Luthor's Assassin

The Plan

He was doing it again- thinking about the child assassin, Renegade.

It happened far too often for Batman's liking. Then again, he was naturally wary of anyone who tried to kill him anyway, so maybe it wasn't that that weird...

For the millionth time that day, he typed "flying graysons" into the search bar of the computer in the watchtower (he was on monitor duty) and stared at the picture that came up.

A photo of the Grayson family on the trapeze came up. Little Richard was easiest to pick out, his soaring form was twice as small as the rest of his family. A joyous expression was on the tiny boy's face as he swung through the air.

Oh, how so much had changed.

There was a mechanical whir behind him, and he heard one of the zeta beams activate.

"Recognized, Superman, 01."

"Recognized, Flash, 04."

Batman quickly shut down the article on the Graysons and pulled up a different document, this one only not showing Renegade's identity. He wasn't ready to reveal that he knew who the assassin was.

"...but then the look on his face was totally priceless! You should've see it, Superman, it was..."

Flash fell silent as he and the Man of Steel approached Batman's position. He could feel two sets of eyes boring into his back, then traveling up to the screen in front of him.

"Batman..." Superman began, and Batman stopped typing to indicate for the Boy Scout to start talking.

"We're... worried about you, Bruce."

Batman didn't react.

"Is that all you wanted to say?" he hissed, and Superman opened his mouth to continue, but Flash beat him to it.

"No!" he burst out. "You're completely obsessed with this kid,Bats! It's unhealthy, and he tried to kill you, for Pete's sake! And you don't even know if... if... um..." He trailed off as Batman fixed him with the infamous bat-glare, gulping nervously.

"What I am doing should be of no concern to you two."

Superman came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder before be could get back to his work.

"Bruce, please," the kryptonian said softly. "I know you want to help the boy, but what if he doesn't want any help? I know what the team's report said but-"

Batman cut him off with a growl.

The team had come back from their mission to investigate a warehouse in Bludhaven to reveal that Renegade had been there, and that he had (as Kid Flash put it) "kicked their butts". Upon further questioning of the team, Miss Martian had revealed his skills in repelling her mental attacks, Superboy had spoke of his acrobatics, and Aqualad his skill with a sword.

The way they had described his fighting methods had intrigued Batman, he wanted to know who was training the not Luthor, maybe Mercy? But try as he might, it seemed irrational for a robot to train a human child. Surely that wasn't it.

For the next few days he had combed the security footage from around the Lexcorp building for anyone, anything that could give him a clue, and finally he found Renegade's instructor.

Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke the Terminator. He was the only possible option,since traffic light cameras caught him going both to and from the Lexcorp building- and besides, who else could train a child to fight like that?

The team's report had told him that Renegade had seemed extremely hesitant to answer any of their questions concerning his killing sprees, and Red Arrow had revealed that the boy was very unsure of his views on why he was doing what he was anyway. Batman wanted to help him, wanted to believe that his hesitance was enough to assume that he would change if given the chance.