Chapter Text
Tim didn’t even make it past the hotel lobby before his phone started vibrating like it was trying to escape.
He checked it once. Froze. Checked it again.
“…I’m very sorry,” he said, already backing away, composure cracking just a hair. “Something came up.”
Mr. Lancer nodded.
Tim hesitated, eyes flicking to the kids, then to Wes, who was being physically restrained by Mikey.
“I’ll send a replacement guide,” Tim said.
He gave Danny a polite nod, Tucker an indulgent one, and vanished with the next second.
Twenty minutes later, their new guide arrived.
“Hi!!!”
Silvester was sunshine in human form. They waved like they were greeting long-lost cousins instead of a walking hazard.
“Hi everyone! I’m Silvester! I’ll be with you for the rest of today. If you need anything, just ask!”
Mr. Lancer narrowed his eyes and immediately moved to the center of the group.
He herded them into the bus and drove them to the science exhibition in tight, watchful silence.
The science exhibition was massive. Holograms. Interactive displays. Prototypes that hummed with barely contained power.
Silvester bounced from station to station, explaining everything with genuine delight.
“And this is a clean-energy reactor prototype—”
Tucker was vibrating. “This is better than Disneyland.”
Sam eyed a display critically. “This could be greener.”
Danny phased his head through a hologram just to see what would happen. It glitched, sparkled, and reformed upside down.
Silvester blinked. “…Huh. Must be a bug.”
Mr. Lancer stood dead center, arms crossed, rotating slowly like a lighthouse. Every student stayed firmly within his line of sight.
Wes leaned forward to read a placard.
Lancer cleared his throat.
Wes leaned back.
The visited the Gotham Mall next.
Mr. Lancer stopped the group right outside the mall entrance like a general surveying a battlefield.
“Alright,” he said, voice flat with experience. “We are not splitting up. We are finding a bench. We are sitting quietly.”
The students collectively wilted.
Silvester blinked. “Oh! But… it’s a mall.”
“Yes,” Lancer replied. "And we will be sitting. Together. On those benches.” He pointed at the sad looking benches near the entrance.
Silvester laughed softly, clearly assuming this was a bit. “Oh, Mr. Lancer, they’ve been so good today! The museum went smoothly.”
“You weren’t even there for the whole day,” Lancer said.
Silvester clasped their hands. “But you have to use positive reinforcement. You loosen the reins, they rise to the occasion.”
Mr. Lancer turned slowly. “Do you see this?” He held up his tablet. “This is a live feed of sixteen teenagers whose baseline state is weird. ”
Silvester hesitated. “Well… teenagers can surprise you.”
“Yes,” Lancer replied. “Negatively.”
Silvester tried again, gentler now. “How about just one hour. Buddy system. Security's everywhere. Wayne-funded mall. What’s the harm?”
Lancer stared at the ceiling, lips moving as if reciting a prayer.
“Last time I trusted them in a mall, we had to rebuildthe while thing.”
Silvester’s smile faltered. “…Huh?”
“It was on fire.”
The students nodded solemnly.
Silvester opened their mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “Okay, but this is Gotham. Kids grow up around… unusual things here. They’ll blend right in.”
“That,” Lancer said quietly, “is what terrifies me.”
Silvester tried one final angle, soft and hopeful. “They look at you like they respect you.”
Lancer sighed, defeated not by logic but by time. “Fine. Thirty minutes. Your usual group. You better not fuck this up.”
Silvester lit up like they’d just won a medal. “You won’t regret it!”
Lancer turned to the class. “I already do.”
The kids scattered with alarming efficiency.
Silvester watched them go, proud. “See? Responsible.”
Mr. Lancer glanced down at his tablet.
Every tracker immediately spiked.
“…I need an adult,” he muttered.
Silvester, still smiling, had absolutely no idea what kind of apocalypse they’d just negotiated.
Thirty minutes later, Mr. Lancer blew his whistle.
Every tracker on his tablet was blinking some shade of concerning, but the mall was still standing, no alarms were screaming, and no one had been arrested on international charges.
That, by his standards, was a win.
“Trip’s over,” he announced the second the students reconvened, several of them mid-argument, mid-snack, or mid-whatever ritual Paulina insisted was just skincare.
Silvester blinked. “Already? But you scheduled four hours!”
“Yes,” Lancer said, ushering them toward the exit with the urgency of a man evacuating a gas leak. “And you’ll notice that the building is still intact. We are leaving while we’re ahead.”
Rebecca looked genuinely confused. “But we didn’t even—”
“No,” Lancer cut in. “You didn’t.”
Nathan waved goodbye to the pet shop like he was leaving a beloved friend.
Mikey physically carried Wes away from a security guard who had started looking suspicious.
Valerie checked over her shoulder, disappointed. “Huh. No explosions.”
Silvester trotted alongside Lancer. “See? They were fine!”
Mr. Lancer gestured vaguely behind them. “The glowing footprints say otherwise.”
The bus pulled up. Everyone piled in. Headcount done. Trackers confirmed.
As the doors shut and they rolled away, Gotham Mall remained upright, functional, and un-haunted.
Silvester smiled. “That went really well!”
Mr. Lancer slumped into the driver’s seat. “Yes,” he said. “Which means something very bad is saving itself for later.”
The bus turned toward the hotel.
Behind them, the mall lights flickered once.
Then stayed on.
Nothing burned down.
History would remember this as a miracle.
The hotel lobby dissolved into noise the moment the doors slid open.
Teenagers spilled everywhere. Onto couches. Against pillars. Across luggage carts. One of them immediately laid flat on the marble floor and declared themselves deceased from boredom.
Mr. Lancer counted heads on pure muscle memory and then surrendered to gravity, dropping into the nearest chair like a man whose soul had briefly left his body.
“Stay,” he said weakly. “Here. All of you.”
Star flopped onto the center couch, legs tucked under her, eyes gleaming. “Okay,” she announced to absolutely no one in particular, “so did you guys know some hotels are built over ley lines?”
Silvester paused mid–keycard conversation. “Ley lines?”
Star nodded gravely. “Yeah. Thin spots. Places where the dead get… chatty.”
A couple checking in slowed. A businessman lingered. Someone’s grandma sat down.
Star lowered her voice. “This one? It’s loud.”
Silvester’s smile wobbled. “Haha. That’s… fun.”
Behind her, Rebecca sat cross-legged on the carpet, quietly folding paper stars from discarded pamphlets. Each one shimmered faintly when she finished, glowing just enough to be unsettling.
A bellhop stopped. Stared. Blinked. Decided not to comment.
Mikey, meanwhile, had commandeered a low table and was building a card tower with monk-like focus.
Mia poked one of Rebecca’s stars. It hummed.
“Why are they glowing?” she whispered.
Rebecca didn’t look up. “They like being made.”
Mr. Lancer opened his book. Closed it. Opened it again.
Star leaned forward, voice dropping further. “People say if you listen closely at night, you can hear footsteps in the walls. Not pipes. Feet.”
A hotel guest gasped.
Silvester laughed nervously. “Wow, you’re very imaginative!”
Star smiled sweetly. “Oh, this one’s not a story.”
The lights flickered.
Mikey’s card tower reached an impressive height, then stabilized in a way that felt illegal.
Mr. Lancer rubbed his temples. “I am begging this building to survive until morning.”
Sam had claimed a corner table and was quietly lecturing two very confused businessmen about corporate pollution, using the hotel’s complimentary bottled water as visual aids.
Paulina and Tiffiane were using the lobby mirrors to touch up makeup. The lights reflected wrong. Paulina’s glitter caught and refracted in faint green halos.
Dash was doing push-ups against a decorative pillar, counting loudly. Kwan spotted him, immediately joined in, and turned it into a competition. The pillar cracked slightly.
Tucker had found an outlet.
This was a mistake.
He was crouched on the floor, laptop open, muttering about “hotel bandwidth inefficiencies” while three guests watched him like he was defusing a bomb.
“I’m just optimizing,” he said, as the Wi-Fi speed tripled and the lights dimmed again.
Nathan had located a potted plant. He was whispering encouragement to it.
“It’s trying its best,” he said earnestly, when Mia gently but firmly relocated him to a couch. She then sat on him. Not aggressively.
Sarah and Ashley were arguing in low, intense voices over a vending machine.
Dale was explaining multiverse theory to a concierge using salt packets. The salt packets rearranged themselves to demonstrate branching timelines.
The concierge nodded slowly and wrote request transfer on a sticky note.
Wes had gone very quiet.
Mr. Lancer looked up immediately. “Wes.”
“I’m just… observing,” Wes said, standing far too close to a tasteful Wayne Enterprises plaque.
Mr. Lancer stood. “Step away from the billionaire propaganda.”
Danny, still riding the aftershocks of whatever he’d inhaled last night, was sprawled upside down on an armchair, feet over the back, staring at the ceiling.
Mr. Lancer sank back into his chair, surrounded by noise, light, whispers, and the faint hum of the supernatural.
He has, against all odds, finished Frankenstein.
He turned the final page with the solemnity of a man closing a chapter of his life, stared into the middle distance for a long, sinful second, and whispered, “I should not have read this on a field trip.”
He slid the bookmark in anyway.
Habit was a cruel god.
At around 9 PM, just as Star leaned in to deliver the final, ominous sentence of her ghost story, a man in a hotel vest cautiously approached the group like someone stepping into a live exhibit.
“Uh,” he said, clearing his throat. “Dinner for the… Amity Park group?”
Star smiled, all teeth. “Perfect timing. That’s when the footsteps usually stop.”
The man paled, nodded once, and fled.
Mr. Lancer stood immediately. “Food,” he announced, voice firm. “Salvation. Move.”
The spell broke.
Chairs scraped. Conversations died. Even the glowing paper stars dimmed slightly, like they knew better.
They filed into the dining area with surprising efficiency. Hunger, it turned out, was the strongest containment field known to man.
Dinner passed in relative peace.
Sam ate thoughtfully, still mid-argument with a very tired businessman who had followed them in and then regretted it.
Mikey’s card tower was dismantled and repurposed as coasters.
Tucker was banned from touching anything with a plug.
Rebecca folded napkins into stars. They did not glow this time.
Everyone was grateful.
Mr. Lancer sat at the end of the table, fork in hand, eyes half-lidded, basking in the rare miracle of a meal unaccompanied by screaming.
He took a bite. Chewed.
Nothing exploded.
The clock ticked on.
For one more blessed hour, Gotham allowed them peace.
The peace died screaming the moment they stepped into Gotham’s Dino-Discovery Theme Park.
The place was aggressively Disney-coded.
They made it three steps in before the lights cut out.
And then the lights snapped off.
Suddently green question marks slammed down over every screen.
“WELCOME, INTELLECTUAL INSECTS, TO YOUR FINAL EXAM.”
Mr. Lancer stopped walking.
“…Nope,” he said, already turning around.
Metal shutters slammed shut.
The Riddler descended from the ceiling like he had rehearsed this in a mirror for weeks.
“You are my captives,” he announced dramatically. “Solve my riddles, or perish.”
There was a pause.
Riddler’s henchmen spilled out, guns up, theatrically menacing.
Danny squinted. “Wow. These are… not subtle.”
They were herded into a cordoned-off exhibit, fake vines and plaster fossils everywhere. A bomb sat in the center. Beeping. Green lights. Riddles scrolling across a screen.
Riddler continued. “Answer correctly, and you live. Fail, and—”
Danny tilted his head. “Is this an escape room?”
“Oh my god,” Tucker whispered. “This is an escape room.”
Riddler grinned. “It is a test of—”
Dash cracked his knuckles. “Do we get points?”
Star squinted at the nearest puzzle panel, “Is this timed or can we speedrun.”
Riddler’s smile twitched.
Mr. Lancer raised both hands. “Class. No. We are not engaging. We are being held hostage.”
The Riddler coughed. “Please don’t shoot the intellectual property.”
Meanwhile, the kids were already at work.
Tucker hacked the nearest console. “The answer’s ‘coffin.’ It’s always coffin.”
The door slid open.
Riddler stared. “That was supposed to take at least five minutes.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “Your logic tree is predictable.”
Mikey solved another riddle without looking up. “You rely too much on wordplay.”
Riddler’s voice tightened. “You’re not supposed to mock the cadence.”
“Sorry,” Tucker said, already pulling out his phone. “This UI is kind of mid.”
Mr. Lancer was pacing now. “Stop. Engaging. The supervillain.”
Silvester, determined, stepped forward.
“It’s okay,” they said bravely, then immediately pulled out a gun.
Mr. Lancer screamed. “WHY DO YOU HAVE THAT.”
“I’M FROM GOTHAM,” Silvester yelled back, equally panicked.
Paulina took a selfie with a hostage sign.
Bets started immediately.
“Ten bucks it’s Nightwing,” Dash said.
“No way,” Valerie replied. “Batgirl. She’s efficient.”
“Red Hood,” Wes insisted loudly. “The real vigilante. Batman’s just a crime boss.”
Mr. Lancer snapped. “Wes, not now.”
“I’m just saying,” Wes continued, gesturing wildly, “if you look at it structurally, Batman controls territory, deploys operatives, and maintains a monopoly on fear.”
Riddler rubbed his temples. “Why are the teenagers psychoanalyzing me.”
Then he made his fatal mistake.
Riddler’s voice slithered through the speakers, smug and pleased with itself. “Let’s see how well-read you really are. I imagine most of you think Pride and Prejudice is just a tedious parade of manners and marriage plots. Hardly worth the paper it’s printed on.”
The room went quiet in the way forests do right before lightning.
Mr. Lancer stopped pacing.
He took off his glasses. Cleaned them. Put them back on.
“That,” he said carefully, “is a deeply unserious interpretation.”
Sam’s head snapped up. “It’s a social critique.”
Rebecca looked personally wounded. “It’s about power, class, and moral growth.”
Star whispered, “It’s literally about survival.”
Danny cracked his knuckles. “Also, Darcy slaps.”
Riddler scoffed. “Please. Drawing rooms instead of danger. Compared to real literature, it’s—”
Mr. Lancer turned to the class.
Slowly, carefully, he adjusted his glasses.
“That,” he said softly, “is a lie.”
He turned to his students.
“You have my permission. You may proceed.”
The kids went feral.
All hell broke loose.
Tucker was already hacking. “Dinosaur online.”
The animatronic T. rex powered up, eyes glowing, servo motors screaming like a mechanical god awakening.
Dash vaulted a railing. “FOR JANE AUSTEN.”
Mr. Lancer stood calmly in the center of the chaos, arms crossed, utterly serene.
Silvester lowered the gun. “Should we… stop them?”
Mr. Lancer watched his students dismantle a supervillain with righteous fury.
“No,” he said. “He earned this.”
By the time the smoke cleared, the situation had… resolved itself.
Every henchman was zip-tied together in a neat, vaguely festive pile near the gift shop. Someone had arranged them sitting up. Someone else had put a souvenir dino hat on them.
The Riddler was not restrained.
He was seated.
Rebecca stood in front of him, calm and terrifying, holding his cane like a lecturing pointer.
“No,” she said patiently, “the entire point is that the danger is social. The stakes are reputation, security, marriage as survival. Austen is dissecting power structures with a scalpel.”
Riddler opened his mouth.
Rebecca raised a finger.
“Elizabeth Bennet is not passive. She is observant. Darcy’s arc is about humility. If you dismiss it as trivial, you’re telling on yourself.”
Riddler looked like he wanted the bomb back.
Mr. Lancer watched from a safe distance, nodding. “Good use of corrective pedagogy.”
Silvester packed their gun very slowly. “…Is this normal.”
“No,” Lancer said. “But it is effective.”
That’s when the skylight shattered.
Red Hood landed first, guns already down because… honestly, what was he even looking at.
Red Robin followed, staff spinning once before he froze mid-motion.
Silence.
Wes sucked in a breath. “YES.”
Star groaned. “Ugh, I lost twenty bucks.”
Kwan sighed. “Worth it.”
“Called it,” Wes said triumphantly, pointing at the ceiling. “Red Hood. Real vigilante. First on scene.”
Red Hood scanned the room, took in the dinosaur animatronic with glowing eyes, the zip-tied henchman choir, The Riddler seeted on a bench, and the group of teenagers watching him like he was a lowly bug.
“…What,” he said carefully, “the hell happened.”
Danny gasped.
“RABIES GUY!”
Before Mr. Lancer could stop him, Danny was already jogging forward, eyes bright, hands waving.
Red Hood stiffened. “…You.”
Danny was already jogging forward, eyes bright, hands waving like he’d just spotted a favorite uncle at the grocery store.
“You’re alive! Still! That’s awesome!”
Red Hood stared for half a second too long.
Then, faced with sixteen teenagers turning toward him like a pack of curious raccoons, he did the only sensible thing.
He ducked behind Red Robin.
Red Robin yelped. “Red Hood, what—”
Red Hood grabbed his cape and hauled him half a step back like a human shield.
“Nope,” he said. “Nope. I’m not doing this.”
Danny skidded to a stop, delighted. “Oh hey, there’s two of you now!”
Red Robin froze.
Sixteen sets of eyes locked onto him.
Paulina clasped her hands. “Oh my god, is this a thing.”
Star whispered, “This is better than the mall.”
Tucker was already recording. “Say hi to the internet.”
Hood hissed, “WHY ARE THEY FILMING.”
Kwan smilled. “Solid aesthetic.”
Valerie crossed her arms. “Your trigger discipline could use work.”
Rebecca, still standing next to the Riddler, added calmly, “Your entrance timing was inefficient.”
Dash crossed his arms. “And tactically speaking, it was also kind of mid.”
Red Hood blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You shattered glass,” Kwan added. “Announced presence. Lost surprise advantage.”
Red Robin opened his mouth.
Sam beat him to it. “Also splitting entry vectors without confirming civilian status was risky. You got lucky we already tied everyone up.”
Mikey nodded seriously. “Your crowd control timing was off. If we hadn’t already neutralized morale, escalation could’ve happened.”
Red Hood stared at the pile of zip-tied henchmen wearing dinosaur hats. “…Neutralized morale?”
Rebecca chimed in, helpful. “Also, your intimidation relies heavily on aesthetics rather than rhetoric. Have you considered a stronger thesis statement.”
Red Robin rubbed his temple. “This is not how this usually goes.”
Wes, still laser-focused, added, “Also your entire operation is structurally flawed because Gotham’s vigilante ecosystem is basically a crime syndicate with better branding.”
Red Hood turned slowly. “Kid.”
“Yes?”
“…I don’t like you.”
Mr. Lancer cleared his throat. “They’re like this in class too.”
Silverster laughed, bright and incredulous. “You let them do this?”
“I encourage critical thinking,” Lancer replied. “Within reason.”
Silvester whispered, “They’re grading them.”
Red Robin straightened, defensive. “For the record, response time tonight was within acceptable parameters.”
Mikey pulled out a notebook. “We ranked it a B-plus. Docked points for theatrics.”
Red Hood groaned. “Dammit.”
Wes squinted.
Hard.
Red Robin shifted his weight, favoring his left side.
Wes’s eyes narrowed.
“…Huh.”
Red Robin adjusted his grip on the staff. Same side.
Wes tilted his head.
“…Huh.”
His gaze flicked between Red Robin and a mental image of Tim Drake giving a tour, standing the same way, wounded in the same place.
“…Huh.”
Red Robin felt it. Slowly turned his head.
They locked eyes.
Wes smiled. Small. Sharp. Knowing.
Red Robin felt a chill crawl up his spine.
Wes smiled wider.
“Oh,” he murmured. “This trip just got interesting.”
Mr. Lancer clapped his hands once. Loud.
“Alright!” he said brightly. “Villain neutralized, literature defended, dinosaurs accounted for. Gentlemen,” he nodded at the vigilantes, “these are my students. I will be taking them back to the hotel.”
Rebecca closed her lecture with, “In conclusion, you’re wrong, and you should feel bad.”
Riddler whimpered.
Wes kept staring.
Red Robin very deliberately did not limp faster.
Okey second day in Gotham is done:
■ Do not rise the dead
□ Do not, under any circumstances, stab anyone.
■ Do not have any ectoshots. Or anything remotely resembling it.
□ Do not start a revolution.
□ Do not let Danny SEE any clowns
■ Do not feed anything to any local animals
□ Do not have a fishing competition in the sewers
□ Do not throw a pun-off with the Joker
■ Do not treat Riddler's attacks as escape rooms
■ Do not eat/bite/chew/lick/salivate on locals
■ Do not make bets on which vigilante will appear the fastest
□ Do not catcall the Catwoman
□ Do not make snowmans from Dr. Freeze's snow
■ Do not argue with vigilantes on tactics and strategies
□ Do not throw fish at Mr. Cobblepot
■ Do not interfere with the local gangs
■ Do not infest Gotham with ghosts and/or stories of ghosts
□ Do not approach Arkham Asylum under any circumstances
■ Do not let Wes anywhere near the bat family nor the Wayne's
□ In addition to the above, do not decrease the population of Gotham Rogues, murder is a crime (note thar accidental murder can also be considered a crime)