Bruce's P.O.V.:
"So how exactly are we going to do this?" Damian asks, crossing his arms.
"Well first," Tim intervenes, "we should contact the person who took her out of the house in the first place." Time begins to type on the Batcomputer, pulling up the list of contacts and going straight to Jason's number.
As the computer rings, Damian turns to me asking, "Todd?"
"Yeah. Jason Todd."
"How did you know Jason's name but not mine?" Tim complains looking back.
Damian rolls his eyes. "We were given a list of names within our 'family'. All I did was a process of elimination. Or is a simpleton like you incapable of doing so?"
"Can you return him to wherever he came from?" Tim deadpans to me.
"If I could, I would leave this instant," Damian snarls.
Before Tim could retort, Jason answers the call, showing a waveform on the screen, matching his speech pattern. "I'm kinda busy right now." As he's talking, we could hear grunts and gunshots. "Wanna talk later?"
"We need your help, Jason," I call out.
"Oh, really?" He grunts, and an outside voice cries. "Couldn't ask anyone else?"
"We know you took, Demetria out," Dick speaks.
"Oh, Dick? Is that you? What's up," he says nonchalantly.
"Quit joking around, Jason!" Dick yells. "Demetria's gone because of you and you're not doing anything about it!"
"Wait, hold on," Jason says. As he says this, he mutes himself, from the call.
"Did he just mute himself?" Tim asks in disbelief.
"Todd is now my least favorite," Damian growls out. "It's obvious he's not going to help! This is a waste of our time!"
"Alright, I'm back," Jason says into the call.
"Where the hell did you go?" Dick asks.
"Unlike you guys, I've been searching non-stop."
"Do you have a location?" I ask, slightly hopeful.
"Yes and no."
"What the hell does that mean?" Tim asks, starting to get annoyed.
"I have locations, fourteen to be exact. I'll send them over right now."
The display of the waveform, minimizes into a smaller window, moving to the side to show a list of locations ranging from abandoned factories to underground sewers.
"Where'd you get these locations?" I ask him, skimming through the names.
"Beat them out of some drug dealers that were working under Joker. Just so you know, this is the filtered version. They gave me over a hundred locations. Apparently, this group of dealers has multiple safe-houses, and Joker's currently using one of them."
Taking in the information, I look at Tim. "Tim?"
"Already on it, Bruce," he says, pulling up another window and typing away. He begins to pull up information about the group of drug dealers that Joker has taken under his wing.
As he's doing this, I look over to Dick. "Dick, go to the docks and see if you could find anything there."
"I could go to the docks," Jason interrupts.
"No. I want you to continue to interrogate the dealers."
"Now you're speaking my language!"
"No killing, you know the rules," I say darkly.
"No fun," Jason mumbles.
I watch as Tim moves from one window to another, quickly while talking to Jason. He's now cross-referencing all the locations with Joker. As I watch Tim, do his magic, I feel an intense gaze on me. I look to my side and find Damian staring at me. I cock my eyebrow at him.
He points to himself, without blinking. "What am I supposed to do?"
Behind us, Dick walks out of the changing station fully dressed in his Nightwing suit.
I look between Damian and Dick. "Dick," I call out as he gets onto his motorcycle. "Bring Damian with you, he might be useful."
Dick sighs out, "I'm not getting paid enough to babysit."
"Dick, you don't get paid at all," I point out.
"Exactly," Dick says, glaring at me.
Ignoring his glare, I continue to give them directions. "Take the car if you want." But before any one of them could say anything I quickly turn my head to Damian and point at him. "You're not driving."
"Tch." Damian stalks over to the Batmobile and stands with his arms crossed next to the passenger seat.
Dick takes the remote to the car and smirks at Damian. "Sorry, shorty," Dick says ruffling his hair and waving the remote in Damian's face, "B wants someone who can reach the pedals."
"Argh!" Damian lunges at Dick, but Dick was quick enough to dodge.
"Damian, stop that. You're going to listen to everything that Dick says. He's in charge."
As I say this, I see Dick in the corner of my eye, sticking his tongue out at Damian. "And Dick," I call out, catching his attention. "Make sure nothing happens to Damian. Keep a close eye on him. He likes to go off on his own."
"Roger that," Dick says, unlocking the car and jumping into the driver's seat. He looks at Damian, who is now staring dagger at Dick form outside the vehicle. "Well," Dick says putting his arm out towards Damian, "get in your highness."
"I will kill you, Grayson," Damian scowls, jumping into the passenger suit.
The glass closes on top of them. Once locked, they drive away at full speed, the roaring engine echoing through the walls of the cave. Disappearing from my sight, I make my way over to the Batcomputer and stand next to Tim, looking up at the monitor. I watch in silence, listening to Tim and Jason converse about the whole situation at hand.
"So we've been able to filter the locations down to three now," Tim says, after a while, typing away. He pulls up three images of the locations. "These locations have been active lately. Strangely enough, they're all abandoned warehouses. There's been traces of active lines and tracks leading to these locations."
"Are there any security cameras in those areas?"
"That's the weird part. There aren't any. Well, not any of Gotham's surveillance."
"If you want, I can go check them out," Jason says.
"No." I stare at the images while rubbing my chin. "Show me the locations on Gotham's layout. We can probably figure out from there."
Tim pulls up a map of Gotham and pinpoints the three locations. Two red dots appear on the screen, all located in Downtown Gotham.
"That's strange, there only two dots," Tim says out loud.
"What do you mean only two? A giant building doesn't just magically disappear," Jason says.
"It's because it's not in Gotham." I take over the keyboard, zooming out of the map of Gotham, displaying the whole state. Zooming out, the third dot appears. "He has to be in that one," I say pointing at the red dot located on the outskirts of Gotham.
"What makes you say that?" Tim asks.
"It's near Arkham Asylum," I point out. "Not only that, but there's nothing else around it. Take a look." I zoom in on the area of the abandoned warehouse, showing that there's nothing but concrete and old structures around it, for miles.
"Alright then. I'm going to make my way over there. I have something to settle with the clown anyways," Jason scowls out.
"Not yet, Jason. We still don't know his intentions. Unless you know something."
"No, I don't," Jason sighs. "But I don't need to, to know that he's bad news."
I hum, in response, knowing that he's right.
"I'm gonna keep on searching. I'll call if I find anything new." With that, he hangs up, leaving me and Tim t look for more clues while waiting for Damian and Dick.
As if on cue, the sound of a roaring engine fills the cave. Tim and I look back at the entrance of the cave to find the Dick and Damian coming in. I walk over to the parked car, waiting for them to unlock it. The glass of the vehicle opens. "What the hell happened to you two? Did you two get into another fight?!"
Blood is spilling out of Damian's mouth while Dick's side is gushing with blood.
"Junior here thought it would be a good idea to bring attention to us," Dick says glaring at Damian.
"How was I supposed to know that they were going to shoot you?" Damian says, walking away from the car and towards the Batcomputer.
"They had guns!" Dick complains, flailing his arms in the air.
"It was your fault for not being able to dodge the bullets," Damian retorts.
"You little—"
"That's enough you two," I interrupt. As if on cue, Alfred steps into the cave with medical supplies.
"Come on, Master Dick, Master Damian. Allow me to tend to your wounds."
"You're some type of magician, Alfred," Dick comments, following Alfred to the medical station.
"Did you two find anything?" I ask, walking over to Damian.
He reaches into his utility belt and pulls out several substances in plastic bags and capsules. "We were able to get some samples of the drugs at the scene. They were there to clean up their mess, but we got there before they could do anything."
Nodding my head, I grab the substances and walk over to the microscope next to the Batcomputer. "Tim," I call out, "switch with Damian."
Tim and Damian look at each other, confused.
"Damian, I want you to figure out where that cargo ship imported their drugs from. While you're doing that, Tim and I will examine the drugs that you and Dick found. And Dick, once you're done getting cleaned up, take the rest of the samples—" I take a glass slide and put a small amount of each substance onto different slides— "and do some further analysis on them using the computer."
Damian gets up from his seat at the medical bay and walks over to the Batcomputer. Alfred begins to tend to Dick, soon after, Dick makes his way to one of the Batcomputer's monitors. Assigning all of the boys their tasks, everyone goes quiet, focusing on their work.
Going through some of the glass slides, I've noticed something strange. I had decided to confirm it with Tim. "Tim."
"Yeah?" he answers, adjusting the knobs of his microscope.
"Are yours...moving?"
He looks up at me with wide-eyes. "Thank god. I thought I was going crazy," he sighs out in relief. "I've been staring at the same glass for the past twenty minutes thinking I was going insane."
I furrow my eyebrows. I turn around to look at Dick. "Dick, did you find something?"
He stares at the screen before him, showing different elements that the compound is made up of. "Some contain nano-bots. But they're not deadly. The other's are just normal everyday drugs. Strange." Dick inserts one of the capsules containing a green gas into the Batcomputer. "Well, I've never heard of that before."
"Heard of what?" Tim asks, walking up to Dick and staring at the screen. "Dioxin? What's that?"
"Did you just say Dioxin?!" Damian and I exclaim.
"Yeah. What is it? I've never heard of it." Dick says.
"Dioxin is a group of toxic chemical compounds. Highly toxic," Damian explains.
"Well, depending on how the elements in the compound are rearranged. In this case, it's a highly toxic one. It was banned back in the day, around the late 1900s. It's an illegal substance that was supposedly destroyed," I add-in.
"But it seems that they were able to get their hands on it," Tim points out.
"And if it's in the Joker's hands, who knows what he'll do with it," Dick chimes in. "But what does Dioxin do?"
"It affects the human body, severely," Damian explains. "It's just like every other drug, it's just that this one lingers in the environment."
"Wait, what? What do you mean it lingers in the environment."
"Tch. You're an adult and you don't even know that Dioxin is in everything? How idiotic."
"Wait, so if it's everything, then it's not that bad...right?" Tim asks, slightly confused.
"Traces of dioxin can be found everywhere. From the ground, we step on, to the food we eat. But they only hold a percentage of it. And as I said, it all depends on how they're rearranged. Dioxin is a name for a group of chemical compounds, not specific ones. Small amounts won't affect us that much, but this—" I point to the screen— "is pure highly-toxic dioxin. If this gets into the Joker's hands, he'll be taking over for decades."
"Can it be destroyed?" Dick asks.
Tim looks at the screen and begins typing. "It's made up of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and chlorine. I'm taking that as a no Dick. I would've thought that something this dangerous would be flammable, but none of its components are flammable, they're everyday elements." Tim turns towards me. "Are you sure that this Dioxin is dangerous."
"If you doubt us that much, why don't you inhale it, and we'll see what happens," Damian says, glaring at Tim.
"Can you seriously not take him back to wherever he came from?" Tim complains.
I shake my head and rub my temples, starting to get a headache with all of the boys fighting. "Let's get back to the task at hand. Damian, did you find where they were imported from?"
"Hawaii."
"That's where they were supposedly destroyed," I point out.
"The Dioxin is from Hawaii, the everyday drugs are from countries in Asia, while the one containing nano-bots are from someplace named Metropolis City."
"Big Blue's got some explaining to do," Dick says, crossing his arms.
"But what's the purpose of all these drugs? They're all useless except for the Dioxin."
My head snaps up towards the screen, displaying the Dioxin. "Dick, digitally combine all of the substance found today along with the nano-bots."
Dick does so, the screen displaying a complex chemical compound diagram with all of the drugs combined. "That looks...complicated."
I stare at the chemicals. "Somethings not right. All of the chemicals combined don't scream Joker."
"You're right," Dick pipes in, "they scream death."
"He's not wrong," Tim joins in.
"Dick, add Joker's gas to the mixture."
He complies, typing away on the keyboard, adding the components of the Joker's gas. Once combined, the screen shows a chemical mixture that we have never seen before, but know that it's bad news.
"That can't be good," Dick says.
Not only is it the Dioxin something that can cause cancer and all sorts of disruption to the human body, but the combination with the everyday drugs also enhances its power. The Joker's gas, adds more symptoms and lethality to the drug.
"But what do the nano-bots do?"
"They're probably to help spread through the body faster," Damian chimes in. "Clever."
"Damian, we don't compliment the bad-guy," Dick deadpans.
"Do you think that they'll test it out on Delilah?" Tim asks.
"It's Demetria, you swine!" Damian yells.
"I hope not," I answer, ignoring Tim's slip-up and Damian's outburst, "But I know for a fact that hope is not something to battle with against the Joker."
"Well? What are we waiting for? Let's get going!" Damian says, sprinting towards the Batmobile.
I grab him by the shoulder. "Not yet."
He swats my hand away from him, hard. "You keep on saying 'not yet'. Do you even care what happens to her?!"
Before I could respond, the Batcomputer rings, indicating that someone is calling. Looking at the screen, Red Hood's name appears on the screen. Tim clicks the space bar, answering the call.
"Hey, Old Man. I found some very useful information."
"Spill."
"The two locations in Downtown Gotham are only storages for drugs, lightly guarded."
"You infiltrated their base, didn't you?"
"Someone had to," Jason scoffs. "Anyways, you were right. Joker's location's on the outskirts. Just had one of the thugs confess."
"Anything else?"
"Yeah. They said that they're preparing for something extravagant. Know anything that's 'Joker Extravagant'?"
"He's going to create an enhanced version of the original Joker gas using nano-bots and Dioxin."
"Wait, Dioxin? Like that shit that's in food fo no fuckin reason?"
"At least he's educated," I hear Damian whisper beside me.
"Yeah, that. But deadlier."
"The type of Dioxin used in the military back in the day?! That's not good."
"How the hell do you know that?" Dick asks, slightly taken aback from how knowledgeable Jason is on this subject.
"Simple. If it's killing, then you can bet your ass that I'm reading."
"You? Read? The gas hasn't even released yet and it's already the end of the world," Tim exaggerates.
"Shut-up, Einstein. Anyways, Demetria wasn't in any of these warehouses. She's most likely with Joker. Were there any recent Joker attacks today?"
"No, why?" Tim asks.
Jason's voice hardens. "That only means that his first victim will be Demetria."