Gifts From the Sea, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl

Batfam Bingo 2019: AU: Zoo

Chapter 55 - Rescue Mission (part 2) [rough draft 2]

Raven was too weak to open a shadow portal, so the Titans started a determined march toward the nearest exit, directed by Cyborg as he consulted maps of the building that he'd downloaded while in H.I.V.E.'s computer system.

They didn't manage to make a clean getaway. They ran into a couple of startled H.I.V.E. metas by accident, but those fights didn't last long. The problem came when they rounded a corner and found a large group waiting for them, powers primed and ready to go. A second group ran up almost immediately to hem them in.

A fight erupted. The wounded Titans were pushed to the center as Aqualad used the water he'd been magically towing along to form a sort of shield. Raven tried to help, but Bruce yanked her back. "Save your strength," he ordered. "We need an escape route more than we need a shield right now." Raven nodded and settled back to focus inward.

Wonder Girl and Starfire, meanwhile, were holding the line on either side of the Titans, using lasso and starbolts to attack and punching away anyone who got too close. Speedy was rapidly using up his arrows and Kid Flash was zooming around too quickly to decipher his actions. Goliath roared and hunched protectively over Dick, Cyborg, and Raven.

Raptor grabbed Cyborg's arms out of the bag of limbs. "How do you turn these into firearms?" he demanded.

"I don't know how to do it when they're not attached to me!" Nevertheless, Cyborg made his best guess, and Raptor and Robin were soon shooting energy beams into the mass of enemies.

"Ow! Watch it!" Wonder Girl roared when she was hit by friendly fire.

"Sorry! I'm sorry!" Robin yelled back, his voice high-pitched with panic.

At the beginning of the fight, Bruce had instinctively grabbed Tim and tucked him into the safety of the backpack. He could feel the octo-mer writhing in protest, and it was rather distracting as he tried to make a plan. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a green insect drop down near his ear and say in a voice barely discernible over the din, "There's a pool one floor down that's directly below us. I think we should-"

Bruce never found out what Beast Boy's plan was. During the fight, numerous holes had been blasted in the walls, floor, and ceiling; at that moment, with a loud, creaking groan, the floor gave way entirely, dumping most of the non-flying combatants to the floor below.

On pure instinct, Bruce had shot his grappling line through one of the holes in the ceiling. As he was yanked upward, he looked down in a helpless counter-urge to save his children. He got a chaotic glimpse of the flying Titans trying to grab hold of the non-fliers and of Kid Flash zipping through the air, using enemies and debris like stepping stones.

The next moment, however, Bruce was on the upper floor and trying to disengage his grapple line before he crashed into the ceiling. He had no time to spare even another glance downward, because he wasn't alone. A surprised-looking teenager gaped at his sudden entrance, then glared and lifted an arm as Bruce dropped to the floor. Bruce immediately had to dodge a stream of fire that shot out of the teen's hand, deeply grateful for the fireproof cape protecting Tim.

He swept under the blaze, holding the edge of his cape to shield the uncovered part of his face, and popped up to strike the boy unconscious. The teen, apparently unused to fighting someone who wasn't immediately incapacitated by the fire, went down with one hit and didn't get up again.

Bruce turned his attention to the mess below but hesitated before descending. The Titans were acting like they'd lost their minds, screaming in panic and lashing out at nothing, weak and seemingly unaware of the H.I.V.E. teens dragging them out of the pool or air. Bruce was afraid of getting caught in whatever was causing the hallucinations, so he crouched helplessly, eyes darting around for some clue about what to do next.

"Good work," said a tall, calm-looking man wearing some kind of ridiculous regalia. "Bring the Titans to the arena and then take up your posts throughout the city. The time has come: tonight is the Night of Darkness!"

"The Night of Darkness!" someone echoed, and then excited voices started to chatter.

"It's tonight?! For real?! Awesome!"

"Finally finally finally finally...!"

They were leaving. Bruce couldn't follow directly without revealing himself, so he expelled a frustrated breath and set off down the corridor, determined to find his own way.

o.o.o

By the time he tracked down 'the arena,' the H.I.V.E. teens had left for their assignments. The large room contained little more than a dais where the H.I.V.E. leader stood and the Titans, still whimpering and sobbing from nightmarish hallucinations, hung from restraints. The only other person present was a teenage girl who had both hands pointed at the Titans, presumably the cause of their mental distress.

A camera was set up and the H.I.V.E. leader faced it from the dais, flanked by two makeshift torches that were the only illumination in the dark room. It seemed no one had managed to get the power back on.

"Citizens of San Francisco," the H.I.V.E. leader intoned, "my name is Brother Blood. Your pitiful, oblivious lives are over; prepare to be reborn. For too long have the gifted been forced to hide in shadows, while those who take pride in 'normalcy' go about their-"

There was a loud clattering as Bruce's grappling hook seized one of the torches and yanked it to the floor, nearly halving the already poor lighting. Brother Blood and the hallucination girl had just whirled to look wildly around the room when Bruce spoke, throwing his voice to make it sound like it was coming from somewhere behind the H.I.V.E. leader. "Blood."

Blood whipped around, yanking a strangely-shaped handgun into view, and shot an energy beam in the direction the voice appeared to be coming from. Of course, it hit nothing but empty wall.

Now hanging from the ceiling, invisible in the darkness, Bruce intoned in the same deep, gravelly voice, "You have brought harm to innocent children." As he spoke, he felt Tim slipping out of his backpack. He groped after the mer, but he was distracted and Tim was evasive; his fingers closed on empty air. "You have angered me, Blood," Bruce continued, throwing his voice to a different location but careful to keep it away from the Titans, lest they be caught in the line of fire.

"Get him!" Blood shouted at the hallucination girl. She flung her hands toward the sound of Bruce's voice, but of course hit nothing.

"I am coming for you." Bruce threw one of his shuriken. It hit the hand Blood was holding his gun with, prompting a shout of fury and pain. Blood lunged at the camera, perhaps in an attempt to turn it off. Before he could reach it, Bruce hit Blood's other hand with another shuriken, then dropped a short-range explosive near the gun on the floor.

As Blood shied away from the blast and then ran to take shelter in a corner, Bruce dropped down behind the hallucination girl, flaring his cape like wings. He yanked both her arms behind her back and slapped down some kind of rapidly-expanding foam. The foam quickly hardened, binding her hands behind her and hopefully blocking her powers. "Enough." She had time to shriek before Bruce seized her and rendered her unconscious. Aware of how he probably looked in the dim, flickering light, he deliberately positioned himself like a vampire preying on its victim.

Once the girl was out, he laid her on the floor and then stalked toward Blood, who was clearly panicking. "What are you?! Begone, demon! Once my servants arrive, I will-!"

He was cut off by the eldritch creature that descended on him, sealing his mouth shut with a long, rubbery limb and using four more to seize his flailing arms.

Tim wore a pair of suction gloves, which he had apparently used in tandem with his tentacles to climb the walls. He gazed impassively down at his victim, who was writhing in terror, high-pitched screams of panic muffled by the tentacle over his mouth and nose. Blood likely had no idea he'd been seized by an octo-mer; the sensation of being unexpectedly held fast in the dark and suffocated by tentacles must have been bone-chilling.

The man's eyes rolled back in his head and he started to fall. Bruce lurched forward a couple of steps, worried about Tim getting crushed, but the boy slapped his suction-gloved hands and sucker-covered tentacles to the wall and clung easily. He looked down at his unconscious victim, then at Bruce. His mouth stretched in a deliberate smile.

"Good job," Bruce signed. He turned toward the Titans.

They were all staring at him (except Dick, who seemed to be unconscious by now). Some of them had gotten free and were making feeble attempts to free the others, but were clearly distracted by Bruce.

"Wow," Beast Boy murmured. "That was cool. Really scary, but cool."

"Let's get out of here," Bruce said, retrieving Tim from the wall.

As the kids rallied and made more decisive efforts to get free, Bruce tuned his comm to the Justice League's frequency. "League, this is B. There's an organization called H.I.V.E. in San Francisco that is apparently making a move to-"

"We saw the broadcast, Bruce- B," Superman said. "Your news alert system worked. I'm actually in San Francisco right now, rounding up Brother Blood's agents. Or, kids; they're so young, they have to have been brainwashed... Anyway, the rest of the League is on their way to help. How are the Titans?"

"I'll take care of them. Just handle Blood's mess for me, please. I have other things to do tonight." Bruce signed off and strode over to the Titans. As soon as all of them were free, Raven took a deep breath and then opened a shadow portal. "Hurry," she said. They all stepped through it and into their living room at the Tower, safe at last.

o.o.o

The kids were more or less all right. Dick felt like crap for a day or two, but the drug eventually worked itself out of his system, leaving him no worse for wear. "No, he didn't touch me like that," he said, to Bruce's relief - apparently Deathstroke had been satisfied with a few mind games before departing, and aside from the effects of the drug, Dick's distress had been purely psychological.

Damian had sustained some injuries, but nothing he wouldn't fully recover from. (It broke Bruce's heart to hear him declare impatiently that he'd suffered far worse in the past and didn't understand everyone's concern now.)

Wally had fully healed by the time they arrived home, at least physically, but he was quiet for a few days. Bruce finally sat down to talk with him. "It...it really hurt," the speedster murmured, his voice nearly a whimper. "They didn't...see me as a person at all, just something to take apart...and then they got interrupted and just left me there, and it-! And I...!" He accepted Bruce's hug and cried quietly into his shirt for a while.

Raven slept a lot for a couple of days, but seemed all right after that. They had to take Vic to his father at S.T.A.R. Labs to get his body repaired, but he seemed fine otherwise. Goliath had some cuts and bruises that Damian fussed over tenderly. Jason, Tim, Donna, Garth, Kori, Gar, and Roy were all mostly unharmed, though some of them were a bit emotionally shaken.

The entire population of Titans Tower was lounging around the living room one afternoon, talking about the mission. Enough time had passed that they seemed quite cheerful and were even cracking jokes about it.

Donna and Gar were playing with Athanasia as Ravi supervised. Kori was cuddling Silkie as she lay with her head in Dick's lap, letting him brush her hair. Jason and Raven were trying to read, though Raven looked like she was having more success, since Jason kept getting drawn into the conversation. Goliath was lying in a blissful heap as Damian groomed him. Bruce felt very quiet and content as he held Tim. The octo-mer watched the conversation intently, most of his tentacles playing with both official and makeshift fidgets.

"It was scary but it was soooo cool, Bruce dropping down on them like that!" Wally was saying.

"If you were aiming for 'vampire-bat-demon thing from the shadows,' it really worked," Roy chuckled.

That prompted a loud laugh from Jason. "Those spiky things on his head really did look like bat ears!"

"Yeah, and the cape!" Gar called over. "It didn't even look like a cape when he dropped down, it was like bat wings!"

"Ah!" Garth said. "So, when you are a superhero, Bruce, you will be...the Batman?"

There was a chorus of laughter from his friends. "Batman!"

"Yeah, so, like, it's Superman in the day, but at night: It's an owl! It's a plane! It's - THE BATMAN!"

"Come to suck your blooood!"

"Watch out, villains!"

Bruce was smiling, amused by their ridiculousness. He loved kids. "It was just a one-time thing. I'll leave the superheroing to you."

"Aw, come ooonn, Bruce."

"Next time you come grappling with us, B, come as Batman!"

"Maybe," Bruce said. Then, quietly and thoughtfully, as the conversation shifted to something else, "Maybe."

TBC