Bruce Wayne

Chapter 38: Finding Resolve

Alfred pulled into the garage and shut off the engine.

"The tools you'll need should be fairly straight forward," Alfred said as he climbed out of the vehicle and came around to help Bruce. "Your combat skills are close range, so you'll require something with a reach."

"Obviously," Bruce grumbled, leaning heavily on Alfred in order to climb out of the van. Bruce's sparring match with the criminals in the alley had aggravated his shoulder wound. Adrenaline had kept the pain at bay, but as it wore off, the injury was hurting as bad as when Bruce had first been shot. It made Bruce wonder if he'd ripped his stitches.

"Have you considered archery, Master Bruce?" Alfred inquired. He led Bruce to one of the guest rooms where the majority of the medical supplies had been stacked. Bruce was not the only one concerned about the bandaged injuries and if they'd been reopened.

"What do I look like, Robin Hood?" Bruce asked sarcastically.

"You might if you had the right set of tights, Sir," Alfred confirmed, trying to lift Bruce out of the depression hovering around him.

"I'd have to carry a bow too," Bruce pointed out. "If I lost the bow, the arrows would be fairly worthless for anything other than a supply of improvised knives. Besides, a miss with an arrow could be just as deadly as a bullet."

"It depends on how sharp you make them," Alfred corrected. "Razor tips would definitely do some damage, but if the arrows are more flattened, they shouldn't go too deep."

"Pass, Alfred," Bruce declined. "I need my hands free. Besides, the arrows sticking up from the quiver could get caught on things, and if I had to roll, I'd hate to think what it would do to my back."

"I know you trained with them in Japan, but since you disapproved of the arrows because of their possibility of doing lethal damage, I can assume you would also reject the idea of throwing stars for the same reason," Alfred guessed.

"You'd be right," Bruce confirmed. He tried taking off his shirt, but the unhealed bullet wound refused to let him. Seeing his predicament, Alfred acted instinctively without needing to be asked, helping remove the shirt. Alfred inspected the bandages and found one of the pads of white gauze turning dark red, indicating the stitches had broken loose. Alfred started removing the bandages in preparation for their replacement.

"If the throwing stars are too sharp, what about a boomerang?" Alfred queried. "They were used to knock prey out of trees, so you should be able to knock guns from criminal's hands. At the very least, Master Bruce, you could give them a sizable knot on the cranium."

Turning the idea around in his head, Bruce considered it carefully. A boomerang would give him a greater ability to fight at a distance without the risk of killing his opponent. "It's worth keeping in mind, anything else?"

"What about smoke grenades?" Alfred mentioned. "They could cover either your approach or withdrawal. You're trained to fight blind, but I don't think your opponents will be."

Alfred finished removing the bandages, and he inspected the injury. A few of the stitches had come loose, but it wasn't bleeding as much as when it had first happened. The butler opened the medical kit and began replacing the stitches.

"There was a chemical compound my fellows and I experimented with across the pond, Master Bruce," Alfred related while working. "Even in small quantities, it produces a rather sizable cloud of smoke. We could replicate it in order to make smoke grenades. Your enemies can't fight what they can't see."

"What if they start firing blind?" Bruce asked in return.

"It would be a good time to either knock their guns out of their hands or run, whichever you think best," Alfred answered.