As soon as the Australian loudmouth hurled the explosive boomerang towards the trio, they immediately sprang into action.
The crimson archer released his arrow a split second later before leaping over the railing, Robin vaulted over the top metal bar, and Kid Flash streaked across the runway and down the stairs to face them all head-on.
BOOOM! The two projectiles collided in mid-air and detonated in a sizable aerial explosion that briefly clouded the grounded men's aim while at the same time the deafening sound briefly pounded at their eardrums.
As soon as the smoke cleared, the Gotham City thugs immediately opened fire with their automatic weapons. A tidal wave of lead swept over the catwalk where the heroes had been standing on just seconds earlier, completely demolishing the railing and floor grating.
Robin took flight briefly with his cape turned makeshift glider, allowing him to maneuver around the hailstorm of bullets following him. Diving down behind a mountain of industrial-sized crates towards the back of the warehouse, he quickly slammed his back against one of the metallic containers for cover against the barrage of bullets.
To his right, Speedy crouched down next to a container with another arrow drawn across his bow. Briefly stealing a glance over the top of the container to pinpoint his next target, he turned back to the Boy Wonder and motioned towards the firing gunmen.
Robin nodded back in affirmation and began reaching into his utility belt as Speedy briefly stepped out of cover and drew the arrow back against his cheek, letting go of the plastic feather and then retreating back behind the protective covering.
RATATATATATATATATATAT! Submachine guns and pistols barked violently in their owner's grasp as they directed their metallic ire towards the besieged heroes behind cover. Amongst the crowd of enforcers and thugs systematically reloading and unloading their firearms, the Electrocutioner activated his shock gauntlets, Onyx expertly slid her katana sword out of its sheath and Javelin readied his cylindrical projectile.
Oblivious to all of them, the archer's trick arrow embedded itself into the ground just a few feet away from them. Within seconds of impact, the capsulated arrowhead automatically detonated into a cloud of white that quickly flooded the firing range and disoriented the gunmen, prompting an uneasy ceasefire.
Gagging and shielding their eyes from the thick smoke, the thugs caught directly in the blast radius stumbled and staggered towards each other blindly leaving the ones in the periphery of the detonation to become wary of friendly fire.
One distracted thug was caught off guard by a pair of bolas wrapping around his torso and disarming him of his weapon. Eyes widened in shock, he was met by another surprise as Robin lunged towards him and landed a flying drop kick to the midsection that downed him immediately.
Twirling around on his heel, he reached into his belt and driven by pure instinct flung a birdarang that disarmed a nearby Black Mask thug. Gasping as his automatic gun was ripped away from his grasp, he turned around only to have Robin kick off his slightly bent knee and rattled his teeth with a knee of his own then followed up with a jump spin kick in mid-air that sent him sprawling to the concrete floor.
As the man moaned and groaned into the floor, Robin's honed instincts took control and threw his body backwards into a roll as bullets peppered the ground he was just crouched on.
Retrieving his two escrima sticks from his belt, the Boy Wonder then disappeared further into the smoke to evade the trio of Falcone's enforcers currently gunning after him with military-grade assault rifles.
"End of the line, pipsque-aaaaah!" one of the thug's confident declarations was cut short when he was violently yanked backwards and out of sight, courtesy of a three-pronged arrow with a black cable attached to the nock that quietly clamped onto his jacket before its wielder yanked backwards.
As soon as their comrade disappeared from the fray and into the smoke the two immediately stopped firing and turned back towards the source of the sudden intervention, a mistake they would soon regret.
Not one moment later, Robin reappeared next to the second thug and after sprinting up his back leg and driving his knee into the small of his back while at the same time wrapping his forearm around his neck
With the other arm, Robin swiftly swiped at the other thug's face with his escrima stick with the blunt end of the weapon just catching him in the mouth to knock him down to one knee.
As the thug he was currently using as a human surfboard face planted down to the floor, Robin somersaulted forwards and rolled on his shoulder up to his feet.
Snapping backwards towards the dazed duo, he dashed back in to deal with the thug whom he had just barely grazed.
Rubbing his now bloody mouth sorely, he groggily raised his weapon only for Robin to knock it awry with a well-timed swipe of his baton before smacking him square between the eyes with his other stick and finishing him with a straight right hand with the same arm to knock him down for the count.
"You little…" Still wincing from the Boy Wonder's faux-chiropractic maneuver on his lower spine, he tossed his almost depleted rifle away for his smaller but more intimate handgun.
He was only able to get off a few shots that all missed due to Robin's hastened series of flips and rolls indicative of his acrobatic background. Upon his third roll, he hurled one of his escrima sticks towards the thug.
"Aaargh." The blunt end of the stick knocked the pistol out of his grip by hitting his wrist to force his fingers to slacken, leaving him wide open for Robin's charge.
Now in a kneeling position with his hand definitely throbbing from being hit, his pained grimace morphed into a surprised whelp as Robin kicked off of his bent knee and lunged forward while locking him in a headlock.
Taken aback by this unorthodox yet effective maneuver, the man's head was wrenched forward thanks to the surge of forward momentum and thus followed suit when Robin rolled to the ground.
While Robin's left shoulder took the impact and allowed him to spring back up while the thug tumbled to the floor and just barely managed to pop back up with his head just caught in a dazed cloud.
Effortlessly retrieving his fallen escrima stick, Robin turned around and succinctly delivered an overhead swing across the man's face that knocked him out cold.
Click-click.
Eyes widening in sudden realization, the teenaged hero twirled around with escrima sticks at the ready as a thug from behind towered above him with his machine gun cocked and finger at the ready.
Thwick! An arrow suddenly found its way onto the man's jacket, the cylindrical arrowhead upon impact instantly emitting an electrical discharge that arced around his body. Shrieking in pain, his agonized cries became more and more stilted as the electrical discharges took hold before his body immediately stiffened like a board and fell backwards.
As he collapsed to the ground with a grunt, Robin relaxed his stance and stood up as the ever punctual Speedy walked up to him after seeing that the arrow hit its mark.
"Save some for me, why don't you?" he remarked dryly with a sigh, drawing another trick arrow from his quiver as Robin put away his escrima sticks.
"Thanks for the save SP, but these guys and I go way back. Way to stay 'traught, by the way," Robin smiled in his usual boyish cadence, referencing the archer's stoic calmness even in situations like this where the odds most certainly aren't in their favor.
"Yeah." Noticing the smoke quickly evaporating as the silhouettes of nearby thugs became more and more visible, he turned back to his smaller teammate. "So, what's the plan no-?"
The words had barely left his mouth before he realized that Robin was now gone, vanishing into thin air in the same vein of his mentor.
"I hate it when he does that," he grumbled to himself irritably, before plucking an arrow from his quiver.
Responding to the clicking noise that suddenly emanated from his left, he knocked the arrow back while falling to one knee before releasing it towards its intended target.
The arrow, hurtling through the air with a blunt weight in place of a pointed arrowhead attached to its tip, smashed into the gunman's jaw with the force of a professor boxer behind it and sent him falling to the ground in a dazed heap.
Pinpointing the sound of handguns cocking to his right, he twirled around with another trick arrow nocked at a pair of Black Mask's thugs aiming their weapons at him.
Just when he was about to let loose with his projectile, a red-and-yellow blur suddenly streaked past them. Seemingly brushing past them, they quickly shrugged it off and proceeded to fire.
The only problem was that their weapons were now missing and their hands were now grasping onto empty air instead of their guns.
"What the-?" one of them started to exclaimed incredulously, before Robin's silhouette swung into their vicinity utilizing his grapple gun and barreled into them both with his aerial maneuver catching them off-guard
As they tumbled to the ground, Robin delivered a quick succession of clubbing blows to render them unconscious before firing off his grappling hook again and propelling into the air to deal with more hostiles outside of the quickly dissipating smokescreen radius.
Now with the smoke completely gone, Speedy took a moment to survey his immediate surroundings for any more hostiles.
His eyes then darted to a yelling enforcer running at him armed only with a Bowie knife. Nocking the same arrow, he was just about to fire when a metal snake from behind suddenly coiled around his neck.
That metal snake turned out to be a sizable length of industrial-level chain that another thug threw around his neck and wrenched backwards, causing him to lose aim and instead re-focus his efforts on wrestling free of the metallic links biting against his collarbone.
"Hold him, Butch! I'm been waiting to do this ever since Robin Hood in Star City put an arrow in my kneecap," the thug with the brass knuckles grinned evilly, his eyes flashing with evil intentions as he brandished the knife menacingly.
"Hey, leave some for me, man!" the thug holding the chain complained, tightening the chain with every second that Speedy clawed at it and struggled to get free.
"Don't worry! I'll leave just enough of Pretty Boy here to-!" His smug diatribe was thankfully interrupted by the same yellow blur suddenly whizzing past him.
It took him only a second to realize that his weapon was now gone, and a second later Kid Flash returned with a lightning-quick haymaker punch to the jaw that had him sprawled out on the floor.
"What the-?" Taking advantage of the second thug's shock and awe, Speedy strategically aimed the arrow he had knocked downwards and let go of the bowstring.
The pointed end of the arrow pierced the man's foot, causing him to cry out in pain and loosen his hold over the redheaded vigilante.
Speedy then slammed the back of his head against the man's unsuspecting nose, sending him reeling backwards as he removed the chain from around his neck.
Now wielding his bow with both hands, he turned around and promptly swung the metallic limb into the man's midsection, effectively winding him before rearing back up and delivering a stiff clubbing blow across his face that knocked him off his feet and unto the floor.
Returning the recurve bow to its natural drawing position, he turned back towards the slightly out of breath adolescent speedster with his usual youthful enthusiasm on full display.
"Sorry...it took so long….. to get down here. Had….. to take out the snipers...on the second level," he explained between breaths, nodding towards the unconscious bodies that now littered the catwalk from above.
Speedy drew another arrow while eyeing the groaning thugs laying around in their wake. "Not complaining, but we need to focus our efforts on Snart's gang and Mannheim. It would help if we were at full strength."
Finally catching his breath, Kid Flash couldn't help but smirk as he stood up. "Try telling him that, dude. When I came back around, Rob was taking on Electrocutioner and that sword lady all on his own. I asked if he needed a hand, but he said he could handle it. Guess he learned that from Batman too."
"That's what I'm afraid of," Speedy sighed.
"Hey, I'll talk to him. Get him..to…" Kid Flash's words trailed off as the corner of his eye picked up a curved projectile currently hurtling towards their current position.
Eyes bulged in sudden realization and his superhuman reflexes kicked in as he zeroed in on the object: a specialty-made boomerang with a flashing light at its center.
"Get to cover! I got this!" Kid Flash commanded, stepping in front of Speedy and holding both arms out towards the rapidly approaching boomerang.
Rotating both arms in a clockwise motion at his usual superhuman speeds, his outstretched limbs became blurred conduits that generated a combined vortex that launched forwards and just in the nick of time managed to engulf the boomerang and propel it backwards.
Through maintaining the vortex with both arms continuing to rotate to generate the horizontal tornado, Kid Flash pushed the explosive out of range but was unable to stop what happened next.
BOOOM! The boomerang suddenly exploded into a fiery blaze that just barely managed to avoid scorching them both. Though they were saved from the incendiary properties of the weapon due to Kid Flash's quick thinking, a shock wave generated from the explosion launched the speedster off his feet and to the ground a few yards back.
Shielding his eyes from the initial flash of the explosion in a crouching position, Speedy quickly returned to his feet and leveled his bow at the thrower with a pointed arrow nocked across the bowstring.
His eyes narrowed in concentration as he faced down his adversary in this impromptu standoff, the versatile yet vile Boomerang, who wielded another object of his namesake in turn on one hand.
"Ya know, I've been itching to pay Green Arrow back for putting me in that ARGUS hole for quite a while now. I'll have a fair go at him soon enough, but killing his protégé should help even the odds, at least a little," the Australian told him, wearing his usual smug smile.
"I'm his partner, not protégé," Speedy grated through gritted teeth, eliciting an amused chuckle from the ever boastful Boomerang.
"Oh, touched a nerve, have we?" he mocked, playfully twirling around a boomerang before adding with a particular nasty smirk, "Let's see if we can't sever a few more, yeah?"
With that, he hurled the curved projectile towards the archer before reaching for another.
Firing off the arrow at the same time, Speedy watched as his arrow speared the spiraling boomerang in mid-air, halting its momentum and bringing it back down to the ground.
A second boomerang thrown by the Rogue was met with a similar fate, an arrow right through its center that now harmlessly fluttered back down to the floor between them.
Instinctively retrieving and nocking another arrow against his bow, Speedy maintained his squared stance in stark contrast to Boomerang's slightly frustrated scowl before being replaced with a reluctant smirk.
"You know how to use that bow, I'll give you that mate. But let's see how you deal with a triple threat." His last words were punctuated by his hand reaching even deeper into his trench coat and flinging a trifecta of boomerangs towards the apt archer.
Without blinking, Speedy released his first arrow before systematically reaching into his quiver and firing off another one in rapid succession. His initial volley of arrows hit their targets, spearing both boomerangs out of contention but in the process of nocking his third arrow the last boomerang nearly caught him by surprise.
Moving by instinct, he threw himself to the ground and rolled up to a knee as it knifed through the space previously occupied by his head before arcing back around towards him.
Aiming his bow at the curved projectile now swerving back towards him, he steadied his grip before firing the arrow off to hit its mobile bullseye.
BOOOM! As soon as the arrowhead tip pierced the metallic exterior the boomerang exploded in another aerial explosion.
Twirling on his heel back towards the Australian, he locked eyes just long enough to duck as another boomerang nearly lacerated his neck. Springing back up, he replied by firing off another pointed arrow towards Boomerang's outstretched right forearm.
Intercepting the Rogue mid-throw, Speedy's arrow knocked the boomerang right out of his hand while also cutting his hand in the process. As Harkness swore loudly while favoring his throwing arm, the archer nocked another trick arrow to put him down for the count.
"Guess you're not as good as you think you are," Speedy taunted, while keeping the arrow pressed back against his cheek at the now disarmed criminal.
Boomerang couldn't help but smirk at the young lad's audacity despite kneading his cut hand. "Oh, that's the thing about me, mate. I'm inevitable. Sure, you can avoid it at first. But…."
"Aargghh." Seemingly out of nowhere, the boomerang that Speedy had already dodged managed to swerve back around and clip him on the shoulder while returning to its thrower.
Forced to take a knee as a brand new wave of pain throbbed through his shoulder, he glowered up and seethed at the now smug Harkness who caught the boomerang with his good hand.
"It always comes back," he finished with a triumphant grin, examining the now crimson-dipped wing of his projectile before slowly assuming a throwing stance.
Still clutching his skin-deep but still searing shoulder wound, Speedy struggled to lift up his bow with the same arm but found the pain disagreeing with his choice.
Grinning from ear to ear in his trademark sadistic glee, Boomerang drank in the moment just a second longer before hurling the boomerang forwards with ease to deliver the coup de grace to the currently incapacitated Roy Harper.