First Meeting of the Crimebusters, 1966
The second Nite Owl sighed slightly as the yellow and black clad girl's eyes trailed after the departing demi-god and his partner, the attention of the new Silk Specter not so much as flickering to the rest of them. She leaves as well a moment later, ending the hero's observation of her far too revealing costume and his speculations as to how she actually managed fought crime in such a get up, a mystery far beyond the capacity of his simple male mind, and brining his attention back to the two remaining masks in the room. Rorschach was leaning silently against the wall behind him, looking out the room's window covered wall as if staring hard enough could make him be on the streets instead of remaining in this slightly smoke filled room. Nite Owl had the feeling his relatively new partner, the current month marking the six month anniversary of their decision to work together, would have a few choice words about wasting their time on publicity stunts rather than actually doing what they were supposed to: cleaning up the streets. If his partner stuck around long enough to talk to him at all, that was. The boy, despite still not having seen his face Nite Owl was sure the masked vigilante couldn't yet be out of his teens, wasn't exactly what one would call sociable. Even after nearly a year of being acquainted with him, the first four or so months of that acquaintance having been spent convincing the feral teen to team up with him, Nite Owl still couldn't predict the boy's moods or what his reaction to a particular event may be. In likelihood his partner would have left him behind, slipping out of the room without him noticing long before the conversation Nite Owl wanted to have with the other remaining occupant of the room was over.
His train of thought drew his eyes away from his eccentric partner and towards the armored figure quietly studying the still smoldering map before him. Ozymandias. The smartest man alive. The reason they were all meeting together to begin with. He had known Ozymandias, or Adrian Veidt as Nite Owl found it far easy to think of him as, for longer than he had known any other crime fighter that had attended the days failed meeting. Everyone else may have felt fine just walking out, but Nite Owl felt a certain obligation to his brother in arms to see how he was doing after his grand plan of a second generation of minutemen had, quite literally thanks to the Comedian's signature cynicism, gone up in flames. He walked forward to stand beside the blond man, turning to silently watch his face the same way the man carefully studied the burning paper before him. He had a look on his face, the same detached, contemplative one Nite Owl had only seen once before, when he'd shown the original blue prints for Archie to the gifted man and Adrian had wasted no time in nearly completely redesigning the air ship, turning what had previously been a simple convenient means of transportation into an item more lethal than Nite Owl could have imagined possible. Something about that burning map was presenting a problem to Adrian's sharp mind, and Nite Owl had a feeling the blond wouldn't be sleeping again until he had solved it.
"Yes, Daniel?" Adrian's voice carried the same oddly detached, nearly sing-song quality it always had, as if the man were really several dimensions away from the rest of them.
"Making sure you're okay, Adrian."
"Thank you for your concern, Dan, but I am quite alright. Despite all appearances I do not qualify today as a failure. Indeed, I believe the Comedian may have done more good today than his limited imagination is able to conceive."
"Even if there won't be any crimebusters?"
"Mmm," Adrian agreed thoughtfully, "That is an unfortunate side effect of the day's events I suppose. Perhaps you and your partner were correct, however. This group was too large to serve any practical purpose; we may be better off working individually, or in pairs, to achieve our ends. A loose association bound by mutual cooperation may be preferable to what I previously had in mind; a fraternity of sorts, if you will."
"The Brotherhood of Heroes?"
"A bit overly sentimental, perhaps, but it will make do. For now." The blond repeated his last two words quietly, most likely to himself, and Nite Owl figured he was being dismissed by the composed man.
"Well," he stated, turning to scan the room for signs of his partner, "just say the word if you ever need anything from us, Adrian. We're here to help." Nite Owl smirked slightly at the skeptical scoff that followed after his words, his partner apparently making no attempts to disguise his disagreement with the Owl's statement of their purpose.
"Daniel," Adrian actually turned from the now burned map to look Nite Owl in the eye, "I have a piece of information for you. With all of today's developments it nearly slipped my mind. I trust you recall that crime lord the two of you disposed of a few months ago?"
Both Nite Owl and Rorschach nodded in confirmation. How could they forget the first big bust of their partnership? Granted, the series of events that had lead to them finding enough evidence and information to allow the police to arrest the mob boss had been more luck than anything else, but it had still been one of the high points of Nite Owl's short career.
"As you may be aware, a small civil war was ignited within his former organization following his arrest. The usual event of various under bosses vying to fill the power vacuum he had left." Nite Owl nodded once more, this he also knew. It was a frustrating fact that crime in the city was like the mythological hydra: the second you cut off one head, three more seemed to appear to take its place.
"It would appear the first victor has emerged. A masked villain calling herself the Twilight Lady has stepped forward to take control of the Vice ring aspect of the business. Seeing as it was originally your case, I thought it best to make you aware and leave the matter in the capable hands of your partner and yourself."
"We'll take care of it." Rorschach asserted before Nite Owl had a chance to respond, and Nite Owl couldn't help but smirk. Of course the thing that would inspire his partner to actually take part in a conversation would be crime fighting.
"I am sure you will." Adrian replied, turning back to his burnt board in a now unmistakable gesture of dismissal.
"Thanks Adrian, I owe you one."
"Think nothing of it, Daniel. Have a pleasant evening."
As they left the room Adrian reached a hand forward, picking up a small pile of ash to rub thoughtfully along his finger tips, the detached, calculating expression dominating his handsome features once more. Nite Owl thought he heard the blond whisper something softly, but put the thought from his mind as Rorschach declared they should start information gathering about this new masked criminal as soon as night fell.
Nearly twenty years would pass before he ever considered that whispered phrase again, and who could blame him for not considering it more closely? After all, at the time he had no reason to think more carefully about those few quite words Ozymandias had uttered to the ash and empty room. The Nite Owl of 1966 couldn't even being to imagine what his friend had meant by 'The greater good.'
AN: Apologies for the very short introductory chapter, later ones will be closer to my standard length. Here's an unnecessarily long authors note to help make up for it.
Apparently I have some kind of sadomasochist streak in me, as I couldn't resist starting to write this series despite the fact 'Dancers in the Dusk' is not yet complete. I will be finishing Dancers while updating this (god help me). I have no idea how long this story will be, or how in depth it will get. We'll just wait and see.
While writing Dancers, I couldn't help thinking of events from the watchmen 'golden years' that would have involved team Nite Owl/Rorschach and the Twilight Lady, but didn't feel comfortable inserting flash backs into what has already become a longer than intended story. And so this fiction was born. I have to admit that, given how very little we get of them during the comic, I'm even more nervous about writing young Nite Owl and Rorschach than I was the older versions of the two. With so little to go off of a great deal of this is just my own imagining. Strangely, I think writing for proper sentence structure Walter/Rorschach will be harder than writing his later broken speech pattern.
As in Dancers I am using some of the movie edits in this story, such as making Rorschach younger (his movie DOB is 1950 rather than the 1940 of the comicverse.), having Ozy head up the crimebusters meeting, and making Laurie, on the rare occasion she appears, slightly more like a person with a soul (sorry to comic Laurie fans, just my opinion). As always, constrictive criticism is greatly appreciated and reviews are loved.