𝕊𝕆𝕃𝕀𝕍𝔸𝔾𝔸ℕ𝕋║[ᴅ. ᴡᴀʏɴᴇ]

Qᴜᴏɴᴅᴀᴍ

It wasn't Monday, but this day sure held enough negative vibes to ruin the rest of his week if something didn't go right for him in the next ten minutes.

"Why is this cat's voice deeper than a Mongolian chanting quartet?" Spade's voice sounded strained even through the teams' comm link.

"MEOW." The demonic thing masquerading as a feline answered him.

He scoffed, "I don't take opinions from things with red eyes and ominous ancient runes floating around their heads, thanks." He was met with an aggravated yowl and a vicious slash across his chest that he couldn't block in time. Vin's boots ground into the dirt as he was shoved back by the swift blow, grunting as he clutched his abdomen, where the claws had dug the deepest. He sucked in a hard breath as he rerouted the pain to different corners of his body in an attempt to lessen the sting. The heir growled lowly as his visor's sight locked onto the floating feline nuisance.

"Oh, that is it." His blood-soaked hand, previously gripping his wound, squeezed the trigger of his rifle, nailing the unholy oversized rat in the hindleg. The thing howled in pain, bringing Vin a sadistic sense of satisfaction. The furball's malicious red aura dimmed as it fell to the dirt in an anticlimactic heap.

Spade exhaled heavily and pressed the button on the side of his visor. "Cat's down." He reported into comms and snapped a custom pair of arcane-canceling cuffs onto the feline's four limbs and a padlocked metal collar around its neck.

"Good work, Spade." Nightwing's voice crackled in his ear. "I'm heading for the plaza. Team, Klarion's familiar is dispatched. He should be vulnerable to physical attacks. Spoiler, with me." The purple-outfitted vigilante nodded and followed his rooftop pursuit toward ground zero, the epicenter of Klarion's constructed chaos. Spade switched off comms and knelt down, sliding the cat off the ground and hauling it over his shoulder.

The limited-time-only good-doer huffed at the dense weight digging into his rotator cuff. "So this is what it's like being a blue-collar, huh." He muttered to himself. "Magic, alien attacks, and much more, oh my. Only for the low, low price of my entire fucking weekend and bits of my lingering sanity." The cat let out a pained, half-conscious mrowww next to his ear. "It really does pay more to be a felon in this economy. Don't have to deal with demonic cat fur on my suit or blue viscous alien blood burning a hole in my armor." He indeed wouldn't have been turned into a walking, talking scratching post five minutes ago if his chest plate hadn't been reduced to scrap during the last mission he had run with the Bats, that's for sure.

But how, oh how, Vincent, did you begin running coops with the Bat affiliation?

Well, petite fleur, he's about to tell you.

To put it simply, his padre sold him.

"Dannazione!" Angelo cursed and threw his cards down, slamming his fist onto the table. Bruce calmly reached over and snagged another cookie from the plate Angelo's mother had set out for them.

Michaelo rolled his eyes at his dramatic son (not that it was a genetic trait or anything) and knocked back what was left of his whiskey tumbler.

Next to his sulking boss, Leo took a long drag of his cigar, tapping the ashes into the small, handmade porcelain tray a seven-year-old Vin had made and gifted him on his birthday.

"I win," Bruce said unnecessarily, affording a small and proper sip from his herbal tea, pinky out just as Alfred taught him.

Angelo, famed for his skill in card games and his identity as the sorest of losers, growled, "You won jackshit!"