Disclaimer: Lihau does not own the Teen Titans or any related characters or objects. If you do, however, please feel free to share. (grin)

Apology: I'm really sorry this took so long! I hope it was worth the wait! And if it isn't... please don't be mad at me!!

The Wrath of Batman

or

Falling: An Unfortunately Very True Story

PART THREE

By Kid Flash

"Sooo…" I began, settling back into the armchair I had temporarily taken possession of.

"'Sooo…' what?" mumbled Speedy, not looking up from the notebook he was currently scribbling in as we sat in the study of the JLA satellite.

"Nothin'. Just felt like saying 'sooo'."

"Weirdo," the archer muttered, leaning further over the desk he was sitting at.

"Thank you! Sooo—"

Speedy interrupted with a glare, practically daring me to say that I'd only used 'sooo' for some sort of strange amusement.

"No, this time I really actually wanna say something important," I assured him.

"Good," was the grumbled response as he returned to distractedly scrawling something in the pad.

"I wanna know what you're doodling."

"I don't doodle!" Speedy indignantly retorted. "Well, except during math class, but that doesn't count. Anyway, I'm writing a list of things we can do to protect your L & L from Batman."

"Great!" Wait a minute…. "What's an 'L & L'?"

"Life and Limbs," he replied, pen still waggling across the paper. Frankly, I never would've thought that he'd have a pen with a fluffy dog glued to the top.

Then again, I wasn't much better. At that time, my favorite pen was one that Flash had given me on Easter—it was all covered with white fuzzies and topped with a little lamb. Its name was Fleece and it had little black beady eyes and legs made of thin rope…

…But we really don't need to go digging through the past, do we? Too painful.

Oh, and just because I'm telling you all about Fleece doesn't mean that Speedy knew about him—IT! Just an 'it', just a pen… just make sure you don't tell anyone about it!

So, having found a rare opportunity to tease the archer about his very un-cool pen, I definitely wasn't about to let it go.

"Where'd ya get the puppy?" I wondered with a grin.

"I—WHAT?!"

While Speedy 'WHAT?!'-ed, I cringed. My gosh, he had a shrieky voice before it started changing!

"It's not mine!" protested the archer. "It was the first thing I could find to write with here," he explained, practically giving the poor doggy a concussion as he knocked against the desk with the pen.

"Hmm," I hummed, smirking again.

"I mean it!"

"So you just… found it there?"

"Yeah," he confirmed, tossing a glare in my direction before he began writing again.

I grinned. "Wonder whose it is."

"It—" Speedy broke off and his face rapidly spread into a definitively diabolical expression.

"Yeah," he agreed, all but snickering in his evil agreement. "Who'd own a fuzzy puppy pen?" mused the Californian, twirling said pen back and forth between his thumb and the rest of his fingers, making the dog plushie swing its arms around in a flailing manner.

Didn't know I had such an awesome vocabulary, did ya?

Temporarily forgetting about the poor, soon-to-be-murdered me, I began listing the potential puppy owners, and Speedy commentated on each name.

"Wonder Girl?"

"I've seen her pens. The closest thing she has to a puppy pen is a pen with a chameleon printed on it. It's really cool, too. Even changes colors."

"Cool! I gotta see it sometime. Anyway, what about… Wonder Woman?"

We exchanged a look before agreeing, "No."

I continued, "Alright, not Wonder Woman. Um… Aqualad?"

Speedy snorted, "He lives underwater. Why would he need a sopping-wet fuzzy-pen?"

"So that counts out Aquaman, too. How about Robin?"

"How about Batman?" the archer retorted.

We grinned wildly at each other. Wouldn't it be something if it really was the Dark Knight's pen?

Finally, I stopped grinning and sighed, "I wish. Then maybe I'd have something to stop him from killing me."

Speedy was still smirking as he said, "You mean leverage. You keep quiet about the cute little puppy pen, he lets you live. Y'know, that's not such a bad idea…"

There was silence for a minute before I slowly asked, "Speedy… what are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking," he beamed, "I'm a genius."

"But—you don't really think…?" I stared at the puppy and its sewn-on black eyes stared back.

"Well, do you really think it belongs to a superhero at all?" Speedy demanded excitedly. "It could be anyone's! Why not Batman's?"

"You just answered your own question," I pointed out.

"I did?"

"He's BATMAN!" I clarified very loudly, shouting to make sure that the point had been driven through his thick skull.

"Well then, who do you think owns it?" snapped Speedy.

Um, uh, let's see, uh… I thought.

"See?! My point exactly!"

Speedy was starting to seriously scare me. Never mind the fact that he had just about the world's evilest grin plastered across his face—he honestly seemed to think that Batman owned a fuzzy puppy pen! And that in itself was pretty terrifying, even without the mental image of the Bat holding a fluffy pen…

Okay, I really did not need that image…

"You are about to owe me your life, Twinkletoes!" proclaimed Speedy, grabbing me by the wrist and yanking me over to the desk so that we were both looking at what I had just named the Notebook of Doom.

I gulped. If I was really, really, really, really, REALLY lucky, I would live to see my next birthday.