Well, the party has come to a screeching halt. Literally.
Angelface has gotten a hold of weaponry by now, mainly a handgun given to her by one of Scarecrow's thugs that have walked in with the Joker's thugs, and now she's just watching what happens. Scarecrow is nowhere to be seen. She's not afraid of the purple-coated man now casually strolling through the crowd, though the ironic similarity to her very first capture does not evade her, is only aware of the danger he represents, the damage he's capable of. Equally dangerous is the femme fatale trotting by his side, Harley Quinn, tommygun in hand and ready to be fired, unflinchingly, at a moment's notice. While the deadly duo make their tour of the room, not shy to indulge themselves in the buffet a small bit (which is understandable, as Angelface knows the lifestyle is sparse in the way of good, filling meals), terrorizing the guests, Angelface herself remains still, unflinching, unmoving, impassive to the very moment he spots her in her out-of-place girlish white dress stained with red blooms of bloodstains.
"Angel," He chimes, and she's mildly surprised that he remembered her villain name, "The city's been no good to you." There really isn't much interest for her in his stare, as she's mainly just the current thing to delay his attention with. Scarecrow is no doubt frustrated in the leisurely manner Joker works in, but will undoubtedly never say a word about it to him. Harley's glare is unmistakable, but she won't say a word either about her jealousy. Angelface just twitches her head, slightly, blond hair sliding down and over her shoulder, out of her eyes, and her stare remains as impassive as ever.
"It's no good to anyone," She states, in a dread monotone. "Not me, or you, or any of these poor bastards."
Joker stares only a second more before letting out a bark of a laugh, turning on his heel and sliding into another stalk towards his next target in the crowd, another person to harangue. "I know that already."
Harley gives her a glance, sizing her up, before her eyes roll and lock onto some movement nearby. She turns, narrows her eyes, and lets off a blast from her gun. A guest falls, phone in hand, to drown in a puddle of his own blood while his children scream and so does his wife. "No phones!" Quinn shrieks, in her distinctive accent that sounds vaguely like Brooklyn or Chicago. "Anybody pulls out a phone, and somebody's gettin' hurt. Mr. J's orders." She looks back at Joker, adoration in her eyes, and he smiles and wags his finger over his shoulder, in her line of view.
"Right, right. We don't want the PD to ruin our fun, do we?" He sweeps his arms out wide, turning to survey the deadly silent crowd. When nobody answers, out of unease whether the question is rhetorical or not, he clicks his tongue, seizes a random guest, and jerks the young woman drenched in jewels (she looks straight out of a Calvin Klein advertisement, as everyone else in the party does) face-to-face. "How about you?" He asks her, smiling, and she turns a color paler than white. "You're having fun, aren't you?" When she doesn't answer, he gives her a light slap on the cheek, and a shake by the jaw. "Well, aren't you??"
"Yes," She croaks, and Joker roughly throws her back into the crowd without a care. She trips on her heels and falls, smacks her head into a buffet table, and collapses to the floor, unconscious, bleeding from the head. As her beau panics, cries her name while kneeling down to tend to her, Joker shrugs slightly, frowns only a little, and says, "Oops." Soon after, he's forgotten all about the wounded woman and is busy narrating to the entire group of guests, as theatrically as usual. Angelface is alone with her 9 millimeter, listening to him.
"Now, we're going to play a game," He starts, enthusiastically enough, and Angelface rolls her eyes. How did she guess that it was going to be a macabre game of horrors? "This game is called, 'Anybody pulls out a phone and they get a bullet in the head". We're already playing, aren't we Harley?" He doesn't look at his female accomplice, and as she opens her mouth with a smile to answer him, he cuts her off without interest or care in what she would say. He already knows what she'd say. "That's right! Everyone here is playing "Anybody pulls out a phone and they get a bullet in the head" with Harley. So nobody pull out a phone or they lose the game."
Here, Harley fires off a shot into the ceiling for dramatic effect, almost as if it were planned that way. The captives jump. Someone is crying, somewhere. Joker turns again, with his heavy coat swirling in an arc after him, and begins pacing.
"Second game, on this magical Halloween night," The main colors of the hall are orange and black, and he snatches a balloon from the air as he walks by it, "Is going to be a luck-based game. Here are the rules." He shoves the balloon in a random person's hands, and they freeze in terror, though hold the balloon as wordlessly instructed. "One, I'm going to ask a question to anybody I feel like. If they get it wrong, then I pop a balloon." He takes the young woman's hands on either side of the balloon, leaning his chin over her shoulder with his arms around hers on either side, and she looks like she's about to vomit from terror. Angelface dimly notes that she could have easily been in a similar situation at any point in time during her own very first capture; there's no doubt in Angelface's mind of what this woman's fate is going to be. She can tell from the look in the Joker's eye; a sharp glint, a glitter of homicidal glee.
"Two," Joker's hands cover the woman's, and begin to push. "The balloons have a chance of either being normal, or…" He slams her hands together, and her long, manicured nails pop the balloon. She jumps, he leans back, but after a moment, they both realize that the balloon is filled with nothing but breathing air. Joker huffs, mutters under his breath, grabs another random balloon, holds it in the woman's face and pops it himself. This time, thick white smog pours out of it, and the woman goes hacking and coughing. The clownish ghoul steps back as her coughs, urgent and breathless, turn into hysterical laughter. The guests, and Angelface herself, are confused by this turn of events, but only for a moment; the woman jerks her head up and though her face is twisted in a grin, it's agonized and she claws at her throat wildly. The laughter is choked, loud and forced HA HA HAs, and she falls to her knees a moment later, laughing and suffocating at the same time. She is apparently alone; no family members or husbands or dates come to her side, as she curls up in the fetal position on the floor, choking, wheezing, laughing. Eventually, she goes completely rigid, digs her French tips into her throat, and claws it out, before stiffening and dying. Someone screams. Harley shoots into the crowd again, twice, and there are two heavy sounds of bodies colliding like bags of sand with the polished floors.
"A special laughing gas," Joker continues, stepping over the woman's body as if it were some everyday obstacle, and to him, it probably is. "Whose creation can be owed to the good Dr. Crane." After a moment, he thinks, and then adds, "Oh, sorry. Scarecrow."
There is a sound that echoes from far away in the large, empty hall, and it sounds like annoyed tsking. Angelface glances around to try and find him, but Crane is invisible. Her attention diverts to Joker once again, as he continues narrating his game.
"And those are the rules! So, who wants to go first?" He glances around, expectantly, but no hands come up, nobody steps forward. Unperturbed, he adds in, "No takers? Oh come on, you killjoys; it's not like we're playing Russian roulette or anything!" Still, no hands come up, and he has to seize a random man by the collar and drag him out, grab a balloon, and shove it in his hands. "Alright, lucky contestant number one! Let's see…what's my favorite color?"
The man glances back at the expectant Joker, looks him over, looks back to the horridly inconspicuous deathtrap in his hands. "Erm…purple?"
His hands are clapped together, the balloon pops, and the acrid smoke poisons and claims the second victim for the night. Horror is etched into every face, barring four. Another random contestant is chosen, an older gentleman.
"How many people do you think I've killed?" Joker questions, and the old man steels himself, looks from the orange balloon in his hands, and says, "I don't know." Joker pulls the balloon out of his hands, lets it float up to the ceiling, and after clapping his hands and being tossed a shotgun, shoots it as it floats to the ceiling. The balloon pops; no smoke. "Right! None of you do, and none of you will!" Joker smiles, grotesquely, at the man, and then lays the barrel of the shotgun against his shoulder like a marching soldier while he peruses the other guests. Another is snatched, at random, and given a balloon to hold.
"You look suitably grave and joyless. How about a round?" He asks the young man, who was standing with and had abandoned the woman that died earlier on from the Joker's gas, and Angelface can't believe her eyes.
"James?" She asks, aloud, and Joker notices this, stares at the young man, and by God, he laughs. Laughs and laughs and laughs, guiding James Thompson over towards Angelface, which is obviously not what he wants to do. Joker shoves him anyway, until he's standing in front of Angelface.
"Now I know why you looked familiar!" Joker laughs, clapping James on the back. "You and Michelle here have a lot of catching-up to do, don't you?" James glances at Angelface in that moment, confusion on his face, and when he realizes what's happened, he can't stare at her and looks at the floor, at the wall, anywhere but at her. She sees the disgust, and in some way, it hurts her. Not very much, of course; James Thompson is a weasel no matter how one looks at it. But still, it kinda stings. A moment of silence passes before Joker says, still giggling, "Well, that was lively! Anywho, back to business." James is shoved away from the crowd and into the center of the room, the ring the guests have unconsciously made for the Joker to move about in, and then the mad clown himself is circling James, like a hyena ready to pounce on wounded prey and crack its skull open between its jaws. "Okay," Joker says, darting like a mako shark into James' line of view, "I'm thinking of a number between one and 'fuck you'. What is it?"
James stares for a moment, in utter despair, before answering, "Fuck you?"
His hands are clapped together and white smoke pours out of the balloons, and though he doesn't start laughing, he starts screaming in terror. The smoke is thinner, almost more powdery than the laughing smoke, and James curls into a ball, screaming. Undoubtedly a balloon filled only with fear toxin instead of the deadly Joker derivative. Joker glares down at him, tapping the side of his own head with the shotgun without care. "Smartass." He gives the young man a kick in the ribs and then walks off, just in time to see a shadowy figure zip down from the support beams and envelop Harley, dragging her up, screaming, firing her gun, into the shadows of the high ceiling. A second or two after seeing her disappear, the legendary vigilante drops in himself, leaving Harley hanging upside down from one of the beams, tied by her foot, screaming insults at him, and pleading with Joker. He ignores her completely, all his attention focused on his favorite nemesis.
"Batsy, you're late!" Joker chimes, and when Angelface sees Batman approach, stalking, dangerous, Joker produces a detonator and the vigilante hesitates. "Not too late to play the game, though. Here are your rules. Twitch a muscle, bat an eye," He says the awful pun with a bit of a laugh in his voice, and Angelface rolls her eyes, "And gas bombs planted all around Gotham go off. Gordon already knows, and that's why we don't have about a half million police officers trying to play our game too." Angelface stares between Joker and Batman, her head turning from left to right, as if she were watching a tennis match. She waits for one to make a move; Joker is waiting for Batman's move, and the crowd is anxious as well. After a moment, Batman does the unexpected; he grabs a plate, flings it like a throwing saucer at Joker, whose attention is distracted long enough for Batman to duck in and tackle him. Joker throws his weight, and throws Batman off of him and into a buffet table while rolling onto his feet, laughing.
"How'd you call my bluff? Do I have a tell, or do you just know me that well?" He asks, laughing, as Batman tosses something at him again. A very familiar burlap mask. "Oh, you caught Jonny-Jonny. Disappointing, but I can't say I didn't expect it." Batman lashes out, and he and Joker tangle while the guests try not to get in the crossfire, and Angelface is left to watch in awe. The fight is brutal, vicious; Joker fights dirty, and Batman has serious skills. Without thinking, she grabs a knife off of a table and aims, throwing it at Batman's back. It bounces off harmlessly, but distracts him enough for Joker to lash out with a particularly brutal slash where he knows from experience that the armor plates in the suit separate, and kicks Batman away from him. The two of them know that at any moment they could accidentally pop one of the many, many balloons hanging over their heads or bloated and heavy at their feet, and though Batman seems to be taking care to try and avoid them, Joker sure isn't. Batman might even be trying to guide Joker out of the way of the balloons, for the safety of the guests, but it's compromising his fighting power and Joker's getting an edge.
"Crane detonated the bombs," Batman growls, in the particular tone that suggests he gargles with razorblades and nails, "And Gordon found them out. Marzipan and kittens." He tries to distract Joker with conversation, and Joker laughs, diving forward for another ragged slash at the exposed portion of his combatant's face. It misses by millimeters.
"You know me," He pants, though not unexcitedly, "I just love bringing Gotham things to smile about!" A moment later, he does land a slash on Batman's lower face and while he's distracted, kicks him into an expensive-looking glass table. He then turns and runs, dodging through the main party room and into adjoining rooms of Wayne Manor, stopping to briefly aim, closing one eye as he does, at Harley in her rope bindings. She screams at him in terror, and he fires his shotgun at her. It misses by inches, and the rope tied to one of the rafter beams is severed. Harley plummets to the ground, landing on a buffet table. She, drenched in punch and smeared with some sort of confectionary, what might be cake of some sort, whines and then moves to her feet, staggering after Joker as he runs into the next room while telling her to hurry up or he'll leave her to Batman. Angelface, for lack of anywhere else to go, sees Batman rouse and stare at the only occupant left in the room; her. He lunges, she turns and runs, barefoot, through the mansion after Joker, dodging into the same room.
Angelface knows that Crane is tied up somewhere and probably being shipped off to Arkham at this moment, so she's going to try and save him later on. She 's also aware that there's a very high chance that Batman will catch her soon, through those weird sneaky tricks of his (she inwardly wonders if he's some sort of marsupial ninja) or some environmental hazard. She doesn't want to go back to Arkham; Arkham is a place of horror for her, of dark hallways and hallucinations and various things she doesn't want to think of. She'll chase Joker down, join up with him again, hide out. That's what she'll do.
Angelface turns a corner into another room and stares right at Joker, holding up a can of what looks like aerosol spray cleaner, and a match. She stares, for that brief moment, with an innocently surprised expression on her face, unable to comprehend, it would seem. And she knows that he knows who she is when he pushes down the button on the can and sprays fire right in her face.
She screams in agony, and staggers back with her hands, brought up to protect her face, burnt, and her face itself subjected to the full blast. Joker tosses aside his poor boy flamethrower and leans down to give her a glance-over, smiles, and says, "Ooh, tough luck there, Schwarzy. Funny, your old costume had some Rorschach ink blots on it, and a trick of his is what took you out. Played you like a violin and then cut your strings, huh honey?" He laughs after that, and then dashes towards a window in back with Harley, making his escape. By now, Batman has taken the time to take out all the armed thugs and let the guests escape, and stops in time to see Angelface. She sees him glance at her, step over her, and then go after Joker and Quinn, while SWAT rushes in and finds her condition. Vaguely, before she blacks out, she hears someone call for a medic.