The keys jingled in the old man’s quaking hand. The source of his unease was clear. Two armed men stood behind him as he opened the back entrance of his jewelry store. Their identities were secure enough with their fedoras tilted forward and bandanas covering the lower halves of their faces. All you could see were their cold, desperate eyes.

There was a flash of light from behind them followed by “Ahem.” The robbers and jeweler turned to find a man standing in the alley. The man wore a broad smile which, for whatever reason, seemed odder than his garish garb. He wore a red, skin tight body suit imprinted with two rows of white diamond shapes. His red and white boots curled back at the tips. His head was covered by a mask and cowl that featured three floppy points like a jester’s hat. In fact, the entire persona said jester.

“Hey, guys,” the jester said, “I’m going to have to ask you to drop the guns and come along quietly.”

The robbers exchanged a glance before firing one shot each at the jester. One shot went wide; the other pierced the floppy hat issuing a small cloud of stuffing.

The jester’s eyes were wide and his mouth was agape. “You shot at me! You shot at me with real bullets!” The smile returned to his face. “Do it again, do it again!”

There were more gunshots, but none of them came close to hitting the jumping, flipping, spinning jester. A back flip landed the jester between the robbers who then suffered various slaps and punches while the jester said things like “Nyuk nyuk,” and “Hey, wise guy.” Finally, the jester knocked the robbers head’s together making a hollow cocoanut sound and they fell unconscious.

The jester jumped up and down and clapped his hands before turning his attention to the old man. “Are you okay? You look okay. You’re okay. What did you think? Was the Three Stooges angle lame? It was lame. You're right, I should come up with my own shtick.”

Sirens drew near and the bulbous form of a police car turned down the alley, its cherry top emergency light bathing everything with swatches of red.

“I should go,” the jester said to the old man. “You know, leave them wanting more, that kind of thing. Just tell them you were rescued by the Fool. That’s F-O-O-L, Fool. Serving justice with a smile since 2010.”

With that, the Fool vaulted into the air, careened effortlessly between fire escapes and disappeared over a roof top. The old man, his eyes wide, his mouth agape, muttered “What was that all about?”

That night the Fool dramatically appeared at various locations across the nation. He put a violent end to some gang violence in San Diego, he saved a woman from a house fire in Poughkeepsie, he posed for pictures at a high school football game in Amarillo, and he rescued a cat from a tree in Topeka. Each time he said the same thing before departing.

“The name is Fool. That’s F-O-O-L, Fool. Serving justice with a smile since 2010.”