October 15th
Gotham City
2347 EST
Deke was out the door and around the side of the building as quickly as he was able to move. Barbara had stashed his long rider, hat, and glasses beside the restaurant's dumpster for him, and he wasted no time tossing them on. He flicked the power to his glasses on, and the world immediately grew brighter. He was going to owe Fractal big for the tech.
[Over the campus, two hundred feet and dropping.] Barbara called out, staying tight against the roof mounted hvac. Between the heat it was outputting, and the thermal properties of her uniform, she was near invisible on the building. [Be careful.] She added.
[Always.] Deke replied, launching himself into the air. Just in the distance, he could see the helicopter, a sleek black thing, which was giving off hardly any sound at all. It had weapon pods on the sides as well, and none of them looked friendly.
Barbara hesitated for only a moment before depressing a small switch on her belt, activating the signal beacon which would alert the rest of the Bats, and draw them down on her location. For a moment, the chopper seemed to hold position, but then it erupted, a series of ropes being tossed out. She saw, in the dark, her boy's hand come up to make some gesture, but the chopper turned just as the last of the soldiers dropped, and hell broke loose from the side.
What was going to be a simple series of grasps had to become a shield in short order. Deke could hear the whine of the minigun before it fired, and reflexively defended himself. Hundreds of rounds peppered the shield, striking it and having their inertia drained off before falling to the ground. Not their very smartest move, he could tank them until they ran out of ammo, and still be good to handle the team.
Barbara realized the truth of the situation though. He wasn't tanking, he was being tanked. She fired off a line, and let the high speed winch yank her off the roof of the Falafel House and into the sky. A few more lines later, and she was able to get into a position to land one of the magnetic grapplers on the bottom of the chopper, which she used to swing into the aircraft, using the side exits as her entrance.
The man operating the multi-barreled machine gun turned and looked the moment she spoke up. "Not cool guys. Not cool at all." She said, and rocked the guy with a pair of punches, followed by a Thai clinch and a few knees to his face. Startled, the pilot tried to shake her out by maneuvering, but she was prepared for it, grasping one of the safety lines. She took a deep breath and unceremoniously (one might almost say rudely) dropped a gas pellet into the pilot's lap.
The gas, a powerful anesthetic Batman had developed, dropped both the pilot and copilot quickly. Still holding her breath, Barbara had to pull both men from their seats and take control of the vehicle before it went out of control. On a whim, she grabbed the pilot's headset, but she didn't like what she heard.
[There's three more of these coming in.] Deke heard as he tried desperately to fend off the sheer amount of ammunition this tac team was unloading into him. He wanted nothing more than to make grand sweeping motions, batting these people away, but in this urban environment, that was only going to lead to fatalities.
[I don't think they're a capture squad.] Deke replied, using his powers to absorb the impacts of the bullets, and to try and get his timing. Babs had taken the big machine gun off of him, which was a godsend, but there were enough guys firing that he couldn't relax much.
There was a moment of elation; he could feel it over the calm of the men below. Deke dropped his levitation the moment he felt it, plummeting several feet down in an instant, the moment a loud report met his hears, and the side of a building lost a massive chunk. He needed to escape and evade, and let his partner handle the sniper.
Deke just dropped the rest of the way down, into the midst of the team, and he lamented not doing it sooner. They wouldn't all fire when he was surrounded, out of caution for their teammates. Now, he could cut loose a little.
One pinpoint of energy appeared not far from a group of three, no bigger than a soda lid, before another spawned from it and grew outward. Both were sealed entities, and the growth of the outer layer created a vacuum.
When he released it, a thundering noise resounded throughout the street as air rushed in to fill the empty cavity, yanking and tossing the three soldiers several yards. More still fired though, and he needed to not have them shooting, it was taking too much of his focus to keep alive. Deke waded in at a group of them, the rush surprising them, and began beating on them, physically. Well, he was able to enhance his strength some, making sure when he hit, they stayed down a while.
Above him, Barbara kept in the air, listening to the other choppers coordinate. She was wary of using the weapons available for the potential for loss of life and collateral damage. [When the other birds come in, one of them is prepped for capture from the way it sounds. Could be gas, electrical, whatever, don't let anything touch you. Help's coming.]
Deke wasn't going to lament the help. He snapped one of the soldier's arms at the elbow, feeling slightly bad about it, and tossed him into a group of his friends. These guys were obviously the distraction, a speedbump at worst, and he'd gotten drawn into them. With a few down though, he was able to focus more on using his powers offensively though, and began ripping weapons from their hands and destroying them.
The three other choppers finally made their way in, moving to converge. Barbara couldn't safely tangle with them, but there was something she could do. An excellent pilot, she began spoiling their flight paths, putting her helo in the way when any of the others tried to drop ropes. She even had a moment to whip a batarang out the window of her aircraft, expertly drilling the sniper as he tried in vain to line up a shot.
Above Deke, there was a strange ballet of helicopters. He couldn't spare a real look, but he knew who was responsible. One of them was in too close for any of the others to use any weapons without hitting or damaging the rest. Damn, his girl was good.
A few whooshing sounds filled the air as Deke lobbed kinetic energy at the remaining shooters, knocking them flat. He was about to take himself back into the air to help Barbara when another black shape shot through the sky. A bright blue flash erupted in between the still airborne helicopters, though no explosions followed it. Instead, the whining of the engines slowing down met his ears.
[Damn EMP's] Barbara groused, pulling her bird out of the cluster and moving to set it down before it crashed. She didn't have much time, so she had to focus everything on that, so when the other choppers went to land on rooftops or on the ground, she couldn't warn her boy that all those troops were spilling out.
Not that he didn't notice pretty quickly. The air around him filled with lead pretty suddenly, forcing him back onto the defensive. Instead of just blocking the rounds though, he ducked down an alleyway for a moment, took a breath, and poked back out, making a large swiping motion with his left hand, before launching himself in flight towards the only group not using standard rifles. Those would be the capture team, and if they wanted him, they could have him.
As he moved, several sudden eruptions of smoke clogged the city street and the small park nearby. There's the cavalry, Deke thought to himself as he used a telekinetically powered punch to send a man in some kind of strange exosuit flying. Another cloud erupted near him, this one an off blue-ish color. Deke immediately surrounded his head with a sealed dome, and began pulling gas masks off the capture team, some with his hands, others with his powers.
As he did, some of the team began trying to pound on him with shock prods. That actually hurt pretty bad as he couldn't exactly stop electricity. It might have been too little too late though as they lost their gas masks and succumbed to the gas they were trying to capture him with. He turned, ready to take on more people, feeling incredibly alive, but all he saw when he looked were piles of unconscious people as the smoke clouds cleared.
Batman stood amidst one of them, looking like Batman always looked. Deke raised a hand to him in greeting, but the Dark Knight's eyes flew wide. Then, there was nothing in his world besides a sudden blossom of intense pain in his chest, followed by cold, and then, nothing.
October 16th
The Batcave
0027 EST
Slowly, the world came back into focus. He could feel the cool and gentle breeze of oxygen filling the plastic mask on his face, but more than that, there was a prevalent and near debilitating pain in his chest.
"This is not how I wanted you to see this place." Deke heard, and felt his hand being squeezed. It was Barbara, his love, and more became right in the world. He tried to sit up, and that just was not happening. "No, stay still."
Deke began looking around. He was in a cave, a big cave, filled with all manner of amazing stuff. Holy damn, it took almost dying, but he was in the Batcave! It must have been obvious too, because Barbara facepalmed.
"You nearly died, and you're fanboying about being in the Batcave? You can't be that badly hurt." She said, and looked over her shoulder. Whoever was there was someone that made her smile, which had to be a good sign.
"Our patient is awake." A British accented voice said, just out of Deke's field of view. He did see Barbara accept a cup from whoever it was, and she sipped at it. "Good thing it was a rubber round."
"That was rubber?" Deke muttered under the oxygen mask. "Felt like, a semi or something."
"Thank you." Barbara said, and took another sip of tea. "It was rubber, but it probably would have killed anyone not powered or armored. Batman said he saw the disruption of air around you before it hit, he apparently signaled you quickly enough."
"Reflex." Deke muttered, and shut his eyes. It hurt to talk, it hurt to breathe, it even hurt to think, but that might have been him projecting onto himself.
"Whatever bro, you lived, that's what matters." Another voice, this one was Robin's. He leaned over Deke and gave a nod. "We got them though, wrapped up nice and tight. Gotham PD is handling them now."
"We should perhaps let Mister O'Connelly rest, Master Robin." The British voice said, still outside of field of view. Whoever the guy was, he was keen on keeping out of the way, which Deke supposed made plenty of sense.
"Do I have time to trance?" Deke muttered, the request taking way too long to make.
"Yeah," Barbara said, still squeezing his hand. "Just go deep and stay that way, and don't be surprised if you wake up somewhere else. I promise I'll be there when you do."
"Food please." Deke said, and began shutting down everything he didn't need to keep living, and set about forcing his body to recuperate. He really needed to learn to not get hurt. This pain thing was for the birds.
Barbara held a finger up at Alfred's quizzical look, and watched her boy's breathing and body language. When she was satisfied he was thoroughly tranced out, she spoke. "He burns a lot of calories self-healing." She explained. "And we can talk now, he's out for several hours."
"Mistress Barbara, are you certain? We were left very specific instructions." Alfred argued. Bruce had made it exceedingly clear where the boy was allowed to be, and what he could see and hear.
"I am very certain." Barbara replied, and slid off the table to see what Tim was working on.
"Their weapons are all basic AR pattern rifles, serial numbers have been stripped, and internals were modified for automatic fire. The big rifles were metallurgical matches to fifty calibers reported stolen at the manufacturer to the BATFE. The only oddities were the capture team. Those shock batons weren't cattle prods, and the aerosolized anesthetic has a chemical makeup the Batcomputer can't cross reference. Also, that exosuit looked like a complete custom build, and a good one too." Tim said with a frown. His eyes narrowed, the same way Bruce and Dick's would, when confronted with a puzzle.
"So, we've got the flash drive he was given, and that's it?" Barbara asked. "I don't think I like that being our only lead at the moment. For all we know, they were lures and the drive contains a virus."
"That's up to you to figure out. You're a hundred times better with that than I am." Tim replied to the woman who had become his big sister over the couple of years he'd been working with the family. "Batman's out hunting down the two scientists, but if you want my opinion, they're either dead, gone, or both. The nanotrackers you slipped the guy went dead not long after we arrived. Also, I'm supposed to tell you, you're too close to this and let us handle it, but we both know how well that's going to work."
Barbara scowled, the expression foreign to her otherwise lovely features. "Exactly."