Bat Lash vs. Batroc the Leaper
There was not yet a bell in the chapel tower to signal the dawn, and so it was that Bat Lash awoke to furious pounding at the door. He found his boots and left the wildflower from the brim of his Stetson by her coiled rosary before exiting through the window. There in the boughs of an old ash tree, he went about tying his neckerchief, wishing a train would arrive from Jefferson with that big bell. Convent's no safe place for a man without a proper belfry.
Someone on the property was prepping bacon. "Sinful," he sighed, tucking his shirt into his trousers, feeling the tremor of an empty belly. He'd left Daisy in town, so it'd be a long stroll before breakfast unless he stumbled on a peach tree. Stranger things had happened.
He shimmied down the tree and stuck near to the walls, slowly making his way toward the fence. He weaseled between broken slats and tipped his hat to a scowling school marm on her morning constitutional. "Some gentleman ought to mend that structure."
He followed the creek, skipping stones along its surface and startling ducks to flight. He found a pretty blue flower in a patch of yellow, plucked it, and tucked it in his brim. They always seemed to find him whenever he needed a fresh blossom. He led a charmed life in that respect. He neared town and found his visage grinning back at him from a poster affixed to the barber's window. He casually removed it, marveled at the figure of his growing bounty, and folded it neatly. Pulling a pencil from his coat, he went about composing a grocery list. "Liquorice," he mused. "A new bolo tie, as Lavender is not likely to mail the one I left with her in Topeka."
"You are a pretty man, mister Lash." came a voice from inside the barber's. The accent, flamboyant. Bat had held many French women, but spoke not a lick of the language. He'd drifted to sleep to their whispers, nodding dutifully to exclamations that meant nothing to him, but functioned rather as music. As a connoisseur of foreign tongues, he had an appreciation that some men lacked. This voice, this French, was not so lovely to behold. A gross impersonation affected by an eccentric pimp. "Ze poster, it does you no justice."
The Frenchman wore a tumbler's costume of such garish violet and mustard yellow that Bat nearly lost his balance at the door. He'd been presented with an ascot with such colors by a well-meaning girl in Mississippi, but he'd kept it in its wrappings until he could unload it in a card game on the next ferry out. He braced himself on the door jam and pocketed his wanted poster. "That sketch artist ought to stick to carnivals, sure."
"Apologies," said the Frenchman, wiping the shaving foam from his mug with the barber's cloth. His peculiar mustache was perfectly sculpted for what it was. "I am called Batroc. Ze Leaper."
The barber backed off a ways. "Mister, you said nothing 'bout being a leper when you came in here…"
"Leaper," Batroc repeated.
"I consider myself a progressive man," said Bat. "But I've gone all my years without acquiring no sores, and I don't–"
"Leaper! I am to jumping! I am not to be having diseases!"
"Why's he talking like that?" the barber shouted from behind his second chair.
"This is a Biblical matter," said Bat. "I happen to know a girl…"
"I am fallen through ze portal in time from ze future! I buy my way back to ze present with bounty moneys!" explained Batroc.
"Show me your fingers!" yelped Bat. "You got all your fingers still!"
Bat Lash vs. Batroc the Leaper
Who wins?
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Bat Lash and Batroc mix it up up and in the confusion Jonah Hex enters the fight. He knocks out Lash with the butt of his pistol knocking him out cold. Hex tries to shoot Batroc but he would not stay still, leaping from place to place. Hex begins to shoot everything in sight, especially the floor. Batroc falls for Hex’s trap and goes through the floor and gets stuck. Jonah says, “Not so full of pep now are ya son?”
Hex then shoots the Leaper right between the eyes stone dead. Jonah turns around to see that Bat, his bounty, is gone with only his flower and a note laying on the ground. Jonah picks up the note and reads it. It says, “Thanks for the help you ugly bastard, see you around.” Hex holsters his six shooters and crushes the flower with his boot as he stomps out of the bar.
Winner: Bat Lash
Bat and Hex are allies.
@Paul Not in my head. Besides Hex always had a little disdain for Bat.
@JesTr Not in the current book.
Suddenly, out of the saloon across the street burst a shirtless hunched over figure who seemed paralyzed at first by the bright morning sunshine. Both Bats backed off a few steps as Manbat ran into the dusty street, spreading his translucent translucent wings as his pointy face scowled:
“What the hell is wrong with you people? Why do you associate yourselves with bats when you do not have to? Do you have any idea how high maintenance this fur is?” He double over and abandoned his struggle to speak as he cleared a hairball.
Leaper hesitated: “Perhaps ve should be taking take this up some other time when ze street is less crowded vith lunatics?”
Far up the road, a man rode toward town on a black horse, wearing a black duster that resembled a cowl…
I love Batroc’s logic of “Money = Time travel”.
HAh! Yes, I too would like to know how Batroc plans to buy his way back to the future. Is the Delorean running as a time taxi now? (omg… ! Christopher Lloyd… Doc Brown… Jim Ignatowski… It all makes sense!)
I see this as a Cairo swordsman/Indiana Jones type deal: Batroc leaps about, trying to show that he means “leaper”, not “leper”. He finally stops at one end of the barbershop, says “See? I am not ze leper, I am ze…” and Bat Lash, exasperated by the flitting about, leaping, color, and frenchness, shoots him. Game Over
Batroc gives up on the bounty for a while and actually manages to steal a fair amount of money through a combination of people’s fear of disease and being the weirdest thing anyone had ever seen. However, before buying his way back to the future, Ze Leaper tracks down Bat, just to prove that he can catch him, and Bat convinces him that they should play a friendly game of poker. After losing all his money and then some, Batroc is forced to stay with Bat in the 19th century.
WINNER: Us, because holy shit a book starring these two would be amazing.
LOSER: Bat, because Batroc is the worst wingman ever.
Batroc is Belgium and France was much more successful in warfare during the 1800s. Batroc will win just because he is imune to whiplashes.
Batroc will then use the money to hire Doc Brown to take him to further into the past and fight Time Traveling Bruce Wayne and then Napoleon.
Bat Lash : Pros – can handle a six gun. Cons – Dubious sexual orientations.
BatRoc: Pros – leaping ability. Cons – Cheese eating french surrender monkey.
Fight turns into a stange mix of grunting, grasping and panting. eventually the whips comes out, and afterwards Batroc lights up a Gauloises cigarette.
@Shallam You might be confusing Bat with the modern Rawhide Kid? Bat Lash is with a new girl every issue.