Prompt 7.A.7 - Batshit
I’m trying to live in the present, but I keep tripping on the past.

The news from Gotham was bleak. It was as bleak as a bleak house. As bleak as a Lindsay Lohan horror movie. As bleak as George Bush's post Presidency speech making prospects. It was...bleak.

Eric Cartman went about his normal life, trying not to worry about the events happening so far away. After all, it had nothing to do with him, with his life or his persona. He was just a boy. A fat boy. A rude, obnoxious, mean little fat boy from South Park. What could he have to do with the horror that was happening in Gotham?

*cue flashback music*

The wooden sign over the arch said "Welcome to Camp Wataweenee". As the busloads of boys and girls drove inside for the three weeks that far too many children suffered in life, the counselors prepared the cabins for all of the boys and girls who would be shedding their city trappings for some fresh country air, complete with puberty, ridicule and a lifetime of cringing memories.

There were the priviliged offspring of the rich and famous, as well as the children deemed by some societal entity as being "at risk". When the bus from South Park, Illinois, drove up, the group was mostly made up of those at risk children, many of whom would recount tales of summer camp while butt raping inmates in maximum security, many years later.

A young girl stepped off the bus from South Park. She wasn't pretty, certainly not in any way that would suggest the vast numbers of men she would entertain in the future. This young girl was spunky, funny and had an early fascination for the freaks of the world. Since leaving Nebraska in shame, Liane had been searching for friends, people who, like her, were of dual natures and personalities.

From another bus, there was a boy who was being stared at and mocked, because, dude, kids are fucking mean. This kid looked like some kind of a clown, with green hair, white skin and a gross mouth all scarred and red. He was assigned to the same cabin as Liane, so she went over to introduce herself.

As they chatted, a limo pulled up to Camp Wataweenee, and from inside, a boy emerged. He was handsome, sure, but there was something about him...something dark. Something sinister. Something that made Liane take notice and made her nipples stand at attention.

"Will you be needing anything else, Master Brucie?" A man stood there, handing the good looking kid his leather bag.

"No, Alfred. I'll see you in three weeks." The boy strode up the cabin steps, where Liane stood with the other, strange looking boy. "Hello, Bruce Wayne."

"I'm Liane, and this is my new friend..." She turned to look at the strange boy.

"Tululea Does the Hula in Hawaii Krapowski." The kid muttered, looking down at his shoes.

"I beg your pardon?" Bruce looked at Liane, trying to figure out why she was assigned to sleep in a boy's cabin, and then at the white faced kid.

The boy squared his shoulders, and glared at the rich, handsome Bruce. "Tululea Does the Hula in Hawaii Krapowski. It's an old New Zealand name. My parents gave it to me so no one would notice my last name has shit in it."

"I didn't notice at all. Did you notice, Bruce?" Liane tried to sound unfazed, but it was a little hard to do when you tried to think about getting that name on a tag for the orientation.

Fortunately, kids are kids, and they came together that summer, as three friend bound by fun, by the sun and by the shared knowledge that they were all inner freaks. They were inseperable, that summer, and the next, and the one after that. Liane, Bruce and Krapkid all hung out, and over time a bit of a rivalry developed as surely as Liane's breasts. This, of course, would have dark consequences many years later, when Gotham was torn asunder by the two former friends, who shared everything but a smelly sleeping bag, all that time ago, in a world away.

*cue ominous Dark Knight music*

"You summonned me here, Alfed, with the signal." Eric waddled through the hidden tunnel underneath Wayne Manor.

"Actually, sir, that was not a summoning signal. It was a bevy of fireflies." Alfred grimaced, sure that this new arrival could only make matters worse.

"Fuck, who cares? I'm here, dammit, and we're going to straighten this shit out, once and for all!" Cartman's face was set in the kind of chinless determination that was reminiscent of...well, that was the question, wasn't it?

They hurried over to where Harvey Dent was speaking to the press. In the audience was Bruce Wayne, and somewhere, glued to a set, was Krapkid, now using the handle, The Joker.

"The night is darkest just before the dawn. And I promise you, the dawn is coming." Old Harvey was really working himself up into a near hero lather. Eric stepped up to the podium, and shoved the man aside before stepping up on a box to speak.

"Shut up, Dent. You two faced blonde boywhore. Jesus Fucking Christ, you're more prissy than a McDreamy sandwich. What kind of pansy ass name is Dent, anyway? Did your parents name you after that thing in your chin? Shut the fuck up." Cartman turned to the crowd, as the bulbs flashed and the whispers died down. "Let's turn the clocks back. A year ago, you were all talking about Scarecrows and Falcone, and now look at you! You thought it was going to be easy, didn't you? You thought that you could just claim weapons of mass destruction, and no one was going to bother trying to find them. You thought that life was going to be one big fucking Schwartzenegger movie, and that one guy in a rubber suit was going to make the world safe for you all. Well, looks like you were wrong, bitches."

"Excuse me, but who are you?" One reporter with a cheap suit and even cheaper watch demanded.

"I'm Eric 'Poison Oak Does the Mambo on Dancing With the Stars' Cartman, bitch, and my mommy's name is Liane." Bruce Wayne's eyes filled with tears, as he stared at the fat kid on the box, and not because he was trying to imagine the long lost boy in a mini Batsuit, either. Across town, the Joker was shouting, "That's MY boy!", as he stared at the screen. The two men, friends in childhood, torn asunder by sorrow and unanswered questions, now facing the truth before them.

"You pansyfools want Batman and the Joker gone so shit can get back to the way it was. But I know the truth: there's no going back. You've changed things...forever. Gasoline will never be ninty nine cents a gallon again. A loaf of bread will cost more than a six pack of beer, and it all is because of your greed. Well, I'm here to put a stop to this motherfucking shit right now." He looked right into the camera of the station with the highest ratings, and he said the words that Gotham, and the world, needed to hear.

"You will respect my authoritah!"

And the crowd cheered.

*cue pansy ass emo Tori Amos song for chicks*

In the garage, two men stared at each other, over a little round boy.

"Mommy said that you needed to know the truth, Dads, because it all started with that trip to the cave that Mommy had with Bruce..."

"I remember." Bruce smiled, shaking his head.

"And it ended when Mommy took Krapkid to the circus."

Joker laughed, but not in a creepy Sid Vicious way. "I never felt so at home in my own skin, or hers."

Cartman looked up at the two men, and took each of their hands in his sticky, dirty, ones. "Don't you see? Mommy knew best all along, knew you both so well. She saw the freaky deaky side of both you assholes, and she licked it. You both did her. Hell, I bet you did each other. And look at you! Did your balls drop off? No!"

"Eric, you can't leave us to return to South Park. I might slip farther into sicko tendencies, like having young boys live with me wearing tight costumes." Bruce didn't like to beg, except for the highly paid hookers he had in his office.

"And I might do shit like blow up fairies." Joker pleaded, smoothing his hair back. "Displaced rage and all that. What if we end up killing each other?"

"Kill each other? You could never kill each other! What would you do without the other? Think of the franchise, the sequel, the chick in the catsuit that's just around the corner!" Cartman looked up in those eyes of his two daddies, and pleaded like that bug eyed kid asking for a Red Ryder BB Gun. "No. You can't let this end here. You can't! Don't you see? You...you complete me, and each other, and the only shot that a comic movie has at an Oscar, dudes."

"He's right, Bruce." Joker held out his arms.

"I know, Tulelea Does the Hula in Hawaii Krapowski." Bruce honored his friend with his real name, and a tearful hug that lasted just a little too long, what with Joker rubbing up on the vinyl a bit.

"Let's go get pizza, my treat." Bruce took both of their hands, and they walked out to the street together.

"Not fucking Domino's, Bruce. What kind of cheap ass sponsorship deal is that? I want Papa John's." Eric waddled down the dark streets of Gotham, between his two daddies, bitching about garlic sauce and Pepsi versus Coke. The truce wouldn't last any longer than a cupcake at Rosie O'Donnell's house, but it was a nice night for a Batdance under the moon, for Cartman and the two sides of his paternal coin.

Eric Cartman
South Park