JLA Watchtower (Archive)

He's gotta get to the top. Gotta find a safe place to hide. He's not letting them get him.

Blockbuster runs, pushing his way past the guards, not caring if he's hurting them or not.

He runs up the stairs...and finds himself caught at his ankles. He trips, only to find himself blinded by a bright light.

Triplines. Flares.

Someone knew he was here.

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Oh, he knew. And now he has Blockbuster right where he wants him.

Robin swings in from above, staff at the ready, and hits Blockbuster with a punishing blow. So punishing, in fact, that at that angle and level of force, it would have killed a normal man.

Blockbuster is not normal, and that is the only thing that saves his life.

Landing nimbly, Robin whirls, throwing two bolarangs, which spin around Blockbuster and pin his arms to his sides.

"Desmond..." growls Robin, in a voice full of loathing which barely resembles that of Tim Drake.

"You'll wish you stayed in Arkham when I'm through with you."

Edited Date: 2009-06-18 03:55 am (UTC)

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With that hit, Blockbuster's knocked off his feet, falling back down the stairs. Slowly, he gets up, only to be pinned by the bolarangs.

"No..."he says, ripping free of his restraints, "You can't make me go back there!"

He charges at Robin.

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As Blockbuster charges him, Robin stands his ground, smiling grimly.

The brute is strong but slow, and Robin has no problem somersaulting over his punch, landing beside him and hitting him in the side with his staff. Blockbuster turns, and Robin's already pole-vaulted with the staff over his head, landing on his shoulders and shoving a smoke bomb right in his face.

Robin lands in front of him as he reels back, blinded again and now choking, and he thrusts the staff forward again and again, striking Blockbuster in the most sensitive areas, pressure points he learned from Lady Shiva and Cassandra Cain. He's sparing the brute no mercy, and the efficiency in which he's attacking is almost frightening.

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Blockbuster coughs. He can't see, and now he can barely breathe.

Even though he's feeling extreme pain, he continues to throw blows left and right, trying to hit Robin.

"What do you want with me?!"

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At Desmond's despairing yell, Tim literally sees red.

He doesn't know? He doesn't know?!

Well, if this sick bastard doesn't even remember, then Tim's damn well gonna make sure he remembers.

Blockbuster's already ungainly, and blinded, he's all the more clumsy. As he swings one canned-ham fist at Robin, the young vigilante hurls a batarang, grimly smiling at Blockbuster's yelp of pain. The batarang buried itself in the back of his hand, and it's going to take serious medical attention to repair the nerves damaged there.

Tim came out here tonight to send Blockbuster back to Arkham. But right now, the thought of damaging him more is more and more appealing. The evil bastard killed Stephanie, and now he can't even remember her name. That's not going to go unpunished.

Edited Date: 2009-06-18 05:11 am (UTC)

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Blockbuster lets out a cry of pain as the batarang sinks into his hand.

Now he's really angry.

"STOP!!" he roars, continuing to charge at Robin, desperate to stop his attacker.

He's weakening though. He's slower. He has to stop more often to catch his breath.

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Robin's not listening. He's past listening.

In Roland Desmond he sees every murderer who ever slipped away. In Desmond he sees the Joker standing over Jason Todd's body, the scene that haunted him from the day Batman told him about it. In Desmond he sees Jean-Paul Valley, mercilessly booting the villain Abattoir to his death.

In Desmond he sees the man who killed Stephanie Brown, the man who murdered a young girl because even she was a threat to him.

"I want you to say her name."

Robin approaches to melee range, sure now that Roland Desmond can no longer bring his superhuman strength to bear. He raises the staff, and strikes Roland. And strikes him again. And again. And again.

Gripped by his anger, he's blind to the parallel between this and the very scene that haunted his childhood.

"Tell... Me... Her... Name!'

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urgeoftheflesh.livejournal.com

Nestled comfortably in the shadows, a figure watches, and smiles.

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Robin's backed Blockbuster into a corner. It's all he can do to raise his hands an attempt to lessen the blows, but not to much avail.

"I don't know what you're talking about! Whatever it is, I didn't do it!"

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"LIAR!" Robin yells, his voice distorted with rage.

Lady Shiva taught him the Leopard Blow, but never in the years since he learned the lethal attack has he ever thought to use it.

Until now.

Replacing his staff on his belt, Tim leaps into the air, his right hand lifted high, all the better to come down for the killing stroke.

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It is almost preternatural how she knows where and when to be. It is part of Lady Shiva's mystique. It may never be known exactly how Shiva knows where to be and when - but she is here.

And she is rather suddenly between Robin and his target.

It doesn't look like she's going to try to defend herself from the Leopard Blow.

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Blockbuster is all that fills his vision, and then, as if from nowhere, she is there.

There is no time for thought, only for action. Recognition flashes in his eyes, and Robin twists, pulling out of the Leopard Blow abruptly.

Robin's shift is ungainly, not at all like him, and instead of landing nimbly on his feet he tumbles to the ground, barely managing to land in a crouch in front of his onetime mentor.

"Shiva..." Robin murmurs, like a boy only halfway awake. His eyes are glazed, like he's going on forty-eight hours without sleep.

If only it were that simple.

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Odd as it is, Shiva had faith that he would not strike her with the blow she had taught him. Though, on some level, she believed it would be fitting that he strike her dead and it would be an acceptable death.

"Little Bird, you are not well."

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For the first time in well over twenty-four hours, a thought enters Robin's head that has nothing to do with Blockbuster.

"Shiva, I..."

He feels the familiar feelings in her presence... guarded respect, something almost akin to the awe he feels for Bruce, tempered by the knowledge that this is a woman who would not hesitate to kill him if it suited her needs. It pierces his mind, cutting through the din of rage subtly enhanced by another.

"Something's wrong."

Understatement of the year.

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Shiva looks toward Robin and Robin only. Blockbuster is not of her concern in the least. There is an affection she feels for this boy, this young man, which is dangerous to her and she knows it. In this case, while blockbuster is a threat, Robin is much more concerning.

"Something has unbalanced you, Little Bird."

Reaching out, she puts her hand against the side of his face, thumb against his cheekbone. "What drives you?"

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Tim looks at his onetime mentor, glazed eyes seeming to find focus somewhere in her own.

"What drives me is... revenge?"

He looks back to Blockbuster, bloody and cowering, and reason slowly returns, bearing with it the awful weight of what he has done, and what he was about to do.

He slowly lifts his hands, knuckles bloody with another man's blood, and stares at them, horrified.

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"That does not sound like you, Little Bird." Carefully, Shiva pulls her hand back from the young man, looking at him, Blockbuster behind her. The blood does not bother her though it may bother him.

"For whom do you seek revenge?"

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Blockerbuster's still standing. Just barely. He's dazed, and he has no idea what's going on.

But something about Shiva's sudden presence makes him uneasy.

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Blood is a familiar thing for Shiva, not so much for Robin. True, he's bled and made others bleed before. But always, he has tried to prevail with a minimal amount of bloodshed. Battles have been an equation to him, a calculation of the minimum force expenditure necessary to achieve victory, the optimal result. He can't remember a time he wanted to make a man bleed, before now.

Neron's influence is fading, but the anger is still there. His eyes focus back on Blockbuster.

"For an innocent girl. For someone I cared about, someone that piece of trash murdered."

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"Ah."

If Shiva was going to say anything else on that matter, it is held back for the time being. She looks toward Blockbuster for a brief moment before looking back toward Robin. "Revenge does not seem you, nor does murder."

Something in her tone indicates, she is slightly questioning that statement.

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Robin knows what she's getting at. He reached that point with Shiva, just as Bruce did before him. The point where she told him flat-out he could go no further, not until he shed the weakness that forbid him from killing. Like Bruce before him, Tim refused to cross that line, turning back at the summit and instead using what he had learned to win the day.

And now he's back at that summit. Pushed back to the edge, by a force just out of his sight. But Neron could never have pushed Tim that far if a part of him didn't want to go back.

And now he struggles with that duality, caught between two paths, two masters. This is about more than Blockbuster now. More than Stephanie, even.

"... No." he says at last. "It's not."

Tim doesn't know if he's a killer. But he does know that he's not a murderer. This isn't a foe with fists bared standing against him. This is a crippled shell of a man, cowering in terror.

And Robin can't take any kind of revenge on that.

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"Ah."

Shiva stands straight and takes a step back from him, as if to give him the space to recover himself if that is what he needs to have. There is something here that is not right beyond Robin's desire for a vengence that is not the sort he would usually look for.

"What will you do now then? Do you still wish his death? He is a pathetic creature."

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Does he still wish Blockbuster's death? Maybe. There's always been a secret part of Batman that yearned to finish the Joker, after Jason and after Babs. Blockbuster is his Joker. The only villain who ever hurt someone he loved. Somehow Batman managed to overcome that, and years later, he's still managed not to kill the Joker.

Robin doesn't know if he doesn't have Bruce's emotional discipline, or if he's just not that strong.

But he won't kill Blockbuster. Even if he wants to.

"I won't kill him." he says, dodging the issue of whether he'd like to see Blockbuster dead for his crimes.

"He's... already suffered enough already."

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"You know that is not what I asked you."

Still, Shiva does not press the issue, at least not that issue. At the moment. "What will you do next?" Her eyes scan the area once before returning to look at him.

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"I'm going to get the police. They can have him."

Robin can't meet Shiva's eyes. He knows if he did, she would see what he can't admit to himself.

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