Harley QuinnCrossover origin story

Act I — Please fail according to the script

Vane appeared beneath a spotlight wearing a coat with a dramatic collar and the expression of a man who had practised receiving applause. He explained that the Last Laugh Machine could calculate any performance before it happened. A challenger who made it predict incorrectly would win the bell. Everyone else would become part of his permanent collection of embarrassing moments.

The collection played across the walls: a singer missing a note, a magician dropping his dove, a strongman struggling with a door marked PULL. The audience laughed on cue. Harley watched Vane rather than the pictures. His fingers moved inside his sleeve just before every burst of applause. Interesting. Even his admirers needed batteries.

She stepped onto the stage and announced that she would begin with a graceful entrance. The machine projected an image of her slipping on a loose board. Harley looked down. There was the board. She stepped over it, bowed extravagantly and caught her heel on the curtain instead. The audience howled. The machine added the fall to its collection.

From the floor, she examined the curtain hem. A wire ran through it toward Vane's lectern. The machine was not predicting accidents. It was arranging them, then congratulating itself on its insight. Harley had met people like that. Usually they required a much larger office and called the result a vision.

She got up, dusted off her shorts and asked whether the next round included equipment failure or if that cost extra. Vane offered her a microphone. It immediately produced a squeal loud enough to rearrange several hairstyles. Harley held it toward him. At last, she said, an instrument capable of expressing his personality.

Act II — A machine with an ego problem

During the intermission, Mox found her inspecting the underside of the stage. He expected anger. Instead, she was eating a stolen pastry and following the wires with professional interest. One cable controlled the floor. Another led to the microphone. A third, painted a suspiciously regal gold, ran directly to the applause horns.

Mox admitted that the machine needed rehearsal notes to build its predictions. Performers filled in a little form before going on. When they departed from the plan, Vane used the hidden controls. Harley had submitted a drawing of a duck wearing a crown. Somewhere inside the brass cabinet, an expensive analytical engine was still attempting to understand her artistic intentions.

She asked Mox to show her the projection booth. He hesitated until she promised that anything broken would be broken in an entertaining way. Behind the booth's glass, reels of audience reactions were stacked beside labelled recordings of Vane's speeches. There were seven versions of his entrance alone. One included thunder. Another had a longer pause for admiration. None included the possibility of silence.

Harley chose a reel and wound it onto the spare projector. Mox read the label, looked at her and began to grin. She gave him a cue: when the bell rang twice, play it. He pointed out that the bell was still hanging above the stage. She assured him that details of geography had rarely improved a good plan.

For the next act, she announced a demonstration of perfect balance. The machine obligingly showed her falling from a stool. She sat on the floor instead, put the stool on her head and asked whether it had considered the furniture's emotional journey. Vane pulled a lever. A trapdoor opened several feet away. Everyone looked at the empty hole.

The machine tried again. This time it predicted that Harley would burst into tears. She produced an onion from the refreshment tray, took a theatrical sniff and offered it to Vane. He declined. She thanked him for protecting the dignity of the vegetable. Real laughter rippled through the front row before the recorded applause could catch up.

Act III — The proprietor becomes the entertainment

Vane abandoned subtlety. He declared that the final test would be a duel of wits and released a cage of spring-loaded boxing gloves from the ceiling. Harley studied it with delight. This was the first honest statement the theatre had made all evening. Mox, watching from the booth, covered his eyes and left a gap between his fingers.

She ducked the first glove, pushed the stool beneath the second and swung the microphone stand into the third. The mechanism folded against itself with a noise like a drawer full of cutlery being thrown downstairs. One glove struck the silver bell. It rang once. Harley flicked the dangling stand with her boot. The bell rang again.

Across the walls, Vane's private rehearsal began. There he was, practising his own modest smile. There he was, rejecting a bow because it appeared insufficiently triumphant. There he was, telling the applause operator to add more enthusiasm because the current recording made him sound merely impressive. The audience turned from the projection to the original, comparing the workmanship.

Vane reached for the master switch. Harley got there first and pulled the applause cable from his sleeve. The horns stopped. For three long seconds, the theatre was quiet enough to hear the last boxing glove winding itself down. Then somebody in the back row snorted. The laugh spread without permission, without a recording and without leaving Vane anywhere useful to stand.

The machine announced that it had predicted this outcome. Its final projection showed the proprietor receiving an enormous ovation. Harley looked up at the image, looked back at the furious man beside her and offered a sympathetic shrug. Even a machine deserved an embarrassing moment for its collection. Mox saved the reel.

She took the bell on her way out. Vane protested that she had damaged his property. Harley reminded him that he had promised a prize for an incorrect prediction. She rang it once, close enough to make his collar tremble. He had expected obedience from a room full of goblins and a woman who had drawn a royal duck on his paperwork. Frankly, the bell was a bargain.

At the alley door, Mox asked whether she would be coming back. Harley said that depended on the refreshments. Behind them, the audience had commandeered the stage and was teaching the machine jokes it could not catalogue. She vanished into the rain with the silver bell swinging from one finger. The next invitation to the theatre advertised an evening of uncertainty. For the first time, it was telling the truth.