Content warnings for: Passive suicidal thoughts and depression symptoms, in this first half. It's not explicit, but neither of Hayate's older sibling figures are in a good place right now. We've got a fair amount of Problems™ left to go.


Kei's anger burned, but it burned out. Like a firecracker, its components were a mixture pulled from a dozen sources, and it was volatile in more ways than one. It lacked the staying power of resentment or hatred, decaying instead into apathetic chill when it slammed into resistance.

It was dead within minutes of them leaving the building.

Isobu reached out with careful fingers as Kei's presence went dim and sad and cold again. She still moved and might speak, but her heart had gone hollow. Scorched down to nothing, again.

He held the shriveled result in his cupped palms, listening close.

I'm so tired, Isobu, Kei mumbled. A lingering coarseness snuck into her mental voice. I've barely done anything besides sleep, and then I get into one sad excuse for a fight and what? Blow up at a couple of kids! A toddler has more self-control.

Shame had its foothold.

Isobu summoned up a shade made of memory, of Yang Kurama's little host screaming over being denied candy, and set the image at the forefront of Kei's mind. There were worse things to be than childish. Humans were born to be around other humans, not to keep themselves entirely aloof.

She didn't laugh at his counterargument. Instead, she clutched at the figment until the bubble burst in her grasp.

The cold sank deeper, like currents on the seabed.

All I want is to find Hayate and go home. Kei's voice had gone plaintive. Even as she rearmed all of her refuge's defensive traps, she was doing so without thinking. Without caring.

We will, Isobu told her, leaning his spiritual weight against hers. There will be a future for us that is not here.

…I've been ignoring you. That pervasive, sucking shame dragged at her tone. Even as she sat on the borrowed bed and pried off the mask, all Kei's focus was on misery. I'm sorry.

If you could truly ignore me, you would have done so properly instead of letting your emotions seep everywhere. Isobu had been deliberately shoved aside by Kei's mental defenses before. It wasn't terribly interesting as a technique, and she rarely had the focus to keep doing so for longer than a few minutes at a time. This was nothing like that. Worry about yourself.

Isobu—

My siblings are not lost. We are. Your brother is. Isobu sighed. It was one of those human habits he could no longer shake. Do you want to toss aside these allies and come up with a different solution to our problems?

…not really. If we went at this alone, there's no telling how many people could get caught in the middle.

Red Hood was an urban target. If they went after him together, Kei's experience said, they'd both make mistakes. And people would die preventable deaths for no better reason than a fit of temper.

Some conviction in her memories—vague as it was—rejected the very idea that Hayate was in harm's way with Red Hood as a backer, and Isobu couldn't find its exact source. It was as embedded as her habitual worry about her brother's looming fate. Of his death. It was irrational, but it was still present. Something leftover from whatever strange process had scarred her misplaced memories into her new brain.

Kei's confidence was in tatters already. Isobu decided not to bring it up.

You know I put our concerns above all others.

Yeah. I do.

And you have to think differently. You are not a person who pursues goals to the expense of all else. Only at her own expense. She flinched and withdrew if she thought harm would befall innocents instead, due to her actions. The consequences are too dire.

…True.

Then we should rest, and think, and reassess. We now know something we did not before, and there is perhaps more to learn.

And, Kei thought with a sigh, a huge cost to getting it wrong.

In your view. Isobu still put his life and that of his partner well above the painfully petty creatures around them. Even the brightly-colored ones she was so inexplicably fond of. So…?

Okay. Rest, reassess, and…come up with a plan.

If possible, I would also like to add a requirement for killing our pursuers—

Kei sounded a little more like herself when she said, No.

No?

…Uh. Let me think about the logistics during that…planning session?

Isobu curled his arms up and let his head rest in the sand littering their shared mental world. At the same time, he felt Kei mimic his deliberate relaxation with her real body, albeit on the couch instead of the bed. That mirroring, however shallow and arguably forced it was, left him feeling a little more sure that they'd be all right.

It was a thin reassurance, but he held it up to the light until Kei was asleep.


"Aniki?"

Here it comes, Jason thought. He braced himself by taking a fortifying bite of his chili dog, gesturing for the kid to continue with his free hand.

Sitting on a rooftop with a late-night snack after a successful patrol was nearly a tradition. They'd found a quiet spot in the Bowery out of the lingering drizzle to rest, first. Then they got their food from the 24-hour diner, thanks to the power of drive-thrus, cash, and Red Hood's reputation. His helmet sat opposite Hayate's perch, because Jason didn't trust the kid not to mess with it when annoyed, but thus far peace was maintained. As long as both of them were busier with their food than they were with talking.

Hayate's legs dangled at the edge of the roof. He kicked occasionally, as though trying to keep his blood flowing in the cold. "When you said to stay out of sight, I thought you'd be doing something more dangerous than sitting in meetings for three hours because it rained."

"Hey, you got to hide in the office with the spinning chair." He'd heard that thing rolling around the room through the door. If Hayate was a normal teenager, his phone and the chair might've been enough to keep him busy.

"And," Hayate went on as though Jason hadn't said anything, "then you went and got into a helicopter chase the second the storm died down! Without me!"

Jason hadn't been monitoring Hayate's internet usage that closely, but they'd watched Die Hard with subtitles on the laptop. He was still a little surprised Hayate remembered what a helicopter was. He'd been staring pretty intensely at the subtitles and muttering under his breath about explosion realism at the time.

"Black Mask needed to lose the ammo shipment tonight, not just whenever I found the time to get you a flying license." Unlike the "Akaboshi" thing from when they'd first met, Jason had found that Hayate actually understood a few more English loanwords than he had back then. He didn't bother to translate Rogue names anymore. "And I met up with you right where I promised."

Hayate still pouted, because he was a teenager. Without the half-mask rated for Gotham gas attacks, Jason could even see him do it. "I could have helped."

"I had it covered, kid."

It hadn't been a perfect heist, obviously—scratch one helicopter, for starters—but Jason grabbed his getaway motorcycle on schedule and vanished after a train got in the way. He hadn't even needed the backup plan, which involved C4 and a support column. Ever since deciding Hayate was going to follow him under supervision or not at all, he forced himself to be more sparing with those tactics. He'd still gotten away from Batman and Nightwing's foot pursuit just fine in the end. And met Hayate on the roof overlooking the diner at three.

"Sitting on the roof was cold and boring." Hayate tilted his head like he was rolling his eyes under the borrowed goggles. "You at least got some exercise."

Welcome to Gotham, brat. For most people. Also, Jason wouldn't have used the term "exercise" to describe his calculated efforts to avoid being arrested before the next stage of his plan. "I'm sure it was. You could've just waited in the diner."

"Yeah, right. Take me along the next time you do something fun," Hayate suggested. It wasn't a demand, because by now Jason and Hayate both knew they wouldn't take each other's orders. Instead, he said it in the same tone as he'd used to order his chili dog without cheese. Just an innocent request.

Jason sighed. He finished off his chili dog in a few careful bites, then dusted off his hands as he chewed. Going slowly bought him a little time to think.

The word on the street after that little stunt with the helicopter was that Black Mask wanted to "talk" with Red Hood. Or, more likely, string his headless corpse up by the ankles from the Robert Kane Memorial Bridge, but at least that feeling was mutual. Business as usual, then.

Ideally, Jason could keep Hayate clear of the inevitable confrontation.

Realistically, that kid was going to stalk the edges of the fight regardless of what Jason thought, and get hurt in the melee if someone saw him. Already, there were rumors that the Red Hood had a little stalker following in his wake. Jason hadn't gotten any concrete evidence that the story had spread anywhere outside of his territory. Given that Black Mask was still scrambling for control over the Alley with the desperation of a man at a cliff's edge, it'd reach him sooner or later.

Unfortunately, Jason still needed to stomp on his figurative fingers a few more times. Sionis hadn't gotten the hint just yet.

He'd keep an ear out for the next few days, just to be sure.

"As long as you promise to stay out of the fight, yes, you can follow along when there's some progress."

Hayate chomped down on his chili dog so it could partly hang from his mouth, which freed up his hands to pump at the air in victory. He had a whole victory shimmy.

Jason waited exactly long enough for Hayate to finish all of that nonsense and sit down again before doing his best to ruffle the kid's hair through his hood. It was probably a lot like toweling off a puppy, but on the receiving end.

Hayate grumbled through it. Then, he said, "Aniki, I think you should look into getting more clinics."

That was…what?

"The little clinic there" —Hayate waved in the broad direction of the Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic, if you pretended there weren't five brownstones in the way— "is a good start, but it's too small for the number of people who live in this district. There's only one doctor there, though I guess she has a couple of assistants."

Jason stared at him blankly.

Leslie's clinic had been there for thirty-whatever years, renamed after the Waynes were shot dead and the whole area started tumbling downhill. A little light in the darkness, run by the woman who'd been—if not entirely trustworthy—at least trusted by the Bats for all the decades since. Even now, Jason kept a couple of key memories of his street kid days. Mostly about where it was safe to go, at least for an hour at a time. Someplace a helpless brat could beg for bandages when his blisters cracked in the cold.

Some things never fucking changed.

Suddenly aware of the chill in his limbs, Jason shook himself just slightly. Hayate didn't seem to notice, so he avoided bringing it up and said, "More crowded than your hometown, huh?"

"I'll say. Healthcare doesn't make any sense here," Hayate went on, hugging one knee to his chest. The other leg dangled off the roof. "Visits to doctors and hospitals are free for shinobi, or families of shinobi. And if that's a barrier, there are normal private practice doctors and every medic-nin gets a civilian work rotation in peacetime. I think the ratio is, what, thirty physicians to every…fifty thousand people? No, a hundred thousand.

"And even if the ratio worked out in our favor, you'd need specialists. For addicts, for kids and babies, for old people who haven't moved away, and then there's surgeons for everything. And dentists." Hayate muttered, mostly to himself. "Maybe some of the abandoned buildings could be repurposed…?" He paused, then looked to Jason. "How much money does it take to start a clinic?"

Jason did some quick conversions in his head, then revised downward because property in Crime Alley was dirt cheap. Aside from a particularly grasping brand of urban "developer," most of the buildings were owned and condemned by locals. Gotham locals, if nothing else. Some of Jason's cronies lived and worked in the dilapidated buildings within a ten-block radius. While math had never been Jason's favorite subject, he'd been getting perfect grades up until he—until he didn't.

Hayate was still looking at him.

Jason cleared his throat. "...A couple million yen?"

"What's a yen?"

Well, that math was fucking pointless.

"It's probably about what I'd have gotten for everything in the helicopter, if—not for the trouble." If not for Batman and Nightwing. Jason jerked his thoughts away from them before he could get caught in a spiral, scowling. "You might've noticed this neighborhood's a wreck. It takes more than just money to fix it."

"Yeah." Hayate shrugged. "But you're here now, Aniki."

"Guess I am." Jason leaned back a little to rest his weight more on his hands.

There was a break in the clouds, like a crack in drywall. Gray clouds floated intermittently in the wake of the night's drenching rainstorm, and the smell of the city was tamed a little by it. With the inescapable light pollution endemic to the eastern seaboard, there was no chance of stars or planets making any real appearance. Even knowing they were there, if invisible, didn't help.

Jason stared up, and up, and up.

"Aniki?"

"Yeah?"

"I think it'd be easier to set up shelters, if the issue is training." Hayate nudged his arm with one pointy elbow. "The winters here are brutal, aren't they?"

"Yeah." He knew that from experience.

The issue wasn't training, not really. Fuck, if it came down to it, Jason could just shove the money at Milo and make him and Vitaliy's socialist cousin Mikhail figure it out. Maintaining a cold-weather shelter was usually a civics project running through the mayor's office, not something slapped together by criminal enterprises. It wouldn't make them money, unlike running drugs or guns or just stealing Black Masks's projects regarding both. That would cut the legs out from under half of Red Hood's reputation, if he let it. It would give Sionis a target.

Jason scrubbed a hand over his face, his fingers catching on the edges of his mask.

It all came down to money.

And time.

Time could be spent for money, but money couldn't truly buy time.

God. Jason had never wanted for time until he'd stared at that bomb and realized it was all gone. Red numbers ticked down, down, down.

The moon changed, the sun rose, the stars died. Jason didn't have to think about it, because he was dead and it was over. The world moved on.

And here he was again. Back in Gotham, back in the Bats' shadow, and going to settle the fucking score once and for all.

Jason could plan. Two weeks, a month, a year, whatever. He could chase his goals to the end of the world. He could see the angles now. Unthinking trust got him killed once already, so he'd never make that mistake again. He'd learned his lesson. He could hold the world at arm's length for as long as it took to drag a passenger along to hell with him this time.

He had to. There was no going back on his choice now. He hadn't cut his way free of the shadows to stop when his task was still unfinished.

Ever since Talia dumped his ass into the Lazarus Pit and the screaming stopped. Since the training, and that fucking headline. Since learning his murderer was still traipsing around like nothing ever happened. Since learning that—in one fell swoop— he was replaceable, that he'd never mattered, and that there wasn't a single lesson learned in two fucking years.

As long as it took until Black Mask finally came crawling to his last solution like he'd been shot in both legs, and brought the Joker back into play.

And then.

And then.

And then it'd be a choice. A real one. A question, even, for Batman and his naivete. In the end, there was no room for compromise. It'd be Jason or the clown, and—

If it wasn't him—

Then—

Jason felt something warm against his arm. Looking down, he found Hayate leaning almost half his body weight against Jason's bicep, but careful not to close his fingers around Jason's arm. No restraint at all. And he wasn't even looking at Jason; instead, he was staring up at the moon like he was trying to figure out what was so interesting about it, with his hood slipping a bit back from his face.

Jason drew a slow breath. It might've cracked on the way in. "You cold, kid?"

"A little. But you're here, so it's okay." Hayate adjusted so he had hold of Jason's sleeve instead. A narrow-fingered deathgrip.

Ha.

"Guess I am."


When Tim knocked on Genbu's window, Steph was braced for most possible scenarios. A total cold shoulder or the silent treatment, being tossed off the fire escape, or shouting that would rattle the rooftops. After Oracle confirmed that she'd gone and called ahead, revealing that Genbu had gone back to the apartment, Steph figured it only guaranteed her physical presence. Tim brought along grapple guns he'd checked and reinforced over a long weekend, and Steph had invited herself along upon realizing where he was going, so that was as prepared as they could easily get.

Hopefully it'd go smoother now that Genbu had a day to cool off.

Especially while Batman was still chasing Red Hood, this time without Nightwing as backup. Jervis Tetch was out of Arkham and trying to go to ground, but they'd been alerted early enough that dragging him out of his hidey-hole was still a one-vigilante job. Especially with the rest of the Wonderland gang still locked up.

"Do you think she's just gonna ignore—?" Steph began.

At that exact moment, a masked face pulled the gap in the blinds wide enough to notice Steph too, then unlocked the window. And deactivated the murder-stickers Tim said she put everywhere. Then Genbu turned around and went back to her current project without otherwise acknowledging them.

Tim slipped into the room first, after deactivating his half of the security system. Steph followed almost immediately, looking around the apartment in naked curiosity.

"If you two are planning to stick around," Genbu said from the kitchen, "I have those pizza bagel things, and soda. Or water. Coffee. Whatever."

Steph and Tim exchanged glances. While Steph got to see most of Tim's pinched expression, all she did was shrug and drop onto the couch. They'd been invited, Tim. Get with the program.

"Kinda surprised you let us in," Steph said, while Genbu started putting the food on the oblong serving plate that came with the rest of the dishes. Then she thought it over and added, "But I didn't assume you'd be violent, either. Promise."

Genbu came back to the coffee table and plunked the not-a-tray down on its surface, along with a two-liter bottle of orange soda, and three cups. The last four were carried on a series of thin platforms made of water, which evaporated instantly on contact with the cheap wood. Apparently, with a few more of her cards laid out on the table, Genbu was more comfortable with showing off her precise control in front of witnesses.

Steph whistled to show her appreciation.

Genbu's shoulders shot up a little defensively, which probably meant she was hiding a blush. Then she went back into the kitchen.

Steph reached for a bagel with one glove, because pizza stains were acceptable losses in exchange for a snack.

Tim couldn't hold in the hissed, "Spoiler!"

"What? Freerunning is hungry work." Steph had shoved her mask up so that her mouth was uncovered, but left the top half of her face hidden. The bagels weren't great—probably yanked out of the freezer in grand soccer mom tradition—but food was food. "She's not nearly as mad as I thought, so it's probably fine if you sit down."

Steph watched as Tim weighed his options. While he'd be a bit slower off the mark if he started a fight sitting on a couch cushion, Genbu was fast and strong enough that that split-second timing didn't seem like it'd matter too much. He'd be able to reach his Bat-approved sedative sprays and taser at the same rate no matter his position. And, though he preferred his weird pizza toppings, he was fifteen too.

With a sigh, Tim gave in and sat down next to Steph.

Victory! "Sooo, why aren't you mad?"

"Oh, I am." Ignorant of the chill briefly skittering up Steph's spine, Genbu gave them both a very long look. "But miscommunication and misunderstanding aren't good reasons to give up on thinking and just start punching people. Even if it's a trend." At the bafflement she got in return, Genbu sighed. "Y'know, the thing where two groups of superheroes who don't know each other meet up, immediately assume the other one is doing something evil, and then just start swinging? Bad idea. Not doing that."

If only more people in Gotham agreed with that, Steph wouldn't have to hide nearly so many bruises.

"Hey, I agree with you," Tim said, leaning on the armrest. "If more people thought like that, this job wouldn't have nearly as many pointless fights. But not everyone trains in detective work."

"Oh, bullshit. Like you've never jumped headfirst into something with half the information and just told yourself you'll figure it out later." Steph countered immediately. "That is exactly the opposite of what I hear from you when you run into weird shit with your team."

"Only when there's not enough time. I always have a plan."

"So did B ask about his Batarang budget recently?"

"I told you that in confidence!"

"Inquiring minds want to know, Robin."

While Tim and Steph bantered, Genbu dragged a footstool back from the sad excuse for a closet, setting it down and then sitting on it opposite Steph. In her other hand was a stack of paper, a brush, and a little ink bottle, which she set as far from the pizza bagels as possible. It left Genbu a little scrunched up, like a parent sitting at the kids' table. Steph couldn't tell if Genbu was just that kind of person—the kind who squished themselves into the preexisting mold of others' expectations—or if it was a deliberate, disarming choice to put them both at ease. It was kind of working.

Also, she revised her mental estimate of Genbu's age a couple of years upward. Tim seemed to think she was maybe sixteen or seventeen, but that reasoned response to "why didn't you punch us in the face?" sounded like someone outside of high school.

The paperwork strewn across the table didn't make for an argument one way or another, since all of it was in Japanese. It looked more like an ongoing art project than official documents.

"So, you left to make sure that didn't happen?" Steph prompted, with half her mouth still full.

"Yeah, that sounds right." Genbu sighed. One of the bagels in front of her disappeared into thin air. There was the faint sound of crunching behind her mask. After a brief pause that was probably genuine trepidation, she asked, "Why am I getting a visit from the two of you instead of Batman?"

"For…?" Tim's attempt at puppy-dog eyes was never gonna be world-class with the mask on, but he could do "baffled kitten" decently enough.

"…Because I hit you both with a dose of mortal terror?"

"Pff, yeah, but that's not new!" Steph waved a hand dismissively. "It was scary in the moment, but we've got a guy on the Arkham rotation who goes for literal terror attacks every time he gets out." Steph mimed Scarecrow's signature bag-shaped headgear. "You know, Scarecrow? It's nearly Halloween so we're overdue for his bullshit anyway."

"Oh, to live in a city where half the Rogues have doctorates and just use them to make people suffer," Tim muttered. When Spoiler made a face at him, Tim shot her a look like "what, like I'm wrong?"

The pause got longer, until Genbu looked down at the art supplies she'd brought to the coffee table and started spreading them out, probably to keep her hands busy. As she moved them, she just said, "…It's almost Halloween?"

"Yeah. I mean, it's like three days before. Kinda hard to tell if all you do is go out after everyone turns their shit off for the night and everyone you talk to is always in costume, huh?"

Genbu sighed. This time it seemed to go all the way down to her soul. "Apparently. I haven't looked at a calendar in a while."

Steph poured herself some soda. "Must be easier with no school and no day job."

"Do you get paid?" Genbu asked. She'd gotten blank pieces of paper in front of her and uncorked the ink with a flick of her finger. "Or does the night shift count as volunteer work?"

"We're not in it for the money." Tim's body language relaxed a little, now that Genbu was participating in the conversation more confidently. "Should I take that to mean you're feeling a little better?"

"I guess." Genbu tilted her mask in his direction. Another bagel disappeared. More crunching.

Steph was going to figure out how she did that eventually. Maybe not before all the bagels were gone, but she'd solved more difficult mysteries before.

"Can you tell us a bit about your situation? The real story," Steph added, glancing at Tim again. "I get the impression nobody was super forthcoming about anything before I got involved." She sat up a little straighter and tried to broadcast sincerity with her whole body. "I can go first! I met Suzaku when I got chased by those ninja guys in Crime Alley. He jumped them, beat them up, and started talking to me about why coral shards are bad news."

"And you didn't believe him?"

"I mean, I talked to Robin first and he said Suzaku jumped him when he was doing surveillance on Red Hood, so…" Steph held her hands up innocently. This was not her circus and those were not her monkeys. She showed up late with Starbucks and was mostly trying not to spill her latte. "It's hard to tell what to believe if you can't verify it. And Suzaku destroyed all the shards we found, so I didn't have a lot to work with."

"He destroyed them?" At Steph's nod, Genbu let out a deep sigh of pure relief. "Thank fuck. I was afraid he wouldn't."

"Why would that be a problem?" Tim asked. He'd changed his stance into what Steph's teachers might've called "active listening mode" if they gave enough of a shit to explain social niceties. Leaning forward, hands folded in his lap, and generally just seeming like a teacher's pet. Only without a desk. "I don't think you fully explained this the other night."

"They're…homing beacons?" Genbu's voice carried unmistakable guilt, just behind the hesitation about her word choice. She dipped the end of her brush into the ink and started drawing a border on the first sheet of paper, her precision nearly mechanical. "I hoped the League was magically tracking me, so I made up something louder than I usually am and hoped they'd take the bait. It sounds like they did."

"Sure does," Steph agreed. They'd gotten an ID on the dead man in the gulch from dental records. John Davies. Homeless and probably just a case of a wrong place meeting a wrong time. It didn't make it any better to hear that someone had died before Steph could even think of helping.

Another sigh. Another disappearing bagel. Another stroke on the page. "Sorry about that. Again."

"It's over. I'm over it." Steph snatched up one of the bagels in the exact moment Tim reached for one. Making a show of ignoring his miffed look, she added, "You know, Suzaku didn't seem like he was in bad shape. He was talking pretty much the whole time we were tying up the bad guys, using his phone. It didn't seem like he understood any English."

"He doesn't." And just like that, it sounded like Genbu was feeling cagey again. She scribbled a series of words on her paper, looked down at it, then crumpled her work into a damp ball. It got flipped into the recycling bin a moment later.

Hopefully it wasn't one of the kinds that reacted badly to intruders.

"I didn't get the feeling he was afraid of Red Hood," Tim offered, trying to help dig Steph out of the figurative hole she'd stumbled into. "Whatever else is happening with the gang problems in Crime Alley, it seems like either he accepts the violence or maybe Hood is lying to him."

Genbu was silent for a lot longer this time, laying out stroke after measured stroke in stark black ink. No bagels disappeared, which was actually a little worrying.

It gave Tim a chance to eat some and catch up, but that didn't really make the silence any more comfortable.

So, Steph cracked first. "Genbu?"

"I can get him away from Red Hood," was what Genbu came up with.

"And then what?" Tim asked. He'd whipped out his gauntlet computer at some point to start changing this or that on some spreadsheet, which Steph didn't want to know about. Too much Excel made her eyes cross. "Gotham gangs typically don't accept resignations."

Steph briefly entertained the idea of smacking him, because Genbu didn't need to hear that. There were plenty of cases when gang members wanted out once they realized their boss was actually Two-Face or the Joker, and that those two lived up to their volatile reputations with gusto. And most of the time, they got a bullet in the back of the head as their severance pay. If they were even unluckier, Rogues would use the least-devoted minions as examples. Especially if they thought someone was snitching. The crime scene photos made less-seasoned cops throw up.

"Red Hood doesn't hurt kids. And he'll have bigger problems than me, given everything I've been hearing." Genbu lifted her left hand to make a gesture that might've been bull's horns in most contexts, but was usually the ears on Batman's cowl in Gotham.

Steph would agree that Batman was, generally, a big problem.

Tim wasn't convinced. "But if he likes how Hood does things—"

"I've looked after my brother since our mom died. If I ask him to leave Hood behind, he'll leave." Genbu folded her arms over her knees, then raised one hand so she could rest her chin on it as she decided against a fully defensive posture. "All I've wanted to do since arriving in Gotham is to take my brother and run."

Huh. Maybe Genbu really was an adult. A young adult—twenty at the outside—but old enough to feel super responsible about that kind of thing.

Come to think of it, everything Steph learned about Genbu's actual personality was focused around running. She tried to avoid personal topics that contained any identifying information, clammed up when she felt uncomfortable, and only allowed Nightwing to help her once she got too tired to flee the League of Assassins on her own. Genbu was strong enough to fight any ten guys to a standstill, but she seemed just to be the kind of person who hid from her problems instead of confronting them.

And despite being angry enough that she lost control of her powers, Genbu just holed up in this apartment again, supremely awkward in her embarrassment. Not rushing after Red Hood and kicking his helmeted head in. Not hunting down any Bats that might've been hiding secrets from her. Just…hibernating.

Steph kind of felt bad for her. A life with that kind of attitude wasn't going anywhere good.

"Do you have any idea where you'd go?" Steph wanted to hear her say it.

Genbu jerked her head away stubbornly. "Anything's better than here."

That was a "no," then.

"Though it's easier with Batman's money," Genbu admitted, as though it pained her.

Steph sputtered into a laugh. "I bet!"

"It'd be harder outside of Gotham, with the League still chasing you," Tim pointed out. "At least here they have to work in the shadows. And you have help fighting them."

Genbu thought that over. With that face-covering mask, it was hard to tell what exactly was going on between those ears, but Steph figured it might have something to do with the murder-vibes from earlier. Genbu might not have wanted to act on that urge, but Steph was pretty sure they were counting down to the day she snapped and stabbed one of the League bad guys in the actual face.

They'd be asking for it, but it'd suck to have to fight Genbu to protect people like that.

"We'll be fine," Genbu muttered, but less confidently this time. Some of her scribbles apparently met approval, since they were laid out to dry on the edge of the table. "We haven't really hurt anyone."

Oh, shit, wait. Genbu didn't know about the murders. Steph hadn't known about them until Tim went over the report with her on the way here.

"Genbu," Tim said carefully, having realized the same thing. "I think you should be a bit more worried about Red Hood influencing Suzaku."

Ink dripped off the end of Genbu's frozen brush. "Why?"

Steph swallowed her next bagel with a dry throat. Oh boy.

Tim crossed his arms. "Because unless you've been busy, Suzaku already murdered two people a couple of weeks ago."

"Oh."

That…wasn't quite the impact Steph thought it should have.

Rather than reacting with shock or disbelief, Genbu only straightened her spine a little and peered at Tim with a suspicious cast to her body language. "You knew Suzaku was my brother before Spoiler did, didn't you?"

Tim nodded.

"But he probably didn't tell you. Or you would've mentioned it earlier."

Tim knew where that was going. "Cutting to the chase, we had a blood sample from the scene of a massive shootout at the beginning of the month, and it didn't match anyone whose body was accounted for." Tim scrolled through his hologram screen and held it up, twisting the projection around so Genbu could see it. "During the investigation, we found evidence that someone used those kunai knives to kill two men during the fight. I had the DNA sample on file when you gave us yours."

"How much blood?" was all Genbu wanted to know.

Yep, the murder-vibes were clearly all-natural, organic, and homegrown. And heritable. Christ. It was already seeping back into the air, but—not like Scarecrow's. If Steph had to describe it, the effect was way more targeted. Like…knowing a big predator chose a different target, a long way off. Like being a bystander to violence.

Also, no hallucinations. Five stars, and Crane should've taken notes.

"Not enough to be life-threatening," Tim said, outwardly unfazed now that he knew what to expect. All he did was pull his glove back. His hands didn't even drift toward his utility belt. "My current theory is that Suzaku was shot, but someone—likely Red Hood—provided medical attention and a refuge, which would explain his loyalty."

Steph frowned at him. He hadn't mentioned that incident when explaining Suzaku's whole deal.

Genbu studied Tim for a few more moments, then let her shoulders drop. She finally said, "And you're sure the ones who did it are dead."

Holy red flag, Batman! Phrasing!

"The bullet matched one of the guns found on the scene," Tim explained. Probably a little late, if Genbu's earlier reaction was anything to go by. "If Red Hood shot Suzaku, they probably wouldn't be nearly as friendly."

And a lot of others hadn't been, apparently. Red Hood was notorious for his ability to walk into a gunfight and making sure he was the only one who walked out. The timeline was screwy, though. Steph was pretty sure that Red Hood hadn't actually earned a rep before the serial decapitations.

"As long as he's okay and he comes home," Genbu said, with a tone of inarguable finality, "then we can figure out the rest."

There was a cadence to it, like Genbu was repeating something she'd had to say or think a thousand times. It was on the same level as words like "an apple a day keeps the doctor away." Steph also figured that phrase worked for Genbu; Tim mentioned the apple slices from last time, like he'd experienced some kind of foreign custom.

Rich people were weird. And Genbu was Japanese. There'd be a moment of utter bafflement sooner or later.

Anyway.

"Sooner or later, there'll be a real confrontation between Batman and Red Hood. Rogues always escalate. And we all know how that'll end," Tim said. His confidence was actually a problem here, and it sounded like he knew it. A bad outcome for Hood meant arrest and maybe Suzaku getting shuffled into juvenile court. "You need to get to him before then."

Genbu leveled a stare at him. It was infinitely judgmental for all that Genbu's entire face was covered. "I figured."

Thankfully, Tim didn't press when he realized there wasn't really an argument for him to make. He could've spouted off statistics of juvenile offenders for days —along with trivia about every other part of the justice system and crime statistics—but Steph doubted Genbu really cared. While sure, Suzaku was definitely underage, so were they. Vigilantism was less illegal than murder, yeah, but the system didn't have anything useful to say about delinquent metahumans either. Getting snapped up into a gang like Red Hood's was honestly one of the better options around Crime Alley. At least they basically knew where Suzaku was, and that his boss treated him pretty well.

Oh, idea! "Genbu, hey, I have proof of life."

"What?"

While Genbu's head whipped toward her, Steph dug through her pockets until she pulled out her phone. Unlocking it and scrolling through the camera roll, Steph made a noise of triumph as she found the right photo and slid it across the table.

It wasn't a particularly good picture by Steph's standards, and even less so by Tim's. But it showed, in very low light, a kid holding a piece of coral pinched between his fingers. A couple of moths were on his sleeves, since there'd been a minor plague of the things at the time. Sure, the kid wore a hood and a mask and a pair of goggles, all of which conspired to hide his face, but Genbu went totally still. Drinking in the sight, like she was too afraid to look away.

"That wasn't on the Batcomputer," Tim hissed at Steph.

"Whoops, I guess I forgot," was Steph's response. If they were laying all the cards on the table, it wouldn't do to miss any. "It's not like I knew we were supposed to be looking for him! Hood might be Japanese, so Suzaku might've been just another Rogue joining up."

And Steph was always the last one to be told what was going on outside of her little corner of the world. She got why, but it always chafed.

"I have a request," Genbu interrupted, before they could really get going.

"Shoot," said Steph.

Genbu pinned Steph's phone with one finger. "Here."

"What?"

"Do you see these?" Genbu spun the phone around on the table and tapped the photo with her nail, to avoid actually clicking anything.

Steph and Tim peered down at the phone.

"You're talking about the moths?"

Genbu nodded. "We call them 'seal butterflies.' If you ever see these in larger numbers, stay out of the area."

Steph took her phone back as soon as Genbu released it, squinting at the picture. "… They're bugs. Suzaku killed like ten of them two seconds after I took this."

A faint sigh. "Of course he did." Genbu drummed her fingers on the table. "The coral was dangerous because it attracts ninjas, but that's new. These things are parasites that sap life energy. Just because Suzaku knows how to deal with them doesn't make them safe." More drumming. "In swarms, they're lethal."

Tim was already scrolling through his gauntlet's computer. He only hesitated for a few seconds before laying out the crime scene photos, using his screen to project three at once.

Steph wasn't privy to whatever computer magic Tim and Barbara used to steal evidence from GCPD, but they'd both left the assassins alive and glued to the ground with insta-coral. They'd left before the cops arrived, but apparently that two-minute window was long enough for someone to make sure the assassins never got up again.

Genbu was the last one out, sure, but Steph didn't think she was the type to really hide that she'd killed someone. That non-reaction to Suzaku stabbing people was pretty telling, especially when Tim said her brother had been hurt first. Most of Genbu's guilt centered instead around hurting people who hadn't done her wrong.

Like the Bats. Mostly. Secret-keeping was a bit of a gray area, but they were talking things out.

The crime scene photos were gross. Not grotesque, not like the way Smilex left its victims with a horrible postmortem rictus grin. But like…mummy-gross. Totally dried up, like raisins. They'd shrunk inside their clothes. The GCPD could pry the bodies out of the coral without saws as a result, which was one of the crappiest silver linings Steph had ever heard of.

"This wasn't you, then?" A valid question. If Genbu used water to attack people, that kinda made her a waterbender. And bloodbending was down that pathway somewhere.

"No. All of them were alive when I left. I'm not killing anyone in Gotham." Genbu raised a hand to her mask, then thought better of it. It felt like she was building to some kind of explosion, but was keeping a lid on it like her life depended on it.

And that was a weird thing to say if someone didn't know how hard Batman came down on costumed criminals. Even if the Bats stopped a lot of street crime, actually putting effort into a supervillain gimmick meant lots of broken bones and an automatic stint in Arkham or Blackgate.

Also, implications. Genbu had almost definitely killed people before. Just not in Gotham.

Finally, it was too much. Genbu banged her head on the table. Her mask hit the wood with a dull thud. "Uuuuuuuugh. Fuck. Fuck."

Steph was a little tempted to reach out and pat her shoulder. She didn't, though. "Uh, Genbu?"

"How familiar are you with parallel universes?"

Pause.

Wait. What kind of question was—? Oh, dammit.

"They exist, they sometimes show up to break things in our world, and mostly they already know we're here," Tim offered immediately. Sure, he hung out with a whole team of superpowered menaces to society and supervillains alike on the weekends, and he was always acting like the smartest person in the room—and usually he was—but still. His team was so fucking weird. "We also sometimes get tourists, once the punching dies down and everyone finally starts talking about their feelings."

"Cool. Great. Suzaku and I are from one. Or a pocket universe. A magical hidden world?" Genbu's shoulders shifted. "Whatever term you use for it."

Steph had questions. So many. Starting with: "So did the Nazis win World War Two or—"

Genbu groaned into the table. "No." Without even lifting her head, she held up three fingers. "Three things: Magic is heritable, the culture is barely out of the Warring States era, and I'm a literal ninja."

Holy shit. What. "Oh my god, you're actual magic ninjas."

"Actual alien ninjas." Tim, no. Stop adding descriptions. "There's nonhuman DNA in your bloodline."

"Makes as much sense as anything. There was some kind of apocalypse and our historical records were destroyed. It could've been aliens." Genbu lifted her head just to bury it in her hands. "I just want to take my brother and go the hell home. I don't even know for sure how we got here! My best guess involves the League of Assassins magically snatching us out of our hometown, because they're the only group that seems to know anything about us."

"They called you a, what, an 'abomination'?" Steph prompted.

Genbu made an inarticulate noise of pure frustration.

Tim leaned forward like this was, officially, just another Young Justice team thing. His standards for "weird" were completely skewed. "I think that makes you a refugee, just so you know. Or a trafficking victim."

"Mrrrrgh. I guess."

Okay, so Steph didn't have the most experience with aliens and ghosts and weird stuff that went bump in the night. Gotham had a shortage of metahumans and magicians, on the whole, and she wasn't on any of those big superhero teams, so this was completely novel to her. She was, at heart, a local girl. Her home field advantages were all about being the one with her ear to the ground and Gotham's smog in her lungs. She got this place in a way outsiders didn't.

And then there was Genbu, who was foreign to everything, being chased around by evil assassins, and couldn't figure out how to get back home.

It had to suck.

"If the butterflies are here, my people are trying to figure out a way to follow us," Genbu said after about thirty seconds to sulk. She sounded exhausted. "Even the butterflies are a thing from home, being used to pursue retribution after Ra's swung first. Because as far as they're concerned, we got kidnapped. And if that's twenty-to-life here, it's execution-worthy at home."

Ah. "So, I guess crime doesn't work the same."

"Not with the…'abomination' thing. Ugh." Genbu sat up fully, took a loud breath, and rested a hand on her chest. She looked like she was about to say a pledge. "Hi, I'm Genbu, and I'm a jinchūriki."

"Hi, Gen—" Steph stopped herself. This wasn't AA. She needed to remember to cut down on the quips a bit.

Tim stayed focused, at least. "And what does that mean?" His computer was out and on translation duty again. "Jin—"

"—Jinchūriki. The direct translation is 'the power of human sacrifice.'" Okay, that sounded a lot worse than Steph thought it would. Genbu's tone retained that unsettlingly rehearsed quality, like she was giving a rote response to a teacher's question in class. "I'm the host of a spirit monster. Basically a human superweapon capable of destroying cities. And Ra's al Ghul either wants me as a recruit or as a bomb."

Steph blinked. Well…that sure was something.

She didn't know what to react to first. It took her that long to figure out that somewhere along the way her meter for "normal" got broken.

Because if all she could think of was "wow, that sucks" to being told the person in front of her was a literal bomb then something was clearly whacked. And that wasn't even touching on the fact that apparently Genbu was a ghost monster piñata.

And there was even a word for it. Why was there a word for it?!

Tim was already fair, but he paled a little more in the bare-bulb lighting of Genbu's living room. His brain was sticking clues together like someone with a lot of string and tacks and a full conspiracy board. He'd share his conclusions with Steph later, probably, but in the meantime his brain whirled at a bazillion miles an hour.

And this confirmed that the League ninjas were super fucking evil. Like the assassin cult thing wasn't already plenty bad. Steph didn't have a lot of personal experience there, because she usually kept to her routes and didn't go around turning over rocks to see if there were career murderers hiding under them. But if an magic alien ninja was going "that's fucked up," about their plan to destroy a whole city—or making sure they could in the future—then Steph wasn't at all sorry those guys were butterfly food. She wouldn't actually go around killing them—because that was a bit too far—but feeling bad for them? Off the table.

Steph looked at Genbu's hunched-up form and just…pushed that to the side. They could deal with it later.

"Someone tried to use you as a weapon before, if you expect it from someone you've never met," Tim said, which was the exact thing Steph had been trying to avoid thinking about. "Not as a metahuman soldier, but specifically as a bomb. How common is that?"

"Common as in…?"

"As in, how often did that work?"

"Not even once. If I fight, it's because I agreed ahead of time." If they could see her face, Steph thought Genbu would be baring her teeth. Growling, maybe. "The League of Assassins are a bunch of pretentious poaching assholes and I'm never working for them."

"Glad to hear it," was Steph's bright response. It was maybe a little false bravado, but that wasn't anyone's business but hers. "Because I really don't want to fight you."

"…Sorry. That was kind of intense, wasn't it?"

"I'm starting to get the sense that a lot of what you've been through in Gotham is 'pretty intense,' so you get a pass," Tim offered. He hadn't jumped or anything. He hung out with too many superpowered people.

"I—then we're good?"

"Yeah." Unless Barbara heard all this and got worried about them taking absurd risks. But if she hadn't cut them off or interrupted before now, it was probably fine.

"Thank you. So, I've obviously been terrible at finding my brother so far. And I still can't search the city without attracting assassins," Genbu murmured, shoulders slumping in abject defeat. The magic things she'd been working on were just sad scribbles now. "So, if any of you see Suzaku before I do, please let me know. Hell, let him know his sister is looking for him. Anything. I…can't do this on my own."

"Definitely." Steph was already nodding. Tim could judge her later. Barbara could judge her later. Batman could fuck off. This conversation had been entirely too much, but it didn't change the fact that someone in desperate straits needed their help. "I…have ways of keeping an ear to the ground in Crime Alley. I'll holler if I see him."

"Same here." Tim dug around in his utility belt until he found the device he was looking for, then set it on the table between them. It was another one of the standard in-ear comms he and Nightwing used. Steph's comm was in the process of being redesigned with an ear loop, so it wouldn't get lost inside her costume if she took another hit. "You can use this if we have to stay in contact."

"Okay. And… I'll manage what I can on my end. Like the butterfly thing." Genbu nudged the plate of bagels a little closer to their side of the table. "Um, so…"

Steph snatched up three of them. "Bribe accepted."

"It wasn't…meant to be a bribe?" And the turtle was back in her shell.

"And the second I'm done with these, I'm hugging you. You need one."

"I—uh, I appreciate the thought. But please don't."


Notes:

1. Jason knows most of his minions' names, CVs, immediate family members, and their take-home pay. Yes, he knows he'll probably have to shoot some of them in the head, but that's no reason not to know where to put them to best use.
2. Bagel Bites are inherently funny to me as a food option. I never needed permission to eat pizza whenever, but I guess now I have it. Thanks, advertisers.
3. Tim, as Robin, once actually managed to pay for and construct a whole extra Batmobile for his team. By hiding it in the Batarang budget. And it was wrecked almost immediately. His friend group includes the half-Kryptonian test tube baby of Superman and Lex Luthor, a daughter of literal Zeus who holds the Wonder Girl title, and also a time-traveling speedster. They once played baseball for the fate of the world. Young Justice is the wild middle child of teenage superhero groups.
4. Realizing you have a problem is the first step to solving it. Kei has been in a Catch-22 situation practically since she got here, and it's finally hit her that the problem is too big for her to solve alone. The next step, then, is actually asking for help.