Chapter Text
Dick Grayson had exactly three seconds of warning.
First came the flicker of green in the alley behind him—sharp and unnatural, like emerald lightning skimming concrete. Second was the sudden stillness of the air, a vacuum hush that made every hair on his arms rise. Third was—
“Sorry, Nightwing!” Hal Jordan’s voice came from above, way too cheerful for the context. “Emergency space detective requisition!”
“What—”
Too late. A green arm the size of a compact car scooped Dick clean off the rooftop. He yelped as the construct yanked him skyward, grappling line still attached to the building like a sad, trailing spiderweb.
“Hal!” he snapped, twisting in the grip of the glowing arm. “This is kidnapping!”
“Only if I take you across state lines,” Hal said, floating beside him in the suit-and-smirk combo of someone who absolutely was taking him across several light-years. “Which I am. So let’s call it… interstellar friendship?”
“I was in the middle of a weapons bust!”
“And I’m in the middle of a ‘missing planet’ scenario.” Hal conjured a massive green bubble around them, and in a blink, they were warping past stars like glitter through water. “I asked the Corps who the best detective was. They said Batman. I said Batman comes with psychological trauma and legal disclaimers. So here we are.”
“You could’ve called!”
“You would’ve said no.”
“Exactly!”
Dick slammed his fist gently against the inside of the bubble. “You know I can’t breathe in space, right?”
“I brought snacks.”
“Not what I meant.”
Thirty minutes later, Dick was crouched on a space station orbiting what used to be a planetary system, holding a cracked alien tablet under a forensic lens while Hal chewed on jerky in the background.
“Okay,” Dick said, running a gloved finger along the symbols. “This isn’t a ‘missing planet.’ It’s a deleted one. The math’s off.”
“The math?”
“The gravitational pull on that moon’s wobble.” He pointed to a slow-rotating chunk of rock barely tethered to a sun. “It’s missing mass that used to stabilize it. Someone didn’t just hide the planet. They rewrote reality.”
Hal blinked. “That… actually helps. I thought the energy signature was off, but I chalked it up to space indigestion.”
Dick gave him a flat look. “You kidnapped me for a hunch?”
“I trusted the hunch. And I trust you.”
“…ugh.”
A few hours and one close encounter with a sentient probability storm later, they floated quietly above a reconstructed hologram of the missing planet.
“You ever think about how weird your life is?” Hal asked.
“I was adopted by Batman at age twelve.”
“Fair.”
There was a long pause.
“Thanks,” Hal said finally.
Dick shrugged. “You owe me tacos.”
“I owe you ten tacos.”
“And a jetpack. In case you do this again.”
“…Noted.”
Dick sighed and leaned back in the bubble, arms crossed, expression grudgingly amused.
“I swear,” he muttered, “I’m going to start charging for grab-and-go detective work.”
“You’d make a killing.”
“I really would.”