I still don't own any of the characters.
Thanks to SamIAm4 for all the help!
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"Hey, Dinah," Christina said, standing in the doorway. "Thanks again for-"
"Rusty saw one of his friends kidnapped," Dinah said quickly. "Barbara's dad is the police commissioner, you can call him. Do you have a piece of paper? I know the phone number by heart."
"Okay..." Christina said slowly. She shook her head several times as if to clear it. "Wait. What?"
Dinah sighed heavily and stomped one foot. She didn't have time for this! She had used her comms to call Barbara at the clocktower, thankfully having the presence of mind to hastily grab her cell phone out of her purse. Barbara had told her what to tell Christina and had contacted Helena working at the Dark Horse, so all three of them could discuss what to do.
:: I still think I should tell Leonard there was a family emergency,:: Helena insisted for the millionth time.
:: We don't even know if there's anything you can do, yet,:: Barbara said impatiently. :: Stay there. Until we have something concrete to work with, it's just as well for you to stay where you are.::
Dinah was beginning to understand why Helena went off comms so often; it was hard listening to so many people at once. If she wasn't afraid of Barbara's reaction, she probably would have turned her comm off while she talked to Christina.
"Rusty saw a strange man come up to one of his friends and say that his mom was at the doctor's," she explained hurriedly. "I thought that sounded strange, so I asked Barbara, and she said that the kid is missing, so you need to call the police and have Rusty tell them what happened and give a description and all that stuff. Give me a piece of paper and I'll write down the number for you to call that goes straight to Barbara's dad. Tell the secretary that it's about his daughter, and then tell him that Barbara told you to call. He'll listen."
"Rusty, did you see one of your friends go with a stranger?" Christina asked, looking at her younger brother intently.
The little boy nodded, disinterested. "Can I go play now?"
"Yeah, go on upstairs," Christina said. "But later, you're gonna have to tell some people about it, okay?"
Rusty shrugged. "Okay," he said, going into the house.
"Come on in," Christina said, holding the door open wide. As Dinah came in, she asked, "Who's Barbara, again?"
"Ms. Gordon."
"Oh, yeah!" Christina said, slapping her forehead. She jogged into the other room and came back with a pad of paper and a pen. She handed both to Dinah and then said, "Okay. I call the number and I'll get a secretary. I tell the secretary that I need to speak..."
"To Commissioner Gordon," Dinah supplied, writing the number Barbara was giving her over her earrings. "You tell the secretary that it's about his daughter, and she'll put you through. But then you tell him that Barbara told you to call and tell them about Rusty."
Talking to Christina made Dinah lose track of the number she was writing. She panicked for a second, and then said, "Um... let's see, the number is..."
Barbara heard her and quickly repeated the number over comms.
"Oh, that's right," Dinah said, writing the rest of it. "I almost forgot it there for a second."
:: You really should memorize it,:: she heard Barbara say. :: You've already used it a few times, and someday you may need to know it.::
"You have the number memorized?" Christina asked skeptically, leaning forward to see an area code, number, and extension.
Dinah raised an eyebrow, a gesture meant more for her guardian than the person in front of her. "Yeah, hard to believe, isn't it? It's not like I'll ever need to call it."
:: Hey, I heard that. No using the conversation with a person in the field as a passive-aggressive retort.::
"Well, it sure came in handy now," Christina commented innocently.
The sound of Barbara's laughter came to Dinah through her comms.
The teen sneezed, and Christina thought it sounded strangely like the word 'hypocrite'.
"Bless you," she said.
:: Passive-agressive,:: Helena sneezed.
"Thanks," Dinah said. "I've gotta get going. Barbara's waiting for me."
"Yeah, no problem," Christina said, walking back to the door with her.
"You'll call?" Dinah asked, going out the door.
"As soon as you leave," Christina promised.
Dinah waved as she walked away and dug her cell phone back out of her purse so she could speak freely with her guardian without looking like she was crazy.
"What do I do now, Barbara?" she asked, making her to the clocktower.
:: Did the boy see any distinguishing marks?:: her guardian asked. :: Any tattoos? Did he happen to get a look at the car?::
Dinah thought back to her vision. "It was red. He's not old enough to have remembered the make or model or anything. It was fairly small... I think it was four door. He did see the license plate, though."
:: Wait,:: the teen heard Helena's voice, :: he didn't notice what kind of car it was, but he remembered the license plate number?::
"He thought it said... what's that cat that's always trying to eat Tweetie?"
:: Sylvester,:: Helena supplied.
"That's it," Dinah confirmed, waiting impatiently for the traffic at the corner of the block to thin.
:: That's too many letters. Maybe the car had a European license number…:: Barbara speculated.
"I don't know," the teen said skeptically. "Rusty's six. Maybe he just can't spell very well."
:: Good thinking,:: Barbara said quickly, making Dinah smile in pride. :: I'll try different combinations.::
:: Now can I-:: Helena started.
:: No! Finish your shift.::
:: You're NO fun, Gordon.::
:: And you're no gendarme, Kyle. You need a job that pays, so save the family emergency for when it'll make a difference.::
:: You know the problem with your comebacks? No one ever has any idea what they mean.::
:: And the fact that I have to explain whether or not you've been insulted just eats you up, doesn't it?::
"Anything yet?" Dinah asked, crossing the street to get to the clocktower.
:: Luckily, most of the license plates combinations that could spell 'Sylvester' are out of state. I've got a couple of hits in the New Gotham area… only one with a red car. Was the kidnapper a Caucasian male with brown hair and eyes?::
"Yeah!" Dinah said, stopping in mid-stride right outside the door at the bottom of the tower. "Do you have an address?"
::2550 Capitol Ave.::
That was only a few blocks away. Without giving it any conscious thought, Dinah took off at a run, her shopping bag forgotten on the ground.
In the clocktower, Barbara saw Dinah's signal start moving towards the address. "Dinah, wait! You can't be sure he's the kidnapper! Get back here! I don't want you going in there alone!"
There was an audible click and the marker faded from the screen.
For a moment, Barbara just sat there staring at the screen, stunned. Then she opened her mouth and a stream of creative explicative came gushing out, ranging from Elizabethan English to French to Portuguese to good old American street slang.
:: NOW, Oracle?:: Helena asked.
"Now, Huntress," Barbara confirmed, her hands clenched tight into fists. "And I don't care if you have to take her by the heels and drag her, get Dinah and bring her home."
:: On it.::
"Problems, Miss Barbara?" Alfred asked from behind her.
Startled, Barbara looked behind her and then turned her chair around to face him. "Problems? Dinah used the memory of a six year old to generate random patterns of letters that could represent a cartoon character as reasonable grounds to break into a home... alone and with her comms off. There's no part of this situation that isn't a problem, Alfred."
"You're worried about her."
Barbara sighed and rubbed her temples. "Of course, I'm worried. She isn't in the right frame of mind emotionally to be doing the job, at all, much less confronting someone she equates with her mother's murderer. And, to make matters worse, the odds are low that this man is the abductor."
As if on cue, Dinah's voice filtered through the communication system. :: Oracle, Huntress… it's him. I'm going in.::
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Okay, so Dinah had definitely come up with better plans. She knew, as she ran down the street, that Barbara would be angry with her… maybe so angry that she would never forgive her. She figured that she would probably get kicked out over her choice. A family sized hole deep inside of her was screaming at her to just turn around and go back to the tower. All she had to do was turn on her comms and say that it had been an accident.
As she thought about being turned out again, it was all she could do to keep herself from quaking and trembling with fear. But as she thought about what that man was doing to those kids…
She ran faster.
As she got to Capitol Ave, she didn't even need to check addresses to know she was at the right house. The small red car from her vision was parked in a driveway and called to her from a full block away. As she got closer, she saw a license plate that only a six year old mind (or, apparently, the most brilliant one in New Gotham) could possibly think spelled "Sylvester". There was a small blue backpack in the front seat with the latest incarnation of Power Rangers on the front.
Adrenaline fueled the fury and the fear, but she still had the presence of mind to check the backpack. Her instincts said that this was the car and a six year old kid was in the house, but she had to be sure. What if some father and son were in the house, and some poor kid watched her beat up his dad?
The car door was locked, but her telekinesis tended to kick in when she felt threatened, so she had no difficulty popping up the lock from the inside of the car. Hastily, she threw open the door and tore open the backpack, searching for anything with a name.
She almost burst into tears when she found a picture of three stick figures: two large ones and a smaller one. One of the large ones wore pants and the other one a dress. A mom and dad and little kid... a perfect little family, one which Dinah had never been able to draw. Proudly printed at the bottom of the page in big, uneven letters was the name "Will."
In a second, the unbearable despair gave way to fury. No one had the right to take a child away from a happy home.
Reaching up to turn her comm back on, Dinah gritted out between tightly clenched teeth, "Oracle, Huntress… it's him. I'm going in."
:: Dinah, stop RIGHT THERE!:: Barbara yelled. At any other time, her tone would have sent shivers running down the teen's spine. :: Huntress is on her way, and you don't know for certain-::
"Will's backpack is in the car," the blond said, her voice hard and low. "He's in there."
Dinah took long strides towards the door, not caring about a response. Somewhere in that house, a little kid could be getting hurt and she had no illusions about what was happening. The windows in the front wall of the house began to rattle and shake from her overwhelming fury. Before she even reached the front steps, the glass in the front windows shattered inward. She didn't care and gave no effort to rein in her telekinesis.
"What the hell?!" a decidedly masculine voice called from inside.
Dinah heard hurried footsteps come towards the door and waited patiently. For a moment, she felt oddly calm despite the angry tears running down both cheeks. The door swung open, and she was greeted by the man Rusty had seen take his friend.
"Who the…" the man started angrily, his average face contorted in open anger and annoyance. He quickly lost steam, stopped dead in his tracks by something he saw in the teen's eyes.
Dinah had planned what she would say if she ever had the chance to confront the man, imagining herself saving someone in the nick of time with a witty retort to add insult to serious injury. But when she really saw him standing there in front of her, all she could do was open her mouth and scream.
Her telekinesis threw the man backwards, flying some ten feet before hitting a wall. His back and then his head gave a sickening, wet, thwack as it slammed into the hard surface. He slid down the wall onto the floor, his limbs moving sluggishly and unintelligently.
Dinah ran the short distance and was standing over him as he got to his elbows and knees. He gave a mighty push upward, only to have her slam a fist in his face. He fell back to the floor, knocked senseless, and remained there for a few seconds. It was only instinct that caused him to try to rise a second time, conscious thought having ceased long before.
"How dare you?!" Dinah yelled down at him, her voice high and piercing. "He was happy, you bastard! He was happy with a family who loved him and you ruined his life! You took him away! Did you ever think what you were doing?!"
Dinah watched and waited for him to get on his hands and knees before delivering a swift kick to his head. This time his head snapped backwards and into the wall, before he hit the ground. Blood stained the wall where the man's head had slammed into it. He stayed on the floor, unmoving.
Dinah didn't care. She fell to her knees and used all of her weight to plant another punch on the man's face. Caught between her fist and the floor, the man's head didn't move with the force of the blow. So she punched him again, and then again.
"He could have been happy! Don't you understand that? He was finally with a family that loved him and you took him away. It wasn't your right! You hear that?! You had no RIGHT!"
She continued hitting him as hard as she could, pounding the lump of flesh that used to be his face. All she saw was blood and darkness, and she raged against it with every fiber of her being.
Suddenly, she felt a presence behind her and arms wrapped around her, pulling her away.
"Dinah, stop!"
"No!" she cried, flailing unsuccessfully. "He ruined it! Now he'll never be happy!"
"Who will never be happy?" she heard Helena ask.
"He took him from his family!" Dinah insisted, not really hearing what her friend was saying and pissed off that she was holding her back. "He's NOT his father! He should have stayed away!"
:: Huntress, you need to get the both of you out of there!:: Dinah heard distantly through her comm. :: Neighbors have called the police, reporting the sound of a struggle. They'll be there in under two minutes.::
"Can you come before they get here, Oracle? Dinah's gone nuts!"
She used all of her weight to try to surge forward, but Helena went with the momentum and pushed her to the ground. She pushed back with her elbow, but the brunette only grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back to keep her from lashing out again. On the ground with one arm painfully held behind her and Helena's weight keeping her down, Dinah struggled to bring her telekinesis to bear but her energy was draining.
"No!" she cried out. "Stop! Don't take me away!"
Her mother was pulling her into the darkness, and the world was spinning away from her. With every ounce of strength she had left, Dinah gave one last mighty shove both with her muscles and her telekinesis, no longer aware of whom she was fighting.
And then the darkness won.
