by Lisa Yee
“It’s weird, but the only signal that can get out of the bubble is your show, Harley,” Batgirl said, trying to stifle a giggle. “No phones, no messages. Nothing.” Harley gave her a sideways look. Batgirl was not known to be a giggler. Something strange was definitely going on. “And the only information that can come in to us is Lois Lane’s Web channel!” Batgirl said before laughing so hard she was in tears.
Lois was still talking. “It appears the super heroes are all in attendance at the Krazy Karnival. Wait, what’s that?” Lois’s voice remained calm, but her eyes widened. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing. It looks like the Green Team is…Can it be? The Green Team is multiplying!”
“The Green Team’s doing math?” Harley quipped.
“There are reports that though they started out as a dozen, there are now one hundred members fanning out into every corner of Metropolis!” said Lois.
“WOWZA! They’re multiplying themselves! DOUBLE WOWZA! Triple, even!” Harley cried as the magnitude of what was happening finally hit her.
“It’s worse than you think,” Batgirl said, doubling over with laughter. “The joke’s on you!”
Harley could not believe her eyes. Or her ears. Batgirl had reprogrammed the video screens that were dotted around the amusement park. Now, instead of J.J. reminding everyone to have a great day, it was broadcasting Harley’s Quinntessentials, where “Harley” was reporting from the Krazy Karnival.
“Lalala…The Supers of Super Hero High don’t care about what’s happening in Metropolis!” a fake video Harley said. “We just want to have fun!”
“What’s that?” Bumblebee said, flying over to Batgirl.
“THAT’S NOT ME!” Harley shouted. She could not take her eyes off her image on the screen. “I’m standing right here!”
But it sure did look like her. “It’s showtime!” the Harley look-alike said. “Sure, the Green Team may be taking over Metropolis, but we have more important stuff to do, like go on rides and play games!”
Batgirl switched back to Lois Lane’s Web channel. “Has Harley Quinn gone crazy?” Lois was asking. “What’s up with our beloved super heroes when we need them most?”
Batgirl punched in some numbers. “No one is paying attention to Lois, or any other channel, Harley. They’re all tuned in to you. Yay! You rule!”
“THAT’S NOT ME!” Harley shouted.
“It sure looks like you,” noted Bumblebee. “Look, that Harley even has the same little freckles you have.”
Harley pulled out her hand mirror and did a freckle check. They were still there. “I need to get on the air right now and fix this,” she said as she squinted at her fake self.
“Hello, Harley Quinn here,” Harley said to the camera. “I’m here to tell you that there’s a fake Harley out there—”
Her broadcast was interrupted by the Fake Harley. “And I’m here to tell you that it’s me, Harley, who’s being fake and funny!”
“No, that’s not me,” Real Harley insisted before being interrupted again. The video screens jumped back and forth between Harleys.
“Loyal viewers, come along for the ride as we watch the Supers act really strange!” Fake Harley said. “What will happen? Stay tuned to find out.”
Suddenly footage of more Supers acting out in general mayhem and chaos and of rides going haywire were blasting on the screen.
“I—I don’t know what’s happening,” Harley sputtered. “I’m not in control here!”
“Then who is?” Batgirl asked seriously, and burst out laughing.
The real Harley was running in circles to calm herself. Miss Martian made sure to be very, very still so as not to get caught in her whirlwind. Meanwhile, Bumblebee was buzzing around the amusement park, getting a fix on what was happening.
“Wow, she’s not herself,” Bumblebee whispered to Miss Martian as they watched Batgirl reprogram the Magic Donut Maker. It began to pump out so many doughnuts that they seemed to be raining down over everyone in the vicinity.
“No one is,” noted Miss Martian. “Well, you, me, and Harley, but it’s like everyone else here is acting like someone other than themselves.”
“Yeah, it’s like something’s happened to everyone,” said Bumblebee. “But what?”
“I had a huge headache when I first got here,” Miss Martian said. “It hurt so much, and it wasn’t until I took off my…hat. Hat! It’s the hats!”
“Ooookay…,” Bumblebee said slowly. “Now you’re acting weird.”
“No! It is the hats,” Miss Martian insisted. “They are affecting everyone’s minds. You, me, and Harley…no hats. Batgirl, Supergirl, Cheetah? The Green Team? They are all wearing the hats.”
Bumblebee looked around. Batgirl was now doing a doughnut dance she had just invented, and Cheetah was wandering around passing out compliments to everyone she came across.
“You’re right,” Bumblebee said. “They’re all wearing hats and not acting like themselves.”
Harley sat on the ground and moaned. “And the person who is most not like herself is ME. With THAT one on the air.” She pointed to a video screen where the fake Harley was telling everyone to “get reckless and wild!”
“It is the hats,” Miss Martian repeated. “We have to get them.”
Harley nodded slowly. “Okay.” She pointed to Batgirl. “Let’s start with hers.”
Batgirl was sitting on the ground stuffing more doughnuts into her mouth when Bumblebee shouted, “Three, two, one…go!”
The three rushed Batgirl. “Hey!” she cried. “What’s going on?”
“Give us your hat!” Harley yelled.
“No way!” Batgirl said, pulling it tighter on her head.
“Please,” said Miss Martian. “It is harming you.”
“Is not!” said Batgirl. She scaled up the tall skywalk that circled the Krazy Karnival and was now hanging upside-down with her legs bent over a rail. She held her hat on her head with one hand and finished a doughnut with the other.
Bumblebee flew up to her. “I’ll explain later,” she said, attempting a fly-by to snatch the hat from Batgirl’s head.
Immediately, Batgirl reached for her Batarang and flung it at Bumblebee, who ducked out of the way.
“Hey!” yelled Bumblebee. “You almost hit me!”
“No one touches my hat!” Batgirl grumbled.
“She’s not herself,” Miss Martian reminded Bumblebee. “We need to get her hat and destroy it to be sure she won’t put it back on!”
Harley leapt onto the nearby Gravitron ride. She used its spinning centrifugal force to propel her up and landed atop the metal mesh roof of the skywalk. From there, Harley looked down at Batgirl, who was still hanging upside down, enjoying the view and the snacks.
In one move, Harley grabbed Batgirl’s hat and tossed it up toward Bumblebee, who hit it with her blasters. But in her hurry, Harley lost her grip. She began to free-fall toward the ground.
“HELP!” Harley yelled, flailing her arms and kicking. “Someone catch me!”
Before Bumblebee could get to her, Batgirl swooped in on a thin wire and grabbed Harley. They both landed lightly on the ground.
“Thanks, Batgirl,” Harley said as she smoothed out her shirt.
“What just happened?” Batgirl asked. “I feel sort of weird.”
“Too many doughnuts,” Harley quipped. “Come on, we’ll explain. But first we have to make a plan.”
“It’s fun and chaos here inside the bubble,” Fake Harley was reporting. On the screen was video of the Supers trying to tear the hats off the heads of the others. “Like a game of capture the flag, my fellow super heroes are playing Grab the Hat. Never before have more people been more in love with their hats,” she said, laughing. “What’s more important than hats? Nothing!”
The footage was strangely compelling. Viewers had never seen anything like it. Some Supers, like The Flash, were too fast for just one super hero to catch. Katana and Big Barda were fighting over Barda’s purple hat with red fe
athers, even though Katana had a jaunty green Robin Hood—style hat of her own. “Mine!” Barda shouted. Everyone, friends and enemies, was engaged in fights over hats. As the mess grew, so did the number of viewers of Harley’s Quinntessentials.
“Every news channel in the world has locked into HQ, but it looks like Fake Harley is still overriding your real reports,” Batgirl said as she looked at her chart. She was keeping track of which Supers had had their hats confiscated and which ones were still wearing theirs.
“What about Lois Lane’s reports?” Harley asked.
Batgirl shook her head. “No one’s watching that, even with Metropolis under siege. They’d rather watch you.”
Separating super heroes from their hats proved difficult.
“No one’s getting this hat!” Supergirl yelled as she flew toward the top of the bubble. Wonder Woman, Hawkgirl, and Bumblebee were in pursuit.
“It’s controlling you!” Bumblebee said.
“It is not, and you are starting to bug me!” Supergirl called out as she hovered out of reach. “I love my hat! It makes me happy! Plus, it’s so cute.”
“It is cute,” Wonder Woman said as she flung herself against the thick wall of the bubble. “But there’s nothing cute about mind control, and that bonnet you’re wearing is making you all wonky. I wasn’t myself until Batgirl Bataranged mine off my head!”
“Wonky?” Supergirl said. “Who are you calling wonky?” For a moment, Bumblebee distracted her with a sonic blast. In that second, Wonder Woman swooped in and got the hat, tossing it to Catwoman, who used her whip to destroy it.
Bumblebee gave her a thumbs-up. One more hat destroyed, one more Super to help get rid of the hats. What started out difficult was getting easier. Or was it? Harley wasn’t sure. There were still hundreds and hundreds of guests to contend with, and they were totally out of control. So much was happening, Harley didn’t know what to aim her camera at next.
“Video off,” Batgirl ordered Harley.
“This could be important information—think of the viewers!” Harley protested. Batgirl didn’t flinch. She wasn’t as fun without the hat, Harley noted as she shut off her camera.
“Miss Martian, tell everyone what you know,” Batgirl said.
Miss Martian willed herself to be seen, and several Supers gathered around her. “The hats are controlling—or at least influencing—everyone. But not in the same way. Some people are happy, others are belligerent, and still others are just flat-out wacky. It’s as if someone wants everyone to act crazy.”
“Well, it is the KRAZY Karnival,” Harley joked.
No one laughed.
“So, what’s our plan?” asked Miss Martian. “We have a plan, right?”
“We confiscate all remaining hats,” said Batgirl. “Supers first.”
“But we have to break the bubble that’s trapping us in here,” Wonder Woman noted. “Lois Lane is reporting that the Green Team is robbing every house and business in Metropolis.”
“Yes, but with all of us Supers working together, it will be easier to break it,” Poison Ivy said.
“Someone plotted to have us trapped in here,” Hawkgirl chimed in. “But who?”
“The Junior Detective Society will figure out who and why,” said Batgirl.
“But first, this,” Harley interrupted. She turned the camera on. “This is the REAL Harley Quinn here, assuring you that the super heroes of Super Hero High will be in Metropolis soon to help save the day from the Green Team, who’s—”
The screen sizzled with static. Fake Harley suddenly appeared. “To save the day, we have the Green Team, a group of talented teens. And back in the bubble, let’s watch the Krazy Karnival! I guarantee, you’ve never seen anything like it before!”
“Why did you just say that?” Beast Boy asked Harley. “That was totally not the right thing to say!”
“It wasn’t me!” Harley yelled, leaning in toward Beast Boy’s face. “I wouldn’t do that!”
“You just did!” he yelled back.
“We can discuss this later,” said Wonder Woman, breaking the two up. “Right now we have work to do. Let’s go get all those hats!”
“Some of us should stay back and try to figure out who’s behind this,” Bumblebee said.
“Great idea,” said Hawkgirl. “Miss Martian, we’ll need you here with us. Harley, stay in contact. I’d say that someone’s out to get you. The fake Harley is proof of that.”
“Proof, schmoof.” Harley gripped her mallet. “Let them try,” she said. “I’ll show ’em why it’s not smart to mess with Harley Quinn!”
As the hat-free Supers zeroed in on their classmates still wearing hats, Beast Boy spotted Cheetah.
“Hey there, Cheetah, you sure look nice today,” he said.
Cheetah absentmindedly touched her beret. “Why, thank you, Beast Boy, and so do…”
But before she could finish her sentence, Beast Boy had transformed into an eagle, snatched Cheetah’s hat with his beak, and was flying circles above her.
“You—you stole my hat, you green pest,” Cheetah said accusingly.
“You’re welcome,” Beast Boy replied as he handed the hat off mid-flight to Adam Strange, who then tossed it to Starfire, who dropped it toward Katana, who sliced it in half before it touched the ground.
“Cheetah,” Harley said, lowering her voice. “You were being nice…to everyone.”
Cheetah looked startled, and then she scowled like she had just sucked on a lemon.
With each hat confiscated and destroyed, the Supers gained momentum and Batgirl crossed another name off the list. Working together, they found gathering the hats from the Krazy Karnival guests was easy…almost. Captain Cold was particularly hard to separate from his pirate hat. But once hatless, he was back to his ornery self.
“Someone was trying to control my mind?” he said, seething. “That’s not cool!”
“The hat was controlling my mind?” Lady Shiva repeated as she stared at the smoldering pile of felt and electronics at her feet. El Diablo and Sapphire had confiscated her hat; then El Diablo had hit it with flames. One by one, as each Super’s head cleared, they began to understand what had happened.
Meanwhile, when it finally dawned on guests that they had been under some sort of mind control, panic began to spread. Confusion built to epic proportions, especially when they tried to escape from the Krazy Karnival and learned that there was no way out of the bubble.
“Nothing good can come of this,” Fake Harley reported. “I love it!”
“That’s not me!” Real Harley said, interrupting Fake Harley’s feed. Suddenly the video cut to one of the remote cameras that Harley had put up earlier.
On the screen, Wonder Woman was swooping toward the Tunnel of Love, where she was met in the sky by Silver Swan. Each hovered in the air, neither speaking. Silver Swan did a pirouette so fast she had to hold on to her hat, to keep it from flying off. When she stopped, she glared at Wonder Woman, who returned her unblinking stare.
“Please give me your hat,” Wonder Woman said evenly.
On the ground below them, The Flash, the last Super Hero High student with a hat still on his head, was being chased by several Supers.
“Why would I want to do that?” Silver Swan scoffed.
“Because it’s controlling your mind,” Wonder Woman explained.
“No one controls Silver Swan,” she said. “If you want my hat, you’re going to have to take it from me.”
“Oh, you don’t want that,” Wonder Woman warned.
“Try me,” Silver Swan dared her.
Wonder Woman flung her lasso at Silver Swan. But before it reached her, Silver Swan began to hum, slowing the lasso’s projection. Then she let out a powerful sound wave that made the lasso snap back toward Wonder Woman.
“Oops!” said Silver Swan. “Maybe you aren’t as invincible as they say you are.”
Wonder Woman brushed off the comment and tightened her grip on the Lasso of Truth. “I guess we’re going
to have to find out,” she said, flying full force at her nemesis.
Silver Swan pirouetted once more then retreated into the Tunnel of Love with Wonder Woman in pursuit.
“We can’t see what’s going on inside,” Harley said over the video as the scene projected onto the screens all across the carnival. “But something’s sure happening!”
Only the sounds of battle could be heard. Smashes and crashes abounded. At times, swan boats flew out of the entrance and exit, barely missing bystanders. Every now and then, Silver Swan flew out of the tunnel, followed closely by Wonder Woman…or Wonder Woman flew out with Silver Swan in pursuit, and then they both disappeared back into the tunnel. Things were happening so fast, no one could keep up with either combatant.
Suddenly, there was quiet.
No one moved. All over the amusement park and beyond, viewers were riveted to the screens.
Where was Silver Swan? And more importantly, where was Wonder Woman?
They couldn’t see anything, but they could hear a beautiful low hum coming from the tunnel. It was Silver Swan. Harley stared at the video monitor. There was a murmur from the crowd outside of what was left of the Tunnel of Love. Where was Wonder Woman?
A rustle of wings signaled Silver Swan, who emerged smiling. Hawkgirl and Poison Ivy gasped.
It was Batgirl who began cheering first. “There she is, right behind Silver Swan,” she said, pointing at the screen. “Wonder Woman’s got the Lasso of Truth around Silver Swan!”
“Look what’s in her other hand!” shouted Hawkgirl.
Sure enough, Wonder Woman was holding a hat.
“I wasn’t keen on wearing it,” Silver Swan was saying as she rubbed her forehead. “But he insisted. He said everyone at the carnival had to wear the hats.”
The video was suddenly fuzzy as Fake Harley took control. “You saw it here first,” she said, winking. “Silver Swan was unemployed until J.J. Tetch, the kind owner of Krazy Karnival, gave her a job. But the real story is that those teens from Super Hero High will soon be out of work. They’re stealing hats, of all things!” Fake Harley looked straight into the camera and confided, “I never did like any of my schoolmates. They’re a sneaky bunch!”
