The Night Show

Working on a Case, chapter 18: What Do You See?

2009-12-17T01:42:00Z

Characters: Titans as of the end of the Family Lost paperback, starting with Bart Allen (Kid Flash) and Tim Drake (Robin). This installment also includes Conner “Kon” Kent (Superboy).
Rating: PG.
Content: Mystery with comic relief, or perhaps comedy with mystery relief.
Word Count: about 1,200 words per chapter. Unknown number of chapters.
Summary: Bart Allen as Kid Flash wants to help Robin on a Titans case involving a convict with a super-power and a strange police record. He knows honing his investigatory skills will require insight, concentration, and...what was the third thing? Out in the western Nevada desert, Kid Flash and Robin are searching the helicopter used in a jailbreak while Superboy phones in their location.
Continuity: DC Comics standard.
Disclaimer: The Titans and its members are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.
Notes: It all started here.

Chapter 18

What Do You See?

So I look. I really look. But I don’t see any bloody fingerprints or cigarette ashes or scribbled phone numbers or other Clues. “It’s just the pilot’s operating manual. All 546 pages, including 15 that say they’re ‘intentionally left blank,’ which aren’t blank because they say, ‘This page has been—’”

“Bart, how did they turn off the transponder?” Tim asks.

“Oh. That’s on page 255. Look at the end of the left-hand arm rest of the pilot’s seat.”

Tim peers over the dead pilot, and stretches past the man’s body without touching it, and feels around that arm rest, and calls, “All I’ve got is a cup holder and a cup of coffee. You sure the switch is here?”

“No, the switch isn’t there,” I tell Tim.

“Bart!”

“But the cup holder means that this Haumann model S-140 was built in the last three years,” I explain. “So the transponder thingie is in the central column under the dashboard. See that little metal door, with the key sticking out?”

“Oh. All right then.”

“See, if this were an older Haumann model S-140, the switch would be on the far right side of the dash—”

“I got it, thanks.” Tim opens the door, touching it only on the edge, and peers inside. “Hmm.”

“What do you see? What do you see?” I’m bouncing up and down on the sand.

“Nothing,” says Tim. “No blood, no scratches.” He takes stereographs of the little metal door and the central column and the dashboard, and then he turns and takes pictures of the pilot’s body and the cut in his neck and even the cup holder. He hangs his camera back on his belt and starts gathering samples in his little vials, muttering into his recorder thingie, “Sample 4. Pilot’s wound. Sample 5. Liquid in paper cup at pilot’s left hand. Hmm.”

“What do you see? What are you looking at?” I try to deduce what Tim’s deducing. “Why don’t you tell—”

Suddenly Kon is hovering beside me with his back to the helicopter door. He drops my radio in my hand and says, “Vic’s still growling at me.”

Tim steps back out to the sunlight. “Uh-huh. And what about the case?”

“I gave Vic the GPS readings. He said the Marshals will send a squad from Reno. Also, they found a body in that lake—the woman who helped bring Cross Cut from Texas—”

“Marshal Virginia Parley!”

“Gar’s still looking for others.”

“I bet he’s being a shark!”

“He may not find another body there,” says Tim, swinging back down to the dirt.

“No, really! Sharks can smell one drop of blood in two thousand gallons of water!”

Tim shakes his head. “Crossley may not have killed both Marshals. The other one—”

“Marshal Spencer West!”

“Yeah, Bart. He might be working with Crossley.” Tim strips off his extra gloves and rubbers and squeezes them into a little latex ball. Then he lifts his cape off the ground and straps it on his shoulders as he heads up the slope.

“So Marshal West was Cross Cut’s Insider?” I ask, following Tim. “But who logged onto the computers at Java Lava?”

“I don’t know yet,” says Tim. “It’s all still possibilities. We’ve got three sets of footprints here—”

“So three people got off the helicopter,” I deduce.

“Or two people got off, and a third met them. All we know is that one person was being pulled along by the others.”

So I stop and look at the ground and look and look and, sure enough, some of the footprints are all messy—they’re feet stumbling, or being pulled sideways, and even some places knees dragging on the ground. And as I look, I think of the voice I heard screaming on the videotape: “No! No! Don’t take me! No!”

“Yow!” I catch up to Tim and Kon as they reach the top of the hollow. “So how do we find Cross Cut? How do we rescue Dr. Ignatieff? All three sets of footprints go onto the rocks up ahead, and they never leave!”

“What about tire tracks?” says Tim, still walking.

“Oh, I saw some of those. Ooh! The three people might have gotten into a vehicle!”

“You think?” says Kon, and I’m about to explain to him how I deduced that when I realize he’s being sarcastic.

“At least I’m working on this case,” I grumble at him. “I have my radio. I looked at the crime scene.”

He turns and snarls. “And I’m not bothering Tim with stu—”

“Kon, you still have those water bottles?” asks Tim.

“Yeah.” Kon holds up the plastic sack from the Fastmart.

“Let’s all have a drink now,” says Tim. “We dehydrate fast out here, and that can get in the way of clear thinking.”

So Kon grunts and passes out the bottles, and I drink all of mine, and I do feel a little better, especially after I burp. Kon holds out his hand for my empty bottle, so I put it in his palm, and he uses his TTK to make it collapse into a tiny plastic tube, which is cool and which I deduce is his way of saying he’s sorry a little.

By this time we’re up on the rocky part of the desert, and Tim looks around. “When you were up in the air,” he says to Kon, “did you see any highways nearby?”

Kon points. “Over that way, behind the ridge.”

“So they could have had a vehicle waiting here, and landed the helicopter nearby, all out of sight of the traffic.”

“Here are the tire tracks!” I yell from a far corner of the rocky place. And I watch Tim close up his water bottle and hand it to Kon, and Kon loop the plastic bag back on his wrist, and Kon pick up Tim under the arms, and finally they fly over to me. “See!”

“Uh-huh,” says Tim, laying a little ruler beside the tracks and snapping three more stereographs before he takes his camera apart and stows the pieces in his belt. “Old tires, shallow treads. Width shows they were on a full-size pickup truck, probably old as well. And it must have picked up a coat of dust out here.”

“Truck—old—dust—got it!” I say, and I dash off, following the lines in the dirt around the ridge, and sure enough they head for an asphalt highway half a mile away, and when I get closer I see the tracks curve and merge onto the road. “He headed southeast!”

“Good,” Tim says through my radio. “Half-speed, Bart. We have to keep up.”

So I slow down, which means the few people on the highway can actually see me coming up behind them, and I wave to a couple of kids in the back of a station wagon before I pass, and the road goes over three arroyos, and in the distance I can see some sort of town, and I deduce that might be where Cross Cut headed when I hear Tim’s voice in my ear, saying: “Bart! Come back! They turned around!”

Working on a Case, chapter 17: No Touching

2009-12-07T04:24:46Z

Chapter 17

No Touching

“Don’t touch it!” says Tim.

“I’m not touching it!” I snap back.

“Don’t even go near it! It, uh, might be booby-trapped.”

Oops. I zip back up to the ridge. I was only near the tail looking for Clues, but I didn’t stay long enough to spot any cigarette butts or shell casings or pads of paper with itineraries scratched very faintly on the top sheet.

“Send up a dust devil so we can spot you,” says Tim.

So I run around and around and around until a column of dust is swirling up in the air, and I close my mouth tight and vibrate and run to the other side of the hollow, but some dust particles still get in my eyes because there are just so many of them, and for a second I wish I’d kept wearing goggles.

In my earpiece Kon says, “There he is,” and before I finish blinking blinking blinking he zooms up and drops Tim on his feet beside me.

“Good work, Bart,” says Tim, and already he’s scanning the helicopter through his bat-binoculars. “Hmmm.”

“What? What? Can I look?”

“No,” says Tim, which is what he always says about his binoculars.

So I ask Kon what he can see ’cause he doesn’t need binoculars.

“Maybe someone in one of the front seats,” says Kon, squinting at the smoky glass windshield. “Not moving.”

“Don’t you have X-ray vision yet?”

“I’m working on it!”

Tim sets off along the edge of the hollow, so Kon and I follow, and he asks, “Bart, did you run close to the back rotor?”

“No,” I say.

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Did you?”

“All right, yes, I did! Before you told me to stay away!”

“Fine,” says Tim. “I just needed to know who left the big footprints back there. There’s another set of marks leading from the door up to here.” And he kneels down so suddenly that Kon and I almost trip over him, and two steps in front of us are a whole mess of footprints that come up from the helicopter and head off—

“Ooh! A trail!” I dash off into the desert, following the footprints but staying carefully to one side, but after forty paces I hit a stretch of sandstone, and the footprints disappear. I run around and around the edge of the stony part, but I don’t see the same footprints start up again anywhere, so I have to run back and report, “I lost them.”

“We’ll pick up the trail later,” says Tim. He’s snapped some sort of bat-camera onto his bat-binoculars, and since it still has two lenses I deduce that it’s a stereographic camera that makes 3-D pictures.

“Ooh! Can I use—”

“No.” Tim clicks a photo of the footprints, and then he sets off down toward the helicopter, and Kon and I follow again. Tim doesn’t act worried about booby-traps, so he must have figured out there aren’t any, but I can’t see how, and I start to wonder if he just told me there might be booby-traps to keep me from touching—

“Hmm.” Tim kneels down again, a few yards from the helicopter, and he scoops one of the brown spots lying in the middle of the footprints into a little glass vial, and he slips that vial back into his belt and pokes a button on his sleeve and says, “Sample 1. Possible blood drop from exit path.” So I deduce that he’s recording a message for himself, and now I want a detective-recorder, too.

Tim reaches the helicopter, and takes more pictures of the ground right under the door, which is open just a crack, and he pulls off his cape and spreads it on the ground with the yellow side up. Then he pulls two little plastic packages out of his belt and rips one open and starts to unpeel this big translucent balloon—

“Ha! You got bat-rubbers!” says Kon.

What Tim is technically called a “condom,” but he’s not using it the way the books say you should, and instead he’s stretching it out to fit over his boot like it’s the other kind of rubber.

“They’re not ‘bat-rubbers,’” Tim grumbles as he steps onto his cape with the boot in the condom and rips open the second little package. “Batman calls them ‘high-tensile, sterile latex envelopes’.”

“And he trained you to put them on your feet?” says Kon, still smirking.

“Yup.” Tim pulls pale latex gloves out of a sleeve pocket and tugs them on over his regular green gloves. “To avoid contaminating crime scenes.”

“Ooh, then can I have some?” I ask.

“Sorry, Bart. They don’t make any big enough.”

Kon snorts. I start to pout, but then I look at Tim with the two pairs of gloves and the bat-rubbers on his boots and his cape lying on the ground, and I think that being a detective can make you look pretty dorky.

“Okay, Kon,” says Tim. “Slide open the helicopter door, but don’t touch it with more one fingertip.”

“Can do.” Kon uses his TTK, and the door slides open, and suddenly we all have a clear view inside the helicopter. Most of the floor is covered with blood that’s dried enough to turn sticky, with clumps of little black flies moving around on it, and there are spatters of more blood on the ceiling near the door, and even more blood on the wall over by the back seat.

There’s a man strapped into the pilot’s seat and slumped over, and even though his back is to us we can see crimson has soaked into his green shirt and his dark pants, and dribbled onto the floor around his boots.

“Oh, man,” says Kon, and he steps back with his face squinched up.

Tim is taking lots of pictures, and I watch to see what Clues he’s finding, and I spot steel handcuffs and shackles lying in the dried blood, except they’re in pieces, with the cuffs sliced right through, and I think Cross Cut!

Then Tim hoists himself up through the door, stepping on his tiptoes, trying to make his bat-rubbers land on the little spots on the floor where there isn’t so much blood. He gets to the pilot’s seat and touches the man. “Stabbed in the throat—a sharp, curved blade straight into the right carotid artery.”

“He used his thumbnail!” And since the carotid artery carries blood to the brain, cutting it is really really bad.

“Marshals badge around his neck. Looks like he might be South Asian.”

“Pilot Salman Mirani,” I remember.

“Jeez,” Kon mumbles, and he looks like he might throw up, and not just ordinary throw-up, but super throw-up, with bits of power bar and waffle going everywhere. And I don’t want to be around for that, even though it might be fun to watch on video later.

“We need to report our GPS coordinates and what we’ve found,” says Tim.

“I can do that!” I say, but Tim shakes his head.

“Let Kon make the call.”

Kon looks sheepish and says, “I, uh, left my radio beside my bed this morning.”

“I can—”

“Then take Bart’s radio,” says Tim. “Fly up to get a better signal.”

I’m almost ready to argue ’cause Tim’s not letting me do anything, but then I deduce that he wants to give Kon an excuse to get away from the crime scene, which is kind of gross, and then maybe Tim and I can really start working on this case, so I snap my communicator out of the wristband and hand it over.

“Jeez, what’s that smell?” Kon says, holding it out between two fingers.

“Gar put it—”

“I don’t want to know.” He launches himself straight up until he’s almost out of sight.

“Can I climb into—”

“No.” Tim snaps a photo of a handgun that’s been sliced in half and kicked in a corner, and he scrapes up a couple more blood samples for his belt, and he tells his radio, “Switch to channel 1 or 2 first, remember?”

Then Tim peers at every little button and switch on the dashboard like he’s lost something, and I’m still stuck outside, and I’m still not doing anything, and I’m about to tell Tim that this is not how you learn to be a detective when he grabs a thick gray binder sticking out of a pocket under the co-pilot’s seat and tosses it to me. “Take a look at this.”

Continued here.

Working on a Case, chapter 16: Just Us

2009-11-28T21:43:24Z

Chapter 16

Just Us

Kon grabs Tim and starts to rise, but before they’re too high Tim points across the mountains and calls, “Kid Flash, run to Route 208! We rendezvous at the convenience store in Yerington!”

“Okay!” I put on a real burst of speed and then switch on my communicator. “I’m here at the Fastmart! Wow, it’s hot! This town’s even smaller than Manchester. Ooh—I know! This must be where the helicopter flew over!”

“That’s right,” Tim says over the radio.

“Should I interview witnesses? Should I look for Clues? Should I watch for Suspicious Events?”

“Low profile,” Tim tells me. “We’ll be there in three minutes.”

So I’m waiting waiting waiting again, and this time all I have to think about is how Tim isn’t letting me be a detective even though I’m way ahead of him, and how now it’s even longer since I ate breakfast, and how there’s a big neon hot dog in the Fastmart window, and—

“Finally!” But this time I don’t say that—I hear Kon and Tim say it as they land beside the store, and they both laugh as if they knew what I was going to say, but I act mature and instead of giving them the satisfaction of hearing me complain I just pout.

Tim asks Kon, “You got your Titans card?”

“Of course,” says Kon, as if everyone always knows where his Titans ID is. “We come all this way to buy something?”

“Yup,” says Tim. “Can you go in and buy six power bars and six bottles of water?”

“And three juice boxes!” I say. “And a box of frozen waffles!”

“Bart, I saw you eat breakfast an hour ago,” Kon tells me. “How are you even gonna eat frozen waffles out here?”

“You can toast them with your heat vision.”

Kon rolls his eyes and ends up looking at Tim.

“Actually, a toasted waffle sounds good,” says Tim. “Unless you’re not sure you can control—”

“I can control—no, you’re just trying to manip—fine, I’ll get your damn waffles! But you guys’ll owe me big time. Big time.”

While Kon goes inside the Fastmart, I ask, “So what do we do?”

“We stay in this shadow,” Tim says.

“’Cause we’re being ‘low profile’?”

“Because it’s really hot. Let me work on your communicator.”

I snap it out of my wristband. “Don’t sniff it.”

So Tim can’t help sniffing it because he always has to know, and his nose wrinkles so much that he has to smooth his mask back down before he pulls the Air Traffic Control papers out of some secret pocket in his cape and hands them to me. “Do you remember maps as easily as other things you read?”

“Sure!” I say, but I’m not so sure, and I look at the top map, and I try to deduce what Tim wants me to do, and I read all the little names and I look at the lines and squiggles in between, and I think it would be easier if it had some sort of story.

So then I imagine that I’m a Haumann model S-140 helicopter zooming over the desert, over Wabuska and Walker River and Highway 95 and Sand Mountain and— “Ooh! I could land here at the Air Force Base 51!”

“You mean the helicopter could have landed there?” Tim shakes his head as he keeps twiddling with my radio. “Oracle said the base radar didn’t pick up any unknown 0aircraft.”

“Maybe it did, but an Insider got that report classified.”

“Nothing’s that classified. We have to search the desert.”

Kon comes back out carrying a white plastic bag with a smiley face on it, and I run to help him unpack, and pretty soon we’re all chewing on power bars and sipping juice behind the Fastmart. Kon finds a concrete block and uses his TTK to make all the dirt fly off it and lays down one waffle and zaps it with his eyes.

Tim tosses back my communicator. “I set it to Titans channel 3.”

“We got only two channels,” says Kon, not looking up.

“Not anymore,” says Tim. “So if you want to call any of the others, remember to switch back to 1 or 2 first.” I deduce that he’s come up with a radio frequency for just us, which is the sort of cool thing Tim does.

I snap my communicator back in and reach for the hot waffle, but Kon grumbles, “First one’s for someone who didn’t already have cereal.”

Before I can argue, Tim says, “Bart, you’ll take point,” which means I’ll be in the lead, which I like. Tim taps the map with the hand that I notice is not holding a waffle. “We have to sweep this whole triangle, so think about your landmarks.”

I picture myself running past Fallon and the Lahontan Dam and that bend in Highway 50, and I don’t stop until I smell the third waffle toasting. “Cool!” I tell Kon. “You toasted a lightning bolt on it for me!”

“I was trying to make an S,” says Kon, which is silly since none of my names starts with S, but it tastes just fine.

“Ready to go?” says Tim, taking back the maps. He stows the last three water bottles back in the plastic bag and hands them to Kon. “We’ll think better now that we’re not starving or dehydrated.”

“That something you learned from Batman?”

Tim smiles. “From someone else. Let’s go.” He takes out his bat-binoculars and holds up his arms for Kon to lift him.

“Maybe that’s why Cyborg’s so cranky this morning,” I joke into Titans channel 3 as I dash off. “He didn’t get his protein shake!”

“Actually, Vic started to sound upset last night,” I hear Tim tell Kon. “When I called in, he asked if I knew where you and Cassie were.”

And Tim’s microphone picks up Kon’s voice, softer: “We just went to the beach.”

“So you said.”

By this time I’m five miles northeast of Yerington, running zig-zag to one of the Indian reservations and then back to the river.

“Vic should know Cassie and I can take care of ourselves,” says Kon. “We got powers, you know?”

Most of the land is flat, but there are some dips and gullies that might be deep enough to hide a helicopter, so I dash back and forth to check them, too.

“Vic’s not worried about someone attacking you. He’s worried about what the two of you might do when you’re alone.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t like to kiss and tell.”

I cross a highway and go, “Shyeah! Kon only told us forty-six times about his groupies, and how he kissed all those beauty-pageant girls, and—”

“Bart,” says Tim. “You’re thinking out loud, and your microphone’s on.”

Oops. I run another mile. “Can Kon hear the sounds from your earpiece?”

“Superhearing, dude!” Kon shouts at Tim’s microphone.

Oh. “Sorry!” I cut through what I remember is called an arroyo.

“No, man, you’re right. I used to brag a lot. But Cassie’s not like those—like most of those girls. So I don’t feel so right boasting about how we made out.”

“You made out with Cassie?” I yell as I zip up a little ridge, looking down both sides at a bunch of prickly pear cactus, genus Opuntia.

“Bart,” says Tim. “Kon just said he doesn’t—”

“Yeah, we were kissing, on the sand,” says Kon. “Then we flew over the ocean. Cassie came close to me, and we started kissing again.”

I see sunlight glint off something in a far-off hollow, so I curve that way.

“Cassie wanted to fly down near the water, so the waves were crashing over us. Like we were bodysurfing in the air, you know? And we were still kissing, and sort of twirling in the—”

“Ooh! I see it!”

“Yeah, it’s quite a picture,” mutters Tim.

“Not that! I see a Haumann model S-140!”

Continued here.

Working on a Case, chapter 15: Titans Together?

2009-11-22T05:00:56Z

Characters: Titans as of the end of the Family Lost paperback, starting with Bart Allen (Kid Flash) and Tim Drake (Robin). This installment also includes Cassie Sandsmark (Wonder Girl), Koriand’r (Starfire), Conner “Kon” Kent (Superboy), Gar Logan (Beast Boy), and Victor Stone (Cyborg).
Rating: PG.
Content: Mystery with comic relief, or perhaps comedy with mystery relief.
Word Count: about 1,200 words per chapter. Unknown number of chapters.
Summary: Bart Allen as Kid Flash wants to help Robin on a Titans case involving a convict with a super-power and a strange police record. He knows honing his investigatory skills will require insight, concentration, and...what was the third thing? The Titans assemble on a ridge in the Sierra Nevadas as they prepare to chase down an escaped criminal.
Continuity: DC Comics standard.
Disclaimer: The Titans and its members are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.
Notes: It all started here.

Chapter 15

Titans Together?

When all of us Titans are going to meet someplace, my job is to run there right away and activate the homing signal on my communicator so everyone else will know exactly where to go.

Which is easy, and makes me happy to have an important job, but then I’m waiting waiting waiting for everyone else to come. I try thinking about our Cross Cut case, but I don’t see anything to deduce, and I can’t find any more stuff to stick into the CHASE system, and my stomach is noticing how long it’s been since I ate breakfast, and—

Kory and Cassie come in for a landing beside me.

“Finally!”

“Bart, you set off your signal six minutes ago,” says Cassie.

“I know!”

Kon flies in from a slightly different direction, with Tim hanging from his arms, and they land on another part of the ridge. “What are those papers?” Tim asks the girls.

“Ooh! Those are maps from Air Traffic Control!” I say.

Cassie’s busy saying, “Hi,” to Kon while Kon is saying, “Hey,” to Cassie, and it looks like they want to say a lot more, so I run over and take the pages from her arms and hold them up one at a time for Tim.

“See, this is where the Haumann model S-140—it says that somewhere, in code—where it took off from Alcatraz, and then it flew onto this map, but by then the transponder thingie was turned off, but Cassie figured out that it came back from the ocean and flew over here—no, wait, this one’s upside-down—”

“Can I look at them all?” says Tim gently, so I let him take the maps and lay them out on the flat ground. I run off to fetch rocks to weigh down the papers so the wind doesn’t blow them away, but my running makes them blow away, so I run back to slap them back down on the ground.

“See, here’s where the paths end,” I say, pointing to a spot just west of Saddle Mountain.

“Mmm,” says Tim, and his finger traces the line past us into Nevada. He taps his communicator and makes his voice even lower than when he talks to bad guys and says: “Yes, sheriff. My name is Draper, and I’m working with the U.S. Marshals. This morning, have you received any calls about a low-flying helicopter? . . . About 7:20? That’s very helpful, thank you. Our office will be in touch if we need anything more.”

Tim reaches into his utility belt and pulls out what looks like a regular pencil, but I deduce that it’s a bat-pencil that turns into a laser or dartgun or something. Tim uses it to mark a spot on the map, then moves his finger to a big gray patch with square edges marked USAF RESTRICTED SPACE - LEVEL D.

“Ooh, what’s that?”

Tim taps his radio again. “Oracle?”

“Hi, Oracle!” I call.

Tim waves at me to shush. “We’re tracking a low-flying helicopter close to AFB 51. You got any useful intercepts this morning?”

I don’t hear Oracle’s voice, so I bend down close to Tim’s head while I’m shaking and poking my communicator to make it work again, but all I hear is Tim saying, “Nothing? So it didn’t go that far. Oh?” His fingers goes back along the flight paths all the way to California and a little starry shape labeled CARSON RESERVOIR. “Thanks, we’ll check that. Robin out.”

“What? What?” I ask Tim, jumping back to my feet. “What’s Carson Reservoir? Did the helicopter turn back?”

“Incoming! Clear the deck!” A green hawk swoops past us and lands on a boulder. “Vic’s about twenty seconds out.” So Kory and Kon and Cassie step back.

Vic comes down—WHOMP!—and the ground shakes. The patch of grass where he lands gets kind of torn up even though he bends his knees.

“So what have we got?” Vic asks, and everyone looks at Tim.

“The helicopter carrying Cross Cut, Dr. Ignatieff, and the Marshals crossed into west-central Nevada,” Tim says, gathering and folding the maps. “It doesn’t look like it went as far as Air Force Base 51—I’m thinking it landed in the desert. Also, twenty-five minutes ago some fishermen reported a helicopter dumping something in Carson Reservoir.”

“Ooh, a Suspicious Event!” I say. “Maybe Cross Cut dropped the machine gun in the lake so no one could find it!”

“Maybe he dropped one of the marshals,” says Tim, and suddenly working on this case is less fun.

“All right then,” says Vic, clanging his hands together. “Two squads: one chases the chopper, the other flies back to the reservoir.”

“Cassie and I can head back,” says Kon. Which is kind of weird, since he usually wants to be in front

“No, you’re on different squads,” says Vic. “And hands to yourself.”

Kon says, “Yes, sir,” which he never would have said back before we were Titans, and I squint to see if he’s really Kon or if he’s Match again, and I notice Cassie isn’t letting his hand go.

“It’s all right,” she tells Vic.

“No, it’s not,” says Vic. “We’re working now, and I want everyone’s mind on this case.”

“What is the problem?” Cassie snaps. “You’ve been grumbling at Superboy all morning.”

Vic frowns. “I should grumble at you, too. You two were out last night until almost three-thirty.”

“I didn’t know we had a curfew,” Cassie says, and I gulp ’cause I didn’t know either, and Tim and I were out working on this case, but then I get that she’s being sarcastic. “We just flew out to a beach.”

“What if your mother had called and asked me where you were?”

“She knew where I was—I called her! I even gave Kon my cell to talk to her!”

Kon nods, looking a little embarrassed. “She did.”

Vic shakes his head. “I don’t want love affairs on this team.”

“But, Vic—” says Kory.

“You and Dick were different,” Vic tells her. “Older. Mature.”

“And all over each other,” says Gar. “Come on, metalhead! Conner and Cassie are, what, sixteen? Of course they’re gonna fall in love!”

“Yeah?” says Vic. “And how’d that work out for you, greenie?”

Suddenly Gar’s smile turns flat, and his nostrils flare. He’s actually quiet for eight seconds before he says, “Fuck you, Stone.” Then he turns into a green cheetah and races down into the trees.

I jump up to catch him, but Tim grabs my wrist and shakes his head.

“Aw, shit. Gar! I didn’t mean it like that!” Vic takes a couple of steps toward the trees and then looks back up at Kory. “We need him for searching the reservoir.”

“Go find him,” says Kory. “Meet us there. I’ll handle things.”

Vic nods and takes one of his big jumps, and we see him soar over the stand of trees and out of sight, and I deduce he’s going to meet Gar at the bottom.

Kory turns and looks at the rest of us.

“Someone should call the Marshals,” Tim says quietly.

“I know. Kid Flash, Superboy, and Robin, you track the helicopter. Cassie, you come with me.”

“Really, Cassie and I can work together,” Kon says. “I swear, it’s not a problem—”

“Not now,” says Kory, with a glance down to where Vic has disappeared into the trees.

And I don’t know what’s going on, and I look at Kon and Cassie, and they don’t know what’s going on, either, and I look at Tim, and even he doesn’t know. He just walks over and lifts his arms for Kon to grab him and says, “Let’s go.”

Continued here.

Working on a Case, chapter 14: Flight Paths

2009-11-08T23:35:10Z

Characters: Titans as of the end of the Family Lost paperback, starting with Bart Allen (Kid Flash) and Tim Drake (Robin). This installment also includes Cassie Sandsmark (Wonder Girl) and Koriand’r (Starfire).
Rating: PG.
Content: Mystery with comic relief, or perhaps comedy with mystery relief.
Word Count: about 1,200 words per chapter. Unknown number of chapters.
Summary: Bart Allen as Kid Flash wants to help Robin on a Titans case involving a convict with a super-power and a strange police record. He knows honing his investigatory skills will require insight, concentration, and...what was the third thing? Cassie has just radioed for assistance from an Air Traffic Control Station.
Continuity: DC Comics standard.
Disclaimer: The Titans and its members are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.
Notes: It all started here.

Chapter 14

Flight Paths

Level Z is Titans code for “no danger,” and Vic told us to say that first with Kory or she might come flying in shooting off her starbolts everywhere.

So I know Cassie’s okay, but she still needs some sort of help, so I take off running around the waterfront and across the inner bay and up the bluff and along the highways to San Alfredo and then up a hill and over the chainlink fence to where there are half a dozen whirling radar dishes and one flat concrete building.

I dash inside and find Cassie in the big central control room, with her hands on her hips and an annoyed look on her face. Two men and one lady in office clothes are looking back at her, also annoyed, and all around the room are more men and a couple of ladies looking at computer screens and radar displays.

I slide to a stop in front of Cassie with my arms folded, and I snap at the people, “What’s the problem here? We’re working on a very important case!”

Behind me Cassie mutters, “I asked for Starfire.”

One man recovers faster than the other two, which makes me deduce that he’s the boss, and he says, “Like I told the young lady, sonny, we don’t show high-security material to just anyone from the Boys and Girls Club.”

“But we’re Titans! I’m Kid Flash! This is Wonder Girl! And…we’re Titans!”

I look back at Cassie, and she has her hand over her face. “And this is why I asked for Starfire.”

“No way,” says the lady, shaking her finger at me. “I had a Titans poster on my wall in college, and you’re at least a foot too short to be Kid Flash.”

“That’s my cous—”

“And Wonder Girl’s hair is black.”

“That was just a dorky wig she used to—”

“Imp!” snaps Cassie, and I jump as she grabs the back of my neck. “Sir, ma’am, one of the leaders of our team should be arriving—”

“Frank!” calls a lady from one corner. “My screen shows a bogey headed right for us!”

“What?”

There’s a streak of gold in the sky outside the windows to the south, and everyone in the room ducks, but then the gold disappears and in fourteen more seconds Kory strides in, her armor glinting with the lights from all the screens.

“Oh, my,” says Frank the boss, and he’s not recovering so fast now.

“What’s the trouble here?” Kory asks.

I start to explain, but I feel Cassie’s hand squeeze my neck, so I let her go first. “We’re trying to find the flight path of the helicopter that took off from Alcatraz—”

“A Haumann model S-140—ow!”

“—and they say we don’t have enough security clearance.”

“Didn’t you show your I.D.’s?” Kory asks, and now I keep quiet ’cause I still don’t know where my Titans card is and it probably still says IMPULSE anyway.

“I did,” says Cassie, and Kory turns back to the managers, gazing down with her spooky green eyes.

The managers squirm, and the second guy says, “You see, Ms., um, Starfire, we don’t know what a Titans I.D. is supposed to look like. You know?”

“Wonder Girl and Kid Flash wouldn’t lie about such things,” says Kory, which is sort of like Gar saying I couldn’t make up a story, but sounds better. “Now do you have the flight paths for us?”

“Yes, ma’am,” says Frank the boss. “Sandy, bring out this morning’s readout over Alcatraz.”

“Sure thing,” says the other man, and he goes to a printer and brings back a paper and lays it on the conference table, and I deduce that they had that all along, but before I can complain Frank points to a dotty line on the map and says:

“Here’s the blip you’re looking for: a Haumann S-140.”

And I grin and look at Cassie and Kory in case they want to say what a useful detective I’m becoming, but they’re just frowning at the map.

“It was flying due west,” says Kory. “But where did it go?”

Franks taps two more spots, two and three centimeters out over the Pacific. “Here’s where its transponder was turned off. And here’s where it went out of range of our radar.”

“Still heading west,” says Cassie.

“We need to call Tempest!” I tell Kory. “And Lagoon Boy! And the Coast Guard! The Haumann S-140 has a flight range of 640 kilometers, and Japan is eight thousand kilometers away!”

“Let me show you something else,” says Leslie, and she starts laying down more papers across the table so they make a big map of central California. “Ten minutes after your chopper disappeared off the radar, we picked up an intruder over Point Reyes heading east-northeast. No transponder signal. Same radar profile, approximately. Same airspeed.”

I’m trying to deduce what two Haumann S-140s mean, and still wondering about how to contact Lagoon Boy, when Cassie says: “So our pilot flew out of radar range and then doubled back.”

“Looks like it,” says Leslie.

“But that path disappears,” says Kory, leaning over the maps to study all the dotty lines.

“The pilot could be staying close to the ground,” Frank tells her. “Trying to keep below our radar, probably. That flight path seems to pick up again here, when the ’copter has to climb over those…two big hills.”

“And Beale Air Base picked it up here,” says Sandy. “Because they’ve got, um, big radar dishes.” And he blushes, too.

Kory looks up. “Is there something wrong?”

The two men shake their heads, but they can’t talk.

“Honestly!” snaps Leslie, and she rolls her eyes at Cassie, and Cassie rolls her eyes back, and I look at Kory, but neither of us can deduce what’s going on.

Leslie edges the men aside and draws ovals around three or four dotty paths on different maps, paths that all line up the same direction. “It looks to me like your chopper was headed east-northeast toward Nevada. Once it got to the Sierras, it stayed low, and we don’t have the coverage to find it.”

“Then we will,” says Kory. She gives Leslie her great big smile. “Thank you.”

Now Leslie blushes as she rolls up the papers and hands them over. “No problem. I, uh, always wanted to help the Titans on a case.”

“Let’s go,” Kory tells Cassie and me as she strides out of the building. “I’ll call Cyborg, and we’ll all meet on Saddle Mountain.”

Continued here.

Working on a Case, chapter 13: Habits

2009-11-08T23:25:22Z

Characters: Titans as of the end of the Family Lost paperback, starting with Bart Allen (Kid Flash) and Tim Drake (Robin). This installment also includes Vic Stone (Cyborg), Conner Kent (Superboy), Gar Logan (Beast Boy), and Cassie Sandsmark (Wonder Girl).
Rating: PG.
Content: Mystery with comic relief, or perhaps comedy with mystery relief.
Word Count: about 1,200 words per chapter. Unknown number of chapters.
Summary: Bart Allen as Kid Flash wants to help Robin on a Titans case involving a convict with a super-power and a strange police record. He knows honing his investigatory skills will require insight, concentration, and...what was the third thing? The Titans and U.S. Marshals are investigating a breakout from Alcatraz, finding too many possible suspects and not enough clues.
Continuity: DC Comics standard.
Disclaimer: The Titans and its members are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.
Notes: It all started here.

Chapter 13

Habits

One of the guards looks through the peephole and says, “Another kid in a mask.”

“Ooh, that’s Robin!” I shout. “I mean, Agent R!” I zip over and squeeze in beside the guard and tug on the handle. But the stupid door is locked, so I flip things and jiggle things and spin things until the door finally moves.

Tim walks in with his mask hiding his eyes and his black cape swirling around him, and the marshals all stare, and Alioto mutters, “Son of a gun—he does exist.”

“Anything?” asks Vic.

But before Tim can answer the chief marshal says, “Young man, we’re in the middle of a presentation.”

“The CHASE system,” says Tim, glancing at the square on the wall. “I believe what I’ve found belongs under C, Chief Marshal Rawlins.”

The chief marshal is too startled to talk ’cause Tim did that trick where he knows your name before you tell him, so he has time to go on: “Warden, that spyware’s been on your computer for three and a half months—at least.”

“Damn,” says Easton.

“At a random time between five and six o’clock each day, it sent a copy of every new file on your computer under 256 kilobytes. That means almost every email, most attachments, all passwords.”

“So we have to find out where those transmissions went,” says Rawlins. “Gil, that’s your—”

“They went,” Tim keeps saying, “in packets to different email addresses, on an eleven-day cycle. Our insider could access those addresses from any computer. But at least 64% of the time, those email boxes were accessed from computers at the Java Lava on Webster Street.” And before the chief marshal can give any orders, Tim adds, “We’ve already sent someone there.”

“And we need to get word to him,” says Vic.

“I’ll go!” says Kon, and he must really want to leave since he gets out the words even before I do.

But Vic waves for Kon to sit back down. “Kid Flash. Go.”

So I sprint through the door and out of Alcatraz, and across the bay, and up into the city, and then I run around Golden Gate Park till I remember what street Tim said Java Lava was on, and I dash even faster to Webster Street. I find Gar outside on the sidewalk, staring at the storefront and rolling his eyes dramatically, which is the way he likes to do things.

“The insider was using this place the whole time!” I tell Gar, and I look through the window inside ’cause the insider could be inside there right now, but I can’t see much because the glass has posters taped all over it and it’s kind of dingy besides. “Who’s inside? Is it open? What can I do?”

“You can let me use your communicator,” Gar says. He can’t carry one when he changes shape, so he’s always borrowing someone else’s or looking for a phone.

So I unhook the communicator from my wristband, and Gar pokes the buttons and says, “Vic? Still got your head screwed on? . . . I got good news and bad news. The bad news is that Java Lava’s crack workforce is so stoned out of their minds that they can’t remember who was in there an hour ago, let alone last night.”

What? I think, and I make a What? face, but Gar waves me off, so I run into the café so fast that no one can see me and I dash behind the counter and I grab all the papers and notebooks and file folders and little pink WHILE YOU WERE OUT message slips and run back outside, where Gar is still talking:

“Of course I asked to look at their records. Their records are a total mess. Out of order, huge gaps—I think they used most of ’em for rolling papers.”

I think Gar is a great guy, but a detective knows that anything can be a clue, so I plop the pile down on the sidewalk behind his back and I start reading one paper after another, which is harder than I thought ’cause it’s all just names and dates and times and people didn’t use their best handwriting and they really are out of order—

“Maybe ‘Agent R’ can spot more in that mess than I could,” Gar says. “I just left everything exactly where I found it in case he wants to take a look.”

Uh-oh. I grab every paper and folder and notebook and pink slip, and I run back into the café and put everything back behind the counter again. It’s all exactly where I found it if we count “behind the counter” as exactly where I found it. Then I dash back out to Gar and lean against the storefront as if I’d been standing behind him the whole time.

As the door closes behind me, I hear one of the two guys running the Java Lava say, “Dude, did you just see that? The papers, like, blinked.”

And the other one says, “Wow. You must have some strong shit.”

Gar turns around, still talking to Vic. “The good news? Oh, yeah. I was able to convince the dudes not to smoke my hair. Beast Boy out.” He snaps the communicator shut.

“So what now?” I ask. “What can I do?”

Gar shrugs. “Nothing, Speed Racer. You can’t chase down a dead end.”

“But the insider came here 64% of the time!” Now I’m being dramatic, jumping around Gar and waving my arms. “We’re Titans! We’re working on a case! We don’t just give up because of bad luck!”

“It’s not bad luck,” Gar says. “Believe me, our suspect chose this place because he knew no one working here would remember customers’ faces—or even what day it was. So he could make a habit of checking email here—”

“Ooh—habit! We can use the CHASE method!” And I dash back through the city and across the water and up the wall of the prison down to the secure room and over to the corner where Vic is standing. “We found a habit!”

Vic has one finger in one ear, and his regular eye is focused off in the distance, and I deduce that he’s listening in on his communicator. So I yell:

“The insider—he lived right here in San Francisco! What can I do?”

Vic takes his finger out of his ear and looks down. “You can go meet Gar on Pier 47. He says you left your communicator behind.”

So I slap my forehead and run back down the wall and back across the water to that pier, and a minute a green stallion gallops up and trots over to me and opens his mouth and spits out my communicator in my hand.

“Eeeeyuck!”

“Next time don’t forget it,” says Gar. “And be glad I didn’t carry it any other way.” And he turns into a green eagle and takes off for Alcatraz.

So I hold the communicator way away from me and shake it really, really fast so it dries off, and then I sniff it, which is a big mistake, and then I snap it back into my wristband and open the channel in my ear to make sure it’s still working. And the first thing I hear is Cassie’s voice saying, “Starfire, this is Wonder Girl. Level Z. I need you at the Air Traffic Control Station in San Alfredo.”

Continued here.

Warmer, Cooler - a Young Justice ficlet

2009-10-08T00:07:13Z

Universe: DC standard, very early in the career of Young Justice.
Rating: All ages.
Genre: Humor.
Characters: Robin (Tim Drake), Superboy, Impulse (Bart Allen).
Word Count: 385.
Summary: We’ve got to keep ourselves amused somehow. (This ficlet is brought to you by the letter P.)
Note: Voted first place in a batfic_contest competition for stories under 500 words on the theme “Hot and Cold.”
Disclaimer: Young Justice and its members are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.

Warmer, Cooler

I get to the Justice Cave two hours late and find Superboy in the front room, reading a magazine. “Hey, Robin. How you doing?”

“Hey.” I look around. No sign of Impulse. Maybe I’m not the last to arrive after—

There’s a crackly blur, and Bart’s standing in front of Superboy, holding a wooden board. “Plank!”

“Cooler,” says Superboy.

“All right! Hi, Robin! Bye, Robin!”

All I see is a blur heading out. I turn back to Superboy. “What’s the story?”

“You’re late,” he says.

“Yeah, well—”

“I’m not busting you, man. We’re all human, sorta. You hadda help Batman find the evil Jaguar Gang or whatever.”

“Uh, yeah.” English paper, same thing.

“All I’m saying is Imp and I had to find something to do.”

Another blur, and Bart’s back, holding a scrawny evergreen with dirt clods hanging off its roots. “Pine!”

“Mmm. Warmer!”

“Aww.”

And Bart’s gone.

“So,” Superboy continues, “we started playing ‘Guess What I’m Thinking.’ I’m thinking of something that begins with P.”

“Of course.”

“You want to get in on the game?”

“Maybe next round.”

Another blur. “Protractor!”

“Cooler.”

“Yeah!”

I lunge for Bart, but he’s already gone. I turn back to Superboy.

“Pineapple,” he whispers. “You’re on my team.”

“Yeah. Does Bart know the rules?”

Superboy’s eyebrows fly up. “They’re not that complicated, Boy Genius.”

“I’m just saying, it doesn’t look like he—”

“Propeller!”

“Even cooler.”

“Whoo! Hey!”

This time I grabbed Bart’s elbow as soon as he stopped moving for a second.

“What’s up, Robin? You want to be on my team?”

“Maybe next round,” I repeat. “Bart, you know that ‘cooler’ means you’re guessing worse, right?”

“Shyeah!” he scoffs. “‘Cool’ is good, Robbie—everyone knows that! ‘Cool’ is special, ‘cool’ is awesome, ‘cool’ is…cool.”

“No, in this game, ‘warmer’ means better. Right, Superboy?”

Superboy spreads his arms in disbelief. “Of course.”

“What?” Bart drops the propeller—CLANG! “Grife, man, don’t you even know what ‘cool’ is?”

“You’re telling me I don’t understand ‘cool’? Look, Imp, I invent new forms of ‘cool’ before breakfast.”

“Yeah, and then you call them ‘warmer’! How is anyone supposed to understand that?”

Now they’re yelling over each other. This argument looks good for at least twenty minutes of Young Justice time.

We have got to get some new members.

Working on a Case, chapter 12: Rock-Paper-Scissors

2009-10-01T03:58:01Z

Characters: Titans as of the end of the Family Lost paperback, starting with Bart Allen (Kid Flash) and Tim Drake (Robin). This installment also includes Vic Stone (Cyborg) and Conner Kent (Superboy).
Rating: PG.
Content: Mystery with comic relief, or perhaps comedy with mystery relief.
Word Count: about 1,200 words per chapter. Unknown number of chapters.
Summary: Bart Allen as Kid Flash wants to help Robin on a Titans case involving a convict with a super-power and a strange police record. He knows honing his investigatory skills will require insight, concentration, and...what was the third thing? Having seen the video footage of a bloody escape from Alcatraz, Bart speeds out of the meeting in the secure room to talk to Tim alone.
Continuity: DC Comics standard.
Disclaimer: The Titans and its members are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.
Notes: It all started here.

Chapter 12

Rock-Paper-Scissors

Susanna yells, “Stop!” when I vibrate through the door into her office, and whips out a pistol, but by then I’m already past her going through the door to the warden’s office, so I call back, “Sorry!” and burst in on Tim.

He jumps a little, which is kind of funny ’cause the batguys are always sneaking up behind people, but I don’t have time to tease him. “Robin, Robin!” I say. “You told me a detective has to pay attention to everything, but there’s too much to pay attention to!”

“Crud,” Tim answers, but he’s not even looking at me.

He’s taken the warden’s computer apart into fourteen separate pieces, not counting the screws, and he has wires hanging out of both sleeves, and he’s staring at the screen, and he’s got his hand on a memory thingie that he stuck into one of the ports, and I deduce he’s still trying to find the spyware inside there.

But I’m talking! “Robin!”

“I’m listening, Kid Flash,” Tim says. “What did you see? From the beginning.”

So I tell him about the video of the Haumann model S-140 helicopter landing on the roof at 06:18:27, and Dr. Ignatieff coming out and talking to the pilot and giving him the cup and going around to the door on the other side. I can’t see Tim’s eyes through his mask, but I know he’s still looking at the screen, so I look at the screen, too, and it says:
Copying…
Copying…
CRob122.exe COPIED TO E:

Then Tim jerks the memory thingie out of the port, but a seventieth of a second before that the screen says:
CRob122.exe ERASED FROM E:
“Crud,” says Tim again, and he sticks the memory thingie back into what’s left of the computer. “Keep going.”

So I tell Tim about the helicopter door opening, and the helicopter taking off at 06:24:25, and then the machine gun shooting, and the screaming, and how it was really loud and scary!

And Tim is just watching the screen say:
Copying…
Copying…

Which is so annoying that as soon I see the word “COPIED” I yank the thingie out and slap it down on the desk and say, “Are you even listening?”

Tim looks down at his memory thingie, and at the screen, which now says:
CRob122.exe COPIED TO E:
CANNOT ERASE
INSERT E: TO ERASE
Tim looks up at me with a grin and says, “Thanks, Kid Flash.”

So I smile back and say, “You’re welcome! For what?”

“For disconnecting the memory stick before the Carob code fragmented and overwrote its critical details. Now I can boot up my sleeve drive and analyze the code through a sterile OS.”

And I nod ’cause I know what all of those words mean even if I don’t know how they go together. Then I remember why I came to find Tim: “So I told you all about how Cross Cut escaped in the helicopter with Dr. Ignatieff and the Marshals, and how those guards got shot, and…I don’t see anything to deduce!”

“Who was flying the helicopter?” says Tim.

“The helicopter pilot, duh! The Marshals said his name is Salman Mirani. Ooh, can we look him up in Batman’s database? Maybe he’s—”

“When the helicopter took off,” Tim asks, “was he flying it?”

“I don’t know!” I say. “There weren’t enough cameras, and the blades were spinning, and—ooh!”

I run back through Susanna’s office and into the hall and down to the secure room and through the double-locked doors and I shout, “Who was flying the helicopter?”

And the pilot with the beard who brought the marshals whirls around and points his finger at me and says, “I know what you’re implying by that, you little peckerwood!”

“You do?” I say, and I gulp, and now I really do need to go to the bathroom.

But then I hear Special Marshal Alioto growl, “Lay off the kid, Bukowski. You know we have to ask if Sal went rogue.”

“There’s no goddamn way,” says Bukowski, turning back around, and I grab my chance to zip over to my chair beside Kon and sit down quietly. “Every morning we chopper jocks play rock-paper-scissors to decide who takes first flight. This morning Sal came up first, but it could just as easily have been me or Harry.”

Vic points to the video screen and says, “So was your man flying the chopper when it took off?”

“Sure,” says Bukowski. “This Crossley guy had Margie as a hostage, so Sal was stalling for time. He’s gotta be.”

Vic nods and looks around. “Anyone else in there know how to fly it?”

The young marshal who’s been setting up a laptop and other machines on the table clears his throat. “Ginny Parley was taking helicopter lessons. She told me about a month ago. She didn’t say what model.”

“Damn. Another possible,” grumbles Alioto.

“And we don’t know what training Crossley got when he was on the Mongoose Squad,” says Easton. “For all we know, he could’ve been at the controls himself.”

So I’m thinking, Thanks for the suggestion, Tim! ’cause now we’re have three people in the helicopter who could be secret double agents, and we haven’t even talked about—

“If I could have your attention,” says Chief Marshal Rawlins, standing by the young marshal with the laptop. “Gill has his equipment set up, so we’re ready to begin the office’s standard pursuit procedure.”

And the young marshal Gill pushes a button on one of his machines, and it lights up, and a big blue square appears on the wall, and I deduce that we’re going to see the JSO’s best criminal-hunting in action! The square turns yellow with a stripy pattern at the top and bottom, and in the middle in red letters it says:
C
H
A
S
E

“This is our CHASE system,” Chief Marshal Rawlins says, and pushes a button, and the screen changes so now there are more words in blue:
Clues
Habits
Associates
Suspicious
Events

I don’t think Tim has the CHASE system since he’s never talked about it, so I sit up and watch, thinking that I’ll be able to teach him something when he’s done playing with the warden’s computer.

“The C in CHASE stands for Clues,” says the Chief Marshal—which actually I figured out for myself, and I’m pretty sure Tim already knows to look for clues.

“The H in CHASE stands for Habits,” says the Chief Marshal. “What are our target’s regular behaviors, hangouts, patterns of movement?” I know what habits are, and I know what the rest of CHASE stands for ’cause it’s right up there on the screen, and I’m wondering when she’ll get to—

“The A in CHASE stands for Associates. Our target’s relatives, friends, past co-conspirators, business—”

There’s a knock at the door. “Oh thank god,” mutters Kon.

Continued here.

Party On, Garth - a Silver Age Teen Titans ficlet

2009-07-31T22:36:17Z

Universe: DCU, circa 1966 with dashes of later additions and attitudes
Genre: Humor
Rating: All ages
Characters: Robin, Aqualad (Garth), Wonder Girl (Donna), Speedy (Roy), Kid Flash (Wally)
Word Count: 464
Summary: The newly formed Teen Titans have their first party! But one member has never been to a party on dry land.
Disclaimer: The Teen Titans and their sidekick grown-ups are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.

The Brave and the Bold, #149, revealed that Wonder Girl had a previously (and subsequently) unmentioned power: the ability to exactly imitate any voice after hearing it once.

An earlier version of this tale won first place in the batfic_contest challenge for fiction of <500 words on the theme “Fish out of Water.”

“Hi, Garth! It’s nice you could make it.”

“Hi, Robin. Thanks.”

“Garth’s here, guys! The Teen Titans are now officially having our first party!”

“Yay!”

“Woohoo!”

“Um, Robin? I told Aquaman I was coming to a meeting. I wasn’t sure he’d give me permission to go to a party.”

“So we’ll call this a meeting, Garth. Relax. Donna just played her new Flips record.”

“Who played her what?”

“Donna—that’s me!”

“The only ‘her’ in the room, gillhead.”

“I decided I don’t have to be ‘Wonder Girl’ to my friends.”

“Oh, right. I’m Garth.”

“I know that, silly!”

“Oh, yeah.”

“And I’m Wally! And arrow-boy is Roy.”

“Hi, Wally. Roy. What about you, Robin?”

“For now I’m still Robin. But I’m talking it over with Batman.”

“Man, you and Garth need to grow up! You’re both still asking the old man for permission on everything!”

“Aquaman’s not that old—”

“Come on, fishface, get with the dry-land lingo!”

“Be nice, Roy.”

“I was just saying that these days I don’t have to ask Green Arrow for anything.”

“Maybe because he’s never around?”

“He trusts me, shortpants!”

“Okay, okay. Garth, have you heard the latest Flips record?”

“No.”

“How come? Don’t you think they’re the coolest?”

“Um. I don’t have any records.”

“What?”

“You’re kidding!”

“How unround can you be?”

“Guys, think about it! They probably don’t have record players underwater.”

“I guess that makes sense, Robbie. I’ll tell you what, Garth—I’ll run home and bring my whole Flips collection for you to listen to.”

“Do you have to, fleetfoot? The Flips aren’t that cool. Someday I’ll put a band together, and then you’ll see cool.”

“Then we’ll see some guy trying to drum with two arrows. Hang tight, I’ll be back in a flash!”

“See you soon, Wally! . . . So, um, what else happens at a party?”

“Well, Donna could do some of her impressions.”

“Impressions? What are—”

“Jeez, don’t you get Ed Sullivan down in Atlantis? If Donna hears somebody’s voice, she can imitate it exactly.”

“Oh. I guess that could be fun.”

“Show Garthy how it works, Donna—do him.”

“Let me think what I’ve heard. Hmmm. ‘Aquaman, we’re trapped! We’ll never make it!’”

“Hahahahahaha!”

“I don’t sound like that!”

“You do, gillhead, you totally do!”

“Maybe sounds travel differently underwater.”

“No, Robin, I don’t say that!”

“Well, actually I’ve heard you—”

“We’ve all heard you. Hahahaha!”

“Oh, yeah? Donna, please do an ‘impression’ of Roy.”

“Okay. ‘Hey, dollface, I’m all a-quiver over you.’”

“HAHAHAHAHA!”

“That’s different! See, Garth, that’s not funny.”

“Okay, I’m back! Did I miss anything?”

“‘Just me shooting off my mouth. And seeing all my best lines land off target.’”

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

“Really, it’s not funny. . . . Everyone stop laughing. . . . I mean it.”

Goodbyes

2009-06-16T22:27:15Z

Universe: DC standard—but offering a slight alternative to Red Robin, #1.
Rating: All ages.
Genre: Family.
Characters: Tim Drake Wayne (Robin), Dick Grayson (Batman), Damian Wayne (Robin).
Word Count: 1,100.
Summary: Dick is ready to become the new Batman, and Tim is ready for...?
Disclaimer: Batman and Robin are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.

I don’t really care for fanfiction that attempts to “correct” characters or what they do. I think such storytelling works best as a way to explore established characters, and fictional forms or tricks. And yet I find myself posting a story that offers an alternative to Tim Drake Wayne’s break with Dick Grayson in the pages of Red Robin, #1.

My favorite aspect of Dick and Tim’s relationship is their easy fraternal communication—all the more gratifying because it’s unusual among superhero comics characters. Like some other readers, I would have liked to see more of that behavior in last week’s Red Robin. Dick says some of the right things, but not enough, and Tim doesn’t listen. Yes, we can chalk that up to their grief and Damian’s interference—but in my conception their communication should endure. So this story is how I’d prefer to imagine Tim breaking from his role at Batman’s partner.

However, I’m not suggesting this tale is how events should have unfolded in the folded pages. My dialogue wouldn’t work in a superhero comic book, for a couple of reasons. Christopher Yost’s script for Red Robin, #1, offered a scene of arguing, punching, and storming out, and the genre depends on such scenes.

Superhero comics rest on the notion that characters resolve their differences through action. That’s one reason those stories quickly became popular in comic books and remained so as other genres came and went—comics’ visual dimension can convey outlandish action while the verbal elements explain the stakes. So, as much as I prefer to picture Dick and Tim talking out their differences, that’s not what the genre favors.

A second factor is length. Talking out problems takes a lot more words than silently stewing or making a sudden break, which is why we don’t do it more often in real life. In comics, a lot more words mean a lot more word balloons and panels and pages. Pages potentially without action or change—though I suppose Dick and Tim could have a conversation while hitting things, as in their debate over the Lazarus Pit during The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul.

Finally, I suspect that Tim’s break into the Red Robin identity comes across as a little perfunctory in the magazine because it is. It was part of the premise Christopher Yost signed up for—not a change he’d conceived of and worked toward.

Indeed, I suspect that DC’s editors had decided on Red Robin as Tim Drake’s next crimefighting identity years back. They showed Tim changing his costume to mainly red—yet there was no behind-the-scenes explanation of why the company made that change, or who was responsible for the new design. DC introduced Alex Ross’s Red Robin costume into its mainstream comics, and then into its mainstream universe. The change may have been driven by Grant Morrison’s proposals for the apparent death of Bruce Wayne and a new Batman and Robin team, or those changes might simply have offered the opening to move Tim Drake’s character to a new level, just as the Knightfall arc did in 1993.

In a magazine based on a new premise, the exciting part is exploring that situation—not the moment of transition to it. Morrison declined to write the Battle for the Cowl transition from one Batman to another because he was interested in telling stories of the new Batman. Similarly, I sense that Yost and his editors knew that Red Robin depended on getting Tim out of Gotham and into his new clothes, the faster the better.

And as superhero comics go, the magazine doesn’t do a bad job. The physical action—Tim’s punch—means something. Yost finds additional meaning in a question that’s been hanging around unanswered for years—what’s Tim’s surname now? I like the two panels that show Tim in close up thinking, “This can’t be happening,” as his clothes shift into the Red Robin costume; those juxtaposed pictures convey change more quickly and powerfully than prose.

I don’t think it’s yet clear how much Tim has broken from Dick. Of course, the stories in Red Robin will be more dramatic if he no longer has any Gotham support system. A harsh split offers openings for more drama (and more punching) when the brothers meet again—already promoted on an upcoming Red Robin cover. But I prefer to imagine the twenty-year-old fraternal bond between Tim and Dick enduring.

The story is all in dialogue and sound effects, a form I’ve used before. That seemed appropriate for an exercise in talking things out.

And that’s more than enough ado...

Goodbyes

“Hey.”

“Hey, Tim. How’re you doing?”

“Lousy. We need to talk.”

“I figured. So sit here on Bruce’s trunk.”

“Are you still going through with this?”

“I have to. You know that.”

“I don’t. I think there has to be another way, Dick. We just haven’t thought of it yet.”

“Tim, if you haven’t thought of it yet, I’m not sure there is another way. I wish there were.”

“Hmph. . . . Well, I don’t think I have a place in what you’re doing.”

“You can have any place you want! You’ve proven yourself. You’re my best ally. You’ve got skills any Batman could use. . . . You always said Batman needs a Robin. I don’t need one for all the same reasons Bruce did, but I still need—”

“Damian.”

“Well, I need to keep him under control.”

“Hmph. . . . Right now you’ve got him in the trunk, don’t you?”

“Yep. You remember Bruce’s escape exercises?”

“Oh, yeah. . . . Can he stay in there?”

“Ha! No, I’m keeping him close for patrols. He’s actually useful if you watch him closely, give him stuff to do.”

“Hmph. He’s still a little shit.”

“Yeah, but maybe we can keep him from growing up to be a big shit.”

“About that ‘we’, Dick—I just don’t think I have a part in that.”

“Well, you’ve been operating on your own for years now. You can be your own man, Tim. I mean, you’ve already redesigned your costume—took out all that handsome contrasting green!”

“Haha.”

“Your code name could be ‘Red Robin’.”

“Great. Crimefighting and fries with everything.”

“And Damian could be, um, ‘Black Robin’.”

“He won’t stand for that.”

“Not his decision. You could be head of a separate ‘Robin Corps’. Like, Stephanie could be ‘Purple Robin’—”

“Oh god, no—I don’t want her hurt again. . . . And it’s eggplant.”

“All right, all right. . . . You want to be Nightwing?”

“No! . . . I want you to be Nightwing. . . . And I want Bruce to be back.”

“I do, too, Tim. . . . But we just can’t wait to see if that happens. Gotham won’t last—”

“I’m out of the sack! I bit my way out!”

“Six minutes, thirteen seconds! Keep at it!”

“Bruce ran those exercises for six hours. How long are you going to keep him in there?”

“For his first time, I offered him three hours. He said he didn’t want any time limit, he’d be out in ten minutes.”

“So...”

“So we have three hours and forty-four more minutes before Alfred calls us for dinner. Or Damian might surprise us.”

“Oh, he’s a surprise all right!”

“I hear you talking! Who are you talking to?”

“Our other brother!”

“I don’t have another brother! I don’t have any brother!” Thump! Thump! Thump!

“Seven minutes, Damian. And you’re using up your oxygen.”

“Hmph. . . . I still don’t have a brother.”

“Too bad the trunk isn’t really airtight.”

“Heh heh! You know, Tim, for years I heard you talk about not being Robin all your life, not becoming Batman. . . . So what did you think about being instead?”

“Um. I don’t know. I mean, I kind of thought about college, but only when I was meeting with the guidance counselors. Part of the cover, I guess.”

“Well, you could think about it for real. With your skills, you could walk into Metropolis Tech—”

“That’s not the problem, Dick.”

“So?”

“So...one time, I was Robin and Jack Drake’s son. Then I was Robin and Bruce Wayne’s son. Now people say I’m no one’s son, and you’re saying I’m not Robin.”

“Tim.”

“I’m just telling you how it feels!”

“I know. But I know you. I know you can be whatever you decide. And I know you’re getting too old to be a Boy Wonder.”

“I’m out of the ropes!”

“Eight minutes, fifty-two seconds! See, I remember some of what you’re feeling, Tim.”

“When Bruce fired you?”

“Even before. When I was turning eighteen.”

“Are you saying this is just a phase?”

“I’m saying everyone grows up. When Bruce was that age, he headed off around the world. When I was that age, I moved to New York and threw myself into the Titans. Heck, even Alfred was that age once! I think that’s when he joined the army.”

“Hmph.”

“So...you want to go west, live with the Titans?”

“That’s Cassie’s team now. I barely know some of them. It’ll look like I’m taking over.”

“You want to find your own city like Blüdhaven?”

“Yeah, that worked well.”

“Ha! I found the handcuff key! You dropped it in here!”

“Have you talked with Conner? With Imp—Bart?”

“Yeah, we’re in touch. They’re...dealing with their own stuff.”

“I can imagine.”

“Bart texts me a lot. Hard to read since he uses so many abbreviations.”

“Hey! The key broke off in the lock!”

“That was the key to a different set of cuffs, right?”

“Oh, yeah. I broke three keys before I got wise to Bruce’s trick. You?”

“Once, almost.”

“Hmph.”

“When I see Kon or Bart now, it...just reminds of me how I thought they were dead.”

“Well, they were. But they’re metas.”

“They came back, Dick. So many of Bruce’s friends came back! And Steph wasn’t even dead, but Bruce knew—”

“Well, he said he knew.”

“Whatever. If anyone could fake his death completely, it would be Bruce. If anyone could come back, it would be Bruce.”

“Yes—‘If’. . . . Wait—what are you saying?”

“That I think Bruce is out there.”

“Huh. . . . Well, that would be nice. And if anyone can find him, you can—you’re one of the best I’ve ever known. But maybe you need to find Tim Drake Wayne.”

“Oh, very deep, Grayson.”

Thump! Thump! “I’ll get out of the trunk, and then the handcuffs! You just watch!”

“Damian won’t mind if I don’t stay to see him succeed.”

“No, he won’t. Funny thing is, Alfred sewed lockpicks into his vest right in front of him. I guess he didn’t notice. So where do you think you’ll start searching?”

“Um, maybe Europe. I went there when I wanted training beyond Bruce—and later, when I wanted to get away.”

“Okay. Europe’s a big place. You can be more than Gotham’s Robin. But can I give you some advice?”

“Sure.”

“All the times I left the manor, the only one that worked was when I was running away to something—the Titans—not running away from.”

“Okay, Dick. I’m running away to something, I promise. I...just don’t know what it is yet.”

Sweet Fifteen - a Young Justice story

2009-03-23T16:23:04Z

Universe: DC standard, Young Justice magazine after the group has moved into the old Poconos resort, but before Empress and Li’l Lobo arrive.
Rating: All ages.
Genre: Humor/Friendship.
Characters: Secret (Suzie), Superboy (Kon-El), Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark), Robin (Tim Drake), Impulse (Bart Allen), Nightwing (Dick Grayson).
Word Count: 4,002.
Summary: It’s Robin’s birthday—so why isn’t anyone having any fun?
Disclaimer: Young Justice and Nightwing are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.

I spotted Superboy in the old hotel’s giant kitchen, swearing at a cake. “Dammit!” He was sliding one finger over the round blue surface, pushing a line of pink icing. He formed the pink into an H, an A, a D— “Dammit!”

I solidified at his side and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Yipes!” Kon jumped, and the pink icing smeared. “Suzie, you shouldn’t sneak up on people!”

“Sorry—did I scare you?”

“No! I wasn’t scared.” He drew himself up and stuck out his chin, with its six whiskers. “But you still shouldn’t startle people when they’re doing...delicate work.”

“Ooh, what work are you doing?”

Kon’s eyes darted around the room before he whispered, “Cassie and I, we figured out today’s Robin’s birthday.”

“It is?” I asked. Though I really wanted to ask: What’s a birthday? And what did that have to do with this cake? But it sounded like a special day for Robin, so that made me happy.

“See, Robin told us he can’t stay late tonight because he has to go to two parties,” Kon explained. “Two separate sets of people giving parties for him on the same day. It’s not a holiday, not graduation time. So we figured it has to be his birthday, and one party’s with his family, and one party’s with, you know, the Batman.”

“The Batman throws parties?”

“Okay, so we haven’t figured out everything!” Kon snapped. “But it’s gotta be Robin’s birthday. Cassie and I are gonna surprise him with this cake.”

“Ooh, I get it!” I said, and I almost did. “So why does the top say, HABWELL SOON?”

“’Cause we only figured out the birthday stuff this morning,” Kon grumbled. “And a GET WELL SOON cake was all the bakery had left…for the money we had.”

“For the money I had, mostly,” said Cassie, coming in from the dining room. “Robin’s in the dining hall, working on his laptop. He can’t hear.”

“Good,” said Kon, still keeping his voice down. “I’m nearly done.”

“And I have a candle.” Cassie held up a thick pink cylinder of wax. I could see waves of scent rising off it.

Kon’s nose wrinkled. “Cinnamon and vanilla? What kind of birthday candle is that?”

Cassie put her hands on her hips and stuck out her chin. “Better than the invisible kind that you picked up in town, Kon.”

“Good point.” Kon plopped the candle in the middle of the cake. “Robin’s a spicy sort of guy, after all. Now I’ll finish rewriting the icing to say HAPPY BIR—Dammit!”

Cassie peered at the pink marks and raised her eyebrows. “You’re pushing the icing around with your fingers?”

“I’m using my tactile telekinesis, so I’m barely touching the—Dammit!” Now there was a smear of pink across the whole top.

“I thought your TTK didn’t work on liquids,” said Cassie.

“Icing’s supposed to be solid. Dammit!”

“Look, Kon. I know you’d get this eventually, but we kind of have a deadline. Just smoosh the pink into a big R.”

“Okay, I can do that.” And he did. It took three minutes, and four more Dammits, but at last the cake had a big R with pointy ends that looked close enough to the one that Robin wore on his chest.

“Phew!” said Kon. “When it’s your birthday, Cassie, remind me to get someone else to decorate your cake.”

Cassie frowned. “My birthday was last month.”

“Hey, it’s the thought that counts.” Kon picked up the platter and marched toward the kitchen door.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” muttered Cassie.

***

Cassie whisked Robin’s computer out from under his fingers and set it on the far corner of the table.

“Hey! I was almost done.” Robin got up to go after his computer.

“You got more important stuff to do now!” yelled Kon, swooping in with the cake. He set it down on the table in front of Robin, the candle burning and sending off plumes of cinnamon, vanilla, and paraffin. “Happy birthday!”

“Happy birthday!” said Cassie.

“Happy birthday!” I said, since that seemed to be the thing to say.

Robin frowned. “It’s not my birthday.”

“Aw, you’re just peeved that we figured out your secret,” said Kon. And he proudly explained again about the two parties. “How’s that for deduction, Mr. ‘Trained by the World’s Greatest Detective’?”

“It’s not my birthday,” Robin said again.

“We know you have to keep some secrets for the Batman,” said Cassie, putting her hand on Robin’s shoulder. “We just want to help you celebrate.”

“I didn’t ask for your help on anything.” Robin shrugged Cassie’s hand off.

She started to frown, hard. Robin tried to move past her, and she wouldn’t budge. “Stick around,” she told him.

“I have work to do,” Robin growled back.

“Yo, Suzie,” Kon whispered. “There’s some rope in the closet by the locker rooms. Can you bring it to me? It’s, um, for Robin.”

I still hadn’t figured out birthdays, but as long as the rope was for Robin, I flowed over to the dark little room and floated back with the coil. When I got back, the candle on the cake had burned down halfway, and all three of my friends were speaking loudly, even Robin.

“Just admit it and have fun!” shouted Kon.

Robin tried to past him to get to his computer. “You don’t underst—”

“No, you don’t understand!” Cassie snapped, blocking Robin’s way. “We’re your friends, and we’re having a party for you.”

“I have secrets to guard—“

“I have a secret identity, too, but I don’t use it on my friends!”

I solidified next to Kon and pushed the rope into his hand.

“Yipes! Oh, thanks, Suzie. Now watch my TTK in action.” Kon flicked the coil loose. In three seconds the cord coiled around Robin’s chest, pinning his elbows against his sides.

“Hey!” Robin yelled. “You’re—you’re not letting me breathe.”

“If you can talk, you can breathe,” Cassie pointed out, knotting the two ends of the rope together. “You just want to expand your chest so you can wriggle out later.”

“Is this a birthday game?” I asked.

“No!” said Robin.

“This is only for very special parties,” said Cassie. “When the birthday boy is being a jerk.” She pushed Robin back toward the cake.

“I’m not being a jerk,” he said.

“So you are the birthday boy?” said Cassie.

“No!”

Kon shoved Robin down in his chair and slid the cake in front of him. “We’re doing this for you, dammit! Now blow out your candle.”

Robin clamped his mouth shut.

“Blow out the candle!”

I hate seeing my friends angry, so I misted myself and smothered the candle.

“Was that so hard?” asked Cassie. She pulled the candle out and licked off the frosting before setting it on a napkin.

“That wasn’t me,” Robin grumbled, teeth clenched. “I’m still not celebrating my birthday.”

“But Superboy and Wonder Girl brought you this cake!” I told him, solidifying again. “Cassie brought the candle, and Kon made the R.”

“I don’t care,” said Robin. He couldn’t even bend his arms, but he wriggled his shoulder out from under Kon’s glove.

“You’re gonna have some of the cake.” Kon grabbed the back of Robin’s head and turned him toward the cake.

“No! Stop being so immature!”

“Yeah? How’s this for immature?” Kon shoved Robin’s face down into the cake until the blue frosting was up to his ears. “Happy birthday, pal!”

“Omigod!” said Cassie, and then she burst out laughing.

This all seemed to be part of the birthday party, so I laughed, too.

“He was being a jerk,” said Kon.

“Yeah, but he still needs to breathe.”

“Oh. yeah.” Kon pulled Robin’s head back up. There was pink and blue and yellow cake crumbs all over his face, and in his hair, and on his collar.

“Omigod!” Cassie repeated. “That’s hilarious!”

“I can’t see,” muttered Robin. “There’s crud all over my visor.”

“What’s that, Robbie?” joked Kon. “You say you want us to take off your mask?”

Robin struggled with the rope. I could see heat rising from his scalp.

“Guys!” I said. “Robin looks, well...angry.”

“Oh, chill out.” Cassie licked one little finger and wiped the frosting off Robin’s eyeholes. “Better?”

Robin didn’t answer, but he didn’t complain anymore.

“Cissie will never believe this,” said Cassie. “I should get my camera.”

“I’ll come help you load it,” said Kon. “You won’t go anywhere, will you, bat-boy?”

Robin still didn’t answer.

Kon and Cassie rushed out of the room, her saying, “I can work my own camera.”

“Then how come your pictures never come out?” Their voices disappeared toward the bedrooms they had chosen upstairs.

Robin went back to wriggling inside the rope. I stayed with him, wondering when the birthday party would start to be fun.

***

The front door slammed, and Bart came in, yelling: “Sorry I’m late! Max kept me home to finish all my homework ’cause he didn’t think I’d remember to do it here just ’cause I didn’t remember last week, but I finally did it, and I brought the new version of Tornado Racers to play—ooh, cake! Robin, can you pass me a piece?”

Robin frowned through the blue frosting. “Bart, I’m tied up.”

Bart sighed and rolled his eyes. “Okay, I get it! Robin’s always busy, busy, busy! Well, you can eat your whole cake yourself. I bet it’s all sour anyway.” And he zipped out to the Playzone in the rec room.

Robin shook his head. For a second he may have smiled. Then he sighed and looked at his computer on the corner of the table. He started to squirm inside the rope again, and there was a loud knock at the front door.

I wasn’t sure what that knock meant since nothing had ever knocked on our door before. Robin called out, “Don’t answer tha—”

“I got it!” Bart shouted, zipping through the dining room to the front hall.

In another few seconds, we could hear him shout, “Oh, wow! You’re Nightwing, right?”

“Aww, pusbucket,” muttered Robin. He wriggled down out of his chair and ducked under the tablecloth. Since he was hiding, I dissipated into a thin mist as well.

“Nice motorcycle!” Bart was saying. “How fast does it go? We could race, hahaha! Robin always talks about you, and so does Wall—oops, I mean the Flash. Say, is there a Titans emergency? ’Cause I used to be a Titan, you know. I still have my communicator—somewhere.”

A deeper, calmer voice said something I couldn’t hear.

“Sure, he’s right here in the—huh?” Bart appeared in the big archway at the front of the dining hall, mouth agape. “Well, Robin was right here.”

Behind him came a young man dressed in black with a stripe of blue across his chest and shoulders. On his face he wore a jagged black mask and an amused smile. He scanned the room. “I bet Robin just ducked out for a sec,” he said.

“Yeah, he’s busy busy busy!” Bart said. “Ha! But he left some of his cake! Blue’s my—mmph, mmph—favorite flavor!”

“Yeah, I can see that,” said the man. “I’ll just wait in here. You can go back to your, um, work.”

“Huh? Oh, sure! Nice to meet you, Mr. Nightwing!” And Bart dashed out.

Nightwing walked slowly around the table to the chair beside the smashed cake. In one fluid motion he lifted the edge of the tablecloth and squatted down. “Hey there. Blue’s my color, not yours.”

“Hi. We were just fooling around,” said Robin.

“Uh-huh. I came by to give you a present. Do I need to think about knocking any heads together?”

“No!” said Robin. “We were just. . . I’ve got to. . . This is Young Justice business.”

“Okay, I hear you. But you just let me know.”

“I will. Thanks.”

Nightwing waggled a small plastic bag in his free hand. “I got you a couple of CDs. One by Great Frog, and one you might actually like listening to.”

“Thanks. I’ll take them home tonight.”

“You going by the cave?”

“Yep. And then I’ll have dinner with my folks.”

“Good. Tell Alfred I said hi.”

“I will,” Robin promised.

Nightwing pursed his lips. “I bet you’ll wait until the big guy’s in the room and then say, ‘Dick says hi,’ so he thinks I included him, too.”

Robin shrugged. “And I bet you won’t tell me not to do that.”

The young man smiled—a wide white grin. “Happy birthday, bro.”

So it is Robin’s birthday! But why didn’t he tell us?

Nightwing had dropped the tablecloth and stood up. Suddenly he flipped back one corner of the cloth and crouched again. He pulled a little blade out of his boot and cut most of the way through the rope at Robin’s elbow. “Being in groups is fun, but it’s not always easy. Do what you gotta do for the big guy, but don’t be afraid to ask for help, okay?”

“Okay, thanks,” said Robin. “I know you’ll be there.”

“I wasn’t talking about asking me for help.” Nightwing arched his eyebrows, stood up, and sauntered out. I heard the motorcycle roar away.

***

Robin shuffled out from under the table on his knees as Kon and Cassie came back into the room. Cassie quickly snapped his photo.

“Stop that,” he grumbled.

“Relax, your face was covered.”

“I’d noticed.” Robin struggled to his feet and turned away while Cassie took two more pictures.

“I’ve got two more rolls of film after this one.”

“Well, stop it!” said Robin. “We can’t let anyone take our pictures.”

“’We’ meaning you and Nightwing?” Kon asked. “Because I noticed he didn’t get all huffy about the cake. I figured he’d have a sense of humor.”

“If you were so sure about that, why were you just hiding from him?”

“I was not!” Kon said.

“You and Cassie waited at the top of the stairs until he left,” I pointed out.

Cassie looked a little embarrassed, but Kon stuck out his chin. “We were just giving you guys some privacy. On your birthday.” As Robin rolled his eyes, Kon added, “I could’ve taken Nightwing. He hasn’t got any special powers, right?”

“That’s right. Neither of us do.” Robin suddenly flexed his arms. The rope broke at the cut spot and fell in coils to the floor.

Kon and Cassie gaped.

“But having him see me like this was embarrassing,” Robin went on. “I try to convince him how we’re a real hero team, and then you go do something juvenile.”

“Get over it!” shouted Kon.

“I am over it,” Robin said. “But it’s still all over me.” He strode out of the dining hall.

Kon stomped after him. “Where are you going?”

“I have to sponge off my uniform.”

“Good, ’cause you’re kinda messy,” Bart called as we passed the rec room. He caught up with us in an instant. “I was wondering why—“

“It’s his birthday,” said Cassie.

“I didn’t say that!” snapped Robin.

But Bart had already slapped his forehead and zipped away. We heard two seconds of whizzing and scratching and tearing from the rec room, and then he was back with a small bundle wrapped in hand-colored paper and tied with an elaborate bow made out of an unraveled thread of the carpet. “Happy birthday, Robbie!”

“You didn’t have to go do that, Bart,” said Robin.

“Do what? I had that present ready last week. I didn’t forget!”

“No, you didn’t forget. I didn’t tell anyone about my birthday.”

“Which is today,” said Cassie.

“It is!” I said, manifesting myself. “I heard that Nightwing say so.”

“Ha!” said Kon, pumping the air. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“Suzie, please,” Robin muttered to me. He faced us all. “I was—I am keeping my birthday secret for security. Look, guys, I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me—”

“No, you don’t,” said Cassie. “You’re just pushing us away.”

“No, I’m not! I came out here today, even though I have a lot of stuff at home tonight, because I like seeing you, okay? I like hanging out. But I don’t need cake, and I don’t need Bart’s Starfighters game—”

“How’d you know that?” asked Bart, gazing at his package.

“It’s the size and shape for a video game,” said Cassie. “But how’d he know which one?”

“Yeah,” grumbled Kon. “I’m the one who should have x-ray vision.”

Robin sighed. “Starfighters is Bart’s latest favorite, and he wouldn’t give anyone a present that he didn’t was the best. So Bart—thanks, you’re a great friend. But I don’t want to do anything that says it’s my birthday.”

He spun around, his cape swirling, and strode into a locker room.

Kon and Bart looked at each other and followed him. Cassie looked at me, and we followed the boys.

***

“Cassie! Suzie!” Kon scolded. “The sign says MEN’S.”

“Oh, grow up,” said Cassie. “We’re not finished, Robin. This isn’t just about today. It’s about everyday. It’s about you not trusting us.”

“I do trust you,” sad Robin. He finished running a sink of water and started mopping his face with a cloth. He swabbed at his vest and collar. “I go into battle with you. I trust you with my life.”

“But not with your secrets. Why?”

“Kon said it before,” said Robin.

“I did?” said Kon.

“Batman, Nightwing, me—we don’t have any powers. That’s why we wear masks. That’s why I don’t tell anyone my real name. That’s why I’m always announcing a plan before we go in.”

Kon snorted. “You’re bossy because you have no powers?”

“If something blows up, you guys are strong enough to get through it, or fast enough to get away, but I need a plan.”

“But we’d take you with us, Rob,” Bart insisted.

“I know. But I still have to be more careful. More careful than any of you.” He frowned at his face in the mirror. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to take a shower. For some reason, I have blue gunk in my hair."

Kon threw up his hands. “Oh, come on, man! Just jump in the pool! You know we have our very own pool, right?”

“I know,” snapped Robin. “I arranged for it to be filled, remember?”

“Yeah, but have you ever been in it?”

Robin didn’t answer for a second. I couldn’t remember him ever going swimming, though don’t like to go near the water myself.

His voice was softer when he finally said, “I’ve hung out with you there. Sometimes.”

“Well, today,” said Kon, “we’re gonna have a pool party.”

“I don’t want a—”

“It’s not a party for you, bird-boy. It’s a Young Justice party! And everyone has to go in—including you.”

“But not you, Suzie,” Cassie assured me. “Not if you don’t like water.”

Robin was sticking out his bottom lip in that handsome way. “Sorry, I don’t even have a swimsuit.”

“So we’ll buy you one!” said Kon. He pulled a few crumpled bills from his pocket. “I’ve got, um, $3.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Cassie, unzipping her wallet. “Here’s $10.”

“And I have five,” said Bart, hands flashing from one pocket to another. “Somewhere.” He sat down and shook a green wad out of one shoe.

“Me, too!” I said. “I mean, I would if I had any—”

“We know, Suzie,” said Cassie. “Your job is to watch Robin—”

“Oh, I will!”

“—and make sure he doesn’t try to sneak away while Bart runs into town to buy Robin a bathing suit.”

“Okay!” said Bart, and he was gone.

“I won’t sneak away,” Robin said. “And I can buy my own—”

“But you haven’t,” said Cassie. “That’s why we sent Bart.”

“Who doesn’t know what size I wear,” Robin pointed out.

“That’s because you treat your underwear size as classified.”

Robin smiled for an instant, but then turned serious again. "Look, there’s a reason I—“

“Hold still!” Bart was back with a tape measure labeled "Krohn's Discounts," and a slight whiff of burnt rubber wisping up his legs. He wrapped the tape around Robin's waist, squinted at the numbers, and then disappeared again.

“There’s a reason I keep all these secrets,” Robin resumed, more quietly.

“Because the Batman says so,” muttered Kon.

“The Batman says so because he has a good reason for saying so. People out there are hunting for him, which means they’re hunting for me. They’ll take any piece of information about me they can find—my birthday, my voiceprint, the shape of my ears.”

“Someone’s going to match a photo of you to your second-grade school picture and figure out who Robin is?”

“Yes!” said Robin. “Maybe not like that, but it could happen. You don’t know what the Batman’s enemies are like! If they find out who I am, then they can find out who the Batman is. And who Nightwing is. They’ll find out who my—they’ll track down my family! You don’t know what it’s like to have that responsibility, Kon. All you have is your tactile telekinesis!”

Kon frowned. "Hey, I got people."

“And I have my mom,” said Cassie. “If anything happened to her—”

“I know,” said Robin. “But you guys have powers. I can’t fly home. I can’t punch through walls. So pardon me if I don’t go around telling people what my birthday is!”

We all stood around silently for a minute until Bart suddenly reappeared with a plastic bag that said KROHN’S in big red letters. "I found a suit in all your colors, Robbie!" he shouted happily, pulling out a pair of baggy black shorts with big slices of watermelon and bananas all over them.

Everyone stared at the shorts for a second, then started laughing.

"We'll give you some privacy to change," said Cassie. "Come on, Suzie."

So I had to leave, too. As Kon and Cassie sped upstairs to their rooms, Bart was already in the pool, shouting, "Where is everybody?" I had nothing to do but wait outside the locker room. And wait.

Kon and Cassie dashed back down in their bathing suits. Cassie dove in and began swimming laps. Kon and Bart practiced pulling each other underwater. And I was still waiting.

Then I heard: "Suzie."

I flowed under the door. "What?"

Robin had taken off his uniform, except for his mask, and put on the bathing suit. He was sitting on one of the benches, bare feet on his piled-up clothes and hands in the air.

"What?"

"Can you ask Kon or Cassie to come here? I, um, need a little help."

"Robin needs help!" I called.

"What is it?" shouted Bart from the doorway before he slid past and slammed into the wall at the corner of the hallway.

"What's wrong?" asked Cassie.

"What?" asked Kon, appearing in the door a second later.

"Nothing bad!” Robin said. “I don’t want to leave any fingerprints or footprints, so I, um,...need a lift to the pool.”

"We get to throw you in the pool?" crowed Kon.

“No, you get to drop me in the pool," said Robin. "Hey!"

Cassie had taken hold of one arm and Kon had grabbed the other. They flew down the hallway, Robin hanging between them.

"Bart!" he called back. "Bring my towel, and boots, and—glub!"

***

An hour later, Robin pulled himself onto the edge of the pool, toweled off his feet, and pulled his boots on. He tugged on his gloves and ran off to the locker room. In a few minutes he was back, in full uniform with his traveling bag.

"It was a great party," he said, “but I gotta get back to Gotham.” We called goodbye. Bart pouted, and tried to splash him, and finally said goodbye as well. At the door, Robin turned around one more time. "And guys—thanks for the help.”

He walked out to the supercycle. And I was the only one who knew that in his bag were three rolls of film.

Look! Up in the Sky! - a Young Justice ficlet

2009-01-10T04:31:16Z

Universe: Young Justice, early on.
Rating: G.
Genre: Humor.
Characters: Tim Drake (Robin), Superboy a/k/a the Kid, Bart Allen (Impulse), Cassie Sandsmark (Wonder Girl), Cissie King (Arrowette), Lex Luthor.
Word Count: 1,200.
Summary: Which is more annoying—knowing that Lex Luthor has a satellite spying on Metropolis, or your teammates’ responses to that news?
Disclaimer: Young Justice, its members, and Lex Luthor are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.

METROPOLIS (June 14)—LexCorp launched its latest and most advanced satellite at 7:56 this morning. Company CEO Lex Luthor announced that the launch was a complete success.

“By placing our LX5i satellite in geostationary orbit over Metropolis, and equipping it with the finest optical scanners ever produced, LexCorp is helping this fine city remain the most technically advanced in the world,” Luthor told a news conference shortly after the launch.

“The LX5i will allow our scientists to study weather systems, traffic patterns, environmental impacts, and population settlements in greater detail than ever before. The cameras on board are even sharp enough to read license plates, which will assist the police in apprehending criminals without the need for outside help, making life safer for us all.”

Tim Drake looked up from reading the electronic press release and grumbled, “Pusbucket.”

Fifteen Days Later

TEEP.

“Hey, birdboy!” Superboy called to Robin. “Your computer’s chirping.”

“Yeah, I’m working on something.”

“And I’m trying to watch Wendy. It’s bad enough that Bart keeps trying to plug in his games whenever I turn—Hey! I saw that!”

“Saw what? Me? I’m over here. Whatcha doing, Rob?”

“I’m processing photos from a new satellite.”

Superboy snorted. “That’s what’s so important?”

“The satellite’s parked over Metropolis,” Robin added.

“Really?” Superboy hurried over, though still trying to act cool. “Like, this is a picture of Metropolis, right now?”

“About four seconds ago. It takes two seconds for the optics to scan a square kilometer, and another two for the data to travel through the network.”

“Cool.” Cissie joined the boys. “So is this, like, a bat-satellite?”

“Quick, chum—the batellite!” Superboy joked. Bart cracked up.

“Funny, guys. It’s a LexCorp satellite,” Robin explained. “I hacked into the company network to test if this new tech might be a threat to heroes.”

“A threat to Superman?” Superboy scoffed. “That’ll take more than a camera, even for Luthor.”

“And Flash is too fast for any camera to catch him!” boasted Bart.

“Yeah, Rob. I bet you’re really looking for pictures of Power Girl.”

“Superboy!” Cassie scolded. She put down her book and strode over to the group.

“You mean that’s what you would do,” Cissie said.

“Cissie!” Cassie scolded as Superboy smirked.

“Why Power Girl?” asked Bart.

“Bart!”

“This is a serious issue, guys,” said Robin. “The cameras up there are so sharp they can snap people’s faces. I got some next-generation facial-recognition software from WayneTech—”

“More hacking?” asked Cissie.

“Uh, yeah. Anyway, I set up the software to analyze each image from the satellite. If it makes a match with a face in our hero database, then it tags that part of the image. Watch. The satellite’s about to come back to the sector where Superman was putting out a fire thirty-four seconds ago. So it’ll probably spot him again.”

“There he is.” Cissie pointed to one corner of the screen.

TEEP. The computer highlighted the same area.

“Wow, Ciss, you’ve got sharp eyes.”

“But what’s the big deal about spotting Superman?” asked Superboy. “You and Batman are weirdos who like working in the dark, but everybody in Metropolis sees Superman all the time.”

“Not all the time. If a Lexcorp computer collects enough images of him, then someone could write a program to analyze patterns. They could figure out where Superman’s probably going to be ahead of time. Maybe even figure out his secret identity.”

“Superman has a secret identity?” said Cassie.

“I mean, uh, if he’s working undercover,” Robin explained. “In any case, in the wrong hands—”

“Luthor’s hands,” Superboy muttered.

“—these satellite cameras could be a real threat.”

TEEP.

“Who’s it spotted now?” asked Cassie.

“Impulse,” Cissie reported.

“What?”

“Wasn’t Bart just here?”

TEEP.

“Yes, but now he’s there,” Cissie said.

“So,” said Superboy, “what’s Bart doing in Metropolis?”

“Waving up at us,” said Cissie.

TEEP.

“And sticking out his tongue.”

TEEP.

“Pretending to pick his nose.”

“Let’s hope he’s pretending,” said Cassie.

TEEP TEEP.

“Making bunny ears behind Superman’s head. You know, Robin, I think you’ve found the threat.”

“Aw, man!” Robin moaned. “Kid, would you go get Imp and bring him back here? I’m trying to figure out how to get rid of that satellite, and he’s just fooling around.”

Nine Days Later

“So what do you have for me?” the CEO snapped.

“Mr. Luthor, sir.” Senior imagery technician Stephanie Cariacci swallowed hard. “You asked us to tell you if the LX5i captured unusual images of—”

“Him?”

“No. I mean, yes, you had, um, him on the top of the list, and we’re building a file of those images for further analysis. But you also asked us to look for the young one. ‘Superboy’.”

“Oh, yes.” The CEO’s face softened slightly, letting Cariacci’s heart slow to twice its normal speed. “So what’s the Kid up to?”

“Well, sir, the LX5i captured these images back on the 29th. It took us several days to scan every face. I understand that WayneTech might have some faster software—”

“You have the best tools in the world right here, Cariacci,” the CEO snapped as he flipped through the photos.

“Yes, sir. The subject was in sector U14, and we captured seven images. He had an argument with another teenager, wearing goggles, and then they left quickly. We’ve identified the other boy as—”

“A young meta who works out of Alabama. Mostly harmless. Go on.”

“Yes, sir. Once we pegged him, we started to look back in other images from that day.” Cariacci handed over another short stack of printouts. “He appears to have been, um, making strange facial expressions—”

“Dammit,” growled Luthor.

“Sir?”

The CEO threw down one photo after another, his face and scalp turning ruddy. “They know.”

“Who—”

“The metas. Whoever works with this kid—Flash, Titans, someone. They figured out what the LX5i is for, and he was making fun of it. He was making fun of LexCorp.”

“Can we be sure—”

“He was making faces at me, Cariacci! You have two minutes to download the last data. Then we shut down the project.”

“Sir?” Cariacci watched her boss stride away, fists clenched. Over his shoulder he barked:

“Shut it down.”

Two and a Half Minutes Later

“Whoa,” said Cissie.

Robin glanced back from his seat at the super-cycle’s wheel. “What is it?”

“I just saw something flash in the sky. Over there.” The archer pointed.

Bart stood up in the front seat. “Where? Land the cycle, Robbie! I’ll go see!”

“Calm down, Impulse,” Cassie told him, but she was already aloft.

Superboy was also airborne, squinting into the distance. “That’s Metropolis. I should check—”

“No, the explosion wasn’t down near the city,” Cissie said. “It was way up in the sky.”

“Hmm. The LexCorp satellite might show what happened.” Robin pulled a small computer out of his sleeve.

“Quick, chum—the batellite!” chorused Bart and Superboy.

“Shut up,” said Robin.

“It’d be nice if it turned out to be useful,” said Cassie. “Maybe you didn’t have to worry so much after all.”

Robin stared at the little screen. “I’m seeing nothing.”

“You mean there’s nothing left on the ground?” asked Superboy, suddenly serious again.

“No. No signal from space.”

“You know what I think exploded?” said Cissie.

“The satellite,” answered Robin.

“The satellite.”

“The satellite?” said Bart. “Ohhh, the satellite.”

Robin was still frowning down at the blank screen.

“So Luthor’s big expensive satellite blew up,” Superboy said, settling back down in his seat. “Too bad. It’s not like that had anything to do with us, right?”

The Visitor

2008-12-19T04:38:02Z

Third place (tie) in the batfic_contest community’s voting for best entry of 500+ words in 2008.

Characters/Pairings: Dick Grayson (Nightwing), Tim Drake (Robin).
Universe: DC Comics standard, late 1990s.
Summary: Dick has just settled down for a long winter’s mope when there’s a knock on the roof. With apologies to Henry Livingston or Clement Clark Moore.
Genre: Family dynamics.
Rating: G.
Word Count: 656.
Disclaimer: Nightwing, Robin, and their sidekick Batman are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.

On the night before Christmas, across all Blüdhaven, not a siren was wailing, not a babe needed saving. No crimelords or mooks had abruptly reformed. It was twenty degrees out! They were home, staying warm.

I was in my apartment, atop all those steps, preparing to shower after doing some reps, when all of a sudden came a noise overhead—not a clatter, or thumping, but a single foot-tread.

My visitor might not have meant any harm, but whoever it was had sidestepped the alarms. I threw on a bathrobe and killed all the lights to see out the windows and scan that dark night.

With a glance to the north side, I froze like the weather: whoever was up there had let down a tether and was clambering hand under hand to my floor. I crept to my balcony, opened the door, and blasted him with an extinguisher hose.

It took me a sec to distinguish the clothes: my caller was costumed in red and green tights, and wearing short sleeves on this blustery night.

“Cut it out, Dick! It’s me!” shouted Tim with a sputter as he slammed back and forth on the wall like a shutter.

“Hey, sorry about that,” I called. “Come inside.” I passed him my towel, which had more or less dried.

Tim rubbed most of the frost off his face and his jerkin. “You’ll be happy to know your extinguisher’s working. Now I’m totally frozen!”

“It could have been worse. Next time you visit, try phoning me first.”

“So I can’t just drop by?”

“You dropped out of the blue—are you trying to do what the big guy would do?” As Tim shook his head no, I asked, “Why this late meeting?”

“I wanted to bring you my holiday greeting. You do know it’s Christmas?” Tim said with some doubt, and wiped off his visor and looked all about. Along every wall there were boxes in stacks. Not holiday presents—I still hadn’t unpacked. He pursed his lips sadly. “What we have here is a definite shortage of holiday cheer.”

“Oh, really?” I snatched up a handful of cards and said, “All of my buddies have sent their regards. From Donna, from Wally, from Lian and Roy. Signed ‘Kory,’ signed ‘Victor,’ signed ‘Gar! The Beast Boy!!’”

“You’ve collected six envelopes in a small pile, and that’s how you decorate holiday-style? You should visit the mansion. It’s strung up with lights, bright enough to be seen all the way from the Heights. And Alfred has trimmed an eleven-foot spruce—”

“You’re trying to make me spend Christmas with Bruce.”

“Yeah,” Tim acknowledged. “I’ll be home with my dad. And thinking of Bruce by himself is...just sad.”

“He makes his own choice, wasn’t always that way. I used to look forward to our Christmas Day. We did stockings, and sledding, and holiday songs.”

“You know that that’s only ’cause you’d come along. Otherwise, he’d have spent the whole day underground, and he’ll be there this year unless someone’s around.”

“I have plans,” I told Tim.

“Can you say what they are?”

I admitted, “I thought I’d go down to the bar.”

“Spend the day in some gloomy place, dishing out brews? Now that really is something the big guy would do.”

“Hold on, Tim! Christmas colors don’t make you an elf.”

“Says the guy who selected these colors himself.”

“You got me on that. But I’m not in the mood for visiting Bruce and observing him brood. I just don’t feel eager for Christmas this year. I might skip the whole holiday thing and stay here.”

“That’s your answer?”

“Uh-huh. My answer is, ‘Nope.’”

“Well, I gave it a shot,” he said, back at his rope. “At least open my present,” was his final demand.

“Okay, Tim, I promise.” I held out my hand.

“I’m afraid it’s too bulky to bring in this manner.”

“So where is—?”

He grinned. “At stately Wayne Manor.”

First place (tie) in the batfic_contest challenge for fiction on the theme “Christmas.”

Banners assembled by amara_anon.

Crushed

2008-11-23T00:05:45Z

Title: Crushed
Universe: DC Comics standard, late 1961. Alfred doesn’t yet have the surname Pennyworth, Batman doesn’t wear a yellow oval on his chest, and girls are still icky.
Genre: Humor
Rating: G
Characters/Pairings: Dick Grayson, Alfred, Betty Kane, Kathy Kane, Bruce Wayne
Word Count: 373
Summary: Bruce is having a dinner party. Dick is having an urge to hide.

Betty Kane/Bat-Girl is a character who predates not only DC Comics’ first “Crisis,” but even the “New Look” Batman of 1964.

In 1956 DC Comics had introduced Batwoman as a foil and occasional love interest for Batman. Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson soon figured out that Batwoman was Gotham City socialite Kathy Kane, but she never learned who Batman and Robin were. Then in 1961 Kathy’s niece Betty started to visit from out of town. She was a crack tennis player with a crush on Robin, and she took on the identity of Bat-Girl and helped fight crime in order to meet the Boy Wonder. Dial B for Blog shows some of her appearances.

Bat-Girl appeared in only seven Batman stories. Yet three of those were published in the first Batman anthology, subtitled From the ’30s to the ’70s; I read that as a child, coming away with an exaggerated sense of Bat-Girl’s importance in the continuity. The best of those tales, “Prisoners of Three Worlds,” was also reprinted in Batman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, volume 2. It preserves the one reason Betty Kane is significant in Dick Grayson’s history: in that story Bat-Girl and Robin share their first kiss, and they walk off hand in hand at the end (as Batman fends off Batwoman’s similar advances).

In the 1970s, Betty Kane at Bat-Girl reappeared in the Teen Titans magazine as part of the first Titans West group. She was still a star athlete and wannabe crimefighter, infatuated with Robin. Post-Crisis, DC brought her back with her given name changed to Bette and her hero name changed to Flamebird. Since she was once a Titan, she has to be included whenever a story requires that all Titans be hunted down and/or assembled, which seems to happen about every eight years. Bette Kane plays a major role in the Beast Boy miniseries collected in Beast Boys and Girls, still underpowered and still chasing after Dick Grayson.

Crushed

“Alfred, can I eat in my room tonight?”

“Certainly not, Master Dick. You know Master Bruce has guests for dinner.”

“But that’s why I want to hide! Kathy Kane’s got her niece with her, and Betty has a giant crush on me. It’s embarrassing.”

“A crush on you, Master Dick, or on Robin?”

“I dig what you’re saying, but still—”

“But still you should be a good host. I’m sure Miss Betty would enjoy seeing the tennis court. Now go greet her like a young gentleman.”

•

“Excellent asparagus soup, Alfred.”

“Thank you, Master Bruce. I’ll serve the tenderloin as soon as Master Dick finishes his bisque.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Really, Dick? I figured you’d have an appetite after playing tennis with Betty. Someone out there was really crushing that ball.”

“Oh, that was probably me, Mr. Wayne.”

“Betty’s nationally ranked, Bruce.”

“Terrific! Did you know that, Dick?”

“I figured it out.”

“You mustn’t feel embarrassed, Dick, about losing to Betty at tennis. I don’t know any boys her age who can beat her.”

“Oh, I can think of one, Aunt Kathy. I bet Robin could!”

“Hmph. Robin has more important things to do than play tennis.”

“Now, chum, that’s not very nice.”

“I didn’t say tennis is dumb! I just said—”

“Oh, I’m not bothered, Dick Grayson! The only opinion I care about is Robin’s.”

“But—he—you—”

“Still waiting on that bisque, Master Dick.”

•

“Your coats, Miss Kathy. Miss Betty.”

“Thank you, Alfred. And thank you, Bruce, for a lovely evening.”

“I’m pleased you two could come by, Kathy. I’m sorry Dick didn’t feel well and had to go up early.”

“Oh, we understand.”

“You needn’t apologize, Mr. Wayne—I hardly noticed. Aunt Kathy, I’m going out to the car to see if there’s any news on the radio about Robin.”

“All right, dear. I just need to say a word to Alfred.”

“Yes, Miss Kathy?”

“I hope Betty didn’t crush Dick’s ego with her chatter. Whenever she comes to Gotham, all she can talk about is ‘the Boy Wonder.’ How does that make an ordinary teen-aged boy feel?”

“In Master Dick’s case, I suspect he is suffering from...a mix of feelings.”

“Oh, adolescence is so confusing.”

“Indeed, Miss Kathy.”

The Lights of Metropolis

2008-11-11T04:39:35Z

Title: The Lights of Metropolis.
Characters/Pairings: Tim Drake (Robin), Cassandra Sandsmark (Wonder Girl).
Summary: The only thing Tim hates about being Robin is lying to his father. Has he mentioned that?
Universe: DC Comics standard. During the A Kid’s Game Teen Titans collection.
Genre: Adolescent angst. Created for batfic_contest on the theme “Metropolis.”
Rating: G.
Word Count: 406.
Disclaimer: Robin, Wonder Girl, and the Titans are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.

The Lights of Metropolis

“Yeah, we have a great view of the Lexcorp Tower from the dorm.”

Tim was on his personal cell phone, looking out from Titans Tower at the Golden Gate Bridge.

“On clear nights like this, the whole city is lit up. It’s really beautiful.”

Past Tim’s elbow I could see the Sun, still not touching the foggy Pacific horizon.

“Today? Uh, they took us on a tour of the monorail control center. That was neat.”

That afternoon we had chased down two escapees from Alcatraz. Tim had tracked their heat signatures as I flew him low over Oakland, and one of them almost fried us out of the sky.

“Yeah, I’m learning a lot, Dad. It’s a great program.”

Tim had some cover story to explain Titans weekends to his family. Of course, just as he didn’t tell them about us, he didn’t tell us about them. But we knew he had a “Dad” who wasn’t Batman—a “Dad” who thought he was studying engineering in Metropolis.

“Okay, I’ll call you if the bus gets held up on the way home. Love you. Bye.”

Tim clicked off his phone and stuck it back into his belt. He turned and saw me.

“I hate that part of this job, Cassie,” he said. “Lying to my family.”

“I know,” I told him.

He sighed. “I can’t talk about that to the guys.”

“Uh-huh?” Actually, I thought, you mention it about once a month.

“Almost everyone else, even Kory and Gar—they don’t have parents to talk to at all. I mean, Bart would do almost anything to see his mom again.”

“And Kon never even had parents.”

Tim looked away. “None to speak of. So I feel like a tool complaining about one hard part of having a family.” He looked at me again, though of course I couldn’t see his eyes. “But it is hard. You and your mother, you’ve got a great relationship. She knows about Wonder Girl. Can you imagine keeping all this secret from her?”

“I can’t,” I said. “I really can’t.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Cassie.” Tim put one gloved hand on my shoulder for a second, then went out and left me with the view.

You could tell your family, I thought. I guarantee, Tim, that you’d still have all their love. You’d still have all their respect—maybe even more.

But you might not still have Robin. You know that, Tim, and you’ve made your choice.

All Business

2008-10-23T16:00:29Z

Universe: DC standard, around the time of the To Kill a Bird Robin collection.
Genre: Case/Fight
Rating: PG for violence, language
Characters/Pairings: Tim Drake (Robin), Barbara Gordon (Oracle), Slade Wilson (Deathstroke), Dinah Lance (Black Canary)
Word Count: 4,100
Summary: An unknown assassin gunning for a three-hundred-pound crime lord who’s holed up in an apartment building full of kids? Just another night for Robin since he moved to Blüdhaven.
Disclaimer: Robin, Deathstroke, and other characters are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.

All Business

Friday night in Blüdhaven. I’m squatting on a roof over the back of the Tribella pawnshop, waiting for a part-time employee, full-time loser named Chickie Blaisdell to sneak out for a cigarette. And for this I skipped Homecoming?

It’s 11:30 when Chickie finally leaves the desk unattended. I wait till he’s concentrating on his lighter and then say, “Hey.”

He jumps and almost burns his nose. “Jeez, kid!” He looks up. “What’re you hanging around here for? You’re bad for business.”

I rappel down to the top of the doorframe. “You were glad to see me last month when you had a shotgun in your face.”

“Yeah, and two weeks ago I gave you a tip about Mickey Jay bringing in those diamonds,” Chickie says. “So we’re even.”

“You don’t think much of your life if you think it’s worth one snatch-and-grabber.” I put on my Batman growl. “You and me, Chickie—we’re together for the long haul. So what do you see going down now?”

“Nothing, kid.” He takes a long drag on his cigarette. “Nothing.”

I hang, not moving.

Finally, Chickie mutters, “Double-L’s crew needs money.”

“So tell me more.”

“This week, we took in four Rolexes, three chains, and a plasma TV. All from Double-L’s captains. Actually, from their ladies, but everyone knows who they are. And three days ago Cappy Joe himself brought in one of his gold teeth for the metal value.”

“I thought he looked different,” I say. Actually, I’d never seen Cappy Joe in my life—just his mug shot.

Chickie’s warmed up now. “My cousin, he works for Haney’s Used Cars? He says Dee-Diego traded in his Lexus for a Hyundai and cash. The red Lexus, you know?”

“I know.” I’ve seen that red Lexus around town—it was hard to miss. “So the Double-L crew’s business is down?”

As soon as I ask that, I know it’s stupid. Double-L controls drugs, prostitution, protection, fences, and almost all other street crime in the Teens and Twenties blocks—what Nightwing used to call the Freezing Range. That business is never down.

Maybe Double-L’s planning to move into warmer neighborhoods, I think, and his captains are raising capital. Maybe his business is so good he’s attracting competitors, and he wants more firepower. Maybe red Lexuses just aren’t fashionable anymore.

“I’ll check it out,” I tell Chickie, and start to reel myself back up to the roof.

Chickie calls, “We even now, kid?”

“Nope, we’re still in business. I’ll be checking in regularly.”

Sad thing is, Chickie really is one of my best pals in Blüdhaven. It’s not easy making friends in this town.

•••

As I take the rooftop route down to the Freezing Zone, I dial Barbara on my radio. “Do you have anything new on Double-L and his crew? Why they suddenly want cash?”

The Oracle voice comes back, sounding completely different from Barbara and yet so like her inflections that I can almost see her lips moving. “Checking data for Lloyd Maddison and associates.” Of course she knows Double-L’s real name. And of course she lets me know she knows.

I don’t like Barbara to think I haven’t done my homework, too. So, as I zipline across the big intersection at Gardner, I say, “I know Double-L stands for Livin’ Large. The guy’s six-six, three-fifty, right?”

“When his diet’s working. But the buffet table’s not the only way Maddison lives large. He has a whole apartment building on 19th.”

“Number 207,” I say before Barbara can tell me. “I’m on my way there now.”

“Yes, your dot’s on my screen. Maddison keeps the top floor for himself, and the rest of the building for his ladies.”

“Ladies?” I repeat. “How many?”

“My tabulation of birth certificates says he’s had children by fourteen women, eight of them listed as living in that building.”

Wow. “Fourteen kids?”

“No. Fourteen women, thirty-nine kids. Most of them probably in 207. Maddison sees himself as a big-hearted family man.”

“I’m touched.” I reach the roof of number 210, across the street. Both buildings are five stories tall. I scan 207. It looks like any other tenement on the block, except all the windows have steel guards across them—to keep little kids from falling out, I guess.

I pull out my binoculars and begin to scan window by window. I can see several figures moving around on the fifth floor, only a couple of silhouettes below—I guess all those kids are in bed.

“Hmm,” says Barbara.

“Hmm what?”

“I’m looking at the Odd Jobs bulletin board. It’s like a help-wanted for criminals.”

“Craig’s List for crime? You’ve got to tell me the URL.”

“It’s not on the web, Robin. Anyway, two months ago someone posted $30,000 for a hit in Blüdhaven. A crime lord who never leaves his home base. No names, but that profile fits your guy.”

“Thirty?” I say. “Isn’t that high for a neighborhood crime lord? Or are they paying by the pound?”

“Maddison’s a hard guy to reach, remember.”

Yeah, I guess he’s not a good target for someone new to the business.

“The way Odd Jobs works, whoever asked for that hit had to put the starting price into a Zandian account up front. So the $30,000 was solid. That ad stayed up for seven weeks—no takers. Then eight days ago, it disappeared.”

“And right after that, Double-L’s captains started to raise cash by pawning their best stuff. You think his gang was watching the Odd Jobs board?”

“I see four IPs from Blüdhaven logged on right now.”

Jeez, I wish I had Barbara’s system. To take my mind off that, I scan the roofs around 207 for lookouts or snipers.

“So maybe,” I think aloud, “Double-L saw the ad disappear and figured someone’s coming after him. He knew he needed more guns and muscle, so he sent out his captains to raise the cash to buy it. Anyone on that board now asking for more firepower in Blüdhaven?”

Barbara pauses just long enough to make me realize that was a silly question. “You’re in a seller’s market there, Robin. There’s always someone asking. Talent can name its price.”

Yeah, that was my new home town.

“I can poke around for more details of the Maddison job,” Barbara says. “But I don’t know if I’ll find anything.”

I tuck my binoculars back in their padded pocket.

“Robin? What are you thinking?”

“‘Thirty-nine kids,’ you said. Most of them across the street. If someone’s coming after Double-L right now, and he’s hiring extra gunmen, those kids could get caught in the middle.”

•••

So I end up on top of 207, peering into the fifth-storey windows with my foldout periscope. There are men counting cash, playing videos, arguing, comparing pistols. Not as many of them as I expect, though. And none is six-six, over three-fifty.

I figure Double-L may be downstairs, visiting one of his ladies. So I rappel down between the windows, peering left and right. Lots of shades with no lights behind them—kids’ bedrooms, I guess. A couple of windows are leaking light on the third floor, so I swing over to one.

It’s a kitchen. Young woman in a robe, baby wrapped in a pink blanket fussing in her arms. She takes a bottle from the microwave, swirls it, shakes a drop onto her arm. Baby follows the bottle with big brown eyes. Still no sign of—

Clang! BLAM! Something smacks my right side.

Move, Robin, move! Let out ten more feet of cord to drop fast. Swing around the corner of the building. Climb two storeys to get above the shooter.

The baby’s crying again. More lights go on. Men shout from the top floor.

“I’m handling it!” roars a deep voice. The men shut up. The voice must be Double-L himself.

The right side of my back is stinging like I slept on hornets. But it’s all on the surface—nothing got through my armor. On the other hand (or arm), I scraped my left elbow landing against the side of the apartment house. The night’s first blood.

Which brings me back to my business here. I fumble for my periscope and poke it an inch around the corner of the building. I see a huge dark shape half out a window, one leg on the fire escape. The steel guard for that window is hanging by one hinge, bent in the middle. The smoking tube of a shotgun is still pointed at where I was.

“I know you’re there, little man,” Double-L growls. “I got another barrel loaded.”

I can see that.

“Only reason I didn’t kill you is that would be bad for business.”

No, the only reason you didn’t kill me is that I’m wearing a Kevlar cape. But that gives me an opening. “I didn’t come here to kill you either, Maddison! You know how I operate. But the guys in that business—you know they’re coming.”

Double-L is silent for a second. “What the fuck are you talking about, little man?”

“The guys who put out the Odd Jobs contract on you,” I say. “I came here because I don’t want your kids to get hurt.”

“Odd Jobs,” Double-L grumbles. He leans further out the window—I can almost hear the fire escape creak—and calls upstairs: “Little Mac! You know anything about Odd Jobs?”

“It’s like a website, ain’t it?” comes an answer from the top floor. “Diego usually checks that thing.”

“Diego’s not here,” the boss points out. “So tonight it’s your job. Check it out.”

“He won’t find anything,” I remind Double-L. “The ad disappeared last week.”

“Last week? Damn.” His bulk disappears inside the building like a turtle’s head pulled into its shell. The window slams down.

“Boss? I didn’t find anything,” Little Mac calls from the top floor. “Boss?”

From where I hang, I can still hear Double-L’s rumble. It’s got that trying-to-be-polite tone of someone who has to leave a voicemail. “Cappy, this is Double-L. Twelve-thirty Saturday morning. Get to 207 now. Emergency. Bring in everybody.”

The sound is coming from a dark open window one storey below. I let out a little rope to go lower and swing over there to hear bett—

A face is looking out at me through the window guard. The young woman’s face, tired and scared. She’s still got her baby in her arms, the bottle on the sill beside her.

“I won’t hurt you,” I say without thinking.

“I know,” she answers. I guess that was the right thing to say.

The door on the other side of the bedroom opens into a den where Double-L is pacing, phone to his ear. “Diego, this is Double-L. I need you here. Now. That Robin kid says someone’s gunning for me.”

“Is that true?” asks the woman.

“Uh-huh,” I say, watching Double-L through the dark room over her shoulder. “I came here to tell him to move the kids out for a while.”

“He won’t do that.”

“But they might get hurt. You might get hurt.”

She shrugs, and the baby wriggles without opening its eyes. “He still won’t send us away. He says his family makes him safe. He says even killers slow down when they see kids.”

But the worst of them don’t stop. Double-L thinks he’s a family man—does he know he’s using his babies as shields? I take another glance at him—still on the phone. “I don’t care who gave you the night off! Get over here! And bring your brother!”

“Look,” I tell the woman. “Can you get out on your own if there’s trouble?”

She blinks. But only once. Deep down, she’s thought about this before. “Yeah, I think so. And I can carry Kaysha,” she says, cuddling the baby. “But some of the ladies, they have four, five kids.”

“Can you all get organized? Can you make plans together?”

Now her eyes grow wide. “You’ll have to talk to Francee. She’s on four.” She nods her head up to the floor above. “She was Lloyd’s first, and she’s kind of an auntie for all us girls.”

So Aunt Francee’s the only chance of getting Double-L’s kids out of the way of Double-L’s hunters? I look at the building above me. “Which window?”

•••

It takes ten minutes to wake up Francee, and another five to apologize. She gives me holy hell. Funny thing is, she’s only about ten years older than me. Once Francee calms down, she gets what I tell her right away. “So you all have to be ready to leave anytime,” I say.

“We can be,” she says, nodding. “Back stairs go righ’ down to the g’rage. We—“

A black SUV squeals up to the sidewalk, and three men jump out, carrying guns.

“Aw, crud.” We’re not even close to ready. Maybe I could draw them away—

“Calm down,” Francee says, peering down at the sidewalk. “Them’s jus’ the Ramirez brothers, an’ one of they cousins. Part of Diego’s crew. Lloyd’s callin’ ever’one in.“

Someone opens the front door to 207, and the three crew members slip in. Just what this situation needs, I think. Even more crossfire.

Francee’s not fazed by the sight of those guns. She just goes back to what she was saying: “I can tell the girls to have a bag packed for ever’ kid in they rooms.”

“No, you won’t have time to grab those,” I say.

“Okay, we’ll store a couple bags down in the g’rage.”

“Take cash. You can buy clothes and diapers once you’re—”

Two more guys come around the corner, running stiffly—the way men with pistols in their waistbands have to run. I look at Francee.

“Lynk an’ Jerry Ray,” she says.

They disappear through the front door, too.

“Lloyd’ll be holed up on five with his automatics,” Francee tells me, as if she’s explaining what she’ll cook for breakfast tomorrow. “So he won’ see us leavin’. Otherwise, he’d blow his top, try an’ stop us.”

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll do my best to find out when—“

A silver Chevy rolls silently up to the sidewalk.

“Hmm,” says Francee. “That one I don’ know.”

Uh-oh.

Out jumps a man in orange and blue body armor, full mask, one eye—Deathstroke.

•••

Slade Wilson? This job is bigger than I thought. Or he needs money.

He plants one hand on the hood of the car—probably stolen, untraceable—and vaults all the way over it to the sidewalk. His weapons waver on his shoulders like wings.

“Get everyone out now,” I tell Francee. “I’ll give you as much time as I can.”

I push off from the wall and let the rope zip through my gloves as I slide toward the front stoop. I land in a crouch in front of the door. Wilson stops, surprised.

“You took an awfully small job,” I tell him. “Business must be slow.”

He shrugs one broad shoulder. “Business is business. Now get out of the way.”

“Nope,” I say. “Justice and fairness and protecting the innocent and all that.”

Wilson points his firestaff. I swirl my cape in front of my chest, not that it could do much good against what he can blast at me.

“I’m not here for any ‘innocents’,” Wilson says.

“I don’t want them caught in the crossfire.” I’m hoping that Francee’s cleared out her floor by now, and is moving down to three.

“There won’t be any crossfire. Now stand aside, or I’ll kill you.” Wilson doesn’t sound happy about that. But he doesn’t sound sad, either. It might be time to listen.

Instead, I keep talking. When Wilson’s in his right mind, I know he’s all business. So I say, “I’ll give you three reasons why killing me’s a bad proposition. One!” I spoke fast so he wouldn’t have time to object, but now I’m not sure what I have to say. I keep winging it. “You kill me, and you know he’ll find out. You know he’ll come after you, and, uh, so will a bunch of other people.”

“He comes after the Joker all the time,” says Wilson, “and the Joker’s still around.”

“Two! You know I’m worth a lot more than Double-L. And I’m going to appreciate. In five years, my price could be close to Nightwing’s level. But if you kill me now, you’ll never get that contract, and no one will even pay you today.”

I can see Wilson consider that.

“Three!” I whip out my staff from under the cape and spring at him, swinging. I never had a number three. I just wanted an extra half-second.

Wilson’s as quick as everyone says. As my boot hits his gut, his sword is moving. It slices my staff in two.

I anticipated that. I swipe one half at his left knee, the other at his one eye. Two solid hits.

Then something I didn’t anticipate smacks the back of my head. I sprawl across the stoop, crumple against the stone balustrade. My head’s showing me fireworks.

But at least my head’s still attached. Wilson hit me with the flat of his sword, not the blade. He’s not using lethal force. Not yet.

He’s marching up the steps to the door. I dig a stun grenade from my belt and aim for the air in front of him.

Wilson has his pistol out as the grenade leaves my hand. He shoots and hits it in midair before it comes close to him.

Which means it’s still close to me. I get blasted down to the sidewalk, head ringing. My radio earpiece saves the hearing in my left ear, but it’s shattered. No more calls from Oracle.

I can hear voices from the building. Kids’ voices—sleepy, crying, asking questions. Mothers’ voices, pushing them on. Francee calling, “Move, girls! Move!” I need to delay Wilson a couple minutes more—without getting him too angry.

He’s at the door. He’ll need another minute at least to pick the lock—no, he’s got a key. How does he have a key?

I heave myself onto my knees, ignoring the pain everywhere else, and pull out a batarang on a cord. I whirl the line over my head, whip it out to wrap around his legs.

In one motion, Wilson leaps over the line, grabs the batarang, and yanks. Just when I planned to be pulling his ankles out from under him, he’s dragging me up the steps.

And then my face is pushed against the stone, and my arms are behind me, and my legs are hogtied to my wrists.

“I told you to stand aside,” Wilson says. He’s not even breathing hard.

And then he’s gone. I hear the front door slowly swing closed behind him and click shut.

Shit. Shit shit shit.

•••

I wriggle, testing how well Wilson knows his knots. Very well, of course. And my cape’s caught between my hands and my belt, so I can’t pop any blades and cut myself loose.

Men shout, and there’s a volley of shots in the front hallway. The bulletproof glass of the door absorbs a couple of rounds. Wilson fires his staff, and those shots stop.

I strain to hear the kids. The mothers. Nothing. A garage door rumbles open around the west side of the building. Three vans roar out of an alley. They tear down the street in front of me. Lots of heads inside. The last one has a flap of pink blanket caught in the back door.

There’s another burst of gunfire inside the building, more blasts from Wilson’s weapons, more screams from men—but only from men. Wilson must be working his way up the stairs.

I rub at the cape with my fingertips. It moves a fraction of an inch. I do it again. Another fraction. After twenty minutes of doing that, I’ll be able to reach my belt. Can Double-L keep Wilson busy that long?

I get two minutes before a Hyundai brakes at the curb. Three guys jump out. The nearest one has a big gap in his front teeth—Cappy Joe. He finally got Double-L’s message.

But these three don’t run into the building. They look up at the windows. They listen to the shots, crashes, yells. And I realize who posted the contract on Odd Jobs.

“Looking good,” says Cappy.

“I told you he was worth doublin’ the price,” says another.

“The job’s not done yet, Diego,” grumbles the third.

“Come on!” Diego answers. “You think anyone else could get up to Double-L’s floor? He’s worth every grand. And tomorrow, we start payin’ ourselves back.”

“We’d better,” says Cappy. “I want my damn teeth back.”

There are shots from an automatic, then a blast from a shotgun, then nothing.

I’m lying still, trying to look like a sack of garbage someone left out on the stoop. That shouldn’t be hard since I already feel like one.

But the third guy spots me. “Hey. It’s that Robin kid.”

“No shit?”

I go back to wriggling and clawing at the cape. I have to get loose. Come on, come on.

The captains move toward me. “Someone tied him up.”

“For us?” says Cappy. “They shouldn’t have.”

“You know,” says Diego. “We take him out, our business starts earnin’ even more.”

There’s an explosion high above, and window glass tinkles onto the sidewalk. I see my jumpline flopping in the air, and then two orange leather boots land beside my head. The captains stop at the bottom of the steps and stare.

“Stand back,” says Wilson. He grabs a hunk of my cape near the neck and hauls me up on my knees. I didn’t think I could be more uncomfortable, but I am. “This one’s not part of our contract.”

“We’re rewritin’ the contract,” says Diego.

“That’s not how I do business,” Wilson tells him.

“Take him out now, and in one month we’ll pay you double what we’ve already paid.”

“You have no idea what this one’s worth,” Wilson says.

“Then we’ll get a bargain by doin’ it ourselves,” Diego answers. Cappy and the third captain haul out their pistols.

Before the first shots sound, Wilson tosses me over the side of the stoop. I land on a pile of garbage cans—PRANG!—and bounce once for extra pain in the ribs.

Behind me I hear more gunfire. But it’s muffled. My head’s stuck inside one can, my face deep in a squishy plastic bag. I can’t breathe, can’t move. Are the captains going to get that bargain after all?

•••

No, I tell myself. This is not the way Robin goes out. Robin does not smother in a garbage can. I flex my body, pitching myself forward and back, forward and back. The metal can shifts, tilts, topples onto the sidewalk, spilling me and an apartment building’s worth of leftover pizza, dust bunnies, and baby wipes.

My elbow’s still bleeding, my ear’s still ringing, and my ribs ache. But at least my cape’s no longer blocking my belt. With numb fingers, I fumble for the compartment with the rasp and start working on the cord around my wrists and ankles. Three minutes later, I can stand. Not the best standing I ever did, but good enough.

I peek back over the stone balustrade. There are three guys sliced up on the sidewalk. Wilson took their Hyundai. His Chevy is on fire. I can hear a few groans from inside 207, but no children crying. The rest of the street is quiet. No sirens on their way—but then this is Blüdhaven. All the neighbors are minding their own business.

I stumble west toward the nest, pulling my backup radio out of my belt. “Oracle?”

“Robin! You—”

“I’m okay.”

“Canary’s coming for you,” Barbara says. “ETA...eighteen seconds.”

As soon as she says that, I hear a motorcycle turning off Hamilton. And I realize how grateful I am for a ride home. Dinah weaves her bike around the burning car and the bodies and pulls up beside me.

“I got him,” she says into her radio. “He looks like shit. But you should see all the other guys.”

“That was Deathstroke’s work,” I tell Dinah, gingerly lifting my leg over the back of her seat. “He took out Double-L and half his crew. And then he took out the other half.”

“Here’s something that should interest you, Robin,” says Barbara. “The Marriott reservations system says eight women and thirty-one kids just checked into the hotel in downtown Blüdhaven, paying cash for the whole penthouse floor.”

“So it’s over,” I say, letting myself sag against Dinah’s back.

“End of a bad day?” she asks as she guns her motor.

“Nope. End of a good one.”

Stuck in the Middle with You

2008-10-09T04:21:17Z

Title: Stuck in the Middle with You
Universe: DC standard, circa late 1990s
Genre: Case/Friendship; created for a batfic_contest short-fiction challenge on the theme “The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend.”
Rating: General Audiences
Characters/Pairings: Tim Drake (Robin), Dick Grayson (Nightwing)
Word Count: 500
Summary: Bruce told Tim never to tackle Killer Croc on his own. But what if he has help?
Disclaimer: Robin and Nightwing are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.

Stuck in the Middle with You

Bruce once told me not to tackle Killer Croc on my own. But Bruce is out of town, and I’ve put on ten pounds since then. I probably need two hundred.

At ten-thirty Croc hijacked an electronics truck. I’ve trailed him into the old port district, to a warehouse that only looks abandoned. I’m on a low roof across the street, watching Croc lift the junker blocking the big doors—

Someone else is up here. Dark figure, east corner. I crouch under my cape. Who?

“Hey, Timbo.”

“Dick?” I crawl over. “All right! The two of us can take Croc!”

“Not tonight. Watch.”

Across the street, Croc’s opened the doors, and his driver’s turning the truck to back in. We can see into the warehouse. Suddenly a forklift barrels out toward Croc.

POW!

“Oh, that’ll leave a mark!” Dick chortles.

Croc staggers, and I see two more forklifts moving behind him.

“Who’s in there?” I whisper.

“Outfit from Blüdhaven called the Breakers. They like boosting other gangs’ stashes, so there’s no police report.”

Croc swipes at one forklift and nearly knocks it over.

“So I guess they never expected to meet Croc in person.”

“Or in reptile. And he’s not happy to see them.”

Croc’s driver starts shooting into the warehouse. Someone in the back shoots back.

“Shouldn’t we stop them?”

“What can we do to them that they’re not doing already?”

I look around. No civilians to rescue. Not much property to protect.

“That’s some nice teamwork,” Dick comments.

All three forklifts are circling, taking turns whacking Croc from behind. One darts forward. BAM!

“And Croc goes down!”

The Breakers jump from the forklifts and sprint to a gray van parked in a black shadow.

I stand, slipping one of Bruce’s tracers into a notch on the end of my staff. I’ve been practicing this trick for a month. Lining up the distance, I whip the staff through the air.

A couple of seconds later, the tracer makes a gratifying CLANK on the van. “Ha!”

“Nice,” says Dick. “Of course, one of mine’s under the bumper. That’s how I followed them here.”

Of course.

The Breakers gun their motor as Croc roars out to the street. He throws himself in their way and swings an uppercut at the van—the whole van.

KLAUNG!

The windshield shatters, the hood pops open, the hoods’ heads bang on the dash. But the van’s momentum carries it forward. It comes down on Croc and pins him to the asphalt.

“That’s gotta hurt,” says Dick.

I hear the truck's engine start up. "He's getting awa—”

One of Dick's throwing disks smashes through the driver's window. The truck's motor chokes off. Nothing in the air but distant sirens, coming closer. Time to go.

“Easy night,” Dick tells me as we rappel down the far side. “For a change.”

“I guess. I was kinda looking forward to the fight.”

Dick’s mask shifts as his eyebrows rise. “You wanted to be in the middle of that?”

“Well,” I say, “only with you.”

Banner created by amara_anon for the batfic_contest community.

Dolls

2008-09-10T16:23:17Z

Title: Dolls
Universe: DC standard
Genre: Humor? Created in response to a batfic_contest call for drabbles.
Rating: General Audiences
Characters/Pairings: Tim Drake (before “A Lonely Place of Dying”—i.e., he’s figured out who Batman and Robin are, but he hasn’t met them)
Word Count: 499
Warnings: ’80s slang and technology
Summary: At Somerset School for Boys, the totally awesome thing about getting Tim Drake as a new roommate is all those wonderful toys.
Disclaimer: Tim Drake, Batman, and Robin are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.

Dolls

We knew Drake was going to be a totally rad sixth-form roommate when he opened his boxes. On top was a camera case.

“Awesome!” Frobisher said. “Can I touch it? Can I look through it?”

“Sure.” Drake shrugged. “My mom gave it to me. I’m still learning how it works.”

“I’ll show you if I can borrow it sometimes.” Frobisher twiddled the dials. “And I can teach you how to develop photos. I’m head of the Camera Club. We need more guys. What’s bogus about Somerset School is everyone’s into team sports, nothing interesting...”

I’d heard that speech so many times since Frobisher and I became roommates. I was more interested in Drake’s PC, so I helped him unpack the cords and accessories. He even had a modem—9600 baud. “Bitchin’!”

“As you can tell,” Frobisher said, “Pratt’s in the Computer Club. Which should get mega-respect, since that’s where the money is, but—Uh-oh.”

I looked up to see what was heinous enough to make Frobisher stop talking. Drake had put two plastic dolls on the shelf over his desk: one black, one all different colors. “Batman and Robin” dolls, made for little kids and Gotham tourists.

“You shouldn’t let anyone else see those,” said Frobisher. “Sixth-formers here don’t play with dolls.”

“I don’t play with them. I just...like them,” said Drake. “And they’re not dolls. They’re—”

“I’m saying this for your own good, Drake. If some guys find out—”

“New kid!” bellowed a voice from the hall. Without even thinking, Frobisher and I stepped back from Drake’s desk.

Reardon swaggered in, Burton right behind him. In public schools, wastoids get to repeat a grade. At Somerset, they get to be on the wrestling team.

“Third nerd’s got his own computer,” Reardon told Burton.

Burton smirked. “And he’s got dolls!”

“What did I tell you?” muttered Frobisher.

“Shut up, Froufrou,” said Reardon.

“They’re not dolls,” said Drake. “They’re—”

Reardon grabbed the colored one. “This one’s got no pants. You like undressing dolls, perv?”

“That’s his uniform,” said Drake. “Put him down, please.”

“Bite me.” Reardon held the Robin doll over his head. And of course he was, like, twice our height. As Drake reached up, Burton snatched the Batman doll. Reardon snickered. “Toss it here.”

Burton threw. Drake jumped onto his bed and bounced toward the ceiling. In midair he grabbed the Batman, and then landed beside Reardon.

“Smooth move, Flashdance. But I still got your—uggh!”

Drake had given him a karate chop in the neck. He bent back Reardon’s wrist and twisted his Robin away. Then he stepped back, teeth clenched. “Get out of our room.”

Reardon slouched toward the door. Burton followed. Before Reardon disappeared, he said, “I’m watching you, Drake.” It would have been scarier if he hadn’t been croaking.

It took five seconds for Frobisher to start talking: “That was so excellent! You’ve got to start a Karate Club, Drake! No one’ll ride you about those dolls now—”

“They’re not dolls,” said Drake. “They’re action figures.”

Working on a Case, chapter 11: Watch and Listen

2008-09-01T16:18:30Z

Characters: Titans as of the end of the Family Lost paperback, starting with Bart Allen (Kid Flash) and Tim Drake (Robin). This installment also includes Vic Stone (Cyborg) and Conner Kent (Superboy).
Rating: PG.
Content: Mystery with comic relief, or perhaps comedy with mystery relief.
Word Count: about 1,200 words per chapter. Unknown number of chapters.
Summary: Bart Allen as Kid Flash wants to help Robin on a Titans case involving a convict with a super-power and a strange police record. He knows honing his investigatory skills will require insight, concentration, and...what was the third thing? As the U.S. Marshals, the Alcatraz staff, and some Titans assemble to track down the escaped convict, Bart has decided that this is his chance to shine as a detective.
Continuity: DC Comics standard.
Disclaimer: The Titans and its members are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.
Notes: It all started here.

Chapter 11

Watch and Listen

“First thing,” says Warden Easton, and he has one of his staff guys pass out the photocopies that Susanna brought in, and I recognize them as the same papers I was reading last night at the JLA archive. “All our files on Eli Crossley were incomplete. The Titans delivered these pages to me this morning.”

And I zip up beside the warden and say, “See, what Robin and I found out was—”

“Son, it’ll go faster if we read,” says Deputy Chief Alioto, and I know that’s not true, I can talk much much faster, and the only problem is he can’t listen fast enough. But Vic points to my chair, so I sit back down and pout.

Chief Marshal Rawlins looks up from the last page and says, “So Crossley had a link to Baumhaus.”

And I stand up again to tell everyone about how Cross Cut met the psychologist back when she had another name, but the warden is saying, “And that case links him to Margie Ignatieff. You probably all know that she testified against Baumhaus.”

The three marshals say they remember, which leaves me with nothing to tell them, so I slump back in my chair and grumble until Kon whispers, “Stay cool, will you?”

Then Vic says, “Somebody working with Crossley from inside the JSO diverted communication between the Titans and Alcatraz last night. Our people are tracing that back right now.”

Easton nods and tells the mashals, “That person got us to ask your office to bring Crossley in early this morning. We’ve got surveillance video of what happened next.”

One of the technicians clicks on her keyboard, and the biggest monitor changes to a dark picture of the Alcatraz roof with a clock at the bottom that says 06:17:45, and I’m deducing that it came from early this morning, and that’s why the picture is so dim and foggy, when suddenly a helicopter fills the screen from the top. And I jump up and say, “That’s a Haumann model S-140, developed for the Air Force in—”

“It’s our chopper, son,” growls Alioto. “We know what kind it is.”

And Vic shakes his head at me and says, “Watch and listen.” Which is totally unfair ’cause I was watching, which is how I recognized the helicopter, and the rotors are so loud that there’s nothing to listen to, and I’ve read a lot of stuff that could be useful, and you should not tell your only detective to be quiet, and—

“There’s Margie,” says the warden. “Dr. Ignatieff.”

So I missed seeing the helicopter land, but now I’m paying attention ’cause a lady with short wavy brown hair has walked into view at the bottom of the screen, and the pilot’s window opens, and the lady and the pilot start talking.

The warden adds, with his voice kind of strained, “Margie came in early this morning to oversee the intake. After we changed the schedule.”

I watch the pilot hand Dr. Ignatieff some papers, and she hands him a paper coffee cup, but the helicopter blades are still too loud for us to hear what they’re saying to each other. Then Dr. Ignatieff walks around the front of the helicopter to the right side, which is where the Haumann model S-140 has its big door for letting people in and out.

Rawlins asks, “Any footage from the opposite angle?”

The tech shakes her head, and the warden grumbles, “We’ve got more cameras in our budget request for next year.”

“We know how it is, Sam,” says Alioto.

“Who else was inside that helicopter?” asks Vic.

“Marshal Spencer West. Marshal Virginia Parley. Pilot Salman Mirani,” says Rawlins, and I’m imagining that I’m reading those names so I’ll remember them while she adds: “Spencer flew in from Texas with Crossley. Parley and Mirani are based with us.”

“Ginny and Sal,” says Alioto, still watching the screen.

And now it’s 06:24:13, but we can’t see what was going on then ’cause the picture shows nothing but the helicopter with its blades still twirling until there’s a little movement toward the top of the screen when the door slides open. And twelve seconds later the blades speed up again, and the helicopter lurches into the air and rises out of the screen, and now we see a prison guard lying on the helipad with a big red puddle coming from his throat, and the wind from the helicopter is spreading the puddle across the roof, and over the roar of the rotors we hear the Rataratarat! Rataratarat! of an automatic weapon.

“Other cameras caught the gunshots out of the helicopter—from a distance. And one tracked it flying west into the fog,” says Easton.

Kon clears his throat. “I could hear someone shouting just before the takeoff. I couldn’t make out the words, though.”

I’m proud of Kon for his superhearing, and for figuring out the shouting might be a clue, and then I remember that Vic’s always fooling around with sound stuff, and I go, “Oooh! Cyborg—”

But Vic gives me the same look as before while he pops the cover off a jack in his arm and pulls out a wire, and he tells the technician at the keyboard, “Let’s run the audio feed through my system. I’ve been working on a program to wash out background sound.” Which is just what I was going to say if he’d only let me.

So we wait a minute while the technician rewinds the video and Vic runs his program, and then we see the helicopter on the roof with nothing happening again, but the blades don’t sound so loud this time, and there’s a kind of mumble in the background, and then suddenly we hear someone shrieking, “No! No! Don’t take me! Help! Help!”

And then the helicopter takes off, and we see the dead Alcatraz guard, and the gun goes Rataratarat! Rataratarat! at other guards even louder than before, and we can hear the scream of “No! No! Don’t take me! No!” getting farther and farther away.

Suddenly no one in the room is talking at all, ’cause we’re all thinking about Dr. Margie Ignatieff and the marshals and the pilot trapped on that helicopter, and Cross Cut shooting the guards, and I try to think about how to solve the case—but I can’t think of anything! I can’t think of any clues, or any leads, or any trails! All I can think about is Dr. Margie screaming from the helicopter, and now I don’t feel like a detective at all, and I just want to run and run as fast as I can ’cause I know l can do that.

So I yell, “I have to go to the bathroom!” and I run straight at the locked doors and vibrate through and head for the warden’s office to talk to Tim.

Continued here.

Working on a Case, chapter 10: Secure Room

2008-09-01T16:07:56Z

Characters: Titans as of the end of the Family Lost paperback, starting with Bart Allen (Kid Flash) and Tim Drake (Robin). This installment also includes Vic Stone (Cyborg) and Conner Kent (Superboy).
Rating: PG.
Content: Mystery with comic relief, or perhaps comedy with mystery relief.
Word Count: about 1,200 words per chapter. Unknown number of chapters.
Summary: Bart Allen as Kid Flash wants to help Robin on a Titans case involving a convict with a super-power and a strange police record. He knows honing his investigatory skills will require insight, concentration, and...what was the third thing? Without exactly meaning to, Bart has just helped to reveal that the convict must have had inside help when he made a bloody escape while being transfered into Alcatraz. Now the warden, the Titans, and the U.S. Marshals must combine force to respond.
Continuity: DC Comics standard.
Disclaimer: The Titans and its members are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.
Notes: It all started here.

Chapter 10

Secure Room

So I run to the window and call, “We’re in SOAP Procedure, Superboy! Nobody on or off this island!”

“Huh? What?” Kon doesn’t understand. “No landing? You know there’s a helicopter coming in, right?”

“Oh, grife!” So I run out of the warden’s office and vibrate through Susanna’s door and sprint up the hallway and up all the stairs, and I’m running around the heliport on the roof of Alcatraz and waving my arms to stop the helicopter from landing ’cause even though it has U.S. MARSHALS markings now I know that Crosscut’s insider might be inside the copter, but I’m just waving my arms and not making a whirlwind ’cause the JSO people inside the copter could be good guys after all, and I’m wondering how long I should keep the helicopter—

WHOMP!

“Dude! You’re embarrassing us.”

Kon’s thick arms are around my chest, and now that he’s grabbed me his tactile telekinesis won’t let me vibrate away, and I can’t even wriggle around to look at him, so I calmly explain:

“Crosscut has a helper! They blocked Robin’s voicemail from a café! They took the psychologist lady, and now they might be up there!”

“Uh, yeah.” But Kon’s not letting go, and the helicopter’s right over our heads getting in position to land, and he yells in my ear, “Does Vic know all that?”

“Of course he knows! He was right there!”

“Does Robin know?”

“Yeah, he—”

“So you can calm down, right? Play it cool.”

And usually I don’t think very long about anything Kon says, but this time he makes me remember that a smart detective would pretend that he hasn’t deduced Crosscut had an helper inside the JSO so that insider couldn’t know that the detective was on their trail, which Robin and I will be as soon as we figure where that trail is. So I stop wriggling, and Kon stops squeezing me, but he leaves one hand on my shoulder, and he’s still using his annoying TTK, and finally the helicopter is touching down on the helipad, and the wind makes me think maybe I should have put goggles on my Kid Flash uniform, too.

And then three people come out of the helicopter. There’s a lady with short gray hair and blue sunglasses and a blue suit, and there’s a man with a brown crew cut and leathery skin and a bulge under his armpit that I deduce is a big handgun, and there’s another man with straight black hair and silver sunglasses and a thick black briefcase in each hand. Plus I spot a pilot with a short gray beard inside the helicopter, still working on the controls to shut down the motor. None of them looks like Crosscut’s helper, but of course that’s just what an insider would look like.

As the lady walks by us, she says, “You fellows with the Titans?”

“Yes, ma’am,” says Kon. “Kid Flash here was just making sure the helipad was clear.”

“Oh, is that what he was doing?” asks the marshal with the crew cut, and he gives me a smirky look as he passes, and I want to say something nasty back, but Kon squeezes my shoulder and I can’t think of anything to say anyway.

And by that time the warden and Vic are coming out of the stairwell, along with two guards in body armor carrying shock guns, and the warden says, “I’m Sam Easton, and this is Cyborg, head of the Titans.”

“Janice Rawlins, Chief Marshal, Head of Regional Operations,” says the lady, and she puts out her right hand to shake, and I wonder what Easton’s going to do since he doesn’t have a right hand, but then he grips Rawlins’s right hand with his left, and the lady keeps talking as if that’s ordinary. “Deputy Chief Marshal Frank Alioto. Marshall Gil Montez.”

And each marshal nods at his name, and Cyborg and the warden nod back, and the warden says, “Frank,” and the marshal with the crew cut says, “Sam,” and by now they’re all striding into the stairwell, and Kon and I follow after the marshal with the briefcases.

“I set up a command center in the secure room,” says the warden, leading the way onto the top floor.

“Sounds good,” says Rawlins. “Sorry about your guys.”

“Sorry about yours.”

“We’re marshals, Warden,” Rawlins snaps. “We don’t give up looking for anyone until we see a body.”

“Then let’s get to work,” says Easton, and he leads Rawlins and all of us into a big room on the floor above his office. It’s got a big table and white boards on the walls like other meeting rooms, but it’s also got no windows and armored electric cables, and a whole wall of television monitors showing Alcatraz from a dozen different angles, and four people in Alcatraz uniforms working on different computer controls.

Kon goes up to Vic and asks, “Do I need to be here? I could be out flying and helping Cassie find—”

“You sit down until you get an assignment,” Vic orders, so fierce that I sit beside Kon in the seats along one wall.

And everybody else is finding seats around the table or standing near the screen, and Susanna the warden’s assistant brings in a stack of papers that she hands to one of the guys in uniforms, and the marshal named Gil is pulling a laptop and another machine out of his briefcases and hooking them up, and the helicopter pilot comes in and sits down in one corner, and then Susanna leaves, and the guards shut the thick doors after her and lock them tight—and I look around and don’t see Tim. For half a second I’m really worried, but then I deduce that Tim’s still back at the warden’s office fooling around with the warden’s computer.

Kon is muttering real low to me: “I don’t get why Vic’s so pissed at me today. But what good can we do stuck in here?”

“What can we do? We can listen for clues about what Cross Cut’s up to,” I tell him, “and use those to figure out where he’s going.” Since Kon hasn’t been working on this case as long as I have, I explain: “Anything might be a clue, and Robin says part of being a detective is spotting what’s important—Oooh!”

And right then I realize how the Titans need a detective at this meeting, and since Tim is off playing computers, I can be that detective, and I can gather the facts and spot the clues and deduce where to find Cross Cut. I already helped to figure out how he wanted to come to Alcatraz and almost why he did, so how hard will the rest of this case be?

Continued here.

Random Access

2008-07-29T02:21:27Z

Characters: Tim Drake, Alfred Pennyworth.
Rating: G.
Content: Mild humor, moderate technology. Inspired by the encryption-breaking breakthrough reported here and here.
Word Count: 800.
Summary: Tim is rifling through drawers and shelves in stately Wayne Manor’s back pantry. Alfred would like to know why.
Continuity: DC Comics standard, practically anytime.
Disclaimer: Robin, Alfred, and their sidekick Batman are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.

Random Access

KRATSH! Clatter clatter clatter.

“Master Timothy?”

“I’m okay, Alfred!”

“Yes, but is the house still ‘okay’?”

“I just knocked over some stuff in the back pantry closet.”

“And you will pick it all up again?”

“Um. Yeah. Just as soon as I”—PRASH!—”Oops. I’ll get that, too. See, I read about this new way to discover someone’s encryption key, and I want to test it out. What’s in these drawers?”

Clinkity clang ping clink tinkety-tink.

“Are you looking for a cooking utensil, Master Timothy? Because otherwise, burrowing like a badger through those drawers won’t—”

“I’m looking for canned air. Do we have any in the laundry room?”

“Canned air? Oh, dear. I suppose it’s only natural for someone to start selling canned air, now that we’ve all been persuaded to buy bottled water.”

“It’s not really canned air, Alfred. It’s a bunch of fluorocarbons in an aerosol can. When they spray out and vaporize, they absorb so much heat energy that they turn stuff cold. Below freezing.”

“And this is useful because?”

“Anything under here? No. You know how some wise guys are using encryption software?”

“So you’ve told me.”

Thump ba-dump. Phudd!

“Like Braeman Brothers, that brokerage that’s laundering money for the Westgate mob? Even if we get into their computers, we can’t read their files without knowing their encryption key.”

“And this justifies upending my laundry supplies because...?”

“I’m getting to that. Some professors at Princeton have figured out that the encryption key stays on a DRAM chip for a while after you turn off the computer. That data’s supposed to disappear, but it doesn’t.”

“Rather like the mess in the back pantry.”

“I’ll clean that up, I promise. Right after I find the canned air. Are you sure you don’t have any in your supplies? It’s sold under names like Blow-a-Way and Dust-Off.”

“I remove dust the old-fashioned way, Master Timothy: by not letting it accumulate. But what does dusting have to do with a ‘DRAM chip’?”

“These professors figured out that if you spray a DRAM chip with canned air, it cools down so fast that the data gets frozen. Maybe there’s a can up here? I bet stuff has been stuck inside these cupboards for years.”

Clunk! Demp! Cloppedy clop clop clop.

“Well, not anymore.”

“Sorry. Hand those back up. See, the damage isn’t too bad.”

“Master Bruce said the same just last week, down in the clinic.”

BOMP!

“By all means, Master Timothy, just jump back down without warning.”

“Where haven’t I looked, Alfred? Any other place you hide cleaning supplies?”

“I have more supplies in my supply closet, of all places. But I do not hide them. It just seems that neither you nor Master Bruce ever bothers to look for—”

Clatter! Klunk krump klank.

“Perhaps I should have hidden those away.”

“Was there a huge sale on paper towels? Anyway, as soon as I read what those professors wrote about freezing a DRAM chip, I thought, ‘I gotta try that!’”

“Of course.”

“So I wrote a reboot code. Once I test it, then I can sneak past the armed guards at the Braeman office, open up one of their units, freeze the DRAM chip, reboot, and copy the DRAM data onto a pocket drive.”

“I stopped understanding you after ‘reboot code,’ Master Timothy. And I stopped listening after ‘sneak past the armed guards.’ Is it necessary to—”

“Then I’ll bring the data back here and isolate the encryption key. After that, we’ll be able to read anything off that computer whenever we want. But first—whew!—I have to find some canned air.”

“Alas, we’ve gone for years with nothing but ordinary air.”

“I’m serious, Alfred! I used to buy Blow-a-Way to blast dust out of my computer keyboard.”

“Ah, now I see the problem! Of late, no computers have been allowed to remain in this house long enough for their keyboards to collect dust. As I recall, your exact words were: ‘How can you expect me to track the Riddler or finish a term paper using a model that’s eight months old?’”

“Oh. Well, yeah, I guess I haven’t bought any Blow-a-Way for a couple years. But don’t we have any left over? Maybe in some old closet like this?”

Bop!

“Ouch! Who left those there?”

“Who left brooms in the broom closet? Let me think.”

“And nothing but brooms. My head’s fine, thanks for asking. Dammit, why don’t we have any canned air?”

“Is there really need for such agitation?”

“Bruce is a billionaire, right? A can of Blow-a-Way costs, like, four dollars! All I want to do is cool down a stupid DRAM chip! It’s not like I want to run the test with liquid nitrogen!”

“Oh, Master Timothy, why didn’t you say you could use liquid nitrogen? Master Bruce has six thousand liters stored down in the cave.”

Working on a Case, chapter 9: Helper

2008-05-20T03:24:02Z

Characters: Titans as of the end of the Family Lost paperback, starting with Bart Allen (Kid Flash) and Tim Drake (Robin). This installment also includes Vic Stone (Cyborg), Gar Logan (Beast Boy), and a teensy bit of Conner Kent (Superboy). Where are the women? Off doing real work.
Rating: PG.
Content: Mystery with comic relief, or perhaps comedy with mystery relief.
Word Count: about 1,200 words per chapter. Unknown number of chapters.
Summary: Bart Allen as Kid Flash wants to help Robin on a Titans case involving a convict with a super-power and a strange police record. He knows honing his investigatory skills will require insight, concentration, and...what was the third thing? Bart has just learned that the prisoner he and Tim were investigating has made a bloody escape from Alcatraz, and the warden blames Robin.
Continuity: DC Comics standard.
Disclaimer: The Titans and its members are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.
Notes: It all started here.

Chapter 9

Helper

Warden Easton stares at me as if I’m crazy, and I try to look back steadily as if I’m not, and meanwhile I see that his right arm ends before his elbow, where his stripy dress shirt is sewn shut, and I know I’m not supposed to stare but—

“Check that phone number,” the warden tells his secretary, so Susanna picks up his telephone and starts punching buttons, and I’m ready to repeat the number, but she’s so good at remembering that I don’t need to.

I look at Vic with a grin ’cause I’m being helpful after all, and he points back at me and growls, “I’ll talk to you later.”

So I’m still gulping when Gar saunters into the warden’s office and announces, “All the units are in secure lockdown.”

“One piece of good news,” Easton answers. “It’ll be a tough week. Some guys started to think ‘escape’ as soon as they heard the shots this morning.”

“I did a walk-through with your riot squad,” says Gar. “As a Siberian tiger. That should give your prisoners something else to think about.”

“Guy’s Diner?” Susanna says into the phone. “Did two...young men come in last night at 2:30 to make a phone call? Young men in...unusual clothing? . . . You don’t know. . . . He went off shift three hours ago.”

“But I ate all the white peach pie!” I shout. “Ask about the black pudding!”

The assistant raises her painted eyebrows at me, but she goes ahead and asks: “Do you serve black pudding? . . . No, not that hungry, thanks. What about white peach pie? . . . You had some yesterday evening, but now you’re all out. All right, thanks. I’m afraid we’re outside your delivery area.” And she hangs up the phone and says, “I guess the little guy’s story checks out.”

Then Gar says, “And we all know Kid Flash couldn’t make up something like that if he wanted to.”

And I start to smile again, but then I deduce Gar’s saying I’m not that smart, so I’m about to yell, Hey! But Tim clenches his fist and nods once, and I know he means Good job, Bart, so I calm down, and then Vic grumbles, “Try being helpful for once, Logan!”

So Gar says, “Sure, Rusty! I’ll pick up all the screws and nuts when your head explodes. Which, at the rate you’re going this morning, will be in about three minutes. Look: it’s obvious that Crossley had help preparing his escape. How about we all get on the same side and figure out where that help came from?”

And Vic glares back at Gar, and Gar rolls his eyes, and I look at Tim, but of course I can’t see his eyes, so I look at Vic, and now he’s glaring at the warden, and the warden glares back, and finally Vic tells him, “Let’s fix this.”

“Right,” says Easton. “We can start with that email. The one that made us transfer Crossley in this morning. If your Agent R—”

“Robin,” says Tim.

“Robin. If you didn’t send it,” the warden asks, “where did it come from?”

And Tim answers, “Did you check the source code?”

“Source code?” repeats the warden, but Susanna is leaning over his computer clicking and typing, and she says:

“Well. The two messages came from different IP addresses.”

So Tim almost jumps over the desk to look at the screen, and I zip around behind him, and all I see on the screen are a bunch of internet addresses and numbers, but he says, “That first message came from a Titans server, but the second—I’ll have to look that up.” And he types into a little keyboard thingie that he pulls out of his sleeve. “This could take a few—Robin here. . . . Got it. Thanks!” And I know he’s hearing from Oracle, and I know I’m the only one who knows, which makes me feel special, even if I don’t get to hear what Tim hears, and then he says: “The second message was sent from an internet cafe on Webster Street called Java Lava.”

“I’m on it,” says Gar, and he lifts the warden’s window and turns into a green hawk and soars off toward the city.

“But how,” says the warden, staring at his computer screen, “could anyone there send an email that looked just like yours, with the countersign we gave you?”

And Tim is already slipping into the chair in front of the keyboard and disconnecting what I recognize is the Ethernet cable and sticking a flash drive from his belt into a USB port, and then he says, “May I run a diagnostic, sir?”

And so all of us—except for Susanna, who goes out to her own office—we stand around and watch Tim, and watch the screen, and watch Tim some more for what must be thirty-five seconds, and finally he clears his throat and says, “Warden, your hard drive’s infected with a type of spyware called Carob.”

“How?” asks Easton. “We’ve got the best firewall software in the world.”

And I’m waiting for Tim to tell him that Batman’s firewall is better, but he says, “It’s a new program—appeared two months ago. It travels in attachments.”

“No, we’ve got a strict policy about opening attachments,” says the warden. “The server won’t even let them through unless they come from a JSO address.”

And then Susanna calls in, “Warden, I just dialed your extension, and your phone’s not ringing.”

So the warden picks up his phone and says, “Hello? Hello? Nothing!”

“It just sent me to your voicemail,” Susanna says. “Testing testing. This is a voicemail test.” And she hangs up and comes back in and looks at the warden’s phone, and the light is still not blinking.

And Vic and Easton look at each other.

“Damn,” says Vic.

“Damn,” says the warden.

Susanna runs back out to her office and shuts the door to the hall.

“Crossley’s helper had a JSO address.”

“And access to our phone system. Susanna!” shouts Easton. “I’ll call DC. You call Regional—”

And I see she’s already dialing a number on her cell phone.

“—and tell them we’ve got an insider. Then start the SOAP Procedure. Nobody on or off this island.”

And then I deduce that someone sent the warden spyware in an attachment and was reading all his email and sent him a fake email that looked like it came from Tim so the warden would get the Marshals to fly Crossley into Alcatraz early, and that same someone—or someone working with that someone—diverted the warden’s voicemail so he never heard Tim’s advice to fly Crossley into Alcatraz later, and at least one of those someones had to be inside Alcatraz and inside the JSO!

And Vic is gritting his teeth and snapping connections from his fingertips into the warden’s phone, and Tim is pursing his lips and typing furiously on the computer, and the warden has his cell phone in his one hand and is calling someplace with a 202 area code, and I’m thinking: What can I do?

And then Kon shows up outside the warden’s window, and he looks in through the glass, and he says, “Am I the only one who’s working here?”

Continued here.

Working on a Case, chapter 8: Tagged Urgent

2008-05-15T03:03:31Z

Characters: Titans as of the end of the Family Lost paperback, starting with Bart Allen (Kid Flash) and Tim Drake (Robin). This installment also includes Conner Kent (Superboy), Raven, Gar Logan (Beast Boy), and Vic Stone (Cyborg).
Rating: PG.
Content: Mystery with comic relief, or perhaps comedy with mystery relief.
Word Count: about 1,200 words per chapter. Unknown number of chapters.
Summary: Bart Allen as Kid Flash wants to help Robin on a Titans case involving a convict with a super-power and a strange police record. He knows honing his investigatory skills will require insight, concentration, and...what was the third thing? Bart has just learned that the prisoner he and Tim were investigating has made a bloody escape from Alcatraz.
Continuity: DC Comics standard.
Disclaimer: The Titans and its members are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.
Notes: It all started here.

Chapter 8

Tagged Urgent

As soon as I hear Kon say, “escaped!” I gulp down the rest of the corn flakes, and I run down the stairs and out the door and halfway across the harbor, and then I see I’m not wearing my gloves, so I turn around and dash back for them and then sprint across the harbor again and get to the shore of Alcatraz Island and wait for Kon to show up.

“Who escaped?” I ask him.

“A guy named Crossley,” Kon says, and he doesn’t stop to talk—he flies straight up the cliff to the prison.

And I run after him, not feeling surprised ’cause I already deduced it was Crossley, but I was still hoping it was some other guy.

Kon tells me, “Vic’s pissed.”

“Ooh, is he mad at me? ’Cause I didn’t mean to sleep through the alarm; I was out really late working on a—”

“Vic’s pissed at everyone,” Kon says, and he keeps flying up to the roof of the prison. “He’s even mad at Tim.”

“But—But Tim told the warden not to bring Crossley here yet!” I tell Kon, running up the stone wall. “What happened?”

“I don’t know the whole story. What I heard is that the Marshals brought him in on their helicopter. There was a guard and a psychologist waiting—”

“Dr. Margarethe Sackler Ignatieff?”

“What? I don’t know, Bart! Will you just listen? The helicopter lands, and the doc and the guard go out to meet it. As soon as the door opens, the guy slashes the guard’s throat! He yanks the doctor into the helicopter, and it takes off with him shooting out the window at guards on the walls. I just flew one of those guys over to St. Luke’s.”

That’s the hospital where they fixed my knee, so I know the surgeons will do a good job on that guard, but I also know it would have been better for him if he hadn’t got shot at all. And now that I’m on the roof of the prison, I can see Raven and a medic crouching over a man lying on the gravel, so I deduce that’s another wounded guard, and I run over to them and ask, “What can I do?”

“He has already started to heal,” says Raven. “I took much of his pain.”

“Yep, signs are stable,” says the medic, and she waves Kon over. “Flyboy! This one’s ready for the E.R. Keep pressure on all those wounds, and try not to drop him.”

“Pressure. Got it,” says Kon, and he wraps his thick arms around the guard and zooms off toward the city.

And I’m jumping around in front of the medic, asking, “Is anyone else hurt? I’ve read eight books on emergency surgery!”

“And here I’ve wasted the last nine years with hands-on training,” she mutters as she rips off her latex gloves. “We don’t need you now, kid.”

“What about that guy?” And I point to where another guard is lying on the ground next to the helipad, and as soon as I do I realize why they put a sheet over him, and why the sheet has big red spots. “Oooh.”

“You could’ve helped twenty minutes ago,” says the medic, and she picks up her equipment and walks away.

And I look at Raven and say, “I didn’t mean to come late! But I never heard the alarm before, so I didn’t know what it sounded—”

“I must return to the Tower,” Raven tells me. “All the emotions below are so intense, angry, chaotic. I do not know what might happen if I stay.”

“Yeah, you should leave,” I agree. “But what can I do?”

“Cyborg is asking where you are.”

“Um. What else can I do?”

And Raven peeks out from under her cowl and says, “You must not be afraid, Bartholomew”—but I’d be a lot less afraid if she didn’t say that in her spooky voice and then disappear in a column of black smoke.

I still don’t want to see Vic ’cause I know he’s all angry, but I also know I have to, and I want to find Tim, so I run down to administration ward and into the office of Warden Easton’s secretary, and there’s Gar leaning on the wall.

“Glad you could join us, Kid,” he mutters.

“I didn’t mean to—”

But Gar puts his finger over his lips and points his thumb into the warden’s office, and inside we can hear a man yelling: “Right there on my screen! A message from ‘Agent R’ saying we should bring in Crossley first thing this morning. Tagged URGENT. I was up till midnight arranging his transfer with the Marshals.”

“Warden, I never sent that email,” says Tim.

“You? This is ‘Agent R,’ Stone? I asked for your best investigator, not some kid!”

“Robin is our best investigator!” barks Vic. “And he never sent that email.”

“So what’s this?” says Warden Easton. “It hit my in-box at 10:38 last night.”

“We were still working on the case then!” I whisper to Gar. “Tim was on his computer—ooh!”

“Let’s keep that detail to ourselves,” Gar whispers back.

And a woman’s voice is saying, “...that email’s in the same format as the message that asked us to fax Crossley’s file to Agent R. The exact same format.” And I deduce that lady is the secretary whose office Gar and I are hiding in.

“And,” finishes Easton, “it starts with the security code we agreed on for this case. And now you’re telling me you never sent it?”

And there’s no sound for what seems like a long time to me—two or three seconds at least—and then Tim speaks, but his voice sounds small and tight: “I didn’t send that email. I left you a voicemail with my advice at about 2:40 in the morning.”

“Voicemail?” shouts the warden. “Do you see a light blinking on my phone? Susanna, did I have any voicemails this morning?”

“No, sir,” says the woman. “None.”

“Warden, I called your line from a diner somewhere between here and...a secret location in Nevada.”

“A ‘secret location’? A phone call no one heard from a place no one can identify?”

“Watch it, Easton!” growls Vic. “You bust my balls all you want, but don’t talk to my kids like that.”

“Stone, I’ve got one man dead, my best department head missing, and two guys in the hospital because of your kids! The Marshals are down two deputies and a pilot because of your kids! So I’ll say whatever I have to!”

And I know what I have to do. I run into the warden’s office and zip between Vic and Easton and open my mouth—and I see their angry faces, plus Susanna’s and even Tim’s, and I want to run out again. But I don’t! I say, “Robin called from Guy’s Diner on Highway 108 in Long Valley, California! For takeout, call 760-835-2215!”

Continued here.

Working on a Case, chapter 7: White Peaches and Black Pudding

2008-05-06T19:31:02Z

Characters: Titans as of the end of the Family Lost paperback, starting with Bart Allen (Kid Flash) and Tim Drake (Robin).
Rating: PG.
Content: Mystery with comic relief, or perhaps comedy with mystery relief.
Word Count: about 1,200 words per chapter. Unknown number of chapters.
Summary: Bart Allen as Kid Flash wants to help Robin on a Titans case involving a convict with a super-power and a strange police record. He knows honing his investigatory skills will require insight, concentration, and...what was the third thing?
Continuity: DC Comics standard.
Disclaimer: The Titans and its members are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.
Notes: It all started here.

Chapter 7

White Peaches and Black Pudding

I’m running back to San Francisco from Desert Falls, and I’m about halfway home, but Tim’s wriggling around in my arms, tapping buttons on his communicator and his sleeves, and it’s kind of annoying, but of course I don’t drop him, ’cause he’s my pal and we’re working on a case and I’m going about 480 miles an hour. But then he taps my shoulder instead and points to a set of lights off in the flats, so I zoom that way and set Tim down beside a tumbleweed and say, “What?”

“I want to contact Alcatraz,” he says as he yanks off his helmet, “and I can’t get a good signal out here. I should’ve called before we left.”

And down the street I see a silver building with a shiny sign on top that says GUY’S DINER – Open 24 Hours and a blue sign by the front door that says Pay Phone Inside. So I grab Tim and run over there and set him down, and he coughs and mutters something about warning him next time. And then I have to run back and fetch his helmet which he dropped, but you don’t hear me complaining about him.

And the only person inside the diner is a man in an apron behind the counter stacking plates, and Tim tells him, “We’re here to use the phone, sir,” and hurries over to the telephone in the corner and digs inside his thingie-belt for his Titans phone card.

And the man in the apron looks at me and he looks at Tim, and he looks at me again, so I wave at him, and he says, “You young fellows been at a party?”

“We’re Titans!” I tell him. “We’re heroes who fight crime. And we’re detectives!”

“Uh-huh,” says the man, still stacking plates.

And Tim is saying into the phone, “Warden Easton, this is Agent R of the Titans, calling about 2:25 AM.”

“See, we’re working on a case!” I tell the man. “Both of us! What kind of pie is that?”

’Cause it has about four inches of sliced white fruit, and the crust looks crispy, and there’s still half of it left on a silver platter under a glass dome, and now I can’t stop thinking how I haven’t had anything to eat since my snack three hours after dinner.

The man says, “That’s white peach. You want a slice?”

“Yeah!” So I sit down at the counter, and the man lifts the dome and slides off half of what’s left onto one of his plates while Tim keeps talking into the phone:

“...engineered his transfer to make contact with Dr. Ignatieff, though we don’t know why. I’d like to meet with the doctor in the morning. I think it would be good to postpone Crossley’s move for twenty-four hours. Please call Titans Tower when—”

“So you fellows put the bad guy in jail?” the man asks.

So I swallow most of the bite in my mouth and say, "He’s already in jail.”

“Um-hmm.” And the man goes back to stacking his plates. “Seems like that would make your job a lot easier."

"But—but we deduced that he's trying to escape from jail! Or to connect with his old gang! Or to take revenge on a witness. Or something."

And the man turns to put his stack away and says, “Well, it's good you fellows have that all figured out."

And I picture a big white peach pie falling on my head, since I don’t think I sounded like a detective at all, and for a minute the only thing to hear in the diner is Tim making another phone call:

“Hi, Cyborg, this is Robin. Kid Flash and I are— . . . No, those two aren’t with us.”

And I’m looking for anything else to think about, so I start to read the GUY’S DINER take-out menu, and I say, “You guys left this pudding off the dessert list.”

So the man looks where I’m pointing, and says: “Black pudding? That’s more like a sausage.”

And now I feel even more dumb ’cause I read about blood sausages in fifteen different cookbooks, and I just didn’t want to remember sausages made with blood, but now I do, and my stomach feels so queasy that I can hardly finish my slice of white peach pie.

And meanwhile Tim is saying: “Kon told me they were going to a beach; he didn’t say how long. . . . Well, they won’t—Cassie won’t get into trouble.”

“We don’t actually get much call for black pudding. I tell the Mexicans it’s just like morcilla, but even then they don’t order it.” And the man points at the glass dome and says, “More pie?”

“Yes, please!” I say.

So the man slides the last quarter of the pie onto my plate and puts the platter in the sink behind him. “But we keep black pudding on the menu as a local tradition, what with the slaughterhouse on the other end of town.”

So now I’m back to picking at the pie crust ’cause I don’t want to be rude, but I’m afraid the man’s going to start talking about bringing over the blood to make black pudding, and already I’m thinking about that, and I can’t stop thinking about it, and the man didn’t even tell me anything yet, and finally Tim taps me on the shoulder and says, “Let's go."

So I finish the whole slice at superspeed and jump up.

The man behind the counter blinks a long blink at the empty plate, and he says, "I guess you young fellows might be heroes at that. That'll be seven dollars."

So I look at Tim, who knows I don't have any money in my uniform, or even pockets to hold money, and he sighs and pulls out his card again and says, "Debit, please.”

And the man looks at the card and reads off, “Agent R,” and he looks at Tim, and Tim looks back at him through his mask all serious, and the man shrugs and runs the card through the machine. And then we go outside, and Tim puts his helmet back on, and I light out for San Francisco again.

We finally get back to the Tower seventeen minutes later, and even Tim’s ready to go to bed, so I run up to my bedroom and pull off my mask and gloves and boots and close my eyes for just a minute, and then there’s sun shining through the window, and my pillow is wet beside my cheek, but I’m still so sleepy that my whole head is buzzing. I don’t know how Tim stays up all those nights with Batman.

And on top of that I’m hungry again, so I put on my boots and run down to the kitchen, and it must be real early ’cause no one else is up, and I pour a box of corn flakes in a bowl and I look out the window at the sunrise, and there’s Kon!

Kon? He’s floating in the air and pointing and calling, so I go over to the part of the window we can open a little, and I open it a little and say, “Hi!”

“Didn’t you hear the alarm?” he asks me.

So I explain: “I can't hear anything over this buzzing!”

“Dude, that’s the alarm!” says Kon. “We’re all over at Alcatraz! Some prisoner they were bringing in this morning just sliced up two guards and escaped!”

Continued here.

Working on a Case, chapter 6: Brainstorming

2008-05-06T19:25:08Z

Characters: Titans as of the end of the Family Lost paperback, starting with Bart Allen (Kid Flash) and Tim Drake (Robin), with a cameo appearance by members of the Justice League.
Rating: PG.
Content: Mystery with comic relief, or perhaps comedy with mystery relief.
Word Count: about 1,200 words per chapter. Unknown number of chapters.
Summary: Bart Allen as Kid Flash wants to help Robin on a Titans case involving a convict with a super-power and a strange police record. He knows honing his investigatory skills will require insight, concentration, and...what was the third thing?
Continuity: DC Comics standard.
Disclaimer: The Titans and its members are owned by DC Comics under copyright and trademark laws. This pastiche is offered freely with no hope of commercial reward.
Notes: It all started here.

Chapter 6

Brainstorming

Tim thumbs through the pages he brought from San Francisco to make sure they’re all there, and then he says, “Can you read them again, Kid Flash?” And he puts a finger over a spot on his mask and leans close and whispers so even I can barely hear: “Come on, Bart! This is why we’re here.”

So I read the pages again, and again, and again, and I know Tim wants me to spot a name from the Mongoose Squad, and I wish I did, but I know a good detective sticks with the evidence, and there’s no name, so I have to whisper back, “Sorry, Tim! I really don’t see anything.” And as soon as I shake my head, I can see Wally shaking his head, too, ’cause he’s disappointed in me, so I read again and say, “I mean, there are some sort-of-same names, like Michael Williams and Michael Williamson, and there are two psychologists both named Margarethe, and—Say! Don’t ladies change their names when they marry?”

And over at the side Plastic Man pokes Wally in the shoulder and says, “Nothing escapes your boy,” and Wally pokes Plastic Man back about a thousand times in half a second until Plastic Man stops being a bench and Wally falls on the floor.

But I’m too busy to laugh ’cause I’m telling Tim, “The chief psychologist at Alcatraz is Dr. Margarethe S. Ignatieff, and the psychologist who was working for the JSO back when they picked up the Penetrators was Dr. Margarethe Sackler, and if the S stands for Sackler—”

“I’m on it,” growls Batman, and Tim’s poking buttons on his wrist, and the rest of us watch to see who gets data first, and I say YES! inside when Tim says:

“The Alcatraz personnel file lists her next of kin as ‘Maxim Ignatieff, former husband.’ So Ignatieff wasn’t her original last name.”

“Dr. Sackler was a government witness in the Mongoose Squad inquiry,” says Batman.

And then there’s a kind of mechanical lady’s voice in my ear saying, “Margarethe Sackler. Born Centerville, Ohio, forty-six years ago. Ohio State University, Hudson University Med School, four years in the US Air Force, then joined the Justice Department. She specialized in evaluating criminals’ mental stability...”

And I make a Who? face to Tim, and he mouths, “Oracle.” And I get all excited ’cause I heard of Oracle a long time ago, and I’ve seen Tim and Wally talking to Oracle, but they never let me listen, so this is the first time I ever got to hear Oracle, and it’s a her, and she’s talking in my ear, too!

“...testified about how Baumhaus recruited his operatives. Paid leave for thirteen months. Four years ago, married Maxim Ignatieff—also a psychologist, born in Yekaterinburg. Five weeks later, she requested a transfer to SIS, District 2—Alcatraz. Marriage broke up after sixteen months. Since then, she’s had two promotions and one rise in federal pay grade. She also joined Netflix.”

“Testified against Baumhaus,” repeats Batman.

“So Crossley might be coming after her for revenge,” says Tim.

“Or he might be afraid she has something on him,” says Plastic Man.

“Or he might think he has something on her that could get him out of jail,” says Wally.

“Or he might be in love with her from seven years ago,” I say, “and he finally found out where she is, and...I think it’s the revenge thing.”

Everybody’s quiet for a whole lot of seconds, and then the Oracle voice says, “Is that Impulse?”

“It’s Kid Flash,” says Tim, “and we’re just brainstorming the possibilities. First thing in the morning, we’ll talk with Dr. Ignatieff to warn her and find out more. By the time the Marshals bring in Crossley, we’ll know what to expect.”

“I can move some things around,” says Wally, “and be in San Francisco tomorrow.” And I deduce that he doesn’t think we can handle this case, and since he knows all about what a good detective Tim is, he must be worried about me, even though he has absolutely no reason to be, and I picture forty-four file cabinets falling onto the Flash as he says, “Plas, what about you?”

“Some of us have lives, Flash-man!” says Plastic Man. “Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. Bats, should we help the kids out?”

Batman just says, “Robin?”

And Tim says, “This is a Titans case.”

Plastic Man does a giant shruggy thing with his shoulders and says, “I know when I’m not wanted.”

But Wally is still frowning, and he says, “Is anyone else worried about this?”

And the voice in our ears says, “Oracle out,” and Tim smiles, and I know we’ve won, and Crossley is still our case, and all we have to do is figure out what he’s up to and stop him, which we’ve practically done already.

“All right, Kid Flash,” says Tim, and he turns for the stairs. “Let’s head back to the Tower.” And I zoom up the stairs and hold the door open for when he gets there.

But Wally arrives first, and he looks at me and purses his lips, and he says, “You really got something with that speed-reading thing. Barry would be proud.” And he’s off in a red streak on his way to Keystone City.

And before I know it Tim is beside me, and then Plastic Man snakes by, and usually I’d ask Plastic Man to turn into different things, like a football or a spring or a trombone, but right now I’m a detective working on a case, so I zip across the street to where Robin left his motorcycle helmet and bring it back to him.

And Plastic Man has his neck stretched to peer at the box on the side of the JLA building, and he calls, “Don’t leave yet, Boy Wonder! You still have to fix this security sensor.”

But Batman’s voice says, “The security system is undamaged.”

“Remember, Bats, I caught your boy trying to disable it. And when you bat-types disable something, it stays disabled.”

“Robin was simply triggering the system.”

“Why would he—”

“In order to summon a JLA member,” explains Batman. “He knew exactly when I’d be unavailable this evening, and he calculated that during that time the member would take him into the facility to wait for me. As soon as you opened the door, Kid Flash ran inside. Isn’t that so, Robin?”

“Yes,” says Tim, and I can see his little smile just before he puts on the helmet and motions for me to pick him up. And Plastic Man makes his teeth as big as cement blocks and starts gnashing them, so I grab Tim and start to run west, and when I glance back, Plastic Man has climbed onto the roof of the building, and he’s turned himself into a big black sign with red and white blinking circles that spell out one word at a time:
MOST
ANNOYING
SIDEKICKS
EVER!

Continued here.