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April 1st was always a tense day in Gotham City.
The expected pranks and practical jokes that the day brought were always on another level here. The Bats and other Gotham-based vigilantes had been futilely hoping optimistically that this year would be calmer, as all the usual perpetrators were still locked up in Arkham and being monitored by Oracle. They were wrong, as they would find out by the end of the day.
Tim was just about to leave for work when his phone rang.
Why was Bart calling him? Wasn’t he in El Paso seeing (bothering) Jaime?
“Does Gotham have an Egg Man or a Goose Man that you didn’t tell us about?” Bart asked once the line had connected. Tim was in the middle of looping a tie around his neck.
“What,” Kon looked up at him.
“I don’t know, some egg or duck-themed rogue?” the speedster asked.
“Not as far as I know, unless there’s a new one,” Tim told him. He paused. “Wait — why are you asking? Aren’t you supposed to be in Texas right now?”
“Yeah, I was,” Bart said. “It’s easier if I just show you. Come downstairs, bring Kon with you if he’s there,” He hung up and Tim pocketed his phone.
“What was that about?” Kon asked.
Tim shrugged and finished tying his tie. “Bart’s got something to show us downstairs,”
The two of them went downstairs and found their boyfriend standing outside. There was a seemingly normal egg sitting on the pavement at his feet. The speedster was covered in purple glittery paint and stunk like he had fallen feet-first into a vat of skunk spray.
“Why are you covered in paint?” Tim asked at the same time that Kon asked “Why do you stink?”
Bart gestured to the egg.
“It’s the egg’s fault,” he explained like that explained anything.
This wasn’t the only one, there were dozens more dotted all over the street, even on the road. And Bart wasn’t the only one covered in paint. People up and down the footpath were covered in bright glittery paints. But a greater number were just ignoring the eggs and going about their day as normal.
“These eggs spray paint and something that smells like skunk spray all over you when you try to move them,” he explained. “I ran into one on my way to El Paso and now I’m orange. And they’re not just here, they have popped up all over Gotham,”
“I wonder if the other Bats have noticed yet?” Kon questioned.
“Babs definitely would have, and Duke too, as he’s patrolling today,” Tim said, pulling his phone out again to check the group chat. Bart stepped out of the way of a lady covered in pink and green and red paint who ran past them hysterically crying. She was rubbing at her eyes. Probably got
Judging by the flurry of messages there, everyone who was currently in the city had noticed.
Bruce told them all not to touch the eggs (not like anyone was going to do that anyway) and anyone that didn’t have any more pressing matters to meet in the Cave and to bring their vigilante partners as well. So Tim called in ‘sick’ to work and the three of them headed back upstairs to their apartment to get changed into their vigilante uniforms.
In doing that, Bart discovered that while the stink washed away, the paint did not. Or not easily as his ankles, shins, and oddly hair remained purple even after he had scrubbed at them. Luckily, his suit covered the first two.
“Did you dye your hair?” Dick asked when the three of them arrived at the Cave.
Bart was confused for a moment before he remembered that his hair was egg-caused purple.
“No. I got egged,” he explained.
“You’re not the only one,” Steph spoke up from where she was standing next to Cass. The ends of her blonde hair were traffic cone orange from where it stuck out from behind her hood. “But you got the better colour, I wish I got purple. I got this orange,” She held a piece of hair between her fingers.
They — a good portion of the Batfamily — dispersed out of the Cave not long later to try to find ways to move the eggs. While this wasn’t an Arkham-level emergency, it was still an inconvenient one and one that had to be fixed sooner rather than later.
A handful of members stayed back to try to identify any potential suspects as well as the motive behind the eggs. What was the point behind putting over a hundred rigged eggs all over Gotham aside from the obvious prank?
After two hours and trying nearly everything that they could think of to successfully move and or remove the eggs, Young Justice took a break; they were sitting at the briefing table in the Cave.
Not only did the eggs spray paint and stench, but they were also indestructible.
“Why would anyone make indestructible prank eggs?” Kon questioned, as he stole a green espresso mud cake M&M right out of Tim’s hand.
That same M&M was then nabbed by Bart. “It is April Fools Day,” he pointed out.
“Well yeah; but all the April Fools Day pranks that were on a city-wide scale that were done here had motives behind them, this one doesn’t,” Tim told them as he dropped another M&M successfully into his mouth.
“We could be overthinking this, whoever is responsible for these eggs could have just put them around the city as a prank and nothing more,” Bart suggested. “There could be no motive behind it,”
“Maybe…” Tim trailed off.
“Has anyone tried sliding anything underneath them and picking the eggs up like that?” Kon asked suddenly. “Because it’s clear that picking them up from the top doesn’t work,” He gestured to his green and yellow splattered fingers and forearms.
Tim asked the question to the group chat and got a flurry of no’s back.
“Nope. No one’s tried that yet,” he said. “If this works, we’ve just wasted two hours,” Tim grumbled as the three of them stood up.
They grabbed one of the flexible, nearly paper thin chopping boards from the kitchen and headed out to the closest egg (which was right outside the manor’s gates).
“On the count of three,” Tim called.
Kon and Bart held a side of the chopping board each while Tim was going to keep the egg from rolling off.
The two slid the board underneath the egg and waited to be showered in paint…
Only for that to never happen. Huh.
“Now that we’ve moved this egg, what do we do with it?” the half-Kryptonian asked.
They were holding the chopping board with the egg on it awkwardly in the air between them.
Tim shrugged. “Probably put them in a vault in the Cave,” he said. “Just not the one next to the vault that holds the Joker’s stuff,”
The rest of the flexible chopping boards were pilfered from the kitchen.
And thanks to a combination of just how many members the Batfamily had as well as some of their partners possessing superspeed, the other two-thousand and twenty-three eggs were cleared up fairly quickly. Vault 18 was known as the Skunk Egg Vault by the end of the day.
The next morning, the three of them woke up to find a large golden egg sitting on their coffee table.
“I think a golden goose broke into our apartment and forgot something.”