CHAPTER 1:
CHAPTER 1:
TO AWAKEN A BAT
TO AWAKEN A BAT
Embedded Files
A year and a half earlier…The bat-car was throttling madly through a man-made tunnel bored into granite when the Bat Man suddenly became aware.Though the tunnel appeared pitch black, the sensation of speed was quite enough to make the now-aware the Bat Man terrified, and as soon as his eyes adjusted to the dashboard lights he began to panic.He gasped and sucked in great mouthfuls of air, as the shock of consciousness seemed to have knocked the wind out of him, and he fumbled with his limbs, thrashing around the passenger compartment of the strange vehicle as if he was learning to control his extremities for the first time. He searched desperately for the steering wheel, but in the darkness of the cab the back of his clumsy and be-gloved hands found only strange angular shapes and sharp jutting spires of metal.He managed to scream something like, "Holy shit! Where am I? What is this!" as he craned his upper body around the darkness and stomped his foot furiously at the ground, feeling around fruitlessly for a brake pedal which had already folded itself away into some hidden compartment, in one of the many pointless feats of over-engineering which would soon come to haunt every aspect of his life.He found that he lacked peripheral vision and something seemed to be bracing his neck, so he was constantly turning his entire torso to look around or out either side window of the vehicle. He looked like a complete jackass doing this, and eventually he gave up and returned to staring straight ahead into the blackness.He could not recall any of the events which led up to this moment speeding towards hell on a pitch-black highway, nor could he recall much of anything whatsoever, other than a great white light and unending feelings of infinite terror and panic, which had intensified a few short seconds ago, immediately after he came to."Am I dead?" He wondered aloud, and now slightly more lucid, he found the sound of his own voice jarring. It was certainly not the sound he expected to come out when he spoke."Oh god, I'm dead, aren't I?" the Bat Man slammed his skull back against the headrest, clenching his eyes closed just as tightly as he was clenching his teeth. Yet aside from the strange out-of-body feeling that resulted from hearing a stranger's voice come out of his mouth, this was far too visceral an experience for it to be death.Onward he went, strapped in and plunging into the darkness like a chump. It was impossible for him to gauge how long this horrible ride continued, and it may well have been only a matter of seconds — for just as the lack of a visual reference left him unsure of his speed, his inability to recall prior experiences left him just as clueless to the passage of time… but all things do come to an end, and eventually the car did come to a stop — laterally, at least. Then it began to rotate and travel upwards.The Bat Man slowly opened his eyes, wiping away the tears which had flowed at some point during the journey. He wondered if the the tears were also responsible for his wet pants, but they weren't — that was all pee. He didn't mind it, for some reason.A dim yet growing light from above finally provided some context to his surroundings, revealing the strange and impractical aircraft-like steering wheel and array of switches and buttons which he had previously been slamming his hands against. There was no roof above his head, merely a glass dome which also made up the walls of the car, if it could even be called a car... it looked more like some kind of large cyborg penis, the Bat Man noted to himself. He'd have to think more about that later.The platform elevated the Bat Man and the cyborg dick car onto a massive concrete dais, which stretched out across the middle of a cathedral-like cave, in which millions of bats swooped and screeched through the air far above."Ew, bats," the Bat Man whined as he shivered, "Well, thank god I'm safe in this thing."With comedic timing that surprised absolutely no-one, just then the bubble enclosing the Bat Man in the vehicle suddenly retracted, raising the volume of the screeching bats to an almost deafening roar and exposing the Bat Man to the moist cavern air, which felt thick in his nostrils and left the taste of guano on the back of his tongue."What the fuck, man..." the Bat Man sighed and shook his head, but remained seated. He once again craned his entire body around to get a better look at his surroundings.Scattered around the massive circular platform were all sorts of computer equipment and laboratory gear, with even more industrial computing equipment sitting on steel walkways and platforms stretching up to at least three stories, all with accompanying corrugated steel staircases and firehouse poles for swift movement between levels. There seemed to be a heck of a lot of poles, though... in fact, the absurd amount of poles was just factually and objectively completely overboard.As the shrieking of the bats overhead subsided and they returned to their holes, the Bat Man was able to hear his thoughts once again, and he felt safe enough to emerge from the vehicle finally. But he didn't, for some reason. Instead he just looked down at the seatbelt which was buckled across his lap, and made no effort to release it."Oh no," the Bat Man said to himself flatly, "I guess I'm trapped in this car."With no means of escape, the world's supposedly-greatest detective began to piece together his predicament."This must be some kind of new autonomous-vehicle Uber," he once again said aloud to nobody, tapping on the dashboard and hoping it hadn't been a very expensive ride."And all those computers and machines," he glanced around, "Clearly those are all DJ equipment…""And the poles...?"the Bat Man grinned and blushed embarrassingly."Oh, we know what the poles are for, tee-hee-hee. We must be in some sort of gentleman's club/cave!” the Bat Man actually said “club-slash-cave” like an asshole, shortly after he had started giggling with delight. He sometimes referred to himself as "we" as he spoke to himself, and it was always incredibly off-putting and introduced a distinct feeling of disgust and pity into anyone who overheard.Then he giggled even louder as he shouted to himself: "... 'gentlemen's' is just a fancy word for ‘strip'!!"The Bat Man quit his giggling when he realized there were no girls to be found on any of the poles, and he returned to frowning and detective-ing."Clearly I got wasted, then tried to take this Uber to this underground cave strip club, but we didn't arrive until after they closed, dangnabbit!" And just like that, the Bat Man had solved the mystery of what the hell was going on, except he was completely wrong.A voice from a steel platform above, having heard his talking to himself, immediately began to question his detective work via his sanity:"Master Bruce, is everything—""WHO THE FUCK IS THAT!?" the Bat Man screamed at the top of his lungs, interrupting the unseen speaker, while slapping madly at his seatbelt and desperately tried to find a way out of the Bat-Car.From a platform two stories above, a clearly startled and frail-looking old white man peered over the railing down at the Bat Man, who was barely able to crane his body upwards to make eye contact. When their eyes met, both men felt a shiver down their spine."I-it's me, sir..." the Old Man said, "Is everything alright?" "Does it look like everything is alright, you asshole? Obviously my seatbelt is stuck, and that means I'm stuck!” The Bat Man screamed, “Can you even see this far? Jesus Christ, how old ARE you even?”The Old Man was stunned by this outburst, and as his brain processed the words he couldn’t help but also be confused and surprised by the Bat Man’s predicament, as the Bat-Car's seatbelts were fairly standard and comparable to any car's seatbelts, but nevertheless he dutifully turned and began walking down the stairs as fast as his old legs could carry him, which was not very fast at all.“Answer my goddamn question!” The Bat Man screamed into the darkness as the Old Man descended, “Who the FUCK are YOU?”It couldn’t have just been a particularly rough night out there bat-manning about, the Old Man realized, clearly some villain must have done some dastardly memory-erasin’ to the Bat Man, for his lifelong employer and friend to fail to recognize him… let alone to be lashing out at him so harshly.“I-It’s me, sir. Your butler…” the Old Man stammered, “your trusted advisor, A-Alf—“ “ALF!?” The Bat Man interrupted, and started laughing to himself, “Like… Melmac ALF?? I fucking LOVE Alf! Uhhh… ‘No Problem!’ Say it!!”However, the only response was the echoing sound of ALF’s excruciatingly slow footsteps on the metal stairs.The Bat Man remained seated, his heart pounding still, and the adrenaline in his system conspired with his acute paranoia to very quickly make him quite impatient with the time it was taking ALF to come rescue him. "Seriously," the Bat Man groaned as ALF finally hobbled into view on the staircase, "you couldn't have hurried it up by sliding down one of the stripper poles?"“S-s… Stripper poles? Is that what we're calling the Bat-poles these days...?" ALF wondered, as he neared the Bat-Car."Those poles are for the fucking bats??? Bats can just fly down, you moron!" They better not fly down on me, though, he thought — the Bat Man didn't want anything to do with those things, and he certainly did not want rabies.ALF forced a nervous chuckle at the Bat Man's joke, not realizing that it was not a joke at all. No, the Bat Man really was just that stupid.Arriving at the vehicle finally, ALF reached over the Bat Man and quickly undid the seatbelt with absolutely no trouble whatsoever, because the seatbelt was not stuck — the Bat Man just hadn't thought of doing that, mostly because he was incredibly lazy."Well then," ALF teased as he released the seatbelt, "seeing as how you are the Bat Man, after all — why didn't you just fly out of your seat, then?"The Bat Man didn't respond, and stared straight ahead, his mind clearly processing some realization or new revelation. He remained seated, despite being released from his personal bat-lap-restraint — although his thoughts were briefly sidetracked, as ALF's wrist had ever-so-slightly brushed against his still-wet crotch during the unbuckling, and he found himself startled by how incredibly arousing that old and pasty skin had felt against his genitals.ALF sure was lucky that the Bat Man knew how to properly demonstrate personal bat-lap restraint, or else the Bat Man would have thrust and ground his pelvis deeper into that old man's flesh in search of further pleasure. As he sat and envisioned this fantasy, a slight grin crossed the Bat Man's lips.When this momentary distraction of arousal had passed, however, the Bat Man returned to his initial realization.“The Bat Man? The fuck you talking about, old ALF" he mumbled, mostly to himself, slouching and leaning to catch a glimpse of himself in the Bat-Car’s sideview mirror — a mirror which it did not have, as it instead featured a wildly unnecessary and impractical screen-based sideview display based on several small cameras positioned nowhere near his hideous face. Realizing this, the Bat Man instead lifted his bat-hand above his head, bopping it down a few times onto the spikes of the bat-ears which adorned his ridiculous and embarrassing bat-helmet-thing, each time quickly withdrawing his hand in pain as they struck the dangerously sharp tips of the bat-ears, or horns, or whatever the hell they were. Whatever the hell they were indeed, feeling them was enough for his brain to summon up images of the Bat Man’s iconic outline."That's right..." he said, "I'm the Bat Man."The Bat Man wasn't sure why he added "that's right," because this was certainly news to him."Ah, erm—“ ALF said, still unsure of how to respond because it was difficult to tell if the Bat Man was joking, or amnesiac, or both, "Yes, that would be correct, Master Bruce...""Wayne," the Bat Man finished for ALF, as if ALF had actually intended to say the last name as well, which he had not — thank god. Because if ALF were prone to wasting that much time and energy saying his full name every single time, the Bat Man would have fired him ages ago."Bruce Wayne," the Bat Man repeated, pointing at his own head, "I'm Bruce Wayne." This clarifying statement was made with full confidence, despite it most likely having secretly been a question."Uhmm," ALF chuckled, looking around suspiciously, and suddenly feeling like he was being tested to see how he responded, “No, sir… Bruce Wayne? That’s not… of course you’re not… er, I believe that’s someone else’s identity, sir? Regardless, I do wish you'd say that a bit more quietly in the future."The Bat Man's brow furrowed as he looked at ALF with a sudden unmistakable disgust."You seriously talk to your fucking boss with that tone, old man? That's how you talk to your master?" the Bat Man snarled at his butler, "You better get the hell out of my sight!"With that, the Bat Man clumsily attempted to climb his way out of the Bat-Car. He knew there was no way ALF could move fast enough — he was gonna smack the shit out of that smart-ass old man.However, because it had been designed to be entered and exited with a graceful leap, the Bat-Car lacked any sort of door, let alone handles or structural pillars or anything which could provide a solid grip for the Bat Man to use to drag himself out of his seat.As a result, he found himself repeatedly attempting to stand up only to be immediately thrown back down into his seat as his knees would hit the underside of the dashboard, and so he appeared to almost bounce in place for a moment — up, down, up, down, up, down... — as his hands flailed around fruitlessly searching for a grip, and every time he stood up the sound of a spring went *BOING!* and when he fell back down there sounded a comical *ker-THUMP!*.He eventually managed a graceless half-stand by awkwardly hooking his elbows around the backside of the steering controls, before basically throwing his torso over the side of the car (if it could be called that) and then floundering there for a moment as he snaked his legs up and onto the seat, accompanied by a slippery cartoon *WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOOP* sound. From there he outstretched his arms and heaved himself forward, tumbling over the side of the Bat-Car, and with a loud *HONK!* sound he landed on the cold concrete floor of the strange underground strip club in which he was parked (it was not until twenty minutes later that the Bat Man would use his top-notch detective skills to deduce that this was in fact not a strip club, but actually was a bat cave).ALF had seen the terrifying fury in the Bat Man's eyes, yet was simply too shocked by this unbridled aggression to do anything besides slowly ease backwards and away from his boss all throughout the entire clumsy and slapstick display. For a moment, he couldn't even consider possibly offering assistance... but the pitiful sight of the Bat Man crumpled in a ball on the floor triggered his years of prior conditioning, snapping him out of his shock and sending him hobbling towards the Bat Man's bulbous carcass to offer his assistance."Oh dear, oh dear... Master Bruce... are you sure everything is okay?”ALF felt a twinge of guilt as he realized exactly how bad of a night the Bat Man must have had, and he cursed himself for not being more sensitive earlier as he crouched next to the sobbing heap crumpled on the ground.The Bat Man didn't respond at first. He only sobbed, but with just enough forced severity that it was immediately apparent that he was merely being purposely dramatic to make ALF feel bad. He sniffled loudly, moaned, and wailed as if near death, all of which echoed deeply throughout the cavern, and sent great clouds of shrieking bats fluttering startled down into the darkness of the tunnels.It was due to these echoes that there was no mistaking the fact that the Bat Man had accidentally farted while forcing one of these dramatic sobs, and now he found himself faced with having to choose between either awkwardly pretending as if he hadn’t just passed gas, or instead addressing it casually with a laugh. The latter would completely ruin his dramatic ploy for sympathy, however, so he chose the former.The next few seconds during which neither man acknowledged the fart was excruciating for both of them, especially because it had been a particularly funny-sounding fart. However, the Bat Man was thankful for the small miracle that it hadn't been odorous to the point where he would have been forced to apologize for it.While the moment and fart passed, in lieu of talking, ALF gently placed a hand into the sobbing mass' bat-shoulder. Immediately, the Bat Man was reminded of the earlier lap-restraint incident where the back of ALF’s hand had ever-so-briefly brushed his erogenous zone, and he quickly tried his best to devise some ploy where he could distract ALF and position his crotch where his shoulder was currently. But then the Bat Man sighed, as he realized that even with the added cover of his cape, such a scheme would require far too much agility."Master Bruce, are you hurt" ALF asked, unsure of what else to say. He knew that the truthful answer to his question was very obviously "absolutely not" but what else is there for an old guy to say to a grown man who is crying?"OMG," the Bat Man whined in response (actually saying ‘oh-em-gee’ under the pretense of saving time), "are you just super old, or are you, like… retarded and old!? Of course I'm hurt! And I never even said that anything was okay, so how could everything be okay, you stupid cunt jerk!?"Immediately following the absolute mic drop that was "cunt jerk" the Bat Man broke into another round of even-more-unbelievable moaning and wailing. Even he found himself barely able to contain the fact that everything was, in fact, okay. Still, there was a beat where the Bat Man thought he had somehow successfully just secured himself even more sympathy. This beat passed."...you've got to be fucking kidding me..." ALF said soberly, completely unsure of how to even begin to rationalize what the fuck had just come out of the Bat Man's mouth, before shaking his head and repeating himself, "You've just got to be fucking kidding me…” ALF shook his head incredulously, speaking mostly to himself now.The Bat Man had never heard ALF swear before…no, never before in their five-minute long history together, and not even one of the previous three dozen or so words they had exchanged had been a curse word. This realization was sobering, and the Bat Man shoved his fingers in his ears and made a squinty face in preparation of weathering the fury he had just released (“accidentally” if anyone were to ask). “That's it. I'm done,” ALF said. The resignation and exhaustion in his voice should have been heartbreaking to anyone who heard it — enough to at least result in a pang of remorse, if not a full apology. Sadly only the Bat Man had been within earshot, and the Bat Man was almost certainly a sociopath.ALF withdrew his hand from the Bat Man's shoulder, unaware that doing so ignited a terrible fire deep within the Bat Man's icy soul. ALF then quietly stood up, looked down once more upon the whimpering the Bat Man at his feet, then steadily turned and began walking away.The Bat Man did not like that one little bit.He was even more furious than the time when he had taken an Uber all the way to a strip club that was underground, only to find out it was closed.Not only had ALF not fixed everything like the Bat Man had requested, but now he was leaving before the Bat Man even had the chance to make up an excuse to have the old man's wrist brush against his bat-crotch once again. What's worse is he was super close to coming up with something about having a splinter in his hip, too!ALF simply continued to walk away. He wasn't sure where he was walking, nor did he care, as long as he was walking away from whatever the hell was going on with that bat man over there. He knew he was walking away from his one-time hero, from his boss, his master, his surrogate son, his best friend... he knew he was walking away from his entire life's work. But this wasn't so much tragic as it was due to the fact that ALF not only completely lacked drive, but he also lacked any goals or aspirations of his own, and so he had spent his entire miserable life dedicated to the miserable service of this miserable excuse for a man.But no more.ALF still had a few good years left in his old bones — he was fairly secure in this fact. He would try and find forgiveness in the eyes of God by spending those years in service to positive causes, and helping his community, and maybe even finding happiness himself in the process.For so long, he had been baffled by this inability to find happiness, blind to the fact that he was dedicated to a mad bat man who was wealthy beyond belief yet spent his time and his fortune on waging war against the less-fortunate citizens of his hometown, using a high-tech arsenal large enough to rival even those of most developed nations.ALF had never even really questioned the effectiveness of spending millions of dollars on custom bat-shaped boomerangs and other comparable bat-bullshit instead of addiction programs and low-income housing and other social services which might actually start turning things around in the city, however slowly and lacking in explosions it may be. He wondered how he, a supposedly good man, could have been so blind for so long.Then, as if he could sense his need to stop ALF's thoughts of a bright future, the Bat Man shouted from across the cave:"Hey ALF!"Old ALF froze at the sound of that anxiety-triggering, yet somehow strangely unfamiliar voice, and straightening his posture in preparation of announcing his resignation, he turned around to face the Bat Man.But it was the Bat Man who spoke first.ALF only had a chance to open his mouth, and not out of preparation to speak, but rather from the shock he felt as he turned and saw the Bat Man standing there pointing a gun directly at him."You're fired.” The Bat Man said, as he pulled the trigger.All ALF could do was close his eyes and make peace with his regrets while simultaneously embracing the blackness. Then he died boringly right there on the cave floor.The sound of the shot that ended ALF’s life reverberated throughout the cavern for quite some time, and almost seemed to get louder as it developed into a sound not unlike waves rolling back out to sea. The roar was deafening to a point where each and every one of the millions of bats lurking about the caves were all roused from their sleep, and as a result, that roar was steadily replaced by a somehow-even-louder shrieking, as the bats left their perches en masse. Soon they were swooping all throughout the cavern, dancing aloft from where the Bat Man stood proudly right in the middle of it all. The Bat Man twitched suddenly as it became apparent that the act of bat-rousing had proven to be bat-arousing for him, and he found deep and previously unrealized pleasures in the fact that this deafening roar was a direct result of him finger-banging the small gun-shaped machine in his hand. Realizing his impassioned state, the Bat Man remembered the incident with ALF’s wrist earlier in the bat-car, and he gazed at his former butler’s dead body for a moment.Then, he pretended to wipe sweat from his brow, before loudly proclaiming to himself: “Phew! Guess that means I’m not gay! I was just horny from what surely was a long night of fighting scarecrows ’n stuff!”It is worth noting that this statement from the Bat Man had made each and every single one of the bats swarming around him deeply, deeply uncomfortable, though they could not express it, vocalize it, nor behave in a manner that made their feelings apparent. This was due partially from the statement’s disheartening levels of homophobia, and partially due to its staggering stupidity overall — either way, it made the bats wish they had the ability to distance themselves from their association with that the Bat Man guy.Surrounded still by these creatures, the Bat Man turned his back on ALF’s lifeless body and craned his neck to observe the dense cloud of bats gathered above him.“Eh… I guess these bat things are pretty okay,” he hesitantly decided. He generally came to this conclusion about any living thing which managed to hang around with him for more than a handful of seconds.Unfortunately, the bats were apparently not quite “okay” enough to stop the Bat Man from immediately following this statement by firing off several more shots from his pistol directly into the swarm, which killed a couple of his new bat-buddies. The Bat Man internally justified this act as an accident, as he was only attempting to make more noise, because loud noises are cool. Unfortunately, he would never realize that, regardless, he probably didn’t have to aim right at the swarm of bats to do so.“Whelp…” he said aloud to himself, despite the ringing in his ears drowning out his own voice. Then he paused for a moment, desperately looking around the cave trying to spot which camera was live for him to play directly into while he said his catchphrase, after which the intro credits would surely kick in and get this episode started. Not finding the live camera despite holding the beat as long as he possibly could, he took his chances and picked a direction at random, spinning around and pointing before boldly declaring his world-famous catch-phrase:
“Enough fluff — Let’s get to bat-manning!”
Right on cue, even the bats left, and the Bat Man froze there in silence, alone. He heard no response but for the tinnitus ringing in his own ears, and the intro credits failed to trigger and save him from this awkward situation by cutting away. It was in this moment that he silently vowed that this would be the one and only time which he delivered his world-famous catch-phrase.The Bat Man kicked a pebble and cleared his throat.“Kinda lonely in this cave…” he said aloud, knowing surely that there must be a ward or sidekick or hopefully even an arch-nemesis or supervillain located around a corner somewhere in here. But there was not, and as he shuffled slowly up the longest of the staircases nearby, his echoing footsteps conjured down upon him a great feeling of melancholy so incredibly profound that he would be forced to watch TWO reruns of “COPS” on television that night before he would feel whole again, or at least whatever bat-semblance of “whole” masqueraded as zen for him.On the way up the stairs, he fired off another round from his gun. Right next to his head too, for good measure. “Loud noises are cool!” He said with conviction, reluctant to admit even to himself that he had actually fired for the purpose of turning up the ringing in his ears so he wouldn’t have to hear his god-forsaken lonely footsteps… because even the Bat Man knew that was a terrible solution to a questionable problem.
“Enough fluff — Let’s get to bat-manning!”
Right on cue, even the bats left, and the Bat Man froze there in silence, alone. He heard no response but for the tinnitus ringing in his own ears, and the intro credits failed to trigger and save him from this awkward situation by cutting away. It was in this moment that he silently vowed that this would be the one and only time which he delivered his world-famous catch-phrase.The Bat Man kicked a pebble and cleared his throat.“Kinda lonely in this cave…” he said aloud, knowing surely that there must be a ward or sidekick or hopefully even an arch-nemesis or supervillain located around a corner somewhere in here. But there was not, and as he shuffled slowly up the longest of the staircases nearby, his echoing footsteps conjured down upon him a great feeling of melancholy so incredibly profound that he would be forced to watch TWO reruns of “COPS” on television that night before he would feel whole again, or at least whatever bat-semblance of “whole” masqueraded as zen for him.On the way up the stairs, he fired off another round from his gun. Right next to his head too, for good measure. “Loud noises are cool!” He said with conviction, reluctant to admit even to himself that he had actually fired for the purpose of turning up the ringing in his ears so he wouldn’t have to hear his god-forsaken lonely footsteps… because even the Bat Man knew that was a terrible solution to a questionable problem.
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