Way of the Night

Daleville, Connecticut

9:43 P.M. EDT

Red Arrow scanned the skyline of Daleville looking for the Nightingale. He needed to find her tonight.

The team would take care of S.T.A.R. Labs. The Shadows wouldn't get their end game while they were on watch. Even if the villains got into the labs the team would mage to stop them.

He had decided against going to the labs tonight. It would be better to confront the Nightingale away from the team.

He intended to head her off, bar her path to the labs, but he also had to wonder if she would come this way.

Daleville, though dwarfed in comparison with cities such as Gotham, was still large enough to keep the vigilante preoccupied somewhere else that night, she could go somewhere else, and that worried him.

Suppose she didn't come in his direction, how would he find her? How would he get the information he needed if the one who had that information didn't even appear.

I'll find her though, I'll find her, he told himself as he maneuvered his way across the rooftops to an intersection that was a main junction for the town. If one were to follow the street heading south they'd end up in the business section going towards the labs. To the west was the residential and small business part of town. To the north was the less fortunate side of Daleville, where the orphanage, skate park, and only high school in Daleville was. To the east were the sea and the docks, as well as the train depot and a few office buildings.

The Nightingale would be likely to come through that intersection. It was a pivotal spot in Daleville and she'd probably appear there or somewhere around it during her patrol. Then he'd have a conversation with her whether she wanted to or not.

Robin looked over the labs again frustrated, but he knew his efforts were futile. The Nightingale was nowhere to be seen.

"Has she yet to arrive or is she not coming at all?" he whispered softly aloud to himself in thought. "She's not one to give up that easily, is she?"

He needn't have asked that question. The vigilante he fought was certainly not one to give on anything easily. But could she have turned her attention elsewhere?

Possibly, but his reasoning told him that the matter she would have diverted her vigil to would have to more pressing or related to the events of the two previous nights.

She does know more about this city than anyone else, so what would draw her attention away from the labs?

Robin activated his holo computer and began to look over what he'd researched about the Nightingale thus far, looking over the people or group of people she commonly fought.

Daleville docks were not a place she wanted to be, especially on a blustery rain ridden night. But her duty as Nightingale required that she at the very least look into the shore front activities.

Other areas of her city required her attention and it was doubtful that Ship Rat's endeavors were relevant to Daleville's recent occurrences. But Gale could not neglect to investigate the smuggler, because if she did it would come back to haunt her when the S.T.A.R. Labs fiasco was over.

A distance of about a hundred yards separated the docks from the nearest building, a distance that she'd have to cover to get into the fenced shipping yard, a distance that could allow someone to see her. It was open, grassy, and without trees, hence no cover.

But she didn't expect to be spotted tonight. Most criminals probably expected her to be preoccupied with the labs, so it was unlikely that Ship Rat had posted watchmen.

But Nightingale wouldn't risk that he had deviated from his usual habits and posted some, that was why she'd been sitting on the edge of an office building for the past thirty minutes watching for the movements of guards exchanging positions. So far, she hadn't seen any.

Come on; let's get this show on the road. I haven't got all night.

She let herself down using the fire escape. At the third story, she grabbed her whip, leaned forwards as far as she dare, and cast the length of leather into the air where it caught securely on a street lamp. Without a second thought, she released her grip on the rusting metal of the fire escape, and sailed through the air across the street.

Instinctively, she brought her knees to her chest as she felt her whip release its grip on the street light. She somersaulted through the air and landed in a crouch near the hedge beside the road.

No one's noticed … good, she thought pausing a minute to wait. Usually, the acrobatic maneuver to get across Atlantic Avenue was when someone noticed her coming. She cringed every time she heard a splash as her combat boots hit the soggy earth as she sprinted to the chain link fence. Hopefully any sounds she made were lost in the howling wind and crashing waves.

She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, timing her inhale and exhale with the sound of distant waves. It was a trick she'd created to calm her heart rate and eliminate all nerves before attempting something dangerous. Though she doubted that she'd be spotted, she couldn't help being scared. The grassy lawn was a place of uneasy memories for her. It'd been the place where she'd first felt the physical sting of a bullet.

Ship Rat's men didn't have very good aim luckily, and it hadn't improved at all, so the bullet merely grazed her calf, but that didn't make it any less painful. Since that incursion about give or take a year ago, she'd been even more cautious when dealing with armed grunts.

Her heart stopped racing when she crouched down and made her way along the fence to the point where her entry hole was. She knew that if she ever put her mind to it, she could climb over the fence, barbed wire and all, but it'd be too noisy and she'd be easy to spot, so going under was her option.

She crawled under the fence and fled to shadows of the steel cargo crates.

Running along the tops of the crates and leaping the spaces that marked the aisles, she trekked to the more active part of the docks. As a precaution, she always entered from the usually less active end of the docks. The sea front shipyard stretched for miles, almost the length of Daleville. The sea and the shipments that came through Daleville was the town's life blood, so it was only natural that some clots would form, but Nightingale and her efforts were just the remedy for that.

Amidst the night and pounding rain, she carefully came to her destination – Ship Rat's allotted area of the docks. Of course, he could be anywhere in the wide maze of crates, but he liked to stick to a particular area of it.

But a select few among the merchant rodent's employees would see her as she flipped over the aisles, they wouldn't be around to spot her though. The rodent kept them closer to him in order to protect himself, albeit she went slower as she approached his haunting grounds, carelessness could equal death.

She noted every armed guard and which direction they were going, they kept getting more numerous as she got closer to Ship Rat's nest. Despite her obvious lax in patrol that would indicate to any criminal in Daleville to do what you can while the cat's away, there were more guards than usual. Nightingale didn't like that, not in the least.

Not only did it make it harder to get to the warehouse and office building, it told her that the shipment of whatever was coming in would cause her more trouble in the near future then she anticipated or wanted. Ship Rat only amped up security when something big and of importance was coming into port. Recently, Nightingale's definition of 'big' had been redefined. She hoped it was irrelevant to the S.T.A.R. Labs, or else … she didn't know what 'or else' would be and she didn't want to consider it.

Stay calm, Nightingale reminded herself as she came within a few aisles of crates. The office or 'nest' as she personally nicknamed it of Ship Rat were practically on the edge of the sea and advantageously next to a crane. But she wouldn't need to get up that high tonight and roof of the offices would serve her purposes just fine.

The office and ware house where Ship Rat nested was one of the oddest buildings in Daleville to say the least. The offices were a three story tall building that had a covered walkway connecting it with the adjacent ware house. For Nightingale though, the walkway acted as a bridge, a perfect perch from there she could sit and listen in on the proceedings below.

Through the obscuring shadows she slunk to her usual post. She was early to whatever rendezvous or business meeting that would take place. Her stomach fluttered nervously at the thought of waiting that long for the Rat's business to occur, but it was completely necessary, despite the risk involved.

Nightingale would have to trust the shadows to conceal her, and her intuition and common sense to stay aware of any danger that reared its head, and her churning thoughts to entertain herself while waiting. She needed to know what Ship Rat had coming and she needed a break from the happenings in Daleville involving big league heroes. She needed something simple to cleanse her palette of the frustration she felt due to all the confusion she couldn't understand.