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[b]Waterloo Docks, Blüdhaven[/b]

Dick Grayson stood outside the warehouse with his hands tucked into his trouser pockets. It was bitter cold in Blüdhaven this time of year and being forced to guard some yellow tape in one of the worst neighbourhoods in the city wasn’t exactly helping. Upstairs in the warehouse Detective Gannon Malloy was inspecting the bodies of two dead vagrants. Dick had caught a glimpse of them earlier but Malloy’s partner Amy Rohrbach had ushered him out before he’d got a proper look. Malloy was a good person, one of the few clean cops in Blüdhaven, but he wasn’t a particularly good detective. Rohrbach on the other hand was natural police. It just so happened that she hated Dick’s guts for some reason. Dick had watched as Amy had left in her car and counted the seconds until the call came down from Gannon. He’d made it to sixteen by the time he heard the detective’s voice.

“Get your ass in here, Grayson.”

Dick climbed the rotten stairs of the warehouse and knelt beside Malloy beside the two bodies. Both men were covered in cuts and bruises, they looked like they’d been there for two days at the very least, and their mouths were stained orange.

[color=skyblue]“What do we have this time?”[/color]

Malloy pulled a pen from his pocket and lifted a vial that lay beside one of the bodies. 

“I need you to take a look at this. There’s some kind of orange residue around the victim’s mouths, the same residue lines the edges of these vials, but I have no idea what it might be. I've never seen anything like it. You got any ideas?”

Dick inspected it for a few seconds and drew a blank. [color=skyblue]“It definitely doesn’t look like any drug I’ve encountered before.”[/color]

“Fuck, Redhorn’s breathing down my neck bad enough as it is. If I don’t turn these two black I reckon he’s going to send me back to Traffic. He’s had it out for me ever since I told that joke at the Christmas P-”

From behind Dick and Gannon the floorboards creaked loudly enough to stop Malloy mid-sentence. Stood in the doorway to the warehouse was Amy Rohrbach with two coffees in her hand. She scowled in Dick’s direction.

“What’s going on?”

Gannon climbed to his feet and cleared his throat. “Dick was just giving me a hand.”

Amy continued to stare at Dick. The contempt dripped from her eyes. They didn’t once move away from Grayson, even as Gannon had spoke, and as Rohrbach’s eyes rested on him Dick couldn’t help but feel like Amy was on to him. He didn’t know how she could have known but there was something in those eyes that Grayson couldn’t explain, even with all his years of training. After a few seconds of awkward silence Rohrbach spoke up.

“Are you a detective, Grayson?”

Dick opened his mouth to answer but Gannon leapt to his defence. “Come on, Amy, give the kid a break. He’s just trying to help out. You know the kid’s got an eye for these kind of things.”

She shot Malloy a look that froze him in his tracks and then looked back towards Dick. “Are you a detective, Officer Grayson?”

Dick cleared his throat awkwardly and stood up from his kneeling position.

[color=skyblue]“No, ma’am.”[/color]

“Then I would appreciate it if you’d stop playing at being one and start doing your actual job,” Amy said as she brusquely shoved one of the coffees into Gannon’s hands. “We have a perimeter that needs securing.”

Malloy smiled sympathetically at Dick as he made his way out of the room. Dick didn’t blame him for not speaking up more, Gannon was a housecat, and there weren’t many men in Blüdhaven Police Department that could get Amy Rohrbach to back down. She had the best clearance rate in BPD’s Homicide Division and the fewest friends. In a police department as corrupt as the BPD Dick considered that a virtue.

The door to the warehouse slammed shut and the bitter cold hit Dick like a freight train to the chest. He tucked his hands back into his trousers and let out a sigh as he wondered how long he’d be stuck outside when he could be out on the street actually helping people. Either way, he’d make up for it tonight.

In the distance a familiar form shuffled into sight. The flowing burgundy coat, the tie-dyed shirt, and the messy grey afro that was crammed beneath a tatty old black hat that could be seen from two planet’s away. He was several decade’s older than his namesake and Dick was sure he’d given himself the nickname but he was one of Grayson’s most trusted informants all the same. “Hendrix” spent his days lugging an old, rusted, three-stringed guitar across Blüdhaven. He busked in stations, parks, and the occasional doorway despite barely being able to play a note. He was a fiend, one of many that lived on the city's streets, but his information was always reliable.

“Officer Grayson,” Hendrix said with a smile. “What’s up?”

[color=skyblue]“Boy, am I glad to see you, Hendrix. We’ve got two bodies up there, homeless from the look of it, both with this orange gunk around their mouth. Vials scattered around the scene with that same gunk on it. You got something for me?”[/color]

A wry smile crept across Hendrix’s face. “You know I’ve always got something for you, Officer Grayson, if the price is right.”

Dick smiled and reached into his wallet. He opened it and pushed past the picture of his parents and Dick in their Flying Grayson days to a stash of notes he kept in the back. He pulled one out, took a gentle glance at the picture of his parents, and then slammed the wallet shut.

[color=skyblue]“A Blüdhaven police officer being robbed in the cold light of day and no one lift’s a finger to stop it,”[/color] Dick said with a chuckle as he handed Hendrix the note. [color=skyblue]“What’s this city coming to, eh?”[/color]

Hendrix held the note up to the sky and then nodded his approval. “Sounds like that new package out. They call it Schizo. Good shit too if you believe what the fiends are saying about it. I’ve been hearing word of some nasty side effects…”

[color=skyblue]“Side effects?”[/color]

“Yeah, they don’t call that shit Schizo for nothing. You bottom out on that shit it’ll have you talking to yourself, happy one minute and sad the next, and that’s if you’re one of the lucky ones. You hear about that suicide over on Avalon Hill a week back?”

Dick nodded.

“Schizo,” Hendrix said with a smile. “It’ll fuck with your mind if you’re not careful, man.”

[color=skyblue]“Any idea who’s moving it?”[/color]

“Heh, I tell you that and word comes back on me, I’m a dead man,” Hendrix shrugged. “I like you, Grayson, but I don’t like you that much. You feel me?”

Dick nodded and outstretched his hand towards him. [color=skyblue]“I feel you, Hendrix, stay safe out there.”[/color]

“Always do,” Hendrix muttered as he shook Grayson’s hand and pulled the guitar over his shoulder up a little. “Always do, my man.”

Dick watched as he disappeared off into the distance. He ran through the facts of the case in his head as he watched his breath turn to steam in front of his face: two dead, no suspects, and a new hallucinogenic on the streets of Blüdhaven. Dick had tried to keep his work separate from what he did at night, from his other life, especially when it was a case being worked by his friends. This time, though, it seemed like he didn’t have much choice. Officer Richard Grayson wasn’t going to be enough on this one.

This was a job for Nightwing.