A Tactical Retreat
Usually, when any bat-themed vigilante goes into a fight, they have a plan. But so caught off guard by enemies that by all means shouldn’t have seen them, the only plan running through the four vigilantes’ minds was ‘calm down, don’t panic.’
Fear is the destroyer of all plans, after all.
“That’s the kid! The one who caught me when I was stealing the gem!” One of their opponents exclaimed, pointing at Robin with… some kind of stick?
“Now, now, gentlemen. I’m sure we can settle this without a fight. Just tell us what we want to know and get lost, and this call be over.” Nightwing spoke placatingly, hands slowly reaching up and behind him to grab his escrima sticks from his back.
“Hah! So pathetically clueless as to who hold the power here.” The one the four vigilantes had mentally declared the leader laughed cruelly before gesturing around at the others who had come up behind him. “It’s a 6-on-4 fight, even if you weren’t even a threat to begin with!”
And with those words declaring the odds, the vigilantes sprung into action.
With a brief look of mutual understanding between the four, Red Robin threw a disk at the only warehouse light, shattering it and plunging the room into a complete darkness.
“They went for the bloody lights!” Screeched on the the accented voices in a seeming fit of rage.
In the center of the darkness they knew so well, the Bats moved.
With a burst of expert precision and agility, Nightwing led the charge to close combat, sweeping his leg to the floor to knock one of the foreign opponents to the ground before spinning around to another. As the enemy on the ground grunted in pain and surprise he stuck again, sending the second flying across the room into the warehouse wall with a well-timed kick to the stomach, causing his target to hit with a loud thud.
In the chaos the eldest had created, Robin rushed forwards as well just behind with sword in hand, rushing towards the enemy Nightwing had just kicked into a wall. With a trained arc three well-thrown batarangs pinned the man to the wall as Robin lifted his sword to swinf to the man’s head. The blade cut downwards, interrupted by-
“Protego!”
Suddenly, what almost appeared to be a shield appeared, encircling the man and reflecting Robin’s strike to send the boy skidding backwards as his momentum was thrown back at him. Quickly recovering from the shock of being sent flying by an unfamiliar source, Robin sprang back into action, starting his strikes anew against the shield in an attempt to search for a weak point to be exploited to reach his prey.
“What the hell? Is that some kind of- like, force field? How is he doing that?” Red Hood demanded in an incredulous voice, pulling out one of his guns and quickly surveying the surrounding area for any hidden technology they might have missed before they hit the lights. In situations like these, having the advantage of knowledge over what your enemy was capable of was crucial, and right now they didn’t have any clues about what these strange foreigners could do. Seeing nothing that seemed out of the ordinary from a usual warehouse, Red Hood turned his attention back to the fight before him just in time to see the one who appeared to be the ringleader of these criminals pointing their strange… stick? Directly at Nightwing with a twisted grin,
“Get down!” Red Hood yelled, raining his gun to aim at the enemy before him; but he was too late, and the man yelled out,
“Avada Kedavra!”
A streak of green crackled through the air, a poisonous color that illuminated the room’s present chaos amidst the fight.
Robin, stood nearest the wall, utilizing his well honed agility and adept blade skills as he was locked in combat with the two enemies that had rushed forward as reinforcements to the man pinned to the wall with batarangs, shield gone.
Red Hood, stood back with gun in hand, watching the scenes before him with a growing sense of horror and dread as the Lazarus-Pit colored flash of light arced towards his unknowing brother.
Nightwing, who stood in the center of the room’s splintered chaos, instinctively looking up at his brother’s panicked call to find a flash of green light headed straight toward his face.
But where was Red Robin? A flying disk thrown from seemingly the rafters up above intercepted the ray of light, reflecting it away from Nightwing mere inches from his face. The beam hit a mouse that had run out in the run out scurrying away in the ruckus m, and everything stopped.
As the mouse dropped dead to the floor with a thud and an ominous silence filled the room, Nightwing took charge.
‘Everyone, out! Retreat! Now!” At the shouted commands the Bats shook of the blank horror and confusion that had temporarily consumed them and dashed for seperate exits such as doors and window, whatever their closest exit would be.
“You aren’t going anywhere, you meddlesome brat- augh!” The man Robin had been chasing earlier lunged for the boy and paid the price to regret it as his now severed arm went flying across the room with a sickening thud.
And then they were gone, the shadows holding no traces of the Bats that normally lurked there within them, and the foreign criminals were alone. The ominous silence that had consumed everything was only broken by the screams of pain from the now-disarmed enemy.
“They seem to have gotten away.” The man who had so cruelly murdered the poor mouse that had probably called this place home long before they had arrived, remarked with a cool, yet dangerous tone.
“Gone?! He took off my bloody arm! That brat better run, because when I catch him, I’ll-“ the one-armed man man’s outraged screams of pain were interrupted by that same cool tone.
“You will do nothing. We have a job to do, and we cannot waste time and effort chasing a child over a petty squabble such as this just for the sake of revenge.”
“But-My arm-“ The freshly and unwillingly amputated man sputtered indignantly, rage still frothing on his lips with every word.
“Can be fixed.” The cool tone replied with a dangerous hint of finality. “Now come along, everyone; There is much work to be done here.” With a turn and a fwoosh of his cape in the dark room, the man turned to smoke, vanishing into the night. Moments later, the rest followed, leaving nothing but the shattered room and the body of an innocent mouse on the floor to prove they had ever even been there.
And then the warehouse was silent.