When Tim stirred, half an hour after his parents had sent him to bed, ten minutes after the garage door had closed, Nefertari opened a lazy eye. Tonight she had honored the origins of her name, and was curled up as an Egyptian mau on his bed. A lazy yawn revealed sharp fangs before she asked, "Are we going out tonight?"

Tim nodded as he got out of bed and began putting on dark clothes – not black, but dark, so that he wouldn't stand out as a silhouette against the night skyline. Nefertari stood and stretched, front legs extended before she rolled forward and her rear legs ran parallel with her spine. Then she leapt down from the bed, maintaining the form of a cat. She'd done that a lot recently - take feline forms - and Tim knew she would settle soon.

"There's a new Robin," he replied, picking up his camera and turning it on to check the battery.

"We don't know it's a new Robin. His daemon could have just started preferring larger forms."

Tim shook his head. "We both know that's not true, Nefer. You said yourself that the first Robin's daemon had settled as a bird. We never got a clear picture of it, but it was something in the apodidae family.

"And this new Robin's daemon is partial to larger forms, usually in the canid family."

Nefertari flicked her tail at him as she passed him before leaping onto the window sill. "True. But we don't know his daemon was settled. Something could have happened to shift his daemon's preferences."

Tim paused. "That could be true." Though the implications of that violent a shift . . . well, Tim was glad he'd found out what he had, and could put that possibility to rest. "But Bruce Wayne formalized the adoption of one Jason Todd today."

Nefertari stilled, looking at him with slitted green eyes. "You're sure?"

"It was in the newspaper."

"And everything in the newspaper is unquestionably veritable," she said wryly.

"I'm pretty sure we can trust it in this instance," Tim said as he climbed out the window and waited for her to shift into a white ferret and climb onto his shoulders before he began climbing down the house's exterior. Normally, he would have just walked out the back door if his parents weren't home, but the housekeeper had been muttering earlier about dust in the china cabinet, so Tim knew she wouldn't be leaving for hours yet.

He landed with a soft thump on the ground, then kept low as he skirted the light from the windows on the ground floor and ran for the woods behind his parents' mansion. After pushing himself past a layer of undergrowth he straightened and jogged down a faint trail that ran parallel to the Drake estate until it intercepted the road. Tim turned from the path a few paces before the road came into view and shifted a cover of branches and leaves to reveal his bike. He walked it to the road and, after glancing both ways and listening for cars, swung up and started pedaling towards the lights of Gotham.

Tim reached Gotham over an hour later. At least these trips into the city kept him in shape, he thought wryly as he hid his bicycle behind a dumpster. The thing smelled like it had recently been the unfortunate receptacle of several drunkards, and hopefully the smell would keep anyone from investigating. Tim wrinkled his nose in disgust as Nefertari shifted briefly to a crow to hover around Tim as he climbed a fire escape up to the roof and then shifted into a black alley cat to keep pace with him as he scrambled across rooftops to where Batman and Robin should be swinging by on patrol in roughly half an hour, depending on crime. Enough time to get settled with his binoculars and camera.

His thoughts were suddenly derailed by a violent yank on his collar and the fetid stink of intoxicated breath from behind him. "Look whah we got here, Abidemi. A runt runnin 'round on rooftops. Just like 'em, 'em bats . . ."

Tim risked a glance around at the pause. The man was obviously intoxicated, and seemed to be struggling to regain his chain of thought. There was no sign of Abidemi, the man's daemon, and it may have passed out in response to the man's intoxication. Then Tim spotted it, and swallowed. It wasn't unconscious. It was a bit unsteady on its feet, but the crocodile seemed fixed on Tim as it stalked forward, mouth hanging slightly open and revealing jagged pointed teeth as its tail swung slowly behind it. Tim had seen videos of crocodiles before, in Discovery channel specials, but they never seemed so large, and Tim swallowed as he remembered watching crocodiles lunge out of the water and clamp onto their victims' necks before pulling them back into the water to die.

A glint of metal caught in Tim's peripheral vision, and he refocused on his human assailant just in time to dodge the swipe of a knife the man had evidently pulled while Tim had been transfixed with the crocodile. Then he grabbed the arm still attached to his shirt, reached back to stomp on his assailant's foot while turning slightly to put his shoulder under the man's arm as it went briefly slack at the pain in his foot. He twisted the arm so the joint was facing up, then pulled past the point the ligaments could stretch until he felt and heard a snap. The man howled in pain and retreated, swinging his knife wildly while his now incapacitated arm hung limply. The crocodile moved forward to snap a warning, but at that moment a snarling "ROAWR" came from overhead and a black shadow fell on the crocodile, fangs snapping for purchase on the neck while claws raked along thick skin, trying to keep the crocodile from turning and using his own jaws.

Tim leapt forward and with a sweeping round kick, knocked the knife out of the man's hand. He immediately brought his other foot in low, hooked it around the man's ankles, and pulled the man's feet out from under him.

"Nefertari!" He called as he scrambled away. The black panther gave another of those horrifying cries, showing vicious inch long fangs, before turning and running. She shifted mid-leap into a lighter cat, and kept pace with Tim as they clambered back to the bicycle. Tim had to unzip his backpack so Nefertari could wiggle inside, since she just shook her head when he told her to shift, but then they were biking, and soon they were in better neighborhoods, and eventually across the river and into the upper class residential area. When Tim tumbled off his bike, shaking from adrenaline, he was barely alert enough to recognize that he had somehow made it back to the path behind his house. He picked up his bike and wheeled it into the shadows, where he covered it in underbrush. He yanked his backpack off and ripped the zipper open to see shocked golden-yellow eyes with blown pupils.

"You alright?" he asked, lifting her out of the bag and setting her gently on his lap. She was too large to be a housecat, but he easily recognized her as another member of the family felidae.

"I'm good," she whispered, then shook herself and ran a paw over her face several times before continuing. "It's just - I froze for a second. I turned back and saw the man holding you, and froze. But then he swung at you, and I could move again, but there was a crocodile and you were already busy. So I moved behind it and struck. I didn't pounce – I wasn't a kitty-cat playing a game, I was a predator and I struck, fully intending to maim, to hurt, to even kill," she paused and took a breath. "I don't want to kill, Tim. But if you were in danger, I think I could. And that scares me."

"I know," Tim said. "The crocodile froze me. It was only the glint of that knife that broke me out of it. But you didn't do anything wrong, Nefer. We were attacked, and we defended ourselves. We didn't kill anybody. We broke bones and left lacerations, but we didn't kill. When we had the opportunity, we broke and ran. Any court would find us innocent. We both know that."

"Yes, I do. We always knew there was a risk. We decided to do this anyway. But still, now that I've settled, I think I want to learn how to fight in this form, without killing," Nefer said, looking at unsheathed claws.

"You've settled?" Tim asked, startled. He took a moment to look at her again. She was South American, of the genus leopardus, he realized. Recently, in anticipation of Nefertari settling, Tim had been doing research into the felidae, or cat, family. Taking in her relatively large size, Tim realized there was only one cat she could be. "You're an ocelot," he said.

Her ears perked and she started purring as she circled, examining her own coat and getting a feel for her size and movements. Suddenly she was up a tree, standing on a branch over Tim's head. "See you at the house!" she called, crouching low, before vanishing into the treetops with a distinct "mreow" of laughter.

Tim took a breath after zipping and shouldering his backpack, then took off after his beautiful, intelligent, ferocious, wonderful daemon. For now they would stalk bats and birds, Tim thought as he ran, until the day they caught up with their heroes. But maybe, somehow, through effort and determination and luck, someday they would fight amongst them.

A/N: If you're interested, go look up a panther's cry on Youtube. It's rather intimidating. Also, you wouldn't believe the amount of animal taxonomy research I had to do for this chapter. Probably as much as for the rest of this fic, combined. The next chapter should be Jason, since it's almost complete. Hopefully I'll post it soon, depending on how things go. I have a test on Monday that I'm not looking forward to. Ah, procrastination.

-Drakonflight