Nightwing slid down the zip line with his batons, feeling the wind brush through his short hair and against his shaved chin. His mask protected his eyes from the air resistance so that he was able to keep them open as his legs made contact with an unsuspecting guard's head. The man grunted in surprise, still conscious as he fell over, but too disoriented to make any cry for help. 

 

Before he could regain his senses, Nightwing kicked his legs up and back, separating his batons to allow him to fly off of the zip line backwards in a crisp flip. He landed knee first on the confused man's side, compressing his kidney in a rather crude if attractive knee drop.

 

He groaned, then wheezed in his struggle for oxygen. Nightwing twisted his hand around and brought down the butt of his baton onto the man's right temple, putting him to sleep.

 

Dick stayed in a crouch as he rolled the body of the unconscious guard into the shadows, making sure that he did not scrape any metal while doing so. He was outside of the pier warehouse that Penguin owned, looking for a way in. Chances were that Cobblepot wasn't there, but he wasn't after him tonight. 

 

It had not taken much effort to deduce that this building was owned by Cobblepot; it was the only building on the waterfront that had civilian guards with no business label on the front. The Penguin should have been smarter than that, honestly, but he was not currently under investigation by the police following Brainiac's attack. Most criminals across the planet had grown bold in the face of numerous superhero injuries and fatalities in wake of Brainiac's recent invasion.

 

Penguin, however, had responded differently, instead starting a security service- under a pseudonym, obviously; the CEO of said service was a young upstart named Taylor Skinner- to stand-in for people who feared the rise in global crime, a tactic that would attract monetary support for long-term operations rather than sending his men out to rob banks for quick cash grabs. It was a wise move in all fairness; not only could he make lots and lots of money across the world through legal means, but given the recent happenings with the city's police force, he stood to gain a lot from people who were scared of the city's criminal element to the point where the precinct attack would be taken as a sign that the police would not be good enough.

 

It was all a little too neat to Dick to not spell Penguin's involvement in the precinct attack. If Cobblebot decided he wanted to replicate the attack in other cities around the world, he could expand there too.

 

Nightwing checked on the guard one last time, gauging his heartbeat with his detective vision. The man had a pulse of under fifty beats per minute, his skull was fractured at the temple, and his breath intake was slow; he would not be waking up for a few hours. Satisfied with his handiwork, he moved back across the rooftop he was on over to the ledge. The pier warehouse was down about three stories and fifteen meters to his right, the building's rooftop hosting six patrolling guards.

 

Despite Bruce's protests for him not to get involved, Dick wasn't just going to sit by while Penguin was expanding. Not that he didn't trust Stephanie to do her work, but this was something that would affect his work in Bludhaven if Penguin chose to try something similar in the next major city closest to Gotham.

 

Dick threw himself back into a handspring and pushed himself into the air. As he righted himself in the air, his batons came together once again to seal at the center after coming around the zip line. The stick impacted the wire, shooting a few sparks to the side as he resumed his descent toward street level.

 

Once the zip line ended at a point between two buildings in an alleyway, Nightwing took apart the batons and shoved them into the holsters on his back, unconcerned that he was flying through the air toward the face of a solid stone building. If anything, it was exhilarating to know he could defy death like this, a pleasure that he doubted Bruce felt he needed to pay any heed to.

 

He hit the wall with his arms extended and with his feet flexed. His gloved fingers took most of the impact, which was not what he had intended. At the last moment before gravity reasserted its dominance over his body, he kicked himself back off of the building, flying away from it and moving toward the opposite building of the alley. He turned over himself to the left and flipped to put his feet toward the wall. He bounced off, this time hitting it square so that he could toss himself into a backflip a meter above the ground. 

 

He landed smoothly, barely scraping the concrete with his boots, then flicked his hands about in pain, cursing softly. His fingers stung, but they wouldn't for much longer. He'd made that mistake before. He hadn't for a while, but he distinctly remembered that the pain was only temporary. He just needed to wait for the blood to seep back into his hands and he wouldn't be pained by it anymore.

 

Feeling returned to his fingers within a minute, fortunately. Just to test them, he flexed his thumbs and pressed them into his sides. They dug in well, not even a trace of sting in his thumb compressions. He then interlocked his fingers and pushed outwards, stretching them. They didn't crack, but they weren't tensed up. Good.

 

"Snipes," a voice whispered harshly. "Is that you?"

 

Dick started, then jumped to the side of the alley. He activated his detective vision and glanced around, noticing a blue skeletal signature on his right, indicating a short but stout man with a pulse rate of ninety beats per minute. In the darkness, the man hadn't been able to see him, or else his heart rate would be higher. He had presumably heard the acrobatics and mistaken them for his friend.

 

Dick saw that the man was not armed, so he didn't go out with his batons. There was no way to be sure that this man was affiliated with Penguin, and he didn't want to be responsible for the pain of an innocent. Still, if he was going to be out at night for a meeting in an alley... No harm in investigating.

 

The man's head turned from side to side, searching for anyone else. He entered the alley, creeping forward. His heart rate rose with each step the man took, indicating his growing anxiety. He was still a good distance from Nightwing, but he readied his grapnel in case he didn't stop.

 

He did, stopping in a half-crouch. "Snipes, it's me, Ernie. You there?"

 

Ernie, Nightwing thought, running the name through his mind, trying to see if he knew any criminals by that name and with a figure like that of the other man in the alley. Ernie Chubb? He took another look at the figure of the man, matching it with his prior knowledge. What's he doing out of prison? Chubb was a small-time criminal, an ex-boxer turned mob enforcer. He used to work for the Falcones before had Penguin come along.

 

Nightwing put away his grapnel and grabbed one of his batons, raising it up beside his head. The man would be big and have experience in taking a beating. He'd have to take him out on the first shot or else he'd raise the alarm. 

 

Ernie took half a step back, perhaps beginning to doubt that he had heard anything in the first place. Dick waited, watching with trepidation. Just go...

 

His heart rate dropped and he made an audible exhale. Ernie stood up straight and turned around, getting out of the alley and away from the buildings. 

 

Dick lowered his arm, settling the baton back in its holster. He wasn't here looking for a fight; he wasn't going to risk one to take down a simple goon.

 

What was I doing again? Dick thought. Shaking his head, he took out his grapnel and shot up to a nearby roof. It clicked against the stone of the roof's lip, making a distinct noise followed by an even more distinct gasp in surprise. Uh oh. Dick squeezed the trigger to pull the rope back into the grapnel, causing it to whisk him up to the roof.

 

A head poked over the ledge of the roof. The man at the top saw him, then flinched back in surprise as Dick scrambled up the ledge, grabbed him by the sides of his head, and dropped back to the ledge. 

 

The man crashed into the stone roof face first while Dick caught himself on the roof and hung from it, listening to him groan his way into unconsciousness. Dick waited, listening for cries of alarm or anyone else on the rooftop, but he heard nothing, nor did he see anyone else on this rooftop during a brief scan with his detective vision. 

 

He let out a quick breath of relief. He was getting lucky, but if he was anymore careless, he'd end up in trouble.

 

Nightwing climbed over the edge and knelt beside the body. Turning the unconscious man onto his back, he saw the damage on his face. A severely disfigured nose and a large cut in his eyebrow were red-highlighted blemishes on an admittedly well-sculpted face. He tucked the man and picked him up at his waist, balancing the weight on a single shoulder as he stood.

 

Dick found a nearby air conditioner that he decided would suffice as a suitable hiding location. He sat the man down against the rooftop unit, trying to give the unfortunate man the appearance of being asleep should anyone on a higher rooftop see him. He made a low, involuntary groan as his legs were repositioned.

 

"Sorry, friend," Dick said in a conversational tone. He then reared back and jumped to the top of the air conditioning unit.

 

From the top, he looked out over the opposite edge. Ignoring the rumbling of the machine, he found that he was nearly level with the rooftop of the low building Penguin was using. He smiled, seeing that someone had left a window open for him leading to the second floor office. He activated his detective vision, and found only one signature on that whole floor, though there were plenty on the floor below it. Surprisingly, this single figure appeared to be on its knees, arms bent as if sifting through a file cabinet.

 

Stephanie? he thought. But no, it couldn't be her. The frame he could see about the figure indicated that it was a man that was snooping about. Whoever it was, he was not supposed to be there, that much was obvious.

 

Dick turned off his detective vision, then raised his grapnel up and launched it toward the opposite rooftop. There was nobody on that rooftop, which seemed to be a huge security flaw for a place Penguin was guarding. Aside from the intruder in the office, there were thirty people in the building, all of them going about business as usual.

 

The grapnel hit the roof, then locked into place. Dick took a deep breath, stepped back, then jumped forward, easily clearing the edge of his own rooftop. 

 

He plummeted to the streets below, feeling the thrill of flight once again. He gauged the distance to the window and- as soon as he felt he was low enough- pressed the button to begin pulling himself up. This did not alter his forward momentum, causing him to swing. When he was back level with the window, he pressed a different button for the grapnel to dislodge itself from the rooftop. His grapnel gun suddenly became lighter, the line coming back into its place just as he landed in a roll inside the building. 

 

He smiled at the perfection of the acrobatic achievement, then stood up to face the intruder.

 

The intruder turned out to wear a mask of his own. That mask had only one eye slit for his left eye. Around the eyehole, the mask was painted a rusty orange, while the other side contained crossed metallic wiring. The rest of him was armored in a mix between black and gray promethium, capable of holding several armaments.

 

Dick knew him well; few men could evoke such hatred from him.

 

"Slade," he growled, tightening one hand into a fist. "What are you doing here?"

 

He raised his right hand to point at him. "This is none of your concern, boy," Deathstroke warned. "Leave now before I get angry."

 

Dick noticed that his left hand was holding a few file folders that he had retrieved from a multilayered rotary shelf. They were unmarked. If Cobblepot held anything of value in this building, it would likely be in Deathstroke's hand.

 

"I'm giving you a chance to leave," Deathstroke continued. "I'm not on the job; I don't have to kill you."

 

"I don't care if you're on the job or not," Dick countered. "I'm not here for you." Slowly, he unclenched his fist and let his guard down. "Why are you here?"

 

"I said it's none of your concern."

 

"Tell me, or I'll take you in right now."

 

"You think threats will work on me?" Deathstroke asked. "You think I'm afraid of you?"

 

"You're not on the job, Slade," Dick tried, changing tactics. "You're not protecting anyone by not telling me."

 

The mercenary scoffed. "I'm here looking for something about my employer. Busywork, mostly. Something to hold me over 'til my next contract."

 

"You worked for Penguin?" Dick asked, more than a little surprised. "Since when does Penguin use mercenaries?"

 

"I don't know if he hired me. That's why I'm here; I want to know if he's the one that hired me."

 

"Alright. Did you find anything?"

 

"Not so fast," Deathstroke said coolly. "What are you here for?"

 

"This is Penguin's building; I've been trying to shut him down for months."

 

"In Bludhaven, last I heard," Deathstroke returned suspiciously. "Why are you here in Gotham again instead of stopping him there?"

 

"I was in the neighborhood," Dick deflected. "Taking a vacation."

 

"All I have to do is shout and the boys downstairs will come up here. If they come in, you won't get what you want."

 

Nightwing paused. Was he really considering sharing information with this man?

 

"I answered your questions," Slade pointed out. "Now answer mine."

 

Dick sighed. "You know about the precinct attack?"

 

"What about it?"

 

"I think Penguin was behind it, and that he framed Bruce Wayne in that business with the police too."

 

Deathstroke turned around, putting the three folders back onto the shelf. "Interesting," he said, turning back to face him. "And what's your stake in this?"

 

"You know what this building is for?"

 

"It's some front for a private security service," Slade said offhandedly. "From what I've found, Penguin's been thinking about expanding it to other cities."

 

Well, that confirmed Dick's fears about Cobblepot getting bolder. Now all he needed was evidence to give to the police about who was really behind the precinct attack.

 

"Look at how well his company has been doing since the attack. If he expands and more attacks happen in those cities..."

 

"Then Penguin can get more money there too," Deathstroke finished for him. "It's a smart strategy, but he wasn't behind the attack here."

 

Dick started. "What makes you say that?"

 

Deathstroke shuffled to the side, gesturing toward the file folders. "Have a look."

 

Dick narrowed his eyes at the mercenary, wary of this being a trap, but nevertheless moving forward to inspect what Deathstroke had found. 

 

He opened the file on top, finding two sheets of paper clipped to either side of the folder. The left paper included a series of photo clippings that detailed an intricate floor plan of a large building in Gotham City, one that listed key points for explosives that would collapse the entire structure. At first, he thought it was the layout of the precinct, but he soon discovered that it was the layout of a different building entirely: the Bowery District Courthouse. The page on the right held a short, handwritten note of a few sentences.

 

Until otherwise changed, the note read, the time of the attack will be the fourteenth of August at 2:30 P.M. Wait until Wayne is giving his testimony before you blow the charges.

 

"This was your job?" Nightwing asked, looking up at he mercenary.

 

He snorted. "I don't do mass killings. Not anymore."

 

Nightwing frowned, returning to his study of the information. The rest of the folder contained information regarding how to prime the explosives and how to get them past the metal detectors. Nothing else inside would benefit him. 

 

It was evidence of an attempt to commit mass slaughter, but Penguin could avoid much of the blame by virtue of not being the security company's official CEO. He needed more.

 

Dick used his detective vision to scan the pages and upload them to the Batcomputer for Alfred. Wherever he was. The butler hadn't been arrested alongside his masters because the police had been unable to find him. Dick had checked, and he hadn't been in the Batcave. There was a standing police-issued warrant for his arrest; if he wasn't in the Batcave, where could he have possibly been hiding?

 

"What job were you hired for?" Dick asked, shutting the folder and opening up another one.

 

"Guard duty," Deathstroke replied, folding his arms. "Not a job befitting of a man my talents, but it paid well."

 

The second folder was mostly empty, containing a few photographs of potential buildings to be used for expansion. The addresses were listed neatly beside each photograph. Most of the sites were in either Gotham or Star City, but there were two addresses that indicated that the security firm would be taking up residence in a small town called Beaufort in North Carolina. Dick recognized the area; a few days before, there had been a mass shootout in a field just outside of the town, involving numerous crashed vehicles and blood spatters everywhere. The men involved appeared to have all killed each other, but news reports indicated that most of the men had been killed with clean shots to the head. It hadn't been some random gang battle, but a gunfight between professionals.

 

Was Penguin behind that, too? It didn't seem likely; Beaufort was a pretty small town nowhere near Gotham. This looked like he was simply capitalizing on the incident to expand to a place of fear. 

 

"How much did you get paid?" he asked, flipping the second file closed and opening the third.

 

"Five million for a one night op," Deathstroke answered. "Nobody pays that much for guard duty."

 

Dick frowned, looking up at armored killer. It took a little effort to focus on something other than how much he hated this man. "What were you guarding?"

 

Slade averted his gaze. "I've said too much."

 

Dick bore into the side of his mask, hoping that he would answer, but he offered nothing in return. Disappointed, he looked over the third file.

 

This one held comparatively little inside. There were a few clippings of the calendar attached to pictures of a few well-dressed men, but it didn't look like a hit list. It looked like a bunch of assets Penguin was extorting: nothing of value, really.

 

Dick growled in frustration. There had to be something here that could clear Bruce's name. Why would he ever bribe the police force? It made the most sense that Penguin would be the one really behind it, as he was the one with the most money in the criminal underground and the connections to find out which officers were open to bribes.

 

He shut the folder along with his eyes. How was he going to free Bruce if he couldn't find anything to help him?

 

"It seems neither of us found what we wanted," Slade said.

 

Dick grunted. "That would have been too easy."

 

"Right."

 

Dick suddenly felt rough, gloved hands grab his head and force him down into the table. Stunned, Dick fell backward, watching as Deathstroke extracted a blade from his chest plate and plunge it down toward him. At the last moment, Dick shifted his weight onto his right hip, allowing the sword to just barely miss his gut and strike the floorboard. He took advantage of Slade's overreach and rolled back up to his feet while his attacker struggled to remove the sword from the wood.

 

Dick pulled out two escrima sticks from his thigh holsters and activated the electric tips, giving Slade one chance to surrender. "I'm taking you in, Slade," he hissed. "Do we do this the easy way or the hard way?"

 

Deathstroke's single eye remained unfazed at the sparkling heads of the escrima sticks. He managed to pull the thin sword out of the floor. He tipped the sword toward himself in a single-handed grip, then toward Dick, then finally to the ceiling in a two-handed grip in some gesture of a duel initiation.

 

He swung his sword in a sweeping crescent arc from the floor to Nightwing. Dick easily batted down the rather hasty strike, then stepped back to avoid a return stroke. Sure enough, Slade attempted one, spinning on one knee to try and slash his chest, but came nowhere near him.

 

What game are you playing? Dick thought. Not even five seconds into the fight, and Slade was already performing pretty sloppily. 

 

The return stroke left him wide open, but Dick didn't take the opportunity, instead edging around him toward the window. Slade spun again, this time swinging his arm around and throwing a knife at him. Dick barely got out of the way of the very precise projectile, exposing himself in a less-than-graceful fall to the floor. 

 

Yet, Slade didn't take the opportunity to strike there either. He seemed to be... stalling for time rather than actually trying to kill him.

 

Whatever it was he was waiting for, Dick wasn't inclined to be baited. He jumped forward, bringing the butt of one escrima stick down to bat Deathstroke on the head. Slade sidestepped the attack, bringing his foot up to kick Nightwing in the face. Dick performed a backflip under Slade's outstretched leg, then jabbed Slade in the side, prompting a grunt of pain as he felt the jolt. Slade warded him away with an overzealous  backswing, but Dick was able to duck back in afterward to keep the fight in close range.

 

The mercenary tried to bring his sword back in, but he had left his arm too far out of position. Dick struck him in the crook of his arm with the electric tip. Slade flinched, then phased forward in a feinting headbutt, subtly preparing a knife with his offhand. Dick didn't take the bait, swinging his elbow up to knock his head back, right in his exposed eye.

 

Deathstroke grunted loudly and threw the knife, but his aim was very far off the mark this time. He held his arm up in front of his eye to cup the injury, retreating and shielding his head from further assault. Dick didn't mind; it gave him the opportunity to kick Slade under his raised arm where his armor padding did not reach. Slade shifted his other arm to clutch at his weakened joint. Dick swung an escrima stick at his adversary's hip, hoping to jab the bone, but Slade somehow got his sword back around to deflect the strike, shooting a shower of sparks into the air.

 

Slade spun and extracted a sidearm from under one of his chest plates, drawing it up to Dick's chest at point blank range. Nightwing quickly pivoted out of the way as the gun fired, the bullet just barely missing him. Slade spun inward, attempting a chop kick to Dick's face. He ducked backwards, avoiding the metal-tipped boot.

 

Deathstroke then spun outward and swept Dick's feet out from under him with his other foot. Dick managed to land on two fists curled around escrima sticks- his fingers protesting the landing just as they did earlier- and spring back up to his feet. Deathstroke pointed the gun at Dick's chest again. Dick managed to get his arm up and knock the gun to the side to divert the bullet from his body.

 

Why didn't he shoot? Dick wondered as he readied his escrima sticks again. He had me, but he didn't shoot? Why?

 

Slade stepped back and pulled the pistol back into position. Dick was ready for that this time, ducking forward under the barrel and grabbing Deathstroke, tackling him into the multilayered shelf. The structure surprised Dick by not breaking, though the two men's weights crushed a few fragments of it. 

 

Dick felt the mercenary club him in the back- once again not shooting him while he had the chance- but he did not let go of his opponent. He lifted him from off of one of the layers and slammed him to the floor. Slade, however, had grabbed the top of the rotary shelf while falling, making it fall so that it landed right on top of them.

 

Or, more accurately, crushing Nightwing between the mercenary's armor and the large piece of metal on top of him.

 

Dick gasped, then cried out in pain as he was pinned in place. Deathstroke quickly removed himself from underneath him, finding no difficulty in rolling out from under Nightwing and stepping away as the shelf pressed down on top of him. Dick got his hands underneath him and tried getting himself free by pushing it off of him with his back, but Slade came back and used his foot to push him down to the floor.

 

Slade leaned down and grabbed Nightwing by his hair. He was breathing hard, so he didn't say anything at first, but he soon found his voice. 

 

"One of these days," he growled. "One of these days, someone's gonna put a price on your head. When that day comes, I'll finally put you in the ground, but until then, stay the hell out of my way!"

 

Dick tried to reply, only for Deathstroke to firmly grasp the back of his head and crack his skull on the floor, leaving him dazed. 

 

Deathstroke gripped him by the hair again. "Or maybe I'll do it for free. Always remember that." And with that, Deathstroke let go of him, walking away.

 

The door to the room suddenly burst open, revealing a group of heavily armed men with assault rifles who immediately spotted the blue and black clad figure trapped below the shelf. One man pointed for the others to take aim as he ducked out of the way. 

 

Penguin. So Cobblepot had been in the building. If Dick had known that, he wouldn't have gone upstairs through the office. He would have gone right for him. 

 

He also realized that this must have been what Deathstroke had been stalling for. The fight upstairs had drawn attention from the men downstairs, possibly as early as when Slade had stabbed the floorboards. It had just taken the men time to rouse themselves and gather their weapons.

 

Penguin's thugs took aim. Panicked, Dick suddenly found enough strength to push the shelf off of him, rolling behind it as the men sprayed bullets in his direction. He cowered behind the large shelf, though it acted as pretty poor cover, not allowing him to move much in either direction without exposing himself. 

 

Where did he go?!? Dick frantically searched the room for a way out, his eyes landing on the window he had come in through to the right of the shooters. He wouldn't be able to make an accurate shot with his grapnel gun from where he was; he'd have to manually get to the window, and a smoke pellet couldn't keep him totally safe from stray fire in such close quarters.

 

The bullets stopped spraying in near unison, empty shells clacking against the floor. Penguin ordered his men to form up in rows of two so that on their next barrage would be continuous.

 

Dick threw himself to his feet, then jumped up and activated his escrima sticks. He struck the two of them together, jolts zapping each other and creating a sizzling and crackling noise. Smoke rose from where the two escrima sticks met, rising up to a shower head in the ceiling.

 

The shower head opened up, and a fire alarm went off. All of the shower heads in the room opened at once, releasing water onto all of them.

 

Penguin's thugs cursed, the cold chill of the fire suppression system interrupting their reload when several of their number dropped magazines of assault rifles and tripped a few of their fellows while trying to retrieve them. Cobblepot himself was knocked over by the crowd. He yelled at them for their stupidity.

 

Dick withdrew his escrima sticks and dashed across the room, ignoring the freezing cold water that splashed across his cheeks and teeth as he made his way to the window. Penguin once again yelled at his men for being bastards and having no brains as they finally collected their ammunition and weapons. 

 

By then, however, Dick was already at the window. Bidding Cobblepot a silent farewell, Dick jumped out into the open air just as the bullets began flying again.

 

Dick ignored the winds' promising thrills and pulled out his grapnel gun. He hastily fired it at the building opposite to him. The grapnel line shot out and-

 

Dick suddenly felt a sharp pain in his thigh, causing him to cry out and nearly drop the grapnel. By reflex, he activated the accelerator on the gun, causing him to whoosh up to the building at close range. The grapnel automatically detached when he came within three feet of the rooftop, the gun becoming weightless as he soared way over the ledge and over the air condition unit. He accidentally dropped the grapnel.

 

He flew further and nearly fell off of the rooftop entirely. As he descended, he fell over the ledge of the other end of the building. He scrambled against the wall and just managed to grab the lip of the roof and drag himself sidelong on the wall to a window ledge he used to boost himself up to the roof.

 

Panting for breath, Dick scooted on his rear away from the edge of the rooftop until his back met the air conditioner. He'd just nearly met the same fate as his parents. Sure, he risked such a thing countless times before, but rarely had felt so close to death as he had there. The last of the Flying Graysons falls to his death decades after his parents did. Of course it was going to happen.

 

After a long minute, he finally caught his breath and looked at his left thigh. There was blood there, though much less than he'd feared. He turned his leg around so he could see the back of it. There was much more blood there, and it was still oozing out of the bullet hole. There didn't appear to be an exit wound.

 

Dick banged his head back against the metal. How had he not remembered the dozens of men downstairs working for a crime lord? He should have gotten out of the building as soon as Deathstroke attacked him. Instead of leaving to prevent himself from falling into what he'd known to be a trap, he'd let his hatred blind his reasoning. And now Deathstroke was gone, getting out unscathed while Dick had a bullet in his leg.

 

At least I shut Penguin down again. Despite himself, he smiled. Not out of defiance or the comfort that he had survived when he probably shouldn't have, but out of the knowledge that Penguin's security firm would fall under heavy scrutiny now that there were bullet holes in his building and the building across the street. All he had to do was tip the police. Or maybe someone driving down the street had already done so. The company would go under with the police investigating it, even with its reduced working force.

 

Dick heard some groaning beside him, and he was startled by the stirring body lying next to him. The man he'd knocked out before was still there, and was only now coming back to consciousness.

 

"Sorry for breaking your nose," he said, then smacked him on the temple with the back of his fist. The man slumped once more into unconsciousness.

 

Dick needed to get back to the Batcave and hope Alfred was there to patch him up. If not... well, he could always find a video online about how to go about removing a bullet from the back of your own leg. 

 

Dick sighed, then stood up, straining to get his injured leg beneath him, then limped about the rooftop, searching for wherever he'd dropped the damn grapnel gun.