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Hey, this chapter turned out to be a lot shorter, but it felt like the natural place to stop. Please leave criticism, I want to be a better writer; for your sake and mine. I do not own any of these characters. Enjoy.

*/

The Gateway night was cold despite its coastal location. They found their only suspect quickly. Batman held him by his neck as he teetered dangerously on the edge of a roof. Diana had volunteered to search the man's apartment while Batman interrogated.

"You're real?" The man's voice shook. He attempted to steel himself before continuing. "What the hell are you doing in Gateway?! Go back to Gotham with the rest of the freaks!" His voice shook anyway.

Batman decided he needed an attitude adjustment and dropped him onto the fire escape below. He heard the thud and crash of the man's body hitting the metal and descended to the fire escape, his cape billowing out to slow his fall. The man tried to shuffle backwards away from him, but Batman picked him up again and dangled him over the remaining forty or so feet.

"Anymore questions?" He growled.

The man shook his head.

"I think you do know why I'm here."

Another shake.

"We'll see about that." Batman's eyes narrowed as he got dangerously close to the man's face.

All the man saw was a flurry of movement and he was back on the fire escape, alone. He got down as fast as he could and ran home. Batman waited for Diana to land silently next to him.

"Where is he?"

"Let him go. Anything in the apartment?"

"No. Why'd you let him go?"

"Thought so. Did you plant the bug in his cell?"

"Yes. And I left it in the same place it 'fell out of his pocket' when we were grabbing him. Why'd you let him go?" She crossed her arms showing that she would not answer anymore of his questions until he answered hers.

He smirked. "You'll see. Come on."

"Ooooh, you were trying to scare him into leading us to evidence."

He hesitated before leaping off the roof, surprised by her intuition. Then reprimanded himself for being surprised. He did not have a monopoly on intelligence in the league.

"I'm impressed." He jumped to the next rooftop.

She swooped in and caught him mid-leap to another rooftop. "Uh-uh, I'm not watching you tire yourself out again. It may be miles before he stops moving."

He grumbled, took out his locator, and began directing her towards the point of light that represented the tracker he had put on the suspect. They watched from a distance as he arrived back home out of breath. He picked up his phone that was lying on the doorstep, inspecting it for damage. Diana bit her lip, worrying he might discover her attempt to get into his phone, but any damage he must have chalked up to the fall because he proceeded inside.

Batman handed Wonder Woman an earpiece. "Here's a communicator for just my team, it will allow me to play the bug's feed directly into your ear."

She took it and put it in her ear opposite her league communicator. She pressed the speak button on it. "Testing…"

"I can hear you loud and clear, milady."

She had not expected to hear Alfred's voice, but she was not surprised. Not too much later the suspect burst out of his door and began dialing a number as he hopped in his car. She could hear the call ringing as he pulled out of his driveway.

"Yes?"

"It's the Batman, I don't know why, but he's here in Gateway. He came after me, dropped me off a roof."

"Why'd he come after you?"

"I don't know, he said I'd know."

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him I didn't know what he was talking about."

"So you didn't tell him anything?"

"No! Of course not."

"Bullshit. Why would he have let you go?"

"I don't know! That's why I'm calling you."

"Alright, well whatever you do, don't come here. Lie low for a while. I'll call up some friends in Gotham and see what they recommend."

The call ended and Bruce and Diana did not need the bug to hear the suspect curse as they followed him.

"Master Bruce, I have a successful trace on the other end of that call."

"Send me the location, Alfred."

The suspect drove for a while before stopping at a storage facility. Once he had opened his unit, Batman knocked him out before he realized what was happening. He flicked on the light, a few dressers and a toolbox were the only things inside. They opened one of the drawers and found several kilos of cocaine. Searching the rest of the unit did not take long, but all they found were more drugs.

"Typical," he said, allowing a little frustration to enter his voice.

"What?"

"I'm looking for a murderer and this guy assumes I came all the way from Gotham to stop his drug trade."

"What do we do now?" She was just as unreadable as him now.

"There's nothing more we can do. There's just too many suspects. We'll have to wait for more evidence."

Her lip trembled slightly, in anger or sadness he could not tell. "We are NOT waiting for another victim."

He turned to leave. It broke his heart every time too, but there was no other option.

"Bruce, please tell me you have a plan. Please let this be one of those times you think it's better if I don't know."

The implicit accusation stung, but not as much as it hurt to know someone else would die and there was nothing he could do. He grappled away.

She quickly followed after him. "Bruce! What are you doing?"

"Now I am going after his drug operation." The venom dripped from his words as he spat them.

A weight hit her chest, there really was nothing they could do. He was distracting himself with work, channeling his anger and frustration; he was hurting too.

They landed on the rooftop of the building that the call had been traced to. His lenses flashed and he gave the building a quick once-over. It was obvious that this was a front business, which means the police probably already knew, but for whatever reason could not do anything about it. Batman and Wonder Woman could.

"A dozen potential hostiles. There's a panic room in the back. I'll sneak into the panic room, and is soon as I'm in, you bust through the front doors and take them out. Do it slowly, give the leader time to make it to the panic room and lock himself in. I'll take care of him."

He disappeared and a few minutes later she got the go ahead. She busted through the front doors making a big show of it. She heard several curses and a few confused 'Wonder Woman?'s before they all jumped into action drawing their respective weapons on her. She rolled her eyes, such a creative solution. They all opened fire and she casually deflected the bullets with her bracelets as she walked towards them, methodically taking them out one at a time. Once she saw who she assumed was the boss retreat to the panic room with a bodyguard, she took out the rest of the men in the span of a few seconds. She piled the unconscious bodies in a corner, expressing her anger by being a bit rougher with them than she normally would.

Batman emerged from the shadows, disarming them both and knocking out the bodyguard.

"You? Shit. How?" The drug boss went through several emotions before settling on stoic anger to hide his fear. "What do you want?"

Batman did not speak, he responded by throwing him against a wall and pinning him there. Drawing threateningly close to his face, pulling on his increased mythical status outside of Gotham.

"I'm not afraid of you." He was. "I know you're human, so start acting like it."

Batman threw him over his head and onto the desk in the center of the room. Then swiftly grabbed his leg and drove his knee into it, it gave to the massive force in a sickening crack. The man cried out before being lifted up to meet Batman's face, he was still shorter.

"Did your friends in Gotham tell you that?" Batman let a slight smile dance across his face.

The man could not decide whether to be more afraid or in pain. "What do you want?"

"Names. All of your superiors."

"They'd kill me!"

"They won't have the chance."

The drug lord paled and his eyes widened as he realized that he believed him. He believed that the Batman could take out the entire cartel before they knew who had betrayed them. He hobbled over to the desk chair and pulled out a piece of paper and began writing. Once he was done he handed over the paper shaking.

"Make sure to get all of them. I don't want to die."

The Batman took the paper and disappeared. The drug boss let out a sigh of relief and then inhaled sharply when he remembered his leg was broken and there were sirens in the distance.

The rest of the night, very few words were spoken as they took out each drug lord on the list. They managed to find out how the drugs were being imported and left some evidence in their wake, so the coast guard would know which ships to search. Dawn broke before they finished and both were too tired to feel the pain of their failure with the serial killer.

Diana yawned. "If you need a place to rest before going back, I can sleep on my couch." She whispered to herself, "Although, I doubt you'll take me up on it."

"The flight isn't long."

"I'll call you when something happens." She took out the communicator he had given her and held it out in her hand.

"Keep it."

"Goodbye, Bruce."

"Diana I-. Goodbye." He grappled away, he wanted to say, 'I'm sorry'. Say that he wished he could have done more. He had failed. And worse, he had failed her. He could have sworn the flight was shorter the last three times.