Catwoman glared down from a nearby roof at the Wayne Halfway House as the violet convertible and some muscle cars roared away. It had galled her to stand idle while he took Harley back again. But she'd been amazed at the sheer amount of backup the Joker had brought with him. More than she could handle. Since Bennett had been locked up, he must have moved in on his operation.

"He's made his move," said a voice.

Catwoman glared at Batman over her shoulder, "And we're not stopping him, because…?"

"Because I need him to bring all his muscle to bear at once, all his leads and contacts have to come out of the woodwork."

"And how much collateral damage are you willing to accept?" Catwoman demanded.

"I'm counting on you to mitigate it," said Batman. "I can't get close to her the way you can."

"Do you think the Joker would be any happier to see me than you?"

"Do what you can," said Batman, and then he was gone.

Catwoman continued to regard the empty space with an icy expression. To herself she said, "Not alone. There's only one person who I can get to help me on this one…"

She set off full-tilt across the rooftops of Gotham. She headed for Arkham Asylum.

Catwoman reflected that she could probably walk in with impunity during visiting hours. The cold edifice of Arkham was dark and silent at this time of night, of course.

"Ah, the thrill of doing things the hard way," she muttered to herself. From her position behind a clump of saplings she tried to judge her ideal entrance.

She moved like a shadow, with a flick of her wrists she unsheathed the claws she used to scale buildings, and started to scale the wall. The stones were old and uneven, and climbing was trivially easy. Getting over the spiky iron fence across the top was a bit of a trick, but from there, her whip cracked out, grabbed a drainpipe, and she swung down to alight on the window ledge.

She squinted in the barred window. It looked as if this wasn't a window that could opened. She bounded lightly along until coming upon an office. Dr. Leland's probably. The window wasn't barred, but it had wire mesh in it. It could also be opened. It was latched, but Catwoman wasn't about to be stopped by that. A little jimmying and the window opened. Not even alarmed. Pathetic.

She stepped into the office. Once through, she found the going much easier, until she descended to the cell block. The whole area was behind a reinforced iron door.

A sound behind her sent her jumping up, wrapping her arms and legs around a conduit or pipe on the ceiling.

A guard stomped past in the intersection of the hallways. In a trice, Catwoman let her legs fall and trapeze-swung right into him. His head hit the wall and he subsided with a groan.

"Sorry, pal," she said, relieving him of his key card.

Not unreasonably, the gallery of cells on the second floor of Arkham was open with very little to hide behind or grab onto.

Soundlessly, she strode down the wide corridors. Even crazy people had to sleep at some point, and her keen night-vision picked out familiar faces. It was odd seeing Two-Face's mutilated visage relaxed in sleep, or Scarecrow twitching as if in a nightmare.

Though it was still difficult to see clearly, the vase full of roses was a dead giveaway. She wielded the key card once again, and the glass door slid aside.

Moonlight fell into the cell from the high windows above the cell blocks. The bed at the back of the cell held a curvaceous figure. A cascade of coppery hair spilled over the pillow.

Catwoman cast an anxious glance over her shoulder, and then crept toward the sleeper.

Kneeling, she reached out, and, regretfully, clamped her hand over the woman's mouth.

Poison Ivy's eyes flew open, and she spasmed with a muffled cry before Catwoman snarled, "Quiet, Ivy, it's me! It's Catwoman!"

Ivy's shocked expression stayed in place, but she quieted.
"We've got to go, now!"

Ivy mouthed an incredulous, "What?"

"It's Harley."

Without a word, Ivy was on her feet, and Catwoman had to move quickly to keep up with her.

Ivy applied a swipe of a finger to the stirring guard to keep him under. They crept back to Dr. Leland's office and were out of the window, Catwoman lowering them both to the ground by rappelling from her whip.

"Okay," Ivy said in a harsh whisper, "let me guess: Harley cracked under the pressure, and now the Joker's taken her back, right?"

"Something like that," Catwoman said, taken aback. "And he brought a damn army along with him. Looks like when he went to ground he muscled in on Boxy Bennett and King Barlowe's old operations and their goons work for him now."

Ivy stood there, her shoulders slumped. "And from what I hear, she's been working for the Wayne Foundation to develop a Christmas Concert?"

Glancing irritably at the wall, Catwoman said, "Pam, can we talk about this later?"

Coldly, Ivy stomped off toward the Asylum garden. Bemused, Catwoman followed.

The garden included a small patch of pumpkin and squash. As Ivy marched into the patch, she suddenly kicked one of them like a football. The acorn squash flew at the wall, hit it, and exploded.

Catwoman jumped like a scalded feline as several stone blocks burst out of the old wall.

"A little something I've been working on," Ivy said and stormed through the breach even as the first siren started to sound.

Catwoman followed and they had both disappeared into the woods by the highway before the guards had mobilized.

Afterword: King Barlowe, the deceased mob boss, was of course the bane of Joker's existence from beyond the grave in the TAS episode "Joker's Millions."