DPxDC Hit The Gas

DPxDC Hit The Gas

[Written to 'Renegade (We Never Run)' from Arcane]

Technically speaking, Mr. Masters, Gotham's new aspiring crime lord, did provide them with a getaway car. It's just that, in Tim's honest, objective opinion, said car sucks major ass.

First of all, it's white, which is, well, not the best color for disappearing into the night. Then, it's old — not vintage old, thank fuck, but definitely made before 2005 — and long overdue for a makeover. Tim doesn't see a single part of it that doesn't have a scratch or a dent on it, and are those bullet holes on the passenger door?

Eh, whatever, this is a staged escape anyway. Tim doesn't need it to be successful, he only needs an alibi. Someone — their driver, in this case — to later tell Masters that Alvin Draper did everything he could to keep the package safe. So he can stay in the man's moderately good graces even after they get caught by Batman tonight.

Tim makes it to the car first, throws the back door open and slides inside in one motion, slamming it behind him. Jason, the drama queen, jumps in through the open window and into the front passenger seat.

"Hit the gas, they are on our heels!" He yells at the driver, struggling to turn himself over and put his ass in the seat. Serves him right, opening the door and getting in the normal way would have taken literally two seconds.

The car jolts into movement without a moment of hesitation — so at least the driver has a good reaction time — but Tim still hears a dull sound of a betarang hitting the rear end of it. Nice throw, Cass!

It's only then that he cares to actually look around and realize a few things. A few, arguably, very important things. Like the fact that their driver is a redhead girl who looks barely sixteen. Or that there are two kids, looking no older than ten, in the back seat beside him.

He blinks and stares. The kids — both boys, one of them white as milk with a dark mop of hair and the other one black, wearing glasses and a red beanie — pay no mind to either him, Jason in the front seat, or the speed the car is going at. In fact, they pay no attention to the outside world as a whole, hunched over an outdated PSP. They are playing it together, one of the kids in charge of action buttons and the other one controlling the D-pad, so Tim can understand the need to focus: it takes some impressive teamwork to sucessfully go through the game like that. And they are using some complicated combos while at it, wow.

Wait, no, this is such a wrong time to marvel at videogame skills! They are kids, in a car, in a getaway car, in the middle of a car chase with the fucking Batman!

They take a sharp turn, and Tim grabs onto the handle in order to not bump into the door.

"Oh, you didn't tell me we're racing with the Batmobile," the redhead girl says, but it sounds surprisingly nice and polite, like she's merely asking about the weather.

"Yeah, well, we didn't expect that kind of trouble either," Jason snaps back, scrunching his nose, but the girl just laughs softly.

"No, don't worry. It's no trouble," she assures almost gently, and then reaches one hand behind the seat without looking, tapping the black boy on the knee, "Tucker, sweetheart, switch with me?"

Hold on, what?..

"But Ja-a-azz," the white boy whines.

"We've just got to the boss fight," Tucker pouts, but the redhead just taps his knee more insistently.

"And I'm sure you'll get to it again after we make it out," she says, still perfectly polite and collected. Tim glances out the window. Either this girl has nerves of steel or there's something very wrong with both her and the kids; they are going at least 95 mph, and she keeps only one hand on the wheel like it's nothing.

"Ugh, fine," the kid rolls his eyes and nudges his friend in the shoulder, passing him the console, "Save it, I'll get the cord."

"What cord?" Tim asks because he thought this was a simple undercover mission, but now he gets a sneaking suspicion there's a lot more to it than it looked.

Tucker, with one hand under the driver's seat and searching for something blindly, turns to glare at him.

"The control-cord," he answers like the dumb one here is Tim, "How else do you think- A-ha!" His face lights up as he emerges victorious from under the seat, holding... Yeah, a cord, okay. Which he plugs into the PSP that the other boy hands him without prompting.

"Maybe fasten your seat belts, this is about to get interesting," Jazz offers, but doesn't do so herself. Neither of the kids do it either, and Jason just snorts dismissively.

"You're saying it wasn't 'interesting' before?" There's definitely some teasing in his voice. Tim looks down to the package in his lap, a metal box holding some unknown but evidently very important content.

He fastens his seat belt just in time. The car jerks and speeds up — they are definitely past 110 now. And Jazz is not holding the wheel.

It only takes a moment for Tim to connect the dots and look to the PSP in Tucker's hands. Sure enough, instead of a game, his screen is now a perfect replica of the car's windshield in real time, and his fingers are firmly placed on controls. Like he's done it hundreds of times.

They are racing the Batmobile, and a ten-year-old is driving. This mission is fucking wild.

"Brakes, brakes, BRAKES!" Jason yells from the front, and Tim only gets a moment to notice the quickly approaching back of a truck in front of them and realize they are going to crash before their car just goes through it with no resistance. He even looks in the back window to make sure he didn't hallucinate the truck, but no, it's still there and still real.

Did they... Phase through it?..

"What the fuck," he mutters under his breath.

"Language, there are kids in the car," Jazz chides him with a huff of laughter, and then there's a click.

"What the f- fudge," Jason repeats the question, albeit much louder and way more alarmed than Tim before.

When he turns back around, the redhead is holding a grenade launcher. It doesn't look like a model Tim is familiar with, but it's for some reason painted white, just like their car. Is that some kind of Masters' thing?

Wait, that's a grenade launcher.

Jazz ties her hair in the back in less than two seconds and then reaches up to the roof of the car, pressing a button to open the sunroof.

"Wait, you can't shoot a vigilante, they'll-" Tim yells over the wind, but Jazz just smiles at him and stands up on the driver's seat, peeking out and taking position. Tim throws a panicked look at Jason — they sure didn't plan for anything like this. The car chase was supposed to be over in less than a few minutes, none of them thought that Masters, a fairly new figure in the Gotham underground, would have a kind of vehicle that can phase through things and drive at- at 150 mph through the city roads! Not to mention some strange fucking kids and a teenage with grenades!

"She won't kill anyone," a voice comes from Tim's side, and when he turns his head, he finds the other kid, the one he doesn't know the name of, looking at him, his eyes calm and unblinking. And slightly glowing, okay, and here he was, thinking this clusterfuck of a ride can't get any weirder.

"How do you know?" Tim snaps because there's only so much he can deal with at once in the span of five minutes. The kid shrugs.

"It's Jazz. She has morals," he says, like the word disgusts him, and Tucker huffs a laugh.

"You have them, too. Vlad and Dan killed people before, though," he argues, his eyes still glued to the screen of the PSP.

"Not in Gotham," his friend adds, seemingly just for the sake of having the last word in the argument.

Whatever Tim wants to say back gets cut off by a sound of a gunshot. He turns to the back window again, his heart stuck in his throat, but it looks like the white kid was right: the roaring Batmobile is still on their heels. Whatever the redhead tried to do, she missed.

"Danny, on three!" Jazz yells from above, and the kid springs to action like he's been waiting for this moment his whole life.

"One!"

Tucker moves out of the way as Danny climbs over him and towards Tim, unceremoniously shoves the precious metal box away and all but falls into Tim's lap despite his loud yet wordless sounds of protest.

"Two!"

The boy yanks the latch and throws the door open, leaning down while still sprawled over Tim's knees, and Tim grabs the back of his shirt out of reflex. It doesn't matter that the whole thing is a disaster, he's not letting a ten-year-old fall out of the car on his watch.

"Three!"

There's a loud pop somewhere behind them, and the car suddenly turns and drifts sideways, the sound of skidding tires grating on Tim's ears. Yet, he still feels Danny move and sees him reach and touch the ground. There's a short moment of panic — at this kind of speed, the pavement will shave the skin off the boy's hands in seconds — but then there's a shimmer of white bursting from Danny's palms.

When Tim looks up, the road behind them is covered in ice, the smooth surface of it shining in the yellow light of streetlamps. And, a bit further, there's a thick layer of smoke that should definitely hide them from the view of pursuers.

Smoke grenades. And ice powers. That explains the glowing eyes, Danny must be a meta.

The car shifts again, changing directions, and Tim, almost like in slow-mo, sees the metal box that they've gone to such great lengths to steal, slide towards the open door and tip over the edge.

He is still holding Danny's shirt, and the boy is still hanging halfway out of the car.

The seat belt is pressing tightly into his chest.

The box falls out, and Tim shuts his eyes close. Fuck it, he can fail the mission, it's not the end of the world, Jason can still try and weasel his way into Masters' close circle, and Bruce would understand if Tim explains why quickly enough, it's okay, no big deal-

"Gotcha!" Danny yells cheerfully as the car makes a sharp turn and comes to a halt all of a sudden.

Tim opens his eyes.

Danny, a wide, wicked grin on his face, is holding the box in his hands.

"You're a little shit," Tim breathes out, and the boy laughs, wiggling on Tim's lap and trying to get back inside the car.

"Born and raised," he answers with such a shit-eating expression on his face that Tim doesn't even bother holding back his urge for petty revenge. He releases his death grip on the back of Danny's shirt and gleefully watches the brat lose his balance and faceplant the ground.

The 'quick' undercover mission is sure getting an extension, but somehow, he can't bring himself to feel bad about the fact.