Chapter 14:

Chapter 14:

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[Star City. March 13, 15:19 PDT. 2009

David Lance POV]

My encounter with Deathstroke had left a bad taste in my mouth. Making it painfully clear that I needed to sharpen my martial skills, or I would die before long.

I had to prepare myself to face his kind, soldiers forged in blood, ruthless mercenaries.

I couldn't depend on Batman to save me all my life, or Dinah, someday, sometime, I would find myself in front of the jaws of death, and I would have no one to save me but myself.

I had no excuses.

I had all the necessary tools to overcome myself, I was physically stronger than Batman, I had advantages that others didn't have, I just had to learn how to use them.

For this reason, I had decided to start going alone to the streets of Star City, patrolling the dangerous areas of the city for my part, I needed to learn more than I could under my sister's wings.

And somehow, I felt that by becoming independent I would learn something, something crucial that I was missing.

But enough of that, today I had a mission to catch a serial killer that had so far escaped the Star City police.

The police had no leads on this killer other than that he had killed three possible mobsters in the city, which told me that this killer was one motivated by money, not only that, his way of killing was clean, the corpses had no unnecessary traces of trauma, each blow had been lethal and with intent to kill.

Unfortunately, that didn't help my search.

In this universe, there was a surplus of competent killers, and plenty of people to pay them.

But at least I knew I had to be prepared to fight someone above the common assassin.

"So kid any idea?" The commissioner of Star City, Mark Roman, said while looking at me with a tired sigh.

I shook my head, as I entered his office through the window he had opened, I was still surprised he was okay working with me, considering I was a kid in his eyes, I would've thought he would've been more against it, but no, he eagerly accepted my help, granted we had to communicate through notes, he didn't know sign language.

"This fucker is starting a lot of violence," Mark said, taking a seat, I could see his anger quite clearly, "The mobsters are shooting each other left and right, and normally I would be happy with that, but many innocents are getting caught in the crossfire." he sighed, rubbing his temples.

-Any updates on the new victim?- I wrote on my notepad.

"Yes," Mark nodded, pulling up a file from his desk, "This one was tortured, unlike the rest." he added before giving me the file.

Torture? That was a change in his modus operandi, meaning, one it was a different killer, which was very unlikely at this point, or two, his latest victim was a message, but for whom?

Sighing, I opened the file and started reading. dismemberment, use of acid, flaying. The pictures were quite graphic, and the notes quite detailed, this last man had suffered, and not a quick death, not by all means.

-This is a message, he has yet to strike his main target- I wrote on my notepad, giving him back the file.

"Don't have to ask twice," The man I had rescued nodded, running away with his friends, not without carrying his fallen.

"That was a stupid move kid," The unknown man chuckled, cracking his knuckles.

*Who are you?* I asked, using one of my recorded voice lines from my utility belt.

"Constantine Drakon, a pleasure to meet you," He bowed, as I frowned, this was the first time I heard of him, so far, as far as I knew, there was only one Constantine, and he wasn't an assassin, but a mage of the dark arts.

"That kick hurt," Constantine chuckled, rubbing his chest a bit, "But don't worry, I always pay my debts," he added, hurling a few very distinctive knives my way, as I ducked under their trajectory.

Taking this opportunity I pushed toward him, hurling a few explosive knives with non-lethal charges with the intention to disorient him just enough for me to land a clean hit, knocking him out.

Constantine noticing this, rushed towards me, dodging the knives as he focused on me.

Deciding to break some distance between us, I pulled my grappling from my belt and aimed at the ceiling with the intention to get some high ground before he could reach me, then, as the grappling gun pulled me up, I hurled a few explosives under me halting his advance while covering in smoke, as I landed on the second floor.

"Not bad, but not enough," Constantine commented, hurling a few knives my way from the smoke.

I sidestepped, dodging the projectiles with ease as I focused on the shadows moving through the white smoke.

Then, I heard something.

Behind me.

Reacting in time, I spun around to find the assassin lunging towards me, knives drawn, so twirling under his attack, I grabbed his arm and threw a hard punch to his jaw, putting some weight into it.

Constantine staggered back, spitting some teeth and blood to the ground as I swung my leg in a horizontal kick his way, however, the assassin took no time to recover and dodge my kick, retaliating by slashing my chest with one of his knives.

A hideous scraping noise invaded my ears immediately after, making me grateful for Batman's insistence on using kevlar-made suits, otherwise, I would've gotten a nasty cut.

Seeing his attack had done nothing, I threw a punch his way, but the assassin ducked kicking me into a wall shattering the wall into pieces under my weight with ease.

"Thick armor kid," Constantine chuckled.

I smiled, the man was good, but was painfully overconfident, after all, he had not checked his surroundings at all, nor found the traps I had set beforehand.

Grinning, the assassin took a step forward, activating one of my traps, an electric wire, that effectively caught him, pushing enough voltage on his body to knock a trained soldier down.

"You motherfucker," Constatine growled.

*That's my name, don't wear it out,* I blinked, that was not what I intended to say, I wanted to ask for him to surrender Robin I will kill you.

"You want to play dirty? Then so be it," Constantine snarled, taking out a pen from his pocket, then, clicking the pen, transforming it, into a long sword, then raising the sword high above his head, he swung it down at me as I rolled out of the way, hurling a few explosives and knives his way.

"I will put your head on display kid," Constantine declared, back to his confident self.

I sighed, pressing a button in my belt to activate trap two, the AI dart gun I had positioned within a box a few meters away from him.

However, this time, Constantine reacted in time, hearing the gunshot, and deflected the dart with great skill, sadly for him, I expected that to happen, after the first trap, the second one was destined to fail, which is why I had shot a dart at him the same time he had taken his eyes off me to deal with the other one.

"Kid, I was trained for this, that wo-" and he fell to the ground with a loud thud, he was probably about to say how he was trained to resist things like sleeping darts, but considering he had taken enough voltage to knock a trained soldier, I had upped the dart dosage a bit, quite a bit.

Well, Batman was right, planning ahead does make a difference.