Saw a post yesterday talking about how BFTC is super ooc, since wdym the Batkids would ever willingly become Batman?? And first of all, true. Batman is a punishment for them. SECOND of all, it made me think of a scenario where they’re all arguing about it, and it’s gotten to the point where everyone else has decided that Jason is the most Batman-shaped among them, so he just
“If you force me into the Batsuit I will shoot the Joker in the face in front of as many witnesses and cameras possible.” And surely, surely that will excuse him from Batman-duty, but then-
Dick slowly turns to look at him, a thoughtful expression on his face. “You should use Alfred’s shotgun.”
So then all of the mostly-unsupervised Batlings are planning what’s basically a public execution, and even Cass isn’t arguing bc she knows what it feels like to die and she CHOSE that fight to the death, but Jason never got a choice, and suddenly they’re compiling old rogue plans because if they combine a few it’ll probably be actually successful-
In the aftermath, after Jason has dramatically left the scene, they have Dick stroll over, nudging the Joker with one foot as if to check if the man who just got blasted in the face with a double-barrel shotgun could be anything but dead. Nightwing makes a statement that boils down to “oh you know how alternate universes and time travel can be,” and the Batfam basically blames it all on Gun Batman even though it was literally just Jason.
After that, they have Alfred draw names out of a hat. None of them are going to argue with him, since as shaken as he still is, he’s in charge while Dad is gone. They also have him decide who gets to be Robin, which boils down to “who was the best behaved this week” (criminals don’t know how to react when it’s Jason or Dick, used to a tiny kid. The duo of Cass as Batman and Jason as Robin only happened once, but no one in Gotham’s underworld will ever forget it).
When Bruce comes back, none of them tell him about the fact that the Joker is dead. In all honesty, they’re so used to him being dead that they… well they sort of forgot. He ends up chatting with Jim, the man fondly complaining about how he’s pretty sure the forced interaction as they had to all pretend to be the same person and keep their stories straight meant the communication skills within the family skyrocketed while he was gone. Bruce isn’t sure how to feel about it, but that gets forgotten when Gordon makes a reference to the Gun Batman Incident with a roll of his eyes.
Bruce isn’t even sure if his kids simply let an alternate Batman go feral on the Joker, or if it was one of them.
None of them will tell him.
In the footage, Batman looks up from the Joker’s corpse, and simply says “I am vengeance.”
