Prompt Post - Part Ten
I am REALLY, REALLY SORRY about taking so long, guys, and about not being around much recently. I've been busier than I have in a while, and it just kept slipping my mind between uni applications and volunteering and all sorts- for some reason I thought we were much further off a new post.
If there is anything I haven't responded to, as of now, I'm ( Read more... )
This is more of how this story started:
Jonathan Nathaniel Crane Pennyworth is twelve years old. He is near five feet tall, and is only going to get taller. He is in Year Seven of his mandatory education, which in America means he’s a sixth-grader. When he is angry, he speaks with a very thick cockney accent. He has black hair, blue eyes, and a three way split personality. And you thought you had problems. When he was eight, his maternal grandmother died of sheer meanness. His mother, who never wanted a child to begin with, left him with her mother, his grandmother. His grandmother hated him because he was illegitimate, and was merciless in her hatred.
(His great-uncle (on his grandfather’s side), one Alfred Thaddeus Crane Pennyworth, would have been happy to take the boy in.)
When his grandmother died, Jonathan Crane was sent to the London City Orphanage, where, in another place and time, he was bullied mercilessly by his peers, and threw himself with wild abandon into a life of villainy and crime. He would have been Dr. Jonathan Crane; the villianous The Scarecrow, the Master of Fear. In this world, that would not happen. It could not happen, because when he was ten, Jonathan Nathaniel Crane Pennyworth, who goes by Johnny Crane, jimmied the fourth floor window open, and clambered down the drain pipe. When his feet touched the ground outside, the quiet crunch of sticks did not wake up Daisy, the matrons Jack-Russell terrier, who did not wake up her mistress. In another world, Daisy woke her mistress. Bad things happened to Johnny as a result. Not in this world, though.
Johnny had been preparing his escape for weeks. He had nicked a pair of wire cutters, and a greying beach towel. ''We shouldn’t steal…'' We’ll mail them back. He had hidden them in a bush near the cyclone fence that separated the orphans from the rest of the world’s scrutiny. Johnny C. hadn’t gotten this far, in a different world.
Scarecrow had nixed the idea of simply climbing the fence as Too noisy, innit? and Doc was insistent that they leave ASAP. Thus, the Plan: Camouflage self with beach towel, cut hole in fence, escape, then????....
It wasn’t the best plan, but for him, it would have to do.
Johnny would eventually get booked by the police after he loitered for a few days too many near a fountain across town. He (that is to say, Johnny and Doc, who outvoted Scarecrow,) would give the cops his real name, his full name. His full name, in turn, would be registered into the system, and a few flags would fly. And one Alfred Thaddeus Crane Pennyworth would get a call from an old friend about his great-nephew, “-and could you please come get him?”
“Certainly, when would be best?” Alfreds voice is smooth, cultured. It does not betray his shock- 'e 'as a mother's pearly gate nephew 'oo was 'omeless for Bo-le Of Glue Donkey's Ears and nah wahn told 'im wahn bloody- ahem, keep it together, guv...
“Yesterday would have been perfect, but tomorrow will have to do.” The voice on the other end is not quite frantic, but a clear edge of hysteria is coming through.
At supper that night, Alfred tells his employer, one Bruce Wayne, that “-A personal matter has come to my attention. I must go to London, tonight, to remedy the problem. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
His voice is, as always, unflinchingly calm. Of course, the tone of that voice is the kind of tone that has EXTREME PANIC writ large over it, but I digress…
Oh... I'm going to have to write flashbacks for this sucker...
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And he's Alfred's nephew. Expectations.
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I think it's because of all the P. G. Wodehouse I've been reading...
Hmmm, I totally didn't notice the parallel worlds structure thing... Could you possibly point some of it out to me?
Yeah, I've always really liked Scarecrow for some reason. I have some ideas about what all he can do...
*Maniacal Cackle*
Ah, yeah, I read Alfred's name on the Bat-wiki and was all like "WUT!?!?!?! Hmmmmmmm... I can work with this", so now I have Expectations tooo...
Cockney accents are annoying, but it'll be a while before we get to see one...
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