#that OR they have a closet comically full of identical uniforms and return in like five minutes perfectly clean and it makes fuuta So Mad 😂

[good-beanswrites]

A little comedy drabble for @kyanako5972 in return for their very impressive musical skills! (The Jailbreak mix wouldn't have fit together without ya👍) Fuuta gets his hands on some slime... They've done some art for it here :3

[I couldn't think of something funny enough, but insert broadway bootleg Milgram Slime Tutorial joke here]

Fuuta was open-minded. Of course he was. He was the most open-minded guy here. He knew that vengeance could come in many shapes. Sometimes it took the form of beautiful, poetic violence. Sometimes it was cutting words and a grand victory. And other times, it appeared as sticky craft slime. You just had to have an open mind to see it.

Not everyone was in as receptive of a mood. 

“A-are you sure it’s not a, a toy?” Haruka asked.

“It’s not.”

“B-but,” he pointed, “it’s --”

“No! It’s a weapon.”

“I don’t know if you know what a weapon is…” Amane looked down at the table. “You couldn’t have requested something a bit more… sharp?”

“Eh!? This is a pri-son. Like they’re gonna give me something like that. I’ve got to take matters into my own hands.”

To prove his point, he picked up his creation. The color wasn’t as flashy as the others’, but it held the perfect consistency for what he needed. It had taken some time to formulate the perfect plan of attack. There were rules he had to work around, after all. (No matter how open-minded he was, rules were rules.) There was a no-violence ban. Fuuta had already tested that one -- several times, actually -- and was sure he couldn’t get around it. Their requests were monitored, and it wasn’t as if he could go and order weapons. And then, even if he did get his hands on something truly dangerous, the original ban would stop him from using it. That left him with only one option.

“It’s definitely a toy. The others are playing with it.” It was true, Haruka, Muu and Yuno had their own colorful creations. Amane herself hadn’t grabbed any, though she sat with her eyes glued hungrily on the others’ projects. Her interest in it wasn’t helping Fuuta’s case.

“Exactly, it’s the perfect disguise! They’ll never see it coming.”

“There’s nothing to see coming…”

Muu poked at hers. “Look~ Mine’s cute and pink, see? I’m even going to add some glitter when Haruka’s finished with it.”

“I-I Uh, I think I added too much… sorry…” Haruka’s slime had lost all appealing texture, turned into a clumpy, sparkling mess.

Fuuta heaved the loudest sigh he could manage, but the others continued paying him no mind. He was doing this for them, shouldn’t they care? Es had slapped Haruka during his interrogation, for god’s sake! That was child abuse! Yuno was only a year older and returned from her interrogation with complaints of violence! And Fuuta --! Well, he actually hadn’t experienced any of that, but that didn’t matter. No hero of justice would let all that go unpunished. 

His moment came quicker than expected. He’d planned on ambushing Es coming in or out of their room, but they surprised everyone by coming into the common area. It was fate.

“I heard you all were playing with some crafts in here.”

Amane glanced at Fuuta. He shot her a look back that meant “don’t say a single word.” His exaggerated expression only drew Es’ attention.

“Something to say, prisoner three?”

“Yeah!” He wound up his arm. 

He had an open mind, but not necessarily a quick one. With more time, he could have come up with a righteous cry, something along the lines of: “this is for Haruka and Yuno, you damned scoundrel!” Or even: “meet your judgment, tyrant!”

But as the slime came careening toward’s Es’ face, the only thing he managed was, “fuck you!”

Splat.

The common room fell silent. Fuuta froze. The slime had hit its mark perfectly. It hit Es squarely on the side of the head. It splattered onto their hat. A good deal had tangled itself in their hair. It oozed toward their shoulder, clumps falling onto the uniform. As they tried to wipe it from their face, the material clung to their gloves, getting stuck between their fingers. 

Their eyes moved slowly from their ruined clothes to Fuuta’s still outstretched hand, to his face. “I see.”

They turned on their heel and left.

“That’ll teach ya!” He called out, a moment too late after they’d gone. He turned to Amane, who was watching with a mix of amusement and disappointment. “There’s no way that stuff’s washing out easy. Maybe they’ll have to put on a spare uniform in the meantime.” 

“You shouldn’t have made them so mad,” she said.

“Pah! What’s the brat gonna do? Name me guilty over it?”

[is-it-art-tho]

This is Chapter 4!

Chapter 1  Chapter 2.  Chapter 3.  Chapter 5

Summary: The BatFam goes to a party and Dick learns that even the suburbs of Gotham aren't without their monsters. Especially on Halloween.

“You’re loving this, aren’t you?” Dick asked, studying himself in the full-length mirror hanging on his closet door.

“I really am,” Barbara giggled. She’d been cracking up for nearly five minutes straight, tears streaming down her flushed cheeks as her abdomen ached. “Hold your phone up higher. And do another spin.”

“Babs,” he whined, lifting his phone to give her a better view.

“Please?” She let her voice got all plaintive and cute the way she knew would turn Dick into putty in her hands. It was a power she had discovered long ago, and one she wielded with reckless abandon.

Dick obeyed, the silky cape drifting around him as he came to a stop. He was in a replica of her old Batgirl uniform. Some knock-off Tim had scored in an online bidding war.

“You look great,” she said. The suit she used to wear hadn’t been quite so delicate. The overall gist was more or less accurate, but hers had been designed with combat in mind, everything layered and dense. The cape had been heavier, the boots not quite so rubbery and squeaky, and the colors much more muted – it would be hard to sneak up on anyone with bright neon yellows and purples announcing your presence from a mile away.

Even so, looking at the suit now, she could almost feel the wind rushing past her face; could feel her stomach flip in the sweeping arc from one building to the next.

For a long time, she hadn’t been able to remember those days without a bitter knot twisting in her gut. She was glad now to be able to look back fondly.

“You know, I really do,” Dick agreed, twisting to show off his butt in the thin spandex. “But I’ve seen better.” He flashed a rakish grin, and she laughed.

“You sure you can’t make an appearance tonight?” he asked.

“Nah. I’m still troubleshooting some bugs from the last system update. Probably take a while.”

Dick sighed. “Won’t be as fun without you there.”

“You bet your ass.”

He barked a laugh as he walked away from the mirror and set his phone down. Now the entire screen was black as she listened to him talk and move around his room.

“Just so you know,” he said, opening and closing drawers. “There’s probably gonna be like a ton of girls there. Can’t make any promises if I meet a nice lady Nightwing.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she grinned. “See you later, Batboy.”

She ended the call before he could protest the name and smiled to herself, letting the warmth of the conversation linger in the air a moment longer before turning her attention to her computer.

____________

The party was in one of the wealthy suburbs just outside of the city and the houses were pretty big. Not Wayne Manor big, but large enough to comfortably host well over a hundred people. It was one of those sprawling parties that took up every inch of the house and the back yard and managed to also bleed out into the street.

In every direction people were gyrating and laughing. There was no way most of them even knew whose house this was, but no one seemed too concerned about that. The host certainly wasn’t. Dick had seen him drunkenly carving a pumpkin by the pool and had quietly switched the steak knife out with a butter knife before the guy’s headless horseman costume became a lot more convincing.

Now Dick was standing on the deck, watching the fire pit where Steph, Tim, and Damian were among the crowd roasting marshmallows. Cass was leaning against Steph’s shoulder, her arms wrapped around her knees. Dick couldn’t see her expression through the papier mache Red Hood mask, but he could tell by her languid body language that she was having a good time.

Seeing them in each other’s uniforms was disorienting, like looking at a green sky or eating hot ice cream. Not necessarily bad, just off. But the anxiety he’d felt about the risk to their identities had died when he’d picked them up from the manor and saw them up close.

They looked more like pajamas than anything else, and they definitely wouldn’t draw any more attention than a bedsheet ghost or a grim reaper. Plus, their open enthusiasm for the whole thing made them all seem that much younger and unassuming. Just a bunch of young people excited about Halloween. It was honestly pretty fun to watch, especially coming from kids who were so often called upon to leave their more childish impulses at the door.

He put his phone to his ear. “Babs?”

“Batboy!” There was a smile in her voice. “Sounds like you’re having fun.”

She must have been talking about the music. It was coming from every direction. His bones rattled with each chord and was once again reminded of how freaking old he was getting. When had that happened?

“It’s a riot,” he said, dodging a fairy as she stumbled toward him with a plate piled high with nachos. Both she and the nachos went over the railing and the sound of the impact below hit him with a pang of guilt for not just stopping her. When he peeked down, she was laughing from the center of a bush. Four other fairies leaned over the side to laugh and throw pretzels at her.

“Uneventful?”

“So far.” He squinted for a second at Damian who was now standing, showing a Power Ranger a batarang. He nearly bolted across the yard until he noted the way it caught the light of the fire. Dick was fairly certain it was either plastic or cardboard. Not real. At least, he hoped not.

Cass and Stephanie had gotten up and slipped past him through the French doors and into the kitchen. Tim was still sitting by the fire, clumsily navigating a conversation with a witch who was openly flirting with him. He tossed a pleading look to Dick, who just smiled and waved, savoring every second of it.

“I think Tim has a new girlfriend,” he added.

“Fun. How’s Steph handling it?”

He glanced back into the house. She and Cass were rifling through a massive trash bag of candy that had been left on a counter, picking out all the king-sized bars and grinning ravenously. The many pockets in Cass’s brown leather jacket – Dick wasn’t sure if Jason had loaned it or if she’d commandeered it – were already full to bursting.

“Inconsolable.”

“Poor girl.” Babs sounded distracted, keys clacking as she muttered to herself.

“What’re you up to?”

“I keep getting the same system error, but I can’t figure out if it’s an issue with the hardware or software. I’ve run like ten diagnostic protocols already and I’ve been staring at the same wall of code for like five hours. I’m probably gonna end up just rebooting the whole thing. Comms’ll be down for a couple hours. Or days the way this is going.”

One finger jammed into his free ear, Dick wandered down the steps and around toward the front of the house in search of a respite from the chaos. He motioned to Damian, signaling that he was on a call, and Damian, in his oversized Batman cowl, nodded.

It wasn’t until Dick was a few houses away that the music and chatter became more of a muted throb than an overwhelming assault.

“What’s B up to?” he asked in a lull, his pace slowing.

“Alfred got him to hang around the manor and help give out candy for a while. I think he guilted him with the turmeric incident.”

Dick laughed then he went quiet for a moment, considering, before asking, “And Jason?”

“Nothing. Is it just me or does something seem off with him? I mean, I know he’s not the most communicative guy in the world but, I don’t know.”

Dick sighed. “It’s compli–” He fell silent. At the end of the block there was a guy in a wolf mask standing under a streetlight just… staring at him.

Dick glanced over his shoulder then back at the man.

“Dick?” Barbara asked.

He didn’t respond. A sense of foreboding had washed over him; a crackling thrum in the air that set all of the hairs on his body on end.

Instinctively, he found himself taking stock of his surroundings. He already knew exactly how many steps it would take to close the distance between them, how long it would take for him to get back to the party if he needed to.

He knew how he could use the string lights on the porch closest to him as a weapon or a restraint. How he could tear his Velcro cape from his own shoulders and get it around the man’s face and throat or disarm him since it looked like he was holding something – a pipe? There was a garden gnome in the yard beside him with a hat that looked sharp enough to do some damage if it came to that.

The man was big. Probably had a foot and eighty pounds on Dick.

Dick pushed his cowl back from his face.

The man turned and lumbered away.

Dick exhaled.

“Dick.” Barbara’s voice had slipped past playful curiosity. She sounded about two seconds away from alerting the cavalry.

“I’m here.”

“Geez. What just happened?”

Dick watched the disappear around the corner. “I don’t know. There was just some guy. He was staring at me, I think.”

“Friend of yours?”

“Not likely.”

“Maybe he just really likes Batgirl,” she teased.

Dick let out a breathy laugh, but the man had set him on edge and now he needed to run it off.

“Think I’m gonna call it on this party,” he said. “I need to unwind.”

“Most people do that sort of thing at parties.”

“And since when have I ever been like ‘most people?’”

Babs laughed and Dick felt his chest warm.

“You going home or going out?” she asked.

“I think we both know the answer to that,” he said, grinning as he turned back toward the party.

“Where would this city be with you, Batboy?” she sighed airily.

Dick chuckled despite himself. “Talk to you in a few,” he said, then hung up and opened a group message with Steph, Cass, Damian, and Tim.

Leaving early. Be back in a few hours to pick you up.

Tim’s message came a few seconds later. Don’t worry about it. We’ll just hot wire a car here.

You can’t just steal a car. Dick.

It’s not theft if we return the vehicle. Damian.

Everybody is wasted anyway, Stephanie said. We’d be doing this city a favor.

Cass just sent a car emoji, a beer, and an emoji of a girl making an X with her arms.

Exactly, Steph responded.

Dick pursed his lips and decided to roll the dice on whether or not they were joking. If they weren’t, he hoped they’d at least return the car before it was missed.

He was standing by his own car now, staring at the screen as he mind went to other things. Babs had sounded stressed, so already he was set on stopping by her place. Maybe he could bring her some of the candy he'd managed to snag throughout the night. He could swing by the Manor for his Nightwing suit and then hit Barbara’s place before going on patrol.

Just the thought made him smile, but there was something else still nagging at him. He needed to find Jason. He still had no idea what he wanted to say, but he couldn’t leave things the way they were.

As he sorted out his plans for the evening, his screen went black. And only then, in the dark reflection of the glass, did he see the wolf mask peering over his shoulder.

And in a flash Dick was turning, ducking, his fist clenched.

And then he was falling, and the left side of his head was an explosion of white, searing pain, and suddenly he was staring at boots, one half of his face hot and wet and throbbing, the other cold against the sidewalk.

He heard himself dragging in short, ragged breaths, his teeth gritted as he ordered his body to move. But his limbs remained where they were, heavy and obstinate. His neck ached as he tilted his face up to look his attacker in the eye, his cheek scraping against the sidewalk.

Squinting into the light of the streetlamp, Dick’s eyes focused just in time to watch the man bring the pipe down again, fast and hard.

And Dick heard the sickening wet crack of bone yielding to metal.

And then nothing.