A/N: Perceptive readers will have noticed that this story has undergone a name change. I thought that Involuntary Man's Laughter was more appropriate. I may make another change and undo the crossover. There's more traffic in the regular section.
Predictably, the guard did a double take at the sight of my handsome features, but he recovered enough to tell us that Bozo had gone off into what they called 'Extreme Isolation'. When I said that Gracie and I wanted to go there, he said that would be no problem (which I doubted right off) but that he would have to call another unit. No surprise, the guard radio was down and he was helpless.
"Okay," I said, "there's this invention you might have heard of. It's uh, called a 'cell phone.'" I made air quotes as I said it. "You can use it to call other people. Even if Bozo not only has the guard radio sewed up but the land lines cut too," (which I doubted. Too much of that goes underground.). "I know I didn't see a cell, uh, tower on the island, so he can't have bollixed that up as well. You should still be able to call out. Have you thought of trying that?"
He had the grace to go red with shame, but whatever he might have wanted to say to me was lost to history because the monitor lit up right then, and there was Bozo, who had his jacket off and his shirt pulled aside to bandage the little boo-boo I gave him. Which was no treat for us, as he was just as white under his clothes, I noticed, and not only was he bony as a living X-ray, what muscle he did have was like loose rope hanging slack in his skin.
"Having a little trouble up there?" he asked, maliciously.
"As far as I'm concerned, trouble is something that only happens to other people," I replied.
"I can believe that," he scowled. "Spare me your juvenile attempts at wit. I have something your wife might be interested in seeing. Watch the screen."
The picture cut to an office, where Commissioner Gordon was standing with his back to the camera. As we watched, Boles the drunk came up on him from behind and laid him out with a nightstick applied to the back of the head, and then took another belt of liquor.
Cut back to Bozo. "You see that, honeycakes?" ('Honeycakes?' Gracie mouthed with disgust.) "Commissioner Gordon is on his way to Harley even as we speak. Now your husband might not care, but I caught some of your Angel of Mercy act, and I know that you do, so listen up. In half an hour, Gordon dies. Unless you rescue him first. Got that? I don't think you'll be able to get to him in time, but watching you suffer when you fail will be quite amusing. Harley's looking forward to offing the old man.—Maybe I'll film it and post it on the internet!" He laughed.
"You see, I don't want you catching up with me just yet, either of you. In case your hubby gets any funny ideas about leaving you on your own, let me just say that among my boys are some particularly violent sex offenders, and if they meet up with you—Whoo-hoo! Bye-bye for now!" The screen went black.
Gracie looked at me and opened her mouth to speak, but I got in first.
"I already know what your answer's going to be," I said. "I'm coming with you. Not that you need any help from me, but because I don't want to miss what's, uh, going to happen, one way or another."
"I have no idea what's going on here," the guard interrupted, "but there's no way I can get Extreme Isolation open. The best I can do is open the door you came in by."
"I'll, uh, settle for that. What do you say, Sassy Girl? What's the next move?"
"If I were Harley, I'd get Gordon out of the building and into another location," she answered. "But I have no idea about the layout of the island."
"It seems, uh, to me that I recall there being pamphlets and promotional materials lying about the lobby by the holding cells, back where Boles sapped Gordon. I bet they have maps of all the major stuff."
"Then let's go back there and get one," she decided.
"Fine with me." We left the room to head back to where we started.
Along the way, we ran into a couple of expendables. They had propped a doctor up against the wall and put a bucket over his head with a Happy Face spray painted on it and were now bragging about how they had killed the one guard. Both had sections of pipe, which can make a nasty weapon.
"Not so big and strong now, are you?" one jeered.
The other said, "Didja see how those teeth flew when I hit him in the mouth? Hell, I bet his whole family felt that! Lemme go for the rest of them!" He drew back his arm to hit the dead guy again when I stepped up.
"You, uh, oughtta treat corpses with a little more respect," I said, startling them.
"Huh? Why?" asked one.
"Because you're going to be one," I told them, and went for a twofer. Sideways into the gut, up about a foot into the pulmonary sacs, and finishing up with jabs into the auditory canals. "Hee-hee! Black red stomach blood, bright red lung blood, and pink foam from the ears all mean a long dirt nap, and I got three for three on both of them." I told Grace, while the stricken goons looked at their own bodily fluids with rapidly unfocusing eyes.
"I think I could have gone through eternity without knowing that," she said. "May I make a suggestion for next time, though?"
"You can get suggestive any time you like," I said, giving her the ol' twinkle.
"Hentai! No, what I had in mind was this: Next time, and as we run into more of these goons in the future, what if you just maim some of them, but leave them alive so the word can get around that you don't play nice like Batman? Otherwise it might take them a while to figure it out."
"--Interesting point. I'll, uh, think about it." Passing through the connecting loop, we found the lobby, where there were not only maps of Arkham Island but three sets of chattering teeth and a phone ringing off the hook.
"Is anybody there?" a woman's voice came from the speaker. "I'm trying to reach Steve. Is he there?"
"Hold on one moment. I'll see if I can find him," Bozo said in falsetto.
"Oh, thank you! Thank you so much," she said with relief.
"I'm sorry. I looked everywhere, but I can only find his head! I'll get back to you once I find the rest of him!" he roared with laughter, and the connection cut off there. I was right; there were still telecommunications on the island.
"Charming," Gracie said in disgust. "Okay, this is Intensive Treatment, in what they call Arkham North. Arkham East has the Botanical Gardens and Arkham Mansion, Arkham West has the Medical Building, the Penitentiary, and the Visitor's Center. Do you suppose the Gift Shop is in the Visitor's Center, or in the Mansion?"
"The what?" I asked.
"Every time I ever visited anywhere this fancy, they had a gift shop. What does a mental institution need a botanical garden for, anyway?"
"Beats me. Guess it came with the place. Let's, uhm, focus on getting up to the surface first. How do we do that?" I looked at the map. "Interior map of Intensive Treatment, good. We're nine levels underground, and the only ways out are--can this be right? Just the main entrance where we came in? That's not so good."
"There's an exit to the sewers on the next level down." Grace studied the map, "but I can't tell where it leads out. I know there are fire stairs, but--there are a lot of stairs."
"Well, I'm not climbing nine flights of stairs," I said, emphatically. "And I can't drift off anywhere I want to, like, uh, you can, so that leaves the elevators, which should be through those doors there."
I was right; the elevators were right through there, although neither car was on our level. A guard was punching call buttons and grousing. "Stupid, unreliable--What the hell is wrong with--?"
Smack! Harley Quinn touched down on the counterweight of the left hand elevator like an olympic gymnast, which for all I knew she was. "Uh-uh-uh! Mistah J. said not to make it easy for--Hey! What are you ripping off his style for? Never mind, if I talk to you you'll make me lose my place again. Mistah J. said not to make it easy for you, so--." She pushed a key on a remote in her hand, and Whoomp! blew an explosive charge on the cable. As she flew up in the air, hanging on the end of it and cackling like a witch, the elevator car came down and smashed like an egg.
The guard got knocked out by flying debris, but I leapt out of the way. When my ears stopped ringing, I got up and looked at the mess. "Well, isn't that a bitch?" I asked rhetorically.
"The woman and the predicament both," Gracie agreed.
"I repeat: I am not climbing nine flights of stairs. Ya know, if it were Batman in the situation, he'd have some handy-dandy little gadget to deal with this problem, but I'm not him. However, there is another elevator, and if I can't hotwire it you can shove an onion up my ass and call me a turkey. Only thing is, I need you to go on up and have a look for any more explosives first."
"All right."
"That's my girl." I peeled open the control panel and yanked wires loose while listening for her "All Clear." When I had it, I crossed the correct ones and waited for my ride.