Your name is Dick Grayson. For the last eight years you've been Robin: the 'Boy Wonder,'...
Dick Quest
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01
- Location
- America
Your name is Dick Grayson. For the last eight years you've been Robin: the 'Boy Wonder,' Batman's right hand in his war against Gotham City's underworld. The one he'd trusted to keep an eye on the city when he was across the bay earlier this year, wanting to check out the big guy in blue for himself.
But that was different. It had been planned, been quick. You'd just had to hold the fort for a couple of days.
Bruce Wayne, Batman, has been missing for a month, and in his absence the city's gone to hell. People are disappearing off the streets, and the police are too busy dealing with the latest breakout from Arkham to mount any kind of search.
Not that you've had any better luck. None of the goons you'd interrogated had known anything about the missing people. Just some crap about a job Maxie's crew was planning.
Things were holding together for now, barely, as the assorted lunatics worked to rebuild their respective powerbases before moving on each other, but it was an unstable equilibrium. Sooner or later one of them wouldn't be able to stop themselves from making a play, the rest would fall in like vultures on the weakened winner, and the result would barely be a step down from open war in the streets.
And it wouldn't go any better if you moved first instead. The city needed Batman, someone that could terrify the lunatics into caution long enough to pick them off one at a time. All it had was you, a barely sixteen year old kid in a red vest, yellow cape, and green tights, currently lying on a gurney in a cave as a balding Brit pulled a bullet out of your left leg. "While I doubt this will convince you to cease your nightly excursions," Alfred said, "I can at least hope it will keep you in place long enough to get some sorely needed rest."
You try to stand, wincing as you test the injured leg. "That… might be a good idea," you admit. Just lie down and let the news put you to sleep. "Thanks Alfred. I should be fine for tonight."
"Very well then, Master Richard." As he made his way back up to the manor, you hobble over and settled down in front of the computer, bringing up a feed from GCN. It wouldn't be your first time this month passing out in front of the thing.
"-where a standoff between the GCPD and Killer Moth has been broken by an unidentified vigilante."
Oh good, they even had pictures of what looked like a homemade Batman costume, snugly fit on a young redheaded woman. As if you didn't already have enough on your plate, now you also need to keep some fangirl from getting herself killed. You grit your teeth and move, mounting a batcycle and roaring out of the cave.
This was a distraction for something else. Killer Moth, Drury Walker, was too incompetent to be anything but. He was just a two-bit thug with some fancy gear and not enough brainpower to use it well. Maxie'd probably hired him to keep attention elsewhere tonight while his crew handled what he really wanted done. The museum had an exhibit that would appeal to his delusions on loan from Gateway City.
And here you were, about to let the distraction work. The museum and GCPDHQ were on opposite ends of town, it would have to be one or the other. Dealing with Walker on your own wouldn't be a problem, you'd done it before. But against some greenhorn, even he could get lucky.
[] Deal with Killer Moth.
[] Deal with Maxie's 'New Olympians.'
[] Turn around and go to bed. Maybe you'll wake up and the last month will have just been a bad dream.
But that was different. It had been planned, been quick. You'd just had to hold the fort for a couple of days.
Bruce Wayne, Batman, has been missing for a month, and in his absence the city's gone to hell. People are disappearing off the streets, and the police are too busy dealing with the latest breakout from Arkham to mount any kind of search.
Not that you've had any better luck. None of the goons you'd interrogated had known anything about the missing people. Just some crap about a job Maxie's crew was planning.
Things were holding together for now, barely, as the assorted lunatics worked to rebuild their respective powerbases before moving on each other, but it was an unstable equilibrium. Sooner or later one of them wouldn't be able to stop themselves from making a play, the rest would fall in like vultures on the weakened winner, and the result would barely be a step down from open war in the streets.
And it wouldn't go any better if you moved first instead. The city needed Batman, someone that could terrify the lunatics into caution long enough to pick them off one at a time. All it had was you, a barely sixteen year old kid in a red vest, yellow cape, and green tights, currently lying on a gurney in a cave as a balding Brit pulled a bullet out of your left leg. "While I doubt this will convince you to cease your nightly excursions," Alfred said, "I can at least hope it will keep you in place long enough to get some sorely needed rest."
You try to stand, wincing as you test the injured leg. "That… might be a good idea," you admit. Just lie down and let the news put you to sleep. "Thanks Alfred. I should be fine for tonight."
"Very well then, Master Richard." As he made his way back up to the manor, you hobble over and settled down in front of the computer, bringing up a feed from GCN. It wouldn't be your first time this month passing out in front of the thing.
"-where a standoff between the GCPD and Killer Moth has been broken by an unidentified vigilante."
Oh good, they even had pictures of what looked like a homemade Batman costume, snugly fit on a young redheaded woman. As if you didn't already have enough on your plate, now you also need to keep some fangirl from getting herself killed. You grit your teeth and move, mounting a batcycle and roaring out of the cave.
This was a distraction for something else. Killer Moth, Drury Walker, was too incompetent to be anything but. He was just a two-bit thug with some fancy gear and not enough brainpower to use it well. Maxie'd probably hired him to keep attention elsewhere tonight while his crew handled what he really wanted done. The museum had an exhibit that would appeal to his delusions on loan from Gateway City.
And here you were, about to let the distraction work. The museum and GCPDHQ were on opposite ends of town, it would have to be one or the other. Dealing with Walker on your own wouldn't be a problem, you'd done it before. But against some greenhorn, even he could get lucky.
[] Deal with Killer Moth.
[] Deal with Maxie's 'New Olympians.'
02
- Location
- America
It takes ten minutes to reach GCPDHQ.
The bike is left two blocks away, your approach finished over the rooftops. From the new vantage point, you can see the flames of the building licking at the midnight sky.
The street below is dotted with uniformed officers and firefighters, the occasional news crew and detective questioning the former and keeping clear of the latter. No sign of Walker or the Batman wannabe.
At your perch across the street, at the edge of the building opposite the police headquarters, you withdraw a small mirror from a pouch on your belt and wave it a little. The light from the blaze shines from it, getting the attention of your target. With a gesture, he's directed away from prying eyes.
In the old days you would've been spotted right away, a kid in a bright yellow cape, a red vest, light green tights, and pixie boots. You outfit these days wasn't one so eager to draw the eye. The green tights were still there, but dark enough to blend into the shadows and long enough to reach your wrists and ankles. The inner side of the cape was still yellow, but the outer side was now the same black color as your mask, boots, and gloves, the latter being bulky things loaded with extra gear.
You follow the man from above, dropping a few feet ahead of him as he enters an alley. Well into his fifties and familiar with your partner's methods, Gordon doesn't flinch at your sudden arrival. For your part, you manage to keep silent through the strain on your injured leg. His eyes narrow at the display, dark circles beneath them proof that he hasn't been sleeping any better than you this month. "Your boss hasn't been answering my calls," he notes. The commissioner is at least half a foot taller than you. Once, the badge, gun, and size disparity probably would've been enough to intimidate you into an honest answer.
Now, you've seen scarier. "He's been busy," you say. Probably not a lie. "What happened here?"
He sighs, clearly not satisfied with your response, but answers anyway. "Drury and Lynns turned up to hit the place about half an hour ago-"
"Sorry," you interrupt. "Lynns?"
"Garfield Lynns," Gordon answers. "Cracked special effects guy who got an actress killed on set, met up with Drury somewhere, and started calling himself Firefly."
You glance at the entrance of the alleyway, the street lit by the burning police building. "Can't imagine why," you mutter. "Casualties?"
"Four dead so far, a lot of injured the EMTs aren't sure will make it."
Damn. "So what happened?"
"Like I said, the pair of them turned up and started raising hell about half an hour ago. They went down easy enough; a shot to Lynns's helmet knocked him out, after that Drury dropped his gun and gave up without a fight. At the time, we figured Lynns had been strong-arming him into going along with things and he was happy to have an out."
"I take it things didn't go so smoothly?"
Gordon shook his head. "Nobody's sure what happened now. While they were being put in a cell, they apparently managed to break out and get to their gear, started burning the place from within, and split up to get away. But we can't exactly pull up footage from the security cameras to see how they did it. There's still no sign of Lynns, and we lost track of Walker when he went chasing your new friend uptown."
"She's not with us," you tell him.
"Commissioner!" someone shouts from the street. Gordon turns around, your cue to slip around a corner and back onto the rooftops. "Moth and Batgirl are heading north on Queen's Boulevard."
You shake your head as Gordon parrots the latter name. You're going to need to nip that in the bud.
It only takes a minute on the bike to catch up to the pair. The girl is nowhere to be seen, presumably trying to keep to unlit areas. Moth is flitting from rooftop to rooftop, peering down into alleys. He doesn't seem to have noticed you, the sound of the bike drowned out by his flight pack. The bat-line, a spool of elastic wire tipped by a grappling hook and connected to a winch, hauls you up to the roof just as your target takes to the air.
"Found you!" he cries. As he takes aim at the girl you assume is below him, a well-placed batarang knocks his pack out of commission. He barely manages to catch himself, the arm holding the gun hooked over the raised edge of the rooftop. You fling one of your 'special' batarangs at him, a red foam exploding out of it after hitting his hand.
The foam was a highly adhesive polyurethane , modified from a construction material Wayne Enterprises picked up in a buyout last year. Fireproof, porous enough to breathe through if it covered the face, and damn-near impossible to break by force, it was as perfect a restraint as you could hope for.
Moth wails as you approach. "Get this shit off me bird brain, this was supposed to be my night!" You're not in the mood to deal with him. You ignore the dangling man, looking down at the girl he'd been chasing.
Her costume looked pretty cheap. A black cowl with pointed tips, red hair spilling out the back of it, and the front didn't really do much to cover her face. You could make out the structure of her cheek bones, see her blue eyes and red eyebrows. The rest wasn't much better; a dark blue cape hanging down to her waist, a black leather jacket with a yellow bat symbol stenciled onto the chest tucked into yellow rubber gloves, black jeans similarly tucked into a pair of combat boots that looked like they'd been coated in paint to match the gloves.
All in all, anyone that knew her would recognize her if they got a good look.
"Go home," you tell the girl. "Don't do this again."
"What!?" she demands. "Who are you to tell me that? What do you think you have that I don't?"
You drop down from the edge of the roof into the alley with her. "Training, equipment, and experience," you answer.
She starts again, stalking over and standing an inch or two over you. Not surprising, she has a year or two on you. "Let's see your license to go running around in-"
"Barbara Gordon," you start, quietly enough that the man dangling two stories above won't hear over his own struggling. "This is not a game."
She falls silent, trying to find a response, but the two of you are interrupted by the sound of brick shattering. Moth drops from above, having gotten around the adhesive by somehow breaking the entire chunk of wall he'd been stuck to off the building. You allow yourself a moment of relief as his right arm gets stuck to the ground, only to see the man rip the concrete free as he stands. If you didn't know better, you'd swear his eyes were glowing red beneath the grey helmet.
"That's a new trick," you mutter. "You join a gym or something?"
This... might be harder than you expected.
[] Cry
[] Scream
[] Die
[] Write-in
The bike is left two blocks away, your approach finished over the rooftops. From the new vantage point, you can see the flames of the building licking at the midnight sky.
The street below is dotted with uniformed officers and firefighters, the occasional news crew and detective questioning the former and keeping clear of the latter. No sign of Walker or the Batman wannabe.
At your perch across the street, at the edge of the building opposite the police headquarters, you withdraw a small mirror from a pouch on your belt and wave it a little. The light from the blaze shines from it, getting the attention of your target. With a gesture, he's directed away from prying eyes.
In the old days you would've been spotted right away, a kid in a bright yellow cape, a red vest, light green tights, and pixie boots. You outfit these days wasn't one so eager to draw the eye. The green tights were still there, but dark enough to blend into the shadows and long enough to reach your wrists and ankles. The inner side of the cape was still yellow, but the outer side was now the same black color as your mask, boots, and gloves, the latter being bulky things loaded with extra gear.
You follow the man from above, dropping a few feet ahead of him as he enters an alley. Well into his fifties and familiar with your partner's methods, Gordon doesn't flinch at your sudden arrival. For your part, you manage to keep silent through the strain on your injured leg. His eyes narrow at the display, dark circles beneath them proof that he hasn't been sleeping any better than you this month. "Your boss hasn't been answering my calls," he notes. The commissioner is at least half a foot taller than you. Once, the badge, gun, and size disparity probably would've been enough to intimidate you into an honest answer.
Now, you've seen scarier. "He's been busy," you say. Probably not a lie. "What happened here?"
He sighs, clearly not satisfied with your response, but answers anyway. "Drury and Lynns turned up to hit the place about half an hour ago-"
"Sorry," you interrupt. "Lynns?"
"Garfield Lynns," Gordon answers. "Cracked special effects guy who got an actress killed on set, met up with Drury somewhere, and started calling himself Firefly."
You glance at the entrance of the alleyway, the street lit by the burning police building. "Can't imagine why," you mutter. "Casualties?"
"Four dead so far, a lot of injured the EMTs aren't sure will make it."
Damn. "So what happened?"
"Like I said, the pair of them turned up and started raising hell about half an hour ago. They went down easy enough; a shot to Lynns's helmet knocked him out, after that Drury dropped his gun and gave up without a fight. At the time, we figured Lynns had been strong-arming him into going along with things and he was happy to have an out."
"I take it things didn't go so smoothly?"
Gordon shook his head. "Nobody's sure what happened now. While they were being put in a cell, they apparently managed to break out and get to their gear, started burning the place from within, and split up to get away. But we can't exactly pull up footage from the security cameras to see how they did it. There's still no sign of Lynns, and we lost track of Walker when he went chasing your new friend uptown."
"She's not with us," you tell him.
"Commissioner!" someone shouts from the street. Gordon turns around, your cue to slip around a corner and back onto the rooftops. "Moth and Batgirl are heading north on Queen's Boulevard."
You shake your head as Gordon parrots the latter name. You're going to need to nip that in the bud.
It only takes a minute on the bike to catch up to the pair. The girl is nowhere to be seen, presumably trying to keep to unlit areas. Moth is flitting from rooftop to rooftop, peering down into alleys. He doesn't seem to have noticed you, the sound of the bike drowned out by his flight pack. The bat-line, a spool of elastic wire tipped by a grappling hook and connected to a winch, hauls you up to the roof just as your target takes to the air.
"Found you!" he cries. As he takes aim at the girl you assume is below him, a well-placed batarang knocks his pack out of commission. He barely manages to catch himself, the arm holding the gun hooked over the raised edge of the rooftop. You fling one of your 'special' batarangs at him, a red foam exploding out of it after hitting his hand.
The foam was a highly adhesive polyurethane , modified from a construction material Wayne Enterprises picked up in a buyout last year. Fireproof, porous enough to breathe through if it covered the face, and damn-near impossible to break by force, it was as perfect a restraint as you could hope for.
Moth wails as you approach. "Get this shit off me bird brain, this was supposed to be my night!" You're not in the mood to deal with him. You ignore the dangling man, looking down at the girl he'd been chasing.
Her costume looked pretty cheap. A black cowl with pointed tips, red hair spilling out the back of it, and the front didn't really do much to cover her face. You could make out the structure of her cheek bones, see her blue eyes and red eyebrows. The rest wasn't much better; a dark blue cape hanging down to her waist, a black leather jacket with a yellow bat symbol stenciled onto the chest tucked into yellow rubber gloves, black jeans similarly tucked into a pair of combat boots that looked like they'd been coated in paint to match the gloves.
All in all, anyone that knew her would recognize her if they got a good look.
"Go home," you tell the girl. "Don't do this again."
"What!?" she demands. "Who are you to tell me that? What do you think you have that I don't?"
You drop down from the edge of the roof into the alley with her. "Training, equipment, and experience," you answer.
She starts again, stalking over and standing an inch or two over you. Not surprising, she has a year or two on you. "Let's see your license to go running around in-"
"Barbara Gordon," you start, quietly enough that the man dangling two stories above won't hear over his own struggling. "This is not a game."
She falls silent, trying to find a response, but the two of you are interrupted by the sound of brick shattering. Moth drops from above, having gotten around the adhesive by somehow breaking the entire chunk of wall he'd been stuck to off the building. You allow yourself a moment of relief as his right arm gets stuck to the ground, only to see the man rip the concrete free as he stands. If you didn't know better, you'd swear his eyes were glowing red beneath the grey helmet.
"That's a new trick," you mutter. "You join a gym or something?"
This... might be harder than you expected.
[] Cry
[] Scream
[] Die
[] Write-in
03
- Location
- America
"Get ready to run, turn left," you mutter. Without looking back for confirmation, you put yourself between Barbara and Walker. You do your best to look non-threatening, one hand up and distracting as the other reaches for your belt. "Look, Walker, have you considered heading across the bay? I mean, you're pretty obviously more a Metropolis kind of villain these days-"
The man silences you with a guttural roar, more animal than man, leaping forward. Just as his feet leave the ground, you fling another foam batarang. It strikes his ankle, gluing his foot to the pavement and letting his own momentum swing his face down to join it.
"Go!" you shout, reaching into your belt again. A pellet flung at Barbara's feet bursts into a cloud of smoke, covering the direction of her escape. Turning to follow her out, you fling a similar pellet full of tear gas in Walker's face to buy you a bit more time. If not, maybe the flashbang just out of arm's reach will.
Gordon's niece is in decent shape and has a fair head-start, but you work with Batman. You cheat. As light and sound burst out of the alley behind you, you fire a line and swing after Barbara, dropping into a roll a few feet ahead and leading her to the bike. "What was that?" she demands as you start the engine.
"No idea," you admit. "Now hold on tight." You shoot out onto the street, the thrum of the engine drowning out everything else.
So Killer Moth was stronger than he should be. You could deal with that, you've fought people on Venom before. You'll just need the right tools and an area free of bystanders. Step one for that goal was getting Barbara to safety.
The cops were busy enough already, and you didn't have time to hear Gordon go off about his daughter trying to be a Batman copycat. Her home would risk dragging neighbors into the crossfire. Bruce would wring your neck if you brought her to the cave without knocking her out first, and you can't do that without her falling off the bike.
One of the bunkers in the city, then. One where there won't be any bystanders. The one at the riverside would be the most convenient location, there's something there that you need to retrieve anyway.
Your hasty planning is interrupted as a shadow falls over you. Above, flitting above the rooftops, is Killer Moth. His costume has been stretched taut over his body, somehow having put on about fifty pounds of muscles in the minutes since you left him. His jetpack is long gone, replaced by a pair of enormous gray wings that have erupted out of his back. And yet, he doesn't seem to have noticed you. Blinded and deafened by the gas and flashbang?
Temporary at best. The bike is too unwieldy to make it to the hidden entrance much faster than you could from here on foot, not fast enough to make it before Moth's hearing and vision return. "We're getting off here," you announce, skidding to a stop in the middle of the street and dismounting. Barbara does the same, looking with an obvious question as you lift a panel and type a code into the keypad beneath. "Can't just leave this lying around," you explain. "Come on."
Twenty seconds after leaving the bike, you hear the explosion. "What was that?" she asks.
"Explosive in the bike," you explain. "If we can't hold onto something that could be used to track us, it gets destroyed."
"Not the…" she pauses for a moment, as if refusing to believe what she's saying, "the bomb, him. Killer Moth."
"No idea," you admit. "If I had to guess; designer steroid, splicing bug DNA into his own, bitten by a radioactive moth?"
"Are you always a wiseass?"
"Not when I'm asleep." You press a button on the back of your glove, activating an inbuilt mic. "Robin to cave. Anyone home?"
Alfred's voice soon buzzes through your earpiece. "Of course, Master Dick. Will you be requiring the first-aid kit again this evening?"
"Should probably keep it handy," you admit, "but that's not what this is about. I'm not sure if he's on some new strain of Venom or what, but Walker put on a ton of muscle in seconds, was strong enough before that change to tear a chunk of stone he was glued to free of the wall, and sprouted functional wings. Contact GCPD, tell them if anyone knows it they should use Metropolis's playbook tonight."
"I believe Gotham is lacking a certain something those strategies depend upon, sir."
"Then I'll just have to compensate."
The entrance to your destination is a diner that closed a few years ago, the property bought up by one of Bruce's false identities. The interior is in as poor shape as the exterior, the floor littered with dirt and pieces of glass from broken windows, anything small enough for looters to take long-since taken.
"Why did you bring me here?" Barbara asks.
You lead her into the kitchen, a hidden switch opening a false wall to reveal a staircase. "Safe house." This one was a fallout shelter constructed during the Cold War. The original access point from the building above had been sealed with concrete, the tunnel connecting it to the new entrance set to flood with an airborne sedative Bruce had whipped up if anyone tried to go through it without him, you, or Alfred. At the end, a steel door that would look more at home in a bank vault than a dark tunnel.
The door slides back, fluorescent lights illuminating the spacious interior. Gunmetal gray crates filled with hundreds of batarangs, smoke bombs, tear gas, zip ties, assorted tools for forensic analysis, spare uniforms for you and Bruce, a couple of laptops… but none of that was why you were here. Barbara follows you in, eyes pouring over the array of equipment. "Don't touch anything," you say. "Most of what's in here that doesn't cut, electrocute, or release some kind of nasty gas just blows up."
"So this is… what, your secret lair?"
"Base," you correct. "Villains have lairs, good guys have bases. And yes, it is." It isn't, obviously. It's just one of the thirteen supply caches Bruce set up throughout Gotham. "We're here because I need to pick something up, and somewhere secure to leave you while I take care of Killer Moth."
"What do you mean 'leave me?'" she demands. "I thought we were just pulling back to regroup and come up with a plan!"
You turn on her, another foam batarang gluing her feet and ankles to the floor. "I have pulled back, I am regrouping, and Ihave a plan. You are going to stay out of my way, because I do not have time to babysit you."
She struggles, trying and failing to break the foam. "Funny. As far as I can tell, you're the one that needs the babysitter. Except your boss isn't here anymore, is he?" You step out of sight, making your way through the aisle of crates and drawers and shelves. "What happened? He retire, get too hurt to go out?"
It doesn't take long to find what you were looking for. The basic principle for the suit is sound; layers of a steel alloy over the vitals, layered plates able to collapse on each other to fit different body types. When work started on it, the unspoken assumption was that if it was needed, it would be because the other one wasn't around anymore.
"Batman's only been gone for a month, and Gotham's already turned into a powder keg. It's obvious you need help, and when someone offers it your first instinct is to trap them in a bunker?"
"Yes." It's what Bruce would do. You don't have the time to put her through the gauntlet, much less train her to do so. If you let her keep going and she got herself killed, her death would be on your head. "You say I need help? What makes you think you're qualified to give it?"
The interior layer is padded, meant to be a tight fit. The cape, vest, gloves, anything that would get in the way is discarded. Individual components are donned, fitted over your torso, legs, arms. The suit is heavy, stiff. Artificial musculature built into the joints could compensate for the former, but the latter was a necessary trade-off for protection.
"Because Gotham needs someone in the cowl, even if it isn't Batman, and I don't see anyone else stepping up," she answers. It's a compelling claim, and she isn't the first to make it. You had a discussion with Kirk along these lines last week that ended with him tied up and waiting for his wife. Still, if you were going far enough to use this thing, you might as well roll with it.
You slide the helmet over your head and latch it shut, a nearly airtight shell around your head. The only source of air was the filter over your mouth, a necessity given the gas the armor was meant to deploy. "Well, you're probably right about one thing," you grant as you return to her line of sight. "Gotham needs a Bat."
"What," she asks, "is that thing?" It's a fair question. Bruce wasn't quite as spry as he used to be, and you'd bet your shares in Wayne Enterprises that he was never as light on his feet as you, but even his gear tends to favor a balance of mobility and protection.
By comparison, the midnight blue shell you've erected over yourself looks the next best thing to driving through Gotham in a tank. Gone is the cape, the shared combination of glider and concealment shared by both you and Bruce's typical evening attire, replaced by a pair of metal wings, meant to fold over your back as extra armor when not needed. The torso and limbs alike are swollen, your upper body bristling with gear. The legs, however, were mostly filled with fuel for the rockets under your heels and artificial muscles needed to support the rest of the thing's weight. The only real marking it as a piece of Batman's equipment is the helmet, cast in the same shape as his cowl, and the faintly glowing emblem on the chest.
"Something we put together for a rainy day," you answer. The helmet muffles your voice, but removing it would be a bit too much of a hassle. "This wasn't exactly what we had in mind at the time, but it should make for a decent bug-swatter."
"What did you have in mind?" she demands.
You ignore the question. "If I'm not back in an hour, I'm probably dead. If so, someone will be by to let you loose in the morning."
There isn't really a reassuring answer to that question. You could tell her that you thought it was necessary to counter Bane's Venom enhanced strength, to rip through Ivy's creations, to navigate the terrain Freeze leaves in his wake or ignore Joker's toxins. All of them would be less than comfortable, but none as disconcerting as its real purpose.
As the door seals behind you, you reopen communications with the cave. "Alfred, I've got Gordon's niece foamed to the floor in sub-cave five. If this doesn't work, she'll probably need you to let her out."
"If what doesn't work, sir?"
"I'm taking the Last Son suit out to deal with Killer Moth."
"Is that not rather… excessive?"
"He's a big boy now, he can take it."
The man, if he can still be called that, isn't difficult to find. Walker has left a trail of property damage a mile long, leading up to the docks. With magnification from the lenses, you can see the moth-man ripping into the roofs and walls of warehouses. Searching for other illicit operations, looking for the chance to get even with the people who treated him as a joke for so long?
It's tempting to let him go at it for a bit, but the collateral would be too high. Your second instinct is to sneak up behind him and make a bad pun, but that would sort of defeat the purpose of the exercise. You need to do more than just bring Killer Moth in, you need to strike the fear of the Bat back into Gotham.
Overwhelming force it is. The rockets under your feet flare to life, sending you into the air on a beeline for the mutated man. However else he's been affected, his hearing certainly isn't anything to write home about. You manage to get close enough before he notices that he doesn't have time to react, taking a crunching blow from a metal-encased fist to his gut.
The impact sends you into a spiral as your opponent drops three stories to the ground. You kill the rockets and fire a line from your right gauntlet to the edge of a rooftop, retracting the wings as gravity does its work and delivers your feet to his shoulder, accompanied by the same crunch as your first strike.
The suit is too heavy to move like this reliably, the extra weight leaving you unsteady after landing. It gives Killer Moth time to reorient himself, rushing you by the time you've turned to face him. The impact is enough to dent the plating over your torso, triggering a failsafe. Slits open up along the armor's shoulders, vents releasing a noxious green gas.
Your opponent has the good sense to leap back, flapping wings doing their best to blow the gas away. You don't give him the chance to get far, a claw connected to your right gauntlet by an elastic cable grabbing his shoulder and hauling him back towards you. The section of his helmet, or what you'd thought was his helmet, comes open into three sections, as if his chin had been split down the middle. A white gunk shoots out, blocking the vents as his wings finish clearing the gas that already escaped before he rejoins you.
The impact is enough to knock you to the ground, leaving you with Killer Moth straddling your chest. His left arm grabs at your right, trying to crush the winch connecting it to his shoulder as the right goes for your head.
You catch it by the wrist, prompting the villain to stop resisting the pull and fall into you, mouth ready to wrap itself around your head. The rockets under your feet flare back to life, sending you sliding from the docks onto the road, sparks kicking up as the back of the armor scrapes against concrete and asphalt. You jerk your left hand to the ground as you build speed, pressing his hand against the ground.
Walker wails in pain as his hand is scraped against the road, trying to pull his arm free. You let him, using his own momentum to put yourself on top before flipping over him and killing the rockets, coming to a skidding halt a few feet ahead.
You handle this landing better than the last, rushing forward to the still rising Walker to deliver a metal knee to his jaw with bone-crunching force. He slumps down, finally beaten into submission as a voice calls out from above.
"Not bad." You look up, surprised by the voice. It would be hard for the figure floating above to look more out of place, the bright primary colors standing in stark contrast to Gotham's perpetual gloom. Blue from the neck down, framed by a red cape and boots, red and yellow shield emblazoned on his chest… the Man of Steel strikes a more impressive visage in person.
Bruce- Batman wouldn't have expected help from him, probably would have been offended by the offer. You don't ask about his lack of intervention. "Why are you here?"
"A friend moved here a couple of months ago. I overheard some folks in Metropolis talking, trying to give her some advice, and decided to see what was going on in person." His brow seems to narrow, ever so slightly. "I've been meaning to stop by for a while now. The reports coming in are… disturbing."
You shrug, as best you can under the armor. "You know the news. Accentuate the negative and paint the worst possible picture. Bad news is what sells best. I have this under control."
You don't. You really don't. But Bruce has pretty firm about not wanting Superman in Gotham. The city's in bad enough shape without alien bounty hunters or giant robot ducks running in the streets.
The alien descends, standing several inches over you. "The attitude is almost a match, but you're a few inches short and a couple dozen pounds shy of passing for Batman." His voice is low, quiet enough that you can barely hear him. He places a hand on your shoulder. "I want to help you, Dick. But to do that I need to know what happened to Bruce."
He knows. How does he-
... goddamn x-ray vision.
[] Tell him everything.
[] Tell him to get out of your city.
[] Murder Superman.
The man silences you with a guttural roar, more animal than man, leaping forward. Just as his feet leave the ground, you fling another foam batarang. It strikes his ankle, gluing his foot to the pavement and letting his own momentum swing his face down to join it.
"Go!" you shout, reaching into your belt again. A pellet flung at Barbara's feet bursts into a cloud of smoke, covering the direction of her escape. Turning to follow her out, you fling a similar pellet full of tear gas in Walker's face to buy you a bit more time. If not, maybe the flashbang just out of arm's reach will.
Gordon's niece is in decent shape and has a fair head-start, but you work with Batman. You cheat. As light and sound burst out of the alley behind you, you fire a line and swing after Barbara, dropping into a roll a few feet ahead and leading her to the bike. "What was that?" she demands as you start the engine.
"No idea," you admit. "Now hold on tight." You shoot out onto the street, the thrum of the engine drowning out everything else.
So Killer Moth was stronger than he should be. You could deal with that, you've fought people on Venom before. You'll just need the right tools and an area free of bystanders. Step one for that goal was getting Barbara to safety.
The cops were busy enough already, and you didn't have time to hear Gordon go off about his daughter trying to be a Batman copycat. Her home would risk dragging neighbors into the crossfire. Bruce would wring your neck if you brought her to the cave without knocking her out first, and you can't do that without her falling off the bike.
One of the bunkers in the city, then. One where there won't be any bystanders. The one at the riverside would be the most convenient location, there's something there that you need to retrieve anyway.
Your hasty planning is interrupted as a shadow falls over you. Above, flitting above the rooftops, is Killer Moth. His costume has been stretched taut over his body, somehow having put on about fifty pounds of muscles in the minutes since you left him. His jetpack is long gone, replaced by a pair of enormous gray wings that have erupted out of his back. And yet, he doesn't seem to have noticed you. Blinded and deafened by the gas and flashbang?
Temporary at best. The bike is too unwieldy to make it to the hidden entrance much faster than you could from here on foot, not fast enough to make it before Moth's hearing and vision return. "We're getting off here," you announce, skidding to a stop in the middle of the street and dismounting. Barbara does the same, looking with an obvious question as you lift a panel and type a code into the keypad beneath. "Can't just leave this lying around," you explain. "Come on."
Twenty seconds after leaving the bike, you hear the explosion. "What was that?" she asks.
"Explosive in the bike," you explain. "If we can't hold onto something that could be used to track us, it gets destroyed."
"Not the…" she pauses for a moment, as if refusing to believe what she's saying, "the bomb, him. Killer Moth."
"No idea," you admit. "If I had to guess; designer steroid, splicing bug DNA into his own, bitten by a radioactive moth?"
"Are you always a wiseass?"
"Not when I'm asleep." You press a button on the back of your glove, activating an inbuilt mic. "Robin to cave. Anyone home?"
Alfred's voice soon buzzes through your earpiece. "Of course, Master Dick. Will you be requiring the first-aid kit again this evening?"
"Should probably keep it handy," you admit, "but that's not what this is about. I'm not sure if he's on some new strain of Venom or what, but Walker put on a ton of muscle in seconds, was strong enough before that change to tear a chunk of stone he was glued to free of the wall, and sprouted functional wings. Contact GCPD, tell them if anyone knows it they should use Metropolis's playbook tonight."
"I believe Gotham is lacking a certain something those strategies depend upon, sir."
"Then I'll just have to compensate."
The entrance to your destination is a diner that closed a few years ago, the property bought up by one of Bruce's false identities. The interior is in as poor shape as the exterior, the floor littered with dirt and pieces of glass from broken windows, anything small enough for looters to take long-since taken.
"Why did you bring me here?" Barbara asks.
You lead her into the kitchen, a hidden switch opening a false wall to reveal a staircase. "Safe house." This one was a fallout shelter constructed during the Cold War. The original access point from the building above had been sealed with concrete, the tunnel connecting it to the new entrance set to flood with an airborne sedative Bruce had whipped up if anyone tried to go through it without him, you, or Alfred. At the end, a steel door that would look more at home in a bank vault than a dark tunnel.
The door slides back, fluorescent lights illuminating the spacious interior. Gunmetal gray crates filled with hundreds of batarangs, smoke bombs, tear gas, zip ties, assorted tools for forensic analysis, spare uniforms for you and Bruce, a couple of laptops… but none of that was why you were here. Barbara follows you in, eyes pouring over the array of equipment. "Don't touch anything," you say. "Most of what's in here that doesn't cut, electrocute, or release some kind of nasty gas just blows up."
"So this is… what, your secret lair?"
"Base," you correct. "Villains have lairs, good guys have bases. And yes, it is." It isn't, obviously. It's just one of the thirteen supply caches Bruce set up throughout Gotham. "We're here because I need to pick something up, and somewhere secure to leave you while I take care of Killer Moth."
"What do you mean 'leave me?'" she demands. "I thought we were just pulling back to regroup and come up with a plan!"
You turn on her, another foam batarang gluing her feet and ankles to the floor. "I have pulled back, I am regrouping, and Ihave a plan. You are going to stay out of my way, because I do not have time to babysit you."
She struggles, trying and failing to break the foam. "Funny. As far as I can tell, you're the one that needs the babysitter. Except your boss isn't here anymore, is he?" You step out of sight, making your way through the aisle of crates and drawers and shelves. "What happened? He retire, get too hurt to go out?"
It doesn't take long to find what you were looking for. The basic principle for the suit is sound; layers of a steel alloy over the vitals, layered plates able to collapse on each other to fit different body types. When work started on it, the unspoken assumption was that if it was needed, it would be because the other one wasn't around anymore.
"Batman's only been gone for a month, and Gotham's already turned into a powder keg. It's obvious you need help, and when someone offers it your first instinct is to trap them in a bunker?"
"Yes." It's what Bruce would do. You don't have the time to put her through the gauntlet, much less train her to do so. If you let her keep going and she got herself killed, her death would be on your head. "You say I need help? What makes you think you're qualified to give it?"
The interior layer is padded, meant to be a tight fit. The cape, vest, gloves, anything that would get in the way is discarded. Individual components are donned, fitted over your torso, legs, arms. The suit is heavy, stiff. Artificial musculature built into the joints could compensate for the former, but the latter was a necessary trade-off for protection.
"Because Gotham needs someone in the cowl, even if it isn't Batman, and I don't see anyone else stepping up," she answers. It's a compelling claim, and she isn't the first to make it. You had a discussion with Kirk along these lines last week that ended with him tied up and waiting for his wife. Still, if you were going far enough to use this thing, you might as well roll with it.
You slide the helmet over your head and latch it shut, a nearly airtight shell around your head. The only source of air was the filter over your mouth, a necessity given the gas the armor was meant to deploy. "Well, you're probably right about one thing," you grant as you return to her line of sight. "Gotham needs a Bat."
"What," she asks, "is that thing?" It's a fair question. Bruce wasn't quite as spry as he used to be, and you'd bet your shares in Wayne Enterprises that he was never as light on his feet as you, but even his gear tends to favor a balance of mobility and protection.
By comparison, the midnight blue shell you've erected over yourself looks the next best thing to driving through Gotham in a tank. Gone is the cape, the shared combination of glider and concealment shared by both you and Bruce's typical evening attire, replaced by a pair of metal wings, meant to fold over your back as extra armor when not needed. The torso and limbs alike are swollen, your upper body bristling with gear. The legs, however, were mostly filled with fuel for the rockets under your heels and artificial muscles needed to support the rest of the thing's weight. The only real marking it as a piece of Batman's equipment is the helmet, cast in the same shape as his cowl, and the faintly glowing emblem on the chest.
"Something we put together for a rainy day," you answer. The helmet muffles your voice, but removing it would be a bit too much of a hassle. "This wasn't exactly what we had in mind at the time, but it should make for a decent bug-swatter."
"What did you have in mind?" she demands.
You ignore the question. "If I'm not back in an hour, I'm probably dead. If so, someone will be by to let you loose in the morning."
There isn't really a reassuring answer to that question. You could tell her that you thought it was necessary to counter Bane's Venom enhanced strength, to rip through Ivy's creations, to navigate the terrain Freeze leaves in his wake or ignore Joker's toxins. All of them would be less than comfortable, but none as disconcerting as its real purpose.
As the door seals behind you, you reopen communications with the cave. "Alfred, I've got Gordon's niece foamed to the floor in sub-cave five. If this doesn't work, she'll probably need you to let her out."
"If what doesn't work, sir?"
"I'm taking the Last Son suit out to deal with Killer Moth."
"Is that not rather… excessive?"
"He's a big boy now, he can take it."
The man, if he can still be called that, isn't difficult to find. Walker has left a trail of property damage a mile long, leading up to the docks. With magnification from the lenses, you can see the moth-man ripping into the roofs and walls of warehouses. Searching for other illicit operations, looking for the chance to get even with the people who treated him as a joke for so long?
It's tempting to let him go at it for a bit, but the collateral would be too high. Your second instinct is to sneak up behind him and make a bad pun, but that would sort of defeat the purpose of the exercise. You need to do more than just bring Killer Moth in, you need to strike the fear of the Bat back into Gotham.
Overwhelming force it is. The rockets under your feet flare to life, sending you into the air on a beeline for the mutated man. However else he's been affected, his hearing certainly isn't anything to write home about. You manage to get close enough before he notices that he doesn't have time to react, taking a crunching blow from a metal-encased fist to his gut.
The impact sends you into a spiral as your opponent drops three stories to the ground. You kill the rockets and fire a line from your right gauntlet to the edge of a rooftop, retracting the wings as gravity does its work and delivers your feet to his shoulder, accompanied by the same crunch as your first strike.
The suit is too heavy to move like this reliably, the extra weight leaving you unsteady after landing. It gives Killer Moth time to reorient himself, rushing you by the time you've turned to face him. The impact is enough to dent the plating over your torso, triggering a failsafe. Slits open up along the armor's shoulders, vents releasing a noxious green gas.
Your opponent has the good sense to leap back, flapping wings doing their best to blow the gas away. You don't give him the chance to get far, a claw connected to your right gauntlet by an elastic cable grabbing his shoulder and hauling him back towards you. The section of his helmet, or what you'd thought was his helmet, comes open into three sections, as if his chin had been split down the middle. A white gunk shoots out, blocking the vents as his wings finish clearing the gas that already escaped before he rejoins you.
The impact is enough to knock you to the ground, leaving you with Killer Moth straddling your chest. His left arm grabs at your right, trying to crush the winch connecting it to his shoulder as the right goes for your head.
You catch it by the wrist, prompting the villain to stop resisting the pull and fall into you, mouth ready to wrap itself around your head. The rockets under your feet flare back to life, sending you sliding from the docks onto the road, sparks kicking up as the back of the armor scrapes against concrete and asphalt. You jerk your left hand to the ground as you build speed, pressing his hand against the ground.
Walker wails in pain as his hand is scraped against the road, trying to pull his arm free. You let him, using his own momentum to put yourself on top before flipping over him and killing the rockets, coming to a skidding halt a few feet ahead.
You handle this landing better than the last, rushing forward to the still rising Walker to deliver a metal knee to his jaw with bone-crunching force. He slumps down, finally beaten into submission as a voice calls out from above.
"Not bad." You look up, surprised by the voice. It would be hard for the figure floating above to look more out of place, the bright primary colors standing in stark contrast to Gotham's perpetual gloom. Blue from the neck down, framed by a red cape and boots, red and yellow shield emblazoned on his chest… the Man of Steel strikes a more impressive visage in person.
Bruce- Batman wouldn't have expected help from him, probably would have been offended by the offer. You don't ask about his lack of intervention. "Why are you here?"
"A friend moved here a couple of months ago. I overheard some folks in Metropolis talking, trying to give her some advice, and decided to see what was going on in person." His brow seems to narrow, ever so slightly. "I've been meaning to stop by for a while now. The reports coming in are… disturbing."
You shrug, as best you can under the armor. "You know the news. Accentuate the negative and paint the worst possible picture. Bad news is what sells best. I have this under control."
You don't. You really don't. But Bruce has pretty firm about not wanting Superman in Gotham. The city's in bad enough shape without alien bounty hunters or giant robot ducks running in the streets.
The alien descends, standing several inches over you. "The attitude is almost a match, but you're a few inches short and a couple dozen pounds shy of passing for Batman." His voice is low, quiet enough that you can barely hear him. He places a hand on your shoulder. "I want to help you, Dick. But to do that I need to know what happened to Bruce."
He knows. How does he-
... goddamn x-ray vision.
[] Tell him everything.
[] Tell him to get out of your city.