Thevoidstaredback - Cats Welcome, Humans Tolerated

I have Poor Jack (Nightmare Before Christmas) stuck in my head

I have a very not normal way of remembering my cardinal directions.

I was raised on Never Eat Soggy Waffles, but I could never figure out which way each word pointed. Until, that is, I drilled into my head that the front door to my house faces the sunset, meaning that Never (North) is the way my bedroom window faces, Eat (East) is where the backdoor is, Soggy (South) is the kitchen window, and Waffles (West) is my front door.

Who needs a compass when I can remember the sunset?

Lesser-known steps of the writing process:

Finding all the paragraphs where you used some hyper-specific word more than once

Rearranging paragraphs that you swear you wrote in the right order but turned out to be totally backwards

Going for a walk, coming up with the perfect line, and forgetting it as soon as you get home and open your laptop

Creating a separate document where you can dump all of those nice sentences that no longer fit in anywhere

Waking up in a cold sweat because so-and-so was supposed to be barefoot but never actually took his shoes off

Week One

Kate came back and printed out the invitations as soon as she and Alfred had finished setting out the tables and chairs in the ballroom. By then, Luke and Tim had finished the list and designed the invitations, ready to print them out. At the top, there was space to write in the name of the guest. On the back, they made sure to add in the RSVP information, theme, and dress code.

Suggestions had been thrown around about having an open invitation to bring their families, practically guaranteeing that the Justice League would bring their kids, but that was way too big of a security risk. So, the plan was to put 'family' after each surname to ensure that the families were invited to come along. Besides, this was agreed to be a private event, so not even press was getting in without explicit invitation. And even then, only three people from the press were getting in.

As soon as the invitations were printed out, Tim and Luke set about the somehow even more painstaking task of putting them all in envelopes and addressing them.

"How the hell does Alfred do this for every gala you guys host?" Luke groaned about four envelopes in.

Tim shook his head. "We have a set guest list and address book for every One Percenter in the country, as well as pre-made invitations for every gala of the year. All Alfred has to do is change up the invitations at the beginning of the year, make Bruce choose who gets to be at which one, and send of the invites."

"They're all pre-printed?"

"Yep."

"That seems like a lot of work to do at once."

"Yeah, but it makes the rest of the year easier."

"That's fair."

"You guys go to some real extremes, huh?"

Tim gave him a deadpan look. "You're one of us, Luke. Besides, you really expect any less from Bruce? I'm surprised he doesn't have the names and addresses of everyone in the country!"

Luke gave a considering hum. "How do you know he doesn't?"

"Because I've seen every file on the Batcomputer. Also, it's unrealistic, even for Bruce."

"Also a fair point, but I wouldn't put it past him if he ended up cataloging everyone at some."

"Not even the government has records of every person in the country."

"You're really gonna compare Bruce to the U.S. Government? Batman?"

"Yeah, I see you're point."

It took an hour to stuff and address every envelope. It took another forty-five minutes to seal them all. And, because they're the Waynes, therefore having to be extra at everything, they used a wax seal on all of them. Two different seals, actually, one for the Justice League Heroes and one for everyone else.

The black wax on the heroes' invitations was the Wayne Family coat of arms, altered slightly after Bruce took up the cowl: A sword cut behind a shield, like most coats of arms, but there were bat wings on either side of the top half of the shield. The shield was cut into four sections; the bottom one had weighing scales; the one on the right had a magnifying glass; the one on the left was a bird; and the one on top had a W in fancy calligraphy. A string of pearls hung off the pommel of the sword, and a robin's wings and tail poked out from behind the bottom half of the shield. Finally, a banner completed the seal at the bottom reading, "Eques Caliginous"; Knight Dark.

Every other invitation was sealed with the Wayne Family seal: A W in Elizabethan Calligraphy. Red wax for these ones.

As soon as the wax had dried on all of the envelopes, Luke and Tim gathered them in a stack and were quick to send them off. Their efforts were better used elsewhere now that they were done. Mostly getting ready for patrol, as well as starting the surveillance of the rogues. The gala needed to go perfectly, especially because it was set to end just before their patrol was going to start, but none of the bats were stupid enough to not start setting up fallbacks as soon as they could.

***

Dick and Duke were on Entertainment duty, meaning they had to find both the music and ways to entertain every person in attendance. Having the guest list done made this task exponentially easier. It's be easiest if they had the RSVPs, but they didn't really have time to wait on those, so they were working under the assumption that every family invited would show up.

"It'll mostly be adults in attendance," Dick said, "But there'll be teens and kids here, too."

They were standing in the ballroom, trying to figure out how to cater to everyone. It was a hard task.

"We could have a seperate room?" Duke suggested, "Something off from the main ballroom."

"Not a bad idea," agreed Dick, "But which room? And how would we decorate it?"

Duke shrugged. "We could use one of the sitting rooms? The one by the bathrooms down the hall should work. It's close enough to hear the music, but far enough that kids can escape their parents."

Dick smiled. "Good idea! Though, what about security?"

"Um... Let Bruce handle that?"

"Even better idea! I'll go hire the live music, you wanna put together a playlist for the kids?"

"Sure," Duke started to leave the room, "You sound old, by the way!" He ran before he could see Dick's betrayed sulking.

Part 10 Part 12

A blushing mess of a fool, I become

Y'know, I love getting long comments on my stories, but I ever know how to respond! I'm so much better with the written word over spoken word, but my inability to properly react to a compliment seems to translate into every way of communication