JLA Wonderland 2

 For story with images, see PDF below.

When we left off, dear readers, Nightwing, the former sidekick to the legendary Batman, had found himself fascinated with a statue of Alice, of the Wonderland Alices.

FLASHBACK!

“Curious,” Nightwing said as he found himself staring with fascination at a statue of Alice. “She was in that Looking Glass story, right?” He said.

Wonder Woman looked at the statue and shrugged. “I’m not that familiar with this Alice character,” she said looking at the statue which also included rabbits and a tortoise and other seeming cartoon characters. “Do you think this statue might have something to do with the case?”

“It could,” Nightwing said. He decided to stretch, raising both arms above his head and arching his back, which was just the moment when he popped out his very own pair of boobies. Wonder Women blinked. She rubbed her eyes, but nothing changed the fact that Nightwing now seemed to have his very own pair of brand-new breasts. He also appeared to be wearing makeup.

“Nightwing,” Wonder Woman said. “You—have--” she made a cupping gesture with her hands over her own chest. The gesture struck her as slightly sexist and unbecoming of an Amazon, but she was having trouble finding the words to explain to Nightwing that he had popped out a pair of puppies. “You have, um, bongos.”

“I’ve had bongos since I was 12,” Nightwing said, confused that Wonder Woman had decided to note something that had been obvious for some years. He smirked, but it was an incongruous smirk for a young man. It was the superior smirk of a girl who knows she’s hot and always has been. “I was an early bloomer. The other boys were so jealous.” Then, as if he’d heard himself speak for the first time, his eyes went wide. His hand went to his throat. ‘Why is my voice so deep?”

“Deep?” Wonder Woman asked, since he sounded the same as always.

“Can’t you hear it?” Nightwing said in his usual voice. “I sound like a little girl. It’s humiliating.”

Wonder Woman might have argued this point but for the fact that she had come to realize something very strange was happening and that Nightwing was no longer very much in touch with their reality. Besides, her attention was distracted by the fact that Nightwing suddenly sprouted a pair of ears and whiskers. His short, sharp haircut sprouted until he had hair down to his shoulders. Even his two front teeth seemed to stretch, giving him a quite silly and mousy smile. Wonder Woman, who was quite clever and not under any sort of spell, knew something was going on. She decided to take action. She took Nightwing’s elbow and began to lead him away. “Let’s get out of here.”

Nightwing scrunched his nose side to side, wiggling his whiskers. He pulled his elbow away from her. “You’re not Wonder Woman! You sound like a man.”

“Yes. It’s awful,” Wonder Woman said, playing along, now putting an arm around Nightwing’s shoulder, thinking she would fly them out of there and perhaps get to the Justice League satellite, which had some magic protections. “Come with me so I can figure out why I have this terrible boy voice.”

Before she could get them any further, however, Nightwing began to shrink, growing smaller and smaller and smaller until he finally vanished with a POP.  Sensing there was nothing more she could do here, Wonder Women headed for the JLA satellite. Something was going on, and she would need to get to the bottom of it.

Nightwing, meanwhile, now found himself standing on the edge of a small pond in a magical forest. In more ordinary circumstances, Nightwing may have been worried about being teleported to a mysterious forest, but he could not focus on such trivial matters when there was something far more concerning: he was wearing a dress. “Eeeee!” Nightwing squealed, crossing one arm over his chest and pulling his knees together, looking around, terrified someone might see him dressed like a girl. What would happen if Wonder Girl found out? She would tease him mercilessly, he was sure. She might even break up with him. Everyone knew girls didn’t like it when their boyfriends went around wearing dresses.

Indeed, while it may seem surprising that Nightwing would think boys had bongos and soft voices and yet not find it equally commonplace that they should wear dresses, we must remember that he did not find himself in a topsy-turvy world where everything was upside down from our world. No. He had entered Wonderland, which scientists have determined is more opsy-urvy. “I can’t believe I’m wearing a dress, at least out in public,” Nightwing said, looking for a place to hide. Before he could, however, he suddenly realized he was now up to his neck in the salty pool, which had grown bigger and deeper the whole time he’d been worrying about Wonder Girl seeing him in a dress.

 “Help! Help!” He cried as he splashed about, relieved to hear he now had the high, soft voice boys were supposed to have. He closed his eyes and screamed as loud as he could. “Help! I’m drowning!” After a few moments, he stopped floundering and splashing about, instead of just treading water. He opened one eye and looked around him. “Fiddlesticks,” he said, quite annoyed to find there was no handsome and dashing girl coming to his rescue. “How vexing.”

Now we must leave Nightwing to jump back in time a bit to see what Batman has been up to. I do hope you can follow along as I simply must leap about here and there in this story. Batman, we shall see, was getting up to all sorts of things while other things were happening to Nightwing. So, we return now to the dark knight detective, not quite so fearsome since he’d found himself transformed into a blonde girl with very substantial bongos. He also wore a pretty dress and had a ribbon in his hair which, it must be said, would not intimidate even the most timid of villains.

Alice, oh, I suppose we shall keep referring to her as Batman for now—Batman had been pursuing Superman and catching up to the now buxom babe of steel due to the fact that Superman had found himself wearing a pair of 4 inch stiletto heels while Batman wore much more sensible-- and if you were to ask her much cuter-- Mary Janes. However, Superman had suddenly vanished leaving Batman in a small round room with no visible exit.

“How did Superman vanish?” Batman wondered, twisting her hair around her fingers. “It’s quite a mystery.” Yet, Batman still thought of herself as quite the little detective, so she began to look for clues. There was a small table. Batman knelt and looked under the table. “Puzzling,” she said. Then, she looked behind the table. She tapped her finger against her chin as she’d seen Sherlock Holmes do in a movie once. “Most intriguing.” Indeed, Batman had no idea what she was looking for, but was merely playing pretend, as little girls often do.

Next, she suddenly spun on her heels and pointed at the air, crying out triumphantly. “The footprints of a giant hound!” In fact, there were no footprints, but it was another thing she’d once heard Sherlock Holmes say. Now, however, our adorable hero’s play-acting paid dividends as she did notice footprints on the dusty floor. “Elementalry,” she said, looking at the shoe prints. “Clearly made by a pair of Audrey Hepburn Patridge Pumps. I’d say circa 1967. Hmpf. Superman would wear retro heels,” she said rolling her eyes. “She’s such a Sailor Moon wanna be.”  As Batman followed the heel prints, they seemed to grow smaller and smaller until they ended right at the edge of a curtain. Thinking Superbunny had hidden behind the curtain, Batman reached out and yanked the curtain aside. “Gotchya!”

Alas, he’d yanked too hard, and the curtain pulled away from the wall, falling down on Batman’s head. Batman screamed and fell to his knees, his little heart racing, then pulled the curtain off his head, looking around, chagrined, but quickly realizing he’d bumbled his way into a perfect chance to be cute. “I’m so clumsy,” he said, tilting his head to the side and giggling while rolling his eyes. He folded his hands under his chin. “I hope whoever owns this room won’t be too cross with me. I’m just a silly little girl, after all.”

Satisfied at his cuteness, Batman now turned his detective skills to the wall where he saw a small door. “The game’s afoot!” He cried. The small door was locked, but it did have a keyhole. Being the world class detective she was, Batman soon turned her attention to the table where there was not only a key, but a bottle. “I’m a clever girl,” Batman proclaimed, slightly disappointed there were no grown-ups there to say it for her. She was ever so fond of praise. The tiny key did, indeed, fit the lock. Batman opened the door. Beyond the door she saw a lovely garden of great pink and purple mushrooms and her heart skipped a beat as she clapped her hands. “How lovely,” she announced. “Perhaps I shall have a picnic beneath one of these mushrooms.” Amongst the things Batman now discovered she loved as a girl but which she’d been indifferent to as a boy, were picnics.

She adjusted the ribbon in her hair. She smoothed her skirt and tightened the buckles on her patent leather Mary Jane’s. “A girl simple must look her best when she goes after her quarrel,” she announced, now using the clipped and formal tones a girl uses when answering questions in school.

Then, her pretty little mouth dropped open, and her big blue eyes went wide. The door was too small. “I’m such a little fool,” she announced. “Of course, a normal sized girl can’t go through a tiny sized door.” For a moment, she thought she might cry, but then she crossed her arms under her breasts, stomped one little foot and said, “I don’t cry. I’m Batman.”

Her mood as inconstant as the wind, she giggled and skipped over to the table, picked up the bottle. There was note tied around the neck written in the prettiest script. It read “drink me.”

Batman smiled. “Don’t mind if I do.” She was about to drink down the potion, her pinky finger extended, of course. Yet, she hesitated. Lessons from her youth came back to her. She remembered being a young boy and her father… Batman shook her head. How silly, she thought, imagining myself a boy. She focused her mind, her mouth going sideways and her eyebrows all hilter kilter as she focused her mind. Then she remembered it right. Yes. She’d been a little girl, and she’d been sitting in Mother’s lap as mother brushed out Batman’s long, golden blonde hair. “Never,” mother was saying, “touch a hot stove.”

‘Yes… yes…” Batman had answered, writing the advice down in his diary.

“Do not rub your thumb along a blade to see if it is sharp. You will cut yourself.”

‘Wise words, indeed…” Batman had murmured. As he created this new memory for himself, Batman couldn’t help but notice he had simply gorgeous penmanship, all his letters flowing with dramatic curves and adorned with pretty curly cues. “Anything else, dear mother?” He asked as his mother tied his hair back in  a ponytail.

“Yes,” mother said. “Never drink from a bottle labelled “Poison.” You may well find it disagrees with you.”

Batman tossed his hair. Good old mother, always with such sage advice. He turned the bottle over, upside down, this way and that way, carefully inspecting it to see if it had been labelled poison. One could never be too careful. There was no such label. Still cautious, he dabbed a bit on his finger and took a taste with just the very little tip of his tongue. “Yum,” she sighed. It tased of some many lovely things: there was cinnamon, cherry-tart, custard, pineapple, roast turkey and hot buttered toast. Also, pumpkin spice. Batman very soon finished off the bottle and without the slightest concern. It was well-known among all girls that nothing that tasted of pumpkin spice could be bad for you, and when it came to flavors of things, girls knew best.

The room around Batman grew, the ceiling flying away as she found herself shrinking and shrinking, her body closing up like a telescope. As soon as she’d begun to shrink, Batman had struck a surprised and tentative pose, his mouth open and his arms outstretched, his hands bent at the wrists as if he were batting away butterflies. It was, she was sure, just the right pose for a girl to strike as she found herself shrinking, and if there was one thing Batman, the dark knight detective knew, it was the right pose for the right situation.

“Goodness me,” Batman declared. “Being so small makes me feel ever so cute.” This new Batman adored looking cute, feeling cute, acting cute. It was, really, like, one of his favorite things. Also, pretending he had no idea how cute he looked was also one of the things he loved. There was nothing worse, he felt, than a girl who acted like she knew she was cute. In fact, the art of cuteness required a girl to always seem as if she were utterly naïve. This was something she and Superbunny spoke about often and one of the reasons none of the other girls liked Green Lantern. She was so full of herself!

Batman headed out the tiny door and into the mushroom garden, eyes wide with wonder, cheeks blushing with delight. It was even prettier than she had imagined.

****

Back in Gotham, The Joker found himself in a bit of what some might call a sticky wicket. Some might not call it that, but those somes would be wrong. It was a sticky wicket. We must be clear on that point.

As ever a bad boy, Joker was once more locked in Arkham Asylum. An asylum, by the by, is a place where we put those polite society refers to as looneys and nutters. Joker was the looniest nutter of them all. He took pride in this aspect of his varied personality.

This particular day, Joker was in the common room arguing with Carmine Falcone, who was not actually a nutter but whose lawyer had gotten him placed in Arkham because Carmine preferred the food there.  “You ain’t a man just ‘cause you kill people,” Carmine said. “That don’t make you a man. See? You know how I know ya ain’t a man? You’re wearing lipstick.”

Joker struck a martial arts pose right out of a Manga, though he did not know any formal martial arts but was more of a brawler. “Let’s settle this with our fists,” he said. Sigh. Boys are always fighting with each other trying to prove that they’re men. “And, for your information, Mr. Smarty Pants, I’m not wearing lipstick,” he said, his eyes gleaming with fury. “It’s tinted lip balm.” Hearing those words come out of his mouth, Joker felt confused. Mr. Smarty Pants? It sounded like something Harley might say, but not him. Noticing his martial arts pose, he grew even more confused as three incoherent thoughts followed one after the other.  First, why am I posing like a martial artist when I don’t know martial arts? Then, oh yeah, because I’m pretending I’m Ranma ½, but in his girl form. Then, why would I be pretending to be a girl?

“See? That’s what I’m talkin’ about. You ain’t a man.”

“I’m more than a man than you,” Joker shouted, getting ready to pull Carmine’s hair, but just then he suddenly popped out a big, bouncy pair of boobies. At the same time, his face softened and grew more feminine, with plump lips, a small nose and a pointed chin. Falcone was not interested in Joker’s pretty face. Falcone’s eyes dropped to Joker’s chest. “Nice rack,” he’d said. “I’ll give you a carton of cigarettes if you show me them huge jugs.”

Joker’s mouth dropped open in shock. “How dare you!” He said. “I wouldn’t show them to you for less than two cartons.” Really, ever since he’d gotten his boobs back when he was a tween guys and girls had been wanting to see them, touch them, see them and touch them. He was used to it.

“Well, I guess we can both agree now that you’re not much a man with the lipstick and now the boobs.” Carmine said.

Joker’s mouth, which we have noted had dropped open earlier, dropped open even more. “You’re just jealous because I have bigger maracas than you.” At that moment, there was a flash, and Joker suddenly found himself wearing a red and white dress covered in hearts. Much like Nightwing, he was deeply ashamed to find himself wearing a dress. In this room full of bad boys, he also felt very scared. Boys did NOT wear dresses, and these asylum boys would be very mean about it. He put his soft hands to his smooth cheeks and screamed. “Guards!”

Carmine, his eyes blazing with desire, stepped toward Joker. “How about a kiss, doll?” The other men then approached, closing in on the Joker, forming a crescent and getting closer and closer, like an advancing army. ‘Yeah, how about a kiss? Don’t be cruel, doll face.”

“Get back,” Joker said, not with a soft woman’s voice. “Stay away.” The men just closed in, getting closer and closer, leering, licking their lips. Joker lifted his skirts and backed away, his heart racing. “Guards!” He cried out. “Guards!”

Then, there was a sudden “poof,” and he vanished.

“Hey, where did he go?” Carmine said. “I really wanted a kiss.”

“Who?” Penguin asked.

“The Joker.”

Penguin shook his head. “You mean the Queen of Hearts?”

To be Continued…