Robin one shot part 3!

Oh man, who knows ASL?

Morally_Gray gave me this idea when we were doing the requests for Christmas but i ended up not using it so here's something a little fun and lighthearted because jesus christ i need that

"My EMP should make quick work of them," Red Robin announced proudly as he hit the button. Their enemies were stupid for relying so much on tech. Clearly, without their technology, they would be easy to defeat since they had no real fighting skill whatsoever outside of pointing and shooting. He would never leave himself open to such an attack. Sure tech was great and it could enhance your skill, if you're useless without it then you're just stupid. Well, he may have forgotten to factor in a few things about EMPs. Those came to the surface when Robin turned to him with an unreadable expression.

"Drake," he began, speaking slowly as though speaking with a toddler. "Did you set off an EMP?"

"I did just announce that demon spawn," the older snapped back. Robin was probably too deep in whatever inner monologue he was making to sound himself sound like the hero of the battle to hear who truly won the fight for the and helped everyone else as well in one swift move. He was going to make sure to add that Robin wasn't paying attention in his report even if Batman had told him to stop doing that since it wasn't "necessary" information. It was necessary to him when they were lumped together.

"So that would include our comm units?" He nodded. Sure it was a bit of a pain in the ass but it was worth it. Now they were picking everyone off far easier and it wasn't like they were spread out across some super secret base that required radio communication. They were all in the same room from what he could tell so orders could be easily yelled over the fight as it staggered off and he could fix whatever damage he'd done to their equipment by tomorrow. Robin was staring at him like he was stupid but he couldn't think why. It was a small downside. "Drake, what has Grayson's comm unit been made to include to be alongside a source of communication?"

"It's a hearing aid, why are you asking-"

"Ah, shit!" Nightwing shouted, taking out his earpiece to inspect it but finding nothing visibly wrong. Oh. Right. Nightwing needed a hearing aid and now he was left deaf on the field because it had been fried. The acrobat did a good job at masking his disability so it had slipped his mind.

"You failed to consider his hearing aid, didn't you?" Robin asked a vague smugness about him that irritated Red Robin to no end. It was simply a brief oversight but he just knew in Robin's report it would be made out to be some egregious lapse of judgement that could've cost them the whole mission.

"I may have overlooked it," he snapped.

"You didn't even think about it!" 

"Shut it!"

Dick had been born with bad hearing but over the years it had only gotten worse both thanks to his night job and the nature of his disability. 

When he was a child, his parents couldn't afford the hearing aids he needed so he went through a good amount of his childhood struggling to hear things over the muffling effect that tainted everything. The circus folk taught him ASL to make things easier and so they didn't ruin their voices by yelling at him all the time hoping he'd hear them over the static. He'd learned his routine cues through vibrations of the music and he still loved the crowd even though their clapping morphed into just one loud sound. Fans were usually kind at the end of the show as they took pictures and he even met some other kids who also knew ASL, holding brief conversations with them. There were moments where he wished he could hear without the muffle but he was thankful for it when his parents screamed as they fell.