(Sequel to 'Written Fantasies')
"A Matter of Trust"
Part 1 — A New Bat Toy
Within one of the deepest caverns of the Batcave, Jason Todd leaned against a bedrock wall and took a puff of a cigarette. He closed his eyes and savoured its mint flavour, then exhaled. Plumes of smoke filled the air in the form of small rings. A trick he learned in his years of smoking. Smoking helped him to relax when he was feeling self-conscious or stressed out. He put up a brave front, but deep down, he had too many insecurities to list.
Bruce warned him not to smoke within the main confines of the Batcave and he abided by the rule. He had been told on a continuous bases that second-hand smoke kills and since none of the others smoked, Bruce didn't want it near them.
Jason chuckled at the thought. Did Bruce forget what each member of the Wayne family did for a living? They were superheroes with a cause, justice-seekers, vigilantes who battled the forces of evil, and every one of the Batfamily had sacrificed something important of themselves for it—including their very life at one point.
Jason recalled he had met a gentleman on the street one day who was in his eighties who saw him smoking. The man was bent over and slightly crippled with a cane.
"Smoking is bad for your health, son," the man said. "Your lungs will clog with tar, and you'll eventually end up with COPD or worse. You're too young to die. I smoked for years before I had a heart attack. I quit it many years ago and now my lungs are clean as a whistle."
"It never hurt George Burns," Jason replied. "And have you ever used a whistle without wiping the end first after someone else blew into it? A dog's tongue is cleaner."
If it was anyone younger, they wouldn't get the reference to the old actor who lived to a hundred years old and who smoked cigars every day of his life. Smoking also became George Burns' signature. And, of course, he also had to throw in a little sarcastic remark in for good measure.
He liked to joke. Dick's humour was light, childish, and taunting, but Jason had a darker side, with a sardonic tone. However, Roy Harper told him once his jokes reminded him of someone who liked to mock their victims after they suffered from a horrific accident.
The old gentleman scoffed at his attempt to be funny.
"Burns was one-in-a-million, sonny," the man said, "the rest suffer for their bad choices."
"True," Jason recalled himself saying. He also remembered dropping his cigarette and crushing it under his boot. Not because the old man had given him a lecture, but because he let the man have his win. He still had respect for his elders unlike a certain little devil he knew. The old man walked away smiling as if he had redeemed a young man to turn a new leaf in life.
Regardless of the continuous lectures to stop smoking which did nothing but fuel his rebellious side, Jason heeded his mentor's askance, but more so for Alfred sake, who didn't smoke, and chose to smoke away from the others. He had smoked since he was a kid, so it was difficult to stop something he had done for so many years. And to go cold turkey was even worse.
He had a favourite spot in an undeveloped part of the Batcave to smoke.
It was dank and dark, with some makeshift lighting, and he had to watch out for bat gauno, that stuff stuck to the bottom of his boots like gum and smelled like dog crap, but he considered it his place, for now. His safe space. Where he wasn't judged, or yelled at.
And he got yelled out a lot, by Bruce, Dick, Tim, Damian, and even Roy Harper, his heroic partner in the Outlaws. And a lot of it had to do with the decisions he made when it came to his reckless behaviour in the field and arms dealing.
A man had to make a living. Selling arms is honest work. And quick-thinking and action had saved his butt many times. Neither of which he had regretted.
It wasn't selling arms that he made a living at, really, it was cornering the bad guys, who bought from him that that made him 'honest'. He did what Bruce didn't, and wouldn't do, going one step further to end crime in Gotham—a laughable notion, crime never ended in Gotham. He then re-sold those arms to criminals to begin the cycle anew. Repetitive, tedious, but it was rewarding.
He had a massive kill dossier. If someone asked him to list all the criminals he had killed over the years, it would take a lifetime to name them all. But, of course, his more notorious enemies often eluded him—Penguin, Joker, and Black Mask. And there were others.
He took another puff of his cigarette.
The Batcave was always expanding and this part was the beginning stage of a new area to be carved out. He saw the plans and he wished Bruce luck. He would have no part of it.
He would RSVP for the gala opening.
After he finished the cigarette, he dropped it, crushed it, and then returned to the others in the main area of the Batcave.
Bruce was static at a workbench with his head down with a pair of safety glasses on in front of a metal stripper working on some a new batarangs; Tim was, as usual, engaged in something on the Batcomputer; and Dick and Damian, were—he wasn't quite sure what they were doing. But they were quiet and talking to themselves and out of earshot in the lounge area on a couch.
Everyone was in civi-clothes.
Jason strolled over to the ladder attached to the upper tier of the Batcomputer platform and climbed up. He joined Tim at the upper consoles. Tim had his back turned to him. Jason wandered over to see what the boy genius was doing.
Tim waved a hand across his face and turned. "Back off, Jason, I can smell you coming from a mile away. You smell like an ashtray. Use some spray to mask it, at least."
"I smoke, deal with it."
Jason immediately took notice of a familiar looking device that was connected to the Batcomputer by a cord, giving it power or data transfer—Jason wasn't sure. On the screen, Tim was computing arithmetic algorithms that was beyond Jason's mathematical intuitiveness, and figured, if Albert Einstein were alive today, would even trip him up. Tim was working on what looked like an average parabolic radio dish but on a smaller scale.
Nothing special, he thought.
"What're you working on, Timmy?"
Jason went to pick it up, but Tim snatched it before it could be touched—like a child trying to keep a toy for himself. Tim was notorious for designing new inventions and territorial for keeping them solely for his own use—gauntlets, booster packs, specialist weaponry. Then again, often a one-time-use-thing, too, when they were smashed to bit in the field.
"Chill, Timmy," said Jason, "I'm not going to break it."
"It's parabolic radio dish," Tim explained. "It can pick up any low-bearing sound while filtering out atmospheric noise."
"Um…we have like a dozen of those things. It's nothing new. We use them in the field all the time. But let me guess, this is new and improved, right?"
Tim's eyes narrowed slightly. "Are you mocking me?" Jason just stared at him without saying a word. He cupped his hips. "Well, yes," Tim went on, "but this new dish is more powerful than the rest and it comes with a special visor. You can listen to a conversion and also look through walls like x-ray vision, determining who is speaking—like Superman does."
"Can you also look through clothes? Don't try that with me, its laundry day. I'm going commando."
"TMI, Jason," Tim said.
Jason smirked. "Okay, kid, let's have a listen. Show me your brilliance."
"No, I'm too busy for your games, Jason. You can go back to smoking in cave, alone." Tim turned back to the console. He had a tendency of being oversensitive and over-dramatic.
Jason rolled his eyes. "Don't pout, Tim. Please, can I have a try?"
Tim turned and smiled, apart from being touchy, he was also quick to forgive. Just like Dick.
"Okay," he said. He reached over to the console and picked up a small white case. Inside were two small earbuds. He gave one to Jason with the visor. "I've created one set of earpieces that interact with the dish, but two pairs of visors." Tim mirrored Jason by putting on the second visor and inserted an earpiece. He then picked up the parabolic dish and switched it on.
Jason clenched his teeth and slapped a hand to his ear with the piece. "Too…much…ambient noise…" Tim adjusted the controls, and within moments, the sound stabilized to a comfortable level. "Much better," he then said, and then listened. "Interesting, a wide variety of sounds I've never heard before. Quite—"
He heard an unusual grumbling. He turned to Tim.
Tim put a hand to his stomach. "Sorry, I haven't eaten today."
"Just don't use this thing after I've had a few beers or you'll hear the Horns of Jericho."
Tim rolled his eyes. "I'll keep that in mind," he said. "And a barf bag on stand-by."
Jason closed his eyes. "The screeching of bats, the sounds of dripping water through the bedrock like majestic waterfalls, the hum of circuitry from the Batcomputer, ah, the sound of—" His eyes sprung open and he turned to Tim. "For gods sake, eat something, boy!"
"I'm sorry!"
Jason then looked down at Dick and Damian in the lounge across the cave. "Tim, focus on them," he said. "I want to hear what they're talking about—for curiosity sake."
Tim looked at the pair who appeared to be in deep in conversion on a couch. "They seem to be having a private conversation, Jay. Dick would be very angry of we eavesdropped. And who knows what Damian would do?"
"Gnaw at our ankles? Don't be afraid of progress, Timmy. Our excuse is, if we're caught, we're testing out your new device. What harm would a little eavesdropping do if it's for a good cause? For science, dear boy!"
Tim hesitated, but then agreed. He pointed the dish at the pair and adjusted the controls to pick up their conversion.
"These visors are amazing, Tim," Jason said, "I see straight through the couch. What on earth is Dick wearing underneath his jeans? It is that blue silk underwear? Kinky! Must be a present from Barbara. Dick will do anything for her. Maybe they're chilled underwear—you know, to help the little guys swim. Does Dickiebird have a low sperm count?"
Tim cleared his throat. "Let's stick to listening in for now and leave speculation for later," he said.
"I want a pair of these visors for Christmas, Timmy. Can you make them into a pair of tinted Ray-Ban's? They'll be a huge asset when I come up against Harley, Ivy, and even Talia."
"Jason, you're weird guy. And a bonafide pervert!"
Jason didn't answer back, but he did give a sideways glance and saw Tim smiling. Then: "Whatever you do, just don't look at Barbara with these on or you're a dead-man. Dick will make sure of that."
Tim gulped.
They listened in.
To be continued...