Chapter Eleven: Alone
Blue-Jay hauled herself out of the water and quickly collected her cape and the bear before heading back for the main part of Gotham.
Stopping back at the Roost to change and gather a few things, Blue-Jay wondered how the Bat family would react to all that she'd found. Well, she'd cross that bridge when she came to it, right now the main issue was to get everything to them and the police.
She swung in for a landing on top of police headquarters, and climbed down the side of the building to the commissioners' window. The window was already open so she slipped inside without a sound.
Batman, Nightwing and Batgirl were already there, only Robin was missing. The boy wonder arrived a few moments later, not noticing the girl just inches away from him in the shadows.
"Anything?" Batman asked his sidekick, "Nothing, not one trace of Blue-Jay and I've been looking all night. I'm guessing no one else saw her?" they shook their heads negative. "Where could she be?" Gordon asked "If it was something as big as you suspect, she should have come to you by now, shouldn't she?" Batman shook his head.
"We know next to nothing about Blue-Jay, not who she is, not her motive, not where she came from. None of us could begin to guess where to look for her. We've never been able to keep her in sight long enough to find her patrol routs." When he said this it sounded like he was in pain, but who could blame him? A fifteen year old girl eluding the world's greatest detective had to be aggravating to say the least. Blue-Jay had to fight back a giggle, they were all trying to track her down and here she was in the same room with them and they hadn't seen her yet.
Gordon rubbed his face with both hands, and Batman seemed to be thinking hard. "We could run another sweep, we have time for at least one more before dawn, then we'll be looking in daylight." He said after a moment of silence.
At this point, Blue-Jay noticed that Batgirl was staring at her, eyes wide, mouth slightly open, and shock evident on what features one could see while she was wearing her mask.
"I guess we don't have much of a choice." Nightwing said and Robin groaned, "My feet are killing me and I'm tired." "We, don't know how long we have until they release the gas, Robin," Batman said, sternly "So you'll have to deal-" "How long have you been sitting there?" Batgirl had found her voice and they turned to look at her. She was looking strait at Blue-Jay, who they now noticed was perched on top of one of the filing cabinets, just watching them, her lips twitching in amusement. "About ten minuets give or take thirty seconds or so."
"Why didn't you come out!" Batman demanded, obviously not pleased that she could pull off his trademark trick so easily, and on him of all people. "I wanted to see how long it would take for someone to notice me." She smirked and he growled "But onto more important matters, we have two days before they release the gas." "Their doing it on Valentines Day?" Batgirl asked, aghast, Blue-Jay nodded. "And what's worse, they'll be using these." She tossed the bear to Batman, who raised an eyebrow, but then noticed the eyes. "Weaponized teddy bears, what is this world coming to?" Gordon asked no one in particular.
"The drug itself was first imported into Gotham over a year and a half ago and they've been having weekly shipments ever since, the person who's getting it goes by the name Jaser, meaning fearless. They manufactured the gas in the asylum that was used when the city was first built, below a shipping warehouse, that's where they've been doing their testing as well." She couldn't hold back a shudder and the others all got a nasty feeling as she continued.
"The bears were brought in with other guns being run into Gotham, but they're being ordered by a newbie customer, calling himself The Old One. I am sure that The Old One and Jaser are the same man. They got the last shipment of bears tonight, that's where I got that one." She nodded to the bear that Batman was still holding. "The bears are being stored in a warehouse in the industrial district, next to an abandoned factory on the coast. The factory is where they are filling the bears with the toxin."
Silence fell and Blue-Jay became all too aware that they were all staring at her. "What?" "How do you know all this?" Batman asked, suspiciously, eyes narrowed. "I've been doing research and poking around." He looked skeptical and she sighed "Fine, you want proof? Here." She dropped her photos and the disk with the video on it onto the commissioners' desk.
After looking over the photos, Batman put the disk into the player and the video of the asylum came up. No one said anything while the tape showed the workers, but then the man in the green cape came onto the seen and Batman and Nightwing shot bolt upright. "Ra's Al Ghul." Batman said darkly and turned to the commissioner "This is genuine alright, there is no other way she could have gotten this." They had reached the part where they were performing the experiment and just moments before the gas was released Blue-Jay covered her ears and closed her eyes.
After a few minuets, someone tugged on her arm and she looked up to see Batgirl, her face pale. Getting the point, Blue-Jay uncovered her ears and sat up straight. Everyone else in the room looked shaken and perhaps a little ill, but then again, who could blame them.
"Where was this?" Batman asked "In the original asylum, like I said, below a shipping warehouse." "There was no asylum before Arkham!" "Yes there was, it wasn't included in the city plans or records because it was privately owned when it was first built and still is, though I believe the family that owns it has, for the most part, forgotten that it existed over the past two-hundred years or so, only one person that I know of is aware of it and she was the one who told me about it before I went down there." "Then how did Ra's Al Ghul find it?" "From what I've heard, he was around when they built Gotham, so why wouldn't he know its location and how to get inside?" Batman scowled at her.
"You said that the bears came in with a shipment of guns," Nightwing said "How did you know there would be a shipment coming in tonight, we didn't hear anything about a shipment of anything coming in?" "The same way you find out about this sort of stuff!" Blue-Jay was starting to get annoyed. Couldn't this stuff wait until after they had saved Gotham?
"Who owns the old asylum," Batman asked suddenly "Who told you about it?" "Isn't that a little off topic? Let's stick with the main issue, you can try and grill me for my sources later!" Batman glowered at her. "Fine then," she said losing her patients "We have forty-eight hours to stop Gotham from being destroyed. I was hoping that you would set aside you ego for a little while to work with me on this one but I guess I was wrong." She snatched up the photos and went to the window-sill "And seeing as you have no idea where any of this stuff is, it looks like I'll have to pull this one off on my own. Later." And she was off before anyone could stop her.
Blue-Jay wiped her eyes as she reentered the roost, tears of anger and frustration welling up as hard as she tried to force them back.
Would it have killed him to just let it go and accept that she was just as good as he was at this, as embarrassing as it might be, if would just pay a little more attention to the media, he might realize that the public was praising him just as much as they were her, only she seemed up on him because she had only just turned up a few months ago.
Blue-Jay tried to work on the computer but couldn't, it was like something was blocking her mind and keeping her from thinking clearly. She stood up and walked over to a darker, more hazardous part of the Roost, where the rocks became jagged and slippery from the damp.
Suddenly, Blue-Jay pulled off her mask, leaned against the wall and slid to the stone floor, tears coursing down her face. Pulling her knees up to her chest she buried her face in them and sobbed.
Blue-Jay, R.J., either one, it didn't matter, but both with and without the mask she was still one thing that couldn't be denied, she was just a child.
She was tough and could handle herself, she could take care of herself, something that most people didn't learn how to do until their twenties at the earliest. But she was still a fifteen-year-old girl in the end. Robin was also fifteen but he had an advantage over her, an advantage that she had wanted for her entire life but had never had: he had a family. He had a father that would help him make the better choices, who would guide him when he got lost; he had a brother to look out for him and a sister to tease him. Blue-Jay had none of that. She was alone.
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