Tim threw his hands in the air out of frustration. There were no words for the how bad this was. "You've got to be kidding me. This is the worst idea ever."

Bruce didn't even stop in his typing. "You don't have a choice."

Tim sighed as he started pacing the length of the cave. "I know that. I never have a choice."

Bruce paused for only a moment. "You CHOSE to be Robin."

Tim hung his head slightly. "Well, yeah, but this undercover thing…it's…"

Bruce returned to his work as he interrupted whatever Tim was about to say. "It doesn't matter what it is…you're doing it."

"Why not make Dick do it? He's the "funny" one anyway." Tim was whining…well, as close to whining as he ever got.

Bruce spun his chair around to stare at Tim. "Dick is…not the right person for this one." Bruce didn't want to say it, but his eldest son was NOT funny…not in the least.

"And I am?" Tim raised an eyebrow at him. He was starting to really question Bruce's decision making skills. This couldn't be right.

Bruce turned back to the computer and tossed, "You're the judges' type," over his shoulder.

Tim sat down on one of the work tables and flipped through some of the evidence they had collected. "Meaning a young boy who's going to pretend to be funny?"

"Unfortunately, you have to actually be funny. You're going to have to win in order to get into the back room." Bruce was suddenly standing in front of him and glaring at him. "What have I told you about sitting on the work tables?"

Tim sheepishly slid off the table. "You know what this means, don't you? We're screwed--because I'm not funny."

"Robin." It might have been one simple word, but the Bat's tone said everything. 'Stop arguing and go prepare yourself for your new undercover assignment. This needs to be done and you're the one who's going to do it.'

Tim sighed once again. "Bruce, they call me the serious too-much-like-the-bat-for-my-own-good Robin for a reason. This is never going to work."

Bruce just ignored him as he laid out a few more printouts. "Go get changed."

Tim was about to argue some more, but at the Bat's glare, he just decided he should do what he was told.

An hour later, Tim stood nervously backstage at the comedy club they had been staking out for some time. In the past five weeks, two standup comics who had been involved in this contest showed up severely ill at Gotham General and three others were found dead...all of whom had been finalists. All of the cases so far had no known cause. So, here Tim was, undercover, as just one more standup comic hopeful. He couldn't get over how bad this was going to be. Dick and Bruce had collaborated on making jokes for him, which basically guaranteed this was going to end badly. His greatest hope right now was to be laughed off the stage…and not in a good way…at least then he could tell Bruce, 'I told you so.'

"Rick Scott, you're up," a small petite woman with a clipboard yelled.

Tim sighed as he heard his alias called, and he knew Dick was to blame for the pseudonym. He felt like he was walking to the gallows. He couldn't stop thinking that there was no way this could possibly end well as he walked out onto the stage and just stared at the crowd. Slowly, he lifted up the note cards Dick had handed him earlier. He shuffled through them quickly and grabbed a random one in the middle. Quickly, he read it to himself and groaned internally. Dick had definitely written this one…that was for sure. Tim mentally shook his head as he started to ramble off the joke…if it could be called that. "So, a guy decides he needs a few days off, but his boss won't give it to him. So he hangs himself from the ceiling and makes choking sounds. Then his blonde coworker comes in and says, 'what're you doing?' The guy tells her he's acting crazy so the boss will give him a few days off, and she replies 'OKAY...whatever'. So, finally the boss comes in, and says, 'what're you doing?' And the guy's like...'I'm a light bulb?' The boss stares at him and then answers back, 'okay, clearly you're stressed. Go home and come back in a few days when you're feeling better'. So the guy leaves, and the blond files out right behind him. The boss asks her where she's going, and she says, 'well, I'm not going to work in the dark'."

Tim stood there for moment listening to the few courteous laughs he got. The kind of laughs that pretty much said, 'poor kid has no idea what he's doing up there', which was pretty much true. Tim flipped through a few more index cards until he found a joke which he was certain Bruce wrote. "Why'd the chicken cross the road? Well, it didn't…it got run over." Tim stared out at the crowd again and thought he heard crickets, but that was just insanity…crickets and Gotham City didn't mix. That was like Tim Drake doing standup…clearly a bad choice for all those involved.

Tim folded up the note cards and stowed them into his pocket. This was ridiculous. After that lovely moment, he didn't think anything he came up with on the spot could be much worse. "Okay, even I have to cringe at that one. I have to ask the person who wrote that what he was thinking. Just reading that made my eyeballs hurt. That's what I get for asking my dad for help."

Tim grabbed the microphone, and started walking around the stage. "I'm sure I was expected to do some kind of, 'so, a guy walks into a bar,' joke, but somehow I think that's most likely going to get me booed off the stage…and that's if you're nice folks--but given we're in Gotham, I'm not holding out much hope for that." Tim paused for a moment. He wasn't really sure what to say. He decided the best way to go was to draw from his real life. It's not like anyone would believe the craziness anyway. "So, anyone got a dad out there? Sure, we all do, and whether it's a sperm donor or a friend for life, we've all got one, right? And near or far, they all drive us nuts. My dad? My dad's a little 'special'." Tim made air quotes around the word special as he spoke.

"Most kids I know get like…a hundred bucks if they get straight A's on their report cards…not me. What did I get? Well, last semester, my dad got me a grenade launcher. Yeah, that's right, a grenade launcher--and I'm like…why? His response? 'It's something unique! It's something no one else in your class has. And I'm thinking, 'Well, yeah, that's because the other kids have sane dads--or at least clearly more sane than you'."

Tim cleared his throat before continuing. "So, he's going on and on about how I got this completely unique gift, and in the middle of his rant, I just stop him by saying, 'yeah, well, no one else in my class got a Ferrari, but you didn't give me one of THOSE either. You know, a CAR I could actually USE.' Then my brother sees the grenade launcher, and I'm expecting him to start in on me, you know, poking fun at me and what not, but no. How does he react? He's jealous, that's right, JEALOUS of this grenade launcher. Again I ask the question WHY? So my brother walks over and shows me his burnt fingers and he says, 'you wanna know what I got for my sixteenth birthday? A box of grenades! I could have used that freakin' launcher!' Then he smacked me upside the head and took it away."

Tim paused while the crowd laughed, and after a few moments, he continued. "That's how a lot of things go at my house. I get something cool, and my brother takes it away. So, you know, you try to un-cool-ify things. Like when I finally got that car. I took it out into the back yard, took a sledge hammer, and beat the ever-living piss out of the thing; and when my brother got home, I said, 'Look at this junker dad bought me!' It didn't work though. My brother still stole it."

Tim stopped for a moment to think about it. Truth was, his life could be considered funny, you know, if you weren't the one living it. "So, anyway, my brother took off with my car, and I'm like, well…crap, but, you know, I'm used to it; but then my dad walks up behind me and asks, 'Where's your car?' And I nearly jumped ten feet in the air, because he likes to sneak up on me, which just feeds into the paranoia that dad has eyes everywhere--although given all of the hidden cameras he has, he probably does have eyes everywhere."

Tim shook his head ruefully before continuing. "Anyway, I'm standing there thinking, 'Oh crap, I've lost the car', but then I get an idea. I turn to him and say, 'Dick said he was going to take it out for a spin', and that seems to be a good enough answer for him, because he grunts and walks away….my dad does that a lot actually, but anyway, I'm left standing there thinking about how to deal with Dick. Dick--that's my brother's name. It's one of those rare cosmic instances; his name is onomatopoeic. It sounds like what he actually is."

The crowd laughed, and Tim had to take a moment to wonder exactly how Bruce and Dick were going to react to all of this…well, they told him he had to do this undercover thing, so they could really just blame themselves. "Anyhow, I'm still standing there, wondering what the hell I'm going to do about Dick and the car situation, and while I'm in the middle of trying to come up with something, my dad comes back to ask me to do something--and right when he's about to open his mouth, Dick comes back with the car. I turn around to see my dad's face, and he looks like that time we accidentally hit him with a baseball bat. There's nothing but shock, pain, confusion, and anger. Dad apparently had missed my sledgehammer moment with the new car, so I turn to Dick, and I said, 'What the hell did you do to the car; take a sledge hammer to it?' Dick looks lost, dad looks pissed, and me? I'm running out of there so fast, you'd think I was a meta or something."

Tim smiled to himself at the memory. "Two hours later, Dick was trying to convince my dad that I was the one who ruined the car, but my dad had known I didn't even drive it yet, and really who's going to believe I took a sledge hammer to my own car? Dick had to spend the next six months fixing it. It was six months of bliss, I tell you."

Tim paused for a moment to think of something else to say; after a few seconds he seemed to settle on something. "Then there was the time I got my new 8 gig mp3 player. The first thing I did when I got it was put a ton of music that I knew Dick would never listen to on it. So, what did he do? He took the thing and deleted all of my stuff, and then uploaded all of his music to it. 2000 songs, that's how much I had to delete once I got the thing back. So, I waited until he went to bed, and filled all of his shoes with honey...then I opened his window…I'll let your minds fill in the rest."

Tim stared at the crowd for a moment. Most people's faces were scrunched up in disgust, and Tim had to agree with them when he thought about the mess that had made. Tim mentally shook his head before continuing. "No, but seriously, my brother and I have a great relationship--if you count beating each other up for something to do as a great relationship, that is. I remember this one time we were hanging out…sitting on the couch watching TV, and randomly he started throwing things at me. It started out small. You know, pieces of paper, popcorn, gummy bears, jelly beans, but then the things he started throwing at me got progressively larger…and well, more deadly. He threw a snow globe at me, my student achievement award…which he yelled 'achieve this…' as he tossed it at my head, and then some other decently sized objects came my way. Then, the next thing I knew, a freakin' grandfather clock was coming at me. I managed to move out of the way of the thing and I'm like, 'Dude, what's your problem?' And you know what his response was? 'I was bored.' I nearly got taken out by a freakin' clock and he's over there whining about being bored? So, I jumped on top of him and squirted 12 oz of Reddi Whip up his nose. He didn't bother me for two days after that, but that might have been because he was at the hospital getting Reddi Whip removed from his sinus cavity."

Tim smiled as he thought about it. Dick hadn't even gotten mad at him for that. He just congratulated him on his creativeness, and Alfred hadn't said a word; but the next time he bought Reddi Whip, there was a pointed look that said, 'This is for food'. "And I know that sounds awful, but we do have times when we actually get along…and I don't just mean when we're taking family photos. We get along great when we're destroying dad's work suits. Seriously, the amount of stuff you can find just laying around is astounding. We've covered those things in Jell-o, glitter, stickers, pink and purple paint, cool-whip and sprinkles, pink ribbons, and of course there was the time we super glued one to the ceiling. What can I say? We're creative! Actually, that was retaliation for my dad's attempt at cooking after we told him to just let it go and get take out. It wasn't our fault, honest; he forced us to eat rice that was so over cooked it looked like mashed potatoes…retaliation was a necessity after that. And yeah, he might have glared at us and made us peel it off the ceiling, but there wasn't even any real punishment for that one. He agreed that the rice massacre deserved some retribution."

"So yeah, we're all a bit mean to each other, but if you think that's bad, that's nothing compared to my other brother…who's more like a cousin…a really dangerous cousin. I like to call him Jason, the bickering monkey who you just can't seem to get rid of, but that's kind of a long introduction, don't you think?" Tim watched as a few people in the crowd nodded. "There was this one time he tried to kill me because I was wearing something that merely looked like something of his. Seriously, the guy is nuts--fun as hell to annoy--but nuts, all the same. Like that one time we just happened to run into each other at a bar and he threw me through a window because I 'got in his way', so I dug up some pictures of him sleeping with a stuffed pink Eeyore with a tutu on--which I proceeded to send to Dick, who made sure they got to all of the right people. I'm pretty sure 'the big tough guy' is still doing damage control. This is what happens when you mess with the kid who spends most of his time on a computer. Jason should have known better, honestly."

Tim took a moment to get some water and hopefully stall long enough to come up with something more to talk about. He was mid-sip when he noticed Batman give him the signal to wrap things up. Apparently, there was a lead, and that was alright with Tim, because the sooner they closed this case the better. "Well, I'm sure you lovely people wouldn't begrudge me getting back at my brothers for the prank they pulled last week, so I'm heading out, night everybody." Tim ran off stage, and back into an ally a block away, where Dick was waiting for him.

"You know, getting Reddi Whip removed from your nasal passage isn't nearly as pleasant as it sounds." Dick tossed him a helmet as he got onto his bike.

Tim looked down at the ground sheepishly. "I…it..."

Dick smiled at him. "It's cool, you did well tonight. B has some new information he wants to share with us, so do you mind getting your butt in gear?"

Tim nodded once as he put the helmet on, and climbed onto the bike.

Dick glanced over his shoulder at Tim before starting the bike. "By the way, how did you get close enough to Jason to place the pink Eeyore in a tutu in his arms while he slept?"

Tim grinned to himself slightly. "If you help me melt gummy bears to fill his boots with I'll show you."

Dick laughed. "You know, you could have just told me you were doing something with gummy bears that equaled pissing Jay off, and I totally would have helped for free, but I have to ask. What did he do to deserve the melted gummy bears treatment?"

"Crashed my laptop." Tim said simply.

"What? And you couldn't fix it?" Dick sounded shocked.

"When I said crashed it, I guess I should have said smashed it. He dropped it off of the top of Wayne Tower. There wasn't much left to it."

"Oh, wait…he trashed your laptop, and you're only filling his boots with melted gummy bears?"

Tim shook his head. "No, I'm only allowing you to help with that bit."

Dick smiled brightly. "Ah, there's the evil Timmy I know and love." Tim was silently grateful that they were still driving because he could tell by Dick's tone that he wanted to ruffle Tim's hair.

When they got to the cave, Bruce was waiting for them. "What took so long?"

They both glanced at each other before Dick spoke. "You know, banter takes up a lot of time."

Bruce made a disapproving noise before turning back to the computers. "I saw one of the judges hand one of the boys this." He held up a small plastic bag before continuing. "I'm analyzing it now. We'll know in a couple of hours what it is and what it's made out of. Once I've come up with something to counteract the drug's effects, we'll go visit that judge tonight." Bruce walked away, leaving the other two alone in the cave.

Tim started removing his disguise. "Does that mean that after tonight I won't have to do this again?"

Dick shrugged. "Don't know; you know Bruce--he might make you continue just so that if this type of thing happens again, you're more comfortable with it."

Tim rolled his eyes. "Great."

"So, back to this Jason thing...what are you planning to do besides the melted gummy bear thing?"

Tim smiled evilly. "Stuff."

The end