Chapter 3 - Running for Home and Red Giraffes
Two weeks after releasing himself from the hospital (a day before his actual release) and Red Hood was back on patrol. Well, running late on patrol. He would have been at the warehouse an hour ago, but he kept stopping to look over his shoulder. For reasons completely unrelated to Nightwing showing up in Bludhaven. Plus, his usual route normally took him past a bunch of street cameras, so he had to go around those. Also for unrelated reasons.
Sometimes, Jason wondered if he was lying to himself too much. Probably not.
He was about three blocks away and twenty minutes late for the meeting of the major crime bosses in Bludhaven when he saw something at street level, so he grappled down for a better look.
A kid, around twelve, carrying a stuffed backpack that was way too big for him. From the state of his clothes, he wasn't a street kid. Too nice, and more importantly, clean. And from the furious tears on his face, he wasn't going to a sleep over.
And behind the kid, some guy with a knife. Clearly, he was going to take the kid's backpack. Which was just asking for the Red Hood to jump from the roof onto his shoulders. Which is good because that's what happened.
The kid jumped at the crash, whirling around with a taser in his hand. Well, at least he was prepared. Jason raised his hands in mock surrender. "Good job with the taser kid. Guess I didn't need to stop this crap stain after all." He hefted the man under his boot up, looking him up and down. The man didn't look like a druggie. "Jeez dude. You look half starved. Here," he pressed a voucher into the clearly-homeless guy's hand. "There's a hot dog vendor on Fifth and Blue. Give him that, he'll punch it and give you a hot dog." The voucher was good for ten hot dogs, prepaid by Red Hood. He had half a dozen in his belt that he gave to various people when they looked like they needed food.
As the guy clutched the voucher like a lifeline, Jason turned to the kid, who had his taser dangling by his side as he looked at Jason with some sort of awe. "You're Red Hood."
Jason nodded, not taking off his helmet just yet. "Come on. Let's get off the streets before someone decides you still look like a target. What's your name by the way? And do you have any allergies?"
"Um. Anthony Santana, and no, not really. I mean, the cold gives me hives sometimes, but that's it."
"Come on, Anthony, let's see if Min Yu Eatery is still open." The Eatery was Jason's favourite. It was as close to homemade as he could find in Bludhaven, clean, affordable, and the owner liked him. Partly because he was a good customer, partly because he had gotten her kid out of some trouble with a gang or three. By the time they got there, the place had closed, but Min saw him through the window and opened up. "Missed me by five minutes Hood! You're lucky the stove is still lit or you'd have to eat cold leftovers!"
"Min, you know I'd eat anything you made, hot, cold or otherwise." Jason gestured to Anthony. "Min, this is Anthony. He's running away from home and needs a good meal before he leaves. Anthony, this is Min Yu, purveyor of delicious food and wielder of a large spoon. Do not make her mad."
Min waved the aforementioned spoon threateningly. "And don't you forget it. Shame on you Hood, for ever thinking I'd serve you something cold. Now go sit down. Food will be out when it comes."
Jason pulled off his helmet as he slid into the booth. Anthony cautiously slid in beside him. After a moment, he asked, "So how did you know I was running away?"
Grabbing a pair of chopsticks and laying them on his napkin, Jason answered, "The massive backpack mostly. And your clothes are a bit too clean for you to be living on the streets." Anthony nodded like that made sense. Which it probably did. By now, most of the kids in Bludhaven knew he had lived on the streets when he was younger, so he knew what he was talking about.
"Are..." Anthony hesitated, "are you going to make me go back?"
Jason pulled a face. "Not if you don't want to. But I would like to know why you're running away and if you have somewhere to go. Don't tell me if you don't want, but if I don't know you're safe, it's going to keep me up at night." Min came by with tea, and both of them thanked her profusely.
"You're up all night anyways," Anthony said flippantly, then turned red with embarrassment. "I mean, aren't you? With the crime fighting and the roof... swinging... and..." He trailed off as Jason started laughing.
"Yes, I guess I am up all night. Fine then, it'll keep me up all day." Jason lifted the lid of the tea pot to check if it was ready. Nope. Another minute. "Do you want me to start guessing? Because I will." No visible bruises, but that didn't mean much while the kid was wearing a coat and scarf. However, the way that he had never flinched when Jason touched him, and how he had just followed him to an unknown location spoke volumes. So it wasn't abuse or bullies driving this kid out of his house.
Anthony wrinkled his nose. "It's... a lot of things changed at my house, and... first it was the baby, and then we moved, and the new school and I don't know anyone yet and..." He sighed, fiddling with his chopsticks. "I miss Gotham."
Jason raised an eyebrow while he poured tea in both of their cups. "Filing that under, 'thing's I never thought I'd hear, ever.' Baby brother or sister?"
"Sister. Her name is Carina. And I get that babies need attention, a lot of attention, I've known that since Mom got pregnant, but..." He trailed off when Min brought the food. Jason got egg foo yung with rice and mixed veggies, Anthony got a steamed fish with similar sides.
"You're lonely." Min declared as she refilled the tea pot with hot water. At Jason's questioning glance, she smiled smugly. "The acoustics in here are amazing. All sound eventually ends up in the kitchen. That's the best way to catch dine and dashers. And you," she turned to Anthony, "do you have a destination in mind?"
Anthony nodded and hastily swallowed his food. "Yes. My aunt's house. She lives in Gotham. I thought that I could just live with her and go to school in Gotham and visit my parents on weekends or something."
"Well, you're prepared." Jason shifted over so Min could sit down with her soup.
She nodded, bringing some noodles to her mouth. "Always a good quality."
Pulling out his phone, Jason asked, "So, where do you live?" Anthony gave him an address, and Jason grabbed a napkin from the holder, jotting down a few numbers. "It's up to you whether you stay or go, but if you need some friends, call these people. They all live nearby, they're good kids, and four of them play baseball." He gestured to the Gotham Knights patch on Anthony's backpack.
Anthony grabbed the paper and read down the list. "I think Sylvia Summers is in my Math class."
"So go say hi." Min tapped the paper with a finger. "Say hi to all your classmates. Get into an argument over whether the Knights or the Sabers are better, find a common interest. The friends are there."
"Have you found the RedKids website yet?" When Anthony shook his head, Jason reached over and wrote the website on it. "Start up a thread on there. Last I checked, most of the kids were local."
"So," Anthony fiddled with his chopsticks as he studied the napkin, "you don't think I should run away."
Jason sighed and sat back. "It's up to you kid. Who knows, moving in with your aunt could be the best idea ever. Or, you'd be even lonelier because you miss your parents. But it took courage and planning to pack your bag and walk out the door. Maybe you should use some of that to make Bludhaven work for you."
Anthony nodded. He spent the rest of the meal thinking through his options while Jason and Min talked about food ideas. Two weeks later, Marcus texted Jason a selfie of him, Sylvia and Anthony at the field kids used for baseball.
"Your name is Chaperon Coquelicot?"
The kid squirmed under Jason's flat stare. "Yeah. Totally."
Jason sighed. "Ok, that loosely, very loosely, translates as red hood." Though how the kid knew that coquelicot was a shade of red based on the common word for a French poppy was... actually, it was probably a quick Google search. "So what's your real name? And no bad French this time."
He sighed. "Tumelo Thompson. Friends call me Mel."
Was that an invitation for Jason to call him Mel, or...? "Awesome. So, what'd you call me here for? Your text was super vague." Vague enough that Red Hood had suspected another Armani Thug trap. He'd surveilled the whole block for half an hour before he'd come down to talk.
"It's two things really. First, I wanna join the Red Kids. Not the website, I already have a username and quite a few casings," the website used "casings" as in "bullet casings" as a point system. It was weird, kids were weird, moving on, "the real one, where they go around doing what you do."
"Gonna stop you there kid." Jason held up his hand. Making sure his most serious expression was on his face, he put his hand on the kids shoulder and leaned down so their faces were level. "I'm going to say this once, only once, and I want you to respect it. The 'real' Red Kids are not operating with my approval. I definitely do not want them out there, and I am doing everything I can to stop them. Do not join them. Do not let your friends join them. Ok?"
Hesitantly, the kid nodded. "Fine." Jason wasn't convinced, at all, but he would let it go for now. But if he saw Mel with one of those leather jackets, he was going to lecture him so hard. Still, he leaned back and motioned for the kid to continue. With a huff, Mel did. "The second thing is a bit tricky and really illegal."
Jason just raised an eyebrow and gestured at himself. He was wearing two hand guns, a sniper rifle, and he had a rocket launcher in his duffel bag. Before Mel's text, he'd been going to go blow up a warehouse full of cell phones. Harmless sounding, but the phones had small explosives in them. These were outbound, heading to Bialya, enough for ten thousand people. Dial a master number, and when the person picks up, the explosive goes off with just enough charge to blow off their head. But it was fine. The shipment wasn't leaving until tomorrow.
"Right. I forgot. Anyways, I need you to break into Bludhaven 65's evidence lockup and get a stuffed hippo that may or may not be evidence in a gruesome murder."
"Ok, I'm going to need the story on that one. I'll do it, but I'd like to know why."
Mel sighed. "The hippo is my neighbour's. He's six, and his mom and dad just died, and his best friend got taken just because it got one drop of blood on it. He needs Giraffe, um, that's the hippo's name, to sleep."
A hippo named Giraffe. Cool. "Can do. I just need to make one quick stop on the way. Well, two stops. Text you when I have it." With a smile and a wave, he pulled his helmet back on and jumped off the building.
The good news was, the cellphone warehouse was on the way to the 65th precinct. Goodbye murder phones, hello explosion. After this, he should probably donate some drug money to the firemen. Or he would, if he wasn't incredibly sure it would go to gold bathtubs instead of red trucks. The firemen were almost as corrupt as the cops, which was weird to think about. Maybe he should just buy equipment and donate that.
Hm. It just occurred to him that he used an explosion to prevent many smaller explosions. He really needed to find someone to share the irony of that with. Not the kids. With his luck, they would interpret it as bombs being on the table for all their unapproved vigilante-ing.
The 65th precinct was one of the not-terrible ones. The kind of corrupt that would let an assault charge go for the right price, but a murderer would have to pay a much higher price. Luckily, the neighbourhood was bad enough that most of the murderers here couldn't afford that price, so justice got done after a fashion.
His second stop was his safe house. Not the one in the mob building. After he hadn't shown up for a month, his landlady, a nice Italian grandmother with a quick trigger finger and a mean marinara, had gotten worried and broke down the door. Long story short, they no longer believed his cover about being a writer and it had taken him a week to track down all his favourite weapons. He had left a nice gift basket for his land lady in apology though.
No, this one was the top floor of a condemned apartment building. He'd bought out the building from the state under an alias and was having the whole thing renovated. The top was done, which wasn't at all how the contractor had wanted to do the reno, but Jason, or rather his alias Mark Lee, had insisted. At least he'd gotten a relatively honest contractor. And the lower floors were up next.
Anyways. Future plans. For now, this particular safe house had uniforms. Cop uniforms, and a bunch of real badges he'd doctored so they had his picture instead of the cops he's stolen them from. He dressed quickly and left.
Landing on the rooftop of the precinct was easy. There were cameras, sure, but they weren't set up very well. Three were pointed at the exact same spot and one was staring at the moon. Plus, they weren't covering the rooftop access door. He picked the lock and slipped in.
Red Hood stood for a moment enjoying the warmth. The cop uniform had short sleeves and wasn't very warm. Then, he made his way towards the evidence locker.
In his uniform, with his hat covering his hair and face, no one looked twice at him. It took some doing to find evidence, but luckily, most police stations followed the same general layout. Also luckily, the 65th didn't have anyone guarding the door. Sure, there was an electronic lock that was impossible to break into without a key card and access code, but with that kind of security, they may as well leave the door wide open.
Totally impossible, as long as the person breaking in didn't know about the design flaw. Which Red Hood did. So. Pulling off the side panel, he grabbed the green wire and stuck it into the card reader. There was a fizz and a small puff of smoke, and the door popped open.
With a smile, Red Hood strolled in and grabbed the log book from the wall. The murder was fairly recent, so... There! One stuffed animal, on Shelf 43a. He grabbed the hippo, small enough to fit in his pocket, and left the way he came.
Once back in his safe house, he took the hippo out and sighed. One drop of blood Mel? The hippo was covered in it from mid-belly down. With a sigh, Jason went to his bathroom and pulled out Jason's version of Alfred's homemade blood remover. It was a surprisingly necessary item in Jason's childhood. Still, it took a good half hour of scrubbing before Giraffe got back to his old, grey colour.
An hour later, Jason was swinging home, Mel and his neighbour Cahyo waving goodbye.
AN: For anyone who was wondering, yes, Min's Eatery is a reference to Jason Todd: The Not-So-Outlaw by Go Away Olivia. For those who weren't wondering, you should go check it out. It's good.
Someone was curious about the timeline, and I answered them about it already, but I'm going to put it here in case anyone else is wondering. It's during that period of time where Cass is back from being evil, Steph is alive, and Bruce isn't dead yet. It was short in the comics, but it'll be as long as I want it to be in here.
Read and enjoy my pretties!