Humans. Monsters. Heroes. Villains.

Chapter 18: Laying the Trap

The Chimera's POV
She tossed the map, with Maroni's location circled in red, onto the table. "Sal Maroni's location. Voila."

The Joker sat down, an apple in his hand. He took a bite of it, then tossed it aside. "Great. So what now?"

Alison rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. "Oh, I don't know. What have we been discussing for the past two days?"

He stretched, then picked up the map and studied it. "Right. Kidnapping him. See, sweetheart, that may not be the best course of action."

She pulled out a chair across from him and sat down. "Well, what do you suggest?"

The Joker propped his chin on his hand. "Well, as you've said, you want to take over the mob. Should be easy enough, except we need to play this carefully. Kidnapping him straightaway wouldn't be the best move. We should crash one of their little meetings first, tell them our proposition. If they agree, we go with it and eventually take the thing over. If they refuse, we kidnap their little leader Maroni and take the mob by force."

Alison paused, then leaned forward. "So what you're suggesting is we take the same course of action that you took nine years ago?"

Leaning back, he smirked. "Pretty much. And look how well that turned out, hm?"

He had a point. Alison considered this. It was probably smart not to kidnap Maroni right away - if they really needed to threaten the guy, they should kidnap him later. As for finding the mob during one of their meetings and discussing things with them then, that would be a good place to start.

She nodded slowly. "All right. Problem: we don't know where the mob's hideout is."

The Joker smirked. "You underestimate me, sweetheart. I'll have the location by tomorrow."

Well, that was that.

"Fine." she blew a strand of hair out of her face. "By the way, nice car chase yesterday. I caught sight of some of it when I was out."

"Why thank you." he bowed,  although he was sitting down. "Now that we've got the mob business over with, I've got some other things to discuss with you."

"These things being?"

"The Phoenix has an ally."

Alison rolled her eyes. "Really. Of course she has an ally. She probably needs someone to create her armor and weapons and stuff." Unless she was some kind of super-genius, but that was doubtful.

The Joker shook his head. "No no no. I mean an actual ally. As in, there was someone in her car with her last night during the chase."

Now this was a surprise. Alison froze. "What?"

Obviously pleased with her reaction, he drummed his fingers on the table, clicking his tongue. "Yep. I was leaning out my window, checking how many cops they had tailing me, and I saw that there was someone else in there with her."

She snorted. "What happened to the whole 'I work alone' thing?"

"Exactly." he pointed at her. "But, see, this is a good thing. Well, for us. Not for the Phoenix and her little friend."

Alison propped her chin on her hand. "How so?"

"Well." the Joker licked his lips. "Obviously this person is someone she cares about. Trusts. They've got to be, if she's bringing them along in a car chase. So, if we want to...bring her down to our level, we're gonna want to hit her where it hurts, hm?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Like Harvey Dent."

"Exactly."

"Okay." Alison pulled a blank piece of paper towards her. "Problem: we don't know who the Phoenix really is. So how are we supposed to figure out who her little sidekick is?"