Harley Quinn vs. Cognitive Dissonance
It was a muggy night under the red-orange sky of Gotham city. Many citizens of Gotham thought and moved unencumbered by the harsh outdoor air, thanks to Wayne-Tech centralized air conditioning. The cool dry air pumped steadily from a large building in Gotham's financial district. The dome-shaped facility allowed for all but the most destitute to have a pleasant climate siphoned to their homes. Everyone who could afford freedom from the boiling outdoors did so as a matter of course.
In the penthouse of a hotel adjacent to the facility, Harley Quinn was hard at work decorating cupcakes. Over her customary black and red body suit, she wore a black apron with "Bats are blind to beauty" scrawled on it in white fabric paint. Her lover was meeting with her former boss, and she was determined that the meeting go well. She had mixed a bowl of frosting to perfectly match the tan of Scarecrow's hood. For the final touch, each of Scarecrow's cupcakes were adorned with a dripping S, dyed with the blood of a frightened child. The Joker's cupcakes were frosted purple. Each was topped with a black J, sharply drawn with the perfect lines of Helvetica. In case the Joker did not notice that she put considerably more effort into his snack, she packed a delicately wrapped package of rotting rat flesh into the center of one of Scarecrow's cupcakes. It would not do for her man to get jealous. Harley was ignored, rather than hidden. She heard everything they said. They were not quiet men.
"Do you have any two's?" Joker asked. His purple and orange collars were popped in a show of dominance.
"Go fish," Scarecrow rasped. The loosely spun burlap of Scarecrow's mask concealed the machinery of his own private atmosphere. The clown prince let out a cackle, and Scarecrow upped his dose of the fear gas. He refused to grow complacent.
"Do you have any queens?" Scarecrow asked.
"Go fish!"
Scarecrow drew the two of clubs. It was the final card in the deck. Scarecrow wailed, knocked over the card table, and flexed his bladed fingers into claws.
"Looking for this?" Joker asked, as he revealed the queen of diamonds to his opponent.
Scarecrow clawed at his seated opponent. The blades at the tips of Scarecrow's gloves tore through the left breast of Joker's jacket. Blood seeped from the fresh wounds. Joker let out an earsplitting cackle.
"It's just a game, Crane. You really need to lighten up," Joker cackled as he squeezed the flower on his lapel. A plume of green gas wafted over Scarecrow, as he clawed at Joker's face. Joker fell backwards in his chair, thus evading the blow. Joker's foot caught Scarecrow in the chin, sending him staggering, and revealing the metallic tubing of Scarecrow's inner mask.
Joker landed in a crouch and taunted: "A child of nightmares dependent on the air of Sleepy Hollow. Too scared to breathe Gotham air with the rest of us?"
"You can't handle what I breathe," Scarecrow said as he pulled off his mask and let yellow fear gas fill the room.
Joker sniffed the air, began shrieking, and pulled out a detonator from his blazer. "Joke's on you Crane," Joker sputtered out between quivering sobs, "my drugs are much more fun." Joker triggered the detonator. Green laughing gas erupted from canisters hidden throughout the room.
Scarecrow took a step back, but there was nowhere to run. Joker fell into a fit of giggle-shrieks and Scarecrow was soon to follow.
"I only came to this card night out of loneliness," Scarecrow stammered around an uproarious belly laugh. "I admire your capacity to inflict suffering on others, but your schemes are always overly complicated. Fear is the direct path to human suffering. Your abhorrent performance art satisfies no-one's taste, and is terribly inefficient," Scarecrow said.
"I only invited you here because I wanted to dose you with laughing gas, and mock your lack of vision. Your one-note reliance on fear shows not only a lack of creativity, but a deeper lack of appreciation of the unique value of experience. Artistic pain is ineffably more valuable. I hoped a few days of forced laughter would show you your banality. If this didn't change your mind, it would at least get you out of the way. Us real villains need room to work. Wait, why am I telling you this? Harley!"
"Yes Mr. J?" Harley turned, with her cupcakes on a tray. The mixed gas had only recently wafted into her corner. She let out two coughs, and began shrieking with terrified laughter. After a few more lungfuls of the mingling gases, she began to talk. "I brought you boys some snacks. Glucose for thoughts of destruction. Of course, I can create and destroy too, but I hide my power behind helpful tasks. That way they never see it coming. That's why I get along so well with Mr. J. His love for me may be temperamental, but he'll always miss the things I do for him. Won't you Mr. J?" Harley realized she did not want an answer. She needed a diversion. "My goodness, pudding. Did you just discover a weaponized truth serum?"
Joker was huddled with his back to a corner. His eyes were wide, but his pupils had retracted to pinpoints. "Yes! My laughing gas finally made something useful out of Scarecrow's crude project."
"I fail to see the improvement." Scarecrow said between giggles. His clawed gloves held his belly.
"They kind of even each other out," Harley said, breathing deeply. "The fear forces us to find what is most important in the moment, and the humor prevents us from running or hiding. Imagine a world where everyone says exactly what they are thinking. Think of the havoc. Marriages will crumble, everyone will get fired, elevators will be unbearable."
"Yes!" Scarecrow said. "We shall acquire some poors, and find the perfect dose."
"And our perfect delivery system is just yonder." Joker said pointing down at the giant dome of Gotham Central Air.
The cupcakes were forgotten.
Harley watched as Joker donned the loose white robes of outdoor poverty, and ventured into the untreated nighttime air. He left a thin trail of sweat behind him. The recruitable goons should have hated Joker for his tendency to get them killed. But the draw of dishing out punishment, while standing in the conditioned air, always proved persuasive.
Harley and Scarecrow's work was far more delicate. First they donned their research costumes. Each took their turn in the suite's bathroom. Scarecrow removed his vestments, combed his hair, and washed his face. He returned in a sharp suit as Dr. Crane. Harley switched her jester's outfit for a lab coat and
glasses. With her bronzer in place, and her hair in a neat ponytail, she became Dr. Quinzel.
Their participants were a convenience sample from the hotel. The pair wandered the hotel eyeballing staff and guests. They offered strangers the two metaphorical carrots of wads of cash and insight into their inner lives. The stick was quite literal, and applied forcefully to the back of each participant's head. The doctors managed to avoid having their overt thuggery recorded on the hotel's security cameras, and each participant ended up unconscious in the back of Dr. Crane's unmarked van. When the study disembarked for the docks, they had a small convenience sample of hotel workers and travelers.
Dr. Quinzel rolled her window down and let her ungloved hand play in the wind. Shepherding unwilling research participants to a secure facility reeked of nostalgia. Dr. Crane showed no signs of remembering their shared past, but he didn't show much of anything. Harley changed out of her lab coat ensemble into her more familiar jester's clothes. It was past time for Harley Quinn's research career to begin.
They arrived at the docks after sunset. Crane backed the van up the loading ramp of a rusty tugboat. Harley vaulted through the interior window and gestured erratically with her hammer until the participants fled onto the deck. Crane raised the ramp and began clawing at the participants, until they fled into the brig below decks. Harley took the helm.
They made a small commotion at the docks as they pulled away. The dock master was glad to see them go, but her thickened wallet softened her memory of the ordeal. The coming screams, however, would be too loud and pure for a bystander to ignore. They had to float out quite a way before their work began.
They began in earnest when land disappeared from the horizon. Their actual goal was subtle, and not easily nailed down. Scarecrow and Harley were both resistant to drugs, so their baseline dosage was way off. The first few subjects ended up dead, or in comas. When they did get results, Dr. Crane had a tendency to push the subjects past the mark of pure candor toward pure terror.
Both experimenters were skilled enough in torture to hold out the possibility of relief as contrast. But they had no demands, only a desire to observe. The hotel workers mostly wept through their wide grins. When prompted with the right questions, this weeping abated into constant verbalizations. Their chatter reminded Harley of teenagers experimenting with uppers, except slower, and with apparent sadness. No matter which workers they piled together, they rarely talked to each other. At least in the boat-prison, the participant hotel workers had no interest in each other. No relationships were sabotaged. While clearly unpleasant, and potentially lasting, the effects were not sufficiently different from a bad trip. The only love for them to lose was self-love, and, for most of them, that love would come crawling back.
The couples had more potential. The first couple they measured died from an overdose of the research cocktail. Harley took charge with the second couple.
They were tourists from the Midwestern United States. The wife had an interest in Gothic architecture, so they were spending a long weekend looking at Gotham's older buildings. Harley ingratiated them with small talk, while Scarecrow played out murder scenes through shadow puppetry. Harley gently upped the percentage of the cocktail in the air, while pretending to take notes on her tablet.
When the couple started to giggle and recoil, Harley cut the gas. After a few probing questions to test the couple's candor, Harley found the right words. "So why does she get to choose where you go on vacation?"
The husband responded quickly. He turned to his wife, and rasped, "Because your pain is always valued higher than mine. Our vacation time is always used to make up for some real or imagined slight you need to heal from."
The wife let out a hearty laugh. Her body twisted and contorted, but her gaze stayed on her husband's mirthful terror. "Excuse me for wanting to share my vacation with my husband. You conveniently forget the fact that you travel alone constantly."
"I used to invite you, but you said that describing the theoretical underpinnings of ancient traditional music was masturbatory, and missed the point of why music was made."
"I only said that because you refused to pay attention to me all trip."
"I was working. And you meant it! You trivialize my career, and treat my attention like a toy."
"You treat my attention like a burden!"
Harley spotted Scarecrow by the control panel, muttering to himself. A fresh rush of gas filled the room. The couple fell to uproarious shirking laughter, before they passed out.
Harley turned on her colleague. "Why'd you do that? They were getting somewhere."
"They identified their core differences, and I used the truth gas to cement their relationship's dissonance in their unconscious."
"No. The deeper suffering comes from the canon of conscious memory. We were just beginning to unravel the reasons they can't stand each other. We have to keep the dose low enough that they air each piece of dirty laundry. Not just cement the first point that happens to come up."
Scarecrow shrugged. "One good reason is sufficient to force them apart. Then the aloneness will take them. The suffering that truth-bearing will achieve will come from each victim being alone, with sufficient evidence that it is impossible to appreciate them. Emphasizing the first good reason they find is faster."
"Break ups, and social avoidance don't happen for one reason. If every time they are not appreciated turns into an argument against the possibility that they can be appreciated, then we have maximized their potential suffering from aloneness."
"They simply must believe that they cannot be appreciated. That is the core of this suffering. One good reason is sufficient."
"Fine. I know better than to argue with you. Let's just split the remaining participants, and share data afterwards."
"Agreed."
The business travelers were all that remained of the participant pool. Each was a native English speaker with a small history of drug use. Scarecrow quickly turned his participant from a sob-cackling mess into a catatonic. Harley took hers slow. The participant yielded a little information about finding the right dose, and divulged a lot about scamming sex workers. The participant was on the verge of a breakthrough about why they felt so inadequate, when Harley knocked them out cold. Honesty simply did not matter unless there was someone to hurt.
Harley found Scarecrow hard at work on the pharmacology of the truth gas. He worked around varying tolerances for the cocktail by building in a behavioral flushing mechanism. When a subject was near the end of their tolerance they would develop a compulsion to drink water. This would lead to the subject urinating the excess chemical out before they fall into a coma. However, as long as the chemical remained in the air, it was impossible to urinate all the behavioral effects of the drug away.
Harley sighed, and twirled her hammer. They agreed on a dose that would probably keep most people alive and talking. Then the pair accepted the quiet defeat of their completed study. They didn't know if it would work, but it was time to move on.
As thanks for their help Harley gave the surviving participants a running start, before caving their heads in with her hammer. After she hosed the remains of the witnesses off the lacquered deck, they returned to Gotham.
Meanwhile, Joker had found a crew. Harley and Scarecrow met them in Central Air's parking garage after normal work hours. Each ruffian wore the customary clown mask and dark clothing of Joker's gang. The pores on their hands were open wide, and many shivered in the conditioned air. To the average indoor Gothamite, every outdoor person was an unthinkable poor. Joker, however, knew the many strata of outdoor people, and never recruited from the bottom. There is always a contingent of those who have a little, and will do the unspeakable to impress those who have a lot. Harley sensed the same rudderless superior feeling in Joker's new recruits. Typical help.
The approach on Gotham Central Air was straight-forward, if effortful. While the facility was a labyrinth to the untrained eye, principals of engineering gave a rough idea of the facilities layout. Harley was in the vanguard. She glided as a queen of slapstick; releasing truth gas in her wake. Security guards, who's normal duties were to observe and report, crumbled under and onslaught of groin kicks, eye pokes, and head-splitting hammer swings. The hired goons who followed her served only to secure the wounded.
Joker and his lackeys planted explosives throughout and around the facility, while Scarecrow's crew ferried the compressed gas to the central air output.
The cops came quickly, but the first few died in perimeter explosions. Those who came after gave the building a wide berth, and the siege began. Commissioner Gordon arrived with a mega phone, "We have you surrounded. We don't want any more bloodshed. We are willing to negotiate."
Scarecrow's crew had begun dispensing the gas into Gotham's air supply, the effects on the city's populace would begin in a matter of minutes. Joker wandered into the security room, and found the controls for the pa system. He looped a recording of his earsplitting laugh into the parking lot. The cops ducked into their cars, and waited for ear protection to arrive.
Harley and crew swept the facility. Those who tried to hide, quickly revealed themselves with a series of sobs, shrieks, and giggles. Before long, the villains had complete control of the facility.
Harley walked past the security room, and joker beckoned her inside. "Harley just who I wanted to see. It seems we have company." Joker gestured toward a screen displaying intruders. Batman was accompanied by two of his boys. The garish child known as Robin, and the fresh faced adult called Nightwing. "Harley, keep an eye on our guests, while Scarecrow and I put the final touches of the last laugh."
"The final terror!" Scarecrow insisted.
Harley wasn't sure exactly what they were referring to. The boys were always pushing doomsday, and the capes always rushed in to stop it. She hoped they didn't overdo the finale. It is easy to right off an extreme experience, but unadorned insight will hurt their victims for a long time.
Harley sent her goons at the heroes, while she vaulted across shadowy air vents. Most do not think of her as sneaky, but a good performer reads the crowd, unobserved, before they make an entrance. The goons closed with the heroes, holding pipes, chains, and fists at the ready. While Harley waited for the perfect moment to strike, she listened to the heroes arguing.
"I just don't believe it has to be this way. We are always stalking a bad guy to punch. We never dismantle what gives them power in the first place." Nightwing said.
"Don't blame me. Blame Joker, and his ilk." Batman replied, as he sent a large goon sprawling.
Nightwing scoffed and dodged a haymaker. "Joker is nothing. In a large enough group of people, some of them will be horrible. The question is, why do people work for him?"
"Because they are uppity poors."
Nightwing paused. His opponent took the opportunity to punch him in the gut. Nightwing took a step back then launched forward with an uppercut. He caught his opponent square on the chin, and knocked them out.
"So the poor are at fault for wanting more?"
Batman and Nightwing stopped to stare each other down. This left Robin to square off against the five remaining goons.
"We gave them paths to success," Batman said, "An enterprising poor can make more of themselves as long as they learn our language, and follow our lead. A fry cook can become a doctor as long as they pledge fealty to our financial system through debt, and work unceasingly toward their goal. No, it is these uppity poors who want easy wealth. They pledge their fealty to evil, because they are too scared to compete using what they are given. The uppity poors are the reason we must constantly punch."
"Self-righteous as ever, I see. A modern day king aghast at the lengths his serfs would go to for a life other than fighting over his crumbs. Have you considered that the world might be better off if you stopped trying to rule it?"
"Would you have me halt the industries at my command, fire all my employees, and cease my charitable efforts?"
"No. I would have you turn over control of each of those efforts to the actual stakeholders," Nightwing said. "Give your holdings to the people who do the work or are affected by the work. The Wayne holdings are not about you. Neither is crime. The world would be better off if people like you stopped acting like it revolved around them."
"If I convert Wayne Enterprises into an employee run coop, then everyone Joker might hire suddenly has a job and we stop the mad clown for good?"
Robin ducked under a swinging pipe, then jumped over sweeping chain.
"No. Not directly. The question, however, should not be 'how do we stop Joker?' The question should be 'how do we change circumstances to make Joker irrelevant?' I know you better than most. I have seen what you can do. With a little hope and humility your efforts could contribute to a lasting change."
"The presence of Batman is correlated with a sharp decline in the crime rate of Gotham City. The Wayne foundation feeds, clothes, and houses the homeless. I provide scholarships for any submissive poor looking to class-jump. I make an impact every day."
"Yes, you. It's always in your name, and, somehow, at the end of all that giving, you are still a billionaire. You sit in your spacious mansion, eating food someone else cooked, planning days full of whatever you choose to do. Meanwhile the people of Gotham are so desperate that Joker schemes seem like a good career move. You live in the classic pattern of the charitable rich. You give to cement your own control."
"Of course I do! Look what happens when anyone else is in charge. Police act as corrupt murderers, so I enforce the law for them. Hungry people will turn to crime, so I feed them. The list goes on. Each thing I do makes things a little better. I would be nice if the poor would take care of themselves, but they never have."
Robin was backed against a wall. He sidestepped a flying fist that hit the concrete with a crunch.
"That's because poor people are definitionally folks with insufficient resources. If effective steps were taken toward equality, then desperation would not be the ruling factor in so many lives."
"Have you ever handed a poor enough money for a new life? They spend it in a flash, and nothing changes. Have you ever been part of an organization run by consensus decision making? They spend the whole time debating aesthetics and personalities. Nothing gets done. It takes knowledge, training, and aptitude to manage resources, and make decisions. I invest in education, local leadership, and the safety net. Maybe someday the poors will know enough to take the reins, but for now I am confident that my resources are being used in the best way possible. Nothing short of hard data will change my mind."
"That is the classic logic of the 'loving' oppressor. Charity automatically creates a skewed power dynamic. The benevolent giver always determines who is worthy. This constant assessment from without creates a dynamic where the giver decides traits that are familiar to them are worthy of reward. This means that people exhibiting traits unique, and sometimes essential, to their environment are frequently passed over for charity's reward. Whereas a paradigm of mutual aid allows for communities to decide where the resources are best spent without hierarchical shame, or biased clone seeking."
"If I turned the Wayne Foundation into a mutual aid network tomorrow, they would be bankrupt within a month, and turn to loot Wayne Enterprises for more. Critiques of the status quo have value, but you are going to need to learn something before you give advice."
One goon had Robin trapped a full nelson, while another goon was winding up to slug Robin with a chain-wrapped fist. Robin threw his legs up and kicked them in the jaw.
"You could come up with a sane incremental plan for the transfer of power. You could teach the people about the challenges of running a foundation as you passed the reins. You have an unwavering faith that the people of Gotham are worth saving, but you have no workable plan for how they will stay saved when you are gone."
"I will leave a legacy. Wayne Enterprises, and the Wayne Foundation will outlive me. Some of my protégés will continue to punish uppity poors. You are not telling me anything I have not heard before. My studied opinion is that betters must have the courage to lead, or humanity descends into chaos."
"That is a convenient opinion for a king to hold."
Batman's normally even tone broke into genuine annoyance at his straying apprentice. "What's convenient is the notion that rich people make the world poor by not sharing. My wealth, and the wealth of my peers, is not sitting in gold bars, and savings accounts. It is reinvested into things that, one way or another, people want. This economic activity also creates more wealth that can be used to address human needs."
"Then why are so many humans finding it harder to meet their needs? People don't want 60-hour work weeks, and bureaucratic nightmares every time they go to see the doctor. Your optimistic view of that which is, combined with extreme pessimism about that which could be, facilitates self-serving conclusions. Namely that the extent of your duties is to control the submissive poor, and punish those who rebel. If you believed that anyone besides yourself was capable of making a decision, then the world would have a much better shot at growing into a livable place."
Robin squirmed out their assailant's arms, tripped them, and stomped on their throat.
"All power is limited. I will not let the insolvability of the world's problems lead me to shirking my responsibilities on to others who are less qualified to handle them. Regardless of your current political confusion, you will continue to fight crime, because that is where you can make a difference. The only real difference between you and I is that my day-life contains more responsibilities than annoying your longsuffering professors."
"I am learning that we don't want the same world. This argument is both of us mourning that separation."
Robin stood panting among the unconscious bodies of his foes.
Harley chose this moment to strike. She pulled a garish grenade off her belt and tossed it into a particularly unstable knot of vents. The structure caved, leaving a wall of debris between Nightwing and his comrades. Harley swung down, bashing Nightwing in the stomach with her hammer.
"We have to save him, Batman!" Robin said, while peering through the rubble.
"No, Robin. The Joker is our target. Nightwing has strength enough to protect his neck, and keep his belly full. He has chosen to disregard his inheritance for the sake of untested ideas. You know where those people end up?"
"Where?"
"They end up poor, Robin."
Robin closed his eyes, turned, and did not look back. "I will never be poor again."
Harley's swinging hammer knocked Nightwing into the new wall of rubble. She landed a second swing above his head, causing loose concrete and metal to pin him in place. Harley observed Nightwing's restrained body. His arms were pinned to his sides, his legs were completely buried, and his chest was uncovered. A pipe dug into Nightwing's neck, and propped his head up. The sight felt like an invitation to play whack a mole, but Harley resisted. Dead, he was just another resentment. Alive, he was leverage. Instead she snatched his utility belt and jumped back.
"Why are you doing this, Harley?" Nightwing coughed. "What do you gain?"
"I'm a bad guy, remember?" Harley said, as she rifled through his utility belt and retrieved his phone.
"That's just a judgmental platitude, not a motivation." Nightwing's breathing was strained.
"Whatever you say, college boy."
"You are educated. You are smart, and highly competent. You clearly don't need Joker in your life. Why do any of this? There has to be a better fuck than Joker in this city."
"Not everything is about fucking."
"It's the only motivation I can think of."
"That's on you, fuckboy. You may have been hungry for a day, but you're just a rich brat now. Drunk on your first chosen ideology. Everyone envies your naiveté, and no one can stand it when you talk. I have my own aesthetics and motivations. Mr. J and I just happen to agree on a few things."
Nightwing's fell into silence. Harley cemented this victory by departing through an intact corridor. She used Nightwing's phone to make a call as she jogged.
Barbra Gordon used to patrol the mean streets of Gotham City as Batgirl. With a sense of justice inherited from her police commissioner father, and cultivated by Batman himself, she punished criminals with a vigor that could rival any Robin. Then Joker shot her through the spine, and left her paralyzed from the waist down. While in hospital, she turned to cyberspace, and found solace in finding information about villainous activities online.
Her doctors told her that there was nothing more they could do. Ms. Gordon would never walk again by conventional means. Her thirst for justice could not be ignored, so she pursued her budding digital talent. She developed prodigious skill in researching Gotham's criminal underbelly. Barbra Gordon undertook her new vocation under a new alias: Oracle.
"Dick?" Oracle's came through high pitched and rushed.
"Guess again, toots!"
The voice was familiar, but Oracle ran it through a voice print analyzer anyway. When she got the results, she sent out an all-points bulletin for every cop and hero in Gotham to come to the phone's location. It might not matter in the chaos. Better keep her distracted. "Harley Quinn. What do you want?"
"Well I couldn't help but notice that Gotham is showing quite a bit of candor. So I thought, who controls the narrative of heroic Gotham? Who will determine what they learn from all of this? Their Oracle of course."
"Flattery aside, what are you trying to accomplish with this call?"
"People keep getting confused about whether I'm a bad guy or not, so I thought I would ask an expert. Did I do a bad thing? People are hurting right now, but maybe the truth will set them free?"
Oracle coughed. She suppressed a giggle, as her gaze swept across her unusually malevolent screens. Oracle lived on the edge of Gotham proper. The gas was everywhere. "I can't know what the real outcome of your nonsense is. The data are still being collected, and most of the effects have not occurred yet."
"Blah, blah, blah. Science has limitations. Form an opinion, girl genius."
"Fine, Harley. I think that the choice not to talk is an essential part of any sane human relationship.
For example, it is often unwise to listen and talk at the same time. The choice to listen depends on the assumption that the speaker has chosen something important to say. Compulsive self-explanation destroys any such trust. Not to mention the fact that the first set of words we think of are rarely the most accurate.
I think the pain from this stunt is not likely to lead to growth."
"Haha! I'm still a bad guy."
"I don't find such terms satisfying. Whatever label you end up with, it's clear that you are suffering more than you need to."
"Who, me? I'm riding atop the peak of a brilliant scheme. Scarecrow and Mr. J are both right. The suffering of Gotham will be terrifyingly hilarious."
"Maybe, but why do you want other people to suffer?"
"What I want is for them to admit it. The suffering is already there. This drug just robs them of places to hide."
"So you're doing us a favor?"
"No. I'm just showing you the truth."
"Because truth has inherent value?
"No! Because I have inherent value. I have a fabulous sense of humor, and now the world gets to see it."
"What a waste of the inherent value you embody."
"So you hate the truth now?"
"No. I just don't think that truth is arrived at in a cacophony, and I don't think suffering is funny."
"You hero types are all the same. Perpetually dismissing reality for the sake of ideals you have never seen. Mr. J. showed me that ideal humor can be fully realized. It is humanity's fault if they don't get the joke."
Oracle began to shake. Her stomach clenched in an echo of past pain. Harley's narrative was unthinkable.
"One more question, before I let you go?" Harley asked with pep.
Oracle shook her head to rouse herself. "Okay…"
"This Nightwing character; does he fuck good?"
The words who cares appeared in Oracle's attention, but she realized she was already talking. "He is an artist with his body, and a decent listener. Any form or image that one desires, he could probably fulfil. He has all the subtlety of kickboxer, but he keeps up a decent rhythm. He was always distant, and never vulnerable."
"I mean; did you like it?"
"I lost feeling before I figured out what I liked."
"Oh."
Oracle caught her breath. Her participation in this conversation had started as a ploy to keep Harley distracted. Something else was keeping her here through the disgust. "Sounds like you can relate."
"I didn't say that!"
"It was an educated guess then."
"Based on what? The internet doesn't know everything."
"It knows more than any person. Based on the data on how you and Joker treat each other."
"You think you're a psychologist, but you're just a stalker with a hero-complex."
"The skills of the psychological profession are research methods, reading comprehension, and empathy. Empathy is probably where I am failing here."
"Or maybe it's your overzealous commitment to the idea that I am a damsel in distress, and you are just the girl to rescue me."
"It doesn't require cherry picking to see the trend that Joker mistreats you. Can you think of a single counter-example?"
"Fine. For the sake of argument, I'll agree that training is just gatekeeping, and heroes can do anything after an hour on the internet. Let's say that all of your analyses are sound. There is still one big problem with your argument. My love for Mr. J. is pure. Love is a feeling, and feelings can't be measured."
"No they can't, but reported affective responses have behavioral correlates-" Harley hung up.
Harley vaulted across the upper vents toward the center of the facility. When the vents grew wider than she was tall, she climbed across the overlapping tubes until she was hanging upside-down from the highest point in the dome-shaped building. Far beneath, Harley spotted Joker and Scarecrow on the ground. They appeared to be struggling over a tablet. Around the corner, Batman had pinned Robbin against the wall by the neck. She rifled through Nightwing's utility belt until she found a pair of binoculars.
During a brief spy obsession in her youth, Harleen Quinzel had learned how to read lips. By the time she had reached college, Harleen wrote off the phase as a lark designed to annoy her parents. Harley Quinn, however, found the skill quite handy.
She turned first to Batman and Robin.
"Admit that death is the only escape from reason," Batman said.
"I refuse to accept any ideas that I don't understand," Robin replied.
Batman leaned closer. "We both know complete understanding is impossible. Make an inference. What are your impressions?"
"My impression is that I would have more sympathy for your notion of reason if you had not uncritically attached every aspect of neoliberalism to the term."
"Not you too. Where did you learn that word?"
"Everywhere."
Batman paused. Harley yawned and panned to Joker and Scarecrow. They were quibbling over whether the audio component of the villainous announcement should be terrified shrieking or maniacal laughter. Behind them, Harley saw an oversized bomb decorated with clown faces and jack o'lanterns. The plan suddenly became clear to Harley. For the finale, they were going to destroy Gotham's climate control. First the honesty gas would tear apart all meaningful relationships, then the pain of scorching air would render them irrelevant. Cute, direct, and not at all what Harley planned.
Around the corner, Batman had put Robin down. "The mission, Robin."
Robin shook his head, "Indeed, Batman."
Joker and Scarecrow pressed record, and performed their ideal audio in the device simultaneously. Then they sent out a general broadcast. They also relayed the cacophony of laughter and shrieking through the facility's PA system. Then they projected an image juxtaposing a burlap mask with a grinning clown face on the interior of the dome. This cast a long shadow behind Harley, which was topped by a silhouette of her signature jester's cap.
"Harley? What are you doing up there?" Joker shouted over the PA system. The dynamic duo chose that moment to strike. Harley gazed for a moment at the scuffle below. It looked like a close fight. Her presence would clearly make a difference, and yet…
Harley let Nightwing's binoculars and belt drop. Then she slid down a series of vents toward the hallways below. Harley ran to the basement, toward where the building's waste water entered the sewers. She swung her hammer through the largest grate, and dove through the new cavity. After a deeply unpleasant swim, Harley emerged in the sewers. She discarded her soiled jester suit, and jogged toward neutral ground.
On the surface, Harley could hear a dull roar of overlapping bickering through the walls of nearby buildings. As she strolled toward the higher class neighborhoods, Harley saw a woman of about her build wearing a cute pantsuit. She was running with tears in her eyes. Harley tripped her, kicked her in the head, and stole her cloths. She needed to be well dressed before meeting her associate.
Harley strolled through the dignified old neighborhood. The thick walls muffled most of the turmoil inside these buildings, but these streets contained as many emotional displays as anywhere. In a place like this, any sign of poverty was noted, and shunted elsewhere by glare and worker alike. Harley did not like her chances of dealing successfully with the security at the front entrance, and decided to enter by other means. She climbed up the buildings wall in a tight alley, then vaulted on to the roof. She raised her hammer above a skylight, before she spotted black latex cat ears through the glass.
"What are you doing here, Harley?" Catwoman asked.
"I need a place to lay low for a bit. All my safe houses are kind of compromised."
"You're avoiding the Joker?"
"Maybe a little."
"Fine. I'm not afraid of him, but if your presence jeopardizes the well-being of my cats, you are gone."
"Deal. One more thing. I hate to ask but—"
"Yes. Please use my shower."
"No. Well yes, but I mean…"
"Out with it Harley."
"Why are you doing this? I mean, you don't even like me."
"I don't particularly dislike you, and you are convenient. This chaos provides a prime business opportunity for me, and discrete cat sitters are hard to come by. Feed them precisely according to instructions, and pay them exactly as much attention as they ask for. If you don't cause any trouble, you can stay here as long as you want." Catwoman ducked out under the open skylight, and into the Gotham night.
Harley latched the skylight shut, and turned to see dozens of silted pupils watching both from rafters, and the plush furniture below. Harley hopped down to the hardwood floor. A particularly brave kitty headbutted Harley in the ankle. Harley leaned down to scratch their neck, and the kitty let out a quiet meow. Harley sat down and watched the brave kitty demonstrate their ownership of the rooms furnishings, before laying claim to Harley's hand. Before long, a smaller cat started placing demands on Harley's other hand. On a nearby couch, two kitties started scuffling for no obvious reason.
Catwoman was gone for days, but her apartment was well provisioned. Not just food and water, but an independent air system, and a backup power generator. Harley complied with the cat's demands until they got bored of her. In these brief respites, she avoided every device that received information. There were a few classic books on the shelf for Harley to thumb through between feline requests. But, for the most part, this quiet life was filled with eating and sleeping. Harley had plenty of what one might call 'time to think', but, with the cats' help, she was learning not to.
One evening, about an hour before feeding time, hissing interrupted the normal chorus of yowls. A large athletic chonker was swiping at a lithe little kitty who was prowling across the most prized high backed chair. The small one, for their part, was swiping at the chonker's face, and hissing at them every time they tried to climb up. This prolonged scuffle was rippling outward. Most of the cats were yelling, and many of them were trying their own sneak attacks.
Harley got up, and walked to the chair at the center of this chaos. She grabbed the pair of fighting kitties by the scruffs of their necks, took the prized seat for herself, and place the cats firmly on her thighs. Harley tried to think of the right words to say, before a pinching sensation brought her gaze down to her captives. Each ignored the other as they focused with single-minded determination on clawing her legs. Their limited range of motion, and the thick cloth of Harley's pants, meant that they could scarcely draw blood, yet Harley certainly felt their protest. On a whim, Harley let the cats go. They scampered in opposite directions. Each found a private corner to feel their big mad in peace.
Harley let out a giggle, that soon became an uncontrollable belly laugh. Mirthful tears filled her eyes. She laughed until her abs ached, and her breath was full and slow. When she blinked her tears away, save for a few curious glances, the kitties had returned to their normal business. Harley fixed herself, and went to give the calmest cats a treat.