#punchichi

            To me, the saddest thing about ‘Mitefall’ isn’t that the show got cancelled.  The saddest thing was that nobody had to die. 

            “POWER TO THE PUPPY!” Punchichi yells.

            Bat-Mite giggles. “Sound familiar?” 

            He’s not talking to me. He doesn’t know that I’m here, yet. He’s just doing it for himself.

            All the same, I answer him.            

            “It does,” I admit softly.

              I’ve been watching this episode, and the more I watch it, the more unsettled I get.  

            And not for reasons that Bat-Mite seems to expect.  

            And I’ve finally had enough.

            He’s not exactly unhappy to see me. He’s having too much of a blast to be bubble-burst that easily. 

            “Hello, stranger!” He says. “I don’t remember creating you! Are you Punchichi’s hip new babysitter?! Cousin Olive to his Cousin Oliver?!” 

            I don’t react for a moment.

            Then I take a step forward. 

            Bat-Mite, intimidated, tries to zap away, only to find he can’t. 

            He is a reality warper, but I am the narrator. 

            I have the high ground. 

            He can’t escape. 

            We have to settle this.

            “I remember Cousin Oliver,” I snap, as he stares at me, helpless with shock. “I remember learning his story when I was searching for Punchichi’s doppelganger,”

“And don’t tell me. You’re the one fan of him, a loon to be taken down. Well, I’m feeling merciful today, so allow me to teach you a little lesson.” 

He snaps his fingers, and a small boy appears.  The child is clearly very young, and he’s definitely from an era long past-with his long, pale blonde hair and bangs, and his round spectacles, he looks like a baby John Lennon, a figure that I’m a bit more familiar with thanks to my father’s musical taste.

“Welcome to the Cousin Oliver show!” He chirps at me. “Want to watch me forever?”

“Are you OK?” I ask him quietly. 

Bat-Mite clearly expected either over the top cheering or over the top disgust, not quiet sympathy. 

As a result of his surprise, Oliver spasms, and his round face is filled with pain. 

“Do you really expect me to demonize this child?” I ask Bat-Mite. “He’s only eight.”

“Nobody knows, nobody cares,” Bat-Mite sings.

I step closer to Oliver, my hands stretched out to shield him from any horrible plan Bat-Mite has for him. 

Oliver, for his part, just stares  into space, grinning hugely. 

My heart twists. It’s not right. 

Bat-Mite rolls his eyes at my emotion. “Oh, still going all sympy-wympy on Cousin Oliver, are we?!” He grins like a loon. “Well then! now you can be stuck with him forever!”

I feel chains clasp around my wrists and ankles, as Bat-Mite forces my body into my chair. Less than a foot away, on a stage, is Oliver, but he’s changed.

Oliver’s face distorts and he begins to grow more deformed. He begins to sing about 

Throwing money at the corporate executives. He’s on the part about money when I lift my hand a bit. 

“Bat-Mite?”

“Yeah?” He snickers.

“Can you lengthen the chains on my arm a bit? And bring Oliver closer to me.”

Bat-Mite smirks. He thinks he knows what I’m going to do.

“Oliver! Your audience has a surprise for you!” 

Oliver makes a noise that sounds like a dying bear and a lunatic before shambling to me.

I do something he doesn’t expect.

I place my hand on his shoulder. I was supposed to just watch him. Or, as Bat-Mite appears to hoped, punch him in the face.

He looks at me in surprise, but he doesn’t shake away my touch.

“I never knew Cousin Oliver.” I whisper. “I was born long after he was gone.”

“Well, if you think that we were wrong about him,” Bat-Mite cackles from somewhere nearby, “Then you’re in for a surprise!” 

If he expected me to cringe and back away in fear, he’s dreadfully mistaken. I stand my ground and close my eyes.

“I don’t know much about the brady bunch, Oliver,” I whisper. “But I know that it was about a family of ordinary people. And I know that family is always changing. You’re just an ordinary kid, aren’t you, Oliver?”

Oliver nods quietly. He begins to return to himself, as he truly was.

The bubble bursts. I always had the power to escape, but that would mean leaving Oliver with his tormentor, which is unacceptable. 

Oliver looks dazed, but his eerie robotic effect is gone. The ordinary little boy I knew he was is here. 

Oliver looks around. “Wh-where am I?!”

“Oliver,” I say softly, trying to get his attention.

He squirms back. 

“Ahh! Stranger Danger! Who are you?!” He screams, as he looks around at 2011

Malibu, as far from a fifties suburb as they come.

The eight year old boy begins to sob in confusion, as only eight year old children can.

I kneel down infront of him.

  “I can help you,” I explain. I’m vaguely aware of Bat-Mite dropping a hydrogen bomb on us, but without even turning around, I turn it into a pomegranate  and chuck it into the ocean.  

“I want my mommy,” He whimpers. 

“Ssshhhh,” I whisper. “Don’t worry. Just let me help you,”

“Take me to mommy,”

“Soon,” I answer, as soothingly as I can. “Soon, kid. Don’t worry.”

He buries his head into my stomach. I think about how much of an ordinary child he is, how he was always intended to be, regardless of the show or where or when he was added. I think about how much I want to protect him. 

A bubble forms around him. “Trust me, OK?” I say. He nods. Between me and Bat-Mite, there is little conflict in his choice.

With Oliver safe for the time being, I turn back to Bat-Mite, who is just in the middle 

of preparing to slam a chainsaw on my head. Since I’m really sick of this, I just poof it away

without ceremony.

“BATMITE! You have to stop this, NOW!” I yell. “I may not know Oliver enough to be a fan of him, but I know from the bottom of my heart that I am NOT a fan of murdering innocent children because some immature adults decided to blame them for everything they went wrong! Oliver Tyler died in a car-crash,” (I make sure the bubble around Oliver becomes soundproof, so he doesn’t have to hear) “And that nobody saved him because of you!  You turned his family against him! People like you ostracised him! A little boy! Introduced in the middle of a season with the fate of the show set!”

“They weren’t his family! He wasn’t real!”

“If he’s NOT REAL, THEN WHY DOES HIS PAINFUl, LONELY DEMISE MATTER SO MUCH TO YOU!?”

Bat-Mite just stares at me. He’s completely at a loss. 

I finally have him on the ropes.  But I can’t rest now. I have to drive it home, before he bounces back. 

“If they weren’t his family, then how do you know that Batman is your hero?” I say. “You’re a fictional character too.”

“That’s different! I am a well accepted part of the canon!”

“Well, even if he’s not, he looks, talks, and acts like a kid to me,” I say, pointing at him. “I could argue that Batman is secretly just a loon in a mental hospital and that every single story is just through his eyes of madness. Would that become the truth, if everyone believed it?”

“NOBODY WOULD BELIEVE IT!!!” Bat-Mite screams at me. “DESECRATOR!”

“How do you know that Batman isn’t just a man with a wonderful wife and daughter who he loves, and that this cold world where children and young women being murdered is celebrated-”

“THEY’RE NOT CHILDREN!” Bat-Mite screams. He is ripping the world apart, through the reality-warping equivalent of a massive temper tantrum. 

But I keep a little piece safe, and the people of this world float and forget this strange twisting of dimensions.

Because I am the one telling this story. I cannot be touched if I don’t let him. And the little boy in my care won’t be, either. Or the ones whose heads Batman is messing with. Because I can NEVER let a child be hurt. This is more important then TV.

“I MADE THEM!” Bat-Mite cries, one last desperate plea to convince me to leave them to suffer at his hands.   “Oh, you did, did you? They don’t seem to know you even exist.”

“They couldn’t! I needed to keep absolute secrecy-oooohhh...” He turns away in a gesture of petulant defeat.

I don’t fully trust him, no matter what his motives are at this point, so I don’t lower any boundaries.

Knock, Knock. I turn and see Oliver trying to get my attention, politely knocking on the bubble’s shield like the relic of a bygone era.

I let him out into my bigger bubble. 

He skids up to me. “Miss? Can I go home now?”

I look at him, and I feel sad, because none of this needed to happen.

 None of this was his fault; not in the past, and not in the present. 

And even if it was, taking it all out on him wouldn’t do jack. 

“Please Miss,” Oliver says, mistaking my hesitation for refusal. “You said you would help me. And I really want to go home.”

My eyes sting. “Of course you do, Oliver. Of course you do,”

I close my eyes, and, far away from Bat-Mite’s prying eyes, he’s home, with family who will truly take care of him. His parents came home.

Bat-Mite howls. His favorite punching bag of all is gone. He’ll never find him. I’ll never let him find him, not when he has murder and hate on his mind, when he seeks to blame an innocent instead of growing up and seeing the flipside.

The world of storytelling can be hard to define. What’s popular is not always right. What’s right is not always popular. Sometimes the crowd refuses to accept a bit of cannon, sometimes reality just clashes to hard, sometimes-and sometimes there is just far too much at stake to not stand firm for your own beliefs. 

“No more dead kids,” I whisper.

Bat-Mite blows a raspberry at me.

  I grab Punchichi just before Batman deals the final reality wiping blow. He’s here with me. 

“Put ‘em up!” He yells. “I can take you!”

I reach into my pocket and throw a white hankie into the air; a sign of surrender. Then I kneel down and smile at him. “Hi, Punchichi,” I say.

He stares up at me. “Who are you?” 

So sweet. So happy. Bat-Mite was counting on everyone being too wrapped up in themselves to see the character for who he was made to be.

“Don’t worry, Punchichi,” I tell him. “It’ll be OK. I just really wanted to meet you. You look so much like someone I know. I love him so much. I love how happy and noble and brave he was. I know you’ll be a great hero. I know you have the right heart.” 

I touch his forehead, remembering every time Scrappy did something like crash through a solid wall or something noble or a heart-melting moment with him and Scooby. Now he has the puppy power too.

And then I bring in Kiki Wayne and Helen Wayne to my safe, safe bubble where nobody has to get hurt. 

“This is Kiki,” I tell him.

The two children squeal at the sight of eachother.

“A puppy?!” Kiki exclaims.

“A neighbor?!” 

And just like that, they’re friends. 

I smile. It’s nothing like the Batman that anyone knows, but it’s beautiful in its own way to me. Innocent and joyful and full of so much potential. Not worth being created only to be thrown away. “Have fun, you two,”

They both grin at me. Bat-Mite thought of them, but he didn’t care about them. I won’t let him hurt them.

Next is Batman’s wife. 

 “Thank you for existing,” I say. “Thanks for being a good mom and a good companion to Batman. You must have done something right for him to develop as a character.” 

She just looks at me. Oliver, Kiki, and Punchichi, with the child-like innocence, accepted me and thus, I could reach them.

“Who are you?” She asks. She has taken a fighting stance. She need not be worried. I’ll be brief.

“A friend,” I close my eyes. She’s not gone. She’s safe, where she can raise her cherished daughter in peace. 

Punchichi and Ace are there too. Children do make a difference. But they are also the future. And no child should be treated as a tool of destruction. 

“C’mon, I needed the realism,” Bat-Mite pleads. Given his nature, he heard my inner musings. “If I had just made them into empty minions, then nobody would’ve hated them. It takes a brave soul to take down a child who needs to-”

“No! Nobody in their right mind kills children! Nobody! Zilch! Zap!” I say. “And you know, Bat-Mite, I didn’t ruin anything. The show was already ending. This was the finale. The fate of this show was already set in stone when you started work on it. Even if you hadn’t played any of your mind games with Batman, then the show still would have been cancelled. The cancellation was part of the story too. You didn’t actually break the fourth wall at all.”

“WHHA?! NO!!-So what was the point of this?!” Bat-Mite demands.

I give him a bittersweet smile. 

“Zilch.” I say.  “Zippo. Goose egg. Just writers messing around.”

He gawks at me, and I need to do one last thing. I send Bat-Mite somewhere, anywhere, I don’t care, I just don’t want him to be able to hurt anybody anymore.

I only have one thing left to settle.

Later, somewhere else 

“Batman.” I say. “I saw the show. I know it was  already ending. The family you were given was a red herring, the writers knew the show was ending.  I don’t know if Ambush Bug was lying to you, or if he was just another tool. But I know how happy you were to have a daughter. And I know that I don’t want you to be the kind of person who kills people for no reason. Even if you do it without guns.” 

He gives me a long look, trying to place my face, and when he realizes he can’t, I’ve already made a nice tough force field. Being the narrator can do a lot of things, but it can’t give me the skills to believably beat Batman in a one-on-one.

So he just continues to look at me.

 “Your daughter gave you the will to protect Gotham,” I said. “How do you know that wasn’t real?”

“She wasn’t mine,” “What about your wife? Did you even try to figure out if she was lying to you, or just as clueless a pawn as you were?”

“Was she?” Batman is quick to ask.

“No. She wasn’t. She was too kind to really be just a mindless puppet. Plus Bat-Mite is too lazy to actually put that much work into an illusion.” On this, Batman needs no convincing.

“Plus Bat-Mite is kinda messed up, so I don’t think that he could convincingly fake such well-adjusted individuals,” 

Batman nods. “He would know what they looked like, though…”

“So he could copy the inner workings, and let them be real, to trick you better,” I press.

“Batman, is your job to protect Gotham, or be a star on a TV show?” “But all of this is a TV show!” Batman said. “If that’s the only thing I can count on, then that should be the only thing that matters.”

“......Batman, hit me,”

“...No.”

“Because if you did, then I would crumple like a paper tiger, and that would be bad for me.” I smile at him. “None of that would matter if we weren’t real,” “...So, am I real?” “Your story is real. Just think about everything. It doesn’t have to go dark. The story goes on even when nobody’s looking. It lives on in time and fate. It lives on in the words and drawings that remain, even when nobody pays any attention to them. It lives on in the seeds of fate woven in the narrative, that softly point to the future. If you pander to people who willingly kill children, you are no better then if you mindlessly plow on for the sake of money.” 

“Batman, think about what it was like with your wife and your daughter. Don’t think about what the people watching felt, think about how you felt.” I’ve seen the episode. He loved them. He loved having worked past enough of his issues to have someone to protect. Punchichi’s skill with the surfboard and his companionship for Kiki was something any father and hero would want in a friend or a sidekick. And who cares how

flashy the new equipment is as long as it helps you do your job and protect them?

Batman gulps. “Helen...Kiki...can I get them back?”

“They’re both A-OK.”

Batman is quiet for a long time. “Can they ever forgive me?” “There’s only one way to find out,” I whisper. 

“Thank you…”

He’s not a puppet for fans of the corporation. He’s a fleshed out character who wants his family back, after having an established bond with them.

And now, he has some fences to mend. Choices to make.

I know no matter what happens, no matter what Mrs. Wayne chooses, everything will be OK. 

The kids are alright. Kiki will have her mom and Punchichi. Batman will not kill because random people tell him the fate of the world depends on it.

 And best of all, nobody had to die. 

Batman’s story lives on, maybe not in a way that makes the viewers happy, but in a way where Batman can grow, and isn’t just a toy in the hands of megafans. Oliver is reunited with his parents, the ones who truly cared about him.

It’s the best ending for me, and right now the story’s in my hands.

I feel happy.