"Ivy, we need to go to SkulMart and pick up some more chew toys for my babies," Harley said as Bud gnawed on the side of her foot. It wasn't quite a bite, just enough pressure to get the message across. Today the pedicure would be ruined, tomorrow bones would be breaking. Probably.

"SkulMart, really?" Ivy stood up from where she had been tending one of her new arrivals, a fern with herbicide damage. "Does it have to be SkulMart?" Her eyes narrowed and her voice dripped with disdain. (But unlike Mr J, the disdain wasn't directed at Harley.)

Ivy would give in eventually though. She always did when Harley needed to go somewhere. "Yeah, Bud needs a new chew toy." She wriggled her toes out of Bud's mouth. "And I need new nail polish. Oh, and they have plant supplies usually too. You could stock up."

"Pass," Ivy said, flopping into an armchair (a holey armchair thanks to Lou). "I already make my own compost, gather all my own seeds, and soil is free."

"Aww, but Ivvvyyy," Harley whined, pouted, and allowed a single tear to fall from her eyes. "I really need to go, and you know how I hate shopping alone."

Ivy sighed the long-suffering sigh of the unfortunate martyr, doomed to journey into a capitalistic hellhole once again. "Fine. We can go. But only to get whatever you need for Bud and Lou. And your nail polish."

"Yay!" Harley leaped up and hugged Ivy enthusiastically. Then she ran to get Bud and Lou's leashes. "It'll be fun, you'll see."

"I can hardly wait."

…

The one thing Harley loved about Ivy, was that even if Ivy was having a terrible time, lips pursed into a frown, she never took it out on Harley like Mr J would. Ivy scowled at the advertisements and oversized carts as they entered the store, but helped Harley secure Bud and Lou's leashes to the front of the cart. Ivy frowned at the 375 different shades of nail polish, but still helped Harley pick out the best one.

And Ivy even let out a small laugh when Harley had Bud and Lou pull the cart up and down the aisles. The other customers shrieked and jumped out of the way, but people were just too high-strung these days.

"You need to relax," Harley shouted after a few retreating customers. "There's tea for relaxing on aisle 57"

"Harley, do you have everything you need?" Ivy asked, looking slightly less amused. "This place is a menace."

Harley glanced through her cart. Nail polish, extra jumbo sized bone, extra jumbo sized rope toy thingy, extra jumbo sized box of liver and bacon flavored dog treats. "Uh, I just need some snacks. For us. Ooh, look, we're even in the right aisle. What a coincidence." Harley reached to pull a bag of chocolate chip cookies from the shelf.

Ivy rolled her eyes as if she knew it was not a coincidence, then paused to glare at another offending product, an extra jumbo bonus size box of double chocolate brownie bars. "God, millions of people go hungry, but SkulMart encourages everyone else to gluttonously consume. I hate SkulMart."

"Why don't we buy the double chocolate brownie bars for the hungry people then?" Harley asked. She knew it was a dumb idea as soon as she said it. Mr. J would have told her it was a dumb idea. If it was that easy, someone else would have done it by now. Ivy had told her enough times about things like sustainability, climate change, necro-economics, and food waste, that Harley should know better. Those things were so depressing though, that Harley didn't like to think about them.

But Ivy didn't call her dumb, she just smiled like Harley had really said something special. "Aww, that's sweet. It's more complicated than that, but-"

"But, we could give them to some of the hungry people a few blocks away," Harley finished.

"Yeah, we could," Ivy agreed. "Now let's get out of here. I've had about all I can take of this place."

Harley threw a few boxes of double chocolate brownie bars in the cart, then jumped onto the handles and squealed all the way as Bud and Lou pulled the cart to the checkout line.

…

The lines in SkulMart were always long, so long that the two bimbos in front of them in line 16 didn't even budge when Bud and Lou arrived pulling the cart. Harley sighed loudly, then busied herself looking at the magazines and candy that bordered the checkout line. "Hey look Ivy, they found Batman's secret half-bat love son in a cave in Belize."

Ivy rolled her eyes, and Harley found another magazine that featured Vicki Vale's latest article on Bruce Wayne's scandalous life. He apparently had been seen getting the mail one morning in spotted pajama pants, and nothing else, and tripped on the steps on his way back into the house. There were multiple photographs to document the entire escapade.

Harley glanced up at Ivy, only to notice that she was glaring murderously at the two bimbos in front of them.

"You know, when I was a kid, I never understood why old people wanted to cut down trees," said Bimbo number 1. "But now that I have my own house, I realize how messy they are. Sticks and leaves everywhere. And they make all these cracks in the concrete too."

Bimbo number 2 nodded sagely. "It's like, a coming of age or something. You know what I found out the other day? I finally found a weedkiller that makes my lawn look super nice, but then my landscaping guy told me that was the reason my tree grew all these funny misshapen leaves."

"Wow, really?" asked Bimbo number 1. "I thought weedkiller only killed weeds."

"Yeah, I had to totally cut down the tree 'cause its leaves are all ugly now, so that was thirty dollars wasted-"

Ivy looked about to spontaneously combust. As much as Harley didn't really care about Bimbo number 1 or 2, she didn't want Ivy to get sent back to Arkham over a couple of bimbos who couldn't figure out how to manage their lawns.

"Hey Ivy," Harley said, trying to draw attention away from the bimbos who were not worth Poison Ivy's wrath. "I saw a sign in the gardening section that plants are 90% off. Do you want to get some?"

Ivy looked even more apoplectic for a moment. "They shouldn't sell living things. That's just fundamentally wrong. Life shouldn't have a monetary value attached."

"Yeah, well, we could rescue the living things," Harley suggested.

"Yes, we will."

…

It was a disappointment, really, when Harley saw that all the discounted plants were droopy and sad, with wilted yellowed leaves and crunchy brown leaves.

Ivy did not look surprised, she looked vindicated. "You see? This is why they shouldn't sell living things. It costs more to keep the plants alive than it does to discount the price or throw them out." She started stacking trays of the plants into the cart.

"Living is kind of a stretch," Harley remarked as she prodded a brown wrinkled leaf. "Do you really want to buy these?"

Ivy straightened up to her full height. "We are not going to buy anything. We are going to liberate these poor plants from their cruel oppressors."

"And what about the other stuff?"

"We are going to liberate the other stuff as well, to discourage SkulMart from treating plants so poorly. And because I can't handle waiting in that damn line any longer," Ivy added.

Harley cheered. "C'mon Bud and Lou, take us home, babies." Even Ivy hopped onto the back of the cart as the hyenas ran galloping out of the store. Harley waved to Bimbos number 1 and 2 on the way out. The bimbos weren't worth going to Arkham, but skipping the line at SkulMart almost was.

…

It was late when a frowning shadow dropped from the edge of Ivy's greenhouse, and loomed behind them in the garden, where Ivy was tending the poor dying plants - clipping dead leaves and spreading matted roots, and Harley was eating chocolate chip cookies.

"Poison Ivy," rasped Batman. "I heard you…forgot to pay when you left SkulMart this evening."

Ivy stood up, crossed her arms, and glared back at Batman. "Those plants I took were dying. I saved them. They were only hours from being thrown out, and you know it. It'd be wrong to reward a store financially for mistreating living things."

Batman made a low growling sound. "You left with more than just plants. You have to go back and pay, or it's shoplifting."

"Hey, Bats," Harley said through a mouthful of cookie. "Do you want a cookie? We dropped the rest of the food off at the homeless shelter, but we kept a few cookies, if you want one. We were gonna pay for the stuff, honest, but the lines were so long, and then Ivy got mad about the plants, and I thought it'd be better to get out of there right away than let her attack the manager with her vines. And Ivy said we're gonna donate the extra vegetables too, if the plants survive."

Batman just grumbled and stalked away with a "Fine. I'll overlook it this once, but next time you ladies have to wait in line and pay for your things."

"Aww," Harley cooed when Batman was out of earshot. "I think he liked that we did that."

"Really?" Ivy asked dubiously.

"Yeah, he would have totally dragged Mista J to Arkham for shoplifting. Batsy must be going soft. I wonder why?"

Ivy shrugged and turned back to her plants.

"Maybe he really does have a half-bat love child in Belize, or maybe he didn't like SkulMart very much either," Harley pondered. Either way, it was definitely a lot more fun to end the day with her freshly painted toes digging into soft dirt, while Bud and Lou fought over their jumbo sized bone, and Ivy turned and gave her a warm smile.