The Laughing Spider #22
"He WHAT?"
Edward Nigma's voice cracked on the last word, face going crimson behind his mask. The cane -- his cane, his beautiful, brilliant, irreplaceable cane -- was still not back in his hands. Still not where it belonged.
"Taken by Harley's clowns before I could graze him with my fan," Cheshire reported from across the room, arms crossed.
Across the table, Oswald Cobblepot's grip tightened on the edge until his knuckles went white. "My umbrella," he said, voice dangerously quiet. "My family's umbrella. Three generations. And you--" He jabbed a finger at Riddler. "You and your tournament are why it's gone."
"My tournament?" Edward shot to his feet, chair scraping back. "You're the one who funded it! You're the one who insisted on using the briefcase as bait! This is on you, Oswald!"
"Don't you dare--"
"Gentlemen." Bronze Tiger's voice cut through the argument like a blade. He leaned in the doorway, still healing from his rampage in Old Gotham. Fresh bandages wrapped his chest. "We've tracked them to the Chemical Factory. Harley's got him."
The room went silent.
Riddler's face went blank. Then he laughed -- high, manic, edged with something desperate. "Of course. Of course that psychotic harlequin has him. Probably torturing him for her precious mallet right now."
"Then we need to move," Penguin said, straightening. "Before she kills him and we lose our only lead to--"
"To nothing!" Riddler spun, gesturing wildly. "You think that Spider freak is going to tell us where our items are? We're chasing ghosts, Oswald. Phantoms. Our treasures are gone."
"With that attitude, I won't be surprised if he's already broken your stupid cane in two." Penguin's voice dropped to something cold and final. "I will take him apart. Piece by piece. Brain cell by brain cell if necessary. And I will get my relic back."
Riddler grimaced, but said nothing. His fingers twitched at his sides, itching for the cane that wasn't there.
Onyx stepped forward from where she'd been leaning against the wall. "I'm not getting paid to watch you two bicker. Lady Vic and King Snake are already en route. But the Spider is my kill."
"Not if I kill him first." Bronze Tiger turned to her, grunting. His yellow eyes gleamed with predatory hunger.
Cheshire studied the Riddler, calculating. Her porcelain mask caught the light as she tilted her head.
"The Chemical Factory is Joker's birthplace," she said slowly. "Those two are practically walking into a deathtrap." Her eyes narrowed. "But you--"
She pointed at the Riddler.
"You know something no one here does."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Riddler denied, eyes looking away.
"You son of a bitch." Penguin cursed, stepping forward. "You're still playing mind games. Planning on getting to the Spider before anyone else."
"Well these imbeciles you hired have already proven to be useless," Riddler's voice raised, throwing his hand toward the trio. "He was right there in the open and they couldn't catch him."
Penguin's fist curled. His other hand moved toward his jacket, where he kept a concealed pistol.
"You are going to tell us what you know, or else--"
"Or else what?"
Bronze Tiger cracked his knuckles. The sound echoed like breaking bones. Riddler broke a sweat, raising his hands as the brute pressed forward.
"Okay, I'll tell you." He gave in, backing away from Bronze Tiger's shadow. "But Bronze, you need to stop advancing or I won't say another word."
Bronze Tiger paused. Waited.
"I know a safe passage into the Chemical Factory," Riddler said quickly. "But for this to work, you'll have to take me with you."
"Not a chance," Penguin said immediately.
"This requires brains, not just brute force," Riddler argued, voice sharp. "Isn't that why you still have me around?"
Penguin's fingers twitched, jaw clenching. The silence stretched, dangerous and taut.
"I'll go too," Penguin finally snapped. "I won't let you botch this again, Edward. My people. My operation."
They glared at each other across the table. Two brilliant minds, two massive egos, both driven half-mad by loss and the Spider's impossible theft. The cane and umbrella weren't just weapons. They were symbols. Extensions of their very identities.
And Jake had taken them. Consumed them. Made them vanish like they'd never existed.
"Shall we?" Cheshire was first out the door, not waiting for further argument.
The others moved. Bronze Tiger checked his talisman, fingers running over the jade surface. Onyx secured her weapons with practiced efficiency. The tournament survivors had been humiliated once. They wouldn't let it happen again.
Riddler grabbed his backup walking stick -- wooden, plain, utterly beneath him -- and followed. Penguin was right behind, flanked by two of his best men.
They were all heading to the same place. The Chemical Factory. Where Harley Quinn held their prize.
Where everything would finally be settled.
🕸️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕸️
The chains clinked as Harley pulled, hand over hand, dragging the Spider's body from the chemicals with grim determination.
"Come on," she muttered, makeup running, ponytails plastered to her neck with sweat and steam. "Come on, you stupid bug. I know you're tougher than this. I know it."
The body emerged slowly. Green liquid sluiced off in viscous rivers, pooling on the metal grating beneath. The suit -- that stupid red and blue suit -- was disintegrating, eaten away by the chemicals until only tatters remained.
His skin had changed. Paler. Wrong. The chemicals had seeped into every pore, every cell, rewriting him at a fundamental level.
But he wasn't moving.
Wasn't breathing.
Just hung there, suspended from the chains, head lolling forward at an unnatural angle.
"No," Harley breathed. She knelt beside him, hands shaking as she checked for a pulse. "No, no, no. You don't get to be dead. You don't get to--"
Her fingers found his throat. Pressed against where the carotid should be pumping.
Nothing.
"FUCK!" She slammed her fist against the grating. The metal rang like a bell. "You were supposed to survive! My puddin' survived! Why can't you--"
Her eyes darted to the rose. Poison Ivy's pheromone rose, sitting on its shelf across the factory floor, perfect and poisonous. The thing that was supposed to bring back everything Harley had lost.
"Did I use too much?" she whispered to herself. "Red said just a few drops would drive anyone crazy, make them do whatever I wanted, but I thought-- I thought if I used more in the pool he'd tell me where my 'Good Night' went and I'd--"
Her voice cracked.
She'd never see her mallet again. Never feel its weight in her hands, perfectly balanced, an extension of her will. Never hear that perfect crack when it connected with someone's skull. That sound was music. That sound was home.
And now Bug Boy was dead, and it was making her sad, which was stupid because she hated him, she despised him for taking her treasure, but somehow watching him hang there, lifeless and broken, was worse than anything.
Tears mixed with her running makeup. Black and red streaked down her cheeks.
"I just wanted my 'Good Night' back," she sobbed, voice breaking on every word. "I just wanted my baby back. That's all. That's all I wanted."
She wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing the colors worse.
The body jerked.
Harley froze, hand still at her face.
It happened again. Violent convulsion. His back arched impossibly, muscles spasming as his body fought to expel the poison it had swallowed.
"Oh thank Christ--"
Green vomit erupted from his mouth. Gallons of it. Chemical stew that had filled his lungs, his stomach, his entire being. It splattered across the grating in a spreading pool that steamed and hissed, eating into the metal.
He choked. Gasped. Coughed up more, body convulsing with each heave.
His chest heaved. Once. Twice. Three times, each breath a desperate drag of air into lungs that had forgotten how to function.
Then he started laughing.
Not human laughter. Not the nervous chuckle of someone who'd survived the impossible.
This was something else entirely.
It started low. Bubbling up from his chest like the chemicals still simmering in the vat behind them. Building. Rising. Growing in volume and intensity until it filled the entire factory.
"Ah... ahahaha... AHAHAHA... AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
His head snapped up. Eyes open. Pupils blown so wide the iris was just a thin ring of color around an endless black void.
The laugh continued. Uncontrolled. Manic. Born from a mind that had been taken apart by chemicals and fear and pain, then put back together wrong. So fundamentally, impossibly wrong.
He laughed and laughed and laughed, the sound echoing through the Chemical Factory's corroded spaces, bouncing off rusted vats and broken catwalks. It was the sound of sanity breaking. Of something human becoming something else.
A promise of worse things to come.
Harley stared, makeup-streaked face frozen somewhere between relief and horror. Her hand had found her bat without conscious thought, fingers wrapping tight around the handle.
And for the first time since she'd pulled that lever and dropped him into the green, she wondered if maybe -- just maybe -- she should have let him drown after all.
The laugh didn't stop.
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