It Comes With the Cape

Uncle J

Robin is something like nine or ten in this one. Dunno for sure. Somewhere in that ballpark.

Italics are thoughts.

xXx

Dick was sulking on the rooftops of Gotham. Why couldn't anyone ever take him seriously? He had been working for a year and a half to give his name some credibility, and yet he was still a joke.

He heard footsteps behind him. He didn't move from his place sitting on the edge of the building. If they did something, he figured he was capable of handling it.

"What do we have here? A little birdie, here to visit his Uncle J!" An eerie voice reverberated around him. He knew who it was.

"What do you want, Joker?" he asked in an exacerbated tone, not turning around.

"Now, now, don't get short with your uncle. Don't you want to see Auntie Harley?"

Now, Harley wasn't so bad when she wasn't trying to impress the Clown Prince of Crime. She was actually fun to talk to, and Robin had something of a fondness for her, much as he would an aunt. But she could be absolutely unbearable when the Joker was around.

"Maybe some other time." He stood up, pulling out his grappling hook.

"No, no, no! You simply MUST come and see the place we're staying. It's simply marvelous!"

Before Robin could shoot the hook, or do anything escape-wise, really, his "uncle" threw a smokebomb full of knockout gas straight at his face. Instinctively, he swatted it away, but it still exploded on his hand and enveloped him in a cloud of noxious green gas.

He tried to get out of the cloud, but couldn't in time to keep from inhaling some. His vision blurred, and he collapsed, cursing his poor judgement.

xXx

When he awoke, he was tied in an awkward cocoonish bundle of ropes dangling upside-down from the ceiling of... somewhere. His sight was a bit slow in returning all the way. His arms were pinned across his chest, which was a tad unusual.

"Ooooh! Boy Birdie is awake!" he heard a woman squeal. Harley. Thankfully, he didn't have much of a headache for it to aggravate. He did have a bit of one, no doubt from his position upside-down. But it wasn't half of what he'd had in the past.

He shook his head in an attempt to clear it. "Now, Bird-Boy, aren't you glad I made you come and visit your auntie and uncle?" The Joker cackled from somewhere above him.

"Depends on your definition of glad." He tried to get a good look at his surroundings, but being upside-down and with blurry vision kept him from recognising it. But at least his head was a bit below eye level, so if he fell on it, it wouldn't be terrible. That was a bit lower than sometimes, and it was still too high to use as a punching bag.

"Do ya know where ya are, Birdie?" Harley giggled. What was so funny about where he was?

"I'm sure you'll tell me regardless of my answer."

"You're in Wayne Enterprises' head honcho's office. You know who that is?" The Joker shoved his face where the Boy Wonder could see it clearly.

"I have a vague idea." Joy.

"Ol' Brucie Wayne! I haven't had the pleasure of meeting him quite yet, but I'm sure he's just great. Have you met him? I'm sure you've seen him once or twice on TV, but have you had a conversation with the fellow?"

"I helped him once with a couple of hackers once. He was nice enough, I guess." He wriggled around, trying to get out of his restraints. He was still seeing blurry blobs.

"You guess? What's that supposed to mean, you guess? Young 'uns these days, never speaking straight. Or thinking straight, for that matter."

He got a hand on a birdarang and started to saw at a rope, hopefully an important one.

"Mistah J, aren't ya gonna tell him why we're here?" Harley crooned.

"Ah, yes. You, my boy, are here to tell me how to get into the computer mainframe."

"For what? And why me? There's, like, a hundred other people in this city who are as good as me, and they'd be WILLING to do it."

"But none of them have experience with the Wayne Tech servers. Not like you, Birdie."

Dang it. Why'd I have to open my big mouth? Wait, they brought me here BEFORE I said that I'd helped Bruce. So it's NOT my fault I'm here. Not entirely, anyway.

"And why on earth would I help you?" He could start to make out the details of Bruce's office.

"Why, I'm your Uncle J! Why wouldn't you help me?"

He reluctantly decided to go along with the 'family' charade. "Because... Dad says if I hack anything that isn't the bad guys', he'll take away my TV privileges for a month."

"Oh, pooh on him. C'mon, tell your auntie and uncle how to get in, and I'll let you go. How's that?"

Fat chance. "I dunno... Can I have a treat if I do?" Almost... got it...

"Of course!" The clown nodded earnestly.

"Well, I guess then--" He fell to the floor, having finally cut himself free. "Not in a million years!" He hit the button that opened the office's windows (they were impossible to break, and Bruce would have a fit) and leapt out into the night, calling Batman on his com as he grappled a couple of blocks away.

He could afford to sit this one out. He still could barely see straight.