Batman and Robin: the re-Novelization
Episode 50
Wow, 50 entries in this series! I’ve done this 50 times now. How many things have I done 50 times in the last year or so?
Well, shitting, I guess. Way more than 50. Hundreds, even. Hundreds more than 50.
Lights flashing, sirens wailing, dogs bellowing because for some reason they think sirens are a call to action, even though they’re stupid little dogs that can’t conquer a baby gate, police cruisers screamed up the sloping avenue towards the observatory.
“One-Adam-twelve, one-Adam-twelve, I see the mad scientist with the freezing ray!”
“Two-Eve-twelve, two-Eve-twelve, copy, I see him as well.”
A third voice chimed in, “Three-Steve-twelve, three-Steve-twelve, me, too!”
This resulted in a huge argument over the police band about how it’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, or, at the MOST, it’s Steve and Eve while Adam watches and jerks off because being humiliated by Steve’s ability to please Eve is kind of his thing, but that’s NOT gay, in fact, it’s super straight. Watching someone else rail your wife/rib is super straight, and nobody can tell me otherwise.
Perched high on the platform, Freeze and Bane watched the cavalcade draw quickly closer, knocking over garbage cans and fruit stands, seemingly careless about the line of glaziers carrying huge panes of glass across the street up ahead.
Freeze leaned over to touch the metal barrel of the telescope. “Cops on the rocks, anyone?”
This caused Bane, somewhere in the back of his perishing, misfiring mind, to briefly recall the misfire musical sitcom Cop Rock.
Bane was haunted by what remained of his memories and further tortured that he could not remember his mother’s voice, but he could remember Ronny Cox singing a country ballad called “Hear The Doggy.”
Truly, this was a cruel world.
A huge beam of cryonic energy streaked toward the street below. Instantly, the police cars turned into screeching, skidding, pretty racist cubes of solid ice. Out of control, their occupants, flash frozen, they slammed into each other in a car accident way, not in a “Steve really going deep on Eve” kind of way. Two cars exploded in a raging fireball. The news would say they were instantly killed, but the reality is that there are few deaths more painful than being cooked alive, and there’s nothing quick about it. Even if the time were mercifully short, the human mind’s ability to slow down time in dire circumstances would extend the death process to an interminable length, a possible inspiration for hell being conceived as endless.
“Police are so hot-tempered these days.” Freeze quipped. Then raised an eyebrow, mostly successfully ignoring one cop’s screams for his mother, which caused his charred throat to crack and blood to bubble up through his mouth where it literally boiled on his burning lips.
“Don’t you agree, Mr. Bane?”
The masked monster gave no indication it had heard. All Bane could think about was 90s shows. Drexell’s Class? That was a thing, right? What becomes of all these shows that people put their hearts into and have since just vanished from hearts, minds, and even the lips of those who care deeply about such things…?
~
The banks of the Gotham River were like a scene from the frozen wastes of the Arctic, which is how people who hate snow think about the Arctic, but in a lot of ways, the “wastelands” of the world are just generally uninhabited and therefore contain a higher percentage of their natural beauty and function.
Waste? What’s more wasteful than sacrificing the environment, stabbing Mother Earth so we can drink her blood, so one more human can eat at Wendy’s and complain that the NFL is probably rigged?
Thick snow covered everything. Icicles five feet long hung from trees, and a thick sheet of ice had formed over the water itself, creating a convenient path for a Batvehicle that would be suited to ice, something that, surely, billionaire Bruce Wayne would not waste money on, seeing as the Gotham River never freezes to the point that it could support the weight of a giant sled—
THE BATSLED MOVED WITH SPEED down this frozen highway, Robin at its helm. The sleek, one-man ice sail seemed to dance over the frozen river as Robin expertly piloted it from one bank to the other, crashing into the wall on the left, then the wall on the right (excuse me, crashing to port, then to starboard), cursing Bruce for saddling him with a vehicle that used a goddamn sail as its primary guidance system. At least, being a sailcraft, it was well-appointed with fancy catering and a college girl who was basically there to look pretty, tanning near the front of the ship.
As the Batsled neared the starboard side and prepared for another collision with the walls that hemmed the river in, Robin narrowly avoided another group of sailbros in short white shorts and with sweaters tied around their necks, who attempted to board the boat every time it got close to the river’s side. These boys so rarely got out on the water in Gotham and were desperate. Most missed their jumps, and one clung to the side, screaming something about how the caviar really must be placed in a glass bowl, before he was dragged beneath the boat and left a red smear across the ice in Robin’s wake.
The girl at the boat’s front slid her glasses down, observed the man’s unceremonious death, and said, “I guess he wasn’t as blue-blooded as he thought.”
“WHAT?” Robin screamed. He couldn’t come close to hearing her over the noise of the boat nearly shattering to pieces upon another collision.
The girl repeated her line, but at the exact same volume, even though that was nowhere near loud enough for Robin to hear it the first time. Seriously, what’s with chicks saying stuff super quiet, not being heard, and then repeating the same thing at the same volume? It’s maddening.
Then there was a muffled roar, and the Bathammer raced to join the sled. Yes, a different Bathammer than the one employed this one time when a weird couple named Adam and Eve showed up at Wayne Manor and asked if they could borrow a telephone, and then said, “By telephone, we mean, ‘good, deep dicking.’”
Not subtle, but neither was the Bathammer. Either Bathammer.
This Bathammer was an all-white Batmobile mounted on rocket skis. Though it lacked the grace and uppercrust appeal of the Batsled, it more than compensated with sheer power and the airbrushed picture on the side, an art piece labeled “Ski Bunny” that showed an anthropomorphic rabbit on skis, in a bikini, with the biggest, sloppiest jugs you’ve ever seen.
Speaking of which, Batgirl also showed up, straddling the single-bladed rocket snowcycle known as the Batblade, taking up position on the Bathammer’s flank.
The little armada raced along the surface of the water, toward the ice-swept observatory. “Raced” is being a little generous, but a lot of cuts and rousing music really help, at least from a visual standpoint.