A Stroke Of Death

Chapter 6: Action

A strong punch was delivered to his jaw, successfully making him shut up.

"What did I say about answering my questions? Now, tell me, who is Batman under his cowl?"

"Ouch...thought you already knew, Deathstroke. You knew my name last time we met. And his."

Deathstroke sighed.

"Indeed, I already know. But the point of this question was to get you to answer truthfully. But seeing as you're so insistent on being a smartass, I'll skip straight to the main event."

He leant forward, his face dangerously close to Nightwings.

"Do you know where Tony Zucco is?"

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Tim Drake pased impatiently up and down the batcave, irritably checking the time every five seconds.

Batgirl was hunched over the batcomputer, typing so fast her fingers were a blur.

Just as they had feared, to be able to successfully track Deathstroke, they needed to use the batcave's technology.

But that also meant having a confrontation with Bruce.

Neither were ready for that, so they timed their visit so that they knew Batman was out on patrol, but bow they only had a couple hours left to get a lead, or get out having achieved nothing.

Of course, they still had to worry about Alfred, but he was old now, and moving around him was not the hardest thing to do, seeing as he moved quite slow and the two teens moved quite fast.

So, they were safe for now.

But time was running short.

"Barbra, please tell me you've got something!"

Barbara sighed exasperatedly and hunched her shoulders more, her breaths coming out in shaky gasps.

"...No...Not a damn thing, Tim...I-I don't know what to do..."

Tims expression softened as he approached the closest thing he had to a sister.

"Its OK, Barbra. We'll find Dick, and we'll get him back. I swear. So stay strong for now, because he needs us to be."

She nodded, and wiped at her eyes furiously.

"Y-yeah...I know all that, Tim, but its just so frustrating! He's too good at concealing his tracks, we'll never to able to track him...He disabled all security, including cameras, motion tracking and facial recognition... He's always two steps ahead of us, no matter what we do... And even after all he's done for us..."

The last comment took Tim by surprise, as he knew she was talking about Dick.

He was always such a good brother, insisting on family dinners and outings, braking up fights to stop us from falling out with each other, even giving us all hope and the feeling that we were all loved, no matter what we said or did to each others.

Feelings like that...it took someone more than special to create them.

And to say that we all loved him was the understatement of the century.

So the feeling like we were useless when it really mattered...

There was nothing worse.

"Barbra..."

"No, its OK Tim. I understand. Crying in the bat cave not doing shit won't help us get our brother back. We need to act. And the only way to successfully act in the proper way is to swallow our fear and just...do it."

"Wha- what are you talking about? 'Swallow our fear?' 'Just do it?' Do what?!"

"We..."

Barbra swallow thickly.

"We need to radio Bruce."