Author's Note: You might want to brush up on your memories of South Park the Movie's song 'La Resistance'. Hint, hint.


As you might imagine, strategy is vital to the lives of both criminals and crimefighters. Hours and sometimes days of thought are devoted to planning and outthinking one's opponent. If I hire too many henchmen, will one of them talk - or, worse yet, will one of them be Batman in disguise? If I were to beat up everyone in this bar, would someone be willing to tell me where his boss is lairing? And, of course, there is the never-ending dance of weapon acquisition and robbery foiling that always goes wrong for somebody.

But sometimes, strategy is pretty much useless. After so many years of fighting one another - or, at the very least, fighting The Other Guys - you know what the other person is going to do next, just as they know your next move, no matter how fiendishly cunning you may think it to be. Such was the case in Cumberland tonight.

Dr. McNinja and Batman had hidden themselves quietly in the lab. There was only one logical reason that the two crooks would bother to come all the way out to Maryland - the anti-ninja formula, which, as far as they knew, was carefully tucked away in the lab. (Surprisingly, it still was in the lab. Bait was a marvelous way to attract criminals, even dangerous bait like this. Unfortunately, even if the criminals in question did manage to break into the lab, they wouldn't be able to access the formula. The human brain was a wonderful place to keep secrets, and Doc had stashed the formula in his memory and nowhere else.)

Doc, in his hidden perch above the ceiling tiles, peered curiously down into the seemingly empty room. A laptop with a tiny homing device hidden in a USB port glowed invitingly on the bench where he normally kept his emergency anti-lumberjacking kit. Batman, crouched a few feet away from him over another ceiling support, squinted at a small wrist computer. A small army of repurposed Chuck E. Cheese robots lurked in the forest around the tiny office, their camera-lensed eyes focused on the road and every possible entry to the building. The various feeds from their positions sent a blinking blue glow glimmering over Batman's face as he watched for intruders.

Nothing - not even an owl or a moth - moved. The forest was eerily motionless, which tended to be a usual side effect when you marched half a dozen anthropomorphic man-sized robot animals with whirring eyes into the area.

Brrrrrring! The phone on the wall clattered cheerily into life. The doctor sighed, peeled back the ceiling tile, and landed on the ground with a gentle thud.

Batman stuck his head out of the hole. This was no time to take a phone call. "What are you doing?" he hissed.

"It could be an emergency!"

"Aren't you supposed to be closed?"

"I'm always open," Doc explained, scooping up the handset. "Hello?" He rolled his eyes. "I don't have time for this right now. Call back tomorrow!" he snapped into the phone.

"But I have diabeeeeeetus!" the voice on the other end wailed as he slammed the phone back onto the hanger.

"Sorry," he apologized, swinging himself back up into the ceiling. "Not important. He'll just have to-"

Brrrrrring! Doc, dangling from the ceiling like an opossum from its mother, glared down at the all-too-chipper phone. Brrrrrring!

"Answer it," Batman said curtly, squinting at the tiny monitor. "They're not here yet."

Doc nodded and obediently swung himself back to the ground. The pale beige plastic of the phone glinted in the moonlight as he pressed it to his mask. "I don't care about your diabetes!" he snapped. "I told you, call back tomorrow!"

He paused. "Yes...who is this?" he demanded. Batman turned up the gain on his tiny long-range microphone and aimed it at the handset.

"...is Dr. Horrible," a voice said smugly. "We have the boys. You've got two hours to find them, otherwise...things could get messy." Click.

Batman spun the volume dial down on the mic as Dr. McNinja turned to peer up at him. "That was Dr. Horrible. They've got the boys," he called.

"Right on schedule," Batman said smugly.

"You knew they were going to kidnap them?"

Batman shrugged. The sky was blue, water was wet, and villains who had never faced him before kidnapped his sidekick to try and slow him down. (Villains who had faced him before tended to avoid kidnapping Robin, unless they really didn't care about being sent to the hospital wing of Arkham yet again.) Frankly, he was mildly surprised that the Scarecrow had gone along with it.

Speaking of villains..."I want you to drive out there and get them back."

McNinja visibly swelled with pride. Then, as a thought struck him, he wilted like a flower dropped into the desert. "I let Judy have the car tonight for pottery class!"

A set of keys flashed down through the darkness and landed in his lab coat pocket. "Take my car," Batman ordered. He tapped in a command on his wrist computer. "Follow the dot on the screen - it's Robin's tracking device," he added. McNinja stood there, wide-eyed, with one hand tracing the outline of the keys in his pocket. "What?"

"Nothing! I just...nothing. I'll be back with them right away!" McNinja bolted from the room.

Batman waited until he heard the roar of the engine fading away. Then, like a living puddle of ink, he oozed out of the ceiling and slid the removable tile back into place.

Batman was not a trusting person. In fact, he was deficient in a lot of heroic attributes - hope, cheerfulness, the ability to turn a thug over to the cops without a dislocated joint or two - but chief among his missing personality traits was that of trust.

He didn't trust anyone. From a very early age, he'd learned that the only person you can rely upon is yourself. Everyone else left, or was taken from him by an uncaring universe (aided by various well-armed madmen). Oh, certainly he relied upon his associates, like Robin, and quite often he placed his life in their hands - but he never fully trusted them. The back of his mind constantly seethed with plans and tactics to turn any situation to his advantage, even if Robin were to suddenly jump him from behind and try to strangle him. It had happened before, thanks to a certain someone's mind-control devices, and who knew when it might happen again?

But of all the people he didn't trust, assassins had to take the top place on the list. Okay, so Dr. McNinja was a doctor who spent his days helping people. It couldn't be forgotten that he was a ninja, though, a murderer hundreds of times over. He couldn't trust the man to get the boys back without a bloodbath.

On the other hand, the man might do what he was told. He certainly knew that Batman frowned upon killing people, and he seemed a little too eager to obey Batman's every word. He hadn't missed seeing various scraps of Bat-line and assorted other paraphernalia disappearing into the man's lab coat pockets, after all.

So, instead of trusting Dr. McNinja to do his job, Batman slipped through the raptor-shaped hole in the wall and trotted out into the woods. Doc would be forced to stick to the roads, whereas Batman could cut quickly through the forest and beat him there by a handful of minutes. If you wanted a job done properly, you had to do it yourself - or, at the very least, lurk in the forest to make sure your associates were behaving themselves.


Crane rubbed tired eyes with one hand as he leaned against a handy tree. "Let me get this straight. You saw these three boys on their way to stop us while you were looking for a good place to hide the truck..."

"Yes," Horrible confirmed.

"And they were, in fact, going the opposite direction from where we were..."

"Yeah."

"And their transportation had broken down, and it was unlikely at best that they would have gotten anywhere useful tonight..."

"Well, maybe," Horrible protested.

"And even though they were virtually no threat, you still kidnapped them and brought them back here to your lair," Crane finished, totally disgusted. He glared at the three boys across the little clearing, seated in a line on the remains of the robot bear. Its long, prehensile neck was wrapped tightly around each of them, pinning their arms firmly to their sides. On the bear's head, a small cylindrical metal device blinked quietly as it continually overrode the bear's programming and kept the hero kids firmly imprisoned. Belts - utility and otherwise - and weapons dangled from the nearby trees as if someone had been really hard up for Christmas decorations that year.

"Well, technically I brought the lair to them, but yes!" Horrible snapped, shoving his goggles back on top of his head. "What better way to get the heroes away from the lair than to take their sidekicks hostage? It's traditional! It's bound to work!"

"It's going to land us in the hospital!" Crane growled. "You've never seen Batman when one of his brats has been taken. He tends to overreact." Batman's last little overreaction had left him in traction for weeks. It wouldn't happen again. He thunked the back of his head lightly against the tree, eyes squinched shut with thought. "All right. Here's what we'll do. That device of yours controls the bear, correct? We'll tell it to go west and keep going. When we show up at the lab, we'll tell the heroes and they'll have to go save their kids...what?" he asked when Horrible shook his head. "What? What did you do?"

"I already called him!" Horrible bleated. "They're on their way to get them back right now!"

Crane scuttled away from the tree, planting his back against the side of the WalMart trailer. This was bad. This was very, very...

Or was it? This was the perfect opportunity to leave Dr. Nobody behind while he got the formula for himself! "Fine," he muttered. "Since you took the kids, you watch them. I'll go to the lab by myself."

"But you can't!" Horrible protested. "The plan was that -"

"You changed the plan," Crane snarled, "so you watch the kids. I've got to get to the lab before he gets here!"

"You're going to leave me alone to fight both of them?"

Crane rolled his eyes under the mask. "If I know Batman, he'll still have someone there to catch us," he said. "You'd better hope it's the ninja that comes for those boys."

"Oh, don't worry about it," Horrible said irritably. He drew himself upward, presumably remembering that he was a supervillain who wasn't concerned about two piddly little heroes. "Do you know how much tech I've got in that truck? The army could come for those boys and never get close. You'll see. Things will go like clockwork."

Unfortunately, things often went like clockwork for Jonathan Crane - overwound, badly assembled clockwork that tended to spit springs into inaccessible corners. "Fine." With that, he clamped a hand over the rattling fear toxin canisters at his waist and strode off into the underbrush.

"History will be made this day..."

Crane froze. He couldn't have just heard that. It wasn't possible. The Scarecrow crashed back through the shrubbery to see Dr. Horrible standing nobly on a rock, arms outspread, throat bobbing as he drew in more air.

"What in the name of God are you doing?" Crane hissed.

"...Singing," Horrible admitted.

"Why?" Crane demanded.

"It just...felt right. Don't you ever sing?" Horrible asked, confused.

Did the man want to be a target? Just what kind of lunatic had he teamed up with? Sure, most of his other criminal connections were a few walnuts short of a fruitcake, but they'd never broken out into song. Crane exhaled a short bark of a sigh and crunched back into the forest.

Dr. Horrible waited until the sounds of burlap-covered feet had faded into the distance. "The fate of a planet in my hands..." he sang quietly to himself, building in volume as the Scarecrow disappeared. "And soon they'll see, the children three, their work is all futility, and evil will rule these lands..."

He hopped down from his rock and paced toward the three boys. The boys exchanged a pained look with one another as they were approached by a villain who was not only intent on gloating, but gloating in song.

"You see the heroes there, they're standing in our way. But once we have the cure, villains will rule the day! And when you all are dead, or simply powerless - We survive, and we will have success! We may throw you off a cliff, or deep into a vat. You may become scared stiff, I know that he'd like that! Or we may let you go - because of our oblige noblesse - We survive, and we will have success!"

Meanwhile, across town, Dr. McNinja was roaring down the streets of Cumberland. A happy shout of utter joy turned into music as it left his mouth. "The Batmobile! The Batmobile! Because our sidekicks might get scarred I get to drive the Batman's car!"

Doc squinted down at himself, uncertain why he'd felt the need to sing. But then, with the recollection that he was in Batman's car, sitting where the man himself sat on a daily basis, any worries he had were promptly tossed out the window and abandoned in favor of sheer worshipful ecstasy.

The trio of boys leaned close to one another, intending to exchange a few words of comfort. Instead, they found themselves singing in unison.

"The robot bear, it has been hacked. The robot bear, with a stupid hat. Sidekicks imprisoned - hardly rare! This robot bear!"

Twigs smacked into his burlap mask as the Scarecrow fought his way through the woods, dreaming of tomorrow. A tune he'd heard once years ago bubbled in the back of his brain, and he muttered his thoughts along with it as he stumbled along."Batman, sealed in a tomb, inhaling sweet fear toxin fumes. For with the cure Batman is doomed and so I must procure it soon!"

Gordito and Dark Smoke Puncher stared at one another, confusion wrinkling their eyes. "Stuck inside a musical thriller! Well, you know I think that this line's mostly filler!"

Gordito asked, "Where is this music coming from?"

"And why are all the words so dumb?" Dark Smoke Puncher chimed in.

Robin leaned over and interrupted. "Batman will come to free us all, then he'll take care of Horrible. Say, can you hack the bear to set us free?"

Dr. McNinja, tearing down the wooded road, pressed a button on the Batmobile's glittering dashboard. The canopied top slid back, letting the brisk air whip around him as he burned onward. He slowed to take a curve.

A brown-clad figure scuttled down the road in the distance. Thanks to the Batmobile's long-range listening devices, he could just barely make out the words the man was singing. "A life without Batman..."

It had to be the Scarecrow! He accelerated in the man's direction. If he could take down the Scarecrow and save the kids, he was almost certain to make Batman happy. Well, as happy as Batman ever got, anyway. So, step one - stomp the Scarecrow.

Doc gunned the engine and raced in the general direction of the fleeing rogue. Chasing an actual Gotham villain in the actual Batmobile...what could be better? "I have to get the sidekicks free but until then, I'm Batman! WHEEEEE!"

Dr. Horrible paced up to the boys, deftly flicking Dark Smoke Puncher's hand away from the exposed bear wiring as he sang. "Boys there is no need to run, it isn't worth your time. For with my freeze ray gun, I'll turn you into mimes. You're trapped - there's no escape! Pardon me, I digress, We survive and we will have succeeeeeeeeeeess!"


Dr. Horrible belted out the last note, arms stretched dramatically to the sides, one foot planted on a rock that Robin was certain hadn't been there a minute ago. He darted a glance past the singing doctor into the shadowy woods.

There! What was that light? A tiny, almost invisible flash of bluish light had lit up the darkness for a mere moment. Someone was out there - and since Crane didn't go in for flashy lights, and Moist was still reading his comic in the driver's seat of the truck, that meant that help was on the way. Robin refocused his gaze on the oblivious doctor as he flourished his fists into the air.

"...eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesss!" Directly on the beat, where an orchestra might have blared a final spray of notes, a fist like a lump of stone slammed into the back of Dr. Horrible's head with a painful-sounding thud. The impact sent the doctor tumbling forward in a somersault to sprawl limply at the three boys' feet.

"Hey!" The truck door creaked open, sending a small gush of water pouring off of the floorboards and down the side of the truck. Moist tossed his comic to the seat beside him with a wet sthlap and began to slither to the ground. "What do you think you're-"

In one motion, almost faster than the eye could follow, Batman slipped a batarang out of his belt and flung it backward without looking. It spiraled through the air and smacked Moist directly between the eyes.

"Nice," Robin said cheerfully as the henchman landed in a squishy puddle on the ground.

"What happened to Doc?" Gordito asked, craning his head to peer around the vigilante.

"He's chasing the Scarecrow," Batman said flatly. He stalked over to the bear's head, a good five feet away from the boys, and inspected the small cylindrical 'hat' blinking cheerfully in the night.

Metal crunched and squealed as he stomped on it. The shattered remains of the control cylinder sprinkled on the ground as the bear whined mechanically and went limp.

The boys wriggled out of the loosening loops of bear neck and hopped to the ground. "What's the plan?" Robin asked, brushing a bit of singed bear fur off of his tights.

"Back to the lab," Batman ordered. He retrieved his fallen batarang and slid it into his belt as Dark Smoke Puncher and Robin scooped up their unconscious ex-captors. "This way."


Plans are vital to the success of any endeavor, be it heroic or otherwise. Very few people can wander blindly into a situation and come out on top. However, plans are only as good as the people who follow them - and when someone has chosen to ignore the plan, it's likely that that someone will find himself in a very uncomfortable situation indeed.

The plan had been to save the children. Doc had been on his way, sure enough - but then the Scarecrow had crossed his path and given him ideas. Ninjas, after all, enjoy the little things in life, like a one-on-one pursuit at midnight through ghost-filled forests.

Of course, most ninjas don't typically pursue their prey in giant black Batmobiles with flames shooting out of the back. "STOP!" Dr. McNinja thundered at the fleeing man. The Scarecrow, one hand clapped onto his hat to keep it from falling off, pelted onward, wishing for breath to curse at the impenetrable foliage lining the path on both sides.

It might have been easier to leap out of the vehicle and take down the Scarecrow by hand, but there was one flaw in that plan. It required getting out of the Batmobile, something that Doc wasn't planning to do. Ever.

Buttons, buttons, buttons. Doc squinted at the array of little lit-up circles indicating various Bat-gadgetry. Was this the net? He pressed it.

Crane squealed and bounced into the air, deftly avoiding the giant grapnel hook as it shot between his ankles. Doc slammed the button again and the hook retracted.

This?

A cloud of smoke puffed out of the rear of the car, reflecting the dull orange glow of the flame billowing above the tires.

This had to be it.

A jet of water cannoned out of the front bumper, hitting the Scarecrow directly between the shoulder blades. He screeched and tumbled forward, turning a neat somersault and rising immediately to his feet to continue running.

Doc was impressed. He hadn't seen anyone this good at running away in years.

Two huge trees nestled together at the side of the road with barely two feet between the trunks. Jonathan Crane dove for the gap as if heavenly salvation lay on the other side and disappeared into the darkness of the forest.

Doc slumped back in his seat and turned the water off. If only this car had a manual...or a computer! He brightened. "Computer?" he said briskly.

There was no answer.

"Um...Car?"

Nothing happened.

"Batmobile?" he tried. The screen fizzed into life. "Great! Tell me how to..." He squinted disbelievingly at the screen. "Ben? I thought you were dead!...again."

The ghostly visage of Benjamin Franklin's clone peered through tiny round spectacles on the little round screen. "I snuck away from my table," he said. Then, remembering his reason for haunting the Batmobile, he straightened his glasses and leaned forward. "You let him get away?" Ben snapped disapprovingly.

"No," Doc defended. "I'm going to drive to the lab."

"He's almost there!" Ben pointed out.

"Right," Doc shrugged. "And what could possibly happen?"

Ben rolled his eyes. "Oh, I don't know," he sighed. "He's only armed with about twelve canisters of fear toxin and Yoshi's still in the lab..."

Doc said something unprintable and yanked the car onto the nearest deer trail. He wasn't certain if the Batmobile was built for off-roading, but now he really couldn't afford to take the time to meander around taking the paved roads. The villains holding the sidekicks were one thing - sidekicks were basically professional hostages, and he knew the three boys could take care of themselves - but Yoshi? Who knew what kind of effect fear toxin would have on a raptor? More importantly, who knew what would happen when a fear-crazed raptor scented a hidden vigilante above the ceiling tiles?

Dr. McNinja knew. That's why he wasn't bothering to swerve away from little things like rocks, road signs, and the occasional tree.


Jonathan Crane was a man used to running for his life. Not in the traditional sense, of course, since his adversaries were well-known for their penchant of leaving villains alive. However, if anyone on this earth can be said to have no life, it is the man splayed without dignity in Arkham's hospital wing, strapped down while he impatiently waits for his bones to knit. Again.

He wasn't used to racing on foot down muddy forested roads, pursued by a heavily-armed ninja in a car that could feasibly kill him in twenty different ways, but that was probably just one of the perks of travel.

The slightly parted trees had been like the gate to Heaven. He'd darted through, wheezing, and had taken a precious moment to gasp for air as the Batmobile's engine roared sullenly away. Then, with aching lungs, he tottered in the general direction of the lab.

The front of the building was brilliantly lit to draw in late-night customers. Crane skirted the building and crept through the gaping hole in the lab's window. His gaze darted from shadow to shadow, looking for bat-shaped doom.

But Batman wasn't there. Against all expectations, his back tensed even tighter. If Batman wasn't visibly there, one could be certain that he was lurking out of sight, ready to pounce.

A laptop glowed invitingly on the lab table. The formula had to be lurking somewhere on its hard drive. And if not - if this was just a trap - well, there had to be something useful on it. Other formulas, addresses of pharmaceutical distributors, embarrassing pictures of McNinja...Crane eased the laptop closed, wincing as the lid clicked shut, and tucked the computer under one arm.

Hsssshh. He stiffened. Someone was breathing. It was almost inaudible, but there on the very edge of sound was a faint, raspy, bubbly breath.

It couldn't be Batman. He'd seen Batman breathe silently through a broken, bleeding face, a feat which should have been physically impossible. There was no way that Batman would betray his presence with something so meaningless as breathing.

He padded silently across the tiles. There, in the corner, was a large, fluffy round bed. It had tiny, happy butterflies printed wildly on its bright orange fabric. And curled on the bed, like nature's most unloved kitten, was one heavily bandaged velociraptor.

Crane's hand slid to his waist, automatically checking the connections between his toxin tanks and his wrist sprayers. Oh, yes. Perfect.

The absolute silence of thievery and mischief was broken by the faint grumble of the Batmobile as it came to a halt in front of the building. Footsteps, almost silent as they connected with the grass, rustled as the doctor made his way toward the window. Crane crouched, pointing an arm in the dinosaur's direction.

Dr. McNinja vaulted through the shattered window. His shoes crunched on broken glass as he glared at the Scarecrow.

"Stay back," Crane warned, gesturing at the raptor meaningfully.

"If you make me kill my raptor, I will be so mad at you," Dr. McNinja scowled, resting a hand on the hilt of his sword.

Crane paused, considering the situation. His eyes, barely visible in the ragged holes of his mask, flicked to the two swords strapped across the doctor's shoulders, the myriad of smaller throwing implements laced into belts that crisscrossed his front, and the batarangs peeking out of his lab coat pockets.

Well, if he was going to be a target anyway...he may as well make it worthwhile. Fear toxin hissed from his wrist in a cloud of sickly green mist as he lashed out with one long leg, kicking the raptor awake. The raptor, as most creatures do upon a rude awakening, sucked in a breath of surprise. (A breath, it must be said, containing surprise and about six doses of fear toxin.)

A throwing star hissed through the air and buried itself in the toxin delivery mechanism on Crane's belt. The sharp metal star dug through the various valves and tubes and jerked to a halt a mere millimeter before it gutted him. He could feel it pricking his skin through the rough burlap of his costume.

The lab door slammed shut as Crane pelted into the hallway. He thudded down the corridor, clutching the laptop close to his chest as he aimed himself for the front door.


A lot of fuss has been made about velociraptor intelligence, mostly thanks to their starring role in a certain fictional theme park. They were smart enough to hunt together, to stand as bait and lure their human prey, and (most importantly) to turn doorknobs.

Admittedly, the door to Dr. McNinja's lab was a normal round knob, and not the easy-to-claw levered version from the films. Still, the only door Yoshi had ever cared about had been firmly attached to the refrigerator, so knobs of any sort were a foreign notion to him. So when Dr. Crane slipped out and slammed the door, he effectively ceased to exist in Yoshi's immediate universe. The only other being left was Dr. McNinja...sort of.

Fear toxin came in many varieties. There were toxins to unearth secret phobias, and toxins to cause general fear, and toxins designed to induce fear of specific objects. This toxin, however, was designed to put the victim into a hallucinatory state, where the world and everything in it was totally ruled by the commandment that everything should inspire terror.

Yoshi wasn't used to fearing anything. A seven-foot velociraptor with claws like butcher knives had very little to worry about, other than the occasional battle with the receptionist. So when the lab suddenly melted away, becoming a slippery-floored gymnasium packed to the brim with velociraptors that were twice his size, Yoshi's first instinct was to kill them all.

Dr. McNinja hadn't breathed in more than a whiff of the toxin. He didn't need to. At the moment, he was dealing with a hallucinating, wildly violent velociraptor, and that was enough to terrify anyone. "YOSHI!" he bellowed, ducking as the raptor scythed past him.

He bounced off of the wall, snarling death threats in Velociraptor, and focused again on Doc. Yoshi raced toward him, claws skreeking on the tiles, and opened his jaws wide, wider, letting out a scream of victory.

A scream of victory, alas, that was promptly silenced when Doc smashed his face in with a table. It wasn't elegant, or subtle, and the move would probably make his mother order him back to several months of work in the gym if he'd dared to try it around her, but it had worked. Yoshi fell to the ground, twitching, as his concussed brain bounced in his skull like an out of control racquetball.

The force of the impact had slammed Dr. McNinja into the other lab table. He shook his head briskly, dislodging a clipboard that had taken up residence on his head, and looked at his opponent. Yoshi raaatched a whimper and stretched on the tiles, motionless.

Then...

Doc rose to his feet, gracefully, as if gravity was a concern only for other people. He whipped the door open, ignoring the lock as it tore out of the doorframe in an explosion of splinters, and trotted down the hallway. "Scarecrow."


The semi truck blared through the night, skidding around curves in the road like a tricycle driven by the tweakiest of tweakers.

They'd had to get to the lab - fast. Dark Smoke Puncher and Robin had disconnected the trailer in minutes, with the help of Bat-gadgetry and ninja tricks, and they'd been rewarded by the unmistakable noise of thousands of dollars in intricate electronics smashing irreparably as the trailer dropped heavily into the grass.

Batman had taken the regrettably damp job of driving the truck. Robin, Gordito, and Dark Smoke Puncher crouched on the back, holding their unconscious bound-together charges in place as the truck swerved around corners. They effortlessly kept their balance as the truck beneath them twisted and jerked along the deserted roads.

The truck spun to a halt at the bottom of the path leading to the office. Batman, with moisture cascading from his cape, leaped from the cab and led the procession of junior heroes toward the lab. Robin trotted ahead, squinting at the ground in order to make out muddy footprints that could have only come from the Scarecrow's feet.

They led to the lab. The foursome made it there just in time to see Dr. McNinja's inspired table-to-teeth maneuver. As they drew closer, McNinja ripped the door from his own lab and stalked into the hallway. The raptor, bleeding from the face, twitched feebly on the floor.

"Yoshi!" Gordito gasped, vaulting over the windowsill toward his much-abused raptor.

The chemical scent of fear toxin, harsh and oddly acrid, lingered in the air. In one synchronized motion, Batman and Robin extracted the antitoxin from their belts and tossed the canisters toward the two other boys. "Take care of the raptor," Batman instructed, gesturing at Robin to follow him.

They strode down the hallway, capes flaring, until they heard the sound of mayhem coming from behind a door. Robin flung it open just in time to be bodyslammed by the Scarecrow, desperate to evade capture from the infuriated ninja behind him.

The Scarecrow, like so many people in unfamiliar exam room hallways, had gotten thoroughly turned around. Every door looked the same - and none of them were the exit. He'd been in half a dozen exam rooms before the ninja doctor had come snarling down the hallway at him. With no way to use his delightful toxins, he was down to one option. Escape. Unfortunately, the ninja wasn't keen on the idea of letting him go.

The Scarecrow hurriedly kneed Robin in the stomach and tumbled into another exam room, slamming the door as Doc barreled into it. "You're not going to get away. You know that, right?"

The only answer was the sound of breaking glass as the Scarecrow frantically tried to escape through the window - the window that, he was probably finding out, dropped a grate of iron over the glass when the security system detected that someone was trying to break in.

Doc shifted his grip on the swords and launched himself at the door again, with a look in his eyes that said that the Scarecrow had just earned himself a table next to Frans Rayner.

Thwip-thwip-thwip-clang! A set of bolas whizzed out of the darkness and wrapped around his ankles like a loving cat while a little Robin-sized batarang knocked into his hand, bouncing off of his tendons just hard enough to make him lose his grip on the sword. It spiraled wildly through the air and shuddered to a halt in the doorframe.

Instead of falling to the floor, Doc flipped and neatly landed on his bound-together feet as only someone who had attended gymnastics lessons since the age of two could. The sword in his right hand flashed as it sliced effortlessly through his bonds.

A bead of sweat escaped from under his mask and trickled down his face. Batman was working against him? No, that was ridiculous. Just because Batman was getting ready to throw more stuff at him and the walls were melting, that didn't mean...oh. Walls were melting. Walls didn't melt, normally. Maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe the Batman wasn't really the Batman, but...the Scarecrow! That was it, he was hallucinating and the Scarecrow was trying to stop him!

He spun elegantly through the barrage of faux Bat-gadgetry and sailed at the vigilantes. Robin attempted a football-style leg tackle while Batman trapped the ninja's sword between two serrated wrist bands. Doc snarled and wrenched himself free, sending the three of them into a tumbling, wild pile of violence.

The Scarecrow quietly cracked his door open. The three heroes were totally consumed with attacking one another. As silently as possible, he crept from the room and sprinted down the hallway, out the only door he hadn't yet tried.

It had taken only a few seconds for Doc to incapacitate Batman. Having a large sword had its benefits, one of which was that it could end arguments rather quickly in close quarters. Doc huddled on top of Batman, with the sword's edge pressed lightly across the man's exposed chin, digging in just above the armored neck. He paused, gasping for breath, trying to reconcile the ninja half of him that screamed for death and the Batman-loving side of him that could never hope to hurt anyone who looked like the man himself.

Which is just what Batman expected, of course, which is why he allowed himself to be 'captured'. Laying there on the floor, with a sword to his throat, made certain that Doc's attention would be on him and not on Robin, who was sneaking up behind him with the antitoxin. The automatic syringe hissed as it contacted the ninja's neck.

Doc felt his eyes cross as the chemicals ripped through his bloodstream, canceling out the dripping walls and the other minor hallucinations. And then...he looked down at the man under his sword, who still looked like Batman. Funny. Why wasn't that hallucination disappearing?

Batman swatted him aside with an open palm to the side of the head and got up, ignoring the slight scratch that began to sting as it contacted his rather unsanitary Bat-suit. Doc shook his head sharply, coloring as he realized what he'd done. "Batman, I'm -"

"No time. He's getting away." Batman and Robin raced down the hallway, in pursuit of the Scarecrow. Doc pounded after them, sword held high as if he was the spirit of all avengers hoping to rid the world of evil once and for all. Batman threw the door open and charged toward the front office. The heroes skidded to a halt as a totally unexpected sight met their eyes.

The office looked absolutely normal. The slightly dimmed nighttime lighting cast soothing warm light on the soft chairs in the waiting room. Freshly watered plants dangled moistly from the walls, green leaves barely concealing a few tiny budding flowers. At the desk, Judy grunted a gorilla melody as she neatly tapped papers into piles suitable for filing.

And in the corner, the Scarecrow slumped like a forgotten rag doll. His legs, which had been twisted up beneath him, shoved the small of his back outward while his arms lay motionless across his chest, palms up. Shattered freshly-baked ceramic in shards and smears of dust covered the man like a deadly snowfall.

Metal scraped on metal as the heroes sheathed their weapons. The phone buzzed gently into life. Judy daintily flicked a speck of ceramic from her fur and settled the headset on her large black ears. "Hrmmm?" she grunted.


The cops arrived, as they so often did, after all of the excitement was long over. The Scarecrow, still unconscious, had been bundled into the Batmobile like so much dirty laundry. Dr. Horrible had been dumped just as lovingly into the backseat of one of the cop cars. The drivers of the remaining two cars were arguing in very loud voices as to who had to transport Moist, who was sleepily dribbling water from every pore as he stared dazedly at his captors.

Doc had been hoping for a final goodbye from Batman. A handshake, a 'thank you', a stirring speech about his combat skills (even though they'd regrettably been directed at the heroes instead of the villains)...hell, he would have accepted a compliment for his mother's beets!

Instead, as he pointed the nearest cop at Gordito in order to locate Horrible's trailer, the Batmobile roared into life and peeled out down the road. Doc sighed, forlorn, as his hero sped back toward Gotham. Well, at least he had his souvenirs...

He stuck his hands into his pockets.

Gone. The batarangs, the bat-line, every scrap of Bat-stuff that he'd managed to swipe over the past few days had been neatly swiped back from his pockets. He sighed again, broken-hearted, and sulked back to the lab, ignoring the blue-and-red lights of the cop cars as they hauled their human cargo away.

He nudged the door open with a foot and slouched in, fingers exploring the seams of his pockets as if he might have missed something. Paper crinkled under his questing fingertips. He eased the note from its home in the frayed lining of his pocket and unfolded it.

The paper, forgotten, twirled lazily to the floor as the doctor made a mad dash for his lab. The door crashed aside in yet another shower of splinters as he kicked the remains of it out of his way. Then, with a soft intake of breath, he padded reverently up to the table.

The left edge of it had been somewhat marred by Yoshi's face. On the right side of it, carefully laid to avoid blood spatters and toxin residue, lay a full, shiny new set of Bat-gear. Unlike the bits and pieces he'd salvaged and, let's face it, blatantly stole from the Batmobile, this stuff had never thwacked a villain in the head or suspended vigilantes six stories up from the street. It gleamed in the lights, sharp black arcs and curves clearly outlining the Bat-symbol on every neatly stacked batarang and bola.

Another square of paper, bright with the yellow-and-black Bat-symbol, was propped on a grapnel gun. Dr. McNinja reached a disbelieving hand to it and flipped it over. Scratched across the back in thick black marker were three words that made his heart leap.

"For next time."

Doc grinned so brightly that light was almost visible from underneath his mask.

"YES!"

(to be concluded)