Joker Team Up
Once upon a time, in Gotham City, there was one villain that even Catwoman did not think much of, and his name was the Joker.
You see, the Joker had never cared for Catwoman, not really. She stole for herself, quietly and cleverly, and never for chaos, and that made her rather boring in his eyes. He liked chaos best of all. Right up until the night she got in his way.
It began high above the East End, on top of Gotham City's tall water tower on Bleeker Street. The Joker had rigged the tower with canisters of his purple laughing gas, ready to drift silently over the sleeping neighborhood at dawn. It was a cruel plan, dressed up as a joke, the way his plans so often were.
And that very night, Selina Kyle happened to be crossing that very same rooftop, a bag of stolen jewels slung over her shoulder, when the moonlight caught the metal of those canisters and made her stop cold.
She didn't hesitate, not even for a moment. The East End was her home. It was where her cats slept in doorways and window boxes. It was where the families lived who had once found half a bag of gold coins on a fire escape, back before they knew to thank her for it. She would not let the Joker touch it.
So Selina did something she would never quite admit to doing twice. She reached for a small radio hidden in her belt, tuned to a frequency she had secretly cracked months earlier — one that belonged to Batman, though he had no idea she'd found it.
"Water tower on Bleeker Street," she said, quiet and clear. "Joker's got laughing gas rigged for the whole East End. I'm already here."
Batman arrived in under four minutes, moving fast across the rooftops of Gotham City, and found Selina already at work — her clawed gloves carefully untangling the wires of the very first canister, patient as ever, calm as ever.
And then, with a delighted pop, up rose the Joker from behind the water tower's ladder, his purple coat and green hair catching the moonlight, his painted smile stretched wide with glee.
"The cat AND the bat!" he crowed, clapping his gloved hands together. "This is even better than I dreamed!"
He lunged for a small detonator switch clipped to his coat. But Selina's whip cracked out through the night air and yanked it clean from his fingers before Batman could even take a single step. The Joker toppled backward off the ladder, laughing all the way down, and landed square in Batman's waiting arms.
Selina finished disarming the last canister, her hands perfectly steady, while Batman snapped a pair of cuffs around the Joker's wrists and secured him to the water tower's railing for Commissioner Gordon and the GCPD to collect in the morning.
"You called me," Batman said, once the gas canisters were finally safe, genuine surprise in his voice.
"I didn't call you," Selina corrected, already coiling her whip back onto her belt. "I called in a tip. There's a difference."
"Not much of one," said Batman.
Selina allowed herself the smallest smile as she climbed up onto the rooftop's edge, the whole city spread out silver and glittering beneath her. "The Joker's not my kind of trouble," she said. "He doesn't play fair. And worse than that — he doesn't even try to win. I play for keeps." She glanced back at Batman once, her eyes bright in the moonlight. "Don't get used to this."
And then, quiet as a shadow, she was gone — over the rooftops of the East End, back into the neighborhood that had never known just how much it owed her.
Batman stood alone for a long moment beside a defeated Joker, looking out over the sleeping city. He thought about the note left for a night guard, the coins left for hungry families, and now this — a warning called in on a stolen radio frequency, from someone who insisted, every single time, that it meant nothing at all.
He knew better. Selina Kyle would always show up when it truly mattered — not because anyone asked her to, and never because it was easy, but because the East End was hers to protect, in her own quiet, complicated way.
Whether she ever admitted it, or not.