I do not own Batman, Joker or anyone. I only own my OCs. Though it would be fricking sweet if I did XD. PLEASE R&R. I am new to this writing thing so i need a little encouraging. Enjoy.

Chapter 4

Batman zoomed through the streets, looking for the Joker. He searched every spot of every part of town he went through, to see where the Clown Prince of Crime is hiding.

"I searched the streets all night, and still no sign of the Joker, Alfred." He told his faithful butler on the communication screen. "I've driven halfway to Metropolis by now searching."

"Perhaps, Master Bruce," Alfred suggested, "that you should retrace your steps back where you lost track of him, sir."

"Good idea, Alfred. I'll head back and search." With that the Caped Crusader turned off the com link and turned around to head back to Gotham. On his way back to the crime infested city, he was thinking of where the Joker could be.

"I've got to find him before he hurts more people."

Nicole was going insane. She has been locked in this storage room for almost two hours, and she was extremely bored.

"Come on, Nicole."

"No."

"Please! There's nothing else to do around here!"

"I already said I don't want to play 20 questions!"

"You are so not fun! You are usually way more fun and/ or crazy." Mara said with a mixture of anger and disappointment.

"Why would I want to have fun right now? We are locked in a storage room with a psychopath upstairs, probably plotting on our grueling demise, and my hair is getting messed up!" Nicole shouted angrily.

"Well, I may not be able to do anything with the locked in a storage room with a psycho upstairs thing, but I can help with the hair problem."

"What do you mean?" Nicole asked confusingly.

Mara searched her pocket, then pulled something out and showed it to Nicole. It was a bobby pin.

"You can use it to get some hair out of your face."

"……"

"Nicole?"

"You had a pin this whole time, that we could've used to unlock this door, escape, and call the cops, and you didn't tell me!!"

"….Tee hee."

Nicole had to stop the urge from having a psycotic breakdown and untensed herself.

"Give me the pin."

Mara handed her the pin, and Nicole quickly grabbed it and proceeded to unlock the door. It didn't take long until she heard the click of the door being unlocked.

"It worked!" Nicole said happily.

Mara immediately stood up and walked right next to Nicole. Nicole opened the door slowly and the girls walked out of the storage room.

"We have to be very quiet so clown boy doesn't hear us."

As they went to the staircase, Mara bumped into a big stack of boxes and they all fell down, knocking the nearby stacks down like dominos. The whole process was very loud. Loud enough for someone upstairs to hear.

When the boxes stopped falling, Mara looked at Nicole and laughed nervously.

"That's…. not…..quiet."

Mara smiled somewhat nervously. "What chance do you think he heard us?"

The Joker was wandering around the house, stealing some jewelry, laughing at stupid family portraits, and just plain looking at random stuff. He was looking at a scrapbook made up of newspapers with Batman articles in Nicole's room upstairs. The Joker scowled. "So the kids are Batman fans, huh. Well I'll be sure to fix that. He he."

Just as the Clown Prince was going to rip up an article that showed Batman arresting a beaten up Joker, he heard a loud banging noise. It sounded like something falling downstairs, like in the…basement.

As soon as the Joker knew where the sound came from, he rushed down stairs and ran to the basement door.

Nicole and Mara immediately heard the running noises coming their way.

"Oh, shit." Mara said.

"Quick, hide under the stairs!" Nicole whispered loudly. The 14 year olds quickly ran under the stairs, just as they heard footsteps rushing down them. The Joker was running right to the storage room and stopped when he reached the storage room's door.

"WHAT!" he yelled as he looked in the room, seeing it empty. The girls decided to use this opportunity to sneak upstairs and try to get away. Just as they were on the middle of the stairs, the Joker chuckled loudly and menacingly. This made the girls stop dead in their tracks.

"He heh. Looks like some mischievous mice have escaped their cage." He said while turning around and facing Nicole and Mara. "How unfortunate for them."

Mara and Nicole smiled nervously and Mara asked quietly to Nicole. "Is this our cue to run?"

Nicole glanced at Mara and answered, "Oh, most definetly."

With this, the two girls sprinted up the stairs. The Joker just walked menacingly slow up the stairs, smiling a smile that could kill.

"Oooh! I love a good game of cat and mouse."

As soon as they got out of the basement, Mara and Nicole ran upstairs into the guestroom, where a phone was.

"Dial the cops! Dial the cops!" whispered Mara loudly. Nicole quickly dialed 911, but as she waited for someone to pick up, she noticed something.

"Mara." She started slowly with a hint of fear, "The phone's dead."

As if on cue, all the lights went off. "Okay, this guy is getting really creepy. Now what do we do?" Mara asked.

"Hmmm. Wait, my Mom always leaves her cell phone in her room. We can use that to call for help!"

"Your mom leaves her cell here?"

Nicole shrugged. "What can I say? She's getting senile. Okay you go in my parent's room and call the police. I'll distract clown boy.

" 'Kay. Be careful, okay."

"Okay just go!" Mara then quickly and quietly ran to Nicole's parent's room. She looked all over the room, but then saw the cell phone. She picked it up and examined it. "Wow, this phone is lame. Wait, I'm supposed to dial for help!" She quickly dialed 911. "Come on, come on! Yes hello, get me the police please…."

Meanwhile, Nicole tip-toed downstairs and hid in her father's study. She could hear the Joker's taunting as he was walking around the other end of the house. "Giiirlies! Where are you? Come out and play!" the Joker said disturbingly. It gave Nicole chills, but she shook it off. She grabbed her walkie talkie she left in there, and set it on the setting to the walkie talkie in the room The Joker was in currently. She started to speak into it.

The Joker was trying to locate the girls, taunting them to scare them out of their hiding spots. He was having so much fun. When all of a sudden, he heard a voice. A young girl's voice. "Hey clown boy!" he heard. He tried to pinpoint the location of the voice, until his foot bumped into something. A walkie talkie. He picked it up when he heard the girl's voice again coming from it. "Hey freako, you still looking for us?" The Harlequin of Hate had to chuckle at this. A child trying to catch him off his guard. Good luck. "You know, it isn't very polite to try and hide from your guests, and then try and insult them." He said humor fully, with a hint of creepy seriousness

"Yeah, I know. But you're not my guest. You're a circus reject that barged into my house and tried to scare us."

The Joker scowled. "Watch it, girl. You do NOT want to get in my bad side"

"Make me. You know, I saw a show that said how you became the Joker. A lame old hit man that was stupid enough to try and fight Batman, then fell in acid. Clumsy much? Then you became a super villain. What? You couldn't make it as a rodeo clown?"

Joker growled ferociously. "I'm warning you, you little brat!"

"You know, now that I think about it, your whole life story sound very cliché. I mean you always make plans to kill people, Batman stops you, and you get sent to Arkham, and then you escape. Then the whole thing starts over again. It really sounds…..pathetic. By the way, your jokes suck."

That was the last straw. The Joker yelled furiously, and threw the walkie talkie at the wall, shattering it.

At the other end of the house, Nicole winced at the sound of the other walkie talkie being destroyed on impact of the wall. "I must be out of my mind to do that. I better check on Mara." she said to herself. She crawled to the door of her father's study, and looked both ways to see if the Joker was there. When she checked the right side, she was both getting up and walking to the left when she bumped into something, making her fall back.

"Ughh. What.. Oh damn." What she bumped into was a man in a purple suit with green hair, white skin, and the most chilling smile a person would ever see from this man, and probably the last.

"Hello…Nicky girl."