AN: Once again-I don't like children. They are, however, resilient little creatures. Look at me. I turned out fine.
SwordStitcher-He had ideas. I told him to be quiet. Just because she has to go along with it doesn't mean she's going to like it, and then I have to deal with the aftermath.
Dragonknight4000-You'd think that Arkham would have tightened security after the first mass breakout.
Jasmine Scarthing-I wouldn't put up with the clinging and the nagging and everything else she does without a very good reason.
Jonathan has never had much of a sweet tooth. As a rule, the most sugar he can stand is a glass of lemonade.
He'll admit to having a fondness for those hard strawberry candies, however. When he was practicing, he used to keep a bowl of them on his desk.
Tonight he's settled down in a comfortable chair with a bag of said candies, watching a group of trick-or-treaters go on their merry way. Oh, he's looking forward to the evening news. How many children will he have gotten with this batch? Twenty? Thirty? Hopefully more than that, but some parents are alarmingly paranoid.
How dare they be responsible!
Granny let me play in the street, I turned out fine.
That's debatable.
He shares a quiet laugh with Scarecrow and leans back in his chair, opening another candy.
"Oh, they're cute." Kitty plops down in the other chair. "Do you want one?"
"Don't even joke."
She grins at him and jerks her head towards the house they've…borrowed.
"She's napping again."
"Again?"
"We're not invading a single mum's house again."
Not if they react this way. He learned earlier that gassing her only made her afraid for her child. It was never good to be the cause of that sort of fear.
"Fine."
"Are you sure you don't want one of those? Some sort of legacy-carrier?"
"The temptation to experiment on it would be too much." he admits. She laughs and puts her hand on his arm.
"Come on, love. News'll be on in a few minutes."
"I'll be in in a minute." he says.
Once she's gone, he unwraps the last of his strawberry candies and savors it. After a minute, he hears a shriek on the street over. It has begun.
THE END
