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“Hey!” Pinky swats Billy's little fry thieving hand away and points to the second take out bag he’d gotten from Big Belly Burger, “I got you your own you little hoodlum.” Pinky almost laughs and chokes on a bite of his double Belly Burster at how fast the kid inhales his next round of food, pounding a fist to his chest to dislodge the beef as the kid helpfully pats his back for help and support. He gets his airway free, thankfully not by fully hacking up his food and seemingly without giving away their position opposite of the warehouse they’re keeping an eye on for a suspicious shipment he caught wind of.
“Jeez kid, next time I’ll get you the whole menu.” Pinky jokes with a playful nudge of the elbow, smile faltering at how Billy turtles into his red puffer vest, eyes poking out from over his fully zipped up collar. Pinky would laugh if he didn’t get the kids' circumstances.
Not like his laugh was sunshine and roses, he grew up in Gotham of all places, and right in between that wonderful era of organized crime booms thanks to prohibition and a world war starting to make things even more scarce. He remembers making one of those victory gardens with his mom so they could grow their own carrots and some potatoes instead of buying them and depriving soldiers giving their lives for a very bloody war, that and the overall money situation. Between her death and him getting adopted by Mr. Butler, his situation didn’t get much better. It just involved a single parent of a different sex and a lot of crime fighting with the change. Which, between even the most barebones intelligence gathering and the actual confrontations, didn’t leave a lot of time to snag a part time job to pay the bills or put a balanced meal in one’s belly.
He didn’t feel that hungry anymore, slowly munching on the last bite of his burger and swapping his still fairly full pack of fries for Billy’s very empty one, tossing both their burger wrappers and the empty pack. Billy gave him an embarrassed but thankful look as he nibbled on his new stock of fries, seemingly lacking an appetite too.
“Whadda’ you think they’re moving in?” He asks, knees tucked comfortably under his chin as he surveys the very definitely not sketchy building. “Dunno’ but I doubt it’s some hyper expensive wine, The Devil’s Playground just got a shipment the other week and their sales don’t justify a restock this soon.”
“That’s such an obvious name,” Billy chuckles. “A place named after the devil ran by an actual devil? Com’n Blaze, up your game.”
“Eh, maybe she’s not scared of being obvious. Muscles said she’s a pretty straightforward gal, even when saying she wants a guy's block knocked off.”
Billy draws a strained breath through his teeth, getting a slight chuckle out of him from the kids reaction. It’s a fair one, no debating that, but it’s still funny to see.
It’s an honestly nice night, especially for good ol 'spying and stake outs. The moons a sliver offering little light to show their positions, the lights that should keep the maze of warehouses are horribly neglected leaving only a little dim light at the doorway and exits to the warehouse, and there’s a strong enough breeze that lets his crimson cape billow dramatically behind him. Billy laughs and calls him the Batman of Fawcett.
“Oh please,” he turns to him with hand on hip. “If anything I’m the Robin of Fawcett. I was the Boy Wonder before he was a glimmer in his mothers eye!” He boasts, quietly and more to his audience of one to keep the possibility of getting caught to a minimum. Though, he does think for a moment and makes an amendment to his statement.
“Or more accurately that Nightwing fellow of Fawcett, he was the first and only one for a while.”
“Wouldn’t that mean your dad is the Batman and behind about five adoptive kids?” Pinky laughs, thinking how crazy his home life would’ve been with that many younger siblings. It would be nuts, and he admits as much to the kid whose family life, he thinks at least, is a lot crazier than him or good ol Batty-boy. Orphan with a long lost twin sister, a Wizard mentor who sees you like a son, and magically bound half demon siblings who lord over hell? Or even including his scummy uncle and the whole part-demon cousin thing, that’s a different level of crazy wedged between the sister thing and the demon sorta-siblings thing.
He’s about to make another joke, get the poor kid a little more out of his shell of a puffer vest, when the sound of a way too old and barely functioning truck rolls it’s way into the warehouse. It’s followed shortly after by two unassuming cargo vans, both with the logo for an out of town brewery on their sides and no plates. Bingo.
Pinky cracks his knuckles and readies his grapple gun, “Ready to go Mr. Red Superman?” He asks oh-so courteously, leaving the kid snorting with a mouthful of fries. He has to chew a bit more to manage a snappy “Shazam!” as the death rattle for any planned crime for the night, gesturing for Pinky to have the first move with a just as courteous “You first Red-Wing.”
He grapples to the shut metal doors the trucks came in, placing a nice slime bomb that blows up and leaves the exit too slimy with his own glue mix to allow an escape with whatever goods they were hauling. Above, he hears the tearing of metal as he looks up to see Captain Marvel literally raising the roof. He grapples up to join, leaning on his friend's shoulder while smiling down at the fourteen (he counted) men below.
“Now see here you ne'er do wells, my friend just tore your roof off and is very indestructible so I suggest—” He’s not allowed to finish as almost a dozen automatics send bullets ripping through air and plinking pathetically against the red chest of his buddy. “—not that, but you guys obviously aren’t that smart.” He settles on, leaping down onto a catwalk and returning fire with a few throwing spikes because, yes, Batman did have some good ideas that weren’t a literal homemade laser gun his dad had been using since the forties. He gets a few men in the shoulders at non-lethal points, a few more in the arm and some more in the legs that had them stumbling down. The two who drove in with the cargo vans make a break for the sealed off door, finding themselves trapped as the gunshots stop behind them and turn to a smiling Captain Marvel who grabs them by the back of the head and knocks them together, knocking them out for the count.
The leg guys Pinky got reach for their dropped guns, pointed them at a dismounting Pinky and got them snatched out of their hands and promptly bent into bows at the muzzle by a stills cheerfully smiling Captain Marvel. “Y’know you make my job a hell ‘ova lot easier?” Pinky asks, patting his friend on the shoulder as he sets the bad guys against the wall with proper bindings and patches up the wounds he made so they wouldn’t lose too much blood. That, and he doesn’t want to leave his throwing spikes to become evidence later, he really doesn’t have the money to replace them if he can’t recollect them after a mission.
“I had a feeling.” Billy comments and he wrenches a crate open from the still full cargo vans, pausing once he gets a peek inside. “Mr. Scarlet?”
“What is it?”
“Uh,” Marvel scratches the back of his neck as pinky saunters up. “It looks like a lot of obsidian with this weird sheen to it.” Well that piques his interest.
He looks into the crate with Billy, grabbing a chunk just a bit smaller than an ostrich egg and examining the odd bluish shine under the warehouse light and odder blue veiny impurities to the rock. It’s fairly light too, if he were blindfolded he’d think he was holding an awkwardly shaped helmet or a thinly leaded balloon. Billy grabs his own piece, looking more refined into the shape of an arrow head with what looks like expert knapping. He runs his thumb over the sharp edge while pondering it, suddenly dropping it with a yelp and letting the off-color obsidian fall to the floor with a clinking sound. His thumb has a cut, white-yellow lightning shines out and zaps around as it heals.
“That’s… concerning…” Pinky settles on, checking another box by leveraging two corners with some of his darts this time to find more of the odd not-obsidian. The truck is chock full of the crates, and so far they all seem to have random weapons or items like the one in his hand that seem more suited for some religious practice. He assumes the religious aspect since his crate has items like the large plate and incense holder he has in both hands, three interlocked triangles decorating both.
Billy seems off in his own world sorting out the items he can see between the cushioning of wood shavings used as packaging, a world Pinky guesses includes the voices of a few gods and long dead men extrapolating specifically what they’re looking at.
He sets down the burner and plate when he hears the loud banging and announcement of the police at the smaller entrance of a simple side door, recollecting himself and the carefree version of his father’s persona.
Swinging the door open while hidden behind it, he smiles as he watches eight or so of Fawcetts finest pile into a crime scene with the perpetrators already tied up and illegally traded goods investigated. “Sorry to spoil the fun,” an officer curses under his breath as he turns to Pinky with his gun reholstered. “But I wanted to open my Christmas gifts a little early. Y'know, before the other kids started throwing them around during one of our play fights.”
What follows is the normal back and forth of agitated by the book newbies to the scene getting mad that he tampered with evidence, him shooting back that he’s been doing this since before he was a twinkle in his mothers eyes, and Billy causally stepping to the side with thinly veiled unease as he dash’s out the door behind him. It’s as simple as it can get when it comes to run of the mill vigilantism, unlike the odd metallic stone that was able to cut into his friends skin that Pinky would have to keep an extra eye out for when it came to other such questionable trades.
Back outside, on the roof they’d been lounging on, Billy is himself and pacing frantically, going on about how none of those things should be out of Khandaq and how Adam would kill him if he found out the one material that could physically harm them was in his jurisdiction. The situation, apparently, made more precarious by the fact they were relics and not mined Eternium. So Pinky, ever the proud torchbearer of his fathers tricksy legacy in circumventing proper procedure to enact rightly done justice, concocts and tells Billy his new plan for a stakeout.
“Well then, I suppose we’ll have to steal what the police seized and hand them to your frenemy on an Eternium platter.”