"Who are you?" Hide asked, wary of the mysterious man.
The painted smile didn't shift. The Joker stood in the evening grey of the cemetery with his hands clasped behind his back and his formal suit entirely unrumpled despite having just fallen out of a tree, and he tilted his head as if the question were genuinely interesting.
"Who am I?" he repeated, savoring the shape of a question. "A joker, perhaps."
Hide's jaw tightened.
"Don't do riddles with me." His voice was flat and completely cold. "I asked, who you are."
As he said it, the scales came and covered both of his arms, the dark material rising from his knuckles and climbing up past his wrists and over his forearms to the elbow.
The Joker took one step back.
Both his hands came up, palms facing Hide and he performed with theatrical sincerity, the act of being weak.
"Oh, please, dear. Stop." His voice hadn't lost its cheerfulness, but the step back was real. "I mean no harm at all. I am just a clown. Nothing more, nothing less."
Hide pushed off his back foot.
The gap between them closed in under a second, right arm already extended in a punch, aimed at the Centre of the masked man's chest.
It was going to land.
The Joker had nowhere to go. His back foot had already been taken, the cemetery wall was behind him, and the speed of the approach had given him no time to do anything except receive—
Hide's fist passed through him. His knuckles went through the space the man's chest had been occupying as if it had never been occupied at all. The afterimage stood there for a half-second longer and then it dissolved like ink in water.
A hand settled on Hide's shoulder from behind.
"You really have awakened." The voice came from directly behind him, the same cheerful tone, close enough that Hide could hear the smile in it without needing to see it. "And a Unique Class. I must say — you did take your time. But the results are good."
The hand lifted and Hide's forward momentum, which had been stopped by the shoulder contact, released all at once. He stumbled forward two steps, his right fist connecting with the trunk of the tree directly ahead.
The bark split and a clean hole, knuckle-deep was left on it.
He stood there for a moment with his fist in the tree.
Then he pulled it out and turned around.
The Joker was crouching at his mother's grave and paying his respects, while the mask turned slightly downward toward the stone. He stayed like that for a few seconds. Then he stood, turned, and faced Hide again with his hands clasped behind his back.
"What the hell," Hide said. "What did you just do?" He took a step forward. "Who are you?"
The Joker's painted smile regarded him from across the cemetery path.
"Who I am," he said, "is of little concern." He spread his hands in a loose shrug. "I am a clown. I meet thousands of people each day, and each of them has a different name for me. The names say more about them than about me."
Hide said nothing.
The Joker let the silence sit for a moment.
Then he chuckled. "What is of concern, boy..."
He vanished and his presence arrived at Hide's right side — close, very close, directly beside his ear, and his voice arrived at the same time, dropped to a murmur that wouldn't carry past the two of them.
"...do you want to know who your father is?"
Hide went still, his pupils shrinking.
"And the truth behind your mother's death?"
The words arrived one at a time, each one landing separately, and the effect of them was not a thought but a physical thing.
His mother's grave was three meters away. The dried flower was visible on its face from where he was standing.
"What..." He heard his own voice starting at a volume it shouldn't be at, and stopped. Started again, the words coming through clenched teeth. "What nonsense are you talking. How would you—"
The punch hit him in the stomach, landing below the ribs with the specific force of someone who knew exactly where to place it for maximum effect without causing damage.
Hide went down on one knee, rasping.
The Joker crouched beside him, right at his level.
"Careful, now." He murmured in Hide's ear. "You don't want anyone else to hear. Do you?"
Hide's breath was heavy, the sudden punch combined with the earlier wound he had received from the gatekeeper made it worse. The wound was healed from the outside, but there were still some remnants of damage.
When he spoke, his voice was rough and filled with pants. "What do you know?"
The Joker stood.
He stepped back one pace, and as he did something changed in his posture. He straightened. Tilted his chin down slightly. And then he bowed — a full, formal bow, the one a performer makes at the end of a show, back straight, held for a full count, meant to be seen.
"For that," he said, "you will have to visit a certain place." He straightened from the bow. "Area 5. Further instructions would be given when the time comes."
He took another step back.
His outline began to soften at the edges.
"Wait—" Hide pushed himself up. .
The figure continued to fade just like a television image fades when the signal drops, the details going first and then the shape and then the color, until the space where he'd been standing contained nothing but the evening air and the quiet of the cemetery.
Something fell to the grass where he'd been.