Batwoman disliked this kind of environment. Multicolored neon lights cast patches of every hue that crawled over her body, while loudspeakers Joker had left along both sides of the corridor endlessly played recordings of hearty laughter.
It was not Joker's laughter, but the canned laughter used to liven up sitcoms on television.
"Ha ha ha, ha ha ha, ha ha ha."
The laughter was highly regular, brief, and noisy, as if hundreds of people were laughing at once. But after listening for too long, a terrifying coldness seeped through that mechanical rhythm.
These people were not laughing sincerely. Maybe they did it for money, maybe for work, maybe for their future, but this perfunctory fake laughter was the expression people showed others most often in daily life.
This was real laughter.
As Batwoman hurried forward while thinking, she noticed that the speakers seemed to be running out of power, as if the tapes had become tangled. The laughter suddenly distorted, turning long and eerie, like sobbing and wailing.
The Trench Coat Fighter cautiously followed behind Batwoman, his head snapping from side to side as though he feared Joker might emerge from anywhere.
Many people reacted this way the first time they encountered Joker. That man could give people an overwhelming sense of suffocation. His pure chaos was too real, so real that humans found it hard to accept.
Even Nightwing, who had since struck out on his own, could barely speak clearly when he first met Joker.
Smack! Smack!
Two sharp cracks suddenly rang out beside them. A huge burst of paper confetti sprayed forth, showering them as though welcoming birthday guests, and even the laughter returned to normal.
Only the multicolored lights changed more rapidly.
If they had previously resembled street neon, they now looked like colored lights wildly