12626/What's Victoria's Secret

What's Victoria's Secret
Date of Scene:	30 August 2022
Location:	Sheldon Park - Bleake Island
Synopsis:	Explosives don't end up blowing up Gotham and everyone is unimpressed.
Cast of Characters:	Selina Kyle, Harley Quinn

---

Selina Kyle has posed:
Tuesday morning, broad "grey light" given the heavy cloud cover darkening the day to something closer to twilight. Gotham is like that. Even in the fullness of summer, the slog through November is a commonplace thing. Traffic seethe through the Cauldron, whipping down Detroit Avenue at speeds less than good. They're rarely enforced by cops on the payroll of a certain Mr. Falcone. Mr. Falcone probably wouldn't be happy to hear what comes peeling through.

Two semi trucks moving at less than stately speeds are followed by a box truck emblazoned by said aforementioned Falcone logo. The drivers definitely aren't his, though, any more than the men driving the 18-wheelers are. Boxes galore stacked up in the shipping crates and the box truck hold all manner of interesting consumer goods that go for a pretty penny compared to the pittance for the sweatshop labourers in Bangladesh who sewed or stitched or shaped them. Garments, home goods, the niceties of life.

Selina Kyle wouldn't be caught dead in those clothes or this neck of town, for the most part. But a certain cat would, discarding cover of night for something a lot less enjoyable. Scouting out the three vehicles swinging over the Mooney Bridge leaves her frowning slightly. She's on the rooftop of a warehouse further down from Sionis Industries and its competitors. She knows better than to lurk there. Goggles give her vision slight enhancement, overlaid by Bat-Tech-things that she probably wouldn't have without the whole issue with... y'know. That Bat guy. Stolen goods. Maybe a blend of both.

Visuals give a basic overview. She bites her inner cheek, a bad habit. "Half-mile and closing."

Harley Quinn has posed:
"Hello? Is this thing on?" Then a screeching feedback following because Harley is trying to talk too close to the ear piece. "I think it is! Acknowledged. 10-4. Roger. Time to take down these smugglers. And hey, we ever checked if those rumors were true about the explosives?" but eh, too late to be checking it now! Because it's go time...

Harley is standing on the warehouse directly opposite from Selina, shorty-shorts, tight t-shirt. Baseball bat hanging against her back. Pigtails primed and ready to go!

It's the wait that's usually the more nervous wrecking for most people. The danger that comes from putting their life in the line. For Harley though? Her smile only gets broader, hips moving from side to side in that wait for the trucks to ....

Here they come!

"Gotham Sirens are a go!" And she starts running to the edge of the warehouse and does a 'Hail Mary' jump, directed towards one of those trucks.

Selina Kyle has posed:
Selina really would squint if not focused on tracking the tracks. Her visuals give the goggles a chance to calibrate the likely speed, somewhere between 'reckless' and 'downright stupid.' Colliding with the side of a box truck at 57 mph would mean a nice cat-shaped splat if she misses. Hazards of the profession, of course, right up there with using whips and wearing slippery clothes.

"There goes my plans to use rocket-propelled everything, Harl," she replies at a succinct, crisp whisper. Volume needn't be high. A rasp to her voice rounds out the transmission as she looks up at Harley's rooftop. Her own, coated in fly paper and ancient bird droppings, is exactly the kind of place she would rather avoid.

Zooming by, the drivers jockey for position on Detroit Avenue. Four lanes become three, then two, shredded by parking lanes and turn lanes. Fat tires skitter over deep potholes and bumpy grooves that throw boxes around in the trailers. Clearly no care is being paid to the more sensitive, fragile materials that might be inside.

"For explosives, you'd think they would be more careful." Dark lips flatten. There goes trouble, a leaping jump. Her own approach is far more influenced by acrobatics and zip lines. She fires a cable to the broad top of the semi on the right and hurls herself off the roof. Gravity seizes her as she whirls through space, watching the blacktop and cracked sidewalks flow by. The landing comes a second later, her boots coming down and the thin ring of magnets activating to root her until she gets her footing. Then she drops forward, starting to drive forward toward the door. The thump probably gets heard by the driver.

But it's the goon in the box truck who fires first.

Harley Quinn has posed:
If this was just your run-of-the-mill clownette indeed it would be a 'downright stupid' move to make. But this is Harley Quinn! Trained gymnast and ..., with a little pump from Ivy's serum. So when Harley is flying through the air with a flip and all accrobatically and goes to land...?

She drops right atop one of the trucks, foot skidding across the top and one hand -digging- into the material as she stops herself from just being thrown off the truck. Because physics can be a bitch. She looks across to Selina. Eyes narrow.

"Are those magnetic boots?"

Cue instant jealous expression on Harley's face. Really! She gets no nice toys...

"Next Christmas I am bargin' into Batman's party..." She wants gifts!

As they both start moving to the front to stop the truck it's when those shots are heard. Danger! She lowers herself down and whips her head to the source.

"I am gonna take that one!" She points at the other trucker while dodging, making a throat cutting gesture and then running to the back of it and towards the other. Physics help in this case because the jump from one truck to the other is a lot easier. But then the darn trucker on the box truck starts weaving the truck to one side and the other of the road making Harley slip and having to hang on to the front of it. And then he starts driving faster to try and bump the front of the truck to the one where Selina is. To get rid of the clownette!

"I might need a lil help heah!"

Selina Kyle has posed:
Downright stupid move to splat flat into the truck, downright stupid to shoot at a clown and a cat. Gotham City Sirens are dangerous women to contend with, and all they need is Ivy to round out the risk to all. The moment when gravity almost tips the clownette back is also the point when the truck has to swerve slightly, and the indiscriminate shooting means bullets go wide. Who cares about property damage?

Catwoman hisses under her breath. "If I could make lucite heels magnetic, I would!" Make it's time to look into a pair of Chucks for Harley. Sticky-soled? The cat needs her claws not to totally lose her grip, dropping flat onto the truck and splaying her knees to avoid the ricochet effect. A few seconds later, thump, box truck meets the semi, though not enough to do more than rip up a Falcone grille with new scratches. In the world of vehicles, semis sort of win.

Why Batman doesn't use guns is beyond her. This is a time when shooting back would be helpful. However, what /is/ helpful are the hazardous materials signage (liquids, non-flammable) inserted on the back of the semi. So, ripping it out, she uses the metal triangular sign like a throwing star and hurls it hard as she can at the truck's windshield. The force isn't enough to break the windshield, but it probably makes the driver and his shooting goon flinch and swerve a bunch. Which means instinctively backing off, and giving a few seconds. For Harley, that means less squish and less of a risk factor for falling off. For Selina, it means a few seconds of trying to claw and tear at the metal frame, which is an awful lot heavier and sharper. /That/ will break a nail or a windshield.

Harley Quinn has posed:
That throw gets an appreciating whistle out of Harley. "Good one! Say, you evah met Bullseye? He's a nice chap..." By nice chap she probably means downright psycopath. But focus Harley! Get up from that front! And Harley starts doing just that..., dragging herself up that front even as the truck swerves about. Her legs dangle from one side and then to the other. Another shot rings that doesn't hit either of them ... And then there's a grinning clownette advancing towards that windshield as if it was some kind of spider...

So creepy..

One hand reaches out and she just *yanks* out the sign that was stuck on the windshield. The goons are panicky now. And with good reason because a moment later Harley swings over and crashes through the side window. "Hello there!" A star wars joke? Really? She baps the shooting guy on the head..

"Alright, you got two choices now---" she never gets to finish the sentence because the driver just opens the door and throws himself out. He prefers to face the pavement than the sirens!

Harley looks surprised.. "Oh shit!"

Selina may have to come to the rescue again!

Selina Kyle has posed:
"No." Catwoman hasn't had the pleasure, and no doubt such a meeting would end with stabbings, a broken back, and worse for her. "Saw that purple archer once, though. They related?" Her words come through gritted teeth as she remains planted to the top of the truck, yanking and jerked aside when air brakes engage with a squealing, shotgun rattle of sound. Her body jerks and she's thrown forward, slithering over the edge with a screech of metal and torn paint. There's the grinning woman with the pigtails facing a snub-nosed gun of some sort, but being beaten to death with a liquids warning sign is probably a reality in their books.

Bruised and grimacing, Selina claws off the metal sign holder for an additional weapon while watching the street stretch out behind her, a little too close for comfort given she's half over the edge of the box. The driver flees from the box truck. The semi driver /floors/ it after his braking escapade that tries to shake her off.

Choices, choices, all of them ugly. The whip is more likely to break off the sideview mirror and she can't get a line without smearing herself across the road if she times it wrong. The bolt fires, cracking into the front of the box and the roof of the passenger cabin on the truck. Its force jerks her forward as the magnetic hum disengages, and absolutely no one is going to make a flying squirrel reference when she kicks off.

The bat has a cape. All the little bats? They could have capes, at one time or another. She's just forced to leap with acrobatic elegance (ha, not really) across the distance and Arch in hopes of not savagely impacting with ground. Smashing onto the hood, not ideal. Swinging to the side, more likely, scrabbling desperately for purchase and tearing away a windshield wiper in the process.

Harley Quinn has posed:
"Do you mean Hawkguy?" It's Hawkeye, "I mean, he's sorta cute in that sorta old but lotsa mileage to go still if ya know what I mean...?" and if Selina didn't the sleazy tone in which Harley delivers that line means she will surely know what kinda mileage she's talking about.

Because you gotta talk shop while beating up people! And that means talking about guys, and gals and ..., well, everything!

And again, Harley isn't focused in the real DANGER of what's going on. Because the truck doesn't have anyone driving it! Selina flies up towards the box truck and Harley just stares amazed. She also wisely refrains from making a flying squirrel comment because she wants to keep both her eyes from being clawed out. "That was amazing!" she exclaims, reach out the truck with one hand to help secure the cat. "Come in!" and she will make space for Selina to get into the truck from the passenger's side while she slides to the driver's seat.

"Now, time for you to be Keanu Reeves to my Sandra Bullock..! And see if there's explosives!" did she just make a Speed joke? Yep..

Selina Kyle has posed:
Selina squirms as she tries to hold fast to the truck, forcing herself to the side into the wind. Thank Bast for goggles. Her claws gloves have a few tears and points where she needs to repair them in the future, and her side is bloody bruised. Still, hauling herself through the window is not the least of her concerns with Harley at the wheel.

At the wheel of a box truck full of explosives.

That sinks in a little as she rubs her aching side, trying to remember how many ribs she's supposed to have and where they go. "I swear they put you up to this. You hear it from Waller or them discussing it at a drive-thru?"

Rewinding the barb follows next as the bolt unsnaps from the roof and reels in. She rubs her wrist and smirks at the clown, and then elbows Harley lightly. "Get me a three piece chicken basket and a diet Coke. No sauce." Searching means either going outside or guessing when it's clear there are no doors hidden behind the seats for the truck. Nope, they aren't foolish in Falcone Shipping, even when the truck is clearly stolen. And they're in Falcone's part of town.

That's a problem for another day. She hunts through her gear, pulling out a roll of tools and coming up with the bastard child of a wrench and a glass cutter. "It's going to get noisy in here." Oh, it will, using that to saw through the steel carapace to see the boxes piled up against the back wall of the van. She needs a bit to slice a roughly rectangular hole up to seeing a box on the other side.

Harley Quinn has posed:
Harley zips her lips close when Selina talks about Waller. "First rule about Suicide Club..." You don't talk about Suicide club!

So indeed it could be a mission. Could also mean Harley herself has a little explosive on the back of her head! So many possibilities. But most likely she hasn't. The elbowing and then the quoting makes Harley grin widely. "Oooh, you are gettin' into the spirit!"

What spirit, Harley? The fully reckless one where they can very possibly die if they make a wrong move? Indeed! That's living the life...

While Selina gets busy drilling a hole to get to the other side some more danger comes in the form of one of the forward trucks to start slowing to get next to theirs. "Oh shit..., hang on...!" Harley takes a turn, out of the highway! It makes the truck have to go back to then pursue them but it also means they can't stop. "Shit, we are going in the direction of the airport!"

No pressure, Selina. It's only a lot of people that can die if they don't get those explosives disabled somehow.

Selina Kyle has posed:
That's why she probably said 'Waller' and not 'Suicide Club.' Selina keeps hacking and peeling back the truck wall, tossing aside insulation out the window and leaving metal shavings in hazardous places. Short-shorts don't make that a good mix so she sweeps the metal bits to the passenger side of the bench. "Swing onto Akron Street, and let's try not to get IDed by whatever Falcone has going on. Last thing we need," she grunts in yanking metal aside, "is a spotter. He watches the exits, Akron should be busier to blend in." Maybe not, if their goose is already cooked and angry Italian mobsters are chasing after them. Harley's the one driving, after all.

Of course, she isn't assessing how close the other truck is showing up ahead fo them, being that she's facing away. her look over her shoulder reveals how boxed in they can be by giant semis, and how bad an accident would come from a collision. "Aw damn. I can't just leave these boxes in the road!"

Especially given that several bits she can see aren't so much metal as packed up to look like cardboard, though tearing the outer corners reveals packed stuffing and wood bits to house the explosives in some places. Others are in reinforced bottles and jars, the kind of thing a chemical factory might spit out under cover of darkness. "Why don't /we/ have a Hawkarrow? You know what would help right now? An arrow doing some fancy crap to that truck!" Not a flammable arrow, igniting something, the way she might.

Blowing up the truck, out. Taking out the driver at this distance, also probably out. Emptying cargo, out! It doesn't take a bat for her to see the low number of options available, especially at speed. Add to that very large vehicles, and really fragile cargo. She forces her way through the side of a box and comes up with a pair of metal tubes that don't have much to say about what they do. "You keep driving and don't stop for anything, not even me. Got it? I'm going to run them off the road." With a whip, a few cat burglary tools, and magnetic boots. Yup, that's it. She tucks the vials into her Kevlar-reinforced bag at her side. It's small, at least. "You got this, Harley. Get out into the middle of the grass if you can, and I'll deal with..." She waves her hand at the truck. Then it's time to go out the window, and leap for the void.

Or the side of a box truck. Thing is, she's not aiming to go /up/ this time. She's aiming to go /under/, and with claws and a good grip, there's not a brake line that can resist her for long. All those metal cables, those hoses, those dangly ropy bits...

Harley Quinn has posed:
"Akron?" Harley lifts her shoulders in a careless shrug, "That's a weird flex, but ok!" she won't really question it because again, she is Bullock and Selina is the trained, hot cop Reeves! They got their roles, you see?!

Another twist of the wheel. They are running through a much more packed street. Narrower too. Some screams, people jumping out of the way. But she can't go much slower or the other truck will catch up! And if they do .... Big boom if a fight starts up..

"Wait, what do you want me to do about the explosives?! Are they armed?! Should I had confessed my sins when I went to church earlier today?!" all pertinent questions. (Maybe a few aren't)

"Hawkarrows? Like what? I mean, his action figure has so many crap ones! What will they invent next? A USB-arrow one..?!" Clint would have news for you, Harley...

It's when Selina just jumps out that Harley's eyes go wide and she exclaims, "Holy shit!" then a wicked grin and she pulls on the cable that makes the truck HOOOONK it's way down the street.

HOOONK. HOOONK.

"Go, Gotham Sirens!"

Selina Kyle has posed:
"You're going into a field," Selina hisses when colliding with moving object, her feet swaying perilously close to the ground. Hunching up to hold onto the truck like a burr is nothing at all like action movies. It's noisy, scary, and discombobulating! Her nails dig into the metal, knees pulled up, soles struggling for purchase until she finds something to clamp onto. More screams, more dangerous. A fire hydrant and a trash can are dangerous, but the ugly pickup the semi driver almost sideswiped would crush her if she did not dive under the trailer. Then, under there, she has to start clawing and tearing at everything she can find.

"Like the Green Arrow! He shoots things and they stop," she mutters, hauling on a skinny wire that links up the underside of the truck. Holding tight to metal bits as she crawls towards the wildly spinning wheels means everything could go so, so wrong. It's hard to hear her around the squealing, the road noise, and everything else. "Ugh! Some kind of lubricant, not the... Get off." Therein are the perils of randomly slashing over and over until something breaks and then the trailer probably starts careening or simply stops. Harley better see what that is. "We disarm after they stop. Need time. Big field, you can get away." Or leave craters for fun. "That other one coming after you?"

TYes, yes he is.

Harley Quinn has posed:
"Green Arrow?! That dude is from Starling, and Starling is like Gotham for noobs.." Woah, shots fired! Good thing there isn't an Arrow somewhere listening or she might be in trouble. "It's like Gotham Lite..." Sure, Harley. Continue kicking down. Maybe you will get a stray arrow that hits you one day.

"Hey, you okay. Mmm, lubricant..." With that tone it's almost as if one can feel her eyebrow waggling suggestively at it. Harley has a dirty mind? Yes, she does. "I knew you were my kinda gal.." but it's also her way of keeping Selina's mind out of the INSANE stunt she is trying to pull off. Make it easier for her to get through it by way of silly commentary out of the clownette.

"Got it, I am ..." A bump, an ouch. "... getting into the field now.." she looks over the rearview mirror. "I am still being pursued. Shit. You are still on the other truck?" she is looking for signs of what's going on..

"Okay, time to get serious.." she picks up the sawed-off shotgun that the passenger had been trying to shoot her with and leaaaans out the window, torso twisting. She aims it at the OTHER truck in pursuit...

Selina Kyle has posed:
"No, that's Bludhaven. Gotham in the sunshine, and Starling City is like... not even on the chart. What darkness is there in Starling, a rusty warehouse? A shut down pulp mill?"

A horrible screeching noise of metal giving way follows Selina being coated in some kind of fluid used for hydraulic purposes or cooling or whatever. She won't let cats lick her after that, though her suit becomes slippery and her grip compromised. Smears left behind her by crawling to the back of the semi trailer tell where she was, and the wheels sparking, awful noises coming, and the loaded trailer shimmying uncontrollably also indicate she's ruined steering and braking. That semi won't be long for the road without careening off at the next curve to plow through some bushes on an embankment.

Her turn, then, to find something to mess around with. The streets are minimized, but the best answer to a problem is stealing someone's car. She can do that practically with her eyes shut, though the first choice is a freaking sedan for a grandma. Ugh, it even has doilies on the headrests. Horrible. Wires and things torn to start it up mean she gets onto the road at least, pushing speeds that no grandmother would normally dare. They're smarter than that.

Meanwhile, broken glass erupts for the sawed off shotgun blast, and a whole hell of a lot of noise. The bumping and rumbling gets worse when they leave the road, but plowing a big truck through the grass is a lot harder than a box truck. It's heavy. Earth resists, and it weighs down on tires. Mostly it screws up steering, and it definitely ought to help Harley get another clearer strike. Or a horrible Toyota Avalon to swing around and mess with some tires. Plowing /into/ a pursuing vehicle isn't Selina's brightest move but it's a Toyota. They're made sturdily?

Harley Quinn has posed:
Another bump and Harley hits her head on the top of the truck, "Ow, fuck!" she exclaims. Then both shells come off and she digs inside the glove compartment for more. She gets the last two and slides them in. All while trying to drive with her thighs. It's not easy!

She spots Selina's car coming and of course she knows it's her inside. For who else would be going for that. And she seems to figure out what Selina wants to do..

"Alright. I will wait for you to---" pause as the car hits, "There!"

The truck careens out of position as the Toyota hits, right into the crosshairs of Harley's shotgun. She clicks the trigger and there's that *BOOM* of a shotgun shot. It hits the driver through the windshield, piercing with with lots of glass and a shotgun shell through the shoulder. He will live but will need hospitalization. As for the truck? It starts veering away and stopping. It was already slowing down due to how harder it is for one of those to drive here so it comes to a stop against a stone bench.

A duck that was taking a bath in the nearby fountain quacks with indignation.

Selina Kyle has posed:
Selina is mad enough to steer the Avalon into the truck pursuing Harley, white-knuckled on the steering wheel. She certainly knows how to maneuver with a motorcycle, but less a pokey vehicle on four wheels. She does her best to clamp hold tightly while swinging around, revving the engine enough to keep momentum on her side. Grass flies. The engine redlines. Metal shrieks on metal, the steely bite of a serpent thrumming through her veins.

Avoiding a head-on collision doesn't stop the car from shimmying dangerously, or ripping off the mirror. Or possibly denting the door, and hopefully not triggering the side impact airbags. That would break her body a bit more than not.

When thunder erupts and something horrible crashes, she spontaneously ducks. Feet slam into the brake, pushing it almost to the floor, and the nose of the car plants deep. Her body shudders as she's flung forward into the steering wheel. Always wear your seat belts, kids! Hers are tethered tight, biting into her shoulder, a mark she'll wear for a few days.

Disentangling herself and stumbling out takes longer. The duck honks even louder. She fiddle-faddles with the whip at her side just in case anyone else comes out, though with the ringing in her ears, no telling if she'd actually /hit/ the first time. Or at any time.

Harley Quinn has posed:
With the pursuing truck now stopped it means the danger is (mostly) over. OF course they still got a truck full of explosives but that's just details, amirite?!

"Hey!" Harley brings the box truck to a stop and cranes herself almost all the way out the driver's window. "We did it!" some of the thugs are now getting out of that truck. The guy that was shot just collapses to the ground holding to his arm. The passenger wasn't wearing a seatbelt and so he is banged up a lot and is easy pickings to Selina's whip if she cares to take him out!

"Gotham Sirens are back in town, baaaabbbyyyyy...!" Harley howls up to the sky in a victorious manner. She slides out of the door and to the ground, hands on hips.

"Man, I am gonna take some selfies for Ivy and April. Come ovah.." she gesturing for Selina to join up so she can take the pics. Is she noticing how dirty Selina's suit is? Ah, all in a day's work!

Selina Kyle has posed:
Explosives are problematic, and definitely not something to tamper with. Not like they have to worry about an orbital strike, but it's still definitely a threat posed to every living soul near the airport.

She wipes her face with the back of her hand, and quietly releases a sigh of leather. He probably flinches when she sprawls across the hood of the vehicle, glaring at him through narrowed, glittering eyes. "You," she hisses at the driver, "have been an /awfully/ bad man. I don't /like/ men who shoot at my best girl, got that?"

The only reason she can hold on at all is really an angle, otherwise the vehicle fluids all over her outfit would make her slide right off. Great for a slip and slide water park game, not great for frightening or climbing. She runs the whip across the hood of the vehicle and then slides off the mangled truck. Off to get her pictures with Harley. "You make sure Ivy gets the message. I haven't seen her in /weeks/. Unacceptable. What are we women of Gotham supposed to do, dry our nails on a rooftop and wait for fun to come to us? How dull."

She will smile that cat-like smile because she can.