Peter was hanging upside down from a web in front of the computer that the Red Hood had set him up at. He was told to study the criminal profiles of those that the Red Hood, Batman, and the others fought almost regularly. Most of them were in and out of Arkham Asylum so often that Peter wondered why the place was still operational.

"So basically, anyone who puts on a colorful outfit could claim to be insane to avoid having to be locked up twenty-five to life and then be out in a matter of months if they're declared sane or they pay off the right people?" Peter said as he scratched his chin. "If I didn't know any better I would say the entire system was corrupt. Are you sure the inmates or patients—whatever you guys call them—aren't running the place? You know, use it as a meeting place to compare notes to figure out the best way to drive Batman insane?"

Peter turned to look at the Red Hood when he didn't answer. He was standing stock still with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth. Peter's eyes widened under the mask. He hadn't even noticed when the other man took off his so-called hood. It looked more like a helmet to Peter but what did he care. When he noticed the domino mask like the one Robin wore, Peter chuckled.

As if he'd suddenly trust me with his secret identity, Peter thought and shrugged the thought away. Even Peter was being extra careful while in Gotham. He used a middle-class Gotham accent as Peter and a New York accent as Spider-man.

The Red Hood had a thick Gotham accent that Peter heard a lot of at the soup kitchen and the homeless shelter. Because of that Peter had believed the Red Hood when he told him what borough he'd grow up in and that he understood Gotham's underbelly better than the others. That was why Peter had accepted Red Hood's help, er, tutelage. But that didn't mean he was his sidekick. He just needed to know more about the players and the city he was thrust into without so much as an explanation.

Seriously, whoever is playing with my life could've had the decency to give me a head's up or bored me with some villainous monologue that explained all the details of the whys and hows they did this to me!

Peter couldn't rule out reincarnation but that didn't make sense. He would have started off as a baby, right? And if some deity wanted to thrust him into another dimension as his grown-up self, a brief explanation would have been given to him.

That's the way it happens in the movies. And if they decided to change the reincarnation trope, why hadn't I heard of it? I'm a serious movie buff! A change like that couldn't have gotten past me. Or could it? Maybe I'm in the alternate trope reality. Oh no, that means I have to binge all the movies and TV series to get caught up with the current pop culture! I'm never leaving my apartment again!

Peter threw his hands up in frustration. He'd gotten lost in thought and hadn't noticed that the Red Hood was still staring at him. Peter flipped to the floor and stood up to look at the Hood in concern.

"Ah! Don't tell me time froze!" Peter said and poked the Red Hood on the cheek to see if he'd keel over.

"No," Hood said, and moved Peter's hand aside. "I was just shocked by what you said."

Peter cocked his head to the side. Was he thinking aloud again?

"What did I say?" Peter asked tentatively

"You've been in Gotham for like two minutes and you already know that Arkham is a joke," Hood said then sighed heavily. "I've tried telling Batman that so many times and it just seems like I'm talking to a brick wall."

"Well," Peter said in a low voice as if he was embarrassed about what he was about to say next. "Not that I'm taking his side or anything, but depending on how long he's been catching them and turning them in, you can't fault him for being hopeful that this time it will work."

The Red Hood scoffed in annoyance.

"I mean, I've been doing this," he gestured to his suit, "since I was fifteen and if I give in to the hopelessness of thinking that what I was doing didn't help, I wouldn't even bother. But I can't think that way. If I do and someone dies because I wasn't there to save them... Let's just say that it's not a feeling I would wish on my worse enemy." Peter shrugged. He gestured to the Red Hood's helmet and his gear. "So we put on our suits and get to work to save at least one person and if we're lucky we can save more. We can't let the corrupt institutions or the shady people in power stop us from doing what we do. Because even if the maniacs keep coming back to wreak havoc, we'll be there to stop them. Over and over. If that's what it takes."

"He already drank the Kool-aid," Red Hood muttered under his breath and shook his head deciding to drop the subject. He gestured to the computer screen. "Yeah, I get it. But it's like you said, they never stay in Arkham long. That's why I wanted you to know who the crazies were and what they do so that they don't catch you off guard. They may give the impression that they're not playing with a full deck but they always have an ace in the hole. Sometimes it's some innocent bystander that one of their henchmen is dangling from a roof on the other side of the city. Other times it's the children's hospital rigged to blow."

"I hear you," Peter said looking at the computer screen. He crossed his arms over his chest. "Then there's no point in planning how to deal with them until you're smack dab in the middle of their insanity."

"Not exactly. They do have their m.o.'s and we have ways to figure out what they're planning before they start monologuing," Red Hood said and shrugged. "But even then, there are no guarantees. All we can do is hope we can stop their plans before more people die."

They were quiet for a moment. Each lost in their own thoughts.

"How is it that you've been doing this since you were fifteen and I've never heard of you?" Red Hood asked looking over at Spider-man curiously.

"I've always kept close to the ground. Plus, I usually work alone," Peter said.

The Red Hood smirked. "You were the Robinson's Park Avenger, right?"

"Uh," Peter said stiffening up and then dropping his shoulders in resignation. There was no point denying it. "Yup. That would be me."

"Ha! I knew it!" Red Hood said with a wide grin. He was the only one who'd seen the man in action since he staked out the park in order to catch the Avenger in action. He kept his distance then, not thinking the other man was a threat. Though he remembered how he moved. But he didn't tell the others. Batman wasn't too happy there was another vigilante in Gotham. Especially one he didn't know anything about. "Oracle wasn't happy that she could never get any footage of you."

"Footage?"

"She has access to all the CCTV's in the city."

"She hacked the city?"

The Red Hood smirked and smiled. "She can hack anyone."

"So her moral compass is basically nonexistent," Peter said with a small nod as if he was talking to himself.

Hood looked at him with a small frown. He'd liked the guy so far but there was something about him that set him apart. Maybe it was just that he wasn't a Gotham native. Or it was the way he just presumed things without knowing the full picture. He'd already admitted to being wrong about Mila Peter's character. Though he'd been right about Arkham and probably what he'd said about Batman. But cutting into Oracle, Hood had to put a stop to that.

"I figured as much when she was willing to kidnap a child just to get what she wanted. And I guess since she knows everyone's secrets she can pretty much get away with murder."

"Woah, hold on a moment," Hood said waving a hand. Just because all that was true didn't mean that Oracle didn't care about the people in Gotham. It was why she did what she did. It was why he did what he did for that matter. To protect people from the lunatics that didn't care whether they maimed or killed anyone standing in their way. Hood and Oracle were victims of that insanity and knew first-hand the toll it took to come out of the other side of it. "What Oracle does is invaluable for what we have to do. With her help—and the fact that she has access to places we wouldn't have access to—we've stopped the city from being destroyed more times than I can count!"

"Sure. But that doesn't mean she doesn't take advantage of that for personal gain," Peter said and held up a hand to stop the Red Hood from objecting further. "Let me ask you this, how did she start up? It takes resources to do what she does. And I can't imagine that her civilian job pays her what she needs to keep it going. So who funded her and why?"

The Red Hood opened his mouth to answer. But Peter kept talking before he could.

"Don't tell me, I already know. She hacked someone with clout, locked them out of their systems, and told them in so many words that unless they accepted her offer she'd make their life a living hell."

Hood stared at him mouth agape. Then he started to laugh hard. "He deserved it though."

"No," Peter said with a shake of his head. "No one deserves that. I don't care if they are the biggest asshole or what mistakes they made, no one deserves to be coerced like that. The sad part is that if she would've gone to them and presented her idea they probably would've sponsored her on their own accord. And if they didn't want to, they had the right not to help her."

Red Hood sighed. "If you want to hold on to that way of thinking, you should leave Gotham on the next bus. The people we deal with..." Hood shook his head. "We're all forced to cross lines we never thought we would just to get the job done. We're all morally dubious. We have to be or people die. Batman has one rule; no killing. Otherwise, everything goes. You think I like being in control of the drug trade? Of having the reputation of being a murderous bastard? I did what I had to do to take back Gotham from under the Black Mask's control. Now that guy was a ruthless son of a bitch. And I had no problem meeting that asshole head-on while he running circles around Batman. I don't regret what I had to do. But I will admit that I might not have come back from that if it wasn't for Robin and Nightwing. But if you think you could be a Boy Scout in this city while fighting against corruption just to get the sickos off the street, you are sadly mistaken."

"Wanna bet?" Peter said, a smirk on his lips that was covered by the mask. But the Red Hood had inferred it through his tone.

"What does the winner get?" Hood said with a cocky grin. Because he already knew that the Spider would lose. Gotham would eat him alive. Starting with that moral core of his. That was the only reason Hood decided to help bring him into the fold before Batman kicked him out of the city. Hood wanted to be close enough to stop the Spider if he ever tried to cross the line. Or would be the one to reign him in if he lost himself to fight.

"Well, if I win, I get to hold on to my moral compass. If you win, you get to be the one to bring back from the brink," Peter said with a shrug.

"I may not want to," Hood said but he was glad to have heard Spider-man say that because it meant he was listening. That was good. Better than what he did when he became the Red Hood. "But I'm always up for a challenge."

They were about to shake on it when alarms went off in the Hood's safe house. He looked at the computer that had a message blinking in red.

Arkham breakout.