Dick

After the hospital took the baby-under the name Jack Doe, thanks to the street girl- I return home, because my shift was over a long time ago.

I hadn't known she was back on the streets-social workers rarely report escaped children in Bludhaven-but it's not like I'd expected otherwise. Clearly, this kid's been doing this for a while. I don't know whether to be impressed or concerned.

Given she found a baby that same day, I'm leaning towards impressed. No, wait. That's concerning.

See? I'm in the middle.

When I return to my apartment, the clock is inching towards nine and the rioting of the night is beginning. Bludhaven is worse than New York City; it never, ever sleeps.

Unfortunately, I have to.

I head to bed for a brief power nap after scraping together some dinner with my sparse options and taking a long overdue shower. My mind is still on the girl. As accustomed to the streets as Jason, as clever as Tim, as upbeat as Steph, as sharp-tongued as Damian. Funny, like me.

With only the two short conversations, these might seem like premature estimates. But I can tell. I've always been good at reading people. She's so... good. I just don't think she likes being that way.

I wake up to my internal clock demanding action. A quick glance at the clock informs me that it's a little past eleven, which adds up to more sleep than I got last night. Hurrying into my Nightwing uniform, the excitement that always pulses through me when I plan on going out is pushing me forward, demanding the night to begin.

Soon enough, my belt is secured on my waist and I'm crawling out my window.

My first line shoots into the air, hook grabbing at the stone seamlessly and my body swinging out into open air. This feeling never gets old. The wind on your face, the adrenaline pumping through you, your hair whipping behind you…

It's half the reason I do this.

Patrol is nothing out-of-the-ordinary. There's a gang dealing a new drug with a longer high but a bigger crash that everyone wants. They employ teens. The gang is evil, but lacks the brains and ruthlessness that turn dangerous gangs into a bigger problem. It's simple.

There are a couple drug deals I halt, leaving the kids roped up in fishing lines and out of reach of the exposed drug littering the ground. I stop several attempted muggings and robberies, but for the most part, the city is calm.

After a huge schism in the criminal underworld that I definitely did not (:D) orchestrate, gangs and criminals are unorganized. That could be dangerous, but luckily it's just left them in a state of confusion, grappling for a new leader.

So I spend the night on good-old patrol; looking out for crime while simultaneously practicing acrobatic stunts.

Near four in the morning, I notice a shipment coming in that I hadn't been expecting. Yeah, yeah, I was trained by Batman and memorize the shipping schedules each night. It's habit.

Disappearing into the shadows of past shipment containers, I observe the unloading of several mismatched packages. Personalized shipment.

A cloaked leader (always the sign of a villain or cult leader, in my experience) orders people around with gestures. I'm tempted to jump in, but hold myself still. I don't know anything about these guys.

"Hey!" yells a guy off to my right. Ugh. I've only been here for a couple minutes. "Hey, that's Nightwing!"

Crap.

I flip onto the box behind me just as it's peppered with bullets. Not stopping or even slowing down, I continue moving in unpredictable twists until safely behind a metal shipping container.

Moving away from cover, I toss several smoke bombs from my belt into the center of their formation before running after them myself. Withdrawing my escrima sticks, I begin incapacitating the men one by one, causing mass confusion in the lingering smog. As soon as I can see the boat again clearly, I notice that it's deserted of any other ship workers or cult masters.

I approach cautiously, sheathing my

"It's Nightwing, right?"

I survey in front of me for just a second before twisting to avoid a flying projectile. The offender stands casually on a tower of crates, dressed in all black. Flowing scraps of fabric billow around her very feminine figure, betraying her need for dramatics. Her hair is loose, but in a way that's almost fake, and I decide it's a wig. She's wearing sunglasses, which I'm guessing has some major tech inside, and a face mask that draws up to just underneath them.

She tosses what I now decide are incredibly sharp throwing stars, and I narrowly, narrowly dodge them. I swear one of them cut a scrap of my hair.

"Not impressed."

Utilizing my speed and knowing I'll need it, I lay out difficult and unpredictable dodges, all a distraction for moving closer to her. She throws several more, which continue to get too close, before withdrawing a hunter's knife in each hand, blades following along her arm. My momentum carries me forward, too late to back away from close contact.

I twist over her first thrust, planting my arm on her shoulder to throw my legs up and miss the next jab. While I have my hand there, I use my thumb to press on a pressure point between her mask and shoulder.

Her body thrusts away from the sensitive touch, her arms coming up to slice at my arm as her body twists out of the way.

But I've already moved my hand and am back on my feet, this time with an escrima stick in each hand.

Her next strike is intense and skilled, aiming to wrap her blade around one of my sticks and force it out of my hand. I spin it around the blade in response, ending up with it back in my hand. She can't pull back fast enough and her blade continues, leaving me an open window to aim a stick into a nerve cluster in her shoulder joint.

She dodges with minuscule margins, causing me to miss the cluster and hit just to the side of it. Instead of immobilizing her, it shoots pain down her shoulder instead. I know, because I've felt it like that before. Using that distraction, I send my left foot at her lowered hand and my right hand to her uninjured weapon, disarming both.

Faster than I'd imagined she would've reacted, her foot kicks up into my chest. I am forced back, winded. She advances and trips me backwards, pushing a new blade at my neck. My escrima sticks come up in an X, catching the blade just before it pierces my throat. She kneels uncomfortably on my thighs, restricting me from rolling away or using my legs to push her back.

Usually at this point I need a distraction (sometimes one I make up) or just the slightest give in our impasse to throw her off. Deciding after a moment that this will not yield until she stabs me, I rear up the most successful distraction: "Over here!". Makes them look back, searching for who I'd called for.

But one moment she's bearing down on me, and the next, she's swept aside. I try not to smirk. I like that distraction better. Wasting no time, my now-freed limbs flip me back onto my feet so I can survey what just happened.

I look around for my mysterious attacker only to find the shipyard's crane swinging out over the ocean. It's large hook is probably what hit her off of me. When the chain swings back, I launch onto it, securing my left foot into the hook so I can hang on for the ride.

It swings again up to its apex before heading back over to where my assailant probably fell, but I can see no sign of her on the dock or in the black waves.

The crane jerks erratically, pitching the hook almost sideways. I use a hook on my belt to secure me to the wavering chain I was losing hold of, only to realize, as I pushed my hands in two different links for added grasp, that either the one manning the crane was trying to hit me or hit her.

If it was meant to hit me, sucky aim. If it was meant to hit her…

She'd climb to find out who, right?

I unhook my belt as soon as the chain settles so I can grab the link above my head. Only a few pulls later and the chain pitches again, threatening to drop me onto the dock nearly twenty feet below.

Groaning, I pull myself up as soon as the chain dies down, even though it's still shaking. It starts to move to the right, but I don't stop for that. It's moving, but not in a way that makes it impossible to climb.

Several more times it moves, but I manage to hold fast to the chain and make it up far enough that I can use my grappling hook to connect to the cabin of the crane.

One of the windows is shattered, and there's sounds of a very intense fight. Knowing it might get me skewered by a stray knife, I crash through the remains of the broken window. Luckily, there were no airborne knives.

The cabin is spacious for a crane; maybe twenty by ten feet. The stools and card table are broken. Knives are lodged in the wall, floor and control panel, and their thrower is crashed against a wall. Not like someone threw her against it, though, but like she was running and didn't expect to hit the wall. Wally does that sometimes.

Standing behind the remains of the upturned card table is the girl I met in the station. Her cocky smile is pulled into a more serious expression as she puts distance between the other. The two seem completely focused on each other, though they both vaguely recognize my presence by glancing in my direction.

The assailant advances again, but the girl whips her clasped hands apart, throwing a torrent of playing cards into her vision. As soon as the cards are in the air, she grabs the now two-legged stool from the floor of the cab and swings it around into her head.

Caught off guard, she falls, surprised, to the ground. I move quickly to enter the fight, seeing that the kid has run out of tricks. With a sweep of my escrima stick, the assailant is unconscious.

The girl lets out a held breath and wipes away a few strands of hair sticking to her forehead.

"Still unimpressed?" I quip at my assailant's form. Then I look at the girl again, who's eyeing the door and the distance to it.

Not ready to let her disappear again, I step in her path. "And who are you?"

"Someone who's ready to cash in that favor I did you a little while ago."

My mouth quirks up.

"But I didn't say I owed you one, did I?"

"Fine. Next time I'll let her… do whatever it was she was doing."

"What's your name?"

She looks like she's about to refuse, but pauses and instead responds, "Dani."

Finally, a name! That was driving me nuts.

"What were you doing here?"

"What's your name?" she shoots back. I don't respond, and she nods smugly. "I don't have to tell you anything. But in case you're worried, I only came into this crane when I saw that-" she waves an arm over the unconscious form of my attacker "attack you on the dock."

"We were only like that for a few minutes," I note, looking through the window where I'd been. Everything is tiny up here, and the docks are dark despite the regulated lights.

"Not then. I came up before that. She just gave me a good opportunity. Anyway, she's been awake and listening to us." Dani nods at the lump and I narrow my eyes, withdrawing my weapons again and stepping closer to the attacker. Nothing happens, so I cautiously poke her face with my stick. Usually, cocky criminals like her can't take that.

When nothing happens, I recognize Dani's distraction as a success. Just as I realize that, I look around for her, noticing that the door, which had been closed before, was wide open.

I dart forward, looking for her shape scrambling down the ladder. Remarkably, she'd slid down and was now at the bottom. I can barely make out her arm as she gives a huge wave back before disappearing into the shipyard.

Wow, she's good.

Quick response to the comment regarding Dani's powers: she did use them, when she escaped the car. She just doesn't often because as it will explain more in the next chapter, she's trying to preserve Danny's identity as he becomes more pronounced in the superhero world. And there was the whole year where she couldn't use any of her powers, because otherwise she'd dissolve, so she has plenty of skills and doesn't need her powers most of the time.

~Disclaimer Disclaimer~