Welcome once again, true believers! Once more, I throw my fanfic-writing hat back into the super heroines in peril ring - this time, working off of suggestions that our board's esteemed huphiziah had posted ages ago! Whee!
This will also be the first story I write that uses MH's characters - as you might have gleamed from the title, Harley Belle will be a (perhaps the) central one. But what others will show up? Time will tell...
And will I actually manage to finish a story this time around, rather than simply abandoning it in the middle and leaving it to rot? We'll see.
"HQ to Blue Angel One. HQ to Blue Angel One. Come in, Blue Angel One. Do you read me? Over."
Somewhere in the city of Arkham Heights, a shapely blond woman was looking at the transceiver in her gloved hand. A frown creased her lovely face as she prepared to respond; the voice from the other end sounded rather urgent, even distressed.
This woman, no older than twenty-five, was clad in a rather peculiar outfit. A blue spandex top covered her torso from her neck to her arms to her generous chest, but left much of her midriff exposed; over the left breast, it bore a stylized "A" logo. Further south, a bright yellow belt bearing several large, square pouches encircled her slim waist, resting on her hips. Beneath that was a pair of blue spandex French-cut shorts, which nicely matched the light blue tights running down her long, long legs. Those legs ended with a pair of bright red go-go boots bearing four-inch heels - the same red as the elbow-length gloves on the woman's hands.
And last, but not least, a blue domino mask stretched across the upper half of the woman's face; its eye holes allowed her to see clearly, but its presence nicely obscured her identity. An absolute necessity - much like the rest of the outfit - when one was a member of the Blue Angels, Arkham Heights' oldest and most prominent team of super heroines. And not just any member - the leader of its premier division, the Alpha Squad.
"Blue Angel One to HQ. I read you. What's wrong? Over."
"HQ to Blue Angel. We've just received word of a breakout from the M.H. Institution for Arch-Criminals. From the ultra-security wing this time."
Blue Angel One's eyes widened. "Oh, God. Who was it? Orgasma? Electra Star? Not... Virago?"
"No. It was Harley Belle."
Blue Angel One raised an eyebrow. "Oh."
"What do you mean, "oh"? Take this seriously, Blue Angel One. Harley Belle might not have any powers, but she's the most depraved and twisted of them all. This is a woman who gives Knightwoman the chills, remember?"
Blue Angel One tried to keep herself from rolling her eyes. "Alright, what's the plan?"
"We've sent Beta Squad over to the institution to look for clues. In the meantime, you gather the rest of Alpha Squad and start looking up all her old haunts and partners. Clear?
"Clear as a bell. Over and out."
"Over and out."
A cackle of static, and Blue Angel One knew that the Blue Angels' Headquarters had disconnected. The blonde raised a finger to the device, and began to dial for her other three teammates.
While she dialed, the heroine couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for their current quarry. Harley Belle might have been the kind of villainess that gave Knightwoman's caliber of super heroine some trouble, but against the Blue Angels? She didn't stand a chance.
XOXOXOXO
But little did the cocky blond heroine know, that on a rooftop overlooking her current position, there crouched a woman carefully watching her every move...
A woman whose face was covered in ghostly white makeup, and a black domino mask through which burning, insane eyes peeked...
A woman that was covered from head to toe in a skintight black-and-red jester's costume, as befitting the alias she had chosen...
A woman grinning madly as she imagined all the fun that she was going to have with these arrogant super-sluts tonight...
This is a very cool story about one of my favorite superheroines(Blue Angels) in trouble while in their pantyhosed feet c/o of another super villainess(Electra Star) also in her pantyhosed feet.
God, this place is creepy, Blue Angel One thought to herself as she stood in the threshold of the abandoned Bag o' Gags factory and peered into the darkness beyond. The place had once been a proud asset for the biggest supplier of practical joke items in the state, but recent economic downturns had forced it to close down. Harley Belle had used it as a hideout at least twice before, which made it a prime location for the Blue Angels to check out.
Behind the blond heroine stood the other three members of Alpha Squad, all clad in uniforms identical to her own. Truth be told, none of them looked a lot less unsettled than she did.
There was Blue Angel Two, a slim Asian girl with waist-length black hair and a pretty mean roundhouse kick. She was more or less the team's combat expert, with experience in a multitude of armed and unarmed fighting styles. A real terror whether in the training room or on the streets.
Blue Angel Three was another Asian girl, and the shortest of them all. Her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and her eyes betrayed a calculating, if somewhat rattled, look. She was the team's infiltration expert, and quite handy with disguises. She was fluent in at least half a dozen languages, with a passable knowledge of at least seven or eight more.
And last, but not least, was Blue Angel Four - a tall, kind of gangly redhead who was by far the most chipper member of Alpha Squad. Few would suspect that she was the team's resident tech-head, and an absolute genius when it came to anything with wires. In fact, she'd invented quite a few of the Blue Angels' standard-issue gadgets, though she was always far too enamored with the "rush" of direct crimefighting to accept a full-time lab job like the higher-ups wanted.
"Okay, ladies," Blue Angel One said, turning around to address her team. She pulled herself up to her full height, and set her jaw in determination. "Go time."
With that, the blond heroine reached into her utility belt and retrieved a bracer-like device, which she snapped onto her left wrist. Her fellow Angels did the same.
One after the other, the four heroines stepped into the dingy gloom. And one by one, they pressed a button on their wrist-worn devices, making four beams of light flash across the darkness.
"Cool idea of yours, Blue Angel Four," Blue Angel Three said. "Combination flashlight, net launcher, and evidence scanner!"
The redhead blushed. "The organization already had the rough idea down. I just... tweaked it a little."
"Stay on your toes, girls," Blue Angel Two interrupted. "We don't know if Harley Belle's come back or not. The place could be booby-trapped."
The four Angels continued to probe around the dark, dank factory with their wrist-worn flashlights, spotting nothing but old cardboard boxes and discarded joke teeth for the most part. Nothing to be heard, aside from the soft steps of their boots on the building's floor.
"Maybe we should split up?" Blue Angel Four finally suggested after a while. "We can cover more ground that way."
"I wouldn't suggest it," Blue Angel Two warned. "This place is dark as a coal mine, and none of us know it as well as Harley Belle does."
Blue Angel One nodded. "Divide and conquer. Used carefully enough, even a second-rate villainess like Harley Belle could take us all down."
"Uh, girls?" Blue Angel Three interrupted. "I think I found something."
Four flashlight beams all concentrated in the same direction, illuminating a wall with a piece of paper taped to it. On that piece of paper, the words "GOING DOWN" were crudely scrawled in red, right above an arrow pointing straight down.
The four Angels had just enough time to look at one another in horror before the floor beneath their booted feet gave way.
Son of a...! all four of them thought in unison.
And they plunged straight through the extra-sized trapdoor, but surprisingly enough, their journey was a short one. In no time at all, it came to an end with a rather loud-
SPLAT!
"Ugh," Blue Angel One muttered as she got to all fours. She felt something weirdly soft and sticky on her face and under her hands and knees, almost like mud. "What the..."
"Yuck! I've got it all over me!" Blue Angel Three said. "What is this stuff?! It's all gooey!"
"Oh God, I think I've got some in my tights!" Blue Angel Four complained. "It's all cold! This is so not cool!"
"It must be one of Harley Belle's traps!" Blue Angel Two growled. "We've... got..."
All four Angels suddenly felt themselves swoon, cotton filling their mouths and heat filling their heads. Suddenly, moving felt like too much of a chore. Talking felt like too much of a chore.
While their limbs became leaden and their eyes began to become unfocused, a high-pitched, girlish voice suddenly filled the room. It sounded tinny, as if it were being broadcast over an ancient P.A. system.
"Boy, did you Blue Bimbos pick the wrong fight! How do ya like my Sleepy-Time Pie? I made it for Knightwoman and the Girl Blunder, but I guess you can give it the ol' taste-test!"
Aw, fuck... the four Blue Angels thought as the watched the room spinning around them, and darkness begin to overtake their line of vision. In no time at all, their heads had dropped back down into the pie goo with four satisfying splats.
The quartet of heroines dozed peacefully and helplessly within Harley Belle's deviously designed oversized pastry, unaware of the perils that lay ahead...
"Uggghhhh..." Blue Angel One groaned as she came to. The experience of light and dark flashing into her eyes as everything came into focus again wasn't a pleasant experience, and it was only worsened by the feeling of cold pie cream soaked into her spandex uniform. "Blech..."
The blond crimefighter shook the last of the chloroform cobwebs out of her head, and began to climb back onto her red-booted feet. She hit her wrist-mounted gadget, making a beam of light shoot out across the darkness.
"Where am I...?" Blue Angel One wondered to herself as she swept the beam around.
It seemed like she was still in the abandoned Bag o' Gags factory - which was now all-but-confirmed to be Harley Belle's latest hideout - but her surroundings didn't look familiar at all. If she had to guess, she was probably in another room of the factory, deeper within the building's depths.
Within a few minutes, the Blue Angel had managed to deduce the room's "theme", though she still didn't have much of a clue as to its size or location in the floor plan. Every few steps she took, she could see signs of a certain playing-card suit: the spade. It was emblazoned on the walls, the boxes, the floor...
Frowning, Blue Angel One hit the communicator button on her bracer. Nothing but static greeted her ears.
"What the...?" she murmured. "Harley Belle cut our communications? That's not possible..."
But after a few more moments of static, the blonde sighed and turned off the communication option. It seemed that despite their best efforts, Harley Belle had gotten them with a divide-and-conquer strategy after all.
XOXOXOXO
"Damn it..." Blue Angel Two cursed as she sat on a nearby tarp-covered box, extended her leg, and removed her boot so she could shake out all the pie goo inside. "How'd all this gunk get in my boot, anyhow?"
Once she was finished, the heroine stood back up and hit the flashlight function on her bracer. As she swept the glowing beam around the room, her face settled into a grimace.
"Cute, you little lunatic... real cute."
Every inch of the room seemed to be emblazoned with hearts as far as the eye could see. It looked like the set of the tackiest, tawdriest high school Valentine's Day dance that the Asian heroine had seen in her life. The only mercy was that they were all red, rather than the goopy pink she'd become accustomed to.
She usually considered herself a calm, collected warrior, but Harley Belle just seemed bent on pressing her buttons today. And boy, was she going to pay the little clown back with interest...
"Like love stories, do you?" Blue Angel Two growled as she stalked through the darkened room. "I've got a nice one for you: the ballad of my boot and your ass!"
But even as she growled, she couldn't quite shake the feeling that she was being watched...
XOXOXOXO
"Very funny, Harley Belle..." Blue Angel Three muttered as she. For whatever reason, Harley Belle had seen fit to position her unconscious body atop a narrow conveyor belt raised at least twenty or thirty feet from the floor. When she'd first woken up, the Asian beauty had almost fallen victim to a bone-shattering drop.
The Blue Angel re-positioned herself to sit on the conveyor belt instead, with her spandex-clad legs dangling over the drop. It didn't do much to settle her jackhammering heart, but it did help a little.
Blue Angel Three popped on her wrist-mounted flashlight, and peered into the darkness beyond. She could see several more raised conveyor belts before her, as well as several long, hooked chains hanging from the ceiling. To her dismay, there didn't seem to be any convenient way down to the floor. And to make things even worse, the communicator built into her bracer seemed to be kaput for the time being.
Sighing, the Asian heroine turned her flashlight beam onto the conveyor belt she was standing on. Every foot or so of the belt was emblazoned with a red diamond, but aside from that, there seemed to be nothing special on it. The conveyor belt stretched a good twenty or thirty feet ahead, until it disappeared into the gaping, black maw of some large machine up ahead.
The crimefighter didn't know what was waiting in that machine, but she knew that it was probably her quickest way down. And she needed to regroup with the others as quickly as possible.
"Here goes nothing..." Blue Angel Three said, taking a deep breath and striding toward that machine.
XOXOXOXO
"When we get out of this, I've got to improve on this design..." Blue Angel Four noted to herself as she fiddled with her bracer. She had put months of work into perfecting the communicator function, and yet Harley Belle had somehow managed to disable it in what seemed like no time at all.
After a few minutes, the redheaded heroine decided to give up for the time being. The creepy darkness of her surroundings was beginning to get to her, especially since she was now all alone, with none of her teammates for backup.
"Okay, girl... don't panic... you can do this..."
As calmly as she could, Blue Angel Four switched on the flashlight function and took the first, tentative steps across the shadowy and seemingly endless room. She swept the flashlight beam from wall to wall, inhaling and exhaling sharply at nearly everything she saw.
The entire room seemed to be full of dolls, dummies, and other joke objects meant to mimic human life. She was sure that they would've been cheery and hilarious out in the light, but here, in the dark, abandoned factory, their glassy eyes and dead smiles were anything but.
She tried to focus on any potential clues she found to stave off her growing discomfort, but the only real clue she could find was the playing-card motif she kept finding painted over everything. A black, clover-like design - the club.
What could it possibly-
Her thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a certain nasally, feminine voice echoing through the factory's rusty P.A. system.
XOXOXOXO
"Attention, Blue Boneheads!" Harley Belle cackled into the microphone in her hand. "I know you can all hear little old me, right?"
The self-proclaimed "Clown Princess of Crime" turned to the bank of security monitors right beside her, and was pleased to see that all four Blue Angels were indeed reacting to her voice. Some with anger, some with trepidation - but none of them were ignoring her. Which was good; there was nothing she hated more than being ignored.
"You're probably wondering what's going on, right?" Harley tittered into the microphone. "Well, it's so easy to take a buncha rank amateurs like you down, and sooo boring, that I've decided ta give you mopes a chance 'a redeeming yourselves..."
She broke off, and checked the security monitors again. Now, all of the Blue Angels were looking incensed. Just as she planned.
"I'm in a control room in the exact center 'a this factory," Harley continued into the microphone. "Find me, and I'll come quietly. Or you can beat me black n' blue first, if ya want..."
Her eyes suddenly flashed with an eager light.
"But be careful... 'cause I've set a nice little surprise under this stinkin' place, an' if ya don't stop me in an hour, it's gonna blow all of ya straight ta Kingdom Come!"
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