Hayate listened to Akaboshi's warnings for about fifteen minutes.
It wasn't that he had anything against the local self-proclaimed crime lord, specifically, but Akaboshi wasn't a part of any command structure Hayate had ever agreed to serve. Keeping Hayate out of the field for two weeks to recover from an injury was reasonable; expecting to keep that obedience going was just unrealistic. Inoichi-sensei knew better.
Akaboshi left to do… something with his crime syndicate, leaving Hayate to read through books he'd finished three times already. There was a television, much less boxy than anything he'd seen in Konoha, but Hayate itched to move around properly instead of just lying around like a lump. No matter his injury, Hayate had never been one for an idle lifestyle. He'd been training with his family for his entire life so far, in shinobi and samurai arts, and there was nothing to do here.
Even the occasional spar with Akaboshi didn't suffice, because he was gone or asleep half the time. Night shifts were bizarre and inhumane, but apparently nothing interesting happened in the city during daylight hours.
So, when Akaboshi left for his midnight deals, Hayate snuck out onto the roof and started his own patrol.
The neighborhood around Akaboshi's apartment was probably the poorest and most-neglected in the entire city. He had other safehouses scattered around—including the abandoned ones—but the center remained in the handful of roads and rows of run-down buildings. While Hayate watched, often hiding behind the form of a scrappy alley cat, people went about their lives.
Akaboshi's gang was one formed from the remnants of others, which he'd burned to the ground. Its members grew more confident by the day, but only within the bounds of Akaboshi's ironclad rules. They did not stray. If they did, and someone decided to lash out at the civilian populace under Akaboshi's protection, he was perfectly willing to deal with the offender personally. The local law enforcement—given away by their panda color scheme—only showed up to catalog the bodies in the morning.
Hayate doubted Akaboshi knew he knew about those incidents. Hayate didn't tell him; the guy spent so much time trying to shelter Hayate from the city's realities that it was kind of endearing. He didn't want to burst that bubble.
But as the discipline incidents died down—because people died—signs started appearing. Other gangs in the city wore tokens representing their leaders while in their own territory, and Akaboshi's was a simple red ornament. Wearers toed the line. And thus, more people started associating it with safety.
And the locals had started wearing bits of red fabric, too, to mark them as protected. All of the working girls in the area got red for free. Hayate watched a couple of teenagers hand them out three nights in a row. Subtler things than the scarves, but no less real for the imitation.
Akaboshi tracked down anyone who violated those protections, either personally or through his gang. The more he did it, the more secure people felt.
The funny part was that, actually, Hayate was pretty sure Akaboshi hadn't actually set out to inspire much of anything. But he'd saved Hayate's life that day in the warehouse without a second thought, and some choices had a way of getting quietly, inevitably out of hand. Not planning just made them harder to pin down.
Hayate had to see it for himself.
The smoke and smell of the city wasn't substantially worse than some of the villages Hayate had visited, mostly because of the closed sewer system. The sheer number of smoke-belching cars was unpleasant and new and not something Hayate cared for, but he just pulled up the fabric mask that Akaboshi bought and set his scarf around his throat to secure it, then tried to find someplace cleaner.
Hayate figured he looked a bit like Kakashi, hiding from allergies like that. It was a mixed blessing that no one was around to make that comparison.
And his scarf was red, so the locals mostly nodded in his direction if he ran around without using ninjutsu. Even a dog with a red collar earned a fond look. But for the occasions when he let people see his real self, Hayate nodded back. Then he just went on his way.
He figured none of them would actually tell Akaboshi he'd been out if they thought he was just some random street kid borrowing the colors.
Bored with the endless reaches of city, Hayate made for the waterfront for the first time in a couple of nights. The low and fast route took him out of Akaboshi's territory, but the high winds at his destination were as clear as city air got. As long as he stayed two stories above ground level and the occasional gunshots, and was back in the apartment before Akaboshi noticed he was missing, Hayate traversed the skyline with total impunity.
Except that, before he got much past the edge of Akaboshi's claim, Hayate spotted an interloper.
The only real giveaway was a gleam where there shouldn't have been one, reflecting off street lamps. It was enough.
Hayate figured the spy would see him rushing up the ladder or coming across the roof at a dead run, so he slipped through narrow streets and alleyways until he found the right building. Then he scampered up the brick faster than a squirrel, aiming directly for his target's vantage point.
He'd watched a few action movies with Akaboshi—with subtitles on—and asked enough questions to make Akaboshi wave a book threateningly at his head. And then got Akaboshi to explain anyway, with the movie paused, through sheer persistence. It only happened during the early evening, before sunset, and even then not very often, but it was informative.
The point was this: Hayate knew how to snatch up the super-expensive camera in such a way that he left the device unharmed while almost throttling the spy with its strap. And the only warning the guy got was the blur of Hayate's red jacket blotting out his view.
There was a brief yelp.
Hayate and his target were about the same size, but Hayate had leverage and found a vulnerable nerve cluster first, despite the cape. Then he wrenched one of the guy's arms up behind his back and gripped the back of a slightly-armored neck with his opposite hand, barely avoiding slamming the spy's face into the concrete roof under both their weights. One very careful buzz of Lightning chakra later, as a warning, kept him down.
"Good evening!" Hayate said, keeping his right hand in place even as he eased his weight off the spy's back. "You shouldn't be here."
The spy gasped for breath, then managed a halting complaint. Hayate couldn't understand him; though he was better at distinguishing this city's language now, a complicated quip was going to be something for Akaboshi.
When Akaboshi didn't know Hayate had decided to wander tonight.
Crap. Hayate should've just knocked this guy out.
"Let me up," was what the spy managed, clipped and missing half of the formal signifiers necessary for an actual request. It was delivered strangely, as though the words had to be yanked out of a file folder and tacked into place on a board. "You"—and it was the wrong form—"don't want to…fight me."
At least, that was what Hayate thought he said. His accent was even harsher than Akaboshi's version and the word choice he'd used sounded like he was demanding a duel. He sounded…honestly, he sounded like he'd never tried to talk like this before.
Hm. Well, his sister did sometimes encourage him to make more friends. The last one had been Tenzō, and that kid was…okay. Mostly. Sometimes Hayate wanted to throw vegetables at him to see what he might be able to do with them.
Hayate backed off, letting the spy recover and heave himself off the floor. If there was a problem, he could just hit the guy again.
The spy had a somewhat superficial resemblance to Akaboshi, if he was a few years younger and much smaller. Wiry, rather than bulky, and his black hair was spiky instead of messy curls with a white patch. This black eye-covering mask didn't hide much more than that, where Akaboshi's red one extended downward enough to hide a torture scar along his left cheekbone. And then there was the costume—padded, with subtly sculpted musculature—that was mainly red on the tunic, and then nearly-black green down to the boots. The cape's liner was yellow, but the exterior was matte black to disguise the rest. Especially his hand movements, if necessary.
Hayate finally put a name to the spy's uniform. "Robin?"
Akaboshi hadn't wanted to talk about any of the other costumed people in the city. His entire demeanor changed to anger papered over a core of hurt-betrayal-longing, pulsing like a heartbeat if it could be loud enough to hear across a room. Hayate still saw them on news reports and sometimes at a distance (while ducking Akaboshi's security), so he asked anyway. Maybe under the impression that Hayate would be more likely to obey him if he had more information, Akaboshi eventually caved.
Kumoriman—"Batman," in this language—was someone who claimed to defend the city in the night. The brightly-colored duckling in his wake was Akahige, or "Robin."
Akaboshi's complicated feelings about them looked like rage and resentment, but the waters were deeply muddled. Hayate doubted even he knew the depths. Even so, Akaboshi allowed himself to be distracted by the "wiki" website when they started talking about bird words. It was still a close-run thing.
Robin startled at the sound of his title—not his name—and sized up Hayate in turn. Stared at him, as though he had his own version of Hayate's cold-reading ability.
Aside from the boots and the mask Akaboshi bought for him, Hayate figured he looked mostly like he had on arrival to this city. He'd even covered his hair with a knit hat, which certainly didn't make him taller. Overall, he didn't cut the most intimidating figure, unless someone mistook him for his sister and knew she was a jinchūriki. The combination was rare.
Moving very slowly, Hayate sat back on his heels and held his hands up in plain view. He hadn't actually shocked Robin or broken his camera, only threatened to. Nonverbally. No harm, no foul.
Robin coiled up for an instant once he got his feet underneath him again, then decided it was safe enough to not bother. Wary of the height of the wall nearby—probably aware that was how he'd been spotted—he crept a little closer to Hayate and held out his gloved forearm, as though to show off something written on it.
The glove had slid a little apart to expose a dim panel, with about as many buttons as Akaboshi's "laptop." A similarly dim screen floated above the pad, as faint and fragile as one of Hayate's worst clones. It read, in plain kana, Do you understand this?
Hayate nodded. "So, your wrist thing speaks for you? It's an improvement." The text of his answer scrolled across the screen and then warped, showing a layer of foreign script underneath it.
Robin huffed and said something. The screen rendered it as, I was in the middle of an investigation.
"Then I'm glad I didn't break your camera. It just looked to me like you were spying on someone."
Robin stared at the readout for a long, long moment. What, like a stalker?
"Actually, like a pervert," Hayate said. Because there had been that one time when he was younger where Kei ditched him at a public onsen to go yell at someone. He never did hear the end of that story, and kinda hoped she'd at least maimed the guy a little.
Robin flushed, not hidden well by the mask. Absolutely not. That's disgusting! Why would you think that?
"Because most people don't hang around on rooftops with huge cameras in the dead of night?"
Robin groaned. No. I was looking into someone specific.
"Not actually helping your case."
I am painfully aware. Look, have you heard of someone named— There was a bit of kana there that looked…weird. It looked like Robin had specifically refused to let that be translated into more pronounceable sounds.
The furigana next to it was something so odd that Hayate sounded the word out. "'Red Hood?' Is that a person?"
The question gave Robin pause, too. He pushed a few buttons and the glove spat out a list of suggested translations. "Red" didn't need modification—Hayate remembered that from the dictionary Akaboshi gave him—but the second word had a longer list underneath it. Most of them were types of head coverings. "Helmet" was there, but Hayate reached out and selected "hat" from the list with only minimal hesitation.
"Akaboshi," Robin repeated. He scrunched his nose in disbelief at the words on the screen. He started typing on his glove to lock the words in place, shaking his head slightly. Don't you work for him? After giving him a name like Red Hat?
It wasn't like Hayate didn't know "Akaboshi" wasn't the correct name. But by now, it had stuck in his brain. At last, Hayate shrugged. "It's how he introduced himself, assuming we're talking about the same person. And no, I don't work for him."
Akaboshi was local, but Hayate only deferred to him when he felt like it. Thanks to his mounting stockpile of aggravated boredom, that mood struck him less and less frequently. Especially since his leg barely ached anymore.
You're wearing his colors, Robin pointed out. Now that the flash of fear was long gone, Robin read almost entirely as curiosity-interest-chasing-the-truth. His caution was buried under that weight, and by the excitement at having found a new puzzle.
"I was wearing red beforehand, so that's correlation, not causation. Like a lot of people." Hayate flapped the end of his scarf at him, demonstratively. "And why do you care, anyway?"
Red Hood is using the name of an older criminal. Robin said something else, impatient, and the screen spat out, None of us heard anything about him until he started decapitating people. He was hiding all of his progress.
Hayate tilted his head to one side, prompting an explanation. When it wasn't forthcoming, he said, "So what?"
Decapitation, Robin repeated for emphasis. He even underlined it. Circled it.
"Only happened once." Four times. Honestly, Hayate didn't even really care about those.
He was more annoyed that Akaboshi thought he could hide it from him. Literally taking a target's head was a common enough way of proving someone's death for a bounty. Full corpses usually earned more, but they were heavier, and not everyone had a teammate who could freehand a corpse storage seal.
That said, if someone had gone out and finally killed Orochimaru and presented his head as proof, Hayate wasn't sure that Konoha would trust that. They'd have to burn half the countryside down to be sure the snake's influence was purged.
And he keeps blowing up rival drug operations, Robin insisted. I'm sure of it.
"They broke his rules." Akaboshi wasn't that subtle about his wrath. He sometimes ranted about it over ice cream. "He was pretty clear about his expectations."
Though, granted, Hayate had to pester the hell out of him to get that information, as he had with most details about the city. Akaboshi really did seem to think he was protecting Hayate's innocent heart from terrible truths. For the sake of not causing Akaboshi's worldview to implode, Hayate didn't tell him mission details. Or his personal kill-count.
It kept the peace.
Robin frowned down at his screen as Hayate's words were translated. He blew out a frustrated breath, using his free hand to rub at his forehead. It bled over the need-to-know, barely.
"I don't think Akaboshi's ever done anything to you, so why worry?" Hayate asked.
Because costumed criminals have a habit of not staying benign. Robin used the same word that medic-nin had to describe weird growths that hadn't gotten around to eating a patient alive. That might not have been what he meant. The main way anyone's gotten any information about a brand new criminal empire is through watching weeks of security footage and tracing the activities of other criminals down to their pocket change.
Huh. "More self-made than a yakuza boss, then."
That brought Robin up short. I'm sorry?
"Yakuza are all about hierarchy and respect. Most of them inherit leadership positions whenever the previous one dies. Akaboshi just…" Hayate waved a hand. "Did it all alone. Kind of admirable."
I don't think the usual story of the self-made man involves that much blood money.
Hayate considered this argument. The four Hokage—and many other historically notorious shinobi—came to mind. Sure, most of them were connected to already-established clans or large organizations. From a certain perspective, every country born in the wake of the Clan Wars era was a product of that bloodshed. Or at least the resulting fatigue.
Power was a requirement for nation-building. The exact form it took didn't matter as much. Akaboshi preyed on his rivals' fear and amplified it to his benefit, which kept them under his thumb. Obviously, Hayate hadn't been able to see the organization in action, but it did function.
"Politics says otherwise," said Hayate, though he had to scratch his head when he realized that some of the lessons were definitely censored in hindsight. "Well, Akaboshi's never paid me, so I guess that's fine. No conflict of interest."
Robin gave that due consideration, then decided to scoot over so that he was nearly shoulder to shoulder with Hayate, katana or no. What he said next translated to, Does this Akaboshi fan have a name, then?
Akaboshi hadn't even told Hayate his actual name. And between Robin and Batman, and whoever else was running around, Hayate probably needed a fake name, too. "Uh. Since I didn't think of something before, maybe Suzaku? I wear enough red."
Surprise-contemplation-worry sprang up next. Robin pulled back a little to get a better view of Hayate's entire outfit.
"Something wrong?" Hayate asked, thrown by that reaction. He'd thought that it was kind of fun to come up with to play on both Robin's animal namesake and Akaboshi's theme color. It wasn't like he knew anyone going by it already.
Robin opened his mouth, and then a series of distant gunshots reached both their ears. He swung his camera up and past Hayate. There weren't any visible flashes, at least not without the magnification Robin was using. Still, if they could hear the pops from this far away, either the guns were very large or hiding between buildings.
Maybe something would blow up soon. Akaboshi hadn't shared his plans before leaving.
"Guess that answers my question." Hayate scooted backward so Robin could continue doing his thing, then ducked behind a large rooftop fan.
Robin shouted something.
"Bye!" Hayate shouted back. "It was nice meeting you!"
Hayate made a couple of hands seals and Lightning chakra flickered down his body from his arms inward. Something stuck to the back of his sleeve fizzled and popped and smoked, exactly like his first radio earpiece last year, and Hayate was rushing down the building before Robin could follow up the thought with anything else.
If there was shooting, it was probably time to get back to Akaboshi before he noticed Hayate's absence. He'd fuss.
Kei's first warning that she was going to be attacked was the human-shaped blobs moving through her Hidden Mist AOE and disturbing the water involved. Technically, that was a hypothesis and not a fact. There were other suspects—it wasn't like the Bat-clan had migrated—until she noticed them drawing swords and determinedly scaling buildings.
Kei didn't sigh. She was too fucking sick of these people to sigh.
Instead, she flipped through her mental inventory of the construction site she'd passed a few minutes ago. Doubled back at inhuman speed. Found the first loose pieces of rebar longer than thirty centimeters and spun them in her gloved hands. Tested their weight.
Yeah. Should work just fine.
By the time her new punching bags crossed the mist-sheltered threshold to Kei's little cage match, they were already screwed.
One of them yelled something that Kei didn't understand when he spotted her mask. Between ducking through sheets of plastic and idly avoiding the darts shot in her direction, Kei had a little time to think.
Unfortunately, Kei was kind of crap at languages. Out of everything she'd ever learned—or tried to—only Japanese and English were solid. And both of them were the result of successive lifetimes of experiential learning. She could probably muddle through some rudimentary Spanish and figure out some Cantonese, even if her knowledge of tones was theoretical. If French was used around her…maybe she would notice, but nothing more concrete than that.
If you had to simply guess, what would you choose?
No idea. Between ducking enemy attacks and swinging back, Kei still tried to match the sounds.
Tonight, her brain refused to cooperate. She'd woken up this morning to a pair of deeply haunted eyes staring back at her from the bathroom mirror, and now her memory was skipping tracks.
One of her foes shot at her with a dart gun—twice—and only one even clipped Kei's sleeve. The fold of her sweatshirt caught it, and she flicked it loose in time to duck the next guy's sword-swipe.
Kei retreated behind a pylon, dragging her hand across spare bits of rebar as she went. A web of fūinjutsu followed her fingers and almost blended into the steel, and Kei set the timers with a thought. As her one of her opponents followed—an optimistic idea—Kei darted up and over a wheelbarrow and out of the blast radius.
She barely allowed the assassin following her that same courtesy.
As the pile of steel exploded and the assassin was thrown forward by the blast, Kei hit him in the face hard enough to change his whole trajectory.
And then she was ducking behind cover again, dodging more of the safari dart gun bullshit as she shoved plastic drop-cloths aside.
The next person to attack her cut a basic clone in half without even checking for a shadow. Sure, it was all shadows in an abandoned construction site, but Kei dropped out of the half-built second floor and smashed her opponent flat into the gravel.
It probably hurt.
And then it was time to run again, because if she smacked any of these people too hard they'd probably collapse entirely.
"You cannot escape us!" snarled the third guy, in an accent that was somewhere between like five others.
Kei didn't bother to dignify that with a response.
The only reason these guys lasted as long as they did, even with Kei keeping her chakra use to a minimum, was down to Batman's One Rule.
Above all, no killing.
Other than that, Kei didn't need to think to bring down a bunch of mundane human fighters while Isobu had her back.
"AAAAAAUGH!"
She'd broken one of their legs on reflex alone. And there were so many unforgiving surfaces in a construction site, it was almost a death trap even without her help.
Kei spun the rebar in her hands, imagining Nightwing's escrima.
Dart Gun Guy got hit in the face the second Kei got within his range. And a knee to the solar plexus a second after that, because breaking someone's nose wouldn't automatically keep them down. It did make for nasty black eyes, though.
"You will never run far enough," hissed the last guy standing. "Fight or flee, it makes no difference."
Sure, dude.
Kei got him in a sleeper hold in the end. Then there were three discount ninjas lying on the ground, having been clobbered by a teenager running on five hours of fitful daytime sleep.
The fight had probably taken about…two actual minutes?
Kei flicked her hand, testing. The piece of rebar had bent a little, so she tossed it aside with a bright, bouncy clank as it struck concrete. Someone could probably test it for DNA and get nothing, since Kei had been wearing gloves and avoided stabbing anyone. With the actual rebar.
She hadn't strictly needed to use her chakra for a single ninjutsu. But with her self-control wobbling, she'd queued up the Water Whip anyway and let Isobu haul her around like she was Spider-Man's aquatic cousin. Even the clones were his idea.
I maintain my lack of awe, here.
Yeah, I know. Still, that's six. Six more than the whole time leading up to this. This week is going well. Kei made sure that Isobu felt the full force of her frustration through their bond.
The fact that our unseen enemies feed us weaklings piecemeal is more annoying than I expected. Even having enemies is unexpected. Isobu couldn't rotate his hands enough to rub at his chin, but Kei got the impression just fine. Is this truly the standard humans use in this world?
At this tier? Yeah. Once we start getting into metahuman territory, everything gets way more complicated. And there were definitely some things in this world Kei had no intention of fighting. Not unless she was prepared to scour her surroundings to the bedrock, and still probably lose.
In Batman's city, Kei had essentially peacebonded her katana to remove the decapitation temptation. Which was, unfortunately, very real. She could break through the thin layer of masking tape with no trouble, but the feel of it forced her to think twice. She didn't want the type of attention that followed her back home.
But at the same time, Kei was already having third and fourth thoughts about not killing these clowns (as opposed to any other, more literal clowns). In her experience, assassin organizations didn't tend to stop if someone tried to lodge a complaint with the manager. Not unless she tracked down and gutted them.
Kei let out a low whistle as she started inspecting the unconscious men. Surely the world couldn't need this many people dressed for stealth and equipped with curvy daggers. Or straight daggers—honestly, each of them was dressed like they had a cutlery drawer that needed stocking.
I think this is called a kris. Kei tested the blade's weight and spun it in her hand as easily as a pen. It was well-balanced and probably well-used, like the kukri from two nights ago. Probably poisoned.
Does that matter?
It might.
Not that it was always worth extrapolating about the origins of people based on their weaponry. There were collectors everywhere who drooled over foreign swords. But, as far as Kei remembered, Batman dealt with some really fictionalized Hashashin in the form of the League of…Assassins? Or was it Shadows? Either way, not a great group to spend time with on weekends. They weren't as obviously fucked-up as villains like the Joker, but they were still murderers who made infrequent trips into Gotham to harass or flirt with Batman.
…That last one was probably just Talia. Going by some of the gossip magazines Kei had found in corner stores, Bruce Wayne had enough exes for the "playboy billionaire philanthropist" effect. Hopefully, a few of them were less likely to kill bystanders in supervillain plots.
Huh.
What?
Kei drew back from the man she'd defeated last, careful to wipe the glove off on his shirt. The cloth mask she'd pulled off him was soaked with a substance that was half coughed-up foam. Some of it, by the gleam of a penlight, looked like the reddish-orange of thinned blood.
It looks like it might be a suicide pill of some kind? Not sure if hitting them activated it or they've got the training to bite down even when losing consciousness. Or if they were on a timer when this fight started.
ANBU does not use them, correct?
Danzō's dipshits might have for deniability, Kei told him, but I think if ANBU die in the field, it's not because of this.
Kei would've found a way to raise hell if she ever thought this was a possibility. Her ANBU friends already nearly died on a bimonthly basis. They didn't need the help.
Kei checked the others, only to find the same result. She wasn't sure that the others she'd defeated earlier this week had been chomping down on box jellyfish toxin or something, but it did put a wrinkle in her plan to stay out of trouble with the law. She hadn't stripped any of the assassins and dumped their bodies in the harbor—though it might've been more pragmatic—so there was a decent chance that the city morgue had a few of them already. If this many healthy adults dropped dead, then of course someone would order an autopsy.
Probably six autopsies by now. The coroner needed overtime pay.
At that point, Kei was in trouble, because now she was leaving a trail. She hadn't even killed these stabby shitheads on purpose.
Unless…
Kei checked the bodies again. This time, she used her diagnostic ninjutsu to be absolutely sure that they were fucking dead. And took a better look at bruised faces.
Ah.
Kei took a deep breath, relieved. Okay, I'm not the best at recognizing people, but I'm fairly sure I beat these guys unconscious three nights ago?
I believe so.
Cool. Unfortunately, they still have their heartbeats, which might explain why these people were so confident they could yell at me so much. Kei sat back on her heels. False death is something a little more up the bad guys' alley. I assume they can't just grow these guys on trees.
Did you not say that these humans were likely operatives for an assassin group?
Yes. Kei scratched the side of her neck. They are. But going back to the false death thing, Haku did something like that. With senbon. False death poisons—assuming that someone doesn't double-tap—are mostly useful for distracting or scaring off a mildly-motivated assassin.
I would not have called your humans "unmotivated" with regard to killing.
Kei was pretty sure the only reason Kakashi hadn't double-tapped Zabuza was because of underage witnesses, and because Haku had been dressed like a hunter-nin for that exact purpose. Anyway, I think I remember something about the League attacking any of their own who fail a mission. These guys failed together, but none of us are dead, so…
So they will try again.
Probably. I might be able to get them picked up by GCPD, but they'd probably get innocent people killed one way or another. I'm the hardest target in town.
Kei and Isobu could have kept going back and forth like this until the assassins woke up for round three, but someone new entered the fog.
Calmly. Strangely so.
Player three has entered the battle. Kei stood up and turned to face her newest dance partner, already fighting a scowl behind her mask.
A gun barrel nudged aside the plastic sheet for its owner, and he stepped through the would-be archway as soon as he was clear. The low whistle, filtered through a vocoder, sounded almost menacing. "And here I thought these guys only rolled out the red carpet for me."
Kei squinted at him, noting how the gun stayed trained on her mask. Her hands were empty, if not exactly in plain view, and she was not terribly intimidating before someone spotted all the bodies. A ceramic-composite mask only got someone so far.
You look like a theater escapee and have three visible weapons or holsters at any given time. And there is me.
Whatever.
His helmet was one she was pretty sure she knew. The red gleam was distinctive. As was the penchant for leather jackets and body armor and guns. He was built bigger than most of the men Kei knew, besides Jiraiya, and Jiraiya wore geta that boosted him up a handful of centimeters. This guy had steel-toed boots. She'd have to put in a little more work to knock him on his ass, but not because she actually thought he could threaten her.
There were only ever two Red Hoods in the comics, and the Joker was in Arkham. It was simple enough to remember the identity of the second.
Jason Todd had hit something of a growth spurt since his Robin days. And gun or no gun, Kei had no interest in hurting him.
Ah, sentiment.
You say this like you don't talk to both Kuramas and Shukaku like family. Which you are.
Isobu muttered something uncharitable that he deliberately kept Kei from hearing. It was likely not an actual sentence.
"So, did you slip the leash or is this an actual hit?" Red Hood asked. At a guess, the vocoder probably dropped him a full octave and filled the undertone with metallic noise.
He hadn't lowered the pistol, but if he felt like being chatty, Kei didn't mind. She hadn't talked to another human in three days. Been talked at, sure, but she didn't even know what these guys really wanted.
"First, I don't work for them. The second is unclear," Kei replied, and checked the nearest mask—yep, same guy. If she hadn't checked his vitals very closely, she'd assume he was a corpse now. "Leaning toward 'hit.' Hell if I know what I did."
She didn't owe him an explanation at all.
Boots crunched on gravel as Red Hood approached. He actually holstered his weapon, crouched next to her, and took it upon himself to offer his take after a brief examination. "Yep, that's typical. Surprising, though, that they're breaking out the fake death shit. How many went after you, Spike?"
Okay, so Red Hood was very familiar with Assassin rules and procedures. Not a great sign.
Also not the worst nickname this mask had ever earned. Probably worth some honesty. "Just these three so far. Twice."
Another low whistle. "And here I was, thinking I'd done something more obnoxious than usual."
"I don't know that you didn't." Kei nodded at the helmet. "New supervillain and all. Maybe you have your own groupies."
Red Hood gave a short laugh, which sounded a little like Megatron. "I wouldn't be that nice about it."
Because he was an overgrown teenager with a grudge the size of the Hokage Monument. Kei couldn't remember off-hand if Jason's revival was supposed to be a villain plot, a cosmic accident, or something else entirely. She had only done enough research to confirm that Jason Todd-Wayne was declared legally dead at fifteen. Then there was an understandable blank period. Whatever the hell had happened to this kid between now and then, Kei couldn't say.
But it had turned most of his issues up to eleven.
Still, the new Red Hood wasn't a real public figure yet. No one had officially tacked his name to a crime. If there was some kind of plot going on between the League of Assassins and Red Hood, Kei wanted nothing to do with it.
The problem was that it looked like death squads had it out for more than just him. They'd attacked the second they saw her.
"Shot in the dark, but…" Kei watched him make a disapproving noise at the pun. Maybe his Robin wordplay instincts had faded somewhat. "Look, do you speak their language?"
Red Hood paused. "Why would you think that?"
"You clearly have opinions." Kei tried to push as much "totally unimpressed" into her tone as she could. Her voice was already so filtered by her accent that it probably barely mattered. "I could use a second one."
Red Hood watched her for a long moment. He got to his feet and offered her a hand up, so clearly manners were still floating around in that helmet somewhere. Maybe he was doing it to mock her, or just as an affectation, but it probably didn't matter. It was just really weird to be near one of Batman's legal sons when there was so much shit going on.
And this was the kid who'd gone all-in on the guns. Aside from the matching pistols at his hips, Red Hood moved like he had at least three knives, another hidden handgun (or more), and probably something up his sleeve. Kei hadn't grabbed his forearm when he pulled her up because she was pretty sure something would have reacted.
Yep, still a weird thought. One of Batman's sons decked out like Rambo. Maybe the reason the Bats were so reluctant to let a new mask run around freely was because of him?
Kei stepped back, slightly out of grabbing distance. No need to give him a false sense of confidence.
"I could trade a favor for a favor." Despite his less-menacing tone, Red Hood still kept both hands within easy reach of his pistols.
No doubt he'd already noticed the peace-bond on her sword, and its position across her back. She wasn't going to be swinging at him with anything but bare fists and whatever she could grab.
Kei wouldn't have to swing at all, but Red Hood didn't know that. Red Hood's traditional enemies were mostly human scum. He probably didn't deal with bulletproof foes all that often.
In the end, Kei made a "go on" motion with her hand. The other she rested on her hip, away from her sword and her other holsters.
"It looks like we share some problems," Red Hood remarked. Hiding his face behind that helmet gave him the same perfect poker face Kei had. His tells were hidden in his voice, too, but his hands moved. He made a point of smacking a fist into his upturned palm, theatrically indicating an idea had landed. "Seeing as you have a minor assassin infestation, we could clear all the roadblocks at once."
Kei crossed her arms this time. "How, exactly?"
"Oh, nothing too strenuous." Red Hood, who couldn't have been that much older than Kei, spread his hands innocently. "Just make sure you bring your problems to the Bats' attention. They'd love to get their hands on a few of the stab squad." He kicked one of the assassins experimentally, and the guy twitched. "Well, maybe with an antitoxin or ten. No need to be careless when getting your throat slit might be contagious."
Following Red Hood's plan would probably tie the Bats up in the investigation of why some rando in a mask was getting targeted by the League of Assholes, and allow Red Hood to do whatever he wanted. Again.
Still, maybe Kei could cut this dead boy a break of some kind. He'd died. "Translation first, and I'll think about it."
Red Hood considered, then finally nodded. "Hope it's worth my time."
Isobu, can you play it back?
Yes.
Kei repeated the unknown sentence as best she could, though her pronunciation probably sucked.
Red Hood listened to the end, then asked her to repeat it twice. Most likely fighting her accent. By the end, he had his hand to his helmet's hermetically sealed lack-of-mouth and hadn't moved his helmet to point anywhere else the entire time.
"Well?" Kei prompted quietly.
"Well," Red Hood repeated with that mechanized, mocking edge. He dropped it a second later to say, "That was League of Assassins chatter. And they were telling 'the abomination' that it's time to roll over."
Fuck.
Kei hadn't done anything local that would've given her away as a jinchūriki. No full transformation, no tails, no death aura. She was—probably—operating at a level even most sensors wouldn't bother to report, unless they'd already been tipped off. She'd barely used chakra at all, except to stave off the worst of her headaches and fuel her mobility around the city. Nothing she'd done was traceable by modern methods when combined with her Transformation ninjutsu and gloves. She hadn't fucked this up.
Unless it was because she was a jinchūriki that her movements could be tracked. Kei already knew she wasn't stealthy by her people's standards. It just hadn't ever mattered before. Back home, she could kill anything that thought it could take her, and scare off anything that didn't. These assassins couldn't really know what they were dealing with.
"Looks like that hit home," Red Hood said, with a hint of deep satisfaction. "I bet there's a fun story behind that."
Fuck! Former Robin or not, he was looking for an angle and Kei had given him one.
"I feel like I should clarify something," was half a prompt, half a warning. Red Hood leaned in, trying to use his height to loom. "That phrasing? That's how I know they're not planning on killing you at all. You're an asset, and they don't like it when people turn down their recruitment pitches. Especially not their weapons. They'll run you down like an animal and then…"
Red Hood probably thought that unfinished sentence was sufficiently heavy with implied threat.
Kei had been loomed over by Tailed Beasts. She'd shouted down Yang Kurama and gotten a result that wasn't "getting instantly swatted into a bloody smear." Red Hood was an arrogant housefly by comparison.
She let some of that pride seep into her voice. "And if I try to get a third opinion on that translation?"
"The only one who might give you a useful answer is a Bat." Red Hood was undoubtedly smiling under that helmet. Spite made Kei want to punch it off. The smile and the helmet both. "Face it, you aren't spoiled for choice here."
And you can tell I was avoiding them. Because if I wasn't, I wouldn't have been so surprised that these guys died, Kei thought bitterly. Which means you would happily drop me into a Bat-centered murder investigation that'll tie all of us up for a long time. And you can run around willy-nilly stealing Kryptonite-tipped cruise missiles or whatever you're into this week.
Trusting these people seems more complicated than shinobi work.
It shouldn't have to be.
But Kei couldn't risk being wrong. Being trapped in a Justice League-backed prison while she waited for interrogation was closer to a worst-case scenario than she ever wanted. They probably had space access. Isobu couldn't get her back into the atmosphere. It would be hell.
There was no way for Red Hood to tell that she was glaring at him through her mask, but she hoped he could feel it psychically. Kei had already suppressed the urge to slap Red Hood's helmet hard enough to spin it on his head, but that was petty. The Bats wouldn't hurt her. They'd probably fistfight most of the assassins themselves. Sanctity of human life and all.
But they'd tried to stick a tracker on her clone. Barbara Gordon probably found enough information through only two Bat-encounters to recite Kei's social security number back to her, if she'd had one.
Kei still hadn't found any trace of Hayate.
"Another thing, then."
"Oh? We're adding more conditions now?"
Drama major, much? Kei rolled her eyes under the mask. Ticking off points on her fingers, she explained in her flattest possible tone, "If you've stayed under the Bats' radar for so long, you're either a small fry or you know about the way they work, and you're going around them." Kei pointed at the helmet. "And nobody going by 'Red Hood' is aiming for the first option. Give me a patrol schedule."
If there were already assassins after her, Kei's options opened up. Most of them were even more violent than Red Hood. Hopefully, even the death toll hadn't convinced these assholes to slow down and reassess, they were still open to persuasion. Starting with her fists.
Kei also didn't ask how the actual fuck Red Hood knew what the League of Stabby People was up to. Probably something to do with his revival. She didn't care at this point.
"I'll give you that information if you're in. As opposed to, say, in prison for fifteen homicides," Red Hood replied, waving a hand as though to bat away her accusations. He leaned in again, extending his gloved right hand in a clear offer. "So, do we have a deal?"
The only thing I won't do to you, Kei thought, is give away your "secret identity" to dear old daddy. Leaves a lot of wiggle room.
Kei shook his hand. Fought the urge to crush his hand and won, pulling it back to a mere suspicious twitch. "Deal. So, where do you need me?"
Red Hood didn't smile. Or if he did, she couldn't tell. Still, she could hear it in his voice when he began, "On Thursday night, I'll need you take your stalkers on a little walking tour right through the Diamond District—"
Kei stuck her hand out before he could finish the thought.
"What?"
"Pay me first."
Red Hood groaned, but did manage to come up with a nice stack of bills rather than just shooting her, which was a surer sign of his desperation than anything he'd said or done so far. He did, however, take half of the darts the bad guys had been shooting at her "for his independent investigation," along with the dart guns, which made her just that much surer that there was something going on under the surface.
Kei didn't ask. It would come up later or it wouldn't, most likely via the five o'clock news like crime was an actual epidemic. He wouldn't tell her jack shit either way.
As Red Hood disappeared into the mist, Kei thought, I guess it's time to kill a whole lot of birds with one stone.
Let us begin promptly.
Which started with tying every assassin to something nice and heavy to slow them the fuck down, using that rebar she'd already ruined. They could figure their own way out of trouble.
Notes:
1. If you're wondering, Tim found out about Red Hood first via following Black Mask's organization. (There were a lot of one-sided screaming matches.) He was doing a bit of preliminary investigation at a very cautious distance and got way more info than he thought he would.
2. Tim's first exposure to Japanese was anime. Jason's was Bruce's language boot camp for Robins, but he did come to the table already speaking Spanish in addition to English.
3. Suzaku (the Vermillion Bird of the South) and Genbu (the Black Tortoise of the North) are two of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations, going by their Japanese names. If Kei hadn't been so suspicious and Hayate so clearly connected to Red Hood, Tim might've chosen to mention this "coincidence."
4. Of all the teenagers running loose in the story, Jason is the oldest at 17. Kei's 16 and Tim is either 14 or 15. Hayate is the definite youngest at 14. Dick is 24 and therefore not a teenager.
