Author's Note : It's official; I have no more subplots that I can explore at this time. Yeah. So... I guess we'll just take things from there.
Bruce felt like he was about to pass out. He couldn't take any more. He fell backwards onto his bed. He'd just remembered that Diana's due date was about a week away. He'd pushed it to the back of his mind for as long as he could, but it him like a ton of bricks. There was no way out. In a week, he was going to be a father. Of course, the other scenario was completely unthinkable.
He knew that he'd been neglecting his duty as Batman for the past couple of weeks; he hadn't donned his cape at all, unless prompted by the Bat-signal. Commissioner Gordon had been contacting him as little as possible, possibly sensing that something was amiss, but more strange murder cases had been cropping up. Each case was increasingly gruesome. Most featured blood spatter that puzzled the forensics department, and no motives could be found. Most of the scenes also featured use of the blood to paint messages on the wall. Batman was now convinced that the Joker was behind the killings; in one home, the murderer had written "HA HA HA!" in huge letters, over and over again. In another strange case, he'd smeared the blood above the outside of the doorframe. Batman knew that there was more to the case than he was seeing, but he couldn't bring himself to focus. There was just too much going on his life. He'd practically abandoned the Justice League as of late; they all understood his predicament, but he couldn't stand the fact that he was letting them down. As much as he claimed to hate being a team player, he hated being the weakest link even more.
His thoughts were interrupted by heavy footsteps. He looked up to see Diana in the doorframe, looking exhausted.
"Those... Stairs... Killing me..." She panted as she sat down on the bed. Bruce shot her a look.
"You're nine months pregnant with twins. You shouldn't be climbing stairs."
"Relax, I'm Wonder Woman, remember?" She said, grinning at him. She didn't like to be patronized, but she enjoyed the fact that he was concerned. "You look tense, Bruce. Care to talk?"
"No."
"You're not fooling anybody, Bruce. We both know that talking is good for you. I'm sure that you're familiar with the work of Sigmund Freud?"
"I'm not a fan."
"Of course not. But like he said... Bottling your emotions up is bad for you. Very bad. You don't need to convince me that you're tough. That's why I'm here. You can let your guard down."
He sighed. "It's just all too much. I can't handle it all. This is what I was afraid of..." He paused for a moment. "All of these... Distractions."
Diana looked hurt. "You don't really mean that, do you?"
He thought for a moment. "No." He said slowly. "But I don't know what else to call it. There's too much going on, and I can't deal with it all."
"I know it's hard, but you need to stop thinking that you're all alone. You don't have to do this on your own, Bruce. I'm here to help you, and Alfred will be there for the kids when you and I have to deal with our other responsibilities. But for now, just try to relax and forget about Batman for a while."
Bruce nodded, and flipped on the television. He knew that he'd never be able to get rid of the Batman, but he could at least try not thinking about him for a couple hours. But it was not to be.
The first sign of trouble came when the sound cut out on the news station that Bruce and Diana were watching. It was replaced by a faint murmuring. Bruce flipped through channels curiously. It was the same on every channel. After a moment the picture vanished as well. The screen came back to life momentarily, but the picture was different. It showed an empty newsroom. Diana gasped, and Bruce focused in as a shadowed form shuffled sideways onto the screen; it was the unmistakeable figure of the Joker.
"Hello, people of the world!" He shouted, jumping forth into the light. "It's your good ol' Uncle J. again! Are you ready to have some fun? No? Well it doesn't matter! I'll have my fun one way or another. So just sit tight, and hope that the Batman is out there somewhere, watching me."
Bruce jumped to attention. When the Joker was this direct, it never meant anything good. As he watched, the Joker continued his tirade. "You see, I've been trying real hard to get in contact with my old friend Batsy over the past couple of months, and what do I have to show for it? Bupkis! That's what. So... I've been forced to resort to some rather drastic measures. I've played my hand, tried every clever trick in the book, and still nothing. So I'm going to blow some stuff up. I really hate to have to pull the same trick twice, but you've left me no choice! I've set up more of my special Joker bombs, but this time, I've gone all out! It's taken some time, but I've managed to spread my bombs across every civilized nation in the entire world. Yes, that's right, you could be standing on one right now! So go ahead and run, but don't forget that my bombs are everywhere! So there's nowhere to run to anyway! And the best part is, there's no way to disable them! If you so much as look it a bomb, you could set it off! Now you may wonder why I'm bothering to tell you all of this in the first place, if there's no way to prevent all of this. While it's true that it would be futile to attempt to deactivate all of the bombs manually... I just so happen to have a device that can do it remotely. But... I don't want to see any police. Got it? If anybody without a cape shows up, I detonate all of the bombs at once. Now... Hurry up! The first bomb is set to go off in-"
An eardrum shattering explosion rocked the foundation of Wayne Manor. Bruce pulled Diana onto the floor and jumped on top of her. The windows shattered from the force of the blast.
"Whoops, must have made a small miscalculation, won't happen again folks!" The Joker continued, chuckling slightly. "Now where was that bomb... Oh right! I remember! That must have been the gas station bomb! Oh dear... That one's going to be messy. So... Hurry up, Batman. I hope I didn't just blow him to pieces... That would be a lot of work for nothing..." He mumbled as he walked off the screen. The picture cut to a white screen displaying coordinates.
Bruce helped Diana to her feet. They looked at each other silently for a moment before Diana spoke. "Well? What are you waiting for?"
Bruce nodded. "I'm going down to the Batcave. Get Tim, and brief him on the situation." Diana nodded, and they both left the room.
Batman and Robin were ready to go within fifteen minutes. Tim jumped into the Batmobile quickly, a bit excited despite the circumstances. Diana watched with her arms crossed over her chest; she wanted nothing more than to go with him and make sure that he stayed safe, but there was no way. She pulled him aside to talk for a moment. "Don't get yourself killed."
"Don't worry."
Having said his bit, he jumped into the Batmobile and took off. Diana sighed as she turned to the Batcomputer so she could keep up to date on the situation. She wasn't going to let Batman's death-wish get the best of him today.
Author's Note: Once again, I'm sorry this took so long. I don't really have an excuse here, just a lack of motivation. I had a lot to pack into this chapter, and I wanted to make sure that I got it all in there.
Now we're getting into the core of the story. There are still some parts of this plan that have yet to be explained, so don't write it off yet. This marks the beginning of the end of the first section of the story. You may not be able to see it yet, but things are starting to shape up.
So... As you should know by now, I'm bringing babies into the story. The one thing that I didn't really consider here... Names. Oops. I have one, but the other one is still up in the air. Anybody have any ideas?
I think that I've been taking the wrong approach with wallwisher. From now on, I'm going to be using it as more of a public information center; so that's where to go if you're wondering about why I'm taking so long, etc. I'll still take questions and advice there, but from now on I'll primarily be using it as a way way post updates in between chapters.
I think that that covers everything. There might be an update tomorrow, but it could be a couple of days. We'll see how things go.