Fandom: DC Comics
Title: MST3K Fodder
Characters: Booster Gold, The Joker
Rating: G
Prompt: #8, Phobia
Word Count: 407
Spoilers: None
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em.
A/N: When I started this prompt table, I said I'd do wharf rats for the Phobia prompt unless I could think of something better. I thought of something better. Strangely enough, this is nowhere near as terrifying as Booster vs. Joker as written by me has any right to be. Also, I swear that I wrote this long before the solicit to Booster Gold #5 came out, as my lovely beta wonderfish (betafish?) can confirm.

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The fact of the matter was Booster was terrified of clowns. Technically, he was terrified of one clown specifically, as anyone in their right mind was, but that did serve to make him vaguely jumpy around clowns in general, so he avoided circuses purely by principle. He avoided Gotham for a lot of reasons, but that was one of the major ones.

Unfortunately, his precautions had failed, seeing as he was now standing face-to-face with the Joker himself.

It didn't even make sense for the Joker to be there. Sure, it was the set of a Batman movie, but Batman movies were a dime a dozen, urban legend or not, and there didn't seem to be anything overly special about this one in particular. In fact, judging by the set alone, it was downright cheap and lousy. There wasn't any reason for the Joker to be attacking it at all, seeing as how it was doing a pretty good job of sabotaging its own chances at anything remotely resembling success.

Booster quickly decided that he didn't want to understand why the Joker was there and that he should concentrate more on making the Joker not be there, which was not, it turned out, as hard as he would've thought it would be (that is to say, impossible), and, some creative applications of force fields and blasters later, Booster was as surprised as anyone to find an unconscious Joker. Booster would've liked to dump him on somebody better equipped to handle him immediately, but instead found himself nodding his way politely through the director thanking him for his help, and the hero couldn't help but ask him if he had any ideas why the Joker would be pissed off enough at his movie to attack it.

"Ah, well, you see.... This isn't actually much of an action movie, you see,” the director said in a vaguely nervous sort of way.

"Really? What kind of move is it, then?" Booster asked, raising an eyebrow.

"It's.... Well, it’s a romance, actually, and, well.... We had to take a few liberties, you see."

It was then that Booster noticed the actress with bright green hair and more make-up on than what was strictly necessary cautiously exiting her hiding place.

"Oh," he said shortly. "That would explain it."

When Booster turned the Joker in, he told the cops he hadn’t gotten hit with any Joker toxin, but they didn't seem terribly convinced.