2013.09.10 - Dead White Wedding

It was a late-afternoon soiree at City Hall, a big celebration on the passing of a new bill which was garaunteed to lower crime, as well as the apparent success of a press conference calling this 'the month of the lowest crime in recent history'. Plus those Gotham high-society types liked to gather and talk in fake British accents about tea or something. And the mayor had to hob-knob with them and put up with it so he could have the donations to get re-elected.

All in all it was a night of pinky-in-the-air fancy-pants dealmaking and backroom swindling.

The perfect night for crime.

The caterers are making their rounds, dressed like a parody of policemen, with white blazers with little badges on them and white pants or skirts. A few of the higher-ranking officers are in attendance, though the Commissioner is noticeably absent. Probably out doing his job instead of worrying about appearances like a shmuck. A blonde woman passes by with a tray of wine glasses, offering one to the mayor and the guests he's speaking to with a bright grin, her face partially hidden by the white-and-black policeman's hat pulled down low.

He thanks her, taking a pair of glasses and handing one to his ladyfriend of the evening, as the waitress moves on, passing out more drinks, until her boss catches her eye over by the buffet line and signals her with an over-exaggerated head-tilt to go get the cake from the kitchen.

Gabby Malone has a parking ticket to pay for. It's not her fault someone annoyed her while she was on her motorcycle and so got off of it in a no-parking zone and beat the crap out of him. I mean, okay, technically that is entirely her fault. But that jerk had it coming with his damn wolf-whistling and unsolicited comments of a sexual nature!

Now he's in traction, and Gabby has a parking ticket. She supposes she should just be glad the police didn't actually catch her wailing on the guy, but instead she's annoyed that she's here when she could be out doing other stuff. So the Irish woman heads up the steps to City Hall, FULLY INTENDING to go to the part of City Hall where people handle this kind of stuff, but... The activity is noticeable. The crowd and so on. And her finely-tuned sense of alcohol detection lets her know there's probably something to drink. So she chews her lip a bit, and then leaves.

When she comes back from a nearby party store, she has exchanged leather jacket, leather pants, leather boots, and a low-neckline sleeveless top for a skirt and glittery slip-ons and some other crap. She left the top. Here's hoping she can just slip in with her cover story and drink all the booze in the place. Her parking ticket can wait another day, right? If she's questioned, her cover identity is Gabby Malone, representative of the Community's Local Irish Tenants.

Guess who is here? NOT KATE KANE. Nope, she is absolutely nowhere nearby. At all.

Coincidentally, one of Gotham's two 'master detectives' is situated on a rooftop nearby, waiting for the obvious to happen. An event like this? It's an invitation for someone to try something. So right now a figure in black and red remains concealed... Watching through the skylight, listening through audio-bugs... Waiting. A lithe figure, with a mask, a cape, and the visual appearance of a creature of the night. It's a bit early for her to be out and about in this guise, but Batwoman didn't schedule this party. She just knew it was likely to be the site of something bad.

Half the caterers begin to file towards the back of the room and into the kitchen after emptying their trays as the subtle signals are passed around. The rest of the party goes on blissfully unaware. As soon as Gabby walks into the main gala hall, she is accosted. Not by security, oh no. It's by some drunk dilettante stumbling into her and latching on for balance and support, sloshing her drink around while exclaiming, not unlike a teenager on spring break: "How drunk am /I/!?" Except this woman is in her thirties and making a shameful spectacle of herself.

Hey, they can't all have high-class vampire manners.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, the blonde caterer whips off her hat, tossing it off to the side as she reaches up to pull the ties keeping her hair up in a low bun. As she shakes out her hair, a few of the men around her give a few encouraging hoots and wolf whistles while she shimmies out of her blazer and skirt.

"Now, now, boys," She says in a thick Brooklyn accent. "Keep them eyes in yer heads! I'm a spoken fer lady tanight!" This elicits a chorus of chuckles as she opens a compact and begins to apply apply makeup liberally to her face. ...Yes, on top of the skillfully-applied barely-there makeup already in place. No one pays much attention to the actual caterers and chefs who are tied up and currently freezing to death in the walk-in cooler. Well, the ones that were still alive, anyway.

Several minutes later a large, six-decker cake is wheeled out with fanfare, lit with sparklers and decorated as well as could ever be. The cake gets to the center of the room, the mayor approaches, gives a speech, more reduced crime, better lives for the people of this city, better business ahead for the rich folks in the room. Yadda yadda. It's when he goes to cut it that the cake explodes.

It covers the closest guests as someone stands right there where the delicious confection used to be. Who is it? Why it's none other than famed costumed heroine (villain), Harley Quinn! But... something is very, very wrong here.

The makeup, the facepaint, the pigtails, they're all there. But there's a white veil where there usually isn't, and those pigtails are done up in fancy ringlets, and there's some kind of white dress- Yes, Harleen Quinzel is decked out as Harley Quinn who is decked out in a wedding dress. And not a moment later, as all the henchmen around the event begin pulling out fully-automatic weapons on the startled and screaming patrons of the party, she grabs Mayor Hill by the face, squeezing his cheeks together between her fingers and thumbs, pulling him in close with one hand while holding up a large, gleaming, wickedly-serrated knife with another.

Her gay smile is something much, much nastier, crystal-blue eyes narrowed in malicious glee. "Hey there, Groomy. Happy ta see me?"

Gabby has some woman clinging to her suddenly. "Oi! What th' fugging' hell!?" she lets out. She looks up at the lady who is likely much taller than her, stares for a moment then takes the drink out of the drunk's hand, shoves the woman away one-handed, and says, "Drunk 'nuff." Then she downs what's left before going to get her own.

She's still navigating the sea of legs and important people who also have legs, and maybe pinches a butt or two on her way through (man, woman, whatever) when the cake explodes. This is one of the few times when Gabby can legitimately claim to have a height advantage. In this case, the advantage is her lack of height. The cake that coats everyone inbetween her and it, the people all around with guns who might not see her in the crowd because of how gosh darn short she is, and the fact that ABSOLUTELY NO ONE expects the Irish Interception, all give her the chief weapon of surprise. Once she spots the clown-faced woman by the mayor and remembers the night she spent fruitlessly searching for children who were already safe, she decides that if she runs as fast as she can right now she can maybe tackle Harley away and... And then what? Get shot a bunch? Maybe they won't shoot while she's near their boss. Maybe she can take a reverse-hostage or something. And maybe Harley Quinn won't accidentally slit the mayor's throat. And maybe, maybe, maybe.

Every time she rushes into these things, something happens. This latest incident with the parking ticket is a good example. She acts based on her extremely volatile temper and her penchant for violence, and the net result is nothing good. Heaving a sigh, Gabby decides she really can't afford to rush into things. She has to have a plan. So she backs up, and starts making her way through the scared crowd as quietly and unobtrusively as she can without wasting time that could lead to the mayor or someone else getting injured or killed.

And she starts making her way towards one of the gun men. Maybe she can knock him out when no one is looking or... No. Maybe she can get help. Maybe she can let people know something is happening. Set off the fire alarm or something. She can't... She can't keep trying to handle these things herself, and she can't keep relying on violence. It's a hard pill to swallow. But there's more lives at stake than her own.

For several long moments, the bad guys have control of the situation. Harleen Quinzel, chemical-addled brain that she has, is the one responsible for this mess. She also has Gotham City's mayor at knife point. Trying to take her out right away would be a bad move. The room is too well-lit, there's too much visibility, and as the short-and-stacked Irish woman down there realized, there would be consequences. So the solution is to change the situation.

Plink-plink-plink.

Several metal balls strike the floor all over the room, falling from above somewhere. When they stop moving thanks to being weighted, dense, sight-obscuring smoke starts spraying out of them in every direction. Quickly the air is full of it. It might make some people cough a little but it isn't toxic. It does, however mess up visuals really well.

One of the bay windows is suddenly smashed in by something swinging down from the roof on a tether of some kind. Not that anyone would see that. Those nearest would just see the window breaking inwards, and something dark with leathery almost-wings (actually a cape) entering along with the glass. In the thick smoke, there is only an outline at best. An outline of a figure that rises from the crouch it rolled into, and stares from the grey clouds with pure, dead-white eyes that somehow stand out from the rest of the vagueness.

Is it... The Batman!?

The figure moves away with a *WOOSH*ing swirl of its cape, causing near-ghostly sounds of disturbed air. This figure is too thin to be Batman. Too many curves. And there's something red that trails from HER head -- like she's trailing a curtain of blood. Occasionally, there are foot falls. But mostly there is only Batwoman attempting to take out the armed goons around the room. She probably can't get to them ALL in a timely fashion, but as booted feet, and blades arm guards, and thrown crimson batarangs all make the circuit around the room, there should be plenty of distraction for Gabby to take part as well.

And at the center of the room... Harley is probably tryin to put together what's going on and who might be responsible. Or whatever crazies do in situations like these.

The men with the guns quickly seal off the few conventional exits (IE: doors) out of the room. One of them spots Gabby as she moves through the crowd, blocking her way, sneering as he whips at her head with the butt of his assault rifle. "Aw no ya don't, rich bitch! No one's leavin'!" He's a big guy, towering over the redhead by a foot and a half and then some, with what looks to be a lot of muscle under all that fat.

Quinn, meanwhile, hooks a finger into the mayor's cheek, pulling her hostage up onto the impromptu stage, wrapping her knife-hand around his throat as she presses up against his back. "LAAAAADIES ANNNNND JOIKS! You are all cordially invited ta tha nuptuals of the future Mister and Missus Hahley Quinn!" The gunmen hoot and holler, a disquieted murmur runs through the rest of the crowd. "Ya see, gents..."

The lights dim and a lone spotlight shines on Quinn and her hostage as she takes a step away from him, still holding onto his shoulder with her knife-hand as he eyes the blade nervously. "As a young lass, I too-"

"Just tell us what you want, Quinn." Having found courage from somewhere, Hill scowls at the clown-masked criminal. The spotlight fades away, and the knife-wielding maniac seems nonplussed.

"Why... TA GET MARRIED!" She gushes suddenly, pressing her face almost right up against his. "Once you an' me get hitched, I'll be tha girl behind tha man! Ah course, if somethin' tragic were ta happen ta ya, I might have ta step in take over as Mayah Hahley. But alas, my heart belongs to anothah!" The psychotic clownette strikes a dramatic pose, pressing the back of her knife-hand to her forehead and throwing her head back, the other grabbing the mayor's tie. "But it'll be okay... if I make ya look a lil' bit more like 'em, first!"

The evil, thin, shark's grin is back as she starts pulling the mildly-struggling man in closer by his tie, both of his hands wrapped around one of hers, shaking his head rapidly, or perhaps just trembling with fear. Quinn's I'm-Gonna-Hurt-You-And-Like it smile reflects off the shiny knife as she begins to move the point towards his mouth.

But then gas begins to fill the room, a window breaks somewhere, and someone starts screaming "IT'S THE BAT!" Quinn simply lets her knife-hand fall and rolls her eyes. "Ah course it is... Even on my wedding day!"

The goons nearest to Batwoman begin shooting at her instantly, as angry, crazed criminals with guns are wont to do, regardless of the civilians that might be in their way. The ones closest to Harley back up towards her, their four guns pointed outward, searching for targets. "Got'cha covered, boss!"

"Wouldn't evah doubt'cha!" Quinn quips right back, chipper as ever. "Well Mistah Hill, looks like our weddin's been postponed. But I have this lovely partin' gift fer ya!" And with that, she sticks a small, spherical incendiary device into his mouth, rapidly wrapping duct-tape around his head to prevent him from spitting it out as the room around them is clear. "Call me, tha numbah's on tha bomb, don't swallow it!" The former gymnast calls, grinning as she leaps away on powerful legs, giving the frightened man an upside-down wave as he ineffectually tries to push the fire-bomb out of his mouth.

Which is hard to do, since she also bound his hands behind his back.

That's when Quinn pushes the button on the detonator! ...No, not THAT one, the one that makes Joker Toxin start shooting out into the room from all four sides of the cart the cake came in on. The first ones affected are her own four remaining henchmen, all of whom cough at first, and then begin insanely laughing, veins popping out along their faces and necks as they drop their guns and grab at their eerily-smiling faces.

The crowd paniced, blinded crowd will begin being affected within a handful of seconds as the gas begins to mix with that emanated by the smoke-bombs. Quinn lands neatly, tearing off the skirt, and then the top, of her wedding dress, tossing the veil aside, revealing her more usual outfit of skintight leather beneath as she makes a fast dash for the kitchen doors. "Whoops, fergot you boys weren't immune. Sorry!"

People who signed on to work with the likes of Harley usually didn't last long in this business.

Gabby doesn't debate the 'rich bitch' statement, just tilts her head to the side with reflexes most 'rich bitches' just plain don't have. The butt of the goes wooshes right past. But she doesn't struggle further right now, instead just looking angrily up at the guy, and then letting her green eyes scan over the room for other options. The ranting from Harley and her own inability to do anything right now make her feel helpless. Gabby Malone does not like feeling helpless. It makes her angry. And no one really likes her when she's angry.

When the smoke fills the room, and STUFF starts happening, Gabby's first move is to attempt to punch the goon in front of her in the crotch as hard as she can. And she can punch pretty fucking hard. Sadly, she doesn't have special optic mask lense thingies or whatever, nor is she like a fictional blind girl who could detect things by emitting sound waves from her mouth--Or, wait, maybe that was just that one episode with the theatrical stage production. ANYWAY, Gabby doesn't know where anyone else is in the smoke, so she tries to run for where she last saw Harley and the mayor, and hopefully arrives shortly after Harley ditches and hopefully well-before the cart starts emitting Joker Gas.

And if she gets to the mayor, upon seeing his current state, she'd just try to pick him up bodily despite her smaller stature and run with him towards the nearest exit. She didn't actually see the thermal detonator that Harley put in the man's mouth, so she's just trying to get the mayor clear amidst what she assumes is something bad happening given the mix of screams and laughter.

Batwoman probably should have expected Joker Gas, but the fact the Joker wasn't actually present kind of presented a mental blind spot. She is not some newbie, and she has antidote for Joker Gas, but she can't administer it to everyone in the room if they all get exposed, and she's not exactly immune herself. So she breaks away once the panic starts, holds her beath, and as the smoke spills out through the broken window, the red-tressed crime-fighter grabs the cart and starts pushing it -- rolling it towards the window -- and out onto the lawn. She could chase after Harley, but there's people who need help right now. Even those goons don't deserve to die.

The smoke bombs have stopped spraying out their smoke and the smoke is mostly leaving the room, giving people a clear view of the exits. Batwoman sticks an air filter over her face, obtained from her utility belt, and heads towards where the Joker Gas was released to grab those exposed and give them the antidote. Inwardly, the pale red-head in the skintight black-and-red leather is thinking about the layout of the building and what the most likely escape route would be for Harley. Even if the Clown Princess gets out of the building, she's probably not going to try to escape on foot.

Once Batwoman has finished giving the affected their cure, which will also protect them from further exposure for a little bit, she cuffs the goons and calls out to any security or whomever still in the area with a head on their shoulders, "Get everyone out of here! There air is still toxic!" Then she's headed for the roof once more.

The crotch-punch makes the armed thug begin singing soprano as his eyes go crossed and he falls to ground cupping his boys in his hands. He flumps face down and is likely to remain that way until the room stops spinning in pain and he's able to walk again, though he'll probably be waddling for quite a while. Yeowza!

Gabby reaches the center 'platform' the remains of the cake, and the mayor, are on a mere second before the gas comes exploding out. Luckily for them, they're standing in the middle of the four nozzles, which are spraying outward, so they have a precious minute or so before the gas curls back over and rises up to greet them. Unfortunately for Gotham (but fortunately for him), Mayor Hill is all-too-aware of what Joker Toxin is, and holds his breath as gabby rushes him through it. Hopefully she does, too, because he can't warn her right now with his mouthful of bomb. But he tries to warn her about that, too, before Quinn decides to explode it and kill them both.

But he can't talk, so as he's carried out the exit, he is struggling mightily, kicking his legs, screaming through his duct-tape gag, and headbutting the small of her back.

After a while, you'd think he'd stop trying to get elected to this gig.

Meanwhile, the cart is pushed oustide, still spewing gas, and out onto City Hall's front steps, where people immediately run from the thing crashing down out of a second-story window spewing a strange purple gas. Fortunately winds are high enough today that it carries most of the toxin away before it can concentrate and start poisoning the area.

People are already pouring out of the exits, running screaming for their lives now that they're no longer blocked by armed maniacs. The people given the antidote, those who are cavorting and laughing on the ground, begin to calm down somewhat, their insane cackling quieting, and most of them lose consciousness from the pain.

The police burst into the room, and immediately begin clubbing an still-moving perpetrators, and begin shouting questions at Batwoman like "Where's the mayor!?" and "Where's Quinn!?"

Meanwhile, up on the roof, a door is kicked in and the woman of the hour herself is catapaulting towards a conveniently-stashed helicopter! She wastes no time jumping into it with a childlike "Wheeeee!". That is, until she finds the operator's manual, and starts flipping through hundreds of pages of WTF directions. One squints down while she turns the book sideways and sticks her tongue out of the side of her mouth. After a minute or two, she shrugs, "Meh." Tossing the book over her shoulder, she begins to fire up the chopper.

Fighting Irish is not really in the habit of hanging around law enforcement or government officials or similar. That tends to bring up interesting and unpleasant questions about things she'd rather not discuss with those who can arrest her or sue her or whatever. But here she is, a tiny red-head with the mayor carried above her head like Mario carrying a key in Super Mario Bros. 2, running from the evil gas at a frankly astonishing speed, much like Mario running from the phantom mask thing in Super Mario Bros. 2. THAT WAS THE LAST VIDEO GAME GABBY PLAYED, OKAY? She does hold her breath, but she doesn't have to do it for long as she darts in and out as fast as her legs will take her. Which breaks Olympic records. By a lot.

Once she has the mayor outside of the building and far enough away from any poisonous carts of poisonous poison, she plops him down and helps him get free, starting with his mouth. She wishes she could start with his hands so he could handle his mouth by himself, and thus put off the inevitable yelling and complaining about how sucky she is as a hero (her retort that she isn't a frigging hero probably wouldn't do much to help), but it's better to get this overwith. She's no Batman or Bat... Whatever that was. It looks a bit curvier than what she thought Batman would look like. She's just Gabby Malone.

So she grabs the duct tape on the mayor's face and tears it off all in one go. At least now he has something to complain about! (Oh and the bomb, but Gabby doesn't know about that yet.)

When the police bust in and start yelling questions, Batwoman, without looking up, simply points in the direction Gabby went and says, "The mayor is that way." Then she bares her pearly whites, her lips lined with red making them stand out even more from the rest of her pale skin. "I'm going after Quinn." Then, like a modern-day dracula, she draws herself upwards, one hand rising with fingers twisted like she truly intends to cast some vampiric spell, and then she turns with a swirl of her black-exterior-red-interior cape, and with a flash of sparks, she flies upwards to the skylight and smashes through the glass. Those damn spooky undead dracula bat vampire vigilantes!

Meanwhile, Harley Quinn is trying to pull a Trinity and not really making it work aside from her awesome skin-tight outfit. But hey, who needs to know how to fly when you have the power of LUCK!? Things will just work out right for the Clown Princess, right? The skylight is smashed open and a definitely female figure in black and red comes through amidst the glass. That's two windows today that she has broken. It should be immediately obvious to Harley, given her history with Batman that this is not Batman. With a grin even more vampire-like than the one she showed the police, she rises from the rooftop, crimson-gloved hands down at her sides, cape flaring and fluttering as though they were truly bat wings, fly-away hair whipping behind her like a living thing... And she advances on Harley Quinn and the starting helicopter like she has all the time in the world.

She calls out over the engines, "You should stop now. Give up. I promise I won't hurt you unless you want me to!" In-truth, she has flechetter launchers built into her gloves that she can launch at the helicopter to shut it down (hopefully). But she figures she should give Harley the chance to come quietly.

Once the tape is gone from the Mayor's mouth, he immediately spits out a small, metallic orb with a pulsing red light on it. "MOVE, YOUNG LADY!" He shouts at the top of his lungs, despite Gabby being right next to him. Then he tries to shoulder-block her down to the ground, landing half-on, half-off her if successful with a face full of pavement and a scrape on his chin for the trouble.

Meanwhile...

Up on the roof, Quinn starts her pre-flight startup with a tiny frown. "Am I forgettin' somethin'..." She taps her chin for a moment, then begins feeling all over her outfit for her pockets, finally coming up with a little touch-screen detonator/iPhone. "Ah, here it is!" You were expecting something more push-buttony? Well too bad! The sad thing is she didn't even have to repurpose it. The app she's using to control the incendiary device is something she bought from the online app store.

Ain't technology grand?

As Batwoman comes smashing up through the glass and the helicopter blades start to whirr, Quinn looks for all the world like she's calling someone on the phone. She doesn't look up, at least not right away, holding up a finger as if she expects Batwoman to wait while she finishes dialing. "Be with ya in a minuuuuuute~" Though she doesn't yell, so it's kind of hard to hear over the going rotor blades and through the windshield. She keeps typing and tapping and texting or whatever, finally, she looks up, grins widely at the red-headed bat and pops open one of the tiny side windows.

"Hey, I know you! Sorry, got caught up watering my crops on Farmville. They just die if you ignore them, ya know. Need a ride or somethin'? Lemme jus' get rid of my trash!"

And then she throws the iPhone over the side of the building, a tiny little monitor on it showing that there's precious few seconds to spare until it reaches zero. Then... then she unlocks the helicoptor's door, pats the seat, and begins to take off.

What will Batwoman do, go for the bomb's detonator or capture Quinn herself? DILEMMAS!

"Wha--" Gabby starts when the metal blinking ball falls out of the mayor's mouth. She's going to assume this isn't some kind of fancy governmental oral massager and the fact he's so eager to get her away from it really speaks volumes for its importance and/or dangerousness. Gabby just goes with 'dangerous' out of principle. When she's knocked down the stairs with the mayor of Gotham City lying on top of her -- the mayor himself being too tall for them to be face-to-face, thankfully -- she sputters and yells, "What!? What!? Do we nee' t' get away from tha' thing!? It's dangerous, aye!?" She tries to get up and bring the mayor with her, but she doesn't know how far she's going to have to run to get out of range. She just knows that whatever that is is probably bad news and she doesn't want to be near it. She could run after she gets to her feet just fine. But if she's bringing the mayor with her...

Well, she doesn't really have a choice. Grabbing him by the arm, she hauls him to his feet and tries to guide him away as fast as she can, all the while casting nervous looks over her shoulder. Every time. Every single freaking time she tries to be the good guy, things go wrong for her.

Batwoman's grin turns vicious as Harley is messing with a phone and not stopping the helicopter. She raises a hand to launch the needles from her arm-mounted fletchette launchers to disable the rotors, but then the phone is tossed over the side. The red-headed vigilante puts it together quickly. No hesitation. She leaps for the phone first, and tries to grab it. Her grapple launcher could let her try to aim for the helicopter or something, but at this angle it'd probably fail. When she fires it it's aimed at the corner of the roof to halt her fall, not to try to catch the bad guy. That's because her other hand is rapidly tapping at the iphone to attempt to disarm the countdown even as she plummets through the air -- even if that descent will stop abruptly when she reaches the end of the cable.

Will she make it in time!?

It's not hard for Batwoman to disarm it, it's a friggin' iPhone app. She just has to tap the 'stop countdown' button (and then make sure to lock the screen so she doesn't butt-dial it back into counting down). The day is saved, the bomb doesn't go off, and the Mayor and Gabby look pretty silly running from something which doesn't even blow up.

Quinn flies off into the sunset, though police cars easily follow the civilian-model chopper which wasn't designed for high-speed escapes. But when they arrive where she puts down, the psychotic clown is gone, escaped to crime another day.

The police find the Mayor, and Gabby, pionting their weapons at the redhead with the man she appears to be kidnapping, but Hill sets the record straight and proclaims her a hero. He even sets up a ceremony for the following day to give her an award for heroism!

Batwoman may have failed to catch her prey, but she saved a lot of lives and, in the end, there were no fatalities this night. She even stopped the incendiary that would have caught the building on fire!

She totally missed out on a sweet helicopter ride, though.

And somewhere, across town, in a run-down, abandoned apartment building is a blonde-haired former psychiatrist, with no clown-makeup on, sighing sadly out the window and wondering if she'll ever get her happily-ever-after.