stresses in her life, she welcomed whatever calm could be found.
The car jerked to a stop as it reached the first floor. She waited for the doors to slide open again. Next stop for her was the botanical gardens. Those gardens truly scared Scarecrow; so where better to go to produce even more of her toxin repellant?
The door opened, and Ivy gasped. Batman stood directly outside, dead plant growth strewn across the ground, lifeless brown vines dripping off him.
“My children!” she shrieked. “You killed my children!”
“No,” he said, and the word was like a slap. “You did, by pitting them against me.” He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out of the elevator, then slapped handcuffs around her wrists. “You’re coming with me.”
She smiled and gave him a fake pout.
“You only had to ask.”
* * *
Scarecrow wasn’t happy.
As the prominent psychologist Dr. Jonathan Crane, his job had been to help people rid themselves of their deepest fears. He reasoned that fear kept people from becoming their best, and by minimizing those dark terrors, an individual could achieve peace.
Crane spent years researching fears—why people had them, how they manifested and grew stronger, and finally, when he learned everything he believed he needed to, he began to experiment on how to eliminate them.
Over time he came to believe that to fight fear one needed to create and instill a substitute fear. Firemen fought fires by building a firewall to prevent the bigger blaze from moving forward. Doctors fought many diseases by injecting their patients with small doses in order to build the antibodies necessary to resist the main infection. He believed if one substituted a lesser, more governable fear, it could replace the overpowering dreads that paralyzed his patients.
And it worked.
He replaced nyctophobia—the fear of the night and darkness, a phobia that crippled so many of his patients every day when the sun went down—with hydrophobophobia, the very rational fear of contracting rabies. He replaced arachnophobia, the fear of spiders, with syphilophobia, the avoidable fear of contracting syphilis.
There were thousands of such fears that could be substituted with thousands of others far easier to treat, and less likely to arise for a person living a reasonably normal life. One could, he realized, avoid almost all situations that generated taurophobia, the fear of bulls, much easier than selenophobia, the fear of the moon.
But with each success, Crane began to relish the godlike ability to enter a patient’s mind and to take it over, rebuilding their response mechanisms from the ground up, changing the very way they reacted to the world around them. He enjoyed watching his patients respond to a new series of phobias, and he began to believe that people
deserved
the fears they sought to eliminate. If they were good people, after all, there’d be no reason to fear anything.
Only those with something to hide should ever be afraid.
Send the fear out there
, he thought.
Infect the masses. See what happens to them.
Those who were good would resist his infection. Those who deserved punishment would become victims of their own darkness. What he was doing was right and just.
And well deserved.
Nearly everyone succumbed to the basest fears, which meant he was achieving what providence had meant for him. He was culling the weak. Within a generation only the strong, the pure, his believers, would live.
And that, he decided, was good.
But there were those who disagreed with his mandate and fought him. Most of them he dealt with easily, but not Batman. The Dark Knight always managed to resist.
Scarecrow was on the offensive now. He was going to cleanse Gotham City, and to do that he needed to see his greatest enemy die.
“Batman must be mine,” he ordered the criminals. “Defeat him and bring him to me. My champion will be rewarded.”
Now he needed to recapture Poison Ivy. She possessed the antidote that rendered his
The car jerked to a stop as it reached the first floor. She waited for the doors to slide open again. Next stop for her was the botanical gardens. Those gardens truly scared Scarecrow; so where better to go to produce even more of her toxin repellant?
The door opened, and Ivy gasped. Batman stood directly outside, dead plant growth strewn across the ground, lifeless brown vines dripping off him.
“My children!” she shrieked. “You killed my children!”
“No,” he said, and the word was like a slap. “You did, by pitting them against me.” He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out of the elevator, then slapped handcuffs around her wrists. “You’re coming with me.”
She smiled and gave him a fake pout.
“You only had to ask.”
* * *
Scarecrow wasn’t happy.
As the prominent psychologist Dr. Jonathan Crane, his job had been to help people rid themselves of their deepest fears. He reasoned that fear kept people from becoming their best, and by minimizing those dark terrors, an individual could achieve peace.
Crane spent years researching fears—why people had them, how they manifested and grew stronger, and finally, when he learned everything he believed he needed to, he began to experiment on how to eliminate them.
Over time he came to believe that to fight fear one needed to create and instill a substitute fear. Firemen fought fires by building a firewall to prevent the bigger blaze from moving forward. Doctors fought many diseases by injecting their patients with small doses in order to build the antibodies necessary to resist the main infection. He believed if one substituted a lesser, more governable fear, it could replace the overpowering dreads that paralyzed his patients.
And it worked.
He replaced nyctophobia—the fear of the night and darkness, a phobia that crippled so many of his patients every day when the sun went down—with hydrophobophobia, the very rational fear of contracting rabies. He replaced arachnophobia, the fear of spiders, with syphilophobia, the avoidable fear of contracting syphilis.
There were thousands of such fears that could be substituted with thousands of others far easier to treat, and less likely to arise for a person living a reasonably normal life. One could, he realized, avoid almost all situations that generated taurophobia, the fear of bulls, much easier than selenophobia, the fear of the moon.
But with each success, Crane began to relish the godlike ability to enter a patient’s mind and to take it over, rebuilding their response mechanisms from the ground up, changing the very way they reacted to the world around them. He enjoyed watching his patients respond to a new series of phobias, and he began to believe that people
deserved
the fears they sought to eliminate. If they were good people, after all, there’d be no reason to fear anything.
Only those with something to hide should ever be afraid.
Send the fear out there
, he thought.
Infect the masses. See what happens to them.
Those who were good would resist his infection. Those who deserved punishment would become victims of their own darkness. What he was doing was right and just.
And well deserved.
Nearly everyone succumbed to the basest fears, which meant he was achieving what providence had meant for him. He was culling the weak. Within a generation only the strong, the pure, his believers, would live.
And that, he decided, was good.
But there were those who disagreed with his mandate and fought him. Most of them he dealt with easily, but not Batman. The Dark Knight always managed to resist.
Scarecrow was on the offensive now. He was going to cleanse Gotham City, and to do that he needed to see his greatest enemy die.
“Batman must be mine,” he ordered the criminals. “Defeat him and bring him to me. My champion will be rewarded.”
Now he needed to recapture Poison Ivy. She possessed the antidote that rendered his
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