The first time Jason Todd met the kid was after his not so fun week of memory loss, the League of Assassins, and the Untitled... oh lets not mention possible world catastrophe due to Roy blowing up a big door, Way to go Harper!
Now to top it all Bats decided to take a field trip with the rest of of the league into space, for some kinda trial of sorts. Nightwing and the replacement are off doing god knows what with their junior Justice League.
So he Kori and Roy got stuck with playing "the good guy" for a few weeks. Roy got Star City and Central, Kori got DC and Metropolis; leaving Jason with Bludhaven and Gotham duty, a headache that won't go away, and about three hours of sleep.
After a rough night of drug busts, overweight bird happy men with dangerous umbrellas, a sexy cat lady and angry cops mad at him for blowing up their police cruiser... Oops? Jason ducked into what he thought was an abandoned building too decrepit for even the worst of villains to consider, just a little breather before he headed home. Once he's firmly inside what seems to a small bedroom does he realize that the building's outside looks are for show; the inside is perfectly sound.
The room he landed in was occupied by a small figure, a young child of about 5 or 6. With one hand covering the child's mouth, the other shook her awake. The young girl woke in an instant, but did not panic. Instead, he took Jason's form in carefully.
"Keep quiet," Jason warned in a low tone. The girl only responded with a slow blink. That was as good as he was going to get, Jason figured. He slowly removed his hand, and when the girl did as he was asked, took a step away from the bed.
"I got a few questions for you, kid." The child blinks once more, and gradually sits up on the cot she was resting in.
"Who?" The kid asks. (Jason often looks back at this and thinks that this is the worst unintentional pun ever, with more still to come.)
"You," Jason replies, but takes another look around the room to double check that there wasn't anyone else there that the kid could be referring to. Jason receives the mother of all pouts before the girl chews her bottom lip in thought.
"No," she says, not with defiance, but with confusion. "Who…you?" The question comes out slowly and hesitantly, not because she was afraid of Jason, but clearly because she didn't quite know the words to say. The kid was going to have trouble communicating with him, which was going to draw out the conversation a lot more than Jason wanted it to. He sighs and figures it's not really worth lying to a six year old.
"Jason," he replies, leaving out his last name as a compromise to his inner paranoia. "Now, where am I?" He asks slowly, now knowing that this kid won't be the greatest source of information with his broken English. He knows his location, but this place is obviously the headquarters for something important if they went so far as to disguise the building. The girl cocks his head to the side, her blue eyes staring through him as she contemplates Jason's question.
"The Court of Owls." For some reason, the answer sends a shiver up Jason's spine. That doesn't sound like any place that should be housing a kid her age for any sort of innocent reason, and Jason has a real problem with that, especially after his shitty childhood.
"Why don't I get you out of here," Jason half pleads, half tells as he goes to scoop the kid up. He doesn't know what he would do with the girl, Jason certainly couldn't keep her, Bruce would probably fuck her up (plus he already had a replacement Robin, his mind whispered to add to his already boiling temper), there was no room in the orphanages, and this kid probably wouldn't last an hour in juvie, which is where she would go because the orphanages were full.
Luckily for Jason, the decision was already made for him.
"No." There was the defiance.
"The fuck?" Jason was stunned, both by the answer and how light the kid was when he picked her up. As he lifted up the kid's shirt ignoring the small voice in the back of his head arguing about lifting girls shirts but he had to see if ribs were visible.
His eyes got caught on the scars littering the small chest as they gleamed in the small amount of moonlight. He sucked in a deep breath and pushed down a wave of murderous rage.
"What do you mean? They obviously don't like you that much." Instead of a straight answer, the girl sang a childish tune, possibly one of the few things that The Court wanted her to know in English.
"Beware the Court of Owls, that watches all the time, ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch, behind granite and lime. They watch you at your hearth, they watch you in your bed, speak not a whispered word about them, or they'll send The Talon for your head."
If that wasn't a threat, then Jason was an idiot.
"Then why do they want you so badly?"
The kid smiled, and Christ, she looked adorable and innocent, while pointing to herself and said, "Talon."
"They're training you to be an assassin?" Jason isn't surprised, this is Gotham, and Gotham was the embodiment of 'fucked up'.
"No" the kid chirped happily then she promptly pointed to herself "Assassin ... before" she strained out the words which Jason assumed was as large as her English vocabulary got.
"Then why haven't you killed me yet?" Not that Jason wanted to be offed by a kid after just having been resurrected, but he was curious.
Another smile lit the kid's face up. "Like," she sang, pointing at Jason.
Jeez, the kid had to be deprived if Jason was preferable company. What a sad situation. But it wasn't like Jason could do anything about it. He was still dead by everyone's standards, including Bruce's, and the kid didn't want to go with him anyways.
The thought struck him like a lightning bolt, and Jason felt stupid that he hadn't asked before.
"Who are you?" The kid cocked her head to the other side, confusion pouring off of her in waves.
"Talon."
"No," Jason amended quickly. "When you're not Talon."
"Not." Jason rubbed his forehead, quickly getting a headache trying to convert the one-worded answers into sense.
"Not, what?"
"Not person." It sinks in after a moment that she doesn't have a secret identity, a life outside of assassinations. Even though it went against everything his tough act stood for, he hugged the kid.
Briefly.
"What about before you were Talon?" Jason wasn't expecting an answer but it couldn't hurt to kid looks puzzled for a moment then brightens "Oma...called..." she trailed off grasping for the words, then pointed to herself "Itzu"
"Renegade..." Jason recognized the word from the long hours Ducra made him learn Tsai.
"Your a Niaso?" 'cause only Niaso speak Tsai fluently, it's in their blood.
She blinked owly (another one of those bad puns) then nodded slowly "Umn... Oma said... Niaso" she pointed to herself again.
"Oma?" then it clicked, Oma means Grandmother in German.
"Your grandmother? Is she a Niaso too? And why aren't you with her?" Jason knew that he probably shouldn't bombard the kid with questions but his mind was too busy working to care.
"Oma... no Niaso... Oma in trouble... with old guy... old guy ... sold me to Court" Jason didn't like the sound of that, and with barely controlled fury he asked
"Old guy? who's that?" the kid shrugged "no know name" he gritted his teeth "what about your Grandmother? Whats her name?" Any hint of this kid's family could lead to both good or bad things, but it was worth a shot.
She smiled "Shiva"
Well Damn.
"I'm going to visit again," Jason says after the bombshell, he needs to find answers. Jason looked down at the kid and he sees excitement jolt through her, "and one day I'll take you away from this place." The excitement visibly dies down and is replaced with worry.
"But…die," the kid admonishes him, tugging at his jacket with clear frustration that Jason wasn't understanding what would happen to him if Jason actually stole her away. Jason alone could not stand against the Court of Owls.
"Don't worry, I got this." Jason says it with confidence and a smirk, just to get the little girl off of his case. Eventually persuaded, the kid gets back in the cot and is lured back to sleep as Jason stands over her bed and watches over her. Though Jason really wanted nothing more than to kidnap the child, he knew that he really had no allies to rely on for help, no matter how strong Roy and Kori are, they had just barely survived the untitled and that was with the help of a bunch of cutthroats, they could never pull this off with just the three of them, they need allies that's what Jason really needed if he wanted to get the girl out of this hellhole.
And with his plan of bringing down all of the Untitled slowing coming into fruition, he realized that getting any allies was going to take a while.
_Two years passed, Jason was the official black sheep of his family, the Demon brat (Damian Wayne) was Robin under a covert group working for the Justice League known as Young Justice, and the tiny psychopath was probably eight now (it was hard to tell, her room was always dark, Jason still didn't know who the kid was, and the kid's body was just plain small).
With that though, people knew he was alive, he could work with the heroes on a few things, and Jason was more than ready to extract the girl from the Court of Owls.
Of course, over these two years, Jason had tried to tip Bruce off on the Court of Owls, but it brought up uncomfortable questions and they would get into an argument, and he figured that it was just delaying what Jason wanted.
Plus, he figured, the operation he wanted to pull off required stealth, Young Justice was made for stealth operations, so Jason, as Red Hood dragged Roy as Arsenal and Kori as Starfire, to the teenage infested mountain, and of course forwent telling the League . As much as it would grind him to work with the Demon brat, and with Nightwing busy with Bludhaven he was not gonna be any help, Jason could admit that he needed allies in order to get his little buddy out.
Plus, Jason already promised 'new friends' last time he had visited, and Jason did not want to disappoint the kid.
"Recognize Red Hood, B-07," the automated voice announced, drawing worried and annoyed eyes to his newly delivered presence.
"What's he doing here?" Kid Flash, or Bart Allen, didn't even try to whisper, making Red Hood draw up a smirk. Inside, he was already questioning his judgment. Red Hood looked around and saw most all of the team out of their costumes.
"Vacation day?" he questioned with an undertone of rudeness. Well, at least they weren't doing anything and could focus on his mission entirely. The Demon brat (no, he wasn't ever going to call him Robin) scoffed under his breath and looked away, already labeling his presence as unimportant.
How rude.
La'gaan went back to studying something in his fish bowl, Superboy (wasn't he going by a human name now?) hadn't bothered to look at him in the first place and continued to glare fiercely at the TV screen, M'gann was sending him nervous glances in between making something in the kitchen, and Aqualad deemed Jason important enough to get off of the couch for a conversation, followed by Beast boy and ... Bug boy was it? whatever.
"What is your purpose here?" A little bit cold in the delivery, but Red Hood could feel the subtle interest in doing something other than swimming or watching the TV screen do its usual black and white thing the clone liked so much coming off of the team's leader.
"What would you say if I had a mission for ya?" Aqualad's eyes widened in disbelief, before narrowing in distrust. Red Hood could feel the stares he was getting from the rest of the team.
"Why should we trust you? Your position as a hero is almost nonexistent. In fact, I'm surprised you're allowed in here."
Well, Jason was too, to be honest. Not that he was going to let them know that.
Jason shrugged and smirked, which irritated the Demon brat enough to stomp over and give Red Hood a piece of his mind.
"Well, whatever it is, you can count us out. We all know your 'habits of doing the illegal stuff' as Drake tells me so Batman certainly wouldn't approve of it." As much as Jason hated Batman being mentioned…
"Just like Batman approved of your 'violent tendencies'?" The question threw the birdbrain off long enough to push past both him and the team's leader to come to rest against the couch. "I guess you're right. You couldn't possibly be interested in this." Jason shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, waiting for one of the team to take the bait.
"Interested in what?" Kid Flash, winner of his heart!
"Yes, friend Jason, what could be so important that we need the aid of children?" Kori... never really liked the Young Justice team much.
Roy smirked "I agree with princess, Jay, why are we here?"
"Well, I need your help to help rescue a kid." Silence covered the mountain, and Jason waited for the questions to start pouring in.
And they soon did. All at once.
"One at a time," he demanded. "What are you, three? Take turns or whatever, but I can't answer everything at one time."
"A kid? What for?" Geeze Harper, heartless much?
"Why would you want to save someone?" Ah, the green fish, ever the doubter.
"It could argued that I save lots of people by doing my normal gig as an 'anti-hero'. But I know that's not what you wanted the answer to, it's an ongoing argument we always have. You want to know why I want to save this particular person." The team nodded, the Martian seemed to be holding her breath. "Let's just say, that when I'm your only friend, you are in sad, sad shape."
As much as they would need rescuing from you," the Demon brat sneered, "lacking friends isn't justifiable for a mission."
"I think it is when everyone else that surrounds her wants her to become some sort of super assassin," Jason says it casually, but his insides still burn when he thinks about it, and looking at the others before him, he knows that they don't like it either. "Especially since she's about eight, I think," he adds on for good measure.
Most of the team looks horrified, but Jason is pretty sure by the look on Superboy's face (someone else raised to be a weapon, now that he thinks about it) and his own teammates Roy and Kori, he has at least three allies. But Superboy, Roy and Kori alone does not make up the numerous teammates Red Hood knows he needs, no matter how powerful they are.
"But, since none of you are interested…" he trails his sentence off and turns to leave, when Superboy's hand grips his shoulder tightly and manually turns him around again.
"I'm going," is Superboy's gruff response to his raised eyebrow. Jason inwardly grins, and knows all he has to do is wait for the domino effect to kick in. "I'll go as well." stated Kori firmly, did he ever state how much he loves the princess?
" 'course Jaybird"
"But Conner (so that was his name), you can't just trust the Red Hood," Jason agreed with this, but this honestly wasn't the time, he was a bit anxious to pick the kid up already. "He always has some sort of personal motivation, and we can't even be sure that this kid exists."
"I don't want to take the chance that this kid does exist and that we refused to help them. I'm going." The Demon brat sighed, knowing that he wouldn't be able to rationalize with the clone any further.
"Aqualad?" M'gann asked, deferring to their leader for guidance. The Atlantian stood there for a tense moment before letting out a huge breath."First, I must hear more of the situation. Tell me everything."
So, Jason got cozy on the couch and told the team of his past two years with the strange kid that he had stumbled upon by accident. About the kid's poor English, her weight, her scars, lack of identity, the way her smile lit up her whole face, and that the kid had never laughed a day in his life. And then Jason finally told a few stories about the assassinations the kid had managed to tell him about, and the few times the kid had died.
"They have this weird serum I think, that gives her the power to come back to life, because she says that all of them have this ability."
"Maybe they're all family, and this is a hereditary trait," Aqualad hypothesized.
"As much as I would love to know that there is a family dynamic even more fucked up than ours," Jason casually stated as he pointed to himself and Robin, "I'm pretty sure they aren't. Rumor has it that the Court of Owls goes around kidnapping kids to turn them into their assassins. But I've never met anyone other than this one." The team takes this in with all of the other information they gathered.
"Why us and not the League?" Beast boy questions him curiously.
"Christ, do you think they understand the word subtle? I'm sure if Superman came with five miles of their hideout they'd be gone. If you want a covert mission done, you go to the group that does covert missions. Easy logic."
"Then why didn't you ask the League to give us this mission?" Kid Flash points out.
"For one, I found the kid and I want to rescue her. Two, if you guys went without me, which is what the League would order, the kid wouldn't know you and would probably try and murder you. Third, the League would want to investigate the Court of Owls, which would not lead down a path of rainbows and sunshine."
"What do you mean?" M'gann questioned.
"The less amount of people who know, the less we have to worry about the possibility of our presence reaching their ears. If their cute jingle is anything to go by, they'll wipe out anyone who even knows the title of their organization. The League is full of a lot of people, but again, subtlety is not their specialty, and I would hate to go against a bunch of guys who apparently can't die."
"I still don't know if I can trust you."
"Jeez Fishy, you try to kill a guy once and you're forever on his bad side."
"That's generally how it works, yeah." He was getting nowhere with this kid! Whatever, Red Hood would take who he could get, because at this point, all he wanted to do was get the mission over with.
"What's your decision then, fearless leader?" He asks Aqualad as he stands up, a clear indication he's through waiting around.
"I…," Aqualad trails off for a moment before collecting himself. "I will not make this a required mission, but I will join you."
"Aqualad," his 'brother' protests, before letting out a small groan and waiting for the rest of the team to make their decisions.
"I'm going," Conner repeats, standing up to join Red Hood, Roy, Kori and Aqualad. M'gann quickly stands up next to Conner, also offering her assistance. Bug boy (who kinda looks like a beetle though he was blue), who had been carefully listening as the conversation continued. "I'll come." Jason knew he would be able to count on him to join, after all, having run away from the Reach who tried turning him into a living weapon, he must not have wanted any other kid going through a similar experience.
Finally, it was down to Kid Flash, Beast boy, La'gaan and Robin. The speedster sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck as he said, "Rob…" the Green fur ball nodded in agreement to his red headed friend.
"You too, huh? Fine." They stood up, making the covert team look at La'gaan expectantly "Fine" the fish ground out clearly still unhappy.
"Great," Jason said enthusiastically. "Let's go."
"Now?" A few of them asked, startled that the mission was so soon.
"No, next month," Jason quipped sarcastically. "Yes, now! I've made this kid wait two years, I don't want to make her wait even one more day."
He turned and left, Kori and Roy following closely behind, and as he approached the Zeta transporters, he heard the team scramble to change and get all their gear together.
This was going to be a long night.