Time trickled away. Batman made his way through the forest, slipping from shadow to vanishing shadow and regretting the rising sun. It had been one thing to stand at the edge of the pond when the world had still had a twilight air to it, but to hunt with limited places to hide was not his idea of a good time. He needed to find Robin, and fast, if he wanted to end the game before his stealth was sapped.

Knowing his son as he did, he kept the majority of his attention turned towards the canopy. The air seemed like a more natural space for the acrobat to hide in than the forest floor, and besides that, he smirked, there were less likely to be bears up high. If the boy had managed to make enough mud stick to his costume, he might even blend in somewhat. That advantage would only increase as the sun rose higher and threatened to blind anyone looking upwards from the wrong angle. His mouth tightened at that thought, and he quickened his pace. There was a lot of area to cover before noon, especially since he had to proceed as if he was being chased by his quarry.

"...Batman?" Flash's voice sounded in his ear.

"Here," he whispered back.

"I've got a problem."

"...That being?" He hadn't been caught already, surely...

"Um...there're signs everywhere."

He frowned. "Clarify."

"Well, I went where you said, right, and I found the hand print you were talking about. It was Kid's, no question. There were some other marks further into the trees – a boot print, a couple of broken branches, you know, typical stuff – so I followed them. But...well..."

"...Well what?" he snapped, the other man's interruption beginning to annoy him. It was difficult to scan the treetops, mind his footfalls, listen to the speedster, and try to formulate intelligent answers all at the same time, but he didn't dare stop moving. While sitting and waiting was a viable solution at home, where he knew the high-risk corridors and didn't have to search much to find a crime in progress, here such a tactic would likely lead to failure. Even if Robin wasn't on the move and actively looking for him, midday would come soon enough; he had no time to spare.

"Weeeell...the trail's crossed over itself twice now. I mean, it could be coincidence – he's not exactly experienced in the woods, he could just be wandering around – but it feels...off."

"Mm." It was a bit of a quandary, he had to admit as he considered the possibilities. He couldn't argue with Flash's statement that his protege was far from a master woodsman, and if the children had split up the odds of Kid Flash getting turned around seemed much higher. That went double if he'd been putting on bursts of speed to try and distance himself from the beaver lake. On the other hand, the boy wasn't an idiot; if he had crossed his own trail, Batman expected that he would have recognized as much and adjusted course accordingly in order to un-lose himself.

Beyond that, there was reason to think that he might know exactly what he was doing, and had wanted to go back over his previous paths. Creating false evidence in order to confuse a pursuer was the sort of thing that Robin would be prone to coming up with, and running through the woods and pulling the wool over the eyes of his mentor was very much Kid Flash's speed. "Use caution," he advised finally. "It may be a coincidence, as you said, but we can't rule out it being part of their plan."

"I'm not sure I should stay on it. If he's leading up to a trap..."

"If a twelve-year-old is leading up to a trap, Flash, then I would hope you could spot it before you fell into it. Besides, if you leave the trail what will you do instead?"

"...Point taken. I'll let you know if it gets any weirder."

"Fine. Out." Turning his concentration back to his own pursuit, Batman found himself scoffing at his team mate's hesitation to advance. To take note of an uncomfortable gut feeling was one thing, but to suggest abandoning the lead entirely was something else. What I wouldn't give to have a clear trail, he groused, even if it was likely to guide me into an ambush. At least then, he thought dourly, he would know he was in the right part of the forest.

He didn't have Flash's luck, however. The limbs overhead remained unoccupied, and the soil below failed to yield so much as a suspiciously bent blade of glass. ...I may have taught him too well, he mused.

Heh. He's outwitting you, Bruce chortled. This is fantastic.

He hasn't won yet. There are several three hours to go. I'll find him. He spoke with confidence, but the emotion was beginning to flag. At his current pace he wouldn't be able to cover more than a fraction of the permissible hiding zone. If Robin had, in fact, misled him into thinking that they would be both the hunters and the hunted...if he was, for instance, hunkered down in the far corner of their playing field and simply waiting out the morning...then...

Then he'll win easily, his alter ego laughed. I can't even be mad at him for it if that's the case. It's just too good.

...Shut up, Batman growled back. The lack of any sign of human passage was disturbing, yes, he reassured himself over Bruce's amused chuckles, but that was no reason to alter his course. How many cases had he solved after others had given up on them due to insufficient evidence? More than once had he despaired of ever proving the guilt of someone he knew to be the perpetrator of some foul deed, and yet he'd stayed on course and been vindicated in the end. That was what he needed to do now, was push on. The worst possible scenario would be if Robin stayed free until noon and then explained how he'd done so, and even that would give him greater knowledge of the boy's tactical methodology. There's no way for me to truly lose, he decided. ...But I'm still going to win.

"Uuuuuh...Batman?"

"What?"

"Remember how I said I'd let you know if things got any weirder? Well, they just took a turn for the creepy."

"Explain."

"I'm standing in the middle of a bunch of marked trees."

"...You believe that there's a trap waiting for you, so you've chosen a clearly marked circle as a place to stop and think things through?" he sneered, unimpressed.

"I know, I know, it sounds stupid, but...I've been here for five minutes now, and nothing's happened."

"...Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"...Proceed with caution."

It was Flash's turn to sound underwhelmed. "Is that seriously the only advice you've got? I feel like I've walked into a bad voodoo film, or one of those old-timey romantic thrillers where the only two Europeans for a thousand miles have to escape the jungle before they're massacred, eaten, or go insane, and you give me 'proceed with caution'?"

"What do you want me to suggest? Making muddy hand prints of your own on a few trees, just to see what happens?"

There was a pause. "That's not a bad idea."

"That was not a serious proposal, Flash."

"Are you kidding? Reverse psychology is a brilliant proposal. You use it all the time, so why can't I play around with it a little? I'm doing it," a hint of a grin carried through the radio. "Poor Kid's going to go out of his mind trying to figure out what I'm up to...oh, man...Flash out."

...Leave it to a pair of speedsters to turn a legitimate training exercise into a prank war, Batman grimaced as the conversation ended. They'll probably confuse each other so much that they'll get completely lost and I'll end up having to lead them back to camp by the hand.

Then, for the first time since he'd set out from the pond, he halted. His eyes widened under the cowl as he finally spotted proof that he had gone in the right direction. Ten feet overhead hung a snapped branch, the pattern of its bark interrupted by several small clods of dried mud. One dropped to the grass as he watched, and a grin sneaked onto his lips. He's close, and he's up high. Check, kiddo.

For all that just finding the boy was a major first step, though, the problem went beyond that. If he managed to pick the camouflaged Robin out of shifting green-and-blue kaleidoscope above, he still had to actually get his hands on him. There was no good way to join him off the ground; while most of the trees around had limbs capable of supporting a skinny ten-year-old, there was no way they wouldn't snap under someone four times his weight. Even if he found one that could hold him, his nimble partner would have no trouble leaping away to safety.

His lips tightened as he recalled the last time he had sat and watched the youth play on his ever-expanding set of bars and rings. He did a good imitation of a tailless monkey in the cave; god only knows how uncanny the resemblance will be in the forest, he calculated. I'm going to have to corner him somewhere that his only option is down. The other methods open to him – nets, gas, and the like – could too easily cause his son injury, and while he wanted this to be as realistic a scenario as possible failure was preferable to pain in this situation. Blocking his aerial escape route in the middle of a forest was going to be a mean feat, though.

Putting the question of how he was going to get his high-flying target's back against the wall aside for the moment, he redoubled his efforts to spot an odd angle, a hint of movement, anything that would give him an exact location to focus on. The irony of his standing still in the middle of what might well have been a trap just as Flash had did not escape him, but he didn't smile at the comparison. As had been the case with the other man, nothing was sprung on him, and after several minutes of fruitless searching he conceded that Robin wasn't directly above him. Giving the forest floor a cursory glance, he returned his eyes to the canopy and took several slow steps forward. If he worked in ever-widening circles, he would find him, surely. Even if the markings of his passage hadn't been left intentionally, the boy would be moving just as cautiously as he was. There was time now that he knew he was in the right area...

The faintest swish-squish of something shifting position in the rain-damp undergrowth behind him drew his attention. It could have been a squirrel, he knew, or a bird, or even the bear that had frightened the children the day before. Batman wasn't sure how such a large creature could have been so close without his noticing it, but the bruin's appearance would at least explain why Robin would have moved without giving thought to the muddy signposts he'd left behind. Just in case, he tightened his fists as he turned. He'd never punched a bear before, but if it came down to it he was willing to give it go. It couldn't possibly hurt any more than hitting Clark did, after all.

A flash of mottled red registered in his brain, and he realized belatedly that his quarry had defied expectation and gone to ground. He began to lean forward as his muscles switched priority from standing his ground to giving chase. His back foot lifted off of the ground, his knee drawing it up in preparation for a broad running stride, and that was when a heavy wad of damp sludge hit him square in the face.

An ambush had seemed likely, and a chase had been probable, but a mud ball to the nose was the last thing he'd expected. He'd kept his footing under plenty of blows in his life that were much more forceful than anything Robin could dream of managing, but the shock of the strike plus his one-legged posture sent him tumbling backwards. The earth received him with a wet thump that hurt his pride far worse than his backside, and for the space of a heartbeat he could do nothing but sit with his mouth agape.

...He got me, he marveled as rank-smelling muck began to drip from his chin. That sneaky, brilliant, so-going-to-catch-it-for-chucking-mud-at-me little bird got me. A proud, disbelieving smile contorted his lips, and it felt so good that he ignored the taste of lake it brought with it. I'll be god damned...