Port Adams, not the only commercial dock in Gotham, but it was certainly the busiest. A constant stream of barges coming and going at all hours. Some dropping off their cargoes or picking up the produce of the cities many manufacturing plants. Say what you wanted about the city, more wealth passed through its ports than just about any other city in the country.

It was one of the reasons all but the worst idiots to grace the planet hadn't abandoned the hellhole. That didn't mean there was any shortage of idiots though.

A gunshot rang out from deep within the maze of storage containers waiting by the corner side, cries of alarm and the scuffling of men frantically trying to escape.

Wealth didn't just attract tourism and those with deep pockets. A dock as big as Port Adams was near impossible to keep clean, even if the overseers hadn't been dirty to the bone. Even with the Batman watching over the city, there were always going to be criminals sliming their way into any nooks and crannies they could find.

"That's one, two, three…"The demonic voice counted out, tapping his glock against the chipped red paint of the shipping crate, he whistled, shaking his head. He wasn't angry enough to not be impressed by the balls it had taken them to try pulling this one over him. "Unbe-fucking-leavable. First I gotta deal with her, now this too."

One of the men crouched at his feet, a tool with long scraggly grey hair wearing stained blue overalls tried to scramble back now that their tormentor's back was turned, he hadn't even made it over the bloodied corpse of his fellow worker before another shot ran out. The man rolled over, screaming things he couldn't hear anymore, clutching at where his left ear used to be, as blood ran down his sleeve. "Manners one-oh-one asshat. Ya don't run away in the middle of a conversation."

"Uh, uh, uh." The Hood appeared right before his face, read and gleaming even in the dim lighting, the pure white lenses burning into his soul. "Please, please, please." The man whispered, tucking his head between his legs and trying to curl up small as could be, high out of his mind, he probably hoped it would make him invisible.

"Pathetic." Hood laughed, shaking his head yet again. He could have almost felt sorry for the poor bastards, that was, if they hadn't been trying to flood the Lower Eastside with armor piercing assault rifles and M67 fragmentation grenades. They'd thought they were real fucking tough when he'd happened upon them.

He turned his back on them again and rolled his shoulders, giving them full view of the bullet holes they'd left in his jacket. Moron's hadn't even thought to reach for those armor-piercing rounds when he'd shown up. How did crime even survive in this city?

"We done now?" He gave the three living men kneeling behind him one last warning glance over his shoulder. His only answer was more whimpering, but he took that as an affirmative and ducked back into the container.

It took little over five seconds for his hand to grab hold of the one moron who 'had' been smart enough to go for the good bullets. Too bad for him his hands were…. less than good enough for those bullets. He dragged the man, kicking and screaming up a storm from out of the darkness he'd sought refuge in.

The screams were splittingly loud and more annoying than even the mangled hands trying to disentangle his from the cloth at the scruff of the guy's neck. Worse than that, he didn't want an even higher risk of someone coming to investigate; it was bad enough he'd had to push his pans forward once already that night.

"Shut up!" He slammed the guy into a crate, the sound echoing hollowly throughout the area. It didn't shut Screamy up, so Hood slammed a gun under the bastards jaw and flicked off the safety. "I've been having a fucking night; you really wanna piss me off more asshole?"

A stream of no's, most of them unintelligible were his reply, a stream of 'loud' no's. Hood sighed and tossed the guy aside, catching Screamy's ribs with the steel plated toes of his boot. There was a crack, but Screamy had finally decided that making a noise was doing way more harm than good. He curled in on himself and kept his screams to himself.

"Not so fucking hard now was it?" He dragged Screamy over to his friends, there was some scrabbling of his legs, but that was likely just a reflex thing, not the guy trying to escape. "Robin didn't scream as much as you and she's a kid, didn't make a sound when I got her face with these boots. Grow the fuck up." He tossed the man derisively amongst the others. "Hand it to the bat, he knows how to pick em, girl hits harder than all of you bastards combined." He cocked his gun again, she'd been fiesty, done a lot better than he'd thought she would, he'd almost have liked her if the situation had been different. "You had as much balls between you as that kid and I wouldn't be here."

Whether that was because they'd be dead or they wouldn't have caved to selling military grade weapons to gangsters he wasn't quite as keen on finding out.

"Now, where were we?" He tapped his gun against where his lips would be, the hollow tap, tap, tap against his helmet serving to unnerve them even more. "Oh yeah, the kiddy gangs." He tucked the gun away and got out his keris to replace it. "You were just about to…"

"Hypocrite."

Hood spun around to find the source, and was surprised to see the speaker was the guy who'd just gotten part of his ear shot off.

"I'm sorry?"

Bloody-Ear glared up at him, hand still clamped over the bleeding stump on the side of his head. "Ya wanna talk all mighty bout selling guns ta brats, and ya kick around a little girl for shits."

Hood blinked at the man, he kind of wished the expression were visible, if not for the fact that there might have still been a sniper around he might have forsaken the protection of his helmet to meet the man's defiant eyes. "Come again?"

"Yer not the one with his fucking ear blown off." The man spat, much to the shock of the rest of them. "Think yer fucking special, psychopath.

He didn't like that word. Hood hummed, moving towards the man slowly, stomping his heavy boots down to make as much noise as he could. A grin crept on his face, spreading slowly with each step he took and each inch the men tried to pull back from them. Bloody-Ear wasn't immune, his expression slowly morphing to reflect those off the others.

"Ya wanna know the difference, dipstick?" He grabbed the man's shirt and pulled him up off the ground, holding him at eye level. "Kids you pieces of shit sell these to, they end up dead, kids those kids use this on, they end up dead, kids who depend on those other kids… ya seeing a pattern here Einstein?" He asked, giving the man's neck a squeeze. "Robins, take it from me, they're no fun dead. Right?"

He looked away from the guy dangling in his arms for at those remaining of his arms running operation, nodding wide eyed at him.

"There, see, knew you could be taught. And lucky me, cause I had to leave some of you dispshits alive tonight." Hood sighed and dropped Bloody-Ear to the ground; his arm was beginning to go numb from the weight. "I gotta get a rise outta Batman somehow, right?" He cocked his gun, completely unnecessary, but he liked the way it made them flinch. "So, who's it gonna be?" He very obviously looked between the four of them.

Honestly, he would have preferred none of them be alive, but he needed rats if his plans were going to go smoothly in Gotham, good, scared rats. And they were never as scared as right after they thought they'd seen how far he was willing to go. It was guy's like them that made it hell to be a kid on these streets, they didn't deserve to go home to their hovels and keep doing what they were doing.

'Even the worst of men have their uses boy'

With any luck they'd be too chicken shit to try anything until he 'could' brain them against the nearest solid object, but he wasn't going to do that for any less than the number of people he really had to.

"Him, I need alive…" he gestured at Bloody-Ear with his gun. "That guys obviously a heavy hitter." The gun turned to the biggest of the lot; he looked a little less accustomed to the job, likely only brought along to move the heavy things. "You two, you're gonna have to woo me, what you got to offer a guy?" He splayed the fingers of one hand, pressing them against his chest.

They gaped at him, wide eyes and shaking so hard he wasn't even sure if their voiced were capable of clawing out of their throats. "Come, on, nothing, really?" He rolled his eyes and tucked the knife away. "Okay, howsabout this. I'll ask a question, best answer wins, that good for you?"

Well that got him a couple nods at the very least.

"Okay then." He hummed and began pacing, deliberately stomping down his heavy boots to make them lean a little further back from him, only glancing at them a couple times to make sure they weren't trying anything. He waited until he'd made a full circuit around them before turning sharply on his hell and bending down so he was at almost eye level of them. "Eary over there thinks I'm a hypocrite, he tilted his head at the boss, what about you two, waddaya think of the girl Robin?"

"Lit… Little bitch." One spat out almost immediately. "Ya could, should catch her again, teach her a lesson real good, right, bet she, she deserved it , shoulda hit her harder 'n ya did, got a…"

The gun went off even before Red Hood consciously thought of it, the bang seeming even louder against the sudden rushing in his ears as blood splattered along the ground, covering the guy who hadn't spoken in the blood of his workmate.

"Oh shit, oh shit…" The guy scrambled back, tried to but the corpse had wound up splayed across his legs, trapping him in place. His eyes fixed on the killer in front of him, tears now dribbling from his eyes. "She's great, she's the best." He was waving his hands up in front on him now. "The, the… dunno why there was ever another…"

"Shut up." Hood said in a tone that would have been close to a sigh without the voice modulation of his helmet, a dry, disgusting taste filling his mouth and throat. "You've got the job." The guy started rambling on about something, but Hood didn't listen as he turned to leave before rapid fire beating in his chest got out of control. "I'll text you the address where I want the guns delivered, don't be late."

O

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O

"How was I supposed to know, it'd be a trick, the guy ran like he was gonna fall of that ramp any second." Her shouting agitated the bats roosting above their heads.

"That is why you're supposed to pay attention, you were trained better." Bruce studied the girl through the filtered perspective the cowl provided him, the two black eyes brought on by her nearly broken nose, butterfly bandages holding together the gash on her brow, scrapes all along her cheeks. That was to say nothing of the bruises blossoming all along the rest of her body, hidden now by the loose post-patrol workout clothes she kept at the cave. She shouldn't have gotten hurt that badly, if he'd put more hours into her training.

"I was paying attention, that's how I thought he looked like he was gonna fall over, I can't help he was a good actor." She crossed her arms over her chest. "He coulda fallen off the side of that building and died!"

"He could have killed you!" It had been too familiar, finding her there, bloody and propped up against the wall after she'd been lured away from what he'd meant to be a safe distance from danger.

"Yeah that's what he said too." She mumbled, turning her head away from him, the rage twisting her features so familiar it made his chest burn, and Bruce knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, there was nothing he could say that would get through to her. "It wasn't my fault."

"You're banned from regular patrols until I've gotten him off the streets." He turned from her so he wouldn't have to look at it, knowing she'd see any preventative measure he put in place to keep it from happening again as a punishment no matter how he phrased it.

"What?" She leaped from the cot, the skid he heard giving away that she's stumbled. "I was going on solo patrols before we even met. I can hand…"

"Robin!" He snapped, cutting her off as he spun back to her. "When I agreed to let you wear that uniform, you agreed to nothing less than total obedience, you are not skilled enough to handle this man on your own and you will 'not' wear the it without direct supervision while you are being targeted or it will be taken from you, have I made myself clear!" It didn't matter that the man had insinuated he wouldn't be coming after her again, that he 'had' targeted her at all, had planned things in such a way to get her alone was enough.

"Fine." She spat the word out through her heavy scowl, her fists shaking where she'd balled them up at her sides in an effort to keep herself calm, from lashing out like it she would have if she'd been give even the smallest amount of leeway.

"Good, now get home, your mother's probably waiting for you." He left her at the med bay to finish dressing while he went to the batcomputer to begin working on some old case files to clear his head, not turning from the screen until he heard her stomp past on her way to the old bike she wouldn't let them replace.

"Should I bother coming in tomorrow night?" She called as she started up the engine.

"There are some training exercises I want you to go through." He replied, keeping his eyes on his work.

She didn't say anything, tearing out of the cave a moment later. Bruce sighed and pulled down his cowl to pinch the bridge of his nose in an attempt at staving off what he'd convinced himself was a coming headache.

O

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O

"Without supervision." Steph scoffed, stomping down on the parking breaks too hard when she put the bike into park. "Come in tomorrow for more training, cause you're still not good enough." She pushed back the urge to ram her fist against the handlebars and up off the bike.

No going out without supervision was just Batman speak for, 'You're going to stay in the cave practicing flips until I say so.' Because Batman was always going to have some reason why he couldn't take her with him, and Batgirl had a tendency to knock her out when things got interesting.

Her face still hurt and when her mom saw it, she was going to ask questions, as if Crystal Brown hadn't seen Steph walk by in worse shape with no comment. She'd only get a couple hours of sleep because she'd need to get up early to plaster her face with concealer to hide the bruising so no one else would ask questions. The girl leaned back on her bike with a sigh and ran a hand through her hair, now free of any hair gel. "Cool hair." She muttered to herself and stepped away from the bike, her hands shoved deeply into her pockets.

It was just the worst day, and it wasn't even over yet. There were still three blocks between her and home, and the darker than usual clouds were promising snowfall before she got there. She'd reluctantly stepped into the frigid air outside – not that the unheated little storage room was any better – and was just stringing the lock through the door when she heard the shuffling footfalls coming up behind her. Her head made a hollow thump when it knocked against the heavy metal in front of her.

"Hey, watchya got there?" The voice came from behind her.

Steph's feet dragged loudly against the concrete when she turned, her lips pursed tightly to keep her from saying something in her irritation that she shouldn't have.

There were only three of them, the tall woman who'd spoken to positioned ahead of the other two, she leaned forward, one hand slamming onto the door besides Steph's head, trying to box her in.

"Come on, we just wanna see, maybe take it for a ride, you won't mind, right?" The woman's grin was predatory, one of her flunkies cracking his knuckles behind her.

"Sorry, but I 'just' locked it up." Steph ducked under the arm and tried to walk away, not bothering to make either her voice or expression even a little genuine.

Predictable that got her an arm on her shoulder, pulling her back, and the sound of a switchblade somewhere behind her.

Fine, Steph's hands balled into fists, her knuckles popping with the motion, a grin twisting her features as adrenaline trickled into her blood. No going out as Robin didn't mean Stephanie Brown couldn't beat the ever-loving crap out of these assholes. She spun to throw her first punch.

"Hey!" The voice was accompanied by a shape speeding by Steph, tackling the guy with the knife clear to the other end of the alley. Steph – and later she'd blame this on her minor concussion – was too shocked to move at first.

The new guy spun on his heel to face the new guy, his fists coming up to frame his bright blue eyes in a sloppy boxing stance, a cocky smirk in place. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, the tow muggers still standing threw themselves at him, he got in a few hits, but one had a piece of rusted rebar and he was outnumbered really soon. By the time Steph reached the fight, they'd already thrown him against the side of a hardware store and pressed a knife dangerously close to his neck.

"Whoa, whoa, hold on." Steph skidded to a stop before them, holding up her hands. She didn't want to lose her bike, but she wasn't going to get some guy stabbed over it. Unfortunately – or fortunately if Steph had been almost anybody else – the thugs weren't interested in her anymore.

"You wanna know what happens to dumb kids who try to play hero here?" The woman demanded, spittle flying from her mouth, mixed with the blood trailing down her nose.

"Wanna know what happens to dumbasses caught in the middle of a murder scene?" He choked out, trying to lean away from the knife despite the wall at his back.

"And who's gonna catch us?" The woman returned, leaning in real close.

He squirmed a little in the hold the men had on him to get one of his arms low enough to reach into his pants pocket and retrieve a cellphone. "Ready called the cops." He grinned at them with bloody teeth and cocked his head towards where there were in fact sirens audible not too far off.

The woman snarled and her fist struck out, hitting the guy with an uppercut that would have rattled his brain, she grabbed the phone from his hand and all three of them sped off.

Before chase after them, but paused when the guy now lying in the snow groaned softly. The cop car they'd heard sped right past the scene as though there was nothing there, and now, she supposed, that her stress relief had run off there really wasn't.

Steph glared down at him, a low growl threatening to slip out of her throat, she was about to tell him that she could have handled it herself and he had no business almost being stabbed for a completely pointless reason, thank you very much, but the almost proud expression on his face gave her pause.

"Didn't really call the cops." The guy muttered as he sat himself up and looked in the direction the muggers had disappeared down. He caught her watching him and tried to grin, but winced and brought up a hand up to prod at his already swelling cheek. "Ow, fuck."

She had enough experience trying to help people only for them to share the same sentiments she almost had. Stress and adrenaline had that effect on people. It happened less to Robin than it had to Spoiler, but having people talk down to you when you were trying to help still wasn't the best feeling in the world. And he'd lost his phone because of it.

"You okay?" She knelt down and offered him her hand, trying for a friendly smile. Snow was falling from the sky now, and Steph just knew she'd be soaked by the time she got home and wasn't that just fucking perfect.

"Yeah." He accepted it and let her pull him to his feet then, dusted some snowflakes from his messy dark hair, eyes turning skyward, and they were really pretty eyes, almost green now that Steph got a good look at them, then they turned to her. "Looks like I was a little late, huh?"

"What?" She frowned at him and he waved a finger at her face, her very sore, very bruise covered face. She probably looked someone had pelted her in the face with beets. Steph turned away sharply and brought up her hood to hide as much of it as she could. "No this was…" She jammed her hands into her pockets to start walking away. "Something else."

"Hey hold up." She heard his steps crunching against the snow as he jogged after her once a few seconds had passed, for the second time that night – early morning? – a hand dropped against her shoulder, this one was less hostile, but Steph was also in a way worse mood.

"What?" She asked, careful to keep from snapping at him.

"You uh…" His eyes were wide when he blinked down at her and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "You forgot to lock your bike away."

Steph looked passed him, the chains had fallen to the ground outside the storage room and when she checked, she found the lock still in her pocket.

"Crap." Steph rolled her eyes heaven ward and jogged back, she almost expected to find that someone was in the process of stealing the thing already when she yanked the door open. She barely had the time to release the breath she'd been holding when a low whistle from behind had her spinning around.

"How much horsepower you got on that thing?"The guy was right behind her, looking over her shoulder at the parked bike.

Steph let out a shout and shoved him back. "What the…" How had he even snuck up on her like that? "Oh, come on, if you try and rob me too I swear to God…" She was too tired for this crap; she was already going to have to choose between sleeping tonight and getting to school on time the next day.

"Nah I wouldn't." He waved his hands in front of him with a disarming smile. "I was just, uh…" One hand went to rub the back of his neck and he diverted his eyes. "I just thought it looked pretty cool, ya don't see that kinda machine round here a lot." He splayed his fingers helplessly.

Steph blinked owlishly at the guy, with his earnest expression, his hands were behind his back now and he almost looked like he was going to start bouncing on his feet, despite the fact that he was tall and dressed like he'd walked out of a biker movie, he looked so harmless. Even in her foulest mood, Steph wouldn't have been able to deny that it was cute.

"I really have to get home." Steph said, twisting the chain in her hands, trying to divers her eyes from his as she listened to the links clinking together.

"Oh." There was a crestfallen look on his face for barely a second before he wiped it off and stood. "You want me to walk you, y'know, in case they come back or something happens?"

Steph thought it was more likely that something would happen to him than her.

"Hey I'm tall, I can be scary." He curled his fingers besides his face as though they were claws, at her unimpressed frown he slipped out of his jacket, leaving him with just a green hoody for warmth, and held the leather above both their heads, shielding them from the snowfall. "Got an umbrella." He smiled down at her.

"Okay fine." Steph fought down her smile and dragged the chain through the handles on the door and clicked the lock in place. "So you just walk around looking for fights?" She asked as he fell into step with her.

He snorted and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. "Not like ya have to look in this city." His eyes went to the sky, and he frowned at the snowfall, then winked down at her. "Worth it though."

"Yeah sure." Steph rolled her eyes and pulled he draw strings of her hoody closed around her face to hide the heat spreading across her cheeks.

He said his name was Peter, he was a mechanic who worked around Otisburg, she didn't find out much more about him seeing as how he spent most of the asking about her bike, but he left her a card when he dropped her off and told her to call him any time she needed a tune up.

She still got the feeling he was more interested in her bike than her, but at least he was nice. Just figured she had to meet him when she looked like hell.

O

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Jason's smile turned to a smirk as soon as he turned away from her and began walking down the street. He hadn't planned it, running into her that way, hadn't really factored her into his plans at all anymore other than keeping her out of them, but now…

He pulled a tracker out of his pockets and turned towards the signal being emitted by the phone those morons had been unlucky enough to try stealing from him.

Now he knew that Bruce didn't keep as close an eye on her as he should have, there was no tracer on her bike, and if she walked around her neighborhood that bruised up, there was no one watching her close enough to question it. There was a path to Bruce there, and while he wasn't sure what it was he was going to do with it, now that he knew it was open, so were a whole slew of new possibilities.

Messing with her a little could be interesting, or it could prove pointless, he'd just have to wait and see what happened. After all, an open mind 'was' the most important precondition for creating new ideas.