Part 3

Author's note

I know these normally go at the end where you can happily skip them, but it seems that there has been some confusion as to who Tim is.

So here we will go in succinct form

Batman - Bruce Wayne, Nightwing - Dick Grayson, Robin - Tim Drake

I know you're all thinking Dick Grayson is Robin, he was, he grew up and got replaced and became Nightwing. Any questions, just ask, but it's pretty simple really, and most of the jokes will come from Tim's bad Japanese rather than their secret identities.

So now, on with the show….

The streets of Tokyo were dark and dank. Two dark shadows moved through the alleys holding a large bag that they were carrying for their Yakuza bosses. "what a lovely night for a bit of light crime." One of them said. "The moon's out, not a word of Weiss, the police are busy, why I wish every night was like this."

"I know," The other said, "you can't ask for more than them just giving up their money like that."

"A perfect night," the first said again, "and that dark shadow on that building isn't in any way ominous."

"Dark shadow?" The yakuza said looking up, "that's not a shadow, it's," they dropped the bag and hugged each other, "it's…"

There was a small figure with long spread legs. "In the name of love and justice, I am…"

"Sailor Moon?" One of them said.

"I thought she retired when she got married." The other said. They pulled apart to look at the figure wryly, "she's not wearing a tiara."

"Maybe it's one of the other sailor scouts."

"I'm not Sailor Moon," the figure said in a male voice, "I'm Robin."

The two yakuza looked at each other, then at the small slender figure in the alleyway, "no, not heard of you, hang on." One of them pulled out a small pda and inputted the name. "Robin, you said." He looked up, "okay, let's see." The screen whirred for a moment before beeping to acknowledge an answer. "No, you're not in the list, are you new?"

"Super-hero three years I been." Robin said stepping into the light, he was small and slender in a pair of black tights with red pants pulled over the top that matched his red tunic and he wore a short black cape and a mask over his eyes. There was a golden R emblazoned on his chest. "Fear of America." He stammered out. "Give me." he held out a gauntlet and snatched the PDA, scanning the list. "Here," he said pointing, "I am here." He highlighted the name. "Batman next to." He frowned. "I beat you now."

The two yakuza looked at each other, "well, if you're on the list." They put the bag down, "at least, you're not Weiss."

"Not normal." Robin protested in broken Japanese. "Gotham beat first talk later." He said looking at them like they had sprouted a second head.

"We're agency." He said, "now do you want to beat us up or," he held out both hands with his wrists together, "just take us in."

Robin looked sceptical. Then zip stripped them together. "Who Weiss are?" He said looking at them as he arranged them to be arrested.

"They're the locals." The Yakuza said opening his mouth for the gag. "You're Japanese is very good for a newbie."

"It doesn't show that you learnt it from TV at all." The other said, "nice meeting you."

A second taller figure dropped into the alley way, "hey boy wonder." He said, he was broader, in a skin tight black kevlar suit with a blue dart over his shoulders and chest, a matching one over the bridge of his suit.

"Nightwing." He said in a way that didn't in any way make it sound pretentious.

"Good job, in fact it looks like they surrendered when they saw you." He looked at the two tied yakuza members. "I haven't had a lick of work all night. In fact it's almost as if the underworld is up to something." He said in English.

"You think that they're gathering to stage some kind of hostile take-over?" Robin asked in a low slow voice in perfect English.

"Or they've heard that we're jet-lagged from the flight from Gotham and are giving us an easy night." Nightwing said with an easy smile.

There was a beep, "Nightwing, Robin, report." A low gravelly voice commanded.

"So far we've only run across minor yakuza." Nightwing drawled, "the boy wonder took out two on his own."

"He is a good soldier." Batman said over the radio. The tone suggested that someone else wasn't such a good soldier. "Return to base, we can debrief there." There was a hint of amusement in his voice, "Sailor Moon."

Manx looked at the cctv footage with genuine surprise at the dark shadowy figure revealed. "Persia," she said pushing the intercom, "it's true, Batman is in the city. We will have to open plan JLA."

"Is everything in place for JLA?" He asked, his voice a disembodied entity.

"It will take until morning, sir."

"Then do it, Manx, I trust it will all go to plan, also activate Crashers for random patrol cycles." He seemed to think about it, "do we have enough Kevlar?"

"Yes, sir," she answered, "the shipment from Wayne industries was more than enough for two teams worth of suits. They will be ready for morning, I'll put both teams on high alert then."

"Queen will take the mission of alerting Crashers." Persia informed her, "make sure that Weiss know that they are non lethal, we don't want Batman mistaking them for the enemy." He sounded as if he was thinking something over, "the last thing we want is a problem within Kritiker where our men are mistaken for the villains."

"Yes, sir," she said. "and sir, I have had word that there's been an accident, that Bombay is out of action."

"Nothing serious I trust." He said.

"Just a few broken bones," she said, "perhaps you might want to send him some word." She paused worrying that she might have gone too far. "He is a good soldier, sir, and for once they were not gotten in the line of duty."

"Send the boy some flowers." Persia said.

"Sir," she protested.

"That is enough, Manx." He said.

"As you wish." Manx answered but she didn't seem happy about it at all.

Crawford looked at Farfarello and began to wonder exactly where to start. Shaking his head he looked at him, "just start at the beginning," he said.

"Well," Farfarello said, "the good news is that I didn't kill anyone."

Crawford shook his head and sipped his coffee, although that was good news he had kind of guessed, there had been no burning churches on the radio and no horde of screaming outraged mothers of Tokyo baying for the blood of the white haired gaijin that had met him more than once. "Go on."

"I was in Roppongi," He started, Crawford said nothing, "okay, I was stalking, and I saw," he stopped, "I saw," he stopped again, "I saw." He took a deep breath and emptied the carton of milk that he had in front of him, "I saw Batman."

"Again?" Crawford said, "I thought we spoke about this when we left America, Batman is not real, he is a figment of your mad imagination." He sounded weary, "sometimes I think I should be the one on medication." He said wearily, "Takatori ran over Nagi this morning, I've been back to the hospital three times in two hours, I come home to find that you are pandering to something someone told you in an insane asylum that at some point, and I missed my matinee." His voice was getting more and more steadily irate as he continued, "I don't need this, I am this close to asking Esset to transfer me out of Tokyo." He held his thumb and forefinger close enough that they were almost touching. "Now please explain to me why the apartment is covered in pilling, why Nagi's Mr Fluffy Bunny has been dismembered and why you have his googly eye stuck to your face?" True to Crawford's word there was a small plastic bubble with a black bead in it stuck to Farfarello's eye patch.

"Batman's real." Farfarello protested. "Everyone at Arkham said so, and because I was in Arkham he'll know me." He sounded almost frantic, "so I thought I'd go in disguise."

"And Mr Fluffy Bunny was a sacrifice to some dark demon to hide your identity from the big scary man-bat."

"Not Manbat," Farfarello protested. "Batman. They're different people."

Crawford crossed his arms on the table and then lowered his head unto them.

Schuldig was grinning like a loon when he came in, "you will never guess what I saw?"

"Batman?" Crawford grumbled into his arms.

"No," Schuldig said, "you spend too much time with Farfarello." He gave him a pitying look, "maybe you and Abyssinian should date more?"

Crawford raised his head and his magnum at the same time, "I am not dating Abyssinian." He snarled, "there is no Batman, and why have neither of you been to see Nagi in the hospital, let alone the heinous murder of Mr Fluffy Bunny."

"Farfarello?" Schuldig said, "break out the valium and the scotch." He and the Irish maniac flicked their eyes between each other. "I think Crawford's cracked." He lifted Crawford's mobile, "I'm calling Abyssinian."

Chopin drifted through the hospital ward waking Aya from an uncomfortable sleep, rubbing his eyes he flicked open his cell, "Fujimiya desu." He spoke quietly so he didn't wake the two chibis he was watching over. The calpol had pretty much knocked Nagi out cold and with only Aya to speak to Omi came to the conclusion it would be better if he slept as well. He had dimmed the light, using the light from the street light through the window to read his book before the soothing smell of antibiotics and detergent, a smell he associated with his sister, lulled him to sleep.

"Hiya, Ran." A male baritone said.

"Yuushi?" He asked. "Is that you? Do you have any idea what time it is?" He squinted at his watch trying to make the hands stop wobbling long enough that he could see the time.

"Yeah, it's ten to twelve, I figured you'd be up, but I'm sorry if I woke you." Yuushi sounded cheerful, which was not totally unlike him.

"I'm at the hospital." Aya stammered, "there was an accident."

"Are you okay, is everyone okay, we can come see you if you want. I mean the whole team is up anyway, we've just had the strangest briefing from Queen and well, we hardly ever talk anymore." He was rambling on, Aya answered him with a grunt, "so, who is it, not your sister was it?"

"No, it was Omi," Aya managed. "He was run over by," his tone shifted down and became much darker and more ominous "Takatori." Then his tone went back to sleepy and conversational. "So we're at the Magic Bus now. I'm sure he'll be glad to see you if you wanted to come down."

"Maybe in the morning, as you said, it's a little late." Yuushi said over the phone, "Manx will come to see you in the morning as well."

"Why?" Aya asked.

"They've started plan JLA." Yuushi said excitedly, "do you know what that means?" Yuushi hardly ever got excited like this, he was passionate but at the moment it sounded like he might burst. "We have a genuine, perfectly legitimate, one hundred percent bona fide super hero in Tokyo, a famous one, an American one. We've been given costumes and code names and all sorts of things."

"You have code names and costumes." Aya said patiently.

"Yeah, but now we have super hero code names and costumes made out of kevlar." He sounded like a kid in a candy shop, "and you have no idea how good it makes my ass look, I mean it's not a patch on Batman, but…"

"Pardon?" Aya interrupted.

"What?" Caught off guard Yuushi had lost his stream of thought and forgotten what he was talking about.

"You said Batman." Aya said patiently. "I thought he was a myth, something they made up to scare American petty criminals."

"Queen had footage of him breaking up an attack, wow, he was like all feet and snapping cape and pointy cowl ears, and well," he stopped for breath, "I have never seen anyone beat up petty criminals like that, I mean it was like poetry in motion, and he only used these frisbee things at the start, and there was this other group of yakuza in Harajuku that said that they got zip-stripped by Sailor Moon but…"

"Pardon." Aya interrupted again.

"Well, it wasn't Sailor Moon but some boy pretending to be her, I mean no one's heard from her in ten years or so, well since she got married, I hear she has a kid now, anyway, Kritiker's giving us full body armour, and we're to go on random patrol and…"

"Yuushi." Ran interrupted.

"Yes, Ran."

"It's getting late and I don't have a lot of charge, how about you call around the hospital in the morning and we can discuss this like adults over cups of tea and breakfast."

After a pained and uncomfortable silence Yuushi spoke up again, "okay, I'll be around to see Omi in the morning, around nine or so, and Ran," Aya could hear his smile down the phone, "I'll bring my car so we can take him home, nothing against your precious wheels, but if Omi's banged up bad enough that they are keeping him overnight there might be more room in my car than yours."

"Thanks, Yuushi. You're a true friend." Although it sounded stilted it was clear that it meant a lot to Yuushi to be told that. In their time through Crashers he and Yuushi had fought like cats and dogs, but nevertheless he knew that Yuushi was a true friend regardless. "I'll see you in the morning and you can tell me all about your new costume, Oyasumi, Yuushi."

"Oyasumi, Ran."