Dick Grayson swiveled his chair side to side, as he stared blearily at the computer screen in front of him. He was writing up a police report and, in all honestly, it had been finished thirty minutes ago, but he was bored. He checked the time and mentally groaned. 5:32pm. He wasn't due to go home for another hour and a half, but there's no way he could 'work on' the report for that long. Dick leaned back in his chair, lifting its front legs, and then one of its back legs, off the ground. He balanced it easily, barely paying attention to the wobble, as he replaced the word, "handled", with "wielded", and read over the sentence.
The perpetrator wielded a knife.... Brandished? The perpetrator brandished a knife...? Nah, too dramatic. Better just leave—
"Grayson!" a voice barked at him, and Dick startled. His, chair, more off the ground than on, jerked a little before settled down to a regular position. If he had any less control over his balance, he would've no doubt toppled backwards.
"With the way you're messing around, looks like you got some free time," Officer Amy Rohrbach said slowly, her arms crossed over her chest.
Dick blanched. "Actually, I'm super busy, writing a report for last week's—"
But Office Rohrbach cut him off. "I'm aware you've been finished with that for a while now." She sounded severely unimpressed.
Dick liked the woman, he really did. She was one of Bludhaven's rare non-corrupt police officers, and she was good at her job. Plus, she was assigned to be his partner when he joined the force two years ago, so she earned some points for putting up with him for so long. She had a few years on him, in terms of age and experience on the force, so while they were technically both ranked the same, her decisions and opinions always held more weight than his. Not that that bothered him much. Except for maybe today.
"I'm still making some edits," he tried, but he knew it was a lost cause.
She didn't even dignify that with a response. Her brown hair was pulled back into a bun near the bottom of her head. The tightness of the style sharpened the lines on her face, her already stern expression appearing harsher than usual. She stared at him, unmoving and, although he wasn't intimidated, Dick knew he was in for it.
"Turn in the report and go take a car out for patrol, around Stark Avenue and the Melville Section. There's only two others out right now, in the business district and beyond," she ordered.
Dick wanted to pout but he knew she was in a no-nonsense mood, more so than usual. Maybe something was up. He knew she was starting to investigate the police chief, Delmore Redhorn, and he wondered if she had found anything new. He doubted it, though. Everyone who knew Chief Redhorn, knew he was corrupt. The issue was that practically everyone who knew the chief, save for Dick and Officer Rohrbach, were also corrupt.
Redhorn ran the precinct like a pirate ship. Everyone stole or cheated or lied, often to and from each other, and knew about it too, but no one ever breathed a word. It seemed common knowledge amongst them that selling someone out was the quickest way to get killed. That's why although Dick had been doing his own detective work into the chief, even he had yet to find anything that could be used as hard evidence.
He turned back to his computer, saved the file, and uploaded it to the system. Standing up to show his partner that he had completed said task, he grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and headed towards the exit. Office Rohrbach, satisfied, returned to her own responsibilities.
Dick turned on the squad car and backed out of the parking space, ready for an hour or so of handing out speeding tickets and accosting suspicious characters. As he drove past Melville Park, and into the area he was told to patrol, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.
Things in his life had been calm lately and Dick liked to think it was compensation for the few years of utter shit he had endured. Between his falling out with Bruce, Jason's death, his second falling out with Bruce, Jason's resurrection, Jason's stint as a villainous crime lord, and Damian's not so smooth integration into a strictly no-killing household, Dick had had quite an eventful and trying time.
But in the last year, the bat family had been able to get a large portion of their issues ironed out. Bruce was still emotionally constipated and broody, but at least he was making the effort to talk to his children more. Jason still called Tim "replacement" every chance he could but now it was less outright vindictive and more mocking. And occasionally, very occasionally, when Tim was going on two days without sleep, the only thing keeping him upright being sheer willpower and the caffeine in his veins, it was fond and exasperated.
And Damian, god, that kid, just a young boy forced to grow up faster than he should have. All the bat family fell into that category, but Damian's history really took the cake. It had taken them months to get him to a place where they could introduce him to strangers. Coming in from the League, he had been arrogant, cold, and spoiled, looking at everyone sans Bruce with malice in his eyes. Slowly, as he learned to adopt their moral code, he became more personable, although he never lost his haughty demeanor.
Dick should've been grateful for the change in pace, and he was. He was trying to learn to enjoy life as it came to him. That didn't mean that it wasn't hard sometimes, to not feel like he was missing something more.
He shook himself out of his spiral and focused more on the streets in front of him. He'd been driving around for almost half an hour now and had found no reasons to pull over. He looked up. The sun had set a few minutes ago, and the sky was darkening rapidly. He slid his right hand down to the lever behind the steering wheel and flipped his low beams on.
As he turned onto Dorian Avenue and made his way down the street, he noticed a large nondescript van parked in an alley. There was nothing inherently suspicious about it, until he saw that the license plate had been covered up. He cast a wide glance over his surroundings. Bludhaven Capital Bank stood a less than a block away from the van. That could not have been a coincidence.
He quietly drove his car past the bank, checking the time. It should have closed 20 minutes ago, but light filtered through the cracks of the front door. Most people would have dismissed little things like this, but Dick knew better. Coincidences were rare in his line of work, and something wasn't sitting right in his gut.
He drove around the corner, onto another street and parked his squad car in another alley. Checking around for security camera and finding none, he quickly slipped into his Nightwing costume. He placed his Eskrima sticks into the attachments on the back of his suit and quietly got out. He scaled the side of the building and once he was on the roof, he jumped across the skyline until he reached the top of the building next to the bank where he began to plan his next move.
The lack of windows in the building made him pause. If there really were criminals inside the bank, he couldn't go through the front door, so he looked for a back entrance. Most buildings had one, to take out the trash or accept deliveries, and he found the bank's. After nimbly jumping down to a ledge and lowering himself the rest of the way, Dick quietly crept towards the door. He picked the lock quickly, and carefully turned the knob, cracking open the door just a sliver. He peered inside and saw a long hallway, which once deemed empty, he entered.
The hallway turned left at the end, so Dick walked to the corner and looked around. There was a large room, with a few cubicles in the center and file cabinets lining the walls. On the farthest wall, there was a steel large safe door built into the plaster. And a man wielding a large grey gun, pressuring a man to open it.
It's not to say that Dick was glad the bank was being robbed, but he was proud of his instincts for being right.
There were probably more of them, he realized. There's no way that the man, who, going off his name tag and attire, was a teller, was the only one in the bank. The robber's partners were most likely in the main room, guarding the other employees and civilians.
Knowing this, he decided to bide his time. While Dick waited for the teller to open the safe, he took the time to analyze the robber. He was of average height and build and seemed to be nothing special. He was clad in the usual criminal attire, dark clothing, and a ski mask to hide his identity. But what Dick was really focused on was his gun.
It was large, about three feet long, and a sleek grey that screamed lethal. Its shape was like that of an assault rifle, but not as clunky, and where there would normally be a cartridge clip, the gun had a small glass case. It didn't stick out like cartridge clip would, but stead lay flat against the underside of the gun, spanning from underneath the trigger to the first inch of the hand guard. It was filled with a dark purple liquid, as unfamiliar as the gun design.
He'd never seen a gun like that before, and he was instantly on edge. There was nothing specifically interesting about the robber himself, so what was he doing with a gun like that?
Finally, the robber entered the safe with the teller in tow and started to fill the bags with cash. After a few minutes, they reemerged and the robber led the teller back into the main room, prodding him with a gun, and leaving the door open behind them. Dick smiled, their mistake.
He snuck in a few seconds after them, careful to keep out of sight. The line of teller's booths, while separated from the main room by glass, had an opening at the end, near the doorway he came through, so he hid behind the booth closest to the opening. Thankfully the two tellers in the booths farther down were occupied, keeping their eyes on the robbers in fear. He heard some commotion in the room, and then one of them, the leader, Dick noted afterwards, yelled at them to shut up and pack up to leave.
That's my cue, he realized.
Leaning around the corner, he pulled a smoke grenade from his belt and tossed it into the corner of the room. He waited for the shouts of confusion and the familiar hissing, before making his entrance known.
A downside to using the smoke grenades was that it limited visibility for both sides, but Bruce didn't spend hours honing Dick's senses for nothing. He was trained to fight deaf, blind, deaf, and blind, and the list went on.
Fighting the robbers was child's play. Especially since they were reluctant to fire their guns where they couldn't see. The first one he encountered, backed up directly into him and he was able to take them by surprise. He swept the man's legs from underneath him, snatching the gun as he did so. The robber fell to the ground with a thud and before he could get up, Dick brought the end of his Eskrima stick to his back, unloading a painful amount of voltage into body and rendering him unable to rise.
The sound of his first takedown attracted the next opponent, and another robber came out of the smoke and swung his gun like a baseball bat at Dick's unprotected back. He heard him coming and twisted out of the way, dropping the first man's gun to the side. The robber had overextended himself in the swing and now stumbled forward. Dick was immediately on him, bringing his Eskrima sticks down on his arms, shocking him the same way he did with the first.
Two down.
He heard the air behind him shift and spun on his heel to avoid a blow. The man who had thrown the punch backed up swiftly to get out of Dick's space. They circled each other. This one was most like the leader, Dick analyzed, as the confidence in his posture was apparent. His gun was slung across his back, and he had his fists held up. Dick mentally shrugged and reattached his Eskrima sticks to his back. If that's how he wanted to play it.
The robber made the first move, again, throwing a cross with his right hand and following it up with an uppercut with his left. Dick easily avoided both, stepping to the side. Before the robber had time to reorient himself to face him, Dick used his advantage to grab his arm. He twisted it behind him, kicked in the back of his knee, and elbowed him in the head, forcing the man to the ground. After ripping his gun away and tossing it amongst the other two, he finished off the lead robber by shocking him unconscious.
The smoke had cleared now, and he surveyed the room. There were six people in the room, and the two tellers behind the glass and everyone seemed unharmed. There were two women, reaching for a child under the table, and consoling her. One of them was older, the little girl's mom, he deduced. He took a few steps towards them, to make sure they were all okay, when the second woman snapped her head around with impressive speed to look at him.
She was around his age, with black hair that was messily twisted and tucked into her hoodie. The few strands in the front that were too short to be pulled back fell across her face wildly. Dick saw her eyes first, though. They were unnaturally bright, and a deep sea-green that reminded him of the ocean. She looked at him, calculatingly, and maybe a little admiringly, but it was hard to tell. It was unnerving, how intense her gaze was but before Dick would fidget under her stare, he took notice of her split lip. The cut had not yet scabbed over and the drops of blood pooling at it looked fresh. Her right cheek was bruised, too, not too darkly, but Dick suspected it would become an ugly purplish color in a few hours.
"Are you okay ma'am?" he asked her softly, tilting his head. The cut and bruise looked painful, and Dick found himself wishing he had gotten here sooner.
"Uh....yeah," she responded, a little blankly and still looking at the whites of his mask. At first, she sounded confused, but after a second, she seemed to take notice of her injuries.
Dick chalked it up to the fact that she had just witnessed an armed robbery. Plenty of people couldn't process in the heat of things and the shock of being held at gunpoint probably distracted her from the pain. But then he glanced over and saw a man, a fourth man, laying on the ground. He wasn't unconscious but his face was bruised, and his body shifted in his place on the floor, unable to move.
He only took down three people, and this man was clearly part of their gang, going by his familiar clothing. His gun, the same unusual design as the rest of them, lay a few feet away from his body.
Dick glanced back at the girl, and her hands. Her knuckles were slowly turning pink.
He opened his mouth, meaning to ask her if she had taken down the fourth robber, but he heard the familiar sound of sirens fill the distant air.
At least his colleagues were finally here. Not having the time to ponder the situation at the moment, he reached down, grabbed the fourth man's gun and then strode across the room to grab the other three. By the time the front door opened, and while everyone's attention had turned to the officers filing in, guns drawn, Dick had already snuck away, leaving no physical trace of his involvement.
He slipped out the back door and used the rooftops to return to his car, where he quickly stashed the four guns. He also swiftly changed back into his police uniform and used the fold out mirror above his head to sweep his hair back to its usual style. Once it was as neat as he could make it, he turned the key in the ignition, shifted the car into drive, and drove back down to the bank.
He parked the car alongside the other squad vehicles and, pausing to flash his badge to the guard, entered the crime scene. His fellow officers had already taken the criminals into custody and driven them back to the precinct, it seemed. The remaining officers were spread out across the room, taking statements, and assessing the scene. The bags of money lay in the corner of the room, and he could hear an officer explaining to the teller how the bags would need to go back to the precinct to be entered as evidence before they could be returned. The teller was frowning but seemed to accept it.
As he was observing, Officer Rohrbach stepped into his field of vision.
"It's funny, how you were the closest to the scene but also the last to arrive," she commented, dryly.
Dick put his hands up as if to say, 'what can you do?'.
"I already swept this area once and I was north of the Red Line when the call came through. Lucky Nightwing was here."
She looked at him questioningly, wondering how he knew who had intervened, but Dick jerked his head over to where one of the civilians he recognized from earlier, a man, was recounting Nightwing's takedown of the robbers loudly, gesturing wildly with his hands. Dick mentally rolled his eyes. He didn't even see anything.
Officer Rohrbach actually rolled her eyes.
"I bet you it wasn't that impressive. Anyways, we've got most of the civilian statements so you can let anyone who's not talking to an officer know that they're free to leave," she said, before walking away to speak to someone else.
Dick ignored the unintentional jab at his alter ego and scanned the room again. The woman from earlier, with those green eyes, was standing to the side. She was alone, and she seemed to be zoned out, deep in thought. She was beautiful, almost inhumanly so, and it was clear he was not the only one who thought so. He noticed a few of his fellow officers glance discreetly at her as they moved about.
As he walked over to her, he watched her run a hand through the top of her hair, freeing most of it from where it had been tucked. It tumbled out, deceivingly long and unruly. He stopped when he was a few feet away and cleared his throat to announce his presence. She gave no indication that she had heard him, but a slight shift in her body language made it known that she had.
"Hello, ma'am, since we've taken your statement and evaluated the scene, you're free to leave. We can also provide an escort home if you'd like," he reported professionally, but he sounded concerned, even to himself. The woman was absolutely not paying attention to what he was saying and was instead staring at a spot past his shoulder.
He was about to repeat himself when she seemed to perk up a little. Still not looking at him (why wouldn't she look at him?) she nodded and mumbled an acknowledgement, before walking away.
With a furrowed brow, he watched her leave, her strides unusually determined. A second or two after she walked through the door, he shook himself.
Interesting.
Unfortunately, he had more pressing matters to investigate. He let his partner know he was leaving, got back in his squad car, and left for the precinct. There, he transferred the guns and his suit, tucked safely inside his duffel bag, into his personal car. After clocking out of work, he finally drove home, stopping only to pick up Thai takeout for dinner.
...............
On his dining table, his takeout half-finished and chopsticks still in the box, he looked at one of the guns he had retrieved from the robbers. He had dusted it, and the rest, for prints, but had found none. The robbers had been wearing gloves and he figured whoever else had touched them had done the same. He hadn't yet been able to confirm what the liquid inside the glass casing was, but it looked dangerous, so he decided to wait on that. He also had yet to fire them, for the same reason.
And to think, he had just been complaining about the lack of action.
He needed to figure out where these guns were from. Dick had just foiled one of Blockbuster's, Bludhaven's resident crime lord, villainous plots and the man been underground since. No activity, no movement, nothing. He was either taking a break or biding his time and preparing for something worse, and Dick suspected it was the latter. He wondered if the guns came from Blockbuster. It was certainly probable, but then how did it get in the hands of these low-level robbers?
Dick was annoyed. Every time he managed to take down a villain, another one popped up, and it felt a lot like playing whack-a-mole. He knew he was doing the city good, but it felt like he was always just responding to crime and never stopping it before it happened.
He sighed and placed the gun back in the bag with the others. Picking up his dinner again, and shoveling noodles into his mouth, he sat in his kitchen in silence. The moon was bright through his window, and deep in his investigative spiral, he had practically forgotten about the strange woman with bright eyes.
Tomorrow, he thought, I'll see if I can find out more about the guns.
A.N. Hey guys! First look at how Dick's doing and his thoughts on his encounter with Percy. Next week, it's back to Percy for her Superhero Training Montage, so I hope you're excited!
Let me know if you guys enjoyed the reading! I'd love to hear your feedback, questions, or just any comments if you have!