Chapter Thirty Seven

“This isn’t Riddler’s work.” Red Robin murmured into the comms.

Dick managed to keep his reactions internal, fortunately. It would only have pissed Tim off to know he’d noticed that one minute and forty seconds ago, or to know Dick was inordinately proud of how far his little brother’s perception skills had improved.

Like usual, what he did didn’t matter, because it was him that was wrong, not just his actions.

Case in point, as even his silence got a scoff from Red Hood, “No fuckin’ smartass joke or stupid mama hen bullshit, goldie?”

Dick fixed a smile on his face as usual to reply brightly, “Eh, I figured I’d give you all a break from telling me to shut up.”

Obviously, that was also wrong. Cass made a negative noise of some kind behind him, Jason scoffed again, Tim frowned, Damian gave him a sharp side-eye, and Steph- “Nah, don’t shut up. Then I have to listen to Hood’s grumpy ass.”

Oh yeah. Steph was being weird. She’d been playing pretend at how they used to be all night, ever since Bruce called in Nightwing for a hand scouring the tunnels below Gotham. Apparently, there’d been some kind of unusual signal that tripped one of the Batcomputer’s many many alarm sensors, and it was enough to necessitate an investigation with a full house of bats. But Bruce had been split from them by one of the earlier traps an hour ago, and ever since, it’d been just the six of them.

Harls was covering Blud, thankfully, and Babs was giving her some direction from her laptop, surprisingly. He just hoped Babs wasn’t an unrepentant asshole while he was gone.

Whatever. Deflect. “Who is it then, if not Riddler? They’ve clearly put a lot of work into trying to trick us.”

Tim’s frown deepened, “I’m not sure. I don’t see any particular hallmarks or-”

The tunnel opened into a larger chamber, split by a full-height metal grid fence. On their side, the room was empty, with an exit on the far side, and a table against the fence. The exit was very obviously sealed, an obnoxious red light indicator lit up to show it, whilst the table… had guns on it. Like, a small armory’s worth of variety in firearms ranging from tiny handgun up to shoulder-braced rifles.

Jason let out a low whistle, distorted by his helmet’s electronic voice changer. “That’s a pretty set of guns right there. Nothing too expensive, sure, but quality. No cheap shit. I’d buy that crap, if I needed quick replacements.”

Dick’s eye scanned the weapons. Hood was right, all quality, nothing exceptional, and- His gaze flitted across them all, catching the same mark etched lightly into each. He knew that mark. He was the only one that would, which meant it was all for him.

“Fuck.” The curse snapped out from him, both angry and resigned, sharp enough that the others all looked to him alarmed.

Steph shifted to face him, eye lenses squinting in concern, “What’s the matter? What-”

“Who is it? You just worked it out, tell us.” Red Robin cut over Spoiler, curiosity and urgency mixing in his tone.

Before Nightwing even opened his mouth, Jason was talking too, “Yeah, c'mon fucking golden boy, tell us what we missed because we're all so much dumber than you, right?”

Dick tried to mediate, to calm the situation, even through the frustration that Jason had to pick now to start arguing. “No, I just-”

“Don't be modest, kid.”

The deep rasp came from across the room, through the grate, before the lights came on to reveal the man. Black and orange panels of armour plating clung to an impressively broad figure, similar to Batman’s own body, and black suit material covered any remaining skin that might have shown. Under one arm, a helmet was casually cradled, split down the middle between black and orange, a hollow eye opening peering out from only the left eye, to match the black patch the one-eyed mercenary wore.

Deathstroke raised an eyebrow across the room, a smirk lifting the corner of his mouth. Behind him, Batman watched silently, expression inscrutable, from where he stood on an isolated platform over what appeared to be an underground river, rushing by faster than the eye could track.

Red Hood scoffed again, and Dick wondered when he’d gotten so predictable and routine with that noise. It was almost as common as- yep, there was Robin’s quiet ‘Tsk’. Red Robin glared, his own history with the mercenary as a Titan souring him, whilst the girls reacted similarly, preparing themselves from their knowledge and limited exposure.

Meanwhile, Dick found himself strangely…comfortable. He was an asshole, but he was principled, and had never treated Dick any differently, no matter what mask he wore or new dark deed haunted him. “Slade, it’s been awhile.”

A slight head tilt, acknowledging. “You died.”

“I got better.” Nightwing deadpanned, ignoring the expected reactions around him.

Slade’s eye slowly lowered, and lifted, scanning Dick’s figure in a way that made his skin itch. “I see that. My routine?”

Dick’s jaw tightened slightly. “Not quite.” During Spyral, he’d had to keep a workout routine, but it wasn’t nearly as focused on flexibility and speed as Nightwing’s had been, without access to any of the right equipment. It wasn’t as brutal or strength-focused as Renegade’s either, but he wouldn’t share that Agent 37’s routine was adapted from Renegade’s.

Deathstroke hummed slightly, clearly allowing the half-truth to pass. “You know why I’m here?”

Internally, Dick groaned in frustration. Because yes, unfortunately he did. There were only two reasons a situation like this would have happened, and his wording gave away which it was. One was that another contract was put out on one of the bats, and Slade had agreed years ago that any contract he pursued on a bat, Dick would get a chance to stop happening. Whether that was out of respect or some twisted honour code, he still didn’t know, but it’d made it far easier to keep his family safe, before.

And he never hunted Nightwing, out of both respect and a persistent interest in recruiting him, even if the latter had been put on a permanent back burner, an unspoken admission that Wilson could never **** it to happen, but would keep the offer open. Which led to the second reason. He made a habit of testing Dick, usually when something had changed or it’d been more than a year or two.

This was a test. Had he asked “You know why you’re here?” then it’d be a contract, and he’d somehow manipulated things to ensure Nightwing’s presence so that he had his chance to stop it. Instead, he asked why he’s there; because he wants to see what’s changed.

Externally, Nightwing’s mask lenses narrowed at the mercenary, “And the audience?”

The audience in question were watching the conversation with varying degrees of confusion, as the two men said short, clipped sentences to one another that were understood for far more than their face value. Spoiler’s features spelled a mix of hesitant understanding and incomprehension. Black Bat was still, seemingly fixed on Deathstroke as the threat, but there was a minute tension to her stillness that Dick knew to be utter focus and straining to listen and translate a dozen little cues into an understanding no other would grasp. Robin’s brow was scrunched together in confusion, unsure exactly what was happening, but angry and upset at it nonetheless. Red Robin’s head kept shuffling slightly, back and forth between the two of them speaking, incomprehension clearly frustrating him as his erudite mind tried to draw connections without context, invisible ink on white paper.

Red Hood was- “Right, I’m done, fuck this.” The words dropped, snarled through the helmet enough to distort them, and his hand was drawing a gun from his side before Dick could stop him.

Nightwing barely managed to bark out, “Hood, don’t-!” and he knew it was too slow. Always too fucking slow, too useless, when it came to keeping Jay safe.

Slade barely moved, just a twitch of his free hand, with an unimpressed and bored expression. A flicker of light caught on the steel blade, then it landed precisely in the joint of Hood’s elbow, dodging the armored plates and cutting the suit fabric to land into his flesh.

His gun came up, his body not yet caught up, finger pulling the trigger, and the shot went wide. “The fu-ugh. What the fuck?” Red Hood asked, voice rough and stumbling through the helmet. Slowly, the arm holding the gun trembled, lowering, lowering, until the gun dropped to the ground with a clatter, the fingers limp and barely twitching.

Nightwing winced. “It’s a severe muscle relaxant. Coated on the little splinter of a knife in your elbow. Sit down, quickly. After about another twenty seconds, you won’t be able to do much besides move your chest, maybe your hips.” He ignored the question in Tim’s eyes, and focused on Jason, who was clenching his other fist and trying to ignore what Dick was saying. Without a second thought, Dick’s voice slipped, a steel edge of command entering, “Sit down, before you hit the ground, Hood.”

The helmet snapped his way, but not a sound left, and after a moment, he slowly sat. Dick straightened from helping him down, and continued to ignore the expressions of the other bats around him.

Slade simply said, “I intended them to be in the tunnel traps. I misjudged.”

Nightwing stared a moment, then rolled his eyes. “No, you didn’t.”

It took him that moment of thought to work it out. The other bats present, Batman clearly in some kind of trap device, the guns, and Slade’s ever-careful wording. He asked “You know why I’m here?”, and yes it was to tell that Slade wanted to test him. It was also to point out that someone else was here for a different reason.

“Let me guess.” Nightwing raised his voice slightly, still watching Slade, whose lip had lifted into another of his subtle smiles. “The plan is to get one, or multiple, of us to use those guns in some kind of challenge? Show us the weakness in our training, because of our avoidance of guns? The challenge was clearly your idea, Lawton, wherever you’re perched.”

A pause, then a voice drifting down from somewhere on the other side of the metal grate, in the shadows above, “I was actually just going to kill you, but the humiliation of seeing the bats be so shit at something convinced me.”

Nightwing nodded. That tracked, at least. A contract got put out on someone, so Slade joined Deadshot when he got the chance, knowing the other mercenary’s plan would have failed anyway, and made this elaborate plan so he could test Dick.

“Who’s the contract for?” Nightwing asked, tone full of idle curiosity and nothing more.

“The Bat and Red Hood.” Deathstroke’s reply was simple, recognising how little it actually mattered to Dick. Then he raised a wrist, and tapped at the panel there.

More lights turned on, illuminating six chains surrounding the floating platform Bruce was stood on, each supporting it. Where each of them went over the edge of the deep and wide chasm the river flowed through, there was some kind of large machine that each fed through before crossing the empty air to hold the platform up. Each machine had a small target embedded into it. From where they stood, the targets were no larger than baseballs.

Slade spoke as the lights turned on. “The challenge is simple. Shoot the targets and it’ll stop the chains dropping. Fail, and the platform drops into the river, the Bat with it. Oh, if you’re wondering why he’s not speaking, that grate forms a communications disruptor. A rudimentary faraday cage, in a way.”

Deadshot’s voice drifts down again, “It was gonna be a target each, til your one good shooter was a fucking idiot.”

Dick caught a slurred and muffled, “Fuck you, Whoreton” from behind him, and ignored it as Deadshot laughed, and a tiny glint caught Dick’s eye. He carefully kept his gaze away from it, even if the lenses of his domino should hide where he looks, just in case.

“Pick a weapon, hit a target. Or don’t.”