Lance stood still, gazing out into Gotham's skyline. Even in his younger days, he always admired the view. It was soothing in a way. He wondered if Bruce ever felt the same way, but he quickly shoulders those thoughts. He had work to do.
"Overwatch, how's it looking tonight?" He asks. A quick beep is heard.
"Nothing major going down it seems. Everyone is pretty quiet after Crane's last attack. All the other Rogues have gone underground. Figuratively speaking of course. If they were actually underground, I'd have already found them." Tim's modulated voice comes through the line. Lance chuckles softly.
"I have no doubt you would. Anything going on nearby though? A mugging, a purse snatching?" Lance asks, and he can just barely make out the sound of the keyboard in the Asylum being used. After a few seconds, Tim responds.
"We've got a BE in progress approximately eight and a half blocks away from your position. Sending coordinates now." The teen says, and Lance sees the location pop up on his HUD. He turns around.
"Robin. Snack time's over. We got a robbery to break up." He says, and Carrie frowns as she finishes her chili dog in two quick bites.
"Already!? But we just started, you didn't even eat yet!" She exclaims. Lance immediately pulls his helmet off, stuffs the entire chili dog in his mouth and puts the helmet back on. He gives her a thumbs up, and she scrunches her face up in disgust.
"That's gross dad." Lance's heart warms up slightly, as he points in the direction they need to go. Carrie recovers from her disgust, nods and rushes over the ledge, grappling perfectly to the next building. Lance follows behind, absolutely grateful (not for the first time, and not for the last time) that Joey created what was absolutely the best Robin suit ever made. Unlike Dick's near homemade outfit, and Lance's slightly armored alteration (and Jason's heavily armored alteration) Carrie's suit was lined to the brim with two layers of Liquid Kevlar. Even the black cloak perfectly tightened around her head was double lined with the stuff.
Even Lawton's bullets would have a difficult time piercing the suit.
And taking things from experience (AKA knowing where crooks were usually going to aim for), the black gloves, boots and skirt were all made from what Joey called a 'synthetic Promethium fiber'. The crazy motherfucker somehow was able to make SYNTHETIC FIBER out of Promethium. Even Cyborg, the guy made out of the stuff was absolutely astonished. Joey never had told anyone how he did it either, the cheeky bastard.
But, his Robin was protected thoroughly, so Lance had no complaints.
He quickly follows with his own grapple, shooting across the skyline with his Robin right in front of him. He kept his eyes peeled, looking left and right as he followed right behind her. The Arkham Knight's Robin would never be injured, not with him around.
And if she ever got truly hurt... 'No-kill' rule in Gotham or not, the unlucky son of a bitch wouldn't live to see another day.
As the two neared the sight of the supposed BE, Lance saw three goons attempting to pry open the front door. A little brazen, but not unexpected for a jewelry store in the middle of Crime Alley. Lance and Carrie took a quick look at each other, before jumping down to ground level.
"Hiya guys! What's going on!?" Carrie yells, making the two men trying to open the door jump nearly ten feet in the air. The third man, to his credit, worked fast. As soon as Carrie opened her mouth, he took off like a bat outta hell. It was impressive to say the least.
"Robin, get 'em." He says, and Carrie enthusiastically nods as she takes out a Batarang and throws it hard. It manages to hit the guy in the back of the head, and he goes down. Lance turned to face the other two.
"Now, I can do that to you two, except way more painfully, or you can go home and quit the robbery business." He says, and the guy with the crowbar runs even faster than the first guy in the opposite direction. The last man just stands there, his hands still on the door.
"I can't. I've get two mouths to feed and another kid on the way." Lance folds his arms, and narrows his eyes at the man. (His helmet now tracked his eyes, making the mechanism controlling his eyes do the same. It was great for intimidation).
"Look, I know that life sucks. I get it, but robbery isn't going to help." Lance says, and tilts his head.
"You got a job or is this you freelancing?" The guy almost smiles at that. Almost.
"Just got fired from BatBurger a week ago." Lance almost snorts, but that'd be rude. Carrie instead snorted.
"BatBurger hires everyone! Even the BatBurger in Gotham Heights hires everyone!" She spouts. The man grumbles, and points at his leg.
"Got my knee fuc - messed up really bad a while back. Couldn't work fast enough." Lance shakes his head slowly. The guy seemed decent enough. Especially if he refused to cuss in front of a kid.
"I'm sorry. Is it permanent?" The guy huffs.
"No, but it may as well be due to how much it's gonna cost to fix." The man turns back and nods his head to the jewelry store.
"I just need to pay for my family man." Lance considers for a moment that the man could always be lying. Funnily enough, Tim seems to be psychic.
"His name is Darrod Fargo. 32, has two kids and his wife is currently three months pregnant. He had a car wreck two months ago that damaged his knee. Everything checks out AK." Lance almost nods, but he doesn't need the man thinking he'd allow him to steal from the store. He sighs heavily.
"There's a nightclub a few blocks away. They need a new bartender." Lance says, and the guy's mouth drops.
"You good at mixing drinks?" Lance asks. The man laughs softly.
"In college, I worked part time as a bartender. Would have stayed if the owner hadn't shut his place down." Lance clicks his tongue.
"They accept walk-ins looking for an application. Odds are you'll get hired first thing Monday." The man frowns.
"But it's Sunday night?" He says questioningly. Lance just shrugs.
"The owner works fast. Probably. I've never met the guy." Lance says, stumbling over his words. The man doesn't notice though, and instead points in the direction of the club.
"Gotham Nights right? And they won't mind a former felon?" Lance nods.
"I wouldn't have recommended it if I didn't think you could work there." He says, and looks back to Carrie.
"Robin, we've spent enough time here. Let's go." He says, and pulls out his grapple. The - hopefully - former felon raises his hand.
"Hey, uh... Thanks. Not sure if the old Bat would have taken the time to tell me that." And Lance knows Bruce wouldn't have. For all the work Bruce did as Bruce Wayne to get felons hired, he did a terrible job of reformation as Batman. Lance just chuckles.
"I appreciate the compliment. Now get lost and don't do anymore crimes." The man nods slowly as Lance and Carrie take off into the night. Just because this ended without a fight, doesn't mean everything else will.
"You know, that was really nice of you AK." Carrie says as the two land on a nearby roof. Lance just waves her off.
"It's not that nice. I do need a new bartender." Carrie stifles a laugh at that.
"Oh yeah, the owner that probably works fast that you've never met before can definitely use more help." She says, a tinge of humor in her voice. Lance just rolls his eyes as he flicks her on the head. She pouts as she rubs the spot.
"No need to be rude! I'm not the person stumbling over my words when it comes to my secret identity!" Ouch. Ok, yeah she was right. Lance just huffs.
"Yeah yeah... I'm sorry." He says, and Carrie smiles proudly.
"Apology accepted!" She says, then raises her hand.
"But only if you get me a motorcycle for my twelfth birthday!" Lance snorts loudly.
"Guess I'm not apologizing then." Lance says. He ignores Carrie's noises of protest and her oncoming rant though, because something catches his eye. Or rather, someone. Lance frowns as he sees a mugging going down, just a street away. That's not what initially caught his attention though. What did, was the person wearing the poorest excuse for a superhero costume ever, who was looking at the mugging. And then jumped down off of the fire escape that they were watching from.
Lance watches as the figure in purple sneaks behind the thug, and then tries to choke the guy out. The kid (because knowing Lance's luck, it's definitely a kid) immediately gets flung away. Lance takes a long, heavy sigh as he unholsters his pistol.
"Wait! I'm sorry AK, I didn't mean the thing about the gorilla!" Carrie says in fear. Huh... Lance is... Lance is going to worry about that later. He points down to the street, at the kid in purple as he raises his gun and fires two warning shots at the mugger.
"Give the man his money back, step away from the newbie and get the fuck back home before the next shot goes into your knee!" Lance yells, successfully scaring the man off. Lance likes it when they run off. Means they'll listen. Usually anyway. Lance sighs as he and Carrie both grapple down to ground level. The thug at least dropped most of the money that he'd stolen, and Lance slips an additional fifty bucks in with the money that was on the ground. The would be victim didn't even notice as he thanked the two and walked off.
The figure in purple huffs.
"I totally had that! It was all a part of my plan!" The young girl (because of course it was) says. Lance stares directly at her face. At least she's got enough sense to hide her identity. She's got a near full face mask on. However, Lance is pretty sure the slightly padded face covering is the most armor she's got. She's wearing a damn unitard (he's fairly certain) underneath a flimsy, purple shirt and matching pair of shorts. The large, Halloween-esq cloak isn't doing her any favors; It's not like Bruce's cape.
Lance resists the urge to facepalm. He'd look stupid doing that with the helmet on anyway.
"Kid... Go home and burn the discount Halloween outfit alright?" He says. The girl, to her credit - and his annoyance - crosses her arms and glares at him.
"What? You and Robin can be the only vigilantes in Gotham?" Lance snorts.
"No but we are the only trained ones. With actual armor and not something you scrapped together for..." Lance does some mental math in his head.
"$32:50." The girl gasps.
"Dude that was close! How'd you do that?" She asks, and Lance can't resist the urge anymore. He facepalms. The girl stomps her feet.
"Whatever! None of this is important, I've been waiting around here for three whole nights now, freezing in the cold waiting for one of you guys!" Ok, ok this Lance can deal with. Hopefully. Carrie also perks up, her postion as the audience laughing at his slowly draining sanity now gone.
"Really? You do know there's better ways to find us than dressing up like an eggplant?" The glare now shoots from Lance to Carrie, but the girl simply reaches into her cloak, digging around in a sewn-in pocket. Lance whistles softly. No one hears it thankfully. He doesn't need to give the girl any praise about her intelligence, especially after failing a simple take down (even without training, it's easy enough to grab someone from behind and stay on them).
The girl pulls out a small folder, and Lance takes it when offered. He opens the folder and takes out the three pages she has. All hand written notes about some sort of deals? Locations for weapons and drugs seemingly. There's also a few store locations, maybe areas planning to be hit?
Lance looks back up at her, tilting his head slightly.
"Where'd you get this?" He asks. The girl, seemingly satisfied with herself, laughs.
"I can't rat out my informate!" She says, and then sighs.
"Arthur Brown is behind these deals. He's setting them all up and they should be happening within a week, maybe two." She then scoffs.
"He's going to do these deals and steal some stuff and leave 'clues' for you to find." Carrie scrunches up her face.
"Isn't that the Riddler's thing?" Lance shakes his head softly while the girl huffs.
"It's totally clues, not riddles! What an idiot..." She says that last part softly. Lance chews his lip. What does she have to do with this guy?
"Eddy is going to need a lawyer pretty soon I guess." Lance says, and turns to the girl in purple. He's about to open his mouth, but a quick beep stops him.
"Arthur Brown, 42 years old. He's a career criminal with a wife and daughter. Crystal Brown and Stephanie Brown respectively." Tim says, and a quick picture of all three appears on his HUD. He stares at the picture of Stephanie for a moment, before closing out of the HUD and taking a look at the girl's face. He can only see her eyes (of course they're blue) and a small tuft of blond hair.
...
Wait a second...
"Are you Stephanie Brown?" Lance blurts out. The girl's - Stephanie's - eyes widened, and then she sighed heavily.
"How on EARTH did my identity not last more than five minutes!?" She exclaims, and then immediately shakes her head.
"Do you have some sort of psychic powers?" Stephanie stage whispers, and Lance chuckles.
"No, I've got something better. A caffeine addicted teenager with too much free time on their hands." Lance says, and Stephanie tilts her head in confusion.
"I'm not addicted!" Tim yells through the comms, and Lance raises an eyebrow.
"You're on your sixth cup right now aren't you?" He asks, and Stephanie quietly gasps.
"You're not joking? You've got a hacker as your phone a friend?" Lance laughs out loud at that, and then shakes his head as he stares at Stephanie.
"Tell you what kid, you hungry?"
(...)
Ok, so it took more than one day, and she also immediately had her identity outed (and she may have developed a... Fixation on saving people) but so far, this isn't the worst thing that could happen to her. Plus, she's getting free food out of it! Speaking of, she didn't expect the dreaded Arkham Knight to look so... Young. He can't be older than twenty, no way. Sure he's got a small mask over his eyes, but that doesn't stop her from seeing the rest of his extremely young looking face.
And the Robin (the new, female Robin, that everyone in school had been clamoring about for weeks on end since she showed up) was definitely younger than Steph. Definitely. Robin, who noticed Stephanie staring at her, grinned and waved, food still in her mouth. Steph waved back. The kid was adorable. The Arkham Knight flicks Robin's forehead.
"I just gave you a snack not thirty minutes ago." He says, and Robin pouts. Robin pouts and Stephanie thinks it may be the cutest, most adorablest thing in the world.
"Well I didn't have lunch at school today, and dinner was light!" The Arkham Knight frowns.
"I packed you a lunch. Like I do everyday." Robin gets a self satisfied smile on her face.
"Well, Danny couldn't afford to buy lunch, and Talor also spilled all of her food when Jenny tripped her. I gave them my food!" A small smile graces the Knight's face, and Stephanie really does wonder how this guy has managed to keep Gotham up in shape. He's not Batman, that's for sure. He's not even scary!
"That's a good thing you did Robin, but next time, tell me so I can fix you something when you get home." And oh, is he her dad? They don't look that much alike. Aren't all the Robins supposed to be Batman's kids anyway? Stephanie, for the first time really wishes she listened to more of the gossip in school. Robin nods her head, and for the first time since his helmet came off, the Arkham Knight turns to her.
"So Stephanie, tell me everything." Steph smirks.
"So like, about almost sixteen years ago, my mom met my dad. And then, after a little bit of dating, they-" An unimpressed glare was sent her way. The Arkham Knight sighs.
"Tell me about your dad. And your odd choice of career." Steph snickers quietly. She then takes a deep breath.
"So my dad has been a petty thief for a while. Gone in and out of prison a few times for mostly minor stuff." Stephanie says, and the Knight nods his head.
"From what I've gathered though, that hasn't been enough for him?" Steph scoffs harshly.
"Nope!" She says, with a fake, bubbly voice. "Now he wants to be a supervillain. He's gonna call himself Cluemaster." Robin nearly chokes on her food.
"Cluemaster!? That's fucking stupid!" The Knight immediately turns around and flicks Robin in the forehead again.
"Language." He then turns back to Steph.
"Ok, so you wanted to find and give us this information because..." The Arkham Knight trails off, and Stephanie sighs.
"He's not perfect. Not one bit. Hell, he's locked me in a closet a few times." She briefly seea anger flair up on the Arkham Knight's face, before his expression returns back to normal.
"Anyway... He's been a shitty thief and a worse father. It's time he goes in jail and stays there." Maybe her mom will also stop doing so many drugs if her dad is gone for good too. But that's a pipe dream, and Stephanie learned a long time ago to not rely on those. The Arkham Knight seems to chew on his lips, before pointing at Steph.
"So the badly made vigilante outfit?" Stephanie glares at the young man.
"Dude, I figured if I dressed up as a dumbass and stood on top of a few roofs that you guys would find me! It's not my fault it took three days!" The Knight crosses his arms, and tilts his head.
"You weren't on a rooftop earlier." He says accusingly, and Steph bites the inside of her cheek.
"So the first night was a bust. But on the second night, there was this woman about to be mugged." Possibly worse, but Steph doesn't want to think about it.
"I didn't see either of you around, so I went up behind the guy and hit him in the back of the head with a brick." Robin snorts humorously, and the Arkham Knight gets a small grin on his face, before he shakes his head.
"And like, the woman thanked me and ran off and I just..." Stephanie shrugs. The Arkham Knight nods his head slowly.
"It's a rush for some. For others, it's a need. A need to help people." The Knight grabs his helmet and puts it back on, and then stands up, offering a hand to Stephanie.
"I'll make you a deal. Don't go out anymore." Stephanie opens her mouth to object, but the Arkham Knight raises a hand.
"Don't go out until your dad is in jail. If you still feel like fighting crime afterwards... We can talk some more. Ok?" He's banking on her not wanting this after her dad is gone. Steph stands up, not grabbing his hand. She doesn't need help, or approval. But, if it will get him off of her back...
"Fine. But once my dad is in jail, and I still want to go out, you can't stop me." The Knight just stares at her through his helmet. He shakes his head.
"That's what I'm afraid of." He says, and turns back to Robin.
"It's getting late. It's a school night, so we should head back home." He turns back to Steph, ignoring Robin's protests.
"Same to you Stephanie. Get back home. We'll take your dad down. I promise." He offers his hand again. Steph thinks about smacking it. Or just running off. Or even yelling at him. But instead, she sighs heavily and shakes his hand.
"Fine, I'll go back home. But if I see a mugger or a purse snatcher, I'm clobbering them!" Stephanie says, and then she turns and walks away from the duo. She'll go back home. For now.
(...)
As Stephanie Brown walks off, Lance resists the urge to facepalm. What was with teenage vigilantes nowadays? He grabs his grapple from his belt, and aims it at the nearest roof. As he's about to hit the button, Robin pokes him in the side. He turns and looks at his daughter.
"What is it Robin?" He asks, and the girl just beams up at him.
"Am I getting an older sister!?" Lance can't stop himself this time. He facepalms, for the second time tonight with the helmet on.