August 16, 0310h Donna's call hadn't been the first Roy had gotten and the team was nearly assembled when he'd finally promised to meet her en route and hung up. She was a little ahead of him now, pushing at the constraint of having to play tour guide to the rest of the Titans. "It's right ahead," she called back to them, pointing into the inky blackness of the docks. "That doesn't help us much, Wonder Chick," Roy replied tersely. Having to ride in Toni's plasma bubble made him edgy enough on a normal day and it was far from a normal day. "You'll have to give us better directions when we meet up with Garth and Jesse on the ground." Troia didn't argue with the rebuke. Roy's temper was generally pretty stable but she wouldn't be the one to set him off. Not tonight. Instead she rushed them through the rendezvous with Tempest and Jesse Quick, the group snaking behind her to a warehouse that could easily have been mistaken for any of the others and crowded around as she hauled the door open. As Roy led the team through the door, he saw Barbara and Spud huddled near a curtained off section on the far end of the room and a very familiar blonde head comforting them both. A very familiar blonde head that had turned on them at a trot and wasn't looking very happy at all. "We're here," Donna announced anxiously, her voice carrying across the warehouse. "What do-" "Try keeping quiet for one," Dinah snapped as she approached the group. "There are people trying to operate over in the corner." "No signs of anyone noticing their entrance," Wally spoke up from the back of the group. Roy turned to see his old friend in civvies, the grimmest look on the speedster's face Roy could ever remember. He felt a stab of guilt at their obvious intrusion and tried to cover it up. "Hey, it's us," he announced. "Of course no one saw us." "You're damn lucky they didn't," Dinah replied, fixing him with one of her stares. "I would hope you guys would have learned how to be discreet by now." "Is Nightwing ok?" Argent asked from the back of the group. "He is our teammate," Donna added. "And we care a lot about his well-being or lack thereof," Garth finished. "All we want is some information." "If you wanted information, you could have called the Watchtower," Dinah reminded them. "Look, Nightwing's wife and kid appreciate your concern, but things are a little tense in here and you guys need to either make yourselves useful elsewhere or go back and sit in the Tower until someone tells you something. All we know right now was that Nightwing engaged an unknown hostile who fights with two swords. He's sustained massive bodily trauma and blood loss. He's in surgery now and that's all that anyone knows. The Watchtower will alert you if there's a change." "With the Bat in charge? We'd get a memo about it in a month," someone grumped from the back of the group. Roy winced and held up one hand. "All right," he spoke up. "Black Canary's right. We're heroes. We need to start acting like them." "They could use some more blood," Wally suggested. "Great. Those who can give blood-" Roy scanned the room. "That would be you, Wally, and Jesse. Is there someone here to draw and bag?" "Star Labs," Vic spoke up. "They'll process it and beam it down." "Great. Vic, go with them. Speed things up. The rest of us will go after whoever took down Nightwing." "Absolutely not," Dinah answered just as Jesse said, "No way." "What?" Roy barked. They both started talking at the same time until Dinah nailed Jesse with a glare. "Batman and Robin are going after the attacker," she explained. "No one else touches him." "Batman and Robin don't have my tracking abilities," Roy pointed out. "And they're not metas," Argent helpfully broke in. "Yeah, and-" "No buts. He belongs to them." Deathly silence loomed over the group at that pronouncement, broken only by the vague murmurs across the room and the small sound of a steadily beeping machine. "Fine," Roy finally agreed. "Has the scene been investigated?" Dinah nodded thoughtfully. "Yes and it needs to be sanitized. We don't need someone going up to the rooftop for a smoke in the morning and calling the cops on a possible mur-crime." "Ok then. Jesse, Wally, Vic, Star Labs. The rest of you with me." He cracked a cynical smirk. "We've got cleanup duty." "You'll need more blood than just Wally and I can provide," Jesse suggested. "We'll go around to the other heroes after this and ask them to go to Star Labs to donate." "I'll get Linda," Wally suggested. "She's a universal donor." "Now you're thinking." Dinah nodded approvingly. "Get out of here." She turned on her heel and headed back to her partner and the little boy gripping the curtain. Roy glanced around the warehouse and saw what he wanted in the corner. "Toni, grab the rags and buckets over there," he instructed. "We'll need them." "Roy, I want to talk to you a minute," Jesse cut in, pulling him aside. "One," Roy replied in reference to the minute. "Why the hell aren't you giving blood? Are you going after that guy anyway?" "You read the personnel jackets," Roy said shortly. "You know why." "I thought all that was over. Even regular blood banks only ask about the past year. If there was anything wrong with your blood, Star Labs would have caught it years ago." Roy gazed at Jesse seriously. "Labs can be wrong," he replied. "And if, by some random chance, something is wrong? No way I'm saving my friend's life only to kill him later on down the line. Go do your job. I'll go do mine." He turned away and faced the three left to him. Donna, Garth and Toni. Two of Dick's oldest friends, three counting himself, and Toni, who looked up to Nightwing as if he were some sort of well, legend. Which just maybe he was. "Scene of the crime is the Old Passeo building," Roy announced, information gleaned from Kyle Rayner hours ago. "Ladies, if you will?" Donna caught him up, rising in the air, and Toni used her plasma bubble to haul Garth and the equipment along. In seconds, they were in sight of their destination, in minutes their feet were touching the rooftop. "All right," Roy called back to them. "I want this building so clean by dawn that people will be begging the birds to crap on it. If it's dark, assume it's blood and terminate with extreme prejudice." He shook his head, thinking that Dick would be amused by their menial task. "How do we know what's blood what's just dirt?" Toni wanted to know, her voice small. "Toni, didn't you listen to-" Roy trailed off as he turned his eyes on the expanse of roof that lay before them and the mass quantities of the unnatural darkness that had affixed itself to the concrete laid out before him. "Oh god."