A/N: Welcome to my new fanfic, "Harley's Angels." As I mentioned in the synopsis, this story is set in the same universe as my other fanfic "Mario's Galactic Tale," and picks up shortly after the events of "MGT" Chapter 62: The Fate of the Multiverse. Even though the main character in this fanfic is Harley Quinn, I didn't list it as a crossover because it's still a very Mario universe-centric story. If you've not too familiar with her, that's okay; most of the pertinent parts of Harley's backstory are summed up in this first chapter.

Also, if you haven't already, I'd recommend reading my other MGTU fanfics "Yoshi Commits Tax Fraud" and "The Last Will and Testament of Marfy, Last of the Green Thwomps" before this fanfic – they're both complete and fairly short. While not present right away, there will be connections between those two fanfics and this one later on.

Without further ado, please read, review, and enjoy!

I do not own Super Mario or Harley Quinn.

I pushed open the doors to Jack's Diner, which proclaimed to be "the best restaurant in all of Toad Town!" A blast of chilly air from inside hit me, but it was a nice reprieve from the humid summer evening outside. Several Toads and Yoshis turned and gave me questioning looks as I entered. I guess they don't get too many humans out here. Probably why it's called "Toad Town."

I took a seat at the counter. None of the other seats there were occupied. A waiter Toad on the far side walked over. "Greeting, ma'am," he said. "What would you like on this fine evening?"

I picked up a menu lying on the counter. "I think I will have a…." My eyes widened. "Ooh, an egg sandwich, please." If this world had egg sandwiches, maybe sticking around for a little while wouldn't be so bad after all.

"Coming right up." The waiter Toad leaned through the swinging metal doors behind the counter. "One number four!" He came back to the counter. "If you don't mind my asking, ma'am, are you new in town? I work here every night, and I've never seen you here before. Not many humans in Toad Town."

"Well…." I read his name tag. "…Dale, as a matter of fact, I am new here. I come from far, far away. You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

The Toad shrugged. "Try me. I've heard my fair share of strange tales."

I leaned forward on the counter. "So…I guess you could say that my journey to ending up in Toad Town started back when I was a psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum. I ended up falling for one of the inmates. His name was the Joker. I ended up doing a lot of questionable things for him…helped him break out of the asylum, threw myself into a vat of chemicals, committed a buncha crimes with him, you get the gist. Well, that didn't last too long before Batman – Batsy, I call him – came after us, and I was locked up in Belle Reve.

"While I was there, I was forced into joining the so-called 'Suicide Squad,' which was a fancy name for a bunch of criminals that the government put together to go take down supervillains and stuff like that. I was with them on and off for a while – you know, did one mission, Joker broke me out of prison, I broke up with him, got arrested for crashing my car into a bank, did another mission, escaped with the rest of the Squad at the end of that mission, right? Well, see, here's where it gets real trippy.

"See, I woke up one morning and the whole entire world was melting away into some black goop. Then this orange portal opened up outside and three people walked out of it: Sylvie and Loki – the two of them are actually alternate-universe versions of each other who are, like, in love or something – and Deadpool, real name Wade. They told me that my universe was being eaten by some outer space octopus called Shuma-Gorath, and that I was one of the few lucky people they would be able to save from the universe before it was wiped out. Then I ended up part of some multiversal alliance of theirs that helped to defeat Shuma-Gorath before he could destroy every universe in existence, and joined this team they put together to guard the multiverse against future threats, fittingly called the Guardians of the Multiverse. We took down an alliance of the Daleks and the Sentinels that was planning to take over the multiverse, and then, not long after that, this portal happened to open up right next to be and I got…." I pulled my fingers together. "…shwooped right into it. And that's when I ended up in this universe, in a castle orbiting your planet that was owned by some whiny little brat called Bowser Jr."

The waiter and all the other patrons at the restaurant suddenly looked at me like I'd just said "bomb" on a plane. Seriously? They didn't bat an eye at all this stuff with alternate universes and me knowing the Joker, who that guy Mario told me is a fictional character in this universe, but I say the name "Bowser Jr." and that gets their attention? Man, these people gotta get their priorities straight.

The waiter took a step away from me. "Are you…friends with this Bowser Jr.?"

I waved the question aside. "Pssh. No. Don't worry, no need to take out the gun you probably have strapped to the underside of the counter. Well, he did trick me and a bunch of other folks who got pulled here from across the multiverse into thinking that Mario was the bad guy and attacking him, but then, thanks to Wonder Woman's truth-lasso thing, we learned the truth and ganged up on Bowser Jr. Then I stole a spaceship that belonged to one of Junior's cohorts to get away and…here I am."

The Toad still looked suspicious. "What are you doing…here, though?"

"Well, here's the thing," I said. "The spaceship I took actually belonged to a bounty hunter named Cad Bane who Bowser had hired to go after Mario. But when I got in the ship and rifled through the few personal belongings in there, I discovered that he had a second target he'd been hired to whack: Mario's brother, Luigi. So I came here to find him and, you know, make sure he's okay, that Bowser didn't send someone else after him who's already gotten to him."

"And how do I know you're not this 'someone else'?"

I sighed. "Fine. I get it. You're not a trusting crowd. You're not gonna point some complete stranger to Luigi. How about this Interim Princess I hear you have? Could you point me towards her? From what I hear it seems like she knows Mario and Luigi pretty well."

"You're thinking of the regular princess," an Orange Yoshi behind me said. "Princess Peach. Interim Princess Peachette, on the other hand, none of us are really fond of her. Mario and Luigi included. She doesn't focus on important matters like infrastructure repairs and social policies. All she does is sit around all day throwing tea parties and pretending that planning out the next Mario Kart tournament counts as 'important' work. But if you want to meet with her, she lives in the big castle overlooking the town. Maybe she'll have time to meet with you tomorrow."

The waiter Toad brought my egg sandwich over to me. "Here you go."

"Thanks." I dug a few dollars out of my pocket and placed it on the counter. "I think I'll take this to go." I took the sandwich, got up from the counter, and left the diner.

After spending just over a day in the Mushroom Kingdom so far, I've learned that this world runs in a very weird way. Apparently, to the south of the Mushroom Kingdom is another kingdom owned by Bowser, the father of that little brat who tricked me and Arya Stark and everyone else he summoned from across the multiverse into thinking Mario was evil. Every year, Bowser invades the Mushroom Kingdom and kidnaps Peach, and Mario sets off after him to rescue Peach, sometimes with his brother Luigi and assorted other allies in tow (but this time not with Luigi). Usually they return with her in a couple months, and then right on the heels of that is this Mario Kart tournament that the Mushroom Kingdom throws, which is basically a much more dangerous version of NASCAR racing. For some reason Bowser and a bunch of his minions are always invited to the tournaments too; I've asked around and I've failed to get a definitive reason as to why this is. The three prevailing opinions seem to be that Peach is a traitor, that Bowser was guaranteed participation in Mario Kart tournaments as part of some trade deal made with his kingdom, and "*shrug* That's just the way it is."

As I waited on the sidewalk for a lull in traffic so I could cross the street, the restaurant door jingled open behind me. I turned around. A Blue Toad followed me onto the sidewalk. "Hey, I heard you asking around for Luigi," he said. "I think something's up with him."

I spread my arms. "See, this is what I was looking for in there. Is everyone around these parts so damn tight-lipped?"

"We're just very suspicious of strangely-dressed women who we've never seen before showing up out of nowhere. After that Bowsette fiasco last year…." He shuddered.

Over the past couple days, I'd heard several other Toads and Yoshis make reference to "that Bowsette fiasco last year," but no one seemed particularly eager to enlighten me about what "that Bowsette fiasco last year" actually was. I didn't even bother asking this Toad about it. I glanced down at my red-and-black clothes, which I'd made as a near-replica of the suit I wore at the start of the Corto Maltese mission a couple years ago. They didn't look that strange. I shook my head and asked, "What's up with Luigi?"

"I don't know where he is," the Toad replied. "He was supposed to come to my house yesterday to fix my kitchen sink, but he never showed up. I tried calling him, but no one answered. I drove by his house that evening, but the whole place was dark. I knocked on the door, but no one answered. As a last resort I threw a rock through his window, and still nothing happened. I looked through the windows into his garage and both Mario's car and his and Luigi's plumbing van were both in there, so he wasn't on vacation. And he didn't go off exploring with Mario, because I've seen him around town since Mario took off for outer space."

"So…he was kidnapped," I said.

"What makes you say that?"

"Oh come on! You don't know where he is, he's not home, he's not out and about, it seems like he's vanished off the face of the earth – planet, whatever." That one's gonna take some getting used to. "Not to mention the fact that being kidnapped is an alarmingly frequent occurrence in this universe."

The Toad looked dejected. "Oh, it's not this universe, it's just this kingdom. This isn't a problem in Sarasaland. No one there's gotten kidnapped in over twenty years. There's a reason they call it 'The Mushroom Kingdom…But Safer!'"

These people's lives had to suck. Why did any of them even stick around in this kingdom when, unless my vague sense of this world's geography was way off, there was a safer kingdom right next door? And for that matter, why was everything here a "kingdom"? Had democracy not been invented in this universe or something?

"Where's Luigi's house?" I asked. "I'm gonna go there and have a look around."

The Toad gave me a series of streets to turn down to make it to the house. "So…what are you?" he asked. "Some ex-criminal turned guardian angel?"
I shook my head. "I may be a guardian, but I'm sure a hell no angel. Thanks for your help. Now just go on your way. I'll take care of this."

About half an hour later, I strolled down the sidewalk on Mario Court towards Mario and Luigi's house. The sky was a pale, post-sunset grey-blue color, and the streetlights lining the road cast small circles of golden light separated by large areas of darkness. All the houses had lights on in the windows….

…except the Mario Brothers' house.

Yeah, this definitely looked sus.

I left the sidewalk and headed up the lawn towards the house. It was a simple, two-story building, with a pair of dormers on the second floor and a garage attached to the right side. The house was painted a dull red, or at least it looked that way in the dim light. I walked onto the front porch and, even though I knew it wouldn't do any good, knocked on the door. "Luigi?" I called. "You home? My name's Harley. I'm a friend of your brother's. We took down Bowser Jr. together yesterday. Is anyone home?"

No reply came.

I tried the doorknob. It was locked. Well, so much for trying to avoid a breaking and entering situation. I kicked at the edge of the door; on the second try, the lock broke and the door swung inward. The house was completely silent. The floorboards creaked as I stepped across the threshold. To my left was the living room. In the center of the room lay the rock that Toad had hurled through the window, surrounded by shards of broken glass.

But that wasn't the only thing out of the ordinary about the room. On the far end of the room, too far away to have possibly been hit by the rock, was a lamp lying shattered on the floor. I walked over to it. It was still plugged into the wall, but both the mushroom-shaped lampshade and the two bulbs inside it had broken. The end table the lamp had presumably been on was askew, and there was a dent in the wall just to the left of the archway to the kitchen.

There had been a fight here, which meant he had been kidnapped after all! Ha! I was right!

A car passed by outside, and its headlights passed over the wall. And as they illuminated one specific section, something on the wall shone. I cocked my head and walked over to it. If not for the headlights, I probably would've missed it. I reached out and poked it with my finger. The stuff was gelatinous and had looked pale white in the light.

"What the hell is this?" I whispered.

Maybe someone who knew more about the Mushroom Kingdom than I did could tell me.

I grabbed a vase off the coffee table and dumped the water and orange and blue flowers that were in it onto the floor…along with quite a bit of water. Didn't really think that through. Hopefully they had insurance against water damage. And break-ins, for that matter. I scraped the slime off the wall into the vase, then left the house and shut the front door behind me.

Time to make this Interim Princess put in some actual work.

"Hmm," Interim Princess Peachette said the following morning. "That appears to be ectoplasm."

I raised an eyebrow. "Ectoplasm? That's real? That…ghost-blood stuff?"

"Oh, yes." Peachette leaned back in her fluffy, pink, reclining chair. "Ectoplasm is real. In light of this evidence, I believe that you are correct. Luigi was kidnapped, and I think booze were responsible."

What the hell? All throughout my walk over to the castle (and then my ridiculously-long stay in the castle's waiting room while Peachette, as her butler Toadsworth said, "prepares herself to look her best so she can face the trials and tribulations of the coming day with unwavering positivity and a sunny disposition" – go ahead and tell me she didn't make him memorize that particular load of crap, I dare you), I'd been wondering what Peachette would have to say about the slime, but I was not expecting her to first say it was ectoplasm, then imply that some alcohol had kidnapped Luigi.

"Booze?" I asked.

"Oh yes," Peachette replied. "See, every type of spirit has different-colored ectoplasm. Hiders have blue ectoplasm, Sneakers have purple ectoplasm, and-"

"Wait, wait, wait," I interrupted. "Is there some other definition of 'booze' I don't know about? Other than, you know, liquor?"

"Oh, I thought you knew," Peachette said. "No, B-O-O-S. A Boo is a type of ghost." She adjusted the gigantic bowtie on her pink dress. "And if Boos kidnapped Luigi, we can't automatically assume that Bowser is behind this."

"Who else is there?" From what I'd heard people around Toad Town saying, it seemed like Bowser was the only big bad guy who targeted the Mushroom Kingdom.

"It could also be King Boo. He and Luigi are each other's archnemeses. He has a history of trapping Mario in paintings, but each time he does, Luigi goes after him and defeats him. Maybe with Mario gone, he decided to go after Luigi directly."

That did seem more likely. After all, if the timeline that Toad gave me outside the diner was accurate, Luigi was kidnapped about a day before the battle with Bowser Jr. and Cad Bane at the Fearsome Fleet. It didn't make sense that Bowser would send Boos to kidnap Luigi before sending Cad Bane to kill him and Mario.

I explained my thinking to Peachette. When I was finished, she said, "If it wasn't Bowser, then it could also be the Koopalings' doing."

"And they are…?"

"Junior's seven siblings." Seven siblings?! "When he and Bowser are off on one of their evil escapades, the Koopalings are usually left in charge of the castle."

Maybe Bowser hadn't told them he was hiring Cad Bane to go after Luigi, and they decided to send the Boos after him. In that case, either them or King Boo could be the culprits. I already knew Bowser's Castle was located in the center of his kingdom, to the south of the Mushroom Kingdom. "Where does King Boo live?"

Peachette's eyes widened. "Wait, you're not seriously thinking about going after him?"

"Why not?"

"Well, because he's terrifying! For the last decade, every year, he's been voted Scariest Creature in Existence among the fine citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom." She rummaged through several papers on her desk. "Just last year, the results were King Boo, 52%; Dry Bowser, 29%; Mario, 10%; Wario, 8%; and Bowser, 1%."

Okay, there was a hell of a lot wrong with that list, but I wasn't even gonna bother with that now. "So? I've fought a creepy witch, a giant starfish from outer space, an octopus that devours entire universes, a fleet of a quarter-billion murderous Daleks, and Bowser Jr.'s giant robot Megahammer. Why the hell should I be so scared of one goddamn ghost?"

"…Alright," Peachette said. "If you say so, just as long as I don't have to go with you. Our most recent reports state that King Boo is currently hiding out in – oh my, would you look at that." She glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner. "I have run out of time for this meeting; it's time for my first tea party of the day."

"What?" I exclaimed. "I haven't even been here, like, ten minutes."

"Yes, so be grateful for those ten minutes I took out of my busy schedule just to accommodate you…especially since you didn't even schedule an appointment. I just happened to have this free time in my day. Now, if you'd like to continue this conversation, my next opening is…." She flipped through a planner on her desk. "…next Monday, I might be able to squeeze you in from, say, 1:00 to 1:02 P.M. How does that work for you?"

I was starting to see why no one liked this bitch. "What the hell do you have going on Monday that you only have two free minutes?"

Peachette traced her finger down the page as she rattled off her excuses for being "busy." "Oh, well I get up at 9:30, then I have breakfast and tea at 9:45, take a bubble bath at 10:30, have meetings at 11:30, have a tea party at 12:00, supervise Toadsworth fluffing all my pillows at 12:45, stroll through the castle gardens at 1:00, but I could shave off two minutes there to talk to you about your thing, read a book in the garden gazebo at 1:45, have a tea party in the garden gazebo at 2:45, check in with the Mario Kart tournament design team at 3:30, go handbag shopping at 4:00, have meetings at 5:00, have a tea party at 5:30, have dinner at 6:15, take another bubble bath at 7:00, and then watch the finale of The Bachelor-toad while I have another tea party at 8:00. See, I really don't have much free time…."

I was all for lounging around all day doing nothing, but then again, I wasn't the leader of a freaking kingdom either. Man, how the hell did she end up being made Interim Princess? Hell, I have no leadership skills whatsoever, and I would make a better Interim Princess.

"You know what? Fine," I said. "I'll go find King Boo on my own, and whether it was him or the Koopalings or someone completely different who kidnapped Luigi, I'll get that plumber back, and I'll do it without your help." I got up from my seat and walked towards the door.

Behind me, Peachette clapped her hands. "Toadsworth! Bring me my litter, please, and carry me to my tea party."

"Yes, Your Majesty," Toadsworth, who was standing next to the doors, said. As I walked by, he gave me a quick look, and I could tell he didn't want to be there any more than I did.

I jerked my thumb behind me. "Good luck with Joffrey Lite back there." And before he could ask me what exactly that meant in front of Peachette, I turned down the hall.

Finding King Boo on my own shouldn't be much of a problem. After all, how low of a profile could the king of the ghosts possibly keep?