“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.”
– Ferris Bueller
…
“Believe me, if you’ve seen Phantom Thief once, you’ll know that I’m not making things up.”
Dick said this seriously to Batgirl.
“Are you sure… you can handle it alone? You don’t need my help?”
Batgirl asked with a questioning look.
“I told you I don’t need your help. Can we stop talking about Phantom Thief for a moment? What are you investigating right now?”
Dick changed the subject. He walked over to Batgirl and looked at the huge screen of the Batcomputer.
“Let me see… Garfield Lynns… Firefly?”
Seeing the name displayed in the bat file, Dick asked in surprise.
“Yeah, remember when he and that stupid Killer Moth set fire to the GCPD headquarters? It was me who clearly defeated the two of them, but in the end, the newspaper said it was you and Batman who did it.”
Hearing this, Dick smiled awkwardly and said, “Um… you know, in our line of work, we shouldn’t care about fame and credit. As long as the bad guys are stopped, it doesn’t matter who did it, right?”
In fact, it wasn’t about Dick and Batman taking credit away from Batgirl that day.
Even though Batgirl had already taken down Killer Moth and Firefly by the time they got there, she wasn’t in good shape herself at the time.
So, the task of taking Firefly and Killer Moth into custody fell to Batman and Robin.
Since there were no witnesses to the entire battle, the police and the media only saw Batman and Robin, and they didn’t even know what Batgirl had done.
With Batman’s personality, he wouldn’t go out of his way to tell anyone that Batgirl actually caught the criminals.
“Suit yourself,”
Batgirl replied calmly.
“Cough, cough,”
Dick coughed twice and curiously asked, “After that incident, didn’t Firefly and Killer Moth get sent to Arkham Asylum? Why are you digging into their old files again?”
“A few weeks ago, a district attorney proposed to re-open the GCPD arson case. He thinks that the psychological analyses of Firefly and Killer Moth aren’t clear enough and that they might have been faked. So they were preparing to transfer the two of them to Blackgate Penitentiary for imprisonment.”
Batgirl explained.
“That doesn’t sound like a bad thing.”
Dick said.
“I thought so too until I received some really bad news yesterday—Firefly escaped!”
Dick furrowed his brow tightly.
“How did he escape? What about Killer Moth?”
“Who knows? When a prison guard made his morning rounds, he suddenly discovered that Firefly was missing. There were no signs, and the surveillance didn’t catch anything. As for Killer Moth, he’s still in prison. Maybe Firefly had a falling out with him.”
Batgirl shrugged helplessly.
“I’ve been tracking Firefly after hearing about this. I hacked into Gotham’s entire surveillance system and found over thirty locations where he was spotted. I spent the whole day checking those places, even dealt with several criminals on the streets, I couldn’t find Firefly.”
“So, I came back to check the Batfiles and look through the Batfiles to see if I could guess the possible places he would go from Firefly’s past experiences. You know, the information in the Batcomputer is much more detailed than the GCPD’s database.”
Dick nodded and suggested, “I can help you with some of that…”
“In fact, you can’t, Master Richard.”
At this point, Alfred came over and interrupted him with two plates of chicken sandwiches and two cups of coffee.
“I’m sorry to have to remind you, but you still have homework to complete.”
“Alfred is right. A young boy like you who’s still in school should go and finish your assignments obediently, or else be careful of Bruce coming back to spank you.”
Batgirl said it with a sly smile.
“If you encounter any difficult problems that you can’t solve, feel free to ask me for help,” she added.
Dick glanced at her and didn’t argue back because he knew that he couldn’t really compete with the girl in front of him when it came to studying.
At sixteen years old, Dick was still in his fourth year at Gotham Academy, waiting to take this year’s ACT or SAT exams.
While eighteen-year-old Batgirl had already graduated from Gotham University six months ago with a Ph.D. in Library Management.
Grabbing a sandwich and stuffing it into his mouth, Dick went to the side to finish his schoolwork while Batgirl continued with her task.
After a while, Batgirl finished reviewing all the files and stretched lazily before getting up from her chair and walking towards the Batcave’s garage.
“I’m heading back now, see you tomorrow, Alfred and Elf Boots,”
Batgirl said as she hopped onto a Batcycle, said goodbye to Alfred and Dick, and then left the Batcave.
The night passed without much incident.
The next day, Sunday.
Gotham Burnley District, Sutton Manor.
When Dean woke up and got out of bed, it was already nine-thirty o’clock in the morning.
After getting ready, he had a simple breakfast and left the house.
Dean had a very important plan to do today, so he was planning to go to Gotham City Public Library.
Of course, he didn’t go there to do school research.
Although Dean had schoolwork just like Dick, and he hadn’t even started on it yet, he wasn’t worried at all.
In his previous life, he could even finish summer homework in a single night with just a pen. This weekend’s schoolwork was nothing to Dean.
The reason he was going to the library was actually to prepare a new notice letter.
It must be said that writing the notice letter was really difficult. It had to be cleverly mysterious, not too direct, but also not too much.
It had to be difficult enough to decipher but also not impossible to figure out.
This forced Dean to learn a lot of unknown knowledge that normal people would never bother to learn so as to have more knowledge to use when writing the notice letter.
On the way, he also took care of a fake ‘Pink Fantasy’ and threw it into a random garbage can.
Arriving at the library, Dean went straight to the section on ancient religious mythology.
He picked up a book with a mysterious cover and started flipping through it while standing there.
As he was reading, a surprised voice suddenly came from the aisle to Dean’s left.
“An Introduction to Greco-Roman Polytheism? I didn’t expect anyone to be interested in that kind of book!”
Dean turned his head and saw a red-haired girl wearing glasses staring at him in surprise… and at the book in his hand.
The girl looked a year or two older than Dean, with a tall and well-attractive figure.
She was wearing a white uniform with a name tag that read ‘Library Administrator.’
She was pushing a cart full of books, apparently organizing them.
“Oh! I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to disturb you while you were reading. I was just so surprised because from the first day, I started working here until now, I’ve never seen anyone looking for and reading books from this section.”
Noticing Dean’s gaze, the girl immediately realized that she might have interrupted him and quickly apologized.
