One Bad Day...

In a different time, a different place.

The overcast sky didn't detract Twilight Sparkle one bit as she drove up to the looming iron gates that guarded the roads to her new job, it had been six moths since she received her psychology certification and had taken a case at a home for a the insane, the home was located twenty miles outside the city, and his had been eight years since her graduation at Canterlot High. Though she had previously though her en devours were in science, it was some calling that lead her to practice psychology, and she wasn't going to spend that time working on getting certified in that field in some office above the ice cream shop downtown. No she was tackling the big guns, the demons of her past that had ended up here. She drove a white Honda Civic with all her official documents and papers in stacks on the passenger seat, A cup of coffee from a drive thru almost empty in the cup holder as she flipped the wipers on as rain began to pelt the car's windshield. She turned to the folder sitting on her dashboard and then reread the name on the front, Jack Jolly Moore. His name brought back memories...of so long ago...

JUNE 23rd, Eight Years Ago.

Twilight Sparkle shifted the podium, the entire auditorium of her School; parents, teachers, and her fellow students underclassmen and the graduates beside her in their caps and gowns, all eyes were on her. Twilight tapped the built in microphone on the stand and cleared her throat, as the Valedictorian, it was her duty to deliver a speech. "Today we are to graduate, but what does graduation really mean? The dictionary defines it as." She was interrupted by someone's premature clapping, the slow sarcastic kind that feigns any sort of real approval of their actions. All eyes went from Twilight to her, to see who was interrupting the occasion. It was one of the last in the class grads, the one of the few C.H.S alumni not leaving with much in the way of awards or recognition. The one that wasn't very involved with anything, someone who had no grounds to be interrupting.

"Hello?" A tinny electronic voice called from the speaker besides the looming iron gates to the institute, snapping Twilight from her memories. She rolled the windows down and leaned over to the speaker.

"This is Dr. Twilight Sparkle, I'm here to see patient J.J.M." She said, there was a brief silence as the gates slowly rattled and the chain motor slid them open. twilight shifted her sedan from park to drive and proceed along the asphalt road, the institute a modern three story building of white panel walls, not the stony lonesome and crumbling stones of some 'Bedlam" or "Arkham" that she expected the place to be. She drove up into the parking lot and parked her car in the spot reserved for psychiatrists and others meant to speak with the patients. While some at the asylum had been serving prison sentences, the idea was to keep the less violent criminals who showed reformation potential out of the system. Especially those who had been victimized by other inmates in some way, Twilight herself wondering if her patient was one who should be here.

"Today, is a day many of us have looked forward too. A day to move forward; to embrace the future, to look upon the transition to a new stage in life that's just as invigorating if not more so than the last few years....Jesus H Christ who wrote this crap!" He says pulling a flip lighter from the pocket of the tux under his gown. He lit the paper on fire, nobody got up from the seats, the alumni could only gasp in fear. "You know a great man...Tom Bunk once wrote a piece for MAD magazine in 2000. His piece cuts through the Bolshevik of these speeches, and exposes it for the dreck it truly is." He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, a xerox of the very piece. "And I quote the usual gang of idiots; "the future is yours, because the rest of us don't want anything to do with it! Graduation is a time for celebration, like the fact that the numb nuts beside me haven't been mowed down with a tec-9 in the cafeteria this year. whatever you decide its best to hold onto your dreams, because their the little comforts when the world beats you down. You know I have a few I'd like to say as well....The world we got isn't the world we were supposed to get, the world we'd been promised by somebody...Which may owe thanks to Mr. Joe Quesada or J. Michael Stravinsky. But you know...I prefer NOT to think of such things...because quite frankly, this is a happy occasion for us all...so if I may celebrate prematurely."

He said this as he threw his cap into the air, then tore the gown off. Still no one in the audience could move and a few of the other grads had to be held back from confronting him. Under his gown was a bright purple three piece suit, with an orange shirt and green tie. "Do you like it? Classic Timmy boy Mr. J. Yes, one have reservations on adapting said moniker for one bad day or a hundred turned to retribution after...that Colorado poser. But I assure you all, guns are so passe these days. I mean you hear about them so much in the news day after day, that's it just not funny anymore, its staler humor than Tracy Morgan AFTER the car crash!....HAHAHAHAHA!" His laugh rang out across the auditorium and stll the familes and staff didn't move. The first of the grads to spring into action was Twilight herself. She leap from the arms of Aria and Flash who held her back and stepped forth to him.

"Jack! What the hell are ou doing? Why are you making a mockery of graduation...what ever's happened to you...I...I just wanna help you...please let me help you." She said holding a hand out.

"OH Twilight....Poor naive Twilight. Do you really think some rookie can crack the complexities of my mind, find the roots to my issues and desires to be afaribly evil? GET YOUR NAME IN POPULAR MEDICINE BEFORE YOU EVEN FINISHED PRE-MED!" He said his voice now completly off the walls, cackling and mad as a hatter as he placed a finger on a control panel to the lights off to one side of the stage. "Oh and in case your wondering why everyone on the staff and your parents haven't moved from their seats, allow me to shed a little light on the subject." He turned the house lights up and every parent, every Canterlot High Teacher and all the adults; sat in thier seats with wide ear to ear grins and sweat dripping down their faces, the sweating an idication that.

"They are alivve yes, The cyandine doses I slipped into everyone's drinks at the luncheon, coupled with my own strand of nitrous oxide to enduce smiling, is only enough to render the muscles stiff and paralized. It will wear off, but not before I give a little going away present to you all...I shall start." He said taking two big buck knives, their blades razor sharp and glimmering under the hot stage lights as he smiled ear to ear. He ran the thin but strong blades over his mouth, ear to ear. A Glasgow, or in this case...Joker smile.

"Jack...Please don't do this!" Sunset Shimmer pleaded tears in her eyes as the blood from his mouth and knives dripped onto the wooden stage floor.

"Jack?! Jack is dead Sunset...You know the rest."

The halls of the ward where silent, no laughter or raving madness that one would expect from a place like this. Time in the cold, cruel walls of american prisons had robbed most of these men their sense of humor and laughter. Twilight was lead down the hall by the orderly. A large man with a shaved head, the name tag on his blue scrubs read; Barney Jansen. "Thank you again for showing me the way to his room, has the patient been violent in prison?" Twilight asked, as a rule she would keep it confidential that in some way, she knew her new patient. Barney grunted as his muscled arms stuck into the pockets of his scrubs for the door keys.

"Just on one occasion, and he claims it was to show the other inmates not to try anything on him." He said as they continued, Twilight took a pen from her pocket and got ready to jot it down. "An older man attempted to sexually assault him, so he forced his head into the cell toilet and kicked his teeth into the steel bowl, then he tore his eyeball out with his bare hands, popped it into his mouth, and crushed it in his teeth. The other men where cowering in pure terror saying he wasn't human. Patient; then prisoner, was put into isolation, psychologically evaluated, but claimed the act was the by catch of american incarceration. An act necessary to ensure survival in a world of sexually depraved degenerates and blood thirsty savagery. Was sent to isolation, then here when there was no further behavioral problems with authority, and with the evaluation linked to schizophrenia due to history of self injury, addictive personalty to the fictional character The Joker, and he's waiting for you now doc."

"Thank you Barney, Do you think what happened was just an episode of his psychological disorder?" She asked, all Barney could was sigh, unsure what makes men tick and go off the deep end. He went over a list of rules Jack Moore was still under; no sharp objects like pens, pencils forks or knives, only pass his softy waxed paper and crayola crayons to write with, and while she would be in the room with him, he was to be watched by two armed guards in the room ready to restrain him the first sign of aggression.

"Are you doing this to see if he has any hope of getting out?" Barney asked as he confiscated all her papers, pens, pencils, jewelry, valuables, clips, and pins. Twilight traded them all in for a box of waxed deli paper, a roll of brown paper towels, and a box of crayons. It felt silly, but safety was a priority when it came to the boy who had...

"As my doctor always said, if you gotta go...go out with a smile on your face!" Jack said as he lunged at Sunset, she shrieked waiting for the buck knife to slash at her and cut her mouth ear to ear until she looked like him, mouth bleeding profusely from the smile carved into his cheeks. Bulk and Flash both tackled him like they often did on the football field, though jack did get a lucky stab in and to this day Bulk has a scar in his stomach when the knife went into him, but he lived. They held him down as he struggled to break free, as the parents and teachers could only watch as it got harder and harder to breathe. As Jack had said, the cyanide dosage wasn't potent enough to cause cardiac or respiratory arrest, but it was a painful and unpleasant experience for them all. Their faces stuck stretched in those hideously ugly smiles ripped right from the Batman comics. Only there was no Caped Crusader around to save them, to sock him square in the jaw and administer an anti toxin to save them. Just a crazed fan who read one too many of those books in the hope of imitating the art.

"Get OFF ME! GET OFF ME!" He shouted as the others held him down by the arms and legs as someone ran to the office to phone the police. They showed up in five minutes when the events were relayed to them and Jack Jolly Moore was arrested and eventually tried and convinced of assault and battery, detaining of hostages, and assault with a deadly toxic substance with intent to harm or kill. The rest, is history. Most of the teachers and the parents would recover and try to put the incident behind them, as would the students, all save for one.

Now Twilight sparkle sat in the chair opposite her old classmate and graduate, she wondered why. Why throw your entire life away in such a stunt? Why imitate something down to the wire in a way that left him the only one of her class to not have any foreseeable future in his life? She wondered this he sat opposite her on the desk. He shuffled a deck of playing cards and set them out in a series of suits. A straight flush; a pair of queens, and a full house, followed by a spades royal flush. "Jack? Can you hear me?" She asked as the dim light of the bedroom shined on his face; it had grown as pale as one can get from not seeing the sun for eight years, and the scars of his self inflicted Joker smile had grown hideous and the flesh ragged from the eight years of healing over the skin. She swore as she looked at his lips as they pursed into a devious smile, the first one he'd made since that fateful day, that the cuts began to bleed fresh all over again.

"Good evening Twilight." He said as his smile only grew wider, it was going to be a long night.