toxicodendron_radicans | Harlequin Dreams

"Sorry." Paco said, since 'my bad' apparently hadn't covered it. One thing for sure, this lady wasn't from nearby. Not with that accent. He crouched down to help clean up the mess of things on the floor. And wow, that was a lot of stuff. A lot of small, grab-able things.

The sneaky part of Paco's sat up and took notice.

Harley gathered up what she could and even threw a few more things from the shelf into the bag, "Well you should be! You know how rude it is to just go slammin' into people and make them spill their stuff?"

"I didn't mean to, I didn't see you there." Paco said, noting the extra things she grabbed off the shelves. She couldn't be that obvious...could she?

"Maybe you should get extra bags. It's going to take a real long time to empty all that stuff out and show recipts for the stuff you bought in other stores." Because he definitely knew that some of the stuff in that bag was from the store next door. And the one across the street. And the one two blocks over.

"Receipts? What Receipts? Oh those receipts? They're all in that store down the street, the one having the awesome sale on Belly Flops," because Harley couldn't live without her Jelly Beans in any way shape or form.

As she said that, she put a couple more things from the shelf in her bag, "Toodles!" She started to skip away.

If it were something like food, Paco probably could have been persuaded to look the other way. But the stuff in that bag was just stupid space-filler. She was being so obvious that it was clearly some sort of cry for help, anyway.

Also, this was still the Blue Beetle's town, even if he wasn't here at the moment. And Paco was the sidekick.

"Ma'am, I think you should put that stuff back."

"No," Harley said turning around and sticking out her tongue. "My stuff."

Oh boy, apparently Paco was the mature one in this conversation. That was never a good sign.

"Seriously ma'am, you don't want to do that." One more chance before he started talking about how shoplifting was wrong in a loud voice. "Just put everything back on the shelves and go get help, okay?"

"Want to do what? This?" She tossed a squeaky toy at him and then turned to run. With her bag full of stolen stuff. Harley wasn't about to do the right thing here.

Oh yeah. Burly latino teenager chasing after a blond woman. That would go over well.

"Hey!" he shouted, batting the squeaky toy away from his face and chasing after her. "Shoplifting is wrong, lady!"

Yes, it sounded pretty stupid, but at least it let people know what was going on. Hopefully that would help his case.

"Help, help I'm being repressed!" Harley shouted at the top of her lungs. Which got quite a bit of attention from the surrounding store.

She was cute, the way she saw it, people should side with her.

"Stopping you from shoplifting is not repressing you!" Paco disagreed loudly. He really kind of wished he had a super hero uniform for this kind of thing. Funnily enough, people seemed more inclined to trust you when you were wearing armor, or your underwear on the outside of your tights.

He lunged and tried to tackle her 'round the ankles. Try to spill all of her stolen stuff everywhere again, but not hurt her too badly.

With ease, Harley cartwheeled out of that, using the force of the flip to kick right up at the kid, "Oh no! He's attacking me! Help! Help!" Hey, this place carried the giant pixie sticks.

Score!

"Ooof!"

Note to self: blond woman is bouncy and kicks hard.

Second note to self: this is why the guy with armor fights crime, not the guy who drives the car.

Harley landed with a great deal of grace right in font of the giant pixie sticks. She picked them up with a delighted laugh and put them in her bag. She would have a great and sugary time later.

"And now, I'm OFF like a prom dress!"

Okay, now this was just crazy. People had to be watching them at this point. Why weren't they helping? Or even not-helping? Paco shook his head, trying to clear the stars out of his eyes and staggered to his feet.

"No."

Brenda would never let him forget it if he got his ass kicked by a girl that wasn't her.

The thing about crazy people was most times, no body stopped to do anything. People feared the Crazy. Crane should do a study on it some day if he wasn't spending all his time stuffed with straw and creepy.

"Hmmm, let me think about that," Harley said stopping and just giving him a very intense look, "How about, no?" There's a trusty 'pop' gun in her hand. The amo was nothing more than flash and streamers but at close range? It would burn.

Okay, guns? Guns were bad. Even if there wasn't a bullet in there, there was that firework-thing crammed down the barrel. Crazy bouncy gringas with guns had not been on the menu.

"My solo adventure sucks." he heard himself say. "I want a refund."

"Sorry, no substitutions, exchanges or refunds," Harley said happily and fired colored streamers, fireworks and sparks right at the kid.

Paco automatically ducked and covered his face and head with his arms, so while it definitely hurt -- ow ow OW owOW chinga tu madre, it did -- he wasn't about to get permanently blinded or horrible facial scarring.

Provided that he got the HELL out of dodge.

Which was the plan. Everyone who wasn't the stupid kid confronting the crazy person had run for it the moment the gun had made its appearance, so the only one who needed protection was the stupid kid who fancied himself a sidekick so that his best friend wouldn't have to do the hero thing alone.

Paco bolted.

Harley backed a few things in her bag and happily skip after him, "Oh, don't run! Why don't we play some?!"

And now she was following him. Solo adventure sucks so much.

Paco ducked into one of the aisles, hoping it would provide some kind of cover.

Jaime was going to kill him. And then Jaime was going to let Brenda kill him.

All Ben was really looking for was a couple of things. Waller'd asked him to Texas here to look into something, which turned out to be nothing much at all.

So there he was with his stupid little grocery-store basket, trying to choose between the whole-wheat and the rye bread when he was plowed into by one of the other shoppers.

"HEY!" he said as he went down, the other guy went down, and Ben's basket went flying, spilling its contents everywhere.

"Tell me you're not crazy too." Paco blurted, before scrambling to his feet and hauling the other guy up. A part of him was wondering how the he'd managed to miss the whole everyone-but-the-stupid-kid leaving due to the crazy with the gun. "Nevermind, gotta get out of here before she finds us."

"Nope." he said, trying not to remember the times when he was quite literally out of his head.

"And I thought the store was a little quiet. Man, I really gotta start paying attention." he grumbled as he tried to gather his things together.

Great. The kid had stepped on his bag of cinnamon buns. Dammit!

Wait.

"She who?" he asked confusedly.

"Crazy gringa." Paco said shortly, trying to drag the guy along. "Has gun, will shoot you with fireworks."

The singed look that Paco was sporting certainly wasn't in vogue at the moment.

Harlequin Dreams

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