BLUDHAVEN (Nightwing Fan Fic)

Chapter 1 (EDITED)

~~Dick~~

(In His Head)

I was fed up; I guess I was pissed off of being twenty two years old and still under Bruce's shadow with him treating me as a sidekick instead of an equal.The Joker did help me in that department after he shot me in the shoulder and Bruce thinking it would be better that I quit the vigilante business I knew it was time. I knew that I couldn't keep relying on Bruce to be there to get me out of situations that I could handle by myself. He treats me like I'm still that boy who watched his parents die right before his very eyes, that I am still that kid that he could still command to do what he wanted and he still thinks that I am Robin, the Boy Wonder. I'm not Robin or The Boy Wonder anymore that's Tim Drake now, I am now Nightwing and I need an escape, I need to fly free to make my own path. I have to allow Tim to take my place as Robin so I can finally be free from Bruce's shadow. Tim Drake, who is now in his early teen years, has been Robin now for a few years now and he is very well skilled for someone his age. I remember when I saw him as a toddler and his family witnessed my parent's death the poor boy. He was a smart boy to figure out my true identity along with Bruce's and after Jason's death he decided to join the team after I made my point to Bruce that I will no longer be Robin, that I will be Nightwing. Barbara and I were together for a few years ever since she joined our family, she took up the identity as Batgirl and it made things less complicated with a secret identity. That is when everything changed and made my life a whole lot darker when Joker shot Barbara through her spine paralyzing her from the waist down and she could no longer able fight along my side as my partner. I never left her side while she was in the hospital, I stood by her even when she went through a depression knowing she wouldn't be able to walk again. Even when I proposed to her and she accepted everything started to lighten up for us both. After a year of that hell I figured that everything was going to get better for us but I was wrong. Things just got a lot harder for the two of us, complications within the team and my thirst for vengeance against Joker was definitely noticeable to Barbara  so we mutually decided to split for the best. Not only did she needs some time to wrap her head around everything that was changing in her life but I needed to regain my focus so I wouldn't end up killing anyone though we both agreed to stay on good terms. Deep down I was guilty over what happened to Barbara, everyday when I see her in that chair my heart sinks further and further into my stomach. I should've been there, I should've stopped the clown from hurting her but Bruce stopped me from saving her. Barbara wants to help us still so decides to monitor the bat computers and use her computer hacking skills to our advantages. She adopted the name Oracle and whether it was information or running compounds through the database she has been amazing. Bruce was starting to drive me over the edge with the way he has been doing things lately and I was still dealing with my anger over the Joker. I need to get out of Gotham City and go after the Joker on my own without Bruce hanging over my shoulder telling me his speech on how revenge isn't the answer. I have to do it, not for just Barbara but for myself to help control the rage inside me. So when I heard that Joker was heading to Blüdhaven with his sidekick and girlfriend Harley Quinn because there was apparently a shipment that caught his interest, It was almost too perfect. I always wanted to go solo, to move away from Gotham City and be the hero of my own city without being known as just the sidekick. Bruce took awhile to understand where I was coming from but eventually he thought it would be best to have eyes outside of Gotham. So he bought me an apartment that was secluded from the city, it had a secret room attached to the bedroom that led me to my own cave but it wasn't as big as the one in Gotham. It was just big enough for a computer monitor, a weapon case, a small table to prepare anything chemical or analyze on and a mannequin to put my suit on which was all I really needed. I did have to do one thing which was enroll into Blüdhaven University to in order to finish my criminal justice degree so I had something to fall back onto one day when I couldn't be a crime fighter anymore. Though that won't happen for a long time hopefully, so tonight seemed to be a very interesting night because I broke one of Joker's henchmen arm to get this tip that Joker was interested in some new chemical enzyme. What could Joker want with that? Is it a weapon? Whatever it was it, it was worth a lot of money and if it got Joker interested then so was I. The building before me belonged to a man named Roland Desmond aka Blockbuster; he's one of the biggest Crime Lords in Blüdhaven according to his files. From what the files had told me was that Roland was once fatally ill so he began to experiment with different steroids in order to help him with his illness. The steroids did save him but with all of those injections that he injected into himself, it made him almost superhuman and he became more ruthless with every passing day. Instead of stopping he continued to inject himself with more and more steroid compounds and now it has made him more animalistic than human. The steroid compound Barbara and Bruce had identified were some kind of super-humanized which apparently has enhanced everything, from his strength and agility, to his stamina and endurance. It also enhanced his mental abilities too by granting him with a genius level intellect along with granting him immunity against all types of physical and energy related attacks. I saw two different pictures of him; what he looked like back then almost like a wrestler built to what he looked like now. Nowadays he had the appearance of a humanized gorilla without the fangs and the fur or walking on all fours. He was lucky that his intellect is still intact but Bruce said according to the side effects of the abuse of that compounds that his intelligence will slowly begin to diminish with each day. He needed to created more of the serum that made him what he is or find someway to halt the side effects before his high IQ of over 160 to 40 or lower. But with all of these villains congregating to his Lab was telling me that he must have found a way to counteract the effects from it. If that is true then I can let anyone even Joker get his hands on that serum, Joker is hard enough to take down but a super humanized Joker will be impossible.

I kneeled against the pillar that looked out at the whole city of Blüdhaven, the entire city reminded me of New York because it was like the City that never sleeps. With the sounds of gangs started to get rowdy in the alleyways and the cars honking on the roads echoed into my ears. The smell of pollution fumes were flooding into my nose which reminded me how bad the hit on the Earth's ozone layer was taking. Besides all of that everything seemed okay tonight, strangely enough that there was nothing out of the order but if I knew anything it was not to trust that silence. A loud explosion erupted against the noisy city which caught my attention, the smells of pollution left my nose and was replaced with the foulness of sulfur. Along with the smell sulfur, there was also gas as it began mixing with the sulfur in my nose. The heat from the explosion was hitting my skin as I saw that Desmond Corporation had some kind explosion below, I noticed something odd emerging from the flames. A figure came running through the hole and I saw a few of what looked like Blockbuster's henchmen chasing after the figure. My eyes followed them as I stood up cracking my neck on both sides and I knew it was time to rumble. I saw that there was about ten of Blockbuster's henchmen armed with guns in their hands and I leapt off the rooftop diving down towards the action.