I don't own any characters mentioned in this story. The rights belong to DC comics, Bob Kane, etc.
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Darkness Cannot Drive, Part 1/?
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There is such a thing as the pressure of darkness.
– Victor Hugo
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"Hey Wayne! You fall asleep at the computer again?"
The growling echo in his cowl lets Terry know that, no, the old man had just been ignoring his constant chatter. Bruce had gotten better at that— at ignoring the excess and focusing on the minute change in Terry's voice when something was actually important. But he had missed this one and Terry doesn't think he has time to repeat himself.
[What is it, Terry?]
"I think I've got someone following me again."
[Do you have a visual?]
"No. Who ever this guy is, he's good." Terry has been feeling eyes— burning, stinging, unnerving eyes— on him for about a week now, whenever he went out on patrol. But he hasn't been able to catch sight of anything. Every once in awhile he hears the sound of boots on brick or the scrape of metal on pavement, but he never sees any sign of what he now thinks of as his "bat stalker."
[Stay alert.] Wayne's voice is gruff in his ear.
"Roger." Terry pulls his red glider wings back into his suit and lands near-effortlessly on the top of the Gotham Tech Museum.
Inside, he can see the shapes of eight masked men loading remo cell-cloning prototypes onto a small hover cart. There'd been a recent spike in the illegal cloning industry of late, and even that exhibit's older technology could sell for a bundle in the right circles.
"Hey," Terry hums into his cowl, "the tip was good. Now how about I go in there and make sure those guys have a museum pass?"
[Be careful, T—] is the last thing Terry hears as he fires up the jets on his boots and barrels through the open skylight. The gun shots start almost immediately, and Terry grins like a wild cat as he swerves and spins, hearing the faint hissing sound as laser points hit the wall, the ceiling, anything but him. He holds back a keyed up war-whoop as he throws seven successive batarangs at the thieves' weapon-holding hands.
Six connect with the men's fingers and they cry out in pain. One just hits a gun, sending it flying sideways, but not far.
The masked man recovers quickly and makes a dive. He has the gun in his hand by the time Terry's even acknowledged what happened.
The gun goes off, the laser shot skimming his right bicep (enough to leave a burn, could be worse). Terry darts sideways and shoots forward, boots at full blast. He slams his left fist into the man's shoulder and there's a faint snapping sound. The mask muffles a groan as the gun clatters to the tile floor.
One man tries to get up again, but the Batman (Terry sometimes wonders where the shift in his mind starts and ends, who is who and when) slams a well aimed kick into the man's stomach. He falls, and the rest are smart enough to stay down.
"Got 'em," Terry mumbles into his communicator. "Wait... no. I only count seven. One's missing." He shifts into a fighting stance and scans the room cautiously. The only sounds are the men— the ones already on the ground, fingers sliced and a shoulder fractured— groaning in slightly exaggerated pain (Gotham's thugs have learned that the DAs go lighter on the sentence if Batman has roughed them up more than necessary; they all play it up in anticipation).
"Any thoughts?" Terry whispers.
[Check the perimeter.] Terry can guess that Wayne may be as nervous as the young Batman is, but he doesn't let it show in his voice—which Terry oddly resents and appreciates at the same time.
He scans the room, waiting. The perimeter of the room is clean and, perhaps more importantly, silent. "I think he got away."
[Don't jump to conclusions!] The cowl's ear-piece buzzes. [Check the stairs.]
"If he made it to the stairs, he would have shot at me from above," Terry grumbles. "It's the only spot that he could attack from that I couldn't reach. There's no reason to get there and... do... nothing..." Terry freezes. His communicator crackles and is silent.
[Terry?] Old man Wayne's voice is impatient and worried.
"Um, you'd better see this," the young Batman gulps. Terry's vision goes blue and inverts for a second as the camera flickers on.
Now Bruce sees the same thing he does. Lying on the steps is the final masked thief, eyes and mouth open like a grotesque parody of a dead fish. A sharp, twisted knife is sprouting out of his chest like a budding plant, the blood pooling along the steps.
"Bruce?" Terry's voice sounds calm, collected— like Batman— but he's scared out of his mind, and he thinks Wayne can tell.
[I've called the police. Tie up the rest and get out of there.]
"Roger that!" Terry slings a roped batarang around the seven (live) thugs, tying the end in a triple knot, just in case. (Just in case of what, he doesn't know— but a dead man on the stairs who wasn't dead ten minutes ago isn't something Terry feels very good about).
He spreads his red wings and rockets up through the skylight two minutes before the whir of sirens can be heard barreling down the main streets of Gotham.
Therefore, he also misses the red hooded man, sitting on a gargoyle across the street from the museum, twirling a knife sideways on his index finger.
"You're welcome," the red mask chuckles, watching the young Batman's silhouette disappear into the night.
To be continued...