Gambit/Bind Part 1
Zee-Cue glanced out of the nearby fire escape, the patter of something clearly not rain tapping on the window.
Grabbing her pepper spray she turned it's safety off as she moved to open her window.
"Johnson?
-.-.-.-
Dick was tired, cold and drenched.
He knew that saving Dent and Lane would have its consequences. He knew that making sure Reighart was put behind bars would possibly alert them that something was amiss. But the high from when he realised that, unlike everything else, that this wasn't for nought?
That was glorious. Almost worth being ran out of his home for the last five months and change.
Some paranoid part of him had been bracing for this exact thing to occur over the last ten days. It was in his mega-sized backpack, the carefully stowed items, the root access enabled Wayne XOver in his pocket with the battery carefully removed.
The talons he had dug back out and repurposed into throwing knives.
But he could only run for so long. He was tired. And exhausted. And tired of jumping at the shadows. Peering at every technological eye for signs. Dick knew that he was being tracked - and that the trackers were most likely his former teachers - namely, Giz and Mouse.
As he stood in front of Zee-Cue, he hoped. He hoped he had read her right. He hoped that she allowed him to help her bring the kitchen scraps home that one time, (had it really only been a month? It felt longer) for a reason.
-.-.-.-
"Zee.. Could I crash here for a bit?"
"Of course you can you numbskull! Where were you? Your notice of resignation told us nothing."
"That was kinda the point." Dick gasped as the small asian woman crushed his frame to hers.
"Kinda the point?" Her dark eyes flashed. "Look here mister. You don't just -"
"They would have traced me!"
"They?"
"Yeah."
Dick shifted his feet awkwardly on the carpet of the flat she and her 'sister' shared as he looked around. Scattered throughout the flat were little post-its of random thoughts related to both cooking, and mechanics and stacked neatly in a corner of what was obviously their study space was a pile of ethics and law textbooks.
"Do I want to ask what happened?"
Dick couldn't bring himself to meet her eyes, choosing instead to stare determinedly over his shoulder, into the pouring rain. The reflection was interesting though. The third floor flat was similar in style to his old room at the Outreach Shelter. The only difference was extra doors, presumably one to the bathroom and the others to bedrooms. A couple of moments passed before he heard her sigh.
"Would you like to stay? Just for a bit?"
Dick felt himself nodding. He had been ducking into shadows and avoiding various cameras for nearly 48 hours. A relatively safe place to catch his breath and to go over the strange bits of information he had acquired would be welcome.
-.-.-.-
Jasmine 'Moi Li' Ling jingled the door to her flat, she huffed a little as she attempted to get the key in just right. As the door clicked open she called out - "Hey Zee! Remind me to send in a report to the building manager, the lock is busted again!"
"You always ask me to remind you! And then I do but then you forget!"
Jasmine chuckled as she shook out her raincoat before hanging it to drip dry at the door..
"Well…" She paused and stared at the boy huddled out of the way in a dim-ish corner of her home. The poor thing was caught in that awkward somewhere that most teens were. From certain angles he looked highly reminiscent of a boy-Snape. On top of that he looked practically swaddled in their fluffiest towels and ready to bolt to boot.
"Zee, you didn't tell us we had company…"
Her sister glanced at her from the corner of her eye.
"Jazz this is Rick Johnson."
"From Tobias'?"
"Yeah."
"I…" Rick gulped. "I don't mean to be trouble."
"I offered to let him crash here for a bit."
Something about the skittishness of the kid broke her heart. It reminded her of Zee. It reminded her of herself.
"Stay as long as you need. You're safe here." She told him, careful to show that her hands and her posture were unthreatening. Relaxed. Something about him reminded her of, well, her - her and Zee really.
And that awful time they learnt their 'parents' had found where they had gone.
Back then it had been the little network of contacts Tobias had developed keeping her, and then Zee, safe. It was that network that sheltered them, that talked and supported them from the same skittishness (that was written into every little movement Rick Johnson had) into their current confidence.
Maybe it was time to alert the Network that another kit had to scurry away. Gotham was no stranger to cults and perhaps - Jasmine thought - this was more than just a survivor escaping a terrible situation.
-.-.-.-
Podium. 1530 hours. Mass gathering. Havok preferred. Additional bonus: Settling the matter permanently. These thirteen words were all Dick managed to extract before he saw the signs of a counter hack. Before he had to disappear from the home he had built over the last couple of months. Zee-Cue and her supposed older sister, Jazz, had been extremely welcoming and accommodating - far more than he ever expected them to be.
He learnt why soon after during a chat where Zee and Jazz sat him down with serious eyes and laid out their story in full before him.
…
"Our parents had lots of people over. Always wanted us to be part of the fun. Their fun. Not ours."
"They didn't give us a choice about it."
"So I decided I had enough. I ran."
"Jazz took a stand and refused to be a part of their fun. She gave me the courage to make my escape too."
"You might have noticed that we have different surnames? Saelim and Ling don't exactly obviously state we're sisters…"
"It was a…"
…
Dick pulled himself out of his reminiscing as he flipped through the newspaper that Zee and Jazz had left on the counter.
Podium. 1530 hours. Mass gathering. Havok preferred. That was a road map somewhere but where? He idled through the pages of the paper until a heading caught his eyes - upcoming events. Dick stopped - surely it couldn't be that simple?
What large event would have a podium for a speaker to talk on? In the case of the target that was a simpler matter to figure out. It was probably a Wayne. The Owls had a long history of grudge-holding against the Waynes' general altruism. The question now was where and which Wayne?
The society pages of the Gotham Times were incredibly detailed. Were they not so helpful for his research, Dick probably would have been concerned about how detailed they were. It seemed that almost every time the rich of Gotham did something mildly interesting, there was a reporter there to comment on it. Which led to the question of what they weren't writing about since they were writing about this instead…
The Waynes were better at keeping their private life private than some. This meant that only the times they would be at public events were really commented upon, making Dick's job easy. In the upcoming weeks Martha Wayne was going to an opening for a gallery show in Burnside that served as a fundraiser for the Wayne Afterschool Art Programs. Thomas Wayne would be travelling to Metropolis to give a guest lecture to students at Metropolis U. Both Thomas and the youngest Wayne, Bruce Wayne, would be attending the Gotham University medical students' graduation. Bruce was expected to give a speech.
The guest lecture could be automatically ruled out since it was in Metropolis. The Owls could reach far but when possible, they always tried to keep it within Gotham, their home base. Especially if it was going to be a big statement. That left the gallery show in Burnside and the Med School graduation that was going to be held in an open auditorium near the central Gotham City train station. This was big so the Owls would want to create maximum impact. So the question was how many people would be in attendance at each event. Unfortunately, to do that, he was going to need to get information from someplace.
It probably would be faster to use the Wayne XOver to get the information online. But Dick had already disabled his so it couldn't be tracked. If he used any other device, there was a chance Giz and Mouse would catch wind of that too. He had to go completely analogue. He looked around the empty apartment. The information was hardly going to turn up here.
It didn't matter if he didn't want to leave the flat. If he was going to figure out what he was going to do, he had to go out - and be careful.
-.-.-.-
There were some brochures for various colleges and graduate programs by the tuition center. Dick could see them just outside the entrance from where he was standing in a security camera blind spot in the main lobby. It was late in the afternoon, so no classes were currently in session but there were still people hanging around, using the space available to get some work done. Dick looked around from where he was trying to tell if any of the people around were doing anything out of the usual. Then he skimmed the shadows to see if anyone was standing in them. It didn't look like it but that didn't mean anything. A young woman sitting at one of the nearby tables was giving him odd looks. Shoot, he had been standing here too long and now he looked suspicious. He needed to get it together.
He crossed over to the tuition center, making sure to keep his face turned away from the camera as he passed it. After a bit of digging in the display case, Dick found one for the Gotham City University Medical School. Dick stuffed the brochure in the pocket of his hoodie and started back across the lobby before hurrying back to the Saelim-Ling residence.
-.-.-.-
According to the brochure, the average annual intake was 150 students. If each student brought just one family member then that was at least 300 people. But it wouldn't just be students and their families. 150 students, their families, university faculty, and special guests like the Waynes. Hundreds of people to witness a potential assassination. (It wouldn't be an assassination. Not if he got there in time.) Since the auditorium was open air, the assassin could set up on a nearby building easily.
Finding information about the art gallery show was harder. The newspaper had only included the name of the gallery and the date and time of the event. A look through the yellow pages only gave him their address and phone number. No information about their layout or how many people would be expected to attend. After trying to think of any other way to get the information, short of actually breaking into Gotham City University records for the RSVP list, Dick had to accept the risk of going back online. He needed this information in order to do anything to stop this and he wasn't getting that information sitting around. A tingle in his gut made him pocket the piece of paper Zee gave him before the sisters left for their respective day activities. This was going to be a risk, and he would not risk the sisters any more than he already had. He quietly cleared up his belongings and left, like he was never ever there.
He had to go back to the tuition center.
-.-.-.-
Hood up and head ducked, Dick ended up using one of the computers available for doing school work in the tuition center to quickly look up and print out some information about the gallery from their website. As soon as he was done, he cleared his search history and got out of there. Since it was small, the building had a maximum capacity of 250 people. They didn't normally host events like this. Even aside from the number of people there, a quick look at the gallery's floor plan told him that a job with the slightest possibility of climaxing in assasination, wouldn't be happening there. Too many small rooms and no large windows. Entrances and exits to the area were minimal. How was a saboteur with a motive to 'settle the matter permanently' going to get in and out without alerting security?
Dick sighed as he ducked another security camera.
If the Owls wanted an audience they would go with the graduation. That was a week away. He'd have to head out to scout the area beforehand so he would be able to get the drop on the assassin but he could do this. He had a plan. He hoped.
As he turned onto the road heading back to Zee-Cue's and Jasmine's place, he heard it. The whirr of a security camera turning away from its normal watch point.
The Best Buy. Dick realised in horror, recalling how he had been knocked back by a random passerby which caused his hood to flip down in front of the electronics store.
He couldn't go back. He couldn't let on to Giz and Mouse that he knew they had their eyes on him. They taught him too well.
He meandered out of the way through an alley and took to the rooftops.
-.-.-.-
Zee and Jazz returned to a perfectly clean flat, with no signs that anyone other than the two of them had ever been there.
"He left." Zee noted, scanning about the flat for any signs that Johnson intended on returning.
"I did tell you he might." Jazz tossed back at her.
"You and your theories."
"Well it's perfectly possible that -"
The knocks on the window leading to the fire escape of the Saelim-Ling residence were like gunshots. Just outside, on the same landing Rick Johnson once stood and asked if he could crash, were a man and a woman dressed rather strangely.
The light-skinned brown haired man had telescopic goggles covering his eyes and a random assortment of was that body armour? clad around his chest and limbs. The woman was in something far more risque. A white cowl with an approximation of mouse ears covered most of her head and face, leaving only her mocha-toned jawline exposed. A white catsuit covered the rest of her body save for a window exposing her midriff.
"So sorry for the intrusion ladies." She said as a flying squirrel scurried up to sit upon her shoulder, "But I believe you know where our wayward Gray Son has gone."
Jazz and Zee-Cue looked at each other confused. Zee mentally sighed to herself - Jazz was never going to let the fact that her cult theory was right go.
And as one, they said with an air of pure perplexation - "Who?"
-.-.-.-
A tapping on the window that rose to just over foot level on the street pulled Doug Brenston from his work. Eyes wide, he rushed to open the main lobby's door for the boy clutching a piece of paper with his address on it - written in Zee-Cue Saelim's handwriting.
"Johnson?"
AN: And so begins the chase! Dick vs the Court where the Owls are trying to get him back and Dick is trying to stay out of their grasp.
Thank you for following along so far and feel free to let us know what you think! Or come scream at me on tumblr, (eastonia-blog).