Nightwing:

Gotham City at 3:15 A.M. Not the best hour to be out wandering her streets, much less the warehouse district. Especially when you're Fingers Nolan. Petty thief turned drug peddler turned made man for Malone. The man's moving up in the world.

Yesterday we received intel from Profile, Gotham's leading information broker, saying that Nolan was overseeing up a major haul from Dubai. Profile was supposed to get a cut of the profits made tonight. Only, Nolan decided to cut him a little short. One ring finger short to be exact. I didn't bother asking what he did to deserve that, Gotham thugs have done far worse for much less.

I'd been tailing him for an hour now, hiding in the shadows as I leap from one rooftop to another. Found a roost up on a crane overlooking the drop. This is where they store all the shipping containers. And there are the goons.

"Nightwing, what's your status on Malone?" says Batman in through my handy dandy earpiece.

I press the little button on my throat communicator tucked safely away underneath my suit to reply, "They're making the pickup now." I reach for a pair of night vision binoculars to get a closer look at the cargo. "Do we have any idea what's in the container yet, Boss? Seems like something Profile oughta know. Not like him to not know about stuff."

"I've been doing some digging around. It seems this could be a new endeavor. Everyone's being kept in the dark, except of course the top men under Malone's employ." I hear a distant whimpering in the background. I couldn't help but smirk at the image of some poor schlub dangling over the side of a building. Bruce's grip getting looser and looser until he's fully convinced the guy has nothing else to give him.

"Well," I reply while zooming in with my binoculars, "I'll know in a second. They're opening her up right now."

"Alfred," radios Batman, "Start recording the feed through Nightwing's mask."

"Right away, sir," he answers back.

"Hey, Alfred," I say, "What's for dinner tonight?"

He sighs, "Assuming you don't order take out again, Master Richard, I have a cold chicken marsala with your name on it."

"Your the best, Alf–"

"Nightwing, focus!"

"Focusing." I adjust my binoculars again to get a steady look at the container's door. "They're opening the doors now. My God." Girls. Young girls. They look starved, dehydrated, and absolutely scared out of their minds. Malone's gone into trafficking young girls. No doubt he's the one behind all the new faces around East End. I feel my stomach tie itself in knots out of anger, the grip around my binoculars getting tighter. I watch Nolan's men line up the girls side by side in two single file lines.

"See if you can pick up what they're saying," says Bruce, who I suspect is now watching the feed on his console inside the Bat-Mobile.

"On it," I respond as I reach for my grapple and line. I remember to turn on the starlight vision in my mask, allowing me to see in the dark without relying on my binoculars. I leap off the side of the top of the 165-foot crane and free fall. I love this part. The pure adrenaline rush you get when you fall to a certain death, only to turn around and throw out your life line. I feel the rope give and stretch as I swing to the nearest platform set firmly above the shipping containers, right above the party. "Here's hoping I remembered to restock the compartments in my gauntlets," I say to myself, knowing full well that I did. I open one of the small compartments built into my suit and take out a small listening device the size of my thumbnail. I throw it up against the adjacent container closest to Nolan and his thugs without being seen, more than enough to pick up a decent reception.

"Yeah, yeah, these ones look damn fine, don't they boss?" says a thug licentiously while grabbing one of the girl's faces and examining her. "You sure we can't test out the merch? Make sure everything's A-ok down there?" He gave out a despicable laugh as he licked the sides of his mouth.

"Keep it in your pants, you goon!" barks Nolan, "Wait 'til the boss puts 'em to work. Then you can whet your whistle all ya like."

The other men file the last of the girls in their respective lines. The last to come out is a young girl. By the looks of it she's half Caucasian, half Chinese. She couldn't be more than Tim's age. I continue to watch her as one of the men shove her out of the container and into end of the line. Something about this girl. Her eyes. She's definitely…aware.

"Ah yes, this one the boss'll probably want in his private collection," says Nolan in a satisfactory tone. He grabs her face with his large hand and inspects her dirtied face, then the rest of her body.

"Nightwing," says Batman in his usual cool yet alarmed voice.

I immediately understand without him needing to say anything else. This girl is too well-built. Apart from the lack of food and water, her body isn't showing any sort of strain at all. She may look weak and feeble to an untrained observer, but I see relaxed muscles, bent knees one shoulder length apart with one foot slightly stepped back. Her hands are strategically grasping Nolan's wrist while he has a hold of her. And her eyes. They light up with an intent I'm all too familiar. This girl is ready to fight. "She's gonna get herself killed."

"Then I suggest," says Batman in a low tone, "you go make sure that doesn't happen."

Gladly. I tumble and swoop down from the shadows, landing fantastically on top of the container used to imprison twelve half-starved girls very far from home. "Hey, guys? What seems to be the catch of the day?" Hm, not my best opening line, but sometimes you just have to own up to your mistakes and roll with the punches.

"It's Nightwing! Shoot him!" Gunfire. Lots of gunfire.

"Wait a minute," I say with fake confusion while dodging a ridiculous amount of bullets flying towards me , "You guys aren't fishermen." I quickly leap back into the shadows. Silently I jump across to an adjacent container. There's this move I've been meaning to try out. I saw it one night on TV while nursing a broken leg. The ladies seemed to love it. Target sighted. "Hey you," I shout out in between all the shouting and panic, just enough for this guy to hear me. I jump forward with my legs apart and straddle his shoulders. Use the downward momentum to flip him right on his back. "Whoo!" I celebrated, "I really had my doubts about that move, coming from TV wrestling and all. Alright, I'm a believer." The goon struggled to catch his breath while I kicked his gun away.

I dive into the shadows again to get closer to the crowd. By now they just notice their fallen comrade. "Show yourself, you cowardly prick!" Ouch. I reappear next to one of the girls, the one with the fire in her eyes. She notices me before I get the chance to make myself known. Without saying a words, I signal her to keep quiet and lead all of the girls away from here. Without hesitation the girl quickly gathers up the others and make a break for it. I throw smoke pellets between them and the their captors. "What the hell?" chokes Nolan as he starts aimlessly shooting his gun in the air. I turn on my heat visions lenses as I charge into the thick smoke. Three are easily taken out with my electrified wing-dings launched from yet another compartment in my gauntlets. The best thing about running in Batman's crew? The toys.

I look for Nolan in the thick, who is still shouting out obscenities. Somebody should wash his mouth out with soap. Then a blur runs past me. "The hell…?" I whisper to myself, "Anyone else see that?" Before anyone could answer, I hear short cries of pain, a gargle to left, and slam against a container to my right.

"Nightwing," shouts Batman in my ear, "What's going on?"

I don't answer right away; too busy trying to keep track of the all the activity I'm barely seeing. "Female. 5'5″, about 117 pounds. Fast as hell." The smoke clears enough for me to find a whimpering Nolan surrounded by fallen bodies of his men, dead or unconscious. He shakes his gun at the mysterious newcomer standing eight feet away. Wait…is that?

"My word," chimes Alfred, "Isn't that the young girl from earlier?"

"Yeah, it is," I reply.

"Get…get away from me, you cu–" His words are interrupted as the girl lunges at him and slides a blade, previously hidden underneath her sleeve, into his throat.

Too fast. Way too fast. What the hell just happened? Maybe it was from pure shock that my reaction was delayed. "NOOOOO!" I shout as I run at the girl. She stands, half drenched in Nolan's blood, as if waiting for me to attack her. She looks at me coldly with those eyes. But now there's something else behind them. No time to figure that out now. I have to take her down. I lunge at her with my escrima sticks in hand. I immediately know somethings wrong. The both of us fall together, my body pinning hers. She's just staring. Does she want to be taken in? "Batman, are you getting this?"

"I'm running a face recognition scan now."

"Why did you kill them?" I shout angrily and pressed my sticks hard against her throat, fighting the urge not to turn them on.

No reply.

"Who are you working for?"

Again no reply. Instead, she looks at something behind me.

I turn my head to find one of Nolan's men about to attack me. Before I could react, the man stumbles sideways, his eyes roll back. The side of his head explodes as the bullet exits and plummets into the concrete several yards away. "Sniper?" I feel my body suddenly roll to the side and then onto my back. Again. What just happened? The girl hovers over me, her eyes looking almost desperate. Is she shielding me from the sniper? Blood trickles onto my uniform. She just took a bullet! She just took a bullet and didn't even flinch. She wipes the still wet blood from her face and draws something on my chest. I look down to see what she has drawn. "A bat? What–" She's gone.

"Nightwing," shouted Batman. His voice seems so far away. "Nightwing!"

"Yeah. Yeah I'm here."

"Are you hurt?"

"No. I'm fine, Boss. It's just," I pause for a moment. I drop my head back onto the cement ground and stare at the barely visible stars in the sky. "It's just one of those nights, y'know?"