Chapter Text
Tim leaned a little further out over the fire escape and adjusted the focus on his lens. Nighttime photography in Gotham could be tricky, especially in a section of town like this, where all but one street light had been shot out, busted by a drunk driver, harvested for parts, or allowed to fall into disrepair by the city. There were better lenses for it, Tim knew, ones with wider apertures. He’d had his eye on one or two, but they weren’t exactly going to be covered by his allowance—especially when he ended up spending most of it in bus passes and taxis on nights when he couldn’t take his skateboard. Plus, he’d blown most of his reserves on a gas mask after that Scarecrow breakout last month. Maybe, he thought, if his parents sent him money for his birthday, like they had last year.
It’d be even better if they came home, though. They were supposed to be back in the city in a few days for the Gotham Humane Society’s Black Tie and Tails Gala, anyway. Maybe they could just extend their stay. Just a little.They probably wouldn’t have time to go shopping or anything, but it wasn’t like Tim needed a gift. He wasn’t selfish. But maybe they could get a cake, with candles, and maybe pizza or something. Except that his mom hated pizza. Whatever, they could just get something Mom liked. Like the truffle tagliatelle from Bramonte’s. Although he was pretty sure Bramonte’s was a mob front. It did have pretty good food, though.
Caught up in a sudden daydream about eating birthday Italian with his parents, Tim almost missed the crucial moment. Down below, a white van had pulled up, joining the shiny, out-of-place sports car that had caught Tim’s eye when he’d been setting up along the usual third Wednesday of the month patrol route. Tim couldn’t read the faded logo in the dark, but he clicked a few pictures anyway. Maybe he’d be able to up the contrast, make something out of it. Or maybe the police or Batman would.
Tim grinned to himself at the idea of the Dark Knight himself poring over Tim’s photos. Or maybe that would be the kind of job he would assign to Robin. Just as cool! The door of one of the nearby shops swung open, and a thin, nervous-looking man peered out. As if that were a signal—and Tim was betting it was—the door of the sports car opened, and a woman stepped out. Almost at the same time, two men with guns came out of the white van. Tim snapped pictures. Click. Click.
“You have the artifact?” he could just barely hear the woman say to the shopkeeper.
“Do you have the payment?” he snapped back.
The words were barely out of his mouth before both men had their guns pointed straight at his head. “I’ll be asking the questions,” the woman said.
“Yes, yes, I have it,” the man yelped, cringing. “Look, we had a bargain, that’s all. This was not easy to get my hands on, and—“
“I don’t want to hear your pathetic excuses. I just want to know if the thing works.”
“Only one way to know,” the man said sullenly. He reached into his jacket—drawing a reaction from the armed thugs, but the woman waved them off—and pulled out something from his jacket. It was bumpy and wrapped in cloth.
The woman snatched it from his hand. The cloth fell to the ground, revealing a strange, y-shaped stick with shiny black and silver beads strung on it. Tim zoomed in as far as his lens would go. Click. Click.
The woman aimed the stick like a gun at his head, y-points first, and shook it. Nothing happened. She flipped it and tried again. “How does it work?”
“Here,” sighed the shopkeeper. He took the stick back and reversed it. He turned to one of the thugs and extended the stick towards him. He made a protest, but the woman told him to stand down. The man then pressed the prongs between the man’s eyes. There was a weird black glow. Which didn’t make any sense, because black was what you saw when light was absorbed, not emitted, but it was the only way Tim could bring himself to think about it.
When the glow was over, there was a dog standing where the man had been. A big one, maybe a pit bull mix. As Tim watched, the dog turned around in a circle, then let out a pitiful yowl. Tim stared, too stunned to even think to get a photo.
The woman laughed. “Now change him back,” she ordered.
The man tapped the silver stick between the dog’s eyes. That same eerie black glow—Tim was going to keep calling it that—and then the dog was a man. He looked disoriented and a little rumpled, but otherwise, exactly as he was before. The woman inspected him dispassionately. “Weapon?” she asked. The man held out his gun, and she examined it. “Hmm, everything seems to be in order. And there’s no limit on the number of uses?”
The shopkeeper shook his head. “Not that I have observed.”
“And the breed?”
“Dependent on the person. No clear patterns I can find. No way to change it, either.”
The woman pursed her lips. “Alright.” She snapped her fingers at the second thug, the one who hadn’t just turned into a dog and back again, and he got a small case out of the van, maybe the size of Tim’s lunchbox. Tim suddenly remembered the camera in his hands. Click. Click.
“Half now,” the woman said. “You’ll get the other half when the job’s complete. If your little gizmo works as promised. And if I find out you’re double-dealing with me, or if I hear even a breath of this has gotten out before Saturday, you’ll wish you had used it on yourself and spent the rest of your days as a mutt.”
Saturday? What’s going to happen on Saturday? While Tim was trying to think of the best way to make sure this information got to the Bats and wondering when they were going to do their sweep through, anyway, and leaning further over the fire escape to try to get a clear shot of the woman’s face, he lost his balance.
Suddenly, he was flung, head over heels, into open air.
The good news was that he landed in an overflowing dumpster. Big bags of trash broke his fall, along with a wet mass of something squishy (and smelly) that might have once been a bunch of watermelons. Some of the air got knocked out of him, and he was going to ache all over in a few hours, but he didn’t think he had broken any bones—or even his camera.
The bad news was that two large men with guns were staring down at him over the top of the dumpster.
Dazed, Tim barely had time to realize what was happening before the men grabbed him and dragged him off the pile of trash bags and onto the hard asphalt. Tim’s camera thudded hard against his chest. He clutched at it protectively, even though a big part of him knew he should be more worried about himself.
“What do we have here?” The woman stared down at him like he was the scum at the bottom of her shoe. Which, to be fair, Tim kinda felt like. Something wet and gross was clinging to his hair and dripping onto the back of his neck, and a questionable brownish-grey substance was smeared down his pant leg. The smell coming off him was so bad it was taking everything Tim had not to puke. Or maybe that was the primal fear.
“Should I take care of this punk for you, boss?” One of the men leveled his gun straight at Tim’s face. Dread roiled through him.
“No, wait,” the woman said, and the relief was so great Tim nearly pitched forward onto his face. “We don’t need the kind of attention that comes with a body.”
“It’s the Bowery,” the other thug pointed out. “Who’s gonna care?”
The woman pursed her lips. “It’s a kid. We get the wrong cop noticing, it could create problems. We don’t have time to lay low.”
“Please,” Tim managed to choke out. “Please, I won’t—just don’t—“
“We can’t let him go, obviously,” the woman said, ignoring Tim completely. “But this will give me a chance to see how permanent the transformation is.” She nodded to the thin man still holding that weird silver stick.
Tim’s arms were gripped tight as the cold metal prongs were pressed against his skin. Then…
It wasn’t pain, exactly, that rushed over his skin and into him. It was… it was like being turned inside out, if all of Tim’s warm, safe inside-parts were being peeled open and exposed to cold air. It was the most disgusting and disorienting feeling Tim had ever experienced.
Then, suddenly it was over, and he was still in the backstreet in the Bowery, with four hostile adults looking down at him. Except, they were so much bigger now. Dizziness washed over him, the edge of a nausea he had to fight not to fall headfirst into. Everything felt weird and off-kilter—even the colors were wrong—and Tim couldn’t help but whimper.
Only the sound he made didn’t exactly sound like a scared little boy. It sounded a whole lot more like a scared little dog.
One of the thugs chuckled. “Almost cute, ain’t he? My cousin had a dog like that back when I was a kid.”
“What happens if I shoot him now?” the woman asked the thin man in a voice devoid of anything but curiosity. “Will he turn back? A dead dog will draw a lot less attention than a dead kid.”
The thin man swallowed. “I-I haven’t actually tested…” He swallowed again. “I mean, he can’t talk now, so do we really have to…”
“How long until it wears off?” the woman asked. “Or does it ever?”
The man’s throat bobbed. “I haven’t actually tested past a week, but—”
The woman was shaking her head. “Too much of a risk.”
Tim yowled. He didn’t mean to, but the sound came tearing out of his pounding chest.
“Hey, shut up, mutt.” The thug with the gun kicked at him.
Tim skittered backwards instinctively, yelping. Then, it was as if the motion unlocked something in his brain. He could move. He could move fast.
Tim squirted between the legs of the thugs, even as the woman yelled, “Just shoot him!”
Gunshots rang out, but Tim was running now, and he didn’t even feel the air shift as the bullets whizzed into the space where he wasn’t anymore. “Get him!” a man’s voice grunted. Tim didn’t slow. Another gunshot, this one nearer. A shadow passed over a streetlight, and even through the haze of fear, confusion, adrenaline, and unfamiliar instincts, Tim knew that shadow. Batman. He barked furiously, drawing two more gunshots.
But the gunshots, as Tim had hoped, brought the Bat. As the caped figure swooped down, the thugs yelled and took off in different directions. One had the bright idea to fire at the shadowy shape and took a batarang to the face for his trouble. Tim scrambled into a dark corner formed by the bottom of a fire escape and the side of a dumpster and tucked his head over his paws. Despite the terrifying events of the past few minutes, his tail gave a tiny thump against the asphalt as he watched the thugs curse and scatter. Batman would sort them out. He knew. And then, he’d figure out how to get Tim back to being Tim-shaped.
Just then, a shadow filled the periphery of Tim’s vision, and he got a huge whiff of something strong and floral. The woman stood there, completely blocking his way. There was a gun in her hand. “You’ve caused an awful amount of trouble, kid.”
There was no time to think. Tim reacted on pure instinct. He bounded up and sank his teeth into the woman’s leg. She let out a scream of pain and rage, cursing as she tried to kick him off. Tim hung on for dear life, gripping until his jaw ached. Finally, she punted him free. Winded and bruised, he landed hard on the ground, but he knew he couldn’t stay there. Down was dead. As quick as he could scurry, he was back up and racing for the end of the street.
“Leave him,” he heard the thin man hiss, followed by the slam of a car door and the squealing of tires.
Terror pumped Tim’s stubby legs faster. If she tracked him down, she would kill him. He ran as fast as he could until he found a hiding spot - a broken grate with a large duct behind it–and crawled into it. It was terrifyingly small. He could barely squeeze into it, and the farther in he wedged, the more pitch black it became. Every movement echoed weirdly through the metal in a way that set all of his nerves on end. But he wormed his body all the way in, and if he could barely fit, there was no way the woman, or anyone working for her, could come in after him. With his jaw, he carefully adjusted the grate back as well as he could.
In the dark, he waited, whole body trembling, ears pricked for the slightest noise. He didn’t hear a car stop, or a door open. He didn’t smell the cloying floral perfume. Still, he waited, heads on paws, until, worn out by terror and exhausted after a long night, waiting became sleep.