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Gotham City. His very first full night as Robin without Batman there beside him. It felt strange to be out as Robin without Batman. Heavier than being out on his own as Anarky ever had. In general, Robin was a heavier role. It was different. Anarky was the voice of the people. Robin was a protector. A sort of elevated position above the rest of Gotham. Not something he was usually the biggest fan of. He was one of them. Could his Robin be the singing voice of the people? The same as it was the voice of Batman’s justice?
Swinging over the city, he thanked himself internally for the way he designed his costume. This was shaping up to be a freezing winter. One of the coldest in a long time. The exposed skin of the previous Robin’s would’ve left him a frozen chicken instead of a Robin. Most people were inside tonight. Most of the people who could afford to , at least. His heart hurt for those who couldn’t find somewhere warm to spend the storm.
Batman was spending the storm somewhere warmer. He was sure he wasn’t the only one of Gotham’s rich hiding off somewhere with better weather until it warmed up. Not willing to live with the rest of the city like this.
He paused, watching the bat signal flicker to life against the night sky. Internally, he bemoaned the light pollution that thing caused. Granted, this was a big city, so there wasn't getting out of light pollution. But shining a light directly into the sky didn’t help. It helped even less when it was cops shining it. He knew Batman liked to have a good working relationship with the police of Gotham city or whatever, but he didn’t have to be happy about working with the enforcers of oppression. He resigned himself to having to as he swung off towards the GCPD’s main headquarters.
He touched down and could immediately see Gordon bristle. It was reasonable to say the two of them didn’t get along especially well. And Gordon didn’t seem too happy at the lack of Batman on his side.
“You’re alone ? Where’s Batman?” his arms were folded over his jacket, hands shoved into his armpits. Not pleased.
“The bats turned into a snowbird for this particular storm,” he answered, pulling his cape around him. The snow was coming down heavy. The hood protected his head well enough, but an added bit of cover from the wind was appreciated. “Is there an issue with that, Commissioner?”
“It’s just that I was expecting Batman and I…” Gordon turned away as he interrupted.
“I can handle whatever it is just fine. Batman’s just one man, he can’t do everything at once,” he reminded.
“It’s not that simple… it’s,” Gordon trailed off, uneasy. He still didn’t face him. Cops found it hard to face him. He made them think, hard as it was for them to do so.
“Your people can’t handle it, clearly. And I can’t help if I don’t know what I’m up against,” he shrugged. He wasn’t sure how well it showed under the cloak. It was a heavy material and there was a lot of it.
Gordon turned back to look at him. His face was stern. Serious. “It’s the Joker. He escaped from the asylum two hours ago.”
That gave him pause. The Joker? That was a big name. That was the guy who’d killed his predecessor. He was Batman’s nemesis. And Batman wasn’t here. It was all him. All by himself. Up against the Joker. “Shit.” was the only response he could think to give Gordon.
When he got back in the Bat-Van with Alfred, he breathed an audible sigh of relief. The heat washed over him and he put his hood down. He then had to explain to Alfred the entire shit show he was about to have to deal with.
“The Joker’s out and Batman’s in Brazil. I haven’t been fighting criminals on my own long enough to deal with this, I’m used to just normal assholes,” he dropped his mask into his lap. The thing covered his whole face, and he was going to start sweating under it if he didn’t take it off in the warmth of the climate control.
“Chin up, Robin. Just because the madman is abroad doesn’t necessarily mean he’s coming to Gotham to make trouble,” Alfred assured as he started to peel out of the alley they were holed up in.
“You can’t seriously believe that with someone like Joker, can you?” He put his head in his hands. This was going to be miserable.
“Just trying to look at the bright side of things, young man,” came Alfred’s lukewarm response.
He just crossed his arms and looked out the window instead of responding.
—
He shoved the last of his books into his locker. He really needed to organize this thing. He was starting to not have enough room for his lunch. Maybe his “light reading” was starting to get a little heavier than he was expecting it to. It was worth it, he supposed. The wonders of education were limitless.
He rolled with it as Mark shoved his shoulder ever so slightly. “Lonnie, how long did you study last night? You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
He shrugged with his response, “lots of interesting stuff came out recently, can’t blame me.”
Tyrone slid up against the locker next to his. “Any way we can convince you to drop that this weekend for a movie? There’s a good horror flick that just came out, everyone says it's great. My parents can pay, even.”
He sighed. He almost wished he could. He’d been dropping out on them a lot lately. For a lot. “I can’t, there’s just a lot going on at home right now. My parents haven’t exactly wanted me going out much lately, you know?”
He hoped that would be enough to convince them as he walked away. It was a thing they didn’t really talk about. He’d explained it a little, when he’d first gotten out, but by then they already knew most of it. They’d seen the news. They hopefully couldn’t connect Anarky to Robin, but they knew about Anarky. Everyone did. That did give him reason to be glad to ditch it for Robin. No one knew who Robin was. Robin could still be anyone.
—
Arkham Asylum, one of his least favorite facets of the already horrible punitive justice system in Gotham city. And one of the only places that could currently give him any kind of lead on where the Joker could have gone.
The director walked him through the halls, and he did his best to ignore all the other supervillains hounding him from behind locked doors. He was here for just one of them. The one who was arguably most dangerous. He did his best to explain away to the director where Batman was without giving the supervillains reason to get too excited. He was on the case. Just… elsewhere. He didn’t mention that elsewhere was completely unrelated to the problem at hand.
“There’s not much to see here,” the director explained as he opened the door to the Joker’s cell. And he was right. There wasn’t much there. What there was a lot of, though, was books and magazines.
“I recognize a lot of these,” he thought aloud, picking up a magazine. “They’re all about computers. What interest would Joker have in these? None of his crimes are usually very high tech.”
He’d pirated nearly everything in this. It was useful, see what new developments were being made and what programs were popular with others. And now he supposed he could see what programs were popular with the Joker. Time to break Moneyspider back out of the box.
—
With everything laid out in front of him, he could finally nail the big picture. “Most of the stuff Joker had checked out was by or about Osgood Pellinger,” he explained to Alfred. The guy was a well known ass among computer scientists and internet avids alike.
“You feel that Joker has an affinity for Dr. Pellinger?” Alfred posed from where he was hunched over a stack of the day's newspapers.
“Or they share an interest in the potential dangers of computers. Pellinger says the world’s screwed due to overreliance on computers. He doesn’t take into account the ways that computers have connected people or made day to day life easier for so many people, it’s bull,” he pinpointed what he was looking for. Pellinger lived in Gotham.
“So, the Joker’s looking to use this?”
“He very well could. We just have to figure out the exact correlation before it gets too far,” he stood and reached for his mask, pushing his laptop to the side.
“You’ll pay a visit to Osgood Pellinger?” Alfred asked, starting to stand himself.
“We’ll take the van, come on,” he said in way of answering the question.
—
He barely hesitated in vaulting over the fence to Pellinger’s house. This place was just a clear sign of how much Pellinger had been fear mongering about the dangers of computers. It was massive, and from what he could garner only one person lived there. Three floors of a house in a neighborhood that used to be a fancy one. Ugh.
The second floor’s lights were on. That’s where he needed to look. Looking in on Pellinger, he felt awfully nostalgic for his days as Anarky. If enough people complained about Pellinger he would’ve nailed him in that suit instead of this one. Voice of the people, very useful unless he was the only person who cared. That’s when he had to be the voice of Justice.
Pellinger wasn’t doing anything, just sitting there at his computer and typing away. So he came all this way to sit out in the cold. Amazing. He could always approach him as Lonnie Machin in the daylight. People knew the correlation between Anarky and Machin well enough, and it wasn’t too unknown the correlation between Anarky and computers. It would make sense.
It was interesting, the division between Anarky and Robin and Lonnie. Lonnie just felt like the box that held the other two. Anarky had once felt like the truth. Now, it felt useful. Like if anyone thought he was up to something, he could just point at Anarky and divert it away from the real truth. Robin. Maybe he’d pick it back up one day, the way that Dick Grayson had picked up Nightwing. When Robin was too small a role.
A door closed downstairs. He paid attention. Pellinger was leaving. A snowplow was coming. Wait. The street had already been plowed. Pellinger’s car was swiftly deposited into the snow dump of the plow. With Pellinger inside. Joker .
Damn it. He had to act fast.
He swung down onto the roof of the cab. He couldn’t let them just kidnap someone. Even if he didn’t like the guy. Joker and one of his goons yelled something about him from inside the cab. He leapt down onto the hood. His staff made quick work of the goon. He prepared to revv it up, power on the taser in the bottom, when Joker yelled.
“I killed you!” he yelled it loud, like a child who hadn’t gotten his way. Which, he hadn’t. Jason Todd was dead, sure, but Robin wasn’t. He was Robin now. He yelled it again, and again, and then yelled some other bull about Robin being dead. That was for him to worry about later.
He liked the Joker even less now. And he didn’t like him to begin with.
—
He threw his mask down onto the bat-computer desk and put his head in his hands, digging his fingers into his hair. He screwed up. He screwed up bad. “If Batman finds out, he’s going to regret letting me off the hook to be Robin,” he knew there were other options. Better options, even. He knew that Tim Drake guy had offered. He would’ve been good, probably. But no, Joker had gotten away and it was on him.
“Nonsense,” Alfred sat down, taking off his jacket. He was sure he meant well and all. “Master Bruce has been handed his share of defeats at the hand of the Joker. Oh, he triumphs, but it’s always a near thing. The madman is the most dangerous foe Batman faces. The most treacherous of all the villains in his rogues gallery.”
He understood what Alfred was trying to do, but it wasn’t the most effective. Bruce’s rogues gallery was big, and they all knew that he used to be part of that. Even if he was right. To be the most treacherous wasn’t that hard. Just meant you had to have total disregard for human life. Which was Joker exactly. “Next time I meet Joker, he’s gonna try and finish the job he thinks he failed. He’ll probably kill me.”
“I shouldn’t think that,” Alfred offered.
“What do you think is going to happen when he finds out Batman isn’t here to stop him?” he retorted.
“Dear. That hadn’t occurred to me,” Alfred said as the idea dawned on him.
“He’ll go wild with it. He’s not afraid of the cops, as incompetent as they are. Batman’s the only thing that he’ll actually respond to. And he’s not here right now,” he sighed. “We have to make sure he thinks Batman’s still here. If you think of something, we’ll need it.”