Selina

If she got out of this alive she would sleep for probably a solid 24 hours. She had spent an entire day searching for the kids, got kidnapped and knocked out, and despite being knocked out she still felt dead on her feet. And now she was in the back of a SWAT vehicle with a murdering psycho in the driver's seat and her so-called friend giving him directions. She would say it couldn't get worse but didn't want to jinx it. Because things could always get worse, no matter how bad they seemed.

The calls from dispatch were the only source of noise in the back seat. The two henchmen with their incredibly silly clown masks stared them down. The mayor had asked all local business to stop selling scary Halloween type clown masks, and the city complied after discovering continuing to sell them made the store a Joker target. Teens stopped trying to scare people with them after being yanked off the streets and thrown in lock-up for hours. The only kind of clown mask left were the ones that were ridiculously cutesy ones the Joker refused to use normally, or masks that had been retrofitted for the purpose. Online retailers sold them, but by that point it was very clear the only people who would dare wear such a mask were under the clown himself.

Tim said curled up against Nightwing, doing an excellent job of making himself out of sight. The kid was clearly exhausted and way out of his element, though to be fair they all were. The only thing keeping him going was the sheer terror of the Joker. Nightwing was staring straight ahead, not even looking and Selina assumed he was doing whatever Bruce did when he was tired but still needed to be alert. Barbra too, for that matter, was off by herself, taking in very slow breaths and focusing on the grey metal wall in front of her.

The sniper, Jason, was sulking. The goons had taken his gun away after realizing he was armed, though Selina privately suspected they hadn't taken all his weapons. He'd be the best to help her take out the henchmen, the problem was getting his attention to do it. Both henchmen were hyper-focused on the crew, and Selina knew any wrong move would result in gun-fire. Even if the goons somehow missed the close range shot, the space was small enough that bullet's ricocheting around and hurting someone was a huge possibility. She was in no position to take them both out, it would be a team job. The other issue was she didn't know Jason's capabilities. Sure he seemed pretty in shape, but that, as she had discovered early on in life, did not make you a fighter.

The vehicle suddenly lurched to a stop, throwing both goons directly on top of them. Selina wasted no time delivering a hit to the back of goon one's head, and noticed Jason was on the other one just as quickly. Poor guys face would probably never be the same considering how hard he got it bashed in the metal seat. Selina didn't feel bad about it though. Considering how her night had been going she was more than willing to share the bad luck and take her lucky break and not jinx it.

She wasted no time snatching up the gun, while her new friend Jason had grabbed the other. Nightwing and Batgirl finally snapped out of it, moving around in an attempt to help tie up the henchmen. Nightwing came up with some rope from his own utility belt and passed it around to the group. The moans from the goons on the floor didn't make her feel bad, and she didn't feel bad about securing their hands so they couldn't attack once the shock of the pain wore off.

"What's going on outside?" Tim wondered aloud, and Selina noticed for the first time the yelling that was going on outside.

The doors were yanked open with a jolt and she instantly readied to fire, ready to play a game of chicken with the clown himself. Instead of a whack job in a purple suit, she instead got some very unhappy government suits with rifles, who weren't shy at screaming at her to drop her weapon and put her hands where they could see them.

The guns that had been in their rag-tag team's possession for all of a minute and a half were dropped and everyone's hands went up. They got yanked out of the car and told to sit on the curb and be quiet. Normal Selina would argue, complain and make some quip about how they weren't the boss of her. However, with the amount of large black SUVs in the area and another truck farther up the street told her it wasn't a good idea.

The Joker and Harley were whining into the asphalt about how they had just wanted to join the party before some suit kicked them and told them to shut the hell up. These people had to be government, no one else would have the balls to kick the Joker in the leg, even if they had him in fully body restraints on the ground. No one really wanted to deal with that death sentence.

"Alfred?" Nightwing questioned, gesturing in the distance off at the old man, who was holding a very large rifle of his own. How he had gotten Bruce to be okay with that Selina didn't know. Then again, Alfred seemed to have his own Bat-powers.

Waller was next to Alfred, looking grim as usual. Though Selina didn't ever think she'd seen the woman look like she hadn't smelled something unpleasant. "Come out now. You have nowhere to go" she barked at the van ahead, clearly in charge despite the only one unarmed in the little circle.

Cute. Charming. That was the problem with government people. A FBI team had been assigned to her case, though they quickly stopped sending people because they all decided to start with her fence. Who admittedly wasn't a nice person. Things worked differently in Gotham, locals knew that but Federal Bureaucrats didn't. The Feds didn't like listening to that fact either, based on the lack of Gotham police squad cars in the area.

The van engine revved, though what they hoped to accomplish she wasn't sure. They had nowhere to go. All it did was antagonize Waller, who started yelling again.

The door to the back flung open, though there wasn't much to see considering how dark it was.

"You're going to need to let me go." The voice, calm and cool yet chilling. And incredibly familiar. "He needs the next piece. He'll die without it."

"You're not going anywhere." Waller insisted, as booming and as angry as before.

"You'd kill my son?" The voice hissed, and then it all fell into place. The sudden re-apperance, the random sudden interest with Batman and the city. The reappearance of the Wayne's wasn't a lucky fluke, it wasn't a miracle or a gift. It was all because of this. Bruce was going to be crushed. Was his mom in on it too? The same woman who had doted on them all day, gone out of her way to be welcoming and caring. The woman who had fixed her dress for her because she was close with her son, who'd accepted Dick without any hesitation.

Then those thoughts fall away, though explosions tended to derail anyone's train of thought. Ignoring Mr. Macho government man, she ran the exact opposite way you were supposed to, right at the van.

Dick

Most people tended to react poorly to explosions. People thought they would react like they did at explosions in movies or on TV. The reality was most people expected to have an explosion, and if they hadn't seen the foreshadowing, they only jumped slightly. It lead to the false idea that when they eventually ran into a real-life explosion, they would be fine, okay with it even. They didn't realize the deafening noise is made, the ringing in your ears, the smell of singing and burning, and if you were really unlucky, the screams. Even if a person wasn't frozen in shock, they tended to run away.

Not Dick though. After shoving Tim into Barbara he raced straight into the area, which he realized was a cover set up. The black smoke obscured his vision, made his lungs cry in pain at what he was doing to them, and his tired body protested every move he made. It didn't matter. He had a job to do.

All around him he could hear scuffling, the shadowy figures around him Dick didn't know if they were his friend or not. Gunfire was going off everywhere, sounding like faint pings and deafening the area even more. It was hopeless to try and hide behind something; there was no way of telling where it was coming from. All that he could do was go forward.

Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. It was one foot in front of the other. Such a simple movement. That was how he got himself to move. Logically he knew it was only in seconds that it took him to cover the ground but it felt much longer.

Too long. As both he, a few government agents, Waller and Alfred discovered upon reaching the van was that it was empty. A gurney in the back that had previously been used to hold a large sized person, a few medical bags, though they were empty, and a hatch in the roof.

Waller was yelling something but Dick could only catch every other word. His hearing was coming back in spurts. Alfred was hanging onto him, looking him over, noticing his arm and making concerned looks. Selina arrived shortly after, her costume torn in several places, deep scratches running up and down the sides and in her shoulder. She honestly looked like hell, and kept trying to tell him something, though she wasn't able to override Alfred's mother hen-ing.

Dick gestured to his ears, causing Selina to appear to sigh. She tried to mouth something at him, though it took several times for Dick to get it.

Al ghul. Of course. How could it be anyone else?

"He set off the bomb, the get-away apparatus, everything." Selina spoke, talking louder than her normal volume. Obviously her hearing wasn't back to normal either. "That bitch attacked me in the smoke."

'That bitch' required no explanation. Dick was very familiar with Talia, she'd kidnapped him once. That was, an experience, to say the least.

The atmosphere at the regroup in Wayne manor was heavy. Everyone was still covered in smoke, or smelled like it at least. Alfred was hanging onto his weapon, trying one handed to mother hen everyone. The man, no boy, that had arrived with Selina was hanging onto his own rifle, while simultaneously staring at everything in the house with wonder and trying not to get caught staring. Tim was fast asleep on the armchair, curled up he looked even smaller than he normally did. Barbara insisted on staying and sometime in the past hour or so Police commissioner Gordon had made an entrance, though when and how he had shown up again Dick didn't remember. Either way the Commissioner argued that he knew everything and wanted to see his child right then and there or he would arrest them all. Everyone had been too tired to argue with him and let him in, at first he'd been too angry to speak correctly but that transitioned to talking with Barbara in the corner of the room, quietly. He'd have to ask her about that later. Alfred had quickly explained Martha Wayne had been moved to a secure facility and his withering look told Dick to not ask any more questions.

Things were very bad. Alfred was openly carrying guns around and not enforcing the "no costumes outside the cave" rule and Amanda Waller was standing by the fire place, piecing together what had happened for Selina, the stranger, Alfred and himself.

"Many many years ago, there was an open investigation into Wayne enterprises of noncompliance with lab testing safety standards. Routine stuff but something didn't add up right. The account numbers didn't match up either, and there was a larger investigation launched. We didn't know what we were dealing with going into it. That investigation over the course of years spiraled into everything from third world country human rights violations in procurement of testing materials to actual human test subjects.

"The FBI was very close to moving in when the Waynes died, or they disappeared. It delayed the investigation a year and by that point Bruce was technically the owner and ready and willing to cooperate. Most of the major players went to prison, some went to countries we don't have extradition treaties with, some few made deals and turned over their research to the government in exchange for supervised research with a new department, CADMUS.

We saw a resurgence in some of the same materials being trafficked in the past few years in the Appalachia area, along with a spike in missing persons cases in the area. We never could quite get there in time though, always one step ahead. When the Wayne's reappeared we obviously re-opened the investigation but we had no proof he had anything to do with it." She rubbed her eyes with her hands, clearly exhausted. "The sniper attacks made us speed up our timeline but we still didn't know how everything fit together until tonight happened."

"So you knew about this and sat on it?" The boy, Jason hissed. "You let people die and get hurt because years ago you decided to wait?!" It was hard to not see his point. Hell Dick even agreed with him, it sounded more like Cadmus had waited a while and then shown up after the messy parts to reap the benefits.

"No one sat on anything." Waller snapped. "We had to have an airtight case or we'd never get the project killed."

"Some job you did of that." Was the retort. Waller sighed out loud.

"Look, we're the government. Our job is to protect people. We couldn't just let some of those people go, if we didn't use them someone else out there would. It was deemed necessary for the greater good."

"But people died." Jason argued. "People suffered." One hand was balled into a fist, the other wrapped around the butt of the gun, and he looked ready to pounce, though whether it was to shoot Waller or beat her to a pulp with it Dick wasn't sure.

It was Selina who cut off Waller this time. "Yes they did. But right now, playing the blame game won't do us any good. We need to go find where they went so they can pay for what they did." She had been in the corner all this time, just watching. Her arms were covered in bandages and she looked like hell. "Okay Jason?" Selina had crossed over and gently pulled his fingers off the gun, and just as gently wrapped him up into a hug. "We're going to get them okay? With or without Waller." Waller clearly wanted to say something but obviously thought better of it once Jason's head relaxed into Selina's shoulder. Dick would crack a joke if it wasn't such a stoic moment, he had to be seven or so inches taller than her and Selina was not a short woman.

"If Ra's and Mr. Wayne are working together they would be using Ra's facilities." Alfred spoke for the first time in a while, addressing the room as a whole. "They wouldn't try to use any Wayne Enterprises facilities, they'd know we have an advantage there. Besides, it sounded like they need access to certain materials, already pre-made. Given every current Wayne Enterprises building on the Eastern seaboard has been inspected in the past year, that means they are either using a former building like they had been previously or are using something else altogether." Alfred paused thoughtfully "The escape vehicle was aerial, meaning it had to have been tracked by some kind of sensor that's been placed in the city. We find out where it came from and where it went we have a direction to go."

"Not anymore." Selina piped up. "Ra's is on warpath and not in a good mood. The second he gets done with Wayne Senior he's going to kill him." Selina almost looked excited at the prospect and Dick made a mental note to have everyone talk about what happened so nothing got left out.

Alfred nodded along. "So it will be Ra's facilities then. Bruce keeps very good track of them as well as all accounts, alias and what few known associates he has. Ra's would go somewhere he feels safe, most likely the Himalayas. It's hard to get to and from what Bruce tells me, incredibly well defended as well as his favorite residence. We should start looking there."

Dick sighed in relief and made a mental note to thank Alfred later. The last thing he wanted was to be in charge of this thing. Being in charge was the last thing he ever wanted to do, and the more Bruce being gone, the more he felt the crushing weight. Barbra and Tim already looked to him for what to do, and he didn't think he could handle it if something happened to them on his watch. That and Bruce would kill him for it. As far as Dick was concerned Alfred and Selina were in charge.

"To the Batcave?" he offered cheerily as he could sound, which wasn't much. Selina smiled, disengaging from the hug and pulled Jason along with her into the hallway. He heard he mention something about body armor, which he guessed meant that Jason as coming. Tim had perked up and stood by Dick's side, silently waiting for permission to get to come, or at least watch. Dick pulled him into a hug and told him to go down with the two of them, he could rest in there. Besides, he'd probably feel safer in the save than he would at his own home.

In the corner Barbra and her dad where having a whisper argument before Gordon finally sighed and stood up. "We will be watching from the cave, but we're going to help." Barbra jumped up with energy no one in the room knew how she still had and pulled her father off towards the hallway, babbling with enthusiasm about the computer technology or something nerdy that Barbra was into. Gordon still looked like he wanted to yell at someone but wasn't about to turn down a trip to the place every Gothamite had wondered about.

Alfred had crossed the room and stood at Dick's side, and stared down Waller, who for her part was doing her best to look offended. "You better not be thinking of locking me out of this-" she began to threaten.

"Or what? You'll have us all thrown in federal prison without a trial?" Alfred was still holding the gun and while it was very loose in his hands, he still had the power in the room. "We are not a group of terrorists Miss. That doesn't fly." For as much as people thought Batman was scary, they had clearly never dealt with a pissed off Alfred. Te stare, the tone and the posture had to have come from somewhere, and it had come from the most meek looking member of the house.

"Either you let me in or I handle it my way."

"Because your way worked so well last time." Alfred remarked blithely. Waller had the decency to look offended before Alfred sighed. "If you have input we would welcome it, but you are not doing this your way. It's our turn to take this down." Alfred stared at her pointedly. "Like a team."

Waller didn't say anything, just stomped past them. Dick guessed they had their answer when she sheepishly walked back a few seconds later and asked how to get to the cave.

I know, it's been a long time. I've had a lot of sad real life events happen, so that's where I have been. If you're still here for thanks for reading along.