A/N: Hi, FanFiction! This is actually my very first piece to upload on the site, so I'm sort of nervous ;) Enjoy!
They teased him about it. Teased him to the point where he literally weaned himself off of his fetish for being clever- and borderline annoying. Teased him up until he was almost able to go for weeks, months, maybe even years without uttering a single witty remark.
Almost.
The problem with being raised by a man fueled by a grudge was that thoughts and habits, even ones as simple as this, obscured themselves so deep into the mind that they became second nature.
How, Robin thought, in the seclusion provided atop his glossy red, oil-fueled steed. How could he have let that one slip? After all his hard work and sweat?
He let it slip. Slips were mistakes. There was no room for mistakes in his business.
Two-hundred chin-ups, he told himself. And no dinner. You made a mistake, Dick. Now you have to pay. The voice took on the qualities of Bruce's, even though the two hadn't conversed in well over six months. Robin had received the very same ruling so many times over that the sentence repeated in his head, not unlike a stuck CD.
Realizing that he had fallen behind during his musings, Robin tightened his curled fingers around the gas, forcing the R-Cycle to dart forward, where he took his rightful place at the front of his team.
"Dude! Dude! Dude!" Garfield Logan slammed his green fists into his best friend Victor's door, making it reverberate violently. The door cracked open after a few moments, and a very disgruntled Cyborg peeked out at the changeling.
"Dude, guess what?" Garfield smiled broadly, a single fang jutting out over his lip.
"What." Victor didn't ask. In reality, he would've preferred not to respond at all.
Garfield raised a hand that was before hidden behind his back, revealing a small, silver disc.
"I got it. I got the fight with Plasmus. This is gonna be great."
Batman, the Dark Knight of Gotham himself, was not expecting mail. So when Alfred emerged from the elevator holding a small package with an unremarkable bow looped around it, he was wary.
"Did you check that thing, Alfred?" He growled, watching with sharp eyes as his butler approached.
"Naturally, sir," Alfred replied, grinning at the Dark Knight's habitual suspiciousness. "It appears to be a harmless gift from a… Mr. Garfield Logan?"
Batman frowned, remembering the awkward green member of Dick's little organization. Garfield Logan knew very well that he didn't like him in the least. What could've fueled him to send such a package?
Alfred handed the parcel off to a claw-gloved hand and stepped back, unsure if it was safe to stick around. Batman inspected it for a short moment, taking in everything from the plain brown paper to the messy scrawl in the left corner that read,
"FROM GARFIELD LOGAN"
Batman reached up and tore the cowl back from his face so that it wouldn't obscure his vision. He ran a hand through his dark hair once or twice before tearing the paper cleanly off the thin package.
Inside was a crystal case that played home to a single CD. On the CD was written, in the same, barely legible writing:
"WHAT ARE YOU TEACHING YOUR CHILDREN, BATMAN!?"
A deep frown found its' way onto the Caped Crusader's unmasked face as he shoved aside a stack of documents and inserted the disc into a drive. It took mere seconds for the Batcomputer to process the disc. As soon as it was ready, Batman pressed 'PLAY' and sat back, face sternly set into his trademark 'Batglare'.
The screen went black for a moment, before bursting into color and picture. A little girls' frightened face dominated the monitor. A plethora of voices combined in the background to create an annoying buzz, and something much larger could be detected coming from elsewhere in the picture.
Batman concluded, in the first 3 seconds, that the clip playing must've been recorded on a cellphone, because the resolution was poor and the picture was shaking, as if someone was holding it.
The screen quickly changed again, zooming in on two very odd figures. The first was a giant mass of purplish goop, not unlike Batman's hometown adversary, Clayface. The goop bubbled and frothed as it molded into a giant tidal wave that threatened to swallow the second figure: Garfield, at the moment decked out in his Beast Boy attire. The cellphone holder zoomed in even further on Garfield's bottle green form, revealing that he was held into place by two cuffs around his ankles that seemed to be made out of the same oozing material as his foe.
Garfield called out, "Guys!?" but there was no response. Just as the goop began to crash down, a small colorful blur flashed past the screen and scooped up Garfield. The picture panned out and then refocused upon two figures up at the top of a close-by building: Garfield, breathing heavily, and Dick.
Alfred, who was standing dutifully behind Batman the entire time, gasped audibly, but held his tongue. Batman himself felt his breath catch in his throat, but that uncomfortable feeling was quickly replaced with a much more pleasant one: pride. The bubble of emotion dispersed as quickly as it came to the Dark Knight, but there was no doubt it had been there.
The picture followed the two for a moment, Garfield picking goo off of his shoulder and Dick standing behind him, staff in hand. Batman began to think that the CD was about to end when the screen changed again, this time centering on the purple substance again. The foreign susbtance was now in the process of devouring a larger teen, which the Caped Crusader quickly identified as Victor Stone, a.k.a Cyborg. He was obviously panicking; one of his robotic limbs shooting gobs of energy in random directions.
Batman chuckled. "Amateurs."
Yet again, Dick swung down and latched onto his counterpart, lifting him out of the sea of purple and depositing him on the ground amongst the crowd, which parted willingly. Batman heard Victor thank Dick as he stood up and began to clean himself off, just as Garfield had done. Dick was looking obviously winded now. Victor was quite a bit bigger than Batman's former apprentice, so he must've taken quite a bit of effort to lift.
For the third time, attention was returned back to the sludge. A girl, clad in a black leotard and cape, was fighting to keep her head above the torrent of swirling goop, while a second hovered above the scene, desperately calling for her teammates.
Batman had to think for a moment, but eventually labeled them as Raven and Starfire, respectively.
The camera swung back to Dick and Victor. The person with the camera must've assumed the team leader would perform the same swing-and-pull trick a third time. Instead though, Dick clutched at a stitch in his side, gritted his teeth together, and roared,
"Holy fuck, Batman! Can't you give me a mother fucking break!?"
The crowd on screen went silent, casting an eerie hush over the entire cave. All eyes were on Batman's surrogate son, whose face went ghostly white. The quiet was broken by Alfred's barely audible, "Oh," behind Batman, who remained speechless.
The screen went blank; the CD spun out of the Batcomputer and into Batman's waiting palm. Then, the Dark Knight rose from his chair and tossed the disc at the wall, where it impaled itself into the stone.
Alfred approached Batman's menacing form, a look of concern (mostly for Dick) plastered on his face.
"What do you plan to do now, Master Bruce?" He inquired softly. Batman turned around to face his butler and pulled his cowl back down over his eyes.
"Alfred," he growled, his cape settling around him like a pair of leathery wings. "I'm going to pound that boy into the ground."