Chapter 3

I hope you guys liked my last chapter. And I swear, I meant to update this sooner, but my teachers are flooding me with projects, and I got this out as fast as I could.

Disclaimer: I do not own DC Nation, if I did, Red Hood and the Outlaws would have their own TV show.

Third Person POV

The sound of the slap echoed throughout the empty room, only two people inside the room, one on the floor holding her red cheek.

"You told me you disposed of him, Talia." Ra's said coldly, his eyes like daggers, digging into his daughter's head.

Talia gritted her teeth, glaring at her father as she pushed herself off of the ground. "I have, Father. Timothy has been dead for 14 years." Talia snapped, removing her hand from her cheek.

Ra's glare sharpened, his lips set into a scowl. "Is that so? Then how is it, Talia, that one of my ninja has spotted a boy with his exact name, date of birth, and same disability?" Ra's hissed.

Talia didn't say anything for a while, her hands clenching into fists as she swallowed the lump in her throat. Finally, after the silenced had stretched between the two like a barrier in the room, Talia said, "I left Timothy to die in an abandoned alley. It would have been slow, but his death would have been natural. He was not expected to live."

Ra's growled, his hands shaking with anger. "You have gotten soft, Talia. Timothy should have been wiped from existence the day I told you to get rid of that curse." Ra's said, cold and full of anger. "Guards!"

Ninja walked in, each one bowing before Ra's, then standing straight.

"Escort my daughter back to her room. I want her on complete lockdown until I am ready to deal with her myself." Ra's said, ignoring Talia's murderous glare as she was pulled from her father's throne room.

The ninja took her to her room, Talia walking in, before the guards slammed the door shut, and locked the door.

Talia breathed out through her nose, forcing herself to calm down before grabbing her phone from her nightstand, and pressing speed dial.

"... What is it, Talia? My husband is an idiot who doesn't know a thing about running a company, and these papers need to be completed-"

"Janet, Father has found out about Timothy." Talia cut off.

Silence hung heavy through the phones, only broken by a frustrated sigh on the other line. "It's not too surprising, he would have figured it out sooner or later. What does your father plan on doing about him?"

"There is only one thing my father wants to do with Timothy, and that is to kill him. He has probably already sent an assassin after him." Talia said, concern dripping into her voice.

"And just what do you plan to stop this assassin?" Janet asked.

Talia turned in the middle of her room, watching her eyes narrow coldly in the mirror across the room. "My father will tell my ninja to not take my orders. However, I want you to find the ones loyal only to me." Talia said. "Tell them we are going to war with my father, and that keeping Timothy safe, is their first priority. Any ninja near my son, if my father does succeed in killing him, that could not prevent Timothy's death, dies a slow, painful death at your hands, and mine. Make sure to tell them that word for word."

Tim POV

I focused my camera, closing in on the giant crowd of people walking around the Gotham Mall.

Since it was close to Christmas, the mall was crowded with people. Kids were screaming and crying and begging their parents for gifts that were displayed proudly in store windows, parents were dragging their kids along while telling them 'no' the entire time until they broke, and the stores in Gotham Mall raised their prices as parents were forced to buy gifts for their kids so they would shut up. The mall was in chaos.

So really, a normal day in Gotham Mall.

I snapped the picture, frowning at crowd of people.

The newspaper who I was taking the picture for said they wanted to see a happy crowd of people with Christmas cheer, something to put on the front page of a family really enjoying the holidays, and not screaming bloody murder because they didn't get the new nerf gun or barbie doll they wanted. Not the classic Gotham Mall massacre that seemed to happen almost everyday at some point or another.

"Damn it, If the kids in here don't stop acting like spoiled little brats, I'll never be able to get a good shot for the paper." I muttered.

I looked up with a sigh, looking through the camera lens, leaning over a railing as I stared at the next floor of the mall. Just from looking up from here, I could easily tell that the crowd up stairs wouldn't be any better than the crowd down here. If anything, it might be worse.

I hummed impatiently, zooming in. Finding a perfect picture that was exactly what the newspaper asked for wasn't easy. You have to find and capture a perfect moment, that could take hours to find, in the right angle with good lighting that was almost never there. This usually took restraint, tolerance, and a lot of patience. But after searching the entire shopping area of Gotham for that perfect moment, I was almost ready to give up.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon, eight hours since I left home, and started at Northtown Mall. Not many people were there in North Town in the first place, since it was one of the smaller malls surrounding the center Gotham Mall, but every person there looked like they were ready to kill each other. Parents tried to haggle with managers, people were fighting for the last brand new barbie doll or nerf gun that their kid just had to get, and ambulances had to be called in for the visitors that were stupid enough to try to stop in the middle of the crowd and got trampled.

And as the day went on and I switched to different shops and malls, it only got worse. At this point, I wasn't even sure if the picture that the newspaper wanted was even possible to get in Gotham. "If I can't get a shot, I wonder how many people I can pickpocket before Mom would consider it as too much." I hummed.

I looked up, jerking my camera up when something caught my eye. It was a red light, pointed like a laser pointer that kids use. Or a rifle targeting someone.

Zooming in the camera lens, I narrowed my eyes as I looked for that light again, and the person using it. But no matter where I moved my camera, I couldn't find the red light that I had seen before.

I sighed, looking away from my camera. "It's probably just some annoying kid with a laser pointer." I muttered, though I couldn't believe my own words.

Sighing, I smiled sadly at what Helena would say if I had brought her along.

Flashback

"Timmy, Timmy! Guess what!" Helena shouted, running through the doorway with Mom behind her.

"What, Helena?" I asked, grinning as Helena tugged on my pants and made grabby hands for me to pick her up.

"I found a word for you. Miss Telen teached us about it in class." Helena said, giggling as I picked her up with a swoop.

"It's taught, not teached." I said, ruffling her hair with my free hand. "And what is my word?"

Helena's grin somehow got wider, showing off the gap in her bottom teeth. "Para-noiwd."

I blinked, staring at Helena as Mom laughed behind me, her voice filling our small apartment. "You nailed it, Helena. That's your big brother, alright." Mom said, as I turned around to see her laughing with tears dotting her eyes. "And it's paranoid."

"What are you talking about, I'm not that bad." I huffed, Helena frowning in my arms, giving me a determined nod.

"Yes you are. You always worry about silly stuff. Like when you had that teacher who wasn't a teacher, a sub, who you said looked too much like someone else. And then…" Helena trailed off, her eyes lowering as tears bubbled into her eyes. "Then you coughed up blood, and you were shaking. A-and, you weren't breathing, and Mommy was scared, so I was scared, and we had to take you to Dr. Thompins from your school."

Helena looked up at me, her big blue shining with tears. "And now you're paranoiwd around all subs, and they make you scared, and Dr. Thompins said that being scared about silly stuff like that was bad for you and makes you cough more blood." Helena said, pushing her face into my shoulder as I stared at Mom, who had stopped laughing, with wide eyes.

The man that Helena was talking about had looked too much like someone else. He looked like the first man who had told me about paying things with my body, when I was five. The man who stole my innocence, before Selina found me.

I still had nightmares about the man taking advantage of me when I was only five, nightmares that ended with me screaming in the middle of the night and blood smeared all over my bed sheets, which only scared me even more since it reminded me so much of my insides ripping. So when I had saw the sub, a man who looked like his exact twin, I freaked out. Mom still hadn't dropped Helena off at Preschool, since it starts at noon and I was only in fifth period, so when she came to get me, she had no choice but to take Helena with her.

Helena knew about my problem, as well as any four year old could understand, I guess. But that had been the first time Helena had ever actually seen me during an attack, and while me and Mom both knew that she would be scared by it, she never talked about feeling like this to either of us.

"You shouldn't worry about silly stuff Timmy," Helena muttered through my shirt. "I don't understand who the guy was, but you're not in that other place where that guy was anymore. You're safe here, and it's silly to worry about stuff that you don't have to worry about. And I don't…. I don't want to see that happen to you again. I don't want to see you hurt again."

I swallowed thickly, my face paling as Selina gently took a sobbing Helena out of my arms. Did I really scare her so bad? Had I really traumatized my little sister that much?

"It's alright, Helena. It's not that easy, to forget certain stuff like that, for Tim. It takes time, but," Mom said, looking straight at me. "Tim will get over it, eventually. Me and you will make sure of it."

Flashback

Sighing, I shook my head. I looked around, trying to find a good shot of the crowd again, trying to forget about the red laser for Helena's sake.

But no matter how many times I tried to focus on the crowd, or find the perfect angle, I couldn't ignore the nagging feeling in my gut. Something was upstairs, and pointed a laser straight at me so that I saw it with my camera. Because with the small chances of being able to see a light in a camera, there was no way it could be just be a coincidence.

"Just one more look." I muttered, looking up at the next floor with my camera again. I raised my camera towards the roof, zooming the camera in as far as it would go, and then froze.

In the very center of my camera was a man dressed in all black, his face covered by a black mask with hole for his eyes, and a rifle in his hands. "Who's paranoid now, Helena?" I muttered, switching the flash of my camera off, before taking the picture.

My eyes hardened as the man's widened, and his trigger finger clenched.

The skylight's glass shattered as the bullet passed through, the sound of the gunshot echoing around the mall, silencing the entire building, before everyone started to scream. I stepped back as much as I could, nearly getting knocked over by the giant crowd swarming towards the exit, the bullet landing only a few inches away from me.

I looked up at the skylight again, the man still there, easier to see now that he wasn't trying to hide anymore. My eyes narrowed as I followed the direction of his head, down towards the third floor of the mall.

I looked around, cringing as I saw parents carrying out kids close to Helena's age, who had tears streaming down their eyes and were hugging their parents for dear life. Looking back at the sniper one more time, I turned, running towards the stairs that lead to the third floor.

The man was targeting me in the first place, and I wasn't going to let anyone else get caught in the crossfire.

I hope you guys liked this chapter! Review!