Aftermath V
Okay, firstly, the climate control is broken so it's 40 degrees and showing no signs of cooling; second, I've finished 'Partial Pressure Of Oxygen' but, like a reasonable amount of my stuff, it's turned out a little too geeky-science-obsessed to be posted; and thirdly, instead of having nightmares about exams I'm waking up in a flap because my charming subconscious has elected to produce Kobolds. And, before you ask, no pharmaceuticals, recreational or otherwise, were involved. Yuck.
On the plus side, I guess, this means I return my wandering attention to "Aftermath" as my current level of ire isn't high enough for me to attempt to tackle The Great Fix-Leslie's-Character-Assassination Crusade, and my current level of consciousness isn't high enough for me to attempt more study, but I'm not bloody turning the light off anytime soon.
Kobolds. Go figure.
Ahem. None of the characters portrayed herein belong to me, except for the ones I invented. As this is posted on a DC comics fansite, presumably most casual readers know which is which. Please don't use my originals without asking; I'd be terribly flattered and probably say 'yes', but I do have certain . . . plans . . . for them.
Furthermore, if you're reading chapter 5, then by now you know this AU. Summaries for earlier stories can be found at the start of their sequels. Thanks for sticking it out with me.
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His lips pursed into an unconscious pout as he leaned back from one of several high-powered microscopes in the Batcave, Robin mulled over his find.
Outside of the superhero – and supervillain – community, spandex was generally considered a slightly unorthodox choice for regular workwear, and when used at all it was typically a blended fibre, one mixed with cotton or wool. Within the community it, and it's cousin lycra, were uniform standards. If mixed at all it was typically with nomex, for fire protection, or Kevlar, for a degree of bulletproofing. Personally, Robin preferred his recently upgraded ceramic plates to Kevlar; knives went through woven fabric relatively easily, and the fish-scale overlap of the plates in his uniform spread the impact of most regular bullet rounds without sacrificing flexibility. Plus they were somewhat heat repellant. Not quite up there with the tiles on a space shuttle, but not bad, either. Alfred's done well. Even so, the armor was covered with a spandex-nomex mix. That allowed circuitry to be embedded, and hid the fact that the Robin-suit was reinforced at all.
The fibres currently sandwiched onto a glass slide were spandex. Pure, unmixed spandex.
Still, that alone didn't rule out a bystander. Some innocent jogger, perhaps, one with pride in their physique – justified or not – might wear spandex. But when teamed with other circumstantial evidence, however, things became more telling; he'd collected the fibres from the rooftop of a supposedly abandoned warehouse. The warehouse, in a less than salubrious part of town, had been the hideout of a gang of kidnappers. Any joggers – on the roof or not – would want to be pretty darn quick in that part of town. Robin grinned without humour.
He'd seen a flash of purple cape through the skylight, its owner in the process of fleeing.
The fibres, when backlit, were a peculiarly brilliant purple shade.
Spoiler might almost call it eggplant.
He grinned to himself, contemplating confronting the other teenager. Just as quickly, he dismissed the idea that the fibres might belong to her. She's been with the Batclan for over a year; her costumes have been revamped - though not redesigned - four, no, he checked the files, five times since then. Given how Batman feels about protecting his protégés. . . A-ha! There. She's been upgraded from her original spandex to spandex-nomex-kevlar for the bodysuit, and Kevlar-ceramic plating for the cape. Cross-referencing the dates, Robin found it unlikely any of Spoiler's old, hand-sewn uniforms persisted. She declined the plate armoring. Wonder why? They're not that much harder to get into or out of. Ah. But they're a lot harder for Connor to get her out of them. The thought of his ex-girlfriend with another – and going a lot further than he himself had managed - didn't bother him half as much as he'd imagined it would, given his restoration of self. Briefly, Robin contemplated that before shrugging it off as a minor blessing. I've enough issues without looking for extras. With a bit of luck, and a lot of work, he and Spoiler would manage to be friends again. Despite a betrayal of identity, a year of torture, and a number of spats in the interim.
Armed with a digital photograph thoughtfully printed out from the microscope's camera, he fed the shade into the Crays' mighty search engines. A flick of the fingers, and resolution, amplification, and even the wattage of the light source used to examine the fibrous evidence was added. All matches, please, he touched the search button, commending the fabric to an archive rivaling – and exceeding – that of a number of international forensic organizations. He paused, weighing up the benefits of proceeding straight to gas chromatography while the microscopy ran, decided against it. Once I burn that sample, that's it. I want to make sure there's no problem with microscopy before I do anything.
He doubted there'd be a match with much of Gotham's criminal society; For example, Catwoman doesn't wear a cape, Joker's suits are typically silk or polyester, and R'as al Ghul, while not above wearing a mantle, has a marked fondness for green. Still, an import was not impossible. And any mercenary will go where the money is.
There was no way to hurry the computer's search, so Robin moved to the practice mat. Katas would help him work out the kinks in his shoulders, and the concentration needed for them would free the current of his thoughts. With a shrug, he started barehanded.
It did not take long for the whirl and flow of hands and feet to settle his mind into a relaxed, yet still aware, martial trance. In this, even more than usual, he could understand Batgirl's point of view entirely; a swing and a thrust became as erudite a question or comment as any verbal enunciation could ever be. Violence might be spoken by thugs, but so was English. And as with English, there was a difference between the crude obscenities of street-talk and the poetry of Milton or wordsmithery of Shakespeare.
So many questions. So very many questions. Without even being really aware of it, Robin spun to the weapons display case, his movements flowing like water. A graceful, if not particularly dramatic, block-and-punch combination was seamlessly converted into a grasp, and suddenly he was holding an elegant black daisho set. The blades were 'live'; sharpened to whisper-fine edges. While Batman might eschew guns and blades, he had made very certain that all his protégés, from an early stage, were comfortable and at least passably competent with their use.
Robin was substantially better than 'passably' competent. Whirling, leaping and slicing with the elegance of a dance, he sliced his way through the sword Katas the Shishou had taught him. They weren't showy - or at least not deliberately so - but they were, it was gorgeously, breathtakingly apparent, utterly deadly. More so than he'd ever appreciated before. But, while they helped him to ask questions, to reconstruct 'conversations' with his otherworldly mentor, they offered no answers save one.
More and more, Robin became certain that Huntress' furious allegations on the rooftop some nights ago, so stunningly out of place after his rescue of her from KGBeast, were not without at least some basis worthy of investigation.
With a slight frown, and what might have been construed as a flourish had he not known it was a move designed to flick the gore of battle from the longer of the two currently bloodless blades, Robin re-sheathed the weapons. He wasn't even breathing heavily.
None of the Shishou's katas were flashy or dramatic. There was no theatre to the way the weapons moved, only deadly efficiency. They were the moves of a warrior, not a showman. Lethal, yes, but could they be the 'language' of an assassin?
A smattering of applause greeted him from one of the monitors. He blinked. Oracle had apparently tuned in via one of the roving cameras. He wasn't particularly surprised; when he ran the fabric search, he'd authorized the Crays to cross-reference Oracle's systems for information. As a courtesy, his searches through her system usually triggered a 'ping' to let her know. Usually. Batman never 'knocks', which makes it easier to deny I've been using her system when I don't knock, when I don't want her to know what I've been toying with. There was no point hiding the current search; both she and Batman were aware of the rooftop audience to the bust, and all three had a vested interest in finding out who their 'fan' was. Both his mentor and colleague had been more than happy to allow Tim to do the preliminary analysis.
The last time he'd gone for digital B and E rather than 'knocking' had been after loading the bogus material concerning his own death. He'd wanted to alter Oracle's general search parameters to make sure the information didn't surface top of the list of any search she ran herself. It had worked, and she'd suspected nothing until the PI, Jason Bard, had requested Tim's 'autopsy' report several months later. Which started the whole mess with my father.
Tim sighed. In retrospect, the meeting with his father had been organised prematurely. Had they waited, even another week or two, Robin could well have been fully healed, back to himself. But 'if onlys' get me nowhere. While I probably would still have been there, I could just as likely not have ended up not trying to kill myself at the stadium, and then where would I be? Still fractured? Under Ras Al Ghul's control? He shied away from the thought.At any rate, the 'courtesy call' he'd logged as he accessed her system had apparently translated into an offer for her to 'phone' back. He felt irrationally pleased; Barbara, with her level-headedness and wealth of both information and experience, could be good to talk to.
"Hey Short Stuff, looking good." She was cheerful, her voice only slightly wistful as she remembered her own days of free movement. "You're fast as anything with those blades, faster even than the footage I have of Shiva." Robin grinned without humour. The world saw Shiva as an assassin, she saw herself as a warrior. Doesn't exactly inform my line of enquiry about Kaguya or the Shishou, though it does make me keen to pursue it. That was as good a segue as any into a topic that had been eating at him. Perhaps I should not be asking 'Shishou, where are you? When are you coming back?' But 'Shishou, what are you doing? What were you doing?'
"I don't know about 'fast as anything', Babs. I suspect the Flashes would have something to say about that."
"Meh. We could take 'em."
He grinned, this time with genuine humour, at her bravado.
"So . . ." She paused delicately, "Why playing around with blades? Not planning on changing your image or anything?"
"Why? You think the red and green's passé?"
"Nah. Some things never go out of fashion."
"Tell that to the pixies boots and hotpants!"
"Touche. But seriously, Tim. . ."
"Seriously, Babs, no, I'm not. Take a bladed weapon into a fight, and it'll get used, whether or not that's the intention. If it gets used, the risks of it being lethal or crippling are a lot higher than those of a Bo staff. So I'm good. I'll stay as I am, thanks."
He politely pretended not to hear her almost-sigh of relief. He figured it was fair enough; over the past few months he'd given his 'family' more than their fair share of grief when it came to second-guessing just what was going on in his scrambled mind.
"It was just . . ." She was embarrassed now, so he came to her rescue.
"It just helps me think. I guess. For this case, anyway." Turning towards the main banks of screens, he was gratified to see her face flash up on one of the subsidiary monitors. Her actual face, not the Oracle masque he was getting used to seeing every time Spoiler was in the cave.
" 'Case?' Investigating your stalker counts as a case? Boy, Bats needs to let you play more often." Unspoken, but not unfelt, was the comfortable certainty that, now, it would be possible for Robin to do so.
And 'possible' in the Batclan usually turned into 'happening'.
"No, not really, but it's something to look into." He grimaced to himself. Let Babs think he was investigating only at Batman's behest, that the stalker on the roof was the only point of interest for him at the moment. She knew better, of course; no member of the Batfamily had that much of a one track mind that only one task at a time could be handled, even if they were all frighteningly good at prioritizing. But the polite fiction could be maintained.
"Ah. Looks like your stalker is a lot closer to home than you'd think." She said, as an alarm flashed on the console behind her. Seconds later, the Crays' main screen, too, read 'search completed'.
"One of my own operatives, actually. And it's not surprising she left before speaking to you guys. Things with Batman have been a bit . . . strained."
Robin nodded uneasily. The fibres did indeed seem likely to come from the superhero community. Ninety-seven percent likely, in fact.
"Yeah. Huntress."
"So. Case closed. She was patrolling – like Batman doesn't like her doing. She found the warehouse, hung around to make sure you guys were okay, and then left before she and Batman could do the big confrontation."
"So it would seem." Assuming it was coincidence. It probably was, he knew. But I have enough other questions to ask Huntress that this makes a trip out to her apartment well worth my while.
Glancing at the clock, he knew it would have to wait. Dawn was approaching, and it was a school day.
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A bit of pseudo-forensics in this one ('Pseudo' because, let's face it; a couple of read-throughs of 'The Marks of Cain', 'Dead Men Tell Tales' and 'Proof of Poison' hardly qualifies me to comment on the veracity of Robin's detective technique – especially since I made it up myself, and anyway all three books use case studies that pre-date gas chromatography and electron microscopy.)
While we'll all have to make do with katas and dialogue this time, I've a reasonable amount of punch-up planned for next chapter.
I'm experimenting a bit in this one, I know. Liked it? Hated it? More detecting details? Less? Feedback greatly appreciated; C&C will be fed Cookies and Chocolate.