CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 8
DEEP WITHIN A BAT CAVE
DEEP WITHIN A BAT CAVE
Embedded Files
Two months later; one year until the big day…
The Bat Man rapped viciously at the side of his Bat-Computer-Tower, distraught and confused and wrestling with the very concept of technology in his special and disgusting way. Robman sat miserably across the room, staring blankly at the Bat Man as he underwent his daily violent outburst directed at nonworking electronics, although they were almost always “nonworking” only in the sense that the Bat Man was completely incapable of operating them. The scape of their computing power together was immeasurable, but the Bat Man had no desire to take advantage of that, it seemed. He knew how to use the Bat-Quicktime player, and access the internet with his Bat-Netscape-Navigator — though just barely, as his application window was choked with all sorts of adware tabs and popups, and barely functional. Additionally, despite the massive Bat-Monitor overhead, for some reason he insisted the settings be such that the Bat-Computers only output at a mere 800x600 resolution. Because of this, even Robman was barely capable of making the dozens of Bat-Computers do anything useful, which meant the Bat Man never even stood a chance."God dammit, I still can't manage to buy any Batcoins!" The Bat Man screamed when he was done beating the computer. The Bat Man had become obsessed with cryptocurrency the previous weekend, and had been insisting that he had invented an electronic currency of his own.Robman placed his head in his hands, and slowly rotated his chair to face his back to the Bat Man.“Please,” he whimpered, "please stop calling it that. You know it's called BITcoin. That joke wasn't even funny the first time.” He clinched his eyes shut tightly and prayed to hear the alarm announcing that COPS was on TV in 3 minutes, or Mama Alfred ringing the Bat-Dinner-Bell, or anything to distract the Bat Man long enough for him to enjoy five minutes of quiet."What joke??” Shrieked the Bat Man in an unusually shrill and surprised voice, "I made my own NFT and it's a Batcoin."Robman sighed heavily, before he slowly started to rotate to face his crypto-obsessed boss once more. Nearly all traces of the eager, wide-eyed and willing Boy Friend he once was had faded some time ago. The preceding months had been exhausting at best, but probably closer to absolutely soul-crushing, especially for someone with as tenuous a grasp on sanity and coherence as Robman. Additionally, the forced complete separation from his ex-girlfriend had only hastened his transformation into a bitter, anger-prone cynic.Robman was acutely aware of this change within his psyche, despite never before having qualified of being acutely anything, let alone aware. But the way he thought about the Bat Man when he was alone made it all to clear that the anger he had begun to display was more honestly deserving to be aimed at himself. Because he was quite angry at himself — angry at the love he had so clearly begun to hold for his be-cowled Bat-Boss, despite the never-ending parade of abuses and embarrassments he had suffered at his Bat-Hands over the past several months. He was angry at the fact that he once again felt these things for another man, despite his damndest efforts to be heterosexual, if only for the sake of his decade-old desire for the Cat Lady… whom he had now been forced to ignore completely, at the insistence of the Bat Man he now desired instead.He focused this wide array of conflicting emotions towards his boss, channeling it into good ol’ fashioned spite, which he had learned was something he was surprisingly talented at displaying. And yet with each spiteful outburst, each clench of his fist, and every time he sighed so hard his shoulders slouched a little lower than they ever had before, he could absolutely feel the toll that these negative emotions were taking on him, and it felt as if he was racing the clock to find the strength to openly admit his love for the Bat Man before the repressed emotions soured within him and caused him to wither away and die before he ever had the chance.However, this would not be the day he opened up his heart.“So help me god, the Bat Man," Robman groaned. "If you break another one of my computers by putting nickels in the monitor vents..."Robman turned to face the Bat Man just in time to see him closing the computer's optical drive with a pile of loose change where there should be a DVD."Don't worry, I put the money in the boring part of the computer this time.” the Bat Man assured him.Robman stared on poker-faced as the Bat-Computer whirred and shuddered and ceased to function, just as had the dozen or so other computers which had been his before the Bat Man ruined them in one way or another.The Bat Man already had multiple different state-of-the-art computers and displays — solid state and quantum, holographic and otherwise — and all were connected to every manner of international database of known criminals, villains, petty thieves, and sex offenders compiled by various government agencies or privately assembled by various super-powered crime-fighting leagues of justice and other bullshit like that. And while all this was easily accessible, in the adjacent room from this new Bat-Computer Bat-Lab they currently occupied, the Bat Man insisted they would be better served by various clunky HP and Dell home PC towers, which now lined the room like sarcophagi, bricked in one way or another by the Bat Man.Just then, his most recent Bat-Computer casualty — the one he had just inserted his pocket change into, for some reason — suddenly stopped whirring and began crackling and smoking."Oh FUDGE!” the Bat Man shouted. ”Bingo, it stopped working! Now there’s that grey ghost-y stuff coming out of it too! Help, Bingo!”The Bat Man had recently taken to calling Robman "Bingo" for some reason. Additionally, it seemed he had forgotten the word “smoke”, which caused Robman to throw his arms out towards the Bat Man, palms skyward.“Oh C’MON!” Robman shouted to a God that wasn’t listening. “Now he doesn’t even know what smoke is!? Give me a break!” He was still bitter about being called a motherfucking butthead a few months ago when he doubted that the Bat Man had seen Star Wars, and this latest remark was testing his suspension of disbelief as much as it was yours. While the Bat Man played the part of the hapless, technologically-inept boomer rather convincingly, the shitty smirk which he never bothered hiding gave away that he knew damn well what he was doing each and every single time that he broke one of Robman's stupid fucking Bat-Computers.When Robman’s shouted prayer went unanswered, and the Bat Man continued to claim ignorance of anything and everything that was convenient at the moment, his head fell into his rubber-gloved hands — the Bat Man made him wear the gloves at all times, partially just as a general commitment to always wearing one’s Bat-Bullshit, and partially in case he decided he wanted to play doctor again.The Bat Man was breaking him. Any effort was pointless. There was no way to stop the mad the Bat Man, and even if he were to try, the result would only be more apology sessions in the dungeon with the Bat-Whip.So he wept. There was nothing else he could do. For the first time since meeting the Bat Man, and suffering his barrage of abuses both physical and emotional, Robman wept openly.The Bat Man actually felt a twinge of guilt, but only for a moment, before realizing that what he was actually feeling was hunger, not guilt."Robma— err, I mean — Bingo! I hunger!" the Bat Man announced, and pressed the special button he had installed on his utility belt that played a fanfare of trumpets. He did this after making especially important announcements, as sort of an unbearably obnoxious punctuation. “Fetch me a sando!”Robman responded only by crying even louder."Bingo, I said —""BATMAN, PLEASE!" Moaned an anguished Robman, "Please stop! You know there's nothing down here to eat. And you know we’re trapped down here until Mama Alfred gets back from her business trip and rings the Bat-Dinner-Bell, lowering the Bat-Ladder to the Bat-Dining-Room!”He was right. The Bat Man's hunger was not going to change the fact that they were still trapped in the Bat-Cave — which they were, as the Bat-Elevator had broken and neither of them possessed the upper-body strength necessary to climb back up the Bat-Pole. Additionally, the Bat Man had already wrecked their new Bat-Car — as well as its replacement, and the replacement Bat-Car’s replacement, all within a week, for what its worth — which left the original “gay” Bat-Car the only option for driving out via the extensive tunnel system. The Bat Man swore those tunnels went on for “at least a hundred miles”, so walking was out of the question, yet maddeningly so was driving the original Bat-Car, as the Bat Man insisted that would result in far too big of a risk of being seen driving that thing. Robman himself could not seem to find a steering wheel, let alone an ignition or corresponding Bat-Key when he had eventually swallowed his pride and attempted to drive it himself. Even more maddeningly, the Bat Man wouldn’t let Robman try the door that appeared to be marked “Batscalator”, in what must have been a woeful attempt at rebranding an escalator to fit the overall Corporate Bat-Aesthetic. However, months ago, the Bat Man had taken a sharpie to the door’s labeling and made the S larger, while adding “master” as a prefix, so that instead of reading "Batscalator" it read “Masterbat Scalator”. Masterbat Scalator being, of course, a borderline-illiterate and exceptionally stupid man’s attempt at making a joke about having a room that not only housed Skeletor from Masters of the Universe, but also was specifically constructed for Skeletor to jack off in. This “joke” was much more than a stretch, especially considering that — were it even spelled somewhat correctly — “Masturbate Skeletor” itself reads much more like a terrible demand than it does a label signifying “Skeletor’s Masturbation Room”. However, this still did not stop the Bat Man from fooling Robman… because Robman really was that fucking stupid sometimes. A lot of the time, really. Worse still, the Bat Man forgot that relabeling the door was his doing, and now neither man would dare open it out of fear of interrupting Skeletor. Even if they had risked that potential awkwardness, they would only have found the out-of-order Batscalator — and there was no way in hell the Bat Man was going to walk up stairs like some kind of poor, just as there was no way Robman would leave his master behind, so it was ultimately hopeless. It was thanks to these facts — as well as many other entirely avoidable comedies of error and acts of unbridled stupidity — that the Bat Man and his dutiful ward Robman truly were trapped in a dungeon of their own making, which just so happened to be located right above the Bat-cave’s actual dungeon.“Gosh darnit…” Robman sighed, mostly to himself. “I really could go for a sick caesar right now.” He said this with the casual confidence of someone who was completely unaware that absolutely nobody else in the world was embarrassing enough to shorten ‘caesar salad’ into ‘sick caesar’.Fortunately for him, the Bat Man was also too out-of-touch to find that egregious linguistic faux pax notable enough to comment on.“Still no food, huh?” the Bat Man sighed. “Probably shoulda built a Bat-Quiznos instead of a dungeon, huh?”Robman shot the Bat Man a horrified look.“Who the heck eats at Quiznos??” He asked.“Oh, uh… not me,” the Bat Man said, lying, as visions of toasty, stale sandwiches of questionable meat made soggy by a completely-unnecessary slathering of sauce danced through his head, his stomach rumbling in response. “No sir, I was a Blimpie man, through and through!”Robman’s look of horror turned into a look of shock, partly because he was pretty sure there were no more Blimpies, and partly because it was the first time in human history that anyone had uttered the phrase “a Blimpie man through and through”.“Oh,” Robman muttered, calming down significantly. “R-right. Plus, all the crime-fighting happening, you don’t have time to wait for a sandwich to toast, now.”The Bat Man nodded solemnly.“Yes, yes… I learned that lesson all too tragically,” he said stoically, his gaze drifting off into the middle-distance. “You know, Robman, that’s… how my parents died…”“Excuse me?” Robman furrowed his brow.“My parents — Barry and Andrew Man — I was just a moment too late to save them from being crushed beneath that giant wheel,” the Bat Man sadly explained. “Because I stopped at Quiznos on the way to rescue them, and the toaster took longer than anticipated.”“That’s… awful. I’m so sorry.” Robman shook his head, sympathizing with the Bat Man. “I guess you should have stopped at Jimmy Johns…”“No, Robman!” the Bat Man spat back at his ward. “Never Jimmy Johns!” With this statement the Bat Man turned to look Robman dead in the eyes, with a calm, regretful seriousness which had not been seen by his ward thus far.Robman held his gaze for a long moment.“Nobody,” the Bat Man continued, “NOBODY needs a sandwich THAT fast. The speed at which Jimmy John shits out his mediocre sandwiches is an affront to God himself.”“Right, okay, no Jimmy Johns.” Robman mentally noted this.“One day you’ll understand.” The Bat Man said.“I will?” Robman asked. “Cause I think I got it.”“No matter,” the Bat Man said, perking back up. “The blame doesn’t fall on me nearly as much as it does on my arch-nemesis, John Chidsey Man.”“J-John Chidsey…man?”“Yes, ward. You probably know him simply as the dastardly Chidseyman. The most evil rogue of all those in my gallery of supervillains…” The Bat Man slammed his fist into his palm as he stared off into space once more.“Whats his special power?”“He’s the CEO of Subway.”“Holy moly!” Robman gasped, “You don’t mean…”“Yes Robman,” the Bat Man said, adopting his batsplaining voice. “The very same chain of Subway sandwich shops of which I am no longer allowed to enter.”“You… can’t go into any Subway?”“I’m afraid not in this state… and all for the simple mistake of forgetting to wear pants a few dozen times.”“Oh, I mean… I guess I can understand that…”Suddenly the Bat Man whipped his head around to look at Robman again, glaring at him and pointing angrily as he spoke.“You show me ONE sign that says pants are required! ONE sign! Where’s the fucking sign, Chidseyman? Where’s the sign??”Robman was used to these mood swings and outbursts by now, and simply nodded his head gently, waiting for the Bat Man to calm down again and being sure only to agree with him until that point — he was getting good at navigating their interactions.“Yeah,” Robman said quietly, “We’ll get that son of a bitch.”The Bat Man perked up as Robman swore, as gentle of a swear as it was.“Whoa! Son of a Bitch?? Look who’s talking cool now!” The Bat Man smiled and held up his hand. “High five!”Robman couldn’t help but to blush and grin sheepishly at the Bat Man’s praise. He was talking cool now! And just like that, if it hadn’t already been forgotten, all remaining anger or bitterness from the incident with the computers earlier was washed away fully, and when their hands touched ever-so-briefly in the high-five that followed, Robman felt his heart flutter with the contact. It didn’t matter if they were trapped. They were together, and Robman was learning — learning about the Bat Man, learning about various sandwich shops, learning how to talk cool… these lessons alone were worth the price of a little bit of hunger, and plus, the Bat Man had promised to pay him back in Batcoins once he got his Bat-Blockchain set up.Sure, they were in a bad situation, and they just spent Christmas watching the Bat Man’s DVDs of “Billy Madison” and “Happy Gilmore” while on the verge of starving — historically one of the worst Christmases anyone has ever had, anywhere — but at least they had each other… just two cool dudes in a cave, killing time, doing dude stuff, writing new Star Wars scripts and such. The Bat Man was his friend. His partner. His mentor. His… the love of his goddamned life.However, the proud smile on Robman’s face faded once more with the growling of his stomach, and then the dull pain of the hunger pangs returned“Ugh,” Robman squirmed, shaking his head slowly, “Hey Bruce—““Don’t call me that!” The Bat Man interrupted. “I don’t know who Bruce is!”“Oh, uh… right,” Robman said, “Sorry. But just — for now how about no more talk about food?”The Bat Man huffed and pouted, slamming his fists into the sides of his hips and looking disappointed.“Well what the hell else is there to talk about, then??” He whined. “I’m too goddamned Bat-Starving to talk about Star Wars anymore!”Robman cocked his head.“We can do that? We’re adding ‘Bat-‘ before adjectives now?” He asked.“Da fuck is an adjective??” The Bat Man laughed. “I liked it better when you were talking cool!”Robman sighed.“Sir, when is Mama Alfred going to have dinner prepared?” He asked.“Oh, I’ve got no idea…” the Bat Man said ominously, “I sent her off on a business trip to capture Penguins. And I’ve got NO idea how many days it’s been, I’ve been in a cave!”Robman raised an eyebrow.“I’m sorry — you… sent Mama Alfred to capture The Penguin?? What? Why?” He asked incredulously.“Uh, I sent her to Cozumel to capture all of them — cause I was busy!” The Bat Man explained. “So, when that’s done she’ll be back, the streets will be safer, we’ll have ourselves some grilled cheese — it’ll be fine. Patience, young Bingo.”Robman looked absolutely crushed by this news.“But… I’ve got to eat something. Soon…” He sighed.The Bat Man thought for a moment, smirked, then snapped his fingers at pointed at Robman. "You know, Bingo, you COULD eat some spiderwebs…"
***
Six weeks after their daring escape from the Batcave, Robman felt an overwhelming tenderness in his heart when he thought on the memories of that time they had spent trapped together, and every day for long stretches of time he found himself in a daze, oblivious to the world around him as his mind existed solely in the memories of that time. When he slept, he dreamt only but of those days. For the time being, those memories were thankfully enough to soothe his building resentment and anger at the way the love of his life — the Bat Man — had been treating him the last several weeks. Their friendship was constantly challenged, and their partnership, even though it would only ever be a temporary affair until the return of the Bat Girl, now was practically nonexistent in the eyes of the Bat Man.He partially blamed himself for this — for not catching enough (or any) supervillains, for not talking cool enough, for wrecking the Bat-Car twice, among plenty of other shortcomings — but he mostly, and undeservingly blamed Cody. It was Cody who had staged their daring midnight escape from the cave, revealing himself to have survived the apparent attempt on his life by the villainous Two-Faces before heroically rescuing them from their fate of wasting away in the darkness, all while Gotham swiftly fell into the hands of the evil villains they were currently unable to do battle with. Although Robman had been unconscious for most of their escape, and as a result still had not actually met Cody, he certainly heard how highly the Bat Man spoke about him — how often the Bat Man went on and on about how cool Cody was, or spontaneously announced how much he liked Cody. It made Robman’s stomach turn every time… even moreso than Mama Alfred’s weird grilled cheeses, which she made with Kraft grated parmesan cheese and that weird, dense “Ezekiel” bread that always felt damp. Robman didn’t think anyone actually bought that crap, and after trying it, he sure wished Mama Alfred didn’t.It was due to his chasing the feeling of those days — the thrill of being trapped with nothing to look at but the Bat Man as he moved about in his skintight Bat-Suit-thing — that he found himself venturing down into the Batcave yet again. But when he did, Robman would be all alone, deep in the darkness of that rabies-filled hellhole… much as he was this particular time.Robman pressed his cold, waxy lips to another spider's web. With his vision rendered useless in the pitch black darkness of the cave, he found all his other senses heightened, and he could already taste the silky, slightly slimy musk of the spiderweb before it even hit his tongue. This only made him thirst for the taste of sweet, sweet web even more, and a moment later he inhaled sharply, tearing the spiderweb from it’s purchase on the cave wall and sliding it gruesomely down his throat."I wish this night could last forever…” Robman cooed to another spiderweb on the wall, which he had felt brush against his nose. "I can't wait to consume you."His blissful state was shattered by a terrifying voice from up the Bat-Pole.“Robman!" It shouted. "I swear to god if you're hiding out down there sucking down spiderwebs again, I'm gonna be furious."Uh-oh, Robman thought, I'm totally busted!"N-no, your highness!" Shouted Robman, his words very clearly gummed up and thickened by the residual spiderweb laced throughout his teeth and under his tongue like a tough and bitter cotton candy. "I was merely polishing your Bat-Boomerang Things!"“Robman…” Came the now-unnervingly-calm response, "If you so much as lay a finger on my Bat-Boomerangs, I will reign down upon you with a beating so brutal and pitiless that you will find your shitty web-covered tongue pleading to long-dead gods that I relent and merely bring down upon you the wrath of my Bat-Whip. Yes — my Bat-Whip, of which you shall taste the stinging kiss this eve one way or another, should I catch a whiff of spiderweb on your wretched breath or not — it matters not to me. I thirst for your agony."The Bat Man wasn't fucking around tonight, Robman realized. Now trembling, he went grasping and fumbling fruitlessly through the darkness, desperately searching for a back door which he knew did not exist.The Bat Man's shadow poured downwards from the Bat-Pole-Hole above, like an ink streaming forth from God's peehole, oppressively quenching the small sliver of light which Robman slowly inched his way towards. He could smell the peppermint schnapps on the Bat Man's breath even from his spiderweb-sucking perch hidden all deep-down Bat-Cave way."I'm in deep shit..." Robman muttered to himself, praying Mama Alfred came home. She had zero patience for this kind of bullshit, and several times Robman had been saved by her slapping the shit out of a drunk the Bat Man before he could stumble down the broken Bat-Scalator and begin abusing his ward. Robman so longed for the days of their Bat-Imprisonment, when he would merely be kept awake by the sounds of the Bat Man pleasuring himself, instead of the soul-wrecking moans of a lone the Bat Man unhinged.“RAAAAAHHHHHHB MAAANNNNNNNNN!!!"Came the shrieking wail from the the Bat Man above, who was now whipped into a great fervor, screaming like a banshee.Robman could do naught but curl his head into his knees, gently rock back and forth, and listen as the the Bat Man upstairs proceeded to systematically destroy every room in the manor in a fit of terrifying Bat-Fury.He wondered how long would he have to spend down there in the darkness of the Bat-Cave... perhaps all night, perhaps all day as well — however long it took for the Bat Man to exhaust himself and collapse into unconsciousness. If not for his desire to once more taste the kiss of sweet, sweet spiderweb as it danced across his tongue, Robman thought there was no way he would live through the long and violent Bat-Storm upstairs.“RAAAAAAHHHHHBBB-MAAANNNN!!! WARD! LISTEN, YOU — WHAT WAS WILL BE. WHAT IS WILL BE NO MORE!!”Just as another one of the Bat Man’s crazed shouts pierced his ear for the third time, Robman felt a strange sensation in his left leg, which quickly trembled in a very localized spot for an extended period. After a moment of panic, he realized it was his cell phone. He so rarely felt it vibrate like that, since he so rarely received a call from anyone.His heart pounding, he pulled out his phone, expecting it to be the Bat Man and for this to be the beginning of another incident like the one three weeks ago, where he didn’t pick up because he was taking a shower, and the Bat Man called him 44 times, along with countless threatening texts.When he saw the name of the caller on the monochrome display, though, his heart began pounding even harder. It read:
INCOMING CALLX-GF CAT
Robman barely had managed to so much as flip open his ancient Motorola before the words were already spilling out of his mouth. They came easy, as they were words he had spoken to her a thousand times in the past.“Ohthankgod Cat, can you come pick me up!?”
The Bat Man rapped viciously at the side of his Bat-Computer-Tower, distraught and confused and wrestling with the very concept of technology in his special and disgusting way. Robman sat miserably across the room, staring blankly at the Bat Man as he underwent his daily violent outburst directed at nonworking electronics, although they were almost always “nonworking” only in the sense that the Bat Man was completely incapable of operating them. The scape of their computing power together was immeasurable, but the Bat Man had no desire to take advantage of that, it seemed. He knew how to use the Bat-Quicktime player, and access the internet with his Bat-Netscape-Navigator — though just barely, as his application window was choked with all sorts of adware tabs and popups, and barely functional. Additionally, despite the massive Bat-Monitor overhead, for some reason he insisted the settings be such that the Bat-Computers only output at a mere 800x600 resolution. Because of this, even Robman was barely capable of making the dozens of Bat-Computers do anything useful, which meant the Bat Man never even stood a chance."God dammit, I still can't manage to buy any Batcoins!" The Bat Man screamed when he was done beating the computer. The Bat Man had become obsessed with cryptocurrency the previous weekend, and had been insisting that he had invented an electronic currency of his own.Robman placed his head in his hands, and slowly rotated his chair to face his back to the Bat Man.“Please,” he whimpered, "please stop calling it that. You know it's called BITcoin. That joke wasn't even funny the first time.” He clinched his eyes shut tightly and prayed to hear the alarm announcing that COPS was on TV in 3 minutes, or Mama Alfred ringing the Bat-Dinner-Bell, or anything to distract the Bat Man long enough for him to enjoy five minutes of quiet."What joke??” Shrieked the Bat Man in an unusually shrill and surprised voice, "I made my own NFT and it's a Batcoin."Robman sighed heavily, before he slowly started to rotate to face his crypto-obsessed boss once more. Nearly all traces of the eager, wide-eyed and willing Boy Friend he once was had faded some time ago. The preceding months had been exhausting at best, but probably closer to absolutely soul-crushing, especially for someone with as tenuous a grasp on sanity and coherence as Robman. Additionally, the forced complete separation from his ex-girlfriend had only hastened his transformation into a bitter, anger-prone cynic.Robman was acutely aware of this change within his psyche, despite never before having qualified of being acutely anything, let alone aware. But the way he thought about the Bat Man when he was alone made it all to clear that the anger he had begun to display was more honestly deserving to be aimed at himself. Because he was quite angry at himself — angry at the love he had so clearly begun to hold for his be-cowled Bat-Boss, despite the never-ending parade of abuses and embarrassments he had suffered at his Bat-Hands over the past several months. He was angry at the fact that he once again felt these things for another man, despite his damndest efforts to be heterosexual, if only for the sake of his decade-old desire for the Cat Lady… whom he had now been forced to ignore completely, at the insistence of the Bat Man he now desired instead.He focused this wide array of conflicting emotions towards his boss, channeling it into good ol’ fashioned spite, which he had learned was something he was surprisingly talented at displaying. And yet with each spiteful outburst, each clench of his fist, and every time he sighed so hard his shoulders slouched a little lower than they ever had before, he could absolutely feel the toll that these negative emotions were taking on him, and it felt as if he was racing the clock to find the strength to openly admit his love for the Bat Man before the repressed emotions soured within him and caused him to wither away and die before he ever had the chance.However, this would not be the day he opened up his heart.“So help me god, the Bat Man," Robman groaned. "If you break another one of my computers by putting nickels in the monitor vents..."Robman turned to face the Bat Man just in time to see him closing the computer's optical drive with a pile of loose change where there should be a DVD."Don't worry, I put the money in the boring part of the computer this time.” the Bat Man assured him.Robman stared on poker-faced as the Bat-Computer whirred and shuddered and ceased to function, just as had the dozen or so other computers which had been his before the Bat Man ruined them in one way or another.The Bat Man already had multiple different state-of-the-art computers and displays — solid state and quantum, holographic and otherwise — and all were connected to every manner of international database of known criminals, villains, petty thieves, and sex offenders compiled by various government agencies or privately assembled by various super-powered crime-fighting leagues of justice and other bullshit like that. And while all this was easily accessible, in the adjacent room from this new Bat-Computer Bat-Lab they currently occupied, the Bat Man insisted they would be better served by various clunky HP and Dell home PC towers, which now lined the room like sarcophagi, bricked in one way or another by the Bat Man.Just then, his most recent Bat-Computer casualty — the one he had just inserted his pocket change into, for some reason — suddenly stopped whirring and began crackling and smoking."Oh FUDGE!” the Bat Man shouted. ”Bingo, it stopped working! Now there’s that grey ghost-y stuff coming out of it too! Help, Bingo!”The Bat Man had recently taken to calling Robman "Bingo" for some reason. Additionally, it seemed he had forgotten the word “smoke”, which caused Robman to throw his arms out towards the Bat Man, palms skyward.“Oh C’MON!” Robman shouted to a God that wasn’t listening. “Now he doesn’t even know what smoke is!? Give me a break!” He was still bitter about being called a motherfucking butthead a few months ago when he doubted that the Bat Man had seen Star Wars, and this latest remark was testing his suspension of disbelief as much as it was yours. While the Bat Man played the part of the hapless, technologically-inept boomer rather convincingly, the shitty smirk which he never bothered hiding gave away that he knew damn well what he was doing each and every single time that he broke one of Robman's stupid fucking Bat-Computers.When Robman’s shouted prayer went unanswered, and the Bat Man continued to claim ignorance of anything and everything that was convenient at the moment, his head fell into his rubber-gloved hands — the Bat Man made him wear the gloves at all times, partially just as a general commitment to always wearing one’s Bat-Bullshit, and partially in case he decided he wanted to play doctor again.The Bat Man was breaking him. Any effort was pointless. There was no way to stop the mad the Bat Man, and even if he were to try, the result would only be more apology sessions in the dungeon with the Bat-Whip.So he wept. There was nothing else he could do. For the first time since meeting the Bat Man, and suffering his barrage of abuses both physical and emotional, Robman wept openly.The Bat Man actually felt a twinge of guilt, but only for a moment, before realizing that what he was actually feeling was hunger, not guilt."Robma— err, I mean — Bingo! I hunger!" the Bat Man announced, and pressed the special button he had installed on his utility belt that played a fanfare of trumpets. He did this after making especially important announcements, as sort of an unbearably obnoxious punctuation. “Fetch me a sando!”Robman responded only by crying even louder."Bingo, I said —""BATMAN, PLEASE!" Moaned an anguished Robman, "Please stop! You know there's nothing down here to eat. And you know we’re trapped down here until Mama Alfred gets back from her business trip and rings the Bat-Dinner-Bell, lowering the Bat-Ladder to the Bat-Dining-Room!”He was right. The Bat Man's hunger was not going to change the fact that they were still trapped in the Bat-Cave — which they were, as the Bat-Elevator had broken and neither of them possessed the upper-body strength necessary to climb back up the Bat-Pole. Additionally, the Bat Man had already wrecked their new Bat-Car — as well as its replacement, and the replacement Bat-Car’s replacement, all within a week, for what its worth — which left the original “gay” Bat-Car the only option for driving out via the extensive tunnel system. The Bat Man swore those tunnels went on for “at least a hundred miles”, so walking was out of the question, yet maddeningly so was driving the original Bat-Car, as the Bat Man insisted that would result in far too big of a risk of being seen driving that thing. Robman himself could not seem to find a steering wheel, let alone an ignition or corresponding Bat-Key when he had eventually swallowed his pride and attempted to drive it himself. Even more maddeningly, the Bat Man wouldn’t let Robman try the door that appeared to be marked “Batscalator”, in what must have been a woeful attempt at rebranding an escalator to fit the overall Corporate Bat-Aesthetic. However, months ago, the Bat Man had taken a sharpie to the door’s labeling and made the S larger, while adding “master” as a prefix, so that instead of reading "Batscalator" it read “Masterbat Scalator”. Masterbat Scalator being, of course, a borderline-illiterate and exceptionally stupid man’s attempt at making a joke about having a room that not only housed Skeletor from Masters of the Universe, but also was specifically constructed for Skeletor to jack off in. This “joke” was much more than a stretch, especially considering that — were it even spelled somewhat correctly — “Masturbate Skeletor” itself reads much more like a terrible demand than it does a label signifying “Skeletor’s Masturbation Room”. However, this still did not stop the Bat Man from fooling Robman… because Robman really was that fucking stupid sometimes. A lot of the time, really. Worse still, the Bat Man forgot that relabeling the door was his doing, and now neither man would dare open it out of fear of interrupting Skeletor. Even if they had risked that potential awkwardness, they would only have found the out-of-order Batscalator — and there was no way in hell the Bat Man was going to walk up stairs like some kind of poor, just as there was no way Robman would leave his master behind, so it was ultimately hopeless. It was thanks to these facts — as well as many other entirely avoidable comedies of error and acts of unbridled stupidity — that the Bat Man and his dutiful ward Robman truly were trapped in a dungeon of their own making, which just so happened to be located right above the Bat-cave’s actual dungeon.“Gosh darnit…” Robman sighed, mostly to himself. “I really could go for a sick caesar right now.” He said this with the casual confidence of someone who was completely unaware that absolutely nobody else in the world was embarrassing enough to shorten ‘caesar salad’ into ‘sick caesar’.Fortunately for him, the Bat Man was also too out-of-touch to find that egregious linguistic faux pax notable enough to comment on.“Still no food, huh?” the Bat Man sighed. “Probably shoulda built a Bat-Quiznos instead of a dungeon, huh?”Robman shot the Bat Man a horrified look.“Who the heck eats at Quiznos??” He asked.“Oh, uh… not me,” the Bat Man said, lying, as visions of toasty, stale sandwiches of questionable meat made soggy by a completely-unnecessary slathering of sauce danced through his head, his stomach rumbling in response. “No sir, I was a Blimpie man, through and through!”Robman’s look of horror turned into a look of shock, partly because he was pretty sure there were no more Blimpies, and partly because it was the first time in human history that anyone had uttered the phrase “a Blimpie man through and through”.“Oh,” Robman muttered, calming down significantly. “R-right. Plus, all the crime-fighting happening, you don’t have time to wait for a sandwich to toast, now.”The Bat Man nodded solemnly.“Yes, yes… I learned that lesson all too tragically,” he said stoically, his gaze drifting off into the middle-distance. “You know, Robman, that’s… how my parents died…”“Excuse me?” Robman furrowed his brow.“My parents — Barry and Andrew Man — I was just a moment too late to save them from being crushed beneath that giant wheel,” the Bat Man sadly explained. “Because I stopped at Quiznos on the way to rescue them, and the toaster took longer than anticipated.”“That’s… awful. I’m so sorry.” Robman shook his head, sympathizing with the Bat Man. “I guess you should have stopped at Jimmy Johns…”“No, Robman!” the Bat Man spat back at his ward. “Never Jimmy Johns!” With this statement the Bat Man turned to look Robman dead in the eyes, with a calm, regretful seriousness which had not been seen by his ward thus far.Robman held his gaze for a long moment.“Nobody,” the Bat Man continued, “NOBODY needs a sandwich THAT fast. The speed at which Jimmy John shits out his mediocre sandwiches is an affront to God himself.”“Right, okay, no Jimmy Johns.” Robman mentally noted this.“One day you’ll understand.” The Bat Man said.“I will?” Robman asked. “Cause I think I got it.”“No matter,” the Bat Man said, perking back up. “The blame doesn’t fall on me nearly as much as it does on my arch-nemesis, John Chidsey Man.”“J-John Chidsey…man?”“Yes, ward. You probably know him simply as the dastardly Chidseyman. The most evil rogue of all those in my gallery of supervillains…” The Bat Man slammed his fist into his palm as he stared off into space once more.“Whats his special power?”“He’s the CEO of Subway.”“Holy moly!” Robman gasped, “You don’t mean…”“Yes Robman,” the Bat Man said, adopting his batsplaining voice. “The very same chain of Subway sandwich shops of which I am no longer allowed to enter.”“You… can’t go into any Subway?”“I’m afraid not in this state… and all for the simple mistake of forgetting to wear pants a few dozen times.”“Oh, I mean… I guess I can understand that…”Suddenly the Bat Man whipped his head around to look at Robman again, glaring at him and pointing angrily as he spoke.“You show me ONE sign that says pants are required! ONE sign! Where’s the fucking sign, Chidseyman? Where’s the sign??”Robman was used to these mood swings and outbursts by now, and simply nodded his head gently, waiting for the Bat Man to calm down again and being sure only to agree with him until that point — he was getting good at navigating their interactions.“Yeah,” Robman said quietly, “We’ll get that son of a bitch.”The Bat Man perked up as Robman swore, as gentle of a swear as it was.“Whoa! Son of a Bitch?? Look who’s talking cool now!” The Bat Man smiled and held up his hand. “High five!”Robman couldn’t help but to blush and grin sheepishly at the Bat Man’s praise. He was talking cool now! And just like that, if it hadn’t already been forgotten, all remaining anger or bitterness from the incident with the computers earlier was washed away fully, and when their hands touched ever-so-briefly in the high-five that followed, Robman felt his heart flutter with the contact. It didn’t matter if they were trapped. They were together, and Robman was learning — learning about the Bat Man, learning about various sandwich shops, learning how to talk cool… these lessons alone were worth the price of a little bit of hunger, and plus, the Bat Man had promised to pay him back in Batcoins once he got his Bat-Blockchain set up.Sure, they were in a bad situation, and they just spent Christmas watching the Bat Man’s DVDs of “Billy Madison” and “Happy Gilmore” while on the verge of starving — historically one of the worst Christmases anyone has ever had, anywhere — but at least they had each other… just two cool dudes in a cave, killing time, doing dude stuff, writing new Star Wars scripts and such. The Bat Man was his friend. His partner. His mentor. His… the love of his goddamned life.However, the proud smile on Robman’s face faded once more with the growling of his stomach, and then the dull pain of the hunger pangs returned“Ugh,” Robman squirmed, shaking his head slowly, “Hey Bruce—““Don’t call me that!” The Bat Man interrupted. “I don’t know who Bruce is!”“Oh, uh… right,” Robman said, “Sorry. But just — for now how about no more talk about food?”The Bat Man huffed and pouted, slamming his fists into the sides of his hips and looking disappointed.“Well what the hell else is there to talk about, then??” He whined. “I’m too goddamned Bat-Starving to talk about Star Wars anymore!”Robman cocked his head.“We can do that? We’re adding ‘Bat-‘ before adjectives now?” He asked.“Da fuck is an adjective??” The Bat Man laughed. “I liked it better when you were talking cool!”Robman sighed.“Sir, when is Mama Alfred going to have dinner prepared?” He asked.“Oh, I’ve got no idea…” the Bat Man said ominously, “I sent her off on a business trip to capture Penguins. And I’ve got NO idea how many days it’s been, I’ve been in a cave!”Robman raised an eyebrow.“I’m sorry — you… sent Mama Alfred to capture The Penguin?? What? Why?” He asked incredulously.“Uh, I sent her to Cozumel to capture all of them — cause I was busy!” The Bat Man explained. “So, when that’s done she’ll be back, the streets will be safer, we’ll have ourselves some grilled cheese — it’ll be fine. Patience, young Bingo.”Robman looked absolutely crushed by this news.“But… I’ve got to eat something. Soon…” He sighed.The Bat Man thought for a moment, smirked, then snapped his fingers at pointed at Robman. "You know, Bingo, you COULD eat some spiderwebs…"
***
Six weeks after their daring escape from the Batcave, Robman felt an overwhelming tenderness in his heart when he thought on the memories of that time they had spent trapped together, and every day for long stretches of time he found himself in a daze, oblivious to the world around him as his mind existed solely in the memories of that time. When he slept, he dreamt only but of those days. For the time being, those memories were thankfully enough to soothe his building resentment and anger at the way the love of his life — the Bat Man — had been treating him the last several weeks. Their friendship was constantly challenged, and their partnership, even though it would only ever be a temporary affair until the return of the Bat Girl, now was practically nonexistent in the eyes of the Bat Man.He partially blamed himself for this — for not catching enough (or any) supervillains, for not talking cool enough, for wrecking the Bat-Car twice, among plenty of other shortcomings — but he mostly, and undeservingly blamed Cody. It was Cody who had staged their daring midnight escape from the cave, revealing himself to have survived the apparent attempt on his life by the villainous Two-Faces before heroically rescuing them from their fate of wasting away in the darkness, all while Gotham swiftly fell into the hands of the evil villains they were currently unable to do battle with. Although Robman had been unconscious for most of their escape, and as a result still had not actually met Cody, he certainly heard how highly the Bat Man spoke about him — how often the Bat Man went on and on about how cool Cody was, or spontaneously announced how much he liked Cody. It made Robman’s stomach turn every time… even moreso than Mama Alfred’s weird grilled cheeses, which she made with Kraft grated parmesan cheese and that weird, dense “Ezekiel” bread that always felt damp. Robman didn’t think anyone actually bought that crap, and after trying it, he sure wished Mama Alfred didn’t.It was due to his chasing the feeling of those days — the thrill of being trapped with nothing to look at but the Bat Man as he moved about in his skintight Bat-Suit-thing — that he found himself venturing down into the Batcave yet again. But when he did, Robman would be all alone, deep in the darkness of that rabies-filled hellhole… much as he was this particular time.Robman pressed his cold, waxy lips to another spider's web. With his vision rendered useless in the pitch black darkness of the cave, he found all his other senses heightened, and he could already taste the silky, slightly slimy musk of the spiderweb before it even hit his tongue. This only made him thirst for the taste of sweet, sweet web even more, and a moment later he inhaled sharply, tearing the spiderweb from it’s purchase on the cave wall and sliding it gruesomely down his throat."I wish this night could last forever…” Robman cooed to another spiderweb on the wall, which he had felt brush against his nose. "I can't wait to consume you."His blissful state was shattered by a terrifying voice from up the Bat-Pole.“Robman!" It shouted. "I swear to god if you're hiding out down there sucking down spiderwebs again, I'm gonna be furious."Uh-oh, Robman thought, I'm totally busted!"N-no, your highness!" Shouted Robman, his words very clearly gummed up and thickened by the residual spiderweb laced throughout his teeth and under his tongue like a tough and bitter cotton candy. "I was merely polishing your Bat-Boomerang Things!"“Robman…” Came the now-unnervingly-calm response, "If you so much as lay a finger on my Bat-Boomerangs, I will reign down upon you with a beating so brutal and pitiless that you will find your shitty web-covered tongue pleading to long-dead gods that I relent and merely bring down upon you the wrath of my Bat-Whip. Yes — my Bat-Whip, of which you shall taste the stinging kiss this eve one way or another, should I catch a whiff of spiderweb on your wretched breath or not — it matters not to me. I thirst for your agony."The Bat Man wasn't fucking around tonight, Robman realized. Now trembling, he went grasping and fumbling fruitlessly through the darkness, desperately searching for a back door which he knew did not exist.The Bat Man's shadow poured downwards from the Bat-Pole-Hole above, like an ink streaming forth from God's peehole, oppressively quenching the small sliver of light which Robman slowly inched his way towards. He could smell the peppermint schnapps on the Bat Man's breath even from his spiderweb-sucking perch hidden all deep-down Bat-Cave way."I'm in deep shit..." Robman muttered to himself, praying Mama Alfred came home. She had zero patience for this kind of bullshit, and several times Robman had been saved by her slapping the shit out of a drunk the Bat Man before he could stumble down the broken Bat-Scalator and begin abusing his ward. Robman so longed for the days of their Bat-Imprisonment, when he would merely be kept awake by the sounds of the Bat Man pleasuring himself, instead of the soul-wrecking moans of a lone the Bat Man unhinged.“RAAAAAHHHHHHB MAAANNNNNNNNN!!!"Came the shrieking wail from the the Bat Man above, who was now whipped into a great fervor, screaming like a banshee.Robman could do naught but curl his head into his knees, gently rock back and forth, and listen as the the Bat Man upstairs proceeded to systematically destroy every room in the manor in a fit of terrifying Bat-Fury.He wondered how long would he have to spend down there in the darkness of the Bat-Cave... perhaps all night, perhaps all day as well — however long it took for the Bat Man to exhaust himself and collapse into unconsciousness. If not for his desire to once more taste the kiss of sweet, sweet spiderweb as it danced across his tongue, Robman thought there was no way he would live through the long and violent Bat-Storm upstairs.“RAAAAAAHHHHHBBB-MAAANNNN!!! WARD! LISTEN, YOU — WHAT WAS WILL BE. WHAT IS WILL BE NO MORE!!”Just as another one of the Bat Man’s crazed shouts pierced his ear for the third time, Robman felt a strange sensation in his left leg, which quickly trembled in a very localized spot for an extended period. After a moment of panic, he realized it was his cell phone. He so rarely felt it vibrate like that, since he so rarely received a call from anyone.His heart pounding, he pulled out his phone, expecting it to be the Bat Man and for this to be the beginning of another incident like the one three weeks ago, where he didn’t pick up because he was taking a shower, and the Bat Man called him 44 times, along with countless threatening texts.When he saw the name of the caller on the monochrome display, though, his heart began pounding even harder. It read:
INCOMING CALLX-GF CAT
Robman barely had managed to so much as flip open his ancient Motorola before the words were already spilling out of his mouth. They came easy, as they were words he had spoken to her a thousand times in the past.“Ohthankgod Cat, can you come pick me up!?”
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse