With a thousand lies and a good disguise, hit 'em right between the eyes

[pixieboots]

who: pint-sized Dick Grayson + YOU
what: Dick is 12 years old and confused
when: June 13 - 24
where: everywhere
warnings: child endangerment, bat angst, possible minor injury



"See 'em running for their lives"

[ Crime waits for no unresolved personal crisis, as it turns out, which is actually more of a relief today than it probably should be. It's luck that Robin spots the thief in action just ahead of the victim's yell, but it's that luck that gives him an advantage. An objective. Finally something to chase down that isn't the ghost of the man he's supposed to be someday.

He gives chase across the roof, bridging gaps between buildings with a dazzling array of acrobatics, all restless, over the top flair as he closes the distance.

He's set up for a dramatic entrance at the end of a blind alley, a confrontation to end all petty thievery for all time, but in the split second that he's mid-showy quad flip the thief below plows into someone crossing the street and abruptly changes direction, and Dick's lost him by the time he hits the street below. ]

Hey. [ And he'll snag the hapless bystander by the sleeve. ] You see where they went?

[ Whether you're a hapless bystander, the unlucky victim, or even the thief, Robin doesn't seem to be prepared to let the issue slide anytime soon. His gaze narrows, roving to one street, then another. ]


"Show me how to lie, you're getting better all the time"

[ If you happen to be acquainted with the grownup-sized version of Dick Grayson (or even if you're not, I'll just handwave a reason tbh) your home or place of work has potentially made Robin's list of hotspots. Breaking and entering isn't right of course, especially not without probable cause, so he's careful to case the area first, waiting for the moment when he's pretty sure whoever he's following is going to be away for a while.

He needs information. He needs to know about this place, about what it all means to the people stuck here, and he doesn't believe in his heart that any adult will give it to him straight. He has to know. He has to.

Catch him just ahead of the act - perched precariously at a window or crouching by a door, lockpick in hand - or catch him already inside, picking his way through belongings with a set of evidence gloves on over Robin's green ones. When people don't know can't hurt them, after all. ]


"Now someone is gonna pay"

[ By the end of the week you'll be able to catch him in civvies, attempting to blend with other groups of tween-age children near schools and parks, walking on his hands in high spots where no sane person should feel comfortable balancing, or eating copious amounts of ice cream and candy as he wanders the city.

As Robin he's a little flutter of yellow cape on the roof, a batarang tucked into a bird's nest, an obnoxious burst of laughter if you happen to make a pratfall somewhere in public. He's incredibly easy to find lurking nearby if you happen to stand out in some obvious way. ]

Comments

closed to Tim Drake

[pixieboots]

[ The trophy room, as it turns out, contains only two items. The training room is missing a high bar. There's another Nightwing suit tossed carelessly in one corner, and seeing it makes his stomach twist in a wave of tight, desperate anguish that he knows is stupid. Pointless, when it's old news by now.

And there's a sinking sense of disappointment too, which probably is his own fault. Of course whatever passes for the Batcave in this place - whatever the man he's supposed to be someday built - would be bleached dry of all the things that bring it to life, back home. That make it his and Bruce's.

He finds the Robin suit next, but the little burst of joyful recognition evaporates as soon as he turns it around and spots the double Rs there in place of the emblem. The armor plating lining the chest and sides. This isn't his suit. It's not his, and that means it's someone else's.

It means the files are right after all, and somewhere, somehow he'd failed again. He'd failed, and so Batman had chosen another boy. Another boy to wear the colors his parents died in.

Dick lets it go and steps back, setting his jaw against the sharp, rising sting behind his mask. He's better than that. Batman fired him once already, and he knows now that it was because of this. Because he was weak. Too weak to be trusted. Too soft to make the hard choices when it counted.

He wipes his eyes and tears defiantly into the search for hidden passageways, moving from the walls to the spaces inside the vents, and that's where he fingers find the small metal box. A weapon. A gift. Maybe the secret to unraveling this awful, ugly lie (he hopes. He wishes).

Only it isn't any of those things, once he brings it out into the light. He turns the photos inside over in his hands.

The first few are pictures of strangers, and he leafs through them quickly until the sight of a familiar face arrests him. It's Bruce. Bruce as a boy.

Only it isn't Bruce. This boy's face is rounder, the eyes further apart. The lines different. Harder. He stares.

He sets it on the table and forges ahead, leafing through a few more pictures of unfamiliar people, one that he thinks is probably himself as a man. He sets it beside the picture of the boy, and underneath it is a photo that freezes all the air in his lungs. Because there they are, four down into the stack. His father, dashing and handsome. His mother, confident and sure. Himself younger, smaller. Smiling.

He's holding a much smaller boy in his lap, the way he'd done a thousand times for a thousand kids, back in that other life. Only he knows this one. He knows that small face, like he knows every detail of that awful, awful night. The last night.

Dick drops the photo and stumbles back, hands shaking. ]

[stalkingandplotting]

{There's something strange going on. There are more children around, and a crawling sensation over Tim's skin telling him something isn't right. He leaves the university for the day and goes directly to Dick's place rather than exploring. He needs to check in with him, make sure he's alright, and find out if the police had heard about anything going on.

The mess as he goes in is more than usual. The whole place is torn apart and Tim goes for his staff in his hoodie pocket on instinct, turning armed and ready towards the sudden movement by the vent opening.

It's Dick. Not Nightwing or Batman, but Robin. Tim's Robin. Young Dick Grayson, his idol, his bright spot in an otherwise dull, loveless childhood. And he'd been looking through Tim's box of photos. A quick sweep told Tim everything he needed to know about which one he found. He puts the staff away, back in his pocket and steps cautiously further into the room.}

Dick?

{This is the one occasion in which Tim wants to initiate the hug with his brother, but isn't sure of his welcome. He's got to be careful. If Dick bolted at this size and age, Tim's not sure he could catch him.}

[pixieboots]

You-

[ Dick wants to deny it. He wants to flee the room now, while he can, flee the awfulness of this place before that other boy can say it, because he's here and he's defending this place and he's not stupid, he knows what that means.

But the sound of his name holds him in place. The dropped photos are pinning him down, and in them he sees that face again. Because it's older. It's different. But he knows it. He could never, ever forget.

The other words are dying, unsaid. ]

You're him.

[stalkingandplotting]

{Tim flinches with his full body. He knows it's not an accusation, but it feels like one anyway. Yep, he's the one. The little kid from the night your parents died horribly, the little kid who replaced Jason as Robin...Tim is a lot of things. He forces himself to look at Dick squarely.}

Yeah, I'm Tim Drake. {His eyes flicker around to the mess and his suit, turned over and out of place, but at least the repairs he'd already done looked like they were holding.}.....Red Robin.

{And then training takes over, and Tim takes a cautious step forward a hand out reached towards him.} Are you hurt? {Or just in the massive emotional distress he expects you to be in.}

[pixieboots]

You saw us. Before the show. [ He's not mistaken. He couldn't be mistaken.

Dick finds he can't move. Not towards the outstretched hand. Not away, like every instinct is telling him to.

He remembers them. ]

You were there.

closed to Khisanth

[pixieboots]

[ The guards at the gate hassled him enough that he'd feel a little bad about giving them the slip where he could be seen. Where any one of them unlucky enough to spot him would probably have the blame pinned on him for a kid going missing, silly costume or no. They're doing good work, keeping all the children inside. Keeping the innocents safe.

But the shoe hardly fits, where Robin's concerned. And Robin would be duty bound to case the area, even if the jungle didn't loom there like a prize, promising untold adventure in its own right.

He slips out under cover of night, keeping to the trees at first, if only because the files he'd dug into had said that a lot of the monsters tended to stick to the forest floor. Navigating with a line is a little out of the question, but he's a good enough climber to manage without one.

As it turns out, a few rumors about the monster population of Riverview's perimeter were exaggerated. Something small and spider-like darts past his face without warning, and he has just enough time to dodge the spitting jaws, barely visible even with his infrareds.

He only has one shot to break his fall, so he twists mid-drop, using the line to snag himself rather than risking the long plummet into the unknown below. His foot catches, mercifully. The blood rushes to his head. ]

Shoot. [ He says, very quietly. He can't hear the thing moving above him. ]

[onblackwings]

[ Khisanth really, really enjoys the jungle outside the city. Even more, she enjoys the jungle at night, when it comes alive with a hundred different beasts for her to discover and learn about. And, generally speaking, eat. In fact, there's one in particular she's been stalking — a little spidery thing, clever and sharp and quick. It's fierce, she's watched it tackle prey several times its size as she's been following it on an owl's silent wings. She has the idea that it might be good for reconnaissance — not as helpless as a mouse, and far more nimble.

It's hunting again, and she does so love to watch it hunt — but quickly she realizes just what it's hunting. A human. In fact, isn't that a human child? Out awfully late, and all alone. It isn't really her business if this child goes and gets himself eaten, but ... well, she has to admit she's curious as to what kind of person goes traipsing through the jungle trees at night.

The kid nearly falls, catches himself, and dangles. The spidery thing is working on a slow and inexorable descent toward him, silent on its several legs. It never makes it to him, though.

An owl swoops silently in, and a dragon instantly takes its place. With a snap and a crunch the creature is in her jaws and unmoving, and a mere instant later she's past the kid and into a brief clearing wide enough to slow her lunge with several quick flaps. She brakes, twists, and lands with as much grace as she can manage under the circumstances. With a few more quick crunches, she enjoys her snack. ]

[pixieboots]

[ The line snaps back once he gets his fingers in the release, and Dick rights himself in time to hear the sharp crunch of bone inches above his head. He rolls, grasping wildly for the branch just below, and as he catches it one-handed that long, sleek line of black glides past him in a dazzling flood. He watches, transfixed, as it turns, drops and touches down like a feather. He feels the eyes on him. A dragon's eyes.

Batman would tell him to run. He knows that. That he had to lean on luck to survive at all is bad enough. To stick around now, staring down something that could make him dinner in half the time is a death wish.

And yet he can't bring himself to look away. ]

Are you- [ He hesitates for a moment, feeling silly. But if he's going with the stories here, he might as well commit all the way. Dragons speak. He should speak to this one. ]

...Did you save me?

[onblackwings]

[ He doesn't run. She's paying only a sidelong sort of attention as she finishes off her quick meal, but that's impressive. Even fully grown ogres run from her. She folds her wings into her sides and settles a little more comfortably onto her haunches as she turns her attention more fully onto him, like a great, satisfied cat. ]

I suppose I did. [ Her deep, rumbling voice sounds a little smug about it. ] Does that mean you owe me a favor?

[ Not that she really wants a favor from such a small human, she doubts he has anything she would want. But she likes the idea of people being indebted to her, no matter how small or insignificant. ]

[pixieboots]

Heh. Well, shouldn't that depend?

[ A blind to promise to an unknown quantity doesn't sound very fair, after all.

But still, there's the fact that he's talking to a dragon. That he'd been saved by a dragon, whether it (she?) had really intended that or not. His heart thuds wildly with the thrill of it. ]

...You want something?

option 1

[shadowstepped]

[Quentin passes his days wandering through the gleaming spiraling city, drifting through the library, the museum, the movie theater, parks, but most of all his thoughts, and always looking to the river when he passes by it, seeing his shadow thrown upon the current, peeking out from the shadow of the bridge, floating there unpushed along. On this particular day, he is rattled from the twists and turns of his mind by the robber (he doesn't know that the person is a robber in that moment, but he would put the pieces together) crashes into him, knocking him down to the pavement. He scrapes himself up, by which time the boy is beside him, his finger urgent at his jacket sleeve.]

No, I didn't see. [He casts his gaze about the bustling crowd, as if he might find the thief who by now has blended into the moving current of bodies. Then he looks to the boy, whose bizarre clothing he reasons must be what people wear around whichever parts this boy comes from.] Why, did he take something from you?

[pixieboots]

No. Not me. [ He's a little offended, if he's honest, not to be recognized at once for his obvious credentials on the basis of silly costume alone. But than again, this isn't Gotham. And this man had been pushed. ]

He didn't hurt you, did he?

[shadowstepped]

No, I'm all right.

[Yet he is the stubborn sort who would insist so even as he was gagging on his own blood to form the words. As it is, he has only a scraped heel of the hand where he caught himself on the ground, and a sore behind from the fall, neither of which is anything worth fussing over. He scrutinizes the boy and estimates his age to be hovering somewhere around those tender double digits.]

Well, come on. I suppose we ought to go to the police then, if you lost him.

[pixieboots]

Yeah. [ There's a touch of self-reproach in that note of reluctance. ] Man. He wasn't even that fast.

[ But this guy is right, after all. He brushes his dirty, green-gloved palms down the front of his tunic. ]

...It's sorta my fault he charged into you like that. I'm not usually that distracted.

(2)

[signifies]

[ Clark isn't used to being followed and he's not listening for the same sound sticking close to him. Having settled into a routine in Riverview, he keeps to it. It's the weekend, and he's heading out to the library. He doesn't like to stay at home too long if Jon's not around.

There aren't a lot of truly valuable belongings except the command key and the rudimentary console in the empty study. That doesn't mean Clark won't notice an unfamiliar sound. Someone's rummaging around.

He lands in the backyard, coming in through the door. The floorboards creak, so he hovers over them to remain quiet, looking for the intruder. ]

Excuse me.

[pixieboots]

[ There's an obvious risk to camping out here, away from the sheltering proximity of other homes. Other people. The place draws his attention at once for that reason, though somehow he suspects his older self would have mentioned it somewhere in the file if it was important. Surely he had to have known it was here.

Or maybe he hadn't. Dick is lost without the comforting familiarity of Gotham's streets. Without the certainty that his partner is coming for him no matter what. Everything feels suspect and strange, and the outliers even more so.

He's been inside just long enough for a cursory glance, long enough to determine that it's occupied by a man and his son, that there's probably nothing here that will tell him anything, when he turns and abruptly realizes his mistake. Robin stumbles back at once, tripping gracelessly over a kitchen chair and toppling over. He stares, eyes wide behind his mask. ]

...Superman?!

[signifies]

[ Any tension there was melts away at hearing that. Clark stays where he is with a loose posture. His hands are empty.

It's Dick. His voice hasn't broken yet, but it's Dick, and not some stranger who means him and Jon harm. ]

Robin? [ He errs on the side of caution and uses the codename. ] What's going on?

[pixieboots]

I- shoot. [ This is Superman's house. Superman's house that he'd broken into. Dick is starting to panic, shame and guilt rising up in a paralyzingly flood. He scrambles to his feet. ]

I didn't mean to, I swear. I just- I saw the place, and it was out of the city, so I thought...

[ None of the justifications he'd had in his mind five minutes ago seem to apply now. ]

2. 6/15 bc dates are important

[leadintheyoung]

[ It's a pair of fingers that find the boy's shoulder in something reminiscent of a tap, tap. Their owner? A brunette whose head is canted to one side as she regards the boy, the lockpick in his hand, then the boy once again with a rather expectant expression. Her other hand is quite prepared to snap to his other shoulder and hold should he attempt to bolt despite what some might mistake for a seemingly relaxed appearance. She's anything but considering that her residence is a shared one and she has some care for her floormates. ]

It's a key you hold, to be sure, but not a friendly one. Care to explain?

[ Why the lockpick, who he is -- he can start anywhere, really. Might not be a bad idea to turn and face her, either. ]

\o/

[pixieboots]

I- [ Yeah he's got nothing. Can he outrun her? He doesn't want to fight her. She's only defending her home, and he's the criminal in this situation. ]

I just got lost, that's all.

[ His hand goes to the back of his neck, shamefaced beneath the mask. ]

I wasn't gonna take anything.

[leadintheyoung]

Being lost doesn't merit that sort of key when people make good maps.

[ She isn't buying it, but she isn't going for the dagger sheathed at her hip either. He didn't take anything. Didn't even break the lock yet and here's no verbal impudence, no defiance. He almost sounds apologetic and that mask... well, she happens to be friends with a man who wears a mask. It's a different mask, but a mask all the same and she recalls why he said he wears it. That, and she hasn't seen a masked boy around communal housing before. Hmm. ]

I have no intention of turning you over to the authorities. I can scarcely do that when you haven't committed a crime, now can I? The least you can do is share the reason behind your intentions. If you didn't mean to take anything and you aren't here to hurt anyone, perhaps you were looking for something?

prompt iii

[bestrobin]

( Damian was well aware of the changes in the city with people around him. People were suddenly alternate versions of themselves. Older, younger, their morals or alignment shifted. Richard Grayson was also one of those people.

He'd spent the entirety of the week following him. A part of him would admit it was to be sure he didn't get into any trouble and to be able to intervene if he did. Another part of him would never admit that out loud to anyone besides himself or, perhaps, the Richard Grayson he'd come to know and respect. Regardless of the reason, Richard Grayon - the Pantsless Wonder - was never terribly far from his sight when he could help it.

After a certain point, he'd become tired of Richard's... mess for lack of a better word. He was tactless, a mess to see around the city and working. Any Robin worth their name should have known better.

One night, he took to tailing after him again. He stopped the flutter of a yellow cape with ease, and he took off after him. It was easy to close the distance between them, and once Damian was sure his actions wouldn't put Richard in any immediate harm, he sprang. He descended from where he'd been lurking just a few feet higher than Richard, aiming to take the other down and to the ground in tackling roll in a flutter of a black and gold cape.

If he managed to hit his target and roll them with Richard pinned beneath him, his only response was to be-- ) Where are your pants, Grayson?

omg

[pixieboots]

[ That his older self will one day choose to share the mantle of Robin with several worthy successors was a difficult idea to adjust to, in the context of an abstract future. That said worthy successors currently roam the night in this very city was something else entirely.

After a few days of conflicted avoidance though, he's willing to admit to himself that he's curious. A little wary, maybe. Still guarding against those lurking thoughts whispering to him that if he could only he good enough for Batman there would never need to be another.

But he wants to meet them. The young one close to his own age especially. There hadn't been much about him in the file his older self had left behind.

He's blindsided when the very kid he's looking for tackles him down. He rolls with it, still graceful as he twists sharply underneath him, spluttering with indignation and affronted anger. ]

-What? [ Excuse you he's wearing exactly as much pant as Robin requires. ]

Get your hands- [ And he's trying to grab for Damian's- ] -off of me!!

he can't leave you guys alone for any length of time, can he

[bestrobin]

( Graceful even in the face of a surprise attack. It was a good quality to have. If he were anyone else and they hadn't just tumbled a few feet, he might have been willing to say just that.

As it was, he was Damian Wayne, and this Richard Grayson - Robin - was every a chance to remind all of them that at the end of the day, he was the best Robin to ever hold the mantle. The emblem on his chest had changed with him, and it was a sign of strength and a worthy successor. )

No. ( Was Damian's immediate response to the demand to get off Richard, and he shifted where he was on the boy beneath him. He did his best to center his weight, prepared to move in case Richard tried to knock him off his balance. One hand moved, snatching one of the other boy's wrists to make an opening for him in an attempt to land a sharp warning blow to the other Robin's cheek. If it hit, it would be a hard blow, not nearly enough to do real damage, but enough to get Richard's attention and, ideally, make him realize he had no chance if they came to real blows. )

Calm down, idiot. I'm not going to hurt you unless you make me. ( A partial truth. He had no problem knocking Richard around if he didn't calm down. )

[pixieboots]

[ He'd been baffled at being tackled. Confused at being held down. Then the punch hits him squarely in the cheek, and he reals back for a moment, more stunned than hurt.

And then he's angry. Angry at this boy from the future, grabbing for his hands as if he's a child who needs to be placated. Yelling about his uniform, as if he's the one wearing it wrong. This kid wearing his parents' colors. ]

Ow! Why are you- [ His reaction is instinct, and it's anything but careful. He throws a merciless punch aimed at the delicate spot between mask and cheekbone. ] -hitting me!