Who:Corbinian The Bat (no really) and Nightwing What: Escorting the Bat on his jaunt about town. Where: Around Rainier. When: The night the Bat was sighted after Thomas went into the hospital. Warnings: None.
Jack was as prepared for the situation into which he was being thrown as he could be with no warning and only an hour of practice in the suit. He met Nightwing on the docks, after laboring across rooftops and judging carefully which jumps he could still make in the suit’s weight. He wasn’t used to the restriction of movement, of being forced to second guess himself. In the world where he was Corbinian, if he fell, he fell - it hardly mattered if he did, because as quickly as the fall could break him, he would mend. The Bat, however, was another matter entirely. The Bat could not fall.
He didn’t hold it against Max that she’d sent Nightwing along to make sure he didn’t fuck this up royally. He didn’t necessarily trust himself to be the Bat either, so the obvious escort actually didn’t sting. What actually made him simply want to get through the night and out the other side was the sensation of being the Bat, of representing him. Jack could think of no one in this world he had less desire to be. The suit was restricting and being knocked down in it over and over had made him feel like a fool, had sharpened his feelings of inadequacy to a keen, cutting edge. When this all was done, he would relish being Corbinian again (not Jack, since when did he ever relish being himself?), without the weight of a cape he didn’t know how to use and kevlar he had no need for, just himself and his facepaint, and his knives, without all the trappings and gadgetry.
The first stop was a bar where mob enforcers gathered in the back room to gamble and conduct friendly exchanges, bargaining for rights to certain jobs. The room was small, and the men well-armed, and Jack was still getting used to not being as quick on his feet as he ought to be, but he made it through the fight without any injury serious enough to take the Bat down. There was a moment of uncertainty when one of the men yanked his cape over his head, but e managed to use the motion of it to take the man down all the same.
It was close, but successful, and the rest of the night after that was easier. He made sure that he was seen by pedestrians, and he disabled a sparsely guarded drug operation deep in Rainier. This was what the Bat did. Someone had to, of course. And it wasn’t as if Jack never involved himself in larger matters, but he always took time to look for the smaller crimes and stop those as well. Who was going to, if they didn’t? But they weren’t the priorities of the Bat, so he fulfilled those important tasks so very not his own until he began to grow light outside.
He parted ways with Nightwing at the docks. The other man was surely wondering why someone without experience in a suit had been given this job - he didn’t blame him.
Nightwing knew better than to throw a fit about this. He recognized how it was important to keep a strong repertoire with the masks that were close to the Bat family and to make sure this whole ordeal went over smoothly. Max said she couldn’t live with herself if he or Robin were shot and killed, but there was that little voice in the back of his head that assured him that wouldn’t happen. Anyone who worked so closely with Batman could survive a couple angry mooks at the docks. In fact, he had been doing it for the last several months.
Corbinian didn’t fill out the suit right, but that was to be expected. From what Nightwing could tell, it slowed the man down, but it wasn’t anything significant. If things got out of control, he could easily jump in and keep things from going south. The first stop was what scared Nightwing the most. If Corbinian was going to mess up, it would be during his first big fight in the cape and cowl. Nightwing watched carefully from the sidelines as the man did work, silently taking out stragglers without taking focus away from the Bat.
Usually, Nightwing allowed himself to use the flashier set of moves mostly to draw attention to himself so that the Bat could use the shadows to his advantage, but also because it was disorienting to see a grown man do a wall flip into some mook’s face. Here, it was just basic, tactical take-downs he learned in the police academy. Corbinian was doing an adequate job, save a nearly comical fumble involving the Bat-cape, but nothing Nightwing had to worry about.
It didn’t take Nightwing long for him to realize this wasn’t going to be such a train wreck he was prepared for. As the night went on, he seemed much lighter on his feet and more willing to let Corbinian on a long leash. They were both masks, after all, and such a hobby usually had a fairly large ego attached to it. Or at the very least, a fragile one. Nightwing had no intention on making Corbinian feel uncomfortable or babied, but he stuck by just close enough the rest of the night to show he could jump in if things went south. Which, they never did.