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Black hair and blue eyes, sharp and intelligent looked up from an angular teenage face. He was dressed in a business suit and standing outside of Wayne Enterprise getting ready to head back to the family Manor. The family butler, Alfred Pennyworth, was supposed to be picking him up at the butler's own insistence but he was unaccountably late. It had only been fifteen minutes so the teenager, Timothy Drake-Wayne, hadn't reached for the panic button yet.

The Wayne family members got kidnapped a lot in Gotham City on top of their night time extras. Unknown to the people walking past Tim on the street he was a member of the Gotham Vigilantes most commonly referred to as the Bats and Birds or the Bat Clan. Between the famous and rich civilian personas and the vigilante personas all of them had extensive training for when they were some how captured or kidnapped.

Alfred was late. Alfred was never late without some sort of emergency happening either before or after he arrived. It put Tim on edge.

When Alfred pulled up to the curb Tim quickly slid into the back of the car only to come face to face with a gun aimed right at him. The ugly mug of the idiot holding that gun grinned fiercely at him and leaned over without letting the gun waver. Doing so silently revealed a second gunman in the front seat holding a gun on Alfred.

"One word to anyone, even trigging one of the panic buttons you rich bastards tend to have, and you're both dead," the man said in a low growl. "You aren't our only pick up today with a very insistent invitation by our current boss. Who knows you might even get out of this unhurt if you play along."

"I understand," Tim growled, handing over his phone and watch only to observe the thug putting them both into a small lead lined box.

"Master Timothy, please do try to avoid getting injured. Master Richard is waiting for us with young Master Damian," Alfred informed him stiffly, pointedly ignoring the gun men.

"Just drive old man and be glad that we didn't have to take you out of the manor front door," the thug chuckled evilly. "Oh and the boss said to tell you both that if you get uppity then at least three schools get hit with a new mix of Joker gas. Play along and only the specially invited guests need to worry about the meeting. The gas gets neutralized when everyone's at the party in their proper place."

"Yes, Alfred, I understand," Tim said tightly.

Alfred gave a curt nod and started to drive.

Tim ran through everything he knew about the situation. He mentally cursed that most of the extended Bat Clan was either out of town or out of contact for various reasons. Duke was on a week long field trip so Signal wouldn't be showing up to help them. Damian and Dick were both already captured according to Alfred so neither Robin or Nightwing could show up. Tim's alter ego, Red Robin, couldn't do anything. Cassandra Cain, Black Bat, and Stephanie Brown, Spoiler, were out of town at a concert in Berlin of all places. That pretty much left Jason, the Red Hood but also the second Robin, and Bruce, Batman himself, to come to the rescue. Barbra Gordon, first Batwoman but was now known as Oracle, was part of the team but couldn't physically help due to how the Joker had paralyzed her.

This, whatever this was, was building up into being a nightmare for the entire Bat Clan and it wasn't even clear who had set this up yet. Tim hoped it wasn't going to be Ra's Al Ghul, Damian's grandfather, but the bastard had come back to life too many times after dying to really be sure he was actually dead this time. One of the Gotham Rogues could have set this up but the pointed comments about playing along and not trying to get away meant that this was definitely a move on the Bat Clan.

Tim fervently hoped that the clue of the Joker gas meant that some idiot had snagged some off of a shipment and tried to use it instead of Joker being the one to orchestrate all of this. Unfortunately, he knew the luck of the Bat Clan was never that good.

Alfred continued to drive.

~~~

Barbra Gordon sipped at her coffee as she logged in some of the library returns. The library had just closed for the day and she was doing this last stack of book returns before clocking out and rolling her wheelchair out to catch her ride to her other job as part of the night life. As Oracle she was the electronic eyes and ears of the Bat Clan and she did her absolute best to keep them alive or give them vital intel as they moved through Gotham defending her citizens.

The group of obvious career Goons that walked in through the employee's entrance ended her plans for the night. All thoughts of hot chocolate and a nice evening running the comms while reading a romance novel fled as she watched them approach.

"Can I help you people or are you just lost?" Barbra asked smoothly, brushing her brilliant red hair back behind one ear absently. "We just closed."

"I'm afraid we're your ride tonight, Lady," the lead thug said sympathetically. "The boss wants you at a little party he's throwing. He even sent along a party dress for you."

The thug motioned a few of the women in the group forwards to show Barbra a knock off version of a very familiar uniform. A uniform she once wore before the Joker paralyzed her with a bullet to her spine. Barbra went pale and met the eyes of the leader.

"We can do this the nice way or the hard way," the leader said sympathetically. "As far as we're concerned we just happen to be picking you up for a costume party. Goonion rules and all that. Anyone running in masks gets official ID split with no crossover barring something like the end of the world. The catch is that masks are the responsibility of the ones wearing it and only old hands find out about the rule. Sanity and confidentiality reasons. Bosses don't normally get told either but I'm trying to make this easier on all of us. I got telling you cleared and yeah, you can tell the Big Bat. It's mostly just an extension of reasonable deniability anyway."

"I see... Can I ask who tonight's boss is?" Barbra asked with an obviously forced neutrality.

"Not if any of us want to survive tonight," one of the women offered with a wince. "Sorry, hun. We also can't let you alert the big Bat. He's got his own special invitation and we don't know who else is supposed to be the bait, just that you aren't the only one getting a ride."

"Then let's get this over with," Barbra said quietly as she rolled towards the handicap friendly family bathroom.

The two women minions helped her into the Batwoman costume and mask before rolling her out to the van they had arrived in. Batwoman didn't fight or fuss as she was loaded inside and care was taken to load her wheelchair in the back. Barbra grimly reflected that this was not going to be a fun night no matter what anyone said.

~~~

Red Hood was stalking along his turf on one of his rare daylight rounds. He had gotten some worrying news after a near thirty-six hours of no sleep and no coffee. He was wired from lack of sleep and the Pit Rage left over from the Lazarus Pits screaming at him from the back of his skull making his head throb. The stupid pits were driving him closer and closer to murder again and he wasn't sure he would be able to stop them from just killing anyone who got in range. He was fighting back another surge of murderous green rage when they ambushed him. He was out cold before they dragged him into the dingy white kidnapper van.

~~~

Bruce knew something was wrong when Alfred never came back after supposedly picking up Tim and Damian. Unfortunately, no one else was answering his calls either. Or rather the first response wasn't from one of his family.

"Batsy! How nice of you to call. Unfortunately, your birdies are all a bit indisposed at the moment," Joker cackled from the speaker on the phone.

"Joker!" Bruce growled falling immediately into his Batman persona in the privacy of his currently empty home. The mad man was calling from the phone of one of Bruce's son's. Which meant that the bastard had Richard!

"Don't worry about it, Batsy! I made sure they are all dressed up nice for the party. The quality might not be what you are used to for their party suits but what can you do with only a few terrified tailors? Their work still turned out rather stunning if I do say so myself. You have one hour to show up to the party and I'll even leave one of the little birdy's phones on for you to track," the Joker cackled. "Come in your best party suit! I'm afraid I forgot to get you one special but we should still have quite the bang tonight."

Batman heard the phone hang up on the other end and immediately headed for the Bat Cave, phone in hand and ready to track down this party. He would get his family back and make Joker pay.

The Batmobile shot out of the cave, Batman behind the wheel, less than ten minutes later.

Upstairs in the Manor several people quietly broke in. Half of them were ninjas and half of them were in question themed uniforms.

"What is Joker even doing to get Wayne Manor so empty?" Riddler asked with a frown. "Our tests for the bats should be easy enough to set up but something is very wrong with all of this."

"Agreed," Talia Al Ghul said with a frown of her own as she joined the man who was one of the more clever Gotham Rogues. "This makes little sense. My beloved would never leave his home this vulnerable without a very good reason."

"I'm starting to think we might be on the wrong side in this particular game with the Bats," Riddler scowled. "What do you think about taking them from the Joker later? We can always play our games afterwards but it would do no good if they aren't physically or mentally up to playing."

"It is an interesting thought and one I am not adverse to," Talia said thoughtfully.

"Perhaps we should force them to rest," Riddler frowned again. "If we set it up right... Perhaps a week of an involuntary vacation? Organizing the others to step in for the bats might even work as well."

"No, my father would be pleased to have our men step in," Talia corrected. "A test in a different way for my beloved."

"You aren't from Gotham. It won't work," Riddler denying it with a shake of his head before briefly explaining. "The regular mobsters still don't get it and occasionally have to be corrected. Matching the Bats is not a simple thing and there is something of an unwritten code by this point between most of us and the Bats. The Joker doesn't play by any of the rules the rest of us do. Most of the time Harley is the one to give the rest of us a heads up or organize stuff with people for him."

"Odd, that wasn't in any of the briefings," Talia said with a frown.

"Part of that would probably be from the fact that once Bats figured out we were organizing certain unwritten rules he laid out some of his own," Riddler said dryly as he checked through a doorway to one of the parlors. "The League of Assassins and more specifically you Al Ghul's were to be referred to him. The rest of us just extended that to the fact that you aren't from Gotham and can't be treated as part of Gotham even if we occasionally work with you. It made an unofficial ban of sorts on giving your group certain information, especially since his warning to try to stay away from all of you indicated he had some sort of connection to your League."

"...My father, the Demon Head, considered him for his heir and was the one to approve Batman as my lover and eventual husband. That was before he left us after refusing to participate in one of the final tests. He still refuses to kill," Talia explained carefully. "If he would simply drop this ridiculous resistance to killing his enemies father would welcome him home with open arms. Instead he insists on trying to save this city instead of simply burning it to the ground to end the blight of corruption and evil."

"...I see," Riddler said very carefully. He had a horrible feeling that he had just learned one of the possible consequences of not having the Big Bat around.

"It is clear that you only wish for proper opponents so perhaps you can get through to my beloved where my father and I have failed," Talia huffed. "Now, where is my son's room? I have gifts to leave behind for him. The others my Beloved has adopted have proven themselves to be good choices but my father ensured that my son would only consider blood to be important in family bonds. I do hope that my Beloved has been successful in showing him differently."

"When we take the Bats back from Joker we can always find out," Riddler suggested very carefully. He knew full well that it was a weak cover for getting her to go along with the double cross of the insane clown.

"Perhaps," Talia said thoughtfully.

Then an idea struck as Edward Nygma, the Riddler, remembered overhearing one of Joker's goons talking about part of the plans for tonight.

"...Please tell me that your son is not the current stabby Robin?" Riddler asked in existential dread.

"Yes, he is rather fond of using blades," Talia mused. "Why? You were already aware of their identities as being here proves."

"Joker plans to whip Robin bloody to force the Bat into answering questions about something. I only remember it because I heard some of his goons talk about what might happen to force Batman into cooperating before he goes to execute them, starting from the youngest. Joker's not happy about having other people get between him and Batman with whatever games he sets up and decided to take some pieces off the board. I was trying to get you onside specifically so that we could show up before he killed another one of the Bat Clan since most of the outliers are unavailable or out of town so he only set up to capture the core of the Bat Clan," Riddler admitted in a rush. "Even if the Robin Joker killed came back as Red Hood we can't handle Batman going basically suicidal again."

Talia stared at him in shock and quickly building protective fury.

"Perhaps we should leave this part of the plans for later and gather allies?" Riddler suggested quickly. "We can show up in force and pull the Bats out before anything is done if we move fast enough and abandon setting anything up here."

Talia nodded shortly and started barking out commands in their unique version of Arabic. Riddler took that and started ordering his own goons back to the vehicles. He also pulled out his phone and started dialing numbers of some of the other Rogues.

Taking a different car than Talia Al Ghul the Riddler got the word out. If the Bat and the stabby Robin died then Gotham would burn under the hands of the League of Assassins. He had seen that clearly enough in Talia Al Ghul's expression before Edward had managed to suggest abandoning setting up their presents for the Bats. The Big Bat had refused membership in the League after all and still lived. If any of the Bats died tonight there was a good chance Batman would reprise his suicidal rampage from after Joker killed the second Robin. No one wanted to see that Batman again.