Chapter 2: E2: #11 & #22 at 11:22!
Nightwing and Harold arrive at Nightwing's "personal Headquarters" and to Harold's shock, he finds it all ugly and unappealing to him.
"This isn't a lab, this is what movies think labs should be like, this is what the government thinks labs should be like but not true men of science and technology!" Harold declared, He's always had a pet peeve of bright and over exaggerated laboratories. The kind you'd see in a movie, bright white walls and shiny bright floors and rooms filled with testing tubes and tables for stations of testing but he's always been an organized and specific inventor and scientist.
"Yeah, I had no clue on how to react when I bought the place and it came with this certain… motif but we'll have to work with this for now." Nightwing replied but he could tell from Harold's silence he wasn't happy about it in the slightest, "What do you mean, 'For now'?" Harold asked, curious.
"I have a contact, a friend, who's lived here for a while. He's more of a hacker and a real computer guy but he's no slouch with making a place his own either. However, before I can do anything, I could really, really use your help now more than ever on my suit. This is my home made costume I designed over a year ago but that's all it is, a costume… your suits protected even Kent nelson without the helmet of Fate from being blown to bits and I could use some of that artistry."
Harold pulled out a small notebook from his satchel, "Alright, first we'll need to find your style and what blends with this city." He replied while sketching a design that's been in his mind for a while.
"I could really use some practicality over style, I've managed to not get tagged in the last 5 months I've been here. The regular goons'll never tag me but I can't afford to underestimate these 5 bodyguards you told me about earlier and I keep having this annoying feeling that I'm gonna meet one of them soon." Said Nightwing, he looked nervous and a bit worried.
Harold stopped his sketching and slowly looked up at Nightwing when he got done speaking, "Hold on one tiny second kid, you've been in this city for 5 months??" Harold asked calmly with some shock in his tone, "Yeah?" Nightwing answered with some confusion in his tone.
"The last couple of vigilantes only survived a night, they have his evil on the news, 'Vigilante shot dead, just don't try it in Blüdhaven!' As the headline." Harold informed his new partner while he pulled the paper from a few years ago out of his satchel, Nightwing grabs the newspaper from him and looks sick, feels anger and pity, the vigilante especially in the photo was just a kid.
"Whoever did this unmasked him and he clearly didn't die by a gunshot, because the cop was scared and heroic, they found who he was and tortured him. The markings on his face and the blood all over his body, a fool could see this!" Nightwing screamed out in a rage, a couple seconds after he screamed the duo heard an explosion from outside and Nightwing heard footsteps from very far.
Harold jumped, panicked and was terrified like any normal sane man would but Nightwing stood staring down still feeling what he felt hearing about the vigilantes fate, and trying to remember the ins and outs of his recently bought HQ to get Harold to safety.
"I thought you said they wouldn't find us, well, he found us now, little genius!" Harold yelled in a panic, "Cracked and tracked within 5 months, he's not going to get away with any of this!" Nightwing declared with a serious tone of voice.
Nightwing had an arsenal he personally installed in secret, he looked at all the weapons he had from the Bo-staff, sword and Escrima sticks but retrieved what he felt most comfortable and skilled with instead, the pair of escrima sticks.
"Harold, go hide in the armory, when I call your name, it'll be safe for you to come back out then we both make a break for it. There's only one way out, I wasn't prepared." Nightwing tells Harold in a deadly serious tone.
Harold sprinted to their tiny armory that was wide open but then Harold immediately shuts it when he enters to hide.
7 men with guns rushed in like it was an FBI raid and began shooting everything in the vicinity without mercy, eventually, fortune favored Nightwing and all the men were common thugs first who needed to reload all at the same time.
"Now's my only chance, reload time for them is 1.9 seconds between 7 men in the right spot, only 2 men should be able to reload successfully before I need to duck behind more weird tables." Nightwing noted in his head as he leapt from behind one of the many tables in the room and went on the offensive immediately as soon as he stopped hearing gunfire.
Nightwing perfectly took out like he had said he could, 5 of the 7 men with a special martial arts technique he's learned in the past, a strike that can knock out a regular man in one blow, pretty basically for him then was forced to retreat behind another close table, he used it to knock out the last 2 gunmen.
Everyone he'd heard was unconscious so he called out to Harold for them to meet with his contact. Nightwing opened the door for Harold.
"So, these tables happen to be bulletproof?" Harold asked as he walked out of the room calmer than before, "I'm sure I don't have to tell you that you have to take 50/50 risks in this business." Nightwing replied, the relief he felt when it worked was unmatched.
"Well, I have an idea for them so don't forget to grab all of them on your way out, I would but my back isn't what it used to be anymore." Said Harold but he was halted by Nightwing before he could take a step, "I heard something." Said Nightwing right before 2 scalpels came flying towards them, Nightwing swiftly caught the scalpel coming for his head but he was stabbed by the second scalpel which was aimed at his abdominal organs and he felt it in there.
"Thick and custom designed, gimmicky as heck scalpels obviously made to inflict damage, something this suit can't absorb a lot of right now." Nightwing took note in his head as he examined the scalpels used against him before studying his attacker who made a very silent and late entrance, "I like the gold and wooden handles, it's a very bougie country style though while you look like you should be scaring off some crows."
The villain's name was Brutale, he wore a skin tight, all brown suit with scarring and stitches in certain places of it, with orange lenses installed in his mask, he looked like a nightmare scarecrow.
Harold ran and took cover behind a different table in the room.
"My boss sends a message, the last thing you'll hear, Adiós useless hero." Brutale stated, his voice sounding almost inhuman, cruelty and coldness was the first thing that came to Nightwing's mind when he heard him.
Nightwing looked at the blade of the scalpel he had in his hand and noticed that a scalpel could've made the exact same wounds he saw on the vigilante kid's face and arms, it was like a special type of torture before he was murdered. This only made our hero wrathful and more incandescent as he's ever been and he got to take it all out on the man who did it.
Brutale starts the battle, he throws his scalpels but Nightwing dodged most of them effortlessly, a few he couldn't dodged had slowed him down a bit but he's trained to ignore the pain. Compassion and wrath fueling him and keeping him going, Brutale was faster and was able to dodge his attacks once he got in close by a hair but consistently nonetheless.
As Nightwing noticed Brutale was playing "keep away and wear him down" he also noticed he was biting into it, he felt out of control. He felt undisciplined and like a rookie. He felt undisciplined and out of control before, he was fortunate enough to have a safety net but he's out of safety nets and this city is the big leagues, he was disgusted at himself and got it together.
Nightwing kept dodging until he noticed his escrima sticks were on the floor when he dropped them earlier, he was so used to fighting crime without any melee weapons, with just batarangs and his fists that he didn't notice he had dropped them, he immediately thought of an idea. An idea that put some of his training to work.
Nightwing continued dodging instead of attacking and made his way over to them on the floor together, rolling, flipping and dipping away from many blades flying towards him wasn't the difficult part.
Nightwing tried to split his focus between finding the perfect ricochet and keeping those seemingly infinite scalpels out of him. As an assassin he's had a personal rivalry with in his past once told him in a battle of theirs where he got his butt handed to him, "Being dominated by Bloodlust in a battle is an almost guaranteed win for the assailant!" one of the only pieces of advice from a villain that stuck with him and he didn't immediately disregard, but one that stuck with him and he's remembering now.
Nightwing's plan worked but it came at a cost, the last couple of Scalpels he could take before they wore him down from bloodloss. Nightwing dropped on top of the flipped over table that Harold was cowering behind while he fought Brutale.
Harold heard his grunts of pain and posthaste ran around to check on his wounds, "No, no, no no no, I'm not going to lose you kid like I lost some of them!" Harold yelled as he used all his strength to pick Nightwing up, "I'm not gonna lie, I'd love to solve the mystery of what the hell I bought and made home sometime." Nightwing joked with a weak voice, right before he blacked out and went unconscious.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone