[i](Dblade & Ruby collab.)[/i]

"Yeah, let's go."

Batgirl sounded distracted when she said it, reading an e-mail off a small phone before tucking it away behind her cape. She said very little else, walking in a bee line to the nearest console and punching in a simple command. It was Steph's favorite ride, even if it was used little for being such a new design. The 'flying' Batmobile was at least something Damian was familiar with, too. Some said it looked more like a bat-winged UFO, and maybe that's why Steph liked it so much. It had to be a strange thing to look out one's window, and see the black and red vehicle floating down your alley soundlessly. 

It was only strapped in and halfway to Gotham City that the blonde snapped out of it. "We have a source that's always been very solid. As in, everything they've told us has panned out to one degree or another in the past. But the tips have always been small, relative to most of the other stuff we have to deal with. They just sent us a message saying the Mayor was kidnapped. I'd call the cops and ask if the Mayor was okay or not, but...I don't trust any of the ones left behind from the Freeze thing."

With new purpose, Batgirl pressed the throttle forward, causing the bat-winged UFO to burst forward and the two caped-crusaders forced back into the seats. "Don't say anything where we're headed. No kidding, or we'll find out which of us can put the other down first," there was no play there, no spark, no hint of anything but a tone that was low and deadly serious. Suddenly the craft had stopped moving, and Batgirl's appearance was little more than a sliver of cape sliding after her. They landed upon the roof of a building as little more than shadows with eyes filled with attitude. Their forms cloaked in blackness, appearing for a moment here, then there, then a moment later over half down a set of stairs, then a hallway lined with what appeared hotel doors. The walls dark with few working lights--and Steph killed one of those to provide more darkness for the two of them. She ignored the sounds of sex coming muffled from the other side of every door they passed.

At the end of the hall was another set of stairs, and another light killed, but there was no hall on the otherside of the door at the bottom of these stairs. The door they went through was painted black, and the very wall it attached to was shaking from a mighty rumble. Through the door was still darkness...but also lights. Green, red, purple, blue, white, orange, zapping in and out of photonic existance, lighting up the darkness surrounding the metal catwalk the duo found themselves passing through, below a floor that moved more like waves from their vantage point and distance than actual people on a dance floor. 

But they didn't stay, slipping out the door opposite the one they'd used to slink onto the cat walk. A hallway looking much like the last; a bit dank, very dark, old yet thick brown carpet, no furniture or art or hint of life upon any of the walls. Batgirl took the first door available facing the exterior of the building, since all of it was one big room here, anyway. They were lucky enough to come into shadow, the near forty feet long room mainly lit with mobile spotlighting on tripods that centered their light upon the center of the room. Under the lights were three long and narrow tables and the near deafening sound of moneycounters that lined the tables, each stands of bills around it, and a girl in bra and panties behind it.

Just off from the the long narrow tables was their source; clad in a guady, glittry, gown with platinum blonde hair that rolled down to her shoulders, brownish black eyes framed in a bit much eyeliner, eyeshadows an explosion of gold glitter. She sat in a large, heavily padded, leather skinned high back chair--surrounded by a pack of girls in their late teens, early twenties, from Steph's first glance. Needless to say, everything stopped the second Batgirl and Robin suddenly appeared at line between light and darkness in the big, long, room. 

Some gasped. Some exclaimed with their favorite curse word, as if they'd seen a ghost in the midnight hour. All of them starred. Even the ones counting cash. 

"Where?"

It was Batgirl's only question worth asking.

"55th and Scarsdale," the Madame glittered gold answered without so much as a smile. 

Batgirl disappeared back to darkness, Robin half a heartbeat later. 

Robin followed along wordlessly as Batgirl headed out without mentioning why or where. Normally he would at least ask what they were going to do but Batgirl's sudden lack of banter was a refreshing change of pace and he didn't want to risk ruining it. Then he was distracted from asking entirely. The flying Batmobile was his favorite out of the Bat-Vehicles for many reasons, not least of which was that he'd had a hand in building it. As they strapped in and took off Robin noted with more than a little pride that it was now running almost completely silently, though there were still improvements to be made. He would have to ask Lucius to-
 
[i]Oh...right. Lucius is dead.[/i] He took a minute to force himself to confront the fact and accept it, then stored it away and moved on. There would be time to grieve later when they weren't flying towards who-knows-what. For now Robin had a job to do. He was just about to ask what exactly that job was when Batgirl spoke up again. They were heading towards an informant, apparently to gain a tip on the location of the kidnapped Mayor? Mistrust of the police seemed fairly sensible for Batgirl, after all there were hardly a handful of cops in the city that didn't reek of corruption and almost all of those that didn't had been with Gordon during Freeze's attack and had likely wound up injured. Still, they could easily be walking into a trap, and as the Batmobile sped forward and pushed him back against his seat he considered breaking his silence to ask for enough detail to avoid getting them killed through Batgirl's carelessness.
 
But her sudden admonishment not to say anything was far more interesting than any other information she could have given him. First of all, he was fairly certain what the answer would be if it came to one of them seriously putting the other down. He was faster than her, better trained, more ruthless. If he had bothered considering it then it was true that she had years of practical experience on him, a significant reach advantage, and wouldn't have to spend every second of the fight holding back from accidentally killing him not to mention the only 'fights' Robin had had with Batgirl outside of sparring had ended with him frozen solid or being mockingly swung by his ankles like a child on a playground...but considering any of that would mean potentially acknowledging her as better, and that was almost amusingly ridiculous.
 
Secondly and more importantly, no talking meant no banter, no teasing, no "jokes" or quips. They would spend this entire next portion of the mission in relative silence, likely completely humorless, and even if Batgirl said anything he would be expected to not make any reply whatsoever.
 
He couldn't remember when the idea of following orders had made him happier.
 
Unfortunately that happiness just about evaporated when they arrived at their destination. Some sort of brothel obviously. It stank of corruption and vice and things Robin's mind wasn't prepared to contemplate and the sounds were enough to make him pull his hood over his head in an attempt to insulate himself in disgust. The Boy Wonder suddenly considered the possibility that Batgirl's 'quiet game' had been set up to prevent him from verbally scourging her about the location but decided it might also have something to do with actual danger or bringing someone his age here in the first place, vigilante or not. Other than pulling his hood up and his cape around him he hid any other signs of being disturbed by the place fairly well. It wouldn't do for Batgirl to see the Son of Batman bothered in any way that was remotely childish.
 
If nothing else at least Batgirl was able to move through the area with a competent amount of stealthy professionalism despite lacking his upbringing and the shadows gave them something to work with once she killed the remaining lights. That was until they walked through a black door into a room filled with a bombardment of sound, light and people that would have likely made an ordinary child nauseous. The room after that was blessedly silent, filled with plenty of comforting shadows, and the room after that...
 
Well, if Robin wasn't intimately familiar with the term 'necessary evil' he wouldn't have minded setting that room on fire. His estimate might be a little naive but the money that flowed through there looked like it must match up to at least a quarter of the prostitution in Gotham and the 'woman' at the center of all of it reminded him mainly of some sort of gaudy, gilded tick, or maybe a golden spider. He found himself slipping back to stand further in shadow, not wanting to say anything even if Batgirl hadn't promised to fight him over it. Since he couldn't burn it down he took some satisfaction at the reactions of the room's occupants.
 
When they left to go hunt down the mayor he only paused to give the whole place one last disgusted look before following.
 
"So...55th and Scarsdale?"
 
If anyone was about to make a quip about what they'd just seen, it wasn't Robin.
 
Holy Whores, Batgirl.

"Yeah."

Steph had a few friends who'd become strippers after highschool. Batgirl had kept one from getting raped one night, but hadn't noticed the other become addicted to perscription drugs to the point of lethal overdose. Sex could make a girl money, and some saw it as a way to reclaim feminine power, but most fell into a predatory relationship. And even their 'working relationships' could be violent and degrading as a norm. It could all too easily lead into depression; and depression was often simply the cliff's edge that started the fall to darker places. 

Quite honestly, Batgirl couldn't have gotten out of there fast enough. She was even hard enough on the throttle to get some noise of the Batmobile, until it swooped just above the height of the nearby brick buildings and took off north. The HUD of her cowl had already given her a computer generated layout of the destination, and it looked shady as shit: it was a construction site. But it was a very large construction site, the kind that was created to raise a skyscraper into the skyline of Gotham City. The first thing done at such sites was to carve out the foundation...a really, really, big pit. With heavy machinery lining the tops of said big pit. 

Before even arriving, Stephanie knew where the mayor would be: in the right at the bottom of the pit. Right in the middle. "I'll drop you on the east side, I'll come in at the west side. Meet in the middle, don't jump down into that pit without clearing the top perimeter." Then she hit the hatch to let him out, and quickly set the vehicle down in an alley just across the street. The first gunshot she heard let her know Robin was already at work by the time she snuck in, her knuckles coming alive with the hiss and spark of electricity. 


Maybe start your jump in now? And we'll edit yours and mine below together?

The first thing she noticed was just how large they were; each one of these thugs seemed a poster boy for steroid usage. She saw nearly all colors and nationalities, but each of them wore combat pants and boots, some gun vests, some shirtless. All shaved bald, some had fangs. No females. Wasn't that not at all any kind of surprise to Batgirl. Most wore some strange, illuminated, cyclpos-lensed glasses. 

When it started, there was no screwing around. The wattage she punished these brutes with was nearly lethal. Every strike was debilitating in intent, but it took unleashing a deep level of anger and violence to get the result she needed out of these strikes. Even with success in ratcheting up the violence and aggression. she was nearly shot four separate times. Once from a sniper than she didn't even screw with, she simply blew up the platform in which the sniper had nested himself.

It was extreme, but at this point the one thing Batgirl knew...was that whoever these brutes were they were not Freeze's. Somebody had been waiting, either for Freeze's actions to unfold in order to take advantage of the aftermath chaos, or for anything of note to unfold in order to take advantage of the aftermath chaos. The moment it did plans big and complex enough to steal a Mayor without anyone seeming to notice went into effect. 

"Babs, something's going on," Steph wanted to expnand, but she had to dodge a razor sharp knife, shatter a stubbornly tough elbow, then launch her armored knee into a skull. "This can't be random. These people are too good. Too well armed. Too uniformed. I'll see if I can find something out if I find the leader, otherwise just be aware something's going on."

A quick scan, and the edges seemed safe enough--her cape popped rigid and spread wide to slow her descent into the eighty foot pit with slabs of concrete alternating with stretches of steel ribbed mud where concrete was due to be poured. And right in the middle of it, just where she thought it might be, was a single port-a-potty with it's dialed turned red and reading:

[i]Occupied.[/i] 

"-tt-, as if I need you to tell me how to sweep a perimeter, [i]Fat-girl[/i]." Despite the seemingly caustic tone, Damian was smiling, or at least smirking as usual, for the first time that night. The idea of finally getting into real action did wonders to erase some of the trauma of the shadowy pit of hedonism Brown had just dragged him through for the sake of information. He was eager enough to get to work that he didn't even wait for the Batmobile to fully set down before getting started, instead taking a running jump out of the opening hatch then snapping his cape out and rolling as he landed to slow his fall into the alley.

Moving silent and unseen across the street and through the construction site's jungle of machinery and debris came as naturally to Robin as breathing and it wasn't long before he found his first pair of thugs. Definitely a notch above the usual Gotham riff-raff, better armed and about as big as a set of silverback gorillas, though maybe with a little less intelligence. He leaped from the top of a bulldozer and flipped to land on the shoulders of the nearest one with his full weight, wrapping his legs tight around the big man's neck and going into a twisting roll that would flip the thug down hard while he was still off-balance, consciously forcing himself to modify it slightly so as not to snap any vertebrae.

Robin was already reaching into his utility belt for a bird-a-rang as he rolled clear of the first dazed thug but the hesitation it took to avoid killing his first target was enough for the second one to fire off a shot at the Boy Wonder that nearly clipped him. A well-placed bird-a-rang sent the gun flying and a leaping grab that should have gouged out the mook's eyes broke his nose instead, but the gunfire would still alert everyone nearby.

[i]Careless...no wonder he left me behind. Let them find me then. I won't be responsible for the consequences.[/i]

He stalked through the construction site only halfway bothering with stealth, greeting the next thug with a perhaps needlessly flashy flying sidekick that nevertheless resulted in a satisfying snapping noise from the big ape's collarbone as it met his armored boot. His pained screams drew a few more in but they only added up to a broken jaw, a shattered wrist and elbow and, in a potentially slightly petty touch, a fractured pubis. 

The fact that his cape had a few more bullet holes in it than it should have was of little concern to Damian in the moment, though he should have noticed that things were far too organized for an ordinary criminal to pull off. As things stood he was a little busy dodging a whirring spiked chain, crashing a dump-truck's worth of rubble onto some gunmen and violently returning a knife to its' owner where he was least likely to bleed out but most likely to scream. All punctuated by a chorus of shattering knees and flying teeth naturally. Hesitation in figuring out the last part let a sniper graze him, but all it took were a few flashbangs and some free-running to near-literally feed the man his own gun. 

Not all of it was entirely efficient and neither Damian's father nor most of his League tutors would've approved, but after the rest of the day the fight did feel [i][b]extremely[/b][/i] satisfying.

Once both scans and the lack of shouting guards showed the perimeter to be well and truly cleared, Robin snapped his cape to glider mode and descended down into the pit. In the center of it all was...an occupied port-a-potty? Not in the mood for any stupid games after the night he'd been having, Robin stalked past Batgirl and wrenched the door open...

To the sight of a hideously disfigured and [b]hopefully[/b] dead mayor of Gotham City, as floodlights suddenly glared blindingly down on all of them.

"...shit."

Then everything exploded and the world was filled with bullets. 

"ROBIN!!"

[i]Damian Wayne is dead.[/i]

At least, that was Batgirl's lone thought as she watched in horror as the Boy Wonder begged for his own explosive ending by simply tossing the door open casual as a screen door swinging open on a Saturday morning. She wasn't able to get to him in time to save him from the blast; given she had a full Batsuit on her suit was MUCH MORE explosives resistant given activating the right electro-magnetic 'sheath' mode for the suit--the one that protects mostly from explosions and fire. Despite her current state of panic, training reminded her of her only priority right now:

[b]MOVE.[/b]

A few taps onto her gauntlet and the Batmobile was called in; hovering over the construction site while firing smoke bombs, rubber bullets, and drowning the area in enough light and sound it was as if a giant flashbang had just gone off over the entire site--which, to be fair, was exactly what the Batmobile had been called in to do. To provide enough of a distraction for Batgirl to scoop up Robin, and get in turn scooped up herself by the Batmobile. Stealth mode was unavailable as Steph shoved the throttle all the way forward and began sending the distress call.

Halfway to Gotham Heights she was directed to a backup Batcave, where Dr. Leslie Thompkins was waiting. Steph ripped off the cowl as she took up the broken boy in her arms and lifted him out of the Batmobile; Thompkins was already at her elbow, looking Damian Wayne over with a look of concern that even Thompkins couldn't hide for once. "Get him on the bed."

So began the three hours of Dr. Thompkins and nurse Batgirl. The kinetic shockwave had done serious damage to Damian's internal organs, but the boy wasn't too far gone. "With Gotham General's medical technology, he may not have made it. But Batman has always had better medical technology than even the best hospitals around. I wish I knew where he got it."

"Aliens," Stephanie explained, but Leslie looked at the blonde girl as if she were crazy. "No, really--aliens. Kryptonians, mostly."

Leslie scowled, but continued her work without a single pause or rest until Damian's neck was wrapped in bandage to protect the burned skin upon his neck. His face looked like he had the world's worst sunburn, and his hair had been buzzed short since half of it had simply been burnt off from the blast. But the little shit was alive, and would wake up "soon", according to the Doctor, who retreated from the Batcave that looked more like a bunker in the sewers to go clean herself and take a well deserved break.

Batgirl would simply sit there next to the hospital bed in the dimly lit room, her focus on her smart phone and the sound of the Boy Wonder's breathing. The breathing to ensure he stayed alive, after all, and the smart phone to get the message out:

[i]Mayor's dead. I can't tell if the people we found with the corpse are professional or simply a fanatical street gang; but someone is pulling strings and calling shots. Gotham City is under attack.[/i]

Cut and dry a message as it was, Stephanie simply had no more energy for any additional details. But after sending it to Bruce, she knew it would get passed around, she knew the collective braintrust of the Cave would go into immediate action. And, at least, that was enough of a comfort to let her fade out of conciousness, curled up in the chair next to the bed, to nap until something or someone stirred her once more.