Gotham Knights Annual 1 - Setting the Stage
DC Next presents:
Annual One: Setting the Stage
Edited by PatrollinTheMojave & VoidKiller826
Jason & Alice Todd in... #Outlaws
Written by JPM11S
In the heart of the carnage, Alice Todd could hear each and every cry of a Gotham embroiled in a deep unrest, finally letting loose the anger, the rage, the fear, that had been brewing just under the surface since Batman died. Yet the Crimson Avenger sat tight in the ruins of what was once the orphanage her brother, Jason, had grown up in - though from what she gleaned it was more than a pickpocketing ring. She laid in one of few beds that hadn’t rotted away, flipping through one of the books Jason had brought her. She ignored the urging of the twin ebony revolvers slung at her side to venture into the city and exact vengeance. To bring death to the deserving. And with a city like Gotham, especially Gotham, especially at a time like this, Alice knew that that would surely mean most of the poor souls trapped in the fiery concrete jungle. Gotham was a city deserving of death… but Alice wouldn’t, couldn’t, be the one to bring its fate.
“Jason,” Alice murmured, quickly glancing towards the window as her worry overtook her. Jason, her only flesh-and-blood, was stuck in the heart of the danger, out there in a cape trying to keep the corpse alive. She… She should have gone out there and helped him, but… it was too dangerous. Alice was a Red Hood, marked for death by the Black Glove, a cult of devil worshippers that their parents belong to, and for the last three years, she’d been fleeing them and their Shades of Red. She’d been one of them once, their Scarlet, but after what they did to Dorian… never again. No, she learned to keep her head down.
Creak.
A shudder ran through Alice’s body at the sound and her hand reached for her gun on instinct… an instinct she tried to suppress, pulling her fingers back one at a time and curling them into a fist. It was just the wind, she would tell herself. Or maybe some mice. But then it happened again. And again. And Alice’s paranoia grew with each eerie echo, soon reaching a breaking point. She laid her book down to rest on the bed stand beside her and drew her cursed revolvers, aiming down the sights as she carefully trod along the rickety floorboards.
“Alice,” an unearthly voice bellowed from behind her.
The Crimson Avenger whipped her head around, eyes hard as steel as she readied herself to shoot-- “Jason!” she cried, once tense shoulders dropping, replaced with a look of sorrow as she caught a glimpse of what stood behind her. He was an inky void, an abyss of pure darkness that only broke to reveal a blackened eye and tuff of auburn hair. “You didn’t…”
“It doesn’t matter now.” Jason’s words were quick, dismissive almost, and he turned around and began towards the room Alice had come from as if to punctuate the point.
But Alice wasn’t going to drop it. “Just tell me this isn’t what it looks like,” she said, following closely behind him.
Jason craned his head to look back on her, his bruised eye devoid of the harshness that had once laid in it. A long black cape spilled over his shoulders and pooled at his feet. “It… it is.”
Alice swallowed and nodded her head, walking over to the bed she had been previously sat on and took a seat. “Why?”
“You asked what I thought Gotham needed." Despite his voice being drenched in an unmistakable melancholy, there yet remained a strength to it. A confidence. Jason took off his broken cowl and held it in his hand. “Gotham needs Batman. And so I became him.”
“But you’re here,” Alice motioned to the city in flames that resided just outside their window. “And not there.”
Jason forced a smile onto his bruised lips, wincing ever so slightly as he did so. “Well, I was out there. And now I’m here.” He set his cowl down on the bed stand and ran his fingers through his matted hair, trying to ruffle some life back into it.
“What happened?” Alice pressed.
There was a brief pause before Jason delivered the answer, his face visibly tense… like he was trying to hold something back. Keep something bottled in. “I put down the riot on Trigate Bridge. Dick didn’t approve of how I did it.”
Alice raised an eyebrow. “Well, how did you?”
And with that, whatever Jason was trying to keep in came out in an explosion of rage, eyes flaring with the emotion and hands balling into fists that slammed once, twice, three times against the bed stand until it finally devolved into splinters of wood. “I put the fear of God into them! And goddamnit! I was good at it! I am good at being Batman!”
Despite the sheer display of fury she’d witnessed, Alice held steady, utterly unflinching. A temper tantrum wasn’t about to give her any pause. “You beat them. The people you were supposed to be protecting.”
Jason gave an indignant huff as he pulled his shirt over his head, producing from his utility a belt a batarang that he carefully slipped between the layers of fabric and cut something out: a thin slip of metal with a small bat emblazoned on it. “I hurt the people I was protecting everyone else from. But Dick, and apparently you, don’t see it that way.”
Next, Jason took off his utility belt and cut a similar slip of metal from the inside of the buckle. “I’m leaving Gotham… and I’d like for you to come with me. There’s nothing left here for me.” He put his shirt back on.
Alice quickly rose to her feet and shook her head. “Jason, I… I get wanting to leave. Gotham is a cesspool. It was like that before Batman and it’ll be like that after. But, please, I know what this city means to you. What your family means to you. Don’t leave things on bad terms. Go back out there. Ask for forgiveness and say you need to leave to find yourself or something. I don’t care! Just make sure you leave the door open a crack.”
Jason grabbed a black leather jacket with a red hood he had left with Alice and put it on. He paused for a few moments, then asked, “Are you coming or not?”
A deep sigh fell from Alice’s lips. Jason was stubborn, he always had been, and from the short time she’d spent with this older version of him, it seemed that that particular trait had grown in spades. Perhaps born from the confidence that came with experience, perhaps something else entirely, but it didn’t matter. The end result was the same: There was no sense in fighting him, especially when his decision came from a deep sense of shame. Of embarrassment. From wanting to run away from his problems instead of facing them… Maybe Jason wasn’t so different after all. “Fine. We’ll leave.”
The once Robin, once Batman, nodded, unclasping his cape and throwing it to his sister. “I’m glad. Now put that on.” He motioned to the scarlet coat Alice wore. “Red doesn’t blend in well.”
Alice obliged, clasping the cape around her neck. “Where to?”
Jason walked towards the window, opening it. “I have a few ideas.”
And he jumped.
To be continued in Red Hood and the Outlaws
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Dick Grayson in...
#Holy Knight
Written by AdamantAce
The shadows of Gotham City were long and dark, despite the shimmering moon hanging high in the sky. After the uprising provoked by Lonnie Machin - an extremist who called himself the new Joker - and the resulting carnage, the city was like an atomic bomb ready to blow at any moment. The poor and struggling had more than voiced their concerns, never again to be ignored. The rich were quivering in their boots, investing millions into developing the garrisons of Monarch Security, a high-tech private security firm, terrified after seeing the true capabilities of those they had oppressed for so long. Between these two worlds was a man. Batman.
Dick Grayson had been on patrol all night. Already he had put a stop to six groups of vandals, five jewel heists, four drug runners, and three muggings. Now, atop the Randolph Condominium in the Narrows, Dick had in his grip a man named Jimmy Colbeck, the second of two of the Narrows Wound Ravens, a gang looking to capitalise on the unease by charging the poorest neighbourhood in Gotham for their services of ‘protection’. More than everything that he had come up against that whole night, this was something the new Caped Crusader could not allow to continue.
“How many of you are there?” spoke the Dark Knight plainly. There was no use shouting like a mad man. He didn’t have to when he was dangling ol’ Jimmy off of a ten storey apartment building.
“Shit, I dunno like…” the gangster quibbled, held securely in the Batman’s grip, but with his feet barely clawing to the edge of the building. “Like, a dozen! Two dozen!”
“Can you send a message?”
Jimmy paused, stunned. Then he forced out a nervous laugh. “Yes. Yes! Yes, I can, sir!”
“Tell your boys their services are no longer needed.” Dick pulled Jimmy back by the scruff of his jacket and tossed him across the rooftop. “And that Batman’s coming for them.”
Dick smiled and then leapt, soaring from atop the condominium and into the night. He glided, carried by his navy, leathery cape, and weaved between the buildings of the Narrows, passing through the East End and into the Bowery before coming to rest atop the Gotham Public Library. What he hadn’t told the gangster was whether he’d actually be coming for the Wound Ravens depended on them, whether they persisted in their business venture or focused their energy somewhere else. With one more incident to add to the list, Dick finally took a deep breath. He reached up to his earpiece to contact Stephanie, who was slowly coming to grips with operating the Batcomputer down in the cave, to relay his progress and look for a new incident. But before he did, Dick’s ear twitched. He heard something. He stopped and turned around to find a man draped head-to-toe in crimson and gold waiting for him, a large hood framing his masked face in shade. His presence was looming, much as Batman was to the Gotham populace, and Dick would have been preparing himself for a fight if he didn’t recognise the apparel.
“Azrael.”
“Dark Knight,” nodded the scarlet templar. “You fill the suit well. It’s been a pleasure watching you work.”
Azrael - or as he was listed on the Justice Legion charter, Jean-Paul Valley - was a curious man. He had no traceable background, seemingly appearing from nowhere when he was recruited into Ted Kord’s now-defunct superhero team Infinity Incorporated. He spoke like a poet and held himself like an esteemed warrior, but with a weariness that said he held his past in no such esteem.
“You’ve been watching me?” asked Batman.
“I didn’t want to interrupt, but I have a matter I needed to discuss at the first opportunity,” Jean-Paul explained. He had been unaccounted for since the death of Ted Kord, abandoning his duties with the Justice Legion. Dick couldn’t pretend that he had spent much time with any of Infinity Inc’s alumni, but one question he had for them bothered him deeply. But now wasn’t the time.
“What is it?” Dick took a step closer.
“I humbly request your assistance with a problem,” Jean-Paul answered. “In my quest, I picked up a tail. An... assassin. It’s imperative I lose him before I can continue my search.”
He was being followed?
“An assassin? And you brought him here!?” Dick exclaimed.
Not a second later, a thunderclap rang out through the air. Dick looked up, waiting for the following flash of lightning. Azrael, on the other hand, moved past his Kord-issued Sword of Salvation and drew his original weapon, the Sword of Sin, from his sheath. As the blade sung it was engulfed in flames, like those of the fire dancers Dick had once known at Haly’s Circus. This startled the fledgling Batman, who followed Jean-Paul’s eye to the edge of the building.
“We should make this quick,” Azrael grumbled, readying his sword.
Then, from the edge of the building appeared a giant of a man with marble white skin. He leapt up through the air and collided with the rooftop, causing the ground to shake beneath Dick’s feet. “How did he get up here?” the Batman exclaimed.
Jean-Paul gripped his sword tighter. “He climbed.”
Ahead of them, the ‘assassin’ rose to his feet. This man was the definition of a blunt instrument, seven feet tall, shirtless, unarmed, and with biceps bigger than Dick’s head.
“Batman, meet Cinnabar.”
The hulkish Cinnabar stomped his feet on the ground, shaking the whole roof once more as he did, and grinned. “You couldn’t outrun me forever, Burgundy,” he spat with pleasure.
“Azrael.” Jean-Paul corrected him with a stern look.
“Oh, that’s right, you grew too good for your old name and decided to go native.”
Azrael readied his Sword of Sin, and his opponent reared back, ready to charge. Dick, on the other hand, felt remarkably out of place hanging behind the templar. Then, in a sudden burst, Cinnabar sprang to life, barrelling towards Azrael. And while Cinnabar was twice the other man’s size, as Jean-Paul thrusted his sword forward in a parry, the force was enough to bring Cinnabar to a dead stop. Then began the trading. Cinnabar began a series of blows, throwing his fists out with meteoric force. Azrael narrowly evaded the opening onslaught, lurching back and forth and blocking the final strike with the flat edge of his searing sword, not that Cinnabar seemed fazed when his fist collided with the flames.
“Who is this guy?” asked Batman, leaping to keep up with the pair as they moved back and forth across the rooftop, looking for any opening to jump in and lend a hand without getting in the way.
“Bare-knuckle boxer,” Azrael replied, straining as he swung his Sword of Sin out in a wide arc, slicing across Cinnabar’s bare chest. “Also unkillable.” That explained why he wasn’t using the non-lethal weapon Ted Kord had given him.
“Right, that’s his game, but who is he?” Dick replied, a question that Jean-Paul had no answer to.
He slashed for his opponent’s side, but Cinnabar was more than able to catch the sword as it fell, wrapping his sausage-sized fingers around the burning blade. The brute sneered and attempted to wrench the weapon out of Jean-Paul’s hands, but the warrior had a more than mighty grip. So, instead, Cinnabar pulled the sword up and overhead, lifting his whole opponent with it. He raised him so they were face to face, levelling out the height difference, and then cackled. “Say your prayers!”
Now. Dick pushed forward, leaping and bounding to close the distance he had kept. He reached to his back, up behind his flowing navy cape, and clasped his two concealed implements. Rapidly, he drew his weapons: Twin escrima sticks like he had once used as Robin. But these sticks had an added kick. As he reached the assassin, Batman struck upwards, placing the end of one stick by Cinnabar’s armpit and the other by his hip. Then, Dick clenched his fists and pumped a searing electrical charge from his suit, through the sticks and through Cinnabar’s chest, a complete circuit. A move like this would have stopped the heart of a mortal man, so Dick had to trust Jean-Paul at his word that this guy really was unkillable.
Sure enough, Cinnabar didn’t go into cardiac arrest, but he did leap with a howl, stumbling back and dropping Jean-Paul to the floor. He was furious and - planting his feet - threw out his forearm, smacking the Dark Knight in the chest. Instantly, Dick was torn from his feet, launched into the air, one of his stun sticks dropping feebly to the floor where he once stood. He flew so far in fact that he began to fall from atop the building and towards the pavement below. But the new Batman stayed calm, taking ahold of his remaining baton and holding it out above him. With a click, a wire fired from the centre of the weapon and latched onto the edge above, a grappling wire. Then, with a zip, Dick was plucked out of his descent and began soaring back up to the site of the fight.
When Dick returned to the rooftop, Azrael and Cinnabar were at it once again.
“The Black Glove demands blood!” Cinnabar roared, colliding with his quarry. It didn’t even matter to him that Dick had survived. Azrael had his undivided attention. And Azrael was happy to give it right back, his sword seemingly burning brighter than before, as he launched into an all-out assault. Dick watched him move, thundering, rallying against Cinnabar with deadly force and precision. A skilled killer, but one confident he was unable to kill. But even as Jean-Paul gave it all he had, Cinnabar seemed to be more than able to keep up.
At first, Dick couldn’t understand how Cinnabar was doing it. Sure, he was as big as Bane and - judging from the pain emanating from Dick’s ribs - as strong as him too, but he was a boxer, not a duelist. Then he saw it. Azrael swung out, Cinnabar stepped aside. Azrael lunged, Cinnabar backpedaled. Jean-Paul was far quicker than his opponent, but Cinnabar was predicting all of his moves.
Jean-Paul went for an overhead strike, but Cinnabar kicked him in the centre of the chest before the hit could connect. Like Dick, Jean-Paul was launched from his feet, flying back into the brick chimney atop the roof and shattering it. And it was clear Jean-Paul was growing tired as he struggled to scrape himself off of the floor. Cinnabar however didn’t seem the least bit tired as he bounded back to his foe.
Azrael stood unsteadily and went for a slash. But Dick knew it was for naught. Cinnabar already knew it was coming. Unless…
Dick’s hands passed his utility belt and then flung forward, tossing round projectiles that collided with the back of Cinnabar’s legs. On impact, they detonated, engulfing his lower right leg in a gel that began to rapidly harden, holding him in place. And, sure enough, this was more than enough to throw him off focus, allowing Azrael to go uninterrupted and rake his blade across Cinnabar’s chest once more.
As Cinnabar reared back, screaming in pain and thrashing to both free himself and strike out against his attacker, Jean-Paul moved deftly, ducking under his arm and repositioning himself behind the bare-chested assassin and plunging his flaming sword into his back.
Dick’s eyes shot open as he watched the blade go in through Cinnabar’s back and out through his chest. But then, as Azrael heaved the weapon free once more and the assassin merely staggered forth, Dick knew he truly was unkillable. But Cinnabar had taken more than a few deadly blows, and that was enough to slow a man down from pain alone. That he seemed to experience plenty of. Slowly, Cinnabar caught his balance and turned to face Azrael, who now stood at Batman’s side.
“I’ll always be a step ahead of you, Cinnabar!” Azrael cried out before charging forward for another assault.
Then Dick came to another realisation. The gloating, the grandstanding. Cinnabar was deadly persistent, yet was more than playing with his food, at least up until now. He and Azrael clearly had a personal history, and he could predict all of Jean-Paul’s moves, but none of Dick’s. This was a competition.
“Azrael, wait,” Batman caught Jean-Paul by the shoulder and held him back gently. Jean-Paul looked back, confused while Cinnabar was still rousing himself. It was clear he was also exhausted, with little left in the tank.
“You need to stop fighting to kill,” Dick explained.
“I can’t kill him,” Azrael strengthened his grip on the Sword of Sin. “You don’t have to worry about that.” He leapt forward, but Dick caught him once again.
“I know,” Dick nodded. “But you need to stop fighting to kill.”
Aha.
Jean-Paul let go of the Sword of Sin, allowing it to fall at his feet extinguished. Then, as Cinnabar rapidly began to approach, he drew his Sword of Salvation, a technological development that sparkled with electricity. His weapon from his time with Infinity Inc. As Cinnabar met the pair, Jean-Paul crashed his second sword forward, meeting his foe. At the same time, Dick jumped and repositioned himself behind Cinnabar using his grappling line. He couldn’t do much to scratch the guy without risking shattering all of his bones - he wasn’t hardy like Azrael was - but that didn’t mean he couldn’t help in other ways.
And once again, Azrael and Cinnabar clashed together, beginning another rapid trade of blows and manoeuvres. Both were slower this time, injured and weary, but that didn’t mean either were holding back. Dick watched Jean-Paul move, striking Cinnabar in key points with the shocking edge of his blunt blade. And while Cinnabar was more than able to persist through the pain of the electric shock, it was immediately clear he was now on the back foot, unable to predict his foe’s movement any longer. And Dick could see why: Azrael fought completely differently, showing a fiery commitment to the alternate combat style he adopted while a member of Infinity Inc.
“They really sent the best guy for the job, didn’t they?” Batman bellowed and he jumped up, tossing another volley of gel charges at Cinnabar’s feet. They detonated, momentarily glueing him to the ground and allowing Azrael to pull off a flurry of blows that decimated the immobilised brute. But Cinnabar didn’t give up, craning his neck before bashing his thick skull against the face of Azrael’s helmet, cracking it to reveal the pale face of Jean-Paul Valley. And Valley staggered back, concussed, stunned. Dick continued, throwing out a fistful of Batarangs. “Well, second best. They couldn’t send Burgundy after himself, could they?”
Each of the bat-shaped shurikens bounced uselessly off of the rippling muscles of Cinnabar’s back. But the assassin reeled back, furious at the Caped Crusader. “Second to no-one! Not after I crush the heretic’s skull!”
Cinnabar turned to face his quarry once more, but in the time he had spent gesturing, Azrael had picked himself up and readied an attack. He swung his Sword of Salvation wide like a baseball, connecting the length of the blade with the centre of the assassin’s chest. Then, on the other side, Batman held his twin escrima sticks out, firing a carbon alloy Bat-line from each that wrapped around Cinnabar’s biceps. Dick attempted to pull him back, to immobilise him, but he wasn’t strong enough. Luckily, he didn’t need to be. He squeezed his gloves tight around his sticks and unleashed a final surge of electricity that flowed along the conducting wires and through Cinnabar’s body. Then, Azrael wound back and beat the writhing Cinnabar across the head with the Sword of Salvation, finally knocking him unconscious.
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Helena Wayne in...
#Keep in Touch
Written by Dwright5252
We fall so we can learn to pick ourselves back up.
Her father’s words of wisdom passed onto him from his father, swirled around Helena Wayne’s mind as the pain coursed through her body. She had fallen, beaten, and bruised by the city she was trying to protect, and she was determined to pick herself up. After all, what lesson would she learn if she let this failure defeat her?
Gotham City was in the process of a rebirth through the fires of anarchy that had engulfed the city this past month, with order reigning once more. It seemed everyone was in the process of metamorphosis: Her brother Jason was missing, having attempted to take up her father’s mantle and failing. Stephanie Brown, formerly ignorant of the Bat Family’s secrets, was now fully in the loop and eager to help. Though Dick insisted she wasn’t going to help, Helena saw that spark in her eyes that she recognized all too well and knew it was only a matter of time. And most of all… Dick. After all this time, he finally rose to the task that her father had set for him: Becoming the savior that Gotham City needed.
Helena was happy for him, sure, but she couldn’t help but wonder... what she was supposed to do. Wayne Manor, her family’s ancestral home, had been burned to the ground by frustrated citizens, angry at the Waynes’ complacency with their suffering. They hadn’t done enough. Dick was taking care of that as well, making sure the city saw that Bruce Wayne’s children had relinquished control over Wayne Enterprises to Lucius Fox. The company had just begun a massive effort to funnel money into the more needy portions of the city, to restore and uplift, while the family ran the company’s charity, the Wayne Foundation.
It seemed there was a plan for everything, and Helena was happy that her family name had a way back to its former lustre after all it had been through. They didn’t need her help with this.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” Dick had asked her when she told him the news. He seemed shocked, like he hadn’t seen this coming from a mile away. He was getting better at acting.
“You have everything handled here,” Helena told him simply, hefting her duffle bag over her shoulder as soreness rocketed through her body. She gritted her teeth, determined not to cry out in pain. She didn’t want to make this harder for Dick to say goodbye. “I think it’s time I traveled again.”
She didn’t want to tell him the full truth, that she wasn’t just traveling to find herself. She had a mission, one which Dick most likely wouldn’t approve or would want to help her with. This was something she needed to do alone.
But she was sure Dick had already surmised what she truly wanted to do. It was always hard keeping things from him; his ability to read people was matched only by their father. If he did know, however, he kept it to himself for his own reasons. Maybe he felt like he owed her something, though Helena knew he owed her nothing.
Embracing him in a hug, Helena felt a tear stream down her face. She didn’t think this would be as difficult as it was, saying goodbye to the only true family she had left besides Alfred. But if things went well, maybe she would call another person ‘family’ once again.
“Good luck,” Dick said softly, letting her go as he closed the cab door behind her. “Keep in touch.” The driver pulled away from the sidewalk, leaving Dick Grayson waving to his sister as he disappeared into the Gotham throng.
“Where to?” the driver asked, and Helena saw his nameplate said Ignacio.
“The airport, please,” she responded as she pulled her phone out and began to search for diamond thefts across the world.
We often overlook the obvious clues in favor of the convoluted, when most times the easiest answer is the correct one.
She had many words of wisdom from her father, but her mother… She barely knew the woman. Sure, she made an attempt a few years back before everything went wrong, but Selina Kyle was never the type of person to be tied down to domestic life. She was a nomadic cat. Her mother and father loved each other in their own ways, but it never truly worked between them.
When her father died, Helena halfheartedly expected her mother to take her with her, raise her like she was her child and not a pet she visited once in a while. But she knew that would never happen. A child would slow her down, prevent her from doing the things she loved..
But Helena wasn’t a child anymore. She’d show Selina Kyle how much she’s grown, show her how well off she was without her.
Then she’d learn from her. After all, she wasn’t just the daughter of Batman.
She was the daughter of Catwoman, too.
To be continued in Huntress: The Road Home (One-Shot)
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Dick Grayson & Jean-Paul Valley in...
#Holy Knight, Part Two
Written by AdamantAce
The assassin Cinnabar lay on the floor, bound and unconscious. The fight was hard-fought, exhausting, taking Jean-Paul’s all, but it was done. And now Jean-Paul couldn’t help but look to the new Batman with wonderment.
“How did you know that would work?”
“How’d I do what?” replied the detective humbly.
“You told me to switch styles,” Jean-Paul replied. “And it changed everything.”
“He knew your moves,” Batman explained. “He knew every move in your playbook. But it wasn’t precognition. He couldn’t guess what I was going to do, not that I could do much. Clearly you’ve fought before.”
“Many times,” Azrael continued. “We would often spar back in the day, but… he could never counter me that well before.”
“Right, because he was always second best,” Dick added. “The runner-up. He got sick of it and started training specifically to beat you. Committed your moves to memory. So when you switched styles, started fighting non-lethally--”
“He was caught off guard,” Jean-Paul finished the thought, astounded. “He never expected me to fight to subdue.”
“I don’t know you too well, but I know you worked hard to change your ways with Infinity Inc.” Dick told him. Jean-Paul bowed his head, deeply humbled and blown away by the detective’s powers of deduction.
But then Jean-Paul did some deducing of his own. The Dark Knight was pausing, struggling, searching. For an answer perhaps, or a question. “What is it?” Azrael got ahead of him.
“The Black Glove,” spoke Grayson. “Your friend mentioned them. Said they’re calling for your blood. Who are they?”
“I--” Jean-Paul looked for an answer, one that would satisfy the keen detective and stop his searching. But he knew that any answer he could give would only give him more questions. That, or the Bat would know he was lying at a glance. So he had to be honest. “I cannot say. Only know that they are dangerous, to be kept at arm’s reach, and that I am handling them. As is my mission.”
Dick nodded. It was clear he wasn’t getting much more out of the man on the subject. But there was something else.
“Oh?”
“While you were part of Infinity Inc., you crossed paths with a friend of mine,” Batman explained. “My brother. Robin. I know he got into trouble but… what happened?”
Jean-Paul retreated inwards. This was a grave story that gave him much pause. He was more than aware of Tim Drake, the boy who had given the team much trouble. Once Robin, then Red X. “As I understand it…” Jean-Paul began, “The boy was contracted by Maxwell Lord, head of mercenary group Checkmate. He was… blackmailed, lured out, and forced into his service.”
Dick took a deep breath horrified. He had heard nothing. “Did he…?”
“Kill?” Azrael interjected. “No. Though I cannot say his actions did not result in tragedy. In death.”
The Batman was silent, He already knew what the newspapers knew, and what the Justice Legion knew, and that alone implied something awful.
“He could have reached out to us, to the team,” Jean-Paul continued. “But he didn’t. When Lord began his endgame plans, Drake worked alone to hobble the villain’s forces and succeeded. But he failed to give us the information that would have saved Ted Kord… and the boy’s father.”
Grayson blinked, struggling to look Jean-Paul in the eye. “Thank you.”
“Where is the boy now?” Azrael asked. Dick said nothing. “I ask because… well, I hope he may seek redemption. I sincerely hope he knows there’s a way back.”
“I’ll make sure he does,” Dick replied.
“Then, I must away,” Jean-Paul nodded. “My quest brings me beyond the country’s borders, and to stay for too long would certainly invite another assassin.”
“Right,” Batman nodded. “I’ll make sure Cinnabar is secured in Blackgate Penitentiary. They have special systems to contain metahumans.”
“He is no metahuman, but yes, I’m confident that will contain him,” Jean-Paul replied. “Though I would not keep him in one place for too long. They will come looking for him.”
Grayson nodded and smiled. Hesitantly, Jean-Paul smiled back. He had come to Gotham seeking the new Dark Knight’s assistance, but also to see to one of his dire concerns. But now he was confident that such concern was entirely unfounded. Things were good.
So he leaped and disappeared.
Left alone, Dick Grayson dusted himself off and clutched at his chest, his muscles still aching from the hits he had sustained. But, after six groups of vandals, five jewel heists, four drug runners and three muggings, two Wound Ravens, and an assassin who was difficult to beat, Dick decided he had earned a rest. Especially tonight of all nights. So Dick went home, to the New Gotham townhouse at 4 Morrison Street. It was no Wayne Manor, yet far more opulent than many could afford. But it was in the city, not up on a hill, immersed in the city’s youngest neighbour and only a stone throw from Stephanie’s school. And, after a well earned Christmas evening, it would finally be home.
After Dick had doffed the navy batsuit in the city-side Batcave, he hurried home, pushing through the front door of the brownstone. First, he was met with Alfred tending the open fire with a red-and-white Santa hat atop his head. Instantly, Alfred turned to look to Dick and smiled widely. Something was different.
“Merry Christmas, Alfie,” Dick smiled back, unsure of the good news. “Where’s Stephanie?”
“Still out, visiting friends,” Alfred explained. “But… well, perhaps you could fetch me something from the kitchen.”
“Oh?” Dick raised an eyebrow. “What do you need?”
“Anything,” Alfred smiled.
Clearly, he was being played, but Dick didn’t care. Instead, he crept towards the kitchen. This Christmas was bound to be different, with Jason missing and Helena having flown the nest, not to mention the new home. But, when Dick reached the kitchen and saw the familiar figure waiting for him inside, his heart leapt, Alfred’s bright smile spreading to Dick’s own face. He was home.
“Merry Christmas, Dick.”
He was changed, older, weary no doubt from the last year. But it was him. He was home.
“Merry Christmas, Tim.”
To be continued in Batman & Robin
Introducing… the DC Next Batman Line:
- Batman & Robin by AdamantAce - Starring Dick Grayson, Tim Drake and Stephanie Brown!
- Red Hood and the Outlaws by JPM11S - Starring Jason and Alice Todd, and more!
- Batgirl by AdamantAce & ElusiveMonty - Starring Barbara Gordon!
- Batwoman by ElusiveMonty & deadislandman1 - Starring Kate Kane!
- Detective Stories by AdamantAce and the team - Starring the Bat Family!
We hope you enjoy all we have in store for you in 2021 and beyond! ~Adam
Posted Dec 30, 2020, 10:34 PM UTC · edited