Title: Rappacini's Last Laugh (2)
Author: Allaine
Disclaimers: All characters are property of DC Comics. No profit intended, etc., etc.
Feedback: As always, greatly desired and usually responded to.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None.
Distribution: If you want it, just ask.
Summary: Poison Ivy is mad in love, and Harley Quinn is sorely vexed by it. A DC Elseworlds fic.
Chapter 2
I hate waiting. Time wasted when I could be doing something useful. Like pantsing somebody who needs it.
Every month, Arkham Asylum changes all their internal passwords. Good idea, in their line of work. Every week would be better, but nobody wants to think of a new password every few days.
Every month, I get the new passwords in an email the following day. Barbara - I mentioned her earlier? She's one of the best hackers who cater to the Gotham underworld. Most know her by her screen name, Spoiler. We had a face-to-face meeting a while back, when she was too new to the game to know better, and I learned her secret identity. Babs loves her daddy, but she thinks he loves the job more, so she makes life easier for us criminals.
Although she does have standards. She won't help murderers and rapists, and fortunately I'm neither.
Anyway, I've got her on retainer. Every time she hacks into Arkham and gets me the information I want, I drop a few zeros into her secret bank account.
Thing is, it's been twenty-four hours since the last scheduled change (how do I know this? Interoffice email, of course), and no email. Babs is always on time. So I'm waiting.
And I hate waiting.
It reminds me of how dependent I am on other people. There's Spoiler, and then there's the guy who makes my outfits. Some villains change their look every six months, but not me. I fell in love with the jester look from the moment I saw it. Plus it's tear-resistant.
I've got another guy who makes my gadgets - the joy buzzer, the extendible boxing glove, the trick gum, the special party favors. You know, anything to get a good laugh.
And of course, there's the chemist. He sells me my custom-made Smiley gas, little pellets and bigger gas bombs. Anybody who gets a good whiff will be rolling in the aisles for a good thirty minutes. It'll lay you up in the hospital for a day with chest pains afterwards - just goes to show how we've all forgotten how to have a good laugh now and then.
The chemist is always trying to convince me to upgrade to a different gas that makes you laugh until you die, but I keep telling him that death ruins the punch line. Still, he's an alright guy. He's an evil sonuvabitch, but he knows how to laugh and he has a GREAT sense of humor, and when your business is poisons and acids, you gotta be admired for keeping a smile on your face.
Maybe in another lifetime, we could've been something. It'd cure my Poison Ivy problem, that's for sure. Oh, well.
Much as I love the guy, he's just one of several people who I rely on. And the only thing that truly connects us is the money I slip them. Makes me wonder what I'd do if one of them decides they want more than I can pay them.
Look at this frown! That's what waiting'll getcha - worry lines. I'll just email her.
Well, this is another fine mess you've gotten us into, Harley.
Of all the ways I thought I'd be spending my night, lying on my belly on some dirty roof while peering through binoculars into the next building over wasn't one of them. All because I was worrying. Because I was thinking. Because I was waiting.
I hate waiting.
Babs was a little jumpy when I finally reached her. She had my info, but she also suggested she'd have to double her prices next time for some major security upgrades. I wasn't exactly laughing on the inside when she told me this - plus I was a little spooked that she said that a mere hour after I was thinking something similar - so I asked why.
Turns out there's been rumors of a new hacker in the market calling herself Oracle. No one actually knows if Oracle's a she, but back in the old days all oracles were female, so the assumption is she's a girl. Although, as Spoiler put it, "you'd be surprised at all the boys who pretend to be women in their online games".
Thing is, the rumors also say Oracle's not for sale. In fact, she's got a hard-on for those who are, and I don't mean she wants dinner and dancing. Babs found out the rumors were true today. She was poking around in Arkham's files when the Oracle smelled her out and tried to trace her signal. She eluded the trap by the skin of her teeth.
Now she needs more money to upgrade her computers, and her old fees aren't enough.
I pointed out to her that she was providing criminals like me an importance service, and I didn't see why some anonymous upstart should be able to take that away from us.
Somehow she interpreted that as an offer to bail her out of the jam.
Eventually we did come up with this brilliant scheme. I met Babs at the park, and she gave me one of her laptops, along with specific instructions. I brought it to one of my hideouts and set it up so she could activate it by remote and access the Internet with it. Then she'd break into Arkham a second time and wait for the Oracle to show her face. The laptop won't tell Oracle much about Babs, but it will tell "her" location. Once that happens, Babs shuts the connection down.
If she's the do-gooder they say she is, she'll have no other choice but to investigate the Spoiler's supposed hideout. She might call the police, but Babs is monitoring the phone lines, and I doubt the police will be that interested in checking out the haven of a "known hacker".
When she shows, I teach her about taking life too seriously. You've got to live a little, forget about the rules, not sweat the small stuff.
That's all I'm trying to do in this dark, depressing city, really. Gotham has forgotten how to laugh, and I'm here to remind it.
Back in high school, I first noticed "Harleen Quinzell" sounded a lot like "Harlequin" when I picked up one of those romance novels. I wasn't exactly thrilled - until I looked the word up and found out what a harlequin really was.
"1. A conventional buffoon of the commedia dell'arte, traditionally presented in a mask and parti-colored tights. 2. A clown."
Useful trivia of the day, courtesy of the American Heritage Dictionary.
I liked the court jester image a lot more than the romance novel, actually. I was always the class clown when I was younger. I loved practical jokes and gag gifts and funny movies and circuses. Not long after, I started thinking of myself as "Harley" instead of "Harleen".
My doctors call it one of my fixations, but you know what I say to that! Pbbbbbt.
Anyway, I went to Gotham University, and I found out what a humorless, sordid town Gotham is. That impression only got stronger after I became Harley Quinn full-time and got to know the Bat. In fact, for me he came to personify what was wrong with the city. Batman was a dark, brooding party pooper who never cracked a smile or laughed at a joke. HIS city, he calls it.
Monsieur, I say, this means war!
If he thinks he can go on casting his dark cloud, his long shadow over this gloomy city, he's got another thing coming. And there's plenty of normal people just like him, all sourpusses and stuffed-shirts. These people are actually respected and admired, if you can believe it.
Batman and the wealthy snobs of Gotham became my two targets. I would teach them to be able to laugh at themselves. If the sticks were so far up their asses that they couldn't do that, at least I could remind everyone ELSE what a good laugh can feel like!
My first act as Harley Quinn was to rob some fancy soiree in downtown Gotham. Then I sprayed everyone with a special kind of silly string that leaves bright, colorful lines where they landed. One of the guests - Bruce Wayne, I think - tried to stop me, but I gave him a taste of my super-strong joy buzzer. Not enough volts to kill a guy, but enough to leave him on his back.
That's where I draw the line, by the way. All my tricks and gadgets are nonlethal. Despite what my pal the chemist says, death isn't very funny. And besides, how can you teach someone a lesson like 'there's nothing like a good joke' and then kill them? Kinda defeats the purpose, wouldn't you say?
Batman caught me two days after the heist made all the news. I quickly wrote him off as a lost cause. He can only bring a smile to others. It's my personal dream to see Batman dangling by his feet in the middle of Gotham Square wearing Mickey Mouse ears and a cream pie. After you've seen the Batman looking like that, I think you'd start laughing every time you saw him afterwards.
It looks like there's motion inside my hideout. Thank goodness. It's really filthy up here. I considered bringing my special binoculars, the ones that leave black circles around your eyes, but it'd be wasted on me. My costume comes with 'em.
Huh. Is that smoke?
"Shutting internal monologue off, Harley," I muttered as I stared at what I was seeing, mystified. The window my binoculars were trained on gave me a good view of the room where the laptop was located. Or at least, it HAD a good view. Now it was filled with smoke.
Batman used smoke to help him appear and disappear, but the only way into the room was through the door, and I never saw him through any of the other windows. If the Oracle IS Batman, then Babs might as well tell her father the truth now, because she'd never throw him off her trail.
Then the smoke cleared, and I gasped.
Inside was a person I'd never seen before. It was a caped figure, cloaked all in gray. A skeletal mask hid their features from view, while some kind of curved blade could be seen in one hand. It definitely wasn't the Bat, although it looked like this guy didn't have a sense of humor either. Unless he went in for black humor.
And now it was up to me to confront this guy. Just great. When this was over, Spoiler was getting me my passwords gratis next month.
"Looks like you've taken a spill. Need a hand?"
Uh-oh.
I felt my arm twisted behind my back before I was yanked onto my feet, then spun around and slammed back down on the roof. I cried out in pain and surprise, but I felt someone's knee in my back. And the pressure didn't ease up on my arm.
"You'd better get up here," my captor said out loud. "Looks like our hacker tried to set a trap for us."
They thought I was the hacker? I can't even pay my bills online!
Wisps of dark smoke swirled past my face, and I froze. That smoke looked awfully familiar . . .
"Let's have a better look at her."
The one who surprised me was a woman. This new voice could have belonged to a woman or a man - probably a dead one, because it didn't sound all that human. I'd been taken prisoner by zombies, and they were going to eat my brain.
I was hauled back onto my feet, and finally I got a good look at them.
I immediately recognized the first one. The blonde hair and the fishnets clued me in that I was looking at Black Canary. If she wasn't maintaining her painful grip on my arm, I might have found her attractive.
Then again, maybe not. The ghoulish figure who had appeared as if by magic - and considering they were across the street in the next building a minute ago, maybe it WAS magic - chilled me all the way down to my loins. Plus it had a hook for a hand. Old campfire horror stories resurfaced in my brain. I didn't like the way the blade gleamed either.
"Harley Quinn is Spoiler. Amazing," Canary said. "Guess you're not just a dumb blonde, huh, Quinn?"
"I was going to say the same thing about you, but I changed my mind," I snapped.
Canary let me go and shoved me toward her pal the Dementor. "I guess Oracle was right about the trap," she said.
Neither of these two was Oracle. Just how big was their little organization anyway? I made a mental note to look into other ways to hack into Arkham's computers, just in case.
"Apparently so," the other thing said.
I backed away from them, but they followed me calmly. Judging by the creature's ability to appear and disappear, I guessed they weren't too worried about losing me. But I wagered it couldn't follow what it couldn't see. And I had a trick that stopped working on Batman a long time ago, but these two were just new enough that I might pull it off.
The special noisemaker was in my hand and close to my lips in an instant, and they froze. "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you," I said cheerfully before I put it to my lips and blew.
"Phantasm, stop her!"
Too late, birdie.
It was just your basic birthday noisemaker, the kind that unrolled when you blew into it and made a noise. But mine unrolled more than a few inches, and the ordinary kind doesn't set off a blinding phosphorescent flash at its tip. The glaring greenish light - a gift from Ivy, thanks girlfriend! - caught them unawares, and they both flinched and threw their hands up before their eyes.
"You eat like a pi-ig, and smell like one too!" I sang merrily as I cartwheeled backwards, went over the roof's edge, and bounded down the fire escape. I know ALL the abandoned buildings surrounding my hideouts like the back of my hand.
Still, I ran and leapt about for five minutes until I was absolutely sure I'd lost them. For all I knew, Black Canary's partner was going to skip Arkham entirely and take me to Azkaban.
When I managed to catch my breath, my lungs on fire, I leaned back. My body was sore from the abuse it took from the Canary. Then I sighed.
Whatever else I'd learned tonight - such as that name "Phantasm" - I'd learned that Spoiler's troubles weren't over. Seeing as how I'd been confused with her, neither were mine.
To be continued . . .
