thearena | Fun for all ages.

Who: Harley Quinn, the build a buddies and you!
What: Harley has set up camp in the build-a-buddy store and is having a little ~~me party~~.Tea party. Stop by and she'll help you make a dolly of your very own! Or she might stab you...this is Harley we're talking about.
Where: The Build-a-buddy workshop on the first floor across from the movie theater.
When: Week 1
Warnings: Well it's Harley Quinn...so let's start there and see what happens.

Harley had always had a fondness for plush toys. In fact back at her room in the district suite there was more stuffed animals then anything else despite her recent addition of a small jungle's worth of plant life to honor her long lost friend Poison Ivy.

So after the scramble at the Cornucopia she'd wandered about in delight exploring the mall only to settle on this store loaded to the gills with plushie parts! Her eyes were wide as she marveled at all the different combinations one could prepare to design your very own plushie based on tributes that were either currently in the mall with her, or past favorites. In a matter of hours she'd made a small army of them and they lined every available shelf and counter.

As the first few days of the arena past she made the little shop more comfortable for herself every day, but the irritating robot janitors of the mall kept trying to put things back where they belonged which included dragging off her lovingly crafted plushies. That simply couldn't do. The latest of these mechanical offenders had been impaled on a broom handle and left outside the store like a warning to it's fellows.

Having cobbled together an outfit appropriate for a tea party complete with white makeup covering her face and black makeup around her eyes and lips, Harley seemed to be taking a break from the usual arena activities of seeking out food or victims and was sitting down at a table with a collection of little dolls that looked eerily like her closest friends and allies. Many were long since dead like a little Diana Prince doll, and at least one was recently dead as the Cinderella doll sat to one side with a lovely little black dress and her own cup of imaginary tea.

"Now now Damian, don't threaten Timmy's girlfriend. There's plenty of cookies to go around!"

And sure enough while the tea was imaginary Harley had collected a platter of cookies from the food court. Each cup had some water in it to help wash down the sweet treats.

Oddly enough, Harley didn't feel the need to barricade the door to her little lair, either she had confidence in her ability to defend herself...or she was being incredibly careless.

She considered it "Inviting".

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Harley looked puzzled and brought a child's sized wooden seat for Susie to sit on at the table of water filled tea cups and cookies.

"Well it ain't like you've ever let me meet her. I had to guess what she was like based on description." Without asking she lifted Susannah up to place her on the chair.

"Did I do ok? Would she like that princessy dress?"

Susannah looks it over thoughtfully. "Yeah," she says after a moment. "She probably would." She looks back up at Harley and says, with no small level of exasperation, "You haven't met her on her own like with Detta, but you've met me. Take away everything of me that's specifically Detta and you've got Odetta. I'm the complete woman, Harley Quinn, even if you don't want to admit it."

Harley blinked slowly as the words washed over her. Had she been going about this the wrong way all along?

Somewhere inside the psychiatrist in her screamed DUH!

"Well if Detta is a part of you and you know it, why do ya push her away even harder then you push me away?" She quizzed trying to sort out just where she had take a wrong turn in logic. This task is much more difficult for someone who operates on insanity.

Susannah looks away. "Because... because some of what comes from her are things I don't like about myself. So... I don't act on them. But even then, there's still Detta in me that I do act on. I mean, really, after everything I've said, did you actually think Odetta would be capable of fighting the way I do? Of killing? I killed half-a-dozen people in that museum, Harley. I did it, but I couldn't have done it without the parts of me that come from Detta, even if Odetta influenced me to make them quick and merciful." Which they were whenever she could make them that way.

Edited 2014-08-27 11:07 (UTC)

Harley groaned as Susannah put it all out there in the open. She even smacked herself with a facepalm so strong she toppled out of her chair, skirt flying up and flashing an lacy red thong.

"You're tellin' me, this whole time I've been kill in' myself trying to understand you and get you to embrace your wild side...and you already have?!"

She sat up rubbing her face smearing her makeup I the process. "It's not like those two." She gestured to the two dolls of herself and Dr. Quinzel. "Two halves of the same coin. It's just that you are the creamy chocolate cake made uppa' detta and Odetta...and you still hate her. She makes you the perfect balance even if you try to smother it down till you need her!"

She proceeded to bonk herself on the head.

"Stupid, stupid, call yourself a doctor, wasted months crying, coulda been laughing all that time!" She berated herself harshly.

"I tried to tell you," Susannah says, rolling her eyes and attempting to avoid looking at the underwear Harley was so boldly flashing. "I'm pretty sure I tried more than once. This is as wild as it gets. And I think I have every right to hate Detta Walker, Harley. The last time I was Detta before Susannah was born, Detta tried to murder my-- well, he was Odetta's lover then and he became my husband, but he almost didn't because Detta Walker tried to feed him to a fucking lobstrosity."

That apparently was enough to stop Harley from beating on herself, but she looked on the verge of resuming so despite the tears in her eyes.

"She tried to feed him to a what?"

Susannah sighs and rubs her forehead. "A giant lobster monster. People always seem to focus on the lobstrosities when I tell them about my first couple weeks on Roland's world. But look, putting it that way, can't you understand why she's not my favorite part of myself?"

Harley nodded and slumped in her seat looking absolutely heartbroken. The smeared makeup revealed half of her branding much more clearly and she reached up to scratch at it absentmindedly.

"It really is all my fault then. We coulda been having so much fun but I ruined the whole thing. And I can keep trying to make you like me again but so long as I'm all those things you hate that Detta likes there's no way you'll let me back into your life."

"Don't do that," Susannah says, absentmindedly. "Scratching just makes it worse in the long run."

She looks at Harley's downcast form and sighs. "Yes," she says. "You really did ruin everything. And you made it worse by acting like it was justified, week after week, day after day. And while there's still things I like about you, Harley, I-- I can't be friends with you when you're trying to make me be only the part of myself that you particularly like. I need to have people around me that give me reasons to be better, not people who're trying to make me worse. Maybe if you let go of bringing her back--" She groans and rakes her fingers through her halo of hair. "I don't know, Harley."

Harley remained still for what felt like a very long time.

"You're wrong." she said finally and a few tears ran down her nose to fall into her teacup bringing the makeup with it to cause murky clouds in the water.

"I like all the other stuff about you too." she insisted looking up at Susannah with her eyes watering. "That's why I was trying so hard...because I like all the stuff about you that you like AND I like the stuff about you that you hate." She leaned back in her seat almost curling up into herself.

"I just...didn't want you to keep hating yourself. If you could see what I see then you'd love all the stuff that makes you...you." she reasoned.

"I just didn't realize making you love that part of yourself would be killin' off all the other parts of you I care about...because I'm an idiot."

Susannah reaches and gingerly pats Harley's shoulder. "Yes. You are."

Harley equally as gingerly leans into the patting.

"I'm sorry Susie...I know I've said it a thousand times but...I'm really really sorry."

So now she was up to one thousand and two.

"You know," Susannah says after a moment, "I think for the first time, you actually do mean it."

She sniffled again and took her tea cup pour it out on the carpet and throwing it at the little doll of herself in jesters clothes. The cup landed a perfect shot right in little Harley's face knocking her off her chair.

"Too bad it came too late." she lamented apparently having resigned herself to having lost Susannah's friendship forever.

Susannah shrugs and takes a sip of her own imaginary tea. "We'll see."

Fun for all ages.

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i think this is a good place to end this thread actually?