Gotham, being Gotham, held to certain patterns. There was an ebb and flow to people's movements. A lot of people just lived in the current. Nothing wrong with that. The longer they could, the better their protectors were doing in securing peace and safety for the city.

It required a lot more caffeine than people realized. Tim had a triple-shot espresso in his hand for this exact occasion.

Tim started the evening as he would any other. He entered the Batcave an hour before patrol, suited up as normal, and checked the Batcomputer for any open case files flagged for the night. Wheeling the huge chair around a couple of times, Tim settled in to read while waiting for Bruce to make his way back from Wayne Enterprise's late meeting and the subsequent traffic blockade. If he spotted anything Bruce hadn't last night, he'd update everything.

There'd been a warehouse explosion last weekend that was inarguably arson. The on-paper owners were two shell companies down from known Black Mask properties, and didn't technically exist. Going by the bodies GCPD dug out of the rubble at four in the morning, there'd been twenty-eight casualties. Autopsy reports hadn't been updated yet, but Tim figured patrol might lead them in that direction sooner or later.

And if it didn't, Tim had enough electronic backdoors between his own skills and Oracle's that he didn't need to worry about lacking intel.

Tim clicked through to the relevant file.

The fire department had, unsurprisingly, taken point on the arson investigation. By the time the afternoon news rolled around, experts on the scene already pointed toward high explosives. In Gotham, every department worth its funding was equipped with a wide array of strips, swabs, solutions, Geiger counters, and other methods for detecting hazards to life and limb. Wayne Enterprises invested heavily in developing technologies for that exact purpose. Anything, really, that could help Gotham's people against the onslaught of costumed supervillains cycling through like storms.

And if Batman and Robin skimmed a bit around the edges, so much the better. Tim had a small stock of antitoxins for every Rogue arsenal tailored to him, as did everyone else in Batman's network. They had to change the formulas every time someone got a new idea, but it was a race the Bats would win in the end.

They couldn't afford not to.

Tim backed out of the plain text document and started scanning the crime scene photos. The dead were covered with black tarps in the later ones, but there was better ambient lighting to analyze the explosive pattern. At a glance, it did look like the fire department was processing their evidence a little differently than the GCPD and hadn't shared yet, so Tim backed out and started looking at the bodies again. He'd dig into them later.

Some of the victims hadn't been inside the warehouse in the first place. The GCPD's yellow evidence tags were sprinkled around a gravel parking lot, taking careful note of blood spray and tire tracks from what looked like a motorcycle. All of the other vehicles were accounted for when Tim cross-checked the evidence and the attached DMV registrations. And the track ran directly over one of the bloodstains on the gravel, grinding it mostly into muck and asphalt fragments during a peel-out, and avoided all the others.

Survivors, or attackers retreating? A maximum of two people, if the motorcycle tracks had only one source.

Noting the lack of CCTV footage to review, Tim clicked on the entry for Owen Fielding and started scanning the annotations on his profile. Then another, for Lars Henderson. And on, and on, and on.

All of the men in the warehouse were known hirelings, either for Sionis or a rotating cadre of Gotham rogues. Henderson in particular had worked for Penguin twice, Two-Face once, and even the Joker during a low ebb. Twelve of them could only be identified by dental records and the occasional lucky fingerprint, almost entirely due to the postmortem explosion and subsequent fire. Even so, none of them were sprawled in directions that would make sense for someone fleeing an ongoing crisis.

They'd all been dead before then.

Tim frowned thoughtfully and dragged one of the images into better focus. Then another next to it.

On the screen, two images sat side by side. The GCPD's crime scene photographers had iron stomachs, and Tim's was fairly similar. Away from the smell of burned human flesh, fuel, smoke, and ash, the effect was less intense still. And while Tim obviously couldn't grab the autopsy report yet, it looked like both of the scorched men on screen had been killed by knives.

There was a roughly T-shaped zone on a person's face that snipers aimed for, because a headshot within that space would kill instantaneously. And the knife wound on Jack Parkins was dead center, right between the eyes.

The other man, James MacDonald, had a similarly shaped wound through the back of his neck instead. Just as precise, laid between the C3 and C4 vertebra. If the blow hadn't killed him instantly, the spinal cord damage would've nullified any chance of escaping the explosion. At some point before the police got there, it looked like the killer had ripped the knife or knives out. The wounds had ragged edges, levered against the skull and neck and smudged with blood.

Along with the shortage of shell casings on the scene, despite more than a dozen fatal gunshots, it looked like they were dealing with professionals.

"Any theories on the murder weapon, Tim?" Bruce's voice asked from behind the computer chair, right on schedule.

"At a glance, a knife. GCPD's files don't state the depth of the wounds, but there's a good chance whoever hit Sionis's operations wasn't working alone." Mostly because there weren't many Gotham natives—rogue or otherwise—who could take gunshots with impunity. Barring DNA evidence currently trapped in an evidence locker somewhere, it didn't seem like Black Mask's men had inflicted any casualties. That was…unlikely. "I doubt their CSIs would have found and failed to document anything on the scene—at least nowadays—so the killer was covering their tracks. Probably professionals."

Bruce nodded along with Tim's hypothesis. With his cowl down, Tim could watch him scan the same pool of evidence.

"We'll be checking in on the GCPD investigation later tonight." Bruce hadn't torn his eyes from the screen. "The methodology feels familiar, but I don't have enough data yet. The GCPD has less."

Which meant it had something to do with organizations with ties outside of Gotham. Not people like Deathstroke—who wasn't the type to pick up a contract in Gotham on Black Mask's men with all Bats on deck—but something the GCPD rarely dealt with. Maybe the League of Assassins. Or, as Tim thought of them on occasion, "the stabby ones."

The fact that Bruce hadn't immediately dragged them up was a point in the "against" column, though.

"Have you had a chance to look at the other open cases?"

"You mean the gang shootout near Miller Harbor or the string of muggings up and down the same?" In both cases, a civilian 911 call alerted the police and thus Oracle to the ongoing problem. While the shootout was fairly straightforward—both Maroni and Falcone men survived to point fingers at each other—the latter was less so. A man had been stabbed by a would-be victim, who decided he still deserved to keep the hand.

"The latter. It seems like a coordinated effort by locals to cut down on opportunistic crimes, but we don't know who organized." In other words, a recon mission. And one that Batman thought Robin could and should handle without him. "No one's confessed yet, unless the emergency call was one. Maybe interviewing locals could help narrow the search."

The big bad Bat would scare them, Tim translated silently. Between this and the text alert he'd gotten earlier, Tim said, "Dick and I can handle it. Going easy on us this time, huh, B?"

Something like a smile lurked at the corner of Bruce's mouth even as he pulled the cowl up. It was more just a twitch, but Tim counted as a win. "Never."

Dick arrived a few minutes later, as Tim was checking the fuel on his motorcycle. Fighting Bludhaven and Gotham traffic was slightly easier with Dick's total disregard for personal safety, and easier still with the speed modifications made to the Wingcycle the last time Dick brought it by. Land speed records sounded like personal challenges.

"Ready, Tim?" was the first thing he asked when he pulled his bike up next to Tim's.

Tim immediately met Dick's raised hand with his own. "You know it."

Bruce waved them off from the Batcomputer's console, and then they were roaring down the exit tunnel, motorcycles in sync, and into Gotham's night air.

Half an hour into their patrol, fog rolled in across the harbor. It hadn't been on the weather report for the week at all, but it was better than rain. Rain drove everyone inside and made finding interviewees even harder, made patrols miserable affairs, and made Dick's electrified escrima just that bit harder to use safely. As it was, it just made their disappearing double-act even easier.

The usual procedure was pretty simple: If Batman was available, he drew everyone's attention and let Robin or Nightwing work the edges of the crowd and pick off their opponents. That was the entire point of his heavier armor. Smoke, birdarangs (or wingdings), judicious application of tasers in various configurations, and all the other tricks of the stealth beatdown playbook evened the always-lopsided odds.

But with Nightwing and Robin alone, Tim heard some of the local toughs compare it to being gnawed to death by piranhas. Only flippier. And armed with military-grade tech.

Tim took it as a compliment.

After about an hour of poking through the area, "No, no, I don't know anything about that," was the most common sentiment across the district.

Sure, one of those accounts was from when Dick dropped off a roof directly in front of a would-be mugger and cheerfully started peppering both victim and perpetrator with questions. It was enough to break the tension and scare everyone into playing nice.

Though he did end up breaking the guy's gun into bits.

After that, Dick and Tim reconvened on a rooftop nearby.

"Muggings are actually down," Tim said, after double-checking the data. The computer in his gauntlet was synced to the Cave's before every patrol, which gave him access to better crime statistics than just about anyone besides Oracle. "O? Any updates?"

"No one's made any 911 calls from your current location besides you two." Barbara's clear, calm voice was as welcome as ever over the comm link. "Stand by for a reroute. I'm sure I can find something to keep you boys busy."

"You know we can make our own fun, O," Dick quipped instantly. He'd already placed both escrima on his back again, and pulled his grapple gun free for another round.

Tim turned to follow—every patrol with Dick was as much a learning opportunity as quality time with his predecessor—until he spotted something pale in the corner of his eye. Immediately, his hand flashed into a "wait, listen" signal that Dick clearly saw and processed without giving any obvious sign. Both of them exchanged a glance, lined up their shots, and started making their way toward the new point of interest.

Robins weren't birds for nothing. Batman's proteges could very nearly fly.

There, on the edge of a five-story drop. It was one of the mostly-brick buildings near the docks and had six businesses in the first two floors, with a dozen easy ways to scale it without using a single internal staircase or elevator. Tim and Dick took separate approaches to box in the figure sitting on the roof; giving Tim the fire escape route left Dick with the swing-from-another-building method.

Tim didn't make it to the roof before Dick found his launch point, but that was okay. Someone needed to be on standby, just in case.

If it looked like someone was a jumper… Well. Nightwing wasn't too intimidating, but people still responded better to Robin's bright colors and smaller stature. Robin was supposed to be approachable anytime outside of a fight, and Tim had honed that. Tim, from a certain point of view, had been focused on talking people out of self-destructing for longer than he'd had the yellow cape.

There was a soft thud nearby that set Tim's heart rate hammering, but it was just a black cat when he looked.

Tim let his boots scrape softly against the rooftop layer of asphalt when he finally reached his goal, to cut down the chance of startling their new friend. "Eyes on a potential jumper. Stand by, O."

Barbara tapped a brief staccato on her end of the comm, acknowledging the new objective. She'd hold off on giving them another mission until this was resolved.

Edges blurred by the fog, the figure sat up straighter and turned slightly in his direction. Though they kept sitting on the brick shelf between life and death, legs folded into a yoga pose, Tim was finally close enough to get a somewhat better look.

He called out, "Nice night, isn't it?"

Hesitantly, the figure waved at him. "I…guess?" Then the figure's shoulders hitched, maybe at the sound of their voice—a bit scratchy from disuse—and the hand went back down. "No stars, though."

Mist swirled around a full-face mask, accented with spikes at the upper and lower edge. The eyes were blackout lenses, surrounded by red marks, and the mouth was a zigzag of painted teeth from edge to edge. The black hoodie covered or camouflaged any details about their hair and obscured their outline, even as they kept turning, and eventually one leg slid off the wall and a booted foot landed on the roof in full. At a glance, he'd estimate their height at somewhere between five-five and five-ten, based on the length of their leg compared to the brick they sat on.

And Tim hadn't seen the katana laid across the figure's lap before, but it was hard to miss now.

"Robin, right? Did you need something?" they asked.

"I was just checking in. Normally, I don't see a lot of people lurking on rooftops." And out-of-towners were usually some variety of problem. But if this newbie didn't know Nightwing was watching, too, then Tim wasn't going to say anything. By now, Dick probably had a perfect bead on any potential fight.

The mask angled a little farther in his direction, thought it over, then turned away again. "Fair enough."

Making sure that his comm was open and Oracle could pick up everything she needed, Tim made his way across the rooftop until he was closer to melee range. "Do you mind if I join you?"

"If you want," said the voice behind the mask. After hearing them talk a little more, he was pretty sure he could narrow down the accent based on the way this person approached some of their consonants. The R in particular seemed to trail a little, like they were cutting the sound short.

Tim sat just to the person's left side, opposite the easiest draw direction for the katana. Now that he looked, the sheath had a few dangling lines that matched the not-a-utility belt at the figure's waist. His bo-staff, collapsed down to barely six inches, was within easy reach the entire time.

The figure sighed. "Did you think I was going to jump?"

The "th-" sound in that first sentence was half-transformed into an "s." Tim glanced at to the side, though he doubted this person could tell with the white lenses in his mask. "You're clearly not now. So, what brings you out here this late?"

"Or early." Yeah, that was a giveaway. The R sliding into an L that curled back again. Japanese as a first language, then. The figure went on, "I needed to clear my head, and since being on the water didn't help, I decided to try heights. Didn't work either."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

They shrugged.

It wasn't a "no."

"Is this your first night out in a mask?" Tim asked, watching the figure twitch at the sound of his voice. "I only ask because I try to keep up to date on everyone in Gotham, for safety's sake. Since, well, Gotham, it pays to be prepared."

"I didn't think of a name, if that's what you're asking." They raised a hand to their mask and wiped off a bit of condensation. Flicked their gloved hand a little, experimentally.

Baby's first vigilante stint, then. Most people would've thought up a whole villainous profile for themselves before going out in Gotham, because the native Rogues didn't react well to having their ideas poached. The Riddler hadn't gotten around to beating down Cluemaster and Baffler, but that seemed like a lack of opportunity more than lack of motive. Nygma hadn't been seen recently.

"Are you supposed to be some kind of urban ninja?" Tim suggested.

Nameless turned their head, looking him up and down deliberately enough that it was impossible to miss the move.

"Okay, sheesh, no need to judge. I am aware of the hypocrisy."

Probably sensing the name initiative fading, they finally said, "As of right this second, you can call me Genbu." There was the faintest humor in their voice, making Tim feel like he'd missed a joke. Then their voice flattened out again with, "I'll be out of your way soon enough."

"Hm. But what if there's a matching set of three more themed ninjas running around in my city?" Yes, Tim had caught that reference to Japanese mythology. Katana's stomping grounds were usually far from Gotham, but she subbed in for the Birds of Prey sometimes, and Tim was working on learning every language in the Bats' social circles.

And with a mind like a steel trap, Tim was the reigning champion on trivia nights.

Genbu just shook their head. "There aren't."

"Welcome to Gotham. I still have to ask."

"I guess so." Genbu crossed their arms over their chest. It moved both hands away from the hilt of the katana, which was nice. "If there are more, I'd like to know."

Something in their voice brought Tim up short. A warning klaxon sounded in his head. Still, he pressed, "And what do you plan to do if I find you more ninjas?"

"Talk, first." Which implied a list. "Ask some pointed questions." Genbu looked down at the street, going by the angle of their mask, but it seemed more like they were staring into the middle distance.

"You could have tried to go to the police before putting on a mask, for most problems." It was a hollow platitude. Tim knew damn well that by the time someone decided to put on a costume, that option was long gone. He still had to try for a less extreme solution. "I know they're still trying to win back public trust, but the Commissioner is running a much tighter ship these days."

"Not an option for me," Genbu replied flatly, and didn't elaborate.

"Robin," crackled his comm link, and that was Nightwing's "play it cool" tone. Which meant there was going to be trouble. "I have a thermal view on your position, but there's only one heat signature. No sudden moves."

Ice trailed down Tim's spine. Not recognizing a new mask in town was already dangerous, but that sounded like a metahuman red flag.

Genbu didn't give any sign that they'd noticed the interjection or Tim's sudden tension. They just reached up and rubbed their temples.

Tim's brain whirled through possibilities. Clayface? Always possible, but he was supposed to be contained at the moment. Tim hadn't seen a single Arkham, Blackgate, or Belle Reve alert when patrol started, and he'd have gotten a warning through Oracle or his glove by now if people knew anything. And if Genbu was a disguise for Hagen's latest scheme, both Tim and Dick carried tasers, and the docks weren't that far away.

Maybe—

Genbu sighed again, tilting their mask back and looking over Tim's shoulder. Pointedly. "If Nightwing wants to join us, I—it's fine. I think."

"I'd love to know how they did that," was Dick's immediate response.

As soon as he said it, Genbu raised a hand in a shy little wave. It didn't last.

"Well, with a welcome like that, how can I refuse?"

Stealth ruined, Tim and Genbu both watched Dick's smooth, silent approach. He landed as casually on the roof as someone stepping off a subway car, escrima out but held loosely enough in his hands that he wasn't threatening anything yet.

Genbu's shoulders hitched up a little, but they nodded in Dick's direction as a greeting. Maybe it was just a really shallow bow.

"Much as I hate to pry"—which was a lie because all Bats were chronic snoops—"I'd like to know what you're up to on this fine evening. It's not often that we see a new face." Dick smiled. "So to speak."

"Robin mentioned that." Genbu glanced at Tim again, going by the minute tilt of their mask, then said, "I was just sitting here. And I guess he thought I was lonely?"

"Was I wrong?" Tim challenged gently.

Genbu made a "so-so" seesaw motion with their hand.

"Well, I hope you don't mind if we substitute for whoever you'd rather be talking to." Dick sat on Tim's opposite side when approaching Genbu made them twitch, hands up and escrima away in an "I mean no harm" gesture.

Seesaw again.

"Great!"

While Dick chatted with (or mostly at) Genbu and tried to draw them out of their shell—his actual phrasing—Tim compiled his notes.

Genbu never allowed Dick or Tim to bracket them. In fact, they kept their back to the drop off the roof like it was a core part of their strategy. The deep-seated distrust in their body language and clipped responses wasn't the same as fear, even if it looked similar. Still, they didn't make any moves toward their weapons, hidden or otherwise. The most they did was dodge and reposition every time Dick's gesturing got him nearly into arm's reach, primarily by obviously leaning away and staring down the offender.

Tim knew what a personal bubble was, thank you very much.

"—Which is why I said, of course, why don't we get him on tax evasion?"

Genbu huffed, barely audible. "Do you pay taxes?"

"I'll have you know that there aren't any provable irregularities in my tax records. I'm an upstanding citizen!" Dick grinned outright.

"The word 'provable' should be taxed for how much work it's doing in that statement."

Accent be damned, Genbu had a native speaker's comprehension and turn of phrase. That was enough to let them keep up with Dick—sort of—and implied a lifetime of experience that didn't quite track with the actual sounds they could make.

Tim entered the observation into a new case file. Already present were, in order, a picture of Genbu's costume, a general description of everything Tim had hypothesized so far, and a recording of their voice to compare in a database later.

Dick just needed to keep them talking.

"—And given how much time my teachers spent on earthquakes and volcanology, I grew up expecting they'd be way more relevant to my life," Dick was saying.

Genbu looked out toward the harbor again. "Isn't the nearest fault line in the Atlantic?"

Since being silent for so long was suspicious, Tim chimed in with, "There are fault lines in the Great Lakes, too, but we don't exactly live in the middle of all that. I don't think I've felt an earthquake in Gotham in my entire life."

Genbu snorted. "School districts buy curriculum, you know. They have to find something kids can be vaguely interested in. Like disasters."

"And now we're back to public spending again. You're very civic-minded." Dick reached out as though to pat Genbu in the arm. It was one of his more innocuous tracker-planting tactics, through slight-of-hand instead of, say, a dart gun.

Genbu jerked back like Dick was trying to stab them. There was no way they could have seen the tracker from that angle.

Most Gotham villains were intimidated enough by Bats that this kind of exchange was usually done while someone was being held hostage. Probably by the Riddler or someone else who mostly committed nonviolent crimes. There was also a post-takedown debrief window, but most of the people getting arrested didn't feel chatty afterward.

This was…suspicious.

"Okay, no touching. Sorry." Dick held his hands up again. "My bad."

Genbu made a noise that wasn't forgiving, but they dropped their shoulders again. "I feel like I should be confessing to something. Loitering, maybe." They did sound a little unsteady, despite the Dick Grayson Friendship Onslaught.

"We're good listeners," Tim offered.

Genbu angled their mask toward his gauntlet's computer. "Too good."

It wasn't like Tim had exactly been hiding it.

"You were answering our questions," Dick pointed out, innocent as the night was long. "It's not a surprise. Working around the World's Greatest Detective does lead to a bit of cross-contamination in our methodology."

"I guess not. Then—well. One last one." They shifted from a loose lotus position to standing slowly, hopping down to the asphalt roofing, and were already in the process of reattaching their katana. The tension was back in their voice and ratcheted their shoulders upward, defensively. "Then I'm gone."

Tim frowned, getting to his feet to follow. Just in case."What were you going to 'confess' before getting spooked?"

"I was never here, Robin." Genbu bowed again, outline blurring in the fog as they retreated. It wasn't just an optical fingers, raised to wave, were already fading into nothing. "Sorry. It was nice to meet you, really."

Dick opened his mouth to ask the obvious question, because someone had to—

BOOM!

—and was cut off by a rush of light and noise from somewhere north of the island. Every car alarm in the area screeched angrily in the wake, cutting off other ambient sound. Tim couldn't even hear his own boots scraping on the roof as he automatically flinched.

Dick raised his hand to his ear. "O, what was that?"

"An abandoned factory outside of Amusement Mile. While there are multiple drug dens in the area, I'll need a moment to get eyes on it. Ready to go?"

Tim turned back just in time to see Genbu clutching their mask hard enough to make the material creak. Under their breath, they muttered something like, "I hate this city so much."

And as soon as they realized Tim was watching, Genbu hurled themself backward into the air like a Bat-trained athlete. At the apex of the leap—as Dick swore and tried to catch them—their silhouette imploded like a water balloon. Droplets splattered across the roof in soft rainfall.

Dick lowered his arm. "…Okay, that didn't go as well as I hoped."

"On literally any other night, I'd be annoyed they got away." Tim pulled a set of swabs and small sample containers from his utility belt, and started collecting from the leftover puddle. "But I think we've got enough clues for the road."

"Sure. Exploding like that is a new one, but at least we know they weren't a Clayface ripoff." He hadn't gone to investigate the puddle, preferring to scan the area with the thermal setting of his mask. Not as good as the longer-range camera he had before, but he just needed to make sure the immediate vicinity was free of witnesses.

"There is that," was all Tim said in reply.

The sound of wind—held off by the fog—rushed back. As they looked up, that strange, unforeseen fog cleared out with the ocean's winds pushing it into nothingness.

"And I guess now we're adding weather control to the list." Dick's expression was a little wry. "Learn something new every day."

Tim tapped the side of his mask. There was a camera in Batman's cowl that was a lot better, especially in low light, but Genbu's vanishing trick had been close enough to catch. Still staring at the puddle left behind, he shifted his hand to his comm and said, "Oracle, did you get that?"

"I did. We'll add it to the report for tonight." Cool as a cucumber, the sound of Barbara's keystrokes crept in under her voice. "But it's time to put out some other fires."

"Hey, you did good," Dick said quietly as they made for the fire escape. He knocked his hand against Tim's shoulder in clear reassurance.

Not the hand with the sticky tracker. Tim would've batted it away. "I'll take it as a win once we actually close a case tonight. Just one, as a treat."

"Optimistic! I like it."

Tim stowed the evidence and followed Dick back toward their motorcycles. The city never slept.

Two weeks after arriving in the middle of Jason's campaign to bring the criminal underworld to heel, Jason found Hayate at the kitchen island in his actual apartment.

The first words out of his mouth were, "How the fuck are you here?"

Hayate blinked at him, made a face at the burst of English, then went back to flipping through the English-to-Japanese dictionary Jason bought to try and brush up on his vocabulary. It was next to a stack of bargain bin novels from the not-Chinese parts of Chinatown, which Jason had left in the safehouse ten blocks away. There was a grocery bag explaining part of the situation, but only a bit.

"Did you follow me here?" Jason asked, once the urge to shout had died down a little.

"Yes." Hayate glanced up from the book. "It took me a couple of tries."

And Jason hadn't noticed the jailbreak. Had this kid been stalking him across rooftops until he found the center of Jason's operations and just…let himself inside? Apparently, the kid's observation of Jason's safehouse procedures let him work out the security on his apartment, because none of the traps had been triggered either. Including the shotgun on the window.

"You should've been on crutches for another month." Even if the shot was a flesh wound, Jason hadn't exactly been able to drag Hayate to Gotham General. Getting his hands on antibiotics wasn't difficult for someone who controlled half of the black market around the East End already, and he checked the kid's injury every day, but… "Is that something you could always do?"

Hayate shook his head. "Only recently. Usually I just let things heal, but I've spent so much time in hospitals that I picked up a few tricks."

Cellular regeneration among them, apparently.

"I'm still not mission-fit," Hayate admitted somewhat grumpily. "But I can get around fine."

"Mission-fit" was not a term Jason ever wanted to hear in reference to a child ever again. He hadn't before, either, but Hayate's plainspoken acceptance made him want to find whoever had taught the kid and strangle them. Dammit, a fourteen-year-old was barely out of middle school in any reasonable society, and Hayate was supposed to be at the age where kids got their first crushes. Or broke an ankle screwing with skateboards on concrete.

Jason clawed his temper back under control again with an effort. Taking a deep breath, just to be sure, he said, "And you, what, ran across the rooftops until you got here?"

Jason had seen Hayate's metahuman abilities in action a couple of times now. Including a heartstopping moment where Jason found Hayate messing with the ceiling fan while on the ceiling. Still, getting across Gotham safely and undetected was difficult even for natives. Given Hayate's dangerous ignorance, Jason would've told him to stay the hell put if this had even been a question. He honestly thought he'd gotten that across.

None of Jason's grapple guns had been missing last he checked. So, how…?

"Yeah."

This kid is a menace.

Jason resisted the urge to put his head in his hands. Or scream. Instead, he pulled off his helmet, set it on the table, and started hunting around for the mask solvent.

Hayate watched him the entire time, owl-like. "So, where'd you go?"

"Had to do some troubleshooting."

Decapitating all of the drug-running middle management in his territory hadn't taken that long. The real trouble was getting the blood off everything before Jason crashed their bosses' meeting with an AK-47 and finally gotten the rat bastards to dance to his tune. Or else there would be consequences.

But he wasn't going to tell Hayate the gory details.

Jason pried his mask off as soon as the solvent took effect, sighing in relief. Wearing the domino was a choice he didn't always want to make, but at this point it was a habit. And if he did have to use his helmet's bomb, he wasn't going to run around barefaced.

Hayate repeated "troubleshooting" under his breath like it was an actual Japanese phrase. Frowned. Then: "Did…it shoot back?"

"Tried to stab me, actually."

And where the hell the problem came from, Jason didn't know. Talia wasn't answering to their agreed-on codes and hadn't been since before Hayate dropped into his life. He was down to waiting on a dead drop or three to explain.

The League of Asshats' uniform was paradoxically easy to recognize, for a secret society of intermittent ecoterrorists. Jason spent enough time around them in the last year that he'd have probably been able to recite all of their deployment strategies in his sleep. As it was, they were just stealthy enough to sneak under Batman's radar for a while. Jason figured, reasonably, that splinter cells wouldn't start swinging at him until he'd done something that clashed with one of their ongoing plots. Ra's and Talia usually let Gotham's residents tear themselves apart.

It was one of those things. The sun rose in the east, meth labs exploded if Jason wanted them to, and the al Ghuls toed the line.

But no, this last week was apparently just the time his horoscope just read "ninjas." Jason had ducked two ambushes in five days before having to shoot his way out of the third, and he'd found evidence of a fourth with bloodstains up and down the length of a parking garage. The police scanner didn't contain any revelations about it, so a cleanup crew must have taken care of the bodies. Or maybe everyone had just gotten up, hunky-dory, and fucked off into the night.

Yeah, right.

The Bats' comm lines weren't hackable with the tools in Jason's safehouse, so he'd initially just planned to pick up supplies from his apartment armory before reuniting with Hayate. Only the kid was here, as was all of Jason's most useful stuff, and now he didn't have to leave.

Hayate was still staring at him, though this time he looked more amused than worried. "But you're so friendly and helpful. Why would people try to stab you?"

"I know, right? I'm a delight."

Hayate snickered, and Jason counted that as a win.

It wasn't like anyone else would agree with him.

The League wasn't great to be around. It was all deep-set cult mystique and indoctrination whenever someone on the outside got a look at them. Jason's experience on Talia's training world tour was a half-grateful, half-resentful montage punctuated by having to kill almost all of his teachers. Some of them took shots at him when he started showing too much aptitude. Or if they felt like Talia's cash-filled briefcases sold them short. Others needed killing, barely a step down from the Joker despite whatever use the League got out of them.

So, as the nearest person with an opinion, Jason took matters into his own hands.

But in all that time, Talia was—if not an anchor—a point of contact. Bruce's morally dubious ex-girlfriend be damned, she was useful.

And meanwhile, Ra's thought Jason was entirely a waste of time. Talia hadn't told him that, but it was clear that shoving Jason into the Lazarus Pit was an option of last resort. Apparently, a zombie shuffling around their base—even if Jason's catatonic self could still fight— was dragging the mood down.

Well, screw them. Jason wasn't going to let any of those vultures get in his way now.

"You should take a shower." When Jason whipped his head around to give the kid a Look, Hayate sniffed pointedly. "You're tired, you stink, and I can make food."

"You should be on the debate team with arguments like that," Jason said, rolling his eyes. Still, a hot shower sounded better than sitting here in post-battle sweat. "Do I have to supervise this time?"

"The toaster needed to die and you know it."

"Before you got to it? Because afterward was a mercy-killing." Jason made sure to use the word "kaishaku" just to needle him. He had been reading recently.

Hayate threw one of the novels at Jason's head, which he caught, and made grumbling noises until Jason shuffled out of the kid's newly-claimed territory. He left the book on the coffee table to be polite and make his point at the same time.

Twenty minutes later and feeling significantly more relaxed in sweats and a hoodie, Jason sat down at the kitchen counter as Hayate scooped what he called "chāhan" off a skillet and into two bowls. It was just egg fried rice, but Hayate didn't seem interested in the correction the last time Jason brought it up, even if he did have an actual dictionary now. And the kid got a judgy look in his eye if Jason reached for the soy sauce at his elbow, which he of course ignored.

Cooking was about the customer.

And Hayate couldn't smack his landlord with a spatula for culinary crimes.

Since meeting him, Jason bought different groceries in case the kid really couldn't handle American food, or if he just missed home. Completely baffling circumstances aside, Hayate was culturally Japanese regardless of geography. So, rice. Kind of a lot of rice, honestly. Hayate seemed to eat every major meal with it if given a choice. The lack of a rice cooker didn't bother him, either, once he had permission to use Jason's cooktop.

It seemed like a coping mechanism during his healing, and Jason didn't have the heart to tell the kid to leave it to him. Jason wasn't around for half the day so it wouldn't be fair.

Though he did kind of hope Hayate hadn't dragged all of the safehouse's food across the rooftops. Jason would have to replace it.

"So, how was your night?" Jason asked, since it was as neutral a question as he could manage. Aside from the kid's B-and-E, it wasn't like his behavior had changed.

After half-inhaling his food, Hayate slowed down enough to swallow and admit, "Kind of weird."

"Weird in what way?" Hayate had to have a reason he'd shown up here. Jason's safehouse was barebones, but it was secure. He'd gone over the traps with the kid on his first full day there.

"Someone was watching the other place."

Ice flooded Jason's veins. What? "What?"

"The first time I went out, I found" — Hayate mimed a pair of binoculars, since he wasn't going to look up the word— "in a nest for two or three people on a roof with a good angle. I wasn't sure, so when I went back the next night, and there were two watching the place."

Fuck. Jason kept blackout curtains on his safehouses, but that didn't make it impossible to track his movements. So far, he'd separated the Red Hood activities from Jay Peters, but apparently that was over.

"I ripped this off one of them." Hayate reached into a pocket and pulled out a forearm-length wavy dagger Jason would have known if he was blindfolded.

The League preferred poisoning these.

Jason immediately snatched it off the table. "Did you kill them?" At Hayate's surprised expression, Jason insisted, "Hayate, are they still alive?"

"...Huh." It was said mostly under Hayate's breath, but Jason heard it just fine. Hayate straightened his back and said, "I didn't. If they're dead, that's because someone got them before they woke up."

Fuck! Assuming that Crime Alley's circle of life and death didn't eat those guys alive—and Jason wasn't that optimistic—then they knew they'd been made. Which explained some of the ninja problems Jason was having recently, but not all of it. This incident postdated Jason's first almost-stabbing.

What were they really after?

"I didn't let them see me," Hayate protested, sounding more insulted than anything. "But this is your territory. I thought I'd try to help."

The only thing worse than putting a kid in tights and sending them out as bullet-bait vigilantes was using kids as the muscle. Fucking hell, absolutely not. There was no level of desperation where Jason considered it an option.

He wasn't Bruce—

Jason couldn't afford to think about that.

And it looked like he had to put plans to bully Black Mask on hold. Never mind getting close to getting his hands on the fucking clown. Jason couldn't control the offensive momentum of a Little League team if there were assassins nipping at his heels.

"Hayate, don't do that again."

Hayate drew up short. "What?"

"You're not doing my dirty work for me, Hayate. I can handle it."

It took a bit more arguing, but Hayate eventually subsided with bad grace and went to sleep in Jason's bed. Lying on a couch that wouldn't try to turn his spine into bone meal, Jason turned out the lights and thought.

Jason was pretty sure the next few days would determine whether or not Hayate stayed listening. He'd already proven too skilled to keep in one spot, and too naïve to allow anywhere. And if he snuck out when Jason was busy cleaning up the mess…

No. Not happening.

Jason slung his arm over his face. So much for the plan.

Notes:

1. Kei had already left a Water Clone on the roof by the time Tim and Dick showed up; the cat was her in disguise. (Her trust issues are getting used as a trampoline.) Also, Kei's first thought when meeting Tim was basically, "Oh, I know what Robin this isn't. He's wearing pants."

2. "Kaishaku" refers to the mercy-stroke by a samurai's second during the seppuku ritual. As in, "I have disemboweled myself and need to die before I show pain."

3. Hayate isn't a medic-nin, but he's pretty tired of hospitals by now. Avoidance trained him in certain useful skills.

4. Everyone's activities are ruining everyone else's. For example, that explosion? That was Jason's doing. The Bats are having a terrible time trying to wrangle the chaos.