<div class="floatleft">(https://i.imgur.com/zqjm9YC.jpg)</div><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><strong>Character Name:</strong> Damian Wayne<br/><strong>Date/Time</strong>: Wednesday the 1st of May 2019<br/><strong>Location:</strong> Tricorner Port, Gotham City<br/><strong>Wearing:</strong> Black civilian clothing (nondescript hooded jacket, scarf, cotton pants, sneakers)<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong> Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth<br/><strong>Warnings:</strong> None<br/><br/>The sun had long set over the port. The perpetual mist that clung to the city glowed eerily down by the old naval yards, as workmen continued their repairs into the night. The damage could be seen even from afar, wrought by the recent spate of alien attacks.<br/><em>Aliens</em>, Damian scoffed inside his head, recalling the mass media hysteria that had gripped the world of late. <em>They still bleed. They still die</em>.<br/>He’d witnessed first-hand their destructive capabilities in the Indian Ocean, but the League of Assassins had chosen to remain far-removed from those events. And of course there was no escaping the phenomenon that had been dubbed ‘Superman’, nor the hypocrites that ostracized him one day and mourned him the next.<br/><br/>“Looks pretty grim, don’t it, son?” an elderly gentleman observed from beside him, chewing away on the same wooden toothpick he’d been gnawing since first approaching Damian, hours ago, on the deck.<br/>“It’s Gotham,” Damian replied absently, his verdant gaze sweeping the clouds as night settled in and the city - the real city, the dirty underbelly - stirred to life. He fixated on a familiar signal in the sky. “It’s always grim.”<br/>“Well ain’t you a ray of sunshine,” the old man, Wilfred, chuckled, the toothpick rolling between his teeth. “You sure this is where you want to be, son? Didn’t get on the wrong boat?”<br/>“Want to be?” Damian asked. “No. Need to be, is more like it.”<br/>“I see. Got family waiting for you?”<br/>“Got family,” Damian replied, tensely. “Not sure they’re waiting for me.”<br/>“Let me guess, you ran away, and now you’re afraid you won’t be welcome” Wilfred smiled, clapping a leathery hand on Damian’s shoulder. Damian glared at the hand, but the old man didn’t seem to notice, or care.<br/>“I didn’t run away, I left,” Damian corrected him.<br/>“Right, right. Left the country and traveled to, where was it you said, Tibet?” Wilfred recalled with raised eyebrows. “And after that, traveled all over Asia and the Middle East, and even squeezed in some European culture while you were at it. Not at all inconsiderable for a child, but it still looks like you didn’t want to stay put in one place for too long.”<br/><br/>Damian met Wilfred’s analysis with a steely stare. He didn’t like being psychoanalyzed.<br/>“Doesn’t matter, son. Family is family. They’ll always welcome you back, once the wounds heal.”<br/>That was a sentiment that Damian hadn’t allowed himself the luxury of since leaving Gotham. True, he’d been what some would consider a child, but at thirteen years old he’d known a hundred ways to end a life with his bare hands. To expect a warm welcome from the people that had shaped him into a killer from the moment he was born, perhaps even before, would have been stupid. But he’d had nowhere else to turn.<br/>He’d savagely murdered a suspect out of anger, crossed a line that his father, Bruce Wayne, the Batman of Gotham, was no longer willing to tolerate from him. Perhaps it had been instinct that had driven him back to his mother, just as it was now dragging him back to Gotham.<br/>“Of course, you could always go back the way you came,” Wilfred chuckled.<br/>“Is that the plan?” Damian muttered. He folded his arms against the cold, and a hand crept into his jacket, to grasp the knife concealed within.<br/>“Excuse me?” Wilfred, dumbfounded, considered him with incredulity.<br/>“You’re good,” Damian countered. “But not good enough. I had you clocked the minute you approached.”<br/>“Oh, and we were having such pleasant conversation,” Wilfred sighed. The friendly old man routine wasn’t an act, Damian suspected. The eccentricities of age didn’t give a thought to profession.<br/>“Lose the poison,” Damian commanded. Wilfred held his gaze for a few seconds, then disposed of his toothpick over the side of the ship.<br/>“Old habit,” the old man confessed. “Relax, there’d be no sense in your Ma sending old Wilfred to do you harm. Not sure she has anyone left who could, after what you did to your sister and her… other project,” Wilfred winked.<br/><br/>Damian had had enough of the small talk. Quick as a striking viper, he hooked a foot around Wilfred’s and pushed himself forward, landing atop him. The knife, still hidden in the folds of his jacket, pressed against the old man’s chest.<br/>There was a hushed commotion on deck, the other passengers wondering what had happened - what was that boy doing? Did the old man fall, is he alright? - and Damian knew he needed to be quick.<br/>“Enough of the games, what do you want?” he hissed, and Wilfred, still bewildered by the sudden violence, realised what was jabbing up against his ribs.<br/>“The Demon’s Head sends a message,” Wilfred cried out, a little too loudly, and then composed himself. “The safety of the shadows is fleeting. Act decisively, but know that your first step into the fray determines your last.”<br/><br/>An old lesson rang through Damian’s head. <br/><em> He was back on Infinity Island, and he didn’t know Bruce Wayne as anything more than a name and a datafile kept by his Mother. <br/>He was in the rafters of his Grandfather’s quarters within the fortress, trying to impress him by getting the jump on him. <br/>And he’d believed himself successful, evading notice, dropping down on the old man… <br/><br/>...by the time he’d realised there was a dart in his neck, ejected from the fan in Ra’s al Ghul’s hand, he was already fading to black.</em><br/><br/>“Go,” Damian whispered, pulling his mind back to the present. He stood up and pulled Wilfred to his feet. He didn’t watch the old man take off, but he heard every last footfall until he’d lost himself in the crowd of concerned passengers.<br/><em>The League has followed me back to Gotham,</em> Damian thought to himself. It lent a new sense of foreboding to the already troubling thoughts in his head - for the thought of reuniting with family had blinded him to the other problems awaiting him in Gotham.<br/>Bruce, Alfred, maybe even Dick, Tim and Barbara if they were still around - how would they welcome him? With open arms or closed doors? And then there was the issue of publicity. The son of billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne suddenly turning up at Gotham University was going to bring with it an unwelcome amount of attention.<br/><br/>His thoughts ran away with him even as he disembarked the ferry, his bike roaring out of the cargo hold and into Gotham. The Redwing, as he’d dubbed her, was a stealthbike gifted to him by his Mother shortly before things had gone sour. It was state of the art, even by the standards he was used to as the protege of the Bat. It gave him comfort knowing that he had his tattered Robin suit stashed beneath his seat and his sword hidden just a switch-flick away, for even as he swept out of the port, he spied movement in the shadows of buildings. The illicit dealings of crooks and mobsters being swallowed by the night. And worse - the agents of the League of Assassins, somewhere, following him.<br/><br/><em>One problem at a time.</em>“Let’s see where he’s at,” he grunted to himself, and the wind shield of his bike flared to life, over-layed by a tactical heads-up display. “Patch me into the local police dispatch,” he instructed, and in the corner of the HUD, a radio wave readout popped up. His helmet crackled with transmission static.<br/><br/><em>“Repor…d break in... Bank... otham… Batma... en route, all neares… nits converge…”</em><br/><br/>It was enough for Damian to turn his bike in the other direction. The map display on his HUD swivelled, placing the Bank of Gotham firmly in his rear-view. He didn’t want to talk to the Batman, not yet. And if he was out on the streets, then he knew Alfred was most certainly at home. The trip to Wayne Manor wasn’t a long one, not using the unpopulated side-roads. It would have been even quicker had he not first stopped off at the Glasshouse and found it all but deserted. In what felt like too brief a span, Damian was staring down the towering, wrought-iron gates of his Father's home. Briefly, the thought occurred to Damian that he could avoid the awkwardness of announcing himself by attempting to break in, but it had been five years; five years in which Bruce would likely have improved his security system beyond even what they’d used to be at the old place. Steeling his nerves, he buzzed on the intercom.<br/>“Pennyworth?” he asked, sounding every bit the haughty, ill-mannered boy that had left half a decade ago. “I know you’re home. Let me… I mean… can I come in?”</span>