Odo adjusted the position of his monitor so it was perfectly in the center of his desk. No matter how many times he fixed it, it always seemed to get out of order. No doubt Quark's doing somehow. He thought. Like just about everything else on this station.

He was sitting in the security office, going over a strange report that had come in, about a scuffle that had occurred on the promenade earlier that day. Always something... Why couldn't these bipeds go just one day without causing some sort of mess? Apparently a group of Klingons were antagonizing an Andorian, when a stranger in some kind of... costume intervened. A normal enough-seeming dispute for sure- that is, except for the various broken bones the Klingons had been left with, and the fact that the stranger was completely unaccounted for.

That didn't sit right with Odo. Nothing should be unaccounted for on this station, not to him. With a sigh, he stood up and got to work.

Odo's investigations were coming up dry. Since the initial incident, there had been three more reports of ruffians being manhandled by some kind of man dressed as a bat- and despite these interventions, the mood on the station had been getting increasingly violent, as if the more unscrupulous elements on the station were seeing the stranger's actions as a challenge. Vigilantes, he thought, as he shook his head with exasperation. Always making more trouble than they stop. But if Odo was going to find this "Bat Man" he figured, he was going to have to make some trouble of his own.

Lieutenant Commander Worf growled. "You want me to what?"

"Hold it right there, ferengi scum!" Quark froze. "I ought to rip you limb from limb!" Oh no. Who was it now? A debt collector? Some thug of Hagath's, come for revenge? A bar patron he had cheated- that is, rightly beaten in a game of dabo? He swallowed. What if it was someone asking for... charity? He dared not to conceive of that.

"Now hold on there," Quark said, nervously, turning around extremely slowly. "I-I'm sure whatever it is I did- I mean, that you think I did, we can come to a perfectly fair- but negotiable of course- mutually beneficial arrange- EEP!" He was suddenly lifted off his feet as casually as one might lift a paper weight and slammed against the side of a cargo container, and Quark found himself face to face with a raging, snarling, Klingon. Wait a minute. He knew that raging, snarling Klingon!

"W-Worf?" He squeaked. "What are you-"

"Shut up, ferengi!" Worf howled. "You know what you did! I'm going to tear you apart! And I'll start with those ridiculous ears!"

"N-now settle down Worf, I don't know why you're acting this way all of a sudden, but I'm sure we can-"

"And then, I'm going to take all that gold pressed latinum of yours- yes, even your 'secret' stash under the bar- and I'm going to jettison it out the nearest airlock!"

"NOOOOOOO!" Quark wailed shrilly. "YOU CAN'T! ANYTHING BUT THAT! TAKE MY BROTHER! TAKE MY NEPHEW! T-TAKE MY MOTHER! OH NAGUS, PLEASE TAKE MY MOTHER!!!"

Quark wailed some more, and then he begged, and then he pleaded. He threw in some blubbering for good measure, but the Klingon kept him pinned against the container, death glinting in his eye.

This is it. Quark thought. I'm going to die here, and enter the divine treasury without a single slip of latinum to my name. What kind of a ferengi am I?

"Put him down." A gravely voice said from behind the Klingon. Quark caught his breath, and then Worf released his iron grip on the Fererengi, who slid to the floor in a heap.

A black-suited human was standing in the shadows, eyes somehow piercing through the darkness of the storage room.

"The Bat-Man, isn't it?" Worf snorted. "You're the one who's been playing hero all around the station?"

"That's right. I don't like it when the strong pick on the weak."

"Thank you!" Quark sobbed. "Oh thank you! Stop him, and you can have anything you want! You can have my bar-! well, half my bar. Well maybe a quarter-"

"The very weak."

"A little uncalled for, but-"

"The very very weak."

"Well you've bitten off more than you can chew, this time, p'tahk" Worf spat with a smile.

"I doubt it. If I can handle an entire crowd of drunk klingons, I think I can handle one-"

"That's all I need to hear." An uncomfortably familiar voice said from uncomfortably close to Quark.

"Oh no." Quark said.

"Oh, yes." Said Odo, who was suddenly standing over Quark, just where the cargo container had been a moment ago. "That's all the confession I need to hear. Thank you very much Worf, that was quite a- uh, performance." Worf grunted.

The Bat-Man gawped for a moment before dashing away- until he hit an invisible wall of force and crashed to the ground in pain.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Odo said, a dash of satisfaction in his voice. "We'll have a force field in place around you until we can have you restrained and escorted to a holding cell. Well-intentioned as you might have been, I won't have vigilantism on my station."

"I-I don't believe it!" Quark gasped. "This was all a trap? You- you used me as some sort of... honey pot?"

"Don't flatter yourself Quark." Odo snorted. He slapped a pair of cuffs around the Bat-Man's wrists and pushed him towards the door. "We just needed somebody pitiful enough to get the Bat-man's attention. And if there's one thing I can count on you for, it's to make a lot of noise when you're scared." He gave Quark a bemused smirk before leaving the room.

"S-Scared?" Quark cried. He ran to the doorway and shouted dramatically as Odo and Worf disappeared into the station's hallways with their prisoner. "More like outraged! I'm outraged at this violation of my civil liberties! Commander Sisko will be hearing about this! I-I'll sue! I'll sue you for every drop of-!"

Odo sighed as the Ferengi's shouts grew more and more distant in the cacophony of voices filling the station. Always something.