Before The Truth

Ch 8

After Batman left Dick's apartment he called Barbara. He needed someone to help him find Dick. If it turned out Dick was just laying low in a different safehouse then there would be no harm done, but if something bad had happened...

"Hey Bruce, what's up?" Barbara said cheerilly when she answered the phone.

"I went to Dick's apartment-

"Was he there? Did you find anything?" Barbara interrupted.

"He wasn't there, and it looked like he hadn't been there for a few weeks either." Bruce replied, slightly annoyed that Barbara had interrupted him. "There was dust all over everything... and blood..." Batman added, almost as an afterthought.

"Blood?" Barbara questioned.

"Yes... There was some blood in the bathroom." Batman trailed off for a bit before saying, "I need your help Barbara."

"To do what?"

"We need to find Dick." Batman deadpanned.

"Alright, I can get the team to-

"No, this is not a league matter, we are not going to involve anyone else." Batman interrupted.

"Bruce-

"This is not up for debate."

"Fine, I'll see what I can find." Barbara said after a moment's pause.

"Good, I'll search Blüdhaven. You search Gotham." Batman paused before continuing. "If I finish first I'll head over to help you."

"Alright... Bye." Barbara said before she hung up.

Batman grappled through Blüdhaven, checking abandoned warehouses and scouring the streets for any sign of his son. Any thug, mob boss, or simple mugger that Batman saw or knew the location of found themselves being grilled for information by an angry daddy bats.

After multiple hours of searching Batman had checked every place in Blüdhaven he thought Dick might possibly be. He had beaten several people to a bloody pulp, yet he still didn't even have a scrap of information.

Batman climbed into the batmobile, and he had an idea. Dick had installed a tracker on his motorcycle that he drove as Nightwing. When he had finished testing out the software he had downloaded in onto the batcomputer. Dick had said it was so he would be able to find his bike from the batcave, but Batman believed that part of the reason was so Batman would be able to find him if need be.

It only took a few minutes for Batman to pull up the tracking software on the batmobile, and it took even less time for the tracking software to find the signal from the motorcycle and give Batman the location.

The tracking software led him to a rural area outside of the main city of Blüdhaven. It looked like the signal was coming from somewhere off of the road.

Batman pulled the Batmobile off of the road when he got as close to the blip on his screen as he could, then he got out of the car and began to look for the motorcycle.

The search wasn't that long, in fact all Batman had to do was cross the road and glance around a bit to see the wreck that once was Nightwing's motorcycle. When Batman saw the wreck he immediately ran over to it.

Dick's bike was a mess. He had finally finished fixing it from his last wreck, and it had been totaled again. The sides were full of scrapes and dents. At second glance Batman realized that the back of the motorcycle had many small dents on it, as if someone had been shooting it with a gun. The bullet at the bottom of the garbage can in Dick's apartment suddenly came to mind.