HELLO! So this is my second story yet, so please don't kill me, I'm still working on typos... and I know, slow start but I promise, it gets interesting. Also, please review if you can, I'd really like to know what people think. Thank you so much! ;D

"King of hearts."

"Joker." Barbara set her card on top of Dick's. They were playing cards on the floor behind Bruce's desk in the Batcave while the cowl-less Dark Knight himself sat at his computer doing some brooding on the latest crime spree of Joker's. Not the card kind of Joker.

"That's not right." Dick scowled as Barbara swept up her cards.

"What?" She sighed.

"Joker stinks. Batman always beats him."

"Well," she said, still waiting for him to lay down his next card, "This is cards, War, to be exact, not reality."

"It would be funner if it was."

"Be careful what you wish for, Dick. Joker might take it into his own hands to make your dream come true." Bruce spoke up.

"And we all know what that means." There was a hint of a moan in Barbara's voice.

"Still." He finally put down a ten of diamonds.

"Well, we can pretend different. Batman will be Kings, and, naturally, I'll be the Queens."

"Hey, why can't I be the Queen?" Dick perked up to glare at her.

"Because you're not a girl!"

"This is pretend, remember? You can be a two."

"But they are the worst cards!"

"Exactly. And we can put pretty looking little Robins on the Queen card just for me."

"How about we put bats?"

"Because then Bruce would get two cards!"

"My cards! Not Batman's! You can be a two!"

"I'm too good for that."

"And I'm not?" She stood up and lunged at him, and in only a second they were viciously grappling with each other and flinging cards everywhere. There was a hint of good-natured annoyance in it, though.

"Why don't you take that down a floor to the training mat?" Alfred quirked an eyebrow and sidestepped them carefully, approaching his brooding employer and friend.

"I don't get it, Alfred," he said ignoring the yelps as his protégés indeed found themselves on the floor below, the hard way. "Why would Joker need the ingredients to the cure for Joker Venom and not any of the chemicals for the creation?"

"Perhaps he venomod Harley and has become quite lonely in her absence." Alfred offered, also ignoring the groans as the kids tried to realign their backs from the fall.

"I don't think so." Bruce scowled deeper, staring at his screen intently.

Alfred left the cave to go finish tidying up the house for the night, as it was already nine-oh-four.

"Maybe," Dick croaked coming back up, using the stairs instead of the faster, more difficult fireman-like pole. "He's trying to do the opposite of Joker venom. Maybe he's trying to make peaceful-frown gas instead of tortured-smile gas." He offered jokingly.

"Dick," Bruce's eyes lit up. "You're a genius!"

"I am?" Dick asked at the same time Barbara said "He is?"

"Well- not exactly," he turned his face back to his screen and began typing furiously.

"Hey-" Dick exclaimed.

"Not remotely what I meant;" Batman continued. "Joker's mad, but he's still a genius. He may want to be making a negative Joker Venom."

"It's all pretty negative to me." Barbara pouted.

"There's no telling what a negative Joker venom could do," Bruce's eyes flew across the data scrolling on his screen. "I'll try to come up with possible components and the most likely place to find them, according to some strange robberies that I didn't mention a moment ago."

"Sounds great." Barbara yawned and stretched. I have to be home by nine-fifteen every night. So, gotta' go."

"Wait, why?" Dick scowled.

"Well, it just so happens that my father wouldn't approve for me to fly around Gotham at night in tights and a cloak with a tall, dark guy and an unbearably annoying ten-year old, so I can't tell him. And since I've been getting home rather late, he's cutting my curfew short. Huh. Lucky I convinced him against six o clock. That way I couldn't even be here to beat you up instead of just imagining it." She flicked Dick the forehead.

"Hey-"

"Be quiet." Bruce stood. And turned around, his black, black hair shiny in the illuminating blue lights of the Batcave and his blue eyes on fire. "Suit up." He nodded to Dick as he pressed a button on his desk revealing two suits in air compressed display cases. "We're going to Wayne Industries. The Bio Lab."

"I really do miss the all the fun." Barbara sighed, mounting her Bat (girl) Bike. "Don't die." She saluted.

"I don't make promises." Bruce muttered darkly, taking his suit to the changing room.