December first. Cold as balls, crisp white snow covering everything but the dirtiest parts of the city. The glow of the streetlights bounced off the snow, adding a pretty haze to everything that you could only see in winter – or when Doctor Freeze came out to play. It made things seem beautiful, so, so beautiful, especially if you were lucky enough to be seeing it from one of the wealthier, more well lit neighborhood.
Robin, partner to Batman, squire of justice, enemy of gravity, formerly Spoiler, the eggplant avenger, and… enemy of gravity, was stuck watching the city from beneath a drafty awning in the bowery.
Stakeout, Batman had said, watch for suspicious activity, and don't move unless ordered.
Here the snow was just as dirty as everything else, melted slush she's had plenty time to grow accustomed to. She sighed and lowered her binoculars, stretching out her legs before her. In all the time she'd been working as Robin, she'd come to learn that 'watch the door' was basically bat code for either, 'Catwoman is around, and I don't want to subject your innocent little mind to our flirting,' or 'I don't want you getting in the way.' Robin didn't see Catwoman hanging around.
Sometimes she questioned the point of there even being a Robin, when the littlest hint of danger had her benched, wasn't that when Batman would have needed his partner most? Being Robin was great, she'd go as far as to say it was the best thing that had ever happened to her, but she was begging to learn that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. That maybe, just maybe, Tim hadn't been underselling the position. Being around Batman a lot was one of those things that sounded great until you actually had to listen to the lecture on chewing gum while on patrol.
She winced at the memory of that one, accompanied by a ban of any chewing gum, in uniform or not for two weeks, and raised her binoculars again, though she couldn't make out Batman anywhere, and the warehouse he'd vanished within was silent as it had been since her stakeout has started. A guy that big should not have been able to disappear that easily, it was unnatural was what it was.
It had been a while, and not even a peep from the comms, she was starting to worry a little that he was inside and hurt and she'd been sitting here debating instead of going in and helping him. Biting on her bottom lip, she raised her fingers to switch on her comm and ask if he needed backup, her eyes still trained on the darkened windows. He hadn't given her any orders against that so it would be okay, right?
Movement flickered at the edges of her vision and she shifted her gaze to find it again, half thinking her tired, overactive mind had made it up when she couldn't pick it up again, but 'there', something glinting behind a smoke stack. She turned on her night specs and caught the shape of a man hunched in much the same position as her. Hesitation forgotten, she clicked on her comm.
"B, there's someone on the roof a street over." She said, squinting as though that would add more detail to the mass of grayish violet colors.
'Armed?' He replies and Robin almost keels over in relief.
"Can't tell." She said after a few moment of studying the silhouette. "I think he's just… watching you." The glint she'd seen kinda looked like a pair of binoculars. "Should I go check him out?"
'If he becomes a threat, retreat and wait for backup.' Is as close to a yes as she was going to get. Robin dropped from her perch, tied to hide in the shadows as well as Batman had. While she knew she wouldn't succeed, it should have been enough to get behind whoever was dumb enough to try bird watching Batman.
Instead of going right for him she slunk around back, got in position to either get a better assessment of whether or not this guy was dangerous, or scare the bejeezes out of him if he wasn't.
He was crouched low, peering over the edge of the smoke stack, his head turning around as though he was trying to find something he'd lost and a grin came alight on her face. She was able to sneak up on him; if he didn't see her leave then it was unlikely that he wasn't some dangerous mercenary or ninja out to get at Batman.
Scare time. Robin's smile grew as she crept up towards the guy, close enough now that she could clearly make out his cheap, rusty binoculars. Just as she was about to dramatically step out of the shadows and scold him for trying to spy on Batman, the guy reached out from under him and slammed a red helmet over his dark hair.
He leaped to his feet and ran, right past Steph, as though he hadn't even seen her.
"Hey!" She yelled, affronted and took off after him. The guy just sped up and Steph could see now that he was running right for the edge of the roof, and he wasn't slowing down, it looked like he was going to… "No wait!" She shot out her line to catch him, before he could take a leap off the skyscraper, god she wasn't even going to be that scary!
The man ducked and dropped down, Robin's stomach seeming to go along with him when his head disappeared and she wasn't fast enough to catch him. With a cry, she prepared to leap off after him, her line at the ready when she heard a crash that was from down below, but most definitely not below enough to have been the ground, followed by the thumping of heavy footfalls.
'Robin, report.' Batman demanded his stoic tone just a tad tighter than usual.
"Asshole nearly made me think he jumped." Robin said, touching down on the musty wooden scaffolding that went up the side of the building, she caught sight of the stalker guy sprinting down it and lunged after it. "I'm going after him."
'Don't do anything reckless.' He reminded her, and the wind rustling in her comm told her that he was on the move to, but whether towards her or for something he'd found she couldn't tell.
"Guy's small fry, I'm fine." She bit back a groan and fixed her eyes on her target. He certainly didn't run like he knew what he was doing, making his way down the scaffolding much slower than she was. It wouldn't take her a minute to catch him even if she didn't speed up.
He glanced over his shoulder at her and seemed to realize that too, shattering a window to duck into the building. Steph took a moment to note how weird his helmet looked, a smooth, solid red but for the stark white lenses, distantly familiar and not a motorcycle helmet, as she would have guessed. Steph shot out her line, swung out in an arch for his entry point, and went feet first into the same window he'd broken. Robin couldn't be responsible for too much property damage after all.
Robin blinked at dim interior, the unfinished concrete walls and floor, still scattered with construction materials. Somewhere within there was a scraping sound and she made for that, every step she took kicking up dust to swirl at her feet, it wasn't long before there was enough to tickle at her nose. She was going to have hay fever later that night for sure, she could tell.
"You know I'm gonna find you, right? Make it easy and come out on your own." She called, turning through a doorway and towards the ever-nearer sounds of him trying to make his escape. "Just gotta ask you a bunch of really boring, not at all painful questions about why the hell you were tryna spy on me and Batman."
Nearby metal scraped against the concrete, filling the air with a loud ringing that reminded Robin of a slew of horror movies she shouldn't have watched.
"Or I can just beat it outta you, I actually kinda prefer the beat it outta you option." Steph pounded a fist into her palm as she advanced.
A chuckle broke through the quiet, deep and dark; it echoed through the wide empty space and froze up a little piece of Steph's chest. "So creepy." She whispered, craning her neck to see all around her as she turned into another dark hallway."
"BOO." The his head dropped down in front of her and Robin reared back, before she had a chance to react, pain erupted behind her nose and she was tossed off her feet and sent skidding over the just littering the floor.
"Asshole." She cursed and leaped to her feet in a fighting stance, ignoring the tickle of blood pouring out of her nose.
He chuckled again, the heavily modulated, almost demonic sound aggravating her already foul mood. His hand struck out again, lighting fast and she ducked under it, throwing her weight forward and ramming her shoulder into his chest.
'Ouch, body armor, body armor.' Steph used the opening her strike had given her to break away from the masked man, putting more space between them. She spat out the blood that had gotten into her mouth and pulled out a pair of batarangs, wait Robins one's were called birdarangs, right? "I 'was' hoping we'd go the route that gets you a beating." She kept her tone light, almost conversational. "Think we can finish this before the big man comes along?"
"I think we'll manage." He held up a hand, near his head, displaying a small device that… her hand flew to her ear, feeling for her comm as her eyes widened and her stomach clenched painfully. He squeezed his hand into a fist, the comm cracking in his palm, and then dropped the useless bits to the ground.
His fist came at her again and she turned with the blow so that it just clipped her shoulder, even so, and with the added protection of her armor, it was as if a truck had hit her, throwing her back and knocking the breath right from her lungs. She was up and charging as soon as her feet hit the ground, coming in low, she slashed at him with the batarangs in her fists. There was no skin for them to cut, but having a blade coming at you was a lot more likely to trip you up that a knife, she knew. Even a millisecond of hesitation on her opponent's part could be the difference between winning and losing.
"So this is the new Robin, huh?" He dodged her blows almost effortlessly and she had a sneaking suspicion that if she had x-ray vision she'd see a smirk under that helmet. No matter at what angles she moved at, or how many times she changed her speed, he kept up the pace with her. Like he'd done this all before, like he saw it coming. It was like sparring with batgirl again and she 'hated' it.
"I'm not new anymore!" She went for a kick, and when he dodged it, spun around for another, and another. On the third swing, her foot finally made contact with his chest.
The strike left her foot feeling numb, but he stumbled back, almost knocked off balance. Steph went in to take away the almost, swinging her fist in for a throat punch, but he caught her arm at the wrist and tugged her sharply towards him, using her momentum to force her past him. "Sure you're not." His foot slammed into her back and she went sprawling back to the ground.
Robin turned her fall into a handspring and got as far away from him as she could when he was blocking the only exit.
"Need a little time to catch your breath?" He asked, leaping at her again.
She ducked a sliced at him with out with a birdarangs to get some more distance, he moved to broach the space, but she circled away moving as he did to keep him away. "You're maybe a little tougher than I thought you'd be." Maybe too tough, and Robin protocol for that boiled down to 'stall until backup arrived'. There was a reason Robin had to be chatty. Oracle would be able to tell that something had happened when the comm stopped transmitting; all Robin had to do was stall. She'd be fine.
"What do you want?" She asked.
He hummed, but didn't answer, his head cocking to the side as he kept up his game of slowly advancing on her. Contrary to how it had seemed before, it was now clear that he very much knew what he was doing.
"Or is this a kidnap the Robin thing, cause I gotta tell you, not original." A glance behind her showed that she was still too far from the door to make a run for it, and even if she weren't she didn't like the idea of turning her back on this guy.
"I know, trust me." The way his modulator was distorting his voice, she doubted even his mother would trust him. "I know." He punctuated the last sentence by lunging at her again. She tried to tuck and roll out of reach, but his hands closed around her hair and yanked her back. "Cool hair, not very practical." He tugged harshly enough to bring tears to her eyes, and she thought for a second he was going to back her head into the nearby wall, but instead he just used his grip to toss her aside, further from the door.
Robin ran her hands along her scalp and growled at him, her teeth clenching. "Thanks for the compliment, but psychos aren't my type." She spat, worry now curling around in her ribs.
"Then take off the costume." The way he said it canceled out any thoughts that he was 'that' kind of creep. "Psycho's are the only things you're gonna attract in that." His posture was tight, fists clenched at his side sides, one leg slightly in front of the other, like a snake coiled and ready to strike, but he didn't.
Slowly Robin's hands felt from her head, she hadn't expected this turn of events, but that didn't make her any less angry. "That'd mean a lot more coming from someone other than the man that lured a girl into an abandoned building to slap her around." She moved her hand slowly for the smoke pellets at her utility belt.
"And if I'd wanted to do more than slap you around? Say take one of those fancy knives and cut off an arm, or strap you to a bomb, I could have done it by now. What happens then?" He sounds angry; she can make out that much through the distortion in his voice, but maybe something else too.
"I'm not scared of you." She said, refusing to let his threats sink in past the surface layer of her skin. "Batman's gonna be here any minute now."
He let out a bark of laughter, startling her with its suddenness, and her she gave up the pretense of going slow to grab for her belt. She had the smoke pellet in her hand, but he reached her before she could activate it.
His hands tightly pinned both of her wrists against the wall besides her head, the blank, soulless lenses of his helmet hovering in front of her, so close her breath clouded the glossy surface of his helmet with condensation. "If I'd wanted to put a bullet between your eyes I could have done it fifty times over by now, and all it woulda gotten outta 'Batman'" he put a twist on the word and she noticed that his accent had slipped into something very familiar, "is a tombstone and a new kid to fill the tights." He squeezed her wrists so tightly her hands went numb.
"Then why haven't you?" Her fists loosened, lacking the blood flow for keep tight. "Talking's real easy, but I don't see you doin' anything else."
He was quiet for a few moments, holding her gaze. "Ha." His thumb forced her hand open and the smoke pellet dropped to his. "I like you Blondie, but look out." He released her hands and flicked rolled the pellet between his thumb and forefinger. "One day your gonna run into someone like me, and they're gonna take the shot." He crushed the pellet as she spoke, and dropped it to the ground with a detachment that sent a chill up her spine.
The room filled with smoke choking out the already musty air and Robin's hands were almost too numb to get to her rebreather in time. Batman arrived soon after, but the attacker was already long gone.