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“Hood, don’t freak out, but there’s a rat chewing my rope.”
Jason glances in Tim’s direction. Like Tim, he was sitting on the cold hard ground, paved over with brown concrete. If he didn’t have his hood on, he probably wouldn’t have been able to spot out Tim’s person in the dark, but his hood had a night-vision mode. Jason could make out Tim’s stiff shoulders, and the moving thing that crawls around behind him.
“I’m going to throw up,” Jason says, puffing out his cheeks in the feign of a puking motion. “I hope he didn’t come looking for a bite.”
“I just told you he’s chewing my binds, Hood,” Tim says. “I don’t think he’s trying to nibble on my fingertips.”
“Red, you have a musty, filthy, rat trying to get to the juicy parts of your hand,” Jason insists. “I knew that it was possible to be eaten alive, but I didn’t think it’d be the way I’d go.”
“I’m pretty sure the rat is helping us,” Tim says.
Jason opens his mouth to tell Tim that no, a rat nibbling his rope is not what he thinks it is, and that he’s probably just making things up to cope with their hopeless situation. It would just be a matter of time before the Jokerz came back to mess them up, for good. Tim’s mind couldn’t handle the tension. That’s why, Jason thinks, he’s making up scenarios in his head. Trying to make a hungry rat his savior.
Jason shuts his mouth once he hears a deafening shriek.
Jason can see Tim narrow the slits in his domino mask. In the span of a few seconds, another shriek is sounded, and Jason hears something demonic. Something chittering, angry, and yowling erupts outside. Men start to yell, someone curses, and a rabid cry haunts the night.
It almost distracts Jason from the second rat that decides to nibble on his binds.
Almost.
“Oh, no, no, no,” Jason tries to shuffle away. It’s hard when he’s literally tied to the wall. “No, bad rat, bad rat, don’t touch me. Go away, I’m nothing but muscle.”
Jason liked to think of himself as a tough person, but when it came to the creepy crawlies of the night? Jason’s mental maturity deteriorated into that of a frightened schoolgirl. It wasn’t a good thing for his image, but that was the least of his concerns. Jason didn’t want the gross rat to not touch him.
Jason’s panic squeezes out of his throat as he feels tiny paws press into his sleeves. A full-body shiver travels through his frame, and then jolts through his hands. “Go, go, go away,” he begs. It’s a mantra. “I don’t like you. I don’t like you, go away.”
“Hood, you’re over-reacting,” Tim says.
“You’re over-reacting,” Jason nearly cries, feeling misty-eyed. It doesn’t occur to him that a gut-curdling scream outside their prison-window should be the first thing on his mind. It’s not as important as the rat poking him with its paws.
Jason is only distracted from his misery when he hears a slam.
A metal door, he realizes, mind settling into vigilante mode.
Jason watches the dark hallway in front of their cell. He listens to the pitter-patter of – of something – and it doesn’t make sense until dozens – and he means dozens – of raccoons scramble into the hallway.
“I’m in hell,” Jason realizes. “I’m already dead.”
Tim seems just as shocked as him. Speechless.
Once all the raccoons make their way into the hallway, they settle around in various locations, running paws over their ears, licking up their fur, and scratching themselves as if the blood on their fur was of no consequence.
Jason tenses when he hears heavy clops.
Human, he guesses, until he sees a full-blown stag join the raccoons.
“Red,” Jason asks to make sure he’s not the only one seeing this.
Tim doesn’t respond. He’s shifting his wrists against, wriggling around, and then, with a grunt, he breaks his rope apart.
Tim shoots up, the rat runs through the prison bars to join his gang, and Jason realizes that Tim had been right.
The rats were chewing through their damn ropes.
Tim rubs his wrists as he stares out at the crowd of animals.
“Uh, hello,” he offers.
Several raccoons chitter in response, like snickering bandits, and the stag runs a hoof over the ground beneath him.
Then, without any signal, the animals part.
And Damian freaking Wayne walks as if he’s on the red carpet.
“Robin?” Tim questions, baffled.
Damian ignores him. Instead, he commands, “Key.”
Immediately, a raccoon runs up to him, stops at his ankles, and then holds out a key.
Damian bends down, fluffs up the raccoon’s fur, and then works on getting his brothers free.
Jason doesn’t realize that his binds have fallen off until his rat, the one he’d begged to go away, finally leaves.
“Robin, report,” Tim demands.
“I am here to rescue you,” is his unhelpful reply. “I brought help.”
At first, Jason thinks Damian means the army of animals, but then he hears a panted breath. Dick comes stumbling in the hallway like a fatigued old man, a hand on his back as several birds make his shoulders, and hair, home.
“Guys,” he gasps, “I couldn’t get away from them.”
Damian shifts. “It’s because they like you.” Then, the lock clicks, and the cell door slides open.
Damian doesn’t let them have another minute to digest the situation. He turns towards his animal army and then says, “Thank you, friends, you are dismissed.”
It’s sheer chaos when they start running back towards the exit. Dick forces himself to stay stock still as the animals brush past his legs.
The stag makes a noise that, quite frankly, Jason didn’t think it could make. It shrieks. It leaves without further farewell.
Jason is the first to stumble out the cell.
“Nightwing,” he says, hoping it all wasn’t just a group-hallucination, “what the hell just happened?”
Dick straightens himself up as birds pluck themselves off his shoulder and fly away for their natural habitat.
“Robin is a Disney princess,” he answers lamely. It seemed that he, too, didn’t know how to explain what he just witnessed.