The sun was going down when Dick finally woke from the sleep he'd shared with Barbara in his old room.

He got up, helped her into her wheelchair, and the two came into the family kitchen area of the manor, to find Alfred and Leslie making the family a "breakfast", coffee already done. Leslie handed each of them a mug after they said their "good mornings", and they then went to the living room. There, Tim and Stephanie sat side by side watching piece on the wholesale slaughter of Jokerz in The Narrows by some mystery woman, that Tim was already betting was in some way connected to The Outlaws. Cass sat nearby reading a book, ever trying to expand her limited knowledge of the English language. Hector was likely in the family garage, judging by his absence and the sounds of air tools coming from the doorway leading there. Helena and Selena, of course, were in the corner smiling and whispering to each other about...whatever it was those two talked about, and they were the first to notice the two of them enter the room.

"Kittens! How was your sleep?", Selina asked and hugged the two of them.

"Deep."

"Oh?"

"Not that way, Selina.", Barbara sing-songed as she wheeled over to Cass, leaving Dick to ask Selina and Helena where Bruce was.

"Watchtower. Apparently last night convinced him to go back and take your advice."

"Good. We'll need him tonight."

"Definitely. We wouldn't so much if these bastards didn't somehow know all they do about us."

"Yeah...Tim and Barbara actually have a few theories on that-"

"Which can all wait until after supper, Master Dick. Come, everyone.", Alfred said from the door to the family dining area. As a kid, the massive table had always felt ridiculous to Dick, but that was when it had only been he and Bruce. Now, with the whole "Batfamily", as the news called them, the table was almost too small. He sat beside Barbara, the two eating the omelets Alfred had made them all, and was almost finished when everyone's heads rose at the sound of the door opening again, the lord of the manor having returned.

Alfred helped Bruce to his spot at the head of the table, but now, in a simple training getup, Dick was sure Bruce need help more because of his exhaustion than his healed wounds, the casts and cane both gone and replaced by areas of minor bruising. He hated the strain it put on the aging Dark Knight's heart, but he couldn't help but be thankful for the Watchtower's medical technology. Selina beside him, and Bruce said not a word, instead staring at the plate in front of him for a moment before eating.

It took only a couple minutes before they all were finished, and Bruce finally began to speak.

"Thank you, Alfred."

"You're quite welcome, sir."

"Did you ever call Lucius?"

"Yes, sir, he wants you to be up early enough tomorrow for a meeting with the board."

"Hm. What about Gavin or Grant?"

"Mr. King is heading back here with Ms. Onyx as soon as possible, and Mr. Grant is ready at any time, should you require his aid."

"Good...Look, everyone...", at this, everyone from Hector to Dick gave him their full attention, "...these past few days have been...rough. And now, with Joker on the loose and a war brewing, it doesn't look like it's going to get better before it gets worse. But, you all have your own lives. Your own friends, your own cases. Hell, a couple of you have entire cities that need you.", he said, eyes passing from Cass to Dick, "I can't ask you to stay here any longer. So, if anyone wants to get out of town and head elsewhere, speak now."

When no one spoke out, not even Dick, all of them too invested in the case to leave just yet, he continued.

"Outstanding. Is everyone rested up?", they each nodded, "Then get downstairs. Tonight, we rely on Harold's robots for intel. Before things in town get really bad, we'll train as hard as we can for as long as we can.", when a few of them seemed upset at this, he continued before they could voice any complaints or objections, "We all have messed up at some point in the past couple days, in one way or another, and we simply can't afford mistakes from this point forward."

Even Helena agreed with the sentiment, and Cass led the way as everyone but Bruce, Leslie, and Alfred exited the room. Bruce left Alfred and Leslie to say warmer goodbyes than they would with him around, following his protégés into the Batcave, only one thought in his mind.

Please, please, don't let keeping them here be another mistake.

As the sun fell, Jason felt simultaneously right at home and like he'd gone to another dimension all at once. The Alley had somehow actually gotten worse.

When he'd been a kid, it had been one of the roughest neighborhoods of an awful city, sure, but you could get by. The mafias and gangs were vicious, a few of them more so than others, but if you had skill or tenacity, they'd almost always try to use you, not break you. That's what had happened with Jason after his old man had gotten himself capped by the very ex-attorney he now worked with, anyways.

He proved himself a skilled carjacker by stealing the car of some city official he couldn't even remember anymore right from the City Hall lot. After that, well, he still had to fight off dealers trying to get to his mom, his real mom, but for the most part the thugs around felt it was just plain easier for everyone involved if they dealt with him and others like him willing to work but not really commit square, and let them be so long as they stayed neutral and stayed active. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't as bad as it could've been.

Now, though, now it was something else, and Jason wasn't so sure it could get any worse without the city being a hole in the ground. Not one minute after he'd left the theater, he found some grown "men" beating two kids that looked to be barely out of middle school into the pavement with 2-by-4's, just for not joining up with their little "gang". He'd killed them and handed the kids two of the thugs' pocketknives along with directions to Thompkins' clinic. He was already huffing about how the place had changed when, not two minutes later, he heard a couple screams ring out from a nearby alleyway as he continued down the ruined street.

His head immediately swiveled around, and he saw a girl, no older than sixteen or seventeen and a boy who seemed to be around the same age, both of them underweight and pale, being dragged further into the darkness by two strung-out bastards who'd chosen the wrong day to do what looked like a horrifyingly routine act for them.

He started walked down the alley in a second, pulling up his bandana as he approached.

He didn't say a word when asshole number one, a tall, gangly little bastard, started yelling at him to fuck off, just continuing his march towards the men armed with knives. When the tall one threatened the boy to stay put or "Davie" would cut his "bitch sister's" throat and left him to meet Jason in what he probably thought would be a fair fight, Jason simply grabbed him by the neck and right wrist, locking down his fancy little butterfly knife he most definitely didn't even know how to use and lifting him off the ground.

Before his partner or the two would-be victims could so much as speak, Jason threw him against the wall the such force that a sickening crack could be heard by the four in the alley still alive, before he dropped down the brick surface and into the open dumpster, either dead on impact, or dead within minutes. A spatter of blood where his face had impacted being the only evidence he'd ever lived at all.

"Davie", a slightly shorter and buffer version of his friend, got up, grabbed the girl by her hair in one hand and held a knife to her throat with the other, thinking he was gonna hostage negotiate his way out of the death warrant he'd already signed. Before he could so much get through his offer of bullshit terms, Jason spoke over him.

"Stop the knife."

She latched her small hands around the hand with the knife in it, just in time to stop the knife from stabbing her in the throat as Jason put one between her assaulter's eyes, sending him to the floor with just enough force as to where the girl could save herself. The knife on the ground alongside him, she launched herself up, getting a foot away from the dirty bastard and hugging the boy before they both seemed to remember that they were backing up into someone very dangerous, whom they didn't know at all, even if he'd just saved them. She got in front of her brother?, looking up with eyes so fierce, yet so afraid Jason felt like he'd been punched in the gut. He quickly put up his gun and crouched down to be below her eye level, holding out his hand in a placating gesture before then holding it sideways, as if he wanted her to shake it. The girl took the hint, and hesitantly shook his massive hand with one of her own, introducing herself.

"Harper Row."

"Jason Prince."

She took her hand back and seemed to contemplate something for a moment before looking back at him and asking what he knew she was trying to figure out in her head.

"Are you gonna hurt us?"

"No."

At this answer, she then turned to her brother, who hesitantly shook his hand as his sister had.

"Cullen. Thank you, Jason."

"You're welcome, man. Now...where is it you two stay?", they looked at each other and then back at him without answering, and Jason chose to ask another, more simple question: "Guys, is there anywhere I can take you that you'll feel safe?"

With Harper's reply, he felt a familiar pain in his heart grow even more.

"With you."

Meanwhile, in his office at Sionis Enterprises, The Black Mask was losing his shit.

"What DO YOU MEAN!?"

His secretary calmly replied, "I mean that the Mayor is gone. He's missing"

"I have a WAR on MY DOORSTEP, AND THAT SON OF A BITCH THINKS HE CAN GO ON VACATION!? I want him found, NOW!"

"We'll get it done, sir."

"You'd better. Now what about this "Red Hood"? His little gang put us in this mess, how hard are they pushing into our territory?"

"We've lost contact with everyone in The Bowery. Anyone we've sent to investigate didn't last five minutes before they went silent."

"The Bowery? Hah! If that dumbass thinks he can tame that shithole, he can go ahead and try. Update me if he becomes more of a problem, and make sure no one else in city hall tries to ditch."

"Yes, sir.", she said, walking out with the men.

He thought he'd have a second to drink, taking out a bottle, when he heard the door open again.

"What?", he asked without looking up. When silence followed he looked up and got halfway through repeating the word, when he realized that in front of him, shuffling a pack of razor-sharp playing cards in his gloved hands, was his underboss and the only person he'd ever been afraid of. Even if he would never admit it.

The Joker.

"Well, well, well, Sionis! You really should take something for your blood pressure.", the clown said as he opened his coat to reveal cannisters labeled Smilex, "Maybe then you could actually smile.", he continued before laughing his ass off.

Maintaining his composure, Black Mask reaffirmed his question more calmly.

"What?"

"Uh! Fine, I'll be boring for you. I want Spoiler, and since you had her for...an hour, was it? I thought it would be best to ask you."

"First off, can I ask you why want that little bitch?"

"Sure."

"...Why?", he questioned with his hands clenched to avoid yelling.

"Simple, really. You see, Spoiler is the newest birdboy's squeeze, we all know that, and we also know that she's BFFs forever with the newest Batgirl."

"So why do you want them?"

"That's not as simple, but, rest assured: if we want to get rid of the Red Hood, those two will make it much, much easier."

"...I'm not some creepy old man, Joker, the girl isn't my "specialty" or anything. Hell, even when I did catch her, The Bat or whoever it was showed up before I could actually get anything from her."

"You can't spare even a hunting tip for your old pal Joker?"

"Fine. You want to take her down, get her distracted. She's much more easy to fool than any of the others."

"Thank you.", The Clown said, getting up and slowly walking out of his office. Unlike Batman who came in and left in a flash, Joker wanted you to see him leave. The man was theatrical and manipulative in every sense of either word, and he knew Sionis's anger tripped him up and made him dumb as much as he knew Sionis hated seeing him in his office.

"Joker."

"Hm?", the clown stopped halfway out the door to look back at him, the light from the hallway illuminating his smiling yellow teeth and pale yellow eyes.

"What happened at that airport?"

"...I thought up a new joke, thought I should try it out on an audience I was fine with losing before using it on one I wasn't. Turns out, they though it was even funnier than I did.", he said, only a hint of laughter in his tone as he walked out of the room and into the hallway

In the cave, now changed into simple training gear: shorts, t-shirts, and ankle/wrist wraps, the family sat in a group in their dojo. What had once been a simple weight lifting room now was a sprawling training area, made to stress every body part, in every way.

Bruce was in the center of this area, with the family group in front of him, and he quickly divided everyone into one on one simple matches, to gauge their effectiveness as individuals and the ways in which each person needed to train for what would defiantly be an all-night and possibly most of the day session. Tim and Cass, Steph and Helena, Selina and Dick, with Bruce facing Hector's newest Training Bot (Justice League Unlimited), which they all hoped would be a success this time, unlike with the last one, which Bruce had smashed in half with one well-placed kick.

Steph and Helena were up first, both with with wooden training Bo staffs. Steph favored defense, and her stance mirrored that with the bottom half of the staff she held in front of her being forward, while Helena's was more offensive, the top of her staff out. The group, even the robot, got on their knees in a circle to watch the spar and as soon as Bruce called for the two to begin, Helena went for the throat, which everyone anticipated, including Stephanie.

The blond wasn't perfect, nor even on Tim's level when it came to her Bo, but in that moment, Helena's flurry didn't even touch her. It wasn't until Helena overextended and tried to jab Steph on the inner right side of her knee that Steph even attempted to counter, locking Helena's staff in her own and forcing the older fighter to discard her own weapon. Helena didn't miss a beat, grabbing Steph's staff with her hands as soon as her own weapon was gone, but Steph then did something none of them, including herself, had known she could. She pulled back both arms, swung herself down, and kicked upward with both legs, flinging Helena almost out of the ring as they both rolled over. She followed up with what would've been a swing directly for the head of the dazed and confused Helena, had Bruce not grabbed the staff in her hands to stop the match.

"Enough. Where did you learn that move?"

"The field. One of the Hoods pulled it on me back at the Asylum."

"Hm.", he grumbled, a rare smirk on his face before he was once more serious, "Your defense is impeccable, but staying balanced is important. You will train with Helena to improve your ability to take the initiative and keep it. Terrific work on your adaptability. Helena, you will train with Steph on defense and Tim on how to dodge moves like the one Stephanie just used on you. Take your seats. Selina, Dick."

Steph and Helena, the latter of which congratulated the former on her success, sat down as Bruce once more did, an acrobat and a kitty cat taking their places, Dick with wooden Escrima, Selina with her bare hands, as even a plain leather whip was too damaging for a simple spar.

Dick flipped both of his escrima into the air and Bruce called the start of the bout one second before they landed back in his hands as a punishment for his son's showboating. Selina, however, took mercy and let the panicked fighter reach up and grab his weapons before she pounced. She took him down in a second, her knees underneath both of his shoulders and her on top of his chest, ready to ground pound him into submission. As soon as she did so, however, he ducked as well as he could from underneath her and jabbed both of his sticks into her kidneys just hard enough to make her jump off of him, and got back on his feet sooner than she could, immediately getting on offense.

Selina, however, had been fighting Dick all his life, since before he'd even started training with Escrima. She bobbed, weaved and blocked his attacks before they were close to hitting her, an advantage that Dick took away using his trademark spontaneity, dropping to the floor and sweeping her legs while she blocked the attack he'd set her up to expect. She caught herself before she hit the ground, getting on a head stand and flipping back up to her feet in second. From there, Dick got overconfident in the heat of the match and launched himself at his opponent, said opponent then used judo to grab and throw him out of the ring, over the heads of Tim and Cass.

Bruce stood as Dick hobbled back into the circle.

"You will both train with Cass in how to preform your takedowns faster and more efficiently. Cass, for every time Dick showboats, make him run a mile. For every time Selina relies on repetition instead of her instinct, make her do the same."

Cass nodded and while both were slightly offended at the implication that a teenaged girl was superior to them, they didn't show it as they took their seats. Cass and Tim stood on Bruce's command, and both got into position with Cass, him with his Bo at his side, her weaponless form at the ready in Tiger stance. Unlike the previous matches, when Bruce said for the two to begin, Tim slightly kicking his staff and the spinning it around before getting into his own stance didn't result in a fiery explosive match just yet.

The two circled the ring slowly, him designing a strategy in his head, and hundreds of backups for that strategy's inevitable failure, her studying his eyes, and his body, using them and how well she'd grown to know him to predict his way of thinking. When the two reached their starting position is when the bout kicked off, with Cassandra dashing forward two feet and ducking a swipe attempted by Tim. Before she could strike his chest, he swung his staff back down, right on the handle where the wood was just hard enough to stop Cassandra's light attack from shattering the weapon.

He then ducked her other hand, aimed straight for his face and swerved his body so that her attempted kick to his hip wound up with him to her left instead of front, one of his legs between both of her own. One hand still on his staff he used his other to jab her in the side before she could adjust, knocking her off-balance enough for him to risk swinging his staff all the way around and into her back, wanting to get her out of the ring. A desperate gamble that didn't pay off, Cass splintering the weapon into what was basically an Escrima. He dropped said chunk of what was his weapon, but it was pointless. As skilled as he was with a staff, she was twice as skilled with her hands, even despite her smaller size. He tried one last Hail Mary, attempting to tackle her, and she simply flipped over him and allowed his momentum to carry him out of bounds. As Dick had before him, only looking even more upset with himself, Tim hobbled back into the ring and Cass put a comforting hand on his shoulder as Bruce stood.

"Tim, work on your predictability with Dick. Cass...exceptional work, but try to not rely so much on body language.", when the two fighters had sat back down, Bruce addressed the entire crowd, "You all have your assigned specialized training, and you all know what physical exercise you need. Get done by five in the morning at the latest, when we will rest before going back over all of this. If I don't see at least some improvement in each and every one of you, you will all go train with Wildcat for a week straight."

At this threat, the lot of them jumped up, other than the robot, dashing around to the various equipment areas to get to work helping one another improve. He chuckled, explained to the annoyed Hector that he wasn't going to fight a robot Oracle had already informed him was programed to fight him specifically, making it a trivial matter considering the bot was also stronger and faster than even he, and then walked to the armory.

It's been only two days, and that's been far too long. Time to go to work.

After he busted up another couple muggings while he led the brother and sister duo, Harper and her brother Cullen explained that they had been living in the Narrows with an abusive father before The Jokerz took over there and their "dad" had made the mistake of joining up on the wrong day, receiving a beating and a bullet for his troubles. They'd been homeless ever since, narrowly avoiding shit like what Jason had just saved them from for months. He took all this in before asking her about the safe havens in town: The Wayne Foundation, Thompkins's clinic, certain bars and restaurants run by semi-good people, and the surprise he felt when she slowly explained that none of those existed anymore was masked by the anger and sadness.

The Wayne Foundation? No longer excepted those without paperwork due to an incident in which a child without it murdered her assigned counselor and then got off thanks to her rich and very much alive parents. Thompkins? Too focused on her clinic and it's patients to keep saving room for the homeless, all of it needed for said patients. The various places Jason had gotten food or drink at when he'd had nowhere else to turn? The owners were now dead or had left town.

The pair seemed to pick up on the man's dismay, and he had to remind them that they had no control over what they were telling him. Going a step further, he said, "If I blame anyone for the state of this city, it's the man on top.", staring at the Wayne Enterprises building in the far distance.

Harper saw what he was staring at and asked him a question he hadn't meant to plant in her mind, "You mean Bruce Wayne? How's he the one on-?"

He looked down at her with a silencing expression, and then put his eyes back on the sidewalk ahead, answering, "You got no idea, let's leave it at that. Come on, the place isn't that far away now.", before picking up his pace.

The two remaining members of the Row family followed the last remaining one of the Todd family onto the narrow street upon which laid their destination: Richardson Apartments. A shitty little tenement building as rundown now as it ever was, and the last place where Jason's family had lived before the house right by Neo Eden. A place filled with bad memories, and one he couldn't go to if he ever felt like doing so, which he doubted he would. The place where his father had died was tough enough, the place where his mom had died would be a nightmare.

"Come on.", he said, walking across the street as the street lights finally kicked on, the sun completely gone now, replaced by a seemingly starless, black sky. The two stayed close to Jason in the rapidly cooling dark, their tattered clothes providing no warmth for either of them. He walked around the building and went first up the fire escape after he used the wall and his training to jump on and pull down the ladder. They went up four stories, passing by thankfully either black or covered windows as they went, before Jason finally got them...slightly, out of the cold. The rundown apartment wasn't quite ruined when it came to insulation, but it was still pretty damn bad.

He looked around, and was both thankful and surprised that after five years, no one had taken the old place for themselves. Of course, that made him paranoid and he was almost certain Bruce had something to do with it, until he noticed the mark of the demon carved into a small space on the wooden table.

Talia.

He got Harper and Cullen inside and closed the window, telling them it was safe. He then told them to have a seat somewhere, and then went into the hallway closet and retrieved a blanket, beating the dust out of it before bringing it to the two already asleep beside one another on the old couch. He got them as warm as he could without waking them up, made sure the door was locked and the windows all were locked and covered as well before taking a deep breath.

I'm back. I'm actually back...

He looked around the place avoiding only one room, and everything looked the same as when he and his mom had left in a hurry, fleeing his father's ex-enemies after they'd gotten word of his death. He didn't understand then why his mother had seemed more detached from him than ever after Willis's death. He supposed, now he knew. He wasn't even her son. She had to think about leaving him. Hell, he knew she had.

She'd said as much.

Still, they'd made it work with each other after leaving this...place. This pit where Willis had broken his arm for staring at a neighbor girl too long, and smashed a bottle over the head of the closest thing he'd ever had to a mother for defending him. This place where he had, for the first and only time, stood up to the bastard as well. He still remembered the strange pride and sadness in Willis's eyes, and Catherine's pleas for him to stop, after he'd bashed his old man across the back with a Louisville Slugger.

"Come on, boy. It's easy. You got me on the floor, just one clean hit right here, and I'm gone.", his father had said, pointing right up to is forehead. He'd then beaten Jason within an inch of his life for refusing the suicidal command.

He hated that memory more than most. Mainly because, unlike in most of them, he never forgot his own feeling of pride, of pure elation before the beating started.

Christ, why did I come back here? Closure? That's never gonna happen. No, not closure. A reminder., he thought as he opened the door to his old room, the last one he hadn't yet gone into.

A reminder of what it felt like, even when things were better. A reminder of that pain. A reminder of why I fight, and a reminder of why I gotta win.

As he thought that, his internal drive for going there making itself clear to him, he sat on his old twin-sized bed and looked at a picture which had been stuffed underneath the mattress years ago. He, Willis, and Catherine. He was two, and still happy. Willis hadn't yet falling into the bottle nor his rage, and was still a good, happy father with his son sitting on his shoulders. Catherine wasn't yet a junkie, and was still madly in love with both Willis and with the idea of being Jason's mom. They were standing outside of the Gotham Knights Stadium, laughing and joking as someone they'd been sitting by took the photo.

He put the photo in his pocket and dried the few tears he'd allowed to privately fall, before steadying himself and standing back up with a renewed sense of purpose.

How many kids around here even have one day like that? How many have even a shred of good, or kindness to hold on to?

He left the Rows a hundred dollars and his personal cell number, locking the door as he walked out of it and into the hallway.

Well, when I'm done, they'll all have more than that. They'll all know what happiness feels like, and Superman help anyone who gets in my way.

Shiva was finally back to The Monarch after an entire day and part of a night slaughtering clowns, who seemed to genuinely not have any clue who their boss was. Still, she'd thinned their numbers to a ridiculous degree as she'd just barely avoided police spotting her. Apparently Fries's prediction about a boon in their number was correct, as she saw from the rooftop of a building across the street as a massive crowd of men and women, even some children swarmed the entrance, but none actually there to fight. She used her acrobatic skill to jump from street light to street light, finding herself on top of the old theater marquee sign. She then approached one of the completely boarded up windows, removed her half-face mask, and whispered the key phrase.

"Chill."

The boards were then removed all at once, sliding over as the knight on duty to that window made way for her.

"Welcome back, ma'am."

"Thank you, Knight Sergeant. Where is The Exemplar Paladin?"

"He's downstairs, apparently the boss's performance last night and yours this afternoon sold a whole lotta people on us. People been flocking in to sign up or help out all day. The Exemplar is helping The Knight Commander deal with it all."

"What about The Right Hand?"

"He's coordinating our troops to sweep all across The Bowery tonight, really make it ours. After we find the boss, that is."

"Find him? What do you-"

"He means that Jason left.", Rose answered in her battle uniform from behind her. Shiva followed her and left the knight she'd been questioning to assume his guard duty, moving aside the sheets so that they could look down at the somehow-organized crowd below. Shiva took notice that while she wasn't in the field and had no grime or blood on her to signify that she had been, Rose's uniform was ready to go.

Nicknamed by Jason, it's designer and the one who had it commissioned for her, The Bloody Mary was, as Jason's own battle armor, built to be customized to fit the wants of the wearer no matter their mission or mood. Today, she wore it sleeveless and with only moderate protection, apparently favoring stealth and mobility for...whatever she was about go do. (Original Red Hood and The Outlaws, altered) She still had her regular helmet, a black and red version of her father's blue and orange helmet, only she held it against her left hip instead of wearing it. Along with this, she wore a white eye patch, and her sword sheathes along her back, carrying her twin Scottish-style broadswords: Scabere and Secare, and several other more standard-issue armaments, like twin Roi Arms pistols customized for suppressed fire and smoke grenades.

This really must be serious.

"What happened?"

"Jason...he's been second guessing himself since we had to come to this town prematurely, even if he tries not to admit or show it. He needed to leave and reconnect with himself for a moment so that he could preform as we need him to, so I didn't stop him."

"You didn't go with him, either."

"Have you ever slept with a demon? It takes a lot out of you. And besides...like I said, he needed to be alone."

"Hm. Why aren't you helping Antonio?"

"Because he's a normal man, mostly, who's been awake longer than someone who's not been trained to avoid needing rest and Jason's been awake longer than even his abilities can keep him safely so. Who do you think is about to lead our forces?"

"And you're preparing by standing here and doing nothing?"

"No. I'm prepared, I'm waiting on Jason to show up so I can leave. If you think your boyfriend needs help despite his ample experience in this town, more so than either of us, go do so yourself."

"Fine. Give Jason a kick for me."

"Done.", Rose responded, chuckling to herself.

Jason finally showed up around eight, only a few minutes behind her. As soon as he stepped in through the window, Rose obliged Shiva's request and kicked him in the shin.

"Ow! The fuck was that for?"

"Shiva."

"...Yeah, that makes sense.", the tired but still very awake Outlaw King said.

"Go get an update from Antonio and then get some rest. You need it."

"But, if you're goin' in the field I wanna-"

"Go. Get. Some. Rest. Now, Jason."

"...Fine. Be safe, Rose."

"I will, dear.", she said before the two shared a kiss goodbye. Once he was out of sight she activated it's HUD and put on her helmet, informing Antonio of Jason's arrival and the beginning of what she didn't yet realize, would be known forever in the minds of Gotham's people as The Battle for The Bowery.

I know the actual scene of Jason in his old house felt kind of quick, but that was as detailed as I could make it without going full-blown cliché and including a sprawling, in-depth flashback for something that you didn't really need to see all of just to pad out the page.