8082/The Harley Hole: Revisited

The Harley Hole: Revisited
Date of Scene:	01 October 2021
Location:	The Harley Hole
Synopsis:	Tim and Harley meet at the Harley Hole!
Cast of Characters:	Harley Quinn, Tim Drake

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Harley Quinn has posed:
The Harley Hole.

It's the name most henches are giving this place now after the showdown which happened here a month ago or so, where Harley and Batgirl joined forces to beatdown a group of henches that had come down here to put Harley down. But it had all been a cunning plan of the clownette to expose a certain mob group she is after! And many of that criminal family's members had been captured or otherwise injured. So win-win! The place though? Rumor was that Harley was spending more and more time here as of late. What was her plan though?

She wasn't telling, and it's not as if anyone was asking considering the wide berth she was being given. And considering this is a rather dangerous zone in Gotham that's saying a lot. Reputation does help a lot where it comes to Gotham! Specially if you were a princess of crime for years in a row not that long back....

So if one comes looking? They might just hear a tune inside from the clownette while she appears to be .., cleaning up the place?

Tim Drake has posed:
    Something always gets left on the backburner. Gotham is the kind of city where there could be five serial killers on the loose, a bank and three bodegas being robbed, at least two mid-tier villains actively engaging in some sort of public display of their crime gimmick, and one apocalypse threatening to end it all, and it's a normal day. So while Red Robin may have been meaning to track Harley down to follow up on what she found during her exploration of that underground shrine-slash-body horror movie set, well.

    It's taken him a while to get to it. Thinks just keep happening. He's not even supposed to be out right now--he's on light duty, technically--but his intent is to just talk.

    Not that snooping around the Harley Hole in search of traps and alarms that he can disarm before sneaking in really ingratiates a guest to their host, but Bats gonna do what Bats gonna do.

    Once he's in, let's say through a window, Tim settles himself right there and waits to be noticed. He's not doing the whole gargoyle crouch that the Dark Knight himself occasionally affects, he's just sitting. Legs dangling, hands gripping the sill to keep balance.

    Better than putting his boots on the floor while Harley's trying to clean, right? Hey, maybe she just swept! He's considerate.

Harley Quinn has posed:
The Hole seems surprisingly void of traps. Or maybe Tim didn't find them and has triggered all manner of booby traps that will prove to be deadly in just about six seconds. But ..., no. No explosions, or acid dropping from the ceiling or ...., well we could go on for a while about all the absurd traps that she and Mistah J came up with in their time. So the entrance through the window goes as fine as one would expect...

Inside one can see what the place is about. An old warehouse where some ancient carnival has been stored at. Much of it is decrepit, or falling apart. Time spares nothing after all! Yet a few of the carnival attractions still seem to have semblance of workability. The little unicorn ride, or the big wheel off to a corner.

Harley? She is off on a corner, dragging what seems to be some old pinball machine almost as if it weighed nothing, the whistling pausing when she notes the shadow...

"Ahhhh!" Then she peeks up at Red Robin, squinting her eyes. "Which one are ya? Shorty? Hoodie?" gosh, she needs to really get some glasses. "Ah, Red Robin!" she waves at him enthusiastically. "Good job in gettin' out o' that underground cult slasher thing in one piece..!"

Tim Drake has posed:
    No traps! Suspicious. Or is it not suspicious? Hmm. Well, everything is at least a low-level of suspicious to Tim, but Harley's done a good job proving herself, and not just to him. So he lets his legs kick faintly as he looks around, legitimately a little curious at the setup she has going on here.

    Which is very thematic! Also a little spooky, admittedly. But fascinating, too, in a 'taking a look behind the curtains' kind of way. There's a handful of things he'd like to tinker with just to see how their internal mechanics work, his interest obvious by the way he cranes his neck to peer up at the skeletons of the old attractions like a little kid.

    Business first, though.

    "Shorty?" he mouths, and then he bites the inside of his cheek. "Well, that's what I'm calling him from now on." No he won't. Maybe only once or twice, half dozen times at most. But it's amusing either way, and he offers Harley a casual little salute in response to her wave. "Thanks, same to you. I think we can say it was a group effort."

    He leans forward to brace his hands on his knees. "We encountered the cult again at another site--one they'd just started excavating--and since then they've gone quiet. Obviously they're aware of our nose being stuck into their business." Then he tilts his head. "Anything interesting on your end? Cult-related or otherwise?"

Harley Quinn has posed:
"Shorty!" Harley opening her arms to the side almost as if she was on Broadway, doing a presentation of a show. Actually, she's pretty proud of that nickname! "He doesn't even seem ta mind it.." and of course they all know which Robin is the shorty. No matter if he may have grown in this last year! That's just details... Shorty once, shorty forever.

She leaves the pinball machine down on the ground. Again, it all seems too easy for her, and it should be an heavy thing! But for her .., almost nothing. She starts wandering over to where Tim is, "Found those again? Thought you had destroyed theah lair.." she turns her nose to the side a bit, hopping over a unicorn, then holding on to the side of another attraction and flipping up to a beam on the rooftop. All made like gymnast. She finally swings over again and takes up to be on the same level Red Robin is on.

"I haven't found them again. I have been sorta busy dealin' with a few ol' 'friends'.." the way she says it doesn't sound like they are friends, ".. I mean, I did face off against this giant hamster back in New Yoik. But it's gone now."

"That why you awhe heah?" She asks, then gestures below them. "Haven't really had a visitor heah since Batgirl and I kicked ass the otha night."

Tim Drake has posed:
    Still holding back a smile, Red Robin makes a show of tipping his chin magnanimously. "If the shoe fits," he says, which--yeah, Damian's probably not running around in kid-sized shoes any more--but it's still funny. The joke has legs, to (sort of) keep the metaphor going! He even lets out a faint snort of amusement.

    "They're likely a much more endemic problem than we initially thought," is what he offers up as confirmation of his further encounters with the cult. "So far as we can tell, it all links back to a group that calls itself the Church of the Broken God. They've deified some sort of artifact discovered at the beginning of the millenia in what is now modern-day France."

    He gives that brief on the cult as he watches Harley make her way over to him in a series of gymnastic maneuvers that even Nightwing would approve of, at least by Tim's estimation.

    News that she hasn't encountered the cult again gets a nod from Red Robin, apparently because it's what he expected. The hamster, though? "That sounds like New York," he says, with the vague distain of someone who is a tried and true Gothamite. This city might not be perfect, but in the spirit of the phrase "a face only a mother could love" there's a breed of loyalty unique to Gotham's citizens.

    Red Robin leans back a little, against the windowsill. "I've heard you and her were teaming up." He crosses his arms over his chest. "Good for you."

Harley Quinn has posed:
"Ooo, not bad.." Harley clearly approves the puns Tim does about Shorty. Because of course she would! But she makes no more comment on him. It's more fun when Shorty is around to hear those! So instead she focuses on the actual business that brought Tim here.

That damn cult.

"From France all the way heah ta Gotham? But what would they be doin' heah? Findin' moouh artifacts?" she rests her chin on one hand, brows furrowed, "Those dead cyborg like people were .., really messed up. What can we do ta help on that though?"

Now that she is closer that pendant is visible, dangling from her neck. It's clear she has turned it into a piece of her ensemble by now! Because of course she would.

As for the hamster? "It was full on New Yoik alright. I think it was some kind o' mass hallucination. We might all have drank the same watah. Not that I haven't met some big rats..! Even one or two that know kung-fu.." Master Splinter anyone? But hey, at least she doesn't talk about the turtles!

"We only teamed up that time. Don't think she likes me that much! I just call her Miss Law and Order.." a grin. It might be a fitting name for Barbara though! And it seems she may have a nickname to most caped crusaders out in Gotham!

Tim Drake has posed:
    "That's the big question," Red Robin says, lifting a hand to point approvingly at Harley when she gives voice to it. "...And one I don't have an answer to yet. But something tells me we haven't heard the last of this cult just yet."

    He sweeps his hand through his hair, which is getting long enough to occasionally fall in the way of his mask's lenses. Then, his mouth twists uncomfortably. "We've already confirmed that the bodies that were used for those statues are conclusively dead. Very likely there was some sort of ritualistic aspect to their deaths, based on the traces of wounds left on their organic parts. Nothing on who they were when they were alive, though."

    So basically, the answer to Harley's last question is another "I don't know."

    And Red Robin is clearly bothered by this on some level, tension in his expression as he shrugs. Which only diminishes slightly as he notices the pendant. "Souvenir?" he asks, nodding to it. Though he doesn't press, not yet. Instead he follows the transition of the conversation topic.

    "Probably. They think their water is so amazing," and it is. New York municipal water is awesome. He's clearly just jealous. "And their bagels. New Jersey bagels are *just* as good."