A Plan Put Into Motion
Richard Grayson.
It was the name he and Ned had decided on for his fake civvie identity. It was the name that his dad had wanted for him before agreeing to Peter Parker. It was the name that had made vigilante Nightwing freak out.
And it was the name of the oldest of the Wayne children. A famous man in his own right in this universe, who lives either in Gotham or Blüdhaven depending on the day.
Dear god. He had accidentally sent one of Gotham’s vigilantes after one of the most famous and beloved people in the city under suspicion of being an assassin. And worse yet, he had to stick to his story. It would only make things more suspicious now if he changed the cover name he was using. Yes, that's right, using, not used. Peter had plans for Richard Grayson, plans for the league. That’s part of what he needed the money for. Spiderman may be on hiatus with no expected return, but that didn’t mean Peter was going to sit idle. It meant Peter had freedoms he had never really had before.
Logging out of the computer he waved to Barbara on his way out, making for the shopping district once again to find a thrift store. He had things to buy, outfits to make, a league to get in contact with.
—————
He ended up in a bit of a shady area, that is, shady even for Gotham. A few blocks down from what most would consider the end of the shopping district was a dingy little thrift store. Walking up and down the aisles of the small, windowless building he kept an ear out for any suspicious noises. He had already been mugged once today and he wasn’t going to let it happen a second time.
Eventually he came across what he was looking for. A black long sleeved shirt, some black sweatpants, a few other black and grey pieces of clothing he’d use for scrap, and a roll of dark purple cloth. He bought some more general clothes too, but that was more out of necessity than it was for the plan in mind. All of that plus the small sewing kit ran him about $30, which he rounded up to exactly $30 by dropping his change in a homeless man’s cup outside. The little things counted just as much as the big, and maybe in some small way it would balance out his karma for what he planned to do.
It was quite a walk from there to his broken down office building, especially given the many bags of clothes he had to carry (even a small wardrobe is still a whole new wardrobe of clothes, fit for a whole new universe). And by the time he got settled into one of the rundown cubicles, one he would now designate as his workspace, the sun was dipping behind the cityscape. That was good, this needed to be done at night anyway, if it was going to be done at all.
The next hour and some was spent clipping, sewing, designing, regretting, undoing, and re-sewing a new outfit out of the black, grey, and purple clothes and cloths he had bought. By the end of it he had put together and subsequently put on what added up to be a more urban version of the assassin’s outfits. Fundamentally it was a t-shirt and sweats, but it was hemmed in to fit just a bit tighter, with grey and dark purple highlights, if they could be called that despite being such dark colors. The rest of the purple cloth acted as a sort of scarf to cover the bottom half of his face, but given his wall clinging proclivities it was sewn into the collar of the shirt in hopes it wouldn’t fall off. Stashing the rest of the clothes and materials underneath the cubicle desk, he left his make-shift shelter once more, going to the first of his stops tonight.
—————
The cave was precisely where he had left it, which should not have been surprising to him, but the early days of his adventure in Gotham were strung together in his mind in such a way that it seemed false. Images of sky and cave and bright searing green flashed in and out before it all really solidified on that first night on the rooftop. When he first met Red Hood. Suffice to say, despite the blurry nature of it all, his memory served well enough to have him crawl back in that hole in the ground. The walls of which still clung to him uncomfortably for several feet before he finally squeezed through and entered the crevice he had once woken up in. Below him he saw the chair he had been tied to, two guards still stood in the room, and from down the hall he could hear frustrated pacing. Crawling a bit lower down the wall, he tried to peek into the darkness of that hall, his eyes still making out the bank of monitors, as well as a familiar silhouette placed against them, doing the pacing he had heard. It was then that Peter had one of his better ideas. He was here to prove himself, and what better way then showing up in the midst of their group undetected?
Crawling the rest of the way down the wall, he slowly, silently, made his way behind the chair. And then he stood up straight, and waited. The two guards in the room were standing by either wall, to the left and right of the entrance to the room. Unfortunately that put them just far enough away that the chair (and Peter behind it) would be clear of their peripheral vision. For anyone looking straight down the hallway leading into the room however, he would be in the center of their vision. And that was precisely what he wanted, as the next person to come down that hallway should be…
Here she comes.
The silhouette had taken a few frustrated steps down the hallway then stopped. Looking straight at him with an expression he couldn’t quite place. As she walked into the room the expression turned into an amused grin.
“Leave us.”
She said, the guards looking at her in confusion. Then they looked to where her eyes were focused, only to be even more confused at the sudden presence of Peter standing there with them. With a nod to each other and a wild look in their eyes only Peter would get to savor they left back down the hall she had come from.
“What are you here for, spider? Surely you do not expect to stop us on your own?”
“Can’t a man just visit his favorite murderous cult, Talia?”
It was a power move, for sure, but he spit her name out with a hint of malice, a reminder that he was at least on even ground with her when it came to information, and a promise that he was just as willing to use it.
Her grin faltered, annoyance flashing across her face before she sighed.
“I suppose, but were that the case you would not have taken the time to wear our colors.”
“Ah, you noticed. Good. To be quite frank with you, I'm tired of waking up to your goons-”
“My guard.”
“-your goons, in my apartment, or hunting for me, or having kidnapped me. And while I’m thankful you kept me from dying-
Talia laughed at that, and Peter raised an eyebrow, but received no answer.
“Right, well, while I'm thankful for that, I’d rather be done with your whole cult thing. So assuming the spot’s still open, I’ll help you with this devil or demon or whatever on the condition that you leave me the hell alone afterwards.”
“You’d get involved with things you know nothing of only to wash your hands of it at the end?”
“Oh absolutely, you underestimate my desire to ignore problems larger than my own. So if it means this whole thing can no longer involve me? Count me in.”
Talia paced the room in front of him for a short while, walking across the stones as the green-hued light danced along her. In the right spot it caught a bruise on her forehead, and Peter smirked. It was hard to tell what she was thinking, but soon she spoke up, looking at Peter no longer with amusement but with the gaze a teacher may give their most promising student.
“You will, of course, need to prove yourself before I can give you any more information on us or our plight.”
“And sneaking into your base wasn’t proof enough?”
“Please, if it was every one of the bats would be under our employ.” She rolled her eyes. “Actually, most of them have been at one point or another. Regardless, I will have to think of a proper test for you, in the meantime, what shall we call you?”
This was the part he was worried about.
“Richard Grayson.”
He mustered up as much confidence as he could when he said it, as Talia’s eyes locked onto his and her face once more turned to an expression of amusement. He tried to make his face remain stone-like, unreadable. He wasn’t sure he succeeded.
“You are not him.”
“I am very aware.”
“Yet you would take his name as your own?”
“Did you expect me to tell you my real name?”
“I suppose not.” Talia let out a laugh that bounced off the stone walls before fading away, up into the rocks above them. What she was laughing at he could only guess.
“Well then, Grayson, your test will be this, steal something belonging to the real Grayson, and bring it to me. What it is matters not, but I will know if you lie to me. Return here with it tonight, and we shall accept you into our ranks for as long as our fight with the Demon lasts.”
Well, that certainly complicated things.
—————
Racing along the rooftops his mind was racing too. Steal something belonging to Dick Grayson. Theft wasn’t exactly his MO but he’s had to do it before, and he’d been pretty good at it, so this shouldn’t be so difficult. Except, of course, for the fact that this city was crawling with vigilantes, and he was going to have to break into one of the richest (if not the richest) houses in town. One that would surely have alarms and safeguards and locks out the wazoo. His only other alternative was getting to Blüdhaven and back in a night. While that certainly wasn’t impossible, it’d be cutting things extremely close. It was about an hour's walk to and from Blüdhaven, so two hours roundtrip. And he had already burned some of the nighttime hours with the making of this outfit and the meeting with Talia. Which meant he really only had one choice.
—————
Wayne Manor stood as a monolith against the dark and dense forest around it. Old in a way most of the city was, yet standing tall and proud and suspiciously undamaged by time, it was clearly lived in, and loved well. Tall wooden pillars served as the basis for walls, wooden beams splitting off to either side at every level of the building, defining almost a wireframe of what surely was mahogany or ebony or some equally rich-sounding wood. From there brickwork walls spanned from pillar to pillar, a light grey stone that almost gave the impression of a castle more than a manor. It all smelled of old money, well, it actually smelled quite lovely but you know what I meant. Large gardens of intricate design housed beautiful flowers all the way down the hill to the front gate. It was a large metal gate, eloquent and designed as if it was woven from threads of steel. From either side of it came waist high stone walls with similarly eloquent metal fencing on top. This fencing circled the whole property, or at least seemed to from what Peter could see.
From the top of a nearby tree Peter surveyed the grounds not spying any guards or cameras or the like, which meant his job would be that much easier. He wasn’t foolish enough to believe that there were no security measures however, or even that there weren’t any cameras, just that they were hidden well. Still, a job needed doing, so he leapt out from his branch on the tree and over the fence. Landing silently in the soft grass (even their damn grass was high-quality!) he began to slink his way up the hill to the manor. Staying low to the ground he quickly and quietly cam upon the stone walls of the manor, pressing against them. Then he began to climb up to a second story window he had spotted earlier, cracked open for god knows what reason. Listening intently he couldn’t hear anything beyond that window, so he slowly slid it up, opening it wider and wider by fractions of an inch at a time until he could just contort through it. On the other side was a lounge, large couches and chairs on a plush carpet, all in the warm glow of chandelier lighting and faux-gaslight lamps on the walls. Everything was cast in a slightly orange hue that reflected off shiny wood panelling along the lower half of every wall. It reminded him of the library, which made sense he supposed, given it was this man who had funded the library to begin with.
The next challenge was finding what room Richard Grayson was in. Or far more preferably, lived in but was not currently in. He’d rather not meet the man he was stealing from.
—————
The cave was as dark and damp as ever, stone and metal leaving everything a dull grey or shiny silver, all littered with patches of bright white fluorescent light by overhead lamps, or in strips of a cooler blue running along the floor to delineate paths. Far above bats screeched, far below water burbled away as it continued it’ ceaseless grinding at the very stone it lay upon. Far away that water would continue to burble all the way through the cave, and then the system of caves it had carved for itself, out into a small stream in the forest. Then down, down, down long hills and wooded slopes until it ultimately fed into Gotham Harbor. But that was a far way away. Bruce found his thoughts drifting back to the computer in front of him. There had been strange occurrences in Gotham, stranger than usual. Talia and Ra’s were fighting, which had happened once or twice before but always demanded their attention. Something had broken through a few floors of the old Ace Chemicals building. A new kid was with the League of Assassins, and happened to be using the name of his son as a cover, all while trying to maintain that they don’t need to be enemies. Oh, and Constantine was in town. Why? Hell if he knew, Constantine’s presence was usually a portend of horrible and downright annoying things to come, but at the moment that could be Constantine’s business. When he needed help (Not if, never if with Constantine), he would either come asking Bruce or would go asking Zatanna or the JL who would send him to Bruce.
All of it was a step above the usual strangeness of Ivy’s newest trick (Duke took care of that yesterday) or Bane’s latest breakout (Jason and Damian, last Tuesday) or even the Joker’s latest plans (he had taken care of it himself tonight. It was vile, yes, but not strange, not like the rest).
And so Bruce sat going through reports of every run-in over the past few weeks, no matter how large or small. One by one he made his way through files of breaking and entering, black market gun sales, burglaries, Zsasz’s latest victim, cat burglars, Two Face’s latest heist, Catwoman’s burglaries, even Mad Hatter’s latest scheme (Interestingly he hadn’t been caught, it was either catch him and risk civilian deaths or let him go for now and save lives. Tim had made him proud).
He was nearly falling asleep in his chair as he scanned through files, about to resign himself to being the man in the chair alongside Oracle for the rest of the night when a message from Damian came through, containing a video clearly taken from his phone. It showed. Well mostly it showed the wall, clearly Damien had been hiding the phone’s camera as much as he could as only the tiniest sliver of video actually peeked around the corner of the wall and down the hall, where one could barely make out the presence of a man –no, was that a kid?– dressed in black, inching up the staircase leading to the roof.
Soon came another message, this one only containing one sentence: “My suit’s down there, you’ll have to take care of this one.”
Without even a single heartbeat having passed Bruce was up and out of his chair, his cowl lifted from the desk and placed onto it’s rightful spot on his head as he left.