#0: "The Prep-Time Prelude" (Fantomas / Rimmer)

[HoM]

The cord lines swung out, winding around the jutting water pipe. Two figures sprang up, blankets knotted at the neck thrown out behind puffed up chests.

The older closes his hand into what he thinks is a fist, standing as still as he can balanced on the slanting dumpster lid.

The younger scrambles up beside him, his bandana mask slipping. The two brothers look out over the alleyway that borders their parent's deli and old man Finger's pawn shop.

"Come on!" the older brother shouts, his wavering voice thrown as low and commanding as it will go. "It’s time to go!"

The younger brother clambered patiently back down, pulling at the sleeveless red top, straightening out the giant black R that he'd painted across the chest.
The older leapt, braver, stumbling but not falling down as he hit the cement. Finding his feet, he ran off, the two children whooping and throwing punches at imaginary villains, an afternoon's day-dreaming worth of all-new adventures ahead of them.

"It’s time for Batman & Robin!"

Issue Zero: "The Prep-Time Prelude"
Words - Fantomas
Cover - Jamie Rimmer
Teaser Art - Fantomas

He is Batman, The Bright Knight, alias Dick Grayson Former Robin, sometime Nightwing.

 

He is Robin, The Boy Detective, alias Tim Drake High-schooler and hero.

"These are perfect."

Freddy exhaled slowly, running his fingers along the spiny ridges of the bronze helmet.

Sammy picked up his own helmet, gazing into his own face reflected in the shimmery silver-blue.

"They improved on my designs," he murmured, lifting the helmet up over his head. "I didn’t picture them being so..."

"Whoa."

Sammy Schultz turned to face his young friend. The curved helmet glistened in the electric lighting of the subterranean lair.

"That’s so epic," Freddy Flenderson breathed. He quickly grabbed his own and pulled it on.

"We’re going places now, kid," Sammy said, definitely. "All the training pays off now. It won’t be long until everyone knows the names of the coolest costumed duo in all of Gotham."

"Yeah!" Freddy punched the air. "Watch out, world, here comes-"

A cymbal clashed, and then the drumbeat began. Catchy. Rhythm you couldn’t not tap along to.

Dick put his head back, stretching out his arms.

"Keep talking, I’m listening... just... yeah..."

"Do you even work, Grayson?"

"Spending Bruce Wayne’s money must be tiring, guys, let him be."

"Come on, shut up, I’m trying to listen."

Dick smiled, letting his friends’ talk wash away into the background sounds of the blues bar. It was a quiet place, relatively off the beaten path of Gotham’s nightlife, but never quite empty. There were always new bands coming in to play, usually students from Gotham U, but sometimes older guys with slouch caps and hangdog expressions, who’d talk about the old Gotham days in scared voices.

He’d never quite found a bar like this one in New York. Not quite like this.

This is what separates me from Bruce, he thought, reaching for the bottle on the table and tilting it up. Not just the alcohol-- light and few though the beer may be-- but the calm he felt. The complete, shutting off relaxation Dick felt here.

Bruce knew his Zen meditation, of course. And he slept, even if they were just micro-naps. But they were purposed, calculated. Cessation of conscious thinking to promote lateral thought, free-form association.

Bruce didn’t need downtime. For him he got everything he needed from the Bat. Ultimate job satisfaction. Sitting in a bar like this, just having a quiet drink and talking nonsense with friends, that would be work for Bruce. He made himself into the Batman, turned it into the purest expression of all his anger, loss, vengeance, curiosity, competitiveness, compassion...

But for me... Dick opened his eyes, laughing at something one of his friends said. It’s fun. And sometimes scary. I get to help people, which is good. But it’s not all I am.

I’m Dick Grayson. And then sometimes Batman. Also Nightwing. Robin, once. But right now I’m enjoying myself just as me.

"So I’ve got an early flight back to New York. As an old Gothamite, Dick, think of anywhere I should see before...?"

Dick blushed, rubbing his neck.

"Sorry, Karen. I’ll be turning in early. Busy day of spending Bruce Wayne’s money tomorrow."

Hard to explain an orange girlfriend from space.

"Dick, settle an argument for us."

"Listening," Dick said, turning his head with a smile. His teeth gleamed blue as one of the set’s lights flashed on their table.

"You know Gotham pretty well, right?"

"Well as anyone can," Dick shrugged. "Why? Thinking of moving?"

His friend’s eyes widened. "Don’t even joke. I mean... who would move here? Gotham’s a pit."

Dick looked up, and caught the dismissive glance of one of the hangdog old regulars, who must have caught the Brooklyn accent. An old Gothamite, annoyed by the out-of-towners.

"What’s the argument?"

"Batman. Guy has to be a psychopath, right? I mean, full on psychopath."

"There are lotsa capes," the other friend interjected. "Lotsa people do what he does. Why pick Batman as the crazy one?"

"You look at who we got in New York. Nightwing. Guy could be a total bro, you can tell. Whenever they shove a camera in his face, he’s got some quip. Not too jokey, but he’s not off the deep end."

"So Batman’s a psycho ’cause he doesn’t smile?"

Dick flagged up his fingers, and the two stopped. Even outside of the uniform, outside of the danger of a mission, people recognise that assurance. The confident poise of a leader.

They lean in, listening.

"Batman is like Gotham," Dick said, slowly. He thought he saw the old regular looking over, trying to listen in.

"They’re too big to dismiss. Batman isn’t just some psycho, and Gotham isn’t just some pit. We get from them what we want. Gotham right now is a blues bar. Quiet, friendly, with good company and good music. And Batman...there are different shades of Batman. I think he’s the Bright Knight. The blue daredevil who fights bad guys and saves the day. I think Batman can smile."

Dick sat back, stretching out his arms. His friends stared at him, then shook their heads.

"Dude, you don’t know Batman at all."

"That’s a lot of gasoline, friend."

Leonard Pick blinked, his mouth slowly opening and closing. A slurred, guarded acknowledgement that the contents of the four shopping carts he towed did indeed include a lot of gasoline.

The clerk’s smile wavered, but only briefly. He began tapping it through on the till.

"Well, alrighty then! I’ll just ring that up for you, and let you get on your way!"

There was something about the man. Maybe it was the eye contact. The stare that seemed to go right through him, looking at something behind the clerk’s eyes. Or maybe it was the twitching. Or the skittish, listless clicking of his fingers.

"I know what you are."

"Sorry, sir, didn’t catch that? Say again?"

The clerk was sweating behind the smile now. What had he said? Why had the guy stopped twitching?

Leonard Pick put the money on the counter, then began to marshal the conga line of shopping carts. Still smiling, the clerk watched him, still hidden behind the mask of the enthusiastic, big brand store worker. The face of a happy corporate employee.

"Thank you, sir! You have a nice day now!"

Leonard stopped, and clicked his fingers again, a final, definite snap. His eyes hadn’t left the clerk’s.

"I’ll need a lighter."

"Tim. Hey... hello?"

Tim looked up. The blonde girl stood over him tapped his head, making a hollow knocking sound as she did so.

"Quit it, Steph. This is important."

She crouched down, thumbing through one of the notebooks he had neatly stacked along his desk.

"This doesn’t look like school work, Mr Drake," she reprimanded, puzzling over a sketched blueprint. "What are you doing?"

Tim sighed, and closed the notebook in her hands. She crossed her arms.

"Tim, seriously. What are you doing?"

"It’s just a project. For Mr Wayne. Thought I’d give him a hand with some WayneTech work."

Steph smiled, pulling up a chair.

"That’s good. Cool. I was worried for a moment."

"About what?" Tim asked, but it was an absent-minded question. He ran his pencil along the diagram in his book. He felt the twinge of satisfaction as he found the flaw. 12:30, Security Systems 101. How to hack, back-track and firewall your way through anything.

"Oh, nothing," Steph said, looking furtively away. "How is the billionaire, anyway?"

"He’s fine. I haven’t seen him much lately. He’s been abroad."

"Didn’t invite you?"

Tim looked up. Brief break. Make up for it later, skip cello lesson at 16:00.

"He didn’t want me to miss school. And besides, like I said, I have some projects here I’m working on."

"Must get lonely in the haunted house on the hill, though?"

"I moved to the Wayne Foundation Building," Tim said. "There’s a penthouse on the top, and it’s closer to the city, so."

"Home alone in a penthouse?" Steph wrinkled her nose. "When did you get so lucky?"

Tim gave her a look. She blushed.

"Ohmigod I did not mean that your parents dying was lucky, and I didn’t mean to just say that just now, and-"

"Breathe, Steph," Tim laughed, despite himself. "It’s okay. But I’m not home alone exactly. Alfred’s there, and Dick’s been coming around more often recently."

"Regular boy’s club," Steph said, still red.

"Maybe," Tim opened his book again. Ten minutes more, then get school out of the way. Then back to the Bat-Bunker for a 17:50 review of old case-files from the Batcomputer.

Steph watched as Tim’s expression resumed its rapt focus on his work. She smiled, weakly.

"Well, I’ll let you get back to your project, Tim."

"Mm. Yeah. Thanks."

She got up, and started to walk away.

"Y’know, Drake, you have my number if...I mean, I know you said you weren’t home alone in your penthouse, but if...I mean if you ever want someone to hang with, y’know? Uh...so, y’know. Too many ’y’know’s?"

Tim stared at his book for a moment, then looked up.

"Sorry, Steph, what did you say?"

"Jiangshi."

Jiangshi bowed, her constricting grey tunic embroidered with spidery white designs, creeping in faint trails around her shoulders and around the arms.

Her face was blank, alabaster skin running smoothly where her features ought to be. A dark bob of hair was the only distinction of character on her head.

"Ah, and the Five Deadly Ghosts."

The five figures slid like smoke up through the floorboards. Even as they solidified, their drab garments lingered wraithlike behind them.

Like their leader, they were faceless, and said nothing.

"Excellent... your work in Shanghai speaks for itself, and after what you did in Guangzhou...you may consider me impressed."

Jiangshi remained bowed low, her arms held outstretched at her sides.

"Perfect mastery of kung fu... that has enabled you to manipulate your very essence, phasing through wood and stone... and the Ghost Palm Strike... legendary."

The Five Deadly Ghosts bowed in unison, dropping low.

"But... your pay... it is much too high. I have no intention of going as high as the sum you propose."

Jiangshi’s clawed hand pointed, signing in a flash her intention. Yuãn!

One of the ghosts leapt, two tigerhead hooks burying themselves into a guard. Moving fast, the ghost worked in sharp, quick cuts, then sprang back.

The guard looked down, groaning, as his assault rifle fell away, the metal cut cleanly into fragments.

"Ah... it was worth testing you to see a ghost in action."

The guard gurgled, then spat a long plume of blood across the wooden floor. He stumbled backwards, and his head slid from his shoulders.

"We are agreed. Your services come at the proposed fee."

"How’s he coping, Alfred?"

Alfred thought about the question as he picked a shirt up from where it hung across the parallel bars. He tutted, pinching it and folding it with a neat ease.

Dick jumped, turning in the air, then twisted again as he caught the trapeze, vaulting up to stand balanced on the bar. He bowed, and waved to an imagined audience.

"He keeps his quarters far tidier than some, if I might be so bold. The flying trapeze may be glamorous, but I daresay you’d find the ironing board a more thrilling mistress. The rush of a finely creased trouser is quite incomparable."

Dick dropped down, catching himself on a handhold built into the concrete wall. He sprang to a post and planted his hand down, righting himself upside down.

"Just be glad you don’t have to see my New York apartment."

Alfred frowned. "I can be there in minutes."

"I’m joking. It’s fine. Well. You know. Hygienically fine. It’s liveable. Alfred, you’re avoiding the question."

"Master Timothy has...rather given himself up for his work, I suspect. Since the death of his parents, since becoming an ally of the Batman, he’s thrown himself into what to him must be an exciting world of dark mysteries and detective games."

"Sounds familiar," Dick said, adjusting his balance.

"Unfortunately so, yes," Alfred agreed. "Master Bruce would not have wanted for anyone to have to live with the same kind of obsession that he has, least of all his adoptive sons."

"I know it, Alfred. And I didn’t. Even now, being Batman in Gotham city, I know I’m not the same as he is."

"And he loves you for it," Alfred said, firmly. "but Master Timothy...right now, Bruce is being kept busy with his Incorporated business. He cannot be the father to Tim that he was to you."

Dick hopped down. Alfred handed him a towel, along with a meaningful look.

"He could use an older brother, Richard. Someone to show him that it isn’t all darkness for those fortunate enough to be in the Bat-clan."

"Well, if I’m a Batman," Dick said. "I’m going to need a Robin."

"Screw you, Miki."

"Ah, nah, screw you Hotrod."

"Stow it, racers," the tall one snapped, pulling back his hand.

The thin one flinched. "You stow it, Zen."

The three bikers lounged back, an uneasy truce established. The one that called herself Hotrod Dhana upended her beer. It ran where her lip piercings made her mouth ragged, and left stained lines in the neon facepaint.

"Ugh. Total kamaguna."

"Hear that."

"Let’s bounce out, stay mudita," Boddhi Miki said, saddling up on his chopper. "We got places to be, people to enlighten, dig?"

"Hear that!"

The trio of Golum gang bikers revved their engines, burning rubber on the asphalt and whooping, yelling as they smashed their bottles on the sidewalk.

They tore off, motorcycles roaring into the night.

"New batsuit?"

"Alfred and I have been working on a few personal touches," Dick said, pulling off his shirt as he sauntered into the Bat-Bunker. "Now that I’ve had time to ease into it again."

Pulling on the pigeon grey jumpsuit he turned, modelling the refitted uniform.

"Lightened the body armour as much as possible - I move way more than Bruce, and anything more than triple-weave kevlar would only slow me down."

Whirling his cape around his shoulders, he held a handful up to the spotlight overhead.

"From midnight blue to jet black. Photosensitive para-aramid fabric. Has a stabilizing skeleton to allow it to act as a para-cape for high-altitude drops."

"Ever the trapeze brat," Tim said, strapping his crimson costume on.

"You need to try a HAHO* jump with me some time. Not an on-the-job stunt, that is. When you haven’t got a thousand objectives and variables running through your mind and you can just fly."

*"High Altitude High Opening" - Charlie 'I-Didn't-Know-What-It-Stood-For-Either' HoM

Dick noted the mess of junk food wrappers and empty styrofoam coffee cups littered around the Bat-Bunker’s computer terminal. Sheafs of yellow legal paper covered in scratchy biro notes and diagrams had been pressed in among the debris, while the computer cycled through open files and databases.

He tugged his cowl down over his eyes.

"I don’t need these updated scotopic lenses to see that you need more time away from the bunker, Tim."

"Come on, we’ll be late for patrol."

Dick clicked the brass bat-shaped buckle into place, and fixed his telescopic eskrima batons to the belt, behind his back.

"Alright. But after patrol I’m taking you to the movies. See if we can’t get some early morning cartoons."

"I get it, I’m a kid," Tim sighed, sticking on his domino mask.

"No," Dick grinned. "I like cartoons."

Sergeant Bullock put out his cigar stub and ran the sleeve of his battered overcoat across his nose.

The plane was lurid pink, a shade of Barbie doll sharp enough that it stung the eyes.

A patrolman was vomiting. Bullock gave him a genial thump on the back as he pushed by.

Up the stairway. It strained, rickety in the wind.

Inside the plane.

Bullock lit a fresh cigar. This was how bad things started. With stuff like this.

He began to make his way down the aisle. Stuffed into every seat, a body. Some moving, some not. Bullock had seen the paramedics out on the airstrip. They were refusing to come up. He’d bawl them out later. Right now he couldn’t blame them.

The stench was unbearable. A sweet, sickly tang, mixed with the musky sweat of abject fear.

Yeah. This is how bad things start.

Not one of the plane’s passengers had a face. The skin had been torn away, revealing bloody muscular tissue and bony white points. Teeth chattered over open mouths. Lidless eyes.

The flies were already starting to whirl, even on a November day as cold as this one.

A voice, hoarse and strained. Bullock leant down, fighting the urge to empty his stomach over the speaker.

"...He is coming... The Eater of Faces..."

"Easy, doll, easy," Bullock said, hoping his voice wasn’t as shrill and raspy as it sounded to him. "You’re alright now. Who’s coming?"

The hand gripped his overcoat lapels and tugged, the skinless face jerking towards his.

"Eduardo Flamingo!"

Batman stood, bracing against the headwinds as they came rushing around the uppermost limestone heights of the Gotham Life Building.

Robin crouched, leaning out over the grimacing face of a stone gargoyle.

He looked up, and caught Batman’s eye. They shared a smile, the quiet excitement wordlessly acknowledged. Robin returned to the compact binoculars, and held his breath.

Batman rapped his foot against the ledge. Felt the dizzy drop fall away before him. The city seemed bright below. Neon reds, incandescent yellows, and electric blues. Millions of lights twinkling and sparkling, and all the shadows between cast angular and strange.

Robin raised his hand. Then looked up again to Batman.

"Come on, kid," Batman grinned. "It’s go time."

Robin leapt, springing forward and gripping his cape, pulling it close, diving.

Batman kicked back, executing an easy somersault, then straightening to plunge through the air after his dominoed friend.

"It’s time for Batman & Robin!"

   
NEXT TIME ON


Batman and Robin fly again!
Flamingo waiting to strike!
Will the Dynamic Duo fall to the threat of the face eater?
Will Alfred book a flight to New York to face the harrowing state of... Dick Grayson's apartment?

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