AN: This is it for now. See ya all on Monday.
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John and Harley sprinted down the cracked sidewalk, dodging debris and the occasional panicked civilian. The sounds of battle echoed behind them, followed by the shattering of glass, the crunching of metal, and the groaning of buildings under the weight of the chaos they had left behind.
"We make it to the apartment, I'm building a pillow fort and never leaving," Harley huffed, breath short but steady.
"Let's just get there first," John muttered.
They turned the corner onto 7th Street and stopped dead.
A neon pink motorcycle leaned perfectly balanced against a toppled lamp post. It was clean. Untouched. Like it had just been parked in the middle of an apocalypse. Sitting on it, legs crossed and posture straight, was a man in a blinding pink coat. He tilted his head as if practicing for a scene in front of a mirror. He wore white gloves and shiny boots. A red smudge marked his cheek, and it wasn't lipstick.
Harley immediately backstepped. Her face lost all color.
"Shit," she whispered. "Shit shit shit. It's him."
"A friend of yours?" John asked.
"That's Eduardo Flamingo. AKA El Flamingo. He's not like the rest of 'em. Freak's a cannibal. He eats people, Johnny. Faces. He eats their faces."
John didn't blink. "What's with the coat?"
Harley babbled. "It's always pink. It's his thing. I think it keeps the blood from showing. I don't know. Never asked. Must be a weirdo with weird fetishes. Not that I'm judging. Everyone got their own fetishes."
Flamingo slowly uncrossed his legs and stepped off the motorcycle. He adjusted his coat and gloves, then broke into a wide smile. The smile revealed too many teeth, too white, with no joy, only a sense of hunger.
"I was wondering how long it would take for you to show your lovely face, Harlequinita," he said with a thick accent. "My compliments, by the way... You made quite the statement."
Harley's voice dropped to a whisper. "Don't talk. Don't engage. Just backup."
Flamingo kept walking forward, boots clicking against the fractured pavement.
"Your Puddin'... he's quite upset. Imagine my surprise when the Joker himself calls me up and says, 'Go find my girl. Make that bitch pay.' And he said you did it, little butterfly."
Harley tried to fake a grin, but her voice cracked slightly.
"Aw, c'mon, Eddie. That was a love tap. A warning. You know how it is with exes. Tempers. Drama. Shootin' the ol' kneecaps."
Flamingo's grin didn't waver. He tilted his head like a curious animal.
"You shot him in the ass."
"I had good aim," she said weakly.
"You embarrassed him. Made him bleed. Thanks to you, he was captured and tortured by Waller. Luckily, he escaped, and I got the job. I've always wondered, how would Harley Quinn's face taste?" Flamingo said with a sick grin as his eyes went toward John. "And you must be her new chew toy. Came for one and found two. Lucky me."
"I'm not a fan of pink," John said, flatly.
Flamingo laughed softly, like someone humming at a funeral.
"I won't kill you quickly," he said. "But I'll make sure she hears it when I carve off your lips."
Harley's hand searched her jacket. Nothing. No gun or blade. Not even a fork. 'Fuck that Bats. He took everything. Arrgg! We are in a deep shit, aren't we?'
"John," she whispered. "I got nothin'."
He didn't answer. His eyes were already locked on Flamingo's hands.
Flamingo reached into his coat. Two glints of metal flashed.
John shouted.
"Down!"
Gunfire erupted instantly.
Harley screamed and dove as bullets tore through the air. The crushed remains of a nearby sedan exploded with sparks and glass as the two of them hit the ground and rolled behind it. Bullet holes chewed through the frame, each shot coming with eerie, measured rhythm.
Flamingo's voice called out from behind the smoke.
"I brought my appetite today. Don't make me chase you."
Harley clutched John's arm, eyes wide.
"This guy doesn't stop. He once chased a woman across two states just to finish a bite!"
John peeked over and ducked as a round whistled past his face.
"C'mon. Harley, you got nothing?" He yelled.
"NOPE! Bats took everything, even my freakin' bubblegum," Harley yelled back. "But hey, ain't this scene kinda familiar? But with more danger than before. Bullets flying at us. Another lunatic is shooting at us. We can't go forward thanks to that pinky freaky face eater. We can't go backward because that giant freak might stomp us to pulp. The only thing left is an explosion. A big bang!"
John pressed his back to the ruined sedan, bullets still chewing through the metal inches above his head. He glanced at Harley, who was curled beside him with wide eyes and blood pumping behind her temples.
"This," he said between breaths, "is what happens when you do bad things."
Harley lowered her gaze to the ground and pouted, rolling her finger on the ground. "Sorry. Harls always get you in trouble."
Before he could answer, a small metal object clinked against the pavement.
Both of them looked down.
A grenade rolled to a stop between their feet.
"Oh, come on," Harley muttered.
John didn't hesitate. He grabbed her by the waist and rolled them both out from behind the car just as the grenade exploded. The force lifted them off the ground and flung them into the street like rag dolls.
The blast rang in their ears. Everything went white for a moment.
John hit the ground hard. His body skipped once, then stopped. His vision blurred. A high-pitched whine buzzed in his head. He blinked, trying to see through the smoke, but the world felt underwater.
Harley groaned somewhere nearby. She coughed and sat up, holding her head.
John rolled onto his stomach. His limbs felt like rubber. His head throbbed. But he pushed himself up, shaking off the dust and ringing as best he could.
Then he saw him through the haze. Eduardo Flamingo stepped forward, his smile gone. He tossed his empty guns aside like trash, and the twin clatters echoed down the street. From beneath his coat, he pulled out a chain whip. It unraveled with a metallic hiss as it hit the ground, the links clinking, and the end tipped with a serrated hook.
John's hands curled into fists. His ribs ached. His vision still swam.
Harley blinked, blood running down the side of her temple, watching Flamingo slowly roll his neck like he was warming up for a dance.
"Great," she muttered, spitting blood. "Now he wants to play butcher."
Flamingo spun the chain once in a slow circle beside him.
"You embarrassed the clown," he said. "Now I get to peel the apology off your face. But before that, I'm gonna enjoy beating the shit out of you then your new man."
He cracked the whip once, sparks dancing across the pavement.
John's vision cleared just enough to see her.
Harley was slumped against a cracked fire hydrant, blood dripping from her forehead, streaking down the side of her face. Her right arm was smeared in red. Her lip was split. She blinked slowly, like she was trying to stay conscious through the pain.
He crawled to her.
Flamingo's boots clicked closer in the background, the chain whip dragging behind him.
John reached out and touched her lip gently. Blood.
Something inside him cracked and then snapped. A silence engulfed his mind, bringing a clarity that only emerged in moments when all reason faded away. He didn't hear the whip or see the street; all he could see was Harley, bleeding.
She looked up at him with dazed eyes. "Johnny...?"
He gripped her shoulders and leaned in close.
"You're gonna be okay," he said quietly. "Just hang on."
She blinked, barely nodding.
He cupped her face. His voice dropped even lower.
"You don't need to worry about him. I'm going to kill that freak. Slowly. I'm going to break every inch of his body. And then we're going home."
Harley's lips trembled. "You serious?"
"Yeah. But you have to promise not to hide food under the couch. It's just nasty," John said with a serious expression. "There are rats. You could get sick."
He stood. His muscles screamed, but he didn't care. The pain was nothing. His vision sharpened. His breathing slowed. His heart felt cold.
Flamingo stopped ten feet away, grin creeping back.
"Such passion," he said with a tilt of the head. "How romantic. It'll make your face taste even better."
John cracked his neck and sighed.
Flamingo stopped mid-step, the chain whip swinging slowly at his side. John stood in front of him, blood on his face, hands loose at his sides, expression unreadable.
"How good are you at flying?" John asked calmly.
Flamingo's smile twitched. "Excuse me?"
John tilted his head slightly, rain starting to fall around them. Slow drops at first, soaking into the dust and blood of the street.
"I asked," John repeated, eyes locked on his, "how good are you... at flying?"
Flamingo laughed. Loud and sharp. "Have you lost your goddamn mind? Beg me. Scream for mercy. What the fuck are you talking about?"
He cracked the whip forward. It shot like a serpent through the air, wrapping around John's throat with a tight snap of metal. Flamingo yanked it, hard. John stumbled forward, the links digging into his skin.
Harley screamed behind them. "Johnny!"
Flamingo grinned. "You will beg for mercy."
Lightning cracked across the sky like a celestial gunshot. John looked up. Rain poured down in sheets now. He clenched his fists around the chain and didn't flinch. His voice dropped to a whisper:
"Shazam."
The lightning came down like judgment.
A thunderclap split the sky as a bolt of divine electricity slammed into John, engulfing his body in a blinding white-gold flash. The street lit up brightly for one brief second, and when the light faded...
John wasn't the same.
His tattered clothes were gone, replaced with a black and gold suit. A bolt-shaped emblem pulsed on his chest. Gold bracers crackled with power at his wrists. His eyes glowed faintly. His skin gleamed like obsidian carved by a god.
The chain whip sizzled in his hand, melted from the sheer heat radiating off him.
Flamingo stumbled back. "What! What the fuck!?" Luckily, he dropped the chain as soon as he saw the lightning, or else he'd be toast by now. "Is this some kind of magic show?" He took out his signature dual submachine guns from his coat and began to shoot with a maniacal laughter.
John didn't blink. The bullets hit his chest like pebbles against armor. They sparked, flattened, and dropped to the pavement one by one. The sound echoed across the empty street, but John didn't move. His expression didn't change. His cape whipped behind him in the wind. His fists remained at his sides.
Flamingo screamed with frustration and kept firing.
"DIE! DIE ALREADY! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?!"
The clips emptied. The guns clicked dry.
John stepped forward. Flamingo backpedaled, tossing the weapons aside. He reached for something else inside his coat, but John was already in front of him. One hand closed around Flamingo's wrist. The bones crunched instantly.
"ARGGGG!!"
Flamingo screamed and tried to twist away, but John pulled him in with a single motion. He slammed a glowing fist into Flamingo's gut. The sound was dull and sickening, like metal folding in on itself. Flamingo doubled over, breath gone, eyes wide with shock. He made sure to control his power because Flamingo must feel pain a thousand times more than what Harley felt.
"You like pain?" John said, voice low and thunderous. "Here's a dose."
He brought his other fist around, driving it into Flamingo's ribs. The pink-coated killer flew back like a broken doll, smashing into the side of a bus. The metal crumpled inward. Flamingo's body slumped to the ground.
He tried to get up, dazed, blood dripping from his mouth. He reached for a knife, slow and trembling.
John grabbed him by the collar and lifted him off the ground like a piece of trash. Flamingo tried to jam the knife into John's throat, but the metal simply broke.
"I don't get it. Why use a knife when bullets don't even work?"
"Fuck you, freak," Flamingo punched John and broke his fist in the process. "I'll eat your face even if I have to crawl out of hell."
"Haaa..." John sighed, seeing the stupidity. "Face-eater, huh? Let's see how you do without yours." He flipped Flamingo up and grabbed his leg with his left hand and flew up into the sky with a loud boom.
The rain peeled away around him, a cone of vapor forming at his shoulders as he broke through the lower clouds. Flamingo dangled in his grip, flailing, his pink coat snapping in the wind, his screams lost to the altitude.
The city shrank beneath them. The clouds thinned, and the temperature dropped. John's grip tightened around Flamingo's ankle like a steel vise.
Flamingo clawed at his chest, trying to speak, but the air was thin. His eyes bulged. His mouth opened in a silent gasp.
John stopped.
Still holding him upside down by the leg, John hovered. The wind was gone. It was quiet now. Just the distant roar of the storm far below. Flamingo wheezed, clawing at nothing, trying to breathe. His body trembled in the cold. His eyes rolled, panic finally setting in. John looked down at him with a calm, unreadable face.
"Are you perhaps in pain? I thought you enjoyed pain," John said with a cold expression. "It would seem you want oxygen, huh? I'll let you go."
Flamingo gasped, confused, trying to pull in what little oxygen there was.
John looked out at the stars, then back down to the city far below.
"You'll have about three, maybe four seconds before gravity takes over. That's more than enough air."
Flamingo's mouth opened. He tried to speak, but it came out as a raspy wheeze.
John didn't blink.
"But here's the thing," he continued. "You'll fall too fast for your brain to catch up. Your lungs will scream. Your body won't know which way is up. And before you even remember how to beg..."
He let go.
"You'll hit the ground face-first."
...
[Back to the ground]
SPLAT!
"Heek!" Harley gasped, seeing the human splatter in a pink coat. Blood and flesh splattered everywhere.
John flew down beside Harley.
"Ah tink Ah gog sone slushy in ma mout..." She said with her mouth open.
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---[Don't forget those powerstones]---
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