The show was beginning. If only Dick, Wally, Ty and Roy had known what was going on elsewhere, they wouldn't have been out in front of 200 cheering women ridiculously dancing in black tights.
Cyborg's intrepid hand, sent off to find the stip club's computer, had hit paydirt. It had swerved around, table legs, chairs, and staggering customers and deftly made its way to a small door just past the bar in the "gentlemen's" side of the building. All the while, it sent video back to Cyborg, who controlled it. The hand waited, pressed against the base board at the side wall of the giant room, till finally someone opened the door. The hand scooted in right behind that person and quickly scurried under the desk. While that person was sneaking a drink from the Fat Man's special quintuple malted 125 year old scotch, the hand opened up one finger tip and sent out a probe, a cable with a tip that would connect to most data access ports.
Snickt!
A connection was made to the pc on the office desk. If the employee had been paying attention to anything but the scotch and the view from the peep hole of the girls dancing on the stage, he might have noticed the sudden flurry of lights on the side of the pc indicating activity. Cyborg read the data that the hand was sending. Office, word and excel. Child's play. He determined where the scanned copies of the ID's were kept and erased them. He connected to the club's other office, figured out the layout of files there and erased the copies sent to that pc. For good measure, he navigated over to the club's scanner and wiped its memory clean. Then, he sent the worst computer viruses he knew of into all the club's machines.
Snickt!
The hand disconnected its cable from the pc, withdrew it and pulled it back inside one finger then closed that fingertip.
"I got rid of all the computer records of our ID's," Cy informed Gar and Garth just as Roy was dancing out into the larger room.
The secret drinker left the small office and turned out the light. The hand came out from under the desk and started searching, with a tiny flashlight, all the surfaces in the office for their confiscated fake ID's. A minute's search confirmed that they weren't out in the open anywhere, but when the hand nudged the top desk drawer open with one finger there they were. Cy could see in his mind, a closeup of a fake ID with a picture of Garth and the name "Garth Flounder".
"I got our ID's," Cyborg informed Gar and Garth just after Dick had made his impressive tumbling run.
"Then our friends don't need to be completlely embarassing themselves out there? Do they?" asked Garth.
"No . . . . . . . they don't need to," replied Cy.
"It's not . . . . . . . absolutely necessary," added Gar.
First Gar and Cy and then even Garth broke into grins and Garth turned to Cy. "Will we be able to play the video in Hi-Def at the Tower?"
"Wouldn't have it any other way," smiled Cy.
And as he was saying this, the hand had gathered up the seven ID's opened up its palm revealing a storage compartment and tucked the ID's away there. It jumped up toward the closed office door with the strength of its fingers and knocked twice, loudly as it was dropping down to the floor. A passing waitress heard the knocks and opened the door but was perplexed to see no one as the hand scurried past her feet. A minute later, the hand was at the door to the locker room from the "gentlemen's" side. Cy cracked the door open and the hand rushed inside then jumped up and rejoined his wrist.
Out in the club, Hot for Teacher by Van Halen was blaring from the sound system. The blond stripper, Suzy was pointing to the word "QUIZ" on a dry wipe board and then a math problem "4x9x2=?". The four Titans boys in chippendales dancer outfits plus veteran Lance Stryker, were all dancing in place. Well, all but Dick were dancing in place. He moved slightly. Then "teacher" Suzy pointed to white plastic tablets in front of each dancer. There was a first line with three numbers, 36, 24 and 72 and spots for pegs to be inserted. All four Titan boys inserted the peg at 72. Lance looked at theirs and then did likewise. But when they held the white plastic tablets up in front of them, the numbers had switched on Wally's such that his peg was now at 24. Suzy shook her head and on time with the beat of the song, gave Wally two swats across his backside.
"Ow! Hey! I got that right!" he complained to no avail. And one by one, the others all had their correct answers wash out, too, and also got a couple swats from Suzy with the audience of 200 roaring with each swat. The pattern continued on the next question and then on the final one.
"The peg is magnetized and the correct answers have the same polarity. We can't get the right one," complained Dick.
Still getting worse, thought Wally.
No matter what the guys chose as their answer, the correct answer would move around inside the tablet and avoid the peg. Suzy even put a dunce cap on Dick. The audience roared. But even more so when she enacted an extra punishment for the boys all missing the last question. First Roy, after she gave him a couple swats, she grabbed at the waist of his Chippendales dancer tights and pulled them right off him like a player removing his warmups before entering an NBA game. Only Roy didn't have basketball shorts on underneath. He only had on the black satin slingshot.
The women in the audience roared.
Dick nearly cried out, "No!"
One by one, Suzy pulled off Ty's, then Lance Stryker's then Wally's and finally Dick's Chippendales outfits leaving them in only their little black slingshots in front of 200 cheering women. As Hot for Teacher reached a guitar crescendo, she gestured for them to spread around the room. Wally glanced at Dick. He looked like he might have a nervous breakdown or something. Wally leaned over toward him. "I'll go ahead of you. Just do what I do and remember to smile like that fat guy suggested. Act!"
Dick nodded.
And so began what Dick Grayson considered to be the most humiliating 90 minutes of his life. For him it was worse than he had imagined.
For Wally it was both better and worse. He was thankful that the women never swarmed over him like those girls at that catholic school, despite his now being nearly naked and the women being quite liquored up. And it was better in that, the shock and shame of it wore off as he went along more than he expected. The way they danced for the women, always swiveling their hips, was stupid looking, completely ridiculous, he thought. But Wally plastered on a fake smile and after a few minutes of it found that he could do it. It helped that, even without a mask, he was cloaked in anonymity. He didn't know any of them. They didn't know him. He was just acting.
And, though he would have hesitated to admit it to anyone, the reaction of the women to him was a sort of compliment. The problem was, and what made it worse than he had imagined it would be was the way they all treated him like an object with full rights to paw and fondle and slap him as they wished. Did every woman there have to swat his backside? It was particularly bad as he was getting tips. He had to get his share, $1200 for the group, the Fat Man had said. Wally intended to make sure he did his part for the group. Some drunken woman at a table near him would hold up a one or five or ten or twenty. Wally would give a sort of inward sigh and shimmy over in the expected fashion and continue dancing as the woman squeezed the bill under his waistband. Some went for the front of the slingshot, one screeching to her friends, "Oh my god, that's his real hair color!". Most went for the waistband. Inevitably that woman and the others around her would give him a slap and they would all erupt in laughter.
One thing that stuck him, besides their open palmed hands, was the age of the women in the audience. There were women old enough to be his mother and even grandmother desperately pawing at him and shouting drunkenly. The music played on the club's sound system seemed to reflect this audience demographic as there were songs from the 80's and even some from the 70's. Wally feared that a certain number from the 70's would be played and sure enough, it was. Right at the worst possible moment, the loss of anonymity.
Wally had danced up to another banquet table at which a huge woman, fairly tall even seated and easily double his weight pulled him toward her and slowly jammed a 10 dollar bill down the pouch of his slingshot. He was trying to dance a little bit as she did this when Shake Your Booty boomed forth from the sound system, loud enough that no one could hear Wally groan. The women at that table were suddenly driven into a frenzy of slapping his rear and tugging at his slingshot. It was at that moment that he heard a voice he recognized.
"Wally? Wally West? Is that you?"
Wally turned around, almost too fast to be someone without super speed, to see Lauren Phillips, a girl he'd known at school and kind of liked sitting beside Karen Hatcher, a friend of hers whom he'd always disliked.
Wally danced in the middle of several women, two of whom held out 5 dollar bills that they stuffed in Wally's overflowing waistband as he complied with the song title in front of them.
"Oh my god, it is you! Wally?! What are you doing here?"
"I . . I do this, now," said Wally as he continued dancing in place.
"What happened? You . . you were so smart," asked Lauren while her friend Karen doubled over laughing.
Wally momentarily groaned. He and Karen had always disliked each other, from first grade on. She was a particularly nasty girl, he thought, who had a weird dislike for smart boys. They pretty much stayed away from each other except for one confrontation in 8th grade when she'd called him a "hopeless nerd" and he'd fired back with both barrels, calling her a "homely, anti-intellectual loser". She was laughing out loud now, drawing an irritated glance from Lauren.
"I-I owed some people some money," Wally invented, still shaking his booty as the song demanded while an old woman behind him giggled. "I couldn't pay them back. They-they gave me the option of doing this. I-"
"Stripper boy!" shouted Karen. "You're a stripper boy!" And then she broke into more laughter.
"I'm not a stripper!" Wally corrected her. "I'm an exotic dancer!"
Karen's guffaws were now joined by Lauren's suppressed chuckle and before Wally could think of what to do or say next, Karen got her wallet out and produced three five dollar bills. Wally sighed in frustration and dutifully danced over to her to receive his tip. While he gyrated in a slow circle in front of her, he had to listen to her venomous delight in his apparent fall in life.
"Oh god! Wally West, stripper boy! I can't wait to tell everyone! Remember that red haired boy who thought he was so much smarter than me? You know what he does now? He's a stripper! Ahahahahaha!! Where'd all your brains get you, huh nerd? You're a stripper! Ahahaha! I'm gonna tell every single person who ever knew you. Wally West works as a stripper!"
And to punctuate her words and the fact that she'd squeezed the last of her 5 dollar bills under his waistband, she gave him a slap across his backside. Wally retreated angrily, wanting nothing more than to get away from her but the other women at the table were all holding up bills to give him tips. It was extremely hard to fake a smile at this point. And to add onto it, Karen got out her camera phone and started taking pictures of nearly naked Wally being fawned over by the middle aged women at the table.
"God, look at you! If you were so smart you'd have worn tight clothes to show that body off instead of those loose gangsta clothes you always wore," she snickered from 5 feet away. "There was even a girl who was convinced that you were Kid Flash! Ahahahaha!! Wait till I tell her. Wally West . . stripper boy! Genius in a g-string! Ahahaha!!"
Wally was furious. But what could he do? Nothing, it turned out because a moment later the huge woman, finished some sort of discussion with the other women at one end fo the table, stood up and grabbed the back of Wally's waistband.
"Hey!" he protested. "What're you doing?"
"We're taking you into the champagne room!" she declared and the other women clapped and chanted. "Cham-pagne room! Cham-pagne room!"
Wally was forced to backpedal, awkwardly to stay with the huge woman who had a hold of him. Four other women from that table followed him and three other women got up from their tables and trooped merrily into a dimly lit side room alongside the gigantic woman. Once the door was shut, this smallish room with a leather banquet booth and two smaller tables lived up to the name. Wally found himself at the sent of a group of women intermittently spraying champagne all over him and then, he could no more than whisper when recounting it later, licking it off him. When, 10 minutes later, the eight women were told their time in the champagne room was up, Wally left feeling sticky and dirty all over.
But that particular room was kinder to him than it would be to others.
First, Wally was not the only one to lose the comfort of anonymity. The Titan girls were having a good time at their table at the edge of the room. Some beefy doofuses had danced by and the Titans girls had irritated them by openly laughing at them. Then the girls had sort of tuned out the ridiculous dancers for a while. There had been some sort announcements of names or something but they hardly payed any attention to it. They were drinking and laughing among themselves so happily that the activities in the rest of the club were unimportant.
"So, it is not the size of the earth boy's feet that I should consider?" Starfire was asking.
"Nope. There's a better correlation to nose size," Arrowette informed her.
"But the Robin has a small nose and yet . . "
"Well none of these things are perfect," said Arrowette. "I mean, there are boys with small feet who have big-"
"And the archers? My god," laughed Argent over the top of the other conversation.
"Hey!" complained Arrowette.
"Sorry," apologized Argent. "We were comparing the various groups, supers, bats, flashes, archers, marvels. No offense, but, I mean, look at Speedy and Green Arrow!"
"Dinah's a saint for putting up with Ollie," said Bat Girl to nods all around.
"And nobody can put up with Roy for long," laughed Argent.
"Zatanna said the Flashes are the best and she even dated Batman," said Jinx to Bat Girl.
"What?!" Bat Girl screeched.
"Didn't you know?"
"Oh, yeah, Batman's a real chatty Cathy. He used to tell me and Robin all his relationship news. What the hell do you think?"
"Flash is a -hic- DILF," said a tipsy Mary Marvel before breaking into giggles.
"What is the DILF?" asked Starfire.
Wonder Girl whispered an explanation in Starfire's ear, which Starfire absentmindedly repeated out loud.
"Dad . . I'd . . like . . to . . .," Starfire burst into giggles.
Jinx turned to Argent. "We sooooooooooo made the right choice in giving her a cloaking ring that makes her blond."
"Flash is pretty fine, conceded Bat Girl. I was at a thing in Gotham City where he was there with Batman and it was funny how they gave off totally different vibes. Everyone backs off Batman but the middle aged women practically wanted to rush the podium to get at Flash. How do you deal with all the little tarts wanting a shot at Wally?"
Jinx rolled her eyes. "You wouldn't believe some of these little ditzes wanting to get their hands on him. One time, Wally and I got to this gas line explosion. It was a diversion by Professor Chang's boys. Blow up a gas line over here. Do something else over there. Duh. Coordinated Heist 101. "
Bee nodded with a smirk. That had been the class.
"Anyway, this gas line starts a housing project on fire. Wally starts doing his thing, speeding everyone out of the way. I made all this stuff collapse on the gas line and put the fire out then went over toward the housing project. I come up behind these two girls shrieking to each other about how cute Kid Flash is and then I hear the two of 'em make up this scheme to pretend to need mouth to mouth to get a kiss from him."
"Oh my god, really?"
"Not bad."
"Um, yeah, bad, definitely bad if you talk about it out loud in front of his fiancee. Anyway, the two of 'em lie down and pretend like they've fainted. And a second later, the red and yellow blur zipping around the place stops at their feet. But I put a hand up to Wally. Stop! And, in the greatest bit of timing ever, a green condor swoops down to where we are and lands. I motion for Gar to be quiet and go over and whisper in his ear. "Gorilla" I tell him and also "mouth to mouth resucitation" then I point to the girls. He gives me a quizzical look and I whisper 'they're faking it'. Gar looks at Wally and puts two and two together. He smirks and changes into a huge green gorilla then goes over and starts locking lips with one girl blowing gorilla breath into her mouth. Gods! If you shot that girl with a gallon of adrenaline she could not jump up faster. You never heard such screeching. The other one jumped up, too, before Gar could give her some emergency care."
The table burst into laughter.
"Never mess with a sorceress's guy," said Jinx as the guffaws were dying down.
"Hell, just don't mess with a sorceress at all," said Argent and she turned to Wonder Girl, Arrowette and Mary Marvel in particular. "Let me tell you about our group trip to see Zatanna's show a couple months back."
Jinx joined in on the delicious storytelling. Titan boys lording it over on the girls after winning an informal competition against the girls at the Tower. Jinx taking a call from Zatanna just a minute later and spilling out her frustration at how some of them, in particular, had acted. And then, onstage . . .
"-and she turned Garth into a frog," snickered Jinx.
"Why a frog?" laughed Mary Marvel.
"Don't you get it? Amphibian. And, of course, there's the whole prince turned into a frog fairy tale angle."
"I would love to have seen when she did that to Dick!" grumbled Bat Girl. "A little bat! Ha!"
"Only it wasn't a kiss from a princess that eventually turned Garth back,. It was from Roy!" crowed Argent. "Roy the jackass!"
Jinx was laughing with Argent, when she felt a tap on her shoulder from the other side, from Arrowette. And, suddenly she realized that the others weren't laughing and that the overall din of cheering, shouting and laughing from the 200 women in the room wasn't being augmented by any of the nine Titans girls.
A wide eyed Arrowette pointed to the aisle in front of them.
Jinx turned to look where the others were looking.
She dropped her empty glass onto the leather booth between her and Argent then her jaw dropped nearly as far.
Then, a smile slowly curled her lips as she muttered "Oh . . . my . . . gods."
For a second, nine Titan girl jaws had dropped nearly to the floor. There, in front of them, shaking and shimmying for their pleasure was, not another big beefy doofus dancer but Roy Harper. Roy Harper wearing only the same comical slingshot thing as the doofuses had worn.
There was a moment's pause.
And then the Titan girls all burst into raucous laughter.
R-Roy . .
R-Roy . . the . . exotic dancer?!?!?!
Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!
They doubled over and slapped the table and fell over sideways into each other. Their eyes watered and their sides got sore.
But, eventually, it struck all of them that Roy, dancing away in front of them, wasn't the least bit embarassed about it. Hell, he liked it! What the hell was he doing there working as an exotic dancer! And even in front of them, he liked it?!?!
Arrowette reached into her pockets and produced a 5 dollar bill. Roy danced over and swiveled in front of her as she slipped it into his overflowing waistband. Argent burst into more laughter, leaning against Jinx and shaking her head. "To Roy, this is just another job."
"You can't shame the shameless," agreed Jinx.
All the Titans girls Roy had had, along with Bee whom he hadn't, gave Roy tips as a means for super strong Mary Marvel and Wonder Girl and some of the othersto give the archer slaps across his unprotected backside that had him rushing to get away to the next table.
"Too bad," said Argent. "I wanted to get the story of why he's here and where are the others."
And then Dick Grayson came "dancing" toward them.
The Titan girls broke into louder laughter than when they'd seen Roy. All except for one. Bat Girl looked instantly focused and energized.
It was some 10 minutes later that Wally was leaving the champagne room, covered in partly licked off champagne and feeling dirtier than if he'd rolled in mud. With great effort he plastered on a fake smile and started dancing away, doing the job. From a table away, out of the corner of his eye he saw another group of women approaching the door to the champagne room. Younger women. He froze. He recognized Wonder Girl, Bat Girl and Mary Marvel and the cloaking ring disguised versions of some of the others. He turned away but not before he'd made eye contact with a smirking Wonder Girl. And not before he saw that she and blond Starfire held aloft a certain five foot eight 145 pound leader, carried him waist high like a hunting trophy and as though he weighed nothing and this certain five foot eight 145 pound leader seemed to be calling out for help but had napkins stuffed in his mouth muffling any sound. Walking beside him pulling on his hair was Bat Girl with a mean glint in her eyes.
Wally paused, but what could he do. He went back to his degrading, ridiculous job. In the shuffle of the dancers around the semi-circular room more than a hundred feet across, he didn't see much of Dick again till the night was finally, blessedly over. The music stopped and the voice of the Fat Man came over the P.A. system telling the women that Exposures wanted the night to continue but that Jump City regulations required that they close in 10 minutes.
Wally felt such relief at getting through it. And he looked down at his humiliating slingshot attire and saw dozens and dozens of bills tucked underneath and into it. He hadn't kept strict track of things but was certain he'd garnered more than the $300 per dancer required of the four of them. He made his way over to the door to the locker room. Some women still pawed at him as he went past. He just ignored it.
There was a bit of a crush at the door. Wally sighed. He didn't want to wait even another minute. But Roy was signing autographs for adoring women, signing them as "Dick Grayson". Wally looked around for Dick to see his reaction. At last, Dick approached, but he was trailed by 15 women who still wanted more of him, pulling at his arms and giving him more tips. One kissed his ear.
"Come on! Hurry up and get in there, Roy!" Dick shouted as he rubbed his backside.
Roy snickered noticing that the women were aggressively pawing at Dick. "I'm with my fans. What, are they gonna do, carry you off if you have to wait another minute?"
And he turned to the next woman with a smile. "Would you like that autograph personalized?"
And just as Roy finished asking this, they did carry Dick away.
Somehow, the combination of unthreatening size but amazing physical condition, striking light blue eyes and long lashes, extremely handsome face and a constantly emitted air of shyness had struck a chord with the women in that audience, a deeper chord of response than was struck by Roy's enthusiasm, Ty's energy or Wally's appearance. He didn't collect as many tips as the others but there was something about the exceptionally pretty, dark haired one that drove the women wild and at the height of the their alcohol consumption, at the end of the night, they acted on the group vibe of wanting to do something about it.
Just as Roy went inside the locker room door and Ty followed, the crowd of insatiable women pulled Dick away, two women to each limb. Not wanting to spend a moment longer dressed like that, Wally only shouted, "Come on, Dick, let's go," to his apparently crowd surfing pal and went into the locker room too. He, Roy and Ty started changing and tallying up their tips. They were able to show the Fat Man that they'd made more than $1200 tips without even considering Dick's. The Fat Man sent for one of his lackeys to bring their ID's but the flunkey returned a minute later with the news that they were gone. Wally was upset but Cy winked for him to calm down and the Fat Man promised to destroy them before offering all three of them jobs as dancers any time they wanted. They declined. Even Roy. At least in front of the others.
They wanted to shower, but the single shower stall in a corner of the room, barely let out more than a trickle of water. Ty shook his head. "I want to use the high pressure showers at the Tower, anyway." Wally and Roy agreed.
And then there was the other issue. The girls.
Wally made sure there was no one else in the locker room then got Cy to let him borrow his communicator, the one he stored in his metal arm and quickly pressed Wonder Girl's code.
"Uh, hi, Cassie. It's me, Wally."
"I can see you," she smirked. Wally could see some kind of street background behind her and blond Starfire and Mary Marvel behind her. "I saw you earlier, too, speedster. Nice buns!' the girls behind her broke into laughter.
"It-it wasn't our plan for the night to end up like that. Please tell Jinx I'm sorry. I know she didn't want to see me for 24 hours before."
"But apparently 200 strangers could see you, huh, speedster?" she first reproached him then laughed.
"I-I said I'm sorry. I-"
He stopped talking. The small screen showed the palm of her hand and he could faintly hear Wonder Girl talking to someone else in the background.
"Your fiancee says that you guys had better not be at the Tower before 2:30 and that you'll have to find some other room to sleep in. She doesn't want to see you before the ceremony."
"Um, sure, Cassie. Got it."
"And Wally?"
"Yeah, Cassie?"
"I mean it . . . . . . those are some great buns!" The picture cut out with the sound of multiple girls laughing in the background.
Wally gave the communicator back to Cy then turned to Roy. "Marrying Jinx is no leap of faith. Ever listening to advice from you again, that'll be a leap of faith."
The guys talked quietly among themselves and finished dressing and only then did they notice, hey, where's Dick?
Wally peeked out the locker room door into the big room just as a shouting mass of some 75 women was funneling through an auxiliary doorway into an alley on one side of the building.
"Dick?!" Wally shouted. He heard some kind of yelp in response. "We'll get the car!" He bellowed at the top of his lungs and quickly told the others.
Five foot eight, 145 pound Dick Grayson was in the alley beside the building at that moment. He'd tried for five minutes to fight his way through the horde of shrieking women to get to the locker room but he didn't want to hurt anyone and he wasn't strong enough to bull his way through. A couple times he almost got loose to jump over the crowd but one woman or another always had hold of an arm or leg or something else. He and the thirty women within reach of him had moved not toward but away from the door to the locker room. And finally, some women on the periphery of the horde shrieking while they, pinched, prodded and fondled him leaned against the papered over exit door that opened into the alley. It fell open with a series of loud beeps as though a truck was backing up. The entire circle of humanity fell toward that side once there was no wall supporting everyone on that side. Dick made a desperate calculation. He knew where the T-Car was. If he could get to it, he could trigger the voice activation and the moon roof would open allowing him to dive in. He tried to climb over women to get to the exit, as a score of hands grasped hungrily for his body.
"Where do you think you're going, pretty boy?"
Then, stepping past one woman's arm and over the legs of two others, he was free, out in the night air, in the alley on one side of the building. The horde of women shrieked at the prospect of losing this so very pretty boy. Dick Grayson ran down the alley clad only in his black slingshot, quickly leaving the women, young and old behind.
But the alarm had been noticed by a nearby patrol car and it stopped just past then end of the alley with blue lights flashing. Dick looked down at his nearly naked bare assed self. Uh, no. He could not run past them like that. He reversed field and ran back in the direction from which he'd come. It was like a player returning a kickoff in a football game, only he had no blockers and there were about 75 would be tacklers. Only they didn't want to tackle him. They wanted to hold and pinch and fondle and . . ugh, he didn't want to think of what else. He considered going back in the emergency exit but just a few sprinting strides away, it was shut from the inside by someone.
"Damn!"
Women young and old were getting hands on him as the incognito boy wonder faked and cut around them but he was successfully evading their taking him down. He worked his way past most of them and headed to the other end of the alley. He was just a few seconds sprinting from the end of the alley when he noticed all the shiny little reflections. He stopped short as fast as he could in his bare feet.
"Shit!"
The last 40 feet of the alley was speckled with broken glass. Too far to jump. Too many pieces to try to step between them. And now the women were all running toward him again. In a split second, Dick came up with another option. He ran through the edge of the approaching horde, multiple hands not quite grasping him and made his way to a door at the back of a building on the side of the alley opposite the strip club. He got there on a dead run and tried the knob. He was in luck. It was unlocked. His spririts lifted instantly. At least this humiliating night would get better. Inside he would investigate all his options and make a typically brilliant boy wonder choice and get clothes or some sort of help and get back to the T-car.
But before he could get inside, two of the younger women got their hands around him, one's sweaty claws around his left thigh, the other's around his waist. He made a characteristically smart boy wonder choice and spun free of both their grasps resulting in him having his back to the half opened doorway. He had only to back into the building behind him to be free of all of them then slam the door shut on this ignominious episode. But he couldn't. He tried to but first one woman then the other had a hold of him, had a hold of the ridiculous slingshot.
And its contents.
"Let . . go!" he grunted but they wouldn't.
And so the boy wonder found himself engaged in a tug of way in which he was not only a contestant but also the rope. He pulled his hips back with all his might but couldn't break free of their grasp. If anything, they were stretching the . . rope and getting a better grip with each second.
"Ow! Let go! It's not made for this!" he shouted but the group of women now gathering didn't seem to be bothered by that. Some were laughing and others said something about showing him what it was made for. They were pulling him out of the doorway now, till with a tremendous effort, he got one foot inside the door frame and the other inside the door. He pulled back harder.
"Let me help!" shouted another woman and she tried to add her hands to the tug of war. But, before she could, the one closer to Dick stumbled and she took down the second woman and this third one. With a well timed backward hip thrust, Dick was free of them. He stepped inside the building and slammed the door shut on a chorus of shrieks and grasping little hands, then turned the button on the knob to lock it.
"Thank god!" he whispered.
But inside, wherever he was, was pitch black. He couldn't see a thing. He took one step away from the door and immediately tripped over some low bar or something. He tried to regain his footing and tripped over a power cord connected to something else. He was stumbling with some momentum now, deflecting off some metal chairs and some boxes, picking up speed, knocking over a set of cymbals as he tumbled forward toward a glimmer of light along the floor.
With a loud thud, Dick Grayson tumbled through some heavy curtains and onto a wooden floor in an area of blinding light. There was someone to the side of him, a guy in a speedo swimsuit as music was playing softly. Dick held his hand out to block twin blinding spotlights as he stood up. He could vaguely make out the silhouettes of people at tables in chairs in a semicircle around him.
"I'm sorry," he quickly said, moving his hand and forearm to try to block the twin blinding lights. "I was trying to get away from some women," he explained and was suddenly cognizant of how painful the stretching of the tug of war's . . rope had been
"That's okay. No women here," said one gravelly voice from the audience and Dick could see the silhouettes all moving toward him.
Meanwhile, out on the streets of Jump City, Cyborg turned the T-Car right at the light, again.
"Where could he be?" asked Gar from the back seat.
"Poor Richard," sighed Garth from the front seat . "Accosted by all those women against his will." Sigh.
All six teenage boys had their heads on swivels scanning the area for any sight of Dick Grayson.
"He's gotta be around here somewhere," said Cyborg and he turned right again at the next light, to continue circling the block.
"Wait! There's something!" said Wally pointing toward the gay club they'd quickly exited earlier that evening. The door of the club was flung open and there was a burst of shouting voices followed by someone running out barefoot in leather cowboy clothes, well, a hat, vest and chaps with no seat, anyway.
"Ya think?" asked Cy.
Roy nodded from the back seat and put down the window on that side. Cy pulled over to the curb and stopped the T-car. The cowboy stopped and looked around for a second then sprinted right for them. Cy shifted out of park and back into gear as the cowboy dove through the window and across the laps of the boys in back. They laughed as Cy peeled out pulling away from the curb and they saw it was their pal Dick. Everyone scooted over and scrunched up to make room for him.
"You sure you don't want us to stay here and pick up the other guys in the group?" asked Cy, "The cop, the construction worker, and the indian chief, too?"
Dick pulled off the oversized cowboy hat and shot Cy an angry glance before Gar burst into song.
"Dick likes to stay at the YYYYYYYYY-M-C-A! Dick likes to stay at the YYYYYYYYYY-M-C-A!" complete with stadium singalong hand motions making the letters Y, M, C and A.
The other five burst into laughter.
"Very funny Logan."
"Dude," Ty asked a fuming Dick. "What were you doing in that club? And how'd you get a hold of those assless chaps?"
"Never mind! Do you have my real clothes?"
Wally nodded and started to reach over the seat into the hatchback area.
"No, I'll-I'll scrunch up and put 'em on back there. You guys can have the seats," said Dick.
"You don't want me to make myself into a mouse or something," asked a puzzled Gar.
"No, you guys can have the seats. I'll just crouch back here after I change."