It takes Damian almost another week for him to finally decide to deal with whatever was making him uncomfortable about the situation Grayson initially proposed. The... seeing what other children do. It feels like a waste of time. It is a waste of time. Damian knows that he's better than them.
But they must have some type of power over him, if merely the prospect of being in their territory is making him uncomfortable to the degree that Grayson can tell it bothers him, and he can't allow that.
Damian knows he shouldn't treat it as such – or at the very least, that he would be scolded for treating it as such – but he still can't help but prepare for the excursion like it's a mission.
He borrows one of the items Pennyworth bought that he has not had a reason to use before – a loose sweatshirt the man called a hoodie. It has Gotham Knights written on it in cursive. It's loose enough to serve his purposes and will give him the camouflage he requires.
And underneath the hoodie, he can stash some weaponry. He takes out the old harness he used to use in the League, the one that holds all of his throwing knives and shurikens, and secures it over his shirt around his chest. Then he pulls the jacket over it. The weaponry is almost completely disguised, and the jacket is loose enough he should easily be able to reach inside from the bottom to retrieve any necessary knives.
That makes him feel a lot better already about what he has to do. Approaching Brown in her university without any weaponry was a mistake. If you're going out, you should always have weapons. Batman and Robin do, why would Damian be any different?
Damian completes his civilian disguise with jeans, which he knows American civilians perceive as casual enough to match the hoodie. In the mirror, he appears to be a completely unremarkable civilian child... who happens to need a haircut. His hair has gotten long. It might even hinder combat soon, if it gets in his eyes.
But not yet, and not today, so he can just take a peek outside of his room and see if Pennyworth or Grayson are in the main room. Grayson is absent, but Pennyworth isn't. Ugh.
"Master Damian?" asks Pennyworth, looking up from the shelf he's dusting.
"I'm going out," Damian says.
"...Enjoy yourself," Pennyworth says in reply.
… Damian was sure the man was going to make a fuss, but he didn't. Suspicious. But talking about it would be a waste of time, so he just grabs his coat and goes.
He already planned the route to the nearest arcade and memorized it. All he has to do is walk. As he walks, he tries to think of the city as how a civilian would think about it.
The skyscrapers are pretty tall, he thinks, glancing up. If he were a civilian, that would probably seem like an insignificant background detail. He wouldn't ever wonder who's up there except for maybe in passing, and he wouldn't worry about a sniper or assassin looking down at him from a good vantage point.
How ignorant.
There are streetlights, of course, on the sides of the streets. Turned off in the day. If he were a civilian, the streetlights would probably be welcoming. Civilians are superstitious, kind of like criminals. They assume if something bad is going to happen, it's going to be in the dark. If you can see that there doesn't appear to be danger, there mustn't be any danger, right?
The crowd of people walking on the street would be –
Well, he can see the crowd himself. He can see how most people aren't scanning their surroundings; some people are even looking at their phones as they walk. So the crowd wouldn't be a potential sea of hostiles.
It would just be...
a crowd.
Damian's breath catches in his throat for no reason at all. Dumb. Nothing happened. All he got is that civilians probably view Gotham, at least during the daylight, as unworthy of special commentary or caution.
Damian continues his journey. It shouldn't be that long. The nearest arcade that was open on Sunday was less than four kilometers away. Damian keeps his pace quick, having to weave around groups of civilians who aren't walking fast enough. But it's still better than waiting for them. Better than dwelling on things.
And eventually, he arrives.
The place is small, in a block of stores, sandwiched between a grocery store and a place where civilians are getting their hair cut. When Damian enters the front door, a wall of noise hits him all at once.
Horrible music loud music and some pew pew pews of fake guns going off in games, loud children talking, an adult woman saying "settle down, settle down" to a flock of infants around her –
An army should really bottle this and use it as a sonic weapon. Damian hates the place already.
"Hey," says a man standing in a booth near the door. He appears middle aged, paunch gut, wearing a polo shirt that says Bill's Happy Land above the breast pocket. The same name as the arcade.
"Is one of your parents coming?" the man asks.
Damian scowls. He intentionally pitches his voice lower, trying to make himself sound older, even though he knows his height is average for his age and he might not be fooling anyone. "I'm here by myself." He knows he needs to add a convincing detail, something that would make him seem like a regular child, so he pulls one from Grayson's previous lectures. "With my allowance."
The man nods; he seems unperturbed, so Damian's vocal disguise must have worked. "How many tokens?" he asks.
"How many are required to enter?"
"Uh, none, technically," the man starts.
"Then none," Damian says, and walks past him.
He's not here to play. He's here to... deal with whatever this is.
Damian walks back to the far corner of the place, in the area that seems the quietest, and leans against the wall. It's easier if he imagines this is a mission.
What do you see, my son?
Twenty six civilians, four of them appearing to be employees of the place, one middle-aged, three teenagers. Eight other adults and fourteen children, ranging in age from five to thirteen or fourteen. Of the adults who aren't employees, three are men and five are women; of the women, two are in their twenties, two in their thirties, one in her forties or fifties. None of the adults appear to be threatening; they all appear complacent and unaware of their surroundings or focused exclusively on the children they accompany. The most convenient place to hide weaponry is in one of the women's purses.
But... if he were on a real mission, there would be a target here. Someone he could focus on, that he knows might represent significant danger or at least an objective. But there's no one target right now that seems to stick out more than the others. It makes it difficult to decide how to divide his attention.
One of the men approaches Damian's corner, child in tow, but he doesn't try to speak to Damian. He just starts pointing at the machine that's close by and explaining it to the child.
"It's pinball," the adult says. "You know, the game you see me playing on the computer? It was real first! Like this!"
The kid, who Damian would guess is 8 or 9, starts eagerly bouncing on her heels. Her ponytail flops up and down as she does it. "I wanna try!" she says.
The man places a coin in the machine and a noise pulses through it, even louder than the one that was in the background and yet another set of continuous music starts –
and this is so dumb because if Damian can deal with gunshots going off why is it that this noise seems overwhelming?
Though at least when gunshots are going off, you can do something. You're either pulling the trigger yourself, or you're on a range and know to expect it (and wearing ear protection) or someone's trying to kill you and you can just kill them instead.
There's nothing to do here.
The child seems to think there's something to do here, of course. She's staring at that pinball machine. Every time she touches a button there's a whush of something and sometimes a ding sound and then a bunch of noises all go off at once.
The man steps away from the child for a moment and starts towards Damian. Damian stands up straight and instinctively transfers his weight to the balls of his feet, ready to fight.
"Are you okay?" the man asks.
Damian scowls. Grayson being able to read him is one thing; he presumably has training. A random civilian asking the question is straight up insulting.
"Why wouldn't I be okay?" Damian asks.
"Where's your mom?"
"Dead," Damian says quickly. It's not true, but he knows it's probably the quickest way to get the man to shut up.
The man does give him a satisfying, deer-in-headlights look. Damian walks away quickly before he can continue his train of questioning.
In another section of the wall, the woman with the largest group of children is clustered in the middle of the bunch as one of them tries to throw balls at some target. A series of large rings, labeled 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50. The ball is slightly large in the child's tiny fist, the child is throwing underhand. The target can't be more than three meters away, but the child still misses. The ball clanks up clumsily to the top corner of the area and then just rolls down to the child.
Pathetic.
Damian knows it's a "mean" thought, it's not what he's supposed to think, but he also knows the children would judge him similarly if they spoke to him. For being ignorant about their customs, for... whatever reason.
Two of the children at the edge of the group have started staring at Damian. Damian glowers at them, and they quickly look away.
He knows he probably shouldn't be doing that either. If he wants to figure out more about this without Grayson's attempted aid.
…
That means he should probably apologize.
He's never really apologized much before. He's never had a reason to. And besides – it always seems like it's done by... weak people. People who betrayed Ra's and are begging for their lives, and they never mean it genuinely; they just don't want to die. People who make mistakes. Brown after she froze him, Grayson after one of his many attempts to taste the bottom of his own shoes, Gordon with... whatever she wanted. It's the antithesis of a show of strength; it's an admission of error.
But no one's here – at least no one who matters – so Damian can take a step forward and say, "I apologize if I frightened you."
One of the children – a girl who appears about his age with long brown hair and big black eyes – shakes her head. "You didn't scare me," she says. She still won't really look at him more than a glance; she just stares at the machine again that one of the other children is throwing balls at. "My mom said it's rude to stare. Sorry for staring."
She's ruining his apology with her own!
"But you were staring first," she adds quickly.
It wasn't staring; it was gathering intelligence!
Damian doesn't know what to say in response, though, since he knows his gut reaction would be perceived as... atypical. He used to always know what to say. Even in the instances he had to enter the civilian world for a mission, it was always... well, not easy, but navigable.
"You're pretty quiet," the girl says.
Damian has no clue what value she expects that to add to the conversation. So he just gestures at the other children behind her and says, "Compared to your... cohorts."
The girl looks behind her and laughs.
Is she laughing at him?!
"Cohorts is a weird word," she says. "What's it mean?"
Damian frowns. He doesn't know how to explain what it means; the only other word that pops into his head is a translation. So he just says, "It's accurate!"
"They're my cousins," she says. "They're staying over. You're right. They're loud."
Damian looks behind the girl. Currently, the adult in the group has stepped back and the children are just taking turns throwing balls at the target badly.
"What are they doing?" Damian asks.
"Playing skeeball," the girl says. "You have to throw the ball in the target – "
"Tt. I knew that."
"Uh, and then you get tickets," the girl finishes.
The machine dispenses a few tickets, and one of the kids snatches them up.
"Are the tickets currency?" Damian asks. He can't imagine what else the worthless scraps of paper would be good for.
The girl points over at the far wall, where two employees are standing behind a counter. There are little trinkets Damian assumes are toys in front of them. "For those," the girl says.
"And those are... desirable?"
"Yeah, I want the skateboard," the girl says. "But that costs like, a thousand tickets."
Damian nods seriously, trying to pantomime understanding of the ticket situation. He assumes the tickets must be regarded as difficult to obtain, both from the way she talks about them and from how few the other children received from the machine.
"How many tickets did your cousins just... 'earn'?" Damian asks, reticent on the last word, unsure if it's the correct one for the situation.
"I think five?"
"And how long did it take to earn them?"
"I dunno, three minutes?"
"If it takes three minutes, that means you can play twenty games in an hour," Damian says. "That times five means 100 tickets per hour. It would only take you ten hours."
The girl's eyes open wide. "Ten hours?! I could die before then!"
Damian can't tell if she's expressing hyperbole or genuinely aware of some type of danger, so he quickly glances around the room again. As far as he can tell, everything is exactly the same as it was last time, in terms of general threats.
"Also, my mom would definitely make us go home before then," she continues obliviously.
"Sasha, it's your turn!" one of the boys behind her says in an annoying, whiny tone of voice. "Sasha, your mom said we had to let you have a turn!"
The girl Damian was talking to – Sasha – takes two steps back and is now in front of the long machine. "Hey, you wanna play?" she asks to Damian.
Damian pauses. The last time he was invited to participate in childish endeavors, the other children thought they were better than he was because he didn't know what to call it. But he thinks this objective is simple enough. And no one's here. Grayson's not here, so he can't suggest Damian might enjoy playing 'Halloween' in his Father's gift to him; Pennyworth's not here so he can't imply that Damian needs more 'off-time'. The only people who are here Damian will never see again, so whatever he does here doesn't matter.
It's an amazing feeling.
"Okay," Damian says. "Is the center worth the most?"
"Nah, that one up in the top left corner is," the girl says, pointing to a single ring, not part of the regular bullseye, in the top left corner. It's labeled 100. "But if you miss it you get zero points, so I always go for the center."
Damian can easily hit that. He grabs the ball the girl offers to him and throws it at the ring in the top left corner. But unfathomably, the thing doesn't go in! It just bounces off the far-side of the ring and ricochets right back at him. Damian catches the ball and frowns.
"Do you play baseball?" the girl asks.
"Yes," Damian says, even though he doesn't know what baseball is beyond it being some sport for civilians. But he'll take what ever convenient lie is presented to him.
"Yeah, you shouldn't throw it like a baseball," she says. "You have to throw it underhanded, so it can actually go in."
Damian re-analyses his target area. The rings are at approximately a 135 degree angle from him, tilted back slightly. Throwing the ball straight must not work. "I see," he says slowly. "The object is a parabolic arc. Like in basketball. Otherwise the magnitude of the horizontal velocity is too great compared to the magnitude of the vertical velocity and it will bounce back before it has a chance to fall down into the target."
The girl blinks slowly. "Uh, I guess..."
Damian tries. It helps if he doesn't imagine he's throwing a knife at a target – how he approached the problem the first time. More like if he was trying to lob a smoke grenade only a little bit away from him, to gain cover.
There's a series of electronic beeps as the ball goes in, then another ball is dispensed at the front end of the machine.
"Wow, that was really good!" the girl says. She sounds genuinely impressed, which is strange.
Not as if Damian isn't impressive. But this is far from the most impressive thing he could do. This is child's play.
Now that he's understood the rules of the game, getting the ball in the ring the second time isn't hard. Nor the third time nor the forth time...
This is extremely boring. He understands, objectively, that the other children don't have as good hand-eye-coordination as he does, and that the machine possibly presents a challenge – perhaps even a worthy challenge, as training one's hand-eye-coordination could always come in handy. But that doesn't make it less boring for him.
They're presented with a long stream of tickets and Sasha grabs them all up. "What are you gonna buy with your tickets?" she asks.
Damian holds a hand up. "You can have them."
Her eyes go wide and her voice goes shrill. "Really?!"
Damian winces slightly. "Yes. Please don't scream again."
"I wasn't screaming..." she protests slightly.
In Damian's pocket, his phone beeps. Thankfully. Damian takes a couple steps back and pulls it out, quickly glancing at the screen. The beginning of a text from an unknown number – get ready for work.
Work. Finally.
"My – " Damian is stuck on the appropriate word, so he just says whatever he thinks will sound normal to civilian children – "family is texting me. I have to go."
And he quickly steps around her and dashes out of the arcade before anything else can distract him.
He'll need a quick way to return to the Bat-bunker, since that's where the only copy of his Robin suit currently is. He walked here, which in retrospect was a mistake.
Damian scans the traffic, looking for a truck or some other vehicle he can inconspicuously lie on top of going in the direction of the penthouse. He knows it's risky to pull such stunts in broad daylight, but he assumes whatever is happening is important. And besides, right now he's not dressed like Damian Wayne. He's dressed like a typical ten-year-old American child.
At the stoplight, Damian sees a truck with a trailer pointed to head north. Where he needs to go. He watches the light opposite to the one the truck is stopped in front of, so that he can act only when it's turning yellow, and give the people around the least amount of time to react.
Now. He runs up to the car behind the truck, jumps off it's hood, and as he's leaping up grabs a knife from his belt and stabs it into the backside of the truck's trailer, securing his grip. The driver of the car behind him honks uselessly and Damian pulls himself up to the roof of the trailer.
It accelerates. Damian lays flat against the surface of the roof, decreasing both how easy it is to notice him and his air resistance. The rush of air past him is relaxing, despite the cold. It takes him out of the arcade, out of the civilian world, back into his world. The world of action.
The truck travels almost the entire journey in a straight line; Damian only has to jump off a couple blocks from the penthouse. Again, when he reveals his presence, there's more useless honking. What do the drivers expect to accomplish with that? Either way, Damian knows that he should run in the allies and lose any potential tails or stalkers, with him evidently making a scene.
And then, Damian gets to the Bat-bunker. He doesn't bother putting his stuff back up in the penthouse; he just goes straight down and starts getting changed. As he's getting changed, he puts in his comms to get updated.
"What's the situation?" he asks.
Oracle's voice – now Damian knows it's Gordon's, just altered to be lower and a bit more robotic-sounding – comes in through the comms: "Kirk Langstrom – "
"Man-Bat?" Damian can't help but make a slight face as he says the name. He's never understood why so-called 'supervillains' needed ostentatious code names.
"Yes, Man-Bat," Gordon says. "Langstrom's transformed back into bat form and is going on a rampage."
"And I thought he was 'good' now," Damian says. At least that's what the files on the Bat-bunker computer said. He had control of the transformation. Obviously they were erroneous.
Here's where Mother would say – old Mother, the one who didn't seem so weird – that letting the creature live was a mistake, tactically. And Damian can't help but repeat it: "You should have never given him a second chance."
"Not you too," Gordon says, and a mechanical groan comes in over comms. "Just pitch in. Batman's trying to locate the antidote in an old lab; she wants you to figure out if Langstrom's wife knows where it is or what might have triggered this."
"And who's containing the actual beast?" Damian asks as he finishes strapping on his utility belt. "Batgirl? Don't make me laugh."
"He's not a beast; he's a person. Just find Francine Langstrom. I have her last known address and a hacked cellphone log. Is that enough?"
"Tt. Of course." Though Damian can't help but suspect he's been given busywork. Or at the very least, the least threatening objective. Given that he's out with no... 'babysitter'.
And now, a voice that isn't Gordon's comes in over comms: Grayson. "I've got the call log ready when you need it, k – Robin."
"Grayson?!"
"No real names in costume," Grayson says, even though he can't see what Damian's wearing.
Damian puts on his helmet and starts up the motorcycle, ready to go to drive. "How'd you get on this frequency? What are you doing?"
"Helping," Grayson says. "Speaking of which, get ready to take down the address so you can start driving."
"Tt. I'll memorize it," Damian says. Hearing Grayson's disembodied voice on patrol is still weird. It still doesn't seem like something he should be doing. Normally the people who try to give orders or information on comms are the people who can't fight. Pennyworth and Gordon.
Grayson states the address, Damian quickly checks the GPS on his phone to confirm the route, then leaves the phone behind and starts driving.
"So what am I supposed to ask Langstrom's widow when I find her?"
"Uh, he's not dead – "
"You should have sent me, then," Damian says, even though he doesn't really mean it. "Why are you on the comms, anyway? Isn't that your girlfriend's job?"
There's a beat of silence on Grayson's end. Then, he says, "We're still on the comm channel with Oracle, Robin."
"Okay." Damian knows that Grayson is trying to insinuate Damian made a fool of himself, and he won't stand for that. So he says, "Oracle, why is Grayson trying to do your job? Can't you manage it yourself?"
Oracle doesn't answer, however. She just says, "I'm putting you two on a private channel until Batman tells me you need me specifically. I don't want you distracting Huntress."
Damian scoffs. As if he's the distracting one!
And –
"Huntress is here? I thought you were done bringing back everyone else – "
No use. She's already removed him from the comm channel. Presumptuous.
"Grayson," Damian prods him, since Oracle said she was moving the two of them.
Grayson was moved with him. He responds. "Shouldn't you be getting to Langstrom's?"
As if Damian can't drive while dealing with this situation. He needs to have all of the intelligence before going in! He thought that's what Batman and Robin were all about, according to Grayson.
Damian pauses briefly at a red light, waiting for a break in the flow of traffic. Should have taken the flying Batmobile. Cain wouldn't have taken it anyway; she doesn't like it for some reason. Damian's not even sure they'd take it out on patrol if he hadn't convinced her they didn't want to be halfway across the city from an emergency when one went down.
She did the same thing as always when Damian prodded her about it: concise answers. Never needed one.
There's a brief break in traffic and Damian guns the throttle, accelerating to 100 kph in less than two seconds and slipping through the light right in front of the next car. He can hear yet more honking. Do civilians think that the horn of a vehicle is a button to fix things they don't like?!
"I hear a lot of honking in the background; is there an accident?" asks Grayson.
Damian checks his mirror briefly. Traffic is moving typically behind him. "Don't be melodramatic."
"Maybe it's just the way you drive," Grayson says, and laughs.
Asshole. "I'm an excellent driver."
"It was a joke, ki – Damian."
"'No real names in costume,'" Damian says in a perfect mimicry of Grayson's voice.
"Okay, I deserved that." Then, finally, Grayson stops messing around and gets to work: "Langstrom's phone log: he called his wife, but she didn't pick up. It's all a voice message. He seemed to be on his way out of Gotham, worried about being unable to control the change anymore."
"And then?"
Grayson sighs. "Then, he said 'something's happening', 'that's not possible', and did a bat-screech."
"Tt. You'd think that he'd be acutely aware of how possible turning into a bat is. It's part of his meta-powers."
There's a bit of silence on Grayson's end.
"You think it's something else?" Damian asks.
"I don't know," Grayson says, and a bit of frustration creeps into his voice. He must not like this situation any better than Damian. "We don't know anything until we get more intel."
"There'd be no point in gathering the intel if we just dealt with Man-Bat," Damian says.
"Huntress is containing Man-Bat and the other Batman's getting the serum to cure him," Grayson says. "We're all deployed where we're needed."
Damian pulls up in front of the house that the GPS had directed him to and parks his motorcycle. "Tt. And you didn't even send me a babysitter."
"You want me to whistle up Batgirl?"
Damian scoffs and approaches the house. Inside, he can see two large brown eyes – he thinks from a dog, as they're surrounded by fur – peeking out the window at him from under a curtain.
"Handle this one delicately, Robin," Grayson says. "You're dealing with civilians here. And Francine has kids."
"You want me to handle children delicately?" Damian asks, even though he knows he shouldn't. It's calling his abilities into question, implying there's something he can't do. A couple months ago, he never would have dreamed to ask the question.
"I trust you can do it." Grayson says.
Damian scoffs and knocks at the door. He figures delicately doesn't include breaking and entering.
The door swings open quickly; behind it is a wide-eyed woman who quickly reaches a hand towards Damian. Damian hops off the staircase and lands on the ground, raising his hands up to fight.
And he thought Grayson said they were civilians! But she was trying to grab him!
However, she doesn't try to attack him again. She just gestures him inside from the door.
This had better not be a trap.
Damian walks up the steps and gets inside. Langstrom's widow – wife, whatever – steps back a pace from him, to the living room – at least she appears non-threatening...
The place is... strange. A foyer with a ceiling up two stories high, then a staircase leading up to a second story. The part of the second story Damian can see is empty; as far as he can tell there's no one up there to leap out.
The living room has a child in it, a girl about his age, and some animal wearing clothes –
No. A Man-Bat, but... miniature. A child. Forced to undergo some type of transformation that turns you into a monster –
Damian takes out a batarang. Francine Langstrom moves quickly, both pulling the bat-child back and raising one arm up defensively, ready to block. Held back, the bat-child starts hissing and scratching at the air, saying, "Bad! Bad!"
Damian's bad?!
But Damian can't really figure out how to extract the children from this situation gently. The human-looking child is attached to her mother's hip, fearful.
Damian can't believe this. "You gave a child the man-bat serum?!"
"Shit, Robin, stand down!" Grayson says uselessly over comms.
At the same time, Francine Langstrom says, "I did what?! You came into my house, weapon's drawn – "
That's preposterous! Damian only drew his weapon when it appeared as if there was a threat!
"Robin, that's her son," Grayson continues prattling. "He wasn't given the serum; he was born like that!"
Oh.
… Grayson really should have told him that before Damian burst in.
Francine Langstrom is still holding her son back, looking half ready to fight and half ready to flee.
Damian takes a step back. Just because he knows he shouldn't attack right now doesn't mean that Langstrom won't. And Damian still remembers when he was young and Mother said there wasn't much more dangerous than a cornered mother who thinks you'll hurt her children.
And Damian said What about an assassin? and Mother said What about me? and kissed the top of his head and promised him she'd always keep him safe –
And thinking about it right now is pointless and hurts for reasons Damian can't explain.
Staying at least two meters away from Langstrom, Damian puts his batarang way and raises his hands up.
"Robin, are you okay?" Grayson asks, pointlessly worried.
"I'm fine," Damian says. "Langstrom is simply worried. I alarmed her"
"Of course I'm worried; you came in here like you were going to attack me!" Langstrom says. "Who are you, anyway? The new Robin?"
"You could try apologizing," Grayson says.
Ugh. Damian puts his hands down, looks at Langstrom, and says, "Batman says I have to apologize."
Langstrom slips out of her fighting stance but still is holding her son. Her daughter has taken a couple steps back and now sits on the couch, knees huddled to her chest.
"Bad robin!" says the man-bat child, still angry.
"Is this about dad?" the human child asks.
"Let me talk to Batman," Langstrom demands, holding a hand out for the comms.
No way. Damian's not about to let Grayson steal his mission, not when the man is an invalid by choice!
"I'm perfectly capable of resolving this situation," Damian says, and then to the girl he says, "Yes, it's about your father. He's on a rampage. We need to know if you have any antidote or the knowledge as to what might have triggered it."
Langstrom narrows her eyes. "I know. I saw the news. But I haven't always had a hundred-percent success rate in reining in Kirk, and even if I knew I could do it, someone needs to keep the kids safe."
Is she implying that Damian's asking for her help? He'd never ask for a civilian's help on actually containing a criminal. This isn't a request for aid; it's an interrogation.
"We're handling Man-Bat," Damian says. "All I need is that you answer my questions."
Langstrom stops holding the still aggressive bat-child back and wraps him in a hug and says, "Aaron, Aaron it's okay. He's here to help Daddy – "
Damian looks away, even though that's a mistake, tactically. It just feels so, so weird to be here. It feels like he's intruding on something.
"And no, I don't have any antidote," Langstrom says to Damian. Since she's stopped talking to the child – she's just holding him – Damian doesn't feel weird looking back to her. "I don't have any Man-Bat serums or associated tech in the house. I don't want the kids to get into it."
Well, this was a waste of time. "Any reason for the sudden loss of control?"
"Not that I know of, other than it's exceptionally difficult to live with. He's been trying really, really hard," Langstrom says.
If he was trying hard enough, it never would have happened. He failed. But Damian keeps himself on target. "Any locations he's been frequenting lately? There might be a hint there."
"He wanted to investigate a bat species in Louisiana," Langstrom says. "But he never had time to go there."
"Why is he investigating more bat species? Isn't that how he got into this mess?" Damian asks.
Langstrom merely looks incredibly unamused.
Damian tries to recall the interrogation strategies Grayson taught him. He could be more specific. There's a possibility that the male Langstrom frequented places that she was unaware of or didn't realize were relevant.
So, Damian tries again, this time more thoroughly.
.
.
.
The interrogation of Langstrom is dull. Damian has a lot of day-to-day information he's not sure how he'll weave into anything useful, and the children quickly adapted to his presence, changing from fearful or aggressive to inquisitive to bored. The adult Langstrom seems to be generally annoyed throughout the whole ordeal, though. He's almost done with his interrogation when his comms activate.
"Robin, I need you," Gordon says. She must have finally removed him from 'time-out'. "Huntress hasn't moved in a bit and I'm not getting a response from her vocally."
"You can't send Robin after something that took out Huntress – " Grayson begins.
Condescending.
"I need you to do a reconnaissance of the area and report if there's a threat besides Langstrom in the area. If she ran into something else. Do not engage, just report back," Gordon continues.
Damian nods quickly at the Langstroms, hoping they'll get that he's done here, and rushes out to where he parked his bike. The front lawn. He starts it up and says, "Wouldn't it be faster if I dealt with the issue?"
"Going into battle with a real plan is always more efficient, and I understand your training in stealth makes you ideal for a mission such as this," Gordon says.
She's trying to placate him; Damian knows that. "The Other Batman and Batgirl are busy?" he asks.
Gordon doesn't respond to his question, she just says an address.
Damian can't make sense of Gordon. He thought she objected to his status as Robin due to her perceived vision of him as a helpless child, but now she's trying to command him like she tries to command everyone.
And anyway –
"Why is Oracle in charge?" Damian asks Grayson over comms as he starts towards his next objective: Huntress's location. "Shouldn't you be in charge?"
"Are you talking to me?" Grayson asks.
"Robin, stay on the mission," Gordon says. Clearly not wanting her expertise questioned.
"I'm multitasking," Damian says. He does frown though. This is – it's not something he would have been allowed to do in the League. But the only people who outranked him in the League were Ra's, Mother, Dusan, and situationally, Damian's combat instructors or experienced assassins. And none of them ever implied the things that Gordon implied about him.
The streets become more pot-hole-ridden and crappier the closer Damian gets to his objective. His understanding is it's in "the bad part of town". Less funding.
Damian parks his motorcycle in an alley about 500 meters away from his target. You can't sneak up on anyone in a motorcycle.
"Batman found the antidote; she's on her way," Gordon says.
Damian scowls. "Tell her to wait until I get a layout of the place before moving, if having a 'plan' is really so important."
He knows it's petty. He just wants to hear her say that she was underestimating him – or placating Grayson and his worry, which is even worse.
In Damian's alley, he's right between two tall brick buildings. He shoots a grapple gun to the top of one, and retracts it, pulling himself up effortlessly. Then he pauses and scans his surroundings.
It's still day; still not when he's used to being out as Robin. All of the common landmarks – the incandescent signs, light on in the windows of skyscrapers, streetlamps illuminating the road – are gone. From this point of view, the entire city looks different.
Damian takes off, running across the roofs, leaping over the cracks between buildings, until he gets there. He lands on the roof of an old church. The shingles are rough; he has plenty of places to grab. It's very easy to climb over.
He wishes there were a skylight here. It would be easier to do recon from on top of the roof, just looking through a skylight. He attaches one of his manual grapples – the ones you have to toss – to the gutter and starts slowly lowering himself near the side of the building, trying to see a window he can peak through –
Stained glass? Who even needs stained glass windows?! He can barely see anything through the stained glass except for shapes. Two of them. One is big, appears to be Man-Bat, the other is clearly a man holding a gun. Then, Huntress's voice. Damian can't hear all of the words, just that she's talking to Langstrom. Man-Bat. Whatever.
"Someone's about to shoot Langstrom; I'm going in," Damian says over comms. Besides, isn't this one of the situations Grayson said where it was permissible to blow your cover? If someone was about to die?
"Huntress doesn't use guns," Grayson says.
Damian doesn't keep waiting around to see whatever else Grayson wants to add – stalling him no doubt – so he just throws a batarang through the stained glass window, breaking it, and leaps through immediately afterwards. As he hits the ground, he rolls forward and comes back up in a fighting stance.
The scene: A man in a black outfit holding a gun on Man-Bat and Huntress – Huntress has Man-Bat in a full nelson and is trying to hold him back as he hisses.
The man with a gun startles as Damian busts in, Damian runs towards him, preparing to disarm, but hits –
What?
Something threw him back and he landed awkwardly on one of the wooden benches in the place.
Well that's embarrassing. He almost got his ass kicked by something he doesn't even know what is. Maybe he should have scoped the place out first.
Damian's head fuzzes slightly from contact with the bench. When he sits up to see what's going on, the man is holding the gun back on Huntress and Man-Bat.
Huntress says something quietly to Man-Bat, and if he didn't know it was impossible, Damian would swear Langstrom spoke back. At least it didn't come out in the usual bat-shriek.
Then a voice, distinctly not coming from the man in black, saying "Ignore the boy. God is everywhere."
Man-Bat escapes Huntress's grip; gunshots go off but –
Damian looks at the wall behind Huntress and Man-Bat, who mostly got out of the way. The bullet dispersion is all wrong for it to have come from the man in black's gun – it looks as if the attacker were wielding two.
And, just in time, Batman – Cain, Damian supposes – leaps through the hole in the window that he had made not thirty seconds ago. Cain wastes no time, immediately tackling Man-Bat and injecting him with the antidote.
"Forget Man-Bat; we've got a shooter!" Huntress shouts.
Cain snaps her head towards the man in black.
"Not the priest; another one!" Huntress shouts. "He's invisible!"
Cain's head starts slowly moving from one side to the other and Damian wonders if she's listening for him. It's what he would do.
Damian shuts his eyes to block out the visual stimuli, but the place is so noisy and his ears are still ringing from the gunshots and his head is still fuzzy from the impact that he's not sure it's working at all. Better to keep the eyes open and see if the invisible man makes any mistakes.
Damian stays crouched by the benches he was thrown into, ready to make a move if he has to, but still unwilling to reveal that he's conscious. They may require his element of surprise if they can't find the attacker.
And Cain –
There's a bang and she stumbles back only briefly, grabs Huntress and drags her off. A hail of bulletfire just misses them as the two duck behind one of the benches and flatten themselves against the ground for cover.
The man in black – the one Huntress called the priest – is making his way towards Cain and Huntress. Damian will have to do something, as usual. The priest is still wielding a gun, holding it on the two of them, as if they're the enemies here.
"Robin, what's going on?" Grayson says helplessly over comms.
Damian doesn't respond, to not reveal his presence. He just draws a batarang, preparing to disarm the priest.
"What about this one, Lord?" the priest asks. "Do you want them dead, too?"
Crazy old man. Though he isn't old, Damian guesses he's about the same age as Grayson. But he's still talking to no one.
"Do it." A voice. The disembodied one, this time coming from behind the priest. But Damian can't be exactly sure where to throw his batarang –
Better disarm the priest then focus on the invisible one –
"Kill them all – "
But the invisible man doesn't even finish getting the words out. The priest takes his focus off Huntress and Cain, leans back and elbows the invisible man behind him. Blood pops from the invisible man's mouth and Damian takes that as his opportunity to aim his batarang, right at where he saw the blood, throwing it as fast as possible. It embeds in something and there's a scream as the priest hits the invisible man with the butt of his gun and the invisible attacker falls to the down.
"What happened?" Cain asks.
Huntress is just looking, wide-eyed, at the situation. "No idea."
Damian runs up to where the invisible man was. Now that he's unconscious, his suit seems to have deactivated. White, red beard. Damian's never seen him before in his life.
Man-Bat – Langstrom now, Damian supposes – starts getting to his feet. Saying something to Cain and Huntress. Apologizing for having lost control after he saw the invisible man. Damian doesn't really care. Cain puts a hand on Langstrom's shoulder. Her cape lifts as she does, revealing slight scoring on the side of her suit.
Hmm.
When she stumbled, she actually got hit. Her kevlar absorbed it but – Damian's seen her leap around gunfire in patrol before.
Of course. The attacker was invisible. She couldn't anticipate his actions. That's what she was always going on about, right? Knowing. And evidently her knowing is based in the visual spectrum.
"Robin?" Grayson asks, again uselessly.
"The situation's resolved," Damian says. "It was some invisible maniac. Ca – Batman cured Langstrom; Huntress is fine; the civilians are fine."
"And you?"
"Tt. Also fine."
Damian will have to get the whole story from Gordon, when he gets back. He doesn't like going into battle with only half the details – he doesn't like not what's going on period. It's the antithesis of everything he should be doing; being ignorant in enemy territory is inexcusable. Like he thought earlier. He was just letting Grayson tell him too much.
"Oracle's alerted the police to come take him into custody; in the meanwhile, what's the nature of his invisibility? Meta-powers? Magic? Tech?"
Damian kneels down next to the man and checks him for weapons quickly – not much would be more embarrassing than being used as a hostage if the man wakes up suddenly due to insufficiently disarming him. He finds things he wishes he could keep – mostly knives – but they're covered in blood. Probably murder weapons. Definitely evidence. So he can't.
"The nature of his powers is probably technology," Damian says as he checks the suit. "Not alien. Terrestrial."
"The police will want to investigate it, then," Grayson says.
"Tt. We could do it better."
"And we will, if we need to," Grayson says. "But for right now, how about getting home?"
.
.
.
"So, what the hell happened?" is the first thing Damian asks when he and Cain arrive to the Batcave. Huntress even came with them. For some reason. Despite Damian saying she wasn't wanted along, Gordon said it was fine. It's not her Batcave!
Huntress runs up to Gordon and hugs her. Awkward. Damian looks away.
And... Grayson was there. Sitting in the chair in front of the Batcave computer, right next to Gordon. Damian doesn't understand him.
"Hey, Robin," Grayson says, as he stands up and walks over to him. There's no hesitation, no pain in his gait. It's been two weeks. He should be back out there.
Damian clicks his tongue against the top of his teeth.
"How about telling me what just happened?" Damian says again.
Huntress ignores everyone except for Gordon. She just brushes her hair back slightly and says, "You were right."
"Grayson!" Damian says. He figures Grayson must have revealed his secret identity to Huntress at some point, if he's so calm being unmasked in front of her.
… He's not entirely sure what the point of having one is, at the rate this man is going.
Grayson raises his hands up slightly. "I think Huntress and Oracle were debating whether to kill Man-Bat."
"Hey!" Huntress says from near Gordon. "I didn't actually kill him! Doesn't that get me any credit?"
"It should," Damian says, even though he doesn't know Huntress. None of Father's people seem to get the idea that not killing someone who deserves to die might be hard.
"But if I had killed Man-Bat, we wouldn't have found out there was an invisible killer on the loose," Huntress says.
"And killing people is wrong," Cain adds dryly.
Damian doesn't understand Cain's objection to Huntress's argument from utility – it's certainly more convincing than anything else he's heard.
"Well, I guess," Huntress says, but it doesn't really sound like she believes it. Then she continues, "But yeah. That was what caused the issue. That's what made Langstrom transform into Man-Bat – he could only see the killer if he was in Man-Bat form. Otherwise people were just dropping dead for... well, pretty much no reason."
Even in the daylight, the civilians of Gotham weren't safe. Damian can't say he's surprised. It just... doesn't seem fair.
But that's why Mother taught him how to fight since he could stand. Life isn't fair. And her leaving Damian helpless as a civilian – helpless as an infant – would have been unfair to him. She would have been raising him as a future victim of the monsters and scum out there.
Another thing Father's people don't understand.
"Come on, k – Robin," Grayson says. "I'm getting the idea Babs and Huntress want to catch up. You can tell me how your part went down on the ride home."
"Tt. Why bother? You were pestering me the whole time!"
"I don't pester, I instruct," Grayson says, with a slight smile on his face for reasons Damian can't possibly fathom.
"Your instructions are pestering."
"Oh, so I guess you don't want another lesson about analyzing crime scenes next weekend?" Grayson asks.
"Don't even joke about that."
Grayson tries to rub the top of Damian's head quickly and Damian steps out of arm's radius just as quickly.
"So," Damian says once the two of them are in the car Grayson drove over – and ready to go back to the Batbunker. "Once I learn this crime scene analysis, then I should be capable of being Batman."
"Haha, don't even joke about that," Grayson says. And the two of them drive off.