"So then what did you say?"
Jason readjusted his sunglasses, which had slipped during a fit of laughter. It was mostly a habitual action, Artemis knew his secret identity and the two had nothing to hide from each other.
"I said, 'if you really wanted to make out with me, you didn't have to wait until your stalker took hostages. Kind of kills the romance.' He gave up on me ever being able to take the assignment seriously. "
Artemis asked, "So now what is he going to do?"
Jason grinned. He'd been waiting to tell her about this part. Trying to be as nonchalant as he could he said, "Oh, I think he said he was gonna use Wally or something."
Artemis sat motionless with a frozen expression on her face. She was unable to process just how damn funny the whole thing was. She would be able to hold this over his head for the rest of their lives. Every time Wally forgot Valentine's Day, or pretended he didn't notice the massive pile of dirty dishes he had created, or left his gross boxers out, she would be able to pull this out. It was her ace in the hole. If God exists, I must have done something to make Him happy.
Jason, barely able to control his excitement, said, "And that's not even the best part. This Kitten girl didn't buy it, so now she wants to see Dick and Wally on a date. Together."
Artemis got up to pour herself a glass of water. "If this gets any better, I'm seriously going to die. And my tombstone will read, 'here lies someone who died because it was too damn funny." It will serve as a mystery, beckoning all who see it to ponder what could possibly have killed me."
"And the best part is, I'm not even surprised." said Jason. "Those two have been so close for so long that something like this was bound to happen. And one of Nightwing's stalkers was going to pull something like this sooner or later. I thought it would have been that adorable Drake kid who approached him first, but whatever."
Jason's tone grew slightly more serious for a moment. "You realize, we're going to have to help them with this."
"Of course. What would they do without us?" Artemis took a sip of water. "Wait, this means we have to fight Killer Moth, right? He's so lame."
"I've never met him, but Nightwing came back from a fight with him and said something like, 'My hair's sticking up from electricity, I have silk stuck in bodily orifices I didn't know I even had, and I need some bleach to wash the memory of that outfit from my brain.' He went on to take on of his ridiculously long showers."
"At least we aren't stuck with his daughter and the culmination of six years of bromantic tension."
####
For once in his life, Wally took his sweet time getting somewhere. The speedster felt out of place in his outfit now that he wasn't just a blur to people he passed by. Even in Gotham, the costume turned some heads. He was on his phone, going over the plan one last time with Artemis. "Any luck on finding the hostages?"
Artemis replied, "Yep. We found the Walkers' new home in the suburbs by tracking Kitten's tumblr. Want to know what her URL is?
"Not particularly."
"Nightwing's glorious butt dot tumblr dot com. She has more followers than M'gann."
Wally grimaced. If God exists, and I don't think He does, He must really hate me. Finally he reached the doors of the diner, where he saw Nightwing and Kitten standing next to each other.
"Oh, look, Kid Flash is here," said Nightwing. "That means you can stop groping my butt, Kitten." Nightwing had never looked so uncomfortable in his life. His usual athletic, casual stance had become stiff and rigid. He sat down next to Wally, deliberately making Kitten sit across the table from them. Unfortunately, they now had to make eye contact with her, a soul tarnishing experience. Wally had never seen someone with quite so much makeup on, and his aunt worked for a cable news station.
Kitten broke the uncomfortable silence. "So, how long have you two been together?"
Dick answered immediately, almost as if he had rehearsed the answer. Which he had. "We only started dating a few days ago, but we've known each other for years. After you made me realize Batgirl was,'just me deluding myself to stay comfortable,' as you put it, I realized I couldn't keep living a lie anymore."
He wrapper a muscular arm around Wally and kissed him lightly on the cheek. In a tone of voice much too loud for the current settings, Kitten said, "Well, aren't you going to kiss him back?" It came off as more of a threat than a question.
Wally stifled a sigh and turned to Dick.
"Yeah, sweetie, aren't you going to kiss me?" Nightwing grinned in it's of himself. Sadist. Remind me to punch him when this is over. He leaned in and kissed his best friend back.
It felt really, really weird. Oh God, what have I done. We've known each other since forever, and now I know what his cheek tastes like. I'm never gonna get that out of my head. Every time I think of our missions together, or our sleepovers at Wayne Manor where we would play videogames for hours and I would comfort him when he had nightmares, I'm gonna be reminded of this. He stopped this chain of thought before he imagined Batman's reaction to all this. Good thing he was out fighting the Secret Clan of Something or Other right now in Tibet.
A waiter came by with a smile that really made Wally want to punch him in the face. He asked them what they would like to drink, and Wally had to resist the urge to order straight liquor laced with potassium cyanide.
####
"Y'know, for an escaped asylum patient, Killer Moth has a pretty nice home. Better than my apartment, that's for sure." Artemis knocked down the front door and gestured for Robin to come closer.
"What's the point of trying to be quiet when you've already kicked down the door, oh wise archer." Jason had almost the exact same smile Dick used to have when he was in the costume.
They walked down the main hallway. Most of the walls were adorned with poster of Robin or Nightwing, the kind from teen magazines or printed off the Internet. Some of them had fake signatures with encouraging messages written to Kitten. In reality, they were written by either her father or herself. The two heroes felt a little sad and extremely uncomfortable about the decor.
Robin said, "Kitten is clearly the one in control in this household. She would decorate the parts she regularly stayed in, while her dad would stay somewhere quiet and secluded. He's the supervillain equivalent of a geek who lives in his mom's basement. Well, his daughter's basement.
"And that's where the hostages are." said Artemis.
They came to the only door in the house not covered with Dick's adorable smile. The two heroes followed a flight of stairs down to a dark basement. They found the hostages stuck together with some sort of strong, gooey substance. Out of the dark emerged a figure in a bright purple, orange, and green outfit. Artemis aimed her crossbow with one hand and texted Wally with the other. Killer Moth aimed an Uzi at the pair.
"D-don't come any c-closer," he stammered, "Or I'll..." Before he finished the sentence, he nervously squeezed the trigger and began spraying the room with bullets.
The villain rose in the air under the power of neon green wings. The wings were a mechanical apparatus he had built himself, and they didn't work as well as he would have liked them to. He swayed and jerked in the air, making it extremely hard to aim. Artemis wasn't worried they he would hit her as much as the possibility of a stray bullet hitting a hostage. Jason shot a grapple line which clamped between the wings.
Robin was pulled into the air and landed right on Killer Moth's back. The villain grabbed Robin's leg, which was poking out behind his shoulder. His glove sent a stream of electricity through the boy's body, sending him crashing to the ground.
The turned to Artemis, and fired strafing shots until he ran out of bullets. Artemis aimed her crossbow, but a jet of gooey silk launched from Killer Moth's wrist and gummed up the weapon. She ducked out of the way as he came speeding towards her. She saw three bladed discs fly through the air and lodge themselves in his wings. After a few seconds the exploded, knocking Killer Moth out of the air and into a wall.
"C'mon," panted Robin. "Let's get the hostages free."
####
Wally felt a surge of joy when he read Artemis's message. He stood up and smiled for the first time all day. "Guess what, Kitten?" he said, loud enough for everyone in the diner to hear. "I just got a text message from our friends. We found the hostages. Time for this date to end."
Kitten's face tightened into a grin reminiscent of the Joker's, but with braces. "Sit right back down, homo." She smacked Wally across the face without her purse. "There's a bomb in this diner, and if Nightwing doesn't kiss me before is over, I set it off."
A series of screams and gasps emerged from the other patrons as Kitten pull a cylinder covered with plastic rhinestones out of her purse.
"You... Bezazzled the detonator?" asked Nightwing, who couldn't help but be amused.
"And the bomb. Which will blow us all to smithereens it you get any ideas."
"Like this?" Nightwing flung one of his Wingdings at her, striking her in the forehead and knocking her to the floor.
Before she hit the ground, Kitten pressed the glowing red button at the top of the device. A blast of flame and a thundering noise tore through the diner.
To Be Continued
