Disclaimer: I am not DC. Therefore I do not own Batman. Logical, no?

View the CAT timeline at www. freewebs. com/ bitemetechie/ catverse. html (remove the spaces, of course) and look for this story as the one called "Catfight." (I've switched a few titles. Everything will be straightened out soon enough.)

Read it, love it, drink some tea. (This will be a multi-chapter fic, but not nearly the length of "Vacation Time." I'll call it...between five and ten chapters. How close will my guess be? Taking bets now!)

No, whatever you're thinking, it's wrong.

The strange events in Gotham City involved the Scarecrow's odd henchgirl trio, CAT—the Captain, Al, and Techie.

And what were those three worthies up to on this balmy June evening?

Something interesting, of course. They were always up to something, and the lives of those around them were never dull.

But they were not good at making new friends.

And that was what they were doing tonight.

Specifically, that was what Al was doing.

Since moving to Gotham, she had never gone any farther than the grocery store without being accompanied by at least one of her friends, whether it was Techie, the Captain, the Scarecrow, or maybe the Riddler. She didn't know anyone else.

But tonight was going to change all that. Because she had been invited to a tea party with the Mad Hatter. And not even her socially phobic tendencies were going to stop her from showing up for that.

(Did he even realize that her name was not short for Alice? It wasn't short for anything—although she was starting to think that Aloysius had a nice ring to it.)

Her friends saw her off with some last minute advice and a reminder not to forget the tea she had meant to bring him. She promised to tell them everything, and then she left.

"So…now what are we going to do?" Techie asked when Al was gone.

"Oh, you mean I have to decide?"

"Well, either you or the Ouija board."

"I don't have a Ouija board," the Captain said seriously. "Al would never let me keep one of those things in the house."

"Well, Al's not here now. We have no adult supervision."

They both spent a few solid minutes laughing at the thought of Al as the Mother Hen, accurate as that title might be.

But eventually, the laughter subsided, and they found themselves staring at each other once again.

"Want to watch a movie?" the Captain suggested.

"No. We've watched all our movies already."

"Yeah. Well…is the internet still dead?"

"As a can of spam. I know I can get it going again, but it'll take a while."

"Hmm…there's always bothering Squishy."

"I don't know. He's been awfully gas-happy lately."

"Oh! I know! We can dye our hair and surprise Number One when she gets home."

"Do you have any hair dye?" The Captain's face fell.

"Oh. No. I stopped buying that stuff because all those companies test their products on animals. I guess that's a weird thing for an evil henchman to be worried about, but…"

"But…" Techie echoed, a mischievous gleam coming to her eyes.

"But…" the Captain repeated, as the exact same expression came over her face.

"But…we're in a position to do something about it. I mean, who's going to stop us?"

The Captain laughed.

"No one, that's who! Let's go blow up a factory!"

"Hold on, there, sparky," Techie said. "There are other ways to send them a message than just blowing them up." The Captain looked disappointed.

"If you say so."

"You wouldn't want to hurt all the poor little test animals, would you?"

"Well, no, of course not. But I want to blow something up."

"Oh, we will, Captain. We will."