A Rooftop Conversation

The speedster remembered reaching for Artemis' quiver, hoping he could stop her before she reached her target, then a blur of blue-black fabric and suddenly—smoke.

After, the resulting chaos was hard to explain.

There was smoke everywhere. It invaded Wally's nose and mouth until he was choking, coughing as he abruptly found himself unable to breathe.

He lost sight of his teammates as gray filled his vision, coating the air with an acrid scent.

Fortunately his eyes were protected by his suit's goggles, so at least they weren't becoming irritated by the writhing smog. His throat, on the other hand, was trying to crawl into his stomach.

Wally felt like he was on the verge of passing out when he remembered the oldest Flash trick in the book: cyclone.

Stumbling blindly to his feet, he waved his arms around his head, channeling all his pent-up energy and annoyance into the rapid motion. Lightning wreathed his limbs as they picked up speed, the smoke finally beginning to clear.

He sucked in a breath of semi-clear air, reeling as it flooded his brain.

"Arty?" He gasped out soon as he was able, glancing around for her green suit in the following haze.

She lay on her side; bow askance, eyes unfocused.

"Artemis!" He flashed to her side, bending low and quickly picking her up off the ground, pressing his ear above her heart.

It was beating a little erratically, but that wasn't abnormal after a smoke-bomb attack.

She laboriously pulled in a breath, turning her head up to him with a dazed look, "You…" Her chest rattled under him and her hands frantically felt every inch of his face, searching it for any sign of injury, "are…an absolute…"

"Idiot, I know." The panic in his chest loosened as she shot him a shaky smile, colour slowly returning to her cheeks. She rested her hand on his cheek, pale knuckles stark against his freckled skin, eyes searching for something he couldn't yet put a name to.

They were only a hairsbreadth apart and it sounded like her heart was beating in his chest, when—

"Ahem," A gruff voice cleared to their right and Wally, in his surprise, dropped her.

He could feel his ears going a brilliant shade of scarlet, "She's fine!"

From her new position on the floor, the archer shot him a death glare. "I hate you."

Kaldur—the one who'd interrupted their little…whatever that was—shuffled, looking anywhere but them, "Are you hurt, Kid Flash?"

Wally shook his head. He still felt a little out of it, but it would take more than a measly bomb to knock him out for the count. "I'll be fine. Where's Miss Martian and Superboy?"

"Here," M'gann slipped out of invisibility, shooting each of them a sheepish smile. "I kind of panicked when he threw the bomb."

"Understandable." Came the Kryptonian's deep burr as he stepped out from the gloom, looking completely unruffled.

Wally didn't know how he did it, but the guy never seemed out of order. Was it the alien heritage?

"Did he hurt you?" Artemis stepped over to her female friend, gently feeling around the other woman's neck for any sign of injury. "He didn't nick you in his escape, right?"

"Not that I could tell," The Martian grabbed the archer's hands, shooting the blonde a grateful smile. "I'm alright, but I'm sorry I couldn't do more for all of you."

"Not your fault." Conner added quickly, monosyllabic as always.

"Um, not that we don't appreciate the heart to heart, 'cause trust me, we really do, but," Wally winced at how insensitive he was coming across. "Our vigilante is currently getting away."

"So?" Artemis fixed him with an overly hostile scowl. Obviously she still wasn't over the whole 'dropping' thing. "You're the one with super speed; go chase him."

He blinked once at her, "Oh. That's…fair, I guess." And then he was gone, zipping out of the room before their expressions even had time to change.

Running was everything to Wally. He didn't know how he'd ever survived without it.

He remembered once, years ago, when Artemis had asked if running made everything feel faster, if his thoughts became even more tangled and incoherent.

At the time, Wally hadn't had the words to answer her.

Now, however, as he ran, he knew the opposite was true. With every step taken, his mind would settle; slow. Almost as if he were the one crawling at a snail's pace while the rest of the world passed in an incoherent blur.

He loved it.

That is to say, usually he loved it. Right now it was seriously stressing him out.

While time bent around him in an ill-defined fog, he tried to puzzle out where the vigilante could have possibly gone.

The precinct's basement didn't make sense (where could he possibly escape from down there?), which left every window on the upper two floors as a possible exit.

Meaning, Wally had to check all of them for signs of breakage.

"Become a hero, they said." He flashed down another hallway, zipping from tile to tile as he searched. "It'll be fun, they said."

He was so busy griping that he almost missed it when he actually saw it.

Glass littered the tile, the nightly sounds of the city filtering in through the broken window.

The hero poked his head out, gazing at the pavement far below. There was no way the vigilante had gone that way, unless he had wings. Or mutant-spider powers.

That left one other option. Up.

He swivelled around uncomfortably to look at the roof above, its lip jutting out slightly from the wall.

Maybe this guy in black did have mutant spider powers. There was no way he'd gotten up there. No way could he—

And then Wally saw a black shape silhouetted against the moonless sky, standing on the flat roof.

"This guy has to be some kind of metahuman," The speedster grumbled under his breath as he slowed time around him again, flashing back into the police building.

If he moved fast enough, the vigilante should still be there by the time Wally got up there. Then he could take him down, or just talk to him.

After that display of versatile speed and heightened deadliness down in the commissioner's office, Wally wasn't overly eager about going toe-to-toe with the guy.

He liked his jugular intact, thank you very much.

Earlier that day, the team had entered the department from the roof, so Wally recalled exactly how to get to the top of the building.

Sets of stairs passed in a wild blur under his feet and then the maintenance door was in front of him, shattering on impact as he blew through it at inhuman speeds.

Time snapped back into play, his mind careening out of the speed force a he slid to an abrupt stop.

The vigilante was poised, some kind of weapon (a grappling gun?) aimed at the taller building adjacent the precinct.

At the sound of Wally's none-too graceful entrance, the man swivelled his head around, a glare pulling at his features.

Well, what he assumed was a glare. He couldn't be too sure with the mask and all.

Again, Wally was taken aback by the vigilante's apparent…youthfulness. It sounded rich coming from a defunct hero-post-sidekick still in his early twenties, but it was the truth.

The man wreathed in shadow, standing on the precipice of a three-story building as if it were his natural habitat, couldn't have been older than eighteen. Nineteen, at the most.

The vigilante turned away again, body tensing as he apparently readied himself for an escape.

"Wait!" Wally's frantic voice sounded too loud in his own ears, echoing across the open rooftop.

To his everlasting surprise, the vigilante actually listened. He paused, wrenching his head back around to arch a thick brow at the speedster,

"What the hell do you want, KF?" It was the same oddly light tone, as if they were simply old friends who'd happened to meet up on a suburban rooftop for a quick chat. In the middle of the night. Wearing spandex.

Okay, maybe Wally wasn't the best with analogies; so sue him.

Then the strangeness of the other's sentence caught up with, and the hero blinked. KF?

Had the guy somehow gotten Wally mixed up with another canary yellow speedst—then it hit him. "OH. KF, Kid Flash. I get it, I get it." He shot little finger guns at the dark figure, "I don't like it, but I get it."

"I didn't ask," The man's body flexed again, like he was preparing to make a break for it.

Wally mentally cast about, trying to think of something that would hold him there until the rest of the team could catch up, "Uh, you—that is, what about—" Then his limping mind came up with something. "Aha! Your name!"

The only thing betraying the vigilante's confusion was a slow blink, the white lenses of his mask temporarily flickering out of sight before he seemed to find his tongue again. "My…name."

"Yeah! Yes, that," Wally gestured at the man's ensemble. "It looks like you put a lot of thought into your costume, so don't you want us leaking your vigilante name to the press?"

"Just so we're clear," There was something gratingly familiar about the man's incredulous tone, but Wally couldn't quite place it. "You asked me, a possibly dangerous individual, to stop, so you could ask me my name?"

"Yup," The ginger popped the 'p'. "Except I already know for a fact that you're dangerous." His tone darkened as he remembered the way M'gann's skin had pressed against the blade, the way Artemis' chest had rattled beneath his fingertips.

This man might have ulterior motives that weren't of a sinister nature, but he'd endangered two of the six people Wally cared about most. The speedster wouldn't be forgetting that any time soon.

To his surprise, however, the vigilante actually winced at his words, glancing quickly at his suit's heavy boots before looking at Wally again. "A smoke bomb is hardly dangerous," His voice sounded apathetic, but the strange downward twist of his lips suggested otherwise.

It almost looked like…guilt. Weird.

The speedster cleared his throat, hoping to hear the sound of heavy boots on the stairs behind him. There was nothing; his team wasn't here yet.

Which just meant he'd have to stall for time a little longer. "Sooo, how about you tell me your name? I'm guessing you already know mine, based on the worldwide publicity."

"Nightwing," The man said, eyebrows lifting as if he could hardly believe they were actually having this conversation. "It's Nightwing."

Wally related. He could hardly believe half the stuff that came out of his mouth, too. "Cool, cool, cool, any chance you're going to tell me what you stole?"

Just like that, the emotional walls the vigilante had been slowly letting down—almost so slowly that Wally hadn't noticed—slammed back down. "No."

Then he was raising his weapon-like device again, aiming it at the complex next door.

The speedster resisted the childish urge to curse under his breath. He knew a one-on-one attack wasn't wise when he didn't know the possible extent of the other's powers, but he couldn't just let this guy get away.

So Wally did what Wally did best; overwhelmed him with words.

"Seriously, wait. Just wait. What about your cause?" Wally backtracked quickly when 'Nightwing' cast him a glare so fiery he could feel it despite the man's mask. "Don't you want us to know why you killed the kids and are erasing the evidence? What about your dramatic, villainous monologue? What about that?"

Surprisingly, his word vomit seemed to have an actual effect on the vigilante. The weapon nearly fell out of his grasp, the white slits of his eyes widening into pale half-moons.

"You think I killed those kids?" He sounded horrified, stricken by the very thought. "Is that why you're hear? Your stupid babysitters think I'm some new crime lord?"

Wally tried to withhold his skepticism, but a shadow of it must've shown on his face.

"You really think I did it," The vigilante said more to himself than the speedster.

However, his horror quickly evaporated into anger as gloved fists clenched, the sound of fabric tightening loud enough for Wally across the roof.

The man hissed under his breath. "You're all such idiots."

Wally made out the faint echo of quiet boots on the steps behind him, relief coursing through his entire being as he realized his teammates were with him.

He barely managed to smother a relieved sigh. Thank goodness.

"Hey now," The speedster held up a hand, still stalling as he heard them get into place. He didn't need to turn his head to feel their silent support. "I'm sensing some real hate and hostility here, maybe we should just—"

A geyser of glowing blue water lashed out from Wally's right, followed up quickly by the familiar thwacking sound of an arrow leaving Artemis' quiver.

Surprise briefly overtook the anger clouding the vigilante's expression as he was forced to dodge, clumsily ducking under the torrent of water and tucking into a roll to avoid Artemis' projectile.

"Boy am I glad to see you guys," Wally felt so much as saw them take up ready positions at his side: fists, waterbearers, and bow at the ready.

The black-haired villain—or not villain, Wally was honestly having a hard time figuring it all out—shot back up to his feet and crouched into a ready stance.

The two forces stood at an impasse for less than a second, five versus one, and then the vigilante was recoiling harshly at seemingly nothing.

His voice was sharded glass when he spoke, cutting into each of them, "Will you stop trying to read my mind already? It's never going to work."

At Wally's left, Miss Martian's eyes were glowing an acidic green in the darkness, her lips drawn into a taut frown.

The Martian's eyes narrowed. "Someday it will."

The vigilante just grinned at her, that same chilling smile as before. "I highly doubt that."

"Stay where you are," Aqualad bit out, slapping his waterbearers against the rooftop in a way that was likely meant to be intimidating. It wasn't, but Wally didn't want to burst the Atlantean's bubble. "Under League jurisdiction, I have no choice but to place you under arrest for the—"

"Oh mygosh," Wally couldn't tell for sure, but it looked like 'Nightwing' was rolling his eyes under the mask. "You're more of a broken record than Superman."

"Superman is a fantastic hero!" M'gann called out, quick to defend her fellow alien.

Wally could see the way Conner bit his lip to keep from commenting. Even after all these years, the clone had yet to make up with his source material.

It was a little ridiculous, if you asked Wally. But, seeing as the ginger had his own score of unresolved familial issues, he really couldn't judge.

"Right," The vigilante agreed, voice dripping sarcasm. "Fantastic. I'll be going now—"

"You most certainly will not," Artemis took a step forward, knuckles white against her bow. "You're under arrest."

"Right," He said again, that same lethal dose of you absolute morons sounding in his tone. With his free hand, the man gave them all a clumsy two-fingered salute. Then he smiled, the expression all pale teeth with cold curves, and stepped off the edge of the roof.

(A/N): So, what'd you think of Angry Grayson? Hopefully you liked him, cuz we'll be stuck with him for awhile :/

Thank you to everyone who's read! Especially clairegoodloe, Emily, Guest 1, Guest 2, Guest 3, .2001, and lunacrosser for leaving reviews! Each review encourages me to keep going with this fic so much 333

See ya next week! Stay safe :)

ASL