Back in Arkham. Fudge.
All because that ratfink bank guard pulled a silent alarm. Fudge.
At least when she was
caught with Puddin’, or even with Red, Harley wasn’t stuck all by her
lonesome. They rode with her in the van or the Batmobile, or sometimes the
ambulance, and even if they did spend most of the ride yelling at her for
wrecking their perfect plan, she wasn’t by her lonesome.
Fudge.
Then, once they reached
the admissions desk, Puddin’ or Red usually went over it all again with the
admitting nurse, explaining how Harley had messed up their perfect scheme.
It was like reliving the adventure all over again—at least until the
admitting nurse sedated them. Of course, they couldn’t sedate Red with
regular chemical compounds. They were supposed to use the special
concoction Batman had developed, and if an orderly was new, sometimes they
didn’t know and that was always fun to watch. It was even funnier the first
time a new Arkham employee saw Puddin.
Sigh.
Going through all the
admissions processing by her lonesome was so boring. Harley asked
the admitting nurse to let her dot all the ‘i’s with smiley faces, and that
killed a few minutes. Then she made up some food allergies. She said that
eating anything made with whole wheat or barley made her break out in hives,
and maple syrup gave her nosebleeds. That made the nurse fill out a
supplemental 11-B form with a 46-R green sheet. Harley went back to being
bored.
Back in Arkham and all by
her lonesome. Fudge.

Matt Hagen wasn’t a big
fan of irony. He was an action star. The scripts he’d received when he
was working were simple, straightforward, not too clever. Any time he took
a project where the plot was more complicated than a beer commercial or the
humor more sophisticated than a Bond knockoff quipping that he’s “rising to
the occasion,” a full third of his fanbase was confused. So he’d learned,
flop by flop, to stop reading whenever a script produced any twist he didn’t
see coming by page 10. Meeting the audience’s expectations, that was the
name of the game, not veering one degree from those expectations, no matter
how illogical, unimaginative or hackneyed they might be. That was the key to
making a successful action movie, and that was the key to walking out of a
maximum-security prison in full view of a trained security staff on high
alert.
The irony is that he
never could have done it without reading 200 scripts a year that pandered to
those numbskull expectations. The irony was that he’d completed his “prison
break” while still technically on prison grounds, and only escaped detection
now by technically becoming part of the prison itself. The irony is
that he would have laughed, except it’s physically impossible for wet
asphalt to laugh. The irony is that he hated irony, yet here he was,
disguised as a fresh patch of asphalt in the Blackgate parking lot while he
rested from the rigors of his escape. The warden’s car, the guard’s shoes,
the vehicles for the dragnet, all passed right by without ever guessing the
escaped criminal who caused all the excitement was sitting right in front of
them.
Eventually he would
reshape himself, perhaps as the primer on a visitor’s car or blend into the
upholstery in the backseat, completing his “prison break” once they’d given
up looking for him and scoring a ride back to the city at the same time.
Eventually he would, but for now he needed to rest. Reshaping half his face
at a time was exhausting but he’d pulled it off, presenting one profile to
the camera and another to the guard come to escort him from the holding
cell. Down the hall: one face to the camera, one to the guard. Then
finally once they reached “Processing,” a quick morph walking through the
doorway into a fullface Latino inmate who looked nothing at all like Matt
Hagen’s Monarch of Menace. The guard flipped out, he’d brought the wrong
guy—he couldn’t have, but he obviously did. It was asinine trying to deny
it when the wrong man was standing right there. Plus, when they got around
to looking at the surveillance tapes it would certainly look like he’d
brought this Latino from the holding cell. While one of the guards on the
desk called camera station 12 to verify the incident, the first guard went
back to the holding cell—with an escort of his own—to bring the correct
inmate, John Doe 4923 a.k.a. “the Monarch of Menace.” Matt didn’t hang
around for the dramas. Another quick doorway-morph into a third guard let
him slip away easily in the confusion, but he felt he really couldn’t go
further without a rest. So he let himself ooze out into a comfortable tarry
glop as soon as he reached the parking lot, then darkened to resemble
asphalt. He stretched what had once been his toes into a row of orange
cones, and waited for all the excited nonsense to quiet down.

Chocolate covered
onions? There was little Alfred Pennyworth would put past the French, but
even he found it hard to believe his rival and nemesis, the neighbor’s chef
Anatole, could be planning to serve chocolate-covered onions. Yet if his
suppositions about Anatole’s menu were correct, based on the ingredients the
odious little frog had bought at Harriman’s, then chocolate and onions were
the only items left. That couldn’t be right, ergo, Alfred must be wrong
about the menu. It must be the chocolate that was meant to glaze the
peaches and the balsamic reduction would be used elsewhere…
He drew a thin line
through his speculation for the meat, salad, dessert, and savory courses and
began again, when he heard the elevator that connected his pantry to the
Batcave wheezing to life.
“Miss Selina,” he
murmured, nudging his reading glasses down his nose so he could regard his
visitor over the top of the lens once the door opened. It must be Miss
Selina, Master Bruce never used the elevator. But then as a rule, neither
did she. Yet of the two of them, Selina was more likely to deviate from
habit, and sure enough, as the door opened there she was.
“May I help you, miss?”
Alfred asked automatically, although she waved him off as soon as she saw
him.
“Just passing through to
get a snack,” she remarked heading into the kitchen. Alfred followed and
saw her take a carton of chocolate Haagen Daaz from the freezer and put it
in the microwave.
“Plotting makes me
hungry,” she explained—if that was really the word.
“Indeed, miss,” Alfred
said dryly. “Might one inquire as to the nature of your pl—er, is it
really your intention to ‘defrost’ the ice cream, miss?”
“Just softening it up,”
she said casually, then returned to the question he hadn’t managed to ask. “Plotting is for a museum heist,” she said with a bright smile. “We’re
doing art theft—or at least we were. Ivy’s back, so who knows how much
longer the lull will last.”
Alfred’s vaguely
dissatisfied expression directed at the microwave morphed into one of
unambiguous distaste at the mention of Poison Ivy.
“I know,” Selina sighed,
mildly amused at the similarity to a disapproving bat-scowl. She opened the
microwave, spooned out a healthy portion of ice cream into a waiting bowl,
and then took two spoons from the drawer. “That’s why I have to get as much
fun into him as I can, while I have the chance” she quipped, waving the second spoon.
Alfred said nothing. He
merely watched her disappear into the butler’s pantry and then wiped a
non-existent smudge from the counter.

Getting into Arkham was
no challenge at all for Matt Hagen. Maybe he couldn’t turn into an
eerie-but-photogenic column of smoke and go under the door like Count
Dracula, but he could do the next best thing: walk in the front entrance
like Count Bartholomew. The nurse at the front desk did a doubletake when
she saw him, and Dr. Bartholomew duly recited his prepared excuse about
having forgotten important paperwork in his office and coming back to
retrieve it. Except the nurse wasn’t surprised because he was there so late
at night, she was surprised he looked so good. She said he looked “happy
and chipper,” 10 years younger than when he left.
Matt/Bartholomew coughed
awkwardly and said he’d enjoyed a very good dinner, then he quickly took a
keycard from the desk and headed for his office. At the end of the
corridor, he turned right instead of left, deepening Dr. Bart’s crow’s feet
as he went, sinking the eyes a bit and darkening the circles underneath. He would see how the guard reacted at the final check-in for the high
security wing. If he was suitably convinced that Matt was Dr. Bartholomew,
it would be Plan A for Harley’s breakout: “Bring Patient Quinn to my
office.” From there, Dr. Bartholomew would take her to the roof and stretch
his body into a slide for Harley to reach the ground. But if the guard
reacted to his appearance in any way, however trivial the comment, then it
would be Plan B: destruction. He would take the Monarch’s form, blow a
hole or two through the wall, and he and Harley would hop into the waiting
escape van. It was probably the better plan, strategically. A daring
jailbreak rescue at Arkham on the heels of his mystifying escape from Blackgate would catapult the Monarch of Menace to
superstar status among
Gotham rogues.
But Matt didn’t
especially want to be a superstar as the Monarch of Menace. The role was a
convenience, it matched Harley’s theme and let him sneak back into rogue
circles after Poison Ivy had him blackballed. But now, Ivy knew his secret
anyway, and trying to keep up the charade got him sent off to Blackgate.
The whole idea of a secret identity was losing its appeal. He hadn’t
absolutely decided to give it up, but he certainly saw no need to build up
the Monarch’s reputation into a Bat-busting SuperRogue.
So, even as he reached
the entrance to the high security wing, Matt Hagen had not finally decided
which means he would use to leave again. He would let the guard at the
sign-in desk decide for him…
Except there was no guard
at the desk.
He looked around
curiously and then, remembering his character, he looked around sternly.
Why was the station unmanned at this time of night? What kind of
irresponsible behavior was this from the night staff? Didn’t they realize
what dangerous criminals were housed in this wing? Joker, Scarecrow, Poison
Ivy—The last name was not actually “in residence” at the moment, but
Matt/Bartholomew did see the unmistakable sway of green-clad hips
disappearing down the hall, shapely green hips topped with red hair. That
certainly explained why the guard was not at his station. Matt/Bartholomew
stormed down the hallway, cursing under his breath, and caught up with his
quarry at the door to Harley’s cell.
“Ivy, you’re more
predictable than a Will Smith sequel,” he exclaimed, not bothering to
disguise his voice. She didn’t seem to notice, she just gave that belle of
the ball smile. While Hagen was long past smelling, he was sure the air was
thick with jungle scents and pheromones.
“Do run along, Doctor,
I’m quite busy,” she oozed seductively.
He chuckled.
Predictable. And what Jameson, his agent, would have called “a one-trick
pony.” Clayface had devised two separate ways in and out of the asylum and
could have come up with a dozen more elaborate ones that all fell under the
heading: Why go to all that trouble when I have two perfectly good plans
already. But this, this leaf-diva headcase that called herself a
goddess, her problem-solving seemed to begin and end with: Find
something with a penis and assume he’ll do my bidding. Matt had known
many starlets like that. They never seemed to clue in that beauties were a
dime a dozen on the backlot, and that no lovely face counteracted an acid
personality. They were gorgeous, so what, they were also hell
to spend time with. And if, god-forbid, they were famous instead of just
an aspiring hopeful, they could be ridiculously slow to realize they were
not as loved, worshipped or admired as it said in their press kits.
Poison Ivy at least
caught on quickly. He’d chuckled for maybe eight seconds when the beguiling
smile dropped into a disgusted snarl.
“Hagen,” she sneered.
In reply, he morphed into
his sexiest headshot and delivered his most seductive, movie star grin. He
knew Ivy wouldn’t get the joke, her kind never did. But Matt was amused,
and in the middle of a jailbreak rescue that was fast becoming a sitcom
farce, that was enough.
“Ivy,” he answered. “I
assume you’re here for Harley, same as me?”
“How dare you, you
crawling dungheap. It’s because she was with you she was captured.”
“That’s why I’m here to
break her out,” he pointed out simply.
“Well it’s not
necessary,” Ivy spat. “You can leave that to her real friends.”
He sighed. It was
pointless to even try to argue with an egomaniac. He had tried, in the old
days. He tried explaining how his character, Troy Rudolph, identified with
his uncle but wasn’t really anything like him. He tried to be, but he
always failed because he never really knew who his uncle was. His tragedy
was becoming a pale, inferior clone of Uncle Phillip instead of being the
best Troy Rudolph he could be. Matt tried explaining it, over and over, and
each time Cameron just repeated that one pathetic line from the opening
monologue. “I’m a lot like my uncle.” One stupid line. Yes, Troy
thought that. He was wrong. That was the whole point…
After weeks of fighting over it, Matt finally gave up. Cameron would never
understand the essence of the story he was telling. Matt just let him
babble on in his ignorance, and when the cameras rolled, Matt played the
scene his way. Cameron would yell for a while, then “Take two” and Matt
played it his way again. Eventually Cameron got tired howling at the moon,
looked at his schedule, looked at his budget, and moved on.
Of course, Ivy was not
likely to tire quickly, and eventually the Arkham day shift would come in. A compromise might be in order.
“Why don’t we let Harley
decide,” he suggested. It was a risk. Harley could be a bit of a flake,
and letting her make decisions in the middle of a crime is what brought
Nightwing and a SWAT team into what should have been a simple bank robbery.
But anything was better than going ten rounds with Cameron-in-Leaves. So
they opened the cell door—using the keycard Ivy had taken from Saul
Vics and not the one Matt grabbed at the front desk. Ivy had
insisted on that, and Matt just sighed, not caring. Manufacturing
pointless, petty victories; Cameron all over again—
That was as far as his
thoughts progressed before the lock released and the door opened. Then Ivy
could enjoy one final, petty, manufactured victory in that she realized a
full 3 seconds before Hagen did that Harley Quinn’s cell was empty.

Catwoman did not patrol
like some crimefighting do-gooder. She made that more than clear on a
number of occasions. She would take a mild interest in Bruce’s work as
Bruce’s work, but that’s as far it went. She liked watching him work.
He was in costume, apart from the cowl, and stood before a large,
holographic map of the city, tapping instructions into a hand-held unit to
plan out his route for the night.
It was interesting that
he’d assigned Robin and Batgirl to follow Ivy from the airport. It was a
surveillance exercise, he said, good experience for them but a low priority
in terms of the Mission. Ivy would likely go to Robinson Park, Riverside
Park, or else to her greenhouse. They were to note which, log it, and when
the inevitable Poison Ivy incident occurred, Batman would know the location
of her current hideout. It turned out to be the greenhouse, so he was
adding that neighborhood to his patrol route.
There had been an escape
from Blackgate. Not an alpha-threat rogue, but Batman would examine the
facility all the same. What one man could do, another could do. The
Monarch of Menace was not the priority so much as finding the hole in the
prison’s security and closing it before a more dangerous inmate exploited
it. So Blackgate was added to the night’s itinerary as well. Selina
watched, feigning a mild interest as Bruce tapped his palm control with a
stylus and this second location lit up on the hologram.
Then he looked at her,
his lip twitched, and he tapped the stylus once more. An uptown building
which occupied a full city block in the heart of “Museum Mile” was suddenly
outlined in vivid purple.
Selina licked her lips.
“I’m back in the top
ten?” she asked with a naughty grin.
“After early patrol and
these stops in the Flower district and Blackgate, you’ll resume my ‘lesson’
in the finer points of art theft,” he graveled.
“I like the sound of
that,” she purred.
“I figured you would,” he
grunted.

“VICS!” Poison Ivy
bellowed. Her voice echoed off the walls of the guards’ break room, and
Matt Hagen tried vainly to shush her. Failing that, he expanded himself to
temporarily create a wall of thick, foamy baffling to keep the sound from
traveling further. Luckily, Saul Vics was still in Ivy’s thrall and no one
else seemed to have heard the disturbance. Now that they’d found Vics,
Clayface glurped, melted and drooped back into his natural state. Saul
Vics didn’t seem to notice. He only stared adoringly at Ivy.
“Where is Harley?” she
asked imperiously. “Why isn’t she in her cell?”
“She’s in the supply
closet with Joker,” Vics answered, happy he could provide the information
his goddess wanted.
Ivy looked at Clayface
and Clayface looked at Ivy.
“How in Spielberg’s name
did that happen?” Clayface roared.
Saul Vics had no interest
in pleasing the oversized mound of goo, so he gave no answer.
“How in Gaia’s name did
that happen?” Ivy translated.
Saul Vics paused. He was
still proud that he was able to answer his goddess’s questions, but he was
troubled that the answer might displease her. Still, he had no choice but
to give her all the information he could, so he told the story, such as it
was: Patient J had been despondent ever since Batman brought him in. He
was allowed into the common room for an hour each day in the hopes that
social interaction might bring him out of his depression. Patient Quinn had
been kept in isolation for the requisite 48-hour observation period after
her admittance, then she was taken to the common room too. Patient J looked
up and said, “Hi Harls.”
Clayface looked at Ivy
and Ivy looked at Clayface.
“Well?” they asked in
unison.
Saul Vics shrugged.
“That’s it?” Ivy
screeched. “Hi Harls?”
Vics shrugged again and
held up both his index fingers, evidently representing Joker and Harley, and
illustrated the ending of the story with a sideways movement of the Harley
finger to swing swiftly into contact with the Joker finger, punctuated by a
noise that sounded something like “PTOING.”
“Hi Harls, Ptoing?”
Ivy gasped, appalled.
“Hi Harls, Ptoing?”
Clayface repeated, aghast.
“Might have been ‘hey,’”
Saul Vics offered. “Hi or Hey. ‘Hey Harley.’ Yeah, I think that was it.
‘Hey Harley.’”
“AAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!”
Ivy screamed, wheeling on Clayface and pounding fiercely into his chest. Circles rippled outward from the point of impact as his mass absorbed the
force of the hit. He felt no pain, and his balance was undisturbed, so for
several seconds he didn’t react. Ivy hit him again. And again. And
again. After several repetitions, she stepped back and kicked him squarely
in the crotch. This time the ripple effect stretched upward as his mass
redistributed itself.
“Let me guess, this is my
fault too,” he said dryly.
The line was perfectly
timed and magnificently delivered, as from an actor with considerable
comedic talents he never got to use. But it brought nothing but
another primal scream from Ivy, ravings that Harley was back with Joker
because ‘Fertilizer Fred’ let her get captured, mad scratching at his person
and chunkfuls of mud being flung into the wall, and finally a cry to “HELP
ME OUT HERE, Vics! KILL THE SLIMY BASTARD!”
This obviously got her
nowhere in terms of bringing about his death, but Clayface saw no need to
stick around for more abuse. He’s the one who was just dumped for God’s sake—if you could even call it being dumped, more like being discarded, like
having your brilliant and poignant cameo appearance in the summer
blockbuster of the decade cut for time and dropped onto the editing room
floor—and for Joker no less. And on top of that he’s supposed to foot the
bill for psycho-bitch’s personal disappointments? No. No way. He let his
mass soften and grow soggy, so the final slap he delivered would be good and
slimy. Then he pulled back and let her have it, a hard muddy smudge of
reality right across her precious self-important puss.

…::She’s a criminal, I’m a crimefighter. She’s a thief, I
am… so completely against it.::..
One of his earliest log
entries on Catwoman. “She’s a thief, I am so completely against it.”
Batman had never allowed himself to admire her work… Well, no, that wasn’t
entirely true. He appreciated her fighting abilities, and respected her
intelligence. Personally, he liked her. He was loathe to admit it then,
even to Alfred, but in the privacy of his own mind, especially late at
night, those sleepless nights in the weeks following an encounter… But
when it came to those abilities directly connected to theft, that he
would never permit himself.
But now, now that no
museum property would be leaving the premises because of her activities, he
could see it differently. She was so entirely in her element.
“Look at this, I love
this,” she whispered, her lips curled into the naughtiest grin as she pointed
to a freestanding display case in the middle of the Egyptian wing. “That’s
a glass break detector. They put them on all these displays—but that’s
not glass. Museums don’t use glass; they use polycarbon which breaks on
an entirely different frequency, so when we crack this open…” she paused
just long enough to perform one of her more efficient claw-jobs on the case
“…acoustic glass break detector doesn’t detect a thing.”
She was so entirely in
her element. Loving her, it was impossible not to be affected by this most
basic part of her bubbling to the surface with such passion and energy.
“Now we need to look at
some pictures in frames, and we won’t find that here, so let’s go to the
Impressionists gallery. Mind the motion detectors,” she winked.
He hesitated, taking a
last look at the case she’d opened to illustrate her point and the 12th
Dynasty gold and garnet pectoral now exposed for the taking. It was
preposterous to think there might be another intruder lurking in the museum
who could take advantage of the exposure, and unlikely that a patrolling
guard would notice. Still, he placed a bat-shaped emblem marker on the
case. That way if anyone did discover it, they would know Batman was on the
scene. That should squelch any felonious impulses from either thief or
dishonest guards, and it might keep the museum insurance from being hiked
when the disturbance was found in the morning.
Satisfied, he followed
Catwoman.

Clayface had no interest
in returning to the Hacienda. It was Harley’s place. He stayed with her
when they were together, but now that she discarded him (after they’d been
separated for, what, 10 minutes?), it seemed pointless to go back there. His
needs were simple as far as “shelter.” He literally needed to keep out of
the rain, but that was about it. As long as there was a roof over his head,
it could be hot or cold. He didn’t need a kitchen since he didn’t eat; he
didn’t need a bed since he didn’t “sleep” in the conventional sense. He
liked having a television, sight and sound being the two senses he had
left. Every hotel room in the city had a TV, so he found one that was
unoccupied and watched several hours of reruns: Knots Landing, Magnum P.I.,
something with Henry Fonda as Abraham Lincoln and then some movie with a
talking snake.
He decided he’d mourned
the breakup long enough. When a movie snake starts taking, that’s enough.
It was time to move on. He liked Harley, she was nice to look at and fun to
be with. But there was no shortage of pretty women in the world, and lots
of them were fun to be with. He decided what he really needed now was
company. He checked the clock, and figured he could just make last call at
the Iceberg.

Batman stood just behind
Catwoman, both their heads pressed close against the wall so he could see
the device she was pointing out between the picture frame and the wall. He
knew these devices only as unit numbers on blueprints, or safeguards
specified in a pdf document entitled “Museum Security: The Art of Alarms.”
She saw them as a minor nuisance set in her path by naïve system designers
who just didn’t get it.
“Wireless,” she pointed
out. “They love wireless transmitters because they’ll fit behind the
painting that way without actually touching the back of the picture. Curators hate letting anything without a PhD touch the picture. Of course,
the drawback to wireless is—”
“It’s easy to jam,”
Batman grunted. “Or send a counterfeit signal.”
“Meow,” she said,
pressing a button on a small device Batman recognized as Kittlemeier’s
workmanship. She was pleased at the interruption. It meant he was
interested enough to be thinking ahead.
“Now our guy that set
this up isn’t completely stupid,” she said generously. “It’s a hundred
million dollar painting, he’s got a redundant system in place. So even with
the motion curtain disabled, there’s a shock sensor in place on the frame.
Theoretically, if I take this off the wall right now, it senses the
momentary closure of the contact points here, here, or here,” she pointed.
“Alarms should sound all over the place, right? And yet…”
She eased the painting
slowly off its hanger until a full inch of space was visible between it and
the wall. Batman scowled at the sensors as if they let him down.
“There’s a spring-loaded
stretcher in the frame,” Selina explained with a glint in her eye he
normally saw only during sex. “It lets the canvas expand or contract with
changes in the temperature and humidity,” she purred. “There’s just
enough leeway built into the sensors to allow for it, you have to know
exactly how to finesse it.”
Using a blocking
technique he’d mastered to resist a Martian mind probe, Batman restrained
the lip-twitch that threatened to erupt into a full-blown smile. This part
of Catwoman’s… expertise was so inextricably tied to theft. And yet
she was so good at it, she took such delight in being so good
at it, and she was so completely Catwoman doing it. He
wasn’t sure what he was feeling as he watched her, but he was forced to
admit that he didn’t love her despite being a thief who plagued him
all those years; he loved her because she was Catwoman. And this, this
ability to penetrate the most carefully guarded perimeter, to slip past the
most rigorous defenses and sidestep the most sensitive triggers, to let no
nuisance of a lock (or a law, or a crimefighter) come between her and her
prize, this was all a part of Catwoman.

How dare he? HOW DARE
HE!
He murdered flowers. He
all but pushed Harley back into Joker’s arms. And now he had—he had—He
had to die. That’s all there was to it, Matt Hagen had to die. He had to
die, die and DIE AGAIN! Then they could bury him so she could dance on his
grave. Eventually seeds would sprout, fertilized by his worthless body.
Every so often, she could admire the blooms growing there and think: at
last, he was good for something.
So. Hagen had to die.
The question was how? Ivy wasn’t sure if he was technically alive. He
didn’t eat, drink or breathe as far as she knew. Did he have a heart? If
there’s no heartbeat or pulse, no blood pumping, where do you even begin? He didn’t have lungs, how do you kill something like that?
She didn’t know. There
was entirely too much she didn’t know. As a botanist, she was an expert on
life. As Poison Ivy, she was an expert on poisons. But she had no idea how
to go about killing something that clinically wasn’t alive. Nevertheless,
Clayface had to die. She wanted him ended, permanently ended, and if
possible she wanted it to hurt.
A lot.
How?
How? How? How?
How did one go about
killing Clayface?
She didn’t know. Damnit,
she just didn’t know…
But it certainly occurred
to her that someone did, and that someone was a man.

To
be continued…
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