Who: Tim, Damian, npc Hydra, open to Batfamily (or make your own threads, however works better!) Where: Gotham When: 5/22/17 (slightly early) What: Hydra moves on the Waynes, seeking to strong arm their cooperation. Rating: PG-13
Tim sipped at his coffee, keeping the creeping need for sleep at bay. He’d done it a hundred times. Would probably do it a hundred times more. Last night he knew there wouldn’t be anyway he’d sleep. Seeing Conner like that had seriously put him on edge. He’d spent the night at Lexcorp before finally pulling away from New York city at 5am, heading back to Gotham’s familiar skyline.
Just as Conner needed to act like everything was well, so did he need to act like he was going through his regular routine also. Graduation was done, there were just a few things to wrap up, the last few classes that would take little of his time and getting his transcripts.
Early Monday morning… He sat at the outside table of the college campus’ most popular coffee shop, listening to birds, watching pigeons complain at each other in the small plaza, and the antics of crazy squirrels skimming up and down trees. There were a few people up and running already, getting last minute things taken care of and trading in books for the pitiable buy-back cash, people who knew to get there early to beat the lines and fights for parking spaces.
Most people when they thought of Gotham didn’t really think about this side of it. It was one of Tim’s favorite times of day, before businesses opened and morning rush hour truly got underway. Before the sun glared down sharply between the tall, dark buildings or squint through clouds and fog. Things were at their most quiet and normal, gentle and gray. Like this city could be okay. Like it wasn’t constantly battling cancer.
Beepbeepbeep.
Tim tensed, pulling his phone from the side pocket. His lips pursed into a straight line.
Someone’s trying to hack my phone. Not Robin’s phone thankfully. His.
But in some ways that made it trickier. Because he was quietly alerted to it, the person trying to trace his GPS wouldn’t know he was alerted. If he cut off their search now… Well, they would know they weren’t dealing with your average college kid.
Tim looked at the coding on the search. Very professional and definitely active from someone in real time, not just a program running. Barbara had taught him a lot of the signatures to look for to tell the difference. He reached into his backpack, pulling out his laptop. He put in earbuds like he was listening to music, making sure they were set to feed him noises from his environment still, then set to work.
Whoever they are, they’re good… Looks like there are at least two people… Three… There are more communications going on. Let’s see… Tim started following the trail back. They were getting his position in the meantime. He had to let them, at irksome as it was. Triangulating… Which means… I’m looking for a vehicle that can handle the equipment. But if you’re trying to find me…
Tim skipped into the locked drive of his laptop, tapping into his camera feeds.
Tim hissed. “Shit…” He looked around even as he pulled at his watch to flip open a compartment on the back. It took a little bit until he heard a click. He didn’t wait for any greeting. “Get out. Now. Leave your phone.” Tim hit the button to start the safe sweep on the family’s cell phones, wiping out data that could compromise their secret. Everything was safely stored on the towers down in the Batcave if they needed it. “Take the high way out and head West. There are people entering the school dorms now.” It looked like they wanted to intercept the second-youngest after he’d dropped off his stuff and was heading to class.
He saw the van out of the corner of his eyes. His fingers worked furiously, sending out the messages and alerts. He could only hope that they were coming after them as the Waynes and not as their alternates.
-Someone’s coming after the family. Evade.
People were heading toward him, suits and sunglasses. Tim hit the button to activate the program on his own laptop and phone. Data started to wipe. He brought it out onto the other desktop of the other drives, clicked it closed and calmly took out his earbuds. He pretended not to notice the men until they were nearly on top of him as he was stuffing his laptop back into his bag. He gave them a puzzled look and a frown, letting his skateboard drop to its wheels and standing up cautiously.
“Timothy Wayne?”
“Uh, Drake-Wayne. Yeah?”
“We need you to come with us, please.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“Just come with us.”
“Uh. Yeah, that’s a no.” Tim backed up, setting one foot to the skateboard.
In the end, he’d forced them to pull guns to stop his running away from them, but at least it had been a merry enough chase. Were he Robin, he’d be gone. But he wasn’t. He was just Tim, college student who hadn’t even finished up his coffee completely and was afraid of getting shot. So the second van that whipped out in front of him to cut off his retreat and the order to get into it was followed.
“This… Sucks,” he told them even as they ‘encouraged’ him into one of the seats with a push. Not too hard of one. They were treating him gently. Good. That meant they really were likely just after him, not Robin. Otherwise he could have broken that pushing hand and its arm in five places.
But instead he settled on looking nervous and letting them take his bag from him as the door slid closed and the van drove off.