Harley and Ivy: Chapter 3
Many hours later, the inmates finally got their meals…In time for lunch. Not breakfast.
The disruption in routines made the guards cranky. Administration not being able to figure out who the Joker's accomplice was or exactly how the people involved managed to contaminate the food in the attempted poisoning made them irritable. Having to wait extra long for their food made the inmates unhappy.
And they all took their feelings of hostility and irritation out on poor Harley Quinn. Logically the person they should have blamed for the delays and problems was the Joker but…It wasn't healthy to get on the Joker's bad side. As Harley herself was now finding out.
Harley stumbled along beside Ivy as the inmates were ushered into the 'recreation room' of Arkham. The guards glared at them and the inmates pushed and shoved Harley. Those that Ivy's glare didn't frighten away.
Harley was doing her best not to shed tears as the lunatics in Arkham turned on her. Loyalty wasn't high on anyone's list in Arkham but she knew most of her fellow inmates quite well and their turning their backs on her had deeply wounded her.
"Harley you have to snap out of it!" Ivy said to her friend as she felt Harley sidle closer to her side to avoid a passing loonie.
"But Ivy even the doll guy spat at me!" Harley whined.
Ivy shrugged. "I still say he brought it upon himself. If the ventriloquist hadn't had that Scarface puppet of his say, "I saw him laughing earlier after taking a bite of his scrambled eggs." They wouldn't have pumped his stomach."
Harley gave a half shrug of her own. "Maybe, but if I hadn't antagonized Mr. J. none of us would be having these problems."
Ivy pulled to a halt and grabbed Harley by the arm. She barely managed to resist the urge to shake the smaller blond woman. "None of this is your fault Harley! It was only a matter of time before that maniac clown decided he was tired of you and tried to kill you!"
Harley didn't reply but Ivy noticed her shoulders slumped even more. Ivy steered Harley over to a couch in front of the television and placed her against the arm of the couch and took the spot right beside her to insure no one else could.
"Watch the cartoons Harley and relax. You are too tense." Ivy said and mentally tried to tune out the awful cartoons the guards had turned on the set.
Ivy could feel as Harley slowly began to relax next to her as she became enthralled with the mindless cartoons.
Suddenly they both heard the sound of someone laughing a high pitch annoying laugh. One they both knew and dreaded all too well.
Harley's head slowly turned till she was looking over her shoulder behind her. Ivy too turned to look.
A few feet away at a card table sat the Joker. His eyes glittering evilly and his always maniacal smile firmly in place. Noticing that he had Harley's attention he held up a card with its back towards Harley. Slowly rotating the card he showed that it was a Joker.
"Damn! He's not supposed to be in here at the same time as you are." Ivy hissed in alarm.
Grabbing her arm Ivy hauled Harley to her feet and made a beeline towards a glass walled enclosure off to one side of the Recreation Room. A guard was sitting at a desk inside the protective box. He had something spread out over the surface of the desk and was studying the objects intently. As Ivy made her way over she thought they looked like photographs but the guard becoming aware that she was nearing him swept them up and stuffed them into a pocket of his jacket.
"What's the problem Ivy?" He asked.
Ivy frowned. The guard was one know to the inmates as Pervert. Whenever Harley or Ivy came back from the showers, he was always lurking around. Ivy firmly hated him.
Pointing behind her she said to him. "The Joker is never to be in the same room as Harley! All the guards were supposed to be told this!"
The guard made a large pretense of standing up at his desk and walking over to the glass wall that separated them and peering behind her. "I don't see Mr. Napier anywhere in this room."
Ivy spun on her heels and looked over at the poker table. There were a few of the inmates playing cards but the Joker was no where to be seen now.
"He was there." Ivy turned back but saw that the guard had dismissed her claim and was sitting at his desk once again.
"Come on Harley. We're going to find a guard who will listen to us." She then started pulling Harley away from the guard booth.
That was until she ran into a tall, very hard wall. A wall with leather like skin in a gray Arkham inmate uniform.
"You ran into me!" Killer Croc growled.
"You are standing in the way." Ivy growled back.
Without warning Killer Croc lashed out with a back hand and knocked Ivy back into the guard booth she had just walked away from. In the flight from Croc's blow she lost her grip on Harley's arm. Sliding down the glass box, Ivy glanced backwards and saw that the guard had his head ducked down and was staring at the surface of his desk as if he was desperately ignoring the fight going on mere feet away from him. Knowing there was no help from Pervert coming Ivy turned back to Croc as he raced towards her with his arms wide open.
Killer Croc wasn't named for his animal counter part due only to his looks. He also shared his namesake's strength and disposition. There had been many a Gotham police officer that had their backs broken by making the mistake of letting Croc getting his hands on them.
Ivy wasn't going to let her be another of his victims. Bracing her back against the glass wall behind her, Ivy lashed out with both legs kicking croc in his stomach.
Croc more in surprise than damage stepped back a few feet from the impact. With a mighty bellow he then started running at full speed towards Ivy planning to crush her between his bulk and the glass wall behind her.
Croc was strong, he was mean, he liked to hurt people but one thing Croc wasn't and that was overly smart.
Ivy waited till Croc was almost on top of her and then with a forward flip she leapt over him and allowed Croc to crash head on into the reinforced glass wall. Croc smacking into the wall bounced off of it, only to be met with Ivy's round house kick to the back of his head knocking him back into the glass wall yet again. With a groan, Croc slid face first down the wall and was out of the fight.
"That will teach you to underestimate a woman's power." Ivy gloated. "Isn't that right Harley?" She asked turning to look at the group of inmates that had gathered to watch the brief fight.
Ivy felt a tendril of ice crawl up her spine when she didn't spot Harley among the crowd.
"Harley! Where are you?" She yelled. Most of the inmates shrugged their shoulders and started moving off. Ivy still didn't spot Harley anywhere.
Ivy was just about to start frantically searching when she spotted the Mad Hatter looking at her. Staring at him she noticed he had one of his hands resting on his stomach and his index finger of that hand seemed to be pointing to something in the distance.
Turning to look where his finger was pointing she noticed it was toward a security staircase that lead to a raised walkway that ran the length of the recreation room. The catwalk was used by the guards to maintain order over the room in case of riots. The staircase was completely enclosed in fencing and the entrance to it was locked behind a iron door. With a shock Ivy realized that Mad Hatter wasn't pointing at the staircase itself but at the shadowy darkened area under the staircase.
Considering that Arkham was a mental asylum for the criminally insane, the architect for the building had to have been part looney himself because there were many such shadowy nooks and crannies all over the building. Places were things could be done without the guards seeing or knowing.
"Harley!" Ivy screamed and ran over to staircase. Ducking down she pressed herself into the area under the stairs. At first she didn't see anything and thought to herself that maybe she had been mistaken about the Mad Hatter trying to signal something to her. But then she heard a mewing type of noise way up under the foot of the stairs. Getting on her hands and knees Ivy pressed forward and finally felt her fingers brush against some material. Grabbing a good handful of the material Ivy hauled her find out.
It was Harley. She was gagged and around her throat was some brightly colored party streamers. As Ivy grabbed a handful of the streamers to try and tear them away from Harley's throat she made a discovery. The streamers might have appeared to be paper streamers but as they cut into Ivy's hand she realized they were actually brightly painted barbwire.
Gritting her teeth to steel against the pain Ivy pulled and slowly managed to unwind the tightly wound barbwire from Harley's throat. As she finished she saw that Harley had passed out and in the gloom of the under stairs Ivy could see that Harley's skin color was slightly bluish.
"Don't you dare die on me Harley!" Ivy pleaded and began to rhythmically press on Harley's chest. Stopping Ivy lowered her head to Harley's chest to see if she could hear a heartbeat. Detecting none, Ivy then bent over and began mouth to mouth trying to get Harley to breathe.
Ivy could feel tears begin to form in her eyes as she began to despair of Harley waking up, when with a gasp Harley began to breathe on her own.
Ivy grabbed Harley up in a hug and held on to her. Ivy could hear Harley hoarsely whisper into her ear. "I'm scared Pamela. I'm scared bad."
"Shh. Shh. It will be all right I promise. That clown won't hurt you ever again, I promise." Ivy whispered back.
Easing her way back out from under the steps Ivy then reached down and helped Harley come out. As they turned around they found themselves surrounded by guards. Behind the guards could be seen the other inmates of Arkham leering at them.
"For what…Purposes did you take young Ms. Quinzelle under the stairs?" The guard known as Pervert asked her. He leered implying he knew exactly why Harley and Ivy were under the stairs.
"You bastard." Ivy growled. "The Joker had taken Harley under the stairs to kill her. I found her and saved her life! Look at her neck and you can see the marks the barbwire made! Look at these damn streamers!" Ivy said hauling out a bunch of the wire and threw it at Pervert.
The guard side stepped the thrown barbwire. "And how do we know that you didn't use the wire to try and restrain Ms. Quinzelle when she resisted your charms?"
Harley struggled to speak. "Joker…Did this." She painfully forced out.
Pervert leaned in. "Sorry didn't quite catch that." He said with a slight grin. "Maybe I should take Ms. Quinzelle and 'examine' her for marks." He added with a barely contained leer. Some of the more 'scummier' inmates behind him started snickering.
Ivy could feel her blood starting to boil and stepped in front of Harley to shield her from Pervert's view. Her hands curling into fists she prepared to beat the guard to a pulp or at least go down trying.
"No…Ivy…You'll…Get…The…Hole." Harley managed to rasp out referring to the solitary confinement cell.
"What the hell is going on now?" A voice called out. The guards and crowd of onlookers parted to allow a man in a white lab coat to walk up. With him was another guard. Ivy quickly realized it was Dr. Krantz again with Whistler following along behind him. After Whistler's unfortunate brush with Joker Venom earlier in the morning he had been reassigned by Dr. Krantz to help him.
Whistler not wanting to endanger his job and fully recovering from the poison attack had insisted on not taking medical leave but staying at his post.
Arkham was a scary place to work but employment opportunities in Gotham weren't the greatest at the best of times.
You either worked for Arkham, one of Wayne Enterprises many businesses or for Gotham city government.
And Dr. Krantz was naturally a little suspicious of all the guards since the administration hadn't found out how or who was helping the Joker this time. Who better to trust than the man who had almost been poisoned by the Joker? After all what better proof could you have that the man wasn't in on the attack?
"We just caught Miss Isley here coming out from under the stairs with Miss Quinzelle here. She says that Miss Quinzelle was attacked by The Joker and she came to her rescue but I have my doubts. We all know that The Joker is not to be in the same area as Miss Quinzelle." The Pervert said and then made a show of looking around. "And I don't see him in this area do you?"
"And this is why you are allowing the other residents of this institute to gather around to gawk? And might I add, at your unprotected back?" Dr. Krantz replied calmly but tersely.
Ivy had to fight the urge to laugh on how fast the Pervert turned pure white and whirled around to face the group of homicidal maniacs that was just part and parcel of everyday life at Sunny Arkham. "All right you lot. Nothing to see here. Move on!" He started bellowing and motioning for the other on looking guards to help him clear the area.
"Oh and Kenny?" Dr. Krantz called out.
"Yes doctor?" The Pervert said turning around to face him, and once again leaving his back open to attack by the few remaining inmates standing just behind him.
"Be a good boy and send a guard to see if The Joker is still in his cell, won't you?" Dr. Krantz replied as he made a move to go to see to Harley's injuries.
"Yes Doctor." The Pervert replied in a sullen voice.
The Mad Hatter who had been standing behind him turned to look at The Riddler standing nearby. "His real first name is Kenny?" He asked in disbelief and then started to giggle.
The Riddler tried to look aloof for a few moments before cracking up himself. "Let's hope no one tries to kill Kenny."
The Mad Hatter couldn't resist adding in a mock high pitch voice. "You bastards!"
As the knowledge of the Pervert's real name floated through the room, along with the subsequent South Park jokes, people began snickering and laughing. Suddenly the most piercingly familiar laughter of The Joker was heard.
Harley, whom the good doctor Krantz was just about to examine her throat for injuries, heard the laugh she flinched and tried to curl up into a ball.
"Johnny give me a hand." Dr. Krantz ordered and rushed to try and pick Harley up. He came to a stop however as Ivy planted herself directly in his path.
"No. No man is going to lay a hand on Harley! I don't trust any of you!" Ivy practically hissed at the doctor.
Dr. Krantz was renowned for his calm and cool demeanor and it didn't fail him now. "Now Miss Isley…" He began but stopped as Ivy frowned. "Okay. Have it your way. Poison Ivy. Harley is showing signs of shock and looks like she is almost half out of her mind in fear. It is obvious even from a distance that Harley has been injured in the throat, perhaps even permanently. I won't know till I get her somewhere and examine her throat. You heard that laughter as well as I did. Even though we can't see him, it is fairly obvious that The Joker is not in his cell but is running loose. Do you just want to stand there with your arms folded preventing us from taking her someplace safe?"
Ivy continued to glare at the doctor a moment longer but then nodded her head. "We can take her to infirmary but I carry her and only you two accompany us." Ivy told him in a no nonsense terms.
Now the doctor knew fully well he could have called a squad of guards down. Batter down even the notorious Poison Ivy and have her thrown in a straight jacket for daring to give him orders but first and foremost he was a doctor. Such treatment would not help Isley's mental condition and Quinzelle would definitely also suffer undue mental strain from it as well. Not to mention the fact the doctor didn't want to acerbate the situation in the recreation room more than he had to. Also worrying to the good doctor was the fact that he still couldn't find where the Joker's laughter had come from.
So, he nodded his head and made a motion for Ivy to go ahead and pick up Harley.