"Can you not move any faster?" Damian demanded in annoyance. "Father could only guarantee us a quarter of an hour, and you are wasting precious time in dallying."

"Shut up, Robin."

Damian ignored his predecessor. "Why do I always get stuck with you on missions like this?"

"Because no one else would fit in the vent," Drake snapped. "Now hush."

"Tt."

They made it another ten feet in tense silence before Drake opened his mouth again: "Do you hear that buzzing noise?"

Damian frowned, having picked up on the same sound. "Computer servers?"

"I don't think so," Drake mumbled. "It sounds … alive."

"Don't be ridiculous, Red Robin," Damian scoffed, twisting in the narrow space to scowl in the direction of the older vigilante's shadowy form. "According to the buildings schematics, there's is a vertical shaft straight ahead. Very likely, it transmits sounds throughout the entire struc—what on earth?"

Damian pulled his hand back from the pile of sticky debris at the base of said-shaft, and flicked the lenses in his mask to proper night-vision for a closer look. "Mark your day planner, Red," Damian snorted in disbelief. "You were right." He wiped the offending mess down the front of his tunic. "I think that this is honeycomb." Damian gazed upward at the walls, a moving mass of living creatures. "The whole thing is a giant beehive."

Drake actually swore at this development. "We need to turn back."

"Whatever for?" Damian scowled as he stood carefully, waving away a few interested bees. "They're just insects. Stupid insects."

As if on cue, one of the insulted party planted a stinger in the back of his neck. Damian squashed it flat, flicking the carcass away. He shook his head once, trying to negate the burn under his skin as he turned back to the other boy, swallowing hard past the uncomfortable tightness in his throat.

"It's r-right there," Damian rasped, pointing to the open duct on his left.

"Robin?"

Damian couldn't breathe. It was like that time in Titans Tower when a spar went wrong—Damian had tried to flip out of Wonder Girl's way, and the clone's TTK had caught him around the throat instead of by his cape. An invisible force was closing around his airway with no Superboy available to correct the oversight.

"Drake," he choked out in warning as his vision started to blur around the edges.

Another emphatic curse. Two in one day was rather remarkable for Tim Drake.

"Robin! Did you get stung?" Red Robin was suddenly right there with him in the shaft, gripping Damian's arm painfully tight. The buzzing sound intensified, and then Drake was slapping something over his mouth as smoke began to fill the enclosed space—a rebreather, Damian's mind catalogued absently as he struggled against it. He couldn't breathe, what did clean air matter?

Damian felt his knees buckle and an arm lock around his chest as they went down together in a sudden rush. Then there was the sharp jab of a needle in his thigh and an inhale that went all the way down as Damian shivered at the sudden chill.

"Keep still please."

It was a quiet command, spoken directly into Damian's ear by a voice that he normally disobeyed on principle. There was just a note—a bare whisper of urgency—to Red Robin's carefully-calculated calm. It kept Damian from revolting as he realized that he was now sitting in Drake's lap within the narrow confines of the shaft.

He took a few deep breaths instead.

"Did you know that you're allergic?" Drake asked quietly.

"Don't be … ri-ridiculous," Damian hissed. "My ge-genetics are perfect."

The man hummed a noncommittal response, tightening his grip on Damian when the younger vigilante started to struggle. "We are currently sitting in a giant beehive," Drake reminded him crisply. "Please, sit still."

"The smoke bombs …" Damian trailed off.

"… worked beautifully. Let's not waste the last one," Drake suggested pleasantly. "Help is on the way, so we're going to just sit here, admire nature a bit, and try really hard not to … piss. It. Off."

Damian nodded reluctantly; the plan had merit although he refused to accept Drake's theory before thoroughly testing the insects for genetic enhancement. "I'm cold."

"Epinephrine," Drake explained, still clutching the used injector. "It'll wear off."

"Tt—always prepared," Damian scoffed, closing his eyes. "Do you get a badge?"

"Something like that," Drake murmured.

There was a soft sound above them, and Damian felt his older brother tense. Discarding the useless medical device, Drake cautiously raised the last smoke bomb instead as a portion of the wall above them disappeared.

"Hey, bitty birdies," the Red Hood called down to them quietly, the metallic rasp of the voice synthesiser muted. "How we doing?"

"Epi-pen worked," Drake answered softly, as the buzzing around them began to intensify again. "Rebreather, Robin," he murmured, and let the smoke fill the shaft once more. As the bees quieted, Drake squeezed the younger vigilante's shoulder. "Alright, stand up slowly and I'll give you a boost."

There was really only room for one of them to stand up at a time, and Damian cautiously got to his feet by using Drake to balance himself rather than the walls.

The Red Hood reached down for him. "Easy does it," he whispered, guiding Damian's cautious ascent. Drake cupped his hands around Damian's boot, and the ten-year-old let his older brothers do the work; he didn't want to knock any of the unhappy creatures down onto Drake. "There you go," Todd sighed in relief, passing Damian directly to Batman. "Your turn, Little Red."

Grayson's grip on Damian only changed when Drake was also free and the vent had been carefully replaced. Then his mentor let out a shaky breath and hugged Damian harder. "Let's not do that again," he muttered with an unhappy laugh.

Damian hummed his assent, squirming slightly in his older brother's arms. "I can walk."

"Of course you can," Grayson agreed without giving an inch, "but you're going to humor me anyway."

"Tt."

"… of all the stupid things to do," Todd was muttering, shaking out Red Robin's cape like an over-sized nanny. "Just wait until we get back to the car …"

Damian ignored him with the ease of long-practice, and looped an arm around his mentor's neck. "Did you at least get at Luthor's files?"

It would be an utter waste if the others had not managed to find something worth pursuing whilst the Metropolis man was trapped in business negotiations with Father.

"A few encrypted messages, and non-specific designs for things-that-go-boom," Grayson answered, shifting Damian's weight to fire his grapple out the window. "Based upon that creative little booby-trap though, I'm going to assume that Luthor isn't acting on his own … probably still has connections to the H.I.V.E."

"So does Grandfather," Damian commented, the wind ripping the words from him as they swung over Twenty-third Street.

Grayson nodded as the former-acrobat alighted upon a convenient hotel balcony. Damian wrapped his other arm around the older man's neck for a better grip as Grayson grappled his way down the building. Three floors was just high enough to prevent the man from jumping, although Todd preferred to cut it close. The Red Hood reeled in Drake by the cape, and led the way through a side-alley.

"A little cliche for the H.I.V.E., don't you think?" Drake shrugged, allowing himself to be manhandled.

"That's what worries me," Grayson agreed as they regrouped by the car, "because if it's not a thematic choice, then that was a deliberate measure taken against certain small heroes that like crawling through the ventilation system."

"How could it be a deliberate attack?" Damian protested, snatching the flying orange tube from mid-air. "Even I was unaware of the affect those insects have on me."

There was a moment of utter silence.

The Red Hood's grip on a second epi-pen tightened. Red Robin flushed under the cowl. Batman's mouth fell open in a highly undignified manner, and Robin belatedly put all the pieces together.

"You …" he sputtered meaninglessly.

"Me," Drake agreed reluctantly, shrinking as Todd recovered. The older vigilante swatted Drake upside the head anyway—even as he shoved the epi-pen into the teenager's chest. "You're welcome, Robin," Drake muttered, pushing past them all in order to climb into the car.

Damian was too stunned to remind his rival that the younger vigilante had not thanked the elder to begin with.

"My words are unerring tools of destruction, and I've come unequipped with the ability to disarm them."

-Gansey; The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater