I made a mistake last time – I changed the alarm system between chapters 2 and 3. I hope no one minds!
Many thanks to everyone who has reviewed, favorite, and alerted this story. I really appreciate it!
Super special thanks to ARL15 who is so loyal to this story that she inspired me to get back on track and finish this thing (which will happen eventually). Thank you so much!
Usual disclaimers!
When Alfred brought a lunch tray down a short while later, Bruce was still deep in thought.
"Have you made any progress, sir?" Alfred asked, setting the tray down in its designated spot near the Batcomputer.
Bruce swiveled in his chair. "Yes. Perhaps you might like to see the video?"
"I imagine it's more of a Batman-and-Robin-type job?" Alfred assumed the Penguin would be on the video; after all, Dick and Bruce had just been talking about him that morning.
"Yes, but I could use your help with something. It'll only take about five minutes."
"As you wish, sir." When Bruce turned his back, Alfred sighed inaudibly.
Bruce and Alfred both watched the security footage in silence. When it was finished, Bruce turned to Alfred. "Well, what do you make of that?"
"Apparently Master Dick's tiredness was not simply random teenage exhaustion."
"Alfred!" Bruce was somewhat exasperated. "He stole his own robin!"
"Master Bruce, don't insult my intelligence. You're the detective. Surely you did not fail to notice his strange behavior in that video."
"It could be an act!"
"An act!" Alfred's tone exploded with scorn.
"But why would he do it?" Bruce asked out loud to no one in particular; he had decided to ignore Alfred's last outburst.
"Why would you even think he would do it?" Alfred retorted.
"It doesn't seem like he hid it," Bruce murmured to himself, still ignoring Alfred. "Definitely seems like he stole it."
Alfred heaved a heavy sigh.
"It just doesn't make sense."
Alfred sighed again and began tapping his foot. He was getting tired of this.
"He doesn't even know how much I insured it for," Bruce commented.
"And you really believe Master Dick would steal his own robin for the insurance money?" Alfred asked drily, in a voice too loud to ignore.
Bruce paused, pulled out of his daze by Alfred's voice. "Well…. Would he?"
"Honestly, Master Bruce. Sometimes I wonder about you." Alfred's tone was the vocal equivalent of rolling one's eyes, which the butler would have done if not for his personal code of behavior. A true gentleman's gentleman never did anything so crass – no matter much his employer warranted it. "It's as though we're talking about two different people."
"What?" Bruce asked blankly.
"The Master Dick I know would never steal. I, of course, have no idea how the fictional Master Dick with whom you seem to be acquainted would behave."
Bruce might not have had the best people skills, but he knew when he had been put in his place. "Right. Dumb question anyway."
"Your words, Master Bruce, not mine." Alfred turned to leave the cave. "But in a word: yes."
It was after five o'clock when Dick finally reached the Batcave. Alfred refused to let him begin work on his night job until his homework was finished – and until Alfred had ample assurance that Bruce had returned to his senses.
Dick was munching on a cookie when he came down. "Made any progress, Bruce?" he asked cheerfully (and with his mouth somewhat full).
"Yes, but don't you come near the computer until you've finished that cookie. No crumbs by the computer, remember?"
"Yes, sir," Dick sighed, shoving the cookie into his mouth and chewing most inelegantly. He swallowed with a gulp. "Soooo, what's up?"
"Watch this video." Bruce had spliced all the relevant parts together into one smooth sequence.
Five minutes later, Dick was standing there dumbfounded and utterly crushed. "I-I-I d-d-d-did it," he stammered, his eyes filling with tears.
For a moment, Bruce mentally panicked. Where was Alfred? Then he reached over and pulled Dick into a tentative hug. "No, Dick, it wasn't your fault. Something was wrong with you. You saw how you walked strangely."
"But I did it," Dick sniffed forlornly, rubbing at his eyes.
"No, no," Bruce soothed as best he could, rubbing Dick's back. "I watched that video a hundred times. I think maybe you were drugged."
"Drugged?" Dick brightened a tad.
"Yes. See here." Bruce rewound the video, then pointed to Dick's stumbling walk over to the robin case. "The way you walk right there. Dragging your right leg."
"Uh-huh," Dick nodded.
"That's consistent with drug-induced sleep walking. Probably a drug with a high concentration of …."
Bruce named some fancy chemical Dick had only vaguely heard of. The boy's mind was elsewhere. "So it wasn't my fault?"
"Of course not," Batman said, feeling a bit guilty for having doubted Dick a few hours before.
"Thank God," Dick breathed a huge sigh of relief.
"So, if you were drugged, it –"
"It had to be something at The Penguin's Nest!" Dick interrupted. "I only felt bad after dinner."
"True." Bruce nodded his head. "And we've already suspected the Penguin. And something felt off about his restaurant."
"So instead of his restaurant being a front for stolen goods he turns people into stealing zombies."
"Zombies? Really Dick?" Bruce raised an eyebrow.
"You saw me on that video. I was like a zombie!"
"But how does he do it?"
Bruce and Dick both ruminated for a few minutes. Suddenly, Dick shouted, "The food!"
Bruce rolled his eyes. "That's rather obvious. It's a restaurant, chum."
Dick stuck out his tongue at Bruce. "He puts a drug in the food."
"Your evidence?"
"My gross-tasting lamb from last night."
"There was nothing wrong with your lamb."
"There was so! It was nasty. And I bet it was nasty because the Penguin drugged it."
"But you hardly ate any of your lamb."
"Well, maybe he put it in the chocolate cake, too!"
"That's almost absurd enough to work," Bruce mused.
Dick crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, since we don't have any other hypotheses…."
Bruce half-smiled. "To The Penguin's Nest!"
"Who should we watch?" Robin whispered. "This place is packed again."
"Just a moment," Batman responded. "I'm cross-referencing tonight's diners with the purchasers of high-value bird items from the Audubon auction."
After a few moments, Batman had his answer. "Okay, only two potential targets tonight. The Shaws, who bought the jewel-encrusted magpie, and the Leonards, who purchased the toucan."
Robin scanned the room. "And they are?" He didn't recognize Gotham's socialites with quite the same ease as Batman.
"The Shaws are on my side of the restaurant. Older couple in the corner. Mrs. Shaw's wearing a coral sweater."
Robin looked in their direction. "Right. I see them."
"The Leonards are on your side. The mother, father, and teenage daughter third from the left. Daughter's in a blue dress."
"I see them."
"Good. You watch the Leonards; I'll watch the Shaws."
"Roger."
Many agonizingly boring minutes ensued. Nothing happened. The families both ate their meals without incident. No one complained about their food. No one seemed tired – not even Mrs. Shaw who personally consumed the greater portion of an entire bottle of red wine. Batman allowed both families to leave without finding it necessary to follow them back to their homes (of course, Batman knew where they lived). Robin was incredibly disappointed.
Since it was during the week, the restaurant closed at 10 PM. Once the Penguin and his cronies had left, Batman and Robin slipped into the kitchen to have a look. Robin was desperate to find Penguin's cache of drugs and chocolate cake; otherwise, he feared Batman wouldn't take his hypothesis seriously anymore.
The two started at opposite corners of the kitchen, searching for drugs and infected food. Batman had prepared a series of litmus strips to dip into sauces or smear food on to see if they tested positive for the chemical he believed the drug contained.
As the two searched refrigerator after refrigerator and cupboard after cupboard, testing various items, Robin asked, "So whose birds have been stolen again?"
Batman patiently listed the families and their birds. "And they did all eat at The Penguin's Nest the night their birds were stolen. I checked their credit cards."
Robin smiled. Of course Batman had.
"So we know the Penguin and his restaurant are involved. Possibly drugs, as you said. But we don't know who he might be drugging."
"Hmmm, yeah, tricky," Robin mused, sticking his head inside a cabinet in order to inspect it. As he looked through the ordinary collection of foodstuffs, he thought over the names of the families who had been robbed. Shaffer, Montooth, Garvey, etc. The names all seemed vaguely familiar. And not just familiar from Bruce's social scene; Dick felt he knew the names in some other capacity. As he moved on to the next cabinet, he had a revelation.
Jason Garvey was a senior at Gotham Academy (Dick's high school). And Lydia Shaffer also went to Gotham Academy. She was a top cheerleader, which accounted for why he had heard her name. As Robin went through the list of victimized families in his head, he realized that all of the names were familiar to him, courtesy of the Gotham Academy Directory.
"Teenagers!" he said suddenly.
"Teenagers?" Batman asked, puzzled, pulling his head out from under a work table.
"Yes, teenagers. All of the families have teenagers. Penguin is drugging teenagers and using them to steal!"
Batman's eyes widened beneath the cowl. "Of course. Teenagers."
"Yeah," Robin continued excitedly. "Teenagers won't activate their parents' alarms. Or else they know how to shut them off."
"And if the other thefts were timed like ours, many parents wouldn't even be asleep yet! They'd never realize anything was amiss because the alarms might not even be on!"
"And who would suspect kids anyway!" Robin jubilantly concluded.
"It is an excellent plan," Batman agreed.
Just then, Robin wrenched open a refrigerator. The force he had used to pry open the door had jarred the shelves, revealing a hidden drawer. Robin excitedly yanked it open, revealing several rows of neatly-organized vials. He had found the drugs!
"Here they are, Batman!" Robin exclaimed, holding out several vials of liquid. "I bet these are the drugs!"
Batman took a vial and visually inspected it. Deeming it safe to open, he removed the cap and dipped a litmus strip in. It tested positive. "Yes, this is it."
Robin did a little dance of excitement. "And look!" He gestured at another shelf in the refrigerator in question. "Chocolate cake." Robin enthusiastically tested a bit of cake.
"Awww, it came out negative," he moped. He turned to Batman. "But I'm sure he put it in the cake."
"Could be," Batman replied. "My guess is he injects it into whatever food his victim orders. After all, we haven't found any tainted food back here. Just the drugs."
"Yeah," Robin agreed, slightly disappointed his chocolate-cake theory hadn't been proven correct. "I wonder how much he puts in the food?"
"Wonder no more, Bird Boy!" quacked a sinister voice from the bowels of the kitchen. "And what are you doing in my kitchen, caped cretins! Don't you know too many cooks spoil the broth!"
"Holy cliché," Robin muttered as a large group of thugs rushed out from behind Penguin.
"Get them!" Penguin squawked, pointing his umbrella in their direction for good measure.
The thugs were immediately on top of them. Robin executed a series of flying leaps and flips, landing right smack in the middle of several thugs' chests, toppling them over.
Meanwhile, Batman was punching goons with surgical precision. Despite how many the two bested, more seemed to keep coming. The sounds of Pow! Crash! Boom! filled the kitchen.
When a couple of particularly-large men began menacing Robin, he nimbly flipped over them and made a dash for Penguin. Unfortunately, Penguin saw him coming and pointed his trick umbrella.
"Nice try, Bird Boy!" the villain cackled as Robin was enveloped by a net.
"Arrgh," Robin cried as he fell to the ground with a bump. Batman, hearing the noise, looked over.
"Hold on, Robin," the caped crusader shouted. As Batman lunged towards Penguin, the tricky bird shot a net at him. Batman easily sliced the net in half with his Batarang.
"You'll have to do better than that, Penguin."
"Wah! Wah! Wah! I will." In the dark, the Penguin reached for something.
"Batman, look out!" Robin shouted as he saw a large crate start to fall from the ceiling.
Robin's warning was too late. With a thud, the crate landed on top of Batman, who was knocked flat. With a gleeful waddle, the Penguin came over to Robin, holding a vial in his hand."
"Nighty, night, little birdie. Drink enough of this and you'll be asleep in a minute." The Penguin wiggled the vial in front of Robin's eyes.
"I'll never drink that!" the Boy Wonder hissed. But even as he said it, several (now recovered) thugs grabbed him, some holding his body down while others forced open his mouth.
With evident pleasure, the Penguin emptied the entire vial down Robin's throat. "Eww, gross," the boy shouted, but even as he said it he could feel himself getting sleepy. The drug was quite powerful and Penguin had just given him an extremely large dose.
"Grab the Bat," Penguin ordered. And as Robin drifted off into unwilling sleep, the last thing he saw was Penguin forcing the same drug down Batman's throat.
The first thing Robin noticed as he groggily awakened was the smell of chocolate. The very intense, almost overpowering smell of chocolate.
"Holy Hershey's," he mumbled, his words sleepily slurred.
"Robin? You awake?" Batman's voice was urgent and he sounded very awake.
"Ehhhh, kinda."
"Well wake up. We've got to get out of here."
Robin wearily pried his eyes open in order to ascertain exactly where "here" was.
"Are we -?" his question was interrupted by the Penguin.
"Suspended over a giant, bubbling vat of chocolate fondue?" Penguin quacked. "You are indeed, Boy Bird-Brain. I look forward to the delightful chocolate statues that will result."
"You jerk!" Robin shouted. "You won't get away with this!"
"Tut, tut, Wonder Midget. I most certainly will because you have less than five minutes to get out of there." With an evil laugh, the Penguin pulled on a comically-oversized lever and Batman and Robin (who were tied back to back) began their descent towards the fondue.
"Imagine! Actual death by chocolate," the Penguin rhapsodized.
"I wouldn't bet on it," Batman ground out in a low voice. Penguin just laughed, delighted with his own ingenuity.
Suddenly a door opened and an underlying stuck his head in. "Penguin, sir, the car's ready for the pick-up."
Penguin frowned. "Pooh. I shall miss the glorious death of Batman and Robin." He turned to look at his captives. "Save me a little chocolate, boys!" And with a wave and a waddle he was gone.
The heat of the fondue was suffocating as Batman and Robin moved ever closer to the bubbling surface.
Announcement courtesy of AJCrane:
Will Robin become a chocolate bon bon?
Will Batman be a chewy chocolate center?
Tune In Folks!
Same Bat Time
Same Bat Channel
The worst is yet to come!
From me:
Will they make it? Find out next week – same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!
I hope no one minds the cheesy death-trap too much! And in the 1960s show, Penguin actually calls Robin "Wonder Midget" once!