Disclaimer: I do not own The Dark Knight trilogy. I am just writing for fun.

A/n: Here's another update you guys! Enjoy! Thank you for the follows, the favorites, and the reviews. They really mean a lot to me. Also, I said I'd try to find some way for Melanie not to become a damsel. I think I found it. :D

Chapter 27: The Size of a Tangerine

Since the clown frightened me out so much, I begged Bruce to train me so that I didn't have to feel afraid, or a coward. With much reluctance, I finally got him to train me. So the past week, every day at seven, we've been sparring, and working out because I was in bad shape. I may look like a stick, but my muscles were weak. He started me on protein shakes so that I could get fitter, lean. The more I trained, the better I felt and I felt more confident in the fact I could defend myself against a measly old clown. Today this time I was learning taekwondo in the bat cave. I'd given him a good reason to protect myself; I'd be one less person to worry about when it came to crazy people like the Joker, who was currently on the monitors that Bruce was closely paying attention to.

I finally collapsed on the mat, out of breath one afternoon, sweat pouring down my body. I unwrapped my hand protectors and grabbed my water bottle beside me, as Alfred came into the bat cave.

He turned towards the monitors again at the mob bosses. "Targeting me won't get their money. I knew the Mob wouldn't go down easily, but this is different. They crossed a line."

"You crossed the line first. You squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of desperation. And in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn't fully understand," Alfred pointed out.

Beside the other monitors there was one where it was looking for an exact match of the Clown, trying to find a facial recognition.

"Criminals aren't complicated, Alfred," Bruce said. "We just need to figure out what he's after."

"Maybe he's not after anything," I suggested. "Maybe he's just doing this for fun."

Bruce gave me a droll look. I shrugged. "Or no your right. He could just be doing this because he's crazy and got out of a bad relationship."

He gave me another droll look and I laughed. "The joker in a relationship, that's a good one Melanie." He said.

"Melanie may be right," Alfred said. "A long time ago, I was in Burma and my friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones, but their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never met anyone who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby, the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away."

"So, why steal them?" Bruce asked.

"Because he thought it was good sport? Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just wanna watch the world burn."

"So," I chimed, clasping my hands together. "When do I get my own mask?"

"Never," Alfred and Bruce replied at the same time. A girl can dream.

A new dream that maybe one day I could achieve.

~*TDK*~