Disclaimer: While I don't own DC Comics, this is based on a true story. In which the part of the Scarecrow was played by my kitten. A mighty hunter of feet and hands, but no use at all when her Person is screaming for help.

This is CATverse, but I don't know when it takes place.

Poppaea's Demise

Oh, how lovely it was to be woken by the sound of screams.

Jonathan Crane stumbled out of bed, yawning, but with a little bounce in his step. It wasn't often that the girls got him up this way, but it was always a nice surprise when they did. Had they brought him a new test subject? No, there was too much raw panic in the sound. Unless they had started without him, a new subject wouldn't be that frightened yet. And they would never start without him.

So, what was--?

He stopped, forcing his face to freeze before a delighted smile could betray him.

The Captain was alone in the kitchen, hopping backwards toward a chair and screaming her head off.

"What's the matter?" he asked calmly. Without taking her eyes off the floor, she tried to answer with equal composure.

"Jonathan, would y--HELP! Squishy, help me! Kill it! Kill it, Squishy, kill it, kill it now!"

He followed her gaze to the kitchen floor and saw, oh yes, a cockroach. A big one, too, one of the biggest he'd ever seen. It wasn't doing much at the moment, but every time it started to skitter off in some new direction, the Captain shrieked loud and high enough to make his ears ring, and bounced away from it.

"Are you trying to tell me you're afraid of roaches?" The little insect twitched its feelers, and she yelped again. Well, this was wonderful! He knew she didn't like bugs, but she'd always handled little ones reasonably well. Even big, nasty spiders didn't make her scream like this. Not even the one that had survived being doused with Techie's entire can of AquaNet.

"Squishy, please! Just kill it! Kill it, kill it--" The thing saw its opportunity to skitter toward the girls' rooms. "Kill-it-kill-it AUGH!" She leaped straight up in the air and came down on the roach with both feet, then danced away, trembling. "Oh, my god! Oh, my god! Oh, my god! Ew."

"Are you quite finished?" She looked up at him, on the verge of tears.

"Will you--um--could you please pick it up and throw it away?"

His facial muscles twitched into an unfamiliar configuration that showed his teeth.

"No."

"You're a horrible mean man and I hate you," she said hopefully. He nodded.

"I know."

The Captain slipped away to the bathroom, and returned with enough toilet paper to clog an industrial strength prison toilet.

"You're never going to be able to flush that," he told her.

"God. You're right. Um...if I put it in the garbage can, will you take out the trash?"

"What do you think?"

She moaned, deep in the back of her throat, and extended her hand toward the belly-up cockroach. Then she leaped backwards, as if something had happened to startle her.

"I--I--I can't! Please, Squishy, please do this for me!"

"No." He was almost laughing.

"Oh, god!" She left again, and returned with a dish towel between her hand and the toilet paper. "Okay. Okay, I can do this. Just pick it up and put it in the garbage can. We don't need this towel. Everything's fine. It's just a dead bug. I'm not afraid of a dead bug. Just a bug. Just a bug." The toilet paper was almost touching one of its legs. Jonathan extended his arm behind his henchgirl, prepared to push her forward. "Just a bug. Just a bug. Just a OH GOD NO!"

She was behind him suddenly, making high-pitched gasping noises as the apparently dead cockroach flipped itself over and calmly scuttled away. Beautiful. Jonathan considered making a pet of it.

"It's not dead," he said.

The Captain echoed, "IT'S NOT DEAD!" and thudded down on top of it once more. And again--thud. And again--thud. Then she grabbed one of Techie's discarded platforms and went after it manually. Thwackthwackthwackthwackthwack.

"I think you got it."

"I juh--ehh--aha," she responded eloquently, and thrust the wad of toilet paper at him, having lost the dish towel in her rush for the shoe.

Well, she was officially hysterical now. She literally would not be able to make herself touch the smashed bug corpse with any amount of padding, although if he gave her a moment to calm down it might occur to her that she could sweep it outside with a broom. But he took pity on her.

Yeah. Right.

The Captain seemed to relax for a second, until he had the roach in hand. Then her back straightened and her eyes went wide.

"Um, S-squishy?" Instead of going for the garbage can, he turned toward her. "Don't, um, don't--please don't--okay, Squishy? When I, um--my gran--when I was a--used to ch--don't--" He moved his hand ever so slightly, and she broke. "DON'T CHASE ME WITH THAT! I'LL KILL YOU! I SWEAR TO GOD I'LL KILL YOU!" she bellowed even as she was running away from him.

Well, he had to give chase, didn't he?

She ran right into Techie's door, and bounced off it. Locked! Oh, he had never been happier to have two thirds of his goon squad out doing--whatever they did when they went out. The Captain groaned in frustration, ducked under his arm at a greater speed than he had thought her capable of, and burst out into the relative safety of the more spacious common room. She wasn't built for speed, that one, but her agility was something to behold, especially when she was terrified. She vaulted over the back of the sofa, clearing the rickety coffee table, and perched on the shelf next to the broken TV. That was where she made her mistake, trying to yank out the useless rabbit ears to fend him off. They wouldn't come off, which slowed her down enough for him to catch up to her.

She leaped. One sneaker impacted against his chest as she used him as her personal springboard. If he had been a little quicker, he could have caught her ankle and ended it then, but no. She sailed across the room, and he had to catch his breath as best he could and go after her.

But she had miscalculated. She was heading for his bathroom, and there was no way out.

She realized that, and tried to slam the door on him. Too late! It hit him in the shoulder, but he was already in the room, holding the cockroach an inch from her face. She jumped into the bathtub and hurled a bar of soap at him.

Her aim was terrible. It hit him in the knee, and he pitched forward, off balance. The bug went flying.

It landed in her hair.

She screamed.

He'd thought she was high-pitched before? He'd thought she was energetic? He hadn't known the meanings of the words.

The Captain came flying out of the tub, flailing like a maniac, smacking herself several times in the face in her urgency to get rid of her unwanted passenger. And she kept screaming. The neighborhood dogs must be going crazy, he thought, just before she flew at him.

"FUCK YOU, I HATE YOU, YOU SUCK!" she screeched, punching wildly with both fists. He slammed into the far wall, unable to fend her off. She kicked him in the shin and continued pummeling him, alternately sobbing and screaming. Her hair slapped against the left lens of her glasses, leaving a trail of bug guts. She wailed and hit him harder.

It was worth it.