Seeing S.T.A.R.S (Open)

Participants: Harleen Quinzel | Open
Open/Closed: Open
Location(s): S.T.A.R Labs, San Francisco
Time of Day: Late night
Weather: Slightly overcast

Summary: Harley Quinn is attempting to liberate some alien loot from S.T.A.R Labs - confronted, no doubt, by heroic interference. Unbeknownst to either party, the prizes she's hoping for are transmitting data to their former wielders, and they're en route to take back what is rightfully theirs.

She crept through the dark corridor, sneaking toward the dimly lit laboratory ahead of her. Occasionally, she froze, holding her position as she looked left and right, large blue eyes darting one way and then the other, before she continued forth, certain she was alone. She expected to be, but it never hurt to be sure. So close to success, Harleen Quinzel wouldn't let anything stand in her way.

Elsewhere in the building, a small cadre of clowns distracted S.T.A.R Labs security forces, luring them away from the work benches at the complex's heart, allowing Harleen all-but-unfettered access. With a little application of her stealthy expertise and an incredibly acrobatic display, the Clown Princess of Crime had bypassed security gates and CCTV feeds, and had found herself able to make her way to the R and D department completely unopposed – proof that she was far more than just a pretty face.

She'd even thought to bring along back-up - a riduculously oversized mallet, slung over her shoulder. If she did encounter resistance, she had the means to knock it flat.

Her presence in San Franisco may have been surprising to some – Gotham was her hunting ground, after all. Even more peculiar was her interest in S.T.A.R Labs – bank robberies were her crime of choice. However, since stepping out of the Joker's shadow, and setting up her own criminal enterprise, Harley had been thinking outside the box. Proving that she was more than just a sidekick, she had looked for 'bigger' undertakings than simple heists. She was going to be taken seriously – Superman levels of seriously.

That was what S.T.A.R Labs offered her.

In this particular case, the San Francisco branch of the science giant had come to possess an alien mind control device – something simple that, when jabbed into the back of a human neck, could scramble and reprogram their consciousness. S.T.A.R were looking for a way to immunise mankind to the possible threat. Harley wanted it for rather different reasons.

Pressing herself up against one of the corridor's plain walls, pausing just outside the main lab, she leant around the cover she'd adopted, scanning the area beyond. Again – empty. Grinning, she twirled away from where she stood, pigtails billowing, and skipped into the laboratory – looking at the various items stored in flexi-glass cases around the room: every single one some sort of extraterrestrial device that would boggle most human brains.

Instantly, one caught her attention: what looked to be a metallic needle attached to a hand gun. Whether it was the loot she was there to collect or not, Harleen sprang toward it, pressing her hands to the see-through case, and her nose right up against it, oogling her possible prize. Then, after a few seconds of gawping, her breath fogging the glass, she stepped back and took her mallet in both hands.
“Come to momma!” she muttered, heaving the weapon above her head and bringing it down hard upon the display case.

The laboratory was very dark, a moody kind of dark that was very dark and moody. This darkness was only broken up by the inner lights of the cases that housed each of STAR Labs's spoils of interdimensional and interplanetary scientific conquest. The late night was clearly outside of office hours judging by the overall quiet and darkness, not that it really mattered either way as the two people infiltrating the building's innards had absolutely no qualms about dealing with any midnight oil burning scientists. Of course the place wasn't completely vacated, there were underpaid security officers patrolling the grounds but those rent-a-cops would and were being handled in a myriad of amusing ways.

Back in the laboratory in question a particularly lithe woman made her way about doing silly and unnecessary flips and tumbles and twirls. All while carrying an oversized mallet. Impressive.

When her comedically large smashing weapon did what it did best - smash - bright lights immediately flooded the room. 

"Tsk tsk tsk." Joker shook his head with a solemn expression on his face, his hands clasped behind his back. He seemed to ooze out of the darkness that had once taken up the majority of the lab, and now he stood there in all of his purple suited glory. Pale skin shined brilliantly under the fluorescent laboratory lights. His red lips and green hair seemed brighter and more vibrant than ever.


"Over a decade in my shadow and this is all you've learned? A smashed case and 'come to momma'?" Joker mocked Harley's accent with a wag of his head. "Where o'where did I go wrong?" The Clown Prince of Crime's red lips stretched downward in an elongated frown. "Where's the flair, the pizzaz, the carefully thought out one-liner?!" His frown grew more genuine as Joker lumbered forward. "You're a rank amateur stealing my gimmicks with none of the poise and adrrrrrrroitness," Joker said, rolling his R unnecessarily. 

He drew closer.

"And the worst part," he finally stopped striding when he was only barely two feet away from Harley. "YOU AREN'T #@%$&^* FUNNY!" Joker screamed at the top of his lungs, a few strands of green hair tumbling out of place, as he whipped from behind his back an oversized pistol to combat Harley's own oversized weapon - but Joker's was better.

The second Harley's mallet smashed through the display casing, sending shards of shattered glass spraying across the laboratory, bright, overhead lights burst into life, banishing the ambient darkness. Letting out a short, shrill shriek, Harley raised a hand to cover her domino mask. “My eyes!” she wailed, more than a little dramatically, her vision momentarily lost in the sudden and incredibly unexpected change to her surroundings. It took a heart beat or two for her sight to adjust, though the outlines of objects were somewhat blurry, and she rapidly wafted her hand back and forth infront of her face, as if it would help her recovery.

“Who turned up the lights?!”

Harleen's question was answered when she heard three, solemn 'Tsks' – hissed in a vocal tone she knew almost as well as her own. Spinning on the spot, jester-tails flailing wildly, she searched the room with her fuzzy vision to confirm what her hearing had hinted, and Quinn's eyes soon found the outline of a mauve-suited clown, confirming her initial suspicions: The Joker.

All at once, Harley was flooded with conflicting emotions - adoration, anger, hatred, fear and sadness, each one wrestling to gain control of her mental state. Before her stood the convict who'd created her, the criminal who'd taken her in and taught her the ropes, and the man she'd onced loved with every fibre of her being. He was the clown who'd reminded her how to laugh and smile, and the puddin' to her muffin. He'd also tried to kill her – on more occasions than she cared to count – each attempt on her life more excessively violent than the last, and he'd stomped rough-shod and repeated on her heart, hopes and dreams with his giant clown shoes.

“Mistah Jay?” was all she managed to utter at first, frozen with shock and indecision – shock and indecision that wavered and morphed into something more powerful with every step he took closer to her, with every word he uttered. His insults, barbed and dagger-like, would once have made her cower and strive to be a better accomplice. Now, they caused her blood, that once would have run cold, to boil and bubble, until her lithe form shook with uncontainable rage, eclipsing the other warring feelings in its purity.

"YOU AREN'T #@%$&^* FUNNY!"

A moment of silence followed the Joker's final shout of displeasure, his words echoing around the laboratory's hard surfaces while he fumbled around behind him for a comically large firearm. All the while, Harley's cheeks seemed to balloon, her lips pursed, her eyes scrunched, and even beneath the blanched white of her skin, an angry blush was evident.

“Screw you!” she finally blurted out - not exactly a witty retort, but all she could come up with in the heat of the moment - before gripping her mallet in both hands and spinning akin to a spinning top, hefting her giant hammer with her, lashing out at her former beau with all the strength she could muster, which, it turned out, was quite a lot.

The Joker

Hearing that dumb nasally voice of her's call the pet name she'd use for him for years in her disgusting high pitched tone was like spikes being driven into J's ears. He wanted to rip her lips off along with his ears and burn the whole batch. But disfigurement would have to come later. For now Joker had his hands full with a lowly clown who had gotten too big for her colorful britches. And how dare her! How absolutely dare his own creation, who had been given a space on his show of grandiose chaos, think themself good enough to start a show of their own?

She needed to be broken down. She needed to be entirely dismantled brick by brick back into nothingness. Joker had to remind her of the empty shell of a person she was before she had met him. He gave her life meaning! What was a harlequin without its master? Nothing!

As Joker brandished his gun and held it leveled at Harley's face, all of his frustrated thoughts swirled and swelled in his head threatening to cause massive hemorrhaging. She was a mangy little disobedient mutt, little more than a rabid dog that had turned against its master. Now was the time to put her down. 

At her retort Joker blinked, his expression contorting into something more comparable to disappointment than the rage that had painted his face before hand.

"Seriously? Screw you isn't -- Oof!" Joker had barely even seen the mallet when it whipped around in his direction. His vision was a mixture of black and red for a brief second, when it returned to normal he found himself on the ground covered in glass. The force of the mallet had thrown him into another case, which shattered under his weigh, and he had quickly collapsed to the floor. Joker could feel some of his beautiful, pearly white teeth had been knocked loose. His jaw was aching and there was the familiar taste of blood coating his tongue. Joker spat his blood out on the laboratory floor and cracked a grin at Harley. The grin grew larger and larger as crimson trickled down his white face.

"Hehahahahaheeheehahaha!" Joker was on his feet in an instant, his gun still firmly in grip. He'd taken harder hits before, but still he had to give it to Harley, that mallet of her's certainly packed a wallop. "That's it, Harls, give Papa the ol' what for! Show me what a strong female lead you are!"

Joker lifted his gun again, he was still cackling as he squeezed the trigger over and over. Usually Joker used prop guns that shot comical flags that read "Bang" and the like. This time he opted for the real thing, leaving the scent of gunpowder hanging in the air.

The audible 'wallop' of her mallet hitting the Joker's jaw seemed louder even than her cry of rage. The sheer power of the blow sent him reeling, knocking him clean from his feet and across the room. His ragdoll body collided with one of the glass casings around the laboratory, bringing his flight to a halt, and he fell momentarily still upon a bed of broken glass. Then a second's silence drew out, punctuated only by Harley's ragged breathing as she stared across the space between them, eyes wide, lips parted in a shocked 'O'.

For a second, the rage that had clouded her vision had cleared, and she was left staring at her maker – bloody mouthed and sprawled out – astonished that she'd had the courage to raise a finger to harm him, let alone a hammer. Her skin prickled with a strange nervousness – one she hadn't felt before, not worried about the repercussions of her actions, but of what they meant.

What had she done?

Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, jester ears slapping her cheeks in a manner that could have been considered comical in other circumstances, she took a step toward the Joker, and then rose up on the tips of her tippy-toes, craning her neck to look down at him from what she considered a safe distance. Her movement was met with him spitting blood from his mouth and grinning – an act that caught her off guard and caused her to squark like a distressed bird. Harleen quickly dropped back onto the balls of her feet as the purple-suited Harlequin of Hate bolted into a standing position, a screeching cackle rising from his lips.

Levelling his weapon at her, he took aim and fired. Instead of the usual 'joke' ammunition he utilised, real shots rang out, and Harleen only had time to shriek and wrap her arms around herself, ducking her head a little - as if adopting a turtle-esque defense might save her. She squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath until the last roar echoed around the laboratory, and only then did she dare crack open a single eyelid, blue eye scanning the floor and her body for any telltale signs of blood.

Nothing.

Slowly, she dropped her arms to pat herself down, and then checked her face and hai- Her eyes widened as she realised her fingers were touching bunches, hair rather than pom-pom. Lifting the locks she felt, she tilted her head up to examine them – blonde strands falling loose from beneath torn fabric. A startled, choking gasp escaped her, and she span twice on the spot – until she laid her gaze upon the casualty: the tip of a jester ear, limp, ragged and gun-powder stained, discarded a few feet behind her.

Harley let out a single, solitary sob of mourning for the lost costume-part, and then wheeled back toward her assailant, lips pulled back in a snarl. “You shot me!” Hefting her mallet back up over her shoulder, the crimson mist of rage descended upon her once again. “I'm gonna give you what for 'papa', n' when I'm finished with ya, you're gonna be a mama!” Shrieking, she sprinted forward, throwing caution to the wind, before hurling herself into the air and bringing her mallet arcing down infront of her – hopefully right on her Puddin's stupid, smiling face.

The Joker

Joker was seeing red. And black. And pasty white.

But also he was pissed off!

Harley had always been an annoyance to him, she had always been the prickly thorn in his side that he simply tolerated! She was tolerated because she was his. No matter how much she vexed him or made him strike her or abandon her or pin crimes on her or ignore her…wait, where was I going with this? Basically she was his property and he was allowed to do with her whatever he so wished. She was supposed to know that. She didn’t have to like it, she didn’t have to acknowledge it, she didn’t even have to want it, but she had damn sure know it and accept it.

Joker now had to show her the error of her ways. Harleen was a bad child acting out who was due its punishment, and she dared to attack him?! Obviously the lesson he had been trying to instill in her over the years they spent together hadn’t stuck. It meant no nevermind to Joker he would just correct her misbehavior, it was something he had done a number of times with his goons and henchclowns. Of course, usually he just shot acid in their faces or murdered them on the spot. As much as he would say otherwise, Harley was different. She was a piece of him, created in his image, given life because he had been so generous to gift it to her. And what did Joker get for all of his altruism and effort put into creating her? Disobedience. Disloyalty. Rebellion. And possibly a broken jaw.

Shooting at her was like therapy, he clearly had some things to work out – the both of them did. But mediation from a licensed therapist (his large cannon of a handgun) was not going to fix these two. They needed to roll up their sleeves and put the effort in themselves; breally get hands on with the healing process.

Joker kept pulling the trigger until the expulsion of bullets turned into harmless clicks of the turning cylinder. He turned the gun at his own white face to stare down the barrel, a singular green eyebrow arching upward as he inspected the apparently empty weapon. Joker grumbled, which was barely distinguishable from a chuckle, before he discarded the gun over shrugged shoulders. As the weapon clattered and slid across the lab floor Joker returned his shining green irises to Harley, he stood there with his blood smeared lips pulled into a wide and wild smile. She was alive and unharmed, in a way. But Joker had damaged her attire, her persona. Her soul. The insane clown howled himself into a riot as Harley realized what had transpired. Her eyes lay transfixed on the puff that had been sniped off of her head, leaving half of her true self pouring out from underneath the cracked exterior that was meant to pay homage to her creator. It was a really deep metaphor.

“HAHAHAAAHOOHOO!”

As Harley spoke Joker half-listened while pushing up the purple sleeves of his suit into bunches at his elbow, his thin white arms almost sparkling under the cold lighting of the laboratory. Now things were about to reach the crescendo. Joker’s eyes narrowed up at the mallet that was bearing down on him with enough force to shatter bone. He had been hit by the damned thing once already and Harley had already drawn first blood, he wasn’t going to let her draw any more. Though Joker was no hand-standing, back-bending like the woman sprinting at him, he was still pretty light on his feet in his own right. That agility aided him in sidestepping the mallet as it came crashing down to the tiled floor.

“Hi-YAH!” Joker attempted a kick lashing out with his wingtips aimed for Harley’s wrists in aim to disarm her. In the event of success, he would then latch his own hands onto hers, interlocking fingers to fight for and exert dominance. In the event of failure, well, then we’d find out in the next post won’t we?

“Why do you make me do these things Harley?! Do you think I want to hurt and torture you all the time? I mean, sometimes sure! I get bored, Harleykins. But not allll the time. HEHEHAHAHA!”

Harleen Quinzel

Harley’s mallet would have pulverised the Joker’s face had it made contact. The blow would have knocked out all his over-large, tombstone teeth, making it near enough impossible for him to smile – any attempt at a grin wouldn’t be the same with only bleeding gums on show. How Harley wanted to be the one to wipe the ever-present leer off her previous beau’s face – permanently. It was never something she’d have considered in the past; she’d blindly adored him, after all. Now, though? After one betrayal too many? She felt ruining his signature smirk sent quite a strong message, to her Puddin’, and to the entirety of Gotham City: Harley Quinn didn’t need the Joker (or anyone else, for that matter)!

Unfortunately, the Clown Prince of Crime was more nimble on his feet than Harley remembered. Just before her blow struck, he side-stepped her wild, overhead strike, causing her weighty hammer’s head to collide with the floor with such force, it sent shockwaves through her forearms. Letting out a disgruntled ‘Ah!’ she almost released her weapon of choice, her fingers tingling as she tried to cling on, but found a kick aimed at her hands ultimately dislodged the weapon from her grip.

Wheeling to face the Joker, disarmed but not disheartened, she met his follow-up assault head on, extending her arms in an attempt to keep him away from her. However, rather than duck or weave, the Clown forcibly took hold of her hands and entwined their fingers, locking himself to her. Blue eyes wide, Harleen opened her clenched her fingers and tried shaking her hands as fast and hard as she could, hoping the sudden and quick exertion would aid in a swift escape. Unfortunately, he held tight.

“Let….Go….A…ME!” The last word was screamed over the top of the Joker’s own spiel in hopes of silencing him. Too long had he tried to blame her for the way he treated her, and there, in that laboratory, realisation had hit her like a baseball bat, so hard she could have had a bruise the size of an egg on her forehead and it wouldn’t have felt strange or out of place.

Even less so following a swift headbutt – right to her Puddin’s nose. If he wouldn’t let her get further away, she had no mind brawling up close – or fighting a bit dirty.

The Joker

Ah, it was almost like the good old days. The two clowns singin' and dancin' together. Their fingers interlocked as they moved across the floor as one in elegant, timed formation. Harley shouting at him. Joker ignoring her. But it wasn't the good old days. Harley was out of line and she wasn't being reeled in as easily as she used to. She commonly second guessed what they were to each other but Joker was usually able to get her to fall back in line, it was never a problem to this extent. Someone had obviously gotten in her ear, no doubt about it! Turned his own creation against him. That pesticide sniffing Ivy most likely! Joker shook his head of the thought though, he had to focus his attention and anger on one woman at the moment.

"Y'know Harls, if you would just behave then I'm sure we could - " The words could no longer form, Joker had literally bitten his tongue as Harley's own white painted face crashed into his equally chalky nose. He saw red, he saw black, he saw stars. Blood spurted from the clown's broken nose as his head snapped back and he stumbled backward, only one hand truly releasing Harley's fingers from his grip in the process. Joker's other hand instinctually clamped down and held her tighter, threatening to pull the former sidekick in the same direction that he fell.

The laboratory floor was suddenly frictionless, Joker felt. There was no traction for his shoes to dig into as he slipped backward, losing all footing and falling over in an unintentional comical way. Joker hoped that Harley had fallen to the hard linoleum along with him, his grip only loosening once he was splayed on the tile. The Clown rose up on hands and knees, his face warm from blood that splattered his cheeks and dripped down his equally crimson lips. He licked the blood, his face twitching between a grimace and a smile at Harleen. 

"There's still just too much fight in ya!"

Joker lunged, it was kind of hard on his knees but he was a fairly capable clown. Before he could reach Harley however a dark canister clattered over the linoleum of the floor, sliding without issue against the smoothness. Thick gray smoke then began leaking with quickness from the nozzle on the smoke bomb. Men in black tactical suits filed into the lab, Joker counted at least three before they disappeared in entirely in the smoke. His vision went to $#^% and he turned to face where he'd last seen Harley, though of course he saw nothing but gray now.

"Plain black riot gear, Harley?! You suck at being theatrical!"

Harleen Quinzel

Harley smirked proudly as the Joker stumbled away from her, his frustrating chatter silenced by the thick, dark river of blood streaming from his broken nose. She wiggled the fingers on her now free hand in a bright and breezy wave, as if to say ‘bye-bye’ as he slipped on the linoleum floor, crashing onto his back, head bouncing hard off the slippery surface. It was only then she noted that he’d not fully let go of her other hand, as her eyes went wide and she was unceremoniously dragged to the ground alongside him, his weight – and the sudden force it exerted – unbalancing Quinn. She on her front, arms and legs splayed out at her sides like the limbs of a starfish, and there she lay for a moment, face down.

A small, frustrated groan sounded, and it only got louder when she looked up to see the Clown Prince of Crime rising to his knees, far from knocked out – which had been her hope. His face twitched – struggling to decide on a glare or a grin. Blood-spattered and broken, it opted for a mix of both, a truly terrifying expression. “You gotta be kiddin’ me,” Harleen huffed, pushing herself up into a similar position, the fall having broken the grip he’d managed to maintain on her during his tumble.

"There's still just too much fight in ya!"

Harley pouted in response. “Well that ain’t gonna change! You aren’t gonna boss me around any more!” With her defiance verbalised, he lunged at her; an awkward dive on all fours, though he moved a surprising distance and at a surprising speed. However, before he could reach her, their bout was interrupted by a dark, metallic canister that bounced across the hard flooring beneath the clowns’ knees. From it erupted thick, grey smoke; a dark screen that rapidly filled the room, obscuring the entry of armed men clad in black tactical suits. Within seconds, Harley had lost sight of her Puddin’, and indeed everything else.

Unfortunately, she could still hear him.

"Plain black riot gear, Harley?! You suck at being theatrical!"

Clearly, the new arrivals weren’t allied with her former beau. They weren’t, however, allied with her either. “They ain’t mine!” she shot back. “My crew’d let me beat you senseless without gettin’ involved!”

The Joker

Things had suddenly escalated at an exponential rate, though quite honestly it was nothing out of the usual for the clown. He was used to, and at this point even comfortable with, armed men in dark clothes storming rooms he occupied. It was usually the police or FBI or some other government agency thinking they were going to do what the big bad Bat had failed to do so many times: Put Joker down permanently.

Upon hearing from Harley that those trudging along in the thick smoke weren't in her employ Joker blinked. Apparently whatever mark Harls was after had already been targeted by someone else. Joker gripped his sides and bellowed with laughter. "Oh this is rich! Real great job planning this heist, Harls."

The Clown Prince of Crime snickered in a low tone of sinister whimsy as he got to his feet and skipped off deeper into the rolling smoke. Chemical warfare was Joker's specialty, everyone should have known that by now, so something as simple as a smoke screen was essentially a walk in the park for him. Though to be fair his walks in the park usually involved far more lethal gases. While sifting through the smoke with nary a sound Joker swept his feet along the lab flooring like a blind man reading braille...but with his feet...and instead of little bumps he was looking for...

Harley's mallet!

Upon kicking the wooden handle, and making it rotate away from him just a little bit, Joker quickly snatched the weapon up and heaved it over his shoulder. He still had business to tend to with Harley, and the second he saw her face he was going to aim to bash it in (pay her back for bashing his own gorgeous face and breaking his nose) but no doubt their little interrupters in black were going to drawn Joker's ire more swiftly.

"There! Northwest!"

The command was followed by the sound of artillery and heavy clothing shifting quickly, no doubt the insurgents adjusting position. But what on Earth did Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's daughter had to do with this?

"Fire!"

Joker instinctually leapt to the side, his left hip colliding with one of the cases in the room. Glass shattered and Joker toppled head over heels in an accidentally side-somersault, just as the wall behind him was chiseled to nothing by the rapid gunfire. 

"Quick bursts, don't damage the asset!"

Another command, this one helping Joker in zeroing in on possible targets.

"Take out the distractions and let's grab what we came for."

There! Joker had the talker's position pinpointed now. He clenched his teeth so tight it felt like his jaws could shatter. Gripping the mallet handle with both hands Joker spun a complete 360 as he moved toward the place where he heard the commands originating from. His spin move cleared out a lot of the smoke by the vortex he had created. Clouds of smoke further dissipated thanks to the force of the mallet's head striking and absolutely demolishing....something.

"Yahtzee!"

Harleen Quinzel