Knight to Queen 6

[Jason Garrick]

A gust of wind breezed through downtown Gotham almost entirely unseen. It took skill and practice to move that fast, racing past cameras too fast for even the digital ones to snatch you in a frame, keeping the speed force sharply focused so you weren't surrounded by clumsy crackles of lightning. Jay Garrick had always enjoyed the effect, back in the day. It had all been part of the look, all part of the showmanship. The Flash. Bolt of lightning across the chest. Halo of lightning in the air. That damned helmet. Everyone loved it. Everyone loved him.

Oh, how times had changed.

He shouldn't complain too much, he supposed. Of all his comrades from back in the Justice Society days, he had perhaps fared the best. The speed force had held the addles of time at bay for the most part; his body wasn't as young as it used to be, but it certainly wasn't as old as it should have been. Unlike some of the others, he still had a purpose, a calling, a mission. Unlike some of the others, I'm still alive. He wasn't sure which fate was worse: the sheer finality of death that had claimed the likes of Shiera and Kent; or the living death, the borderline vegetative state of complacent and miserable existence that Alan and Carter had been left with, the continuation serving no purpose except to make them older and wearier with each passing breath.

There were times though when part of him wondered if their path was the more virtuous. For every confident sentiment that they had abandoned the world, turned their back, given up, there was a counterpoint that at least they still had their integrity, and their morals intact. Since the dawn of Checkmate, Jay had done things; things that he would have at one point found questionable. Somewhere along the way though, he had simply stopped questioning. He had let his faith, his certainty in his friends and comrades, supersede the part of him that thought for himself. This was the mission. This was their way. This was the only way. His past self would have scoffed at him for believing that the ends justified the means, but they did. There was no price too high, no cost too great when what you were purchasing was the future of civilization. A few misdeeds, a few sullied morals, the compromised conscience of a handful of men... a price in pennies to save a nation. A price he didn't regret paying.

Not everyone in the organisation felt the same way, though. Richard Grayson was a concern. For the government agents and soldiers that made their way into Checkmate, they understood the importance of duty; they understood where in the hierarchy it sat, where it fell relative to friends and family. Not everyone that they recruited had the same rationale. Not everyone was quite as good at letting go.

Jay snapped to a halt as he reached Robinson Park. He'd scoped the place out well in advance; he knew exactly where to arrive so that his sudden appearance would go unnoticed, but where he could also walk out from his unseen spot without arousing any suspicion of what he might have been up to back there. With a degree of subtlety so rigorously trained that it had become a reflex, his attention casually swept his surroundings, checking all the places he would have concealed surveillance had he planned to do so, stretching out with his enhanced speedster senses for the subtle shifts in the leaves, the furtive glances from the passers by, the people who were spending a little too long staring at the same page of the newspaper. Nothing. Not that there would be. Gotham was too insignificant, too far gone for anyone of any importance to pay any real attention here. That was why Checkmate had chosen the city in the first place.

"Blue sky in Gotham," Jay said aloud as he approached the lone bench, addressing it's casually waiting occupant. "Feel like I should make a note of the date for my memoirs."

[Dick Grayson]

“You like it? I arranged it especially.” Dick Grayson smiled, a broad smile that was about as cheerful as the sky made the day feel (not a lot).

“Step into my office,” he gestured to the park bench. There was a plaque on the back of the seat, a memorial to someone or other; the name had been chipped at and worn away, another soul forgotten by the city.

Waiting for his 'guest' to join him, Dick pushed his hands into his jacket pockets and looked out over the sprawl of the park. He decided that it looked about the same as it always had. Like a picturesque woodland grove from a Disney movie, with all the life and happiness sucked out of it. Was the plant-life overgrown due to negligence, or if it had been carefully cultivated to look this way? There was one thing missing, though.

“Say, you might remember.. didn't there used to be a duck pond here?”

[Jason Garrick]

It said a lot about Jay's life and line of work that the prospect of someone deliberately arranging a particular weather pattern didn't seem all that preposterous. The Mardon brothers may have been out of the picture, and their tech safely locked away under the careful custodianship of ARGUS, but who knew what other sorts of weather wizardry was floating out there in the world?

"I thought you were supposed to be the one who knew everything there was to know about Gotham," Jay countered, a hint of teasing mixed with a dash of almost teacherly disapproval. "All the times I've been here, I've never really been paying attention to the parks."

It was harmless small talk, true, the motions that people in their line of work always went to, a brief concession towards normal human interaction before the requirements of the job forced them into whatever frustrating or sombre scenario had brought the agents together in the first place. There had been a time when Jay had welcomed encounters like this: back when enough of his soul was still intact, he'd been almost playful, all too willing to conform to the stereotypes of espionage that the movies and media spent so much time and effort - and money - trying to convey. Now though he was too old and tired to play the part. This was duty now, and little else; his ongoing damnation for the necessary but unenviable choices his life had been forced to make.

"Besides -" His tone softened, but only slightly. "- open water in Gotham sounds like a bad idea. Thing would be stacked full of dumped bodies within a week or two. Surprised there aren't enough corpses dumped in the river by now to turn this island of yours into more of a peninsula."

[Dick Grayson]

"Well, aren't you a ray of sunshine?"

He had a point, of course. It was a small wonder that neither of them had been mugged in route to the park. A part of Grayson mourned for Gotham. There had a been a brief time, when he was growing up, that he'd been able to look at the city and see nothing but opportunity. The Flying Grayson's would springboard from Gotham onto the national stage, perhaps even the world. That had been the dream - but Gotham was relentless. There was still hope, little flickers of it like embers in ashes, but those flickers took a lot of finding and the cold, bitter wind that ran through the city would snuff them out all too easily.

You either accepted it, or you got out of Gotham. Assuming that Gotham would let you out.

"I'm not sure about the pond. We haven't had a pond-related rogue.. yet."

[Jason Garrick]

"When you get to my age, Mister Grayson, there's not a whole heck of a lot to feel sunshiny about."

A faint glimmer of a smile crept onto Jay's features at the mention of rogues. That hadn't called themselves that back in his day, but the kind of pantomime costumed crazies that Central and Keystone seemed to breed was a class of criminal unto itself. Captain Cold. The Trickster. The Top. The Rogues were everything that Gotham's villains and criminals were not: every bit as preposterous, but with that shiny splash of colour, that lack of a bitter edge. Gotham and Central City's criminals were as different as their defenders; here everything was nocturnal, dark, and shadowed. Back home everyone had colours, and codenames; they struck during the day; and they had a somewhat puzzling fondness for stripes.

Jay reached into his pocket and pulled out a small hand-held device, quietly waiting for Grayson to retrieve his own. It was like one of those Palm Pilots he remembered from the nineties, but considerably more sophisticated, and sleek. A few gentle brushes across the screen pulled up all the documentation he needed; a quick flick to the side and they were beamed over the most secure wireless connection known to mankind into Grayson's corresponding device.

"We have an assignment for you, 37," Jay explained, steering the conversation with his subordinate back towards it's intended purpose. "Gotham seems to be having an influx of tourists recently, and our associates are a little jumpy about how this affects their chances of going unnoticed. We have other assets investigating the powered individuals, but we feel that the Green Arrow is best suited for a man of your skills."

Jay clicked his device off, and slipped it back into his jacket. "If it even is the Green Arrow, of course. Intelligence suggests that there's still a green-hooded archer operating in Star City. We need you to - quietly - discern if Gotham's would be Robin Hood is the genuine article, an imitator, or a decoy."

[Dick Grayson]

"Quietly?" Grayson - or Agent 37, as he was sometimes known - considered the dossier with a raised eyebrow. "Hands-off? No contact?" he added, as he thumbed through what little intel his employers had been able to put together on this particular 'emerald archer'. If this was a copy-cat, it wouldn't be the first time. Gotham had seen more than its fair share impostors and Dick couldn't recall even one instance when a doppelgänger had meant anything other than a headache.

The other possibility was that the Green Arrow was actually operating in Gotham. What did that say about the state of the city, or perhaps even the mental state of the archer? Hell, what would Batman have to say about this news? For all he liked to surround himself with allies, Bruce had never been one for sharing Gotham. Cross that tightrope when you come to it, Grayson told himself.

[Jason Garrick]

"At your discretion," Jay replied, with a certain cautious hesitance in his voice as he contemplated how to carefully word Grayson's mission parameters. "Our associates are concerned about attracting too much attention. If the vigilantes are unaware - or only vaguely aware - of what is happening behind the scenes in Gotham, we don't want to risk tipping them off with a direct confrontation. On the other hand, if they are onto us we need to learn as much as we can to cripple their investigation before we are exposed, and all these years of effort are invalidated."

It was an awkward balancing act, and frankly Jay hated it. Give him a terrorist or a supervillain any day. Threats against people, threats against the public, threats against America he could deal with. Those he could eliminate with impunity without hesitation. Threats against secrecy, though? Threats that endangered the carefully constructed cocoon of clandestine activity and covert operations that Checkmate hid within? Those required a degree of subtlety and underhandedness that even after decades, Jay Garrick had not become entirely comfortable with. Dealing with threats swiftly came naturally. Dealing with them without attracting attention or suspicion required talents that he had been forced to grudgingly learn. It was why Checkmate had taken the uncomfortable step of bolstering their ranks with the kind of unsavoury individuals who felt more comfortable operating outside of the law: it was far easier for a villain or vigilante to think in such a way than for an outdated hero from the good old days.

"Do what you have to do, but keep it out of the papers. Stay under everyone's radar. Checkmate needs all the intel we can get before it can decide on the best solution to Gotham's vigilante problem."

[Dick Grayson]

Though Zero didn't say it outright, Dick heard the word come out of his mouth nevertheless: walk the line. There was that tightrope again. Too slow and you'd never cross it, too fast and you'd fall off. Dick narrowed his eyes and looked out over the misty expanse of the park, as if he might find some inspiration hanging from the drooping branches of trees. No, he wasn't going to figure out the best course of action standing around here. He had to get moving. That was what he did best, after all.

“Where's the last recorded sighting?” Dick asked, pocketing the small hand-held device Zero had shared with him. He could have thumbed through the data and found the answer himself, but he had plans on digesting the dossier later.

[Jason Garrick]

"Pick a rooftop," Jay offered with a small sigh, gazing off towards the snippet of Gotham skyline that surrounded the park. The answer was clipped, but with tiredness rather than irritation. "He's been jumping off most of them the last few nights."

That more than anything irked Garrick. Vigilantes in the wrong city? That was one thing. They had their reasons. They had their internal politics. If the Batman needed the Green Arrow's help with the lawlessness in his city; if the Green Arrow felt that the Batman needed it whether he asked for it or not; that he could understand. That was people being people. But the Arrow was up to something. There was some hidden pattern, some hidden objective guiding his actions; and despite all of the resources at Agent Zero's disposal, he hadn't yet deciphered that particular enigma.

"He seems to be patrolling, sticking to the less wealthy areas of the city. The industrial districts. Crime Alley. We have security footage and police reports of him here and there, working with other vigilantes, stopping the odd mugging or jewellery heist; pretty typical Robin Hood stuff, but there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for it. It doesn't seem like he's working in concert with anyone; it seems random."

Jay's eyes turned, fixing Dick with a look.

"I don't like random, Grayson. I don't believe in random. There's a pattern here, somewhere. There's a reason for why he goes where he goes, and does whatever it is he's doing. Your job is to find it."