Murdock's Mochas

Missing

After the fiasco with Matt's medicine, Matt decided to just stick with Pamela's homegrown recipe. They worked better and were free, so it really was the better way to go. Pamela's medicines were considered illegal, but the League let it slide. The plants had no harmful side effects, weren't addictive, and actually worked great. The plants worked so great that the League even made a deal with Ivy so that she could provide medicine to those who couldn't afford it otherwise. This helped keep people off the streets and out of hospitals.

The whole city of Gotham was pleasantly confused by the charitable contributions that the city's villains had started to make. Of course they still committed crimes and did horrible things, but they also gave back to the people and communities they stole from. Joker started a comedy club that focused on helping people fighting depression. Two-Face couldn't legally practice law, but he still gave people legal advice and reminded people of their rights. Deathstroke started taking jobs to help find missing persons and return them to their homes and families, instead of only taking jobs to find people and then kill them immediately after locating them.

The heroes were grateful for their enemies' sudden benevolence, but still remained extremely weary. The League sent guards to any event held by the law breakers. Every Wednesday Dick acted as one of these guards and watched over the happenings of Mad Hatter's story writing classes, where the Alice-obsessed villain taught aspiring authors the fundamentals of giving a classic story a creative twist.

These classes took place at night and ended quite late which led to Dick's forming of the habit of his walking straight to Murdock's Mochas after he was done. There, he helped Matt open up shop early and get all of the day's goods ready to be served.

It was a cool night, lovely weather for walking. Dick slowly made his way to his civilian job, his Nightwing costume in a duffel bag that he let hang on his shoulder. The night's work had gone smoothly and was actually quite relaxing, something that could never be expected in such a busy place as Murdock's Mochas.

As Dick approached the café, a sense of foreboding and dead filled the pit of his stomach. There was no logical reason as to why but Dick felt that something was terribly wrong. The café lights were usually already lit by the time Dick arrived, but the all the lights, even the ones in Matt's upstairs apartment, were turned off. The front windows also had their curtains drawn. This was curious because when Matt was by himself, he really didn't have a need for the curtains. Matt couldn't see so he didn't need curtains to keep light from coming in and Matt didn't mind people peeking inside the windows to get a good look at the café. Matt usually also kept his lights on for any hungry heroes wandering by after their patrols who might knock on the door to be let in.

Dick walked up the path and knocked on the café's sturdy doors. As his fist met the wood, the door swung partway open.

'Why isn't it locked?!" Dick thought, bewildered.

He stepped into the dark doorway. Once his eyes had adjusted to the lack of light, Dick looked around. The once neat and precisely planned layout of the café was an utter mess. The café was practically destroyed! Chairs were strewn about, tables were knocked over on their sides, Ivy's plants were crushed, the shelves of Matt's delicious food had collapsed, and most horrifying was the large crater located in the middle of a the wall located farthest from the door. The wall was cracked in a spiderweb pattern and chunks of it had fallen to the floor. The wall was also marred by a large, dark streak of what looked like blood.

'That kind of impact could only come from someone being thrown!' Dick realized as he rushed into the café, dropping his duffel.

"Matt! Matt! Where are you?! Matt!"

There was no answer.

"Hey Matt! Answer me! Are you okay?!"

Nothing broke the dreadful silence.

Dick grabbed the comm that he had left in his bag and shouted for help. "B! I need you now!"

The comm crackled to life. "What's wrong?"

"I need help now! Come in! Bring whoever you can! Matt's place is totally wrecked and it looks like there was a huge fight-which Matt lost! I can't find him anywhere! It's really bad!" Dick shouted.

"Matt?! Crap! I'll send out a search group immediately! I'm on my way, I'll bring reinforcements. Any clues you can see?"

"It's too dark. I'm going to look upstairs. I'll call you if I find anything." Dick turned off his comms to focus on his task at hand.

Dick stumbled around, looking for a light switch, which he eventually found-though the bullet hole in it rendered it useless. Giving up on his prospect of finding a built-in light source, Dick tripped his way up the stairs to Matt's apartment with only the faint gleam of a glow stick to guide him.

It rooms upstairs weren't much better than the café below. Furniture was destroyed and Matt's normally well organized cookbooks and notebooks laid on the floor in a messy pile. Matt was still nowhere to be found.

Several minutes later, the sounds of people on the street below reached Dick's ears. He ran down the stairs and outside to meet them. The group contained Damian, Jason, Bruce, Barry, Diana, and Clark.

"What happened?!" growled Bruce.

"I don't know! I just showed up for work and everything was like this!"

The group entered the café and began their work, flipping over overturned tables and looking for any clues as to what happened to their dear friend.

"Why would anyone do this?" asked Barry, who was speedily organizing the wreckage. "I mean it's public knowledge that we all like it here and would definitely go after anyone who messed with him!"

After a moment, Damian gave an answer, "That is probably why."

"Do you think they want our attention or our identities?" Diana asked.

"I do not know, but whoever is behind this is going to regret it!" said Clark, his eyes glowing red. His eyes were glued to the red smeared on the wall.

"First we need to find out who was here before we start anything. Robin, I want you to bring the security footage to Red Robin for him to look at.

"On it, I'll return soon," said Damian, rushing to the bat cave.

"There definitely was more than one person here-not including Matt," noted Diana.

"Looks like three, all quite strong. I don't know why they felt the need to act so violently though. I can see that Ivy's plants tried to protect him, but they're too small to be a big threat. Matt can hold his own for sure, but not against people like this. They would have known that he was at a disadvantage in the beginning," said Barry.

"Maybe they tried to get information about us out of him here, but it didn't work," suggested Clark.

"Of course it wouldn't work! He's our close friend, but he doesn't know who we are. The whole reason why he doesn't know is so stuff like this doesn't happen!" Diana cried, frustrated.

"B? Do you think they're part of the criminal underworld?" asked Dick.

A new voice cut into the conversation. "Never! We would never lower ourselves to the level of these assholes! We would never ever ever hurt dear Matty!" The trees out on the street could faintly be heard swaying in a way that could only be described as threatening and aggressive.

"Wha—" Dick turned to see several silhouettes in the doorway. There stood the Justice League's great enemies. The group walked forward and were revealed to be Two-Face, Poison Ivy, Deathstroke, Joker, and Harley Quinn. At their feet stood a clan of cackling hyenas, their eyes flashing threateningly in the dark light.

The usually smiling face of the Joker stood grim and somber, his bright red lips pressed in a thin line. "We're here to help."