2013-02-03 Ivy's Arkham Escape

The almost freakishly gloomy landscape that clings and hovers about Arkham, normally with its choking stillness--phased only with the infrequent transient, armored vehicle had a rare shudder this evening. A shudder that the surrounding animals certainly feel, birds and hawks nervously flitting about. A rumble. Zooming closer to the scene, a faint alarm--nay, several of them, have erupted within the walls of the secured prison. Clearly, something is amiss.

Prisoners clamor the walls of the facility, first merely taking the opportunity to respond to the excitement of unexpectant alarms and the scattering of befuddled guards. Some grin, hoping that somehow, this may mean their escape. Jubilation sparks next, as deep under the building, a subtle rumbling sound is heard. It's almost as if the earth below were turning.

A more clever guard decides to not spend his time wandering and wondering, but instead reports the incident to the police radio. "Attention officers: there is an UNKNOWN security breach at Arkham. Please hold, as we may need support!" His desperate tone reveals his fear--he truly has no damned clue what's happening, and judging by the stock of villain housed here, he may have apt reason to worry.

Despite the noises and spastic guards, not that much has literally changed at the Asylum save for the ventilation system. While secure, by prison standards, there are currently hundreds of freakishly strong vines tunneling and tearing through the system with a sense of urgency that can be unmistakably inhuman.

Palmela Isley, normally glowering and quiet in the UV lights of her isolated Arkham holding cell, has a different tone tonight. Yes, her letters worked. Someone was sympathetic enough. The most subtle cackle, quiet enough to be mistake for a giggle, slips out of her, like it were its own entity trying to step out of her mouth. They were coming for her--her children were going to rescue her!

Yes, indeedy. Someone was sympathetic enough to intercept those letters, having felt bad about leaving such a great kid behind in that dank, dark, -Boring- asylum while she and her Best Boyfriend Forever got to sing and dance and blow up select parts of Gotham City together.

Besides, she's a -doctor.- The health and well-being of the loons in this particular bin are of particular interest to her! Thus, Harley Quinn is on the scene. Joining her are Bud and Lou, her frantic hyenas of RipYourFaceOffery, a dozen random armed goons of various shapes, sizes, and identifiable scar configurations, one good old fashioned Tommy Gun that's been painted red in select parts to better match her persona (and stenciled with the name 'Thumper,') and one very special plant, perhaps bred just for a special evening like this one.

"Musta been one a' them growth spurts," she says to no one in particular once the plant takes root and grows like the freaking wind.

As usual, her hyenas find this to be beyond hysterical.

"Come on, then! We've got a castle to storm, boys!"

How often are the lunatics trying to break -into- Arkham? Add one more to the Harlequin's rap sheet.

Huntress is on her way to check out rumors of a new meth lab starting up in the riverfront district, but gets a call from HAL (aka, Oracle) and after hearing the computerized voice out she curses luridly and turns her Ducati around. Racing toward Arkham, she mutters every harsh thing she can think of about HAL, about Arkham, and about Gotham in general. The distress call from the prison guard is relayed to her while en route, and that just makes her cursing all the more vile.

She reaches the bridge over to Arkham Island and completely ignores any demands to stop or whatever. She barely even slows the motorcycle, shooting past everyone else and only slowing when she's within sight of something straight out of a Jack and the Beanstalk cartoon. Hastily cutting her bike's headlights off, she stops and pulls the vehicle out of sight off of the road and continues on foot, her crossbow already in hand and prepped with one of her last three flashbangs.

Jynn has been back in Gotham for a few days now and has went right back to work at the Rec Center. With things seeming to be quite a bit calmed down in his life, it was time to get back to helping those he told he would be tehre for. Granted a few new kids have been coming to the rec center, high and rumors were coming out that they were into drugs which had the center to get the cops involved and the parents to help with seeking aid for the children. Not liking this was going on, tonight Jynn was headed out into similar area unbeknownst to him that he is about to stumble into something big.

Not having the intelligence from friends who would help him scout, Jynn is doing this pretty much all on his own right now. He didn't have any clue where to look for this drug house, but all he did know was that it was somewhere within Arkham. Catching sight of a woman on a motorcycle riding by, and the costume she is wearing, "Huntress..." he mouthed. Narrowing his eyes, he quickly takes off towards her, following as quickly as he could. Upon getting across the bridge and using a few pakour moves to out maneuver people trying to stop him he too notices the giant bean stalks or vines.

"Holy jesus crapballs!" the Arkham Asylum guard spat into his police radio, rather unprofessionally. "This is some kind of attack! Crooks, guns and... monsters!? Arkham needs help!"--The signal dies moments after an unholy squeal of metal bending pierces the eardrums of anyone who may happening to be listening. The guard himself delivering the message just stood there for a full minute after his signal was cut, hovering in his hunched stance over the microphone. Stunned by the situation.

The tendrils of Ivy's vines had filled the place, and had begun to affect the air quality of the entire facility. There were not any swath of sleeping spores, nor airborne toxins. Merely an overwhelming floral smell--so pungent that its sweetness had become twisted into a wretched sort of stink. Efficiently and with disastrous impact, it was mere minutes before Pamela's cell wall was tore open with a furious strength--the room becoming awash with crawling vines and leaves, glass and chunks of concrete rolling crumbling to the floor. Within a single minute, the room looked nothing like an Arkham cell.

Pamela's eyes melted at the sight--it was like a loved one seeing their significant other after a year away. She becried excited phrases, "The glory of this night! Let us ruin this..."--Interrupting herself, she so very much wanted to spend her time destroying this place, but despite the strength of her pets, it would take quite a while to level this prison. Time that she didn't have.

Instead, she closed her eyes, whispering something inaudible (presumably to the plants), and awkwardly flung herself backward right into a cluster of outstretched vines. They began pulling her down a flight, towards one of the larger main halls. Perhaps it was time to look around Arkham for a fleeting moment before making her escape, she thought.

Huntress gets close enough to shoot off that flashbang where it'll hopefully freak out those... whatever they are things. She promptly runs to find another vantage point to snipe from, this time aiming a bolt she's not used before. Incendiary. And her target is that hideous plant thing.

"Gee, breakin' into this joint sure is a lot easier after Nature's had a turn with it," Harley remarks in an all too cheerful manner, practically skipping along over large, churning roots and cart wheeling around the slithering appendages of doom that threaten to consume the facility. The goons arriving with her get busy clearing a path, taking out remaining guards and causing a whole lot of racket in the process. Screams, grunts, the stuttering of automatic weapons, it's just music to her ears!

"Now then, Pammikins, what cell block was that again..Oh yah!" Harley slips a pen into her mouth like a mobster might take hold of a lit cigar, hefting the bulky weight of the SMG at her hip. "Letsh dansh."

A few moments later brings Harley and her pets down into one of those darkened halls, occasionally lit up with the strobe of weapons fire as she attacks guards, closed doors, and the occasional fire hydrant, because they're SO neat when they go up like that. "Where ya hiding, Red! Your ride's ready to roll! Crap, I hope I got the right address..."

Easily slipping his hands into his jacket, Jynn takes out a slicked out hand gun. Quickly changing the magazine to live ammo due to the plants, "No, Ivy better not be getting out." he says as he sees the vines moving and undulating as they are ripping apart metal and brick alike. Catching sight of Huntress, Jynn quickly moves to flank her, using the momentary blindness of the flashbang to help aid him into getting to a better vantage point as well.

The plants on the receiving end of Huntress' flashbang did respond with a stunned confusion, though only momentarily. The scene of Arkham, while having erupted into a battalion of alarms and streaming guards, seems surprisingly isolated. Merely a few prisoners have escaped--and, from the distanced view of one approaching the scene--the path of plants is profoundly clear: up a few flights, focused towards one area. If Ivy were watching this from afar, she'd muse something about climbing a beanstalk.

But instead, Ivy's vines tore a roadway in front of her, leaving an obvious path behind her. It was an odd sort of red carpet treatment, and Pamela was unwittingly hamming it up, as if she were homecoming queen. Numerous prisoners in cells around her pounded on the walls of their cells. "Let us out, bitch!!" one serpentine-skinned muscled man shrieked. The guards that did perk nearby to investigate were quickly disposed of by the increasing volume of plant activity. Ivy, however, seemed to have zero interest in helping any of these prisoners out, though she gracefully stepped past them, looking into each cell.

As she began to wonder the most efficient means of departure, she thought she heard... yes, that voice was distinct. Harley's high-pitched whimsy was recognizable to her, even within the chaotic scene, and she couldn't help but head towards it. She panned around a bit--as she momentarily forgot the urgency of her situation. If it was Harley that'd responded to her plead for help, she deserved a thank you. For even if she were to be locked up again within these walls, she at least got to visit with her precious children one more time. This meant (almost) everything to Pamela.

Huntress realizes a little bit late that doesn't seem to be anyone significant near the base of that plant thing, and then gets an idea. She runs for the nearest buildings on the outskirts of the Asylum, looking at the labels on the various locked doors. Come on, they have to keep landscaping supplies around here somewhere. What she wouldn't give for a few five-gallon buckets of that weed-killer stuff they talk about on TV.

Plants and wild, carnivorous animals may not be one and the same, but from where Harley's standing they're plenty close enough. No one wants to spend time away from their babies! Poison Ivy isn't the most familiar sight in the world to the Bouncy Little Trickster, but how many red-headed women can you find in this joint? Let alone ones that are busy roaming around free of their cells. "Red!" comes the cheery yelp of glee, Harley running over to give the other villainess a big ol' hug, flanked then surrounded in an instant by the two hyenas. "I posted bail for ya! Took some doing, had ta reload a coupla times. Path should be clear, let's go check out the stars! Beautiful evenin.' There's even some fires to warm your hands by." The work of Molotov cocktails and what may well be an awful case of ADHD, right there.

Jynn on the other hand doesn't see much himself, climbing up the front gate and leaping down over it, he does a three point landing, one that even the Bats would have to give a nod, but then again he's Batman he probably wouldn't even notice. Jynn begins scanning the area, seeing movement, he gives chase only to find that he is following Huntress again, "Hey what are you looking for, shouldn't we go inside or something." he says holding his gun close and trying to formulate a plan of some kind.

"...Truly a most gracious surprise, my dear," Ivy said with a smirkish smile, trying at first not to respond to Harley's embrace. Her body stiffed awkwardly at first, as she wasn't particularly comfortable with hugs in general, but she breathed into a relaxed posture after a moment. "Thank you for this." Stepping a pace back, her hands and arms extending outwardly with a mixture of rapture and showing off. "Are these not the most lovely Wisteria you've ever seen? A rare, special breed..." she said, beaming with pride--unphased by the nearby gunfire of one of Harley's gunmen taking out a guard. Like a diva dosed on opiates, Ivy was still basking in being wrapped in her sudden, makeshift greenery chamber.

"Let us venture outward, whilst our getting is good!" she proclaimed, stepping into a muted skipping sort of walk. A few bounding trots ahead, her eyes widened as she saw a 15-gaurd sprawl of injured guards, laying prone across the floor... like a trail of breadcrumbs, leading towards the exit. She began to sprint towards that very opening, hoping Harley and her men wouldn't stray too far.

"It sure is a remarkable ..whateveritis--Wisteria! Yah, that thing. Hey, whatever kinda Miracle Grow you fed these guys, it did tha trick. I'd hug it too if I knew where ta start!" Harley cheerily replies while letting the Tommygun fall back against her shoulder. The motion causes her finger to hook against the trigger just enough to rattle off a burst of slugs into the ceiling, shredding a bank of fluorescent lights with an abrupt squeak of surprise coming from the tiny shooter.

Ahem.

"After you, Red!"

A lot of damage came to this place in very short order. Granted, Arkham's fairly used to this sort of treatment, massive plants aside. "Ya know how a fern really helps to dress up an empty room?" Harley remarks while bouncing along after Ivy. "It's a lot like that. The biggest fern for the biggest, emptiest room. They should all be thankin' ya for lightening the mood around here, it's so -dull!-"

Huntress startles at Jynn's abruptly speaking out of seemingly nowhere, but manages to turn the reaction from the surprise into a quick draw that has her crossbow aimed at the speaker's head. "If you're here to help stop that thing," her eyes flick toward the giant plant and back to the oddly dressed young man, "then help. Or get out of my way." No, she doesn't explain what she's looking for, but when she moves on to a small shad and promptly breaks down the door marked 'landscaping', maybe her goal is a little more obvious.

When one is drawn on, some would not do anything, Jynn is on the verge of bringing his weapon up but stops due to him having snuck up on Huntress. "Well if I had a clear way of doing so I would." he says as he looks from her crossbow to the plants. "Well find what you need and help." he tells her as he begins walking away from Huntress breaking out his second gun and reloading it with live ammo as well, "I remembered what happened last time I was in this situation with Ivy." he says more to himself, he raises one gun up and fires off two shots one ripping cleanly through one of the vines, but the second shot misses. Not liking the hot pain of the bullet or the heat, the vine falls to the ground but a second one races down towards Jynn the tip spinning as is trying to pierce him.

Jynn leaps aside, using the gun in his left hand fires upwards trying to hit the main source of that particular vine. Hope Huntress is happy he just brought the forest attention around to him.

Pamela’s trot was stopped short by the sudden encounter with fresh, "outside" air. Ivy took a moment to look into the night sky. Her mind tangented into thoughts of rolling in plot of nightshades, hooting at the moon while encamped in a towering oak. A sense of opportunity filled her, immediately followed by a plethora of possible schemes. But she had so very much work to do, to prepare. To an onlooker, Ivy would've seemed to be affixed into a 30-second, derpy, starry-eyed stare into the night sky. Not exactly the pace of a life-sentenced, Arkham would-be escapee. With an odd likeness of a nervous child taking its first steps, she slid her foot down upon the concrete ground that surrounded the main prison building. This all seemed too easy, she thought with a proud yet paranoid peep in her head.

Just ahead, Ivy saw a rather large, pale thug charging at a breakneck speed away from the prison... an escaped prisoner, no doubt. With another step, she felt endowed with a new strength, and she began holding side sides of her forehead with the palms of her hands. In the night air, she just stood there.

Inside of Arkham, most of the vines and plants would take a dramatic shift. The idle ones began to recede, and the climbing ones shifted directions back towards their source. The movement was dramatic--this flora was slowly beginning to consolidate.

Meanwhile, coming in quickly behind the newest escapee...

"Stupid, old, clunky piece of garbage," Harley grumbles while smacking and all but straight-out punching her weapon in trying to reload it. "Good enough for our fightin' boys in the forties, ages like a soggy baguette. No wonder I got it for a song!"

She's so focused on her task that she nearly runs right into Pamela as she stands there and communes with Nature. The short stop proves to be enough, as the drum magazine drops from Thumper with a heavy clatter.

"A-ha! Yer no match for me, bustah."

Then the struggle begins anew as she tries to load a fresh drum into it. It gives her pets a chance to bounce around and yip like it's Christmas morning, sniffing at the air and looking for soft, fleshy things they can get their teeth into.

"Oh yah! Got us a chauffer just over there, but really! Take yer time. Not like anyone's gonna try ta stop us." Eheh. "..Can we go now?"

Huntress hefts the largest container of herbicide she finds in the landscaping shed out and while the braid-haired young man distracts the nasty beanstalk thing she fires another incendiary bolt at its base in the hopes of opening a hole to reach its roots. Then running as best she can with the herbicide in hand, she races to pour the chemicals on the plant's roots before it has a chance to react to her presence. Fingers crossed, this is a HUGE gamble.

Having gotten hammered by two of the vines, Jynn rolls along the ground and fires two more shots into the vines. It's not until he notices somewhat of a fire at the base of the vines, looking in that direction he sees what Huntress is trying to do. Knowing he has to cover her, he begins firing rapidly into the spot she fired in, hoping to open the hole up a bit more. But after his fifth shot, he begins focusing his firing on the vines themselves keeping them distracted and their focus on him.

Was that a... shriek? Jynn's distraction certainly aided Huntress' ease of movement, and in response to Huntress' herbicide attack, an audible, pained sound squawks from the massive vine's root. Unwittingly, Huntress had managed to hurt one of the main root structures of this labyrinthine weavework of plant sprawl. The entire green monstrosity in front of both her and Jynn, shook and reeled in what was clearly pain.

It wasn't just the greenery that felt it, however. Ivy, too, looked struck... followed with a sudden rage-filled expression in her face. "You might be wrong, my dear," she corrected tersely. She began walking towards the direction of Huntress with a maddened pace. "The lunatics that maintain this asylum mustn't get away with this marred attack on my precious friends..." she barked with a rant-like temper, stomping forward.

"So..we're gonna be stayin' a while," Harley says in a way that screams 'my mood this evening has just crash-landed.' "But..that means..that I get to shoot some more guys..!" Bing! Back up to happycheery Trickster.

Big plant or no, with Ivy leading the march it's only a matter of time before the ones responsible for causing that chlorophyllastic shriek can be spotted. "Hey..! You leave my Little Red friend's Big Green friend alone!" She's got a hundred rounds at her disposal in ol' Thumper, there. She's also got virtually no sense of aim. As cover fire goes, it's not that bad! Lead goes flying all over creation while a small pile of brass starts to take shape not far from her side. For actually hitting anything important, however, she should probably find herself a new hobby.

Somewhere further off there's a fresh scream as Bud and Lou find another guard to maul. They couldn't be happier tonight!

Huntress gasps and covers her ears for a second when then beanstalk starts SCREAMING, but then moves to run clear, reloading her crossbow as she goes and aiming to get the young man who offered cover fire clear as well. Bonus aspect of most herbicides, they're also usually REALLY flammable. She fires off another incendiary bolt at the huge writhing plant then reaches to grab whichever of Jynn's arms is closest and pull him along away from the plant what she's guessing is the plant's owner or at least close friend spraying bullets everywhere haphazardly.

Well with guns in ones hands they really can't cover their ears all that well and the screaming is enough to disorient him a bit as he lowers his head a bit and stumbles backwards. "Shit!" he growls a little as he begins falling back slowly. Seeing Huntress coming towards him through blurred vision due to the screaming, Jynn really isn't in a way to resist her as she grabs his left arm and dragging him away. When the screaming subsides a bit, "Thanks," he says to her as he begins moving a bit faster, wanting to get away from the screaming plant.

Ivy, by some sort of blessed luck, managed to avoid getting shot by Harley's wild gunfire. As her angry footfalls pounded close enough to see her plant's attackers, she stopped. Pamela stared at Huntress with the scowly glare of a thousand daggered eyes. She wasn't sure who this was, but she knew they must've been...just horrible people! A quick scan of the outfit made her think of Batman... and she was immediately, illogically hit with the paradoxical pangs of her winged obsession, somehow concluding that this one must certainly be linked to him somehow. 'That harlot!' she thought.

In the far distance, dozens of police sirens could begin to be heard, but just faintly. The cavalry was apparently en route. Still oblivious to this, Pamela barked at Huntress with a craven-like insanity, "Your malice and destruction shall be noted in the tree rings of history,"

Pamela flung her forearm in a motion that looked almost like a karate chop. This would have been quite random, if it weren't followed by the sudden drop of a half dozen, extensively thorny, large vines. Flung like rubberbands, soaring over Ivy and aimed *directly* at Jynn and Huntress like multi-tipped spears.

A Tommygun's pretty impressive, isn't it..? Right? C'mon, don't leave a girl hanging, here.

Harley can just stand there, jaw slightly agape, as those thorns go launching forward with near-sniper precision. There she stands, smoke billowing out of the end of Thumper's barrel. "Right show-off, ya are."

Sirens closing in can only mean one thing. Easier targets! She swings the barrel around, rattles off another handful of rounds into the squad cars, then runs out altogether. "Aww, -nuts.-" Thumper gets dropped to the ground, practically too hot to touch. In its stead, she tries to grab Ivy by the arm. "C'mon girlie, we don't have the time for this! Grey's Anatomy is about to start!"

A few of the armed goons are still standing around. With their crazy leader out of ammo they step up to the plate, firing away to keep the cops down behind cover.

"We're not clear yet," Huntress tells the younger man. "I think we just pissed off Mother Nature back there. Shitstorms about to hi..." And as if to prove her words right, one of Harley's wild shots sears a stripe across the right side of her ribcage. It's enough of a shock to cause her to stumble and give a thorn-laden vine about as big around as an adult's wrist the chance to slap into her at about waist height and rip her away from Jynn. She's sent tumbling like a rag doll about fifteen feet away.

The gunfire is coming in hot and heavy, and as Huntress is hit, and then thrown away from him, he quickly spins about leaping backwards and firing off two shots before landing in a back roll. The two shots are heading towards Harley, knowing he had live ammo, he fires towards the ground right in front of her to make her jump back and showing that he's a better shot then she is. Laying on his back he rolls to his left as a large vine slams into the ground where he just was. "Shit gotta get back to her." he says as he sprints towards Huntress. Lowering his guns and ejecting the mags, an auto loader in the sleeves of his jacket slides into the hilt of the guns. Reloading them, as he nears Huntress his legs are swept from under him causing him to hit the ground hard, but not before he managing to holster one of his guns. "Come on we gotta move....." he grunts as the air is taking away from him.

The police sirens were more than a muted wind chime now, and their resonance echoed in the distance. Was that a helicopter, too? Ivy, even in all her enragement, totally noticed... and seemed to be panicking. She shook with a momentary spasmodic twitch, and behind her dozens of the remains of her vegetative spawns--about forty large vines--plunged themselves in a sudden, downward thrust into the soil (and concrete pathways, in some cases) below, creating a wave of violent rumbles below. Ivy didn't want this to be her last stand, no. It couldn't be. Not after all she'd been through, locked away here! She might not be able to punish this woman, here and now, drat it. Relief crossed her expression, as Harley's arm-tug pulled her out of what might have been an eternal eye-vexing towards Huntress. Her jesterly ally softening her expression slightly, receding again to a worried panic.

The rumble began to build, ever-so-slowly mounting into a minor, localized tremor. Something was happening below their feet, for certain, as the ground bellowed out an ominous, earthen-crunching sound. Following Harley's directions sheepishly, she began to make her guided escape, finally. With the dart towards the getaway car, a sudden wall of vines rose up--with a synchronized horror, stones and soil spilling out into a heap. The wall rose to about five feet tall, and seeing through it was difficult, but not impossible. Harley and her associates were making their break for it.

"-Yeep!-"

Exactly one red/black arm and one black/red arm leap up to shield Harley's painted face as the dirt in front of her leaps up out of the ground and patters across her wonky costume. "Hey, I -just cleaned this!-" she cries back. The look on her face is that of a child scorned by a parent, though it disappears quickly enough. She's ready to call in The Boys for some reinforcement, or a gun that still has ammo in it, when Pamela pulls the mother of all escape tricks and surrounds them in a wall of vines and roots. Much like her own suggestion a moment ago, it's time to go.

And she can't stop -giggling.- "That was so great! Can we do it again? Oh, you've missed so much, Red!"

The joke is that these two still barely know one another. But for one of the two, that's nothing to get in the way of a good time!

Huntress is slow to pick herself back up, though hearing Jynn's breathless admonition that they need to move spurs to to get up faster. A miracle that she managed to not lose her grip on her crossbow... really, more just a VERY hard won reflex. Rising a bit unsteadily, she re-holsters her crossbow with one hand and pulls a small but wicked knife with the other before reaching to pull the young man to his feet and give the nearest attacking vine a good slice. "Let's go." She'll let herself think about rose thorns and whiplash later.

As he is pulled up to his feet, he too re-holsters his weapon and with Huntress help, he runs with her. Not letting her get to far from him, they managed to get in and out without too much harm to themselves, but still he is hurting. For a male he is a bit on the light side, but wirey and quick and as they run he makes sure to keep his pace matching that of Huntress.

Despite the normally sharp fighting skills of Huntress and Jynn, Harley's explosive element of surprise seemed pad the groups escape. Combined with her numerous high-paced, tenuous car chase escapes, it only took about 15 minutes to shake off the police. 15 minutes, plus unfathomable rounds of gunfire, several explosives, and a practiced route. Ivy, squeeing like a giddy four year old watching her favorite cartoon all the while. Somewhere, in an ignored part of her heart, she felt bad for her cute widdle wisteria, and had already considered ways of making Huntress suffer. Once she figured out who the heck she was.

The police managed to apprehend, over the course of the evening, every other escaped Arkham inmate other than Ivy, and emergency plans were already being discuss to fortify the facility from this ever happening again. The next day, when investigators picked through this hot mess of a rubble pile, they'd find a crumpled, piece of a torn paper that Harley had dropped.

"To those who love true justice," the difficult-to-read letter began, written in with exquisite penmanship flourish. "The cruel, unintelligible teeth of humanity bite the very hand that feeds it--mother nature. I merely ask that those who can't speak still be heard..." The letter went on for another eight paragraphs, condeming modern civilization.