A loud gunshot filled Scott's ears, and he was startled when the clown aiming at him staggered forward. The weapon the killer held went sideways, firing wildly and missing Scott altogether. Because the goon had stumbled forward, he was out in the open, and Penguin's men fired, killing the thug instantly.

Harley stood behind where the thug had been. Kneeling down, she picked up a large cork from the floor and plugged it back into the smoking barrel of the gun she carried. Waving the gun to Scott in salute, Harley let him know she'd just saved his life.

Scott hated the horrid look of the clown mask worn by the man who'd tried to kill him, but it gave him an idea. Diving across the floor, he snatched the mask off the dead man's head before rolling to a stop behind a pillar holding up the second floor balcony. Scott put on the mask, hoping the other clowns in Joker's employ wouldn't recognize him and attempt to murder him like the last one had tried to do. He couldn't expect Harley to save him every time.

Leaning out from behind the pillar, Scott got a brief look at where the remaining number of opponents were located. He had to duck back as bullets impacted the pillar he was hiding behind.

Leaving his covered position, Scott zig-zagged back and forth across the Lounge, taking temporary shelter behind overturned tables and the giant iceberg in the middle of the room. Bullets stitched across the floor, seeking him with murderous intent. Glasses shattered when struck by the hailstorm of bullets, and fragments of dinner plates from the tables were kicked into the air like porcelain confetti.

With Penguin's goons completely focused on Scott, Joker's men were free to engage. The artificial thunder of the gunfire intensified as Joker's men laid waste to the distracted Penguin thugs. As the men on the upper level were felled by Joker's goons, it allowed Scott to move faster toward the stairs leading up to the balcony. He met little to no resistance as most of Penguin's people in the vicinity were dead.

With the Lounge secured, Scott led the charge toward the attached museum where Penguin kept all his hardware on display. Before he reached the door at the end of a long connecting hallway, he noticed movement in the light coming out from under the door.

"Hold it!" Scott commanded to the Joker goons following him. He motioned to one of them, and the man handed over the grenade he held. Everyone backed away as Scott pulled the pin and rolled the grenade over to stop at the foot of the door. Running the moment the explosive was out of his hand, Scott barely made it back to the end of the hallway and turned the corner before the grenade detonated. The door and the Penguin goons on the other side vanished at the same instant as an orange fireball consumed the immediate area.

Wanting to make headway into the next part of the building before any of Penguin's men who were not killed by the blast recovered, Scott sprinted down the hall, firing at anything that moved.

The corridor stopped and a ladder led down to a narrow walkway composed of a metal grating. The walkway was suspended over a deep pool of water that filled the room from one end to the other. Scott suspected if the water were only a little higher, the walkway would be completely submerged and make the entire room appear to be an indoor lake.

The room itself was a large plus shape with a door at each of its four points. A replica of a giant octopus was suspended from the ceiling as if the room were the ocean where it lived. When Scott looked straight across the open space, he noticed a man with a rifle crouched in the doorway at the far end of the room, exactly opposite from Scott's position.

"Hug the wall!" Scott ordered sharply, grabbing the nearest Joker goon and pushing him up against the side of the hallway just as a bullet screamed past them and impacted against the doorway into the Lounge.

"How we gonna get past this one?" the goon asked.

"Just wait," Scott told the group.

The thunder of automatic rifles firing echoed across the water filled chamber, followed by a short and piercing whistle.

"Now we can go," Scott said with a hidden grin under his mask.

"How did you manage that?" one of the thugs tailing behind him asked.

"I had the distraction teams regroup outside the main doors of the museum," Scott explained, sliding down the rails of the ladder to reach the walkway across the waters. "Once they were all together, they came in the other way. Stupid sniper was too busy shooting at us to notice the people behind him."

"Nice," a Joker goon said in appreciation.

Although it was comforting to have backup, Scott knew if the distraction team was here, the cops wouldn't be far behind. The ambushes and roadblocks put in place would delay the police but not for long.

With two of the four exits from the room covered by either Scott or the distraction team, only two more remained. Scott gestured the distraction team toward the one on his right while he led his men toward the left.

"Leave that alone!" Scott hissed when he saw one of his men reaching toward the deceptively passive waters beneath the walkway.

"You don't believe those rumors do you?" the man asked.

"I don't know if Penguin has a great white shark down there or not," Scott answered. "Why look for trouble? We have enough. Let's go."

As Scott had expected, gunmen waited just inside the entries of the side passages as well, but he was relieved to find they only carried automatics and not sniper rifles. He tapped one of his men on the shoulder and pointed toward the guarded hallway. The man nodded his understanding before lobbing a grenade into the arched opening. Shouting came from the hallway as the men inside saw the explosive, but the detonation came an instant later, silencing everything.

Scott scrambled up the ladder from the walkway to the exiting corridor. The passage was filled with smoke, and as he progressed cautiously forward, he shot any bodies he found to be certain they were dead before he risked passing them.

The corridor ended at a heavy door, but as Scott considered the ambushes encountered so far, the door seemed suspicious to him. Scott motioned his people back, having them move to either side and clear the main pathway. Pressing up against the wall next to the door, Scott reached over and carefully opened it, instantly ducking back as a hail of bullets fired through the open doorway from the next room.

When the guns paused momentarily, Scott heard spent ammunition clips being dropped to the ground. Diving through the door, Scott rolled across the faded carpet and over behind a stone pillar. Bullets peppered the pillar, but with the gunmen focused on Scott, his men rushed in and were able to get into covered positions of their own.

A full sized model of a woolly mammoth stood in the center of the massive chamber, an arched bridge crossing over its back. At the front and back of the room, stairways led down from the left and right sides of the upper level to matching landings before continuing down to the main floor and stopping at the feet of the mammoth.

Tall and wide display cases were everywhere in the room. Previously, the display cases would've held artifacts or figurines representing ancient animals lost to the pages of history. Penguin had changed things, and the cases now held guns, police riot shields, rocket launchers, and grenades. The museum room had been turned into a visual catalog of all the illegal products Penguin had for sale.

Currently, Penguin's guards crouched behind the displays, exchanging fire with Scott's men. Neither group had made any significant gains or taken serious losses since the room was breached. Scott knew his acting as a decoy had worked earlier, so before he could think better of it, he dived over the balcony overlooking the stairway and dropped two feet down onto the stone railing descending to the landing. He slid down and took cover behind the stone pedestal at the turning of the railing at the landing's corner. It wasn't very good protection, and bullets were getting terrifyingly close. However, his distraction had worked, drawing the full attention of the enemy gunners.

When Scott's people opened fire, they took down more than half of Penguin's men. Afterward, Scott's people outnumbered the remaining defenders by more than two to one, allowing them to advance quickly and attack from multiple angles at once. No matter which one of Scott's men was targeted by the Penguin's forces, there would be at least one in a position to take them out before they could fire, allowing Scott's people to clear the room with no casualties.

"Break open the cases and take all you can carry!" Scott ordered. "Regroup and pile the plunder in the Lounge. Hurry up; we don't have much time!"

   ***   

When Scott returned to the Lounge with an armload of heavy weapons, the fight was over. Joker's forces were in complete control, and Penguin was on his knees in front of the cackling madman.

"You felonious miscreant!" the Penguin yelled. "If you wanted guns, I would've given you a fair price."

"Oh Penguin," Joker said with a cold smile. "You always did try to stay so refined in your dealings, your words, and even the way you dress, but didn't anyone tell you the truth about working in Gotham?"

Joker produced a long barreled gun from inside the purple suit jacket he wore, leveled it at Penguin's forehead, and squeezed the trigger. In the silence after the gunshot, the falling body was clearly heard.

"It's a dirty business," Joker finished as he looked down on the dead man at his feet. Turning suddenly, the clown faced Harley. "Tell me, my dear, did you use some of my fireworks tonight?"

"Sure did, Puddin'," Harley confirmed. "We needed it for..."

Harley was cut off mid-sentence as Joker backhanded her across the face with his gun.

"No one uses my toys without permission!" Joker screamed. Harley whimpered as he put the hot end of the gun barrel against her ear. "Do you hear me or do I need to clean out your ears with a 9mm swab?"

"Sorry Mr. J," Harley cried.

Scott wanted to help, to protect Harley, but the corpse on the floor showed what would happen if he tried. His hands tightened on the empty guns he held as a cold hatred settled over him. Scott didn't know when or in what manner it would be, but he knew someday he'd kill that clown.