CHAPTER 15:
CHAPTER 15:
ROBIN'S DUTY BEFORE THE GODS
ROBIN'S DUTY BEFORE THE GODS
Embedded Files
In the alder groves of what used to be the blast zone, wondrous boy Robin pouted and stomped around, kicking the occasional rock as he traipsed along down the trail guilelessly, all the while purveying the rabid nonchalance of a rad dude who lacked guile.
For a time, his stride was long and admirable, for whatever it was worth. Yet his practicable demeanor was sure to draw the ire of his peers, were he to have had any peers. Barring those, he dove headfirst into perpetuating his northward march peerlessly, though ultimately he found himself bitterly trudging along more often than his hypothetical peers would have liked.
In lieu of any peers, by Robin's side skulked instead The Cat Lady, his ex-girlfriend from a decade prior, and the two of them made for an absolutely ludicrous sight for onlookers and passerbys. Without fail, any members of the general public they encountered would abruptly guffaw, or let loose with a gleeful and astonished shriek, as the duo made quite the garish and gaudy team all spangled and decked out in their matching Special Boy and Special Girl Bat-Wedding regalia.
It felt like so long ago that Batman had excitedly taken their measurements and had them fitted for their wedding garb... perhaps, Robin thought, it actually were a long time ago by now? Nope, it wasn't.
His admirable stride slowed to a schleppy trudge yet again, and continued to slow until he was stopped, his body dedicating its energy now to thinking and remembering things. Robin looked skyward, and began to rabidly scratch his head, as he always did when he began to think... and the large bald patch on his skull where his hair had all been scratched away was a testament to just how much thinking he had been doing lately.
Cat Lady came to a stop some distance behind Robin, as he usually only stopped when he had to urinate, and having learned how to do so from watching Batman, Robin's urinations were a sloppy fiasco of an undertaking with a surprisingly large splash radius.
For a moment, Cat Lady heard the definite sound of multiple babies crying from somewhere far above, up in the treetops. She squinted and looked upwards, scanning the branches for the source of the unexpected sound, but before she could locate the source Robin began screaming loudly.
"HMMMMMMMM," Robin screamed out a ponderous hum, as best as such a sound was even possible, "YES, I THINK I REMEMBER!" Of course he could remember, he was only thinking back to last week.
"What the fuck is he doing...?" Cat Lady mumbled under her breath, forgetting about the sound of wailing babies drifting from the trees. Despite having seen Robin's thinking ritual many hundreds of times before it always came as a shock and if anything, only became more jarring and confusing to witness each time.
"YES, I REMEMBER NOW..." Robin layed on the ground and crossed his arms over his chest, staring up at the sky until his pupils suddenly rolled up into his skull leaving only blank white empty eyes staring back at the world. He did this on purpose every time he thought about something in his past, because he had seen the kid on "Game of Thrones" do it while time-traveling — Robin did not understand the difference between memories and time travel — and today he wanted to remember the incident last week which had led him into his current questionable situation deep in the woods.
Last week, when Robin would watch the hours of the day fly by like the quickly rotating blades of dusky nighttime windmills, because all of Batman's clocks featured black hands on a black face. And while this made it quite difficult to tell time, especially for the short-sighted, it fit with Batman's bat-aesthetic.
Plus it was fitting, as those had been dark days indeed — the days of Batman and Robin's reign of terror over Niland, CA. The pair ran rampant and unchallenged through the streets, firing their guns, making their batmobiles go up on two wheels around turns, and sending "criminals" screaming into the night like it was their job — which it was.
Until one day, when Robin and The Cat Lady made their way into the batcave as they always did, before clocking in for their shifts on the bat-timeclock, which also had black arms on a black face, except this clock ran ten minutes behind so Batman had an excuse to scream at them twice every day, once for clocking in too early and once for clocking out before their shifts ended.
This day however, they found Batman in a strange mood, all merry and enthused and sparkling with a palpable, yet distinctly feminine, manic energy. Robin and the Cat Lady could not help but sense the bat-electricity in the air, and which caused them both a great and terrible feeling of fear and foreboding.
"Ach, why how lovely," Batman had said in a strange husky southern drawl, "my my, what an extra special Special Boy and Special Girl you two will make on my very most extra special day! Wheee!" And with that, Batman had attempted to leap up into the air and click his bat-heels together, but as was the result roughly half of the one-thousand times he had attempted this previously, he failed. This time he failed even more spectacularly than usual, accidentally kicking a hole in his bat-aquarium, which ultimately resulted in lots of blood, broken glass, and Batman tears, as well as two dozen fish re-homed into various pitchers and bowls and other small containers for a time, until Cat Lady had voraciously consumed each and every one over the course of the next several nights. Ultimately, the resulting mess saw to it that neither of them had the opportunity to ask Batman exactly what the hell he was about to tell them anyway.
It was a few short days after that disaster that Robin and Cat Lady were running the newest batmobile through the car wash for the 14th time that week so far, as Batman had developed a new nasty habit (or nasty tumor) which caused him to constantly vomit a ghastly green and brown bile all over the the doors of the batmobile after every meal. This made it such that three times each and every day, they would have to drive all the way to Mecca, California... where they would find themselves sitting in silence as the vomit-slathered batmobile slowly lurched down the car wash conveyor, while rotating machinery and special scouring sprays slowly chipped away at the gruesome bat-vomit caked all down the sides of the 1984 Dodge Colt which masqueraded as their latest batmobile.
This time, however, Batman's Special Boy and Special Girl were startled by a sudden loud *POP*, and then a disquieting grinding noise which grew into the shrieking of metal-on-metal friction, while the smell of burning oil and electrical fires filled their nostrils. As the soap cleared from the windshield, they watched as nearly the entire workings of the car wash slowed to a halt, with the exception of several of the more dangerous-looking parts, and the car came to rest in a steaming mist above a puddle of scalding water, which was still spraying wildly from a hose which had somehow become torn.
"Oh no," said Cat Lady, unable to hide the fear in her voice, "this must be a trap! I tried to tell Batman it was a bad idea to so blatantly bring his car to the same car wash at the same exact time, three times per day, every single day! The doors don't even lock! We're doomed!"
Robin silently observed the damaged inner-workings of the car wash, as the wet and severed wires overhead showered the car in sparks, while the now-brush-less rotors spun and whirred like giant blades in every direction. After a moment he pulled out his vape rig, and raised the shamelessly robot-dick-shaped mouthpiece to his spiderweb-encrusted lips. Gently, he started his suckle on the mouthpiece, and slid his needlessly-gloved middle finger over the trigger ever-so-slowly, with a level of grace and gentleness a man would usually reserve for his lover's clitoris... however, Robin had no idea what a clitoris was. Additionally, he had made it abundantly clear to Cat Lady that he had no intention of learning what it was either, and over the course of their brief relationship a decade ago, he had even adopted a personal practice of never, ever washing his hands, so that any ploy or subversive attempt made by Cat Lady with the intention of "accidentally" teaching Robin how to please a woman would hopefully result in a painful UTI or worse.
"I've got better things to do that please women..." Robin muttered to himself, lips still wrapped around the metallic phallus of the vape rig which, awaiting the sweet nicotine-enhanced flavor of chemical pineapples. At once, he ruthlessly fingerbanged the trigger and inhaled deeply of the tropical-flavored vapor, before exhaling a cloud so thick it filled the car and made their already poor visibility even worse, and sent Cat Lady into a coughing fit. Robin peered down condescendingly over the top of his super cool sunglasses with the bat-shaped lenses at her as she coughed, thinking to himself — it's just water vapor, bro... quit faking.
Suddenly, an indescribably loud burst of feedback came squealing over some PA system hidden deep in the workings of the car wash, assumedly for usage in emergencies such as this.
"Having a little bit of car trouble...?" Hissed the disembodied voice over the distant PA system. Although the voice was distorted and squawking, the Special Pair recognized it immediately — it was the unmistakable voice of their old nemesis, the Riddle Man, maybe? Actually, they weren't entirely sure.
"I said — having a bit of car trouble, are we...?" The voice asked again. Robin and Cat Lady exchanged confused glances before Robin shrugged and started to respond.
"Erm, actually it—"
"SPEAK UP, special boy! I can't hear you! Could you maybe roll down the window or something??"
Robin sighed, exasperated. His window was broken and did not roll down, so he proceeded to lean over Cat Lady and at first roll down the passenger window just a crack, so that no scalding water or wayward sparks found their way into the car, but then he realized that there was nobody in the passenger seat except for that Cat Lady, so he rolled it down entirely to make sure Riddle Man could hear him.
"I was saying— No, actually, the car is running fine. It's the car wash that appears to have broken," he explained, unable to mask the annoyed tone in his voice.
The voice on the PA grumbled, as Cat Lady started to roll the window back up. Robin swiftly slapped her hand away from the handle, though, as he let out a low growl — he didn't want to have to repeat himself again. This would be the closest Robin would ever come to acknowledging Cat Lady's presence.
"I know, but still..." sighed the Riddle Man from the PA speaker, "you were supposed to ask me what I wanted."
Robin groaned and just shook his head. After another 10 seconds of silence, the Riddle Man coughed and then cleared his throat.
"Well then, how about this — WHO is the PRESIDENT that a bat man would be most likely to find at the car wash??" The Riddle Man cackled, awaiting their response.
Robin sighed heavily, and again shook his head, shrugging.
"I don't know, man... Jimmy CAR-ter?"
There was another brief pause where neither spoke.
"Do you want to guess again?" The Riddle Man said dejectedly.
"No." Robin spat back quite firmly, and began to roll up the window, which caused the Riddle Man to begin speaking quickly again.
"WASHington. It was George WASHINGTON, okay?", he said.
There was another beat.
"Okay...?" Whined an increasingly-exasperated Robin, "Whats your point? I mean — That wasn't even a riddle, it was just, like, a really bad joke?"
"PRECISELY!" Came the response from the PA, followed by a gleeful cackle, "That's what I'm known for!"
"Oh... OH!" Robin realized what this idiot was getting at, "This is the Joker I'm talking to??"
"Yes, my special boy!" More maniacal laughter echoed throughout the broken-down car wash.
"You're not that Riddle Guy??" Robin hollered back.
"Hmm?"
"You know. The Riddle Guy. Isn't he the one that asks those stupid jokes? I thought that's who I was talking to."
There was a long pause this time, before the response came, in a noticeably deeper tone.
"Ah, shit... maybe that's who I meant..." the PA squealed with feedback as Joker or Riddle Man dropped the transmitter momentarily, before he continued once again in the shrill and smarmy voice, "Yeah, that's what I meant, actually — It's is I, the Riddle Master, who demands all the George Washingtons from your wallet!"
Robin groaned and rolled his eyes, before slouching back into the driver seat, leaving the window open.
"Is this motherfucker trying to rob me? That's all this is?" Robin said to himself, and absolutely not to Cat Lady, who was not listening anyway, as she had taken to playing snake on her Nokia phone while Robin and Joker/Riddle Man or whoever-the-fuck had their little pointless exchange.
"Fuck this shit..." Robin muttered as he turned the ignition, and threw the car in drive.
He proceeded to drive the Bat-Mobile harmlessly past the blades and electrical wires and other traps and obstacles which may have indeed been quite dangerous to someone who was not safely behind the wheel of a car. Thankfully, this was not the case with Our Special Pair, and in a matter of moments they had driven safely through and out the other end of the trap car wash.
Almost immediately after emerging back into the daylight, Robin parked right outside the door to the car wash office, and leaving the engine running he stepped out of the car and casually began to stroll into the office to confront his nemesis, the Joker/Riddle Man or whoever the fuck.
"Do you need a hand?" Cat Lady asked, briefly looking up from her phone, but Robin obviously ignored her as he meandered towards the door.
He pulled out his phone as he walked, and started to text Batman about the strange situation they had just found themselves in, although he stopped momentarily to examine a weird and interesting bug he saw on the curb. Eventually reaching the door, he knocked twice solidly to announce his arrival, and give whatever enemy awaited him inside plenty of time to prepare while he continued composing his text to dad— er, his text to Batman, he meant... he always did that.
Unarmed and distracted by his cell phone, Robin gently eased the door open and stepped inside. He took a moment to finish the text, before hitting send and finally looking up to see which criminal mastermind awaited him behind the desk.
It was Batman. In one hand, the transmitter for the PA system. In the other, his bat-gun, which was just a nondescript regular gun with no modifications neither functional nor decorative. The cash register drawer was open and bills were strewn all about, as if Batman hadn't been trying to steal them as much as he were trying to make them rain upon an underground stripper stage in a gentlemen's club in a cave.
"Bruce!? What the fuck are you doing here??" Robin shrieked, stunned, "I was just texting you!" Right on cue, Batman's Bat-phone made it's "new text message" chime, which was a MIDI rendition of the riff from "Bad to the Bone".
"Dude..." Batman muttered, "Ya gotta stop fuckin' calling me that..."
"What happened to the Riddle Man, or Joker, or whatever?" Robin asked, as he pulled his vape from his pocket and took another deep pull — the scent of urine hung heavy in the stagnant air of the car wash office, overpowering even the racks of car air fresheners for sale, and he hoped to mask the stench with his delicious tropical-flavored vape smoke.
"Oh, er..." Batman dropped the transmitter and pointed his bat-gun straight at Robin, "I shot him! *BLOWWWP* — he's DEAD. You just got rescued, son."
Batman mimicked shooting Robin, complete with exaggerated recoil, and the dull click that echoed throughout the room signified that he had accidentally pulled the trigger too — he just happened to be out of bullets.
Robin didn't flinch. He was used to it. He glanced around the small room... barely a minute had passed since he and Cat Lady were trapped in that nightmarish car wash, yet there was no sign of their tormentor, nor evidence any sort of struggle whatsoever in the office.
"You shot him? Wh-where'd he go, then?"
"He, uh..." Batman scratched his protruding stomach, then he pointed the bat-gun at the puddle directly beneath his feet...
"He melted."
Batman coughed.
The familiar scent in the air, the wisps of steam still emanating from the cloudy yellow puddle, the wet spot on Batman's crotch... all these things were conspiring to delude Robin into thinking that this stinking pool was merely a puddle of Bat-Piss... but Robin had no reason to doubt his boss, so he took his word for it.
"Oh, like the wicked witch of the west?" Robin nodded, "Cool, that makes sense. Good work, Bruce!" Robin's gullibility astounded even Batman sometimes.
Batman smirked like a douchebag, and jammed the gun back into it's Bat-Holster. The bat-holster was actually just a medium-sized cardboard box with "Batholster" scribbled in sharpie on the side which hung around Batman's neck by a thick chain. Robin figured the box was just a piece of garbage from the back of the car wash, which he assumed was named "The Bath-O-Stir" or something. This did not make any sense, but Robin was an unfathomably stupid man, and Batman did have a habit of making jewelry out of garbage he found behind car washes.
"You got that Bat-car thing with you?" Batman asked as he pulled the remaining bills from the cash register drawer and jammed them into his damp speedo.
"Uhh... yeah, why else would I be here?" Robin sputtered, mid-vape.
"Alright, les'ko!" Batman finished jamming the cash into his costume, and then attempted to pommel himself over the counter gracefully, but he caught one of his feet on the edge, and then the batholster whipped around his neck from the momentum, slamming into the back of his head with a *BONG-G-G* sound and knocking him forward into a crumpled ball on the floor to the sound of a *KA-THUMP*. Batman groaned and slowly picked himself up off the floor as the *CHIRP-CHIRP* of birdies could be heard before he jogged pathetically towards the door, which Robin held open for his frail partner.
As they neared the Bat-Mobile, Batman suddenly halted and pointed towards the passenger seat.
"What's that?" He said, despite being only three feet away, and undoubtedly close enough to clearly see that it was a woman.
"Oh, that's just Cat Lady..." Robin whispered, "Yknow, my ex-girlfriend? Be quiet or she'll hear us acknowledging her existence!"
"Ah," Batman said, winking exaggeratedly and then miming the ol' zipped lips gesture, "Well shit... I was hoping it was Bat Girl!"
"Pfwoah," Robin loudly exclaimed, "me too, believe me! Bat Girl's got those HUUUUGE...." Robin held his hands out from his chest to signify large breasts.
"Uhhh-huh!!" Batman agreed, with a single drawn out nod, "Bat Girl and her HUGE Ba-Zoombas!" With this, Batman also held his hands out from his chest, as if he were cradling two enormous watermelons. Robin giggled hysterically, and also began to joggle his arms, mimicking holding a pair of comically oversized breasts.
The two of them squatted and marched around exaggeratedly, laughing and laughing at one another as Batman made the sounds of a tuba with his mouth, as to provide a hypothetical soundtrack which would accompany carrying around a huge pair of tits — "Womp-wa-wompa-wa-womp-wa-wompa..."
From the car, Cat Lady groaned quite loudly.
"You guys, could you stop that? It's really misogynistic and truthfully, it's making me uncomfortable..." she said annoyedly. But if Batman and Robin hadn't acknowledged her in the past, they CERTAINLY weren't going to acknowledge her now.
The two men continued their awkward and juvenile tit-march routine until they were both doubled over with laughter and gasping for breath, rendering them unable to keep up the routine.
"Oh my god," Batman wheezed, "I'm so out of breath!"
Immediately following this statement, there was a loud *TH-PPPPPSSSSST* as the Ruby Red Squirt soda that Robin had been drinking suddenly sprayed out his nose, leaving him choking on his laughter.
"I th—, I th—, I th—," Robin stuttered as he stood back upright, laughing too hard to get the words out and dripping sticky red soda from his nose and all over his Robin bullshit, "—I thought you said you were 'out of BREAST'!!"
And just like that, Batman and Robin were rolling back and forth on their backs on the ground clutching their stomachs as they laughed themselves straight into Painful-Crampstown. Cat Lady just sat there shaking her head in embarrassment.
Eventually, still gasping for air, they both climbed in the car through the driver's side door, with Batman falling head-first into the back seat, which caused them both to crack up even harder for a moment before finally settling into their seats.
"Ohhhhh, man, hahaha..." Robin sighed, wiping tears from his eyes, "Yeah, Bat Girl sure has huge tits, doesn't she!?"
"Yessiree," Batman coughed between belly laughs, still barely able to speak, "one day I hope I get to see them naked!"
This statement seemed to suck all the momentum out of any laughter they had left, instantly stopping the giggling as both of the men began to visibly blush and sit completely silent for a moment as they both gazed skyward, imagining what it would be like to actually see Bat Girl's breasts... naked.
After a moment, Batman leaned forward between the two front seats, where Robin sat staring into the distance with a huge grin on his face, and Cat Lady fiddled with her phone, annoyed with the boys. Suddenly, the air in the car became icy cold, even before Batman spoke.
"Robin, ENOUGH. Now get it together or I'm gonna slap that grin off your shitty spiderweb-eating face," Batman growled, completely out of nowhere, in a change of mood so sudden and so chilling only a true sociopath could have accomplished it, "we need to talk serious Bat-Business here, you prick."
"Y-yes sir, Batman The Great and Powerful," Robin straightened up in his seat and clutched the wheel in front of him, prepared to receive his orders.
"You're probably wondering why I gathered you here," Batman said.
They weren't. They were under the impression that they had been trapped and subsequently saved by Batman, but they didn't question things.
"Well, sometimes when a bat man so loves a special boy very, very much, he appoints him as his official Special Boy. And as my official Special Boy, you'll have an extra special duty!"
It was then that Batman had explained to Robin — once again adopting a husky southern drawl for his speech — that as Special Boy, Robin would be responsible for bearing the rings.
When Cat Lady asked what her duty was as Special Girl, Batman ignored her, as always, because not only had Batman not said anything about her being "Special Girl", but that position did not even exist in the first place... and besides, Batman did not acknowledge Cat Lady whatsoever.
"B-bearing the rings wh-where, s-sir?" Robin had asked, his voice trembling with fear, just as Batman had asked Robin to sound every time he spoke to The Great and Powerful Batman.
"Why at the wedding, my Special Boy!" Exclaimed Batman The Great and Powerful.
Robin's heart skipped a beat as he processed this statement... surely Batman must mean someone else's wedding. Because Batman only had room for one partner in his life — a fact which he reminded Robin of on a daily basis to keep him in line — and he wouldn't possibly break up with Robin, would he??
But Batman, sensing this denial from his soon-to-be-former-partner, went ahead and clarified unnecessarily to further drive the knife into Robin's heart:
"MY wedding!"
Robin sat there staring at a bat man in his rearview, and watched as an evil grin spread across his face... but the mirror was too small for him to notice and dodge the bat-fist which Batman brought hurtling into the back of his head a moment later.
"WHAT THE FUCK IS TAKING SO LONG," Batman suddenly screamed at a volume ten times louder than his last statement, once again adopting the horrible shrill voice which accompanied his more manic phases, "DRIVE ME BACK TO THE BATCAVE, YOU PISSANT!"
And so he did, while Batman cackled loudly in the backseat for the entire drive, to the point where Robin didn't even get a chance to ask what the hell a "pissant" was exactly.
Back in the alder groves, a week or so afterwards, Robin ceased his time-traveling — which is what he called it when he remembered things — and came screaming back into the present just as viciously and loudly as he had screamed that day that Batman had told him of the wedding.
They were far far away from Batman's wedding now, and even further still from that old batcave — the only cave which Robin had ever called home. This was because previously Robin had only lived in houses, like a normal person.
Robin was still clutching Batman's stupid ring in the closed fist of his left hand as his thoughts dwelled on that fateful day. He loathed how stupid those stupid the ring was. I mean, like... even upon first glance close to a week ago, he was astounded by how stupid that ring had looked.
It was very thick band of nickel alloy, engraved with three bats and an assortment of NFL team logos on the outside. The inside of the band was inscribed with a quote, reading "'Oh kiss me under the milky skylight' - Batman, 5/2016", which was a misquote from the song "Kiss Me", which was Batman's third favorite song by his second-favorite band, Sixpence None The Richer. For some reason, Batman had attributed the misquote to himself, and inexplicably dated it with the day he had departed for his 2016 spring break trip to Cozumel. That was also the same trip Batman had contracted E. Coli.
Now, he could feel the sheer stupidity of that ring burning the palm of his hand like fire. To make matters worse, the acid which Batman had dipped the ring in seared Robin's flesh with chemical burn, causing him great discomfort.
"Stupid Batman's wedding!" Robin demonstrated his disgust viscerally by punctuating each sentence with spitting forcefully on the ground. He spit to his right.
"Stupid marriage!" Robin turned his head and spit again, this time to his left.
"Stupid fucking Batman!" Again, he spit...this time pausing to turn completely around and spit behind him, for some reason. Then he turned around and continued on.
"Stupid fucking Batman's wedding ring!" He was certainly right on that one. In addition to being all-around stupid, the wedding ring also was a symbol of an unfathomably selfish act. Batman had purchased the ring for himself, and had intended for Robin to present it to him at the wedding, where Batman would proceed to wear the ring himself. There would be no ring for the bride whatsoever... this, Batman had made very clear.
Before he spit this time, Robin stopped and opened his palm, gazing upon the stupid ring which Batman had designed.
"Stupid fucking spring break!" Robin screamed, remembering the t-shirts Batman would wear after coming home from spring break, which read "work hard, play hard" — an overused and insufferably douchey cliche which Batman had adopted as his own motto during one of his Spring Break trips.
Robin cocked his head back, and spit directly up in the air. The droplets of saliva rained back down around him, falling silently onto his Special Boy outfit, and peppering it with the faint smell of spiderweb which still lurked on his breath and in his saliva. Other stray droplets went pattering down onto the autumn leaves below like a shitty, shitty rain which did not belong to nature.
Similarly, neither did Batman's wedding ring belong to nature. Robin knew he couldn't just throw it away, as the very earth itself would reject it and send the hideous thing shrieking straight back into Batman's hands. No, Robin could not just dispose of the ring as he had disposed of Batman's very large and very tacky faux-gold crucifix necklace, which Batman incorrectly thought made him look like Dracula.
If Robin was going to ruin Batman's wedding, he knew he had to lose the ring... and he knew there's was only one way he could successfully lose that stupid fuckin' thing...
Robin would need to cast Batman's accursed wedding ring back into the fires of Mount Saint Helens. The undying fire of St. Helens... the same fires from which the ring came, Robin had incorrectly assumed, because someone had once told him Batman was from D.C., and Robin didn't know that Washington, DC was a completely different place from Washington state.
He was only maybe a dozen miles away from Mount St. Helens now, and he marveled at his ability to have made it so far as he stood there in a frothy rain of his own making. It had been a long trip and Robin looked especially disgusting. He was so disgusting looking, in fact, that Cat Lady mistook it for exhaustion.
"Maybe we should stop here for the night," hissed the Cat Lady.
Robin simply grumbled and began walking again.
"I could stay awake..." Robin whined as he marched onward.
A great warmth, and an enormous sense of worth filled Cat Lady's flat chest, and she couldn't help but begin absolutely beaming. Robin had just responded to her suggestion... for the first time in a decade, Robin had just acknowledged her existence. She had never felt so loved before as she did in this moment.
But then Robin continued:
"...Just to hear you breathing...", he melodically whimpered, as Cat Lady realized that Robin had actually not answered her at all, but was merely singing the hit Aerosmith song "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing", as heard on the soundtrack to the movie "Armageddon". Robin did this often, and she should have known, and by the time he had reached the chorus her elation had left her.
"Watch you smile while bla bla bla bla, you're so far away mm-dreaming..." Robin didn't know all the words, but he didn't give a shit, he just liked to sing this Aerosmith song over and over whenever he was walking anywhere. Batman used to really admire this about him.
Cat Lady sighed deeply before shaking her head at her own stupidity, and then the Special Boy and Special Girl continued their death march towards Mount St. Helens.
From his perch impossibly high up in the treetops above the two, Batman scooped up his two Bat-ringwraiths and continued to stalk his Special Boy and his ex-girlfriend. The ringwraiths remained silent, as their mouths had been recently taped shut -- this was neccessary because they were not supernatural entities, they were actually just a couple of babies Batman had picked up somewhere along the way for some reason.
As he leapt from tree to tree, branch to branch, babies precariously dangling from carabiners on his bat-belt, Batman began quietly singing the harmony part of that Aerosmith song to himself as he went... and if you had to choose between Batman and Robin in regards to which one was performing the shittier version of that shitty, shitty song... then you, ma'am, would have a very difficult choice to make.
For a time, his stride was long and admirable, for whatever it was worth. Yet his practicable demeanor was sure to draw the ire of his peers, were he to have had any peers. Barring those, he dove headfirst into perpetuating his northward march peerlessly, though ultimately he found himself bitterly trudging along more often than his hypothetical peers would have liked.
In lieu of any peers, by Robin's side skulked instead The Cat Lady, his ex-girlfriend from a decade prior, and the two of them made for an absolutely ludicrous sight for onlookers and passerbys. Without fail, any members of the general public they encountered would abruptly guffaw, or let loose with a gleeful and astonished shriek, as the duo made quite the garish and gaudy team all spangled and decked out in their matching Special Boy and Special Girl Bat-Wedding regalia.
It felt like so long ago that Batman had excitedly taken their measurements and had them fitted for their wedding garb... perhaps, Robin thought, it actually were a long time ago by now? Nope, it wasn't.
His admirable stride slowed to a schleppy trudge yet again, and continued to slow until he was stopped, his body dedicating its energy now to thinking and remembering things. Robin looked skyward, and began to rabidly scratch his head, as he always did when he began to think... and the large bald patch on his skull where his hair had all been scratched away was a testament to just how much thinking he had been doing lately.
Cat Lady came to a stop some distance behind Robin, as he usually only stopped when he had to urinate, and having learned how to do so from watching Batman, Robin's urinations were a sloppy fiasco of an undertaking with a surprisingly large splash radius.
For a moment, Cat Lady heard the definite sound of multiple babies crying from somewhere far above, up in the treetops. She squinted and looked upwards, scanning the branches for the source of the unexpected sound, but before she could locate the source Robin began screaming loudly.
"HMMMMMMMM," Robin screamed out a ponderous hum, as best as such a sound was even possible, "YES, I THINK I REMEMBER!" Of course he could remember, he was only thinking back to last week.
"What the fuck is he doing...?" Cat Lady mumbled under her breath, forgetting about the sound of wailing babies drifting from the trees. Despite having seen Robin's thinking ritual many hundreds of times before it always came as a shock and if anything, only became more jarring and confusing to witness each time.
"YES, I REMEMBER NOW..." Robin layed on the ground and crossed his arms over his chest, staring up at the sky until his pupils suddenly rolled up into his skull leaving only blank white empty eyes staring back at the world. He did this on purpose every time he thought about something in his past, because he had seen the kid on "Game of Thrones" do it while time-traveling — Robin did not understand the difference between memories and time travel — and today he wanted to remember the incident last week which had led him into his current questionable situation deep in the woods.
Last week, when Robin would watch the hours of the day fly by like the quickly rotating blades of dusky nighttime windmills, because all of Batman's clocks featured black hands on a black face. And while this made it quite difficult to tell time, especially for the short-sighted, it fit with Batman's bat-aesthetic.
Plus it was fitting, as those had been dark days indeed — the days of Batman and Robin's reign of terror over Niland, CA. The pair ran rampant and unchallenged through the streets, firing their guns, making their batmobiles go up on two wheels around turns, and sending "criminals" screaming into the night like it was their job — which it was.
Until one day, when Robin and The Cat Lady made their way into the batcave as they always did, before clocking in for their shifts on the bat-timeclock, which also had black arms on a black face, except this clock ran ten minutes behind so Batman had an excuse to scream at them twice every day, once for clocking in too early and once for clocking out before their shifts ended.
This day however, they found Batman in a strange mood, all merry and enthused and sparkling with a palpable, yet distinctly feminine, manic energy. Robin and the Cat Lady could not help but sense the bat-electricity in the air, and which caused them both a great and terrible feeling of fear and foreboding.
"Ach, why how lovely," Batman had said in a strange husky southern drawl, "my my, what an extra special Special Boy and Special Girl you two will make on my very most extra special day! Wheee!" And with that, Batman had attempted to leap up into the air and click his bat-heels together, but as was the result roughly half of the one-thousand times he had attempted this previously, he failed. This time he failed even more spectacularly than usual, accidentally kicking a hole in his bat-aquarium, which ultimately resulted in lots of blood, broken glass, and Batman tears, as well as two dozen fish re-homed into various pitchers and bowls and other small containers for a time, until Cat Lady had voraciously consumed each and every one over the course of the next several nights. Ultimately, the resulting mess saw to it that neither of them had the opportunity to ask Batman exactly what the hell he was about to tell them anyway.
It was a few short days after that disaster that Robin and Cat Lady were running the newest batmobile through the car wash for the 14th time that week so far, as Batman had developed a new nasty habit (or nasty tumor) which caused him to constantly vomit a ghastly green and brown bile all over the the doors of the batmobile after every meal. This made it such that three times each and every day, they would have to drive all the way to Mecca, California... where they would find themselves sitting in silence as the vomit-slathered batmobile slowly lurched down the car wash conveyor, while rotating machinery and special scouring sprays slowly chipped away at the gruesome bat-vomit caked all down the sides of the 1984 Dodge Colt which masqueraded as their latest batmobile.
This time, however, Batman's Special Boy and Special Girl were startled by a sudden loud *POP*, and then a disquieting grinding noise which grew into the shrieking of metal-on-metal friction, while the smell of burning oil and electrical fires filled their nostrils. As the soap cleared from the windshield, they watched as nearly the entire workings of the car wash slowed to a halt, with the exception of several of the more dangerous-looking parts, and the car came to rest in a steaming mist above a puddle of scalding water, which was still spraying wildly from a hose which had somehow become torn.
"Oh no," said Cat Lady, unable to hide the fear in her voice, "this must be a trap! I tried to tell Batman it was a bad idea to so blatantly bring his car to the same car wash at the same exact time, three times per day, every single day! The doors don't even lock! We're doomed!"
Robin silently observed the damaged inner-workings of the car wash, as the wet and severed wires overhead showered the car in sparks, while the now-brush-less rotors spun and whirred like giant blades in every direction. After a moment he pulled out his vape rig, and raised the shamelessly robot-dick-shaped mouthpiece to his spiderweb-encrusted lips. Gently, he started his suckle on the mouthpiece, and slid his needlessly-gloved middle finger over the trigger ever-so-slowly, with a level of grace and gentleness a man would usually reserve for his lover's clitoris... however, Robin had no idea what a clitoris was. Additionally, he had made it abundantly clear to Cat Lady that he had no intention of learning what it was either, and over the course of their brief relationship a decade ago, he had even adopted a personal practice of never, ever washing his hands, so that any ploy or subversive attempt made by Cat Lady with the intention of "accidentally" teaching Robin how to please a woman would hopefully result in a painful UTI or worse.
"I've got better things to do that please women..." Robin muttered to himself, lips still wrapped around the metallic phallus of the vape rig which, awaiting the sweet nicotine-enhanced flavor of chemical pineapples. At once, he ruthlessly fingerbanged the trigger and inhaled deeply of the tropical-flavored vapor, before exhaling a cloud so thick it filled the car and made their already poor visibility even worse, and sent Cat Lady into a coughing fit. Robin peered down condescendingly over the top of his super cool sunglasses with the bat-shaped lenses at her as she coughed, thinking to himself — it's just water vapor, bro... quit faking.
Suddenly, an indescribably loud burst of feedback came squealing over some PA system hidden deep in the workings of the car wash, assumedly for usage in emergencies such as this.
"Having a little bit of car trouble...?" Hissed the disembodied voice over the distant PA system. Although the voice was distorted and squawking, the Special Pair recognized it immediately — it was the unmistakable voice of their old nemesis, the Riddle Man, maybe? Actually, they weren't entirely sure.
"I said — having a bit of car trouble, are we...?" The voice asked again. Robin and Cat Lady exchanged confused glances before Robin shrugged and started to respond.
"Erm, actually it—"
"SPEAK UP, special boy! I can't hear you! Could you maybe roll down the window or something??"
Robin sighed, exasperated. His window was broken and did not roll down, so he proceeded to lean over Cat Lady and at first roll down the passenger window just a crack, so that no scalding water or wayward sparks found their way into the car, but then he realized that there was nobody in the passenger seat except for that Cat Lady, so he rolled it down entirely to make sure Riddle Man could hear him.
"I was saying— No, actually, the car is running fine. It's the car wash that appears to have broken," he explained, unable to mask the annoyed tone in his voice.
The voice on the PA grumbled, as Cat Lady started to roll the window back up. Robin swiftly slapped her hand away from the handle, though, as he let out a low growl — he didn't want to have to repeat himself again. This would be the closest Robin would ever come to acknowledging Cat Lady's presence.
"I know, but still..." sighed the Riddle Man from the PA speaker, "you were supposed to ask me what I wanted."
Robin groaned and just shook his head. After another 10 seconds of silence, the Riddle Man coughed and then cleared his throat.
"Well then, how about this — WHO is the PRESIDENT that a bat man would be most likely to find at the car wash??" The Riddle Man cackled, awaiting their response.
Robin sighed heavily, and again shook his head, shrugging.
"I don't know, man... Jimmy CAR-ter?"
There was another brief pause where neither spoke.
"Do you want to guess again?" The Riddle Man said dejectedly.
"No." Robin spat back quite firmly, and began to roll up the window, which caused the Riddle Man to begin speaking quickly again.
"WASHington. It was George WASHINGTON, okay?", he said.
There was another beat.
"Okay...?" Whined an increasingly-exasperated Robin, "Whats your point? I mean — That wasn't even a riddle, it was just, like, a really bad joke?"
"PRECISELY!" Came the response from the PA, followed by a gleeful cackle, "That's what I'm known for!"
"Oh... OH!" Robin realized what this idiot was getting at, "This is the Joker I'm talking to??"
"Yes, my special boy!" More maniacal laughter echoed throughout the broken-down car wash.
"You're not that Riddle Guy??" Robin hollered back.
"Hmm?"
"You know. The Riddle Guy. Isn't he the one that asks those stupid jokes? I thought that's who I was talking to."
There was a long pause this time, before the response came, in a noticeably deeper tone.
"Ah, shit... maybe that's who I meant..." the PA squealed with feedback as Joker or Riddle Man dropped the transmitter momentarily, before he continued once again in the shrill and smarmy voice, "Yeah, that's what I meant, actually — It's is I, the Riddle Master, who demands all the George Washingtons from your wallet!"
Robin groaned and rolled his eyes, before slouching back into the driver seat, leaving the window open.
"Is this motherfucker trying to rob me? That's all this is?" Robin said to himself, and absolutely not to Cat Lady, who was not listening anyway, as she had taken to playing snake on her Nokia phone while Robin and Joker/Riddle Man or whoever-the-fuck had their little pointless exchange.
"Fuck this shit..." Robin muttered as he turned the ignition, and threw the car in drive.
He proceeded to drive the Bat-Mobile harmlessly past the blades and electrical wires and other traps and obstacles which may have indeed been quite dangerous to someone who was not safely behind the wheel of a car. Thankfully, this was not the case with Our Special Pair, and in a matter of moments they had driven safely through and out the other end of the trap car wash.
Almost immediately after emerging back into the daylight, Robin parked right outside the door to the car wash office, and leaving the engine running he stepped out of the car and casually began to stroll into the office to confront his nemesis, the Joker/Riddle Man or whoever the fuck.
"Do you need a hand?" Cat Lady asked, briefly looking up from her phone, but Robin obviously ignored her as he meandered towards the door.
He pulled out his phone as he walked, and started to text Batman about the strange situation they had just found themselves in, although he stopped momentarily to examine a weird and interesting bug he saw on the curb. Eventually reaching the door, he knocked twice solidly to announce his arrival, and give whatever enemy awaited him inside plenty of time to prepare while he continued composing his text to dad— er, his text to Batman, he meant... he always did that.
Unarmed and distracted by his cell phone, Robin gently eased the door open and stepped inside. He took a moment to finish the text, before hitting send and finally looking up to see which criminal mastermind awaited him behind the desk.
It was Batman. In one hand, the transmitter for the PA system. In the other, his bat-gun, which was just a nondescript regular gun with no modifications neither functional nor decorative. The cash register drawer was open and bills were strewn all about, as if Batman hadn't been trying to steal them as much as he were trying to make them rain upon an underground stripper stage in a gentlemen's club in a cave.
"Bruce!? What the fuck are you doing here??" Robin shrieked, stunned, "I was just texting you!" Right on cue, Batman's Bat-phone made it's "new text message" chime, which was a MIDI rendition of the riff from "Bad to the Bone".
"Dude..." Batman muttered, "Ya gotta stop fuckin' calling me that..."
"What happened to the Riddle Man, or Joker, or whatever?" Robin asked, as he pulled his vape from his pocket and took another deep pull — the scent of urine hung heavy in the stagnant air of the car wash office, overpowering even the racks of car air fresheners for sale, and he hoped to mask the stench with his delicious tropical-flavored vape smoke.
"Oh, er..." Batman dropped the transmitter and pointed his bat-gun straight at Robin, "I shot him! *BLOWWWP* — he's DEAD. You just got rescued, son."
Batman mimicked shooting Robin, complete with exaggerated recoil, and the dull click that echoed throughout the room signified that he had accidentally pulled the trigger too — he just happened to be out of bullets.
Robin didn't flinch. He was used to it. He glanced around the small room... barely a minute had passed since he and Cat Lady were trapped in that nightmarish car wash, yet there was no sign of their tormentor, nor evidence any sort of struggle whatsoever in the office.
"You shot him? Wh-where'd he go, then?"
"He, uh..." Batman scratched his protruding stomach, then he pointed the bat-gun at the puddle directly beneath his feet...
"He melted."
Batman coughed.
The familiar scent in the air, the wisps of steam still emanating from the cloudy yellow puddle, the wet spot on Batman's crotch... all these things were conspiring to delude Robin into thinking that this stinking pool was merely a puddle of Bat-Piss... but Robin had no reason to doubt his boss, so he took his word for it.
"Oh, like the wicked witch of the west?" Robin nodded, "Cool, that makes sense. Good work, Bruce!" Robin's gullibility astounded even Batman sometimes.
Batman smirked like a douchebag, and jammed the gun back into it's Bat-Holster. The bat-holster was actually just a medium-sized cardboard box with "Batholster" scribbled in sharpie on the side which hung around Batman's neck by a thick chain. Robin figured the box was just a piece of garbage from the back of the car wash, which he assumed was named "The Bath-O-Stir" or something. This did not make any sense, but Robin was an unfathomably stupid man, and Batman did have a habit of making jewelry out of garbage he found behind car washes.
"You got that Bat-car thing with you?" Batman asked as he pulled the remaining bills from the cash register drawer and jammed them into his damp speedo.
"Uhh... yeah, why else would I be here?" Robin sputtered, mid-vape.
"Alright, les'ko!" Batman finished jamming the cash into his costume, and then attempted to pommel himself over the counter gracefully, but he caught one of his feet on the edge, and then the batholster whipped around his neck from the momentum, slamming into the back of his head with a *BONG-G-G* sound and knocking him forward into a crumpled ball on the floor to the sound of a *KA-THUMP*. Batman groaned and slowly picked himself up off the floor as the *CHIRP-CHIRP* of birdies could be heard before he jogged pathetically towards the door, which Robin held open for his frail partner.
As they neared the Bat-Mobile, Batman suddenly halted and pointed towards the passenger seat.
"What's that?" He said, despite being only three feet away, and undoubtedly close enough to clearly see that it was a woman.
"Oh, that's just Cat Lady..." Robin whispered, "Yknow, my ex-girlfriend? Be quiet or she'll hear us acknowledging her existence!"
"Ah," Batman said, winking exaggeratedly and then miming the ol' zipped lips gesture, "Well shit... I was hoping it was Bat Girl!"
"Pfwoah," Robin loudly exclaimed, "me too, believe me! Bat Girl's got those HUUUUGE...." Robin held his hands out from his chest to signify large breasts.
"Uhhh-huh!!" Batman agreed, with a single drawn out nod, "Bat Girl and her HUGE Ba-Zoombas!" With this, Batman also held his hands out from his chest, as if he were cradling two enormous watermelons. Robin giggled hysterically, and also began to joggle his arms, mimicking holding a pair of comically oversized breasts.
The two of them squatted and marched around exaggeratedly, laughing and laughing at one another as Batman made the sounds of a tuba with his mouth, as to provide a hypothetical soundtrack which would accompany carrying around a huge pair of tits — "Womp-wa-wompa-wa-womp-wa-wompa..."
From the car, Cat Lady groaned quite loudly.
"You guys, could you stop that? It's really misogynistic and truthfully, it's making me uncomfortable..." she said annoyedly. But if Batman and Robin hadn't acknowledged her in the past, they CERTAINLY weren't going to acknowledge her now.
The two men continued their awkward and juvenile tit-march routine until they were both doubled over with laughter and gasping for breath, rendering them unable to keep up the routine.
"Oh my god," Batman wheezed, "I'm so out of breath!"
Immediately following this statement, there was a loud *TH-PPPPPSSSSST* as the Ruby Red Squirt soda that Robin had been drinking suddenly sprayed out his nose, leaving him choking on his laughter.
"I th—, I th—, I th—," Robin stuttered as he stood back upright, laughing too hard to get the words out and dripping sticky red soda from his nose and all over his Robin bullshit, "—I thought you said you were 'out of BREAST'!!"
And just like that, Batman and Robin were rolling back and forth on their backs on the ground clutching their stomachs as they laughed themselves straight into Painful-Crampstown. Cat Lady just sat there shaking her head in embarrassment.
Eventually, still gasping for air, they both climbed in the car through the driver's side door, with Batman falling head-first into the back seat, which caused them both to crack up even harder for a moment before finally settling into their seats.
"Ohhhhh, man, hahaha..." Robin sighed, wiping tears from his eyes, "Yeah, Bat Girl sure has huge tits, doesn't she!?"
"Yessiree," Batman coughed between belly laughs, still barely able to speak, "one day I hope I get to see them naked!"
This statement seemed to suck all the momentum out of any laughter they had left, instantly stopping the giggling as both of the men began to visibly blush and sit completely silent for a moment as they both gazed skyward, imagining what it would be like to actually see Bat Girl's breasts... naked.
After a moment, Batman leaned forward between the two front seats, where Robin sat staring into the distance with a huge grin on his face, and Cat Lady fiddled with her phone, annoyed with the boys. Suddenly, the air in the car became icy cold, even before Batman spoke.
"Robin, ENOUGH. Now get it together or I'm gonna slap that grin off your shitty spiderweb-eating face," Batman growled, completely out of nowhere, in a change of mood so sudden and so chilling only a true sociopath could have accomplished it, "we need to talk serious Bat-Business here, you prick."
"Y-yes sir, Batman The Great and Powerful," Robin straightened up in his seat and clutched the wheel in front of him, prepared to receive his orders.
"You're probably wondering why I gathered you here," Batman said.
They weren't. They were under the impression that they had been trapped and subsequently saved by Batman, but they didn't question things.
"Well, sometimes when a bat man so loves a special boy very, very much, he appoints him as his official Special Boy. And as my official Special Boy, you'll have an extra special duty!"
It was then that Batman had explained to Robin — once again adopting a husky southern drawl for his speech — that as Special Boy, Robin would be responsible for bearing the rings.
When Cat Lady asked what her duty was as Special Girl, Batman ignored her, as always, because not only had Batman not said anything about her being "Special Girl", but that position did not even exist in the first place... and besides, Batman did not acknowledge Cat Lady whatsoever.
"B-bearing the rings wh-where, s-sir?" Robin had asked, his voice trembling with fear, just as Batman had asked Robin to sound every time he spoke to The Great and Powerful Batman.
"Why at the wedding, my Special Boy!" Exclaimed Batman The Great and Powerful.
Robin's heart skipped a beat as he processed this statement... surely Batman must mean someone else's wedding. Because Batman only had room for one partner in his life — a fact which he reminded Robin of on a daily basis to keep him in line — and he wouldn't possibly break up with Robin, would he??
But Batman, sensing this denial from his soon-to-be-former-partner, went ahead and clarified unnecessarily to further drive the knife into Robin's heart:
"MY wedding!"
Robin sat there staring at a bat man in his rearview, and watched as an evil grin spread across his face... but the mirror was too small for him to notice and dodge the bat-fist which Batman brought hurtling into the back of his head a moment later.
"WHAT THE FUCK IS TAKING SO LONG," Batman suddenly screamed at a volume ten times louder than his last statement, once again adopting the horrible shrill voice which accompanied his more manic phases, "DRIVE ME BACK TO THE BATCAVE, YOU PISSANT!"
And so he did, while Batman cackled loudly in the backseat for the entire drive, to the point where Robin didn't even get a chance to ask what the hell a "pissant" was exactly.
Back in the alder groves, a week or so afterwards, Robin ceased his time-traveling — which is what he called it when he remembered things — and came screaming back into the present just as viciously and loudly as he had screamed that day that Batman had told him of the wedding.
They were far far away from Batman's wedding now, and even further still from that old batcave — the only cave which Robin had ever called home. This was because previously Robin had only lived in houses, like a normal person.
Robin was still clutching Batman's stupid ring in the closed fist of his left hand as his thoughts dwelled on that fateful day. He loathed how stupid those stupid the ring was. I mean, like... even upon first glance close to a week ago, he was astounded by how stupid that ring had looked.
It was very thick band of nickel alloy, engraved with three bats and an assortment of NFL team logos on the outside. The inside of the band was inscribed with a quote, reading "'Oh kiss me under the milky skylight' - Batman, 5/2016", which was a misquote from the song "Kiss Me", which was Batman's third favorite song by his second-favorite band, Sixpence None The Richer. For some reason, Batman had attributed the misquote to himself, and inexplicably dated it with the day he had departed for his 2016 spring break trip to Cozumel. That was also the same trip Batman had contracted E. Coli.
Now, he could feel the sheer stupidity of that ring burning the palm of his hand like fire. To make matters worse, the acid which Batman had dipped the ring in seared Robin's flesh with chemical burn, causing him great discomfort.
"Stupid Batman's wedding!" Robin demonstrated his disgust viscerally by punctuating each sentence with spitting forcefully on the ground. He spit to his right.
"Stupid marriage!" Robin turned his head and spit again, this time to his left.
"Stupid fucking Batman!" Again, he spit...this time pausing to turn completely around and spit behind him, for some reason. Then he turned around and continued on.
"Stupid fucking Batman's wedding ring!" He was certainly right on that one. In addition to being all-around stupid, the wedding ring also was a symbol of an unfathomably selfish act. Batman had purchased the ring for himself, and had intended for Robin to present it to him at the wedding, where Batman would proceed to wear the ring himself. There would be no ring for the bride whatsoever... this, Batman had made very clear.
Before he spit this time, Robin stopped and opened his palm, gazing upon the stupid ring which Batman had designed.
"Stupid fucking spring break!" Robin screamed, remembering the t-shirts Batman would wear after coming home from spring break, which read "work hard, play hard" — an overused and insufferably douchey cliche which Batman had adopted as his own motto during one of his Spring Break trips.
Robin cocked his head back, and spit directly up in the air. The droplets of saliva rained back down around him, falling silently onto his Special Boy outfit, and peppering it with the faint smell of spiderweb which still lurked on his breath and in his saliva. Other stray droplets went pattering down onto the autumn leaves below like a shitty, shitty rain which did not belong to nature.
Similarly, neither did Batman's wedding ring belong to nature. Robin knew he couldn't just throw it away, as the very earth itself would reject it and send the hideous thing shrieking straight back into Batman's hands. No, Robin could not just dispose of the ring as he had disposed of Batman's very large and very tacky faux-gold crucifix necklace, which Batman incorrectly thought made him look like Dracula.
If Robin was going to ruin Batman's wedding, he knew he had to lose the ring... and he knew there's was only one way he could successfully lose that stupid fuckin' thing...
Robin would need to cast Batman's accursed wedding ring back into the fires of Mount Saint Helens. The undying fire of St. Helens... the same fires from which the ring came, Robin had incorrectly assumed, because someone had once told him Batman was from D.C., and Robin didn't know that Washington, DC was a completely different place from Washington state.
He was only maybe a dozen miles away from Mount St. Helens now, and he marveled at his ability to have made it so far as he stood there in a frothy rain of his own making. It had been a long trip and Robin looked especially disgusting. He was so disgusting looking, in fact, that Cat Lady mistook it for exhaustion.
"Maybe we should stop here for the night," hissed the Cat Lady.
Robin simply grumbled and began walking again.
"I could stay awake..." Robin whined as he marched onward.
A great warmth, and an enormous sense of worth filled Cat Lady's flat chest, and she couldn't help but begin absolutely beaming. Robin had just responded to her suggestion... for the first time in a decade, Robin had just acknowledged her existence. She had never felt so loved before as she did in this moment.
But then Robin continued:
"...Just to hear you breathing...", he melodically whimpered, as Cat Lady realized that Robin had actually not answered her at all, but was merely singing the hit Aerosmith song "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing", as heard on the soundtrack to the movie "Armageddon". Robin did this often, and she should have known, and by the time he had reached the chorus her elation had left her.
"Watch you smile while bla bla bla bla, you're so far away mm-dreaming..." Robin didn't know all the words, but he didn't give a shit, he just liked to sing this Aerosmith song over and over whenever he was walking anywhere. Batman used to really admire this about him.
Cat Lady sighed deeply before shaking her head at her own stupidity, and then the Special Boy and Special Girl continued their death march towards Mount St. Helens.
From his perch impossibly high up in the treetops above the two, Batman scooped up his two Bat-ringwraiths and continued to stalk his Special Boy and his ex-girlfriend. The ringwraiths remained silent, as their mouths had been recently taped shut -- this was neccessary because they were not supernatural entities, they were actually just a couple of babies Batman had picked up somewhere along the way for some reason.
As he leapt from tree to tree, branch to branch, babies precariously dangling from carabiners on his bat-belt, Batman began quietly singing the harmony part of that Aerosmith song to himself as he went... and if you had to choose between Batman and Robin in regards to which one was performing the shittier version of that shitty, shitty song... then you, ma'am, would have a very difficult choice to make.
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