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12freddofrogs · 5 years

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Gotham Crusaders - A Batfamily TV Show

A few months ago I started wondering how I would adapt the Batman/Batfam comics to TV. I started relatively simple, but then I started getting a little more detailed with a specific episode plot here, a little more to this scene there, some dialogue to be specified… and now the fic is nearly 80k on Ao3, and I still have another season/chapter to go.

This is an extract from Chapter/Season Five, Damian’s Robin introduction, also known as Dick’s run as Batman.

Other episodes in S5 include Cass giving the Batgirl mantle to Steph, Jason getting caught in a hostage situation at Gotham Library, Dick introducing Damian to ice-cream, Tim making a reluctant alliance with the League of Assassins, the Red Hood trying and failing to convince himself he doesn’t care, and the general aftermath of the Bats without Bruce.

Start Gotham Crusaders from Season One Here

Season Five Here

Season Five, Episode Sixteen - Halloween Night

There haven’t been any holiday episodes so far. Let’s celebrate Halloween with the Batfamily.

Cass, Steph, and Babs wander the Gotham University Halloween fete at dusk.

For the moment, they’re just having fun. Steph goes apple-bobbing. Babs aces a ring-toss. Cass is unimpressed with cotton-candy.

A commotion catches their attention.

The girls hurry to where one of the students had tried to tear apart a light display. By the time they arrive, two security guards have already pulled the skinny twenty-year-old off.

He’s babbling about how lights will attract Batman, even as the security guards breathalyse him.

In his theory, the Batsignal is a way for the police to announce when they have a new victim for him, so it’s very unwise for them to have their own vampire-beacon on Halloween night.

“Batman and his colony are feeding on criminals to lure us into a false sense of security before he unleashes his dark powers—”

Steph laughs so hard she falls over. The student pauses long enough to glare at her, which doesn’t help.

Babs bites her hand to stop giggling. Cass is trying to pull Steph to her feet.

Finally, the student is escorted back to his dorm, mumbling that Gotham is going to be enslaved because they believe a blood-sucking monster wants to help.

Robin’s been a child for over ten years now, how is that not suspicious?

If anything would get Steph off the ground, it was not that.

Once he’s gone, Cass asks what a vampire is.

Meanwhile, Dick and Damian are arguing in the Manor living room.

“I’m not asking you to go trick-or-treating.” Dick pinches the bridge of his nose. “Or dress up, or put on a spooky voice, or do anything beneath the outrageous dignity of a ten-year-old. All I’m asking is you open the door, smile, and give out candy.”

“I don’t understand why we reward these pitiful efforts.” Damian looks out the window. Alfred is visible handing chocolate to a girl dressed as a dragon. “I have seen three facsimiles of armour tonight, none of which would stand up to the shoddiest of blades, and there’s no challenge in approaching the door. Surely we should have at least set up a basic trap to be worth overcoming?”

“Okay, the point of fun is a lesson for later.” Dick picks up a novelty candy bucket and shoves it into Damian’s hands. “Right now is social skills.” He drags his youngest brother to the hallway. Through the window, there’s another group of trick-or-treaters. “Talk to these kids, and then we’ll go on patrol.”

“Tch! Fine!” Damian storms to the door as Alfred steps out of the way. He sends an icy glare over his shoulder before turning the knob.

“Trick or treat!” Three eight-year-olds beam at him: a princess, an astronaut, and a dinosaur.

It’s impressive Damian’s forced grin doesn’t scare them. There’s nothing genuine about the teeth on show. “I… like… your costumes.”

“Thank you!” The astronaut holds out her sack.

“You must be a dead astronaut.” Damian gives her a chocolate. “Appropriately ‘spooky’.”

“I’m not a scary astronaut”

“No, you’re a scared astronaut.” Damian hands confectionary to her companions. “Even accepting the useless fabric as part of the holiday, your ‘suit’ stops at your wrists and ankles, exposing much of your skin to the void. Your ‘helmet’ is improperly attached to your shirt, and there is no indication your character has an air supply. By now you would have suffocated as your blood vessels rupture and the fluid in your eye sockets boil.”

The children gape at him.

“Happy Halloween.” He shuts the door. “Well?”

Dick and Alfred exchange a look. “He did smile.”

“That he did.”

Night falls and the Bats go on patrol.

Batgirl detours back to campus, tucking her comm unit into her belt.

The conspiracist-student is getting ready for bed. When he steps into his bedroom, he screams to find Batgirl on his desk.

“For someone so afraid of Bats, you’d think you lock your window.”

He stumbles back, pressing himself against the wall. “You… you can’t come in here without an invitation. You shouldn’t be—”

“Vampires can’t enter houses without permission. This isn’t a house.” Batgirl waves at the dorm. “It’s not your home, not a permanent space, it’s basically public property. I can come and go.”

Maybe it’s a little cruel, but it’s supposed to be a harmless prank.

Batgirl’s rattles off vampire lore, occasionally slips into a bad Transylvanian accent she can’t hold, makes spooky gestures with her hands.

She does promise that the Bats of Gotham don’t kill — maybe they’ll take a sip from a mugger, but nothing they can’t spare.

“Calm down, I’m not going to bite you. We’re harmless, really, at least to law-abiding citizens like—”

The student had been pushing himself along the wall to his closet, where he rips out a clove of garlic.

Batgirl is delighted, and plays the part. Hissing, retreating, hands out defensively. It’s awful acting, but she’s only there for a joke. It certainly convinces him.

While Batgirl is dramatically cowering from a spice, the student grabs a heavy metal water bottle from the desk and hits her over the head.

(Continues under the cut)

Batgirl wakes up tied to a chair in a lecture theatre.

A garlic garland is draped around her neck.

Steph is more concerned with the ropes. Her arms are pinned to the arm rests, done so vigorously she can barely wriggle her fingers. Her legs are similarly tied.

It’s still night. The lecture theatre is dark, with the only light being a glimpse of the festival from the windows and the candles the student is lighting.

“Um, hi?”

The student leaps to his feet, brandishing a cross at her. “Stay back!”

“Sure. Just untie me first.” Batgirl tugs at her ropes. “Okay, we may have gotten off on the wrong foot. I was kinda joking. I’m not a vampire.”

Shockingly, he is unconvinced. “I will not allow your colony to feast on the innocent.”

Batgirl switches her argument from ‘not-a-vampire’ to ‘not-an-evil-vampire’. It doesn’t work either.

Finally she groans, letting her head hang forwards. “How long am I going to be here?”

“Until morning, when you are destroyed by the rays of the sun.” With that dramatic pronouncement he picks up his book and leaves.

Batgirl sighs. “Nobody will ever let me hear the end of this.”

Meanwhile, the episode needs a bigger threat than a uni student with a stroke of luck.

Clayface is a more traditional Halloween villain.

Batman and Robin get waved down from a building by a nearly hysterical man, babbling about a monster that just mugged him.

At first Batman just tries to calm him down, but the revelation that the mud coating his shirt is attempting to crawl away makes them realise Clayface is active.

They give him money to take a cab home and the Dynamic Duo split up to search.

Contacting the others reveals that Oracle’s cameras caught glimpses of Clayface an hour ago, that Black Bat is patrolling on the North End but will keep an eye out, and Batgirl isn’t picking up,

While Batman continues the A-plot with an actual rogue, Robin is sent to find Batgirl.

He grumbles as he leaves, but doesn’t protest.

Steph hadn’t wanted to advertise her plans to prank a civilian, and had switched her tracker/comms off as she arrived on campus. That was still enough of a record for Oracle to note she went back to the university.

Oracle takes a guess and researches the vampire conspiracist. Henry Davids has posted a lot online.

The window to his dorm is open. Robin grapples up, pauses when he finds identical grapple marks already in the wood.

Inside the room are signs of a struggle. A single blonde hair is caught on the curtain.

“Oracle. Batgirl was here and appears to have been outmatched by someone with less combat training than a goldfish. What can you tell me about this building’s activities?”

“Not much, kiddo. Most of the dorm building cameras have been broken for months, needing new funding that hasn’t gone through.”

Black Bat is in the middle of stopping a convenience store robbery, but she takes the time to touch her comms. “Do you want back-up?” she asks, spinning neatly to slam her knee into someone’s throat. “Can be there twenty minutes.”

“No.” Robin climbs out the window. “I can handle this.”

He swings up and drops down to the ground.

Meanwhile, Henry has returned to the lecture theatre.

Batgirl is bored, but her cowl’s eyes widen when she sees him placing a pile of wooden stakes on the teacher’s desk. “Wait, I thought you were going to burn me in sunlight?”

“I said you would die at sunrise. I’m not dumb enough to think a vampire can be defeated by one.”

“How about garlic and sunlight? Throw in some holy water, too, that’ll do the trick — is that one silver?”

Robin is combing the campus.

Oracle tries to help, but Batgirl’s offline and there aren’t enough security cameras. Plus, she’s also concerned with finding Clayface.

“Are we sure Davids is still on the grounds?” Robin asks.

“No, but he hasn’t got a vehicle, the buses aren’t running, and there haven’t been any taxis. If Henry left campus, he was on foot. Even in Gotham, you can’t drag an unconscious girl through a crowd unnoticed.”

“You think she was unconscious?” Batman asks, crouching in an alleyway. More of Clayface’s mud is splattered over the ground, steadily making the way to a manhole cover.

“Hard to imagine what he could have threatened her with to make her go willingly, and Robin said there was a fight.”

“And there’s no digital trail.” Batman puts a sliver of mud into a tray as a compass and slides into the underground. “Guess you’re on physical detective work, Robin.”

“How? Drunken crowds roam every pathway. Even if he left footprints, every sign would be obliterated.”

“Those crowds happen to be your best bet,” Oracle says. “Just ask for information.”

“Nicely,” Black Bat adds, handcuffing the last of her robbers to a streetlight. “Don’t hurt anyone.”

“Or tip anyone off,” Batman says. He flicks his torch against the walls, which bounces back and lights up his grin. “You need to go undercover.”

“How would I do that?”

Cut to Damian knocking on a door.

“Trick or treat,” Robin mumbles reluctantly, holding out a bag from the fete.

He’s given a slew of compliments about how adorable he is, how cute his Robin costume is (“Did you make that yourself?“) and a small shower of candy.

“Thank you,” he says, forcing a smile. “Have you seen my… older sister? We’re in matching costumes. She’s Batgirl.”

He’s told they must look adorable, but nobody’s seen her.

At another party someone waves over someone dressed in a well-intentioned-but-badly-designed Batgirl costume Robin has to visibly bite back comments about.

His bag fills quickly. Once in a while he double-checks no-one’s watching before sneaking a chocolate.

Finally, he gets some useful information. No-one’s seen his ‘sister’, but when he adds that her boyfriend is Henry Davids, someone recognises him. “Yeah, I saw him an hour ago heading into the Arts Building with a lot of candles.”

“Thank you.”

“Wait, kid.”

“Yes?” He pauses midstep.

“Look, see, um… sometimes when a boyfriend and girlfriend get candles and go into a place alone—”

Robin leaves without another word.

He palms another piece of candy before dumping his bag.

Robin lands on the Arts Building.

He pauses at the stairs, finding paper cut-outs of crosses and garlic cloves dotted around.

“Tch.” He taps his comm as he walks. “Robin to Batman. I’m pretty sure I found him. Give me ten minutes and this will be handled.”

“Alright.” Batman is distracted, climbing out of another storm drain and frowning at the giant Halloween party in the building in front of him. “Keep me updated.”

Batman watches the party.

He notices the same man who’d begged him for help earlier that night — now cheerily joking with friends, the same clothes mysteriously clean — and contacts Black Bat.

While she arrives, he heads over to the party, only to find not only is there a strict guestlist that requires an invitation and ID, but also that the bouncers don’t recognise he’s really Batman.

Batman doesn’t insist on his identity, instead asking why the security is tight enough he can see patrols walking the upper balconies.

The guards don’t answer.

Oracle explains that company parties mean it’s very difficult to keep track of everyone’s movements, and this particular company has a lot of valuable prizes stored in the same building.

She’s cut-off when the suspiciously-not-muddy man notices Batman, curses, and transforms into Clayface.

Back in the theatre, Batgirl is sulking.

Henry has set up the room with enough candles to be a fire hazard, each connected with string.

He’s sitting in the row behind her. Several wooden stakes are resting in easy reach.

Batgirl sits up a little straighter when a small red-green-black figure appears in the doorway. “Oh. It’s you. Great.”

“What is this?” Robin steps inside, gesturing at the room.

“This is… umm…”

She’s spared the explanation as Henry lunges forward over her shoulder. He presses a wooden stake against her chest plate, the other hand gripping a mallet.

Robin has a batarang out immediately. “Let her go.”

“I can’t.” Henry’s pale, his eyes frantic. “I have to — I have to protect Gotham. This is my only chance.”

“Protect Gotham from what?”

“You.” Henry’s breaths are quick and shallow. “I know what you are, I know what you’re going to do to the city. I’m the only one willing to stop you.”

“He thinks we’re the terrifying vampire heroes of Gotham,” Batgirl says. Her voice is unconcerned, but she can’t stop glancing at the stake.

“You’re not heroes.”

Robin rubs his forehead, lowering his batarang. “Look, we’re not va—” He stops mid-word. Slowly, he pulls his hand down, smiles with too many teeth. “We only feed on those who deserve it. Criminals, muggers, the occasional student too nosy for their own good.”

Henry jolts.

“I’ve been very good lately.” Robin takes a step forwards. “But it’s Halloween, and no-one can deny I look like a child. I think I deserve a treat.”

Batgirl tries not to laugh.

The panic serves to motivate Henry and he swings the mallet with all his might, digging the stake forwards.

Reinforced armour meets pointy stick. The wood splinters.

There’s a long moment where he’s frozen, unable to comprehend what happened, before Batgirl headbutts him. He falls back.

Robin bites down his smile, stepping into the maze of tripwires.

“No, no, no!” Henry stumbles to his feet, one hand clutching a bloody nose. He digs into his pocket and pulls out his emergency garlic clove, throwing it at Robin.

There is a long moment where Robin considers the spice that landed by his feet, before he grins.

He takes a dramatic leap back, flipping midair, and bares his teeth in a hiss. “That was unwise. Now you’re out of ammunition.”

“Not yet!” Henry rips the garlic necklace off Batgirl’s neck, and starts flinging the individual cloves.

His aim’s pretty good. It’s useless, but accurate.

Robin plays the game. He ducks and dodges and somersaults to avoid the garlic, trying to hide his smile. Once he pauses long enough to wave his fingers like claws.

Batgirl is trying very hard not to laugh. When Robin abruptly remembers her presence, she grins at him.

Meanwhile, Batman’s dealing with Clayface.

The security guards fire, but the bullets do nothing except splatter people with mud. He reaches up to swipe at the balcony, and the guards are no longer interested in shooting.

Batman darts past the bouncers, causing a reaction as people recognise it’s not another costume.

Clayface doesn’t stand and fight, and instead moves to the upper levels by stretching an arm as a grappling hook. Batman follows him, as the party flees.

Upstairs, amongst enough art to be a gallery, they fight.

Black Bat arrives through a window mid-battle.

It takes a while, ducking between pieces of fancy artwork (Black Bat takes the time to move one statue out of the way) but eventually Clayface ends up caught in containment fluid.

Henry is still throwing garlic.

He attempts a particularly ambitious shot and trips over the string criss-crossing his theatre.

Around the room, his candles are knocked over.

Flames start to spread.

Robin flings a batarang. It stabs Batgirl’s chair, narrowly avoiding her arm.

“Hey!” She scowls, even as she’s rubbing her tied wrists against it.

Robin leaps over the chairs.

Henry is tangled in string and mildly dazed. Robin slices the thread and drags the student to his feet.

Batgirl’s free by the time they’re standing.

The three of them flee the burning building, Robin and Batgirl dragging Henry by the elbows.

Batgirl pauses at the door, turns, and tosses a pellet into the midst of the fire. Foam explodes out, suffocating the worst of the flames.

Combined with the sprinklers finally turning on, the damage is halted.

The moment they’re out, Henry slides to the ground.

The Bats let him.

“You okay?” Batgirl asks.

“I — I think so.” He takes a deep breath, still on his knees. “You saved me.”

“We did.”

“Are you going to bite me now?”

“No,” Robin says.

“I might slap you, though,” Batgirl mutters.

“How exactly did you get into that situation?” Robin asks her. She ignores him.

“So — so you were telling the truth? You’re heroic?”

Batgirl and Robin share a look. Robin rolls his eyes and turns away, and Batgirl shrugs. “Yep.”

“I… I was wrong?”

“Also yep.”

“About everything? What about the Riddler being an escaped thrall? And the Bat-signal announcing new victims? And — Batman came back after being disintegrated, I had to be right about the time-travel.”

Robin jerks out of his folded arms. Batgirl stiffens. They stare at him.

“Or… not. I guess I was” He stumbles to his feet.

The sound of sirens reach them. The fire’s out, but smoke drifts from the windows.

“I’m sorry. About everything. I shouldn’t have — I should have put more together, realised vampire doesn’t equal monster.” There’s no response, but Henry’s looking at the fire engines anyway. “I’ll talk to the firemen. Thank you for not biting me—”

When he turns around, he’s alone.

Later, the Bats have met up on top of a building.

“It doesn’t mean anything.” Robin says, balancing on the roof railing. “He tried to put a stake in Batgirl’s heart. I wouldn’t consider him a reliable source.”

“No,” Black Bat agrees, sitting with her back against the railing. “But Tim is.”

“Names,” Batman says without thinking.

“I figured T was in denial.” Batgirl’s pacing. “I got it, I might have done the same. He didn’t want to lose three parents in ten months. But our little conspiracist had the same theory.”

“We already knew T must have had something to base it on.” Batman stares out at the city. “Some detail he’d decided was a clue. Even good detectives come to wrong conclusions and he’d never insist if he hadn’t found something he called evidence. Someone else just found the same clues.”

“Nothing Davids said can be considered relevant,” Robin insists.

Batgirl stops pacing and sighs. “No. Probably not.”

There’s a moment as they let it sink in.

Oracle informs them Henry had admitted the truth and been arrested. He’ll only be held overnight, but is likely to be expelled. He’ll probably head back home, leaving Gotham.

“Good.” Batgirl nods. “I don’t think he deserves Arkham but I really don’t want to deal with him again.”

“I still have questions about how you were captured by that incompetent,” Robin says.

“Don’t act so dignified, I saw you playing along and hissing like a good little vampire.”

Robin’s cheeks colour. “I was not — I did not play — and even if I — that does not answer how you were caught!”

Batman places a hand on Robin’s shoulder, trying not to grin. “It’s not Halloween without a horror movie. Shall we finish patrol and meet up?”

“Make it the Cave,” Oracle advises. “Better atmosphere if we turn off the lights. I’ll bring popcorn.”

“I vote cheesy horror,” Batgirl says, swinging off the roof.

“With vampires!” Black Bat calls, following her.

Batman glances at Robin. “Did you have fun?”

“I—”

“Good.”

They pull out their grappling hooks and swing away.

Find the rest of the fic on AO3.

More tumblr extracts:

S1E13 - Birdcage In which Dick Grayson is held for ransom. Dick is bored, Bruce is frantic, and Robin ends up on the phone with the Commissioner and has to fequently ‘pass’ the phone to Dick.

S2E9 - Double In which the second Robin trades himself to Two-Face as potential leverage over Batman in return for the civilian hostages to be freed. Jason proceeds to comment frequently on all the ways Two-Face’s plan is failing.

S3E20 - Songbird In which everyone in Gotham under the age of eighteen is abruptly bursting into song. Tim is distressed, Steph attempts to pretend she’s not creeped out, Dick finds it hilarious, and Cass is a little jealous that she’s too old to be effected.

S4E01 - Worst Nightmare In which Scarecrow manages to drug Robin and Spoiler. Batman is a protective father, Steph has a discussion with her childhood fears, Tim is walking a fine line between terror and consciousness - and at home, Cass refuses to acknowledge flour/sugar/baking soda are different ingredients for cookies.

#damian wayne #stephanie brown #dick grayson #batman #robin #dickbats #batgirl #batfam #cassandra cain #black bat #barbara gordon #oracle #tim drake #red robin #because he's mentioned too #batfic #fanfic #12freddofrogs writes #gotham crusaders #as ever the episode numbers are more or less random #jason todd #he is not in this episode but his fans will probably enjoy the full fic regardless #dc #this is probably the tumblr extract that most connects with the rest of the season #but it kind of loses the effect of the end if i take out the references to tim #for the record in this verse bruce's vanishing act was public and in the middle of gotham #dick took up the cowl so nobody realises batman's really gone #but that's why henry was able to start wondering about it #batman was on earth when it happened #also i'm not thrilled with the clayface subplot

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