Who: Batman, Robin and NPC Firefly When: Recently! Where: Gotham What: Two characters die! Guess which ones! Warnings: violent death, sads
In a town like Gotham, theft of aviation fuel went almost completely unnoticed. Rogues, criminals and everyone in between passed off all sorts of concoctions in the city of Acme Chemicals and there were a lot more dangerous things being passed around than stuff that made a jet fly. A few small airports with planes owned by recreational flyers were hit and everyone assumed it was teenagers or someone in need of their getaway plane to work. It wasn’t until a couple homes owned by cop families and mob connects went up in mysterious flames that something seemed off. But, no one wanted to talk about it or even acknowledge that the fires could have been arson because how did they know they wouldn’t be next?
Damian wasn’t a detective by any means, so he didn’t see the connection between each house and left the figuring out part up to his father. He knew he was supposed to be learning how to find criminals before they could do damage to the city, but he always assumed once he became Batman he could find a sidekick to do it for him. Wasn’t that what they were for anyway?
It didn’t take long for Batman to find the next target: a crooked cop who stopped paying his dues for “confiscated” drugs. He lived in an old, three story apartment complex that would be turned to ash if so much as one room was set on fire. Damian landed across the street next to Batman and pulled out his pair of night vision goggles. “What are we supposed to do, shut the whole building down?” He asked, focusing his goggles onto the apartment. Damian was dressed in his Robin outfit without the bright yellow cape. Only a deep green vest, the R symbol on his heart, laceup green boots, black pants and bullet proof black undershirt. Even though he had been patrolling the city as Talon, he went as Robin out of respect for his father. Out of respect for the symbol.
A year and more in this new Gotham, and Bruce still hadn’t fully accustomed himself to working with someone. Even now he preferred to do things on his own and old habits died hard; in his world, he’d never intended on recruiting others to his cause. He could train, he could groom someone to follow in his footsteps, but the idea of doing so was what he struggled with. Yet here he was, because he knew he’d been neglecting Damian and maybe some Batman-Robin time was what they both needed. At the very least, it couldn’t deteriorate things any further, or so he hoped. And it wasn’t difficult, not initially. A series of suspicion fires, theft of aviation fuel, and all he had to do was dig a little into the victims’ history to discover the common thread between them all. No, they weren’t accidents; they were arson, and the key to preventing more deaths and catching the perpetrator was finding the next target before their home was turned into an inferno.
He was mapping out potential routes of exit, as the building was too old to withstand a fire, when Damian landed beside him. Knowing this was where the arsonist would strike wasn’t enough; they had to actually prevent it. “The fire, if it’s started, will spread too quickly to be contained. It’s a death sentence for everyone inside.” No sign of activity yet. Batman straightened and spared a glance at the boy. “How many live inside?” He knew, of course, but it was one of those idly asked questions to see what response was given.
Damian was no detective and usually thought all problems had a boot to the head solution. But, he wasn’t an idiot and he understood the importance of some details. “Fifty-three.” The little bird looked up at Batman, knowing full well it was a test and eager to prove himself. “Many residents are families and numerous small children are inside.” Families and children were an important statistic because they had a harder time fleeing if trouble did arrive and because the lives of kids were important to every member of the Batfamily. “An evacuation might scare off the arsonist and we’d have to waste our time returning here night after night.” Damian said thoughtfully and then stood up straight.
“We know the apartment the fire needs to start in. I say we sneak in there now and wait for the idiot to try and light it on fire.” Damian popped a compartment in his utility belt and then held out two cannisters. “These are filled with foam that can suppress the fire at first. I can make sure the building is safe while you try to take the fight somewhere else. Maybe the roof?” The weather was damp and cold enough that it had snowed a little in the past few days. That was bad news for the fire starter, but good news for the bats.
Bruce was quiet, not wanting to interrupt until he was sure Damian was finished. It would have been easy to bypass him entirely and do it on his own, to issue orders and expect them to be followed, but it didn’t take much skill to follow instructions. It didn’t require logic or planning to be told what to do. While he fought at his side he would follow orders, yes, but he also wanted to know the boy was prepared to work on his own as well. That if, by chance, he’d come upon this situation alone, he could handle it until backup arrived or even without it. He wanted to know if he would suggest an evacuation, and was pleased that he didn’t. He would have taken that as his opening to speak had Damian not continued, but he did. There was no denying that the sensation which rose in his chest as he made his suggestion was pride, and he gave a short nod of approval.
“An evacuation would do more harm than good,” he agreed. “The sooner we catch the arsonist, the better.” No others would die because of this maniac. Stealth wasn’t a problem for him, nor for Damian, and so he had little doubt of their ability to get into the apartment unnoticed. “I’ll need to get him out of the building while you handle things inside. The roof will work,” he said. There was no verbal order to move, just movement and sound as he grappled from one building to the other, to enter the apartment from the outside.
Damian jumped off the building the second his father was done speaking, arm lifting up to shoot his grappling hook so he could swing alongside the apartment building and climb up the catwalk. Damian was small and light footed enough that he could scale without making so much as a sound in the noisy Gotham. Inside he could hear television sets, old men snoring and babies crying. He didn’t feel kinship with any of these people, but he knew they needed to be saved and if it could be done without knowledge he was even there, his bloodline would be proud. He reached the catwalk outside of the man’s apartment and hunched over next to the window. Inside, the room was dark except for a single light glowing from the hallway. A perfect playground for a ninja. Damian resisted the urge to crawl inside, find a dark corner and wait to ambush the arsonist.
From outside the building, the sound of jet fuel burning on high sounded followed by the roar of a flamethrower. Damian didn’t need to turn to know who it was. “Firefly!” He shouted into the comm. His hand whipped out, releasing two batarangs that went straight for the loud jetpack sound.
“All Batman could bring was one of his birds?!” Firefly’s voice was loud like it was being threaded through an intercom. The flame thrower suddenly burst back alive and Damian crashed through the window to avoid the licks of fire. He reached for his extinguisher bombs and quickly snuffed the beginnings of fire as he backed up farther into the building. “He doesn’t think you’re here.” Damian whispered into the comm, back against the nearby wall.
Bruce was on the other side of the building, and therefore not within the line of sight, when the sound of jet fuel and the flamethrower’s roar reached his ears. He trusted Damian to be able to handle himself and yet there was still a brief moment of panic, assuaged slightly when he heard his voice crackle over the comm; reassurance, at least, that he hadn’t been burned. And while there had been no Firefly in his world, he’d been here long enough to acquaint himself with every villain and their style. He used the fire escape to scale the building as the battle played out on the other side, the sounds he heard both himself and through the comm painting a clear enough picture of what was transpiring.
“Good,” was his hushed response to Damian’s observation. It meant he had the element of surprise. He had to act quickly, however, lest Firefly burn the building down beforehand; one spark would be all that was needed and Damian couldn’t fend him off forever. In a couple of seconds he’d swung himself up onto the roof and crept across to the other side, keeping himself low until he had a visual on Firefly. He’d have to get him up here, get him close… Bruce had an idea, then, and it helped that his opponent was distracted. In one fluid motion he pulled his Batclaw from his belt, aimed, and fired; once the click told him he’d engaged, he pulled with every bit of strength he had. “Secure the building,” he hissed into the comm. “I’ll handle Firefly.”
Damian shielded his face, wishing for that very cape he had ditched in hopes of looking more like an adult and tried to see through the charred apartment. The filthy floors, couches and tables were all scorched and emitting a smell similar to old hair being lit on fire. He coughed, rolling on the floor towards the window. He heard the pop, hiss and latch of the batclaw and screamed “NO!” in the comm as he got to his feet and leaped out of the building again. “He has a jetpack, you can’t!” Damian tried to explain, sure that a bat hanging onto the tail of Firefly was a dead one. Maybe it was invalidating his belief in his father or it was his own youthful arrogance pushing through without a calm filter to stop it.
Either way, he latched onto Firefly’s armored body and cut the line to his father’s batclaw. “I got this.” Damian insisted, brandishing one of his blades and using it to try and pry open so he could stab the man and be done with this. But, he didn’t think through how used to erratic flying Firefly was and after a couple spins through the air, found himself losing his grip. Damian yelled, headbutting Firefly as they spiraled out of control and then immediately grabbed his forehead in pain from hitting metal so hard.
Damian was out of practice. He wasn’t thinking. He wanted blood.
Firefly managed to tumbled towards the rooftop, shaking off Damian onto a snowy corner and then landed haphazardly across from Batman. “He’s a lot more suicidal than I remember. And, short.” Firefly said smugly, igniting the flame thrower and blasting a wave of fire towards the Dark Knight.
There was no time for Bruce to assure Damian that he did indeed know what he was doing and interference wasn’t necessary. He sucked in a breath, anger rising to be met with worry as his line was cut, and he silently cursed himself for thinking that the boy would be able to follow orders without jumping in blindly. Rendered temporarily useless but still his best chance at forcing Firefly down onto even ground, the batclaw’s line was wound back in as he prepared to fire again, but with Damian latched on he didn’t have a clear shot.
He watched, frustratingly helpless, and his eyes widened almost imperceptibly behind his cowl as Damian began to lose his grip. “No,” he breathed, and then spoke louder, into the comm. “Robin, no!” Firefly was momentarily forgotten as he lunged forward, preparing to fire a line for Damian if he fell to the cold street below. But he hit the roof instead, and Bruce only had a second, barely more, to stare, before there was the very real threat of fire to contend with. “Robin, get up and get out of the way,” he commanded, assuming he was only winded, and then he was rolling out of the way as flames appeared where he’d been only moments earlier. He had to stop him from becoming airborne again, had to keep him grounded.
“It’s me you want, not him,” he growled, rising from his crouch and releasing a series of quick-fire batarangs; high, low, and in-between, to catch him off guard.
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Damian yelled, immediately regretting the act of defiance, but having no time to apologize or even register in his mind that he should. He wasn’t in the right place to fight crime anymore and while that was apparent to everyone (including Firefly), the little bird didn’t see it. Damian didn’t understand a world where he wasn’t the best at what he did. Seething, he clutched his head, dizzy and angry at everyone around him and stumbled back to his feet.
On the other side of the rooftop, Firefly was laughing maniacally at the flames. A distorted, almost high pitched screaming sort of laugh that belonged echoing through Arkham pierced through the roaring flames. The batarangs hit his hand and sent an arc of flames sky high before momentarily turning off. “I want to hurt you Batman. I want you to feel the burn a man like me can inflict!” Firefly’s jetpacks spat back to life and he started to slowly ascend. “Do you like your Robin extra crispy?”
But, before Firefly could get back into the air completely, Damian made a running leap and latched onto the buggy assassin once more. This time the arsonist was ready and snapped his shoulder into the launched Damian to make him tumble back down to the ground with a thud. “You’re just a C-rate thug.” Damian spat out, trying to get back up to his feet despite the broken rib he could feel sharply poking through his chest.
What happened next only took a matter of seconds. No grand, Joker wave of the hand. No grunting machismo of Bane. Only a swift boot to Damian’s chest, a flamethrower pointed to the Robin and the flooooosssh of fire eating the boy’s head up. In that dark, snowy night, the sight of Robin’s skull suddenly being engulfed in flames. There wasn’t even a scream or if there was one, the flames drowned it out until there wasn’t anything left but charred flesh hanging off toasted bone.
“I think I burnt it!” Firefly yelled, the flamethrower sputtering off as what was left of Damian’s skull poured out sickening smoke.
Nothing Firefly said mattered. Bruce could tune out his pathetic taunts with ease and he did so then, though in the process he mistakenly, tragically, allowed himself to believe that Damian would do as he said. All it took was a few minutes of his back being turned, just that. He dodged, weaved, to avoid oncoming flames and he intended, in a few more steps, to attack again, to clip the arsonist's wings and ground him permanently.
But his plan was interrupted. By the time he realized what Damian was doing it was too late to interfere; he'd pounced, a sloppy and ill-planned move, and been knocked back before Bruce could take so much as one step forward. That didn't stop him from trying, however, and as he raced across the rooftop he really did believe, for an agonizingly drawn-out few moments, that he could reach the boy in time. Time slowed to a crawl and he watched as Firefly pointed his flamethrower, and in his mind he tackled him before any flames could escape. The criminal would be thwarted and Damian would be fine. Injured, but alive.
Reality wasn't quite as kind.
He didn't reach the pair in time. Desperation made him lunge forward but he came up short and he grasped at the empty air, nothing more. Heat and flame blazed before his eyes and engulfed Damian's face, his head, turning it into an inferno of orange and charred flesh while he stared, paralyzed by horror. Round and round his mind went, attempting to process what had just occurred, what he'd just witnessed, but it couldn't. There was a disconnect. A short circuit. His son couldn't be dead, no, that hadn't just happened; it wasn't real. No, no, no.
And then Firefly spoke, his voice shattering through Bruce's paralysis and yanking him back to the moment. His goal became singular, then, narrowed to just the two of them and nothing else. His heart pounded in his ears, blood rushing in a wordless roar that seemed deafening as he got to his feet. He didn’t fear the fire; he’d been set ablaze before. He was close, now, the two of them on even ground, and he didn’t hesitate. Three batarangs, this time electrically charged with a press and a click; two for his jetpack, one for the flamethrower. And then one oversized, steely-eyed Bat charged at the arsonist, and while his mind might not have wrapped itself around the fact that his son had been murdered, some part of him had. The sheer force behind him as he lunged, that was vengeance.
Firefly didn’t have time to understand the weight of what he had just done as the batarangs hit him one after the other. The first two ripped tiny holes into the jetpacks, leaking gas out as the third batarang sent the flamethrower jerking up and lighting the air around Firefly up in a blast of flame. A distorted scream screeched through the air as he stumbled forward through the fire, throwing the jetpack off the building and dragging his flamethrower towards the Batman. “The bird burned so easily!” Firefly shouted through a shortness of breath, wildly waving the flamethrower at the Dark Knight in an attempt to keep him away long enough to escape.
“You can burn too! I’ll HELP YOU!” Nothing but manic screaming from the man in the metal suit as flames scorched everything it touched. The high of setting a living thing on fire was better than making an entire building go up in smoke with the hopes it would take someone out. No, cooking the little bird was a personal act that made Firefly feel powerful even if all he had left was a dizzying grip on his senses and an erratic hold on his flamethrower. Another wave of flames at Batman as he tried to make it to the edge of the building. More crazed shouting and laughter that didn’t translate to anything resembling words over the roaring fire.
The flames were nothing. Inconsequential. Bruce kept his distance without retreating, dodging and weaving as the fire blazed paths through the air. It was as though time slowed and he was following a predetermined path, cool and collected whereas Firefly was frenzied and out of control. Strange, perhaps, given the circumstances, but for now he was still in a sort of shock which would wear off in time.
But not yet.
He rounded to the left, feigning a wide berth. Firefly was close to the edge, now, and maybe he should have gone for tactical. Maybe normally he would have. Now, however, he had a different idea in mind. Right, left, left, then right, aiming to confuse, before broke the pattern entirely and charged at him head-on. The heat didn’t matter, the flames didn’t matter; if Firefly wanted to get off the roof so badly, then fine. They’d see how well he flew without his jetpack.
Dodging was impossible between the flames and his bulky suit. Normally he could take anything. Bullets, punches, anything, but the lack of control had him spinning. First his heel dropped at the edge of the roof, then he stumbled and then the rest of his body went crashing down. “No! BATMAN SAVE ME!” Firefly reached up, static high pitched screaming for help through a mask that didn’t make him look like much of a person at all. Just another insect in Gotham city. As he fell, arms out stretched in a beg to be saved, he wondered if Batman killed bugs? Did he eat meat?
Bruce caught himself on the edge of the roof, heels dug in and his weight drawn back sharply to keep from losing his balance and toppling over. It took skill, practice, neither of which Firefly had. And so he went over, plummeting to the ground below and there was a moment or two in which he could have saved him. He should have. When a voice cried for Batman to save them he was meant to answer, to intervene and preserve life. He should have swooped down or fired his grapple gun and helped him, and he was almost certain that Firefly expected him to, even after what he’d done.
His fingers twitched. He took an aborted step forward. “You killed my son,” he said, the words barely a whisper. Too low, maybe, for the doomed man to hear, but they made all the difference. The brief window of opportunity in which the arsonist’s life could be saved slipped by. He’d made his choice, to murder Damian, and now Bruce had made his; to do nothing.
Firefly hit the ground before he could even think Batman isn’t going to save me. The sound of metal slamming hard down with the weight of a human body echoed through the otherwise empty street. A three story drop wasn’t supposed to be enough to kill a man alone, but neither were a couple stairs. Landing made all the difference and maneuvering around in a metal suit was impossible. So the bug landed on his back, metal crunching around his body as his skull cracked open, his spine broke and his organs dislodged.
A quick death wasn’t in the cards for Firefly. When the ambulance arrived he was still breathing, eyes shot open in fear and insanity. Despite valiant efforts from the paramedics, his body eventually gave up on the ride to the hospital. Doctors and police would assume that he simply was crazy enough to go flying without his jetpack. He was just a member of the rogue gallery that bit the dust on his own accord. But, the batarang laying in the alley next to the apartment complex where Damian Wayne died told a different story.