Chapter Text
The hum of the Clocktower’s servers was a steady, low vibration against the brick floor, a stark contrast to the hollow, wind-whipped silence of the Batcave miles away. On the primary monitors, a split screen displayed the tactical layout of the Miller Street transit hub and the encrypted arrest records from the GCPD’s massive sting.
"Dad's calling it a miracle," Barbara Gordon’s voice came through the secure channel, her headset mic capturing the rapid, rhythmic click of her mechanical keyboard. "Three major syndicates completely disarmed and gift-wrapped without a single casualty. But Bruce, we can't count on this neutral zone staying quiet. Songbird manipulated the syndicates' encrypted comms, created acoustic dead zones around her territory, and handed Dad a list of clean officers. The rest of the network needs to know who these two are before someone crosses the line."
In the Batcave, Bruce Wayne stood in front of the monolithic Batcomputer, his posture rigid and his eyes narrowed as he analyzed the data streams scrolling down the secondary screens. He watched a looped clip of the pink-haired woman descending on glowing wings, followed by the feral teenager casually flipping a three-ton SUV. His movements were sharp, fully locked into tactical analysis.
"I agree," Bruce said, his low baritone echoing off the damp cave walls. "They're highly organized, tactically disciplined, and possessing metahuman capabilities we don't fully understand. If any of our people engage them without preparation, it will end in disaster. I'll handle the physical briefing."
"And I'll handle the Birds," Barbara replied. "Keep it simple, Bruce. Don't overcomplicate it."
"I am always simple," Bruce said. He tapped a key, logging her off the comms.
Barbara rolled her eyes at her dark monitor before immediately pinging the Birds of Prey network for a mandatory, encrypted video conference.
Seconds later, the sound of a motorcycle engine echoing down the cave entrance announced the arrival of Dick Grayson. He killed the engine, kicked the stand down, and walked up the steel platform, pulling off his blue-and-black Nightwing mask.
"You called? Please tell me we aren't chasing Falcone's shipments again. I can still smell the dock water."
"No," Bruce said, not turning around. He brought up a massive, data-heavy file on the screen, dense with sensor logs, energy absorption estimates, and combat footage. "We have a new element in the Bowery. Two displaced metahumans. The strategist operates under the alias Songbird; we have not yet identified her true name. She utilizes a unique form of concussive resonance that is currently bypassing our spectroscopic analysis. She projected a physical barrier that blocked thousands of syndicate rounds to protect Gordon's men, and demonstrated the ability to hijack encrypted radio frequencies while establishing localized acoustic dead zones at will. We still don't know the energy composition of her constructs, but there appears to be some kind of vocal component."
Dick blinked, looking at the overwhelming wall of text. "Okay. Sonic lady who hijacks comms. Got it."
"Her partner is Gunna," Bruce continued, his voice dropping into a grim, hyper-detailed lecture. "Classified as Troll. She possesses superhuman strength, advanced agility, and carries a high-density, rune-etched battleaxe disguised as an aluminum baseball bat through a localized illusion. The weapon retains its mass in motion but hides it at rest. They have established a sovereign, non-lethal sanctuary at Saint Jude’s. We have a truce."
"A truce? With you?" Dick grinned. "That's a first."
"It's a tactical boundary," Bruce growled, grabbing his cowl. He checked his gauntlets, preparing to climb into the Batmobile. "I'm going on patrol. Make sure the rest of the family gets the exact details. Do not let them wander into the Bowery unprepared."
"Sure thing, Bruce. Exact details. I'm on it," Dick said, waving a hand lazily as Bruce fired up the jet engine of the Batmobile and roared out into the night. Dick turned back to the screen, squinting at a graph displaying decibel-to-Newton conversion rates. "Yeah... I'm not reading all of this."
Nightwing was swinging through the Fashion District, the wind whistling through the seams of his suit, when he tapped his ear communicator.
"Hey, Red, you there?"
"Barely," Tim Drake's voice came back, accompanied by the distinct sound of a coffee machine groaning in the background. "I've been analyzing Sionis's offshore accounts for nearly twenty-four hours. What do you need, Dick?"
"Bruce just gave me a brief on the Bowery," Dick said, vaulting off a gargoyle and firing his grapple line. "He made a truce with some pink-haired rocker chick who screams laser-shields, and a flannel-wearing kid with a bat that can knock over trucks. Just tell everyone to stay clear of the church."
"Wait, laser-shields and a truck-knocking bat?" Tim muttered, his sleep-deprived brain immediately translating the words into pure, raw physics. He rubbed his temple, trying to make sense of the data. "Wait... solid light conversion? And a localized gravity-shifting bat?"
"Exactly! Just pass it on," Dick yelled, flipping onto a roof. "Nightwing out!"
Tim stared at his coffee cup. He grabbed his communicator and patched through to Cassandra Cain.
"Black Bat? Are you on patrol near the Bowery?"
"No," Cass’s quiet voice replied.
"Good. Keep it that way. Tim's voice was tight, struggling to piece the details together. "Bruce says the Bowery is occupied by a woman who can convert pink light into sound, and some lumberjack with a bat that changes physics. It's some kind of high-tech defense array. Bruce wants us to stay out."
Cass paused, the wind howling around her perch on a gargoyle. She digested the complex terms, translating the warning into her own, direct language. She opened her channel to Damian Wayne.
"Robin," Cass said.
"What is it? I am busy tracking a league splinter group," the current Robin snapped.
"We stay out of Bowery," Cass said softly. "Pink sound lady and kid with science bat scare Bruce."
Damian stopped dead in his tracks on a rooftop in the East End. His eyes widened behind his mask, his chest swelling with immediate, fierce denial. "Scare him? Father? Intimidated by common street dwellers? That is utterly preposterous!"
"He said stay out," Cass repeated, and closed the channel.
Damian slammed his fist against a brick chimney. He immediately dialed Stephanie Brown, his voice trembling with offense. "Brown! Have you heard this absolute slander?"
"Uh, hi to you too, Dami," Stephanie said, her voice muffled by a mouthful of burger. "What slander?"
"Cassandra claims Father has ceded territory in the Bowery!" Damian hissed. "Apparently, he was intimidated by a pink harpy and some common thug with a baseball bat! It is disgraceful!"
"Wait, what?" Stephanie swallowed hard, her eyes sparkling with sudden, chaotic delight. "Bruce got backed down by a girl with a baseball bat?"
"It is a fabrication, obviously!" Damian yelled. "But the fact that he agreed to their terms—"
"Oh, this is gold," Steph interrupted, already switching channels. "Spoiler out!"
Stephanie immediately patched through to Jason Todd’s secure burner phone. "Jay! Jay, pick up, you're not going to believe this!"
Jason's voice was gruff, accompanied by the sound of cleaning a gun. "Steph, if this is about the fire escape—"
"No! Damian just told me, Bruce got his ass kicked by some kid with a baseball bat!" Steph squealed with laughter. "Like, totally backed down! Ceded the entire Bowery! Come on, we can never let him live this down!"
Jason went completely silent on the other end. Then, a slow, dark chuckle rumbled through the speaker. "You're shitting me! The big bad Bat got taken out by a kid with a wooden stick?"
"Yes! We need to go to the cave right now!"
The grandfather clock in the study upstairs chimed 4:00 AM, the sound barely reaching the cold steel platforms of the Batcave below.
Bruce Wayne stepped out of the Batmobile, his cape heavy and damp from the Gotham drizzle. His neck was stiff, and his ribs ached from a scuffle with a warehouse crew. He pulled his cowl off, letting out a long, exhausted sigh, looking forward to a quick debrief and three hours of sleep.
Instead, he walked up the stairs to the central platform and stopped dead in his tracks.
Jason Todd was sitting on the edge of the console desk, a red-and-black hoodie zipped down, holding a notebook. Stephanie Brown was dangling her legs over the steel railing, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.
"I'm telling you, we make it graphic," Jason was saying, pointing a pen at Steph. "Just a big, cartoonish yellow bat hitting a black cowl, and underneath it says: 'I survived Arkham, but I couldn't handle Little League.'"
"No, no," Steph wheezed, clutching her stomach. "We need to ask him about his training. 'Hey Bruce, did you forget the block button? Was the wooden stick too fast for you?'"
Bruce stood perfectly still in the shadow of the Batcomputer. The silence he radiated was heavy, cold, and dark.
Jason turned, spotting him. "Oh, look, the legend returns! How was patrol, champ? Watch out for any kids playing T-ball out there?"
"Bruce," Steph said, trying and failing to keep a sharp face. "We are so, so sorry for your loss. If you need us to run a training seminar on how to disarm a teenager with a piece of pine, just let us know."
Bruce stared at them. His face was completely expressionless, though a muscle in his jaw twitched once. He slowly raised his hand, placing his thumb and forefinger on the bridge of his nose, pinching it tightly as he closed his eyes and let out a long, slow breath that sounded like a silent, desperate prayer for patience. He stood there in the quiet cave, his shoulders dropping a fraction of an inch under the weight of his cape, completely motionless as the laughter finally died down.
"Grayson," Bruce muttered, his voice a flat, dead line.
"Oh, don't blame Dickie," Jason laughed, hopping down from the desk. "So, did she hit you with a home run, or did you just slide into home?"
Bruce didn't answer. He walked past them, his boots clattering heavily on the metal grating. He reached out and slammed his palm down on the console, hitting the family-wide emergency summons button. The red light began to flash, and a low, repetitive chime echoed through the entire cavern.
"Everyone," Bruce said into the master comms, his voice dripping with profound exhaustion. "Back to the cave. Now. We are starting this briefing over from scratch."
High above the neon-lit streets of the Diamond District, the Clocktower was quiet.
Barbara Gordon sat in her wheelchair, her fingers resting lightly on the armrests as she watched the final slide of her presentation fade from the secondary monitors. On the call screen, Black Canary, Huntress, and Lady Blackhawk looked back at her from their respective locations.
"So, to summarize," Barbara said, her voice clear, professional, and entirely efficient. "The strategist is currently unidentified, operating under the alias Songbird. She is able to genrate pink kinetic barriers. She is also capable of hijacking encrypted radio frequencies and creating acoustic dead zones. The teenager is Gunna, alias Troll. She carries an unidentified, high-density weapon disguised as a bat. They have declared the Bowery a neutral sanctuary. Do not engage, do not provoke, and if you see them operating in the Bowery, leave them be. Are we clear?"
"Clear," Dinah Lance said, nodding. "Sounds like they're just trying to survive. Honestly, after what they did to Sionis's crews, I'm glad they're on our side of the board."
"No argument here," Huntress added. "If they keep the gangs out of the Bowery, they're doing us a favor."
"As long as they don't start shooting at my chopper, I don't care who they punch," Zinda Blake chimed in, taking a swig from a mug that definitely didn't contain coffee. "I'll mark the airspace over the Bowery as a no-fly zone."
"Good. Keep your distance. I'll monitor what I can from here," Barbara said. "Oracle out."
She clicked a key, terminating the connection. The briefing had taken exactly four minutes and fifty seconds.
Bzzzt.
Barbara’s personal phone vibrated on the desk. She picked it up, unlocking the screen to find a massive, blocky text from Bruce.
Grayson failed to communicate the parameters. Todd and Brown are currently mocking my tactical decisions. Drake is asleep on the console. I am running a mandatory physical retraining session. Communication protocols need to be revised immediately.
Barbara stared at the screen. She let out a soft snort, rolling her eyes as she tossed the phone back onto the desk.
"Unbelievable," she muttered to herself, turning back to her servers. "He can build a stealth jet and fight a god, but he still makes talking to his own kids look like rocket science."
The Bowery Municipal Library was warm, smelling of old paper, floor wax, and the faint, sweet scent of propane lingering on Melissa's jacket. The facility was quiet, save for the hum of an old CRT monitor in the back corner.
Melissa Gold sat in a creaky wooden chair, her fingers navigating the clunky keyboard. On the screen, a local news database displayed a series of blurry, low-resolution photos taken by Gotham beat reporters.
Bzzzt. Whirrrr.
The library's ancient printer groaned to life, spitting out a single sheet of paper covered in grainy images.
Melissa pulled the page from the tray. She walked back to the table where Gunna was sitting. Gunna was currently occupied by trying to balance a heavy brass paperweight on the tip of her index finger, her amber eyes wide with intense concentration.
"Gunna," Melissa said, setting the paper down on the table directly over the paperweight.
The paperweight clattered to the wood. Gunna pouted, looking up. "Troll was almost at ten seconds."
"Look at this," Melissa said, pointing to the printed sheet.
The paper featured six distinct silhouettes. There was the blue-winged chest emblem of Nightwing, the red cowl of Red Robin, the metallic red helmet of Red Hood, the purple hood of Spoiler, the green-and-red tunic of Robin, and the sleek, black domino mask of Black Bat.
Gunna leaned forward, sniffing the paper. "Smells like ink and cheap wood. Who are little drawing-men?"
"These are Batman's people," Melissa explained, keeping her voice low and serious. "The vigilantes who patrol the city. We have a truce with them. That means they stay out of our area, and we don't interfere with their work."
Gunna stared at the photos, her amber eyes scanning the masks. She tilted her head, pointing a calloused finger at Red Hood’s helmet. "This one looks crunchy. Like big red beetle."
"No biting them." Melissa said, her tone firm and singular.
Gunna’s jaw dropped. She looked at Melissa, then back at the paper, her shoulders slumping in a massive, dramatic show of misery. "No biting? None of them?"
"None of them," Melissa confirmed. "If they cross into our territory, we talk. We do not fight, we do not throw them through walls, and we absolutely do not bite them."
"Not even little green one?" Gunna complained, pointing to Damian's picture. "He looks very small. Easy to catch."
"Especially not the little green one," Melissa sighed. "He's Batman's kid. If you bite him, the truce is over, and we'll have the entire city hunting us. Do you understand?"
Gunna let out a heavy, guttural sigh of utter defeat. She pushed the paper away, crossing her arms over her chest as she slumped back into the library chair.
"Songbird has too many rules," Troll sulked, her bared teeth clicking together in frustration. "First, no eating radio. Now, no biting Bat-men. Troll is left with no good prey in this city. Gotham is very boring."
Melissa couldn't help but smile, reaching over to pat Gunna’s flannel-clad shoulder. "We'll find other ways to keep you busy, Troll. But for now, just stick to the rules."
"Fine," Gunna muttered, staring out the window at the dark, wet streets. "But if big red beetle jumps on Troll's roof, Troll will pinch him."