Chapter Eleven: Soap Suds, Cleaning up and a Mistake

(Batman is not mine)

The batmobile pulled into an alleyway about a block from the old factory, and the three crime fighters got out. After climbing a fire escape to the roof, they crept across the rooftops until they reached their destination.

The Happy Suds Soap Factory had gone out of business almost seven years ago, when Robin and Blue-Jay had both been eight, but Blue-Jay remembered it well. The factory had been the victim of one of the Jokers first citywide Pranks. Anyone who had used Happy Suds Soap, whether it was bar soap, liquid, shampoo or dish, got a nasty, itchy, purple or green rash.

Batman had caught the clown and had found the antidote, but after that, so few people would use or buy their products that Happy Suds was forced out of business not long after the ordeal had passed.

Blue-Jay had never liked clowns, and just looking at the factory gave her the creeps. The brick building was painted white with clowns doing tricks all over the walls, and on the roof of the factory, sat a large clown face that would once have been lit up with neon lighting.

Whoever had designed the clowns, especially the one on the roof, must have had some sort of weird, twisted second-sight, because the faces of the clowns bore an uncanny resemblance to the clown prince of crime. While the one's on the walls did not all have the same green hair or pointy features, the one on the roof most certainly did, only the flowery top hat that the sign wore and the lack of the black shading around the eyes differed it from the clown they all knew and loathed.

While the sign would once have been burning brightly, it was now dark, some of its bulbs broken and a birds nest or two tucked away in its corners and the brim of its hat. The walls had also seen better days, once clean and pristine, they were now flaking and fading, large quantities of spray-paint covering whole expanses of the buildings with words, symbols and designs that would get you a slap across the face and two weeks of no TV and no dessert if you repeated them to your mother.

Blue-Jay felt Robin shudder beside her as he asked, looking up at the sign, "Who painted this place? It's giving me the creeps just looking at it!" "A man named Edmund Waller." Blue-Jay told him "He painted it over twenty years ago, he died about eight years back." She looked around to find them staring at her "What?" Robin cocked his head, saying "How do you know this stuff?" Blue-Jay gave him a small smile, replying "I make it my business to know everything I can about the creepy buildings in Gotham." Robin smirked back at her and they returned their attention to the skylight closest to them.

The inside of the factory looked just as creepy, if not more so than the outside. All the machines and vats were painted to resemble clowns that were just as deterring as the ones on the outside. No wonder the Joker was the first one to break into the place, he must have been the only one who could go inside during the night and stay for more than five minutes without having the urge to run back out again.

They couldn't see anything moving, so Blue-jay got up and left the skylight, Robin following her and Batman, scowling, bringing up the rear.

Once at the edge of the roof, Blue-Jay gripped the eaves with her small fingers and lowered herself so that she was looking through on of the windows in the side of the building. Squinting, it was a moment before she saw them.

The Joker, Harley and the three 'Stooges' as Blue-Jay and Robin had started calling them, were working around the vats in the center of the room, but what they were doing, Blue-Jay couldn't tell.

Pulling herself back up, she turned to face the other two. "They're in there alright, around the vats in the center of the room, but I can't see what they're working on."

Batman nodded curtly and they returned to the skylight. Blue-Jay got there first and quickly picked the lock, but before she could go in, Batman took them both by the scruff of the neck and held them back. "I go in first, then you two follow, and do not run after any of them if they try to lead you away from where everyone else is, got it?" both Batman and Robin were surprised when Blue-Jay frowned but did not argue and sat back a bit. Batman looked at Robin and the boy wonder said, softly, "She doesn't like the Joker." "Are we going or not!" Blue-Jay asked, sounding a bit irritated.

Batman ignored the girls tone and jumped. He was closely followed by the two teens and they landed behind him, one to either side.

The Joker turned to face them "Oh, good!" he said "You made it, I was beginning to worry you didn't know the way." He laughed and Blue-Jay forced back a shudder.

Suddenly, Joker frowned and looked closely at Blue-Jay and Robin. After a moment, he Tsk'd and shook his head, saying "My, my, those two are all sweaty, you really should take better care of your spawn, Batsy, they'll get sick if you don't shape up!" Blue-Jay tensed slightly, sensing a double meaning in his words.

"Oh come on, Puddn'," Harley said, her high and overly preppy voice immediately grating on Blue-Jays' nerves. "You can't really expect someone who dresses like that to be a good father, I mean" she looked Batman over "What kind of father dresses like him?" "What are you doing here, Joker?" Batman asked, finally seeming to have had enough of the clowns talk. Truthfully, Blue-Jay wondered why he had let them talk for so long in the first place, then she realized that doing so had allowed the three vigilantes to take in their surroundings.

"Oh, just finishing up some unfinished business." Joker said, smiling "You ruined my first attempt to help Gotham 'clean up' so now I thought I would try again." The smile left his face "But this time you won't get in my way."

A soft noise behind them caused Blue-Jay to drop to her knees at the same moment that Batman grabbed both her and Robin and threw himself to the floor. The grenade missed them by inches and they all slapped on gasmasks as the Jokers patented laughing gas filled the room.

Blue-Jay tried to look around, but the fumes were so thick that she couldn't see more than an inch in front of her face. Reaching into her belt, she pulled out a pair of what looked like sunglasses, with red tinted lenses.

Slipping them on, Blue-Jay pushed a small button on the outside rim of the left lens. The lenses began to glow red a little bit and made everything she could see take on a slightly rosy tint, but she could see through the gas now with surprising clarity.

And it was a good thing, too, because had the glasses not worked, she would not have seen the mallet that was about to hit her in the head and would never have gotten out of the way in time.

She rolled away from Harley, who's mallet missed her head by less than an inch, hitting the concrete floor with a loud 'crack' that reverberated through out the room.

Blue-Jay's roll had gotten her away from Harley, but, at the same time, she was now pushed up against Batman, who still could not see through the smog. He reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her around to his other side as he stood, causing Harley's mallet to hit the ground a second time, and this time, Batman stepped on it with one foot, and delivered a vicious kick to the clown girls' stomach with the other.

By now the smog had begun to clear, and Blue-Jay and Robin both fell into fighting stance as the Stooges came their way.

Blue-Jay would have thought that not having the element of surprise would have meant that it would be harder to defeat the three large men, but she soon discovered that not only was she wrong, but being rather small had more advantages then she had thought. She and Robin were too small and too fast for the three to get their hands on.

Robin and Blue-Jay quickly downed Moe, and moments later they were both on the shoulders of the other two, beating their fists into the men's skulls. Cur fell when Blue-Jay was finally able to dig her nails into her favorite pressure point, and Ler quickly followed when two sets of small fists collided with his head.

Once that was done, they both realized that Batman and the Joker had moved their fight to the catwalk above the vats. After looking at each other for a second, they both ran forwards, only for their path to be blocked by Harley, who had apparently gotten her breath back after getting kicked by Batman. "Oh, no you two don't!" she said, sneering at them "You aren't going to mess up Puddn's plan, nu-uh, no way!" Blue-Jay cocked an eyebrow "What plan, all he said was he was 'finishing up some unfinished business', that doesn't really have any real meaning to anyone but himself." Harley snorted "That's just because you ain't smart enough to figure out Mista' J's plan!" "If he even has one."

Harley bristled at Blue-Jay's comment, saying "Of course Puddn's got a plan, he always does!" "Sure he does." "HE DOES!" "How would you know?" "He told me!" "Prove it." Robin had to fight back a smirk when Blue-Jay said this, and had to fight even harder when it worked.

"The soap in the vats over there," Harley motioned to the containers that the stooges' had been working at earlier "Are filled with soap that Puddn's gonna send out into Gotham. When people use it, it'll make'em laugh so hard they can't breath!" Harley smiled widely when she finished speaking, only to realize that, not only had she just given away her 'puddn's' plan, but that both of the small birds were smiling wickedly, having cuffed her hands to a pipe without her noticing.

Ignoring Harley's yells, the two climbed up to the catwalk and ran towards Batman and the Joker.

The clown didn't even see them coming. One moment he was pointing a gun at Batmans' head, the next, something hit him in the side with such force that it sent him over the edge. He landed in a large vat of ancient baby shampoo. Looking up, he saw Blue-Jay perched on the rail and Robin standing beside her, both laughing, hard.

When he had gone over the edge, Batman had lunged up and reached out just in time to catch Blue-Jay and haul her back onto the catwalk. Looking over the edge, he was relieved that the clown's fall had ended in a vat of shampoo, rather then on the concrete floor twenty feet below them.

Blue-Jay and Robin both took one look at the Joker as he surfaced, then burst out laughing. Batman had to admit, it was rather hilarious and he might have cracked a slight smirk, had he not been angry.

Blue-Jay's giggles were cut off when Batman seized her arm and shot off a grapple to the skylight above them, pulling them up to it and onto the roof of the building. Once there, he twisted her around to face him. He bent down and put his face right up to her confused one and growled "What did you think you were doing?"

Instantly, the girls face went stony and she glared back at him. "Saving your neck, that's what." "I had no need of you." He said, his voice deathly cold, "Well you could have fooled me!" she hissed back, trying to pull her arm out of his grasp. In response, he grabbed the other one and made her stay in place. "You could have killed him!" he growled. The look on Blue-Jays face changed.

The stony, stubborn look that her features had held gave way to a rather alarming amount of anger, her eyes narrowed dangerously into white slits, and when she spoke, her voice had lost any and all trace of the laughter that had permeated it only moments before. The coldness in it sent a shiver down Robin's spine.

"How dare you!" she hissed at him "How dare you accuse me of being foolish enough to make a mistake like that." She tore away from him with a surprising amount of strength, taking several steps back. "Do you honestly think that I would have let him go over the edge if I wasn't sure that the vat had been under him! Do you really think that I would kill someone like that? Well, if you do, than you have more wrong with you than I could have imagined! Which is saying quite a lot!"

He continued to stare at her, though he now looked more surprised than angry. "I have risked my life for this city, and I have proved that I have made it my goal to stop crime, just as you have. Who gave you the authority to judge me, WHO GAVE YOU THE RIGHT TO ACCUSE ME OF ATTEMPTED MURDER WHEN ALL I DID WAS HELP SAVE YOUR LIFE?"

He was staring at her, now looking rather alarmed. Blue-Jay was trembling with fury as she glared at him. Suddenly, she realized that tears had begun to trail down her cheeks. Brushing them away angrily, Blue-Jay turned and walked away, Robin quickly followed her as she jumped off the roof, leaving Batman alone and with the distinct feeling that he had just made his second serious mistake concerning the Bluebird.

(Review please.)

(AN: Sorry for the delay, things have been rather hectic lately.)

(AN: And next time, Batman has to figure out how to smooth things over with BJ before things get worse.)