Interloper (tag: Frank Castle)
Harley was not wearing a happy face. Because Harley was not a happy camper. This was the second time those butterfly bozos had managed to slip away before she could find out where her Puddin’ was. She was gonna tease it out of them. Or maybe exchange the skull for it, except Selina had managed to swipe it right out of her hands. But even the option of tailing them back to wherever they had their hide out was lost to her.
Because the morons snuck out while she was distracted with the kitty. What kinda henchmen were they that they just gave up in the middle of a job? They sucked. They sucked a lot. And they made Harley feel all kinds of cranky, so she’d done what she could to make herself feel better.
She stole something else.
In this case, she lifted a cut crystal candy dish from a display window. It’d look great in her warehouse. If she ever found her warehouse again. Stupid City. She went to all the trouble of stealing pillows and knick-knacks and making it a nice girly-place, and the damn City went and moved it on her. She’d stole that stuff fair and square, and she should get to enjoy it! But there was no point in stealing big things until she had a place to stash them again. So. Candy dish.
With an internal sigh, she headed back towards the botanical gardens. She hadn’t seen Pammy since the zombie attack and Harley was starting to fear that something might actually have happened to her best friend. Though Poison Ivy had managed to come through a lot worse situations. But with no idea where her own hideout was, and no better plan for finding Pammy, hanging out at the botanical gardens seemed like the best idea.
But somehow, she must’ve got turned around because the turn she’d take to get back to the large glass building didn’t take her where she wanted to go. Instead, Harley was headed towards the docks. Which was weird. So she turned around, walking in the opposite direction. Only to find herself right back on the docks. What the hell?
Then her eyes widened, accompanied by a small squeal, when she spied the very thing she’d been missing. Her warehouse! How it got to the docks, Harley had no idea, and right now, she didn’t care. She just wanted to get inside, get her things, and maybe get some rest. Then she could come up with some sorta idea of how to track the butterflies down. And torture them. Harley had very distinct visions of shoving rubber chickens in certain places that she was pretty sure would get her the answers she wanted.
She bounced through the door, feeling happier than she had in a while, only to come to a dead stop. Because there was something in her warehouse that wasn’t supposed to be in her warehouse. She was pretty sure that she hadn’t stolen it in her sleep and stashed it here or anything either, because it was really not the sort of vehicle that she would pick out. If it had been a sports car or a convertible, yeah, sure. But a beat up black delivery van? Nuh-uh.
There was a slight sneer on her face, like she was smelling something particularly bad, as she circled the thing. What was it doing here? And what was inside? Well that one, she could find the answer to pretty easy. Because the back door was not only open, it was cracked. Harley grabbed the handle, cautiously pulling it open.
The sight that met her eyes made her gasp. Guns. Hoo baby, were there guns. Every shape, size, make and model. And more. There were grenades, what looked like mines, things that looked a lot like her exploding canisters, and a bunch of stuff she couldn’t identify at first pass. But the eye-catcher was a big, black rifle that looked like it could put holes the size of soccer balls into something. Harley wanted that gun.
Well. It was in her warehouse, so it was hers, right? Right. Worked for her. One foot went onto the back bumper of the van, as she prepared to hoist herself inside what appeared to be a mobile armory. But she froze when something growled at her. Harley’d been so focused on the Barrett rifle, she completely missed that the van was occupied.
Unfazed by the growl or the bared teeth, Harley simply patted the large Rottweiler on the head. “Good puppy.”
The dog looked confused, no doubt because that was not the normal reaction it got when it growled at people. But Harley was not a normal person, and it was just a dog after all. Not like it was a hyena. She missed her babies. Well, the dog would probably do for now until she found appropriate replacements. She’d look at the animal more later. First she wanted to see the gun.
She spent a considerable amount of time sitting on the floor of the van playing with her new toy. After field stripping and reassembling it, she then explored the capacity of the magazine. The dog watched, chin on paws, as Harley all but ignored it. Its head came up as she stood, and once again, she patted its head. Then gave the ears a bit of a scratch for good measure. Holding a gun that was two-thirds as tall as she was, she exited the van. And she made sure the door was closed when she left. Nobody was just going to waltz in and take her new stuff.
As she headed for the area that she’d claimed as her “bedroom,” Harley reflected that this wasn’t even the strangest combination of things she’d ever come back with. A rifle and a crystal candy dish didn’t even crack the top five on the weirdometer. Not like that time she and her Puddin’ had come home with…
Her thoughts trailed off and she paused, head tilting to the side like a dog hearing a high pitched noise. It wasn’t that Harley had noticed anything overt, no sound or movement had alerted her. But everything in her told her that she wasn’t alone. Which sorta made sense, with the van and all. She was just surprised that nobody’d shown up while she was playing with the gun.
The big, heavy unloaded gun. That wasn’t going to do her much good unless she used it as a club. She leaned it carefully against the wall, where she could grab it if she needed it for that very purpose. Going into a crouch, she crept forward slowly until she could see into the room with the big windows that she’d marked as her own. It took a minute to locate the source of her unease, but when she did, Harley abruptly stood up straight in affronted indignation.
There was a man in her bed! A man she hadn’t invited and didn’t know, or it might be a different matter. He was laying there, in the middle of all the pillows she’d worked hard to thieve, like he belonged there. Well that was gonna change.
Silently stalking towards her bed, Harley’s hand fisted around the heavy crystal of the candy dish. Whoever this guy was, he was gonna get out of her bed. He probably drooled on her pillows! The petite blonde snagged one of the cushions as she drew close, deftly slipping the candy dish inside the pillow case. Fisting the end closed between her hands, she hefted it over her shoulder and held it at the ready. Then she kneed the guy in his side. Hard.
“Hey! Sleeping Beauty! Wakey-wakey!” Harley tightened her grip on the pillow case, ready for the big guy to react poorly. She wasn’t exactly waking him with sunshine and rainbows. “And tell me what you’re doing in my bed!”