Semantic-toc Goes the Doomsday Clock

One Hundred and Thirteen times. That's how many times Robin had gone unconscious. Blunt impact, blood loss, poison, sedative darts. He kept count. Normally, the return to consciousness was slow and blurry and involved a lot of less than polite swear words.

This time, however, Robin smashed back to reality with a sudden and jarring breath. The jungle and wilderness he had left behind were replaced with rock and slate and palettes of who-knows-what. His head ached and his arm burned where the bullet had clipped him, but overall, Robin was glad to be alive. That was one thing that never changed; no matter how battered or bruised he was, it was better than being killed.

His arms were tied at his sides, and the cement floor made a lovely reclining couch.

"Is this a 5-star hotel? You guys really went all out! You shouldn't have!" Robin guffawed, shuffling to an upright position, his arms pulling at the ropes.

"Shut up." came the eloquent reply from the leading behemoth, who was holding a small rectangular box. The cube glowed with undermined power, and Robin hoped that whatever it was couldn't hurt too much.

"We're done with this mess. You heroes keep getting in our way. The best way to keep you out of our hair is to get rid of you." grumbled the man, fiddling with the cube as he spoke. "If we leave your body here, Bats will come after us. But if it looks like you're missing, no one's the wiser."

Robin's mind was racing: this was not going well. His toolbelt was twisted in such a way that he couldn't reach any sharp tools with his stretching fingers, so cutting the ropes was a no-go. Before he could attempt any secondary maneuver, the man with the glowing box stomped over and grabbed the back of Robins suit, hefting him into the air like a rag doll.

"Hey hey, buy a fellow dinner first!" he protested, but the large man simply held him up beside the glowy box, continuing his monologue as if he hadn't heard a thing.

"We've got a portal, it'll send you to a lovely little place called Middle Earth. We've been going there for a while now since the stupid creatures don't seem to care if we take their gold and metals," he growled.

"And if you don't have one of these babies," he gestured to a small sphere on his belt that had similar designs to the fancy box, "you're stuck forever. Nifty huh?" he chuckled.

Robin had a problem. Oh sure he was about to be killed and/or irretrievably sent to a different world, but that wasn't the biggest issue.

"That's not a portal."

"What?"

"A portal implies you can go through it both ways. If you can't return without a different device, it's not a portal. More of a sender." Robin informed his captor, his body rotating slowly from the suspending ropes, more concerned about the proper use of certain words than his imminent death at the moment.

"What does it matter?" the man scoffed. "We're going to kill you anyway."

Robin was outraged. "If you're going to kill me, at least call it what it is!"

The man growled and dropped Robin to the floor - ouch - and hit the cube, which began to thrum loudly. As a glowing ball of light enveloped Robin, he couldn't resist throwing one last verbal jab.

"Hey: if you're killing me, are you sending me to death? Because if not, and death is a portal, does that imply people can come back? Dude! Zombies!" he cackled, and got one last satisfying glimpse of the man's crimson twisted face before the world shifted to grey, then green, and then back to black for the second time that day.

One Hundred and Fourteen. Damn. The young man came to in a small bramble bush, the ropes still bound to his torso catching in the small thorns and making it a herculean feat to try and twist free.

Wiggling like a possessed jackrabbit with a penchant for LSD, the young vigilante made a graceless escape from the bushes, flopping towards a small dirt road he could see a few yards away. He could hear voices approaching from further down the path, and his mind raced with possibilities.

Was he actually in another world? Potentially: these things were known to happen occasionally. His mentor and father-figure had world hopped before, so why couldn't Robin. On the off chance that he wasn't in a different world, and the thugs had simply dropped him in some random forest, could he risk allowing civilians to find him in such a vulnerable state? With his hands tied, he would be unable to stop them should they try to remove his mask, and that would be a big uh-oh.

As the voices grew closer, the sound of hooves on dirt and gravel got louder, which served to reinforce the probability of being in another land. This was a less than ideal situation, but Robin wasn't prone to panic, and instead went with the less 'death by starvation on back country road' option, and decided to try for help.

"Hello! HELLO! Over here!" Robin shouted at the top of his lungs, lunging to his knees and waggling his body as a flag-down for whoever was approaching.

As a small platoon of horses and riders rounded the bend, the sudden straightening of the riders made it apparent they had seen him, and Robin breathed a huge sigh of relief as they quickened their pace.

"Hold steady little man, were coming soon." bellowed the fellow in the lead, apparently amused at the apparent state of the young man on the road.

'Oh boy, calling me little, so original' thought Robin, rolling his if he had to endure a few jabs about his height for the sake of being untied, it would be worth it.

The nine riders soon arrived at Robins location, and as they slowed their approach, horses chuffing and stamping, clearly upset to be stopped in an even pace, Robin was struck by something: these men looked different than usual humans.

Shorter. Stockier. More...beardier.

"And how did you get there." asked the (man?) on the lead horse, his large beard and braided plaits reminding Robin of Norse patterns.

"Whos asking?" he replied, his voice surprisingly strong and impertinent for a short boy hogtied on the road at the feet of clearly armed men.

"Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain. Who are you?"

King? What had Robin gotten himself into now?

[ End Chapter ]