"You're late," Bruce growled at him when Terry came into the batcave.

"Sorry, had to take my little brother to soccer practice."

"We have some errands to run," Bruce told him. From his tone, Terry knew that he'd be in a suit, the uncomfortable kind.

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"Ah, Bruce, so glad you could join us," An oily man with slicked back black hair offered Bruce his hand, but Bruce made no move to take it, resting both hands on his cane. "And Mr. McGuiness, always a pleasure." Unlike his employer, Terry knew he couldn't afford to be rude, so he offered Mr. Harvey Maxwell his hand. "Let's go inside my office to talk, Mr. McGuiness, if you need anything, talk to my assistant, Leslie." He put his hand on Bruce's back and led him into his large office. Terry smirked when he saw Wayne stiffen even more at the man's touch.

"Would you like anything?" The secretary was blonde and attractive, and Terry had heard a rumor that Mr. Maxwell himself had paid for her breast implants.

"Coffee, would be great," he smiled at her. He had to find a way to make her leave the room so he could link to her computer, and do some digging around. Word on the street was that Mr. Maxwell was involved with some not so legal-smuggling of chemicals that had been outlawed, and had been using them in several of his engineered agricultural products. The chemicals were very toxic to humans and could cause serious harm to any workers, either in the factories or to the farmers, once the product was distributed. "Have you ever had Dairy Cow Coffee? I've had a craving for it all week, and we're right nearby, what do you say? While our employers are tied up?"

"Well… I have a lot of work…" Leslie looked at her computer then up into Terry's ice blue eyes, "but I guess I can leave for a little while…"

"I'm sure they'll never notice," Terry smiled. He left his laptop sitting beside his chair, set to automatically link to any computers nearby, Max had a special program installed and running, so the computer could autopilot hack- and if there was a problem, Max was alerted and could instantly access anything the laptop was accessing.

"Find anything interesting?" Bruce asked, as they got into the car.

"Mr. Maxwell coaches his son's t-ball league, makes all his employees do five hours of volunteer work a month, and only employs females with C or bigger cups. Oh, you meant in his computer." Terry grinned when Bruce's expression darkened. "My computer copied all the files off Leslie's computer, but I didn't have time to look through all of them yet, but I'm pretty sure the files include records on all his imports. Leslie's computer was pretty secure, for only being a secretary, so I'm thinking the files might be good. Max had to help the hack along a little bit."

"Good," Bruce leaned back in his seat, the sun was just starting to set. "Why don't you put the car on autopilot and get to work?"

"You got it boss," Terry pulled the car over and climbed out, "See you in a few hours."

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"There's a break in over at Gotham Central Bank,"

"On my way," Batman sighed, as he finished tying up a group of Jokerz. It had been a long night, a lot of petty criminals doing very stupid things. He wished the Gotham police could get their act together, he knew it wasn't the Commissioner or the DA's faults, they was busy with the big time criminals and didn't have time for the hundreds of thugs that roamed the streets at night, and the police weren't really equipped to deal with some of the bad guys- like Inque or Curarae. Even Mad Stan was more than they could handle.

"Any word on the criminals?"

"No, but they've taken the bank manager and several others hostage."

"Slag it…" Batman said as he sped towards the bank. Outside several police cars were gathered, the plane hovered the scene for a moment. "Any ideas?" There was no way he was getting in past the police.

"Around the back, there's a vent you can climb through, and into the room with the hostages, get them out that way."

"Right," Batman said, and he dropped from the plane, already invisible. He climbed in through the vents and made his way into the room. A batamarang caused the man to drop the gun, and before he could react he found himself pinned to the wall. "Get out!" He told the hostages, motioning to the vent he had just come in through. He knew Bruce had alerted Barbara, who had gathered police on the outside ready to take the hostages to safety. "How many are there in the other room?" Batman asked, but before he could get a response the door was blasted inwards, three men in masks that covered the lower half of their faces burst in, their eyes were protected by sunglasses, all wore identical dark green pants, black t-shirts, vests that matched the pants, and black gloves, all were holding extremely large guns, that looked more like rocket launchers and all were aimed at Batman. But the hostages were safe, Batman breathed a small sigh of relief as he leapt out of the way as the first round of rockets was fired at him. The room was very small but bullet proof, the rockets wouldn't penetrate the walls, not for the first few rounds anyway. Batman managed to fly at one and the gun clattered to the ground, the man was unconscious, he flew over their heads out into the main bank. The three remaining men rushed after him, the one Batman had caught earlier, and then released had picked up the unconscious man's gun. Batman noted he wasn't wearing the vest, but otherwise his outfit was the same. Batman disappeared behind a large pillar, and watched as one man signaled the other two to spread out to hunt for him.

One man walked right beneath Batman, and Batman dropped on him. The man's gun clattered away, the other two were drawn by the noise and ran towards the pillar. Batman through the gun out into the middle of the hall, without thinking both men fired at it. One hit, blowing the gun to smithereens, the other missed, and his rocket struck a large pillar which started to fall, a large piece knocked the gunman unconscious, Batman swooped out and carried the man to safety, oblivious to his commrade's safety the only remaining gunman fired at Batman, carrying the other man, Batman was barely able to avoid the blow, which grazed his thigh with a searing fire. He dropped the man and was barely able to avoid colliding with a wall. The third man started to fire again, but an ice batamarang froze the gun, and would have frozen the man's hands but he dropped it and turned to run, but Batman was able to swoop down, and tied him tightly to one of the pillars, then rounded up his two companions. From the corner of his eye he thought he saw standing in one of the corners watching, but surely no one had been standing there before. He shook his head and blamed it on exhaustion or pain, his leg was injured and he needed to get back to Bruce.

Outside he managed quickly realized that one jet boot wasn't working and had to bring the bat mobile down to the ground so he could climb in. He saw the Commissioner but she made no move toward him, they had to be careful not to show too much familiarity.

"Batman, are you alright?"
"Yeah, but I'm coming home."

"Are you hurt?"
"A little, and the suit's definitely been damaged,"

"Alright, bring it in." Bruce sighed, that boy did an awful lot of damage to that poor suit.

"Bruce,"

"I'm here," Bruce sighed when Barbara's voice came over the frequency they had set up to share information.

"I think the bat's injured,"

"He's headed home."

"Good, he did a good job tonight, don't be too hard on him."

"Right," Bruce couldn't help smiling, he was proud of Terry.

"You might want to stay off of that for a few days," Bruce recommended, as Terry hopped off the gurney and tried to walk around the cave with his bandaged thigh.

"It's fine," Terry said, pulling on his pants, "How's the suit?"

"If the rocket did that to your leg, how do you think the suit's doing?" Bruce told him, the words came out more harshly than he meant them to. Terry's leg would heal, but it was going to be tough injury to hide, and he was going to have trouble walking for a few days. Back in his day, the injury would have scarred, Bruce thought to himself. Now they had things like Gel-O-Cast, which he had carefully applied to Terry's injury. Not the first time they had used the stuff. But this was still one of Terry's worse injuries, despite his attempt to cover it Bruce could tell the boy was in pain. "Go home, get some rest,"

"I thought I could do a little research on who those guys were," Terry said, making his way to the computer. "Or do a little digging on Maxwell," Bruce sighed, maybe he had trained the boy too well.

"I need you on the streets, not behind the screen, go home. Get some rest." Bruce ordered him.

"Alright, alright," Terry said, "I'm going." Bruce watched him limp painfully up the steps.

"Sorry kid," he said softly.

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"Terry?" His mom asked when he came in.

"Hey Mom," Terry attempted a smile, this was the disadvantage to coming home before midnight, his mom was still awake. She had her schoolwork spread out in front of her.

"How was work? You got home early…" She glanced at her watch, "Normally you don't get in for another hour or two." She had finally come to accept Bruce's "odd" hours- of course she had no idea how late he actually came in. Terry just told her one or two am so she didn't worry too much.

"Uh… work was fine, excellent actually, Bruce let me come home early."
"That's good, you know, I do have to wonder what do you do for him that…" Terry shot her a look and she held up her hands in defeat, "you're right, it's not my place." She gathered up her work, "Looks like its time for bed for me at least, as long as you're home, try to get some sleep." She kissed her son on the cheek. "I always sleep easier at night… knowing where you are."

"Good night Mom," Terry said, trying not to feel guilt at her last comment. He wondered how often she had laid awake at night… waiting to hear the creak of the door, and then not hearing it… Terry tried not to think about it, but as soon as she was gone he made his way into his room and collapsed onto his bed. God it felt good. He looked forward to the six whole hours of sleep with his name on them, then his vidphone rang. "Hey Dana," he smiled as his girlfriend's image appeared on the screen.

"Wow, you actually answered." Her tone sounded accusatory.

"Bruce let me come home early tonight." Granted he could barely walk… "How are you?" He asked.

Dana shrugged, "I'm alright, I didn't get to talk to you after Chemistry today,"

"Yeah, sorry, Bruce…"

"Called you out of school?"

"Yeah,"

"I swear Ter, I don't even know how you're passing your classes with all your absences." Terry didn't say anything, telling Dana "the commissioner pulled some strings"- probably not the best plan. "You okay, you're kind of quiet."

"Sorry, just tired." He smiled, then yawned as if to emphasize his point.

"Night Ter," Dana sounded disappointed.

"Night," Terry turned off the call, he felt bad but his leg really hurt and he really needed sleep. He'd try and make it up to her this weekend.

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"Well? Are you happy, four of my best men are in jail tonight."

"Relax, I've already seen that they will be released shortly on a technicality."

"We got nothing,"

"No, we have everything we need." The woman placed a vid disk into the computer, and watched Batman maneuvers against the four Rocketmen, smiling when the rocket slammed into Batman. "We even injured him, perfect." She smiled.