Two Sides of the Same Coin | Young Justice

Chapter Nine | The Hunt

BATMAN JUMPED OUT OF the vehicle and pulled off his mask, his Boy Wonder following in a similar manner. Sweat poured down his face, sticking his usually "styled-to-perfection" black hair to his forehead.

"That was so wicked! Did you see their faces when we came down? Priceless!" Dick laughed, hopping into the seat of the Bat-computer, beginning to type in the mission report.

Batman, now Bruce since he took off the cowl, rolled his eyes at the boy's childish antics, but the corners of his mouth pulled up nonetheless. He raised a gloved hand up in a futile attempt to wipe the sweat off of his face.

"It isn't a game, Dick. We easily could've gotten killed," he lectured.

"Yeah. But we didn't," the boy pointed out, not looking away from the screen as his fingers flew over the keyboard.

Bruce let out an inaudible sigh as he bent down to inspect one of the tires. He hoped that one day his sidekick would learned that what they do is serious. One wrong move, one stray bullet, one slip-up, and it's all over. Contrary to popular belief, they weren't invincible. They weren't Clark or Diana, with impenetrable skin and immortality, no, they were just human. And that was perhaps their greatest weakness, their humanity.

And some days it bothered him to no end, the fact that everyone else on the League put in so much less effort than he did, but still does exactly the same level of efficient work as him, maybe even better. But of course, none of them are The World's Greatest Detective, now were they?

"So, any news on Blackout?" Dick's voice rang across the cave, snapping him from his thoughts.

"Unfortunately, no."

With that, his mind wandered back into the realm of deep thought. He inwardly cringed at the thought of her joining his teamー his team, which he worked for so many hours to perfect its members, only for it to be all destroyed. She would completely ruin the dynamic. He had run the calculations; before, there was very little chance for one of the current members to mess anything up.

But now Blackout was here. Blackout, who was a wild, reckless, snarky, know-it-all. And to put the icing on the cake: a criminal.

Sure, maybe he'd begrudgingly admit that, yes, she was skilled. She was a mini-Catwomanー and had all the fighting technique to back it up. She always somehow had the gadgets that will seemingly do whatever needs to be done in that moment, which irritated him beyond compare. She probablyー obviously didn't plan ahead for anything. If she did, she would preform outstandingly better, and God help them if she ever actually figured that out.

That was maybe the only thing keeping him from personally hunting down The Big Blue Boy Scout with a kryptonite ring. She had potential. But the team dynamic would still be messed up. Rough calculations told him that she had a 15% chance of not completely destroying it.

He had almost broken somethingー and still wanted toー when Clark agreed to her stupid little deal. (He wished it had been her, but he unfortunately had a rule about that.)

For a brief moment Bruce considered taking a breakー maybe going on a vacation. He couldn't do anything anyways, so did he really want to just watch his city crumble around him? To just sit there and look at all of the damage he would have to clean up at the end of the week?

The thought immediately left his head as quick as it had come. He couldn't leave Gotham, no matter who was loose.

His train of thought was broken once again when Alfred walked into the room, carrying a silver tray with glasses of water on it. Bruce stood up as Dick turned around and let out a shout of joy. He did a flip off of the chair and ran up to Alfred, grabbing the waters and chugging them down at an inhuman speed that would've made Barry proud.