His Revenge

Alexnandru Van Gordon

Sometimes I really don't understand the nature of revenge. Don't you ever wonder on the odd days why a person must have the last laugh—the final winning blow? It only continues the cycle—there is no winning blow. And what about the other people around you? They get hit numerous times by a person's carelessness and that makes them more than deserving of a share in the game. Hence, the circle grows…

In short—do you know whose turn it is for revenge?

Let's go—

It was HIS turn for revenge. He counted over all the shots at least a million times and he determined, based on the level of the previous revenge taking, he was, in fact, due for his turn. And the deal was: if he didn't have his revenge now, he'd be lost in the game.

That meant a mind was set to work at once…

-R-

The dog was annoying and it would take some more time for Ebony to warm up to it wholly, but Richard was eventually befriending Ace without the aid of Bruce. The dog still followed him around even though he didn't want it to, and there were times when it startled the heck out of him, but it didn't chase him or jump on him like it did before unless Richard reached out his hands toward it and knelt to hold the small puppy. Its breed suggested that it would grow faster than Richard, and it was easy to see that was true by how large it had grown from the pictures Bruce had shown him. Five days and it was already almost seemed to grow larger.

"Here, puppy." Richard called, sitting in the living room with Ebony asleep on his lap. Ace was running around the coffee table in his excitement, waking from its own nap just a short while ago.

"Call him Ace." Bruce instructed, reading his newspaper and turning to the next page. Richard stared across the room at where he sat and rolled as eyes as the man said what he always did. "You have to get him used to his name."

Ace, although his name was called, answered to Richard all the same and lied down by his feet. He had already been taught not to sit on the couch, seeing that he would be such a large dog and Alfred didn't want it shedding on the material. Rugs you could vacuum, couches were a different story…

Unexpectedly, the grandfather clock tolled twelve o'clock and Richard almost threw Ebony across the room as he stood. The cat, instead, fell on Ace and the two went running away into the hall after the shock. One thing Richard could describe about the two…both were jumpy.

"Where are you going?" Bruce asked, still not staring up from his newspaper as Richard strolled from the room. Despite his accidents with the paint, Alfred had actually allowed him to paint an old shelf he was putting in his room to hold his ever growing pile of books. It had taken him endless hours to paint it the same deep colour of red he almost spilt from the last can and all of it was used up in the project. Oh well—hard work always paid off and today it should be dry.

Taking the long hallway to the back, he strolled down happily toward where he kept the painted shelf upon old newspapers for drying. When he got there, however, he just about had a heart attack.

"What happened to it!" He exclaimed, staring at the blue shelf. It was still damp from someone painting over it and not an inch of red was left for the human eye to see. And he thought he had gotten rid of that colour…heaven only knows the dye just finished getting washed from his hair the other night.

Panicking, the boy ran from the room to find the good butler, humming away in the kitchen as he made the soup for lunch.

"Who touched my shelf/" Richard asked immediately, standing next to Alfred just below his elbow and successfully giving the old man a good start. He stared down at the boy with all honesty and shrugged.

"Master Bruce said he was going to add a few finishing touches to it after you left it the other day. Why do you ask, sir?"

Furious, Richard stormed from the kitchen without the slightest answer, running off to find the fiend of the trick. It was his turn, after all, to get back at Bruce for the dog stunt. What was he doing? Trying to get ahead of Richard in the game or something.

"Bruce!" He yelled at the top of his lungs. He was going to find him…he was going to find him and get back at him all right…

-B-

Finishing with his paper, he folded it neatly and tucked it under his arm as he made his way to his room. He wanted to rest for a while, losing much sleep after last night's patrol, and the only way a person could nap in the house without the dog jumping them (unless you so happened to be nature boy, Richard) was to sleep in your own room with the door closed. He wouldn't sleep for long though. Then Alfred would begin to worry and try to talk him out of going on tonight's patrol.

Yawning, he grabbed his doorknob and stepped inside the large room—not quite expecting what he saw next. Every that could be moved by one person alone was turned upside-down. The pictures he had on his shelves where turned around, paintings on the walls—even the ones he couldn't touch without a ladder like the one above the fireplace, were turned at odd angles in other directions, and everything else was somehow balanced in other ways then they should have been. It must have taken hours to do all that and ity would take him possibly just as long to undo it all…

Grumbling, only one fiend could come to mind,

"Richard!"

-R-

Of all the places he found him, the cave was the place to check. In fact, it looked as though Bruce was searching for something when he got down there and the boy didn't even wait until he was off all the steps to the cave before he jumped the man. Back to Richard, the kid jumped and latched his arms around his chest, pinning his arms just at the shoulders to his sides. Bruce almost fell from this, once again rarely caught by surprise as he stumbled toward the practice mats for sparring.

"What are you doing?" He grunted, slowly prying Richard's tiny hands away from his grip. It wasn't too hard to do actually, Richard could barely hold his hands around Bruce anyway on the count that he was so small.

"Revenge!"

"Yeah right—the dog wasn't that bad. Besides, the last prank was just a little too much considering what you did to me. I think I should get two turns."

Richard thought back to the Pregnancy joke but furrowed his eyebrows at the comment. "And setting a dog on me is fair play?"

"Is attacking me from behind fair either?"

Richard, feeling that Bruce was going to pry his hands free at any given moment, gave him a good knee to the kidney. "Anything on the mats is fair—you said so yourself. And what else would I have done? Let you jump me?"

Hell no—Dick wouldn't be able to hold the weight.

Bruce, rolling his eyes after the pain subsided in his side, knelt on one knee to lessen the fall and then threw Richard over his shoulder. The boy land directly in front of him on his back, right arm still in Bruce's tight grip from the flip.

"Oh? So it's the rules we're provoking now? If you want to fight on the mats, them I guess I can say that I'm in the mood for teaching you another lesson."

Richard panicked at the sound of that and scrambled to free his arm from Bruce's grip. There was no use in that. Bruce slid him closer and, sliding his left hand under the boy's back and flipped him onto his stomach. Then, before he could move, took his right hand and folded his arm behind his back, wrist pinned between his protruding shoulder blades.

"Hey—let go!" Richard exclaimed, back arched in an attempt to pull his arm free. "This isn't fair!"

"Here's a good lesson. Pin the wrist of the captive higher up and it makes it harder from them to pull free, guaranteed." Then he noticed Alfred walking down the cave stairs with a tray of his soup. "Hey—can you reach into the second last compartment of my utility belt and hand me the short rope and the cuffs, Alfred?"

"What!" Richard squeaked. "Don't listen to him, Alfred—he's evil—Ow! Quit pulling before my arm breaks!"

Bruce ignored his ward and held out one of his hands to catch what Alfred tossed him, the other hand holding the boy's hand in place as he tried to move away. His other arm was stretched out far in front of him to keep it away from Bruce, but Bruce's reach was longer and caught his left wrist without much trouble. Arm twisted down and around, the wrist joined the first soon after and were caught together by the click of the cuffs.

"Let go—let go—let go!" Richard continued to yell as he endlessly struggled under his captor's weight. While one hand held his writs in place, the second one grabbed an end of the rope and slipped it under Robin's chest. It followed a couple more times until Bruce tied the two ends together behind his back, securing his hands caught between the shoulder blades.

"There…almost finished."

"What?" Richard, having thought that that was the end, writhed again as he was lifted off the ground and thrown over Bruce's shoulder as easily as a pillow. There were great disadvantages that came along with weighing half of what you should have.

"You're going for a time out." Bruce explained, passing by his workbench to pick up another rope from his belt. Then he took Richard over to a chair and sat him down, winding this rope around his upper body to keep him seated against it.

"I'm too old for a time out!" He complained, still trying as hard as he could to break free. Bruce ignored him and dragged the chair over to a corner of the room near the main computer where he himself sat down and began researching up information on their next case.

"You're nine." Bruce muttered. "And you can either sit there for you're hour quietly or I'll gag you. You're choice."

Richard fell silent, frowning so hard that you could have sworn if looks could kill…"If you hadn't painted it blue I wouldn't have attacked." He said at last before giving into his punishment.

And that was all he needed to say.

"What?"

Richard shook his head. "Don't act dumb—I spent hours on that shelf and you painted it over in blue!"

"No I didn't!"

"Yes you did!"

"You turned everything in my room upside-down!"

"How? If you haven't noticed, I'm not too tall. I can't even reach the top of your large shelf."

Then it dawned on them both.

Bruce stood at once and walked over toward the soup, just now noticed the small letter folded by the bowl, Alfred already long gone up the stairs to the main floor.

My turn at last,

-Alfred

"Go figure…" Bruce chuckled and Richard rolled his eyes.

"If it was him would you please let me go?"

"Heck no."

"Why not! I'm innocent!"

"You still jumped me."

"….Darn…."

-A-

This was just a little mid-point in the story for poor Alfred's sake. I started feeling bad that he had to deal with those two this entire time…so…yeah. He had his share of the fun for just right now. Maybe even some more later.

Until Again,

Alexnandru Van Gordon