This is a 90% true story.

High above the city, the rain fires downwards, bouncing off the rooftop on which he stands,  peering over the edge at the filthy city he protects. His cape billowing,  the rain running down his mask, his fists clenched, waiting. A bolt of lightening illuminates him and a thunder-clap booms over the city.

“Shit!” Russ sits bolt upright in his bed frantically peering around him desperately trying to figure out why he is so panicked. He realises that he has left the TV on all night, and that the Batman Video had got bored and rewound itself and started playing, just for something to do I guess. Now aware of his surroundings he swings his legs over the side of the bed and looks at the alarm clock.
“Shit!” It was 10:35 he was very late for school, and way past the point of plausibly ringing up school pretending to be his dad and saying he was sick. Then he looked at the calender, it was Saturday. He let out a huge sigh of relief until:
“Shit!” He noticed under the date on the calender was written; French Thing 12:00. He raced around his room picking clothes from the floor and running through the mandatory smell check until he was dressed. He sat and watched Batman for 10 minutes, he loved this bit where he flies through the window and the Joker..
“Shit!” 10 minutes had turned into     30 minutes. He flew downstairs and out the door to the screeching fanfare of his mother’s voice:
“Aren’t you supposed to be at that French…(SLAM!!)”.

Russ’ school, a delightful comprehensive with a knife-crime rate comparable to your average high-security prison, had for some reason entered itself into a competition against all the other comprehensives in Sheffield. Each schools French department were competing, and the event was being held at the opening gala of Hallam Universities new Languages Block. In attendance were the local mayor, a soiree of French dignitaries, a score of Sheffield’s finest business-folk, and a Minor Royal the Earl or Duke of somewhere or other. The competition was that each school would put on a play of some sort, entirely in French, and the winner as judged by a panel of the aforementioned high-flyers would get a minibus, or a cricket-bat or something educational (Russ didn’t know, it didn’t really concern him, as they stood no chance of winning it).

Russ had been bribed into doing this competition, as he could string a half-decent sounding sentence together in French, and the French teacher said that if he did this the whole selling fags at extortionate prices to the kids too young to buy their own would go away, as if it had never happened. (This was a big part of Russ’ income, so sacrifices had to be made). So he was thrown into a classroom once a week for 5 weeks with 4 girls who had also been strong-armed into competing. Each week would be much the same, the teacher would sit with them while we discussed ideas then she would leave and the girls would move to one corner to discuss who had performed what to who and where, and Russ would retreat to the other corner and read. The last meeting was the day before the big show, the teacher demanded to see what they had done, and they had to admit that they had nothing. So, she frantically wrote out a scene for the 4 girls to learn overnight and gave Russ a long monologue. He went home determined to learn that speech, not wanting to look a twat in front of a load of people, but, that was the night his brother had rented Batman from the videoshop and the lure was too great.

As Russ sat on the Bus to the university he panicked like he had never panicked before, he would probably be expelled if he didn’t show, you had to have 5 people or you couldn’t go on, and they would be the only school disqualified. He had nothing though, he had not learned a single word, he briefly entertained the plan of naming all the animals he knew in french, but soon discarded that idea as being Shit. Then it struck him, a way out, a light at the end of the Chunnel (sorry no need for that). He got off the bus two stops early and went to the market.

Russ’ school was near the end of the running order, all the good schools, like King soandso’s or The Royal Thingymebob had gone up and stormed the place with bloody Shakespeare in French and debates on current French issues all in French. Then it was Russ. The girls made a terrible attempt at the scene, all of them retaining their Sheffield accent throughout, which made it sound like driving to France without ever using the clutch. So it was up to Russ to save the day, to save his school from the pity of a Minor Royal, shaking his head and whispering to the French Ambassador for Hatchbacks:
“I think it must be a special school”. And boy did Russ surprise them, nobody said anything of that sort when he’d finished. Nobody said anything actually, the room was left in complete silence, nobody was even breathing after an initial mass intake of air.

Russ took to the stage, Russ produced a wheel of camembert cheese and stated proudly in his best Gerald Depardieu accent:
“I weel now make dis chiz disapiur”.
Russ then scoffed down huge bites of the cheese, and having never eaten it before, realised how revolting it was. Russ was about half way through the wheel, looking directly into his distraught/furious French teachers eyes when he felt a surge race through his body. The entire audience saw the surge. It was unmistakable. It was now unavoidable and everyone knew it.

Russ threw up steaming chunks of camembert back into the cardboard container from whence it came, to a mass inhalation that is remarkable that it didn’t suck him off the stage. In the post-emesis fuege, Russ stood, smiling,oblivious. Until everything expanded inside his head like a bomb going off. All Russ could think of was:
“I need a closer.” Russ leant forward to the Judging panel beneath him and looked the Minor Royal square in the eye, proffered the vomited cheese to him and nonchalantly said:
“Camembert your Highness?”

It is all a bit hazy after that, Russ was wrestled from the stage and directly out of the building. He can’t recall how he got home or where he’d been, his brain seemed to kick back in with his mother saying:
“So… How did it go then?” To which he replied:
“Ok, could have been worse.” To this day nobody knows how Russ did not get expelled. The only plausible reason being that he must have had some serious dirt on the headteacher.

So Batman earned himself a new nemesis that day. The pain Batman caused, immeasurable. Russ now stalks the night streets of Sheffield with a fractured mind, wielding a vicious wheel of camembert, striking fear into Hearts of all the dee-dahs, trying to lure out Batman , so he can enact his brutal revenge. For he is no longer Russ, he is now and will forever be THE PROCRASTINATOR.