Author's Note: Well, I suppose I should set up a bit of a timeline for this one, shouldn't I? This is a story that is set in the year between Issues #26 and #27 so, as you can imagine, this story has been percolating for a long time. It's not exactly the metaphor-laden material I'm used to churning out but I hope it's good for a few laughs. It's basically a tribute to all the conversations I've ever had with friends and random people while either I or those across from me at the time have been under the influence. Enjoy and hope that you can keep your sanity as you read. . .
Drunken Grave Defiling
Gotham City – 12:09 A.M.
Forest Hills Cemetery was one of the city's few remaining public sites that had managed to endure the vast majority of the physical and historical upheavals that Gotham and the surrounding area had to offer throughout its long history. Sporting a formal funding history dating as far back as The Revolutionary War, these rustic, simply pristine grounds have been long maintained through non-profit assistance provided by Catholic parishioners seeking to ensure the safety and well-being of what remained of their dearly departed friends and loved ones. It has become the final destination for honored dignitaries and other notable figures in Gotham's long, illustrious city including governors to mayors to the most distinguished of socialites to some of the most infamous organized crime figures the city had ever known.
However, the most important fact to be considered when taking a closer look into this consecrated tableau was that this graveyard had long become a treasured home for those who had long given their banes and gifts to society. Their active contributions to the existence around us could not be extended further and, like those that had come and gone before them, they have earned the honor to rest within their deserved peace and tranquility.
Clink!
"OI! Stop throwing ya cans against the headstones, ya soddin' dinnermasher," exclaimed a half-annoyed, half-drunk Lloyd Thomas as he dug his rusty spade back into the well-trod dirt around his feet. "Ain't anybody ever tell ya to be environmentally friendly?" he went on, his noble warnings cut short by the loud belch that poured from his throat. "Gonna be throwin' up some bad juju at us if ya keep pullin' that shite."
"Did I ever say I wasn't not going to clean that up!" Dick Grayson fired back, the older detective's recent ingestion of seven 12-ounce cans of Killian's Red and a Styrofoam cup full of Jack Daniels over the course of the last two-and-a-half hours managing to severely limit not only his capacity of speech but also of digging. In fact, it was a small wonder that the original Robin had managed to avoid cutting into his work boots as he sloppily slammed the metal point of his shovel into the surrounding soil. "You don't get to tell me what to do, Black Dog, 'cause I'm Nightwing! I've been fighting crime since I was 12 years old and. . . and. . ."
"And I've told more bad puns and worn more pairs of pixie shorts than you could ever wear in a thousand lifetimes!" Stephanie threw in, the interruption drawing snorts and guffaws of laughter from Lloyd as well as herself. Dick, in response to the unwanted observation, briefly pulled his handsome face into a somewhat menacing scowl before the need to laugh took him over as well, the bustle raised by the three rabble rousers raising an ever increasing ruckus in the otherwise quiet burial ground. However, despite the amusement, the three of them were remarkably capable of eventually recovering themselves as Dick slowly clambered out of the ever-deepening hole he had helped create in order to give Stephanie more room to work with.
"Oh, and don't think that I don't know what you're doin'," Stephanie added, the tone in her voice making it sound as if she had uncovered a great mystery. "You're just stallin' so you don't have to answer my perfectly legitimate question!" The whiskey bottle she still clasped within her left hand, a decanter containing stuff that even Dick had refused to touch, tilted from side to side while the rest of her body briefly jostled about along with it.
Lloyd, in response, gave an extravagant roll of his eyes while employing his telekinesis to place Dick's most recent act of littering upon the makeshift pile he had started shortly after they arrived. His efforts were a little shakier than usual, of course, thanks in no small part to his imbibing of several bottles of illegally acquired Fortunian rum, a substance so potent that it managed to somewhat overcome even his own hypermetabolism and healing abilities, if only for a limited space of time. He was fairly certain that The Condemner, the noble beast that had shared a portion of his immortal soul, would have disapproved of such activities but, quite frankly, it wasn't like it was in the driver's seat now, was it?
"All right, all right, keep your thong on, Tweety," he replied, his words drawing another ungainly snort from his fair-haired comrade. "So Scandal and I get back from this hell dimension after saving the soul of some bint that Mao apparently knew back in his days at Oxford. A couple hours pass, my big sis retires for the evenin', and then I get the news that our client wants me to drop over so she can thank me personally. An', I mean, I'm 14 years old so I don't know nothin' from nothin' so I'm just traipsin' in expecting some kind words and maybe a bite to eat only to walk in and see this lady naked as the day she was spawned."
"No way," Stephanie insisted, her somewhat angry words coupled with the sound of her slamming her shovel back into the dirt. "Damnit, man! I am sooooo sick of you lyin' about all these women who apparently wanted to deflower you! I mean, you're cute an' all but you ain't that screwable."
"Sod you. Right sexy, I am." Lloyd spat back before making a telekinetic reach for another shot of rum. "To be fair, though, the lady wasn't so much as a lady as she was a 1,400-year-old succubus and she didn't really want to shag me as much as she wanted to enthrall me into doing her bidding."
"Damn," noted Dick, his hazy sights currently focused on the third-quarter moon as he lay down on his back. "You know, it's so nice to have somebody around with a worse knack for picking women than me."
"Oh, like Barbara Gordon hasn't stolen any souls in her day," Stephanie fired back, her words earning her a sneer from her predecessor and an attempted fist bump from Lloyd.
"Aaaaaaaaand that's how I got my first kiss," Lloyd finally finished, the Brit looking quite relieved that his round of storytelling was done. "It could have been worse but the fact that Scandal ran in a couple minutes later to break up the proceedings before I could start psychically signing contracts tells me that it could've gone better."
Stephanie couldn't help but give Lloyd a lazy grin as she moved to ruffle her big brother's hair, a response that Lloyd happily endured for a moment or two before jerking his head away in a gesture of manly machismo. The whole thing prompted the Gotham-based Green Lantern to give her colleague a playful wink as she heaved out a small helping of earth and loam onto another haphazard pile. "Well, seeing as how I pretty much forced you to go first, I might as well go next. Ah, and before I begin, this isn't about my first kiss but more like my first embarrassing romantic experience."
"Well, given the experience of the lady in question," Dick threw in, "somethin' tells me that this is gonna be about a playground romance gone horribly, horribly wrong, isn't it?"
"No comments required from the moron gallery, thank you very much!" the current Robin yelled up at her predecessor, the venom of her words punctuated by the mound of dirt she chucked at the offending vigilante with the aid of her shovel. "And, before you ask, it doesn't have anything to do with Timbo either. This was my 15th birthday and my new boyfriend just got his driver's license and he wants to celebrate by showing me all the romantic ambience that mommy's Ford Fairmont can provide."
"Sounds like we're dealin' with quite the noble chap here." noted Lloyd.
"Oh yeah. Perfect gentleman, this one." Stephanie countered with what could only be considered a forced degree of cheerfulness. "Well, anyway, Ronnie and I are in the backseat foolin' around and I'm, like, I lean back and down and it turns out there's a bunch of small holes in the passenger side door and my hair gets caught up in 'em."
"No fuckin' way!" Dick threw in, the older gentlemen feeling compelled to reply since Lloyd was busying himself with laughing like a hyena.
"And the more I'm trying to yank my way out the more it ended up getting tangled in," Steph went on, her tone getting higher and louder as her face turned a darker shade of red. "And I am just cursing up a blue streak with tears in my eyes until Ron got so sick of me that he drove us back to his house just so he can sneak in, grab a pair of scissors just so he could cut me out, and then drive me home!"
It would have been hard for anyone to figure out just which of the three unexpected tunnelers was laughing harder now, their combined clamor now ratcheting to a high enough level to offend a nearby raccoon into ceasing its nearby scavenging in order to search for quieter horizons. The annoyance in the little creature's black eyes managed to catch the light provided by the moon in a way that made the small orbs shine rather brightly within the otherwise sparsely-lit setting. However, despite this potentially intriguing phenomenon, the forager continued to go ignored by the gaggle of immature humans as they went about their self-assigned duties.
"So, to make a long story short," Stephanie concluded while raising her second bottle of whiskey near to her lips. "I had a hell of a time explaining to my mom why I suddenly decided to have a bob instead of the shoulder-length hair I was rockin' before."
"You know, I did like that look on you," Dick offered with a hint of sympathy while clapping his dirt-laden palms together. "Well, I guess it's my turn now, isn't it? And I don't suppose that I can just get away with retreading one of my Starfire sexcapades, can I?"
"Ohhhhhh, definitely not," Stephanie quickly replied, the young lady just recovered from a slight bout of coughing causing by downing too much of the bitter, brown liquid in one swallow. "Besides, I wanna hear about you an' Babs since I know she's the one that popped your cherry."
"Aw, come on!" Dick protested over Lloyd and Stephanie's almost equally noisy agreeing. "Babs and I are. . . we've always been. . . complicated. I mean, it's not like you with that Aensland woman, Lloyd, or that high school fling with Steph."
Lloyd and Stephanie both narrowed their eyes, the both of them not the least bit offended by the apparent attack upon their honor but quite peeved by the idea that their friend was obviously trying to get away unscathed.
"I was naked in a Turkish harem surrounded by succubae," Lloyd offered.
"And I had my hair caught in the cheap ass car door of a guy who broke up with me the moment after he shorn my lovely locks," Steph added. "Make with the self-humiliation right now or we dig another hole and put you in it!"
"Forget it!" Nightwing said defiantly, the eldest of the three vigilantes relatively confident that his replacement wouldn't make due with her implied threat. "How about that time I was making out with Huntress on her motorcycle and it tipped over and nearly crushed my foot?"
"Well, that is pretty good," Lloyd confessed while Stephanie let loose another snort of slightly inebriated laughter. "But wot's this I'm seein' about this Gordon girl tryin' to handcuff ya to her bedpost?"
Nightwing's eyes widened like saucers while a loud thump sounded off from the small hole of dirt from where Stephanie had stumbled to the ground in a paroxysm of laughter.
"FUCKING! ASSHOLE! GOD! DAMN! YOU!" he shouted, each of his words punctuated by a beer can being thrown at the telepath's head.
Wayne Manor – 4:21 P.M.
It had only taken a month of living at the enormous home at the cusp of Mountain Drive for Lloyd to realize that a brisk walk around the ground floor was quite the fine way to wake himself up. That being said, his usually measured steps were running quite the bit quicker than they usually did during this time of the afternoon, a turn of events thanks in no small part to the little, fair-haired irritant marching alongside him. After all, the vibrant bounce in the woman's step and the bubbly candor she brought to the table was managing to be even more infuriating than usual, as hard as that was to believe, and her continuous requests had quickly become the audio equivalent of nails dragging across an exceptionally dry chalkboard.
"Ya know, I still can't understand why you're so obsessed with this!" grumbled the tired Brit, his small hands jammed deeply into his jean pockets as he continued to try his best to move forward. "Or, for that matter, why you're so dogged in thinkin' that you need company for it."
"Aw, come on!" Stephanie whined back, her voice somehow managing to curdle the bile in The Black Dog's stomach. "This is a once in a lifetime opportunity here! I mean, I've got the opportunity to dig up my own grave and all I'm trying to do is let you and Dickie experience this with me!"
"Woah, woah. Hold on!" Lloyd exclaimed while his once rapid pace coming to an abrupt stop. "Dickie? As in Richard Grayson?"
Steph merely shrugged her shoulders, the young woman seemingly ignorant of the sheer wrongness of what was being suggested. "Do we know any other Dickies?"
Lloyd countered with a rise of his eyebrows. "As in Nightwing? The sot who, to this day, takes every opportunity to stare daggers in the back of me head during every briefing we've ever had?"
The effort Stephanie had to put into making sure she didn't roll her pale, blue eyes in annoyance was something that she didn't think she'd be able to muster this early in her workday. Likewise, the struggle to refrain from mentioning that the hostilities between Dick Grayson and Lloyd Thomas had hardly been one-sided also turned out to be quite difficult to manage, especially with her knack for cheerfully pointing out the faults of others. In fact, outside of some examples of camaraderie at Jason Todd's grave and the words shared during that desperate (though entertaining) fight with Alexander Luthor's Society, the sparse display of interactions between the two prospective Beta males of Wayne Manor had consisted of little more than thinly veiled antagonism and distrust.
And no, it didn't take a psychologist to figure out what was going on between them. That being said, it was still fun to occasionally dredge up the mental picture of the two raven-haired cuties head butting each other like angry bucks. Hell, she even publicly mentioned a stray dream of hers about Dick and Lloyd mud wrestling but that only caused Kara to let out a hot blush before scurrying away like a wide-eyed, long-legged mouse.
Honestly, that girl is weird, Stephanie couldn't help but think as she watched Lloyd's annoyance begin to ratchet higher and higher.
"Well, how about this?" Lloyd threw out, the former employee of Mao Tenryu already smiling at his own cleverness. "I'll agree to go if Grayson agrees to go first."
"Oh, okay," Stephanie countered with an equally self-impressed smirk. "Well, then pack your bags, Puppy, 'cause Dick's already coming with."
"Oh, you're talkin' the piss!" Lloyd snapped back, the sharp rise in volume more attributed to shock rather than outright anger. As far as he was concerned, Richard Grayson was the last person he would have expected to want to willingly spend time with him and the possibility that he had "outmatured" him was already causing his blood to boil.
"OI! GRAYSON!" The Black Dog shouted as his hasty steps and even quicker teleportation suddenly brought him five feet away from Nightwing's sleeping quarters. "What cha tryin' to pull here?"
"ME?!" Dick quickly spat back, his eyes quickly settling themselves into a hostile glare while his arms busied themselves with sliding a Gotham University sweatshirt over his tired torso. "What about you? I wanted to have a day off for the first time in a month-and-a-half and now, because you agreed to go be stupid with Stephanie, I'm spending my day off in a damn cemetery!"
"I agreed?" Lloyd squawked back, the younger prospective field commander shooting back an equally potent Batglare at his hated adversary. "But you were the one who said you'd go. . ."
To their credit, it didn't take long for either gentleman to begin to put the pieces together. This shared realization was made doubly convenient a handful of seconds later when a wide-eyed Stephanie foolishly chose to stumble into Dick's room, her small feet sliding to a stop as she began to weather the presence of the glaring looks in the eyes of her potential victims. In response, the current Robin flashed the most harmless looking smile she could muster while attempting to look as innocent as possible.
"I'll buy the beer?"
12:32 A.M.
"Walkin' home three parts pissed, I stumbled and fell in the morning mist, I fell and rolled in the hungry grass that tells the tale of a terrible past. . ."
Stephanie poked her head out of her own grave the moment the singing began, the blonde-haired Gothamite always eager to see proof that she had been proven right once again. The sight of Dick and Lloyd weaving back and forth in a fairly uneven display of harmony, the boys' efforts seemingly more devoted to the tasks of holding on to their drinks, brought an almost goofy grin to her face. Of course, the fact that Dick ended up being a few seconds late in singing the next verse caused her sarcasm to resurface, the Green Lantern shaking her head back and forth thanks to her frustration of not bringing her camera phone with her on this little endeavor.
"Down in the ground where the dead men go, down in the ground where the dead men go," the two male vigilantes sang together, the elder of the two looking quite pleased that he didn't have to rely on Lloyd to know the words he was singing along to. "Down in the ground where the dead men go, down in the ground where the dead men goooooooo. . ."
"At least we think that's where the dead men goed," Stephanie added while sinking her shovel back into the dirt before pulling out another mound of vaguely gray soil and mud. As one could guess, any possible thoughts on the grammatical legitimacy of her words went completely ignored by all parties.
"I like this song," Dick loudly declared, the master detective sounding as if he had made a truly groundbreaking discovery. "It's got a beat and I can dance to it," he added before adding another noise into the mix that had nothing to do with the classic Celtic drinking song. The commotion came with an odor that prompted Lloyd to crinkle up his nose and nearly retch as he stumbled away from his singing partner, a disgusted look on The Black Dog's face.
"Oh, foul! FOUL!" Lloyd announced as he waved his right hand in front of his nose and mouth. "That has got to be the worse ruddy smell I've ever experienced." The sound of a thumpprff drew Lloyd's attention back to the worksite, the noise apparently caused by Stephanie attempting to leap her way out of her grave in one fell swoop. Unfortunately, her current physical state, when combined with her poor decision to try and make the leap with the shovel still wrapped tightly in her hands, left her body to slam into the soil, her outstretched left hand being the only body part to successfully make its way out of the sepulcher. The half-demon felt himself letting out a snort as the woman who had quite possibly become his best friend momentarily swung there like a giant Garfield doll before finally mustering a small percentage of her strength in order to pull herself out of the awkward situation she had put herself into.
"Nightthing did a beer fart?" Steph asked as she quickly pulled herself up to a standing position. "Where? I wanna smell!"
Now it was Dick and Lloyd's turn to look concerned as their comrade in felony quickly followed up on her spoken inclination, the former Spoiler walking quickly around Nightwing while making a series of audible sniffs. Thankfully, the impassioned efforts appeared to be short lived and, soon enough, a glare of disappointment soon crossed into Stephanie's countenance.
"Awwwwww, that ain't nothin'," she concluded while slumping her head in discontent. "I'll tell you. . . oof . . . about the biggest stink of all time," she insisted, the pause generated by the whiplash that came from jumping back into her former resting place. "A couple years ago, my mom had bought this used mini-van from a friend of hers so she can make the commute to her new job. However, neither of 'em knew that somebody had spilled some milk in the trunk and, since we never did any grocery shopping, it stayed there for like a month before anybody really noticed."
"Well, this should end well," Lloyd hypothesized while making his way back into the slowly deepening hole, his movements somewhat slowed by the simultaneous effort of making certain not to spill his drink.
"So who should discover it, of all people, but Timothy Drake during the very first road trip we took in that hunk o' junk. So, of course, he's going on and on about how my mom should be more responsible with her possessions and I should really be making more efforts to be a detective and I just get sick of him and jam his face right into the source of the reek."
"Awesome," Dick replied in definite approval, the thought of the doubtlessly repulsed look that would have been on the face of his former understudy warming a rather sick portion of his heart.
"Well, he didn't seem to agree," Stephanie quickly broke in while continuing her digging. "At least from the way he just outright fainted on the spot. Had a hell of a time dragging his ass back into the passenger seat, I gotta tell ya."
"An' here I thought ya would 'ave just gone and taken advantage o' him," Lloyd guessed while throwing his own share of gathered dirt out of the way. "An' though that may indeed be a smelly moment, I would argue that it is not, in fact, the smelliest moment of all time." He dug his spade deeper into the loam this time, if only so it would stay where he left it as he stopped to think. "All right, how about this? Thick o' the bubonic plague, center of London and right outside the horse yards, on Throw Out Your Dead day."
"Oh, Lord," Dick said through a slight gag, the original Boy Wonder shutting his eyes in an attempt to block out as many of the possibilities as he could.
Stephanie, on the other hand, let out a fairly impressed whistle as she tapped the handle of her shovel against Lloyd's. "You know, now that we're on the subject," she broke in over the sound of Nightwing's coughing, "I still think Eric Idle shouldn't have gotten as much credit as he did for Spamalot. I mean, it's not like most of the material he came up with was really that good and most of the exceptions were only good because of the performers."
"Oh, here we go," Lloyd groaned out. "Ya know, you've managed to complain a great deal about a Broadway show that you dragged me out to see not once, but twice! An' with Bruce's stolen credit card, no less, which meant that I had to put up with the extra training that came with your wrongdoings!"
"I still think it could have been better!" Stephanie insisted as she and Lloyd went back to digging. "I mean, you've got Doctor Frankenfurter, Niles Crane, and Moe Szyslak on the same stage and you're ripping off the greatest comedy of all time. Now I'm as much of a Python fan as you guys are so I think it's only right that we should've expected more. . ."
"I don't wanna 'ear it," Lloyd spattered back at his unsatisfied companion, the forcefulness of his gesture almost enough to spill a drop or two of rum from his telekinetically upraised cup. "An' we're not talkin' about that! We are now talking about the smelliest moment of all time and I have won the day!"
"Hold on! Hold on! I'm challenging for the crown!" Dick loudly announced from his slightly higher fashion point. "The plague thing is not bad but I think I can top the both of you here."
The primary heir to Bruce Wayne's vast fortune stretched out his long fingers in order to better paint his scene, the former acrobat seemingly determined to do whatever he could to get his valuable message across. "It's the home stretch of the Second Continental Congress, right smack in the middle of a sweltering, Philadelphia summer and you've got dozens of men in starched wigs and tweed outfits broiling away. The windows are shut since you can't have anybody listening in and, of course, there's no air conditioning or anything so it's nothing but stale sweat, musty wool. . . and an 82-year-old Benjamin Franklin confesses that he just 'sliced the Muenster'.
"Ewwwwww," Lloyd and Stephanie said in near-unison, the disgust in their eyes offering Dick enough proof for him to believe that he had come out on top.
11:02 P.M.
Given her already deep-seated desire to tell other people what they should be doing with themselves, it naturally didn't take long for Stephanie to reach the first classic stage of drunkenness. In fact, if either Dick or Lloyd had chosen to be brutally honest about it, the both of them would have been happy to confess that they were surprised that it hadn't happened sooner.
"Okay, Lloyd. I'm going to throw out a situation here. Completely hypothetical right now," Stephanie insisted in a tone that indicated anything but. "I just want to see what you think about me setting up some kind of real, fancy-schmancy shadow ops routine. Y'know, something that can really dig into the baddies that are down really deep before they can come to the surface and do some damage."
The annoyed groan that rose up from Dick's throat confirmed Lloyd's suspicions of just what Stephanie was choosing to talk about. He realized that he could, perhaps, have done something to stop it but, to be perfectly honest, the possibility that he'd also get a chuckle out of it kept his lips sealed and his eyes locked on his increasingly perturbed partner in digging.
"Now, the first thing I'm gonna do, of course, is get a whole bunch of high-profile vigilantes on my squad. Something like an 8-foot-tall Amazon, a Green Lantern with shiny, green skin and hair, maybe a Brainiac. Ah! How about an orange alien with ginormous boobs! Oh! And Metamorpho! 'Cause nothing screams secret and subtlety quite like Rex Mason!"
"Shut up!" Nightwing managed to easily shout over The Black Dog's chuckling. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"
"And I'm going to let my teammates make promotion deals that let them sell t-shirts while they're on patrols! I mean, that'll be the perfect way to keep us off the radar, right? Ooooh, and how about an information network that consists entirely of somebody I don't even know and won't even bother to investigate!" Stephanie suggested, her smile toothy and her eyes gleaming maliciously.
"Seems a little risky, Tweety," Lloyd couldn't help but admit, the former assassin shining more than a hint of sympathy towards Dick as the older male vigilante clamped his hands over his ears. "But, to be fair, the knack of hidin' in plain sight has got its merits as well."
"I presumed that Roy Harper, a former government agent, had a handle on just who he was getting his tips wrong," Dick interjected, his petty need to defend himself from the inevitable causing his two younger companions to smile. "You guys keep going on and on about trusting others and you get on my case for doin' just that. Come on!"
"Oh, just you wait, because it gets even better!" Stephanie said while hopping over into Lloyd's workspace. "Because this is all about making certain that neither I nor anybody that's ever known me will ever be able to be taken seriously again. When the daughter of one of my best friends gets kidnapped by an international child slavery ring, I'm not even going to bother to try and bring in Bruce Wayne or Barbara Gordon or any of the dozens of super-powered crime fighters I know and the billions of dollars worth of information gathering equipment that they have at their disposal. Oh no! I'm going to bring in John Walsh! YEAAAAAH! Suck on that, Mister Thomas!"
"All right! All right!" Nightwing finally relented, the only thing stopping him from breaking the finger Stephanie was waving in front of his face being the near impossibility of actually being able to pull it off while avoiding any form of reprisal. "The Outsiders was a bad idea, okay? So shut up about it!"
The sharp, though honest, declaration seemed to be enough to satisfy the current Robin. Taking a moment to celebrate by gunning down a fifth of Jack, the youngest of Earth's Green Lanterns fixed the infuriated Nightwing with what she figured to be a winning grin.
"There. Was that so hard?" she asked with a playful smile.
11:38 P.M.
"What the hell kind of name is 'Black Dog' anyway?"
Given that he had spent the last ten minutes looking for an excuse to get away from his current labors, Dick was more than happy to look up from the dirt around him in order to see how Lloyd would respond. His fellow digger initially began by pursing his lips upward and standing up straight in order to complete the mocking gesture of thought, the younger gentleman's hazel eyes quickly shifting to share a look with him.
"I'm sorry, Grayson, but I believe I'm hearing ghosties in the graveyard," Lloyd said apologetically. "'Cause, quite frankly, spectral possession is surely the only reason I could think of that would cause The Artist Formerly known as The Spoiler to possibly give me guff on how I want to call myself."
"Well, Casper may have a point," Dick countered as Stephanie responded to the smirking Brit with a noisy, spittle-filled raspberry. "I mean, you were named after a Led Zeppelin song, for crying out loud. That doesn't exactly scream originality."
"Just a follow-up question here," Stephanie broke in, the girl's lips pursed in a gesture of contemplation. "Just how big of a Cowboy Bebop fan was this Mao guy anyway?"
"Look, I'm not about to deny that the name still causes me to roll me eyes every now and again," Lloyd said simply as he returned to his burrowing. "That bein' said, after witnessin' Vincent got dubbed 'The Silver Coyote' I figured it'd be best if I just cut me losses."
"Okay, fair enough," Dick answered, the older of Lloyd's two critics seemingly not as determined to push the matter. "Still, you think you could have just asked to name yourself after a cooler Led Zeppelin song? Like Gallows Pole, maybe?"
Lloyd shook his head back and forth. "Nah, that's way too on the mark. Although the acoustic version of that song does kick all sorts of ass."
"Oh yeah, that double bass fucks your mothers," Stephanie sagely added, the words drawing confused but ultimately confirming nods from her laboring comrades. "How about Kashmir?"
"Are you daft, Tweety?" Lloyd spat back, his memories of one of history's most killer guitar licks already being lost to his own irritation. "A Brit boy workin' for a global enterprise naming himself after the spot that India and Pakistan have been brawlin' over for the last 700 years? Be lucky if I ever got a job on the eastern side of the globe doin' something that stupid."
"Now, now, be nice, Lloyd." Dick interrupted. "She may still be possessed by a ghost, after all."
"I am not possessed by a ghost," Stephanie insisted through gritted teeth. "Ooh! Howz about, Carouselambra?"
Lloyd made certain to let out a sigh that managed to carry over Nightwing's own groan, which was no small feat indeed.
"Another tip when it comes to being a globally-feared assassin?" he mentioned while pointing a finger at Dick. "Make sure you pick a name that everybody is actually able to pronounce."
"Not namin' yourself after the weakest song on the 'All My Love' album probably wouldn't hurt either," Dick added.
"Well, fine," Stephanie replied, a slight note of her occasionally morose ways beginning to make its presence felt after being shot down time and time again. "If you're going to be like that then that Mao guy should have just named you 'Hot Dog'!"
"Poor Stephanie," Lloyd nearly whispered while Dick gunned down the remaining contents of his eighth beer. "Bein' possessed by a rock stupid ghost like this."
"Damn shame," Nightwing agreed. "She had such promise."
"I AM NOT POSSESSED BY A GHOST!"
The whistling duet of the theme from 'The Exorcist' was met with a display of invective from the youngest of Earth's Green Lanterns that, in the interest of keeping certain ears innocent, will not be repeated here.
12:39 A.M.
"Cecil then Tidus then Terra then Squall then Cloud. . ."
"Buuuuuuuuullshit," Stephanie harshly interrupted, her sharp tone prompting Lloyd to cut his list short and shoot an angry glare at the attention hogging Girl Wonder. "First of all, what is it with you old fogies and Cecil the Paladin?! Second of all, Kain was ten times cooler and, third of all, Cecil couldn't do nothing but slash at people with his sword and be a glorified meat shield!"
"Cecil was the rock! He's what every other Final Fantasy hero should be." Lloyd fired back, the passion in his speech far more distinct than it most likely would have been if they had been discussing how to solve poverty or world hunger. "The guy had more than enough real reasons to be down on himself but he did his best to try to be a good bloke, he was a hero but he didn't make a big shit storm or be an emo punktard about it, and, most importantly, he used regular-sized swords instead of constantly tryin' to compensate for something. Cloud wishes he could have been Cecil!"
"Fine, fine, fine," Stephanie finally jumped in, the Gothamite more than eager to put a mute button on all the annoyingly passionate words before she could lose control of the topic. "I'll give you that and I'll give you Terra and Tidus but there is no way, no chance in hell that you can put that whiny master of the ellipses pissant over Cloud. Whether you like it or not, Cloud was the guy that got millions of people playing role-playing games and you're just going to have to respect that! Terra then Tidus then Cloud. . ."
"No, no, no, no, no, no," Dick butted in, his well-tossed beer can striking Stephanie on the bridge of her forehead and quieting her for the time being. "And before I start arguin', let me point out that a lot more people were less interested in Cloud's giant sword and more interested in Tifa's giant chesticles."
"THANK YOU!" Lloyd cried out to the heavens. "Oh, Grayson, say that Barret should have been the main character and I'll never say a bad word about ya again."
"Barret was good but not that good," Dick quickly interposed, the aforementioned request momentarily interesting him though his desire to speak his mind soon won the day. "All right, I'll put your two lists together here, throw in mine. . . How about. . . Tidus then Terra then Cecil then Squall then Zidane then Cloud then Vaan and Ashe. Any questions?"
"Works for me," Lloyd complied with a shrug of his shoulders. "No inquiries on my end."
"I've got one." Stephanie added. "Does anybody remember what we were talking about before we starting talking about this?"
Sadly, neither Dick nor Lloyd could provide a good answer to their comrade's perfectly legitimate question.
1:37 A.M.
Stephanie wasn't happy with discovering that Lloyd Thomas could be an angry drunk. Granted, it took nearly four-and-a-half hours of relatively heavy drinking for the half-demon to get to that point but the mere realization that it could happen was almost convincing her to hide in a corner or freeze up altogether. Her memory of her father chugging a beer bottle at the plaster walls, the handle screaming only inches above her head before the sound of shattered glass threatened to puncture her eardrums, was threatening to turn her back into the insecure little girl she never wanted to reveal to the two men around her. However, as much as she wanted to deny it, the heavy sound of Lloyd burying his shovel almost completely through the dirt made her jump in fear and surprise.
"Don't you start thinkin' that you're better than me!" Lloyd slurred out, a tinge of silver appearing in his usually peaceful gaze.
"You were the one that started it!" Dick snapped back, the taller vigilante now nose-to-nose with the far more powerful hunter. "You come into my house when I'm not around and start thinking that you can make orders and tell me what to do! You. . . you tried to change everything! Change every, fuckin' thing!"
"At least you had somethin' that somebody'd wanna take!" Stephanie did her best to hold in a gasp as Lloyd quickly jerked his sights away from Nightwing's angry eyes. "I mean, your folks, the real one and the new ones you got along the way. . . they'd have loved to stay with ya, yeah? I mean, I know it's not that right fer me to think that ya had it easy but. . ."
"Aw, jeez. . ." Nightwing replied, a note of sad realization in his once stormy tone. "Lloyd, man. I. . ."
"Why couldn't my dad wanna stay with me?" Lloyd mumbled as he stumbled to the dirt below him, his jeans once again becoming riddled with the earth he had spent hours disrupting. "Why. . . why did my mum not want to be with me?"
Stephanie wasn't even sure if there was enough room for all three of them in the chasm. Of course, that lack of knowledge didn't stop her from sliding down anyway, her arms already stretching forward so she could wrap them around Lloyd's neck that much quicker. She managed the task even before she could settle her butt into the dirt, the fingers on her left hand sifting their way through her big brother's hair. He took in Lloyd's warmth as she made shushing sounds in her friend's ear, the current Robin trying to grow more and more confident that she still had something that stayed where it should. She knew she had to be there for him, if only so she could get him to stop talking about mommies and daddies who didn't want them. Quite frankly, she was fairly certain that she was still a bit too sober to be hearing such things.
"I'm not gonna leave ya, puppy. Gonna be right here, okay?"
Dick found himself standing back from the scene, his momentary nervousness that came with almost having to deal with the unwanted situation somewhat calmed by his successor's timely rescue. Realizing that it wasn't going to be enough, he did his best to bend his long legs down in what little space left to him in the 8 foot by 7 foot surroundings. Tossing his shovel out of the space in order to give himself more to work with, the founder of the Teen Titans managed to wrap his long fingers around Lloyd's knees. He took in the slight trembling in the younger man's face and in his limbs as he sat in the dirt, the thought that somebody who seemed so strong look so uncomposed calling out to a somewhat forgotten part of him.
"It wasn't your fault, man," he said as simply as he could. "You're a good guy."
"Yeah," Lloyd croaked back, his chin still buried in the crook of Steph's shoulder. "You too, mate. I didn't want to take anythin'. Really, I didn't."
"I know, man. I know." Dick replied as Stephanie buried her face in Lloyd's left shoulder.
2:09 A.M.
The third-quarter moon seemed to hang unusually high in the normally dank, night skies of Gotham, the lack of cloud cover allowing the shine of the orbiting body to seem quite strong over the course of this particularly long night. The passage of time and the consumption of alcohol had finally brought an end to the sprawling, largely unnecessary conversations in order to usher in far more meaningful bouts of silence interrupted only by Stephanie's efforts in her formal burial chamber.
Dick and Lloyd had spent the last ten minutes enjoying the companionable silence, something that they most likely could have never accomplished only twelve hours before.
"Sooooo, you an' Bruce 're off to Nanda Parbat, are ya?"
"Looks like it," Dick replied, the older man's last can of Killian's long forgotten as his attentions shifted to the Gotham skyline he had fallen in love with nearly two decades ago. "I mean, we'll only be there for a few weeks before movin' on to Europe but. . . yeah."
"Yeah," Lloyd agreed, the thought of being placed in charge of everything that Bruce seemed ready to hand to him suddenly seeming far less appealing than it used to be. "An' we've got that new kid, the archer, comin' in too. Cor, I don't think I can handle all this."
Dick felt himself let out a sneer as he leaned forward and slapped Lloyd across the shoulders. "Bruce believes in you, man. You should probably be doin' the same. The best thing you can do is to stop thinkin' about it so much."
"Huh." It wasn't the first time that Lloyd recognized how what seemed like the most pointless of words could mean the most to somebody. Then again, Mao always did tell him that situations like these usually brought out the honesty in people. He swept his eyes down the length of his own body, his brain taking a moment or two to count all the grass stains and dirt smudges that had managed to pile up on his ragged blue jeans. He let out a long, deep sigh as he concluded his inventory, the urge to ask Dick about what he thought about it all finally beginning to form into words before the even sounds of Stephanie's digging came to an abrupt stop.
"HEY! I've hit mahogany, guys!" Several schuffs produced by the metal of Stephanie's spade sliding against the thin remains of dirt near her feet were soon to follow. A brief cackle from the grave was the next sound to rise as the current Robin began to trumpet her success. "Hey, guys! Ya sure you don't want to help me dig up another grave when we're done? I mean, now that I'm really thinking about it, it doesn't make much sense to me that we spent all this time digging in a cemetery and not see a dead person."
"No," Dick replied with as much sternness as he could muster in his current state of drunkenness, his brief reply prompting Lloyd to let out an agreeable grunt. "We are gonna clean up, sleep for a day or two, and then work together to make sure that nobody remembers this night for as long as we live."
"Hear, hear," Lloyd added as he stumbled back up to his feet, his own metabolism allowing him to reclaim a somewhat stable state of half-sobriety. He took a moment to see if Dick needed a hand, the Brit soon to note the gentle, sweeping back and forth of the man's head before he turned back to his self-appointed tasks of stumbling about while picking up bottles and cans. He all but ignored Stephanie's declaration that she was going to open up her casket, his thoughts already centered around the warm bed that waited for him back at the manor. In fact, he had finally managed to start turning the dirt-strewn pile of refuse into something that presented a bit of order and arrangement before his ears were assaulted by a shrill scream from the grave itself.
"What the hell is this?" Stephanie asked in bewilderment, the fear in her voice prompting Lloyd to drop all but a few bits of his collected refuse and Dick to roll to his feet as they both rushed to her side. "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!" she mumbled on in rapid fire as her comrades raced towards her and whatever she had found. However, the shared desperation collapsed almost immediately after it began as Stephanie all but collapsed in her own laughter, the realization that she had fooled her comrades combining with the alcohol in her system and her usually winsome ways to make her feel phenomenally tickled. Dick and Lloyd, on the other hand, had their shock and compassion give way to annoyance as they cast their sights on the same coffer that Robin had pretended to be so horrified by.
"You are such a bitch," Lloyd was all too happy to declare, his small hands raining down what few pieces of trash he had left in his clutches down onto the top of Stephanie's head. The hail of garbage was met with even louder laughter from the fair-haired tormentor as she weathered the airborne strikes while doing her best to avoid Dick's efforts to ensnare her into a headlock.
"Come on, guys," Stephanie almost pleaded once the dual attacks had ceased. "Ernestine Hemperwinkel has been in that same, tired hole since 1952 and I believe she could use some fresh air. I mean, we don't even have to do this with shovels this time! We'll just break out the spectral bulldozer, lift the casket out, and start our undead army. It won't take. . . OH SHIT!!"
"RUN!"
A flashing of red and blue lights immediately followed Dick and Stephanie's panicked exclamations and the brief introduction of a pair of sirens as a small army of Gotham City's finest had apparently arrived to investigate. To be fair, however, the care that Lloyd had put into swooping Dick onto his shoulders before hustling him away from the scene of the crime could have been seen as a step in the right direction given their previously hostile encounters. Steph's efforts into bounding her way out of her own grave, on the other hand, would doubtlessly have drawn some critical ire from The Batman had he been able to witness it first-hand but, thankfully, Bruce Wayne was not available to comment about the length of time that Robin needed to come out of her tuck. Likewise, the spurt of profane words that poured from her mouth as her right knee clipped against one of the nearby gravestones on the way out also went unnoticed by The Dark Knight of Gotham City, the warnings of the uniformed officers managing to drown Stephanie out.
Wayne Manor – 9:21 A.M.
"Well, lady and gentleman, I trust that the previous night's labors bore a great many desired fruits?"
Alfred Pennyworth didn't even bother to curb the sarcasm that he usually laced into his traditionally sardonic observations. The question of whether or not this showing of unrestrained emotion was due to a genuine disgust directed at the three people slumped over the breakfast table was left somewhat uncertain but the butler's previous quick excusing of one Kara Zor-el from the morning's festivities provided a fairly solid clue. To their credit though, Dick, Lloyd, and Stephanie weathered their punishment with no complaint save for a small smattering of anguished groans and throbbing temples. On the other hand, one could also argue that their castigation could have been made a great deal smaller if Batman had not chosen to pick such an early time in the morning for a daily briefing or if Alfred had chosen not to make so much unnecessary noise while preparing the team's first meal of the day but, quite frankly, such possibilities were most likely to be left within the psychological ether that was life at the largest house in Gotham.
"I don't suppose that you lot have had the time to peruse the morning's headlines?" Alfred continued on while taking a seat across from his victims, his quick hands moving to make a play for the nearby copy of The Gotham Times. "It appears that some poor fools attempted to tarnish one of the finest cemeteries in the city last night before the police arrived to run them off. Honestly, I find the audacity of such thieves and vagabonds in times such as these is nothing short of galling."
"You know, we can put him in the hole we dug up last night," Lloyd said almost matter-of-factly, the fatigue in his voice far more attributable to a surprise, two-hour training session with Kara than to anything he had consumed the night before. On the bright side, the accidental pummeling the half-Kryptonian had given him most likely had done wonders for her confidence.
"Nuh uh," Steph mumbled in reply, her medium-length blonde hair still covering up her slumped over face. "He makes pancakes. Can't kill guy who makes pancakes."
"We can learn to make pancakes," Lloyd slowly countered, his tone growing more and more incredulous. "We beat The Anti-Monitor and The Society of Supervillains in less than a day so it stands to soddin' reason that we kin make our own breakfast."
"Oh my. Just how am I to respond to such a bold series of threats upon my safety and livelihood?" Alfred asked all who could listen without a hint of dismay. "I believe I shall take my leave now, if only to ensure my physical and psychological well-being. Of course, that means that I must entrust the care of these many dirty dishes into the hands of those that remain but, Lord willing and the creek won't rise, I hope that some good soul will be able to take care of them."
To his credit, the former Interpol agent managed to keep a good proportion of the smugness out of his smile as he left the kitchen.
"Guys, is my brain still in my head?" asked Nightwing, the former acrobat's neck rising an inch or two off of the recently polished wood of the table he was dozing on. "Because, honestly, I don't think I remember what a dish is."
Lloyd let out a groan as he rose up onto his tired, quivering legs, the Brit tilting his head to the right in a mocking effort to check the space between his friend's ears. "You're in good shape," he determined while making his way around to the nearby sink. "As for what a dish is, I think it's one of these glass things that everybody else but us ate off of this morning." The young man sometimes known as The Black Dog narrowed his eyes at the scouring sponge that the caretaker of Wayne Manor had lain at the left edge of the nearby sink before picking it up himself. "An' judgin' from all that's in here, it doesn't appear that any of them have chosen to run away with a spoon."
"Need any help?" Stephanie asked as she craned open her eyes to look at her adopted big brother, the dull pitch in her offer of assistance a clear sign that she hoped that the answer was a resounding 'no'.
"Naw, I'll be all right, Steffers," Lloyd bravely replied as he placed his first successfully scoured dish aside. "You Robins just go to sleep and put your heads back together again. Responsibility of the newly-crowned leader an' all that."
"Sounds good to me," Dick confessed as he slowly hefted himself to a standing position. "Maybe that way, I can actually remember a single thing that I did last night."
Even Steph, as exhausted as she was, couldn't help but jerk her eyes upward in order to take in the hurt expression on Lloyd's face as Dick walked away. A sad, Muppet-like smile rose on her lips as she took in the abject hurt on her friend's face while she rose to her own feet as well. Resisting the urge to slump over and wrap her big brother into a tight hug, she thought it wiser to stumble over to Dick, her pace allowing her to catch up with the first Robin just before he reached the foot of the manor's main stairwell.
"You're an asshole, you know that?"
Dick slowly turned around to look Stephanie in the eye, a quiet smile surfacing upon his face as he took in the meaning behind the words.
"Come on, sprout. Can't let the new kid off that easy, can I?"
Misfits Confidential
Man, it felt good to write this. Of course, given that it's almost a week late in it being published, I could understand why some of you might not believe that. That being said, I think I've got a reasoned argument behind my tardiness. In fact, allow me to present said line of reasoning in the form of a mathematical equation.
55-hour work week + Martian Death flu = Halfway lucid Matt the Batman Man who didn't meet his main writing deadline for the first time in a year-and-a-half.
No worries though. Apparently I've managed to make a tentative truth with my mucous membranes so everything's all right for now. Of course, I can't promise that I'll be able to make up for all the lost time in the next week or so but, hey, there's no harm in trying, is there? I don't have that much of a mind to lose anymore anyway.
Here's hoping you enjoyed the story. As a form of apology for its lateness, how about a next story preview free of charge?
Next Story Preview
The next story is all about Bruce Wayne. Well, at least it was supposed to be. You see, no matter how hard I try to give The Batman a bit of alone time, there always seems to be a bunch of opportunistic little moppets that want to get in this broody guy's way. Still, I think we can manage to pull off a one-shot that's all about The Dark Knight, even if I have to hop across all of Bruce's life to do it. Tune in to watch the ultimate loner have no time to himself in the next installment to The Misfits: Patronly Stigmas. Until then, remember to say what you think and write what you feel!