Chapter Text
Fawcett City was starting to give Dick Grayson a headache.
For the last two weeks, he’d been going after a labor trafficking ring that had had a satellite operation in Blüdhaven. Dick had shut down the branch operation and managed to obtain their financial records, which allowed him to track the trafficking ring’s main base of operations to Fawcett City, Pennsylvania. He'd also managed to dig up the ringleader's name: Capaldi.
Dick had arrived in Fawcett three days ago to scope out the city’s layout. He was inordinately glad to have done so, since Fawcett City made no goddamn sense .
Dick had seen multiple instances of sleek, modern glass buildings towering next to squat buildings that looked like they were straight from the mid-1800s. Some streets were paved with asphalt as expected, but others were inexplicably cobblestone or gravel, seemingly at random. No two street corners had the same style of road sign. Dick was pretty sure he’d seen a primitive automobile sitting in rush hour traffic the other day. There was even a kid in a newsboy cap selling newspapers with a megaphone near the cafe Dick was sitting in front of.
Dick sipped his coffee as he idly watched the pedestrians walking by. He’d be glad to be out of Fawcett and back in Blüdhaven once this was over. Blüdhaven might be comparable to Gotham in terms of its aesthetic, but at least it was consistent. Fawcett looked like it couldn’t decide between being a metropolis or a living historical museum.
The sounds of shouting from down the sidewalk drew Dick’s attention. He spotted a boy in a red sweater running and threading his way through the pedestrians; the boy couldn’t have been older than ten, but he was fast. The reason for the boy’s speed became evident as Dick identified the source of the shouting: three older teens were chasing the red-sweatered boy, hurling obscenities and pugilistic threats at his back.
Dick observed the situation calmly. When the chase finally reached Dick, he stuck out his leg just in time to catch the delinquent trio’s apparent leader in the knees. The teen almost seemed to pivot around Dick’s leg as his face became acquainted with the sidewalk. His cronies were unable to stop in time, and so they quickly joined their leader on the pavement with a pair of yelps.
The red-sweatered boy looked back at the sound to see his pursuers no longer in pursuit. His gaze moved from the prone bodies on the ground to meet Dick’s gaze, and Dick noted with interest that the boy seemed to freeze up for a moment when he saw Dick. The boy recovered quickly, though, grinning. “Thanks, mister!” he yelled, then kept running, albeit without his prior urgency.
Dick moved to follow the kid, but he had already managed to vanish into the foot traffic. Coffee finished, Dick put the encounter to the back of his mind for the time being.
Dick decided to retire to his hotel room for the rest of the afternoon and evening so he could prepare for that night.
Dick showered first; it had been particularly humid that day. Wrapping himself in a towel, he went to the kitchen and slapped together a sandwich for himself. Grabbing his laptop, Dick plopped himself down on the cheap-feeling bed and started reviewing his case notes as he ate.
There had been seventeen reported kidnappings in Fawcett during the last six weeks, nine of which Dick had been able to link to the labor trafficking ring. Given that the trafficking ring seemed to be targeting mostly people living on the streets and out of the public eye, though, the actual number of victims was bound to be higher.
From his experience taking down the ring’s satellite operation in Blüdhaven, Dick knew that the timing between kidnappings was seemingly random, ranging from anywhere between half a day to a full week. But there was still a pattern; it would have been difficult for the traffickers to reliably meet their quotas if there wasn’t. It had taken Dick and Barbara a long while to figure out the pattern, but they had. And based on that pattern, Dick could say with certainty that the next kidnapping would likely happen that night.
Brushing the crumbs off his keyboard, Dick moved over to his suitcase and opened the hidden compartment to pull out his Nightwing suit and equipment. He changed into the suit, then took stock of his equipment: escrima sticks, wing-dings, smoke pellets, miniature explosives, lollipops, miniature rebreather, notepad, pen, and spare comms devices. Everything he might need for the night.
Pressing his own comm into his ear, Dick switched onto his private line to the Clock Tower. “You there, Babs?” he checked.
The response came about eight seconds later. “Field names only, Nightwing,” Barbara admonished, her Oracle voice filter making her sound staticky and robotic, “But yes, I read you loud and clear. What’s the situation?”
Dick drummed his fingers against his thigh as he spoke. “I’m heading out to patrol. That trafficking ring I’ve been chasing—thank you again for helping with that, by the way—they’re going after another target tonight, based on their pattern so far. Hopefully I’ll be nearby when they make their move, but I’d appreciate it if you could keep some digital eyes and ears open to cover the places I’m not.”
Barbara hummed in thought. “It’ll take me a minute to get to all the CCTV cameras in Fawcett, but I’ve got your back.”
Dick grinned. “Thanks, Oracle.”
“Anytime, Boy Wonder,” came the reply. Barbara’s end of the line then fell silent as she got to work.
Dick laughed. He stretched for five minutes to warm up, then moved to the window and slipped out onto the fire escape.
Time to fly.