The Dynamic Duo

There comes a moment, in every young hero's training, when the training ends and the real thing begins.

For Dick Grayson, that moment came on a Tuesday night in October.

Dick had been training in the Batcave for almost a year. He had learned to throw a Batarang so it returned to his hand. He had learned to leap from rafter to rafter without a sound. He had learned how to land from a falling height without breaking a bone. He had even learned, late one night when Alfred was already in bed, how to disarm a man twice his size by using the man's own momentum against him. He was ready, although he didn't quite know yet that he was ready.

Bruce knew.

That Tuesday, the rain was coming down hard against the long windows of Wayne Manor. Dick was in the library doing math homework. Alfred was tidying up the dinner dishes. Bruce was sitting in the armchair by the fire, pretending to read a book on architecture but actually listening, with one ear, to the police radio he kept tuned to a low murmur on the side table.

And then the police radio crackled.

A voice came through. Sharp and urgent. "All units. Robbery in progress. First National Bank, Sprang Street. Six suspects, masked. Heavily armed."

Bruce closed his book.

A second voice came through — a deeper, calmer voice that Bruce knew very well. Commissioner James Gordon, the only honest cop in all of Gotham City. "I've got the Bat-Signal up. We'll need him on this one."

Bruce stood. He walked over to the library window and looked out into the rain. Far off, above the dark skyline of Gotham City, a single circle of yellow light glowed against the low clouds. In the middle of the circle was the unmistakable black shape of a bat.

Bruce turned around. Dick was watching him. The math homework had been forgotten.

Bruce said one thing.

"Suit up."

Dick's heart pounded all the way down the staircase behind the grandfather clock. He pulled on the red tunic with the yellow R. He pulled on the green sleeves and green leggings. He clipped the yellow cape into place. He tied the small black domino mask snug across his eyes. His fingers were quick. They didn't shake. The trapeze had taught him long ago that the body is calmer than the mind, and his body had been ready for this for months.

Bruce was already in the cape and the cowl.

They walked together to the Batmobile.

The Batmobile that night was the long, low, dark one with the jet-engine in the back. Bruce climbed in the driver's side. Dick climbed in the passenger side. The roof slid shut. The headlights snapped on. And with a roar that Dick felt all the way up through his chest, the Batmobile shot up the ramp out of the cave, through the hidden waterfall door, and out into the rainy Gotham night.

They reached Sprang Street in five minutes flat.

The First National Bank was an old building of marble columns and tall arched windows. Alarms were already screaming inside. Glass was broken across the front steps. Bruce killed the Batmobile lights, parked in the alley around the corner, and the two of them slipped out into the rain.

"You take the side," Bruce said quietly. "I'll come down through the roof. Stay low. Don't be a hero. Just be ready."

Dick nodded. His heart pounded. But his hands were steady.

The plan worked exactly the way Bruce had hoped.

Bruce went up the fire escape, across the roof, and dropped down through the skylight in a cyclone of black cape. The robbers — six of them, in red ski masks, with their canvas bags half-full of money — turned in panic. Three of them dropped their bags and ran toward the back door. The other three lifted their weapons and aimed at the dark shape now perched on the rafter above the chandelier.

But they had forgotten to watch the side window.

Robin was already inside.

He had slipped in silently, through a small high transom window, hung from his fingertips for a heartbeat, and then dropped down to the marble floor without a single sound. He could see the three armed robbers from behind. He could see Batman crouched on the rafter above them. He could see the bank clerk, a kind-looking older woman in a yellow cardigan, hiding under the counter and gripping a stapler like a weapon.

Dick smiled, very small, behind his mask.

He took one breath. He thought of his father catching his wrist mid-flip. He thought of his mother whispering listen for my voice. He thought of all the long quiet hours in the Batcave learning patience and stillness and how to land soundlessly on marble.

And then he MOVED.

He sprinted. He leaped. He caught the great brass chandelier in the center of the lobby and swung once, twice, picking up speed. On the third swing he let go.

WHOOSH.

He twisted in midair — a perfect double somersault — and landed in a soft crouch directly behind the three armed robbers. Not one of them heard him land.

Dick stood up slowly. He reached out one bright yellow gauntlet. He tapped the nearest robber on the shoulder. Tap. Tap.

The robber jerked around in surprise. He saw — for the very first time in his criminal career — a small, bright, grinning bird where a moment ago there had been nothing at all.

"HOLY BANK HEIST, BATMAN!" Robin shouted, his cape swirling behind him.

The robber's mouth dropped open.

Above them, on the rafter, Batman moved.

What happened next happened so fast it would be told and retold in the bars and diners of Gotham City for months. Batman dropped from the rafter onto the second robber in a sweep of cape. The third robber tried to run and tripped over a Batarang that came whistling out of nowhere and tangled around his ankles. Robin, all the while, was a blur of color — a flip here, a kick there, a sweep of the leg that took the first robber's feet right out from under him. The three robbers who had tried to run for the back door came running back when they realized the back door had been welded shut by the dark figure on the rafter five minutes ago. They got tangled in Bat-rope and toppled like dominoes into the lobby.

Ninety seconds. Six robbers down. The bank clerk under the counter was still holding her stapler, blinking.

Dick stood in the middle of the lobby, breathing hard, grinning so wide his face hurt.

"Holy mackerel, Batman," he said quietly, "that was FUN."

Bruce, from across the lobby, in the middle of tying the last robber up, did something Dick had almost never seen him do.

Bruce laughed. Just once. A short rough surprised laugh. Then he caught himself and went back to being Batman.

The "Holy something" tradition started that very night and never stopped.

For the next several years, whenever Robin saw something surprising — a trap door, an inflatable giant rubber ducky full of stolen jewels, a getaway boat shaped like a swan, the Joker hanging from a chandelier in a feather boa — Dick would shout it out.

"Holy mackerel, Batman!"

"Holy umbrella, Batman!"

"Holy guacamole, Batman!"

"Holy hopping kangaroos, Batman!"

Bruce never once asked him to stop. The truth — Bruce told Alfred this years later, very late one night, drinking tea by the fire — the truth was that he liked it. The bright cheerful sound of Robin's voice broke up the long heavy silence inside the cowl. It cracked the dark mask of Batman just a little. It reminded Bruce that he was not, anymore, alone in the shadows.

Out in the lobby, the sirens of the Gotham City Police Department were getting closer.

Bruce said, "We should go."

But Robin was already climbing. He swung himself up onto the pile of six tied-up robbers, settled himself on the top one, swung his green boots a little, folded his yellow-gloved hands in his lap, and grinned.

"Just one second, Batman," he said.

"Robin —"

"Trust me."

The front doors of the bank burst open and in came Commissioner James Gordon, his coat dripping rain, his hat dripping rain, his glasses dripping rain, six officers behind him with their guns drawn.

Gordon stopped.

He stared.

There, in the lobby of the First National Bank, were six masked robbers tied up neatly in Bat-rope, piled gently into a kind of heap. And sitting on top of the pile — swinging his green boots, the bright yellow R on his chest catching the lobby lights, his small black mask snug across his eyes — was a boy. A grinning boy. Maybe ten years old. Maybe eleven. In a costume so bright it almost hurt to look at.

Robin waved.

Gordon, who had been a Gotham City cop for twenty-five long years, who had not laughed in front of his officers since 1998, who had a wife at home who had been telling him for years that he was forgetting how to be happy — Gordon took off his hat. He scratched his head, slowly. And then he laughed. A great rough surprised laugh. A real one. The kind that made his officers behind him glance at each other and start grinning too.

"Well," Gordon said. "I'll be."

By the time Gordon's officers had reached the pile of robbers, Robin and Batman were already gone — out the skylight, up to the rooftops, slipping away across the wet shingles of Gotham toward the alley where the Batmobile waited.

But the Commissioner found, the next morning, that he had been smiling on and off for hours. Even at his desk. Even in the elevator. Even at lunch.

Gotham City, that Tuesday night in October — for the first time in many, many years — had just gotten a little brighter.

The Dynamic Duo had arrived.