dami can't (leavethenest) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-07-29 04:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | damian wayne, door: dc comics, red hood, stephanie brown |
Who: Talon, Batgirl and Red Hood
When: backdated wwaaayy back when there were escaped inmates running around
Where: A slummy part of Gotham
What: little baby heroes working together saving the day and trying not to get each other killed
Warnings: Violence
Damian, dressed in black and gold, soared down from the sky, arm extended as it pulled his line to snap back into the palm of his hand. Around him, Gotham was in a panic. Broken glass and overturned garbage cans littered the streets as screams echoed from nearly every direction. The smart parts of the city had locked itself up, but those who couldn’t move fast enough or didn’t understand what escaped Arkham inmates meant were still in danger. He didn’t look particularly friendly or in the mood to save anyone, but that was part of the charm of being the Talon. He wasn’t here to make friends. He was here to stop other dark monsters.
He looked around the place he agreed to meet Jason Todd, catching sight of the ruby red helmet amongst the crowd. “Hood.” Damian shouted and stalked towards him. “Unless you have a better idea, I think we should work our way towards the local arms dealer. Shut him down and it’ll give the authorities an edge.”
At the behest of the Cat, Jason had, for the moment, abandoned his guns. They were still in the holsters at his hips, but he’d brought along a heavy extendable baton instead, and he was using it gripped in the middle to pull assailants off their feet and leave them incapacitated. Life had been a confusing mess lately, and he felt cheated and stupid for not just killing the killers as he came across them, but the trouble was telling the truly mad from the psychopaths - it was almost impossible to do, in this mob. If he couldn’t kill them, then the next best thing was to be sure they wouldn’t be able to continue participating in the festivities. He did this with his usual brutality and intensity, but was not leaving deaths behind. Crowd control. Right.
Jason had just spun the baton into the neck of a man who had pinned an elderly man against a wall when Damian came up behind him, and Jason nearly swung the baton at him, waist high. He stopped when he saw who’d approached, and gave the plan a curt nod. The brat was right - the last thing they needed was more nuts with guns. “You see the girl?” he called, shoving his way through the crowd, all broad shoulders, strength, and quick cracks of the weighted weapon to disperse anyone in his way.
Stephanie wasn’t around very much lately. Nick wanted to mourn, and she was willing to give him all the time that he needed. So, she wasn’t exactly aware of Gotham’s breakout until he finally let her through the door, until she saw the streets teeming with escapees and chaos and everything in between. She wanted to steal some sleep, rest that Nick wasn’t getting, but Gotham’s call for help outshined any other problem. She could always get some sleep later, right? She had to keep the boys in tow, too. Who knows what they would do without her around.
As if her ears were burning, right on cue, a black blur sailed over the boys’ heads, and heavy black boot connected into a man’s head. As Stephanie landed with a little stumble just to Hood’s left, she took a moment to look around and flash both men a grin before swinging her elbow into the creeper’s stomach. “Tried to start the fun without me?” she shouted over her shoulder towards Jason and Damian while brandishing her own baton. Slightly similar to Hood’s but lighter and retractable. The man she knocked over the head during her landing tried to regain shaky footing, but she managed to swing at his legs with the weapon before he could come up again.
“Girl?” Damian started and then turned around at Stephanie’s voice. He gave her a small nod. “Am I the only one who brought a real weapon here?” He asked, chin turned up as if he were clearly the smartest ex-Robin out of the trio and spun out his two half-moon hand blades. He didn’t exactly carry anything that was particularly nonlethal even if he hadn’t killed with these blades in a long time. Well, if Talons didn’t count anyway. The little bird opened his mouth to say another sarcastic, eye-rolling taunt to his teammates when a scream like someone was being torn apart echoed down the street.
He turned to see an ignited bottle crashing into a car, flames spreading quickly over its body. “It’s going to explode. Jason, make sure there’s no one in the car. Batgirl, crowd control with me.” Damian didn’t care if his elders didn’t want to take directions from a kid. They could go right ahead and let a whole group of people get one way tickets to the burn ward. Damian was already pounding pavement to get to the people near the car.
Jason wasn't much interested in taking orders from the bat, but the people possibly about to burn to death in that car were a priority, so he branched off from the other two and dove for the door handle, shoving more people aside as he went. He could see a shape inside and moving by the steering wheel, and he wrenched the door open. It was nearly too hot to touch even with gloves on, and the woman inside, middle aged and in business attire, half-fell into his arms, kicking at the seatbelt caught around her ankles and coughing from the smoke. Jason ducked his head in to be sure there was no one else inside, then took the woman under her arms and pulled her away from the car. Her pulse was fine, and while she was still coughing lightly, she'd survive. He glanced up and spotted a man in Arkham's distinctive patient uniform, pulling back another lit bottle to throw.
Jason hit him with a quick, flying tackle, and the bottle went flying, hitting the ground a few feet from where they'd been standing, and spreading a pool of fire on the asphalt. The heat was nearly unbearable, but it kept it from hitting any more cars or civilians. They both hit the ground at a roll, Jason catching his feet after a few turns. The man on the ground was still, not far from the creeping fire. Jason stood, looked him over, and stepped away, back toward Damian and Stephanie. Let him burn.
Normally, Steph would have snapped at Damian for trying to give her orders, but there was no time to hesitate and bicker just then. “Someone letting that Wayne power go to his head, little bird?” Steph managed to shout at him with a smirk as she followed him towards the crowd. They seemed paralyzed by the sights, many too stunned to retreat from the blaze in front of them. Shouting at them, she waved her arms to try to snap them out of the fearful reverie. “Move, move, move!” Her voice echoed through the chaos and alerted pieces of the crowd to get out of the way.
She spotted the man Hood left on the floor and the fire crawling towards him. “Hood,” she called out, but somehow knew he wouldn’t turn back for the man, one marked by the Arkham jumpsuit. No, that wasn’t his style. Quickly glancing over to Damian to shoot him a look, she bounded towards the stilled figure on the ground. The exhaustion she felt wasn’t as obvious before as it was now, as she maneuvered among civilians and prisoners alike running about, and she mentally cursed out Nick and his (understandable) insomnia over the past couple of weeks. Her reactions, therefore, were sluggish, so much so that she didn’t hear or see or even realize one of Arkham’s escapee’s approach behind her until it was too late. She felt a fierce blow to her arm and turned to see a man brandishing a wooden bat. The pain shot up and down from the impact, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut for a moment, but Steph ignored it enough to connect a kick into his chest.
Damian had figured the Red Hood could take one simple order without letting his crazy get in the way. On that front, Damian was completely wrong. He had missed the attempted fiery execution of one of the inmates until Stephanie simple vanished from his side. “What-” Damian tilted his head to glance back at her, to see that look. A snarl crossed his lips in agreement. Red Hood could let thugs to die on his own time, but around someone like Batgirl proved that he didn’t bother to think about his teammates.
He nearly took a second to bitch the Hood out, but Batgirl needed help and that took priority. Running after her, he pulled out a small electrocution device and snapped it on the back of one of the attacking inmates, sending a blue shock through him before the man passed out. His plan of attack was simple, first grab one of the ashtrays the put on garbage cans, throw it on the burning man to stop the flames and save Batgirl. What Damian forgot about was how the car was about to explode.
With a boom that echoed down the street, Damian was knocked to his feet as the car exploded in front of him. “Batgirl? Hood? Are you-” He broke out into a cough, eyes shielded from the blinding fire.
Jason had forgotten about the hero problem - the goody two-shoes Bat children, unwilling to let arsonists die in the street in the messes they'd made. By the time he made it back to where he'd last seen Batgirl, she'd somehow passed him headed toward the firebomber he'd left behind, and the brat was in close pursuit. Cursing aloud, he sprinted after both of him, and made it about halfway there before the car exploded.
Jason hit the ground and rolled. He was far enough from the blaze to avoid flying shrapnel, but as he stumbled back to his feet and coughed through the smoke, a tingling, numb, pins and needles sensation in his leg made him look down. It was on fire.
Jason ripped off his jacket and crushed out the flames, then began moving toward the kids again, the leg dragging a bit. No time to slow down or check the injury - he had to keep moving. He dragged the jacket back on, more a protection from the flames than anything else.
The man who he'd seen attacking Stephanie through the smoke was laid out cold. He made it to her just before Damian did, and put a heavy hand on her shoulder. "You don't go back for the scum. Ever," he shouted over the din, teeth set against the pain and the vivid pop of rage in his chest, dragging her back away from the flames and the criminal. He wasn't worth saving, and he certainly wasn't worth her throwing herself into the fire for. There wasn’t much left of him after the explosion anyway.
Stephanie had suffered through ridiculous amounts of pain in the past -- Black Mask made sure of that -- and though it wasn’t blinding, she thought her arm might be broken. Or, fractured at the very least. Gritting her teeth, she hugged her injured arm to her chest and pulled out one of her Batarangs to toss at the man attacking her. Before she could fling it, however, the car blew to high heaven, and Steph, being the closest of the three, was tossed back a considerable distance. She landed on her back, the wind knocked out of her, and she was too dazed to move until Hood put his hand on her shoulder. She snapped back into herself then, looking up at him with contempt and a set jaw.
“They don’t deserve to die, Hood. That’s not what we do!” she retorted, trying to fight off Jason’s iron grip on her shoulder. Suddenly, she stopped and looked around panicked. “Dami--Talon. Where the hell is he?” Her eyes scanned the crowd, but smoke burned them enough to cause her to squint and tear. “Talon!”
Damian stumbled to his feet, holding onto his knees as he coughed out black spit. His mind kept telling him he’d been through so much worse than a nearby explosion, but being knocked on his ass would always be a little surprising. On the ground next to him was the arsonist, dead and crumpled, with shrapnel sticking out of his forehead. The little bird took it as a personal failure and forced his mind to laser focus.
Stephanie calling his name helped, too.
“I’m fine!” Damian called back, following her voice through the smoke to see her safe with the Hood. His eyes darted over her face to make sure she was okay before grimacing at Red Hood. “Congratulations! He’s dead. Are you happy, Hood?” He took a couple stomping steps away from them, pissed that his only connection to the old Gotham could have died in a stupid accident caused by the Hood. Pissed that he was working in an already dysfunctional team. He stopped, knowing that his father wouldn’t have given up so easily and turned back around. “Batgirl will go after a man on fire. Every. Single. Time. Let’s keep moving. Once we secure the arms dealer, we can split up and do things our own ways.”
Jason looked between the two of them behind the metal of the mask, then turned from them. "That's what I do. And I am happy. But if you're going to insist on acting like idiots, I'll wait until I get out of your range to roast the next one." Once Stephanie was back on her feet he began moving toward the arms dealer again, pulling the baton from his belt and hitting with extra force to clear the crowd of inmates. The stupid, short-sighted Bat kids were going to get themselves killed, and he wouldn't be responsible for it. That would be on the man who taught them their morals.
Stephanie huffed a sigh when Hood turned away from them, completely unimpressed by his actions. She knew Jason wasn’t like the rest of them -- she had heard the stories, seen the damage -- but this was her first real confirmation of it all. Following behind Jason, she kept her own baton in one hand and the Batarang between her fingers of the other. “Move along, boys,” she called to the inmates, as if placating a crowd of rowdy fraternity pledges. “Nothing to see here!” She turned to Damian briefly to shoot him another look that conveyed all of her feelings on the situation -- on Hood. She pushed an advancing man with an elbow to the gut. “So, I’m voting that he’s off the case next time,” she said to Damian over her shoulder, grimacing all the same. “He’s knocking our aesthetic off with the red.”
Damian didn’t want this to turn into a fight about ideologies or whatever else Jason had been sore about since the Joker killed him. “Once the streets are cleared and the inmates are back where they belong we can all get on the internet and fight about it there. Okay?” He rolled his eyes, looking over at Stephanie with a small grin. “I’ll make sure to tell Red Robin that if he ever shows up.” Damian was on her side about this, but any chance to take a low blow at his arch nemesis was worth it.
The streets seemed to clear a lot faster with three masked figures walking down it with brandished weapons. If an inmate got too close, Damian would slice their arm or trip them up enough so they’d get the message. Soon, the arms dealer shop was in sight. “There it is. All we have to do is convince this guy to lock up good and tight until the inmates are back in their cells. If that means locking him out of his own establishment to be eaten by the wolves, we do it.”
Jason, true to expectations, went straight into the shop. The doors were still open, and quite a few people were already inside, attempting to stock up on firearms. The arms dealer was just barely managing the chaos, as civilians and escaped patients alike ransacked the shelves. "Looks like he doesn't have much of a say in the matter," Jason said before wading into the fray, sliding right to avoid an inmate who lashed out to the left with the butt of a rifle he'd just ripped from the wall.
Steph gave Damian a dirty look as a response to his dig at Red Robin, but didn’t say anything otherwise. Among the Batfamily, Tim and Damian’s issues with each other were notorious, Steph having dealt with them first hand plenty of times before. She hadn’t thought about her old flame much, but in that moment she wondered what he would think about all the things happening -- the doors, and being stuck in people’s minds, and having a Batman that wasn’t theirs.
The gun shop was teeming with people scrambling for weapons, the chaos almost stifling. Steph pushed through though, taking the side opposite of Hood and moving towards the dealer. Pressing a finger to her ear, she clicked on her comm link with Damian. “We’ve got to get him out of here,” she said. “The dealer. Move the problem, take the rest out if we have to. I don’t want to risk Hood offing more people.” She tried to catch Hood’s eye as she inched closer and closer to the dealer and motion him to move the dealer away from the violent crowd. But she hoped she or Damian got to the man first. That would make things much better for everyone involved.
“Copy that.” Talon whispered back into the comm, edging around the building to find a back entrance he could surprise the owner with. With Red Hood making a fuss at the front of the store, Batgirl and Talon could get the chance to take down the dealer without much of a fight. Kicking open an “Employees Only” door, the little bird moved quietly through boxes of inventory. Suddenly, he swung open a door into the main store and grabbed the man behind the desk, arching his arm back and behind him. “Pool’s closed.” Damian whispered into the man’s ear, dragging him into the back room.
Giving a signal for Batgirl to follow him, Damian threw the man on the ground and put a boot to his throat. “Give me your keys. We’re locking this place up. And, if you think any of us give a damn about your revenue stream, I’ll have Red Hood out there burn this place to the ground.”
Batgirl was close enough to the front so that all that stood between her and the back room was a couple of thugs who thought they could get the better of her. Of course, they couldn’t, and she dispatched of them quickly with a swipe of her baton or a swing of her fist. The exhaustion creeped more and more as she maneuvered through the crowd, bones aching and a sharp pain radiating from her injured arm. She looked over her shoulder to search for Red Hood, but in the end, she didn’t wait. This would run easier, and much smoother, without his special brand of justice thrown in the mix.
As she crossed the threshold of the door, Damian was slamming the man to the ground and pressing a boot to his throat. “Talon,” she said firmly, but didn’t ask him to move. Instead she looked down at the man with one hand on her hip, other arm still hugged to her chest. “Now, we can make this easy for alllll of us, mister. We don’t want to have to do things the hard way.”
In the main room, Jason was busy ripping weapons from the hands of the patients. Thankfully most of them were still locked and unloaded, so guns were being used as retaliatory blunt weapons, not firearms. He slipped underneath the wildly flying barrels of a shotgun and delivered a hard crack to the wielder's face, dropping him quick and fast. He stuck close to the door to the back room, even as the crowds began to slide closer. They didn’t care about the man in the back - they did care about the keys to the gun locks, and Jason didn’t intend to let anyone have them. “Now now, guys, take your time. I know a riot is like a kid in a candy store when it hits the gun shop, but -” He kicked out, shoving a snarling young woman back, toppling her into the bottlenecked crowd behind her and throwing a number of them back and off balance. “Everybody’s going to get their turn.”
“Who are you people?” The dealer screamed, trying to escape the weight of Talon’s boot. The mask in black and gold looked up at Batgirl with a grin, crushing his boot just a little more against the man’s rib cage. “We’re here to make sure you don’t contribute to Gotham falling to scum. Give us the keys, run for your measly little life and we will take care of the rest.” Damian liked scaring people. It was half the fun of running around as the Talon. The dealer, about to pass out or piss himself, snaked his hands in his pockets and threw a large keychain on the floor next to Batgirl.
“The big brass key. Will you give it back when you’re done?”
“We’ll see.” Damian lifted his foot, reaching down to pull the man to his feet and push him out the door before pulling it closed and blocking it with a desk. He looked to Batgirl and then to Hood before shouting. “Let’s flush this rat hole out.”
Stephanie didn’t return Damian’s grin, instead opting to keep her lip firmly pursed. As he dispatched the man and sent him back into the weapon-hungry crowd, she snatched up the heavy keychain and shifted through the tiny things with her gloved hands until she came upon one that matched the owner’s description. “Got it, kiddo,” she said to Talon as she jingled the keys to grab his attention. But that garnered attention of the inmates pressing in against Hood, and a few lunged at Batgirl to get the keys for their ammunition. She landed a kick to one of their chests as she tried to shake off one going to grasp her injured arm. “Oh, no no no,” she said to the assailants. “Nice try, but I think we got these fair and square. Talon here? Had to sell all his Catwoman collectables for it.” She looked over one of the men’s shoulders and did grin at that before turning back to the problem at hand.Next thing, a Batarang protruded from a woman trying to wrap her hands around Stephanie’s throat. Batgirl wasn’t playing around anymore; the longer they were here, the longer they risked Jason Todd doing another stupid thing
The crowd wasn’t clearing out anywhere near quick enough for Jason. If they fought them back an inch at a time, they were going to be here all night. So he grabbed his own gun, flicking open the holster at his waist and firing a few rounds into the ceiling. That got their attention. The patients had guns with no ammunition, and they knew a losing fight when they saw one. Most began fleeing from the door, leaving behind an enterprising few. One, the woman Jason had already pushed back once, had grabbed a jagged shard of glass from one of the shattered cabinets, but a quick whip up with the baton shattered it on its way to Jason’s throat, dashing it back against her face. Her arms came up to protect from the shards and he whipped the baton around again, this time sending her straight to the ground.
Just a few left, after that. He glanced back at the other two, and made a show of putting the safety back on and ceremoniously sliding the gun back into its holster. “Let’s clear the dance floor.”
Talon spun the key ring around his finger and jumped on top of the store’s counter, sending a wave of throwing stars across the store before leaping onto a man holding a shotgun. He still fought like he was five feet tall, a winged tasmanian devil, which sent men falling back in a clumsy mess of topping shelves and merchandise. Damian jumped to the next man knocking the gun out of his hand as he sliced a long string of blood down the man’s arm. All of the injuries he inflicted were warning shots, things to scare people out of the store. And, honestly, this departure from lethal fighting felt good. Freeing, even. And, even if he didn’t want to admit it, part of him wished his father the one from this city could see him.
Now standing above the bloody mess of a crawling inmate, he grabbed the man by the collar and pulled him out, waiting for the other two to finish up so he could bring the giant steel doors down around the entrances.
Stephanie rammed her way through the sea of remaining inmates, not slicing or whacking but just pushing as far as she could go. The lack of sleep was beginning to press down on her hard, her head a heavy weight and limbs aching with fatigue. Her injured arm continued to make its presence known as well, the sharp pains radiating up and down her arm, and she still hugged to to her chest. Damian made a bit of a path that Steph tried to follow through, but the inmates stumbled into her way. She sighed and rolled her eyes and felt a bubble of irritation crawl up her throat. “Don’t you guys learn,” she mumbled through gritted teeth as she used her bo-staff to push a cluster of clawing men out of her way. A skidding round kick knocked another group off its balance as she closed in on the entrance, closer and closer until she stood next to Talon as well. Out of breath and exhausted, but standing up straight with pursed lips.
Jason finished up with a last knot of holdouts close to the shotguns on the wall, dispersing them with a few hard kicks and swings of his truncheon. It scattered the stragglers post haste, digging in beneath wailing arms and cracking into undefended jaws, sending them struggling, staggering, and running for the door. There was nothing to be gained by them sticking around, particularly when they lacked the keys to get access to the guns they’d stolen.
Jason turned to Damian, and gestured up. “That’s the last of them. Hit the doors.”
Damian nodded, snapping the doors closed, locking them and then pulling the iron gates in front to lock those as well. “Good.” He said, turning to look at Jason and Batgirl, the stark difference of both who they were and how they dressed more apparent than ever. He had noticed Batgirl struggling to keep up, which meant this was a good time to split. She could go make an appearance with the people of Gotham while he and Jason kept fighting back the horde. “Batgirl, go check on the local shelters in the area and see if they need supplies. Jason, make your way up towards Crime Alley. I’ll keep carving a path up to Gotham Central so they can get some police down here safely.” Whether or not they wanted to follow his orders were up to them. It was their problem if they couldn’t see logic like he did.
Steph was spent, the fighting finally taking its finishing toll on her body and mind. She could barely think and found herself leaning against a nearby lamppost, squeezing her tired eyes shut for a split-second as she listened to Damian shut the doors and bring the gates down. “Damian, I--” she started, eyes snapping open, when he suggested she stop by some of the closeby shelters. Exhaustion ached in her bones, but again, she knew that Gotham needed her. Maybe this would push Nick to finally get some proper sleep. Pushing herself off the metal pole, she rolled her shoulders and nodded. “Yeah, okay. Keep your comm open, and tell me if you need any help.” She shot him a pointed look with bloodshot eyes. “I’m serious.”
Pressing a button, her bo-staff retracted, and she reached to her leg for her grapple hook gun. “Now, you boys don’t have too much fun without me.” Turning towards Jason, she forced a smile and winked. “Nice playing with you, Todd. We should tango again soon.” She didn’t actually mean that, but he got the job done at least. With a bang, her grapple was off, and after a final wave, she moved up and away from the two other former birds.
Jason didn’t care what the bat children thought about him. What was important was minimizing deaths in this mess, and keeping the criminals from Arkham from doing any more harm than they already had. It was scenes like this that made him wonder why anyone would ever listen to Bruce’s mandate of locking the worst criminals in the city up in a place so easily breached. He shouldn’t have agreed to team up with the pair of them in the first place. It was like running around with little mini-Bats, spouting all the same rhetoric, giving him all the same looks, and it left him with a bitter taste in his mouth.
For once, he didn’t mind the idea of following the brat’s lead. In Crime Alley he could do some damage to the worst of the worst, stretch himself a little, get some real work done. “Try not to get killed,” he offered, cheerful as a morgue. He hopped up, grabbed the edge of a fire escape, and levered himself swiftly up. To the roof - it would be faster, anyway.
Damian stood there, arms crossed like a Robin, as he watched the two of them speed off in different directions. “Huh.” He said out loud once they were gone, a little surprised that they had not only worked as a team (for the most part), but actually listened to his orders. Grayson would be proud. So would his father, even this version of him. Feeling more accomplished than smug for once in his little feathered life, he popped the grappling hook from his belt and flew towards Gotham Central.