ROBIN and all related characters, names and indicia are TM & © DC Comics 2004. Story by Chuck Dixon, novella adaptation by Ice Spectre.
Rated PG
Author's Note: Suddenly, the "center" function of 's editor isn't working, so please forgive the left justified chapter title.
"TRIUMPH OVER TRAGEDY" - She's So High Above Me
"Are you sure this is the place?" the tall, thin girl in the back of the cab had not stepped out yet. She brushed some of her long blonde hair out of her face and stared up at the building. It was dark.
"The Majestic Theatre, one hunnert thirty-fourth street an' Huey Av'nue," the cabby answered. "This is the address y'gave me, lady."
She finally stepped out of the cab, studying the business card that had the address on it, which had been mailed to her home. "This just doesn't look right. Something's wrong here... There should be other people here. The man who sent me this wrote that this was a cattle call. An open audition. Look, I've changed my mind. Take me--" She turned, but the cab was already rolling away down 134th Street.
"--back downtown. Jerk."
She turned back to the dark theatre. There was a paper sign taped to the wall that had the word "AUDITIONS" written on it with black magic marker and underlined with a wavy red line. There was a red arrow pointing towards the stage door. The light above the stage door was on. She turned the knob. It opened. Maybe no one else knew that this was the non-equity night. maybe she would get lucky and be one of the few to audition tonight.
"Hello?" she called. that backstage area was dark. A soft glow was coming from under the runner curtains, the footlights were on. She made her way out through the wide wings and onstage. "Is anyone here?"
There was an echoing clack sound as a spotlight came up full in her face. Startled, she dropped the business card bearing the audition date, time, and place, and shielded her eyes.
"So glad you could make it," a voice came from the darkness. The effect of the light in her face caused the rest of the theatre to be utter darkness. She could not see who was talking to her.
"Look, a guy I met at the agency sent me this card. I didn't belong to equity, so he promised to let me know about any non- equity auditio--"
"The part is a simple one, my dear," the voice interrupted her. "All I require is that you scream."
"What?" she couldn't believe that. She had prepared two contrasting monologues and a showtune. She brought her music, her resume, her bio shot, her references. Didn't he want any of that? Perhaps later...
"Let me hear you scream."
Just scream. No scenario, no warming up, no getting into character, no character advice, no plot line, no exercise to dispel inhibitions. Just scream. Stanislovsky would hate this guy.
"Eek," a small screech emanated from the girl's throat.
"No, no, no," the voice replied. "A bit more enthusiasm. A bit more mo-tivation."
Ah. Now he was going to give her what she needed. A scenario and some motivation. She could feel it coming.
"Imagine that there are figures in the dark all around. Imagine that they are reaching for you. Hands from t he dark, pulling, clawing, taking you away to a place of torment and humiliation." The man began to walk closer to her. In the shaft of brilliant white light, she could see his shoes as he approached, then his pants, his jacket and shirt. "Your only escape is to raise your voice and let all your terror out for the world to hear--" then she could see his face, his mangled, ruined, grinning face.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!"
She fainted on the stage.
The Joker grinned and stepped up to her unconscious form.
"Such beautiful music," he hissed.
"You know, it's a shame to have the Batmobile just sitting here like this," I pull back the cover on the coolest car I've ever seen. I wish I could drive! Alfred's loading the holographic equipment into the back of the van. He's breathing heavily from the effort and I can see the vapor of his breath in the cool air. The Cave sure gets cold this time of year.
"If you're suggesting I drive that monster out on your nightly rounds... even if I did know the code that disarms the security system..."
"It's not that," I interrupt him. Well, it is that, a little. I really wish I could cruise the burg in the Batmobile. Really. I wrench myself away from t he beautiful piece of machinery. "But it would be a lot easier to make it seem that Batman was still in Gotham if the 'mobile could be seen on the streets. We can't keep hauling this bulky holographic equipment around."
"Bulky is an understatement, Tim." Oops! I've been wandering around the Cave thinking, and poor Alfred has been hefting equipment into the van all by himself. I start helping Alfred load the van. "But using the Batmobile is out of the question."
All right, all right. How can he tell how I'm gazing longingly at it through my mask and lenses? "Batman's presence is the only thing that's making The Joker keep a low profile. We'll have to set up the hologram projector someplace where it'll do some good. Somewhere that a big crowd will see it." Like where? A movie theatre? Hardly Batman's haunt.
"A more public venue?" Alfred has this way of almost translating my phrases into better vocabulary. "I shall have to--"
He's interrupted by the ringing of a telephone. We are both startled by it and turn to look.
"That's the shielded line! It has to be Batman!" I race over to the phone, but Alfred, who was close anyway, beats me to it.
"Hello?" Alfred's eyebrows bunch up. "Hello? Master Bruce, is that you?"
"Alfred, what's going on?" I watch perplexed as Alfred sighs and hangs up the phone. "Was it him?"
"Just static."
"But...But it had to be him!" Alright, we're getting a little desperate, aren't we now, Tim? "Not even the phone company can get through on that line!" Maybe it was The Joker! ...no, not a chance.
"Even Master Bruce has a difficult time getting a trans-oceanic call through," Alfred is claming me down, but sternly. "I can forward this line to the cellular in t he van should he call back."
Yeah, that's a good idea. I nod once to Alfred and turn towards the van. I'm fighting terror. What if something happened to Bruce? Gotham would be doomed! Alfred climbs into the van and starts it up. My jaw is clenched. It's the only way for me to hold down my fear. I have a feeling that tonight is going to be a big one.
Setting up holographic equipment on a snowy rooftop is no easy trick. The wind is at our backs, which is helping a little. My cape is plastered against my back and the backs of my legs, and that's keeping me warm. But the wind is riffling through my hair and freezing my head. Why couldn't a cowl be part of my costume, too? They wonder why I'm always the one with a cold in the winter. Because I'm the one with nothing on my head!
Actually, I shouldn't complain. Alfred's got no hat and no hair.
"Well, wherever Batman is, it has to be warmer."
Alfred is gazing up at the brewing blizzard. "I fear the weather may interfere with t he clarity of the projection."
"I wouldn't worry too much. The snow will make for poor visibility anyway." All people need to see is a dark outline of a man-bat, it could even be a cardboard cut-out.
We are standing on top of one of the highest buildings in this area in Gotham. "From here we can project the image on top of half a dozen buildings."
The police scanner in one of the compartments on my right shoulder crackled to life. "All units in downtown area...one-nineteen on number One Industrial Boulevard..."
"One-nineteen!" My line is wrapped around a pipe on top of a nearby building already. "That's a suicide attempt!" I'm on my way.
Alfred watched Robin toss his line instinctively and step off the rooftop.
"Master Robin! What about the--" but Robin was gone. "Oh, bother." Alfred would just have to set up the hologram alone. In the freezing cold. Well, after all, what did he expect Robin to do? Let someone die while they set up some image of Batman? No, of course not. Alfred just wished Batman were here to go and save the one-nineteen or whatever while Robin finished up with the hologram. But if Batman were here, they wouldn't need a hologram at all. And Alfred could go home and make tea for when they got home. Or get ice packs and bandages and rubbing alcohol, more likely. Oh, if only he could have seen this coming as a young man when he first came to Thomas and Martha Wayne. He would have stayed in England.
No, he wasn't sure that was true at all.
There she is, on top of the billboard on top of the TransCon Airlines building, the tallest building in this part of the country. I can hear her screaming even over the howl of the wind and the wail of the sirens.
Sounds like she's changed her mind about jumping.
Beautiful girl. I wonder what she had to jump about. She looks like a model, tall and thin with long blonde hair. She's got that artsy look about here, even in the clothes she's wearing. She's wearing a dress and boots. No coat. Geez, isn't she freezing? Then again, I guess you don't worry about that sort of thing when you're trying to die.
She's out of reach of the ladders on the fire trucks. Only a maniac would try a rescue in a helicopter in this weather. There isn't even a window on this face of the building. How did she even get out here?
I toss my line around one of the lights on the top of the billboard and swing across. I have to come in sideways or I'll smack face into the billboard. I lower myself carefully onto the snow and ice covered ledge not twenty feet from the screaming young woman. She sees me. She doesn't recognize me as a good guy. Or maybe she does. She's just scared out of her wits right now, and she's whimpering with fear and inching away from me.
"Just stay right there, Ma'am," I call to her, my hands extended to gentle her. No good. She screams and starts to run from me.
"No! Stay there!" I can see the ice under where her boots have scattered the powdery snow. She's slipping with every step. And I'm running after her.
"That kid's got his work cut out for him," one of the rescue squad commented to the fireman standing next to him. The fireman squinted up to the far top of the building.
"Must be crazy. Who is he?"
"It's that Robin kid," the rescue squad man answered.
"Geez. Where's Batman?"
"Must be around here somewhere," commented a man dressed in a telephone repairman's uniform. "Where there's Robin, there's Batman."
"The Boy Wonder again," The Joker seethed, peering out from under the brim of his telephone repairman's cap at the similarly dressed mook who had just reported a bird sighting. "I didn't want the Bat and the Brat around just yet." Joker tilted his long chin upward to look for the junior member of the Dynamic Duo. "I know I killed Robin. Why won't he stay dead?" He turned back to his men. "This little brouhaha is not going according to plan. The decoy was for the police, not the caped partypoops."
Joker was quiet for a moment, working hard on his next thought. "Perhaps Batman and his fledgling will provide even more of a diversion! An even larger opening night for our bidding thespian. And in all this chaos," Joker ripped the hat from his head, "no one even noticed a gang of telephone repairmen sneaking into the phone company."
"So what's the gag, Joker?" a blond man with a gold earring looked up from his position squatted on the floor in front of his toolbox. "Why're we at the telephone company, anyway?"
"This is just phase one of my plan to turn Gotham into a hell of technology-inspired madness! With the help of these schematics," Joker pulled a rolled-up sheaf of papers from inside his jacket, "drawn by our good friend Osgood, we will turn this town upside-down! We cross a wire here, we boggle a cable there, knit one, purl two, and a tangled web we weave!"
Joker pulled the front panel off one of the units, revealing a tangle of wiring and blinking lights. "We just follow the directions and it's simple as A-B-Z! Heh heh heh."
Alfred had managed to move all of the equipment over to the other side of the L-shaped rooftop he was on, and he had a clear view of Robin and the suicidal young woman.
"This is most certainly a large enough audience for the holographic Batman to make an effective appearance," he muttered to himself. Remembering his days onstage in small theatres in England, he added, "The show must go on."
He aimed the projectors at a building two rooftops over from Robin. If he projected Batman any closer, people would begin to wonder why he wasn't helping Robin as long as he was so close to the situation.
I've gotta stop her! She's screaming at the top of her lungs and with every step she risks slipping off the edge.
"PLEASE stop!!! I'm here to help!"
It's no use, she doesn't even hear me.
"Ah!" My foot slips out from under me and I fall to my knee, but now I'm up and running again. Carefully. She can't go much further, the ledge ends in thirty or so feet!
Armed with welders, electric screwdrivers, and penlights, Joker and his men are busily rerouting every line they can reach.
"The good professor has designed a series of quadruple-blind mazes of telephone connections that'll take the phone folks a year to unravel!"
"Geez, shouldn't we be gettin' lost? The Batman's out there, remember?"
Joker raised a finger to his lips. "All in good time, Bones, all in good time."
As we approach the corner of the building, I can see that the ledge continues around the corner. At her velocity, though, she's not going to make the turn on this ice.
"Stop!"
Her boot slips. Her foot goes over the edge. She follows it.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!"
"Oh my god!" Now's the time for that quick thinking I'm so well trained in. Hours of practice with the baterang should pay off now. I yank it from my utility belt and hurl it down after her. I've gotta catch her around the boot. A two ton test line would cut her in half around the waist. She only outweighs me by maybe fifteen pounds.
Before all the slack pulls tight and yanks me off the ledge right with her, I'd better anchor myself. I can still feel the line unraveling from my belt. I snap the end segment of my bo at the tightest angle I can manage and hook it around one of the lamp posts high above my head. I would really like to bend my staff completely in half and hold both ends, but the post is too high over my head. I'd never reach it at only half the length of my bo.
Whoa...
There's the end of the slack, and she just pulled my feet off the edge! Man, I wonder if this is hurting her as much as it's hurting me. Her full weight swings from my belt. She's starting to swing back in towards the building. I hope she keeps parallel with the wall. There's nothing I can do if she smacks into it. I manage to get both my feet back up on the ledge, but she's swinging too widely for me to keep any kind of balance. On the swing back, she pulls me down again. My arms feel like they're being pulled out of the sockets. But if I let go now, we'll both go down. Her swings are losing arc, which is helping a little, and the fire ladders are climbing up to her. She's within their reach now. I really would have preferred to climb up to the rooftop with her, or swing to a lower roof, and then take the stairs. It feels like the fire ladders are rising in slow motion. And on her first few swings, they miss her.
"Uuhnngh!" they just grabbed her and pulled. Have they forgotten that she's attached to me? I feel the line slacken and I can get a grip. I pull my left foot back up onto the ledge and let go of my bo. I drop to my knees. All my joints feel like a rag doll's. Better start raveling up this line. I press the button on top of my belt compartment and hold it down. It starts reeling in like a tape measure. The baterang folds in half to fit into the compartment and I snap it shut. I take a few deep breaths as I watch them carry the girl down the ladders to a waiting ambulance. She's not screaming anymore. I hope she just fainted and isn't in shock or anything. I think I'm okay now. I'll just breathe here for a few minutes, just until I see her safely in the ambulance...
Responses to Reviews:
GhostNinja85 – Ooh. I haven't read that yet either. I'll look around for it ï