robin; a different fate [Discontinued]

Chapter 01: Assassin

[Third Person]
[Location: Gotham City]
[11:55 PM]

There always was something strange about the people who picked Dick Grayson up after his parents died. He knew it too, he knew that there was something fundamentally wrong with them but didn't question it because once again he was given a family. 

They were murderous, they were secretive, they didn't like it when he spoke about them to the outside world. They had imposed their murderous tenancies onto him and he can't say that he disliked it. He didn't mind his humorless comrades so long as they kept him alive. Sometimes the lack of humor made a joke all the more funny. 

And while he still had some great moments of disobedience he was more subdued than he had been in a very long time. He had long ago passed his breaking point and yet he still pushed their buttons with his small of disobedience.

He would comment on his parent's fall, as if it didn't still haunt him at night, and make jokes about all those poor souls who had been murdered by him in the last four years alone.

You might be wondering, what kind of psycho child jokes morbidly about casually murdering thousands of individuals in the last four years. The answer would is one that is not all there. One that is so wrong in the head that it's right.

Dick Grayson was not totally there in his mind. Part of him was still back at the circus he had once called his home, the same circus who had given custody to the Court of Owls. For generations the Court had been using the circus to recruit new blood and add to their ranks. The circus people, after all, were already incredibly fit and knew how to defend themselves. If it came down to a fight, the laughable clowns of Haly's circus were more than capable of defending themselves.

He himself had been on their radar ever since he was born and his family let him in on their act. It was his great grandfather's organization, the Court of Owls, after all. He was to be their heir, the heir to the Court. And he was, he fulfilled his duties as heir of the Court. He was one of the best Talons in the Court of Owls despite his young age and appearance. Looks could be very deceiving when it came to the small blue-eyed acrobat.

And much to his amusement, many did not expect a teenager as small as him to possess the power he possessed. It was almost uncanny how often people hesitated to strike his smaller form as if one blow could kill a trained Talon, an assassin. No matter, Dick thought; this always lead to their ultimate demise and made a lot of his jobs a whole lot easier to accomplish.

Currently Dick was sitting atop the roof of his one man apartment in Gotham, not afraid of what was in the dark or of the dangers down on the street below. No, the boy felt invincible at this height, legs dangling perilously over the looming edge.

Not even Batman could've made him feel any less, Dick knew that under the mask was just an ordinary man that no one had been able to identify yet. One that he had run into quite a number of times while in costume. Sometimes the bat had his sons with him and other times he didn't. Dick figured that the Robins were too close to their mentor for it to be anything other than a father son relationship.

The first Robin had been a former assassin of the league of shadows, born and raised by his mother. Dick didn't know anything other than that, but he did know that there were two other robins, the youngest having survived dying at the hands of the joker and being revived in the pit. Red Hood as he liked to be called was a little loose in the head. Dick had figured that out the hard way after almost being killed by the older boy. Luckily for Dick, the Red Hood was now much more reigned in after that accident, much more watched by daddy-bats.

Dick snorted at his nickname for the Dark Knight of Gotham. If the Batman knew what he was called in Dicks head he'd be wishing he'd never asked. But alas, the Dark Knight was far too stoic and controlled for Dick to wager a proper reaction out of him. Bats was boring to fight most of the time because he was just all business and no play which is a lifestyle that Dick just can't agree with. What was the point of having such cool toys if you didn't get to play with them?

Dick sure as hell didn't care to understand why the big bad Batman kept himself on such a short leash. An absolute killjoy he was. Dick was certain that a certain Red Hood would agree with him halfheartedly that the Dark Knight was just such a killjoy and a stickler for the rules.

And Dick? Well he and rules have a history of being at each others throats. They were the bane of his existence. You cant leave witnesses, blah blah blah, honestly Dick found the whole speech the Court gave him to be useless. What was the point of killing witnesses when it could spread their influence and promote the Court simultaneously? Of course the 13 year old boy knew exactly where that line was drawn and that if he stepped too far out of it they would have no problems with putting him on ice for a while until he learned his lesson and was ready to obey the stupid Court rules again.

Not like they would kill him for his disobedience, he was after all, the rightful heir to the Court. They've needed someone to take over for years now, why not a legitimate descendant of the family that started it all.

Dick smirked to himself as the wind gently blew at his hair. He was Talon. Or was it Dick? The two seemed to blur in his mind at times.

Talon slowly began to move over the city, tugging his hood close. He settled on a rooftop halfway across this accursed city. It was time.

"Beware The Court of Owls." Talon mumbled under his breath as he stood up from his perch, ready to complete his job for the night.

"That watches all the time." He scanned the city below, marveling in how quiet it was that night. A quietness that he would soon be disrupting for his own mayhem.

"Ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch." Dick watched his target move across the dull streets of Gotham. The bigger villains must have subconsciously felt his presence and decided to bunker down for the night. That just made his job all the much easier.

"Behind granite and lime." Be careful, Dick thought with amusement. His target had bitten off far more than he could safely chew.

"They watch you at your hearth." He unsheathed his guns from their holsters with a fluid movement much like water.

"They watch you in your bed speak not a whispered word of them." Dick narrowed his eyes and hummed to himself as he let a single bullet fly silently into the night, silenced by the roar of the city life. He watched as his target fell to his knees and then dropped dead on the streets.

Talon smirked. There was one less nosy detective in the world now. Detective Williams had looked down the wrong hole for the last time. The Talon silenced another one.

That's when the screaming began and Dick decided to leave the scene. His job was done and he was ready to turn in for the night. Talon or not he still got tired on a pretty regular basis because he was still so young. Before he left the scene completely he dropped a grey feather in the place of his sniping spot in order to taunt the heroes who would most likely be rushing to the scene.

Dick wasn't stupid, he knew Batman would be able to tell where the sniper had sniped from so he thought he would just leave a tag, an identification of sorts. And while it did generally go against the Courts rules to leave any traces, Dick just loved breaking the rules given to him.

Besides, it would be hard to find a dead man in that database of theirs even if they did get his fingerprints off of the feather. That was what made Dick the perfect killer, he wasn't recognizable by the system. When his parents had still been alive, even then he wasn't in the system and hopefully never will be.

Even if they did get him he could just hack their servers and mess with the information a little, lead them in the wrong direction.

Dick quickly left the scene of the crime and dropped to the ground, sheathing his guns in the hidden holsters as he went. It was better for him to travel unassuming on the ground rather than on the rooftops where Daddy bats and his bat children liked to play hero. Dick's lip curled at the thought of being a self proclaimed hero.

Never, he would never go to the other side of things.

With that Dick Grayson disappeared into the night, just as he had appeared from it's shadows. The Talon would bide his time until it was time to strike again.

[1542 words]

note that this chapter is early on and hopefully they'll progressively get longer but i don't know depends on my mood

or, you know, just when i decide that it's time to end them