Met Your Match

1962 Bellmont Avenue

Tuesday, August 15th

6:15 PM ; Formal Attire Requested

The postcard showed up in Adelaide Karson's mailbox on Tuesday morning. There was no postmark or return address, and it was written in a near-perfect script. She didn't need a return address to know who it was probably from. See, Adelaide had gotten herself mixed up with some very not-so-great people (like it was hard to do in Gotham), and she had been warned that soon the Clown Prince himself would probably be after her. She would've liked to say she wasn't sure what she'd done, but she figured that stealing money directly from ol' Mister J himself hadn't exactly been her best idea. She knew she had to show up at this - whatever it was. She didn't know him, but she definitely knew of him, and knew he wasn't one to ignore. He'd find her either way and she knew it.

She put on the nicest clothes she owned, and then sat down at her laptop to research him. She'd already done this a million times, of course; pretty much everyone in Gotham had. But she needed to make sure there wasn't anything she was missing. She didn't like going into situations uninformed.

She started making a list of the things she knew about the Joker:

1. He had basically fallen out of the crime scene when his beloved pet Harley Quinn had died in a Batman-related incident a year before.

2. Although he wasn't as active in the scene himself, he still had countless henchmen working for him, doing his dirty work.

3. He still owned and operated most of the nightclubs around the city.

4. It was rumored that no one had actually seen his face since the day Harley died.

5. He lived in a secluded mansion somewhere that people claimed no one had ever lived to remember the location of.

6. She had stolen a decent amount of money out of a truck driven by one of his men and had killed said man, and the Joker was probably planning on serving her head on a platter at a dinner party.

Finally, it was time to go. Throwing on a jacket, she made her way out to her sleek black motorcycle. It took her almost a full hour to find the house; it was way out of town and on a street that barely seemed to exist from the outside roads. When she finally did pull up to it, she gasped at the enormity of it. It was easily the biggest house she'd ever seen, even bigger than the houses in the rich district in Gotham. The house was completely silent as she pulled up, not a car or person in sight. She was sure she was in the wrong place until she saw the realistic mouth spray painted on the mailbox.

As she walked up the sidewalk, she began to hear voices inside. She recognized the Joker's voice from the news. He was screaming at someone inside, but she couldn't quite make out his words. She looked down at her watch and discovered that it was exactly 6:15. She rang the doorbell and the screaming from within stopped at once. A burly man in an ill-fitting shabby tuxedo came to the door.

"You must be Ms. Karson," he said, his voice gruff.

"Adelaide," she told him, stepping past him into the house. "Where is he?" she asked him, not exactly in the mood for all the theatrics that she knew he loved so much.

"Mister J will be joining you soon. He's asked that you wait in the study," the man said, gesturing past her into a dimly lit room. She stepped the way he motioned to see that the room was actually cavernous, with unbelievably high ceilings and textured dark purple wallpaper. There were two dark purple couches situated near the walls and a huge dark wood desk near the back wall that was full of windows.

She seated herself on the edge of one of couches and only had to wait a few minutes before she heard him coming, tapping his cane on the floor as he walked. He appeared a moment later, bright green hair slicked back on his head and bright makeup smeared on his face. He was wearing a button-up white shirt with the top three or four buttons undone so that she could see his bare tattooed chest shining in the dim light. He smiled at her as he walked in, holding his left hand up to his face to show her his wide smile tattoo on the back of his hand.

"Adelaide," he murmured, his voice much lower and calmer than she'd been expecting.

"Hello," she said, standing. He motioned for her to sit back down and she did so.

"We've got a lot to talk about, don't we, dollface?" he asked her, making his way around to the back of the desk and seating himself in the chair there.

"I suppose we do," she told him, her voice steady. Her hand instantly went to the pistol that was holstered to her thigh underneath her dress. She was ready for whatever he was about to throw at her.