"BATMAN!" He called out after jumping past a door, turning back to look for his mentor.
The few lights, dimmed by years of not changing the light bulbs had gone out thanks to half the building collapsing. The hallway was short, and led to scaffolding since this old building was going to be remodeled before the Falcone family bought out the previous owner. He peered into the darkness, easily making out the shapes of ruble, but straining to see any sign of Batman. The bat-claw whizzed inches away from his ear, just as another part of the cast iron ceiling caved, and the scaffolding collapsed. He zipped up, pushing past the younger man.
"What do you think that was about?" The younger chirped as he followed, he couldn't help sounding a little giddy when things started to happen around them that were slightly out of the plans that Bruce may have concocted.
Batman put up his hand as he catty-cornered, looking about the proceeding area, hearing the voices of the thugs they had been following closely for the last few days. Robin mimicked the action, crouching down next to his mentor, to try to listen in. They sounded panicked as they yelled about rushing out of the area right down the next hall, afraid that the whole building would soon collapse then whispering to each other in hushed tones that the Batman may notice a crumbling building if they did make it out. A few boxes, moldy and covered in dust laid about, some empty, others with some of their contents spilled, and there were two air vents close to the ground, just as the blueprints had marked out.
Robin had found this location only a few days before, having scoped it out before they moved in on their prey. The blueprints of the building were easy to find in one of the offices just below these large industrial air ducts; since the building was in the midst of being repaired. Batman of course neither acknowledged that Robin was actually trying his hardest to keep close to the Falcone's family's goings on or that without him it'd be a little difficult to navigate through the whole thing.
There were several mezzanine floors that they could use to their tactical advantage, there were also plenty of air ducts that would help them escape detection, especially on lower floors. The power being out in most of the building was wholly to their advantage, minus the areas with a few small backup generators, which had been used as power for the work crew that never got close to finishing their job.
There was also a storage area near the main office, and a random door on the wall with no stairs that actually used to lead to the office before the first collapse of the building a few years back.
And while Robin had pieced together all this information so meticulously, Batman had found himself following a new serial killer, leaving Robin to learn more of the gang's movement alone. The boy-wonder thought the challenge more of a test to his detective skills until he had presented it to Bruce, and he just seemed to skim all the information in ten minutes then declared they would be hunting down some mobsters.
Sure, those weren't Bruce's exact words (they were something more along the line of "Suit up") but whatever about that.
Instead of working more together on the whole mission the boy-wonder felt like he had returned to being the tiny boy side-kick who more of followed Batman around than helped. But he decided not to dwell too long on that prospect since they had bigger problems at the time.
The only problem that mattered at this moment now was half the building being collapsed and all the thugs desperately trying to get all their drugs out before authorities made their way closer to the commotion. Truth be told though, most of the police were anything but useful in cracking down on crime as of late in Gotham, so these guys were more than likely afraid of the Batman.
For Batman's grand strategy this was less than ideal —they had stopped tons of the drugs from spewing onto the streets of Gotham, but it would never be enough. The only way for them to even slow down the drug ring was to take down the top dog, Carmine "The Roman" Falcone. A man Robin had only seen once, maybe. He stood at six foot, hair all white, even then, three years ago. He always seemed serious, dark brows over dark eyes, thick fingers and a straight nose, and from what Robin could remember, a thin black mustache.
To be able to find Falcone they had to follow the top henchmen at this location to him, though that could potentially take days, possibly while turning a blind eye to the drugs making their way into the city (which they both knew they couldn't risk that or losing the opportunity of tracking him down.) If the plan worked, the drug trafficking would be curbed. Batman had already taken down Maroni, having had him tried earlier this year for several counts of murder and drug-trafficking thanks to the counsel of Harvey Dent, and unfortunately ending with his men fleeing to Maroni's sons and even more so to Falcone; allowing for the "Roman Empire" to grow larger.
"'Urry up; we need'a get this shit outta 'ere!" One of the thugs yells out to the rest of them. "You stay 'ere, while I go an' report to da boss."
"Don' worry aboudit, I'm sure da Bat's tied up in some mess already, we'd all be dead oderwise." The other replied, waving his arm haphazardly.
Robin stood up, his mentor just spending a quick glance his way, and walked back to a vent he had spotted earlier, and began his attempt to remove the grate. Robin, though now at the ripe age of sixteen was apparently taking too long for Batman's taste, and therefore deemed unsuccessful and was brushed aside by his mentor. Batman pried the grate free easily and seemingly effortlessly and Robin, with a scoff of, "I almost had it," disappeared inside the vent, while Batman turned to stop the drugs from going further than this warehouse.
Robin made his way through, bumping into only a few rats (and of course poop) before standing up in a vertical shaft, and having to quietly jump against the wall, and reaching a higher horizontal duct. During Robin's muffled ascent, Batman had returned to his prior corner, the first man was gone —Robin taking care of that situation— and the second man stood ordering the thugs to continue. Batman slipped past this man, grappling to the roof of the office, a small over looking structure that had its own roof and a set of stairs, from the schematics that his ward provided there was another set of stairs to the office on the other side of the wall, and then over to a nearby iron support bracket that no longer supported anything.
He made quick work of a henchman wondering just below him, rushing out of the building with the drugs, by hanging upside-down with the help of his grappling hook and lowering himself to grab the guy and leaving him to hang by a foot, unconscious. He quickly moved to the next support bracket, and landed between two thugs as they passed each other, smashing their skulls together. Two thugs below yelled out to their colleague, now having spotted him, and the guns were brought out by the nervous crowd of five.
Batman made home in the dark shadows quickly, disappearing from sight, and the now-paranoid thugs cautiously sought him out. One of the five goons passed by the Caped Crusader, listening, but a crack from the other side of the warehouse spooked him. Batman then, grabbed the gun, dismantled it in mere seconds, the thug frightened into silence. He fell to his knees at his first encounter with the dark knight. Batman took advantage of the moment, hitting him with the butt of the gun, still in his hands, knocking him out instantly, and walked over to his next hiding spot.
A thug saw the end of his cape, and made his way to check out the strange movement, finding a fist in his face as soon as he got too close. He had pulled the trigger causing enough commotion to attract is friends to the situation; Batman disappeared again, this time prying open a grate, and making his way to a better area to over look the thugs left over.
"We know ya's in dere!" The thug yelled brushing his work-glove covered hand, under his broken, bloody nose.
Bruce pushed open a grate when he reached the other end of the duct, and had the cover of a few large crates, then returned to the last support bracket as they now looked about the warehouse grouped together. He made his way to breaking them apart, jumping behind them, kicking one of them towards those in front of him, and when they attempted to shoot him he made sure to be out of their panicked accuracy range (which unsurprisingly wasn't very far).
The last four began running about, trying to find the hero, the front two finding his feet as he swung down from the support bracket, momentarily seeing stars, then nothing immediately after. He then punched the bloody-nosed thug's jaw, knocking him out swiftly.
The last thug aimed the gun, Batman crouched, ready to make his move at the drop of a hat. "Well, Ba'man, whadda surprise." He said, looking around, at all his fallen comrades.
Batman pulled out a batarang, waiting for the man to finish his statement, anything that would help further their search for shutting down this drug ring would be appreciated.
"Sad that this is where you last fight," he gloated, not being helpful at all for any more clues, finger on the trigger. Batman pulled back his arm, prepared to throw the small weapon and duck and roll out of the way, and then hit the thug on the back of the neck with his elbow, therefore affectively knocking him out.
But before any of these actions took place, a red-clad boy, fell from above and knocked out the threat. "Looks like I came back just in time." Robin commented smugly, and Batman seemed unimpressed. "I have a tracker on our guy already, so we can go whenever you're ready." He held out the touch screen tracker. Batman plucked it from the youngster's hand, and look at it, turning away, ready to leave. "At least say something about me saving you!" The boy-wonder whined, following his mentor toward their ride.
"I didn't need your help." Batman stated coldly, and before the boy could protest he continued, "I had everything under control."
The younger crossed his arms, mumbling under his breath, "of course you did, like always," knowing his mentor had heard it, though, and like always paid no mind.
They entered the bat-mobile, and having plugged in the tracker, began to drive towards where Falcone was most likely hiding. With the police radio on low, the ride seemed too quiet; with going on five years of being Bruce's ward, this calmness told the young man that there was a greater issue that would arise soon, but for now the silence would have to suffice.
The bat-mobile, as he had affectionately dubbed it when he was twelve, had everything a crime-fighter could ever need a car to have. All the bright fancy lights, the cool buttons (Robin proudly knew what each one did), and even cup holders. This was the second model of course, the first one didn't have as many techie things, and now it could even be controlled from the batcave. Alfred could potentially send it to Bruce at a moment's notice. Of course they were aiming to have a fully-functional autopilot to be able to send it, but unfortunately the test-run showed it had issues when pedestrians got in the way, so it wasn't used past a few short miles from the bat cave where Alfred could still control it remotely.
Bruce had been caught up with this new strange serial killer for several weeks, and hadn't actually run it through with his sidekick. While Robin had been busy hunting down the Falcone syndicate he had been tracking down this slayer of girls. Robin had been dying to ask about this killer's M.O., but felt awkward since their relationship had begun to feel more strained from the time when he had attempted to take out a gun-for-hire on Salvatore Maroni's payroll.
Batman focused on the road, saying nothing while the boy-wonder's thoughts swam around the man's metal mask half red and half black matching his strange armor suit. He had distracted the man from shooting into Harvey Dent's hospital room, having a batarang shot out of his hand. He attempted to fully engage the assassin only to wind up trying to dodge a shot. He wound up shot in the side –a minor thing in the world they revolved in– and had chased the man only to lose him quickly because of his injury forcing him to slow. He had gotten away, and Batman had been with Harvey –discussing who knows what– to check on him.
Dick had no one else to blame but himself, the masked man had gotten away, and when Bruce saw the injury he had begun to exclude the smaller vigilante.
The boy understood that what had happened to Dent was a tragic thing, and Bruce felt it had been his fault, and that it was overly worried over Robin being shot so soon afterwards, but he felt that this exclusion was too much. "Bruce, I-" suddenly the most interesting string of words came from the police-radio; Bruce raised the volume, incidentally cutting off his ward "The report on the body is being sent."
"Another body has been found!"