The First Laugh

How it started?

Like every other story in Gotham City, with the wrong person, at the wrong time, in the wrong place, ready to send the destinies and fates of countless others into disarray. Or maybe… it was the right person, at the right time, at the right place, after all, this was Gotham City, things like luck are never on one’s side, no matter how much of a good person you could be.

So it started, with some very familiar faces, with the man wearing the continuous grin on his face, his dark green hair slicked back, the perfect presence, of the perfect monster living and breathing, the clown prince of crime; alongside him there was a small number of his goons, and among them, a woman with blond pigtails hidden underneath a cowl, her face painted white and her whole attire looking like her name, the harlequin.

This time, you could him the Joker, but besides him, there were some other forces of chaos that were new to the city, several heavily armed men, with technology and equipment that made them look a little out of place amongst the more traditionally garbed members of the local mafia; their reasons to be here? They had a job, a truly important job, simple as that, these men were not going to say nor ask anything, they just did their jobs, just like any other day… if they had to kill someone if they tried to interfere? Even better for them.

That’s how most stories in Gotham City go really, someone wants something, something so powerful or important that they will do anything for it, and just like always, as they truly believed that they will get away with it, he appeared, the one man in the city that was prepared to stop them, always ready no matter the day to defeat the villains and do what was right for the city.

The caped crusader did what he did best, stop them all, in this case both the usual riff raff of Gotham and the highly trained soldiers sent by a mysterious buyer, a buyer of what? A highly unstable, newly discovered artifact that had been sent to the Gotham City Museum for study.

A gray strange looking pyramid, made out not of any blocks or known material, it absorbed most lights and energy that was send to it as a way to study it; all around it there were symbols, human figures, nothing made sense in the structure the size of a man, heck, it seemed to have been carved from one big piece of… something.

So Joker was there because there was money to be made, and he wanted chaos, because the pyramid was apparently magical, of what kind? Who cares, as long as he is able to use it to make existence so much more funnier, for him of course. The soldiers were there fighting Batman because that’s what they were paid for, that’s what they believed in, and Harley was there because Joker was there, not that the man cared too much about her when he pushed her into the fray, just so she would fight Batman for his entertainment.

She tried of course, anything for her ‘pudding’, but it was clear, like every single time this happened, that she was punching way above her league, just a duck to avoid her mallet and a quick uppercut into her chin and she was send flying into the air; one thing to be sure was that Batman treated everyone equally, no matter the gender, age or race, Batman will always kick your asses, no distinction whatsoever, equal opportunity for getting your clock knocked around.

As for our unlucky girl? Well, she went flying through the air and crashed right into the gray pyramid and as she tried to get the stars flying around her head to disappear, the pyramid hummed, finally awakened, who knows by what exactly, but as Harley and two of the unknown soldiers tried to get up to continue the fight, reality around them was ripped apart.

Energies beyond their control or understanding began to tear reality around them, a storm of energy trapping the three inside the power, and just like that, the one that had been Harleen Quinzel ceased to exist. Her personality, her soul, everything that had been her was torn asunder, and in that moment, just as a new soul, taken from somewhere in the vast multiverse, was forcefully pushed into a new existence, changing everything.