3 Months Later
It was supposed to be a quiet night at the Chicago Federal Bank.
Then the doors exploded open.
Fifteen men in black tactical gear stormed in, masks on, rifles raised.
The leader fired a warning shot into the ceiling, plaster raining down as screams echoed through the marble hall.
"Alright everyone!" he barked. "If you want to see your loved ones again, you're gonna stay calm and do exactly what we say! You…." he pointed his gun toward a terrified teller and says "open the damn vault!"
As chaos filled the room, one of the gunmen split off from the group, dragging a duffel bag down an empty corridor toward the security booths.
He never saw the shadow above him.
A faint whir cut through the air.
Something snapped tight around his leg.
"What the…!?"
Before he could shout, the rope yanked him upward with brutal force. His rifle clattered to the floor as he was hoisted into the ceiling tiles and vanished from sight. Only his muffled grunt echoed for a second… then silence.
One of the robbers turned, confused. "Where's Kyle?"
No answer.
Another thug looked up into the dim lighting. "Kyle, you good, man?"
A body suddenly dropped from above, hanging upside-down by the ankles.
Unconscious.
The group froze. "What the hell?!"
Then, the lights went out.
The entire lobby was swallowed by darkness. Only the blinking red of the exit signs painted the silhouettes of the gunmen.
"Flashlights!" the leader hissed. "Move! He's in here somewhere!"
They spread out, beams slicing through the dark but they were nervous, jumpy.
From above, the faintest whisper of movement with a soft thud, the scrape of boots across a vent.
Someone was up there.
Then a thwip.
A blue wing-dart sliced through the darkness and shattered a flashlight.
"Contact right!"
Gunfire erupted. Bullets ripped through drywall and marble pillars but they hit nothing.
Another man vanished into the shadows, dragged into a ventilation shaft.
A muffled crack of a neck strike then silence again.
"He's picking us off! Find him!"
But Nightwing was already behind them.
He dropped from the ceiling silently, rolling across the floor in complete darkness. The white glow of his mask lenses shimmered for an instant like eyes in the void.
He moved like liquid with no wasted motion.
One thug spun around too late as an escrima stick cracked across his jaw, the blow silent but sharp enough to drop him instantly.
Nightwing caught the falling rifle before it clattered and laid it down gently.
Another turned "He's….!" only to get hit with a wing-dart to the shoulder, the shock current shorting out his muscles.
Dick slipped into cover as the others opened fire again, muzzle flashes lighting the chaos. He moved through the gunfire like a ghost. He was flipping over desks, rebounding off walls, landing behind one man and knocking him out with a knee to the temple.
The leader fired wildly into the dark.
"You think you can hide, freak?!"
The emergency lights flickered back on and there he was.
Standing atop a counter, batons swinging and his mask gleaming.
Nightwing.
"Hide?" he said with a grin. "Buddy, I'm right here."
The leader aimed his rifle but Dick's escrima sticks spun from his hands like boomerangs, knocking the gun out of his arms and stunning two men at once.
He dropped down, sweeping one man's legs, pivoting mid-spin into a backhand strike that connected with another's ribs. A fluid transition into a forward roll, then a whip kick that sent a third crashing into an ATM.
The leader stumbled backward, eyes wide.
"What are you!?"
Nightwing twirled a baton and smirked.
"Just a guy who hates bad timing."
He darted forward in a blur of blue and black. A double strike to the gut, a baton flick under the chin, and the leader hit the ground with a thud.
Silence filled the bank again and it's only broken only by groans of unconscious men.
Nightwing exhaled slowly, lowering his weapons. His heart rate was steady not a single wasted breath.
He tapped his earpiece.
"Alfred, call CPD. Fifteen hostiles down, no casualties."
"Excellent work, Master Grayson," the AI replied. "I take it the stealth approach was satisfactory?"
Nightwing smirked, retrieving his batons.
"Eh… still needs a little more flair."
He fired his grapnel and zipped up through the shattered skylight, disappearing into the night as police sirens began to wail in the distance.
Timeskip
Later That Night
Red and blue lights flashed across the marble facade of the Chicago Federal Bank.
SWAT units and police officers flooded the scene, stepping over broken glass and scattered shell casings. The faint smell of gunpowder still lingered in the air.
Fifteen armed men unconscious, zip-tied, and stacked neatly by the vault doors and was were being loaded into squad cars and being sent to Arkarm Prison.
Detectives murmured to each other, confused, glancing at the strange electric batons and blue darts littered across the floor.
At the center of it all stood Commissioner James Gordon with his trench coat swaying slightly in the cold wind, gray streaks in his hair glinting under the flashing sirens.
He surveyed the scene with calm, trained eyes. This wasn't his first time seeing chaos. But this?
This was different.
A young officer approached, still shaken. "Sir, uh… witnesses are giving us the weirdest statements."
Gordon raised an eyebrow. "Define weird."
The officer flipped through his notepad nervously. "Some say… someone came down from the ceiling. Others say he was moving through the dark and he was fast, quiet. Couple even said his eyes were glowing white."
"Did anyone get a name?"
"No, sir. But they kept saying the same thing…" the officer hesitated, almost embarrassed to say it aloud. "They called him 'the man in black and blue.'"
Gordon crouched near one of the unconscious robbers, examining the precision of the zip-ties and it was military-grade, perfect restraint, no excessive force. Clean. Efficient.
He looked around at the lack of bullet holes in civilian zones. Not a single casualty.
Whoever this guy was he wasn't a killer.
Another detective walked up, holding something in an evidence bag and inside a small wing-shaped dart.
"Found this lodged in one of the walls," the detective said. "Doesn't match anything on record. Custom tech. Way beyond local gangs or vigilante nut jobs."
Gordon took it, turning the dart slowly between his fingers. His reflection shimmered across the metallic blue.
"Black and blue…" he muttered to himself.
He looked up at the shattered skylight above a clean exit hole through the roof.
Whoever this vigilante was, he'd come prepared and left without a trace.
Gordon's radio crackled. "Commissioner, news crews are setting up outside. They're asking for a statement."
He sighed, straightening up, his coat flapping in the breeze as he walked toward the front doors.
Reporters' voices were already echoing through the chaos.
"Commissioner! Is it true a vigilante stopped the robbery?"
"Do you have any idea who he is?"
"Is this the start of another masked menace in Chicago?"
Gordon paused at the steps, glancing back at the crime scene and at the civilians giving statements, their trembling voices carrying through the open doors:
"He saved us."
"He came out of nowhere."
"He didn't even hurt them but he just… stopped them."
The Commissioner looked back toward the skyline. The city lights stretched endlessly and it was bright, but cold. A city drowning in crime, fear, and cynicism.
He'd seen too many headlines of corruption, too many funerals for good cops.
And now, for the first time in a long time… someone had done something right.
He faced the reporters. The camera lights hit his face, his tone steady but thoughtful.
"Tonight," Gordon began, "someone saved a lot of lives."
"We don't know who he is, or what he wants… but eyewitnesses describe a man dressed in black and blue. Moved like a ghost. Fought like a soldier. And left without saying a word."
He paused, glancing at the police cars, the victims being escorted safely out.
"Chicago's been through hell these past few years," he continued quietly. "People are scared. They've stopped believing things can get better. But maybe…"
"Maybe tonight changes that."
He looked straight into the camera.
"If you're out there, kid whoever you are this city just found its hope again."
The reporters murmured, flashes going off as Gordon walked past them, lighting a cigarette under the streetlights.
Wingcave
Dick is watching the news feed of Commissioner Gordon talking about him and his eyes widen. "That's the present. There are DC characters here. Alfred look up Barbara Gordon."
Alfred loads up a picture of a 23 year old red haired woman who looks like Sadie Sink and Jim Gordon looks like Bryan Cranston and Barbara is a student at the police academy.
Then Dick jumps up and asks "Bruce Wayne." Alfred is silent and says "Bruce Wayne is not found." Then Dick sighs and says "That makes sense but then he asks "Slade Wilson."
Alfred is silent and says "Slade Wilson also known as Deathstroke a former Autstrialn soldier who was in a project to make a Australian Captain America but Slade went AWOL and became a mercenary."
Dick sits back in shock but then says "Alfred activate training simulation 25." The platform with Nightwing logo lights up and a hologram of a rooftop appears and a group of 20 men surround Dick who is only wearing pants pulls out training sticks and says "Who wants some."
Timeskip
Sionis Tower
Roman Sionis sits at a desk but a bald man walks in and locks the door and says "It seems Chicago got its own superhero."
The bald man puts a metal wing ding on Roman desk and Roman says "Zsasz this brat has been the one ruining my business. Stopping my drug dealing, Woman trafficking."
Zsasz nods and then Roman says "Get me Deadshot on the phone. I have a new job for him."