yoursdndispatcher asked: ⛓️ @circuitboardskin answered:
send ⛓️ to find my muse bloody, bruised and restrained
It had been early on in Brother Eye's reign when Batman had gone missing. The AI had yet to take control of Superman and Wonder Woman just, so its power wasn't so vast that they still envisioned themselves capable of turning the tide. Terry was the first one to see a glimpse of the truth, and the first to be helpless to stop it. He remembered the way the wires bit into his skin, worse than rope burns, leaving scars that took years to fade. People still thought they were in control, then, so the AI hadn't sucked everything out of his brain. Instead his nerve endings were burnt to a crisp with every jolt of electricity sent through him. The taste in his mouth was like battery acid. A bag of pennies. He had been in his suit, then. That had been made useless, A.L.F.R.E.D no longer a comforting presence in his ear. Just static and the occasional twitch of broken circuits. Bruce had found him, eventually; the old man's face twisted in that rare concerned panic and Terry had said, I knew you were coming. No one's coming this time. There's an annoying drip ping drip ping drip ping to the right of his head. It hits the pipe they've secured his hands around. Every droplet against the pipe sounds like a tiny little needle being jammed into his temple. The cold has seeped into his fingers, numbing them to the point of uselessness. He keeps moving them just to see if he still has sensation, but with the water and the position he's in, he has a feeling it's a lost cause. The binds don't feel like wires, but if he closes his eyes long enough, he thinks they are. There's no electric shock, but the cold droplet stings and his brain is having a hard enough time remembering to stay in the present. This shouldn't have happened. Torrance isn't Gotham. Their rogues gallery isn't anything to scoff at, but it's not the circus of insanity that seems to come out of the woodwork every other blink. There's tons of excuses Terry could come up with as to why he's here, why he's in so much pain, but they wouldn't change the facts. Someone's been keeping an eye on him. Someone's been paying attention. Because what other reason would anyone have for taking just the glove off of his left hand? There's a heavy dread pooling in the pit of his stomach and a slow, rancid panic that's been crawling down his spine. It's there under every purposefully slow breath and painful twinge of his swollen face. He doesn't need to lose his mind. Not now, not when he still has his life. And yet. And yet-- "The glove..." Terry slurs when someone shows, not even knowing who it is. "Where's it?" Because nothing really matters if he doesn't have that damn suit.
The dank, musty air of the place makes Robert's lungs sting. He tries not to think too hard about what's inhabiting the abandoned space. Black mold, noxious gases…. worse things? The fact that multiple calls to various dispatchers had reported some sort of a skirmish and ❛suspicious❜ costumed individuals coming and going from the storage units only to come away with nothing had … pinged something in Robert's brain.
Still, every investigation into the 'prowlers' came away with nothing, and dispatcher after dispatcher ended the call, content in the knowledge that a theft or vandalism had been averted.
Robert couldn't let it go. He asked Galen about it, and no one else thought it was odd, so he OUGHT to let it go… And yet, the misgivings lingered and festered within him like a bad infection.
Come on, he told himself. This isn't your first fucking rodeo. The calls you don't make and leads you DON'T investigate are the ones that keep you up later. He doesn't wanna regret letting it go six months down the line when some serial killer is discovered 100 kills deep in an ongoing spree, and he just sat on the feeling, doing jack shit about it.
So he went alone… (With his phone and eight superpowered beings on speed dial)… He'd also swung by his home to grab his light emitting emp gun he used to keep in the holster of his costume… It wasn't non-lethal, but it could sure as heck incapacitate multiple armed goons and afford him some much needed time to get away, which it's done in the past. He slips onto the private grounds and inside, finding a distinct lack of barriers. Doors are picked and unlocked with ease, and he searches each room methodically until he hears a groan and approaches until a slumped, bound figure comes into view.
❝ …fuck… Fuck fuck, fuck-fuck,fuckfuckfuck, ❞ he mutters through his teeth as he unties the figure.
❛The glove,❜ the man says. His voice sounds weak… like he's been here a while. ❝What glove?❞ Robert echoes back.
Wait… He knows that face… It's that guy… That stiff, almost automaton liaison shill from Batman Inc. that came to the offices that day for a tour Robert most certainly but (impossible to prove under scrutiny) palmed off to others and escaped to go do his thing in R&D downstairs.
The fuck is that guy doing here? ❝I didn't… nor do I... see a glove,❞ he says, looking about just to be sure.
