I spent a bunch of latenight hours on this one. I wanted to make it longer but then I thought, 'Let's save that part for the next chapter.' So we'll all just wait till later for the rest of it. I was a little upset that I barely got any reviews or comments (2) for the last chapter. Was it too short? Or did it just ooze bad writing? For those that did review last chapter, thank you! You guys are the reason that I sit down and write even more each night just so I could get another chapter out. I'd like to thank all my reviewers so far (put here 2 feel joy, DarkSora31, AbiSnocom, SolitaryMovement, liVe-yOur-fAntasY, iloveme5895, Kit-T-Rex, Dragonsinger13, and Ninja Stealth Noise). You all are great! And most of all I'd like to than put here 2 feel joy for telling me what you liked most and pointed out what might need improvement. I'm keeping your ideas ;D and thank you for PMing me. Anyhow let's move onto the chapter, review please! For the millionth time, I'm open to critiquing.

I struggled with the oncoming malevolence in a fitful sleep, something that I deprived myself of for a long time. The cons outweighed the pros of my new work: death versus sleep-deprivation. I'd happily go back to slurping down coffee like a starved addict, shuffling through regular criminal cases than see the Joker's face inches away from me again. He tried his best pushing me to edge of my wits last night, poking and prodding at the ambiguous weaknesses in my presence. My own emotions betrayed me, radiating anxious energy to his sensitive taste buds.

Dressing for the day had to be a redundant and cautious task. Lacey was rough around the edges, and me, well, I was professional in my stature. Not temptingly treacherous. I trained my facial patterns over the prolonged night encounter with the Joker and his cutthroats, making sure that my muscles pulled my features into a diabolical exterior. After finishing up my tumultuous appearance, I reached out and picked up the phone sitting on my kitchen counter, ready to call Gordon to fill him in on my occurrences with the devil. The ringing droned on forever that I assumed it was off the hook, until I heard an exhausted voice at the end of the line.

"Gordon." I sighed, my body relaxing at the comforting tone of someone other than a lunatic speaking to me.

"Good morning, Miss Whitman." Gordon relapsed into a composed voice without the hint of urgency I half-expected him to use. "I hope you're… together after last night. Did you find him?"

The flashback of the Glasgow smile forever plastered on the Joker's face, the threatening shine of his knife, brought out an unwanted shudder erupting through my skin.

"I did." I answered. The instinctive question dawned on me if I should tell Gordon my evil deed. Would it be necessary to admit I murdered someone on the job? "He nearly picked me to pieces," was all I could force out. Traitor tears slid in thin rivulets down my cheeks. "But I didn't blow my cover, Gordon. I would never-" I bit back the sob instantly. Weakness wouldn't be tolerated by the Commissioner either. If I let out the fact a breakdown was closing in on me, Gordon would inform Genton and have me off the case at once.

"I would never fail a case handed at top priority to me, Commissioner." I replied back, dipping my head between my knees to pour out the flow of momentous words.

"I know, Violet. But does he have an idea? A plan today?"

"Yes, there's a plan. And no, I don't know what it is. We got the address, but no one knows the job today. I'm pegging for a hostage situation, nothing out of the abnormal in his taste. You were right. The scars caught his attention, strangely enough." The scooping v-neck of my sweater contrasted to the long scar in an open prominence. Bearing the scar made me feel even more indifferent to the rough world I lived in. It almost made the insides of me twist with malicious intent.

"Keep up the good work, Violet." Gordon stopped right after the statement—his own way of letting you know he wanted to add on for the receiver's benefit or admonishment. "Just a word of caution I'm forcing myself to repeat time and time again to you: be careful." The audible strain of his vocal cords formed a lump in my throat. I swallowed down the panic widening the whites of my eyes, causing the twitching of the down-turned corners of my lips.

The clock read 11:26 on its bright, glaring red panel. The address wasn't exactly downtown Gotham, but taking a cab out of the crammed traffic of the city would do anything to slow my pace down. Stuffing two gleaming pistols and two deadly magnums under my pant legs, I gripped onto the phone for a second longer--anything to hold onto my last connection of stability in the outside world.

"I'll do my best, Commissioner." I cleared my throat of the knots lodged inside, and sent him my goodbye for the day. The shut-off switch was now pushed down and locked until my hours caught in between a chaotic lunacy would end. It was time to become the face of a criminal for a second round. This time, the absurd madness of Lacey Fowlson would shine brighter than her first taste of the blemishes dug into criminal class society. I would become the man who held that pointed blade to the youthful skin of my neck all those years ago. The one who crawls into the darkest parts of the victim's disposition and flicks the trigger off. That is who I had to be in front of the Joker, even if that constant fear of becoming what I hated stabbed at my insides till they bled with virtuosity.

An assembling of seven or eight men crowded into a partially singed apartment complex room, each gripping onto the soft plastic guises to hide their faces from Gotham's justice. I was an obvious abnormality in the room, half because of the fact I was the only woman standing in the room, and the other half because of the deceptively petite frame I held my body up as. There was muscle underneath these layers of clothes, no doubt. I'm afraid the men's lack of intelligence failed to understand the case that it was the Joker who welcomed me into his gang, otherwise I wouldn't be here.

The remaining men who witnessed my attack yesterday recognized me. The way they positioned themselves was cautioned and well-guarded beside the men who were unacquainted with my guns.

"Af-ter-noon, gentlemen…" the Joker walked in hunched disproportion into the room, already bringing in a stifling air to the apartment with his occupancy. His glittering obsidian eyes darted to me for a second—the freshly coated smile perked up. "and lay-dee. I've got a uh, little job for all of you. Ooh ha ha! The Co-missioner's force will just be delighted picking off the innocent from the guilty. It's all part of the game Batsy must play."

His cronies around me shifted the weight of their feet from side-to-side uneasily. The skin of my palms began to sweat in distress.

"So, here is our 'guide-lines'," the Joker air-quoted with his gloved fingers to instill his own type of humor into the plan. I began to doubt that there was anything except twisted humor in the core of his plan. "The explosives will, uhm, be set up along specific per-im-eters. Ah ah, pay attention! This is where we might… lose our heads. You people," he waved his hands in a circling motion, licking his lips as the adrenaline rush pumped through his system, "will be in the middleof the explosives with our hostages, who will also be masked when the Commissioner's gang arrives. And theeen…" His eyes rolled up to the surface of the ceiling expectantly.

I knew it. I thought. Always a twist, there's always a twist. He's not going to tell us.

"We find out!!" He cackled. The Joker slipped his hand into the deep waist-pocket of his purple overcoat, a jingling reverberation of the sound of keys lingering every time he moved his arm. "Any takers on catching the mice for the trap?" And suddenly, I had that innate feeling that his gaze drifted directly to me once he mentioned it.

"I'd love to."

Commissioner Gordon and numerous officers I identified were at least thirty feet away from the northernmost detonation zones when they arrived. Just like the Joker had said, we all stood in a pencil-straight line, shoulder-to-shoulder. The hostages were randomized, as was the citizens I had to pick off the street. I wasn't sent alone for my duties—two more of his goons attended me when I walked the streets. It wasn't the Joker's lack of trust in me that fulfilled the issue; it was his humorous pinpoint on my insufficient strength to carry seven victims back to the truck on my own. They conversed among each other a majority of the time, shooting a few peculiar questions towards me every once in awhile when they thought they hammered the Joker's scheme. I answered them as best as I could, without displaying the knowing countenance too easily.

I've worked with criminals for years, and it surprised me that with the few hints Joker lit on fire and threw at us for fun, I knew what was going down.

At least when picking up the citizen's off the streets or in alleyway crevices, they were drugged with chloroform and not beaten as I'd suspected at first. My face, hidden behind the typical patriotic-colored clown mask, shook in anticipation as Gordon stopped now ten feet before the detonation points. The hostages clutched a gun identical to ours, and were dared by the Joker himself that if they fired a single shot, he'd blow us all to our own personal hell. The point of the distance was for the officers to have difficulty deciphering who was shaking or not, when they spent time picking out the hostages. In actuality, it wouldn't astonish me if all of us were shaking in our boots, because the risk of fatality if one of us failed to do our job was 100 elimination of the entire group.

We should've called ourselves kamikazes in the first place.

Working for the Joker was unpredictable, I was only starting to realize. The chances of survival seemed to thin gradually each hour I spent around him, for each time I was within range of him, I was always tested. A tiny reminder inside my head continued to pursue the strength of my morals when the jester of chaos felt the need to crawl under my skin.

Our line was as still as possible to please the unpleased. A woman at my right whimpered, but the whine was muffled by the thick plastic of the mask.

"Shhh…" I hushed, although the sound was emitted as a low hiss.

"Good evening, Co-missioner…" the Joker drawled over what I perceived to be speakers concealed at our east and west sides. His laugh rang out into the inner city like an airborne plague, freezing an exposed person's blood ice cold. "Let's play a little game… of pick the innocent and shoot the guilty. Rules are simple, officers. Surrounding this, ah, criminal line-up are highly-sensitive explosives. Cross the line and they ALL die. Pick out the citizens by shooting every villain and well, you win. But we can't let you have all the fun, now can we? The Jack-In-The-Box is winding, Commissioner. Take your pick. Let's seee if you can tell the difference between a criminal and a Goth-am citizen."

The first motive, I knew it from the moment I saw his face, was to search out which one was me. There were only three women hostages, making it a total of four he had to choose from. Our feminine curves stood out from the men's in a smooth, undulated form. Through the tiny holes in my mask, I caught Commissioner Gordon whispering to two of his officers, pointing to various spots in our line. None of us attempted to move an inch in fear of the fatalistic outcome. The minutes passed as if death itself hovered over our heads questioningly, and I found myself tapping my fingers on the edges of the gun's heavy metallic shell—a nervous and very fidgety habit I failed to drop. That was the moment when I caught Gordon's eye. He didn't directly point at me, but I knew he spread the message through the crowd of the force.

I dropped the act before the Joker could notice my intentions, and he most definitely would notice if I continued. A piercing fire of a gunshot rang in the suffocating air, and the man to my left dropped to his knees with all life drained from him in one quick blow.

"One down, eight more to kill," the Joker cheered. A clapping noise thudded through the speakers ecstatically, his deep growl sounding in the noise's background.

The sequence was in a random order, but I suppose it was the way we held ourselves up that gave it away. More than half of us shook; it was all out of terror. You see, criminal minds came in two packages: they were either proud of their misdeeds or contained a condemning conscience for the art of killing. The personality traits were contradicting, though it was enough to determine who worked for the Joker and who didn't. The civilians lacked personality in this case. When they're told what to do, such as standing as still as death or face the consequences, they'll do what they must to stay alive.

I was the complication here, because losing my life for following through with work wouldn't suit my boss well. There was only one resort: shoot but don't kill. One-by-one, his lackeys fell at the hands of justice, shot in non-vital parts of the limbs that prevented immediate death. The hostages let out nothing more than an inaudible sob at each deafening bullet that was fired. The Joker's fun was extracted from the situation as his men went down. I was next. Gordon lifted his pistol without accelerated impulse, the click of the bullet sliding into its hollow and at ready reached my ears. I bit my lip hard, breathing in to brace myself.

Then, hell's fire burned through my veins.

"Game over."