The Archer and the Acrobat

[Green Arrow]

Gotham City.

Oliver Queen had seen many places on his travels, but none were quite like this. He hadn't been born here, but Gotham had made him the man that he was today. It was a city of contradictions. Corporate towers stood mere blocks from derelict slums. The rich threw parties and flaunted their wealth in the high-rises above; while on the streets below the people either stole or starved. Gotham was rotten at it's core: but the world was too afraid of the truth to ever look past the surface. In their cocoon of wishful thinking, they were warm, and safe.

Ignorance is bliss.

Not everyone turned a blind eye to Gotham's true nature, of course. There were champions like James Gordon who fought as part of the system, stamping out corruption and wielding the law as a weapon to make the world better, rather than as a shield of excuses to justify inaction. It was a losing battle however, and while the Commissioner did not stand alone, far too many chose to stand against him, rather than with.

In such desperate times, a few had adopted desperate measures to aid his campaign. Bruce Wayne was one; Oliver Queen another. While united by a common objective however, their crusades took radically different forms. As the Batman, Bruce fought with fear and intimidation, saving Gotham from crime by waging war on it's criminals. Oliver couldn't deny that it made a difference: Blackgate and Arkham were practically bursting with criminals kept safely off the streets. There were times however when Bruce lost his objectivity. For him, this was about vengeance: the criminal underworld had taken his mother and father from him. This was his retaliation.

Oliver fought for a different cause. While he too was an orphan, his parents had been killed on a jungle safari; somehow, he doubted that a silly outfit and a few gadgets would have the same affect on a pride of lions as it did on petty criminals. Where Oliver's path diverged from Bruce's was at the realisation that in war their are casualties. Countless criminals had been removed from the streets, but those who remained were more desperate; more dangerous. Every gang that Batman destroyed flooded the others with new recruits. Every thug who'd once carried a knife had upgraded to a gun, to protect them from the Chiropteran menace. Every costumed whack-job publicly tossed into Arkham inspired a dozen more to take their place. When Batman waged war, the criminals waged back; and the citizens of Gotham were caught in the crossfire. That was where Green Arrow came in: one man, saving the city one innocent victim at a time.

Or sometimes one man and one teenage girl, apparently.

Oliver came to a halt at the edge of the rooftop, his glance turning sidelong beneath his hood to seek out the sidekick that Batman had 'loaned' him for the night.

"You keeping up, kid?" he grunted.

[Red Robin]

The teenage girl in question slowed to an abrupt halt beside Oliver, puffs of her breath misting in the night air. The wind snapped her cloak around her and snatched at her hood, tearing it back from her head. Beneath her mask, the girl in red and black frowned.

“Keeping up?” Carrie asked as she flipped her hood back up. “I'd be two buildings further down the block if I thought you could keep up with me, old man.”

After offering Oliver a commiserative smile, she steadied one booted foot against the rooftops edge, took a moment to gauge the distance before her, then leapt forward into the shadows.

[Green Arrow]

"Old man?"

The string of grizzled and grumpy expletives that stumbled through his mind was more a confirmation of her jibe than a contradiction. Those words were followed by a few seconds of exasperated silence as Oliver watched his successor - replacement - as Gotham's infamous Robin leap off into the night.

Of course, in his case, the Robin moniker had been a not-very-subtle allusion to the British folk hero. For Carrie, it was more of a bird thing.

A single breath of laughter squeezed it's way out of Ollie's lungs at the inadvertent gender pun. The breath soon morphed into a sigh however and, taking a few steps backwards, charged forward in pursuit.

Their route was familiar; not planned exactly, but when you spent night after night leaping from rooftop to rooftop over the same crime hotspots, you came to learn that the quickest way to get from Building A to Building B was to go via rooftops C, D, and E. Right now they were skirting the edge of Falcone turf; Carmine's boys had a habit of getting rowdy whenever high society threw one of it's fancy shindigs, and Bruce Wayne's charity gala certainly fit the bill.

"Slow down, speedy," Ollie instructed; he'd caught up enough ground that she could probably hear him, but the earpieces that they both wore - courtesy of Wayne Enterprises; Bruce sure did love his toys - made that irrelevant.

"We're patrolling for crime, not trying to set a new land speed record."

[Red Robin]

She heard him, though that didn't mean she was going to listen. It wasn't anything personal. It was just difficult to hold back when their patrol hit Falcone territory. Whether Oliver had noticed it or not, Carrie always picked up the pace when she knew that they were getting close to it.

She stalked the edge of the rooftop, her eyes darting about the streets below. Rain hit the pavement in luminous pinks and blues, each splash reflecting the flickering neon lights above. A dozen or so feet ahead of Oliver, Carrie dropped into a crouch, her cape gathering around her as she studied the street. There was hardly anyone out on the side-walk. Just a couple of thugs dragging trash bags to an already over-flowing dumpster. Their laughter echoed and bounced down the alleyway.

“Hey, Green? Prevention is better than a cure, right?”

[Green Arrow]

Oliver felt a small knot tighten in his stomach. That was Bruce's influence shining through: the attitude that governed the Batman crusade. They were thugs; they were in Falcone territory; that made them mobsters, and that made them guilty. Bruce wouldn't hesitate. Bruce would be down there in an instant: some theatrical display to keep them rattled.

As plans went, it had it's merits; but it was a slippery slope. Maybe it would work. Maybe scaring the pants off every thug they saw would drop the crime rate. Maybe in doing so they'd prevent an assault or a mugging; maybe those thugs would think twice, having seen one of Gotham's vigilante's in the flesh, rather than just hearing about them in stories. Maybe it was the best thing to do.

That didn't mean it was the right thing to do. That wasn't Oliver's way. It wouldn't be Carrie's way either; not if he had anything to say about it. Not on his watch.

"How about we leave that to the Department of Sanitation?" Oliver quipped, trying to keep his tone as unparental as he could. "Overfilling dumpsters isn't exactly the sort of crime we're out here to deal with."

[Red Robin]

Still crouched low, Carrie glanced back over her shoulder. “You never want to get your hands dirty, do you?”

Without another word, she was up on her feet and moving again. Oliver was right, of course. There wasn't anything to be gained from spinning rings around every meat-head who might be in Falcone's employ, beating them black and blue with her staff. That didn't make it any less of an appealing idea, however.

As she sprung onto the next roof in their path, Carrie caught a buzzing in her ear. Frowning, she slipped a hand beneath her hood and cupped it to her head.

“Master Queen? Miss Kelley?”

There was no mistaking that voice, that accent.

“Alfred?”

[Green Arrow]

"I'm terribly sorry to disturb the both of you, what with you being in the middle of a patrol and all -"

There were times when Oliver struggled to believe the almost caricature Britishness of Alfred Pennyworth. You saw such characters in movies and on television, and you assumed they were exaggerated stereotypes: but Alfred was the living embodiment. He was the kind of upstanding Englishman who corrected you when you got confused between literally and figuratively, or infer and imply. He was the kind who would correct you if you referred to him as a butler rather than by the correct terminology. One time, when he and Bruce had been younger, they'd broken into Alfred's room and found a stash of strongly worded letters that had never been posted. You just couldn't make this kind of stuff up.

"Succinct please, Alfred," Oliver spoke into the earpiece.

He could imagine the mildly affronted expression that he knew Alfred must have been pulling during his momentary silence. "As you wish. It seems there has been a disturbance at the First Bank of Gotham. Only one individual seems to be involved, and unless I'm very much mistaken, he doesn't seem to be stealing anything."

A frown tugged at Ollie's features. "Anyone we know?"

"I don't recognise them as one of the usual rogues, sir. The police are already on their way of course, but I'll wager that your response time will be somewhat swifter." He paused for a beat. "Would you like me to inform Master Bruce."

One man on his own. In a bank. Not stealing anything. Every instinct screamed 'trap', and demanded that they be as prepared as possible. More bodies meant more prepared; but Bruce wasn't just another body. It wasn't exactly stepping out of the Batman's shadow if you called him for help every time things went a little sideways.

"No need for that, Alfred. We've got it covered. Right kid?" Ollie turned, eyes settling on where Carrie had most definitely been not ten seconds before. "Kid?"

His shoulders sunk, and he hoped to God that he hadn't been so damned impulsive when he was a kid, lest his irritation be somewhat hypocritical. "Remind me to get that girl a leash, Alfred," he muttered under his breath.

Alfred's response was dry as ever. "Very good, sir."

[Red Robin]

Up ahead, Carrie's voice filtered through the ear piece: “I heard that! TMI, old man.”

The First Bank of Gotham was such a routine target for robbers and the occasional super-villain that it was a small wonder the GCPD didn't have a permanent presence there. Then again, there were times it felt like you could turn any street corner in Gotham and find yourself confronted with a crime scene. There was no way the GCPD could keep up with it all. Even the Batman couldn't be everywhere. That was why they needed people like Green Arrow. People like Red Robin.

The pair slowed as the walls of the bank came into sight. Carrie took a moment to catch her breath. The bank looked... normal. Quiet, untouched by any 'disturbance.' Brow wrinkled beneath her mask, Carrie rolled her shoulders, as if the motion might shake free a brilliant strategic plan. Nervous energy buzzed through her.

“What's our angle?”

[Green Arrow]

"He'll be expecting Batman."

It was an uncomfortable admission, but a necessary one. Gotham had more than it's fair share of vigilante crime fighters, but it was the Batman everyone was really concerned about. Maybe that was a curse, or a blessing; it all depended on the day.

"Or the cops." Oliver frowned, mulling over the possibilities: the obvious breach points, the best way to guard them, the obvious places to hide. If Bruce was here, he'd make some dramatic entrance via skylight - he seemed to like doing that sort of thing. The cops on the other hand would play it defensive; set up a perimeter first, then kick down the front door.

But if Alfred was to be believed, there was only one man inside. Or at least, only one man that the security cameras could pick up. That gave them the advantage; in numbers, at least. They needed to play the odds.

He shot a sidelong glance towards Red Robin. "Are those scrawny chicken legs of yours strong enough to bust through a skylight?"

[Red Robin]

While Oliver studied the bank, Carrie stole quick brief glances at him, as though watching his eyes move behind his mask might give her some clue about his thought process. This was where he had the real experience, the real advantage. Oliver might have dressed like an idiot, but he was smart. Street smart even, though Carrie wasn't going to admit that to anyone any time soon.

When he looked her way, she snapped her gaze back onto the bank.

“Well, they're strong enough to kick your ass.”

She shrugged, the casual gesture somewhat offset by the fact she was bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“So - yeah,” Carrie turned a sudden, giddy grin toward Oliver and punched the air. “Time to go vandalise a bank!”

[Green Arrow]

Oliver couldn't stop an eyebrow from quirking at her exuberant display. He didn't even realise that kids still did the whole punching the air thing any more. He spent a brief moment contemplating whether he was woefully out of touch with the youth of today, or if Carrie was.

"Lets at least pretend that we're professionals here, 2.0." He fought really hard against doing the disapproving adult sigh, but it managed to sneak out anyway. "If not for the sake of the job, then for your own: you can be damn sure that Bats will be reviewing the CCTV footage, and you do not want to be on the receiving end of his 'This isn't a game' speech. Trust me: he's had a lot of practice."

Silence fell. Oliver tried to cover it by unshouldering his bow and snagging an arrow from his quiver. It didn't really help.

"Go on, pup. Get your ass on that roof. And wait for my signal."

[Red Robin]

The 'pup' didn't need telling twice.

The roof of the bank wasn't on their patrol route for a reason. There was a good distance between it and every building that flanked it and nothing short of a zip-line launcher would bridge the gap. Batman might have carried gadgets like that as standard, but Carrie wasn't so lucky. She shimmied down a drainpipe to street level, to an alley that overlooked the busy street between Oliver's vantage point and the bank. When an opening appeared, she darted through the traffic and disappeared into the shadow of the bank.

Out of view of traffic, Carrie peered up at the building. It's almost like someone doesn't want people to climb this. She shook her head and found the best starting point she could, determined not to stop until she reached the roof. It wasn't often that she got away from Oliver during their patrols and he needed to see – to understand – that she could be trusted to work alone. That she was capable of filling his big, dorky boots. Well, not literally. Who had come up with that costume of his anyway?

Minutes later, the Red Robin emerged on top of the First Bank of Gotham, puffs of breath rising from her lips like smoke. The skylight was some fifteen feet away. Having caught her breath, Carrie crept her way over to it and crouched low beside the glass.

“In position,” she murmured, flexing some of the ache out of her fingertips and reaching for the expandable staff attached to her belt.

[Green Arrow]

Green Arrow didn't need her confirmation; he had eyes, and had been watching her progress. He'd also been nervously watching the main road; in the distance, the tell-tale flickering lights of police cruisers could be seen trying to weave their way through the traffic on the bridge. Eight minutes was their estimated response time; they'd already wasted five getting here and getting in position.

Drawing in a breath, he readied his bow. Oliver Queen was a man of many talents: he could fly a plane; fence; resolve quantum wave equations and similarly complex math problems; could hit a target the size of a playing card from over a kilometre with a sniper rifle; could mix fifty-three different cocktails from memory; and could talk even the most stubborn of journalists out of their clothes in under seven minutes.

He also knew how to break into a bank: though that skill wasn't exactly on his CV.

The bowstring recoiled, and within half a second a second arrow was readied and launched; they latched themselves onto opposite corners of the bank's broad front window and stayed, tiny red LEDs blinking patiently. The glass was reinforced and was allegedly bullet-resistant, but that didn't matter; one flick of a button recessed into the grip of his bow, and an onslaught of intense ultrasonic vibrations ripped through, shattering the pane into pieces.

Oliver didn't have time to watch and wait. He leapt, booted feet landing heavily on the hood of a briefly stationary car, halted by the traffic signals that Alfred had helpfully turned red for him. His momentum carried him into a roll and he landed on his feet yet again, advancing through the breach he'd just opened, bow ready to fire again.

Glass crunched beneath Green Arrow's boots; but as he moved into the bank's lobby, an entirely unexpected sound took it's place. Oliver had braced himself for gunfire; for alarms; for the menacingly psychotic laughter of Gotham's usual brand of psychotic criminal. What he wasn't prepared for was the sight of someone so ordinary: and the sound of slow applause.

"Freeze!" Oliver growled, sighting down his arm at the centre of the apparent bank thief's chest.

[Werner Vertigo]

"Freeze?" the thief echoed, a slight note of laughter in his voice. "Oh I can assure you, I have no intention of going anywhere."

His head cocked to the side slightly, and appraising gaze sweeping across the vigilante. There was something odd about him, particularly his voice: on the surface it sounded almost British, but there was a hint of something else underneath; like an American's poor attempt at a German accent. His manner too was a little off: far too calm, and too confident.

"My name is Vertigo," he explained after a brief pause. "And you, my hooded friend, are the one they call Green Arrow." A slight, thoughtful frown crossed his features. "Not the original, of course. You probably weren't even born when he was gallivanting around with a bow and green tights."

There was a flash of a smile, and something in his expression hinted that he knew more than he was letting on. "You've certainly put a new spin on the persona, though, and your toys are far more sophisticated." He gestured in the direction of the shattered window. "Compact ultrasonic emitters? I must say, I am impressed."

There was a sigh; a shift in his body language. "Unfortunately, you aren't really the costumed crime fighter I was expecting: I was rather hoping for your Bat friend. Will he be joining us?"

[Green Arrow]

Despite his best efforts, Oliver couldn't help being a little unsettled; there was something about this Vertigo that set him on edge. He clamped down on his jaw, burying his unease as deeply as he could. He fought the urge to glance upwards, determined that his body language would not give away his back-up.

"I gave Batman the night off," Oliver shot back. "I hear there's an Attenborough documentary about bats on the Discovery Channel, and he'll be pretty grouchy if I drag him away from that for such an insignificant little threat."

Oliver cocked his head to the side, mirroring Vertigo's body language. "What was that name again? Vertical?"

[Werner Vertigo]

A tight-lipped smile tugged at Vertigo's face, a look of mild disappointment following in it's wake. It subsided quickly, however; he nodded to himself, accepting the futility of persisting.

"You must be wondering," Vertigo began, his attention suddenly fixated on the palm of his hand, "Why you've been feeling so uneasy since you stepped in here. Perhaps you dismissed it as being something in my mannerisms, or as deja vu, no?"

His eyes narrowed slightly, and the smile was back: but there was arrogance and venom behind his lips this time. "Sound is a wonderful thing, Green Arrow. You yourself used ultrasonics to shatter glass that is strong enough to repel bullets. I, on the other hand, prefer infrasonics. I presume you must know of it: frequencies too low in pitch for the human mind to consciously perceive. The subconscious on the other hand, is another matter entirely. Infrasound is what upsets dogs before an earthquake; and for the last sixty seconds, infrasound has been what is making your skin crawl."

The smile grew. "Would you care to see what happens when I increase the decibels?"

Vertigo's hand lashed out, and in an instant Green Arrow had stumbled, his surrendering knees buckling and depositing him on the floor. Vertigo snarled like a sickly amused predator, watching as his prey fell helpless before him. "You should not have underestimated me, Green Arrow. And you should not have come alone."

[Green Arrow]

Oliver's stomach did somersaults, backflipping like a ride on the world's worst rollercoaster. The ground swam beneath him and his vision blurred, as Vertigo's infrasound drove his inner ear and sense of balance haywire. Force of will was the only thing keeping his rushed dinner down; his limbs stubbornly refused to help him back to his feet, returning him instead to the marble floor's welcoming embrace.

Stalling for time, he managed to cough out a laugh; as he rolled onto his back, the hand that seemed to have been cradling his head reached for his ear. "You assume too much, Vertical," he managed to wheeze, between urges to retch up his innards. "Who said I came alone?"

[Red Robin]

Right on cue, the sky fell in – and the Red Robin fell with it. Cape spread at arms length like wings, Carrie sucked in a breath as the polished floor of the bank rushed up to meet her. From below, she might have been an impressive sight, imposing even, swooping down in a hail of glinting shards. Inside, her heart was pounding. Suck it up, Kelley. Robin doesn't get scared. Bruised? Maybe. But not scared.

She hit the ground and tucked into a roll, coming up to her feet behind Werner Vertigo with staff in hand, tiny slivers of glass clinging to her cape like frost. This was when she ought to have whipped out a pun. Instead, she whipped her staff forward. The overlapping cylindrical sections of the staff telescoped outwards and snapped into place, seconds before the staff cracked against the side of Vertigo's left ankle with enough force to sweep the man's feet out from beneath him.

[Werner Vertigo]

The instant the sound of the shattering skylight reached his ears, Vertigo allowed himself a small flicker of hope. That was soon shattered also however; the scrawny form that swept down from above was quite clearly not the Batman, either. The disappointment was potent; his shoulders sagged, even before his legs were forced to fail him.

Contact with the ground came suddenly, but it was easily corrected. Not with the same grace and acrobatics that one of his vigilante foes might have attempted perhaps: but the old fashioned approach of calmly climbing back to his feet served him well. The girl brandished her novelty staff at him; a stylish feat of design to be sure, but the telescopic design implied a hollow core, and structural weaknesses he could perhaps exploit.

"Green Arrow," he called, allowing a smile to form on his face again. The European accent tainted his words even more now. "So rude of you not to introduce me to your little friend."

[Red Robin]

It said a lot about Gotham City that Carrie was more surprised to hear the European accent than by anything else about the situation. She watched him as he got back to his feet, all calm and collected. The fall had barely mussed a hair on his head, let alone shaken his confidence. His cold blue eyes still twinkled with a smile. He looked, Carrie decided, like the kind of angularly handsome sociopath that you saw in James Bond movies.

Didn't he realise that those idiots always got what was coming to them? That usually meant a fist to the face followed by a grisly death. The latter might be a little extreme, but the former? Yeah, she could do that. What better way to introduce herself?

Without warning, the Red Robin sprang forward and this time jabbed her staff at Vertigo's head.

[Werner Vertigo]

A lunge. An aggressive move; powerful yes, but lacking in finesse. Vertigo parried and sidestepped, a brush of his arm the only token effort he made to deflect the infant's attack. He allowed his momentum to carry him onwards, a few casual steps moving him far enough away to evade another immediate strike.

A frown of disapproval formed on his brow; his tutting tongue clicking in his mouth. "Such poor form," he criticised, sounding more like he was commenting on ballet than a fight. "And such terrible manners. Not lady-like at all."

From the corner of his eye he saw movement; "Ah-ah-ah!" he denied, a hand waved in Green Arrow's direction, another wave of sonic dysphoria washing over him. "Patience, my emerald friend. One at a time, if you don't mind. And as always -"

His lips curled into a sly, subtle smile. "Ladies first."

[Red Robin]

Beyond Vertigo, she could see Ollie trying to rise to his feet – only to crumple under another silent, sonic assault. Well, there went the element of surprise and the potential for a combat advantage. Carrie tightened her grip on her staff, trying to ignore the sound of the Green Arrow coughing and choking. She had to piece together what this weirdo's game plan was.

“Speaking of manners,” she said. “You know, you're doing this backwards, right? You're supposed to knock out the side-kick then tangle with the hero, not the other way around.”