Walking down the narrow staircase that one could find only if they knew how to, behind the old grandfather clock in the Wayne Manor living room, Damian breathed in the familar damp air that felt so welcoming after being stuck in classrooms for the whole day, finally feeling a sense of being home as he turned a corner and entered the Batcave.
When he'd first seen how his father had chosen to decorate his base of operations, he'd admittedly scoffed, thinking him childish and sentimental for keeping all of those trophies, the most noticable of which being the oversized Penny displayed in one of the corners, and of course the life-sized animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex standing tall and proud on the middle platform of the cave. He'd thought this, along with the glass displays showcasing the various costumes his father's partners had worn throughout the years were immature and completely unneccesary.
And to a certain degree, he still thought that. But a couple of years spent training, meditating, solving cases and essentially living down here had given him a certain familiarity with the place, causing him to develop something of a sentimental appreciation for the items displayed. The animatronic dinosaur still served no purpose at all, but though he would never admit this to anyone should they ask, it did look pretty cool.
He stopped for a moment on one of the top steel platforms built into the black rock that made up the walls, scouring over the cave to confirm that it was empty.
It wasn't a lot of people that came down here except for him lately. He knew Alfred would go down here at least once per day to clean the guano left by the bats currently hanging from every available inch of free space in the ceiling, but he usually only did that at night, when he'd finished his duties in the rest of the Manor. His father still used the cave regularly, but he'd been preoccupied working with the so-called "top minds" of the Justice League for the last few days, trying to solve some problem regarding wormholes and planets somewhere in space.
Damian scowled at the thought. If it really was that big an issue, you'd think his father would have let him come along to try and work out a solution instead of making him waste his time at that school. Sure, the problem seemed to have even Mr. Terrific stumped, but that just made him want to join in and show off his own brilliance more. If he could out-problemsolve the inventor of the T-Spheres himself, then he would never let his father (or anyone else, for that matter) hear the end of it.
He listened closely, taking in the idle sounds of water dripping from stalactites, and the cries from a few sleepy bats echoing through the cave. It certainly seemed empty. When Grayson, Drake and Todd were down here training, you could normally tell from a mile away just because of all the noise and mess they left in their wake, and since it was mostly them who ever visited, it was a safe bet to assume no one else was hiding in any nooks and crannies.
Kane, being as mission-oriented as she was, rarely saw the need to pay social visits, a thing that Damian respected and could definitely relate to.
There was nothing really left for Gordon to do here when she had most of her tech in her clocktower and couldn't really use most of the training equipment in here due to her limited movement of being confined to a wheelchair.
Kyle, while being as unpredictable as the felines she'd named herself after, could be reasonably expected to only show up when his father was home to "play" with her, this aspect of their relationship having been kept up even after their recent marriage.
And Thomas? Damian wasn't even sure about what Duke Thomas actually did, but whatever it was, you sure didn't see him around a whole lot.
As he glanced down towards the gym area, he noticed that there were definite traces of some of the former Robins having used it recently, with the weights being scattered around on the floor randomly, and the protein bar wrappers he knew Drake liked laying on the floor for Alfred to pick up later.
Damian briefly thought about how odd it was that he always saw the evidence of them having been there, but rarely ever saw them around when he went down here. He tried (and failed) not to think about what Stephanie Brown had told him when he'd voiced this observation out loud at the last meeting, and how she'd said that they had all memorized his schedule and made sure to only enter the cave at times when they knew he wasn't present.
He grimaced. Sometimes that girl could annoy him far more effectually than Natsuki could ever hope to accomplish.
"Tell me if you find anything!"
At the thought about the pinkhaired Club member, he remembered back to her last unspoken request at him, coupled with that pleading look in her wide, pink eyes that he couldn't seem to shake from his mind no matter how hard he tried.
He sighed, and began walking down the narrow staircases, making his way down towards his own self-assigned space of the Batcave, marked by a large, iron door ingraved into which were the large, spiral letters spelling out "ROBIN- NO ONE ENTER- ESPECIALLY YOU, RED HOOD."
The door had no handle, but Damian merely planted his palm on a clear surface, allowing the scanner to recognize his handprint, causing the door to slide upwards with a loud whoosh.
When he'd entered the small, yet surprisingly spacious tunnel-like section of the cave that he'd claimed as his own, and the door had sealed itself once again, he allowed himself a brief moment to just stop, close his eyes, and relax a little, lowering his shoulders as he exhaled. He didn't lower his guard entirely, he never did that, since the cave had been invaded a few too many times by intruders to be considered completely safe, but it was close to it. And since he'd designed a few of his own security measures for this room independant from the ones already in place at the main cave entrance, he could allow himself to feel more at ease here than he could at any other place on or outside of the planet.
This was his home.
Then, the moment passed, and he opened his eyes again, already prepared for the work ahead.
He walked past the bottles and tubes of his chemical experiments, the ancient armor stands and blades he'd collected throughout the years, until he found himself in front of a large cooling unit.
He opened one of the drawers in it, and looked down among the many glass vials contained within, searching for the ones that would help him with this particular case.
Normally the worries of some random school girl, and particularly one like Natsuki who already irritated him immensely, would be near the bottom of his priority list for cases to look into, but... he was bored.
The last few nights of patrol had been so uneventful. It seemed like every single petty criminal of the Gotham underworld had taken a break with not so much as a purse-snatcher being on the streets. It said something about the average nights lately when even without the dramatic turn it had taken, Jon's phone call yesterday had been the most intense thing to happen the whole week.
Plus, during this down period, he'd seen that Barbara Gordon had flagged all the interesting-looking cold cases they'd hacked from the GCPD, as a bit of light homework for herself now that she wasn't needed elsewhere, solving them all from the comfort of her Clocktower, and Damian just didn't feel like spending his effort on trying to solve them before her for the bragging rights.
It was sad to say, but Natsuki's theory about something strange happening at their Club was without contest the most interesting case he'd had since the Brainiac attack, even if it turned out to be nothing, as he suspected.
And thus, he grabbed hold of the four vials from the cooling unit once he'd identified the name tags tied around their nozzles, and carried them with him out of his room, holding them up against the bright lights installed in the cave to make sure the samples hadn't been contaminated.
Each glass vial held within it a thick, dark red liquid, with each one of the small name tags spelling out a different name: Sayori, Natsuki, Yuri and Monika.
The blood samples of each girl in the Literature Club, gathered by him on the very first day of school.
As he walked towards the large collection of screens near the middle of the Cave making up the Batcomputer, he thought about how trivially easy it had been to poke each one of the unsuspecting females in the Club with a needle and extracting a bit of their blood. Each time he'd skulked around one of them, waiting for the perfect moment to strike, prepared to make it seem like a mosquito bite or whatever else he'd had to come up with, but he needn't have bothered. As it turned out, if you operated the needle precisely and quickly enough like he had, the girls wouldn't even notice the intrusion on their skin.
It was something he did to every team or gathering of people he would have to spend an extended amount of time with, just as a precaution. It was for their own good really, a way to quickly determine what bloodtype the people he would be working with had without having to waste time asking questions, in order to quickly provide the correct transfusion in the case of injury. Not to mention it being a great way to test for weaknesses of his more enhanced "super" teammates, allowing him to quickly plan a contingency should they turn bad. Compared to the beings with "unbreakable" skin like Jon, getting the blood of four girls with average durability was a complete non-issue.
Standing in front of the many monitors, he pressed a few buttons on the massive keyboard underneath, causing a small compartment to open near the bottom of the computer, into which he inserted each of the vials. The compartment closed again, and Damian sat down in the chair by the keyboard, looking up what files he could find on each one of the girls in turn, taking note of everything he could discover about them while waiting for the blood analyzer to finish scanning the samples for any abnormalities.
He knew Natsuki had pointed out Monika in particular as the potential cause of the mood swings in the Club, but he preferred to reach his own conclusions and to not let his jugdment be tainted by possibly biased opinions. Which he would accomplish by unraveling every aspect of each girl's personal life.
He felt something small, light and furry on his legs, and looked down with mild interest to see Alfred having jumped up and setlling himself in his lap. Alfred as in the cat he'd gotten a few years ago that was, not the human. Obviously. Damian absentmindedly scratched him behind the ears, before raising his head towards the screen again.
He didn't really expect to find out anything unusual doing this. Hell, he didn't even fully buy into Natsuki's worried theory theory about the Club members. The only reason he did this was that it couldn't hurt to check, and be thorough, especially when he had nothing else to do.
He finished his dig-through of Sayori, Natsuki and Yuri's files, discovering nothing really worth of note about them. They had some unusual living conditions, particularly in Sayori and Yuri's cases, as a result of the untimely deaths of their parental figures, but otherwise they were clean. No history of prior arrests, cover-ups, or anything that would help him with this "case," if one could even call it that.
All in all, completely in line with what he'd expected.
He moved on to Monika, having started with the others because of how their fairly unique names would be easier to find when he'd never bothered with learning their last names, than a more common name like Monika. But a person of his skill level, coupled with the Batcomputer's tech, quickly made short work of finding her file as well.
He raised an eyebrow as he read about her. He had to admit he hadn't expected this of the Club President.
As it turned out, she was apparently the youngest daughter of a very renowned and wealthy family with quite a bit of influence as they costantly traveled the globe, settling deals all around the world. Their fortune was small, barely even a drop in the water when compared to that of the Waynes, but it was still enough for them to live comfortably in a mansion on the outskirts of the city.
Doubled with that, Monika seemed to be something of an honour student at Gotham High, her teachers all singing her praise, her grades second to none (atleast for now- give him a few more weeks, and Damian was sure he could surpass her) and just in general being the image of a perfect, hard working student liked by everyone.
She was clean.
Too clean.
Damian dug deeper, focused on finding something, anything that could be considered tarnishing. Nothing made him more suspicious of someone than when they had a seemingly spotless record, especially with someone as wealthy as this, when he knew a family with this amount of power and money could easily pay the right people to wipe pretty much anything incriminating short of murder from their permanent record.
And after a few minutes of hacking into the right accounts, he found it. They had tried very hard to hide it, but obviously not hard enough to throw Damian off their trail as he opened up the file of Monika's medical records.
Wait, that's it?
He frowned slightly, disappointed as he read through it. This was what they had gone through all the effort of hiding? It was hardly even that bad, just a simple mental condition, and a mild one at that! He supposed it was pretty uncommon for it to manifest in that young of an age, but it was hardly unheard of. As long as she made sure to take her prescribed medication, there wasn't any reason at all to be embarrassed or worry about it.
Although he did take note of the fact that according to the file, she had neglected to get a refill of her pills this week. But that was hardly something to even consider being suspicious about, and certainly nothing that warranted any further research on his part. Clearly, Natsuki's concerns could be disregarded as that of a paranoid girl's ramblings and-
A ding sound shook Damian from his thoughts as he looked up at the monitor again, seeing a pop-up displaying the results of the blood test. As he'd expected, there were no signs of any abnormalities in the blood of Natsuki, Yuri, Sayori, and-
He had to do a double take as his eyes settled on Monika's results, and sat a little more upright in the chair, a gesture the snoozing Alfred audibly protested. This wasn't normal for sure, didn't belong anywhere near someone like Monika, and was far more concerning than the attempted cover-up of her mental issues.
There was something running through her body which Damian thought he recognized from someone he knew all too well.
Quickly opening another tab on the screen, he looked up the file of one Harleen Francis Quinzel, searching for the documented result of her blood tests from the many times she'd been incarcerated at Arkham Asylum. Finally he found it, and compared the unusual chemicals in her blood with Monika's.
It was a match. Both Harley Quinn and Monika had traces of the same serum in their bloodstream, an unreplicable plant-based solution which would make the average human incredibly resistant to most toxins and poisons, and also generally increase their physicals.
A serum that could have only been made by one particular woman in the world.
Despite the worrying implications that came with this revelation, Damian smirked to himself, and began pulling up a map of Gotham City, scanning for recent unusual traces of toxins and plant life in the city, as well as eye-witness reports of last known sightings of the femme fatale duo. He still didn't see how, or even if this tied back to what Natsuki had been saying, but Monika having any connection to these two women at all was definitely worth investigating closer. Finally, this case was getting interesting.
He felt more than heard the sudden presence behind him, his trained senses picking up the slight movement that seemed way too close to him. Without hesitation, he grabbed one of the spare Batarangs lying on the Batcomputer control panel, and spun his chair around as fast as he could, throwing the projectile against the assailent, only to have it collide uselessly against the animatronic dinosaur behind him with a loud klink, no sign of anyone there.
Insulted at this sudden movement, Alfred hissed and meowed loudly, quickly jumping down and retreating from Damian into the darkness of the cave.
He narrowed his eyes, searching every square inch of space in front of him, trying to listen beyond the idle sounds of water drips, bat screams and electrical whirring. Nothing came up, and there wasn't the slightest hint of anyone else besides him being present in the cave. Not even his father would be capable of stealth to this level.
Which meant it could only be one possible person.
She's improved. He thought, impressed. He relaxed again, and spun his chair around again to see how far along the Batcomputer had gotten in scanning for possible Poison Ivy hideouts. Almost immediately he felt the presence behind him again.
"Let me guess." He spoke aloud, voice echoing in the seemingly empty room. "You're bored as well?"
There was no reply. He didn't expect her to respond when she was in one of her playful moods. Not to mention that she generally didn't really talk much.
He respected that aspect about her, and definitely preferred it to other blabbermouths like Grayson.
At last, the computer finished its scan, zooming in on an old warehouse at one of the abandoned building districts in Amusement Mile.
Damian gave one of his rare triumphant smiles. Finally, something worthy of his attention.
"Well, since it doesn't look like you have anything better to do today," Damian said, rising from the chair in order to suit up, without looking at the figure standing behind him since no matter how fast he turned his head, she would be out of sight the moment he did it. "Perhaps you would like to tag along on this drive-by?"
Dead silence. An unmistakable mark of consent from her.
Damian's smile widened.
"Alrighty ladies and germs! Give it up for the Queen of Flora and Conqueror of Fauna herself, Poooison Ivyyy! Bow down to yer knees and get ready ta worship this holiest of holy women, all night long!"
Damian had just finished picking the lock of the door by the end of the tunnel he'd found himself in when he entered the Warehouse and already he could hear the intrusive high-pitched voice of Harley Quinn, yelling at an even louder volume than usual, as if she was making an announcement to a crowd of people.
He pushed open the door, and could feel the dampness in the air on his skin, as if he'd just entered a greenhouse. Plants of all varieties were spread thickly all over throughout the room like a jungle, making it hard to see anything.
He was definitely at the right place.
"I have to say, I'm never exactly certain as to where you're going with these crazy antics of yours Harls, but you sure never fail to make it entertaining when you get started."
He heard the calm, bemused voice of Poison Ivy, sounding as if she was mildly amused by whatever she was seeing, blocked from his own view by the rich jungle all around him.
He had to navigate the terrain slowly, being careful to avoid contact with the plethora of vines strewn about the ground and hanging from the ceiling. If he wanted to keep his element of surprise over those two, he couldn't afford to touch as much as a fallen leaf and alert the woman physically connected to all the plantlife in the room.
Their voices were growing louder and clearer the closer to the middle he got.
"That's the idea Pammie! I'm never sure what I'm on about myself, I just do whatever it is that seems fun in the moment! Ya just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show!"
As he made his way through the narrow walkways free of trees, bushes, flowers and whatever else they had growing in here, he took a few seconds to adjust the green gauntlets on his arms, making sure the blades embedded in them by the lower side of his arms were sharp as ever. When he came across a particularly heavy-looking log blocking the path he was using, Damian bent his knees before jumping over it, the sound of his landing absorbed by the special soles of his equally green boots.
The walkway made a turn, and he reached up to touch the emerald mask across his eyes, and the world of green around him turned ghostly blue when he activated its thermographic mode, allowing him to see two heat signatures directly at the end of the turn, confirming the villainesses' location. He switched it off again, and pulled the hood built into his cape across his head, as he continued to walk along the path with confidence and determination.
As always, it felt good wearing the Robin uniform again.
"Oh, don't worry." Poison Ivy purred silkily. "As long as you keep wearing that, I'm sure I'll be enjoying whatever it is you're going to do."
"Ha! Ya got it Red, anything fer ya! It's so good ta have ya back ta normal again!"
"Likewise. But let's not tarnish this day with bad memories like that, and get back to what you were doing- worshipping me."
Damian rounded a corner of the maze-like jungle, where he saw a clearing of sorts, a huge round space in the middle of the warehouse, completely surrounded by trees reaching all the way up to the ceiling. And in the middle of that clearing, he was treated to one of the more bizarre sights he'd seen in recent days.
A flower throne, elevated high above the ground on a pedestal of green leaves, held firmly in place by thick, brown branches snaking around the vegetation. The throne itself was comprised of a million flowers of all shapes and sizes systematically placed in order of colour, going from red at one side to orange, to yellow and so on, giving the glorified chair the appearance of a rainbow.
And seated in the throne, looking down from her ivory tower with a self-satisfied smirk across her face, recognizable from afar due to her green skin and fiery red hair, was Poison Ivy.
It seemed she had chosen today to wear a much more conservative outfit than how she normally dressed, a wide, elegant flowing dress made of ferns reaching all the way down to cover up her crossed legs, her shoulders adorned with pads of spiky cactus securing a long shawl of nettles going down her back. On top of her head, placed over her scarlet hair was a collection of branches that reached around her forehead, sharp edges pointed straight upwards like a wooden crown, and just to complete the royal "Queen" look she seemed to be going for, one of her hands were clutching a finely sculpted stick like a scepter.
Her eyes were glancing downwards, blind to Damian standing at the far edge of the clearing, giving her full attention to Harley Quinn whom it appeared didn't share Ivy's sentiment to show less skin. Quite the contrary, actually.
"Right-a-roonie! Ya just keep that bodacious booty a' yers firmly planted where it is, and watch this! I watched a video tutorial on how ta bellydance, and I think I'm gettin' pretty dang good at it!" The female jester exclaimed, twirling around to give Ivy and unknowingly Damian as well, a better look at her outfit of choice.
She was dressed in what appeared to be a tribute to the socalled "Hula Girls" one would often find as a bubble-head figure on the dashboards of cars and trucks, complete with long strands of grass covering the bottom area of her body down to her knees, and what looked like two coconut shells, one painted red and the other black, used like a bra over her torso area. The rest of her pale body was completely exposed, but in a strange twist all this was nowhere nearly as noticable as her headgear.
While normally a typical jester cap in her trademark split colours of red and black would decorate her head, with obnoxious bells loudly announcing her every movement, a wide basket of sorts, constructed from a brown, ropey material had now replaced it, perched on top of her head, hiding her blonde hair from sight.
And as if that wasn't enough, the basket was littered with various fruit products like bananas, oranges, apples, grapes, and many more variants of fruit, all stacked on each other so high it was a wonder Harley was able to move so fluidly without losing her balance.
Damian suppressed a groan. This was going to get quirky, wasn't it?
"Ooh. Now that I gotta see!" Poison Ivy exclaimed, and leaned a bit more forwards in her throne, an excited look on her face at hearing Quinn's announcement.
Damian couldn't exactly relate to her feelings, and made his decision at that moment, before this surreal scene he'd walked in on had a chance to escalate further.
"Do I even want to know?" He drawled out loud, announcing his presence to the criminals as he stepped out of the shadows and into the clearing, his voice slightly muffled from the transparent mask strapped over his mouth and nose to protect him from the toxins and pheromones this room was undoubtedly full of.
Harley's face, having just stretched into a wide smile at having successfully enticed her partner, changed to that of shock and horror at hearing his voice, and she gave a loud, surprised yelp when she turned her head sharply to see him, with a few cantaloupes falling out of her fruit basket in the process.
"Uh, Ivy?!" She yelled in fear, staring at Damian with a look of pure disbelief as she tried and failed to position her arms to cover up her exposed body from his view. "The bird boy has infiltrated our secret base! And not the cute, tall ones either, it's the pint-size psycho!"
Damian grit his teeth. He really wasn't that shorter than Grayson or Drake.
Poison Ivy was looking down at him from her throne, a look of mild annoyance on her face as she snapped her finger, and a thick vine started moving over her body, wrapping around her waist, until it lifted her up from her sitting position before slowly and gently descending her down towards the ground.
"You've got a lot of nerve, coming into my domain like this." She said, and her tendril-like hair started billowing underneath her crown as her eyes lit up and all the plants around them began moving menacing, a large number of vines slithering towards Damian. "But I have to wonder if you fully thought this through. That mask of yours won't help you much beyond keeping your head clear as my babies crush your ripcage."
Damian glared right back into her glowing green eyes as her feet made contact with the ground, refusing to let himself be intimidated even as the vines kept creeping towards him from all directions.
He knew this probably wasn't how his father would have gone about doing this, and would more than likely call him reckless if he ever found out about Damian heading straight into enemy territory to confront one of the most dangerous criminals of Gotham City, in terms of raw power at least.
But Damian wasn't his father. He was better.
"Don't worry, the mask isn't for those." He said, gesturing around him at the vines even as he kept his eyes locked tightly onto Ivy's. "That's what this is for!"
He pushed his arms outwards, causing the cape that had concealed his body up until now to billow outward, revealing the six white bags strung across the red part of his uniform's torso area, connected to eachother with a mess of differently coloured wires, each one adorned with a stylized "R" symbol. Poison Ivy's eyes ceased glowing as she stopped to take in what she was seeing, causing the vines around Damian to pause their forward momentum as well.
Damian took this moment to reveal the black detonator in his hand as well, giving them a good look of the red button on top of it.
"I wouldn't come any closer if I were you." He warned them, and raised his thumb to keep it a few milimeters above the button, ready to trigger it. "I trust you both have some semblance of intelligence enough to understand why. You're both Doctors after all."
"Is... is that a friggin' suicide vest?!" Harley Quinn exclaimed, eyes widening in recognition of the contraption on his chest. "Jeez, what is Batman teaching ya kids? That death by bomb is better than being captured alive? I mean I knew the guy had ta be wacko but I didn't figure him for a terrori-"
"Save it, clown." Damian said, not even sparing the madwoman a glance as he kept his eyes on the biggest threat in the room, who had narrowed her eyes at the bags strapped to him, hesitant as she considered his intentions. "I'll be fine if I push this trigger, but I don't think the same can be said about the plantlife in here once they get a whiff of the chemicals I've got stored in these bags."
Poison Ivy's eyebrows raised in alarm as she understood.
"You don't mean..."
"I've got four pounds of my own specially designed weed killer rigged up and ready to blow, spreading it in every direction when I push this button." Damian said, confirming her fear as she took a step back. "More than enough to reduce everything in here to dust, from the largest tree to the smallest flower, the second they come into contact with this stuff."
"You wouldn't!" Poison Ivy exclaimed, fear etched on her face as she stared at him in disbelief.
"Try me, Isley." Damian retorted, making sure the unwavering seriousness in his voice was clear.
"What the hell is yer problem!?" Harley angrily yelled at him. "Ya come into our home unannounced and uninvited, and immediately start threatening to blow yerself up? At least when B-Man would harrass us, he would do us the decency of giving us a fair fight before resortin' ta dirty tactics like this! And he would ferget his gasmask more often!"
"I'm not here to fight you." Damian said, keeping his voice calm and dignified against Harley's hysterical yelling. "I'm only here for some information I think you'll be able to provide."
"Oh, I'll inform ya of this!" Harley exclaimed, reaching up to the ridiculous basket on her head to pull out a yellow, curved object, pointing it directly at his faced like one would a gun.
Damian hoped his expression of pure condescension would translate enough through his two masks as he looked at her, before speaking up.
"That's a banana, Quinzel."
Harley turned the fruit in her hand, looking at it in apparent amazement as she squeezed it a bit.
"Huh. So it is."
"I trust that if you really were carrying a firearm, you wouldn't be so stupid as to point it at someone who's keeping my precious babies hostage?" Poison Ivy asked her partner with venom dripping from her voice. "Especially considering what happened the last time you recklessly fired a gun in here?"
Harley's face flushed up in a deeper shade than Yuri's had ever managed to reach, and looked down at her bare feet in embarrassment, dropping the banana.
"No ma'am. Sorry ma'am." She said in a fast, miniscule voice.
Poison Ivy kept glaring at her for a few seconds before turning her gaze towards Damian again, scowling at him with a look of pure hatred.
"Well, it seems you've planned this out, birdie." She snarled. "We're utterly helpless and completely at your mercy, you must be so proud of yourself for outsmarting us. Now what do you want from us?"
Damian smirked behind the gas mask.
This was even easier than he'd expected! And to think his father had given him and everyone else in the "family" strict instructions that they were not to approach these socalled Super Villains alone without backup. This was just further proof of Damian being the superior Robin when he could confront someone like Poison Ivy who the Batman had had trouble with for years, just with a decent amount of basic prep.
Despite all of the power they held, most of the rogues here in Gotham had very simple weaknesses to exploit that absolutely everyone could figure out if only they would be a bit more like Damian and use their brain.
Mr. Freeze, despite being nearly untouchable in his suit could be incapacitated very easily by leveraging his wife. Clayface was merely about environmental control. Lure him to somewhere cold enough, and he wouldn't be able to take on dangerous forms. Mad Hatter? Just tell him that "Alice" wouldn't want him doing this, and his psychosis would make him break down crying.
Nearly all of them had some incredibly easy thing about either their personality, physicality or mental condition he could take advantage of, and Ivy was no exception. While she did have nearly total control of all plantlife, capable of making trees grow in a matter of seconds, she was also emotionally attached to them to an absurd degree. If he had wanted to be dramatic about this, simply walking in here with a flamethrower would have done the trick, and Harley was, as always, a non-factor. Just a walking migraine sticking to people more powerful than herself like a leeching parasite, not worth the effort of thinking up countermeasures.
Still holding onto the detonator with a firm grip, he extended an index finger and clicked a few of the buttons built into the gauntlet on his left hand.
"I need you to tell me all you know about this girl." The same moment he said "this" a ghostly blue hologram sprung up in the palm of his hand depicting a girl's head with very long hair mostly kept in a ponytail tied back with a large, white bow, smiling sweetly, as oblivious as she had been when Damian had scanned her to get this 3D model of her face. Because might as well, since he'd already taken her blood, right?
The reaction from Ivy once she laid eyes on the small blue holographic Monika was immediate. She bared her teeth and seemed to hiss a little in anger, with all the plant life around them recoiling slightly as if their master had just gotten an electric shock they'd all shared the pain of.
"I take it by this reaction that you know her, then?" He said, observing her passively.
"Turn that thing off!" Harley snarled at him, hurrying over to stay at her friend's side, throwing her arms around her as if to shield her away from the torture Damian was apparently subjecting her to. "Ever heard a' trigger warnings, bird brain? Ya know how insensitive it is ta some people when ya just show them pics of people who've caused them trauma like that? Ya could have made me and Red deeply uncomfortable!"
"My heart is breaking." He responded dryly, and pressed another button on his gauntlet, collapsing the hologram into nothingness, noting her comment about trauma in his head as something to question them about later. "Tell me how you know Monika and-"
"Don't say the M-word, we're recoverin'!" Harley exclaimed.
"-and, I'll consider not showing you her picture again." Damian spoke over her interruption.
"Very well." Poison Ivy said in a low voice, still staring daggers at Damian. "We kidnapped her almost two weeks ago."
"You kidnapped her?" Damian repeated, frowning.
"Yeah, yeah." Harley cut in, sounding annoyed. "We know, 'what a horrible thing ta do! How could ya do something like that to a poor, innocent youth! Ya monsters!' And all that judgy kinda crap ya self-righteous hero types always spew our way. We saw a girl walkin' home from school, thought she looked like her family got cash, and we wanted ta make a quick buck, boo-frickety-hoo. In case ya hadn't noticed, we're Supah Villains! We do bad things, big shock!"
"How come I never heard of this?" Damian asked, ignoring Harley. He hadn't expected this response, since he thought he would have heard about a hostage situation like that if it had been reported.
"It didn't exactly go as planned." Poison Ivy explained. "Due to unforeseen complications with her family, we were unable to call for a ransom, and we both decided to cut our losses and get rid of her, permanently. Overall, kidnapping her was one of the most regrettable decisions of my entire life."
"Amen." Harley Quinn agreed, nodding solemnly.
Damian stared at them both in disbelief at hearing her recounting of the events, especially the "getting rid of her" part. He knew that both of them could generously be described as mentally unstaple mass murderers, but he would have thought a thing like this would have been below even them.
"You were going to kill a highschooler?"
"Hell-o!" Harley exclaimed, throwing her arms out while staring at Damian, with an expression on her face as if he was struggling to understand something exceedingly simple and straightforward they were trying to tell him. " Did ya even listen ta me?! Supah Villains! Bad deeds! Right here!"
Damian pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. Why had he expected anything else from these two?
"Whatever." He said, deciding to move on. "Her blood results said that she's got traces of your immunity serum in her blood, Isley. Why would you give a random school girl whom you were going to kill, something I thought you only provided your most trusted allies with?"
"Yeah, I'd like to know that too, actually!" Harley said, angrily placing her hands on her hips as she turned to glare at the other villainess, who released an impatient groan before replying.
"Harley, you know I wasn't in my right mind when I gave her that." She said, with an air over her voice that suggested she'd gone through this multiple times already. "She'd done that thing that made me stop you from killing her, and all that other stuff I wrongfully said to you afterwards, remember?"
"Oh, I know." Harley said, and her face split into a wide smile again. "I just wanted ta hear ya admit ta bein' wrong back then again. That really makes the pain of that period easier."
"Come here, you." Poison Ivy said, her face softening up into a smile of her own as she pulled Harley close to kiss her softly on her forehead. "I'm so lucky to have found someone like you who refused to give up on me even when I tried to kill you."
Harley giggled.
"I'm just glad that bitch's effect wasn't permanent. God, can ya imagine?"
Damian looked at the two women laughing as they stared longingly into each other's eyes, wondering if they had forgotten he was even there. He decided to remind them again by clearing his throat, before speaking up.
"What effect? What made you stop from killing her? Elaborate, now."
The smile vanished from Poison Ivy's face as she looked down at him again in annoyance.
But then, the corners of her mouth creeped upwards, as her eyes started to glow yet again.
"You know, I think I'm done taking orders from you."
The plants around the clearing started moving again, the vines slithering ever onwards towards him, way too close for comfort.
He glared into her empty green eyes, frowning.
"Have you already forgotten what I told you? Call them back, or this garden of yours is gonna go from green to gray very, very fast."
The vines didn't stop, and instead of showing any signs of fear, Poison Ivy's smile actually grew wider. He raised an eyebrow. It wasn't like her to knowingly endanger her precious plants like this. Did she think he was bluffing?
"Oh, I don't think you're going to do that, little bird." She said, and her voice echoed throughout the warehouse, sounding like it was coming from all around them as it was magnified to many times her normal volume.
"-TT-" He scoffed, glancing around at the plants that had reached close enough to make contact with his boots now, and raised the detonator. He was getting sick of people not taking him seriously because of his age and his height, which was likely to be what she was referring to with that "little bird" comment. Perhaps it was time to finally teach these women what would happen if they messed with this Robin.
"Don't say I didn't warn you, Isley." He said, and pushed his thumb down hard on the detonator.
Nothing happened.
Confused, he turned the detonator around in his hand, inspecting it as he pressed the button again and again, still with no results. He could feel the vines starting to crawl up his legs now, and his heart pace quickened. This was impossible, he'd designed this plan himself! How could it possibly fail?
"Oh no!" Harley exclaimed, throwing her hands up to her cheeks, mockingly pretending to be aghast at the situation. "It looks like the Boy Blunder is havin' performance issues! Don't worry, it's perfectly natural, and happens ta the best of us!"
In an act of frustration, Damian threw the useless detonator to the ground, cursing inwardly as the vines kept advancing up his body. He angrily glared at Poison Ivy, who was still staring at him with her bright green, glowing eyes, smiling smugly.
"How?!" He barked at her.
"You should have paid more attention to your surroundings." She said, the triumphant tone ringing clear all throughout the room. "While we were chit-chatting, I spent my time sending miniscule vines up through the floor where you stand to entangle themselves in the wiring of your bomb in order to block the signal to your detonator."
He looked down his body, and sure enough, the wires connecting the white bags on his torso looked a whole lot greener and alive than they did before, as they wriggled all around the bags like tiny worms.
"People always think about the big things when it comes to me." Ivy gloated. "Massive trees, Venus Fly Traps big enough to swallow a man whole, turning cities into jungles. But what they don't realize is the deadliest things comes in small packages. A drop of poison in a drink. A seed sprouting in your stomach. Or a kiss, from me. Would you like to try that? I guarantee, the experience will take your breath away!"
Damian refused to let himself be intimidated by her theatrics, as he quickly reached into a compartment of his utility belt, closing his fingers around the sharp edge of a batarang. The plan had gone a little awry, but there was still a chance he could salvage it, by simply cutting open the bags and release the chemicals manually. The spread wouldn't be as effective, but he could at least make the plants ensnaring him wilt on the spot, giving him time to think up another plan.
Raising the batarang, he plunged it towards one of the bags and-
"Oh, I think not." Ivy said casually, and two vines shot through the air with great speed to wrap themselves around each of his arms, pulling them harshly to his sides, in a cross-like position. He struggled a bit, but quickly realized they were both too strong to fight against.
"You know, I think you've had some poor manners for a houseguest, wearing a mask like that in our home." Ivy said silkily, as another vine shot up from the floor, and slowly slithered forwards like a snake approaching its prey, until it was right in front of Damian's face. "It's insulting, frankly, to insinuate that we're carrying some infectuous disease. I'll let you keep the one around your eyes, since I know you and your kind are shy, but I don't think you have any need for the other."
The vine shot through the air faster than Damian's eyes could follow, right towards his face, making him flinch despite himself. He felt it collide hard against the transparent gasmask, penetrating its shell like a nail gun hitting an egg, destroying it. Then, it coiled around the edge, pulling the protective gear right off his face, and letting it fall to the ground.
Damian tried to hold his breath, until one of the vines ensnaring him tightened around his chest, making him gasp in pain, forcing him to breathe in the floral scent hanging all around the air in here.
"See? Doesn't that feel so much better?" He heard Poison Ivy's voice, sounding muffled and far away as a fog seemed to settle inside his head, making it hard to see, or think straight. His vision blurred, making it hard to focus on the feminine figure slowly walking towards him, swaying her hips seductively with every step. "Just breathe in the delicious scent of Mother Nature herself..."
Had Pamela always looked so... beautiful? He stared at the woman, noticing for the first time how soft her green skin looked, how flowing that crimson hair was, and felt a strong desire to... to touch it, wondering how it would feel between his fingers. He was almost certain it would be softer than even the finest velvet, surely it would. He'd never felt this way about another human before, which was fitting since Pamela hardly counted as a mere human. She was a Goddess!
How could he have ever planned on hurting her babies? Even the thought of the upset expression tainting that pristine face right in front of him if his plan had worked seemed to cut right through his heart. Why was she considered bad again? There was no way someone as pretty as her could be be evil...
"Aw man, yer' so dead!" The high-pitched gleeful voice of Harley Quinn cut through the fog, followed by an even louder laughter that hit him in the head like a splash of water, clearing his mind a good amount.
He glared into Poison Ivy's intense eyes, their green coloration reminding him of the girl at school he'd come here to investigate in the first place, cursing how easily this villainess had managed to distract him from his mission with her pheromones. He had to concentrate his willpower on avoiding falling into the slippery slope of the plant lady's beauty, a good way to do this being focusing on how badly he'd messed up this excursion, and how his father would react if he could see him now.
And then another realization hit him, making him groan internally.
God, I'm never going to hear the end of this from her, am I? She is going to make sure I never live this down.
Shaking his head in an attempt to clear his dull head some more, he spoke up in an attempt to at least TRY to get some more information out of this disastrous mission.
"Before you kill me," He said, finding it difficult to talk as his jaw felt heavy, as though he was underwater or asleep. "Just tell me the deal with Monika."
Poison Ivy merely smirked at him, no mercy to be detected in her eyes.
"Oh my, you've got quite the mind, being able to fight back my influence like that. Not that it'll do you any good, of course."
Harley's face popped into his vision, a maniacal smile plastered across her face as she looked on in great anticipation to see how her partner was going to finish him off.
"All you need to know about that girl is that she's a freak, and we want nothing to do with her. Now," Poison Ivy said, as she grabbed hold of his hood, pulling it back over his head, revealing his black hair. Then, she placed her hands on either side of his face and licked her lips, which Damian knew all too well were loaded up with a poison known for its unfailing lethality. "Any last words before your good night kiss?"
"Just one." Damian said, preparing himself for the massive hit his pride was about to take, before taking a deep breath, and yelling as loud as he could.
"NOW!"
There was a loud crash from above, as the explosives they'd planted an hour before at the roof of the warehouse went off. The two women recoiled away from Damian at the sudden noise, shielding their heads from the sudden downpour of dust and debris, making them miss the dark figure descending from the newly made hole in the roof as well, landing in the middle of the clearing.
"What the heck?!" Harley screamed in shock, squinting at the cloud of dust still settling in the room, shielding the figure from view.
"What is the meaning of this?" Poison Ivy demanded to know in a furious voice, baring her teeth at Damian, not having noticed the fourth person in the room either.
"Interrupt... something?"
Harley and Ivy's heads snapped towards the unknown female voice coming from the dustcloud, looking on with puzzled expressions, before the figure finally stepped forward into view, revealing herself.
Despite not being particularly tall or large, not even reaching Poison Ivy's height, she had a way of moving, completely without hesitation or fear of any kind, making her appearance grand and imposing in her own way, helped along by her costume.
She was dressed in an entirely black, skintight outfit, the thin material hugging the curves of her body, showing off the springy muscles in her slender body. Unlike Batman and the rest of the Robins, Damian included, there was no special protection integrated into her uniform, having been sacrificed in favor of better movement, in theory making her completely vulnerable to knives and bullets- if anyone would ever manage to hit her, that was.
The only parts of her costume that wasn't pitch black, including the long, flowing cape trailing behind her as she moved forwards, were the faint yellow outline of a stylized bat across her chest area, and the compact utility belt of the same colour clasped across her hips, looking about two sizes too big for her due to her body's build.
Her head was covered by the cowl typically associated with the "bat" members of his father's family, complete with the long, pointy ears jutting up from the sides of her head like horns, but this cowl differentiated itself from the others, evidenced by the blank, black spots stitched over the mouth and eyeholes, hiding her face and expression from view entirely, although Damian thought if he knew her right, she was probably smirking smugly behind her mask as she took in the scene of his precarious situation, helplessly tied up by vines, while the two villains stared at her in awe, lost for words.
Cassandra Cain, the second Batgirl, always did like to make an entrance.
Harley Quinn was the first one to break the silence, cowering behind Poison Ivy in exaggerated fear, as she pointed a shaking finger at the new arriver.
"Gah! A gimp! Ivy, kill it!"
The black clad woman tilted her head vaguely to the side, this being the only way for her to express confusion with the mask she wore.
"Am not... gimp. I am... Batgirl." She said slowly and hesitatingly, as if chewing her words over carefully before speaking them aloud, voice slightly muffled behind the mask. Damian knew her language skills had improved a lot from a few years ago where for all intents and purposes she'd been a mute. He knew that she could speak in whole sentences if she absolutely had to, but she preferred talking like this when in costume, since she'd been told that she actually appeared scarier when using her broken dialect.
"Yeaaah, nah. I don't think so." Harley responded, her initial fear of Cassandra's sudden arrival fading away as she inspected her with a critical eye. "Batgirl's a hot redhead, not a model for BDSM. And trust me, I know a little bit about both of those, right Red?"
She smirked, and shot Poison Ivy a sideways wink. The plant lady didn't seem amused.
"Harley, quit messing around." She said, keeping her green eyes trained on Cassandra, clearly recognizing the threat she presented. "I've heard about this one before, and she-"
"Say, what colour is yer hair under that thing anyway? Assumin' ya even have hair." Harley spoke over Poison Ivy, not listening to her warning.
"Black." Cassandra replied pleasantly.
"Ah, typical." Harley sighed, raising a palm to her face. "As if we didn't have enough of ya guys runnin' around. This is just like that new Witcher show where they made that other cute redhead inta another boring black haired broad. Thanks Hollywood, ya ruined Batgirl! Gingers need representation too, y'know!"
"Harley, shut up!" Poison Ivy hissed. "If what I've heard is true, this Batgirl is leagues beyond what the original was capable of, maybe even surpassing Batman himself. We have to take her seriously!"
"She doesn't look like much." Harley said, sounding unconvinced. "Lookit her, she's a kid! Barely even taller than the bird boy, what could she possibly do ta one of the deadliest women in the world? Oh, and you too I suppose, Pammie."
Cassandra, seeming to have grown bored of their bickering turned her head towards Damian, tilting her head to the side once more.
"You lost... bet." She said, and Damian could hear the punchable smirk in her voice. "Said... could beat them... without help. You... couldn't."
"Do we have to do this right now?" Damian asked, his annoyance rising. He really wished he could get free from this ridiculous position he was forced into by the vines. "Could you not rub it in while the villains are listening?"
"Want to... hear you say it." Cassandra ignored him, crossing her arms. "Admit you... needed me."
She's been spending way too much time with Stephanie. He thought, this being the most likely explanation for her increasingly sassy retorts.
At that moment, Poison Ivy let loose a primal scream, as she collapsed to her knees, connecting her hands with the floor of the warehouse, her eyes glowing brighter than ever and her hair billowing around her face as if caught in an invisible tornado. The ground started rumbling for one second, before all hell broke loose.
Plants started bursting through the floor, massive, coiling vines of all shapes, sizes and colours, some even adorned with thorns large and sharp enough to puncture a man's skull. The forest around them seemed to be shaking madly before even more vines burst forward from the far depths of vegetation, joining their kin still breaching through every available inch of the floorboard.
And every single one of the hundreds of vines were closing in on Batgirl at a breakneck speed. It seemed as if Poison Ivy had decided to strike with the full extent of her powers while Cassandra had been seemingly distracted, gloating at Damian.
Unfortunately for her, as she would now come to realize, Cassandra Cain was never distracted.
Batgirl reacted immediately, leaping away from the spot she'd been standing just moments before another vine penetrated that point as well. It became hard for even Damian to follow her movements as she ducked and weaved through the descending greenery, never staying in one spot long enough for the vines to even touch her, looking like a black blur more than anything else as she made her way over to Ivy.
Damian supposed that certain members of The Titans like Kid Flash and even Jon had to be faster than her, technically- she was just a human after all- but the way she used her speed as efficiently as possible while dodging through the entire forest of obstacles coming her way without getting hit even once, somehow made her seem faster than the two Speedsters.
This was part of the reason why having to be saved by her hurt his pride as much as it did. Even though he knew she had only reached this level of physical perfection by training from birth rougher and more intense than even he had, and the fact that it had come at the expense of her ability to read, write and even speak in the beginning, she just made everything look so easy!
"How is she so fast, Red?!" Harley yelled, in an effort to be heard over the creaking and crashing of the vines chasing Cassandra. Her voice had a nervous twinge to it, as Batgirl advanced ever closer towards them, zig-zagging in between the descending forest.
"She can't keep this up!" Poison Ivy yelled back, her teeth gritted in strained effort as she exerted more and more of her power. "No mere human can hope to defeat nature itsel-"
Poison Ivy was cut off when Cain used a vine breaking through the floor to boost herself up in the air, where she grabbed hold of another vine above her, and, using the momentum she'd just gained, rotated her body around the vine before releasing her grip, launching herself across the room to brutally land a kick directly in Ivy's face, instantly knocking her out cold.
Damian felt a a huge twinge of sympathy towards the plant lady, even as the vines ensnaring him began slackening their grip as they no longer had anyone conscious controlling them, and the rest of the room's plantlife started slowly descending to the torn up floor as well. Was Ivy okay? He hoped Cassandra hadn't kicked her two hard. She could have been seriously hurt, and for what? Unlike the other lunatics in Gotham, all the things she did came from a place of good intentions. She just wanted to save the planet, and who could fault her for that? Maybe this whole encounter had been one big misundersta-
Damian shook his head to clear his thoughts again, rubbing his wrists to start his blood circulation again after having been tied up.
Stupid pheromones.
Batgirl stood over Ivy's body lying unmoving on the ground, cracking her knuckles casually as if she'd just completed a light workout. She turned her masked head towards him again.
"Admit it!" She called after him, continuing their conversation from before as if there hadn't just been a major interruption at all.
Damian was tempted to merely respond with one of his most condescending "-TT-'s" to date, when Harley Quinn began speaking up, reminding them all of her presence as she was crouched next to Poison Ivy, tears streaming down her face as she glared at them both with a look of deepest loathing.
"Alright. Ya guys got what ya came here for. Ya physically bullied, assaulted and terrorized two poor, helpless women just tryin' ta make a livin' in a big city. Yer parents must be so proud of ya. Now scram." She said, in a low, hateful voice. "We're gonna need some time ta recover after this mess ya caused."
Poison Ivy? Helpless? Damian knew Quinzel was delusional, but to go that far?
He walked over to join Cassandra's side, stepping over the now immobile vines strewn about all over.
"You're both going to Arkham, Quinzel." He said, crossing his arms. "And hopefully they'll manage to keep you there longer this time."
"What?!" Harley shouted, voice full of fury and outrage. "It wasn't enough for ya to ruin Date Night for us by exertin' yer vigilante brutality on us? Now ya gotta take us ta prison, too? We didn't even do anything this time before ya just burst in and started trampling our rights!"
"Harley, you're a wanted criminal with a body count of over 50 people, and that's not even counting the murders you were only an accomplice to." Damian said, sighing. They had this conversation every time she was caught, as she never really seemed to fathom the concept of there being consequences for her actions. He knew how she would reply next.
"I meant recently! That was back in my Mistah J days, it's hardly fair ta bring that up when we're no longer together! How am I s'posed ta show I've changed if ya keep locking me up in the nuthouse?" She countered, confirming his guess.
Even if that was how the Law worked, she'd used that "no longer with Joker" excuse a few too many times for him to even remotely believe her.
"You tried to kill an innocent girl just a little over a week ago." He said. "Not to mention us, a few moments ago."
"Emphasis on 'tried!' And if ya saw how annoyin' she was bein', I bet ya would have done the same too!" Harley countered, somehow thinking she was making a good case for herself.
"You need help, Quinzel." Damian said, glancing away from her in order to bend down and cuff Poison Ivy's hands before she woke up. He knew they wouldn't do much against her plant control, but he still felt like his mind would be more at ease with her hands secured. "But unfortunately I know better than to expect you'll get it in Arkham this time around, your track record being what it is."
"I will not stand fer this kinda racial profiling!" Harley yelled, pulling another banana from the basket wobbling madly around her head as she got to her feet. Once again, she pointed the end of the fruit at Damian. "It's because I'm blonde, isn't it?!"
Damian hardly even spared her a second glance.
"Quinzel, that's still a banan-"
A rough push to his side made him collapse to the floor the same second as a loud bang echoed all throughout the warehouse. Damian looked up, dazed to see Batgirl standing over him, her body coiled and ready to strike as Harley stood across from her, still holding the banana which was now smoking lightly from the tip, the peel at the front having been ripped to shreds, revealing the very real gun underneath.
"No!" Harley screamed, firing the gun again at point blank range, this time at Cassandra, who effortlessly dodged the bullet.
"Why! Won't! Ya! Just! Die! Die! Diiie! " Harley yelled each word in tune with her firing the gun, the bullets harmlessly whizzing past the rapidly moving Cassandra, and instead hitting the various trees and bushes in the warehouse until at last nothing but empty clicks could be heard as Harley uselessly kept pulling the trigger.
"This ain't possible. No one can move that fast." Harley mumbled in disbelief, still reaching her arms towards Cassandra even as the masked girl took the empty gun away from her. "How did ya even do that?!"
"Told... you. I'm Batgirl." Cassandra responded, and confiscated the fruit basket on her head in case she had any more hidden weapons stored in it. Then, she turned towards Damian, still laying on the floor, who for once found himself completely speechless at having been unable to predict a move from Harley Quinn of all people. She bent down slightly, and offered him a gloved hand. "Saved you... twice now. Getting... rusty?"
"-TT-" He found his voice again as the disbelief turned to anger at her childish taunt, and got to his feet, ignoring Cassandra's outstretched hand.
DEFINITELY spent too much time with Stephanie.
"I'm completely screwed now, aren't I?" Harley asked, sounding defeated.
"Yes." Cassandra replied.
"Alrighty. Any chance ya can make sure I get a cell far away from her?" She asked, shooting a cautious look at the still unconscious Poison Ivy. "I don't think she'll be very happy with me once she finds out I shot her plants. Again."