A lot has been written about the woods. In fact, there are probably enough books about forests and the beauties therein to make up the remains of one quite large shredded and pulped area of timberland.
Very little has been written about this forest. It's dark, with deep shadows concealing piles of dead leaves and bits of dry bracken that are likely to snap under even the softest footstep. And, unlike most other forests at night, this forest is absolutely silent. Not a single owl is hooting. There is not a creature for miles around that will dare to place a paw in this all-too-silent patch of woodland outside the caves.
Four silhouettes stood in the gloom and quietly observed the cave's entrance. One of them - the one in the blindingly white lab coat - stepped forward. "Stay here," he warned, black dress shoes crunching on the bits of natural debris strewn outside the cave's entrance.
Dr. McNinja sidled into the darkness, watching with narrowed eyes for the first hint of movement. Would it be from behind the stalactite? From above? Maybe from the small, ribbony path of worn rock where a waterfall had carved a perfect hiding place?
He crept up onto a stalagmite to get a better view. It wouldn't be a ranged attack - that wouldn't be any fun. No, it was definitely going to be hands-on. His shoe scraped against the stone, barely audible in the dripping, chilly darkness.
The rock beneath his feet exploded upward. Two powerful, stripy legs scissored toward him, aiming to catch him by the knees, but he had already hurled himself upward to cling spider-like to a stalactite. The stripy black blur sprang toward him, brandishing a gleaming silvery sai in either hand. The good doctor readied a handful of shuriken and -
ThwipthwipthwipthwipBONK. Something whizzed out of the darkness and wrapped around them like a love-starved octopus, belting them together tightly at the waist. Dr. McNinja and his mysterious opponent fell to the ground, only lightly kicking one another as they fought to land on their feet. The fake stalagmite rattled away into the depths of the cave with one swat from a tabi-clad foot.
"Who was that?" the other ninja demanded, slicing through the rope with a quick slash of a tiny dagger.
Doc brushed the silken bat-line off of his hips, tucking a piece in his pocket as a souvenir. "I'd like you to meet Batman and Robin," he said proudly. "And this is...my mother."
Batman and Mitzi scowled suspiciously at one another from under their masks.
"Hi, Mrs. McNinja," Gordito greeted, waving with his left hand. A blur of silver, like a freshly smelted sparrow, sang through the air at him. Bang! The tiny sharp thing spun harmlessly away as Gordito holstered his right-hand pistol.
"You'll do," Mitzi nodded, turning on her heel and stalking into the tiny incongruous house set into the cave wall.
"The robot room's downstairs," Doc said, dropping his shuriken back into his pocket with a faint jingling noise. "This way." The quartet entered the little house, shutting the neatly painted front door behind them. The interior was typical suburbia: knickknacks and pictures clustered on the shelves, soft curtains draped beside the windows, and well-polished floors underfoot. In fact, if the family photos on the wall hadn't been of four masked ninjas, one almost might have mistaken it for a normal home.
A door at the end of the hallway swung open. "Oh. It's you," another ninja greeted. His mustache, viewable through a specially-cut hole in his mask, was splashed with oil and grit.
"Yeah. Are the robots up and running?" Doc asked.
Dan McNinja shrugged. "I don't know. Are the robots up and running?" he asked his younger son pointedly.
The boy shrugged, tugging sheepishly on his hat. "No, sir."
"None of them?" Gordito asked, shocked.
"Huh? Oh, the ones outside are cool," the boy dismissed. His metal necklace, upon closer inspection, bore a spray of scorch-marked debris. "The snakes just exploded again."
"Good," Doc said. "We'll go down and look at the video feeds, if that's okay with you."
Dan shrugged. "Does your...friend like robots?" he asked guardedly.
"He's Batman," Doc explained, as if that was all the answer that anyone needed. "This is my dad, Dan, and my brother..." he sighed. "Dark Smoke Puncher."
"Yo, Gordito!" the boy ninja said, perking up, "you gotta come see what we did to the bear. It's tight!"
"Yeah?" Gordito said, interested. They moved toward the basement door.
Mitzi stuck her head out of the kitchen into the hallway. "Dinner's ready," she informed them.
"Okay," Doc said, "we're just going to go down to the basement and - "
A black-gloved hand snapped out of the doorway and caught him by the collar. "Dinner's. Ready," she repeated.
"Okay then!" Doc wheezed. "Dinnertime. Right." Mitzi dropped him and disappeared back into the kitchen. "Go ahead and grab a seat - I'm just going to go help," he said, waving Batman and the boys down the hall toward the dining room. "We'll be there in a second!"
When they were out of earshot, he spun and darted into the kitchen. "Did you poison anything?" he demanded.
Mitzi, balancing a full row of serving platters on her arm, narrowed icy eyes at him. "What kind of a question is that?" she snapped.
"You always poison dinner when we have guests!" Doc sighed. "I'm asking you - please - please don't poison Batman!"
Mitzi scooped another dish up and wriggled it into place on her elbow. "This is my house, young man," she reprimanded, "and I'll poison who I like!"
Dan popped his head in through the swinging kitchen door. "If this Batman was half as good as you always said he is, he wouldn't need you to be in here asking your mother not to poison them. He'd deal with it himself like a proper ninja would."
"Okay! Fine!" Doc waved his hands in the air, exasperation coming off of him like steam. "Poison the dinner! Whatever!" Mitzi, with her remaining free hand, slid a brimming bowl full of beets onto her left wrist. "It's the beets, isn't it?" Doc demanded, standing in the doorway with his hands pressed against the frame as if it might collapse and bury him under a mound of drywall and well-polished wood. "You poisoned the beets!"
Mitzi glared at him. "Move," she commanded. With the well-trained reflexes of a long and violent childhood, Doc snapped to attention somewhere near the stove as Mitzi stalked out of the room.
"No, wait," he called, hurrying after her. "You can't...start without Dad," he finished lamely as he skidded into the dining room to find the table surrounded by questioning vigilantes. Drat. He slid into his chair and moodily tinged a fork into his water glass with the flick of a finger.
Mitzi performed a complicated shrug. Dishes spun from her arms and rattled into place on the table. Dan McNinja, mustache freshly groomed, took his place at the head of the table and lifted the first platter.
Batman looked at the spread of food silently, his blank white eyes focusing one by one on each bowl and platter. Could he have heard the conversation in the kitchen? Doc devoutly hoped so. One by one, the dishes passed by Doc. Roast beef...salad...potatoes...beets.
With the bowl full of bright purple beets in one hand, and the serving spoon in the other, he looked daringly at Mitzi. She pinned him with a cold, flat stare that told him nothing. There was really only one way to handle this.
Doc scooped a generous portion of beets onto his plate, followed by a second generous portion, topped by a third portion that always gave its entire salary to charity. "Looks good, Mom," he lied, scraping the last one onto his plate before settling the empty bowl back onto the table. "Whoops! There's none - "
China rattled.
"...left," he said, looking at the mountain of neatly sliced beets in the newly refilled bowl. Fabric wrinkled slightly on Mitzi's mask as she smirked at him. With a quiet sigh, he lifted the new bowl of possibly deadly beets and passed it down the table.
One of the best things about the ninja mask is that it hides one's face. (Well, obviously, or why would ninjas wear them?) It was easy to act casually when the thousand tiny tells on your face were covered with opaque fabric. She wanted to ruin the dinner? Two could play at that game. Silently, below the tablecloth, Dr. McNinja slid a syringe from a hidden pocket in his labcoat and carefully slipped the needle through his trousers and into his leg. At least the antidote would keep him alive for long enough to get more for the others...
There had probably been more strained family dinners in the history of the world. One can imagine the sheer joy and relaxation involved with a dinner at Henry VIII's place, and dinnertime with the Borgias had possibly been less than pleasant as well. On the whole, however, this dinner ranked up there at the top of the list of Dinners I'd Rather Not Eat for Dr. McNinja.
The adults concentrated silently on their food. The boys, however, eagerly launched into a discussion about robots. Since the three of them each had some experience with saving the world and/or fighting said robots to the death, the conversation tended more toward battle techniques and emergency hacks than speculations about whether Optimus Prime would wipe the floor with Voltron.
Doc gingerly lifted a forkful of beets, with the vain hope flitting across his mind that perhaps the antidote might kill some of the taste as well as the poison. A single, deep magenta-stained drop of liquid splashed onto his plate as he stared down the forkful of death. Then, with a quick, indrawn breath, the beets hit his tongue.
Oh, yes, they were every bit as vile as he remembered. But...something wasn't right. There was the firm, yet mushy beet, and there was the tangy, mouth-puckering brine...where was the poison? His mother's poison always left a distinct, smoky aftertaste on the back of his tongue.
She hadn't poisoned the dinner! It had all been one of her mind games. With a smile of relief, he scooped up a forkful of salad. Dressing gleamed on the fresh, crisp greens. He crunched happily into them.
Oh. There was the poison. He ran his gaze over the table. The only ones to take the salad had been himself and his father. Dan would be all right - his mother had yet to come up with a poison that would slow him down for even a moment - and the antidote would surely take care of whatever she'd laced the salad dressing with in his case.
His smile of relief faded as he looked down at his plate. The beets, resting in a pile the size of a large kitten, puddled disgustingly together at the edge of his plate.
A ninja has no fear. A ninja has no fear. With only a brief pause to wish that ninjas had no tastebuds, Doc raised his next forkful of beets to his mouth.
Jonathan Crane was not fond of the outdoors. There was a reason that he worked in Gotham, and it only had a little to do with the wide availability of test subjects and the strong possibility of being sent to Arkham instead of death row. He'd spent his childhood outside: tending the fields on his great-grandmother's farm, hiding in the bushes from bullies, plodding step by step down the long, dusty roads from school to home, coming up with stories to explain away the bruises that his great-grandmother never asked about...
The Scarecrow was a man of cities, and he preferred to stay that way. Unfortunately, he'd wound up stuck with Dr. I'm-Horrible-At-Directions, and so he'd spent the last half an hour trudging through the damp and squidgy forest in an aimless search pattern to find a recognizable landmark.
"You're telling me that with all that electronic junk, you didn't think to bring a map?" Crane said as they rounded a bulbous boulder for the third time.
Dr. Horrible, squinting into the distance, ignored him. "That way," he said, pointing down the only fork in the path that they hadn't yet tried. "We're almost there - I think."
"You're sure?" Crane said snidely. "Or is this another one of those we're almost theres like the last twelve?"
Gadgets clanked as Horrible shifted the bag irritably to his other shoulder. "You're more than welcome to go back to the office," he snapped. "I'm sure McNinja and his pet would love to see you, unless you've got some kind of brilliant plan like your last one."
"I was going to be gone before they got back!" Crane grumbled, wincing as his sodden foot squelched noisily into another mud puddle. "It wouldn't have mattered if you'd just stayed out of it."
"Me?" Horrible laughed. "Without me, you'd be back there being used as a toothpick. There it is," he beamed, picking up the pace and hurrying toward a huge white blur. Crane resolutely forced his fingers away from the toxin release buttons. He needed this twerp to stay safe tonight. After he had the cure, though...oooh, he'd have some fun then. With the back of his glove, he blotted fog from his glasses under the mask and peered disbelievingly at Horrible's residence.
It was a semi truck. A huge, single-trailered semi truck, with WALMART printed in giant blue letters on either side of the trailer. Another young man, his pale t-shirt soaked with sweat, squinted at a comic book in the dim glow of the truck's hazard lights. He looked up, straightening in his lawn chair as the duo of villains approached.
"You came all the way here in a Wal-Mart truck?" Crane shook his head.
"What's more evil than Wal-Mart?" Horrible shrugged. "Hey, Moist!" he called to the new guy.
"Hey, Doc!" The damp young man waved an equally damp comic at the two of them in greeting. "Who's your friend?"
"He's the Scarecrow."
"Laughton? Here?" Moist brightened with awe.
"Nah. Rain something," Horrible said dismissively.
"Jonathan Crane," the Scarecrow snapped, thoroughly irritated. He calmed himself down momentarily by picturing his soon-to-be-full test room, after he'd shorn the upstart of all of his irritating little devices.
"Oh!" Moist grinned. "Crane...from Gotham, right? I heard about that one thing you did recently...where everyone was scared of you?"
"That tends to happen," the Scarecrow said dryly.
"No, the whole city, all at once. Pretty cool," Moist complimented. Crane let a little smirk of pride flit across his face, safe under the mask. "So, Doc, did you get the cure?"
"Nah. McNinja came back early." Horrible ran his hands up the back of the truck, feeling for the catch that would spring the door open. "We need a better plan." With a tiny squeak, the doors swung open to reveal a portable lair crammed with bits and pieces of technological advancements. "We'd better get moving," he added, hoisting himself into the back of the trailer. "Wouldn't want the heroes to find us."
Crane swung himself easily up into the trailer and pulled the doors shut behind him. From outside, he could hear Moist climbing into the cab and starting up the truck.
There was a soft-looking green sofa wrapped heavily in plastic to his left. He settled down on it, grimacing at the feel of wet, muddy burlap against his skin. An equally well-wrapped ottoman waited to support his ankles. Next to the couch was a bed, neatly made. The rest of the trailer was packed with electronics - prototype robots, computers, and various ray weapons jostled for space on the floor, while wires supporting delicate webs of metal dangled from the ceiling. If he'd been inclined to give credit where credit was due, he'd have been somewhat impressed by the lair.
But, in his time as a villain, he'd seen enough to dismiss this lair as comparatively nothing. It had a couch that he could sleep on, and that was about the only redeeming quality in this whole mess. Team-ups never worked out. He'd belonged to a handful of evil organizations - the Injustice League, the Injustice Gang, the Secret Society of Supervillains - and every time, the heroes had snuffed out their efforts by using their weaknesses against each other. Even when it had been just him and another villain, he'd always wound up as the punching bag. Teaming together didn't work.
But teaming together until he could throw the other party away as hero bait - oh, yes, that worked beautifully. Crane slid one of the toxin sprayers out of his shirt and examined it, carefully cleaning mud from the various intricate bits that made up the trigger. Let's see how effective his gadgets are against this, he thought smugly as he scraped mud from his pride and joy.
Dr. Horrible, nestled behind a wall of monitors and other electronics, peeked through a gap at the Scarecrow on his couch. Frankly, he was rather pleased that the man had happened along. It was always useful to have another target for the heroes to focus on.
Speaking of which...the Batman was out there somewhere. That was a complication he hadn't anticipated. Taking out Captain Hammer had been one thing (oh, and what a glorious thing it had been - reducing that monstrous, testosterone-fuelled egomaniac to a pile of psychological rubble was page one in his mental scrapbook of Awesome Things I've Accomplished) but Batman would be quite another thing altogether. Captain Hammer had tended to rely on his super-strength alone to get the job done - not that he'd needed much else most of the time, unfortunately - but Batman used his strength and his mind, not to mention the array of bat-gadgetry in his belt.
He booted up his laptop. Leaving behind the question of could he take out Batman - and that was a pretty big question - he turned to his next thought. Should he take out Batman? The rogues of Gotham were notoriously proprietary about their hero. Well, at least he'd heard that the Joker was, and the Joker was not a man to trifle with. Should he really drag the Evil League of Evil into something that might turn into a prolonged, vicious war merely to get Batman off of his back?
It was at times like this that he was glad that he hadn't quite finished taking over the world. His top-secret ELE wireless connection blinked into life a mere moment before he opened his email account. Within a few minutes, he'd typed up a rather succinct version of what had recently happened and fired it off to management to ask them what to do next.
His inbox was choked with new mail. A slight smile drifted across his face as he flicked through them. Comments on his latest blog - mostly concerning questions as to what the big secret thing he was going to steal was - mingled with spam and the occasional useful letter. Arachnos wanted him to join them to aid Dr. Aeon in the lab - deleted. Aeon was a jerk. Mad Scientists United wanted him to lend a hand to rebuild the Sinister Sixty - nah. If he was going to waste time building an army of robots, he was going to use his own designs, not Hufflebaggins'. Trans Poly U wanted money for a new lab, since the old one had been destroyed thanks to yet another careless student in the mad sciences - nope. Just because he'd gone to school there didn't mean he felt any kind of long-term loyalty to them.
Ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding! His email alert chimed through the air. A response already? He clicked on the new email.
"BAD HORSE, BAD HORSE, -" the speakers thundered.
"Can you turn it down?" Crane snapped, glaring at Horrible through his wall of technology.
"Sure." Horrible spun the knob. The speakers continued singing, much quieter this time.
"...the ninjas in Maryland are standing in our way
With Batman's help, they could put us in disarray
And since you have the power to make them go astray -
You must be quick, without remorse
to kill the Batman! Signed, Bad Horse!"
(to be continued)
Author's Note: ...cuz I'm fillin' up my belly with ice cream and jelly, and I'm toppin' it with pickled beets, oh yeah! Toppin' it with pickled beets!...dear god, I'm rapping a song from the Care Bears/Wonderland crossover. Eighties cartoons will be the death of me one day - that is, if the ninjas don't kill me first for posting this on Talk like a Pirate Day. (Also, beets are delicious. So there.)
References ahoy! Arachnos is from the game City of Villains, which I waste far too much time playing. Mad Scientists United is from Tom Smith's musical The Last Hero On Earth. Trans Poly U (Transylvania Polygnostic University) is from Girl Genius (girlgeniusonline dot com), which I haven't read all the way through yet, but I adore Tom Smith's Trans Poly U fight song. (If you're not listening to Tom Smith yet, you're a silly person who is missing out. He's at tom smith online dot com.) Crane's master plan that impressed Moist is from The Batman Adventures #19.
