Chapter: Twenty-Six

"Alfred To The Rescue"

Alfred went to his room first to gather a few items before heading to the secret elevator that lead to the Batcave. He made sure his attire was proper before pressing the elevator button to descend. As the elevator lift dropped, he suddenly had a feeling of dread. He didn't know whether it was intuition or something equivalent of ESP, but over the years he had learned to trust those feelings and deal with them head on. And the current situation in the Batcave needed a straight-forward approach—a hard-nose conclusion.

When the elevator doors opened, the first thing he heard was the sound of something metallic crashing, the smash of electronics.

Richard Grayson was fighting Future Drake in the main area of the Batcave. With closer observation, they were not actually fighting, but throwing things at each other like a bunch of overgrown schoolboys, no physical contact was seen, hence the crashing sounds.

Alfred saw, Richard had thrown a portable television projection monitor across the room at Future Drake and it was now embedded in one of the Tier One computer consoles, sparks were shooting out and wires sizzled. Future Drake had thrown a chair used to at one of the console stations at Richard and it had smashed against one of Bruce's workstations, scattering its contents to the floor.

Alfred had not seen Future Drake when he had threatened Timothy Drake, only told the story of what had happened, opting to take care of the bed-ridden master by proxy story-telling. He had been informed that the Bruce was securing the younger man in cryostasis. Obviously, that had not occurred, and now he was running amok, and having some sort of temper tantrum, fighting with Richard, who was supposed to be recovering from his recent injuries. His head bandages were all but unraveled and hanging from his head and neck like a snake-charmers serpent. Future Drake also had some clothing in disarray, namely one arm sleeve was slashed by something and also one pant leg, exhibiting redness beneath.

Anything that wasn't nailed down was being used as a projectile, and tribute capsule chambers that once displayed uniforms were smashed, their contents being used as weapons. Things that were once held in sacred regard were now thrown asunder without a care. The entire places looked like it had been subjected to a bomb, even the upper tiers and galleries, as things were strune everywhere. Even the canopy of the Batmobile had been penetrated with what looked like a sharp object still embedded within.

When Master Bruce sees this, he's going to…On that note, where is Master Bruce?

The pair had not noticed him yet, and Alfred was able to observe the fighting unabated. Richard picked up a long thin pipe from the floor that had belonged somewhere near the workstation hit by Future Drake's chair, and then began to twirl is like a bo staff. Future Drake quickly looked around, found a sword that had been haphazardly dropped on the floor and banished it as a weapon.

Alfred knew this insanity had to stop. Enough was enough.

He reached into a jacket pocket, took out a small pistol, and then fired it into the air. Both combatants suddenly halted. "Cease this childish behaviour. You are—or were once—sons of gentlemen! Look at this mess. It's going to take weeks to clean this up!"

Dick's eyes bulged in surprise, he then immediately shifted his position to protect the butler. "Alfred, Arkells is extremely dangerous!"

"Master Dick, you're going to cause yourself more injury," Alfred said, sidestepping Grayson. HIs gun remained in the "starters pistol" position with his elbow eased to avoid any untoward aggressiveness, but kept ever watchful of Arkells. "Please calm yourself. I wish for the both of you to disarm yourselves. Enough of this foolishness!"

Arkells pointed at Grayson. "He started it!"

Dick clenched his teeth. "No, I didn't! You threatened me first!"

Alfred fired again, this time startling Dick, forcing him to jerk away. "Boys will be boys, as the saying goes," the butler stated, albeit sounding slightly pedantic. "I said put the your weapons down. There are only so many issues one person can deal with at one time. Multi-tasking aside, and I am a butler, but I do have my limits."

Dick stood at his defence, but he knew when to obey the apt man. There were only certain times Alfred got this way, and that was when he was ticked off. When he got angry, it was time to back off. "I'd do what he says, Arkells, believe me," Dick voiced.
Arkells laughed short. "You're no match for me, old man. Not with my new found powers!"

"In a one-on-one match, I would tend to agree, but…" Alfred reached into his other jacket pocket and pulled out a small device, and Arkells suddenly became very still, his eyes wide. It looked like a metal cigarette lighter, but it was actually something else.

"Good, you recognize this. It's something you—or rather your other self—designed to help quickly disarm would-be assailants in the field. When I was young, guns and other assorted weapons were forged with iron and steel, now they're all 'smart' with computer chips."

"Is that what I think it is?" Arkells wondered with a look of dejection on his face.

"Yes, it's an EMP miniature explosive. It has a small yield, and it's to be used at short range, but I believe it's more than adequate to short-circuit you at this distance and that blasted AI intelligence you've fused with. I know the equipment in the Batcave is safe from an EMP pulse, I trust you're not. Or am I wrong in that assertion?"

Dick's mouth went agape, smiling with intrigue. "Good going, Alfred!"

"Thank you, sir. One must think ahead, it is the most efficient way to disarm a tense situation before it escalates."

Arkells growled, then dropped the sword. He put up his hands in surrender. "Fine, you got me. Just don't drop it. I don't want to die."

"A far cry from what I was told earlier about you," Alfred remarked. Alfred returned the gun to his pocket as it was no longer needed, yet kept the EMP explosive handy. "One should not want to throw away their life so easily. All life is precious. Young Master Tim has suffered from depression from time to time, and he though he didn't want anyone to know, he often come to me to talk about it. As you may have done, although I can't speak for myself from your timeline?" he said to Arkells. "PTSD is a nasty business in this line of work, as Master Dick can attest to. Many a night I've stay up with him after one of his night terrors, but boy and man."

Arkells's shoulders seemed to slump as if all the fight just oozed out of him. And he nodded. "Whenever I was down, you already gave great advise, Alfred," he said. "I never could talk to anyone else, even you, Dick. Teen issues, you know?"

"It's been a while since I was that young, Arkells. These days, teens have so many different issues than what I had to deal with. I try to stay young at heart as best I can, and though I crack a corny joke on the job sometimes—" Alfred gave Dick an incredulous look, as if to say: 'sometimes?'. Dick shrugged with compilation. "—okay, quite often then. It helps me defuse a tension situation within myself. But, that's just me; we all have our quirks. Laughter is the best medicine, they say."

"Yes," Alfred agreed. "At appropriate times. Now, where is Master Bruce?" Alfred directed the question to Dick.

"Arkells said he put Bruce in a cryostats chamber," and then he remembered, "without oxygen!"

"Go, Master Dick! Release Master Bruce!" Alfred instructed. "I'll stay here and watch Mr. Arkells."

Dick gave one last glance to Arkells, who pouted at being called Mister instead of Master, as Alfred always called male members of the household, respectfully, and left, assured Alfred had the situation well in hand, exiting the main area, and entering the Medibay.

Here Dick quickly located the cryostats chamber, or hyperbolic chamber as it was sometimes referred to, laying flat and horizontal, near the back of the Medibay, and found Bruce, in Batman regalia and unconscious within, seemingly asleep, as seen from the transparent canopy. Dick checked the readings. Arkells had lied. He did turn on the oxygen to normal levels. Dick breathed out a sigh of relief. He knew Arkells—Future Drake—wasn't all that bad. The kid had anger issues—much like someone else he knew—but at least he still had some morality left in him fused with that artificial intelligence he designed.

Unlocking the chamber, it depressurized and hissed, and Dick pulled open the canopy. At first, he just looked at Bruce. He was kind of sweet asleep like that, so innocent and kind. And Dick wondered if he looked like that when he was sleeping in the hospital with Barbara watching over him? He leaned over and patted Bruce on the side of the face.

"Wake up, Sleeping Beauty," he said, smiling.

Bruce gasped awake, startled, and instantly reached out with his hands, as if reacting to a previous situation, suddenly halted.

Dick jumped back, and put up his hands in surrender. "Whoa, Bruce! It's me, Dick! It's okay."

Bruce grabbed the side of the chamber, looking around. "How…did I get here? The last thing I remembered was tangling with Arkells. I thought he was unconscious, but then he must've blindsided me and put me in here."

"That's what I figured," Dick replied, and helped Bruce out of the chamber to his feet. "Alfred has him secured at the moment with an EMP bomb in hand. Arkells wants to live now, so he's not resisting. If he tries anything dumb, Alfred has threatened to fry the AI inside of him."

"Good plan," Bruce stated. Bruce noticed and then touched a portion of Dick's head bandage that was nearly unraveled. "How's your head, Dick?" he asked. "You should be recovering, but I'm glad you're finally back in action."

Dick smiled, then explained he and Barbara had rushed to the Manor when they heard about Tim. Bruce understood their worry.

Bruce said, "After all of this done, I want to sit down and talk with Tim. If I can change future events, talk to the teen—if he's festering the same feeling like Arkells inside—I don't want him to…"

Dick put a hand on Bruce's shoulder. "Talk to Alfred first," he said. "Trust me."

Bruce wasn't sure what Dick meant by that, but he'd ask later.

Bruce got back to business. "I reviewed Tim's medical scans before the situation with Arkells," he began to say, "and, initially, it didn't look good. But after thinking about it, I think his condition can be reversed. All I need it to do is examine that Neuro-Diffuser more closely and, simply, change the polarities, and jump-start Tim's nervous system again."

"Sounds good!"

Dick fixed his head bandage as they left the Medibay together.

When they returned to the main area of the Batcave, Arkells arms were still up, and Alfred was still where he was when Dick left him. Bruce gave Arkells a hard stare of disdain and Arkells looked away abashed. He actually looked regretful.

Dick then approached Arkells but wary. "You can put your hands down now, I trust you're not going to do anything stupid?" Arkells nodded. "Early, you said Damian was going to die in a most distasteful way."

"I actually said in a horrible and gruesome way, but go on."

"How? We need to stop it."

Arkells grumbled under his breath, he then folded his arms across his chest. "Typical, there's a problem staring you straight in the face—me!—and all you care about is that damn, annoying brat?" He snorted angrily.

"He's my son! So, answer the question," Bruce demanded. Alfred put a hand on Bruce's shoulder as a calming effect. Bruce sighed silently and calmed down. "If you had a problem, Drake, why didn't you come and talk to me?"

"Because you always have a wall up, Bruce. You never let anyone in, even before Selina Kyle left you." Bruce clenched his teeth and Dick held him back. Dick gave him a serious look. "Oh yes, that only happened recently. It's been years for me. But it's no wonder I rebelled against this family. Ousted as an outcast."

"Where is all this coming from? You've always been a member of this family. Hell, I even adopted you as my son, Tim!" Bruce tried to remain calm. "We've had our problems, but I thought we made amends? I told you to leave for a time because you were acting too much like Jason, rebellious and narcissistic. Then we came together as family again."

"I was a teenager, Bruce. That's what we do! What we are! We always think we're invisible and smarter than everyone else. But you never understood what I was going through, did you? Always, the high and mighty one, thinking you knew everything there was about everything!"

Bruce put his hands on his hips. "Okay, out with it, Tim. What's all this really about?"

"Obviously there's a difference in my timeline than in this one," Arkells voiced, thinking out loud. "What happened to me, didn't happen to this timeline's Tim Drake…"

And he explained what that difference was.

"So, basically, you guys never made up like Bruce and Tim did in this timeline," Dick said. "One difference of opinion about some stupid—" Dick sighed heavily.

"It wasn't stupid at the time, it was serious! But there were other things, too. Things that just pissed me off about him!" Arkells pointed at Bruce.

"The Butterfly Effect," Alfred interposed. "Every action can have an equal or opposite reaction. And by this lack of an apology, the start of it all, Master Drake's frustrations began to fester into a self-made monster, and then they were somehow deflected towards his past-self. Simplified, if his past-self never existed, the issues he and his family faced would never have occurred, and thus, by this negative reasoning and the possible dark depression Master Tim suffered from on occasion, caused him to fuse with his self-made Batcomputer as a conduit to aid himself, so he could get the knowledge, create a time machine, and go back into the past, to fulfil his plan of murdering himself, his younger self? Or, at least, this version of future himself?"

Arkells nodded. "Basically, that's pretty much it," he said. "Now that I think about it, it was kind of superfluous. With my new abilities, I think I can become something else—something beyond, Batman."

"Sorry, Terry McGillus has that covered," Bruce said.

"Huh?"

Dick masked a smirk. He knew exactly what and to whom Bruce was referring to. Terry McGillus was Batman from the not-so-distant future, who had come back to the past to save his own timeline once. Tim had even tried out his armour.
Bruce waved it off. "Forget it," he said. "What else do you remember? What other things triggered such a deep hatred of me?"

Alfred stepped forward. "If I may interject further, sir," Alfred began. "The split from the Batfamily could have occurred at any number of junctions, not just one; emotions run high in this chosen profession, that pinpointing the exact moment is irrelevant. It happened, and while I do not wish to fully incline with Arkells, the introduction of young Master Damian may have a large part in it."

"I got to know Damian better when I temporarily took the Batman mantle," Dick said, "and I have to admit, he was…and still is…difficult, to say the least. He's not afraid to speak his mind. He also likes to, let's just say, cock-block my relationship with Barbara."
"Master Dick?" Alfred sounded mortified with the term.

Bruce nodded, sharing Dick's sentiments. There were times Damian had done the same to him.

"It's true! He never let's us be alone anymore, swinging in at the last moment when we're about to…" He cleared his throat, as everyone began to stare at him. He then shook his hands in front of him to wave off the conversion. "Anyway, let's get serious. Arkells, let's get back to what you were saying before we began to fight: How do you know Damian will die?"

"Because I was on Treasure Island when it happened."

And he then told them the horrid and gruesome details.

To be continued...