Warning: Language and Laughter . . .

"What's with you and coats?" Nightwing complained. Elle had forgotten her coat at the recording studio in her angry haste to leave, and neither of them wanted to go back for it.

They were traveling out of Gotham in the direction of the Manor at high speed. Elle wore a leather jacket that Nightwing had stored in one of the cycle's storage compartments and his helmet that was decorated with his symbol. She had her arms wrapped around his waist in a death grip. Not that he minded. He liked feeling her clinging to him.

Elle didn't answer him. This was her first time on a motorcycle and he understood she was too nervous to enjoy it. Maybe if this was a summer day and they were cruising backroads in the country. As it was, he was traveling an ill-used, curving backroad in inclement weather in the middle of the night at seventy miles an hour. He could feel her breath hitch whenever he leaned into one of the many turns and curves.

He felt Elle's head jerk up as they left the road.

"Wait," she yelped. "Where did the road go?"

"Short cut," he reassured her. "The Batmobile has a hidden road Batman uses another half a mile or so. I thought I'd cut a few minutes off the ride by taking the path."

"What path?" Elle was happy for the helmet a second later when the tip of a passing branch whipped across the visor. "Yowza! That was close!"

Her grip slackened as she startled. Nightwing let go of the bike with one hand to grab one of hers until she could tighten her hold on him once more.

"Keep your head down," Nightwing instructed.

Several minutes more passed of being slapped by bushes and branches until that all gave way to a stretch of a deserted, single lane road. Nightwing turned onto this, and Elle felt safe to put her head up and peek around his shoulder. Yawning blackness loomed ahead. She gasped when they entered the cave still traveling way too fast for comfort. Several yards in, lights suddenly came on. They followed a paved path that was barely wide enough for a car; long strips of indirect lighting illuminating the way.

"Where are we?" Elle yelled at him.

"This is the entrance to the Bat Cave," he told her.

"Bat cave?"

"Where else would you hide a bat?" He laughed.

"Are you kidding me?"

"Why would I kid you about that?"

Elle shifted her hands carefully. She didn't really want to distract him in here. "It's just that I thought that was part of the myth."

"Myth?" He glanced over his shoulder at her.

"Ack! Oh my God, turn around! Watch where you're going! Don't look at me," Elle yelped.

Nightwing laughed. "I've driven this thing for years. I could ride my bike in backwards and blindfolded, and not have a problem."

"I'll take your word for it," she told him. "No need to prove anything."

Nightwing shook his head, amused by her nervousness. "I thought you trusted me! You let me fly you around the city!"

"That was swinging up to a rooftop a couple of times," she explained. "And we weren't going eighty miles an hour then, either."

"We're not going eighty miles an hour now either. We're barely going forty."

"Forty miles an hour inside of a freaking straw that's make out of rock," she retorted. "It's not even a straight straw," she whined as the road dipped suddenly and then curved at Elle swore was a ninety degree turn. She pressed her helmeted head against his back.

"Just answer the question," he said. "It'll distract you."

"What question," she muttered.

"Explain what you meant by myth."

"That's not a question," Elle said.

Nightwing laughed. "It was the first time I asked it. Just tell me what you meant."

"I thought Batman had a normal hideout. I didn't expect his secret lair to actually be in a cave. Does anyone actually believe Batman's base of operations is in a real cave? Of course not! They think it is in his mother's basement, like all the other crazy people!"

Nightwing slowed the bike down to a more reasonable speed as he burst out laughing. "I guess, in a way, that would be right. Oh man, I can't wait to tell Bruce you said that!"

Elle let go with one hand long enough to slap at his shoulder. "You can't tell Bruce I said that!"

"Why the hell not?"

"It might hurt his feelings," she explained.

"Batman doesn't have feelings other than impatience and anger." Nightwing told her with a smile.

"That's not true," she scoffed. "He smirked at me when he scared me into dropping the key to the door of the recording studio."

"Probably a good reason you shouldn't hang out with Batman, then."

"What? Why do you say that?"

Nightwing shrugged and she clenched her hands tighter around his waist with a yip. "Because you would definitely ruin his reputation for being a badass," he yelled back at her.

The cave opened up at that point into a mammoth cavern, and anything Elle might have said was lost in her awe.

"Oh . . . My God," she said barely loud enough to be heard over the purring of the bike.

Nightwing pulled to a stop and waited patiently for Elle to get over her shock and climb off of the bike. It took a while.

"This is . . . This is amazing," Elle whispered; taking in the sights from their centralized location.

One could see most of the cave from here. The medical bay; the changing area; the training area; and the stairs leading up to the Manor weren't visible from here. But she could see the Bat computer, the long list of Bat-vehicles, including the Batplane and the Batboat, and the display and trophy cases . . . Elle gasped. Nightwing smiled.

And the trophies that were too large to fit into any case.

"Is that a dinosaur? That is a dinosaur! Why does he have a freaking dinosaur in his Batcave?" She gaped as she took off the helmet.

She almost lost her balance attempting to climb off of the bike while still staring at the sights around her. Nightwing grabbed her arm to help steady her, but Elle didn't seem to even notice as she handed him back his helmet and turned in a circle a full three hundred and sixty degrees.

"This is . . . Amazing," she gasped.

"You said that," he told her, amused by her reaction.

"It's worth repeating," she said, and then gasped again, her eyes widening.

Nightwing looked around, trying to figure out what had caught her awestruck attention now, but she didn't seem to be looking at anything in particular.

"What it is?"

She swung around to face him with a huge grin and excitement lighting her face. She waved a hand in the air as she spoke.

"The acoustics in here are fantastic," she exclaimed loudly, and then laughed in delight at the echo.

Nightwing laughed and pulled her into his arms. Leave it to Elle to be more impressed with the acoustics of the cave than its components. "Well, I think you're pretty darn fantastic yourself," he kissed her nose.

"You missed," she smirked at him.

"I didn't want to embarrass the bats." He smiled back at her.

"Mm," she hummed appreciatively. "What bats?"

A growl resounded throughout the cave, causing Elle to swing around in his arms. The sound grew louder until a huge, black car entered the cave along the same path they had taken in. It pulled up in the center of the round parking turnstile, and the door swung open as Batman emerged.

His gaze immediately centered on Elle. Batman wasn't above wanting to hear a little praise for his achievement in engineering, apparently.

Elle gaped at him a moment, and then frowned at Nightwing. She punched him in the arm.

"Ow! What the hell," he yelped as he rubbed his arm dramatically. "Why'd you do that?"

Elle pointed at the Batmobile! "A car? You made me ride on the back of that death machine when he had a car?"

Nightwing laughed, and sure enough, Batman smirked.

Batman slid across the hood of the car in a move that caused his cape to swirl out with a dramatic flair. Elle clapped her hands together in delighted appreciation, and Nightwing gasped for air around his laughter.

Bruce is actually showing off for her? Nightwing placed a hand over his aching ribs.

Unintimidated by the Bat, Elle practically launched herself at him, and was checking out his cape. "This is so cool," she gushed. She looked back at Nightwing over her shoulder. "Why don't you have a cape?"

Bruce pushed the cowl off of his head at that point, and grinned at him; actually grinned. "Yeah, why don't you have a cape?"

Nightwing's laughter finally died out. "Cramps my awesome fighting style," he retorted, smugly.

Bruce held out an arm to Elle in a gentlemanly fashion. "He used to wear a cape," he told her. "It didn't cramp his style back then. In fact, you should see firsthand what Nightwing's style used to be like when he was Robin."

Dick was carefully peeling off his mask. "What? Oh, man, don't do that!"

"But I want to see it," Elle said.

"Just keep in mind that I was only nine years old and fresh out of the circus when I designed it." He called after them.

Elle's eyes widened as she came face to face with a tiny costume with scaly, green panties and pixie boots and a bright yellow cape. She laughed and then slowly her laughter fell away as she contemplated anew how small Dick was when he first donned the cape and mask.

"He was so little," she mused.

"He had ten feet worth of talent and determination crammed into that tiny costume," came Bruce's reply.

"Determination," she asked, not looking away from the colorful outfit.

"He insisted. Refused to take no for an answer."

She glanced up at the man beside her. Bruce's face was an odd mix of emotions, until he realized she was staring at him, and then the emotions melted away as if they never were. But Elle had seen them. He felt them, even if he didn't like people to recognize them.

"You didn't want him to become Robin," she said in a moment of insight.

"No. I wanted him to have a childhood; to feel safe and cared for . . . To be happy. But his sense of justice is as deep and persistent as mine. It was either train him or prepare myself to eventually mourn him."

Elle was silent for a moment, and then a mischievous smirk appeared.

"So, whose idea was it for the hot pants and the elf boots?"

Bruce laughed. "That was all Dick's idea!"

"I can't believe you let him out of the cave in that," she snickered.

"Hey! I heard that," Dick said from across the cave. He was walking out of an alcove that Elle hadn't noticed before wearing street clothes.

"I can see that you aren't to be trusted to go shopping by yourself," Elle quipped.

"I've improved over the years," he pouted, walking over to join them.

"I'll say you have," she grinned and leaned up on her tiptoes to kiss his chin.

He grinned down at her. "You missed."

"It was on purpose," she told him. "I didn't want to embarrass the bat," she said in a stage whisper as they turned around. "So, would someone like to explain the dinosaur to me now?"

"You're handling the Batcave very well for your first time here," Bruce remarked.

Elle shrugged. "Well, it's not like there are really bats in here, after all." In fact, she had yet to see even one. "And it's actually not all that creepy for a cave."

"There are bats," Dick told her. "They stay further back into the cave, however. The lights and sounds in this area tend to bother them. They seldom linger here for long."

Elle looked thoughtful for a moment. "The bats use echolocation, don't they?"

Bruce answered her. "Yes."

"Did you know that Dolphins and certain whales use echolocation as well," she murmured.

Dick looked at her curiously. "Your point?"

Elle grinned. "I just want to try something."

"What's that," Bruce asked.

"Something I used to do with the dolphins off of the coast of Italy when we would go swimming or diving." Elle said.

Dick and Bruce exchanged glances over her head. Both were puzzled.

"Do you mind if I try it," Elle asked Bruce.

"I don't suppose it could hurt anything," he said.

"What are you going to do?" Dick was a little more cautious.

Elle started singing the scale; moving up octave after octave. Bruce and Dick looked surprised. Her range was astounding. Then suddenly there was silence, but Elle still looked as if she were singing. Then came a mad rush of beating wings as the bats swarmed the cave. To say the men were startled would be an understatement, but none were more startled than Elle herself when the bats swirled and swarmed around her. Her silent singing stopped because this wasn't anything like playing with the dolphins!

Dick and Bruce ducked under the onslaught, but Elle shrieked and flapped her arms about her. They were in her hair! In only a couple of minutes, the bats retreated with the exception of the one that had tangled itself in her hair. Dick and Bruce rushed to her rescue!

"Ew! Yuck! Get it out," she shrieked. "They are not nearly as fun as dolphins!"

Dick had to bite his lip not to laugh as he struggled to hold the bat so that it couldn't bite him as Bruce untangled Elle's hair from its wings and little clawed toes. She would never forgive him for laughing outright at her. It was also mildly reminiscent of their experience with Mook, and Dick began praying that she wouldn't suddenly decide that she wanted to keep the bat as a pet now, too.

"Okay," he said as Bruce pulled the last few strands of glossy brown hair free. "It's okay now. It's out!"

"Wait, don't hurt it," Elle gasped. She felt sympathetic toward the creature now that it wasn't clawing its way about her head. After all, she was the one that disturbed it first. "Before you let it go, I want to see it."

She turned and stared at the little creature; studying its face and ears.

"Hm," she hummed to herself; wrinkling her nose in thought, and Dick found he was curious as to what those thoughts were going through her mind. "Okay, you can let it go now."

He did, and they watched it fly away; desperate to get back to its family further back into the cave.

Elle drew in a deep breath and blew it out again in an attempt to steady her frazzled nerves after the night she had had.

"Okay. Alright, then." she took another calming breath, and turned to face the two men. "Now, would someone, please . . . Finally, tell me what's up with that damned dinosaur?!"

REACTIONS?

Only Elle, right?