Selina knew her second team wasn’t exactly top of the line. Things would have been so much better if the teleportation platform had worked. At least they could still use the device to escape after.

Kite-Man was loyal to Ivy —the only reason she could think her friend even tolerated the obnoxious man— and he was somewhat competent when things were serious, but he was still Kite-Man.

Red Bee was no Batman, even if he did look good in that ridiculous costume… Batman was so busy with that damn al Ghul hussy anyway, perhaps she could give Red a spin later? That’d teach the Bat to neglect her.

Damn it, she really was frustrated. As a cat burglar, her fingers were quite dexterous, but they just weren’t enough.

Batman had complimented Detective Chimp’s investigative ability, so he should be able to help with Joker’s toys, but he wasn’t exactly known for his martial skills if anything went wrong, magical sword or not.

Although, it was a very beautiful sword. The guard had detailed ornaments and it emanated such an interesting aura, hmmmmm.

Selina turned her face away. Such a pity she was the one to ask for help… and she didn’t think Kara would be as forgiving as the Bat. Not with the smoking hot barbarian alien as a girlfriend.

Jumping out of the building, she used one of, ugh, Kite-Man’s invisible, noiseless kites to glide toward the open window on the floor Ivy was being held on. —Nobody must ever know— Opening her fingers, she dug her claws into the wall, sticking there for a second as she looked at the window.

Carefully, she disabled the trap, then spent almost a longer to disable the secondary trap before slipping inside. Only a few seconds later, the others started pushing their way through the window, kites retreating into their backs.

Detective Chimp sniffed, then looked around for a second before nodding, this room was clear.

According to the cameras, Ivy was in the center of the building, tied to a chair in a small, empty room. Without losing time, both Catwoman and Red Bee approached the door.

“Another trap?” The hero asked.

“The clown is annoying like that,” Selina nodded. “It’d be worse if he didn’t expect the Bat, he wouldn’t try to be fair with them so even trying to disarm could be a problem.”

Detective Chimp tapped his knuckles against the wall, one hand scratching his chin and then he took a few steps further away from the wall, tapping again, enough to get their attention. With a fast movement, he pierced the sword through the wall and easily cut a large hole in it.

“That… can work I suppose,” Red Bee said.

“Never could do that before,” Detective Chimp commented. “Still, seems even the Joker still expects you to use the door… or he just didn’t have enough traps.”

Shrugging, Catwoman stepped through the wall to see Count Vertigo agonizing on the ground, three wounds on the man’s chest spilling blood on the floor. Red Bee approached the villain and dropped three of Forge’s devices around him.

With a hiss, a shield wrapped around the villain, lifting him from the ground without moving his body, then one of the devices sprayed him with some healing agent, plugging the holes to prevent further blood loss before starting to drag him towards the window where they had entered from.

Right, more of Kara’s ridiculous kryptonian tech.

“Drop a few more,” she said. “Knowing Forge, they’ll seek the others on their own. We don’t want to spend too long here.”

Red Bee nodded and did as ordered. The small army of square devices paused on the floor for a full second, then seemed to flow away looking for more disabled villains to capture.

Detective Chimp lifted his sword on his shoulder, laying an arm over the side of the blade and continued on, they all followed him in a straight line towards Ivy’s location.

Selina’s throat felt dry, dealing with the Joker always left her nervous, and not the good nervous of executing a job. No, the horrible kind, where she could feel goosebumps all over her arms and it made her want to just… run away.

There was no adrenaline rush, no pleasure of a job well done, just a lot of terrifying moments and, in the end, some relief when nothing happened. He really was the prince of bad jokes.

Stepping into the second room, she noticed the walls were vandalized, little drawings of bats were made in what could only be blood and there was a naked dead man in the middle of the room, a giant pentagram drawn around him and a large, colorful box on top of his naked chest.

Behind them, the door snapped shut, a clock started to sound from the box. Red Bee ran towards it, intending to disarm the thing but Selina grabbed his arm. “No, it’s never that straightforward.”

“What?” the hero turned towards her.

“The clown has a sick sense of humor, the box is either a dud or disarming it won’t do anything,” she warned. “He likes to give people false hope.”

“We can get away,” Kite-Man hurriedly suggested.

“There’s no way of knowing how large the explosion will be,” Detective Chimp noted. “Usually, one wouldn’t want to affect other rooms because of your teammates, but it’s the Joker.”

With a sigh, Kite-Man joined her around the device. Selina was trying to check if it was one of the ones who could be disarmed or a trap to even touch.

“Detective, can you lend us your sword?” the minor villain asked.

“What?” The chimp asked, looking at the box too. “Ya think you can solve it?”

“I told you I worked on some of his devices,” Kite-Man said. “Think you can cut a small hole here? I need to see inside.”

Well, color her surprised, Seline didn’t think the man could be this serious, or this competent. “Hmmm, I don’t remember you doing anything like this before?”

“I hate the Joker,” Kite-Man said with a very serious voice, carefully prying the cut metal and looking inside the device. It seems it was a bomb. “I know I’m not very talented, but I’ve hated him for years now… and I can be hard-working when someone motivates me.”

Huh, now that she thought about it, didn’t Kite-Man help the Bat put the Joker behind bars the last time too? Well, everyone in Gotham had a reason to hate the clown, but few were that dedicated to it.

“Can I take a look?” she approached.

“Sure. It has a digital clock, I think you can touch it without triggering if you can cut the purple wire and not touch those on the side,” he said, indicating certain pieces while pulling a small string from his costume and handing it to her. “But I’m not dexterous enough. I see the failsafe in case you try to cut the power and the one in case you try to take out the explosives, but I think he didn’t prevent us from reconfiguring the timer if you can connect this.”

Selina looked through the small opening and, while she wasn’t sure, she agreed. Using one of her claws, she cut the wire and gently touched the simple clock used to time the explosion. A second later, she had connected the cable and Kite-Man started working.

If she had tried to cut the power, it would have exploded, but now Kite-Man could hack the device without trouble.

“There, I set the timer to 33 hours, Joker has barely improved his programs since leaving jail.”

“Will the battery run out?” the detective asked.

“Possible, but the Joker isn’t the most careful bomb maker, he doesn’t really care if you disable them unless they’re part of his main plot,” Selina said, repeating Batman’s own advice.

In a way, despite all his meticulous preparations, the Joker was usually careless about his devices. For him, it would be funny if someone disarmed his bomb and it still exploded, but it wasn’t essential for his plans, and he wasn’t playing with Batman, so he wouldn’t put that much effort into it.

Stepping away, Selina saw the rest of the team already stepping through another hole cut into the wall.

They disabled two more traps and, finally, arrived in the room before Ivy’s. There was a trail of blood on the ground and the Joker was slowly dragging himself toward the door, lying on the ground between them and their objective.

All four of them stopped to watch the villain, he had three wounds on his back, places where Kara’s projectiles had hit him and passed all the way through. His white face was in pain, but he still tried to move towards the door.

Seeing them, the Joker managed to lift himself a little, getting into a sitting position. “Aha… hahaha. Funny, I thought it would be the Bat, but it’s just another failure.”

Kite-Man grabbed a gun from his waist, but Red Bee managed to stop his arm before he aimed, shaking his head. For a tense second, they stared at each other, but the villain sighed and lowered his hand.

“You… gah, you know, you’re ruining such a great joke, I-I wanted the Bat to see it,” Joker spits a wad of blood to the ground, the giant smile never leaving his face. “Oh well, I didn’t want to do it anyway… huff… They didn’t take any of my suggestions.”

Selina frowned at the Joker, she had hoped they wouldn’t find him and could let him bleed out without help. With a sigh, walked towards the door, ignoring the Joker’s laugh as she approached him, knowing Red Bee would release more of Kara’s rescue devices and the clown would survive, again.

With a sharp scream, Detective Chimp went from calmly walking beside her to lunging at Joker with no warning, his lips peeled back to reveal giant fangs as he swung the sword with both hairy hands, aiming to cut the villain in two. Selina’s eyes widened, but all three of them were too surprised to stop the chimp.

The Joker wasn’t. Faster than Selina could follow, the clown rolled away, then leaped down towards the other side of the room, he laughed even harder, no lack of breath or sign of pain. “Well damn, how did you know?”

“Forge had the Joker in his aim,” Detective Chimp couldn’t help explaining even as he continued to stare at the Joker, sword ready for anything. “No matter what lies he told everyone, he’d never settle for capturing him alive.”

“Ah, I did think it odd the bullet hit me in the head,” the ‘Joker’ sighed. “Still, it could have been a fair mistake, there were several walls between me and the outside. Such a pity.”

Selina stared at the thing pretending to be the Joker, watching as its body seemed to flow, the supposed wounds disappearing as it slowly rose into the air. Well… fuck, flying was never a good sign, not when it clearly wasn’t its only power.

On the wall, a television is turned on, the Joker staring at them through the screen. “Hmmm, I had hoped Bats would make time for little old me, but I suppose his little pussy will have to do. Hey, why the serious faces? Smile people, this will be a blast!”