fell and didn't get back up. Their souls couldn't survive the weight of their own atrocities, and Marcus felt no remorse for that. These weren't innocents. These weren't misguided souls who could be redeemed with a stern talking-to and a second chance.
These were MONSTERS. And monsters deserved to meet something scarier than themselves.
Harley Quinn was next.
She'd tried to run—smart, really, probably the first smart thing she'd done since meeting the Joker—but the Ghost Rider was faster. A chain materialized in Marcus's skeletal hand, wrought from pure hellfire, and it shot forward with a serpent's speed to wrap around her ankle. He yanked, and she went down hard.
"HARLEEN QUINZEL."
"Please." Her voice had lost all its playful bounce. "Please, I didn't—I just—Mistah J, he—"
"YOUR SINS ARE MANY." The Ghost Rider crouched over her, bringing that burning skull close to her face. "BUT THEY ARE NOT ALL YOUR OWN."
Marcus hesitated. This was... complicated. Harley's case was complicated. Her psychology was complicated. There was genuine evil there, but there was also manipulation, abuse, gaslighting. The Joker had broken her, rebuilt her in his image, turned her into a weapon against herself as much as anyone else.
The Spirit of Vengeance whispered judgments in his skull—guilty, GUILTY, burn her, cleanse her sins—but Marcus pushed back. He was still in here, somewhere under all the fire and fury. He could still CHOOSE.
"LOOK INTO MY EYES, HARLEY QUINN. BUT KNOW THIS: YOU WILL SURVIVE. THE STARE WILL SHOW YOU WHAT YOU HAVE DONE... AND WHAT WAS DONE TO YOU. PERHAPS THEN YOU WILL FIND YOUR OWN PATH."
Harley whimpered, but she couldn't look away. The Penance Stare activated, but Marcus held it BACK, diluted it, turned what should have been a fatal judgment into something more like... brutal therapy. He showed her her sins, yes, but he also showed her the Joker's manipulation, the patterns of abuse, the slow corruption of everything she'd once been.
She screamed. She cried. She convulsed on the ground, reliving every moment of trauma—given and received—in rapid succession.
And then it was over, and Harley Quinn lay still, breathing but unconscious, her face wet with tears.
"MAY YOU CHOOSE BETTER," Marcus murmured, and then turned toward the main event.
The Joker was still standing in the middle of the street. His goons were down—dead or catatonic, scattered across the asphalt like broken toys—and his Harley was out of commission. But the smile never wavered. If anything, it had grown WIDER.
"Now THAT," Joker said, spreading his arms like a showman acknowledging his audience, "was a PERFORMANCE! Standing ovation! Bravo! You've got real talent, Bones! Ever considered a career in entertainment?"
"JOKER." The Ghost Rider stepped forward, chains dragging behind, leaving furrows of melted asphalt. "YOUR VICTIMS CRY OUT FOR JUSTICE. YOUR SINS BLACKEN THE VERY AIR. TONIGHT... YOU FACE JUDGMENT."
"Oh, JUDGMENT!" Joker clapped his hands together. "I LOVE judgment! Big fan! Tell me, is this where you give me a speech about the error of my ways and then haul me off to Arkham so we can do this all again in six months? Because I've got to say, that bit's getting a LITTLE stale—"
"THERE WILL BE NO ARKHAM."
That actually made Joker pause. His smile flickered—just for a moment, just a FRACTION of an instant—and then it was back, wider than ever. "Oh? Oh, NOW we're talking! Finally, someone with some INITIATIVE! Some VISION! Tell me, tall dark and toasty, what's your angle? What's your THING? Every cape needs a thing!"
"I AM THE GHOST RIDER." Marcus stepped forward again, close enough now that the heat was making Joker's makeup run. "I AM VENGEANCE INCARNATE. AND YOU, JOKER, HAVE EARNED EVERY INCH OF WHAT COMES NEXT."
"Vengeance? VENGEANCE?!" Joker threw his head back and laughed, a genuine sound of delight. "Oh, that's RICH! You think I haven't faced vengeance before? You think Batman isn't DROWNING in vengeance? He's just too WEAK to do anything with it! Too scared! Too—"
"I AM NOT BATMAN."
The Ghost Rider moved.
Later, when police would review the traffic camera footage (those that survived the heat), they would swear the flaming skeleton had TELEPORTED. One frame he was five feet away, the next he was inches from the Joker's face, skeletal fingers gripping the clown's jaw with irresistible force.
"LOOK. INTO. MY. EYES."
And Joker, for once in his miserable existence, couldn't look away.
What the Penance Stare showed you was unique to your sins. For most people, it was a highlight reel of their worst moments, their cruelest choices, their deepest regrets. They experienced their crimes from the victim's perspective, felt every moment of pain and terror and betrayal that they had caused.
For the Joker, it was so much worse.
Marcus felt it all flowing through him—the conduit between the Spirit of Vengeance and this cackling monument to human cruelty. He felt the THOUSANDS of deaths, the countless broken minds, the years upon years of calculated, gleeful destruction. He felt Jason Todd's screams and Barbara Gordon's paralysis and the hundreds of nameless victims who had died laughing because of Joker's toxin.
And he fed it ALL back.
Not just the pain—the Joker might have ENJOYED that, the sick bastard. No, Marcus showed him the AFTERMATH. The orphaned children. The grieving parents. The survivors who would never sleep soundly again. He showed him the WEIGHT of his actions, the ripples of suffering that spread out from every "joke" like poison in a water supply.
For the first time in decades, the Joker stopped laughing.
His face contorted—not in his usual theatrical expressions, but in genuine, uncontrolled emotion. His eyes widened until they seemed about to pop from his skull. His mouth opened in a silent scream that went on and on and ON—
And the Penance Stare burned through him like fire through paper.
The Joker's soul—if it could even be called that, after all the atrocities it had committed—simply... COULDN'T survive the weight. There was too much sin, too much darkness, too many victims crying out for justice. The Spirit of Vengeance delivered its judgment, and for once, there was no escape clause.
No Arkham breakout. No last-minute rescue. No comic book resurrection.
Just JUDGMENT.
When Marcus released him, the Joker crumpled to the ground like a marionette with cut strings. His eyes were open, staring at nothing, that grotesque smile finally—FINALLY—replaced by an expression of absolute horror. His chest didn't move. His heart didn't beat.
The Clown Prince of Crime was dead.
"JUSTICE," Marcus whispered, and the word hung in the air like a prayer and a promise.
The Ghost Rider stood in the middle of the devastation, flames still licking from his skull, chains still glowing with hellfire, and felt... peace.
It was strange. He'd just killed a man—killed MULTIPLE men, if he was being technical—and he should probably be having some kind of moral crisis about that. But the Spirit of Vengeance didn't do moral crises. It did JUSTICE. And justice had been served.
The surviving civilians were long gone, fled during the chaos of the battle. The catatonic goons were scattered around, some moaning, others silent. Harley Quinn was still unconscious, and Marcus made a mental note to leave her for the authorities—she deserved a chance, however slim.
And the Joker was dead.
DEAD dead. Permanently dead. Not "comic book dead" where he'd show up again in six months with a convoluted explanation. The Penance Stare had destroyed his soul. There was nothing LEFT to resurrect.
Marcus felt the Ghost Rider wanting to move on—there were more sinners in Gotham, always more sinners, an endless supply of darkness to cleanse—but he pushed back, asserting control. He was still in here. He was still HIMSELF, Marcus Chen, comic book nerd and former data entry clerk and reluctant supernatural vigilante.
And right now, he needed a moment to process the fact that he had just permanently ended one of the most infamous villains in comic book history.
Holy shit, the Marcus part of him thought. I killed the Joker. I actually killed the Joker. I—
A shadow dropped from the sky.
Marcus spun, flames flaring brighter, chains raised defensively—and found himself face to face with the Batman.
Bruce Wayne had seen a lot of strange things in his career.
He'd fought aliens and gods and demons. He'd traveled through time and across dimensions. He'd died and come back, lost partners and found new ones, watched his city burn and rebuilt it from the ashes.
But this...
He stared at the creature in the middle of the street—because that's what it was, a CREATURE, not a man in a costume but something genuinely supernatural—and felt his tactical mind racing to catch up.
The facts were these: A burning skeleton on a flaming motorcycle had appeared out of nowhere, killed the Joker and most of his gang, and was now standing in a crater of melted asphalt like a scene from a horror movie.
The Joker was dead. ACTUALLY dead. Bruce could see the body from here, could see the expression of frozen terror on that painted face, and something in his chest twisted in a way he couldn't quite identify.
Relief? Guilt? BOTH?
He didn't have time to examine it. The creature was turning toward him, those blazing eye sockets fixing on him with an intensity that made Bruce's skin crawl.
"BATMAN."
The voice was like gravel being crushed in a blast furnace. Bruce forced himself not to step back.
"What are you?" His voice came out flat, controlled. The Batman voice, the one that made criminals wet themselves. It seemed to have no effect on this thing.
"I AM THE GHOST RIDER. I AM VENGEANCE GIVEN FORM. AND YOU..." The creature tilted its flaming skull, as if examining him. "YOU CARRY DARKNESS, BUT NOT SIN. YOUR HANDS ARE STAINED, BUT IN SERVICE OF JUSTICE. YOU ARE... INTERESTING."
"You killed him." It wasn't an accusation exactly, more a statement of fact that Bruce was still trying to wrap his head around. "You killed the Joker."
"I DELIVERED JUDGMENT. HE WAS GUILTY. HIS SOUL COULD NOT BEAR THE WEIGHT OF HIS CRIMES." The Ghost Rider paused, and when it spoke again, there was something almost like dark humor in its voice. "DID YOU MOURN HIM, DARK KNIGHT? YOUR GREATEST FOE, YOUR ETERNAL DANCE PARTNER? WILL YOU MISS THE GAME?"
"The Joker was..." Bruce stopped, unsure how to finish that sentence. A monster? A madman? A CHALLENGE? "He deserved justice."
"AND HE RECEIVED IT."
"He deserved to face trial. To answer for his crimes in a court of law. To—"
"TO ESCAPE AGAIN?" The Ghost Rider took a step forward, and Bruce held his ground through sheer willpower. "TO KILL AGAIN? HOW MANY TIMES HAS HE EVADED YOUR 'JUSTICE,' BATMAN? HOW MANY VICTIMS WOULD YET LIVE IF HE HAD BEEN STOPPED PERMANENTLY YEARS AGO?"
Bruce had no answer for that. It was the question that had haunted him for years, the philosophical puzzle he had never been able to solve: Was his code worth the lives it cost? Was refusing to kill actually the moral choice, or was it just cowardice dressed up as principle?
He'd always told himself that killing would make him no better than the criminals he fought. That the line, once crossed, could never be recrossed. That SOMEONE had to hold the standard.
But standing here, looking at the Joker's corpse, knowing that the clown would never hurt anyone ever again...
How many? whispered a voice in his head. How many lives would have been saved if you'd done this years ago?
"I DO NOT CONDEMN YOU, BATMAN." The Ghost Rider's voice was softer now, almost gentle. "YOUR PATH IS YOUR OWN. BUT DO NOT MOURN THIS MONSTER. DO NOT WASTE YOUR GRIEF ON ONE WHO WOULD NEVER HAVE EXTENDED YOU THE SAME COURTESY."
"Who ARE you?" Bruce asked again, and this time it was less a demand and more a genuine question.
"I AM WHAT THIS CITY NEEDS. I AM THE FIRE THAT CLEANSES. I AM—" The creature paused, and those empty eye sockets seemed to flicker with something like amusement. "I AM SOMEONE WHO READS COMIC BOOKS. GOODBYE, DARK KNIGHT. I SUSPECT WE WILL MEET AGAIN."
The motorcycle roared to life beside the creature, hellfire blazing along its frame. The Ghost Rider mounted it in a single smooth motion, and then—
—it was GONE, rocketing away down the street, leaving a trail of fire that slowly faded into the night.
Bruce stood alone in the ruins of the Joker's last crime scene, surrounded by bodies and destruction, and tried very hard not to think about the fact that a supernatural entity had just solved his greatest problem in a way he had never been willing to consider.
Across Gotham, in her clocktower headquarters, Oracle—Barbara Gordon, once Batgirl, now the all-seeing eye of the Bat-family—stared at her monitors with an expression of pure shock.
She'd been tracking the situation since the first explosion, had watched the creature appear and systematically dismantle everything the Joker had built. She'd seen the confrontation with Bruce, heard every word through the parabolic microphones she had pointed at the scene.
And she'd seen the Joker die.
Her hands were shaking. She'd told herself for years that she didn't want him dead, that she was above revenge, that surviving was its own victory. But watching that flaming skull lean in, watching the Penance Stare—whatever that was—reduce the Joker to a corpse...
He's gone, she thought. He's actually gone.
The man who had shot her, paralyzed her, tried to break her in every way possible... was DEAD. Permanently and irreversibly dead.
Barbara put her face in her hands and wept.
She wasn't sure if they were tears of joy or grief or some complicated mixture of both. But for the first time in years, she felt something she'd almost forgotten how to feel.
Hope.
In the Gotham City Police Department, Commissioner Jim Gordon received the news via a breathless phone call from one of his officers at the scene.
He sat at his desk for a long time afterward, staring at the Bat-signal controls on his desk and trying to process the information.
The Joker was dead. Killed by some kind of supernatural vigilante. Half his gang was dead too, the rest catatonic or close to it. Harley Quinn was in custody, apparently in some kind of trauma-induced coma.
Gordon reached for his whiskey—he kept a bottle in his desk for nights exactly like this—and poured himself three fingers.
"You magnificent bastard," he muttered to the absent Ghost Rider. "You actually did it."
He downed the whiskey in one gulp and reached for the bottle again.
It was going to be a VERY long night.
Marcus became human again somewhere around 4 AM, the flames receding into his body as the Spirit of Vengeance settled back into its slumber.
He was standing in an alley several miles from his apartment, next to a motorcycle that was slowly transitioning back from "hellish death machine" to "rusted piece of junk." His clothes were somehow intact—he had no idea how THAT worked, but he wasn't going to question it—and he felt...
Tired. EXHAUSTED. Like he'd just run a marathon while carrying another person on his back.
But also... good?
Marcus leaned against the alley wall and took stock of his situation. He had just made his debut as the Ghost Rider. He had killed the Joker and most of his gang. He had briefly terrified Batman.
And apparently, no one had any idea who he really was.
Good, he thought. That's how it needs to stay. Marcus Chen is a boring data entry clerk. He doesn't fight crime. He doesn't transform into a flaming skeleton. He pays his rent on time and keeps his head down.
The Ghost Rider was... something else. A separate identity. A role he played when the Spirit of Vengeance demanded action.
But they would never connect. Could never connect. Because if there was one thing Marcus had learned from reading comics his whole life, it was that the secret identity was SACRED. The moment people knew who you really were, everything went to hell.
He pushed himself off the wall and started the long walk home. The streets were quiet now, most of Gotham sleeping through what had been a historically significant night. Tomorrow, the news would be everywhere. The Joker's death would dominate every channel, every paper, every social media feed.
And Marcus would sit in his crappy apartment, eat some instant noodles, and pretend he had no idea what everyone was talking about.
It was, he decided, a pretty good plan.
THE NEXT MORNING
"—unprecedented events last night, as the criminal known as the Joker was killed by what witnesses are describing as a 'flaming skeleton on a motorcycle.' Police have confirmed that the Joker is, in fact, deceased, along with several members of his gang—"
Marcus changed the channel.
"—calling itself the 'Ghost Rider,' this mysterious entity has raised questions about Gotham's already controversial relationship with vigilante justice. Critics are calling for—"
He changed the channel again.
"—Batman was spotted at the scene but apparently did not intervene. Sources within the GCPD suggest that the Dark Knight may have actually SPOKEN with the creature before it fled. No word yet on—"
Marcus turned the TV off entirely and stared at the blank screen.
Well, he thought, I'm famous now. Or the Ghost Rider is, anyway.
He took a sip of his coffee—instant, because his coffeemaker had given up the ghost two weeks ago and he kept forgetting to buy a new one—and contemplated his future.
The Spirit of Vengeance was quiet today, sleeping off last night's exertions. But Marcus could feel it in there, coiled around his spine like a contented serpent. It had FED last night. The Joker's sins had been... substantial.
So what now? he asked himself. Do I just... keep doing this? Ride around Gotham and burn criminals until there's none left?
It was tempting. God, it was tempting. Gotham was a cesspit of corruption and violence, and the Ghost Rider could clean it up in ways that Batman never would. He could hunt down the mob families, the drug lords, the human traffickers. He could make this city SAFE.
But...
But he'd also read enough comics to know how that story usually ended. Absolute power corrupted absolutely, and the Spirit of Vengeance wasn't exactly known for its restraint. If he let it loose too often, if he stopped being Marcus Chen and started being ONLY the Ghost Rider...
He might not like what he became.
Moderation, Marcus decided. I'll use the power, but I won't let it use me. I'll be the Ghost Rider when I NEED to be, not when I WANT to be.
It was a good resolution. Whether he could keep it remained to be seen.
His phone buzzed—a text from his boss, asking if he was coming in tonight. Apparently, even supernatural vengeance didn't excuse you from work in this economy.
Marcus sighed, drained his coffee, and went to take a shower.
Life in Gotham continued.
ELSEWHERE IN GOTHAM
In a penthouse apartment overlooking the city, Oswald Cobblepot—the Penguin—stared at the news coverage with a complicated expression.
The Joker was dead. His oldest rival, his most unpredictable competitor, was GONE. On one hand, this was excellent news. The clown had been bad for business, his random chaos making it harder for organized crime to operate efficiently.
On the other hand...
If this "Ghost Rider" could kill the JOKER, what chance did the rest of them have?
Oswald reached for his phone and began making calls. It was time to consolidate, to shore up defenses, to make sure that when the flaming skeleton came for HIM, he'd be ready.
He had a feeling he wasn't the only crime boss in Gotham thinking the same thing.
In Arkham Asylum, the inmates had heard the news.
Word spread through the facility like wildfire—the Joker was dead, killed by some kind of demon, burned from the inside out. The reactions were... mixed.
Some celebrated. The Joker had never been popular, even among his fellow rogues. He was unpredictable, dangerous to everyone around him, and had a nasty habit of betraying his allies for a punchline.
Others were terrified. If something could kill the JOKER, the most unkillable maniac in Gotham's history, then none of them were safe.
And a few—a very few—looked at the news coverage with something like HOPE. Hope that maybe, just maybe, their own victims would finally see justice.
Arkham Asylum slept uneasily that night.
In the Batcave, Bruce Wayne stood before the massive computer screen, watching the footage of the Ghost Rider for the hundredth time.
He'd analyzed every frame, every movement, every word. He'd run the voice through every database he had access to. He'd cross-referenced the creature's appearance with every supernatural entity on record.
Nothing. The Ghost Rider was a complete unknown.
Which should have been impossible. Bruce had files on EVERYTHING—every meta, every vigilante, every supernatural occurrence in the Western Hemisphere. The fact that something this powerful could exist without ANY prior documentation...
It bothered him.
Alfred appeared at his shoulder, bearing a tray of tea and sandwiches that Bruce had no intention of eating.
"Master Bruce. You've been down here for six hours."
"I know."
"The sun has risen. And set. And risen again."
"I know, Alfred."
The butler sighed, setting the tray down on the nearest flat surface. "If I might offer an observation, sir?"
"You will regardless."
"Quite so." Alfred moved to stand beside him, studying the frozen image of the Ghost Rider on the screen. "This creature, whatever it is, accomplished something that you have struggled with for years. It ended the Joker's threat. Permanently."
"It KILLED him, Alfred. Killed him and half his men."
"Yes. And in doing so, likely saved hundreds of future lives. Perhaps thousands." Alfred's voice was gentle but firm. "I am not saying I approve of its methods, sir. But perhaps... perhaps it is worth considering that there are more ways to achieve justice than your own."
Bruce was silent for a long moment. Then: "I won't become a killer, Alfred."
"No one is suggesting you should. But neither should you torture yourself over the actions of another. The Joker is dead. The world is safer for it. Allow yourself to accept that, even if you cannot approve of the means."
Bruce turned away from the screen, and for just a moment, Alfred saw something crack in his former ward's expression. Something that might have been relief.
"I need to find it," Bruce said finally. "The Ghost Rider. I need to understand what it is, what it wants, whether it's a threat to Gotham."
"Of course, sir. But perhaps after some sleep?"
Bruce almost smiled. "Fine. Four hours."
"I was thinking rather more along the lines of eight."
"Six."
"Seven."
"Alfred."
"Sir."
They stared at each other, and finally, Bruce's shoulders slumped in defeat. "Fine. Seven hours. But then I'm back at it."
"I wouldn't expect anything less, sir."
Bruce Wayne headed upstairs, leaving the image of the Ghost Rider burning on the screen behind him.
And somewhere in the darkness, the Spirit of Vengeance slept, and dreamed of fire.
END OF CHAPTER ONE