When things fall apart, it happens slowly, and then all at once.
It was the same story all over, be it in a student's educational dedication, a once motivated employee's work ethic, the integrity of institutions or the triple layered plans enacted by mentally unwell enslaved convicts.
Now Task Force X wasn't exactly subtle in this new rendition, a rather unfortunate tendency of losing experienced assets, and a failure to get ahold of some key personnel—namely Deadshot, who was having a nice vacation with his daughter to get over a bout of existential fear—led to them having to make do with a roster that was volatile at best, and without the expertise and grounding of a capable leader.
Low profile infiltration facilitated by local power brokers became an impossible plan, replaced by a literal air drop right over Arkham Island, something only made possible by Batman's investigations taking place in the city proper, followed by an encounter with Victor Zsasz that just couldn't be rescheduled, what with the scarred madman holding a knife to some poor woman's throat.
Lethality was likewise way over the acceptable levels, which meant Waller's superiors and rivals would find greater faults in her management…something most definitely unacceptable as far as the gravitationally-abused woman was concerned.
It was thus obviously not the best plan, but it functioned.
The inmates were released rather quickly, Harley Quinn acted within the expected parameters despite her stated rebellion against that 'Jerk' of an 'Ex-boyfriend' and facilitated his release, giving Waller's operation cover from the bat while he scrambled to fix the damage done by the clown.
Their search for the supposed thumb-drive hidden within Riddler's cane was of course merely a cover for the actual mission—the elimination of the security risk named Edward Nigma, previous member of the Suicide Squad who found a way to break free of her control and rid himself of the sub-dermal bomb, while the caped vigilante acted like a good unknowing asset and resolved the dirty bomb issue.
The Squad was obviously not informed of that particular information, and only Killer Frost was charged with actually killing the Riddler, something that worked smoothly despite all the issues…until it didn't.
Nigma squealed like a rabbit, telling them everything they needed to know to ensure his survival. In less than ten seconds, he went from facing a cold death to being escorted by an ensemble cast of murderers who protected him as if he was their lifeline, which he was.
Something Waller would have loved knowing, just so she could pulverize the heads of a few convicts and keep the rest in line, alas the Riddler made sure to not-so-subtly instruct the squad to feed her false intel on the mission's development.
Not even an encounter with the Clown Prince of Crime changed the situation for him, though he was more than a little amused by the revelation of Black Spider being Batman, a pity the Joker had to spoil the riddle before its proper completion.
That big oaf called King Shark did disappear somewhere, probably distracted by a tasty looking guard or whatever that particular freak considered more important than his life, but his loss wasn't missed.
Not while the squad were strapped onto the asylum's therapeutic electric chairs, getting some high voltage therapy into their system to fry the bombs, just as Waller realized that she was in the process of being fucked like a five penny whore and pressed her big red button of doom, eager to blow everyone's brains to bits.
Only for her 51% fat composed body to start sweating as if it remembered the effects of exercise, just as the realization of her current situation set in, her eyes widening and veins bulging somewhere under all that meat.
Which brought everyone to this situation, five mass murderers with rap sheets so extensive only Eminem could list them in one breath without dying, sitting in those chairs that were so often soaked in urines, all of them recovering from the ordeal yet still utterly on edge, wondering whether their heads were about to explode.
All except Harley, who just looked turned on.
"I am turned on!" And felt the need to inform the world of that particular detail.
Captain Boomerang's still ringing ears heard that and saw free real estate.
"Well, love–" He said between pants, his body still spasming from the electric shocks, "I think I could help you with that…in a moment."
"No thanks, boom boy," She stuck her tongue out at the red head.
"Did it work?" Louise Lincoln, codenamed Killer Frost, asked a grinning Riddler who was cleaning his nails with an utterly insufferable smile.
She might not look very threatening in blue unitard and thigh high boots with white fur highlights, despite objectively being the one with the most firepower in the suicide squad, but the one criminal who contested Boomerang's position as the team's top alcoholic got her covered.
KGbeast's hulking form turned toward the riddler, the former soviet asset who very much kept to the aesthetic had his bald, scarred face in a perpetual scowl that wasn't helped by the Stalinic moustache.
The amputated arm replaced with a heavy cannon added quite a bit to the intimidation factor, that and being nearly as big as the literal landshark who ran off somewhere.
Nigma was spared from having to answer, or perhaps they were the ones spared from hearing him speak, by the voice of Amanda Waller screaming into their ear pieces.
"You insufferable low lives–" She spat, and Louise could almost feel saliva thrown at her ears, which was not cool…pun intended, "You think this little game worked? If you want the slightest chance of returning to your cells alive, kill the Riddler. Now. Or I promise you'll leave this asylum in a closed casket."
Killer Frost could see KGBeast frowning, the last time he tried to call her bluff, she started the countdown to detonate the bomb in his head, only stopping at the last second when he finally complied with her orders.
Boomerang was trying to keep his cool, but there was no hiding the drop of sweats on his forehead. As for Harley, she was still lost in her own world.
It was very convincing, her tone every bit as confident as it was when she gassed them before sending them crashing into the Asylum, only opening their chutes at the last moment, lording her control over their lives.
Except for one tiny detail.
"Riddle me this: I have four petulant pawns but I refuse to spend a single one, what am I?" Nigma asked, leaning against the wall and making it very clear that he did not need an earpiece to know what the fat bitch said, "Can't cheat your way out of this one, Waller? It's so simple, the answer is Desperate!"
Seconds past, everyone waited to see what would happen, until Louise decided to trust her guts and break the cold war between convicts and captor…she should really stop with the ice puns, though.
"You're bluffing," She said onto the earpiece, removing it from her ear and freezing it solid, another second past without her brains turning inside out, and she allowed herself a smile, "And… I am not dead,"
The collective relief couldn't be concealed, even KGbeast allowed himself a particularly ugly smile as he crushed his own communicators and put his mask back on.
"Yahtzee!" Harley shouted, jumping off her chair in a somersault, only to turn around and tilt her head in askance, losing her smile, "Wait, what do we do?"
"Well that's obvious sweetheart," Captain Boomerang got up and stretched with a grin, "We get the fuck out of this madhouse, for one, and then maybe you and I can go grab a drink?"
Killer Frost agreed completely, and so did Anatoli…the leaving part, none of them wished to share a pint with their now disbanded team's marksman, though KGbeast probably wouldn't mind a drinking contest if there was some proper Vodka involved instead of that piss tasting wheat juice people called 'beer'
"I am leaving," KGbeast said for the second time tonight, though this time his head didn't start beeping, he looked from Harkness and his boomerang to Harley who seemed oddly constipated about something, before landing on Killer Frost "Do not follow me, I will not harm you in the name of our shared struggles, but know that we are comrades no longer."
This was the longest thing they've heard him say, and he sounded rather respectable in the process, probably due to his face now being hidden behind his red mask.
"Wouldn't dream of it, big guy," Captain Boomerang said, still grinning, "I think I can get meself outta here quite well on my own, unless you wanna stick around, love?"
He was looking to speak to Harley, but the woman dressed as a very much not safe for work jester had already left the room, and so did the Riddler.
"Well that wasn't very nice, w–" He said, scratching his head only to realize that Killer Frost left by another exit, and even the hulking villain was building up momentum to jump off the window.
*Shatter*
Which was still closed, obviously.
*Crash*
Just like that, the red haired Australian stepchild was left alone in the intensive care unit, his grin fading slowly into a bitter grimace.
"Ah shite, that's what I get for being friendly," He cursed, before he too started running away, "Hope you end up meeting the bat, bloody pricks."
The six villain strong team named Task Force X was thereby disbanded, two members being taken out by vigilantes and then spared an explosive end by the machination of the least moral one, the rest running away to try and assure their own survival and freedom.
Hundreds of kilometers away, in one of the government facilities that did not exist, where the United States personnel was absolutely not conducting mass surveillance nor torturing a couple enemies of the state, there was a single faithful McDonald client gritting her teeth as she watched her career suffer a major setback.
Losing members of Task Force X was a given, even if it's the entire team, there was a good reason they were called the Suicide Squad.
But that was only if they did die.
The near totality of their assets going rogue, and then surviving to tell the tale, possibly spreading ways to overcome their security measures amongst other possible resources, or even besmirching the reputation of the leaders of the free world if they somehow decided to leak it to the press.
That was a catastrophic failure.
A pile of shit that she couldn't so easily pass down onto her subordinates, consequences might trickle down faster than money, but her measures to prevent the rise of upstarts capable of taking her place left her without involved leaders capable of taking the fall.
Nigma was at large, the bomb's whereabouts were unknown, with the single thing holding the ship together being the hope of Batman finding it, or blaming it on Cuba if he fails to do so in time.
An administrative nightmare she failed to properly conduct.
It was bad, but she would survive, she always did.
Things were going to be rough, very stressful, perhaps too much for her blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and she could also say goodbye to that healthy diet she was hoping to start.
But Amanda Waller would survive this, she knew too many things about too many pedophiles not to make it.
. . .
The Asylum was in a state of chaos, but enough time had passed for reinforcements to arrive and supplement the efforts of the Arkham's security guards and the first police to respond to the emergency.
It was far from enough to turn the tide, not when Bane and Poison Ivy were freed, but the common inmates could no longer enjoy themselves.
The situation was only made worse for the cops when a six-foot-three masked gunman broke through a wall and started shooting his way out of Arkham, Anatoli broke into a sprint the moment he saw an opportunity—a police chopper waiting for him behind a measly entourage of officers who scattered the moment they saw him coming, a wise decision if a cowardly one.
He jumped into the vehicle, which while cramped, he could pilot easily despite the difference with the superior aircrafts produced in the motherland.
The helicopter took to the air, and he hardly noticed a familiar head of red looking at him from the ground.
Captain Boomerang briefly considered hopping into the chopper, and maybe trying to fight KGBeast for control of the vehicle, he didn't really trust the big guy not take them to a US Airbase just for the love of the game.
Then he remembered that he wanted to stay alive.
The marksman took out a grappling hook, nothing as fancy as batman's gadgets but enough for a chap like him to work with, swung it around a few times before launching it right at the choppers landing skids.
He barely had the time to make sure it was attached securely when the helicopter started flying away, taking him far from this shithole of an asylum and into the city.
Harkness would of course ditch the chopper and its trigger happy pilot as soon as possible, leaving Gotham should be easier than trying to reason with his former colleague, or trying to stay in Gotham.
You'd need to be right loon to try that crap, Boomerang started laughing, when he realized that Harley probably intended on doing just that.
'Should've wised up and followed me, love,' He snickered, imagining the kind of tomfoolery they could've engaged in, 'What a shame..'
Back in the intensive care unit, Harley was of course proving him right, humming a song while keeping an eye out for any sign of her pudding, gripping her mallet tightly—knowing Mr. J would be very upset if she lost it.
She did end up finding the Joker, tied to a chair right in the middle of a break room, his mouth taped shut but looking rather satisfied with himself, right until the moment he saw her.
Harley pictured his face shifting into joy and relief at their reunion, confessing his eternal love and affection for her after she rescued him from that super ugly bat bully's unfair treatment.
What she ended up getting was a look of pure annoyance.
"I'm back, puddin'!" She said with an unsure smile, showing off her mallet to try and salvage the situation, "And I brought a present for ya!"
Somehow convincing herself that he wasn't getting more and more upset, she took his eyes widening and the return of that humorous spark as a good sign.
Even if he was looking at something behind her.
Even if there was now a shadow covering her.
She turned around slowly, and came face to face with a rather sizable chest wearing all black, with a very familiar and much hated bat symbol on it.
"Oh, goat crap!"
She tried to swing her mallet at that nosy hero, but he grabbed it easily, ripping it from her grasp like an adult removing a toy from a misbehaving child's hands.
But she wasn't a child, Harley was a trained adult with superhuman strength and endurance, a hardened criminal who was going to show him who's the boss!
She used the momentum to turn around and send a vicious kick right at his face, only to be stopped abruptly when he countered her strike and threw her to the other side of the room, making her collapse on her knees with one strike.
"That's so unfair!"
. . .
Captain Boomerang never looked back, only a true masochist would risk his hide over some crazy bint, no matter how hot she was or how wild she might be.
The chopper gained altitude fast, KGBeast pushing the engine well past what the police model was ever meant to handle. Wind tore at Harkness's coat as he climbed the rope, boots scraping metal, fingers numb around the grappling line. Below them, Arkham shrank into a blazing knot of lights, smoke, and violence.
A shape moved at the edge of the cliff, getting peppered by bullets but not caring one bit.
Bane.
He roared, muscles bulging grotesquely as he ripped a police cruiser from the ground like it weighed nothing. For a split second, Boomerang thought the mad bastard was just posturing, trying to look cool in front of some imaginary ladies or whatever it was the super steroid addict did in his free time.
Then Bane hurled it.
The car spun end over end through the air, a screaming comet of metal and glass. KGBeast swore in Russian and jerked the controls hard to the left. The cruiser missed the helicopter by mere feet, the displaced air rocking it violently and smashed into the cliffside instead.
The explosion lit the night for a brief moment, before being forgotten amidst the chaos.
For Boomerang, it would be just another close call, something to talk about while drinking with the boys…after a suitable amount of embellishment, of course.
For Bane, it was just another release of that mindless rage that struck him each time his body was ravaged by the venom, the anger that just wouldn't let him go.
For KGBeast, it was Monday.
Everyone would forget it, except one Louise Lincoln.
Inside that very cruiser, Killer Frost had thought herself clever.
She had reached it seconds earlier, an inmate already half inside, hands on the door, eyes wide with hope. She didn't slow down, nor hesitate. All it took was one touch, reaching out for that well of power within her and letting the cold pour from her like a curse.
Ice crawled over his skin in an instant, freezing his scream in his throat, locking him in place mid-motion.
He died standing up.
She shoved the frozen corpse aside, letting it shatter on the ground, slid into the driver's seat, and floored it like her life was on the line.
For a heartbeat, it felt like victory.
Then the world turned upside down, she felt the car rise, the floor getting further and further away, and heard the throaty roar coming out of a giant's maw.
Then she felt herself flying.
The impact came without warning. Airbags detonated with bone-breaking force, snapping her head forward as heat surged through the cabin. Glass embedded itself into her skin and fire swallowed the dashboard, the doors, the very air she was breathing.
She reacted on instinct, flooding the interior with cold, ice crawling desperately over flame and molten metal, trying to keep the car from exploding.
Too late.
*Bang!*
The fire died, overcome by her powers and the explosion's blast, but the damage was already done.
What was left of her laid several yards from the smoking husk, thrown away by the blast. Her body was twisted, broken, skin burned black and red in equal measure. Parts of her suit had melted and fused into her flesh, synthetic fabric welded to sundered muscle.
Her prized ice-blue hair was gone, reduced to ash.
She was alive.
Barely.
Every nerve screamed. Breathing felt like inhaling broken glass. Her eyes burned, bloodshot and unfocused, staring up at a sky she could no longer cool, no longer control.
She had beaten Waller.
Escaped the bomb.
Survived the squad.
Only to die here.
In a madhouse.
Louise had stolen. Killed. Tortured. Used people until there was nothing left of them. She had thought herself cold, unbreakable. But now, as the pain refused to fade and darkness pressed in from all sides, she felt small and afraid.
A question surfaced, unbidden and cruel.
What did I even do with my life?
Her body wouldn't let her cry.
Her lungs wouldn't let her scream.
She was going to die here, all alone, in pain.
Then came a voice, so vague and muffled she might've hallucinated it.
"Do you want to live?"
Burned eyelids forced her to see a haze, and all she could make out were two red suns hanging in the darkness.
"Do you want to live?" the voice asked again.
She couldn't speak.
Couldn't beg.
Couldn't even nod.
But she opened her mouth anyway, a silent, desperate yes clawing its way out of her.
Her throat was on fire, her everything was on fire.
Then something cold, rich and soothing spilled past her lips, dousing the agony just enough for her to feel her own mouth again, to feel the flesh pressed down against her lips, and desperately she bit down with what little strength she had left, drinking greedily until the source was wrenched away.
Her healed eyelids opened to let her see the world, but through the pain and confusion, all she could make out were the two red suns stared back at her from a pale face most would consider either monstrous or beautiful.
To her, it was gentle.
Kind.
She tried to speak but couldn't, and darkness took her before she could try again.
Elsewhere in Arkham Asylum, the night continued tearing itself apart, but there was one monster who finished his works at long last.
He didn't consider himself a hero by any measure, he killed, tortured and stole both possessions and people, guarded those two things jealously yet couldn't help but reach out for more, seeking greater power and influence despite already having so much.
But as he sacrificed parts of himself to save a burned woman, as he watched horror and anguish turn into desperate hope and then peace, he felt…something.
Despite his actions being marred by his own interests.
Despite his mind already conjuring so many ways to profit from his deeds.
Despite everything reminding him of his nature.
Despite wondering if a salvageable hypocrisy was truly better than murderous honesty.
John Harker once again enjoyed the pleasure of saving someone.
. . .
Discord: