Chapter Text
"So how ya doing Lil Red," Harley asked Ranma as they sat in the cafeteria.
It had been a week since they first met and befriended the Red-Headed Teenager. She would have said taken under her wing but the Japanese girl could definitely handle herself, even in this crowd of psychos.
Ranma frowned at the nickname, "Why Lil Red?"
Harley laughed before gesturing to to the green lady with red hair sitting beside her, "because she's already Red, so you got to be Lil Red."
Ranma made a face.
"I suppose I could call you Red and Pammy Big Red." Harley put a finger to her chin with a thoughtful look on her face.
Pamela looked at Harley and gave her an evil eye, "if you start calling me BIG Red there's going to be a problem."
Harley just giggled before turning back to Ranma, "I guess you're now Lil Red, now answer the question."
Ranma looked at her before sighing, "I don't think Dr Morris can actually help me, I don't feel like he actually cares about helping me with my C-c-c... Furry devil problem."
Harley nodded, "that's because Ol' Morrey is an idiot."
Pamela nodded, "he really doesn't put much effort into things, not that he can help me anything as there is nothing wrong with me."
Both Harley and Ranma gave the Eco-Terrorist a look, remembering the rant about killing all the CEOs that pollute the world at the group council section earlier that day.
"Oh Red, we are all broken in here." Harley laughs for turning back to Ranma, "but ya, he's a lazy ass."
She takes a bite of food, "in fact, the reason we have the group counsel sessions is so that he can put on paper that he treated several people while putting in less effort."
"Really?" Ranma asked.
"Oh ya, We all have different things wrong with us. It's kind of useless to treat us all at once in the same way," Harley continued, her strong accent noticely disappearing as she started to lecture, "you have a trauma induced dissociative identity disorder ,Red here has a communal narcissism disorder with a huge superiority complex and while I have a bit of dissociative identity disorder myself, my main issue is my histrionic personality disorder with a side order of dependency"
She ignores the surprised silent stares of the rest of the table as she explains.
"Each of us require different and separate treatments to help us deal with why we each are broken."
"Wow, you certainly sound smarter than Dr Morris," Ranma noted.
"Ah thanks Lil Red," Harley grinned, her strong accent back, "that's nice of ya ta say. I am a fully trained psychologist too, graduated top of my class and everything."
"Really, you're a doctor?" Ranma perked up, "maybe you could help me with my problem."
That took Harley aback. Her mind raced as she looked at the expectant face of the younger girl before her. She was broken, she knew she was broken, She couldn't help herself most days, how could she help someone else?
Trying to think of a way to put the girl off, her thoughts were interrupted by Harvey who had been watching the conversation with interest.
"You graduated top of you're class?" He said in disbelief, "why the hell would you take a job at this freak show?"
He gestured to their surroundings.
"Ya," the penguin added from the next table, "you should be off making a fortune somewhere else."
"Ah," she felt a little put on the spot, "I thought I could make a difference here."
Harvey nodded in understanding, she thought maybe it was because he thought that way once back when he was Gotham's District Attorney trying to clean up the city's corruption.
"I can pay," Ranma broke back in, "what do you want to help me?"
She turned back to the Japanese redhead to say that no she couldn't help her when she paused, maybe if she asked for something she couldn't pay then maybe..
"I tell you what Lil Red, I've been craving a Big Kahuna burger from Frank's Diner for a while, with a side of curly fries and a large chocolate milkshake." She congratulated herself on coming up with the plan, "you bring me that and I'll take you on for a session."
She smiled, that should put her off.
Her smile became a little forced when Ranma asked for directions to Frank's Dinner.
***
Harley finished her evening routine of letting her pigtails down and combing out her hair when suddenly she was hit with the smell.
There was no way...
Turning around she saw Ranma standing there with a paper bag and a big smile.
"One Big Kahuna Burger, curly fries and Chocolate milkshake," Ranma said proudly, "Frank says hi by the way."
"How? What? Why... No how are you in my cell?" She asked bewildered.
Ranma just smiled innocently, "I walked through the door."
Harley turned to look at her closed and very locked cell door before turning back to her new friend, before sighing, new patient she amended.
"Well I guess if you went through all the trouble, hand me that burger." She hadn't been joking about her cravings.
***
"...and after we finished she distracted me and then was gone." Harley finished recounting the story to Pamela. She kept the details of what they talked about from the story, doctor patient privilege and all, but she had to tell her about Ranma's ability to seemingly appear and disappear at will.
"So Ranma is a ninja?" Her green friend asked, "that would explain how she dealt with Zsasz."
"You know I asked her the same thing and she laughed, asked me why anyone would limit themselves to being a sneaky coward," Harley shook her head in disbelief, "told me it would make her as useless as those pathetic League of Assassin wannabes."
"... Oookay, that's kind of scary.." Pamala started after a moment, trying to equate what she was hearing with the short Japanese girl that she and Harley had befriended, "do you think she could help us escape?"
"I don't think so Red," she shook her head, "kid actually wants to get better and thinks that this place can help her."
"Ugh, Arkham can't help anybody," Pamala grumbles, "this place is cursed."
"No arguments here."
***
Ranma waits for lights out, laying in her bed for a little longer as she watches the guard walk by looking into her cell before moving on.
Then she pulled a full sized life like doll that looked exactly like her out of her sleeve using her hidden weapons technique, She still couldn't hold quite as much as Mousse did but she had been working on it.
The doll itself was something that she didn't want to think about even as it came in handy for this situation. Let's just say that she confiscated it from Kuno and that she had found it in his bed.
Shuddering she tucked the thing into her bed and went to the door. She closed her eyes, concentrated and walked forward.
Opening her eyes she found herself standing on the outside of her cell. She smiled and ghosted down the hallway.
Her walk through doors technique was a combination of the advanced forms of her Pop's Umi-Sen Ken mixed with Happosai's technique he used to steal bras and panties off of women without removing the rest of her clothing.
Training it had been a pain, he had broken his nose twice before getting it right. She couldn't go through anything more than a couple inches yet, which is why it was walk through doors and not walk through walls but Ranma was sure that she would improve with practice.
She had to use the techniques four more times before she was free of the Asylum. The Guards not noticing as she walked right by them using the more traditional methods of the Umi-Sen Ken.
Once she was in the surrounding forest she quickly changed her clothing from the Orange prison Jumpsuit to a sleeveless black hoodie and black sweatpants.
Fully changed she jumped through the trees towards Gotham. She came to explore the city and she wasn't going to let a pesky little thing like being locked up keep her from doing that.
.jpeg "Finding Help In Strange Places - ToManyIdeas (1)")
***
Batgirl peered out over the city from her perch on the roof, keeping an eye on the building Across the road. Firefly had been up to his old tricks Batman had narrowed his next Target down to three locations including the one she was watching.
Robin and Batman were staking out the other two.
Well used to long stake outs she allowed her mind to wander while still keeping an eye out for the arsonist villain.
As of late she found her mind going back to that night a few weeks ago when she came upon the scene of Scarecrow's last and final attack.
The gruesome crime scene reminded her more of an animal attack something done by a person. She was the first to enter after hearing frantic gunshots and screaming.
She had busted into the room and tried to make sense of the situation as it looked like the Scarecrow and two of his goons were panicking and firing their guns randomly, the rest of them already laying still on the ground not moving.
At first she thought that the goons had maybe accidentally inhaled a dose of their own fear toxin but than she saw one of the men go down with his throat torn out and then the other.
That was when she noticed the blur hopping around the room.
"What are yo....grugle!" The Scarecrow's scream was cut off in a spray of blood as he went down as well.
Thinking that it might be better to back out of the room and wait for back up she was unprepared for a blood covered blur to bounce toward her and knock her painfully on to her ass.
Of course the pain was forgotten as she looked into the eyes of a blood covered Japanese boy.
"Meow?" The boy co*cked his head as he peered into her eyes.
"Uh, hi?" She replied nervously.
Then the boy smiled and he started nuzzling her face.
She found herself blushing as he pushed his whole body up against her like a cat, rubbing some of the blood off of himself onto her before settling down and seemingly falling asleep on her lap. Was he purring?
Not wanting to disturb the possibly dangerous boy she just let him to lay there.
That of course was when Nightwing and Robin burst into the room, finding her with the boy sleeping in her lap like a cat while surrounded by the corpses of Scarecrow and his gang.
She didn't realize it until later but she had been petting the boy's head like a cat while explaining what she'd seen.
Tim and Dick had teased her incessantly since about her new "pet cat boy".
Then the boy woke up and they all tensed up, getting ready for a fight. They were not expecting for the boy to look around groggily before realizing where he was and bolting off her lap so fast she almost thought he teleported, apologizing for what ever he did.
Last she saw of the boy was him getting led away by the police for questioning. She figured that he would be let off due to being under the influence of the fear toxin and not in control of his actions.
Her dad, the police commissioner, had told her that he wasn't pressing charges and he was getting help to deal with the trauma. She wished him luck.
"What are looking at?"
If she wasn't so used to Batman doing the same, she might have jumped right off the roof when the slightly foreign accented voice came from right beside her.
Turning to the source she saw a girl looking out over the same roof as her. Her face was shadowed by the hood she was wearing but she could see that it was a fellow redhead .
"Who are you? what do you want?" She jumped back in a fighting stance.
She just smiled and pulled down her hood, showing off her beautiful Japanese features, looking a few years younger than Batgirl herself. Her piercing blue eyes looked damn familiar.
"I'm just a tourist and I jumped." She said without a care in the world.
"A tour... Wait you jumped?" She backed away further, "we are on top of a five story building!"
"I didn't jump up five stories," she pointed to the building across the street that was 4 stories tall, "I jumped from that roof."
Batgirl gawked, the building gap between building's made the fact, if she was telling the truth, even more impressive.
"Hey," the girl co*cked her head to the side, suddenly staring past her, "do you know anyone that can fly?"
"What!?" She turned despite the possible threat and saw Firefly coming towards them, the flames from his rocket pack glowing in the night as he got closer.
Activating her comm, "Batman, Robin, Firefly inbound on my location," she glanced at the girl who hadn't moved, "he possibly has help."
The girl frowned at that, "I'm not with him, I don't even know who he is."
"He's a criminal called firefly, he burns buildings down," she prepared a batarang just in case the girl came at her.
"He's a bad guy?" The girl's gaze went cold staring at the approaching villan.
"Yes he i...." She trailed off, her head whipping back and forth trying to see where the girl went. She was gone.
"Aragggg!"
She spun her head around again only to see the girl somehow riding on the back of Firefly, some how steering him towards the roof she was standing on.
She jumped out of the way as they both came crashing down on the roof, right where she'd been standing.
Firefly shifted weakly, obviously hurt, while the girl did a graceful backflip off the man just as they hit.
"There ya go, one bad guy." The girl smiled.
Firefly ripped off his helmet, gasping for breath. "What the f*ck you crazy bitch." He raised his arm which had a flamethrower attached and pointed it at the girl.
Batgirl needn't have worried as the girl just casually stepped out of the way of the flames and kicked the man in the head, knocking him out cold.
"That was rude."
Batgirl found herself gawking again.
"Who are you?!" She practically yelled.
"I told you, I'm just a tourist," she turned to the left and frowned, "well, nice meeting you, got sights to see."
The girl just waved and jumped to the right, right off the edge of the building.
Running to the edge she saw that the girl was gone. Suddenly she heard a sound behind and she spun only to relax when she saw Batman and Robin landing on the roof.
What the hell just happened? And why did the girls eyes seem so familiar?
