2014.04.14 - Pop Goes The Harlequin

(NOTE: The beginning half of this log got corrupted. Harley attempted to hold up a shoe store, Vorpal tries to stop her, which leads us to...)

"Come now, Harley. You're to lovely to be angry." The familiar voice floats at her down from the dome. The Joker's face is replaced by that of a serene-looking Cheshire.

"If all you wante were shoes, all you needed to do was ask, yannow?"

The illusion crackles and then it is gone completely. Vorpal is standing there in front of the remaining stragglers, acting as a human shield.

"All of this for a pair of shoes? C'mon. I'll buy you shoes and then take you out for ice cream. For realz."

"Come now, Harley. You're to lovely to be angry." The familiar voice floats at her down from the dome. The Joker's face is replaced by that of a serene-looking Cheshire.

"If all you wante were shoes, all you needed to do was ask, yannow?"

The illusion crackles and then it is gone completely. Vorpal is standing there in front of the remaining stragglers, acting as a human shield.

"All of this for a pair of shoes? C'mon. I'll buy you shoes and then take you out for ice cream. For realz."

Harley watches all these illusions with a mixture of amazement and wonder and violent rage sitting on the cutting edge of a knife. Really, she could go either way with it all.

When it all desolves and Vorpal is standing where snow globe snow and happy memories of Victor being all 'raaar my wife' had been, Harl raises her uzi and narrows her eyes.

"And cucumber slices?"

"All the cucumber slices you can wish for." Vorpal says, arms crossed.

The last employee is leaving the store at this moment- the way he sees it, he needs to buy her time to get out. Even if it means putting himself in the line of fire.

Not that he wouldn't buy Harley ice cream. He sees Quinzel as a victim of the Joker's taint. A dangerous, insane victim, still.

Harley is making decisions of grave importance in her bleach blonde head. Her eyes remain little slivers across her tear streaked white face, glaring into Keith so hard... so dang hard.

"Kay." She finally says sheepishly quiet. Like a little girl whose just been talked out of her hiding place by a loved one swearing there's no monster under her bed.

She pulls the trigger, of course. I mean, seriously, that was gonna happen.

But the important thing to note about it is there was no 'reason' for her to pull the trigger. She just did.

For funsies.

I never saw a moor;

I never saw the sea,

Yet know I how the heather looks

And what a billow be...

It's strange, the things that pop into your mind when you're certain you're facing your death and everything becomes a one last stretch of time. A poem. Some silly poem his mother used to read. The bullets hit him with a force that sends him back against one of the racks, causing it to collapse over him. One of the bracelets crafted by Brynn detaches from his arm, flying across the store. Ironic that it was made of material that could deflect bullets, if only it were wielded by someone fast enough to do so.

The boxes collapse on him, but he's not really in a mind to worry about that now that warm blood is flowing from him. And there are sirens in the distance, coming closer finally.

Harley watches the cat fly backwards in a spray of red mist as the bullets rip through his body and send him hurtling back into all the shoes. Buried in all the shoes. Bleeding on all the shoes.

The uzi smokes from the recent firing, still held out stretched in her hand. Her face twisted over to one side and a brow raised curiously as she inches closer to Vorpal to nudge him with her toe.

"You're not wearin' armor?" Absolutely flabergasted. She's not really concerned that he might 'die', only that he... you know.. wasn't wearing protection.

"That whole, put a helmet on the little man, doesn't just apply to sex, dude.." The uzi is slid into the back of her pants and her head turns in the direction of the approaching sirens. "Ugh..."

She kneels down and grabs Vorpal by the wrist, dragging him out through the open door into the street. A bleeding vigilante in one palm, a mallet in the other, she's comically leaning forward to trudge through invisible snow. Up hill. Both ways.

"Let's go mister... You need to buy me some ice cream before you bleed out."

"R--rain c-ch-check." The Cheshire says, trying to focus hard. His teleportation wasn't going to save him because of its limitations. What he needed was something above and beyond. He wasn't sure he could get it done, though, not like that time in Arkham when he pushed himself. Still.. he had to try.

He plants his feet firmly and focuses. Very soon it'd be life and death.

"No, you promised. Bullet wounds are no excuse for take backsies." Harley tugs, she's probably stronger than she looks. All hopped up on plant juice an' all. Her tongue even pokes out one corner of her mouth, suddenly this is a game of tug-o-war for realz.

"Don't make this difficult, people will think we're havin' a spat." Nevermind that he's bleeding from chest wounds.

Details.

He could feel himself ebbing out. This wouldn't do- if he couldn't get it together, he was going to die and Harley was going to drag his body around like some demented Calvin with a dead Hobbes.

"N-next time d-don't shoot..." he says, and focuses. One last attempt, because that is all he has.

And that's all Harley would see of him- first there was a very solid cheshire there, on whom she was tugging, and then there was only empty air, on which she would be trying to tug.

A few miles away, a nurse got the fright of her life as a bleeding, severely wounded purple feline appeared in front of her desk, and then collapsed without a word. The emergency room staff mobilized soon after.

Harley isn't having none of this! She wants ice cream and she wants it. right. NOW! With a mighty tug, she leans all of her weight into yanking Vorpal in the desired direction. Yet, there is no Vorpal, there is only air. There is air that she's pulling with a mighty tug that would have surely been victorious in dragging hi one single step closer to ice cream.

Instead she falls flat on the sidewalk. Starting around with quick, scowling glances, where a cat has disappeared. "ooooooh... That's just not fair. That's not even fair at all..." She huffs and pushes up to her feet and grabs her mallet to hoist up on her shoulders. Sirens are coming. 'Do I have time to grab some shoes?'

She's ALREADY forgotten about ice cream.

Tip toeing towards the broken glass, she peeeeeks down the street, then into the store and pilfers the pair of flats she was eyeing earlier and takes off running down the sidewalk waving them at lunch time foot traffic, "Move! I've got super secrete clown business that supercedes anything you might have been doing on this sidewalk today!"

One dude in a business suit gets smacks upside the face with the business end of a flat.

'You should probably send the purple cat a get well soon card.' "That would be super thoughtful."