Blüdhaven. He had come here, what, four years ago? He was this city’s first and only hero at that time. Someone had to fix the corruption that was eating away at the city, sucking the life out of its citizens. That, and he had a legacy to live up to. Not the Bat, but the Kryptonian; Nightwing, the great rebuilder. Supes had given him this legacy to continue on, and he had. He rebuilt the city he was now overlooking from one of his perches on its skyline. That seemed like forever ago.
Now here he was, maintaining the order he brought about. That was laugh. Maintaining order was like trying to get Bruce to laugh or Alfred to cut loose. Some new criminal was always popping up, claiming they were the new king of crime in Blüdhaven, and each consecutive “king” got worse at the banter part of the job; that, and their gimmicks were getting worse. The last criminal he put away was the Frog Prince. He had vowed to show the world the true ugliness beneath the surface or something along those lines. From his position on the rooftop, he was eye level with a billboard plastered with his own image; an action shot of him from when he first got to the city. Big letters read:
BLŰDHAVEN’S VERY OWN BATMAN!
The sign was from when the city had tried to use him as a tourist attraction of sorts back then. With a sigh, he stepped off the building. In mid air he somersaulted and shot out a grapple from his armored gauntlet. The grapple hit home and stuck into the wall of a nearby building. Using the momentum from his somersault, Dick swung away from Blüdhaven’s Batman. He had spent too much time brooding. He had an appointment to keep, but the city had a way of working her magic on you. The earpiece Dick was wearing buzzed to life with the frantic voices of the BPD.
“Suspects are heading up Seventh driving an unmarked red van.”
With a grunt of exertion, Dick changed his course toward the BPD chase up Seventh Street. He landedon another rooftop overlooking the street, and soon enough a red van with no windows on the side came barreling down the street toward his position. Dick dove from the roof, caught hold of a flagpole, swung into a backflip off of it, and finally landed on the roof of the van. The force of the impact was mostly absorbed by his shock-absorbing boots, but he still felt it slightly. Ignoring the slight jolt he had felt, he set to work.
The first thug come up out of the passenger window with a shotgun. The blast rang out into the night, but the shot missed its mark as Dick rolled over the side of the van. He caught himself on the side and swung his leg up in a kick to the back of the thug’s head. He cracked his head off the side of the van and slumped down back into the window. The side of the van slid open then, revealing three more low lives. As they brought their weapons up, Dick swung back to the top of the roof and rolled toward the other side of the van.
He pulled a contained explosive from his belt and attached it to the door. When it blew, sending the door flying from the vehicle, Dick swung in through the hole, catching one of the men in the back with both feet. Before the other two noticed, Dick had his escrima sticks out and the tazer ends fired up. One swung around with the butt of his shotgun, but Dick ducked under the blow and thrust both sticks forward and into his chest. He went down easy, but the last one managed to get a shot off from his pistol. It hit Dick square in the chest and sent him to the floor of the van, knocking some air from his lungs too. Luckily the armor around his chest held, but he would still feel it in the morning.
With him on the floor, the thug got some confidence back and lunged. With a quick recovery, Dick wrapped his legs around the thug’s arms and neck and pulled him down. He used the momentum to roll on top of the thug and deliver a decisive punch straight to his chin. With that done, Dick turned his attention to the dirver.
”Listen, you should make this easier on the both of us and just pull over. I don’t tihnk your firends are gonna disagree.”“Ha! Fat chance!”
The driver produced a detonator seemingly from thin air.
“I die for the Blood!”
”Wait!”But it was too late. The driver’s thumb slammed down. The engine went first, the force of which sent Dick slamming into the doors on the back of the van. The popped open, and he went tumbling out of the van and met the street hard. Then, the van went up all at once. He went to jump up, but his body had other plans. He slumped back down to one knee with a groan, holding his abdomen. Slowly, he got to his feet as sirense closed in around him. Police sprang from their cars and rushed toward what was the van.
“Nightwing, what the hell happened?”
The voice belonged to Gannon Malloy. Dick turned toward the cop, all signs that his injuries were bothering him were now gone in the face of the BPD.
”They had the van rigged with explosives.”“But why?”
Gannon had looked toward the engulfed van and looked back, but Nightwing was gone. Back up on a rooftop, Dick sat with his back agains the raised ledge. He hurt everywhere, and his embled had some scorch marks from the explosion and the bullet he took. He was getting sloppy. His mind wasn’t focused enough on what he was doing in the van. He should have been able to stop the explosion. If he had, he would have someone to question, and those men would still be alive. He slammed his fist against the building, sending a small jolt through the shock-absorbing material of his gloves and causing new pains to branch out from his current ones. The words of the drive rang in his head.
”Damn it…”His earpiece went off, crackling to life with Wally’s voice.
“Hey, boss man. What’s keeping you? You’re not standing me up now, are ya?”
The sound of his friend’s voice brought a smirk to his lips.
”I wouldn’t dream of it. You’re the only scarlet woman for me.”“That’s scarlet
Speedster, thank you.”
”I’ll be there soon. I ran into an incident here in The Blüd. Better assemble the rest of the gang for this one.”“I’m on it, boss man.”
