A Duet of Harley's Madness and Link's Precision!

The thunderous crash of the giant crystal chandelier was the opening salvo of the slaughter.

Crystal shards and sparks swept across the banquet hall like a deadly downpour. Guests screamed, tables and chairs overturned, and the shrill sound of breaking glass joined the symphony of chaos.

The lights went out. Darkness swallowed everything.

Only the sickly green glow of the emergency lights and a tablecloth burning in the distance outlined the hellish scene.

"Open fire! Catch them!"

Penguin's elite guards had earned their reputation as hardened killers. After a moment of shock, they raised their assault rifles, their infrared sights weaving a web of death through the darkness.

"Party time!"

A gleeful shriek cut through the dark.

Harley Quinn sprang from behind a toppled Roman column like a brightly colored butterfly freed from every restraint.

The Baseball Bat she had picked up from who knew where whistled through the air.

One guard had just trained his sight on her when, before he could pull the trigger, Harley flipped sideways and landed on a dining table in front of him.

She stepped across the expensive plates as though dancing ballet onstage, spinning and leaping.

Then she kicked off the edge of the table and soared upward. Her Baseball Bat came down with tremendous force, smashing into the guard's helmet.

Clang!

The impact rang out like a bell.

The burly guard collapsed without a sound, his eyes rolling back.

"First one!" Harley licked her lips, grinning like a child who had just been given candy.

Her fighting was a dazzling, mad performance.

One moment she swung across the room on a tablecloth; the next, she used a panicked guest's shoulders as a springboard. Her Baseball Bat always struck from the angle her enemies least expected.

She darted through the hail of bullets, laughing wildly with every dodge.

She drew nearly all their fire.

Link, meanwhile, was her complete opposite.

He was darkness itself.

While Harley held everyone's attention, he moved through the shadows without a sound, like a Ghost with no solid form.

One guard was so focused on pinning Harley down with gunfire that he failed to notice the shadow beside him seem to come alive.

Link's hand shot out like a snake, clamping over the guard's mouth. With the military knife in his other hand, he made one clean, precise cut across the man's carotid artery.

No scream. No struggle.

Link dragged the guard's body silently into deeper darkness. Only a splash of warm blood struck the cold floor.

Elsewhere, two guards searched the room, standing back to back.

Suddenly, one guard's vision blurred. His partner appeared to turn into the madwoman with the Baseball Bat.

"Die!"

He roared and pulled the trigger on instinct.

Pfft, pfft, pfft!

Every bullet struck his partner in the back.

As he froze at the bizarre sight, Link appeared before him.

A knife-hand strike landed precisely on the side of his neck.

Another enemy fell without a sound.

In Link's hands, the Chaos Force was no longer a tool for simply creating disorder. It was a deadly weapon for controlling the battlefield with precision.

It made enemies hallucinate and misjudge what they saw. In the instant before they pulled the trigger, it made their movements seize up for a fraction of a second.

To Link, that fraction of a second was the difference between life and death.

The battle went on.

Harley fought with the same abandon, but her position was growing dangerous.

After she knocked down another enemy, three infrared beams appeared along her escape route.

Bang!

A bullet grazed her arm, spraying droplets of blood.

"Ow!" Harley cried. She rolled across the floor and ducked behind a thick marble column.

Bullets hammered the column, sending chips of stone flying.

She was pinned down.

"Kitten got trapped?" Link's voice came out of the darkness for the first time, edged with teasing.

"Shut up, sweetie! Do something!" Harley shouted as she grimaced and checked her wound.

"As you wish."

The fire suppression system on the other side of the banquet hall suddenly activated.

Cold water sprayed from the ceiling, filling the hall with mist.

Everyone's vision was badly disrupted, and so were their infrared sights.

The three guards pinning Harley down immediately lost their target.

As they tried to find her again, a dark figure slipped between them at an impossible speed.

Link moved with cold, mechanical efficiency.

He used no weapon, only his fists, palms, elbows, and knees.

Every strike landed precisely on a vulnerable point: a joint, a nerve cluster.

With one move, he dislocated the first guard's wrist, sending his gun flying. A knife-hand strike to the throat left the man unable to make a sound.

The second guard tried to turn, but Link drove an elbow beneath his ribs. Agony doubled him over. A blow to the back of his head knocked him unconscious.

The third guard raised his rifle and fired wildly, but Link slipped behind him like a ghost and locked his arms around the man's neck like iron clamps.

Crack.

Bone snapped. The fight was over.

It had taken less than five seconds.

Link had never shown this style of combat before. It was nothing like rough street fighting. It seemed honed through relentless practice, designed to kill with maximum efficiency in the most complicated surroundings.

It drew on the best of several fighting styles. Precise. Deadly.

Harley peeked out from behind the column just in time to see the textbook display of killing.

For the first time, genuine awe showed in her eyes.

If her fighting was a wild, sweeping ink painting,

then Link's was art carved with a scalpel, every cut precise to the micrometer.

The last guard threw down his weapon in terror and dropped to his knees, begging for mercy.

Deathly silence returned to the banquet hall.

Only the hiss of the sprinklers remained, along with sirens in the distance drawing steadily closer.

Link walked up to Harley, tore a strip from his waiter's uniform, and deftly bandaged the wound on her arm.

"Game over?" Harley asked, looking at the wreckage strewn across the floor.

"No." Link shook his head and looked toward the office backstage. "The star has finished watching the appetizer. Now it's time for the main course."