"The Gotham Grouchfest" - Part Five

Part Five

            Accompanied by the Mystery Incorporated kids in their “Mystery Machine,” Skeeta and Sonia followed Batman to Arkham Asylum and combed the area as discreetly as possible. Not very long after did Erica and Alan arrive in Erica’s car, with half of the Gotham City police force following close behind. Erica spotted Gordon and Flass among the men. “Stay here,” she instructed Alan as she got out of her car.

            “What?!” Alan objected. “I thought we were in this together!”

            “In what together, man?” Erica ridiculed. “I’m a cop, you’re a civilian. So, stay your butt in the car, while I do my thang!”

            Of course, Alan didn’t follow her order for very long.

            A few minutes after she left, he snuck out of her car and snooped around the asylum property. He noticed some activity happening within a derelict wing. While looking for a window to get a good view, he ran into a familiar, short-statured Asian woman, dressed in black.

            “You again?!” Alan griped.

            “What do you mean ‘you again’?” Sonia griped back, visibly furious to see him there. “Why aren’t you back at the Manor where it’s safe?”

            “You’re not my mother anymore!” Alan barked. “What’s with the concern?”

            “You know, I’ve just about had it with you!”

            “Not as much as I’ve had it with you!”

            Their bickering attracted the attention of the suspicious individuals inside the building, prompting a few of them to step out to investigate. In discovering Sonia and Alan, the armed thugs held them at gunpoint and forced them inside. There, they were brought to a suited man with a grotesque burlap sack on his head that doubled as a horrifying scarecrow-type mask.

            “What do we have here?” the scarecrow man mockingly inquired. “A mother and son who got lost on the way to the movies?”

            “She ain’t my mother,” Alan declared.

            “He’s right,” Sonia supported his claim, much to his surprise. “He’s just some dumb street punk that tried to mug me.”

            Alan frowned. “What are you…?” It didn’t occur to him until that second what Sonia was trying to do. She was still protecting him, in spite of his refusal to acknowledge her as his mother. While he probably should have felt grateful, it only irked him more. He was grown enough to handle this situation himself.

            “Well, if that’s the case,” the scarecrow said, drawing a handgun from out of his suit jacket and taking aim for Alan’s head. “I guess I’m free to kill him.”

            “NO!” Sonia cried; her ruse betrayed by her protective instincts.

            The scarecrow had anticipated such a reaction, moving his gun away from Alan. “So…he is your son…only a mother would respond with such nurturing affection,” he analyzed.

            “What are you anyway, man?” Alan asked. “A psychologist?”

            “I am actually – Dr. Jonathan Crane, at your service. And I’m about to make a lot of people feel better with my new medicine. Perhaps you’d like to try some.”

            Crane was just about to spray some sort of gas from a nozzle hidden within his sleeve, until the skylight above them exploded in shards that rained down on them. Sonia and Alan noticed two Batmen and one Super Grover drop in. Whereas the Batmen landed gracefully on their feet, Super Grover landed not-so-gracefully on his head.

            “Do not fear, citizens,” he woozily told Sonia and Alan. “For I…have a really bad headache!” Sonia pulled him in to join her and Alan as they hid themselves beneath a table. They noticed a woman lying on that table, gasping and convulsing.

            “What’s the matter with her?” Alan asked.

            “She must’ve had some of Crane’s ‘medicine’,” Sonia deduced.

            The Batmen made short work of Crane’s men, with the Batman domestic to this world even poisoning Crane with his own gas, rendering him into a fear-induced craze. The other Batman looked over to the woman on the table and asked his counterpart, “Who is she?”

            “Her name’s Rachel, and she’s my concern,” the domestic Batman stated. Glancing over to Sonia, Alan, and Grover, he instructed them, “Get yourselves out of here right now.”

            “What about Rachel?” Sonia queried upon learning the name of the poisoned woman. “She needs the antidote to whatever Crane gassed her with.”

            “I have one back in the cave,” the domestic Batman said. “But I can’t risk getting her out with the police right outside.”

            “Leave them to me,” the other Batman volunteered.

            His counterpart eyed him suspiciously. “I don’t even know who you are.”

            “I’m you…that’s all you need to know.”

            The distraction worked to perfection, with the other Batman storming off the Arkham property in a jet-propelled muscle car. For added measure, he rammed through the police barricade, urging the GCPD to pursue. At the speed he was going in his Batmobile, the police wouldn’t be able to keep up.

            Much later, everyone returned to Wayne Manor where Bruce supplied Rachel with the antidote in the bat cave beneath the manor. Shortly after he sedated her and unmasked, he moved to a nearby computer. “Where are you?” he muttered with his eyes intently searching the monitor that displayed a map of Gotham.

            “Where’s who?” Velma overheard him.

            “He’s talking about the other Batman,” Alan clarified.

            “There are two Batmen?!” Daphne reacted to this news that she, the rest of Mystery Inc., and even Skeeta were just finding out about. “Jeepers! How on earth did that happen?!”

            “That’s what I intend to find out, as soon as I’ve located the tracker I placed on him back in Arkham,” Bruce said.

            Suddenly, someone approached Bruce and slammed a miniscule, beeping device right onto the desktop. Following the gloved hand that held it up until then, Bruce and the others saw the other Batman standing in the cave. He removed his own cowl, revealing the face of a much younger Bruce Wayne with a mop of hair that hung over his eyes, smeared heavily with black eyeliner.

            “I don’t know how I got here,” he told his counterpart and the other strangers. “I was patrolling the streets of Gotham – my Gotham – shortly after the flood. And then, I was taken in by a light.”

            “A dimensional rift,” Sonia figured. “Possibly the same one that took the Sesame Street characters from their world.” On that realization, she then declared, “I promise you all will return to your homes, as soon as I’ve recovered my TARDIS from the docks.”

            “Yeah, about that…”

            Hearing Erica’s voice echoing through the cave, all eyes looked to the lift that led in and out of the cave. Erica stepped off of it, accompanied by Alfred. Her hands deep in the pockets of her long coat, she relayed to the group, “Assuming that big black domino-looking thing is this ‘TARDIS’ of yours, it’s been confiscated from the docks while we were at Arkham.”

            “So, the police got it?” Alan assumed. “That’s all good. We’ll just go over to the station and get it.”

            “That’s just the thing, honey,” Erica told him. “It wasn’t taken by the police.”