Sick Bird.

40. Alive-ish.

"Poisoned!" Roy almost shot an arrow at Batman in shock. "How long did you know?"

"Some time now." Bruce narrowed his eyes at the arrow imbedded into the wall just inches away from him. "Save your arrows for the enemy."

Red Arrow smiled sheepishly, turning around and picking up the arrow the Caped Crusader threw at him. "Why do you think he's being poisoned?"

"Because all sources of water he's come in contact with are clean." Batman said coldly, clenching his fists in anger.

"But the 'sleeping pill'," Roy raised his fingers in an air quote, he had suspected that pill didn't only make Dick sleep that day.

"Even if that was the source of the poison, Dick wouldn't be sick right now, he'd have at least a month until the virus had finished incubating."

Now Roy knew why Bruce seemed so mad. "Someone poisoned Dick a month ago? And we're just finding out now?" How incompetent where they? How could they not know their bird had been infected?

If Roy was feeling bad, Bruce was feeling worse. "I didn't say he got poisoned a month ago," The Dark Knight started with a grit of his teeth. "The maximum incubation time for the Breathless reaper is a year."

Roy stared at Batman in a daze. "An entire year?" he could barely get the words out. "He's been on the verge of getting this sick for an entire year and we didn't know?"

"Damn." When archers are angry, it's the walls around them that suffer. Roy pulled his fist out of the crumbling brick of an ancient alley wall. "We have to get these bastards no matter what."

{Ah! Roy is censored from now on.}

"We have to get these idiots, no matter what." The archer looked ready to kill. Beware, walls everywhere.

"I got a note saying that I'll find the answers here, by this time." Roy could almost hear the smirk in the billionaire's voice.

"Notes are never good things." Roy grinned maliciously. "We kill them all."

Bruce's eyes flashed with anger but his voice was calm and cool. "No Roy, we're heroes."

The archer's shoulders slumped as though he had remembered an important that fact, he turned to the brick wall again, ready to punch it when the deep voice behind him spoke again.

"We don't kill people, we leave them near death."

Roy slowly turned around to face the scariest, licensed hero in the world. "I don't think Superman will be pleased." though he said this, he couldn't help bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement.

At the mention of Superman, Bruce punched his own alley wall. "They shouldn't have messed with me, they shouldn't have threatened Dick," he almost growled. "Superman and all his self-righteous ethics can go to hell."

Do not expect an archer to dissuade a bat, when batarangs and arrows fly, naturally, chaos arises. Roy sent a salute Batman's way, marching to him with a sadistic grin slapped on his lips. "Yes Sir!"

The two 'heroes' shared a moment of deadly silence, because it was both an unspoken and written rule. When someone hurts Richard John Grayson-Wayne, there is no line between good or bad.

"Remember to leave one alive-ish." Bruce reminded him.

"Are we going to torture him?" Roy looked like he would die from the excitement.

Batman grabbed the archer off cloud nine. "We are heroes, we don't torture people, we interrogate them politely."

"Oh," Roy grinned in realization. "Politely, got it!"

-

No walls were hurt in the making of this chapter.