File Stealing

Part Conclusion

‘Wellwellwell, so it seems that as more of that dirty old laundry comes out that the vaunted Teen Titans and their big bros and mentors are looking more and more like their legs are solid clay and it’s crumbling from where we’re sitting.

Let’s review, shall we?

Robin—yes, Robin!—seems to have produced an unclaimed itsy-bitsy Batette hanging around the cave…care of the younger Ms Spears?

Speedy has acquired a nasty old drug habit.

Kid Flash is the daddy of twins and, bless his heart, is denying rumors of several young ladies hanging on his string as he tugs at their hearts—much to the upset of the Mrs.

Wonder Girl—purdy lil thing that she is—may or may not be widowed and wallowing in the deepest darkest depths of despair, poor honey child.

And Aqualad? Let’s just say that all is not well in the state of Poseidonis, if we’re to believe the rumors that are flying—or floating out of Atlantis.

Have we forgotten anyone?

The vaunted Green Lantern is widely considered to be the Man-slut of the universe by his co-workers. Aquaman is said to have a temper which could cause tsunamis all by itself. Batman—well, does anyone think this gent is as tightly wrapped as one would wish? Wonder Woman is commonly said to be a disciple of Sapphro. Green Arrow spends waaaay too much time ‘courting’ Black Canary to the distress of drug addled Babyboyarrow Speedy.

The only ones who seem to have escapes unscathed is the big man himself, Supes, and maybe the green guy—Martian Manhunter.

Not a pretty picture from where we’re sitting.

And these are the people we call our heroes?

“Well, I told you that this would be my ball game because I’m the one with balls. Now, since there aren’t any questions, shall we get in with business, gentlemen?—oops, forgive me, I mean Lady and Gentlemen.” Joker looked around the room, confidant and nuts as ever.

Catwoman fingered the small bump hidden in the palm of her left glove, turning on the hidden microphone linking her to Robin, letting him hear what was going on.

Scarecrow seemed unimpressed. “You know, the more that I think about it, I think I may opt out of this, if you don’t mind. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding someone else to cover my spot and in the meantime I think the country can stumble along without my intervention.” He stood up, his gangling body seeming to unfold from the chair.

“I think, if it’s all the same to you, that I may join him. I’m terribly flattered, of course, but I’m more comfortable working alone. You understand, don’t you? But we’ll stay in touch and if there’s ever anything you may need, just call.” Two-Face started to join Scarecrow as he made his way over to the large industrial sliding door. “Catwoman, would you care to join us or do you prefer to stay?”

“Nooooooooooooo!!!!!!” The three barely looked back as Joker vented his frustration. “You said you’d be with me on this—you promised!” He seemed to be close to tears as he ran after them, grabbing Two-Face’s arm and spinning him around. “You promised, you did. I heard all of you. You said we’d do this together; make a pact and control the whole world. We were even going to get Luthor to deal with Superman and everything.”

Catwoman paused, dispassionate as she spoke to him. “Well, it seems that we’ve changed our minds, haven’t we?” She continued towards the large door and was almost there when Joker hit a remote he’d hidden in one of his pockets. The door slid shut, the locks audibly engaging as it fit into the frame.

“I think not.” He pulled another gadget from his pocket and palmed it, savoring the slightly startled looks on the faces of the other three. “Yes, of course it’s a bomb”. He answered the unasked question. “You know what they say; if you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. You won’t help me, then you’re useless to me and I’d hate to think that there may come a time when you’d ever work against me so…” He pulled the grenade’s pin, holding the trigger, delaying.

He started tossing it up and down. Toss, catch. Toss, catch. Toss, catch. Toss, stumble—almost miss, catch with his high pitched laughter as a counterpoint.

“Stop that. Put the pin back and put that think away.” Scarecrow was visibly annoyed, always a bad thing. “We’ve had enough of this, stop what you’re doing and unlock this door.”

“No can do, Amigo, no can do.” Toss, catch. Toss, catch. “Unless you kids all decide to change your minds, that is. You know how I’ve been looking forward to all of working together, don’t you? Working together, playing together, having Christmas parties, celebrating birthdays, having cook outs. I have so few friends and I thought that we could, you know, hang out. ‘Have movie nights, double date…”

“Joker…”

“And after all the work I’ve put into this—you’ve no idea, none! I’ve spent weeks, months!—working on setting up those Titan brats and the stupid Justice League, softening them up, making sure that their reputations were in the toity. I’ve had so much fun and I though we’d all have fun, too!” He seemed close to tears again.

Toss, catch. Toss, catch.

Two Face tried. “Let’s all go sit back down and we can talk about this, work it out together. There’s no need for unpleasantness.”

“All these silly stories in the press? You know about them? The ones that have stupid little Robin knocking up that little chit? The ones that have his stupid friends getting into all kinds of trouble? The ones that have Green Lantern whoring around in bars? That was me! I was brilliant! I had them running around like chickens without heads—all me!”

Toss, catch. Toss, catch.

“We were going to have so much fun.”

‘And that’s another thing which has occurred to us peasants slaving away here at our nine-to-five grind. These superhero types; has anyone ever figured out where all the money they must have comes from? I mean seriously.

I know, I know—we’ve been over this before, but c’mon! I should have so much spare change to play with, is all I can say.

Now you didn’t hear it from me, and that’s for darn sure, but are we the only one who wonders if some folding cash may change hands under the table, if you know what I mean?

Tons and tons of dollars, yen, Deutschemarks, Lira and whatever else are floating around and—okay—there have never been any real serious questions about this, we think maybe it’s past time to examine where all these expensive toys, equipment and costumes come from.

We, for one, would lovelovelove to see Batman’s MasterCard bill one of these days…not to mention Babybat’s latest bill over at Babies-R-Us.

We’re just saying, is all.’

Robin led the Titans through the waterfront warehouses, knowing that time was almost up before Joker did something with the grenade—let it drop, throw it or, being Joker, maybe just disarm it.

Everyone lined up behind him, “Spread out like I told you. Speedy, you come with me, Donna, get ready to open the door, Kid Flash, back her up, Aqualad, get ready to drench everything when you get the signal—questions? No? Okay, let’s do this!”

Robin and Speedy used a batarang grappling hook and a grappling arrow to get up to the roof, opening the skylight and paused half a second while Wonder Girl pulled the sliding door off its hinges. Aqualad formed a huge wave from the harbor, causing water to surge in the now large opening, sweeping everything in its path before retreating.

Swinging down through the skylight, Robin knocked Joker off his feet with the first blow, surprisingly easily until Joker caught Robin’s left calf and tripped him, flinging him over and slamming his head against the floor. Somehow not losing consciousness, Rob rolled away, grabbing Joker’s coat-tails and pulling him backwards as he caught himself on broken chair which immediately because a weapon in the man’s skinny hands. Rob used leverage to pry it away before he could be hit in the head again but not before Joker managed to get in a couple of good kicks which hit home. The thought that a couple of ribs might have been cracked left his mind as soon as it flitted through, dismissed by the more important business at hand.

Grabbing a broken table lamp, Robin got a lucky hit in, taking Joker down and wondering where his expected henchmen were and why they weren’t joining in the fight until it occurred to Robin that there weren’t any underlings here tonight. No one with Two-Face, no back up for Scarecrow, No kittens for Selina and Joker seemed to be on his own-unheard of and he wondered why; not that he was complaining but what was that about? Hell, maybe Selina really came through, after all.

Jonathan Crane was starting to do his thing as powerfully as he ever had and Harvey Dent produced a gun from somewhere under his jacket. Taking cover behind a half fallen pile of large cartons, Two-Face got three shots off as Speedy hit Harvey with a knockout arrow—an oldie but still a goodie.

Where the hell had the bullets ended up? In anyone? Not tonight—their luck was holding.

Next Wally spun past almost, but not quite, too fast to see while he punched out Jonathan Crane but unfortunately not quite fast enough as the hallucinations started.

Roy was affected first, staring at a blank space along the far wall. “Lian! I’m coming, baby. Daddy’s coming. Hang on, just hang on.” He stumbled his way across the trashed and sodden room, trying to save his daughter, not realizing that she was safe miles away. Dick ran over, giving him an injection to knock him out long enough for them to finish the collar without distracting the other Titans from the work at hand.

Just as he was lowering Roy to the floor, he saw Donna kneeling by the upturned conference table, crying, broken hearted and whispering, choking the name ‘Terry’.

Robin went over to her, holding her while her crying slowly stopped to be replaced by a stunned silence as se relived the loss of her ex-husband, though she’d somehow been spared the memory of the loss of her children.

There was no sign of Selina and the thought that she might have been knocked out by the powerful wave of water flashed through Robin’s mind. It was followed by the fear she may have been drowned or was pinned somewhere in the mess of furniture and warehouse crates blocking the floor space and turning it into a maze and jumble of debris. Looking around the room, he caught Garth’s eye as he made sure the three male criminals were secured. “Where’s Catwoman?”

Seemingly unaffected by Scarecrow’s powers of illusion and nightmare, he shook his head. “She’s gone, out the skylight; she used your jumpline to climb up while we were busy on the floor. I couldn’t follow her.” He apologized, “I can’t really climb all that well; you know how clumsy I can be on land…”

“Where’s Kid Flash?”

“He was here but, Scarecrow—Wally looked frightened for a moment, said ‘Linda’ and was gone.” Garth shrugged. With any luck, as soon as he got back to Central City and saw she was all right he’d come down from the delusion. There wasn’t much they could do about it this minute but since they could hear the sirens coming closer, they knew they’d be free in a few minutes, as soon as they could turn the prisoners over for booking.

“Robbie, you’re all right? Scarecrow, he didn’t affect you?”

“I’m okay, Batman taught me a few tricks about that—they don’t work for long, but Wally took him out fast enough that I wasn’t affected. How about you?”

Garth looked a little sheepish, “I was starting to think that some fish were swept in when I brought up that wave and I was getting pretty nervous—remember how I used to be afraid of them? But I’m all right now.”

“You sure?” Aqualad nodded.

The police were loading Joker, Two-Face and Scarecrow into separate squad cars for the ride down to headquarters. There would be endless amounts of paperwork to do in the next couple of days.

“You think the others will be all right?”

Dick nodded. Roy and Donna were taken by ambulance over to Star Labs for them to be treated and to allow them to come down gently. If need be, Wally would join them since Clark was keeping an eye on him as well.

“So it all worked out the way we hoped it would. Have you told Bruce yet what we were doing?”

Dick shook his head. “I will—later. There’s no hurry now that it’s over.”

“I guess.” Garth headed over to the waterfront. “I’m expected back home for a meeting in a few hours. Call if you need anything.” He dove into the water, Dick wondering of he was really going to swim all the way or if he had some kind of ride home. No matter; Garth managed.

An hour, still damp from the wave, later he pulled into the Batcave, finding Bruce working at the lab area on what looked like some DNA evidence. “Everything turn out all right?”

“Fine. Selina got away, but that’s okay.”

“So are you planning on explaining to me what this was all about?”

“Simple; I contacted Selina a few months ago and she agreed to get a hold of Scarecrow and Two-Face. They all contacted Joker and suggested that the four of them work together to control parts of the country and eventually the world—the beginnings of a sort of supervillian syndicate. Selina and I pretended to be an item—or that we were having an affair so that the others would think I’d go easy on them for her sake.”

“Which is why you two were swapping spit for the papers a few weeks ago.”

“Right…”

“But that could have gone either way; Joker might have thought that she’d gone over to your side of things and then you’d have been left hanging.”

“Sure, but Selina can be very convincing when she wants to be. She talked to all of them.”

“But…”

“Let me finish. As soon as all four were on board, all we had to do was convince Harvey and Jonathan that Joker was about to double-cross them and take control. Since they never completely trusted him anyway, that wasn’t all that hard to do and so they agreed to the set up to catch Joker and get even with him.”

“So they’ll get credit against their prison terms for this?”

“Maybe. They knew it was a crapshoot and will be up to the parole panels when they come up again.”

Bruce sipped the tea Alfred left him every evening. “And all those tabloid stories?”

“Those were just Joker’s sense of humor, that’s all. He wanted us to think he’d somehow gotten access to our private files and computers and all of that stuff like our medical files. He was trying to scare us and make trouble with all the media feeding frenzy.”

Another sip of tea. “So you’re not going to marry Jamie Lynn?”

“Not this week.”

“Good.” Pause. “Was any of that garbage true?”

“Not much.”

“Some?”

“Eh.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow as Dick headed to the shower.

‘So we’ve all had a busybusybusy week, no?

No, babies, I won’t bore you with yet another recap, but let’s just say that it hit the fan and it’s still spraying. Great big globs are still landing like landmines.

There was that bigbigbig arrest in Gotham with three great big and nutzy crazies going off to pay their many debts to society, thank goodness! Now normally we wouldn’t waste our breath or blog space with such serious doings, but when they involve our own favorite babybat, well!

Sweetbatbuns—we heard there were shots fired and we almost messed ourselves thinking that someone might put an extra hole in that oh so cute bod you walk around in—you be careful, y’hear?

And, okay, we admit it—some of the things we were shoveling around the last few weeks and were—yes, we admit it—planted by the number one big bad himself—Joker, and we’re incredibly embarrassed to admit that we were taken in so…

For the record (and under some major lawsuit threat—yikes!)

Our favorite babybat is not, as far as we know, a friend of Ms Jamie Lynn Spears, let along kissing cousins and, no—Robin is not (a big shout out to the not) a babydaddy yet and there seems to be no immediate news on that front. However, if he feels like practicing, we’ll be happy to give him our number.

We’ve been strongly told that Speedy is clean and has kicked any and all bad habits, bless his heart and good for him.

Wonder Girl is as pure as the driven snow. We have this on very good authority which we wouldn’t think of doubting.

Mrs. Kid Flash may rest easy knowing her every loving and very fast hub-unit loves her to pieces and is as faithful as the day is long.

Aqualad is happy as a clam in his watery home and everything is lovely there. Honest.

Anything we missed?

If there is, we’re sorry about that, too.

“So Robin, I was wondering; was anything in those trash papers true? Anything?”

“Like what, Commissioner?”

“I don’t know; any of it, I guess.”

Rob gave a half smile then glanced up at the wall clock. “Oh jeez, I didn’t realize it was so late. Gotta go.” He shot a jump line out Jim Gordon’s office window and swung away.

“…Damn kids.” Picking up the Batphone, he muttered, “I’ll get to the bottom of this…”

 

The End



NOTE: Time frame? Time frame? You want continuity? Sometimes one can’t be troubled with details. This is one of those stories. Ah well.

8/12/08


 

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