"You have to be the stupidest living garbage in the universe," I snarled, the words scraping out of me like a blade.
Roy froze, the color draining from his face. For a second he looked ready to answer back, to feint with some moral righteousness and then jab again with the righteousness most kids use as armor. He'd wanted a scene, a moral high ground to plant a flag on and wave around like a trophy. I wasn't going to give him that comfort.
"You left her," I spat, loud enough that a few heads in the room twitched. "You left an unarmed scientist in a public school in Happy Harbor with the neon footprints of our operation stamped all over her. Do you know why? So you could run back here and brag about infiltrating the League of Shadows, so you could stand in the Cave and enjoy the warm fuzzies while someone else—maybe—got butchered because you wanted a story."
He took a step forward, jaw working. "I got her out—"
"You got nothing," I cut him off. "A rescue that leaves a breadcrumb trail is a hand-delivered corpse. Have you even thought she might already be dead? Have you checked whether she was implanted with a tracker the second your face left her vision? Have you asked whether the League of Shadows might have identified the school and followed the signal? Or were you too busy polishing your ego for the team photo?"
Roy's bravado wobbled. His fingers tightened on his palm; he was a bull braced to charge, and yet he didn't move. It was the kind of silence that happens right before someone stops pretending they know what they're doing.
I let the words settle, each one designed to dethrone him. "This isn't grandstanding, Roy. This is triage. Lives matter more than your highlight reel."
Green Arrow moved behind Roy with the hand of the mentor who had expected better but had learned to deal with worse. "Enough. We don't need to—"
"We do need to," I snapped back at the older man. "We need him to stop thinking like a headline and start thinking like someone who keeps people alive. Because right now? He's a walking liability."
Batman's eyes were narrowed, calculating; the man was cataloguing everything I said and did, measuring it against some metric only he could see. Wally shifted uneasily, looking like a kid who just watched two adults nearly come to fisticuffs over who'd used the last of the milk.
Roy swallowed. "You're not the one who—"
"Don't retort," I said, cutting him off before he could script his comeback. I leaned in, voice low and cold. "Don't bother with excuses. You're a kid who left a woman exposed because she made you feel important. That's not heroism. That's vanity with a cape."
"I'll fix this," I said, and I meant it. This wasn't posturing. This was a logical decision. "I'm going alone. I don't want anyone getting in the way. I don't want paper trails, and I don't want speeches about procedure while someone's life hangs on a thread. I go quiet, I get the problem solved, and I come back with the outcome."
Batman opened his mouth — the cave temperature seemed to drop — but I cut him with a look and a single sentence: "I won't kill an enemy. You have my word."
That was my line. That was the only leash anyone would get.
I didn't wait for their replies. There's always a lot of noise after ultimatums — questions, pleas, moral lectures — and none of it helps when a clock's ticking. I stepped toward the zeta-tube.
The yellow vortex swallowed light and shape and the hum of the tube vibrated under my boots.
[Recognized: Attano — B07]
◈⟡◈ ◈⟡◈ ◈⟡◈ ◈⟡◈ ◈⟡◈ ◈⟡◈
HAPPY HARBOR HIGH SCHOOL
22:43 HRS
"Hey."
"GAH—!"
"Shut the hell up," I hissed, clamping a hand over her mouth before her scream could echo. "Relax. I'm not here to hurt you."
Her eyes went wide, terrified. Even in the dim light of the classroom, I could see the exhaustion in them—bloodshot, rimmed with stress. Her fingers trembled as she clutched her lab coat to her chest like a shield.
"D-Do you work with them? The Shadows?" she stammered.
"No," I said, lowering my hand slowly. "I'm your backup. Sent by the guy who pulled you out of the Shadows' base."
Her eyes darted to the classroom door, then back to me, still wary. "He—he left me here. He said this place was safe."
"Yeah," I muttered, scanning the windows, the corners, the faint hum of security cameras. "About that. It's not. You're sitting in the open, with the League of Shadows probably already triangulating your position."
"W-What?" she whispered, horrified.
"Exactly." I knelt in front of her, tone low but sharp. "Now, Dr. Roquette, I need you to focus. You created a weapon—The Fog. You know how it works, you know how to stop it. I need everything—locations, access codes, manual overrides, all of it."
"There's a lab upstairs," She blinked, stammering, "If I can access The Fog's frequency, I can shut it down before it deploys."
"Good. We don't have much time you will work with that. Lets go"
◈⟡◈ ◈⟡◈ ◈⟡◈ ◈⟡◈ ◈⟡◈ ◈⟡◈
Dr. Roquette was working with the school's outdated computer, fingers trembling as she typed line after line of code into a system that looked like it hadn't been updated since the early 2000s.
It's a miracle this thing even turns on, I thought grimly. We don't have access to the Cave's mainframe or Robin's holographic terminal. Not that I expected we would—but damn, I need to get one of those for myself someday.
"Once you're done, give me the coordinates of the current Fog unit. I'll take care of it myself. After that, I'll get you somewhere safer than this school."
"Yes," she replied quickly, eyes still glued to the screen.
I exhaled slowly, the tension coiling tighter in my chest. The hum of the old computer mixed with the faint buzzing of the fluorescent lights, the silence between keystrokes thick enough to cut.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
"[Dark Vision]," I murmured.
The world shifted.
Color drained from my sight, replaced by shades of molten amber. Every object in the room glowed faintly—warm outlines against a cold, dark void. The walls pulsed with faint electrical traces from the wiring. I could see the heat signature of Dr. Roquette's hands moving across the keyboard, rapid and uneven. Beyond the classroom walls, I scanned deeper—searching.
Heartbeats. Movement. Breathing patterns.
The world pulsed with hidden life.
Through the haze of amber, faint outlines emerged—multiple humanoid forms, moving silently just beyond the perimeter of the school.
Assassins. League of Shadows.
I opened my eyes and the amber faded back to cold reality.
"They're here," I said quietly.
Dr. Roquette froze, her fingers pausing above the keys. "W-What?"
I moved toward the door, voice low but firm. "Keep working. Don't stop typing, no matter what happens. You hear anything—don't look. Don't scream. Just keep going."
I drew my folding blade, the polished steel glinting under the harsh faint light. The assassins were moving through the corridors now, silent as ghosts. I activated [Dark Vision] again for precision targeting.
I pointed the sharp, thin tip of my blade forward. I didn't intend to use the power as a concussive wave; I concentrated the raw kinetic energy of the [WindBlast] into a focused, needle-like projectile at the tip of the steel.
Thrust!
The motion was minimal, a lightning-fast forward of the wrist.
Fwuuee.
A nearly invisible lance of super-compressed air erupted from the blade. It pierced the thin partition wall of the computer room with a faint, whispering sound, leaving behind a perfectly circular, pencil-thin hole. The concentrated wind blast, moving at near-supersonic velocity, continued through the concrete block of the corridor wall.
The lead assassin, who was running past the wall, suddenly seized. The concentrated kinetic force of the Thrust hit him precisely in the groin, an area designed to instantly cripple and paralyze.
He didn't scream. He simply dropped, folding in on himself with a wet, heavy thud against the tile floor. His momentum carried him forward, resulting in a horrible, muffled sound as his face hit the ground, but he was completely incapacitated, twitching violently.
The five assassins immediately behind him slammed to a halt, scattering like disturbed birds. They hadn't seen the attack; they had only heard the sickening impact and witnessed the immediate, inexplicable collapse of their lead member.
"One down," I muttered, lowering my blade. "That should buy us exactly ten seconds of confusion."
A/N
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