Burden of Engagement

[Vars]

Lady Bat (Female Batman) and Jason Todd RP.

I will make this pretty later, maybe? Px

Story
Start with the red hood movie and just kinda move on from there.

@omnibee13

 

[Vars]

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Bosnia

A torn Robin slowly awoke into consciousness in a cold, mostly empty warehouse, only to be knocked in the face with a crowbar and tossed a few feet from the impact. The teen couldn't help but cough, blood beginning to pool in his mouth. His hands and feet were tied, his outfit and cape in tatters while the Joker grinned from above.

"Wow. That looked like it really hurt."

But the green haired and powdered white face of the villian didn't end his assault there. He continued to hit the boy wonder. In the ribs, in the gut, every hit making contact and creating an unseemingly squelsh of Robin's insides, following along with his groans and grunts while he tried to resist calling out from the sustained torment.

"Whoa, now, hang on. That looked like it hurt a lot more," the Joker continued, his voice eerily calm after displacing the teen from his last hit. The boy was now on his back, swallowing back more blood.

"So, let's try and clear this up, ok pumpkin?" Joker peered down at the bloodied boy, giving him an uncharasteric rest while he tapped the crowbar in an open palm. "What hurts more?"

The purple-suited psychotic raised the bar over his right shoulder, "A?" and came down hard on Robin, who immediately coughed out yet more blood at the impact, turning on his side.
"Or B?" Joker continued, slamming the crowbar down from his left shoulder.

"Forehand?" the abuser hit Robin yet again from over his right shoulder, "Or Backhand?" and again the ugly schlup of Robin's insides being pounded was heard.

Robin had turned on his stomach, attempting in vain to protect himself while the man with the greased-back green hair took a moment to cackle to himself. The boy wonder caught his breath as much as he was able and turned his face on the cold floor, trying to mutter some words to his attacker, but they came out as unrecognizeable.

This was a fact Joker caught on to immediately, and mocked. The man came down to Robin's face, sticking his tongue out as he made raspberry sounds to immitate the tattered teen below him. "A little louder, lamb chop!" he loudly whispered, grabbing Robin's jet black hair and pushing his head down onto the tiles. "I think you may have a collapsed lung."

Joker grinned, pleased with himself as he forcefully pet the boy's hair. "That always impedes the oratory."

Jason grunted, pushing his head up against Joker's gloved hand and spitting blood onto the painted face of his abuser. Joker, in turn, shoved Robin's head back down into the floor with a grimace and stood back up, grabbing a cloth from inside his blazer. "Now that was rude."

He patted the cloth to his cheek, delicately trying to dab the blood away without blemishing his make-up. "The first boy blunder had some manners."

Jason only glared at the Joker in response, forcing an open-lipped smile to show off his bloodied mouth. Robin may not be in the best situation now, he may be in pain and tied up, but he knew Lady Bat would come for him, and anything to put this psycho in his place was a victory. His act of defiance was a small, silver lining amongst his current situational sea of shit.

Joker's brows raised in disappointment at the sight of the boy's reaction. "I suppose I'm going to have to teach you a lesson so you can better follow in his footsteps..."
He then squinted one eye and readjusted his sholders, dropping the fatherly act. "Nah! I'm just gonna keep beating you with this crowbar!" That was by far more entertaining to him, and he lifted the bar yet again to slam down on the boy, cracking the smile right off the boy's face with yet another exciting schlup.

The next schlups were right into the boy's obliques, a heeled shoe pressing between Robin's shoudler blades to keep him from trying to futily crawl away or go into a fetal position. Jason closed his eyes and tried to brace against every hit as the older man devolved into yet another one of his cackle fits. He knew Lady Bat would come for him. He knew. But... He was still beginning to lose hope. And just when Jason was sure he'd pass out, Joker stopped, tossing the crowbar to the far end of the warehouse with a loud metallic clatter and picking up a large fur coat from a nearby box.

"Okay kiddo, I gotta go," he said, suddenly bored. He walked toward the door and straightened his tie as he continued, "It's been fun though, right?"
Opening the door and turning back, he took in the sight of the tortured Robin laying on the floor, admiring his handiwork.

"Well, maybe a smidge more fun for me than you," he said, slightly disappointed that the boy wonder didn't have any smart retort as he slipped his arms through the sleeves of his overcoat. "I'm just guessing. Since you're being awful quiet."
He straightened his coat while he continued to talk to his captive audience. "Aaaanyway... Be a good boy. Finish your homework and be in bed by nine."

He pointed to the half-dead bloodied boy on the floor, coming up with yet more to to proclaim. "And hey! Please tell the big Lady I said... Hello." The renouned grin spread across his red-painted lips once again. He flipped the furred hood over his head, his voice implying there was yet more to come.
This was further proven by the round of laughter he emitted following his statement as he walked out into the snowstorm, slamming the metal door behind him.

Once Jason was left alone, he breathed a sigh of relief. It was over.
Finally.
He could rest.


But wait.
No.


He had to use this time to his advantage.
Who know knew how far out Lady Bat was, how soon Joker was coming back.

He grit his teeth and summoned up all his energy and began inching his way to the door, all his twisted limbs and schlupped insides protesting at every movement.
No longer having to hide his pain, his groans, grunts, and yelps were freely given, reverberating off the metal walls of the structure. It felt like hours, but in reality was merely minutes before he reached the door, stretching his shakey tied hands to pull at the knob, only to find it locked from the outside.
Of course.

He sighed in defeat, sitting up against the door. Even if he could have gone out, he would have frozen to death anyway. He'd just have to hope that Lady Bat would find him before Joker came back. . .

Before Joker . . .

Before . . .

.

.

.

Holding his broken rib, Jason's green eyes meandered to the source of a light digital beeping he'd failed to notice until now.

⁰⁰⠘⁰⁶
⁰⁰⠘⁰⁵
⁰⁰⠘⁰⁴

Jason's green eyes lowered, his postured wilted.
He thought... He thought he'd think something. But now, he thought nothing.
His mind... Surprisingly blank.
He was just...
Sad.

He let out a forlorn breath.
This was it.
This was. . .

⁰⁰⠘⁰³
⁰⁰⠘⁰²
⁰⁰⠘⁰¹

The warehouse exploded, metal bits of the roof scattering in a several foot radius.
The flames were visible for miles among the snowcapped mountain the building had sat.

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Gotham City
Warehouse

Inside an out of use manufacturing plant, several of Gotham's biggest thugs and dealers sat around a table and bickered amongst themselves. Someone had called the global get-together, but none knew just whom. After waiting for some time, one of the men had finally had enough, and got up to leave in a huff.

"Sit down, Freddie," a voice called from one of the scaffolds above. "It's my meeting."
"Who's that?" one of the thugs spoke. "Lady Bat?" another questioned.

"We didn't do nothing!" one dealer proclaimed in hopes of avoiding a possible incoming beatdown.

Everyone turned to look up into the shadows above. Those who had sat at the table even stood to get a better look as the man on the scaffold walked forward to the railing and into the light. He wore motorcycle gear, complete with a modified red helmet, and lifted a rifle up to rest the barrel against his right shoulder.
"Well we all know that's a lie," spoke the man, in answer to the last thug's statement.

"Who the hell is that?" said one thug, finally getting a good look.
"Smoke him!" ordered Freddie, all the people below reaching for their firearms.

The helmeted man, Red Hood, aimed the rifle to the table those below had been huddled around and fired a stream of bullets through the center of it on semi-auto, forcing the dealers to move out of the way.
"I said sit down," Red Hood re-iterated.

"You wanna die?! There's easier ways to kill yourself!" Freddie shouted back.

"Yeah, like yelling at the guy who's holding the AK-47," Red Hood quipped, bringing an armored boot to rest on the lowest rung of the arm railing / safety barrier of the scaffolding he presently occupied.
"Listen to me, you drug-peddling scumbags," he continued, his left forearm also resting against the highest rung as he bent over the barrier to eye said scumbags below.

"I will be running the drug trade from now on. You eight are the most prosperous street dealers in Gotham. I'm offering you morons a deal.
You go about your business as usual, but kick up forty percent to me. That's a much sweeter deal than the scraps Black Mask is leaving you.

In return, you will have total protection from both Black Mask and Lady Bat."

The dealers looked from Red Hood to eachother in a feigned disbelief.

"But you stay away from kids and school yards," Red Hood went on. "No dealing to children, got it?
If you do, you're dead."

"Okay, crazy man," Freddie was the first to speak up with a smirk. "This is all very generous," he mocked. "But why the hell should we listen to you?"

Anticipating such a question, the masked man from above threw down a duffelbag to the center of the table. Extremely weighted, it landed with a loud thud. Freddie gave a curious look to a female dealer, swallowing, before approaching the smelly and stained vinyl bag and unzipping it while the others at floor level squeezed around to look inside at the reveal.

"Those are the heads of all your lieutenants," Red Hood explained.

One thug muttered a shocked "Damn" while another turned his head and threw up from the sight.

"That took me two hours," the man from above continued, bringing the stock of his rifle into his armpit. "Wanna see what I can get done in a whole evening?" The others wouldn't be able to see it, but he grinned inside his helmet, proud of himself for the accomplishment.
That pride barely lasted for a second, however, as he went right back into his planned monologue.

"Make no mistake," he said, aiming the AK toward the men and women below, oh which there were far more than eight in total. "I'm not asking you to kick in with me."

"I'm telling you."
To hammer the point home, he shot down below, covering the floor in a spray of bullets and forcing the thugs to scatter. The resulting chaos gave him precious seconds to disappear, leaving a light puff of smoke behind him.

"Forty percent works for me," Freddie sighed, looking to one of the others.

Gotham Harbor

"Go, go, go!!" the passenger of a screeching delivery truck screamed to the driver.
"Where's Raymond and Denny?" the driver responded back after pulling a sharp turn, aggravated.

"She got them," the passenger returned, throwing a thumb toward the back of the truck, "just grabbed them up!"
The driver cursed.

"Screw it! Just go! Get us out of here!" a second passenger called out.

The driver responded by speeding out between the piles of shipping containers, trying to lose the Bat inside the maze of them.
"You think I lost her?" he peered into his side mirror as he drove, gas pedal still held to the floor. "I think I lost her," he spoke mostly to himself.
"I think you lost her," one of the passengers confirmed. "I think we're good."
A sigh of relief flooded out of the three of them, the panic subsiding as they went toward the highway to deliver the equipment in the truck.

 

[omnibee13]

There was no such thing as an easy night.

There was no such thing as a quiet, routine night.

This was Gotham. Gotham was the nearest thing to Hell on Earth.. And she had actually been to Hell a time or two.

Still, following close on the bumper of a trailer-truck, Lady Bat couldn't help but think that this wasn't the worst way to spend an evening. If all went well, she'd have the weapon, the flunkies, and given the nature of said flunkies, the name of their boss. There was always a bigger fish. Always a larger quarry. And she was the huntress.

"I think we lost her!"

The idiot was yelling. She was not but a yard or more away from the truck's cab, her cables criss-crossing and weaving with the stacks and stacks of piled high cargo crates. These weren't professionals.

She twisted in the air, swinging her legs forward, pitching her body airborn. Gloved hands left their cables, and for a moment, she flew. She hated Clark. Hated him.. Loved him, but despised the fact he flew. In the air, there was no noise. There was no blood. There wasn't a truck full of half-cocked ex-cons and petty criminals speeding down wet asphalt like they weren't transporting a weapon that made nuclear warheads look like cheap AK's…

But, inevitably, she fell.

"I think we're good."

Lady Bat hit the hood like a ton of bricks, white eyes glaring beneath a black cowl. Her cape was heavy, kevlar. It fell around her shoulders and helped keep her firm on the hood.

"No," she hissed, her voice a dry sand-paper wrasp across steel wool. "You're really not."

The shock left one of them quickly. He aimed a gun. She hated guns. She had learned to hate guns. And he fired, because of course, that's all men with guns did when they had them. But Lady Bat was too quick. She was up, and over, powerful thighs propelling her over the cab, onto the roof, rolling and sliding as the three on the inside got faces full of broken windsheild glass for their trouble. With her left hand, she found purchase on the roof of the trailer, keeping her from sliding off the back, and with her right, she threw an armful of sharp, tiring shredding BatBarbs. They glittered on the wet asphalt ahead of the truck like black diamonds, and she knew she had precious little time to execute her next move.

Deep breaths. Even breaths. No sound. All calm. No feeling. All focus.

She pulled herself forward. She was back on the roof of the cab.

The truck hit the barbs. The tires shredded like wet paper. Sparks. Burning rubber. Hot metal.

The truck pitched left and right. Lady Bat stayed upright. She moved. She got to the side of the cab.

Break the window.

Done.

Grab the gunman. He was too itchy, too skittesh. He'd shoot again.

Her leather covered fingers found a hank of dark, greasy hair, and she pulled. He came out easily, but screaming.

The driver pitched the truck, over-compensating that wheel, and she leapt. The gunman gave little struggle. A rabbit punch to the base of the skull on extraction stunned him. She was heavy with him, weighed down. He hit the top of a cargo crate heavy, laid still. He wouldn't be an issue much longer, and he was easily bound.

Lady Bat straightened, watched the truck tilt on two wheels and crash. The back of the trailer burst open and IT fell out.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Lady Bat raced towards the truck, hoping to apprehend the two inside, if they weren't too injured to not be worth the effort. The paralyzed or the dead didn't need to be restrained. But if they put up a fight, that ruined her timing. She had a few minutes, a few precious minutes, maybe less, to get the metal, beeping crate that tumbled out of the back of the trailer secured.

Her boots hammered the roofs of the crates as she made her way to the truck. It was useless now, totaled. She slowed when she watched the two remaining perps stirring in the cab. Slipping down like a shadow and across, it was only a few strides to stand in front of the shattered cab.

The driver reached for the gun. Her heel may have ground a little too easily into the back of his hand. He cried out, pulled it back as she lifted her weight from it.

Lady Bat was no small creature, no delicate pixie. She was five foot ten, six with heels. Lean, ropey muscle across her frame, a shelf of breasts across her chest, and a long, cold neck, covered with a mantle, a cape, a cowl.. Witnesses called her a wraith. A demonic, wretched angel of the night.

Criminals usually called her a bitch.

Two hands grabbed him by the collar, drug him from the wreck. And slammed him hard against the ruined, dented trailer roof with a calamity. He was taller than she, but she was able to hold him aloft, albeit with the help of the roof as leverage, a counter force to her own impressive strength.

"Who are you working for?" She demanded.

The man wasn't much of a man. She didn't think that to be sexist, either; he was a boy. Maybe Dick's age. Maybe.

"N-Nobody!" He stammered. His nose was running. He'd start crying soon. Lady Bat sneered. "Listen, we just boosted the truck, and--"

Lady Bat slammed him into the roof, once.

"Lie to be again," she hissed. "And crashing into a wall, head first, will be the least painful activity of your evening."

"No!" He yelled. "I swear t--"

A beeping cut across the cold silence of the harbor. The perps brown eyes left Lady Bat's face for the first time, over her shoulder, over to the technical crate that lay, forgotten by him, well behind the wreck of the truck.

Lady Bat looked too, feeling a kind of icy weight settle into her gut.

Too long. She thought she had more time..

Red lights flashed in time with the beeping on the crate. A glowing green dial spun on its own, probably damaged by the fall from the back of the truck. Air was shot out from the creases and cracks with a pneumatic hiss and snap. The box opened up, sliding two sides away to reveal a humanoid shape. The creature seemed to inflate, folded over its knees..

Slowly, it raised its sickly orange head, and leveled glowing red eyes at the wreck. Lady Bat worked quickly, cuffing the two, driver and passenger, to the crossbar of the cab.

"What is that?!" The driver asked, blinking, in shock.

"Your cargo," Lady Bat said, her voice dripping with unhidden disdain. The creature rose. It was bigger than a man, probably more than head and shoulders taller than Clark.. When it stepped from the crate, the ground seemed to shake..

"It's called "Amazo,"" Lady Bat explained, her lip curling in involuntary disgust. She had fought the thing before. It wasn't easy. It was the biggest pain in the League's ass in some time.

"What the hell is an Amazo?!" The driver asked, pulling at his arms, trying to get free, trying to put distance between him and the imposing creature that stared, coldly, at the three of them.

"A highly advanced cybernetic android, equipped with the ability to absorb the power of super-humans," she said, eyes narrowing at the android.

Deep breaths. In and out. All focus.

"What kinda super-humans?" The driver asked, surely afraid.

Idiot, she wanted to nap. Short-sighted, petty idiot. You brought this thing into Gotham..

Amazo made a cudgel from his hands, and brought it down with a great roar into the asphalt. The shock of the impact alone sent a fissure down the alley towards the wrecked cab. Lady Bet leapt, missing the impact of the shockwave. The wreck jumped a little, and the two morons she captured yelped with fear as they bounced along with it.

Crouched on the wrecked hood of the cab, Lady Bat glared down the way at Amazo.

"Big ones."

Lady Bat had planned her moves in a few split seconds. She jumped down, ran towards Amazo, the uneven asphalt not hindering her movement. She threw a smoke bomb, and he caught it. It exploded in his fist, and thick blue smoke spread like dye in water, enveloping her, enveloping him. She burst through the smoke and caught him in his elongated chin with her knee. She propelled herself over him, landing a two-handed blow down on his head from above. She landed, went to throw another punch.

He caught her wrist.

It felt crushed.

She ignored it.

He pulled her off balance, flung her like a rag doll, swinging her around. He threw her up, maybe five feet or more off the ground, and reared back for a punch. Lady Bat crossed her arms over her chest, making an X to try to block the force of the blow, disperse the energy of the hit across a large surface that didn't consist of her chest.

It didn't work very well.

Amazo hit her so hard, she flew backwards more than 20 feet, and slaming her hard into the side of a cargo crate. The dent in the shape of her torso wasn't deep enough to keep her aloft, and she fell onto her hands and knees with a grunt.

Hands and knees.

She was not this weak. She'd not be beaten by a machine.

"Packs quite the punch for a toaster on sterioids, huh?"

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Lady Bat didn't want to look up. She recognized that voice, that devil-may-care jaunty tone.

Ugh.

But she did look up and she saw him. Her first boy. A living representation of her folly, dressed in black and blue. He smiled too much. This was a game to him. Fun, laughing games.. This was her life. This was death, too.

Nightwing smiled down at his mother, his fists on his hips, like his hero Superman. He gestured with his right.

"Need a hand?"

Lady Bat gave him a cold look.

"No."

All the warmth of a step-mother with none of the evil chores and scheming.

Lady Bat turned from him and ran, towards Amazo. Facing her eldest child was less appealing than facing an android they only every took down with the help of Clark and Diana.

Nightwing deflated like a balloon, his shoulders slumping.

"Okay, well.. How about I just stick around and watch?" He grumped, before jumping down to follow the older woman. He flipped, glided, a graceful acrobat.

Amazo lifted a three ton cargo crate over his head like a child hoisting a toy, and launched it, head-long, at the pair of them. Lady Bat ran under it. Nightwing backflipped over it, and then off of it, capitalizing on its kinetic energy and his.

Nightwing was her first boy. Her first Robin. The salve she used to soothe her aching womb. And in exchange, all knew heartache.

Nightwing reached into his utility cuff, pulled out a pair of brass knuckles. As Lady Bat distracted him, diving out of the way of another thrown cargo crate, Nightwing landed a drop kick to Amazo's trunk. He rebounded off him, twisted on the ground, launched himself at the Android again, and landed a slicing blow to the side of his face. Some of Amazo's syntheskin was torn off.

It was a dance they knew. Mother and child always knew each other. Lady Bat landed a counter blow, and together with Nightwing, the pair seized him with grappling hooks, propelled themselves at him to hit him all at once. They landed together on a higher stack of cargo crates, Lady Bat twisting before impact to throw two batarangs at Amazo. He swatted them away like flies.

"I think you'll have to do better than that, Boss," Nightwing said, incredulous.

"I did," she replied, dryly.

A surviving batarang swung back towards Amazo, catching and imbeding him in the lower calf. He looked at it, pissed. It blew, a fire ball that engulfed him whole. Nightwing and Lady Bat ran along the row of crates, away from the android with a quickness.

"Will that be enough to stop him?" Nightwing asked.

"It'll slow him down," she replied, no longer disguising her voice.

The crates behind them exploded, flying sky high. Amazo burst from the inferno behind them.

"Think so?" Nightwing quipped. Lady Bat could have smacked him.

"Get to higher ground!" She ordered. She was his mother still.. And the creature on their heels was a hellish nightmare of metal and fire. And it was coming for her and her child.

In tandem, they fired their grappling hooks, finding themselves on the northern suspension bridge headed for Gotham Proper.

"Did you know he could fly?!"

Damn you, Dick, she thought. This wasn't the time to talk. This wasn't the time to get distracted.

She could hear Amazo's lurching form, the grinding of his insides increasing in her ears as he closed in.

"Move!" She barked.

But Nightwing didn't. Amazo had him around the waist, took off with him. All manner of gruesome possibilities raced for all of a second through Lady Bat's mind. She silenced it.

She launched a second grappler, the end wrapping around Amazo's leg. Her shoulders popped with the power of being pulled by the creature.

Nightwing yelled something. She could barely hear over the rush of wind in his ears. She understood he was asking for help. Mothers knew.

"He has the same weak points as a human being!" She screamed. Nightwing hit at Amazo, twisting in his grip. He said something, probably something clever, and stabbed two electric prongs into Amazo's elven ears. The electrocution was immediate and the android screamed. It let go of Nightwing, and Lady Bat disengaged her grappler.

… She was flying again. Nightwing controlled his fall to come level with her. She wrapped one arm around his waist. He was bigger than she was, but together they used their weight and motion to deploy a grappler, swing down to the pavement and land in a crouch.

Amazo crashed to earth behind them not a moment later. Clearly enraged, he blasted at them with concentrated energy from his eyes.

Damn you, Clark.

Lady Bat shoved Nightwing out of the way. He tucked and rolled, and she dove after him. Staying low to the ground, making their targets very small, Nightwing seemed to panic.

"Lasers, he's got lasers!" He shouted. Not for the first time, nor last, Lady Bat wanted to smack him. A chatty child. A difficult, mouthy boy.. Not the only one..

Nightwing got up, went to move. Lady Bat cut away from him. Amazo focused on Nightwing, trying to slice him with his lasers. Nightwing flipped and twisted away, but Amazo closed the distance between them, loomed over him.

Lady Bat, behind him, threw herself onto his back, and slammed two fists down, around his head, covering his eyes with thick, black mush.

Lady Bat flipped off of him and ran to Nightwing, as Amazo struggled to pull the putty off, staggering.

"I don't think putty in his eyes is going to hurt him.." Nightwing snarked. Lady Bat looked at him, over one shoulder. Her eyes, hidden behind her mask, were cold and narrow. Wordlessly, she pulled out a small, pen-trigger, and pressed it with her thumb.

Still glaring at Dick, Lady Bat didn't flinch as the plastique sparked to life. Amazo pulled at it, gritting his teeth, but it exploded, more concentrated than the previous batarang. Amazo was left destroyed, and pitched forward like a stiff corpse, hitting the concrete and splattering black oil out of the stump of his ruined neck.

"But plastique will!" Nightwing said, easily impressed. "Nice!"

"You're a child," Lady Bat said, turning away from the burning corpse of the android, and headed back towards her two bound suspects at the wreck.

"Hey!" Nightwing said, following.

He helped her toss the three prisoners towards a cargo crate, hands cuffed behind their backs. The driver was still shaken, while the gunman still seemed dazed. All three needed medical attention from the wreck. St. Judas could have them when she was finished with them, however.

"This shipment was meant for The Black Mask," she said, disgust oozing from her lips. Black Mask would try to get a weapon of mass destruction like Amazo. Likely fancied himself a criminal on par with Luthor. "I highly doubt you three degenerate fools are behind this. I'll ask again: who do you work for?"

The driver spoke up. He was eager.

"I swear, we're not working for anybody! This is our gig, all our idea!" He said, looking to the other two for back up. Lady Bat's white eyes narrowed. She looked to Nightwing.

" . . . Go on."

Nightwing smirked and thumbed a small remote. The corpse of Amazo, harnessed on a simple, braided metal cable, free-fell down over the three men. Nightwing stopped it a foot or more from their heads, the stump puking more black oil.

"I'll talk, I'll talk!" He shrieked. "Just stop! Staahp!"

Lady Bat walked up to him, slowly, cape trailing and heels clicking. Nightwing thumbed the switch to raise Amazo's two ton corpse, and he approached as well. Lady Bat loomed over the three men, a shadow made real. One, long-nailed glove found its way to her hip, her black painted lips curling with unhidden, cool anger.

"Well?"

"We're working for the Red Hood," the driver said, pitifully. "We don't have any choice!" As if that made a difference. "He's got a--"

His chest exploded, first inward, then outward. Lady Bat blinked, shocked for a moment. It was a short moment, and time seemed to slow after the first. Shot. The driver's eyes went wide, but then rolled up in his head, his mouth open and slack. He slumped forward. The other two men also yelled out in pain and slumped, their chests seeming to combust outward from within.

She and Nightwing ran, taking quick cover.

"The shots came from the skyline! A sniper!" Nightwing yelled. "A good one."

Lady Bat stepped out from her cover, pulling high powered binoculars from her cape. She zoomed in, the glittering Gotham skyline a lie. The city was filthy. Zooming in, she saw the figure of a man, far across the bay, on a skyscraper. The resolution was poor, he was so far away, but she could make out his shape, and the fact he held a rifle. He was fleeing..

"See him?" Nightwing asked, unable to keep quiet.

Lady Bat gave a curt nod and put her binoculars back into her cape. She pulled out a fob and thumbed it. Over heard, roared the Batwing, lowering a cable down to her using its onboard computer. She shot up like a ghost, having wrapped her hand around the cable.

The satellite had pinpointed the suspect through his image on her binoculars. It communicated with the Batwing's onboard computer, and zeroed in on his heat signature. A thousand CC cameras went offline and switched to the BATi satellite system. He couldn't hide.. Not with the Batwing zooming across the black water of the bat, deep into the heart of the Dark City..

Lady Bat was the huntress.

 

[Vars]

The Red Hood was far, far from an idiot. He had placed tracers and mini transmitters on his three stooges. He was mildly impressed they got as far as they did in the mission to steal Amazo away from Black Hood's men, even moreso with how long it took for Lady Bat to make her appearance. He had to admit Amazo getting loose wasn't a guarantee, but he'd made proper countermeasures in case it didn't happen. And once the Bat finally settled the score with the robot, he was able to set up his long-range sniper rifle on the proper building.

From the proper angle.
From the proper distance.

Everything must be proper.
For, everything was planned.

He'd gone through a considerable amount of it, planning. Watching the city. Gaining his bearings. Writing down strategies among strategies, scripts among scripts. If actions went one way, he pulled out the new scenario files, and on and on. He was Destiny, he pulled Fate's strings. And while he knew what was to come and how to resolve it, he still had to convince himself to not get too ahead of himself. Not get too cocky.
Because you never knew what you didn't know.
But you can relish in what you do.

"We're working for the Red Hood," the driver said.

And that was his cue. He squeezed the trigger, fired. Readjusted. Squeezed again. Breath, readjust, squeeze, fire. That was all three, all in a pretty line. He knew they'd give him up, he had wanted them to say his name, but not reveal too much more. Even if they hadn't though, these were the lowest thugs. They deserved to die. And their deaths would play an integral part of the play.

He stood up, making an obvious show of dismantling his rifle, grabbing his gun case ad fleeing. But not too fast. Just the perfect speed. Had to make sure Lady Bat's binoculars got a lock on him, making sure the batwing got his heat signature. He smirked quickly under his helmet at Nightwing's remark that he was a good sniper - of course he was. Better than Dick ever would be, that was for sure.

And then, once he'd exited the rooftop, once he'd heard the batwing take flight, he dropped his baggage and made a show of running in the streets, giving the batwing some time to catch up to him before he hopped into his getaway car and shoved off, speeding along the busy streets, going between cars and against oncoming traffic. Sure, he could die right here, but what was death anyway? It was the chase that was exhilarating. Leading Lady Bat on on such a short leash, he was ready to give her the worst cunt block of her life.

Because he knew. He knew... Ever since he'd come back and found at that she hadn't done anything. Had done nothing with the man who'd ruined so many lies. He was full of rage. He'd make her pay. He didn't understand her thought process, how she cared so little. But now he'd devised it all, everything, every single possible outcome, everything that led to the big reveal, and playing Black Mask, he'd have it all. All of it.
He'd fuck with their heads like his head had been fucked. He'd bring them down with him just like he'd been brought down. But emotionally. Tragically.
And Visceral. Retributive.

Revenge wasn't the right word.

As if on cue, half-way through the sharp turns and the death race, the batwing released it's grapple hook into the car's roof, it's metallic shink and hook into the material ringing above the loud whooshing of the wind and squealing of brakes across the highway. Like a fish, Red Hood continued to try and pull away, continue on his route and pull out that line, loose it, lose it, pull at it to make the game more fascinating, real, and risky. Death was nothing to him, he'd dealt with it once before and now there was no need to be afraid.

But the batwing reared up and pulled back, demanding Red Hood's car stop and begin to take flight. The front axle started to lift and the driver was losing momentum. He knew this was a possibility however, and that's why he'd picked this particular car. With a practiced precision, he unclipped all the clasps above the windshield and the convertible's top released into the air, leaving the Batwing with a false catch and bringing the car's wheels back to the street so he could make his final few blocks to the planned destination.

He drove his car straight through one of the metal delivery doors of the old Gotham Chemical Plant, running full speed into a vat, making sure his oil tank blew, billowing out the flammable liquid among the still-filled cylinders of hazmat. The cylinder he'd collided with had also weakened its wall, the well of acrid chemicals beginning to leak among the car and mix with its oil.

Red Hood of course had jumped from the vehicle at a key moment, running to his hidden perch and waiting for the lovely Lady to make an appearance. And when she finally did, he'd quietly walk out on a higher gangway, overlooking the spot Lady Bat stood. The same spot where the railing had been replaced from an incident so many years ago. The first incident. the Key incident.

He knew the memories would be flowing through her head. They always did. She probably had some sort of PTSD even with how often she rehashed her old vigilante memories. Maybe playing them over in her head constantly helped her, like playing back videos of football plays to see how to improve. But you could always see it in her eyes when she did it. It was that judgment, yes, that analyzing of what to improve upon, sure. But mostly it was critiquing herself. Recounting her failures. It was a thing he counted on. He let her reminisce, let her remember, before he made his presence known.

He lifted his arm and pointed his pistol at her.
"Hard to forget that night, huh?"

He tapped the safety off with his thumb. He didn't want to shoot her, but he would if he had to, if she didn't play her proper role on the stage.
"In a way, Lady Bat, this was the site of your first great failure."
He drew the hammer back. He knew she'd let him talk.

She always let them talk.

"Maybe your greatest. But certainly not your last, right?"
Definitely not your last.
There were oh so many more...

He let the statement hang for a moment.
Ah, memories..." he relished in his own. He wasn't there for this particular one, but he knew all about it.
Who couldn't?

He turned his aim to his car and shot the rear bumper, the ricochet causing a spark the ignite the oil and hazmat combination, which in turn caused a small, precursor explosion.

Red Hood turned and ran at his chance. Just seconds later would be a much larger explosion. He'd been researching this one for weeks. He couldn't let himself accidentally become injured in one of the first steps to pissing off the big bad Bat Lady, now could he?

The following explosion would encapsulate the whole building.

 

[omnibee13]

The chase had put way too many lives in danger. The Batwing was not usually a vehicle utilized for chases when the other party was in a car. Gotham was built too close, too many Gothic skyscrapers that had ledges and gargoyles perfect for scaling but utter, utter shit at flying through. A quick escape, maybe, but a full fledged one on one car chase?

Hardly.

Still, Lady Bat was a dog with a bone. She had him dead to rights.. He had killed three petty criminals, and as much as she held the three in disdain for their crimes, she abhorred murderers. She loathed guns. A sniper was her antithesis.

And he gave her a run for her money, certainly. It was almost impressive.

Almost.

He was good. Too good. The release of the convertible roof was a slick move. She wasn't dealing with an idiot. He had done this before. But, still, as she piloted the Batwing behind the car, it weaving in and out of traffic, she ran through her rogues gallery in her mind. Lady Bat, to the best of her considerably and impressive knowledge, couldn't match his MO to anyone she knew of. Which, in her mind, meant that he came from out of town..

Some Metropolis or Bludhaven scumbag come to her filthy little city to make it all the more hellish.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

She caught herself gasping sharply, though quietly, when the car veered off. It lost control. For a split second, she thought he'd kill a civilian, a bystander.. But instead, it ran into the wall of the Gotham Chemical Processing Plant. If he hadn't been killed on impact, she thought, switching the Batwing from manual to automatic, and ejecting herself from it, plummeting in a controlled fall, bracing for the crash through the glass skylights of the plant and onto a catwalk, high above the bubbling vats of toxic waste, he'd be killed by running into one of said toxic vats..

It was eerily silent in the plant. The bubbling vats sounded like witches cauldrens. Lady Bat scanned the area, took stock of it. The car was crashed into a far vat, the impact cracking the thick, concrete and metal structure, orange, steaming muck leaking out from around the car's hood. The car itself was smoking, totaled out, and unoccupied. She figured the plant had all of five minutes before the heat from the wreck ignite the chemicals. The fact it didn't burst into flames on impact was a pretty good sign in her book.. Maybe she'd get lucky for the first time this terrible evening.

Lady Bat scanned the walk-ways, looking for her suspect. Instead, she found herself thinking about the last time she was in the plant, and just what could happen to the sniper if he had fallen into one of the vats. Death was one thing. Temporary agony. There were worse things than death...

Ages ago.. she wasn't sure the years exactly. Early on in this prolonged, self-imposed nightmare of nocturnal activities.. He had been a low level crook, trying to capitalize on the recent vogue of masked or themed super villains. A white male in a red, domed helmet, red cape, tuxedo suit. He was a coward, backing away from her, money packed into his pockets from a recent heist. Lady Bat stalked towards him, and he was afraid.. She had subdued his hired guns and muscle, by herself. This was years before Robin.. She was alone. He was skinny, gangley.

"It was a set-up!" He babbled. He was backing away from her. He reached out blindly for the railing, grasped it with a white gloved hand. "I'm not a crook, I swear!" It all happened so fast from there. He tried to lift the bell-jar of a helmet off his shoulders, taking his hand off the railing. He pulled. His heel caught the hem of his cape, threw him off balance. He was already pitching over the edge of the railing by the time Lady Bat realized he was falling. She lunged forward, hand out to grab him, to save him. But he fell.. She'd never forget his scream, she'd never forget seeing just the playing cards, his stupid gimmick, floating to the top of the scalding, molten muck below her.

Joker.

A monster she made. A monster who she couldn't kill.. She'd raised more demons than she could put down..

That was years ago. The railing had been replaced. It was bright, while the rest was dull, rusted..

Lady Bat caught his movement out of the corner of her eye, the sniper standing on a walk-way a level up. Taller. Stockily built. Solid. Age unknown. Race indeterminant. He wore a full-head red helmet.

He leveled a gun at her. Not for the first time, she found herself at the end of a gun..

"Hard to forget that night, huh?"

He knew her. This wasn't some random, Bludhaven gangbanger. She was silent, watching him with opaque white eyes, her cloak around her shoulders, shrouding her. He'd talk himself into a corner.. They'd monologue. They always monologued.

"In a way, Lady Bat, this was the site of your first great failure."

Ooh, conversational little bastard.

Little bastard.

Lady Bat was impassive, unreadable. Let him talk.. Watch the gun.. Memorize his voice..

"Maybe your greatest. But certainly not your last, right?"

Now her eyes narrowed. Black lips pulled down slightly at the corners. He knew her.. How could he know her? Who the hell KNEW her..?

She took a small inhale, waiting. Waiting...

"Ah, memories~" He said, seeming to properly aim that gun now, and not just brandish it.

Shoot me, she thought, her eyes white slits. Shoot me, you cowardly son of a b--

He adjusted his aim and fired. She didn't flinch. She heard the sharp tink of metal on metal and then the roar as the inferno found life. She didn't have to look. He had shot the car. It had caused enough of a spark to ignite the chemical, pooled around the car at the bottom level.

The vat nearest her erupted like a volcano, belching up white hot fire all the way to the ceiling. Lady Bat shielded herself with her cape, a glob of molten muck hitting her shoulder, almost burning through. The heat made her grit her teeth.

The sniper was gone. He had fled. He had left her to burn.

... In a pig's eye, she thought, firing her grappler at the ceiling and shooting herself up onto the level the sniper had stood on. He was running. She gave chase.

A second explosion rocked the plant, hard enough to send the mangled wreck of the car blasting up into the catwalk like a rocket. Lady Bat pitched backwards, no longer firm surface beneath her boots. The walkway collapsed beneath her, and she fell.

A vat was beneath her.

Like instinct, she fired a second grappler, it embedded itself in the ceiling. Swinging and twisting, she found her self inches above the chemical. The heat burned her lungs. Her heels slid across the surface. It melted the rubber of her heels, sloughed it off..

Lady Bat was propelled upwards, just as a piece of flaming car hit the vat. Hot on her ass was yet another explosion. The concussion took her breath away, blasted her up and out of the plant. For a moment, she knew not where she was, or where she'd land.

The concrete was almost a welcome surprise. She rolled, a ragdoll, as debris fell around her.

The plant went up like a keg of dynamite. It glowed orange in the navy Gotham night and Lady Bat found herself watching it as she caught her breath.

Her greatest failure. Not her last.

... Her heart felt like ice, a contrast to the burning heat that radiated from the burning plant, acrid smoke shooting into the sky.

God, she thought. What else have I done?

 

[Vars]

Some Time Later

"He did what? WHAT?!"
Blackmask's voice rung out crystal clear, a poster example of frustration.
"Do you idiots know how many bidders I had on Amazo? A list of puppet dictators and psychos as long as my arm! Millions shot right to hell! And whose money is that?!"

"Your money," a monotonous female voice answered, light scratching of a pen on paper following.

"My money! Mine!" Blackmask turned in his chair, the leather squeaking at the movement.

"This score was a game changer," he began to rant, standing up and pacing. "Amazo was going to buy my way up into high-end international trafficking. Now I'm forced to keep rooting around in this local leg-breaking garbage!
And he gives me bat trouble. Who blows the damn robot's head off!"

Blackmask paused before relenting, "I could have at least sold it for scrap, but Lady Bat kept it."

"Yes, Lady Bat likes to keep things," the monotonous voice answered again.

There was an uncomfortable silence in the room. There were more than just the two people in the office, but their presence went audibly unknown.
"Look, this circus act, this Red Foot--" Blackmask began, his voice calm.

The monotonous woman interrupted to correct him: "Red Hood."

"-- whatever," Blackmask went on. "He's dead. Take care of him."

The silence returned briefly before two footsteps were heard. "You. New guy," Blackmask called quietly.

"Sir!" the new guy answered, a nervous queek in his voice.

"Don't be nervous, kid," Blackmask stated as he walked closer to the other. "But if you keep staring at me like that, I'm gonna cut your eyes out."
Another few moments of that familiar uncomfortable silence were heard before a thwap and a gasp. Evidently, Blackmask had punched someone. Probably New Guy.

Even so, Blackmask continued in his calm and quiet voice, headed back to his chair. "Give me the specs on tonight's shipment."

"Yes sir," New Guy answered. His voice was young and shakey from being hit, but he still persisted. "It's ten cases of assorted SMGs and PDWs, along with five thousand .45 caliber ACP rounds - your personal favorite - and two cases of RPGs.
It's all bought and paid for, so this is strictly a delivery, not a buy.
In view of recent events, I've taken the liberty of doubling security and switching the drop spot."

Finally, the important information. The things Red Hood had tapped into Lady Bat's covert audio bugs for. Of course she had bugged Blackmask's office. And Red Hood, well... Why bother planting his own when he could tap into the Bat's frequency? Saved him some trouble, and made sure he and his Lady friend would be on the same page.

He knew she'd gone to Arkham Asylum earlier, especially due to the chemical plant show. While he didn't know what Joker had said specifically, he had some pretty good ideas. The Red Hood smirked beneath his mask as he looked at the radio he'd been listening to.

"Sounds like a plan," he stated, knowing he'd get no reply. No one could hear him up here.
Now his plans, Lady Bat's plans, and Blackmask's were all in alignment.

He couldn't wait for the night to fall once more. His play was well on its way to the third act, a climax he so desperately wanted and yet... Still ached to belay.


When that night finally arrived, it took no effort to secure the guards at the drop site - despite the increased security, they never saw him coming. It was easy enough to tie them all up and set them in big coats. When the helo arrived with the shipment, all they could do was stand and look pretty.
Red Hood, dressed like everyone else of course, hurried into the helicopter as it landed, the pilots yelling over the sound of the blades in their complaints: "Hey! Protocol says I'm only supposed to be on the ground for six minutes."

"It's okay," Red Hood returned with a sneer, pulling a pistol on the two. "I won't be staying that long."

He flicked back the white hood of his jacket with his free hand, making sure to show the pilots his red helmet before kicking them out of the vehicle.
On their way out, they knocked into his formation of carefully placed hostages, downing all of them like dominoes and revealing their encumbers.

Red Hood took the controls of the helo, but made sure to wait on the rooftop a minute longer to give time for the Bat to show. He didn't see her but felt it had been long enough after the precious 60 seconds, so decided to lift off and attempt his flight across the city with his new helo.

 

[omnibee13]

Belinda was home.

As near to home as she'd ever be, anyway. Not the manse above ground, the sprawling country manor that her father built from the skeletal remains of his ancient, familiar home as a wedding present for her mother. The cave was as close to home as she'd ever come to. Basic archaeology told her that it had existed, untouched, for two millennia or more before she stumbled upon it in her youth. Christ walked the Earth, when the cave was half the size it was now, and still home to a hundred thousand bats.

It had gone from being just a home for bats and became her head-quarters.

This wasn't the first Bat-Computer she sat at. And it probably wouldn't be the last. She wondered how long she'd be sitting in front of that eerie blue screen.

Her cowl was off, laying against her shoulders as she worked in the dim privacy of the cave. Black hair was cut into a fashion-forward bob, one that the media tittered on for a good two weeks before they let it go and started talking about who Lex Luthor was dating. Bel had two ice chips for eyes, and a dark, downward pointing frown for a mouth.

Dick was talking.

He had made himself comfortable, certainly.

Alfred and Ace were happy to see him. Few others.

"This bit of intel was what brought me here," he said, gesturing with a thumb drive. Bel's face was impassive. He should use more disposable, less tracable options. But would he listen to her? Noo. "Good thing I've always had perfect timing."

"Hm," Bel hummed, turning to the screen as Dick slipped the drive into an open USB.

A video file started. Bludhaven. Nighttime. The figure from the warehouse was running across the rooftop.

"I got this from a snitch," Dick explained. "He said this guy was making some serious moves."

"The Red Hood," Bel said, eyes narrowing. She turned her attention towards the keyboard, entered a few strokes.

"Might be," Dick said, with a frown. "He bears a resemblance to the original."

Bel paused and rolled her kohl lined eyes. Dick would have no way of knowing. He had been a toddler, surely, when that incident happened. Regardless to that, she kept working, pulling up files and pictures that rolled across the screen.

"Several criminals have utilized this persona," she said, leaning back in her chair. Mostly low level, petty theft, assault, trafficking.

"One of particular interest," Dick said, leaning his weight onto the consol. He looked at his mother. Bel didn't look back. "But he's locked up." When he realized she wouldn't take her attention and place it on him, Dick straightened, his hands on his hips.

"This isn't his MO," Belinda said, folding her hands into a pedestal for her chin, resting it there. "There's been an uptick in heavy trafficking. But." She raised a finger, perfectly manicured under black leather. "Crime is down."

That was a rarity in Gotham. Major news networks had picked up the story and the shining utopia that was Metropolis even ran a story in their Daily Planet rag about how "nice" it was that Gotham could "improve."

"Indeed it is," came the familiar and constant voice of Alfred from behind them. "Lady Belinda has gotten three hours of sleep in the past two days. A true busman's holiday."

He was carrying a tray for coffee. Belinda didn't look at him, her oldest friend. The Red Hood's words were still swirling around in her head.

Her first great failure.

"He is locked up," Dick said, already distracted by coffee. Alfred watched her get up and leave, silent as a ghost, while Dick was preoccupied with coffee. His gaze was disapproving, but not objectionable.

If Dick had anything else to say, Belinda didn't hear it. The Batmobile roared to life and she was in the driver's seat, flipping switches and engaging systems.

Dick yelled something. After more than a decade of being her charge, he still never knew how to behave.. Get in the car. Pay attention to what she was doing. Be aware.

It wasn't that hard.

Jason always managed..



ARKHAM ASYLUM



Hell wasn't as bad as Arkham. It was probably better furnished, sturdier built, with better security, and filled with nicer people. The screaming, moaning voices of the damned, mingled with the stink of urine soaked sheets and stringent antiseptic, over the damp must of rust and decay.. Lady Bat was in Hell, with Nightwing, and her oldest, most violent of all rogues. She had seen the man calmly gouge a hostage's eye with an hors d'ourve fork, cackling the whole time. She had heard him talk about what he'd do to her, once he got her all to himself.. In a way, the thing that got him put away, all those years ago, was the nearest he had ever come to breaking her, without ever laying a hand on her at all.. He just broke a different, little body..

He was a man. Middle-aged. Features underneath the pale visage unknown, and the shock rendering him more than simply insane, unable or unwilling to say who he was before the chemical bath.

His eyes were yellow. The chemicals had left his eyesight, but damaged the sclera so violently, she was surprised he still had eyes. And those eyes looked her up and down, visceral and predatory.

"You look good," he sneered. "Been working out?"

He was goading her. She didn't blink.

"You could probably use a little sun," he went on, leaning forward in his chains. If the Joker tried anything, he'd be killed on the spot. Lady Bat wasn't sure if she wanted him to try or not.. If a quick, sterile death was worthy of him. "Then again, who am I to talk?" The Joker pitched forward and back, laughing like a hyena. Nightwing looked at her, frowning. The words were loaded. He had heard people call the woman he privately referred to as "mother" far more despicable things than what the Joker had ever dared, and yet, hearing him talk about how good she looked made his skin crawl. If it did the same to her, she wasn't letting on..

She slid a picture across the table at him. A Red Hood still.

"He's calling himself The Red Hood," she hissed. Joker looked at the picture. "What do you know about it?"

"That he has horrible taste," the Joker replied. "When I wore that number it was classy. More flashy maître de than motorcycle fetish. Those were the days.." Ah, to reminisce..

Nightwing leaned forward, pointing a finger in Joker's face. Lady Bat almost stopped him. She had seen Joker bite through a man's finger like a carrot..

"If you're behind this in any way," he began, threatening. "We will found out. You're not—"

"Oh, Birdboy, you're so much less fun now!" Joker interrupted. "All grown up and in your big boy pants.. Still." Joker rolled yellow eyes back towards Lady Bat. "Better off than his replacement, right?"

In the back of her mind, she heard a low tone. Like a ringing in her ears. It wasn't that he was just dead, no.. He was almost in pieces.. "Even tougher makin' the yucks when you're wormfood."

Car crash victims looked the same.. Like meat in a baggy.. loose, vaguely shaped like a boy, but so broken..

Lady Bat was across the table before she knew it. She hauled him, all 250 pounds of him, up and over the table by the chain around his throat, and slung him into the wall. He fell, but she caught him. By the throat.

How good do I look now? She thought, holding him aloft against the wall, one clawed hand around his throat. She squeezed, teeth grit. Have I been working out, you demented, evil cunt of a man..?

"You gonna do it this time?" He hissed, red lips split in a wide, gash of a grin. "Or are you just gonna put me in a body cast for six months."

The last time, she was screaming. Primal, guttural screaming, as she brought down blow after blow. She broke every finger. She snapped both elbows at the joint. And he lay nearby the violence, curled in the snow, unmoving and without breath..

Nightwing moved behind her.

. . . She dropped him.

He lay in a heap at her feet.

"So disappointing," he said, between gasps. "Now.. back to the matter at hand.. This new hoodie.. You really think I'd stir up all this trouble and not make sure you knew it was me?"

And he laughed at her. He was still laughing as she and Nightwing swept from the cell.

"It's not him," she muttered to Nightwing. "But at the same time, it is him. I just don't know how yet."

"Boss?" Nightwing muttered back. She was silent.

She had to think.. Where would he strike next? Why? What did he want with Amazo, why would he try to mess with Black Mask when he was a lone man, seemingly without deep, Gotham crime connections?

… She'd find out.

 

[Vars]

It was after he finally lifted off when his helicopter spontaneously died.

"And I almost thought she wouldn't show," Red Hood grumbled, thinking aloud before looking back through the open door of the craft and recognizing the mobile EMP/harpoon combination device in Nightwing's hands. They must've shot the helicopter with it.
It was unexpected, but, not entirely detrimental to tonight's plan.

"Wanna dance? Let's dance," he shouted. He was never as good at the smart talk as Dick, but, he liked to partake anyway, even if they couldn't hear him above the sound of the blades. He might not be able to gain anymore height, but he was already at the edge of the building so he may as well just dive off it completely.

Nothing like keeping the Bats on their toes. Expect the unexpected, or so they say. Plus, it put the innocents in danger on the roads below. That should keep at least one of them busy - probably Nightwing. And who really wanted to deal with Nightwing anyway?

The helo dived, blades first, right down toward the street below. Red Hood watched out the door until he was able to make a safe enough jump for it onto one of the low rises, ditching his white robe and donning his normal motorcycle gear- his characteristic red helmet, of course, but also his leather jacket full of goodies and the black body armor beneath.

He rolled to safety on the roof, and after righting himself from the fall, went back to the edge to watch the spectacle. Lady Bat would have to come up with some sort of creative solution to deal with the helicopter, and this he wanted to see. Of course, she dealt with it much more quickly, and with much less collateral than anticipated. The man thought he'd have more time for the next step in his plan, but... Again, he had to remind himself to expect the unexpected.

He hadn't really expected Lady Bat to so quickly point out his location afterward, either. Nightwing had swung down and picked up Lady Bat, both of them swinging directly toward him from the remains of the tether that had originally stopped the helo. He turned away from them and snidely spoke to himself, "Okay then. Nice night for a run..." as he did just that, and started off the wild goose chase.

Or was it more of a cat and mouse thing?

He wasn't entirely ready, and it wouldn't be perfect, but he could still pull off his plan if he was able to buy himself enough time. He ran toward the central train station, where he'd ditched his motorcycle before going after Blackmask's men. Running from roof to roof, he eventually spotted a skyscraper under construction and jumped toward it in an attempt to lose the Bats. He was about 80% sure it wouldn't work, but one could try anyway.

His metal-plated combat boots crumbled the wooden scaffolding under his weight when he landed, and rolled down a few levels before managing to right himself and pick up speed again, running across the scaffolding and through the blue tarps that covered where windows would be placed. Every step was getting more and more luck-centric, as the Bats were getting ever closer. They were well-built for stamina. Red Hood wasn't so much.. He was bigger than the other two, and had a lot of gear weighing him down. He was never as acrobatic as Dick was, but he could always improvise in other ways to make up for it.

He crossed through the half-completed structure, pummeling through some studs that would've been too narrow for him to slip through without breaking too much speed. After passing a lantern that had curiously been left lit, he noticed a large commercial fire extinguisher on his way to the opposite side of the structure. Immediately, he formulated his new plan to gain some ground between himself and his pursuers, and picked up the heavy canister to carry it with him to the glass windows that had already been placed on the far side of the building.

Without breaking his gait, he swung the large canister at the glass, shattering it and making the jump easier for the Red Hood to take. The momentum of his swing turned him backward, and he lept from the building back-first. He immediately let go of the canister by throwing it back up toward the building where Nightwing and Lady Bat were just beginning to catch up with him. Pulling out a pistol, Red Hood shot the canister, releasing the dry chemical in a flurry and blocking his pursuers for some precious seconds while he righted himself mid-air, re-holstered his weapon, and managed to nail a precarious landing on the steel I-beams of the beginning of the next skyscraper.

This building had only its skeleton done, so far. There was no scaffolding about it for now, nor was there any floor. At its very first step of construction, it served as a balancing act and hopeful maze. Red Hood was at a slight disadvantage here as he ran with one foot placed directly in front of the next, but he used long strides and still attempted to gain enough speed in the open area. He needed more distance.

And what distance he gained was quickly narrowing due to the Bats darn acrobatics. He took a look back to figure out what he was dealing with, and of course the two were doing their circus flips and shit, a grace Red Hood would never be able to mimic with his build. He was basically a bumbling buffoon in comparison.
But he couldn't let himself down. He had too much riding on this. He couldn't be caught just yet. He'd just have to throw a few more curveballs their way and hope he could make it to the train station and his bike. Not only to perform a clean getaway with more sureity, but also to leave the last, necessary clue. That clue, provided of course, Lady Bats hadn't already connected the dots yet.
They'd see soon, he supposed. But he couldn't let his mind wander too much now. He had to concentrate on going faster, gaining more distance, breathing, and not fucking falling off the steel beams he was running on.

He saw an opening, finally an opportunity to get off the beams. He turned and jumped from his current beam maze to a shorter building's rooftop, rolling to protect his feet and momentum at the terrible height difference. He wasn't going to get many more building at convenient heights after this, and he was going to need to up his game before he got too close to the street.

From that roof, he ran and jumped to the next, finally gaining some comfortable distance away from his pursuers. Yet another roof was jumped, and he finally got to the point where he couldn't hear the Bats running behind him anymore. In front of him, floating just below his current rooftop was a blimp, and he went for it, landing atop it and drawing both his handguns, pointing them to where he knew his pursuers would pop out.

He needed to catch his breath, and as he kneeled, he did just that, a precious few seconds of rest before he suspected the next leg of the chase would begin. Finally, yet all too soon, the Bats appeared, and fired at them- his aim was only a bullet spray to have them seeking cover - which they predictably did - until the blimp had floated enough distance away where he was certain they would not be able to complete the same jump as he.

Safe for the time being, he holstered his weapons and stepped to the next leg of his journey - jumping to another rooftop he had hoped was outside their vision.
Unfortunately, it was not, and the rest Red Hood had so needfully gained proved to be only at the expense of the distance he had wanted. Now, the vigilantes were only a few feet behind him again. He was starting to panic, and began to run along the large window sills of the gothic buildings, hoping to get his pursuers turned around enough to let him lead again. The train station was in sight, several yards below this building, and he jumped for it.

But in his jump, Lady Bat tried to ring him in with one her batarang cables. The method was revealed by the sound it made - a familiar wrap and whoosh in the wind. With a practiced accuracy, Red Hood turned, drawing his knife, and sliced through the cable mid-jump, before it went taught. Once it went taught, he'd never be able to get out of it, and he wasn't going to be caught today. Not when he was so close.

Blade in hand, he turned himself more, having to break his cinematic leap mid-way in order to re-orient himself to his planned goal of the train station. He landed on the corner of yet another gothic window sill, giving him a second to breath and sheath his knife. He looked behind him and heard Nightwing yell "Got him!"

"Not yet," Red Hood thought to himself. He took a deep breath and went for the final free-fall: straight into the domed glass ceiling of the elevated train station of Gotham.

He knew now that he only had a few seconds to get everything right. He checked his watch- train to arrive in about a minute. He made a mad dash to his bike and grabbed a few of his "just in case" explosives, quickly duct taping them around a pillar and arming them, setting them to go off in about 30 seconds. Enough time between now and the train's arrival, and hopefully just after Lady Bat and her first love pop in.

He ran back to his bike and started it, hopping on and jumping down onto the tracks with it, positioning it and himself right in the intersection of the station. The trains made an L turn here, and if he positioned himself correctly, he'd be in full view of the Bats for his last coup de grace before the train raged between them, giving him enough time to drive off and lose them for good.

So, with everything now in place, he put his boots on the ground and looked behind him as he sat on his bike and caught his breath. The worst of it was over, and he'd had enough cardio for the evening.

Right on time, the Bats made their entrance, but didn't see him.
"You think we lost him?" Nightwing questioned softly.

Then the explosion distracted the both of them, and they jumped for cover. Red Hood chuckled to himself and peeked at his watch again. He turned to look down the tracks, and the train was coming. Everything was perfect. It all worked out.

He revved his bike, the engine bringing Lady Bat and Nightwing's attention to him.

"You haven't lost your touch, Bé̶̺l̶̡̢͙̬̬͈̞̞̩̥͎͉̬̞ͅl̸̇͊̍́̀̂͝í̴̐̀̒̍̈́͆͝n̶̨̥̱̠̯̮̯͗̏̓̋̄̂̈͜͝d̶̢̦̮̺̥̰͍̹̃̈̊̔̊̌̾͠a̸̛̝̥͈͙̫͈̼̥̿͑͑̌͛̄̒"


The train could not have passed at a more perfect time, either, as it came right after the 'B' sound of her true, legal name, and headed right for her and Nightwing. She would have no choice but to jump out of the way, as they had gone into the tracks previously to escape the explosive. Now, Red Hood had his clean getaway. And she knew.
She knew that he knew who she was.

And that, that was going to eat away at her.

 

[omnibee13]

Either he wasn't as good as he thought he was, or Lady Bat was being played. Either option seemed viable at this point. That fact alone irked her like no other. She didn't get played. She wasn't to be fooled. Nightwing had insisted on accompanying her. He had that habit. He didn't have that right. She wasn't going to argue with him. Not when the odds were not totally in her favor. Not when they were dealing with someone who, seemingly, had a death wish.

Someone stealing from the Black Mask..

That wasn't his name. That was what he wanted his name to be. Roman Sionis' parents were utterly self-absorbed. They made the Bonfire of the Vanities look trivial. He was actually not too much older than she was. His parents owned a company that specialized in cosmetics and superficial trifles. Desperate for the high society charm that her own parents possessed, Mr. and Mrs. Sionis wore their own kinds of masks. More than once, she remembered her father speaking less than favorably of them, but out of politeness, remained cordial, despite Roman's own father calling Thomas Wayne merely a winner at Birth Lottery. Belinda remembered having to befriend the often-times vulgar and dull Roman at society functions. He said he had been named Roman because he would inherit an empire. Belinda told him that her name meant beautiful snake.

He steered clear after that.

Roman stopped being Roman after Janus Cosmetics failed, ten years ago. He had handled his father's company like a kid wielding a gun. Reckless. Breathtakingly stupid. After he pushed through a line of facial creams that disfigured or otherwise harmed several hundred Gothamite women, the company was going to collapse. Enter Wayne Enterprises. Belinda had offered to absorb Janus Cosmetics, buy out Roman's investors so he would break even, help settle his court cases using Wayne lawyers.. The part that Roman chaffed at was that, in doing so, Janus would fall under Wayne Enterprises' control, entirely. A new board of directors, all appointed by her, an utter overhaul of the company, the ops side and the manufacturing side, all to bring them up to Wayne standards. Essentially, the only thing left of Janus that was still Sionis family legacy was the name. The skeleton, the backbone, the muscle, the brain, would all be Wayne.. The only thing left of Roman would be the face.

He took issue with that.

He refused, said he'd bail Janus out himself, along with a few other choice, four letter words. Inevitably, though, he ran it into the ground. The last product Janus put out was a full face mask, one that came out of a cheap, plastic clamshell container. After the fiasco with the face cream, Roman staged a huge event. He'd try the new face mask himself, live, on the 9 o'clock news.

Belinda watched, more than a little sick, along with the rest of Gotham, as Roman donned the mask, and almost immediately fell to his knees. Reporters got sick. The smell, allegedly, was something awful. It had adhered to his skin, had charred it..

Janus Cosmetics was effectively ended, well before Roman got out of the hospital. But with the death of Janus, the rise of Black Mask.. Roman was shit at running his own business. The laws were too constricting for him, the numbers too confusing. But if he were at the top of a criminal empire, laws were inconsequential, and if the numbers got too confusing, he'd just kill his current accountant.

Ten years, more than 40 Black Mask connected homicides later, Lady Bat watched as Nightwing shot the shoulder-mounted, electric cable hook at Sionis' chartered helicopter. Low-level agents lay scattered around the helipad, zip tied. She hadn't taken stock of any casualties yet.

She had larger prey.

The helicopter bucked and strained against the cable, surges of electricity racing up it and through the craft.

"YOU WANNA DANCE?!"

Lady Bat frowned, eyes narrowing. She took a half step forward, watching him struggle against the controls of the 'copter.

He wouldn't…

"LET'S DANCE!"

Her eyes widened as he plunged the chopper down, allowing it to free fall.

Jesus..

"Is that gonna hold?" Nightwing yelled, over the din of the chopper's fading noise.

"No," she snarled, grabbing the shoulder mount from him, and sprinting for the roof top. He said something. She didn't know what. She didn't care. They were 40 stories up, over a major Gotham roadway, at a time when the nocturnal city was buzzing with activity. Lady Bat lept off the edge, allowed herself to free fall. God, was he still in it? How suicidal was he?

She hoped Nightwing had the good sense to try to stabilize the cables. He had the high powered "Nightstaples.." She hated that stupid name.

Free-fall.

Not flying.

Definitely not weightless.

The helicopters blades shattered against the side of the building as it fell, sending out shrapnel. Lady Bat launched a second grappler from the shoulder mount at the 'copter. Done. She hooked a second, stabilizing line to the cable, fired said stabilizing grappler at the opposite building. She hurt the crack and crumble of granite as the wall accepted the hook into its own..

The lines were going taught. She pushed away from them, not wanting to get caught in a loop or a knot. She'd sheer her own limb off that way.. The 'copter stopped, supported precariously, but supported none the less, a mere few feet above the heads of scattering, screaming bystanders.

But she was still falling.

Lady Bat reached out, grabbed the now taught cable with both hands. She slid. Even through her gloves, reinforced and knit with Kevlar and steel, she felt the heat. Seen smoke rise. Shit.

Nightwing.

Here he came, swooping in. She'd not complain. She grabbed for him, and he swung her to safety, away from the 'copter, hanging, and the chaos.

Red Hood wasn't in the wreckage. He had bailed out. How he had bailed, Lady Bat had no idea. No normal criminal could do that. Either luck or skill..

"Turn," she breathed, scanning the nearby rooftops for him.

There.

A runner.

Nightwing shifted his weight, swung them around.

He was good. A free-runner, but stockier built. How could he be this good? Who in the hell..?

Lady Bat followed on foot, barely hearing Nightwing behind her, barely caring. Something wasn't right. Something was dead fucking wrong..

He didn't care about the lost cargo. He bailed way too easy. He laid a trap.

Lady Bat was closing the distance, she pulled a batarang from her hip, lobbed it at the small of his back.

She missed.

He had turned, just at that last second, and it stabbed itself into the platform they ran on.

… She missed.

Inside the building. Under construction. He blasted his way through some wall supports, he was running out of room to run.

Lady Bat was two seconds behind him. Just two. But he was decades ahead of her, somehow. Smashing through the window, still stories and stories up. She ran to it, expecting to see him fall to his death, but..

A canister.

Something the construction team used, for some reason or another.

He had thrown it.

He had..

She was thrown back in the explosion. Her lungs burned and her body was sprinkled with yet more exploding glass and red hot chemical fumes. Tumbling back, she took shelter behind some pallettes as the smoke cleared.

Dick.

Dick?

Nightwing was there, hunched beside her. He hadn't gotten his lungful. That was good. Lady Bat felt strange. Not from the chemicals, but from the confusion. Who were they dealing with?

The smoke cleared, and she and Nightwing emergered, back to the shattered remains of the window..

He was below.

He had landed on his feet, and he had ran..

And they followed.

Now it was a mere chase. He had the headstart, but they had the stamina. Surely, they had the stamina? Although, seeing his skills in action, Lady Bat was starting to doubt they were dealing with a mere arms-dealer. He was too good at this. He was able to keep abreast of them, somehow. She had run down metahumans before. They weren't this good. It wasn't mere strength. It was taught, learned skills.

Nightwing pulled ahead of her.

Made sense.

As they leapt from beam to beam, she could see he was larger than she was, taller by maybe a head. About Nightwing's size, height-wise, but stockier. More robust.. But he wasn't slowed down by it.

He wasn't a normal criminal.

Lady Bat watched as he lept, arms out, legs bent, and he landed that free-jump, tucked, and rolled and kept running.

Jesus..

How many times had she had to teach the boys how to do that jump? Her mind was a multi-leveled tesseract. Her lungs burned from running after inhaling a mouthful of chemicals, but her mind was only partially on the hunt.

I can't do it, Mom..

Then I'll take you home, and you won't ever come with me on patrol again. I can't carry you everywhere.

Mom, I—

Dick never had to be carried. Do you want this or not. Do you want to stay home? Is that what you want?

No..

I'm not your mother. I'm your teacher. Jump, Ja—

Gun-fire.

Lady Bat skid in her boots, rounded back around a corner to keep from being hit.

Red Hood had lept onto one of the GCPD zeplins, had managed to maintain his balance long enough to crouch and take fire, pistols pumping in each hand.

She caught Nightwing by the bicep as he tried to round the corner.

"He's good," he breathed, a little winded, but still capable.

"Yes, he's putting on quite the performance," she replied, lips pulled into a snarl. She touched the side of her cowl, activated better tracking optics.

She had lost sight of him for a moment, but only a moment. She was able to pick up the trail again, and her and Nightwing lept, jumping onto the zeplin and off of it.

Lady Bat couldn't shake the feeling that he hadn't meant for her to lose him.

Now she was angry. She grit her teeth, sprinted after him, arms pumping as she ran. They rounded a corner, came to yet another edge.

Lady Bat flung a batarang at him, attached to a cable, timed to his leap. It wrapped around his ankle, and for a moment, time stopped.

He was in the air.

Lady Bat pulled the line to her, with all her considerably strength.

It started to go taught..

He twisted.

In a flash of metal and the singing of sliced, woven steel, the line was cut.

Lady Bat could only scowl as he broke away from them again.

"He's very good," Nightwing exclaimed, coming to her side.

Too good.

He was ahead of them again, looking back at them, as if goading them to give chase. The crystalline train depot was ahead of him, all glass and metal.

"We've got him!"

Oh, Dick, you precious fool.

Red Hood lept, seemingly without fear, and grabbed a line, swung around, plunging into one of the glass panels of the skylight and out of sight…

"That's impressive."

Lady Bat looked at Nightwing, shouldering past him. He was nervous. He got chatty when he was nervous.

"Nothing we haven't seen before," she said, looking back at him. She hoped she sounded reassuring. He always needed reassuring. He didn't have the same fortitude as Jason had. "Go home or come with, but this ends tonight."

"If you say so," he muttered.

The train depot was silent. Too silent. No one rode the rails at night, if they could avoid it. Too many people willing to do terrible things.

Lady Bat and Nightwing dropped into a disserted, eerily silent glass death-trap.

"You think we lost him?"

Lady Bat was going to scold him, her lips were already peeled back in a snarl to tell him, Dick, if you don't shut up..

But then she heard it.

Beeping.

Explosives, wrapped around an iron support beam, lights flashing nearer and nearer to the end of their display..

"GO!" She barked,

Lady Bat was tired of explosions. This was, what, the fifth of the sixth in two nights? Why was this guy so attached to explosives? She thought, as she was blasted down, off the platform, onto the tracks. Didn't the son of a bitch know what they did to human bodies?

Nightwing was hurt.

He landed wrong. Gymnasts were all about landing right, landing with the weight and gravity perfect.. But the explosion had blown him off his feet and onto the tracks beside her.

… He was there.

Red Hood stood, straddling a motorcycle, at the far end of the depot.

"YOU HAVEN'T LOST YOUR TOUCH, BE---"

A train drowned out the rest of his taunt.

A train.

Shit.

As it barreled down the tracks at them, Lady Bat grabbed Nightwing by the scruff of his neck, and bodily hauled him and herself up onto the platform. The train shot past, kicking up wind and a roar of noise that filled her ears.

By the time it past, he was gone.

Lady Bat didn't move immediately. She had to catch her breath. She had to take stock of Nightwing.

But her mind was a many leveled tesseract..

Oh, God, she thought. It can't be.

…

Alfred was tending to Dick. He wasn't out of commission, but he wasn't top of his game, either. Belinda was only half paying attention. Most of her was focused on watching and re-watching the recording her cowl took of the pursuit.

"He's got some moves, huh?" Dick said, his voice echoing around the cave. "And as much as I hate to belabor a point –"

"And still, that is often exactly what you do," Alfred said, pointedly. He knew his mistress' patience and the extent at which it could be tested. Safe to say, Bel was well passed merely pissed.. She was not brooding, so much as fuming.

"I'm chatty, it's part of my charm," Dick said, with a smile. Alfred didn't phase him. Fuck, Bel didn't phase him. He'd die with a damn quip coming out of his mouth. "I'm just saying, that our boy here –"

He isn't my boy, Bel thought.

" – has got some serious skills. He's been trained, and trained well –"

By who, Bel thought, steepling her fingers as she watched the footage play.

"Like that!"

"Pointing is rude," Belinda muttered. She didn't even have to look.

"That right there," Dick said, emphatic. Red Hood, cutting the cable that she had thrown, wrapped around his ankle. "He sliced that cable off his ankle before it went taught."

"Yes, clearly," she muttered again, now leaning back, drumming her nails on the armrests of her chair.

"You don't just DO that. That has to be practiced. Learned," Dick finished.

Hours and hours of practice. Hours and hours of tears and tantrums.

Belinda swallowed, blue eyes not leaving the screen.

"Then there's the knife," she said, eyes narrowing.

"What about it?"

"You know many knives that can cut my lines?"

Dick was an adult. He made it that far in life. But he was still her student. And she was still his teacher.

"Not many," he relented.

"No. Not many."

Belinda turned back to the computer.

"Well, look, now we have a game pla-OW."

Dick had tried to move. Alfred figured that he had popped the joint capsule in his ankle. It would heal. If he kept off of it.

"Alfred?" Belinda said, taking a small breath. She exhaled. "Take him home."

"Bel, I can still help you with this," Dick objected.

Normally, she'd bark at him, give him the order to leave. But in the corner of the cave, loomed a tall, glass capsule. Inside, a mannequin, wearing a lovingly restored red and green costume.. Bel was looking at it out of the corner of her eye as Dick spoke.

She took a breath and pushed her chair away from the controls, turning to look at him.

"You already have. Thank you."

And she went back to the controls. Dick was still talking, saying that she knew where to find him if she needed her. He knew, though, that she wouldn't.. She could hear him ask Alfred something, incredulously, but her mind was elsewhere. It was on the video, in front of her. Belinda swallowed, her throat clicking. She waited, waited to hear the heavy door to the cave shut behind Alfred and Dick, before she continued.

The train depot.

She isolated that clip, raced through other stills to find it.

"You haven't lost your touch, B—"

The train drowned out the rest. Her stomach felt sour, and heavy. Belinda thumbed a few controls, typed in a few commands.

She was isolating the audio. It appeared before her in spikes and valleys, a solid bar running down it as it played back.

"You haven't lost your touch, Be—"

He was saying Bats, she thought. He had to be saying bats. What else could he say? Maybe bitch? Oh, God, please, she thought, her throat burning, as she forced the audio to the furthest extent she could.

Isolate his voice.

Remove the train.

"You haven't lost your touch, Belinda!"

She shot up out of her chair. It toppled over, behind her. She stared, wide eyed, up at the computer. Shaking her head, slowly, she backed away from the computer.

… She could see her reflection in the glass capsule. A sad, old woman, staring at the costume of a young child. Slowly. Almost reverently, she raised a hand to touch the glass. It was cold. Just like that day..

But they weren't all bad days. Once Jason got the hang of things, he did nothing by halves. Once he was fearless, he wore that as a badge of honor. But she should have known.. Every patrol, every mission, Jason was twice as wild as Dick. Not malicious, no.. But he took great joy in hurting the criminals that crossed their path. He had all of Dick's mouth, sure, just twice as foul.

She was mean to him. Belinda felt a stinging in her eyes as she remembered.

Born to an ex-con father, an addicted mother.. And Bel was mean to him. In these, lonely, vulnerable moments, with the cowl off and the skin raw, Belinda could be honest with herself.

I can't carry you everywhere. Jump, Jason.

He went from being a scared, abused child to the one that did the abuse, though. In his own way..

An incident stuck out in her mind. As Jason got older, he got harder to control. He shot up like a weed, more brutal than Dick, less forgiving and kind. They had to infiltrate a drug house. They had to take out a budding enterprise..

Robin always had to go first. He always had to be the one to break down the door, to penetrate. She had always thought it was a puberty thing, but with Robin, it was a matter of plain brutality. It should have been a simple take down. He had taken out two, before Lady Bat had even darkened the doorway. But a third had taunted him, and like a dog with a bone, Robin had unleashed on him.

"I had to take him down!" Jason had yelled. He had been yelling at her for a few months now. She thought it was a puberty thing. Looking back, now she wasn't sure.

"You shattered his collarbone!" She yelled back.

"He was a drug-dealing pimp! I didn't think I'd have to prop up some pillows before I took him down!"

Smart ass. Spoiled brat.

Her child.

But still just a child. He forgot that from time to time.

"We needed him. He could have talked, but you put him into shock," Belinda explained. She remembered taking him by the face, forcing eye contact. Jason kept the stare for a while.. But then looked away.

"I'm sorry," he said. "That was dumb. But he deserved it."

He moved away from her, and she let him. She watched him walk away, and she remembered, now, as her memory faded, as she stood and stared at the glass capsule containing her Robin's tattered little costume..

She remembered worrying about him. She thought maybe it would be time for him to really focus on school. To be a normal child.. To grow into a normal adult.

Belinda took a deep breath, in the present. Jason never got that chance.

Exhaling, Bel turned and leaned her back against the capsule.

"Well," she muttered to herself, reaching up to rub her face. "As bad as you feel, Belinda.. At least you're not Roman.. He's probably fairly upset right about now.."

 

[Vars]

"Maybe my last request was too mired in subtlety.
I want this man dead."

The Red Hood took his signature helmet off and hung it off the handlebar of his bike before taking a bite out of his Big Belly Burger. He'd bought it shortly after his escape from the Bats. All that cardio tended to make one crave the carbs. And with his chosen profession, who knew when he'd get another chance to eat? His blue eyes looked down at his helmet when he heard Black Mask's whispers emitting from one of the speakers inside.
It wasn't worth interrupting his meal to discern the actual words for the time being.

Turning, Jason felt around in the bag that he'd tossed on the bike seat for some fries, popping some in his mouth while he still held the burger with his other hand. He wondered if there was an irony in eating something from a LexCorp subsidiary, but shrugged, as it ultimately didn't matter. Jason had always liked these burgers better, anyway.

"When I say 'dead,' I mean seriously dead."

The words were a little more pronounced now. Oooo, old Roman was starting to get mad, the vigilante chuckled to himself as he stuffed his face full of more fries. He would have to eat the rest of this quickly as he knew he was going to have to prepare for the next step in his plan.
He hadn't suspected Black Mask to respond so quickly, or so aggressively, but he wasn't going to let the opportunity lay to waste.

"Beaten."

Jason took the last few bites of his burger and shoved the wrapper and bag in the nearest trash can. He'd been standing in a parallel parking spot outside some pawn shop on a deserted side street. After a quick slapping of his hands together to throw the salt and grease from his gloves, he hopped back on his bike and replaced the helmet, the radio transmissions from his intercepted Bat radio bug ringing clearly in his ears.

"Broken."

The Red Hood pushed the kickstand back and started up the motorcycle, getting ready to head to one of the many stashes of bombs he'd hidden around the city to replenish his saddlebag before moving forward.

"His head mounted on my wall kind of dead!"

"Cute," Red Hood thought as he pulled from the street. "He really does think about me."

"Understood. We'll be taking further precautions at every transaction--"
"Screw that! Time he learns that this is a contact sport! We're going on offense."

Oh boy, now it would finally get interesting! As the Red Hood followed the speed limit on his way to his enclave, he smirked underneath the helmet.
How long would it take for him to prepare this one, he thought? He liked having fun with the man. Black Mask was a bit too easy to manipulate. A little less predictable than Lady Bat, but nothing Red Hood couldn't plan for. In fact, it often didn't take much planning at all-- Black Mask was never as clever as he thought he was.

"Rough up his business."

He'd finally reached one of the abandoned piers and kicked down the stand. He let his bike run as he jogged down to the shore and kneeled, hunting around for a seabag in the crevices of the concrete wave breakers.

"Something big. Something loud!
When he shows up to shut us down, have a party waiting for him!"

He finally found it, opened it up and took a few choice weapons for his saddle bag arsenal and tossed them on the pier before re-closing the canvas bag and concealing it among the breakers again. He took his materials to his bike, packed them up quickly, and headed downtown, again. He had a good feeling of where they were going to hit, even though he was sure it'd be confirmed and transmitted directly to him anyway.

"And when I say 'party,' I actually mean a whole lot of people who are gonna kill him!!"

All in due time, Red Hood figured. Better to go to where his gut was telling him now and wait to make a timely, well-executed appearance than belay it for Black Mask's candid discussion of the mater. He was already on the overpass overshadowing the back of the Baret Rouge Club when one of Black Mask's associates began articulating the plan. They walked out before revealing the juicy details, but Red Hood had plenty enough to go on to be confident in his ability to play.

It was an almost perfect vantage point for when, in an unrealistically timely manner, a blue Pontiac Grand Am slammed through the front entrance of the club, scattering a bunch of people. Although Red Hood didn't have eyes inside the club, the gunfire from semi-automatics were unmistakeable from the outside.

The vigilante leaned back in his seat, only his left boot on the ground as he contemplated when to come to the rescue. He decided he'd better wait and see what happens. If he intervened too early, they might actually begin to suspect the bug in the office.
Predictably, there was more gunfire and a lot of glass smashing. After a few minutes, they finally dragged Bramford's big black ass out of the club, already beaten and bloodied. The man was practically unconscious already.

The Red Hood expelled a faint "Hmmm" and cut the engine, moving his bike as close to the shoulder as it could go and watching the events unfold.
In the back of the club, there was a large, undeveloped block. It was going to be either a parking lot or another skyscraper - who could really tell these days in Gotham's constant state of construction? But this block was just dirt and some abandoned trash at the corner. Notably an old junker of a car. The vigilante predicted that'd make a decent place to land for his theatrical appearance. His knees would surely kill him for the decision, later. But alas. His "give no fucks" image was important to him.

The Red Hood touched a button on his helmet, toward the back, and switched radio frequencies. No longer was he listening in on Black Mask's office. Now, it was bug in the car in the vacant lot. Coincidentally, the car that the two men had propped Bramford against. The lot was host to a lot of "under the tba;e" deals, so to speak. This area was one of the first places he'd planted his own audio transmitter. He couldn't be hacking into all of Lady Bat's, now-- he had some of his own up his sleeve. And it was a good thing too, because the goons had stripped the rotund drug dealer down to his wife beater and blue boxers. Red Hood had a bug in one of the man's coats, but, obviously, that was useless in this situation.
Thank his foresight he had bugged the junk car.

"Do you know who... who you're messing with!" a struggling, pained club owner proclaimed as he struggled to sit up.

"Yeah," one of the men smugly responded, voice calm and quiet. "Tyler Bramford."
"You're a club owner and some big damned drug dealer in the East Quarter, right?" mocked the first man's partner.

Bramford pointed to himself with his thumb, his busted up face already swollen, his nose and lip still bleeding as he forced his response: "I am the East Quarter drug trade, you stupid bags of--"

"Manners, fatty," the first man, in a red jacket, interrupted Bramford's failed attempt to preserve his ego by cocking a revolver and pushing it into the so-called fatty's head. "I don't care who takes care of you. You watch your mouth."

Interesting line, Red Hood thought to himself.

"Then... Then you know who's got my back," Bramford stuttered, his brow twitching beneath the muzzle of the gun. "You know who I answer to."

Red Jacket pulled the gun away, but kept it pointed toward its target while he took backward steps to his partner, Chico, in a blue jacket.
"Sure," Chico answered, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a glass bottle with a cloth breaching the mouth of it. "The Red Hood."

"And we work for the man who's gonna take back what's his," Red Jacket commented with a smile while his partner grabbed a lighter from an outside pocket.


"So at the expense of your very wide butt," Chico continued, his lighter coming ever closer to the cloth in the whiskey bottle, "We're sending your boss a message."

"Cute," Red Hood thought to himself, taking his pistol from his holster and making some very precarious aimwork to that molotov cocktail.
Chico lit the cloth and Red Hood tracked it as the man lifted it up to throw at Bramford. Right before it was tossed, Red Hood took his shot, immediately encapsulating Chico in flames. His scream surprised the others, but it only lasted a short period before his body crumpled and the flames spattered out, having fed on his body and clothes to his death.

Red Hood holstered his weapon and made his jump for the hood of the clunker. His steel boots dented the automobile's roof heavily, it crumbling beneath his 250 pounds.
"OK. What's the message," he questioned. He got the theatrical entrance he so pined for when Bramford and red Jacket turned from the burning man to the Red Hood.

But, unfortunately, both of them ran away immediately. Behind the mask, Jason frowned.

"A simple one, actually."
A woman's voice. Somewhat robotic.
This was unprecedented.

Within seconds, four people - well, maybe people- all jumped down and made their presence known. Bulk, who towered above the others true to his namesake, Baton, a sort of Tron-version of Nightwing, really, Shot, who was probably human, but looked like a cyborg as he was the only one with his entire body covered in armor and robotics, and then, the woman- the leader- he didn't know her name, but she looked a little bit like Artemis is she were in the Mortal Kombat franchise.

"Want to guess what it might be?"

The Fearsome Hand of Four, he thought to himself.

The woman extended light blades from her two robotic hilts and jumped toward him, her group following closely behind her.

"I have a few ideas!" he shot back, "Shit, almost forgot to make a quip," he finished in his head as he jumped away from the junk car. He'd have cornered himself if he'd stayed there.

Unholstering both the pistols from his waist, he began firing at all four of them, but it wasn't doing much. The shots ricocheted off the group's metal armors, and their leader - who had the least amount of it - was exceptionally good at slicing each bullet with her light blades. It was all Red Hood could do to simply evade and provide himself cover fire.

Since when did Black Mask have the Fearsome Hand of Four on retainer? Sure, it would've come to this eventually, but how did they get here so fast? It had been, what? An hour? Tops?
And he hadn't even seen them get into position? What the hell. He was actually... Really thrown off-guard.

"Any of you hired guns even know who I am?" he shouted.
They probably didn't, but he had to buy himself any time he could. He was making great use of his acrobatics training, training he would've liked to forget, but couldn't deny it proved exceptionally helpful in just a situation such as this - and it was tiring. His muscles were already aching from the run earlier, and his body was much too bulky to keep straining with circus antics.

By now, Lady Bat would've figured out who he was - or at least suspected. She wasn't dumb. And she'd probably thrown a tracker on him - if not that, then, she'd at least have a bug somewhere around the club, like he did. So surely, surely, she'd come down to confront him with her suspicions.
She couldn't possibly let someone like him slip through her fingertips without at least questioning him first.

And Red Hood wasn't an idiot. He wouldn't be able to take them all down. Not at once, anyway. He'd have to run, hide, do something other than brute force it. And he wasn't all too ecstatic about being the mouse in a cat and mouse situation. He was a hunter. Not the hunted.

"You are our target!" Baton belabored as he shielded himself from Red Hood's gunfire. The Artemis-wannabe was quick to back him up and start her light blade slicing again. Red Hood was on the first level of a fire escape for now, hanging off the railing with one hand and shooting them with the other. He had the high ground, but it wasn't going to give him the advantage for long.

As had already been pointed out, he wasn't built for acrobatics, and with the exception of their Bulk member, the Fearsome Four were all lithe and absurdly flexible. Soon, Shot ran up to provide them with an offensive weapon. Shot had some type of large energy cannon on his face. Luckily, it gave off a loud hum as he powered up, allowing Red Hood some precious seconds to jump out of the way from a beam that would've incinerated him.

Except. He wasn't quick enough.
The fire escape exploded behind him, the aftershock blasting into his back mid-jump. Red Hood involuntarily dropped both his guns and only barely managed to fall correctly. But that, too, was interrupted.
Apparently he'd rolled right into Bulk, whose monstrous mechanical hand grabbed his ankle and threw Red Hood's whole body into one of the overpass's support pillars.

The vigilante gasped, calling out as his back smashed against the concrete before the man fell to the ground. Rolling to his hands and knees, he let out an unenthusiastic "Ow." to cover up the groan he so wanted to belabor.

Pushing himself up, he now had the Four as an audience. Was Lady Bat really not going to show? What was taking her so long?
He really didn't want to bail after taking so many hits already. But he supposed... Maybe it was time for his luck to run out. He couldn't be perfect all the time.

"So," he rasped, on his knees now as he tried to buy more time, "You four have all this power. And all you do with it is kill for money?"
Seriously, it was insane how powerful they were. He'd completely and utterly underestimated them.

The big one stepped forward and put his giant hand on top of Red Hood's helmet, it fitting in his palm. "From what I hear," he said through his thick mask. "We've got that in common."

"Did he just...?" Red Hood thought. How could he be compared to a fucking mercenary? That wasn't his mission at all.
Offended, and now reinvigorated by such a comment, he replied, "You heard wrong."

Bulk picked Red Hood up by the head, getting ready to throw him around again. Before he could do that, however, the vigilante - who was in no way a mercenary - reached into his leather jacket and tossed a few mini token bombs out to Bulk. They landed on his chest and stuck, one second later detonating and causing the giant to stagger back and release Red Hood.

Unfortunately, the other three members of the group were not surprised by this at all and took the millisecond of commotion as an opportunity to jump in. Red Hood hadn't even gotten his feet to the ground yet before fucking Tron!Nightwing Baton smashed his namesake into the vigilante's torso.

Red Hood called out and flew backward- the baton had been charged by heat and had burned through his first layer of teflon. That said nothing to the pain from the sheer force behind the blow. Now his chest was smoking and clogging up his vision. Fortunately enough for him, he was able to correct himself on his feet and draw his knife to block the leader's blades, which were quick to come after him.

"Am I really going to have to make a run for it?" he questioned himself, giving the Leader a swift steel toed kick in the gut to get her blades out of his face. "Is she really not going to show? Or is she just watching me?"

He turned to Baton, who was running at him again. The mercenary was quick to disarm him, leaving The Red Hood to try and fight a cybernetically enhanced man with a long fire stick with just fists. A losing battle to be sure, and he definitely didn't want to get burned again. Still, he managed to get in a few hits before, predictably, Baton kicked him down and he landed on the dirt on his stomach again.

As he lay there, three of the members of the Hand surrounding him, he got that feeling. The gut instinct that someone was watching him. Finally, he sighed inwardly. Hopefully she'd jump in at any moment. Of course, his feeling was backed up by a proximity alert, too. A little muted beeping in his helmet. Because. Of course- he wasn't stupid enough to not put a tracker on Lady Bat.
He'd done the ingenious thing and used one of her own, attaching it to the little crevice on the sole of her boot, the one between the flat of the sole and the heel. In the arch, where it wouldn't be squashed into the ground.

He had wanted to put it in her belt pouch, but he'd never been able to get close enough to actually do that. From the ground, though, he could throw it up on her boot when she was airborne. He'd done it forever ago, before this drug madness. And it'd taken several tries. If she ever found it, he'd hoped she'd assume it was hers and put it in her belt. After all, what enemy of hers was smart enough to re-purpose her own trackers?
No one.

Regardless, he didn't know if it was in her boot or belt now, but the irritating beep was in his ear confirming his suspicions that the Mother Bat was near and he hoped she'd fly in and save him, soom. Because, as much as he hating thinking that, he'd much rather be saved by her than run away from the Fearsome Four like a puppy with its tail between its legs. He wouldn't let his ego get hit like that, especially not from anyone on Black Mask's payroll.

"I thought you'd put up more of a fight," Baton mocked.

"Uh, aheh," Red Hood tried to cover up his pains with a forced laugh as he pulled himself to his hands and knees again. "Oh, the fight hasn't started yet..."
That little beeping in his helmet was getting a little louder, now.

Baton walked forward and put his staff underneath Red Hood's chin, pulling it upward.
"I'm just stalling," the vigilante finished, the smirk on his face audible in his voice.

 

[omnibee13]

She wasn't going to tell Dick.

She should tell Dick, but she wasn't going to. She wasn't sure if she could stomach the look on his face if she told him her theory. It would be bad enough to be wrong, let alone being right.. That, and, Belinda held the guilt that came with the compromising of her identity. The Red Hood knew her name. Shouted it into the night as if it meant nothing to him. And if he knew who she was, it wasn't a stretch to guess who Lady Bat's birds were. If she was wrong – and Jesus, how on earth could she be right? – then the Red Hood, knowing who Belinda Wayne was, would also know who Nightwing and Robin were.. Not for the first time, she road the roller coaster of regret at adopting the boys, and severe disgust at herself for ever regretting bringing them into her life.

Lady Bat wasn't going to tell Nightwing. Her heart was hammering in her chest as she swung, line by line, towards the beeping in her cowl. She had taken a gambit, in between watching reel after reel of Red Hood's escape, studying every move. She knew who his associates were, the drug dealers and pimps he had taken under his wing, playing a Gotham-sized game of chess with the Black Mask. Years ago, she had kept track of all the big and little players in Gotham. They all had small, internal tracking devices, all of them implanted surgically at one time or another, after a stay at one of the many hospitals owned by the Dr. Thomas Wayne non-profit hospitals. Most of the stays were ochestrated by Lady Bat herself.. Often by force and often after multiple facial fractures.

It was no big feat to activate the trackers. Bramford had been in less than a month prior, so it was sheer dumb luck.. But his heart-rate was nearing 180 and his adrenaline markers were off the charts. Nothing too exciting for a man pushing 350 pounds, given his taste for frequent romps with high end whores, but Bramford didn't fuck while traveling 55 miles per hour. He was frightened and he was headed somewhere.

And knowing Roman, it was just the kind of trap the son of a bitch would set..

From there, all she had to do was track where Bramford was, and likely, a hired assassin would be there, ready to take out the Red Hood.

. . . And there he was.

Lady Bat had to stop. Not had to, but she stopped. She watched. She had to be sure.

The Fearsome Hand of Four. Jesus, Roman, he's just a boy..

No. No, you don't know that.

Swallowing, Lady Bat stayed in the shadows, and watched, as the four assassins took on Red Hood, one by one. There, she thought, as she watched the female assassin get bold, slash at his masked face, was that knife again. The same one he used to cut her line.. He was quick, but that was because he learned to be quick. This didn't come naturally. Someone spent hours with him, someone coached him, trained him… screamed at him… didn't catch him when he fell… didn't pick him up either… stood over him like a witch watching her victim struggle…

Struggle.

Jesus.

They had him on his hands and knees. All of that. After all of that, he was down? He was on his hands and knees. No.

No, you goddamn will not…

Before she realized what she was doing, before it registered to her higher brain that she was going to engage these bastards, getting in between them and the man who had tried to kill her at least four times this week, Lady Bat had already flung two batarangs. Their razor sharp tips imbedded into Baton's arm. She leapt, and landed, a wraith, cloaked in long black shadows, between the Four and the still crouched Red Hood. As she raised, the effect was noticable. Lady Bat was a frightening sight to behold.. tall, lean, black and grey swathed dark angel, pale skinned and black lipped.

White eyes narrowed at the Four.

Bulk, a massive beast of a man, regained his senses long enough to lash out. She ducked under it, punched up at him, he swung again, and she blocked, snapped out with a vicious jab that sent Bulk reeling.

"What took you so long?"

Lady Bat felt her lips curl in a familiar, impatient snarl. That goddamn smart mouth..

Looking over her shoulder, she saw him.. Not a small creature, anymore, a nasty voice whispered in her head. He's a man grown now..

"Shut up and fight," she snapped.

By then, the Four had decided, likely, that a dead Bat could only curry them more favor with the Black Mask and they engaged her as well. Splitting off into natural pairs, Lady Bat kept her back to Red Hood, with Bulk, Baton, and Shot engaging her in open combat.

During all of it, she could hear his small grunts, his sharp inhales as he lashed out at the only female, Leader. Vicious, sword-wielding bitch, who reminded her far too much of Talia..

It was simple to beat them at hand to hand, but their cybernetic upgrades, armor, and weapons made them formidable. For god's sake, the big one had hefted a car at her in the time it took her to drop Shot for a minute.

Time to wrap this up..

The car flew at her, and she launched herself up to meet it. It was nerve-wracking to race through a flying car to come out the other side, but she managed, landing and slapping the jets onto Bulk's wide back. He flew off into a corkscrew in the sky and where he landed, Lady Bat found herself unable to care less.

Shot was next. A one, two, three sharp, rapid kicks into his chest, before uppercutting his armored jaw to send him sprawling. During that exchange, she had slapped a jet onto his chest too, the blast of which sent him screaming into a far building.

Lady Bat scanned the lot, taking quick inventory of the fight.

Red Hood was still engaging Leader, and Baton was –

Lady Bat swivelled, feeling the heat off his electric staff flying past her face. Baton.

"You're mine," he snarled, breathless, as he raised his staff high to bring down on her. Lady Bat grit her teeth and lashed out, viciously kicking him in his chest, dodging the staff as he brought it down in pain, and then bringing it back up this face for defense. Lady Bat swung, her fist crashing through the baton's center, shattering it, and ending to meet Baton in his face. He fell like a ton of bricks, and Lady Bat found herself face to face with the Red Hood again..

She barely heard the sound of Shot's laser powering up behind her...

 

[Vars]

Baton lifted up Red Hood's head by the chin for a moment more before narrowing his eyes and creasing his visible brows at the Red Hood's smart remark. He removed the stick from beneath the vigilante's chin and raised it instead to strike down and kill the one on the ground. Only, as his stick was above his head, two batarangs lodged themselves in his forearm, forcing him to involuntarily drop his weapon.

Lady Bat was here.
Finally.

While the Bat made her own theatrical reveal, everyone's distraction gave Red Hood enough time to roll over on his hands and knees, right himself, and push another button on his mask to silence the beeping proximity alert in his helmet.
Bulk was the first to engage her, going into it at a quick pace. Lady Bat made quick work of him, and in a minute moment of rest, Red Hood was able to give his smart ass "What took you so long?" remark.
Even though he was relieved by her presence, he was a little unsettled by her response of "Shut up and fight."

Momma Bat seemed pretty peeved, he surmised. Probably had just surmised his identity and wasn't pleased to be saving his ass? Who knew. He did as told, though, simply shutting up and fighting. With Lady Bat doing most of the work, he only had to concentrate on one at a time. She had his back. Which was welcome, as his entire body was screaming from its soreness. Adrenaline wasn't enough to blow past all the pain and fatigue this time.

The Artemis-wannabe of a leader was the first to have her go at him. He got a few punches in but then managed to trade with Bats and go with Bulk instead. He wasn't accomplishing much with Bulk either and had to switch his attention to Shot, who was firing his laser cannon thing all over the place. Red Hood quickly dodged many of the beams but hastily tried to herald his exit, getting involved with the Leader again while the others engaged the Lady Bat.

Red Hood's punches and kicks were slow by this point, as he was fairly exhausted. But so were the Leader's. It wasn't any consolation, though, as the Artemis-lookalike swung both her blades, one after the other, and Red Hood was unable to move fast enough for the second one. She caught his arm, cutting through his jacket and shirt and catching his blood.

Calling out from the impact, Red Hood backed up and grabbed his arm as the woman went in for the kill. He panicked for a brief moment before a car was sent barreling in his direction. They both moved out of the way and Red Hood used to opportunity to run to another wall, using parkour to run up it slightly and come back at the leader. It was to get her swing in a circle and turning. It worked, because he was able to behind her to not only evade her slash, but also grab one of her forearms and throw a fist into her head, momentarily disabling her.
In that momentary loss of movement, he turned her around and used his helmet to headbutt her bare forehead, thus guaranteeing her loss of consciousness for a much longer period of time. He let her fall to the ground and then turned to watch Lady Bat deal with Baton.

For the time being, it had seemed she'd already managed to dispel the rest of the group, with Baton following in short order.
Once she had broken his namesake and knocked the mercenary out, Red Hood stepped forward, closer to the Bat.
"I gotta say," he said, his pants still a little too evident between his words. "I miss watching you work."
Clearly, she kept up with her workout routine.

He wondered how much endurance he'd lost by being six feet under?

In that moment of psuedo-eye contact (as such contact was hard to do through two layers of masks) and self-congratulation, Shot reappeared behind Lady Bat. He'd simply fallen back into the field, evidently his energy cannon pre-charged.

Red Hood didn't even know what he was doing. He didn't have time to think. He simply acted.
"Look out!"

He shoved Lady bat out of the way, the energy cannon landing straight into his chest instead, blowing him in the air and backward. Red Hood fell on the ground, briefly unconscious and on his back while his body armor smoked again.

 

[omnibee13]

Lady Bat was shoved to the side, the stink of ozone filling the air as the blast of energy blasted past her and into Red Hood's chest. She felt a name swell up in her throat and almost got through her grit teeth, but she had no time to let it slip out. She pivoted on her heel, spun around to throw a handful of flashbangs at Shot, the man firing his laser all the while, sprinting towards her.

He was a strange creature. His movements were disjointed, unnerving, like a puppet with slack strings.

Shot was able to burst through the cloud of smoke easily, closing the distance between the two of them to engage her once again.

He jumped up, flipped, and landed his heel against her wrist in a block, and rebounded back into an opposite flip. His fingers dug into the dirt as he landed a sloppy handstand, his heavy boot clacking into her chin, splitting the skin.

Nightwing would be surprised she was taken aback by such a shitty move.

But Lady Bat staggered backwards and fell, feigning a daze.. Maybe it was the blood on her face, but Shot hovered over her for only a moment before seemingly dismissing her as a threat and stalking over to the Red Hood, who was groaning as he lurched himself into a seated position.

Shit, shit shit..

Shot kicked him and pinned him and Lady Bat had to be careful with her movements, her muscles tightening like a spring, storing up energy to launch herself up, to …

Why was she helping a crime lord?

That close… Could Shot miss? What chance did the Red Hood have?

… What was she supposed to do?

 

[Vars]

He didn't know how long he was out for, but he hoped it was seconds. With a groan, he came to, sitting up, and about to grip his head - probably had a concussion, as he was a little confused - but he was greeted by a swift kick to the chin by an armored foot. Evidently, Lady Bat had not taken care of the enemy for him.

He fell back down with a shout, Shot quickly jumping atop him and pinning all Red Hood's limbs down. The cybernetic person/being got his head right up in Red Hood's, and, immobilized, the vigilante only had his words to fall back on.
"Awful close," he muttered. "Afraid you'll miss?"

Shot lifted his head away from Red Hood's, but only a small amount as he answered the incapacitated vigilante on the ground. "Black Mask just wants a body."
Leaning forward, his face cannon began to charge as it once again was pointed directly at Red Hood's forehead. "We don't need your head."

"Let him go." Lady Bat interrupted. "And step away."

Both the attacker and the immobilized looked over to the Bat. Thankfully, the cannon seemed to power down on the interim, giving Red Hood a semblance of relief for the time being.

"A taser?" Shot mockingly responded.

Instead of doing what arguably the smart thing would be to do and just continuing with his blowing Red Hood's head off, he instead succumbed to the Bat's appeal to emotion. The cybernetic entity grabbed Red Hood and lifted him with an eerie ease, holding him up on his feet with metal claws on his helmet and at his neck. With Red Hood as his hostage, he looked back to the Bat.

"Nail me and you'll electrocute both of us." He pulled Red Hood's head back.

"Maybe that's what she has in mind," the vigilante grunted, his own taser slipping from his jacket sleeve and into his hand.
It'd make sense that Bats would want to punish him too. He'd pretty royally fucked this fight up for the both of them.
But he had a small shot of redemption, and it would be used right now.
He gripped his own tazer and jammed it into Shot's head/cannon, the shock causing the contraption on his head to explode. It blew the canon and the mercenary's head off. His blood splattered over the wall he'd been holding Red Hood against, and his brain matter littered the floor.

Red Hood looked down at it, unreasonably calm. Huh. Guess he was human under all that, after all.

"Be happy I only killed one of them," he grumbled, now turning back to Lady Bat. They're all assassins," he explained, defending himself from the judgement he knew would be coming. "I'm cleaning up Gotham."

He turned his back to Bat and began to walk off. He suddenly didn't want to deal with her, or this situation, anymore. "That's more than you ever did."

 

[omnibee13]

Lady Bat was too slow to stop him from killing Shot and that bothered her. He hadn't even thought about it. He hadn't seemed to consider it. How could someone act with such flippancy? She took a step forward, her free hand coming forward in a "stop" gesture, but it was too late. Shot's head seemed to explode. Not the goriest thing she'd seen, but given her proximity to it and how she had been powerless to stop it..

The scream of "No!" died on her lips as she watched Shot keel over, a body with nothing above the shoulders.

The Red Hood made some weak excuse for his murder and Lady Bat found herself glaring at him.

"Cleaning up Gotham? You're stealing territory from Black Mask, and killing anyone who gets in your way," she countered, taking a step towards him.

The accusation that the evolution, the step above her work, was to murder people was jarring...

Lady Bat softened her voice slightly, dropping the growl and speaking as she would normally. The drop of The Voice felt significant to her.

" . . . You're becoming a crime lord," she pointed out, softly.

 

[Vars]

Red Hood Stopped at Lady Bat's remark.
"Black Mask is just a part of the plan." Yes. His plan. Why he'd started all of this. It should come to fruition quickly now. If Black Mask had already jumped to hiring the Fearsome Hand of Four to try and kill him, then his next step would probably be getting the one Red Hood really wanted to come out for him... Black Mask was only the middle man.

He turned and gripped the air in frustration as he addressed Lady Bat directly. "You can't stop crime. That's what you never understood," he pointed to the Lady with his index finger, then to himself with his thumb. "I'm controlling it."

He let his hands fall to his sides. "You want to rule them by fear. But what do you do with the ones who aren't afraid?"
He stepped forward, "I'm doing what you won't. I'm taking them out!" This was an especially emotional catharsis for him, considering what he had come home to after he'd climbed up from the grave.

Continuing to dump baddies in Arkham Asylum never solved anything.
He would going to take care of that.
Once and for all.

 

[omnibee13]

Lady Bat's black lips parted with surprised, her eyes widening a little at his outburst. She took notes of his words, and the pointed, accusatory nature of them.

What she never understood.

Ruling by fear.

Doing what she won't.

Her stance relaxed, the tension going out of her shoulders.

" . . . Tell me what happened to you," she offered, taking a step forward. She opened her arms a little, imploring him. "Let me help, J--"

Lady Bat stopped.

"Let me help," she said, adding a finality to the statement.

He got tall. He got less sinewy, he filled out, like a man grown… He had been so malnourished, at first.

Lady Bat raised her hand, out to him, palm up, offering..

 

[Vars]

Tell me what happened to you.

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An eight year old Jason Todd opened the door to find his mother, once again, on the couch and completely out of it. She said something to him, after he'd slammed the door behind him, dragging his backpack on the floor as he approached the kitchen area of his dirty apartment. He couldn't understand her; he hadn't been able to understand her for the past few days, but that was nothing new. Mommy just needed her medicine, was how she explained it. She was just so sad that Daddy was gone. Something about his boss being two faced and the jobs getting harder.
Jason was too young to understand it then. He had taken it at her word.

But, he missed his dad, and he knew something was wrong. All the other kids didn't seem to have families like his; they had parents that didn't need all the medicine, had parents that didn't slur their speech or move like rag dolls controlled by girls with no sense of anatomy. He didn't question it, though. He just thought it would've been so much nicer to have Bobby's parents or stay at school longer. And he had been doing those things lately, even. His apartment didn't really have any food in it; he was eating meals with friends who he didn't know secretly pitied him.

Jason was starting to miss his mom though, as out of it as she was, and after seeing she had forgotten to go grocery shopping yet again, he left his bag on the floor in the midst of a pile of food trash and walked over to his mom. She reached out to him then, but her arm was floppy.

He took her hand in his and blinked, watching her eyes roll up into her head.
"Mom, can we go out and get ice cream?"
He didn't really want ice cream. He wanted his mom back. Just to spend some time with her would be nice. He missed dad, too. Dad was always the one to give him more of the attention. But he still couldn't cut off his soft spot for his mother.
"When is dad coming back?"

His mom's face was pale, and only getting whiter. She slurred something, seemingly slightly angry, and waved her arm around haphazardly a bit. In his mind, he imagined she said he isn't coming back, and that made Jason cry.

The next days came quickly. He had gone to school for a few of them, he didn't know how long, but the state of his clothes were taken note of, and the teacher complained about not being able to get in touch with his mom. Mom never left the couch or said anything again, and she was starting to smell. His friends were getting tired of having him over all the time, so he started "camping" outside.
The landlord came to throw them out one day, but after some yelling, he called the cops. It was another whirlwind of action by that point, and he didn't remember much. He was told mom and dad were never going to return, and he was the state's problem now.
Death was briefly explained to him, but the concept didn't really cement into his brain until much later.

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It was explained that some billionaire woman had taken pity on him, and he wouldn't have to bounce from foster home to foster home anymore. Not that it truly mattered, as for the past year and a half he'd run from them all and spent most his time on the street. He'd become hardened and full of rage by that time. Life had not treated him kindly and his veil of ignorance to the world had been violently lifted in his short time on Earth.

This "Belinda Wayne" had decided to financially adopt him in some capacity, and shoved him off to a boarding school so he wouldn't live a life of crime. Except, the school was meant to foster exactly that. He was in Ma Guns' School. For Crime. He had a love/hate relationship with it. The structure was necessary and helpful in a way, but the abuse and emotional trauma got to be too much for him. Maybe, in an alternate universe, he would've been a caring person. But instead, he perfected the art of not giving a shit about anything. He turned himself off, burrowed all his feelings deep. Maybe, in some way, he was trying to kill himself by taking on riskier and riskier projects. One of those was messing with the Bat.

It was Crime Alley. She wasn't around, but her batmobile was. He didn't really need a tire but he happened to have a tire iron in his hand. It just seemed like Fate was saying something to him. Well, no, not really. He wasn't doing much thinking back in those days. He just had the tools and the time so he did it. He stole the batmobile's tire. Why? Who knew. Maybe because he could? He wanted Lady Bat to do something? He wanted a big stroke to his ego? Maybe he wanted to take it to Ma and get a good pat on the back and some infamy. He'd been climbing the ranks pretty fast lately.

But Lady Bat came back just as he was on his way out. He'd removed the tire from the vehicle but had yet to totally leave the premises.
Lady Bat didn't do anything to him though.
Nothing that he expected, anyway....

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Lady Bat had taken him in. And as it turned out, she and that Billionaire Wayne woman were one and the same. She found out about Ma Guns and shut her down, pulled Jason out, and took Jason Todd on as her second ward. It took about a year to get Bel to let him wear the Robin suit. He had to curb a lot of his rage, learn to feel things again. He knew from the beginning he was the black sheep of this family. Even though she had another adopted son, Dick, he was totally different from Jason. Nobody really understood him, but he couldn't be too surprised about it, because he didn't understand himself either.

Regardless, he did become Robin, although he and the Bat were butting heads. He was never as easy as Dick and he didn't want to be. He didn't think her "no kill" rule was smart and he didn't have any sympathy for the criminals. Criminals had ruined his life, and although he knew the backgrounds of both Bel and Dick, he somehow felt like his situation involved much more life ruin. He learned what had happened to his mom, and his father, and he was taking out his lost childhood on the criminals. It was all their fault.

But one criminal in particular eluded all of them. The Joker. Jason knew it infuriated Bel, but he also knew she kept letting him escape. Over and over. He couldn't help but agree with madman on more than some occasions - although he never voiced it to BatMom. He was determined, one day, to take out the Joker. Both for himself and for Belinda. He tortured them all, and that said nothing to how he treated the rest of the world.
The Joker would die, and it'd be his own private, secret, goal. He could save himself, Gotham, the world, and both of his families just by offing one guy. He didn't know how he'd do it. But he knew he would. One day.

"I get it. He's a total nut bar." he remembered, arguing with Lady Bat once again. Maybe she was beginning to identify what some of his rage had been focused toward, lately. He hadn't really figured her out, yet. He thought he knew her. He was pretty sure he knew Lady Bat. But sometimes Momma Bel would come out and it'd be from left field.

"No," she commanded. "Do not treat this lightly, and don't write him off as simply being insane. It's not that simple.
He's not like the others.
He has no code. No methodology. No goals.
You can't hope to understand him because his desires are fluid. They change.
He can't be predicted. He can't be reasoned with."

Her fingers stopped, hands resting lightly on the keyboard of the batcomputer. She looked down at her gauntlets.
"And if you're careless..."
She turned around, facing Jason, her Bat Cowl still on, but her glare piercing through the lenses regardless.
"... you will die. Do you understand?"

Yeah, yeah. He'd thought.
But now?
Now, he did understand.
He understood far too well.

And he wouldn't make the same mistake. He couldn't.
Because on that night, he died.
By the Joker's hand.

He got cocky, but his life ended and he was scared. And alone.
He wouldn't make the same mistake again.
But.
Bel was wrong.
Because the Joker can, in fact, be predictable.
So could everybody.
To an extent.

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He remembered digging out of his own grave. Physically, cathartically, ripping open the casket and piercing through the dirt with his fingers. Sucking in his first breath of fresh air. Crawling out of the pit.

But it was a false memory. Or perhaps a dream? A dream he relived close ot every night for the first year. It was relieving. But also horrific. Scary, but comforting. A confounding mix of emotions, a metaphor for himself.
But it was wrong.

Ra's Al Ghul had taken his body from Bosnia and revived him in the Pit. Apparently he'd run off in a crazed state. Naked, to never be seen again. Jason didn't remember any of it, but Talia had explained it to him. Unlike her father, she kept searching. And she did eventually find him. She gave him an apartment. A bunch of money. Love.
Jason was confused by it all.
But he eventually put it together. He figured, she really loved Belinda. But since she couldn't have Bel, she'd somehow misplaced all her feelings into him. Despite its queerness, it ultimately helped him. His memory was in shambles when Talia found him. His muscle memory, however, was on point. His body was still in pretty stellar shape, and apparently he'd been wandering the streets and beating the crap out of people to survive.

Everything came back slowly, but he still remembered the grave dream vividly. He always had wondered what it meant.
Talia had explained to him who he really was, but it hadn't clicked yet. He was a Robin, trained by Lady Bat. He fought crime in Gotham.

He started reading Gotham newspapers. She thought maybe they'd help him remember.

And one day.
They did.

Lady Bat Returns Joker To Police Custody

Everything came back.
Including the rage.

He wanted to kill him. He wanted to kill her. How could she?
He died and she let that motherfucker live? He went back to the Asylum? Only to escape, again and again, hurting more people, hurting him, leaving him... to die in vain?

Talia tried to stall him. She said he couldn't go out in his condition. She said he should train before he went on his mission.
She was right.
He'd only figured out she was stalling him later, but, ultimately, she was right. He needed to train.

So he took her money, and he went around the world, paying exorbitant funds to criminal tutors. Lady Bat had taught him a lot.
Robin was good.
But Jason Todd?
He was going to be better.

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Prague. He'd been training under a Russian Mercenary by the name of Egon. In six months, he'd unwritten all the rules of pulling punches Bel had ingrained in him and was now able to quickly and succinctly kill. Six months on hand to hand and six months on firearms. He was a living, breathing, armory. He was consumed in his personal advancement and lost sight of his goal.

"What's your story, American?"
They were walking down the compound in heavy snow, sharing a cigar between eachother to help pass the time.
"How does kid have enough money to buy time with Egon? You rich man's son? Or you got, what's the word? Sponsor?"

Jason shrugged, pulling the red hood of his hoodie tighter over his face as he took a puff of the cigar.
"Ja, Okay, you have secrets. But listen. You have skills. You're good. We've been talking."

Jason turned, handing the cigar back and giving his mentor a quizzical look. "We?"

"Me and the others. We who work for Egon. You should think about taking some work." He took the cigar from Jason's hand.
"we have jobs where we could use you." He took puff and blew the smoke out, it drifting quickly in the winter wind.
"Money is good. Even for you."

That was right before some asshole popped out of nowhere and curbstomped Egon's head in. Jason had heard him coming, but knew it wasn't for him so stepped back and watched it happen.
Once Egon's brains were firmly spread across the once-white ground and the stranger's boot, he turned to Jason.
"You will have to forgive me. Some of my men will forget on occasion to refrain from... Discussions. Jan will take you back to your room."

The job turned out to be transferring child sex slaves. His curiosity got the better of him and he checked it out, himself. He became familiar again with the type of people he was takign tutelage from. His sense of justice came back. He remembered his goals.
And he blew the shit up out of that place.

Coincidentally? His next steps in his new, evolved, training plan, were explosives experts and pilots.
And he'd blow the shit up out of them once he found out what they were doing on the side, too.

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England. "This is becoming quite the habit of yours," Talia mocked, a finger rimming the glass of her wine.
"What is?"
"Your 'investigations.' A pattern has formed.
I assist you in acquiring 'teachers', who possess very dangerous skills that I hope for you to cultivate and expand your repertoire... And then they end up dead."
She looked up, her long brown hair accentuating her face as she smiled. "I know it's not because you're covering your tracks."

Jason glared at the woman and hunched forward over the table they shared. "It's not without reason. The surveillance expert was a pedophile. The small arms guy ran a smack ring, and half of it was poison. The bomber was going to start a war on terrorism. The mercs in Somalia started a civil war over a petty rivalry that only ended up getting boy soldiers killed. Nearly thirty a week before--"

"Before you stopped them. Right." She tipped her wine glass and peered into it through lowered, long eyelashes.
"I know," she sighed, righting the glass. "I'm not criticizing. I'm just pointing out the obvious. Seems like your road to revenge has been belayed by a revisit to an old interest..."

Jason slapped a hand on the wooden table. "I'm not like her. At best, she would have put these dirtbags in jail. They're wrong. And I'm putting them down."

"Jason..." Talia exhaled, turning her head slightly before grabbing a folder from her satchel.
"I have new business. I... I have to show you something."

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Gotham.
He managed to hold himself back. Did a lot of introspection. At first, he'd set out to kill Lady Bat. But in order to do that: surveillance.
And in several months of it, he came to the conclusion that killing her wasn't enough. In fact, no, it might've been too easy. He couldn't let her off like that. She needed to know why.

So, at some point, he'd concentrated not on her and killing her, but getting the Joker instead. His private, secret, childish goal, but now motivated for entirely different reasons. With his new knowledge and skills, his new life (and death) experiences, he had the whole picture. And he could use that to get what he truly wanted.
Approach it from an entirely different angle.

He's save the city. In his own way. And in the process, he'd fuck over every criminal in Gotham, including the Joker.
He'd get retribution for his death.
And if he failed? Well, he'd just die again.
And it's not like that scared him.
He'd already done that once.

The Joker was back in Arkham Asylum again. He briefly thought about breaking out the psycho himself, but going through several possible outcomes, all of them didn't allow him enough time with the man before Lady Bat would be alerted. There was too much risk involved.
So he went through the catalog of demons Lady Bat still had affairs with on the outside, and one of them could make his dream a reality.
Not through brute forcing it, or even through smarts, but the one thing that brought all of Gotham together: money.

Black Mask had the means to bribe the guards and get the Joker out. And he was easy to manipulate.
And dumb enough to work with the Joker when he was mad.
So what would Jason do?

Make him mad.
Get him to hire the Joker.
All the while, fucking with Lady Bat's head.

And then, when the Joker was out, and Bats was whirling in her emotional circles, he could work his own magic. Get his own justice.
Make Gotham great again.

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Lady Bat stepped forward.
"Tell me what happened to you."

Where to begin? He thought.

"Let me help you."

Jason looked down at his feet, his helmet thankfully covering up the water welling up in his eyes.
Let me help you.

Did he even want help? Did he need it?
He thought back to everything he'd done. Bel certainly had the means to help him. But look at her track record.
She set him up for failure when he was a kid. Ma Guns?
Robin? Joker?

Sure, she believed in rehabilitation. She wanted all criminals to be rehabilitated.
But look at where they all ended up.
Back on the streets.
Still committing crime.
And ever present cycle of events.
An ouroboros.

Still.
Even with her spectacular resume of failure.

He considered it.

He really did.

But.
No.
Remember the Joker.
Remember his goals.
Remember Justice.

He wouldn't let himself lose sight again.

No.

He lifted his head and glared at her.
"No. You had your chance."

Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out a smoke grenade, weakly dropping it on the ground after pulling the pin.

"And I'm just getting started, Bat."

Once the smoke filled the area, he made his quick exit, climbing back to his bike and the overpass as quickly as possible, and running off.
Smoke never lasted long, and given Lady Bat's familiarity with it, his time to escape was even shorter than normal.

But he'd make do.
Like he always did.

His plan was still in motion.
He knew what Black Mask's next step would be.

Joker would be his.
Justice... Would be his.
He'd save this town.
He'd make it great.

He could turn shit into diamonds.
All this town ever was was shit, but he'd risen above.
And he'd make every effort to do what Lady Bat never could.
Because, unlike her, even when he'd been shit on for his whole life.
He still saw the possibility for the world to be good.
And, unlike the Bat,
he wasn't afraid to get a little more shitty in order to create that good.

He didn't let Death rule him.
He'd beaten it once before.

It kind of loses its intimidating finality after that.

 

[omnibee13]

And just like that, he was gone. Lady Bat was left, standing in the empty lot on Gotham's slumside, with the bodies of the Hand of Four scattered about. There was an eerie silence there. Not quite a graveyard, but unique to Gotham.

Scanning the damage, she came across the body of Leader. She had yet to regain consciousness, and Lady Bat doubted that, after the blow to the base of her neck, she would ever be completely herself. That was neither here nor there, though, as Lady Bat approached. Her sword lay nearby, discarded in the combat, and at the edge, the rusty stain of steadily oxidizing blood.

Red Hood's blood.

Swallowing hard, and too engrossed with her own fears and suspicions to avoid the act, Lady Bat lifted the blade and carefully made her way back to the Batmobile.

Once there, she felt almost automated. Her actions were partly her own, and partly robotic. One side of her told her it was madness and impossible. That she had been there, seconds after the explosion, that she had hauled him out.. That he was all at once so heavy.. so heavy.. but so very small as well. He was just a boy..

Lady Bat hadn't used the DNA sequencer much. Very rarely did she not know who every mover and shaker in Gotham was or what their movements were. But, clamping the sword into place and setting the scanners to focus on a large stain of Red Hood's blood, she realized that he was the first person in a long time to have bested her at nigh every turn.

From the murder of the men delivering Amazo, to the chase through Gotham, to the combat with the Hand of Four.. Red Hood appeared as a run-of-the-mill criminal, a crime lord in a leather jacket, but that was almost a deliberate misdirection, leading him to be underestimated by Lady Bat altogether..

The computer ran through the sequencing, and Lady Bat keyed in the commands to cross reference it with what DNA samples she had of Jason. His picture was side by side with a still from the footage she had of Red Hood. Steadily, the green bar progressed across the screen, the percentage kept creeping up and up. Belinda sat, cowl off, watching the program run with stepled fingers in front of her face, in the near silence of the Batcave. The bats chirped and tittered, the computer hummed low, and Bel's own breathing just crept along in rhythm.

M A T C H

The red words flashed above the pictures of Red Hood and Jason. Belinda heard a crash behind her and turned.

Alfred stood, having dropped his platter of coffee, cream, and sugar on the stone floor. His mouth was open, eyes wide. Belinda felt tears sting her eyes. Alfred was saddened. Hurt.. Her oldest friend, who had accompanied her to every funeral since she was 8..

"It can't be, ma'am…" he muttered.

Belinda sighed and turned back to the computer. She would have loved to have said that the sequencing was wrong, but the Batcomputer was never wrong.

" . . . I'll find out what happened to him, Alfred," she promised, pushing her chair back and going to stand. Her tears dried up, leaving a salty feeling to her eyes. "At this point, he shouldn't be too hard to track. I'll make it happen.. The sooner the better."

"You believe him to be going after Mr. Sionis next?" Alfred asked, kneeling without a single groan. Belinda watched him, an old man, gathering up the pieces of the platter he had dropped. And his composure..

"More like Sionis will go after him. This is small. I can guess what he's really after, but I'm not so sure," she explained, taking a step towards him. "Jason was too wild for this job, Alfred."

"He was a child," he said, a certain harshness to his tone.

"This had always been my fault."

Alfred didn't disagree, but he did look up at her.

After a long pause, he spoke.

"If you can, ma'am," he began, measured and calm. " . . . do your very best for him. He's only ever truly had you."

Those words stung.

Jason had had a mother and a father, and a glorified mob boss, and then he had her.. Belinda wasn't sure which of them were worse for the boy.

"Chances are, if we monitor Sionis closely enough, their paths will cross again and we can go get Jason," she said, with more confidence than she felt. "Alfred?"

Alfred was rising, the platter and the broken pieces of mug and coffee pot resting on it in his white gloved hands. He looked at her, one eyebrow raised.

"For now, Dick isn't to know," she ordered, feeling ice water rush through her veins. Dick would rush in. Try to reason with his "little brother." Try to be the big damn hero.

"Ma'am, with all respect owed to you," Alfred began, but he was cut off.

"We need to discover what's happened here," Belinda said, cutting across Alfred's words as gently as she could. Alfred took a deep breath and nodded. "You and I both know Jason died that night." The words seemed to make Alfred wince. "But yet, here he is, how many years later? Something doesn't make sense."

"What do you suggest we do, ma'am?"

Belinda took a deep breath and exhaled it, her shoulders rising and falling. Alfred gave her a stern look and they seemed to non-verbally communicate the unthinkable.

" . . . Alfred."

"It is in very poor taste, ma'am."

"Alfred."

"I'll not be part of it."

"I'll do the heavy lifting and digging."

"You shall do no such thing. It's by no means a job for the lady of the manor, let alone in regards to what exactly we're considering doing." Alfred objected, marching over to the nearest shelf to put the platter out of his hands.

"We can't bring in a crew, certainly. It has to be us two," Belinda pleaded. Alfred, his back to her, seemed to sigh, heavily.

" . . . I am too old for so much loss, ma'am."

"He may NOT be lost," she asserted, strongly.

. . .

Regardless of Alfred's objections and reservations, he was out there with Belinda, holding a lantern as she operated the backhoe. The Wayne Family Cemetary was on manor property and had next to no visitors. Occasionally, they had a historical tour, but the small, well-kept plot in the corner, belonging to Jason, was never disturbed. They stuck to the center, looking at the 16th and 17th century stones..

Belinda had her dark hair tied up in a red bandana, a black turtleneck keeping her from the chilling cold. The backhoe's controls were a stiff and her muscles ached from trying to manuevre them in a way that wouldn't disturb the grave too much.. Once the earth was moved away, a black metal casket lay at the bottom. Belinda clamored out and slid down into the grave, pulling a crowbar from the belt loop of her jeans.

"Do you need more light, ma'am?" Alfred asked.

"No," she called up at him. "I can see fine." Taking a deep breath, she lodged the crowbar into the seam of the casket and forced her weight onto it, trying to dislodge the seal. Heaving, and gritting her teeth Belinda pushed the lid open and..

Jason lay there. He hadn't aged a day. Belinda herself was Catholic and her mind went back to the stories of the incorruptible corpses of the saints. She heard Alfred's audible relief behind her, even as her stomach plummeted to her shoes.

"There you have it," Alfred said, his voice cracking. "He is still at rest."

"No," she growled, using both hands to grab the fine black suit she had bought him for his first communion, years and years ago. The suit he was buried in. Heaving upwards, despite Alfred's shocked gasp, Belinda was furious. It was a dummy. "He isn't."

Storming out of the grave, out of the blasphemy that had found itself among the hallowed ground of Wayne Cemetary, Belinda was on the war path. Alfred was at her heels.

"Ma'am, you cannot blame yourself!" He said, following her.

"It was a stupid mistake," she raged. "The body was made of high end latex. I didn't think to check him when I brought him home."

How could she?

The Coroner had declared it a tragic accident, that he had been at the wrong place at the wrong time and crossed paths with the Joker and Lady Bat.. Out of respect for Lady Wayne, the papers published next to nothing about his death and the ceremony was quiet and private. Commissioner Gordon sent her flowers..

"Belinda, please, remember how distraught you were!" He pleaded. "Even I found it hard to.."

Belinda rounded on him, in a fury.

"Stupid and careless!" She shouted, before the look on Alfred's face made her back down. She turned again and made her way towards the entrance to the back cave.

"Ma'am, where are you going?" Alfred called, starting to follow her again.

"To talk to the monsters that did this," she said.

 

[Vars]

"Can't you feel it?"

Just as The Fearsome Hand of Four had been almost impossibly timely, Red Hood would be also. His conversation with the Bat had revitalized him. He was just getting started. He would finish his plan. And without further delay, he drove straight to one of Penguin's old weapons caches. He needed something big. Something loud.
Something that said "I'm coming for you... Bitch."

"We're stuck in the damn crossfire."

And that thing was a rocket launcher. And he'd say it from the rooftop- of course. Because if there was one beautiful thing about Roman, is was that the man loved his glass windows. Full view of the city.
And of the laser sight crawling up his white suit.

Black Mask was quick to catch on. His eyes widened and he followed the beam across the way, where Red Hood waved.
In that moment, the vigilante almost wished the guy could see through his helmet. He could've eaten shit with his smug grin.
But alas, the wave was all that he would do.
Followed shortly by launching the rocket. Obviously.

"Ah, hell."

Black Mask and his monotonous-voiced female assistant turned tail and fled. Red Hood gave them about five seconds. That should've been long enough to not actually kill them, but still have the capacity to at least seriously injure and send a message.

The missile launched from the barrel in a flurry of smoke and a burst of sound that rivaled a jet engine. Although he'd been leaning into the shoulder-mounted weapon, the recoil still threw him back and he almost landed on his ass. He wasn't exactly proficient with such an outlandish weapon, afterall. But big plans called for big shows.

The projectile sped toward Sionis tower, the flame of its propellant still burning brightly well after its smashed through the glass of the skyscraper. It flew through Black Mask's office as well as the open door he'd run through, and later exploded in a place inside the building that Red Hood could not see.

But the message was sent.
And it was loud and clear: "I'm coming for you... Bitch."

The top half of the Tower caught fire and began smoking in short order. Red Hood dropped the weapon from his shoulder with a grunt and made his way back down the fire escape of the building he was on. He didn't care about the weapon - it was Penguin's and he had no further use for it - but he did want to get out of here before the fire department arrived.

He briefly wondered if Lady Bat would be back, but, since she didn't appear to have followed him to Sionis Tower, he figured he was okay for the evening. She probably got hung up on her own shit, he mused.

He was on his bike when the sirens of the fire engines started. Heading the opposite way, he actually passed one of them as he headed back to the Baret Rouge Club. Only about an hour had passed by the time he got there. Pulling up and getting off his bike, he noticed the bodies of the Four still lay on the ground, all unconscious save for the bloody mess of the one called Shot.

Red Hood walked the grounds, surveying the damage now that he didn't have to worry about being interrupted. All of their weapons were broken and strewn about... Except.. the sword. He stopped, the cleats of his combat boots making a squishing noise. Absentmindedly, he'd stepped in the puddle of Shot's blood. Behind his mask, he grimaced, picking his foot up and stepping backward.

"Must've taken it as a souvenir," he thought to himself, his brain still on the sword. He turned to the Leader's body as she let out a strained whimper. She was coming to.

Red Hood sucked in a breath, his left hand coming up to his chest.
"She got me," he thought. "I bet my blood was on that blade. Wonder if she took it to test it..."

Narrowing his eyes, he figured that must be it. If Lady Bat was testing his blood, then she'd find out the truth tonight. That ought to buy him some time, at least.

"Nnnnnghh..." The Leader moaned as her body began shaking.

Before she had the strength to open her eyes and get up, Red Hood reached into his jacket and pulled out a long tube. Drawing a pistol from a thigh holster with his free hand, he then screwed the suppressor onto it. Afterward, he shot the leader in the head. She flopped back down to the ground quietly.

He stepped closer to her, making sure she had breathed her last breath. Once he had made certain she was dead, he walked around to the other two, shooting them one time each in the head. He wouldn't be letting them come back to bite him in the ass, later.

You're becoming a crime lord, Lady Bat had said, before.
"Yeah," he muttered softly, thinking aloud. "You can't stop it. Just control it."
Like turning the light on in a room full of roaches. They'll all scatter. Unless traps were laid.


With a sigh, he unscrewed the suppressor and put it back inside his jacket, later holstering his weapon and going back to his bike.

Time to go home.

If he knew Black Mask like he thought he did, tomorrow was going to be the big night. It was almost dawn.
He needed to get some sleep before the coup de grâce.