Batman pulled himself out of the rubble, coughing up dust. Whoever those two had been, they were likely dead now. That was when the whole place started to rumble. Batman held on tightly, and hoped to God it wasn’t another earthquake.
It wasn’t.
“DAMMIT, GUIDO!” a voice shouted. “I really don’t enjoy the feeling of your oversized kneecap in my stomach. And who the hell is that?”
“A cockroach. Duh!”
“It’s the size of a Labrador!”
“It is not-… well, maybe. That’s not the point!”
“I’m being attacked by a dog-roach! It’s the only point!”
The rubble moved again. Batman lurched up—through no power of his own.
“I think something’s on me.”
“Better hope it’s not a dog-roach.”
Batman leaned over, glaring into the face of the man rising from the rubble. The figure looked up at him, then turned back to a smaller man in a green trenchcoat.
“No, not a dog-roach. It has a cape.”
“It’s a dog-roach in a cape?”
Batman blinked.
The smaller of the two, who was rather studiously ignoring the Dark Knight, turned and looked around. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto.”
“Do you think they’ve got Grey Poupon here?” The larger asked interestedly with sudden and, Batman felt, totally misplaced enthusiasm.
Batman cleared his throat. It was a menacing and meaningful sound. He practiced it in front of the mirror just that morning. And after breakfast in the Cave. (Echoes helped, you see.)
The pair paused to spare the cowled figure a disinterested glance before turning back to the important things.
“Don’t start with me about your debilitating mustard addiction again, Guido. You have a problem. “
“I do not!”
“Denial is no way to live, man! Help me help you!”
“I am a connoisseur. I need real food. Like Grey Poupon. Or peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches.”
The smaller man and Batman shuddered in unison.
Batman climbed down from the misshapen man’s shoulders, and gathered the tattered shards of his professional dignity. “Is this the warehouse on Eighth and D streets?” he asked politely.
The slender man looked at the dog-roach with the cape. “Dude, do you have any Grey Poupon? I’m afraid I just can’t control him if he doesn’t have any Grey Poupon.”
Batman blinked again. He wasn’t used to his questions being ignored. Caped individuals tended to draw attention and inspire fear.
Even in Gotham. He squinted and conceded. Especially in Gotham.
“Pardon me,” Batman said, his voice deep and threatening. It was the voice that had made Harvey Bullock pee in his pants.
“Don’t you start asking for Grey Poupon,” a new voice said, standing slowly and shaking off dust. He looked exactly like the slim man.
“Too late,” another new voice said, spitting out dust. He, also, looked exactly like the slim man.
Some days, Batman thought, it just didn’t pay to get out of the Cave. Carefully, he threaded fingers across his cowl, checking for any major dents. Brain damage was a bitch.
Someone squealed, suspiciously girl-like, since he also looked like the slim man, and grabbed a large two by four. Still screaming, he pounded the board into the ground several hundred times.
“Feel better, Jamie?” the big man asked.
“I slayed the leader of the dog-roach people,” the man said, out of breath. He raised both arms above his head, dropping the board. “I am da man! I saved this city from the dog-roach people! Don’t you think I deserve a statue?”
His friend gave him a flat and unfriendly stare. “No.”
“Jealous.” Jaime sniffed resentfully and thumbed at Batman. “HE thinks I deserve a statue.”
Guido blinked, then looked at Batman with some confusion. “Do you think he deserves a statue? I really don’t think he should have a statue. Statues are for dead people and stuff.”
Batman, looking blankly at Guido, made a mental note to get Alfred to prepare the MRI machine in the Batcave.
He took a deep breath, and tried once more to get their attention. He had Important Stuff to do. “I would like to know—“
The ground moved. Batman didn’t squeal (no, really, he didn’t) and ANOTHER Jamie appeared.
“Good God!” the new Jamie said, looking in horror at Batman. “It’s the attack of the dog-roach people! Save yourselves! Run! Run! Wait, no, more importantly, save me!” The duplicate grabbed a big stick and started beating Batman, while Guido jumped into the first Jamie’s arms. Jamie erped and fell underneath the weight.
“Jamie, stop!” another Jamie said. Batman rose, disarmed the attacking Jamie, and looked at him. They actually attacked. HIM.
“Dude. I think you angered the leader of the dog-roach people,” another Jamie said, backing away. “You won’t like him when he’s angry.”
The one being held raised one hand carefully, making the Vulcan sign. Slowly, enunciating clearly, he said, “We. Come. In. Peace. Take. Me. To. Your. Leader.”
Batman understood, for a split-second, exactly how the Joker felt. “I don’t have a leader. All that I want is for you to tell me…”
”No answers for you, caped dog-roach-boy dude person!” said another Jaime, who crawled out of the rubble slowly. “All you get is our name, rank, and serial number!”
Guido brightened suddenly and clambered off his Jaime. “You got serial numbers? How come I didn’t get serial numbers? I want serial numbers! I think serial numbers are cool. Can mine be 007?”
“No.” said Jaime. “Mine’s 007. You’re 42.”
“That’s so not fair, you know. I joined the team before you, I get to be 007!” shouted Guido. “I AM JAMES BOND!”
Jaime smirked at Guido. “Dude, you forget. Val likes me better, I get to be 007. Besides, I’m cuter than you are.”
“Says who?!”
“Pietro.”
“Oh, God. Scary place! Scary place!”
Bruce Wayne was an exceedingly smart man. (Three degrees from Harvard alone. Really.) This was obviously a no-win situation. In fact, this was increasingly looking like a go-crazy-quickly situation. Unless he wanted to bunk with the Joker, and he couldn’t stand the way the man laughed (or smelled), he needed an escape route.
Batman assessed the situation. One man (Jamie?) unconscious at his feet, another one (the first man’s identical twin) behind the deformed man, and several more men (identical octuplets?) crawling out of the rubble.
Not good.
Quickest way out was through the large window to his left. He took a step towards it, and was stopped by another octuplet.
“Hey, dude, do you have one of those little fruity drinks with the little umbrellas in them?”
First the mustard. Then fruity drinks. What did they think he was, a bartender?
He turned and used his Batman voice (again). “No. I do not have drinks with little umbrellas in them. I am the Dark Knight. I am the avenger who stalks the streets, I am the defender of Gotham City, I am the terror of the scourge of the underworld, I do NOT TEND BAR!”
Jamie paused. “You’re Darkwing Duck?”
Guido blinked. “Darkwing Duck leads the dog-roach people?! EXCELLENT!”
Batman had officially Had Enough. It was time to show these two madmen exactly what the Batman was made of.
He leapt for the window.
“I guess he was out of little fruity drinks with umbrellas.”
“Dude! Darkwing Duck is getting away!” A dupe ran for the window, and watched as Batman shot a jumpline and swung off. “Where does he get all those wonderful toys?” he asked dreamily.
“You killed Darkwing Duck! You bastard!”
“You know, Guido, I don’t think Landau, Luckman and Lake sent us to the Bahamas.”
“Well,” Guido sighed, “there must be fruity drinks somewhere. Make a note: LL&L owe us a refund. And maybe also a little prize. They made a Darkwing Duck the dog-roach leader fall on us!”
“In the meantime, off to find little fruity drinks!” said Jamie. “WITH UMBRELLAS IN THEM!”
By the time they found the Joker, Jaime had a banner. The banner had started out its existence as a bright red bedsheet, sloppily painted in vomit green, “FRUITY DRINKS UBER ALLES!” Guido, for his part, tried his best to goosestep in time with Jamie’s unsteady tread.
Clearly, both mutants had already consumed copious amounts of fruity drinks.
“Excuse me,” one of the many identical men said, “Have you seen Darkwing Duck? We were asking him about fruity drinks—“
“—and then he panicked—“
“—and jumped out the window.”
“You killed Darkwing Duck! You bastard!”
Guido shook his head. “All right. It’s time for you to reintegrate yourselves.”
“Um.” Jamie looked around. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea…”
The reintegration process was slow and painful. With each dupe reabsorbed, Jamie’s color shaded closer to green. By the last dupe, Jamie had passed through green and come out the other side. “Dude, I feel sick.” He muttered before emptying the contents of an entire column of Fruity Drink Uber Alles marchers stomachs into a conveniently placed gutter.
Guido stopped his own marching to watch the process with great fascination. “Dude, I think your toenails just came up. If you keep going, do you think that I can keep your spleen?”
“Don’t talk about my spleen,” groaned Jamie, who sat up slowly. “My blood hurts.”
“Your own fault.” Guido remarked heartlessly. “I told you not to drink the entire bar.”
“But one of those bottles might have been a fruity drink in disguise!”
“You have a point. Fruity drinks are sneaky bastards. Probably in league with the dog-roach people. Had to take one for the team,” agreed Guido.
“Dog-roach people?” Joker asked, his eyes assuming a hunted look.
“The merciless rulers of this city,” Guido said matter-of-factly. “Have you seen them?”
“Looks like Darkwing Duck.” Jaime added helpfully.
“With a cape,” Guido said.
Joker felt a traumatic onset of sanity coming on. He really didn’t care for the feeling much. “Darkwing Duck? The terror that quacks in the night? The feathered fearless fighter of felons? THAT Darkwing Duck?”
“Well, maybe not quite fearless. He has a fruity-drink phobia, and he has a cape. Very important, that cape. And he fell on us!” said Jamie.
Joker cautiously backed away and gave a serious thought to going back to Arkham. They wouldn’t follow him back to Arkham. And was it really that bad having a cell next to Killer Croc? He was quite a nice guy when you got to know him. Even with the chronic halitosis.
Jamie picked his banner back up and waved it threateningly. “Do you have any fruity drinks?” he asked the Clown Prince of Crime, who was a slender figure running very fast in the other direction.
Guido sighed heavily. “You chased off another one.”
“It’s not my fault!” Jaime protested indignantly. “He was probably a dog-roach lover! I can’t help it if all the dog-roach people have fruity drink complexes!
Guido paled suddenly. “Oh, god. We will never get a fruity drink in the city controlled by them!”
“Oh, the horror! The horror! The inhumanity and dog-roachness of it all! There is no more reason to live! Life. Lost. All. Meaning.”
Guido grabbed Jaime by his lapels. “Get a hold of yourself, man! Pull yourself together!”
“I tried,” Jaime pointed out reasonably. “Remember the spleen thing?”
Guido let him go and stepped back. “No Grey Poupon. No fruity drinks. No spleen. And you killed Darkwing Duck. Boy, is Val gonna be pissed!”
“You’re an accessory,” Jamie pointed out. “If I go down, you’re going down with me!”
“We are the fearless and invincible X-Factor. We can deal with this. We’ve dealt with worse. Let’s do the dreaded traditional X-factor attack.”
“You really think the situation is that desperate?”
“I do.”
“All rightie then. Time to Run Away?”
Guido and Jaime squealed like little girls with one voice and ran down the street, their banner flapping triumphantly.
***
They got back to the mansion, stepped out of the purple portal, and nearly were sick. But they both straightened up as Rahne came toward them, her face screwed up. She sniffed at them several times, and looked at Jamie curiously.
“Is that . . . fruit . . . I smell?”
“YES!” Jamie yelled. “Yes, that’s exactly what it is!”
“And no way is it anything but fruit! Especially not alcohol!”
”It would never be alcohol! We were, uh, bobbing for apples! Just apples! Because we would never drink on a Saturday night!”
“Ever ever!” Guido agreed fervently.
“Is that a banner?” Rahne asked, peering around Jamie.
Jamie tucked it behind his back. “No. Guido?”
“Now, I hear that Touched By An Angel is running a marathon,” Guido said, shoving her hard toward her room. “Away, little one!”
The door slammed behind her, and they heard her plaintive voice, “But I have them all on tape!”
They ran down the hall, the banner flapping like a thing possessed. Unfortunately for Jamie and Guido, the next person they happened to run into was Val.
An extremely cranky (but not that kind of cranky. Really. Pervert.) Val. “Now just where have you two been? Is that fruit I smell?
“FRUIT!” said Jamie. “We were viciously attacked by apples! They tried to leap down our throats!”
“DOG-ROACH PEOPLE!” said Guido, at the same time as Jamie. “THEY HAD CAPES! They fell from the sky!”
Val looked incredibly confused. “Dog-roach people?” she asked, looking from Jamie to Guido and back again.
Jamie looked at Guido again. “It was an Unholy Alliance ™. We barely got out with our lives.”
Guido hurried to add, “And they had capes!”
Val sighed, and then peered at the rolled-up bedsheet behind Guido. “And what is that?”
“NOTHING!” shouted both men. “Nothing at all.”
“And in fact it didn’t happen. It was a story we heard. And we don’t remember it. We’ll be in our room.”
“Stop. Show.”
Guido and Jamie slunk over and warily unrolled the banner. Val read it.
“Explain.”
“It was a story—“
“That says ‘Fruity Drinks Uber Alles.’ Now. Explain.”
“Well, ‘Fruity Drinks, Fruity Drinks, Fruity Drinks, We Love You, Amen!’ was too long to fit on the banner.”
Guido raised his hand cautiously. “I voted for ‘Give Me Fruity Drinks or Give Me Death.’ I’m a good American.”
Val backed away. “I am never giving you LL&L fruity drink coupons again. Here is what is going to happen.”
Guido and Jaime looked very alert.
“Roll up the banner. Go to your rooms. And let’s never speak of this again.”
“You da man, Val. You da man.”
“Nice skirt, by the way,” Guido added.
Val stared at them. They ran.
The blonde closed her eyes and counted to five, trying to find her center. She opened her eyes, and saw Jamie peering around the corner at her. “By the way, if anybody comes asking, we had nothing to do with the suspicious death of Darkwing Duck. In fact, we were here all day. Watching Touched By An Angel.”
Val spent the rest of the day locked in her room with a carton of ice cream and a fifth of vodka. Alex was starting to worry until the third day when Jaime yelled loudly enough to be heard at Westchester.
“Hey! Darkwing Duck just fell out of the sky!”