Chapter Ten: Valentine Bears

Blue-Jay had forgone patrolling for the first half of the night in order to finish synthesizing and testing her antidote, making sure that it worked before loading one dose into a syringe gun and slipping a few more into her belt, just in case.

After this was done, then she headed out, but not on patrol, no, she was going to find out how they were going to get the toxin into the air.

The first few hours yielded nothing, for either party. The bat family couldn't find a trace of Blue-Jay, and Blue-Jay couldn't find someone who knew how the toxin was going to be released, hardly any of those she followed even mentioned the rumor that something huge might be going down soon. One thing was for sure, whoever these people were; they were doing everything in their power to keep even rumors from starting that might jeopardize their plans.

Blue-Jay sighed in frustration as she headed for the dock-yards, hoping to get something from there. She knew that she should probably try and find Batman and clue him and the others in on what was going on, but she didn't want to risk exposing either of her parents just yet, that was her personal bust, and her's alone.

No matter what time it was, the Gotham dock-yards were never deserted. The activity that went on around this time wasn't always illegal, only about ninety-nine percent of it was. But tonight, what caught Blue-Jay's attention was the group of men unloading a shipment from one of her fathers' gunrunning rigs.

This in itself was not a shock, she had known that there was a shipment being brought in tonight, that was why she had come to the dock-yards, after all. But what she did find odd was that they were breaking the shipment into two parts. One half of the shipment was going to the normal customers', the other half would be going to a newbie customer, someone going under the name 'The Old One'.

Suddenly, the men carrying one of the unknown crates slipped and dropped it. The lid of the crate was jarred loose and the men cursed before going to get something to seal it up again. When no one was looking, Blue-Jay jumped down from her perch and snuck over to the open box and looked inside. It was full of, of all things, teddy-bears. Bright red teddy-bears.

Footsteps told her that the men were coming back and she had no time to run or hide anywhere but the crate, so she slipped inside and buried herself under the plush bears.

The men secured the top again and then picked up the crate once more. "Hey," one man grunted "Did this thing get heavier?" "Na," said his partner "It's just because we set it down and we've been hauling this stuff all night." The other seemed to accept this and they loaded the crate into what seemed to be a truck, along with the rest of The Old One's shipment.

Once she was secure, Blue-Jay pulled out her flashlight and turned it on. She sized one of the bears and looked it over, she immediately noticed the minuscule nozzles in the bears' glass eyes and realized that the gas would be in the bears and would be released once the furry red creatures had been distributed to the people of Gotham for Valentines Day. She growled; leave it to the corrupt to try to kill thousands on the day of love.

When the truck finally stopped and the crates were unloaded, Blue-Jay cautiously looked through a crack in the wood of the crate. Using her night-vision lenses, she was able to determine that she was in a warehouse. All the lights in the room were shut off and, from what she could see, no one was there, but that didn't mean that there weren't guards or sentries in locations that she couldn't see. Either way, she was pretty sure that this was just a place used for storage, not where they would be filling the bears with the gas.

As quietly as she could, Blue-Jay pried the lid off her crate and slipped out, replacing the lid as she did so. She tucked the bear that she had been examining in the crate into her belt and looked around. There was no one else in the warehouse, it was just for storage, until The Old One had them picked up, whenever that was. But that was why she had placed a tracer in the bottom of the crate while she had been in it.

Keeping to the shadows, Blue-Jay used stacks of other crates to get up to the windows and slipped one carefully open, squeezing out of it and closing it behind her.

Climbing up to the rooftop, she found that she was in the industrial district, near an abandoned toy factory on the shoreline. Following a hunch, Blue-Jay swung over to a window of the factory and looked in. It was empty.

Slipping cautiously in, Blue-Jay jumped down to the floor and looked around. Jackpot. She found a place on the floor by a pile of boxes containing old toy parts where the dust had been disturbed multiple times from something swinging across it like a door, but there was no door, just the blank wall. Or so it seemed.

Looking even closer, Blue-Jay found what she suspected she'd find, the out-line cracks of a secret panel that would swing outwards.

Realizing that the door was likely to have sensors for unwanted visitors, Blue-Jay went back outside and walked around the building until she got to the water. Taking off her cape, she wrapped the bear in it and hid the bundle in a clump of reeds before slipping into the water and swimming over to a large pipe that, she was guessing, would go right under the secret area of the factory.

As she swam up it, Blue-Jay made sure to make as little noise as possible as she passed each grating. Finally, she came to the one she was hoping to find, and looked into the room where they were, sure enough, filling the bears with the toxin.

"We, have received the last shipment?" She couldn't see the speaker, but she knew, without doubt, that it was the man in the green cape; she would never be able to forget that voice. "Yes, sir." "No problems from Batman or the others?" "No sir." "Hm, I do hope he has not lost his touch. Not that it matters, anyway, he will be destroyed along with the rest of Gotham city in two days time." There was a pause before a woman spoke. Blue-Jay guessed that it was the woman that she had seen him with in the old asylum. "Have there been any sightings of her?" Blue-Jay felt a strange sensation go through her but she pushed it aside to analyze later, because the man was speaking again.

"No, there have been no confirmed sightings of Blue-Jay, though I have no doubt that she is out there." He seemed to turn his attention back to the man and away from the woman "And remember, if she turns up, Blue-Jay is to be captured and brought to me, she is not to be harmed any more than necessary, is that understood, and I want her brought directly to me." "Yes, sir." The man and his companions left.

Blue-Jay swam back down the pipe, her head buzzing. What did the old man want with her? Why was Blue-Jay so important to him and the woman, and why had she felt that the woman's voice was, somehow, familiar?

Shaking her head as she reached the end of the pipe, Blue-Jay cleared her mind of those thoughts and questions that were not of immediate importance, and concentrated on her surroundings.

Once sure that the coast was clear, she swam out and headed for the spot where she had first gotten into the water.

Half-way there, however, she ran into trouble.

A guard in a boat came by and she had to duck under water to keep from being spotted. She swam over to a small, low dock and came up under it, looking through a crack in the wood to see the two men look around "Are you sure you saw something?" "I thought I did." "It was probably just a fish." "It was too big to be a fish, it was something else." "What, the loch Ness Monster? Come on, it's the end of the shift, your eyes are playing tricks on you, lets go in." the other man sat nervously back down and Blue-Jay gave a sigh of relief as they sped away.