[The Batcave]
Soft clicks echoed rhythmically inside the hollowed underground cave with low lighting and soon they stopped. What followed was either a grunt or a groan but the only ones who could tell were the little night critters that were hanging upside down the stalactites of the cave. But even they won't tell you the difference because they couldn't be bothered by it.
"Another dead end, I presume, Master Bruce?" The tell-tale drawl and perfectly intoned syllables of a stereotypical English butler joined the silence of the cave, along with the soft rolling tyres of a snack trolley.
Another grunt followed.
"Is that a yes or a no? The grunts sound so alike these days that my old ears can no longer tell them apart." A perfectly construed response of imploration, reason and sarcasm all rolled into one, in a way only an English butler could.
Bruce Wayne – since he was without the mask – turned around to face his lifetime butler, caretaker, old friend and confidante, with his own perfectly construed response, but alas he couldn't beat the wit and quick response of the English butler.
"Your tea, Master Bruce." An elegant teacup was held a few meters from his face, rendering futile whatever retort he might have built up. Alas, the English butler wasn't done showing why they were the stereotypical perfect aide.
"And some light snacks to go along with it, to tide your empty stomach until you come up for dinner, which from the current progress of your work," the butler stole a glance at the six active monitors in front of the young master, "will be in the next two hours."
Bruce gave his butler a look before bringing the cup to his lips under the smiling gaze looking down at him. He picked up a snack while looking at the screens, the smallest piece, and he felt the smiling eyes behind him widen as they closed up. The stereotypical perfect English butler caught the young master.
Bruce grunted as he picked another snack, the biggest one this time.
"Oh my, they keep getting worse." The butler quipped softly as he refilled the teacup.
"How are the children doing, Alfred?" Bruce asked after setting the teacup perfectly down.
Alfred Pennyworth, the stereotypical English family butler, with a stereotypical English name, set aside the teacup on the trolley and gently pushed it aside, but not out of arm's length of Bruce's chair.
"The young Miss Barbara won't be coming over tonight. Family dinner with her father as she said it. Miss Cassandra has been performing combat drills since you both came back. That was four hours ago."
Bruce gave a soft nod. Alfred continued.
"As for the young Master Tim, he turned over for a two and half hour sleep before he goes on patrol." Alfred let out a hurt sigh. "One would think a parent would teach their children good values and habits."
He looked at Bruce who was staring blankly at him and shook his head in a disappointed fashion. "How can you excel spectacularly at the former and fail so woefully at the latter? Please endeavour to keep your bad habits private, as you do most things."
The blank stare directed at Alfred was now a dry one, but the wizened butler perfectly ignored it, as dare they say an English butler would.
"As for Master Dick, while he hasn't been to the mansion or the cave in two weeks, he did send word. Something about ninjas hopping around and weird groups running about, even in Bludhaven."
He procured a small plate from the trolley filled with scant few slices of fruits and set it in front of Bruce.
"I'll gander a guess that it has something to do with the doodles running around on those screens?"
"The League of Assassins. They've been snooping around for the past month, but never made their presence obvious."
"Except for that perfectly executed car chase over two weeks ago, that is." Alfred quipped, to which Bruce gave an acknowledging grunt, but this time with a nod. How gracious.
"But lately it feels like their focus has changed. They're searching. If they had been looking for something these past few weeks, now they're looking for someone."
Bruce tore his gaze away from a particular set of screens to another that displayed something entirely different. "And then there's this."
"Ah yes, the crypt from a few days ago." Alfred hummed in recognition as he looked over the scans. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but the spread of destruction doesn't seem like conventional weaponry."
"It doesn't." He clicked a few keys and enlarged three particular images. "Advanced tech, enhanced capabilities, or exoteric means."
Alfred scoffed and remarked in a dry tone. "Right, because nothing makes things better than exoteric means." He picked up the empty plate and put it on the trolley. "Does this have anything to do with the 'weird groups running about' that Master Dick mentioned?"
Bruce shook his head slowly. His eyes were staring coldly at the images before him, his brain trying to create patterns for a mental simulation from the limited clues he had. "I don't know yet."
He looked at the time on the screen and frowned. He had spent four hours down here and, like Alfred said, planned on spending the next two as well. Well, best he get to work and hopefully finish as quickly as possible.
"I'll keep this one on tabs for now, at least until something new comes up." He said and started typing away swiftly and efficiently at the keys. "The presence of the League and whatever Ra's current interest in Gotham is worries me. I'll tail their trail and see if I can find out what or who it is that they are looking for?"
"I see. Should I inform Miss Barbara and Master Dick the next time they call, or will you do it yourself?" The way the old butler said those words made Bruce's fingers halt as they hovered above the keyboard.
They slowly came down and resumed typing, albeit at a slower speed, Alfred noticed and gave a faint smile from behind Bruce, smiling a tad bit wider when he heard Bruce's reply.
"I will come up in the next hundred minutes. I'll tell them before then."
Alfred dipped a bow. "Then excuse me, Master Bruce." And like the stereotypical perfect butler, he silently pushed the trolley away and left Bruce Wayne to his solitude and his work.
.
....
.
[Gotham, inside a particular nondescript building]
A few figures were seen walking around every part of the small quaint house, casing and observing every inch of it for almost half an hour before they converged around the dining table, where the remnants of hastily eaten meals were left behind.
"They were obviously in a hurry. The question is whether they ran because they sniffed us coming, or they ran because of someone else?" Slade Wilson, the Deathstroke, finally spoke after they spent the last few minutes silently reading the whole house.
Talia al Ghul, daughter of the Demon Head, Ra's al Ghul, walked purposely around the table, took notice of the placement of the fork on the ground, and the stale half eaten pancake on the table, and then at the empty plate with a fork left on it. The scene slowly played out in front of her eyes.
"He was not in a hurry, even if he was, he didn't show it. The child he was with, the girl, on the other hand was clearly nervous." She looked from the table and drew a straight line with her eyes from the table to the room an adult clearly slept in.
"He left her first on the table and went to gather what little things he needed, but her nerves were frayed so she couldn't finish her food." She looked at the fork indents on different parts of the pancake, a sign of her frayed nerves which made her lose her appetite and subsequently played with her food.
"Normally a child will retain a sense of confidence even in the face of harrowing danger when in the presence of a calm adult, especially one they are familiar with."
"But she obviously didn't, which means she doesn't know him as much, or haven't known him for long." Slade interjected.
"That might be true." She accepted his reasoning as she stood behind the child's chair and ran her hands along its surface. "Or she knows more about the reason why they had to leave in a hurry. Which means that they have known each other for only a short time, which is why she couldn't emulate a calmer mind. In order words they are running from something, or someone, that is after her. A threat she's familiar with."
"Ohh?" Deathstroke sounded impressed at Talia's reasoning and deduction, and even the silent Lady Shiva looked at her with approval in her eyes. So he prodded her more. "What makes you so sure?"
Talia looked at Deathstroke and answered in a self-important tone, as if saying the answer should have been obvious to him in particular.
"During your encounter with The Assassin, how did you say she reacted to his orders?"
Even though his face couldn't be seen, Slade smiled behind his mask. Still he answered, injecting the right amount of cheer into his voice.
"Confident and trusting. She never hesitated to the words he spoke."
Talia nodded, pleased. "But that's not the picture here. She's clearly nervous and feels rushed. You said she could use magic, right? She might be related to the new wave of dark cultists that crawled into Gotham and soon disappeared. Or maybe even directly related to the weird spell someone had set off in Gotham. The timeline they started using this apartment matches with the same night the spell was set off."
Slade whistled, he was thoroughly impressed. He knew the daughter of the Demon was more than just a pretty face and deadly skill, but her deductive capabilities were truly impressing him.
"What more can you tell us?" He asked, completely serious this time. He shared a glance with Lady Shiva who remained silent and kept staring at Talia.
Talia looked at the table and the door, and then picked up the fork, as well as the spilled canned drink, before sitting on the chair. She continued.
"She kept absentmindedly poking at food and nervously tapping her legs against the table, getting increasingly stressed with every second they remained here."
Deathstroke looked at the floor under the table and around the chair and saw what looked like a little friction line centimetres away from one of the table's legs. She must have pushed it with her nervous tapping, he internally summarized.
With the fork still in hand, Talia looked at the door and continued her simulation. "Her wait paid off when he came out of his room and told her they could leave. She got up instantly, dropped the fork, and shook the table, causing the drink to spill, and ran outside so they could leave quickly."
The ended her simulation as the scene in front of her eyes faded away as soon as the girl stepped out of the door.
"So they are running from something? Most possibly magic-totting deranged cultists." The masked mercenary summarized. "Where next might they have gone? Bludhaven? Metropolis? Or maybe somewhere else along Stateline?"
Lady Shiva who had remained silent finally spoke up. "He wouldn't go to Bludhaven, too close to casualty ground."
"And Metropolis?"
She started walking towards the door, her response echoing behind the silent steps she left. "He won't step into Metropolis unless he has a good reason to. And if he did, we'll find him quicker."
He and Talia followed behind her.
"So is anyone going to tell me about his history with the League? Neither you, Talia, or Ra's will speak up anything about him even though it is clear you knew him more than the title he carried."
Seeing no one reply him, he shrugged and went the other route. "At least tell me why he won't step in Metropolis. I doubt it's because of the big blue boy scout over there."
Lady Shiva stopped and turned her head halfway to glare straight into Deathstroke's eyes through his mask. "His past reasons are not important. His current actions are. We need to find his next trail before it all disappears."
She tore her eyes away from Slade but left him with some words. Him and Talia both.
"We're hunting not just any assassin, but 'The Assassin'. The moment we lose his trail is the moment we become the hunted. Underestimate him for even a second and you will be dead in the next."
As Lady Shiva walked away, Deathstroke couldn't help but mutter under his breath.
"I hope the Bat picks up those clues as quickly as possible, because something tells me we'll need every edge we can get in tracking this particular mark down."
Talia stared at him from the side of her eyes, wanting to scoff derisively at Deathstroke's words but resisted the urge.
"He's not some mark. He's the thing even hunters dare not hunt."
Slade couldn't help the sarcastic quip his tongue retorted with. "And remind me again why we are hunting the living embodiment of a flashing danger sign?"
And Talia's answer to that was simple. "Because we dare. Because Ra's al Ghul demands it."
The masked mercenary chuckled sardonically. "Yeah, that'll do it."
.
...
.
Taro stared at the ceiling of the motel they were in as he absentmindedly twirled the flip phone in his hands around his fingers, thoughts firing off far and wide.
His mind left the boring ceiling and fell to the phone dancing around his fingers. It took all of a second for the image of the phone to be replaced by a custom carved knife that waddled in-between his fingers with surgical accuracy.
The same stray thought that had plagued his mind for over two weeks came back again to his mind immediately it relaxed.
What are you doing, Taro Sakamoto?
It had been like a dream. One moment he was the usual corner-store owner in a rundown part of downtown Gotham, and the next moment he had thrown it all away without so much as a second thought, something he only realized as a life fades away through his hands, just like it had done all those years ago.
All for what? A child he barely knew. A girl he didn't know the true name of. Her poker face was incredible and even her nerve tells had been trained not to react, an adverse effect of her emotional impairment, but he could tell easily that her name wasn't Raven.
And despite all this he still found himself not caring all that much.
What are you doing, Taro Sakamoto?
The question came again to him but he was too tired for a deep introspection so he let it float about and hang around somewhere.
And at the end of everything that plagued his mind, the only reason he had was that the hopeless child he found besieged by demons on a cold dark night did not deserve it.
She did not deserve to be alone. She did not deserve to fear to love. She did not deserve to be cursed by her birth. She did not deserve to have Trigon as a father.
"It does not matter." Yes, it does not. He was old enough to not care about structuring a strong enough reason behind every decision he made.
Maybe he'll find an answer down the road, but honestly it did not matter. He decided.
He will no longer search for a reason, or think up a great importance for what he currently had and what he was currently doing.
"You're thinking too much." The familiar bland voice drew him out of his thoughtful wanderings. "Even if I can't tell what you're thinking, I still get an impression."
Stupid old man thoughts, he mentally waved at her.
"At least you know that much." She took a seat on the wooden chair in the corner of the room and opened up the black tome she had brought out.
"So? What were you thinking about?" With her eyes fully focused on her tome, and her voice eerily bland and grating, she sounded completely disinterested in what she was asking of.
"Nothing useful."
They spent the following minutes in appreciated silence until Raven finally looked up from her dark tome.
"When... If everything works out well, will you go back to Gotham?"
Taro looked at her from behind his round glasses and gave her a casual nod. "Of course we'll go back. We can't leave the store closed for too long or we'll lose our customers."
"I see." Was her short disinterested reply before she went back to reading her book. She remained like that for the next few seconds before she spoke up again, her eyes still focused on her magic book.
"The spring on my bed frame squeaks out sometimes." She said it with the air of a passing comment.
Taro frowned, almost looking distressed. "Rather than buy a new one, we'll oil it first and see if it still squeaks."
"Cheapskate."
"It's called managing finances. You'll understand when you become an adult." He replied, waving her off with a self-important attitude as if he was shooing her away.
Seeing the girl sitting with her guard subconsciously raised up, even as she tried to engage in what she probably felt was worthless conversation, and yet she still tried.
He nodded inwardly to himself. He didn't need a reason.
She was trying to be confident and positive in the face of what looked like a lost fight, even when she didn't know how to.
Going around and asking questions in a roundabout way, just to silently ask if she would have had a place to return to if things had worked out fine. She did. He let her know she did.
Even as she prepared herself to march towards what looked like certain death, she asked regardless, and he let her know that she still had a place to return to.
Who needs reasons in the face of such silent cries?