Note: About the only thing I can really say about my interpretation of this world is that it's post-Infinite Crisis, because before that Jason is almost literally a Dick Grayson clone. Down to the Bruce-picked-him-up-from-a-circus backstory. I think it's been two universe reboots since then, and thus canon is dead and I'm a bored necromancer.

Tim wasn't required to help Genbu get settled in the safehouse, strictly speaking, but he was working on the security system at the last minute because everything else in Gotham decided to go wild on a Friday night. He was already there. Barbara was busy directing Bruce and Dick around town as drunken revelers stumbled out of bars at two in the morning and muggings ticked up, and Tim was expected to avoid flying solo for a little while.

No one liked the look of the Red Hood's ambition, but he'd gone dark again. And since Tim was going to be avoiding that shadow for a while, he had a chance to satisfy his curiosity by casually interrogating Genbu instead.

Despite the weird feeling Dick got from them the other night, he'd basically said he was okay with Tim bothering the metahuman mystery unsupervised. So, Tim set up shop at the little square table that served as Genbu's dinner table, got out his laptop (as a replacement for his still-fried gauntlet) and enough gadgets to turn a reasonable apartment into Fort Knox, and started working.

Genbu arrived about fourteen minutes later, carrying a duffel bag and a backpack.

"Ah. Somehow, I didn't expect guests," said Genbu in their flat voice upon spotting him. The jumpiness Tim usually saw was dialed back to nothing, in a manner that could only be deliberate, as they dragged a go-bag inside the studio apartment. "Hi, Robin."

This late at night, Genbu could have gotten away with wearing their spiky mask and just running across Gotham as usual to the correct address. Instead, they'd replaced their "gear" with an entirely normal set of rip-kneed blue jeans and the distinct gray and red of a Gotham Knights jersey over a black hoodie. Their hair was mostly covered by a beanie and their face by costume glasses and one of those black medical masks, which seemed to be a thing in East Asia for the most part. They smelled like they'd walked through plumes of cigarette smoke to get here, which explained their mood somewhat.

"Konbanwa, Genbu-san." When Genbu hesitated in confusion, he added, "I've been brushing up on my Japanese. Going all in on the sports theme, huh?"

A one-shouldered shrug. "Nightwing suggested it. I think he meant it as a joke."

"He probably did."

Dick had been the origin of the traditional Robin impishness, the showboating, and most everything else hard-baked into the role. Jason, afterward, leaned harder on the compassion and empathy that let him connect to victims and seek justice for them with his whole heart.

Tim did detective work and gadgetry and figured the rest of it was going okay. Like now. "Did you want to look around?"

Shrug, again. "Separate bathroom, but no specific bedroom, right?"

"It's what you get in a studio layout," Tim said, and pointed with one of the battery-powered comm relay units that'd serve as a backup in case the building's electricity failed. "We went and stocked the place a little, but figured you'd be able to order-in for a bit if necessary."

"Sure. Always wanted to drown in takeout containers." Genbu made their way around the couch and started looking through the cabinets. They hadn't gotten rid of their mask or their hat, just the glasses, and only partly turned their back on him. Distractedly, they said, "Thanks for babysitting, Robin."

"At least you didn't assume it was the other way around." Tim installed the relay behind the mostly-empty bookshelf with a bit of reusable adhesive, and then went back to checking the booby-traps on the dingy apartment windows. While Barbara favored security cameras, Tim usually rigged up a laser grid near potential entry points as a backup. "I appreciate the little touches."

"You're Robin. I assume competence. And that you probably get patronized enough."

Not wrong. Tim let it go. "Do you need me to go over the security layout with you?"

Genbu shook their head.

"Suit yourself."

With that, Genbu continued exploring. The closed-off bathroom area turned the rest of the apartment into an L-shaped room, and there wasn't really that much to see. Aside from Tim's workstation, the room only had a few other pieces of furniture: the steel-framed bed, a couch, a coffee table, and the combination bookshelf-nightstand that had a clone in every one of Dick's safehouses. There was no TV or radio or even any other books besides a dog-eared copy of some romance novel Tim had never even heard of. The entertainment pickings were very slim.

Genbu didn't seem like they'd climb the walls from boredom. Mostly, they seemed tired. While Tim double-checked his work, they transferred their belongings to the bedspread and started unpacking.

In a couple of minutes, they'd set the bag and the backpack on the floor and kicked them under the bed. That left a small stack of clothes, a pile of snacks, and more than a few weapons. There was also a dedicated corner for what looked like rolls of paper—scrolls and stickers of some kind. Talismans? Maybe the secrets of their martial arts dojo or something. The Genbu costume was in pieces, but there didn't actually seem to be that many parts. Aside from the mask, the gloves, the katana, the holsters, and a stack of shuriken, it really did look like a closet cosplay taken too seriously. While Tim didn't go over and check, none of the fabric in Genbu's belongings moved like armor.

And they'd apparently been fighting ninjas every night since Tim first met them. Not just fighting—winning, consistently and nonlethally.

"None of my things are that interesting," Genbu's voice said, a little wryly. They'd seen him observe their movements, then. "Nothing electronic."

Tim couldn't decide if that tone counted as a rebuke or not, so he shrugged. "I'm not just interested in hacking. But are you seriously saying you don't even have a phone?"

Japan wasn't exactly starved of useful tech. Quite the opposite, actually. Even the League of Assassins had an IT department, though it ruined Ra's aesthetic choices if anyone acknowledged that they existed. The mysticism clashed with the WiFi network. If they left Tim alone long enough unsupervised in one of their bases… Well. Tim kind of hoped they never did, but he'd happily destroy every single computer there if the opportunity arose, preferably after draining their bank accounts into a wildlife conservation fund. There was something satisfying about making sure those resources went somewhere actually working for Ra's stated goal.

As opposed to the guy who used "the ecosystem" as an excuse for stabbing people.

"Personal electronics kinda…skipped me." Genbu sighed. They sat down on the bed and started going through their weaponry, starting with the long holster that ordinarily sat on their thigh. "I'm sure the stab squad would track me through it anyway."

"Probably. But not through Oracle's cybersecurity. Or mine." Tim grinned when Genbu shot them a blank look. "Look, with enough proxy servers, anything is possible."

"Pass, I think." Their hands were full of knives. Genbu held up one to the light, squinting at it. "Okay, that's chipped. How did…?" They set the knife aside and went back to picking through their scant belongings without finishing the thought.

Tim let them mutter. If they were going to focus on their own problems for a bit, that was fine. It gave Tim more time to update his evolving profiles of everyone involved in the last month's chaos. Genbu and Suzaku had separate documents, and only Genbu's had a picture. It showed their mask as seen head-on, in one of Dick's Nightwing selfies. Red Hood got a picture of a generic motorcycle helmet painted red as a placeholder.

"How old are you?" Tim asked, on the off chance that Genbu might answer out of sheer reflex.

"Older than you," was the blunt response. Since it was apparently time for Twenty Questions, they asked, "Do you have allergies?"

"No." Yes, but Dick didn't keep shrimp in his safehouses and honestly wouldn't know what to do if he did. Alfred made the list of what could be considered "staple" foods, and nothing in this particular apartment was even going to put Tim on the back foot.

Besides the occupant.

"Can I have that?" Tim asked, while Genbu continued to fuss. "The…knife thing."

"The wha—oh. Yeah, sure." And Genbu obligingly lobbed the weapon so that it landed ring-first in Tim's grasp. Already busy again, they added offhandedly, "They're called kunai."

Tim turned the weapon over in his gloved hands. The blade was mostly shaped like a leaf, but with a notch in it that looked like it'd suffered some misuse. Maybe…used against a pipe? "I think if you lean any harder on the ninja theme, the League of Assassins is going to sue."

"Fortunately, they'll have to catch me first. That's not going so well."

"Not for lack of trying." Tim spun the kunai on his finger by the ring. "Can I keep this?"

Genbu considered it for a while. "Knock yourself out."

The weapon was a little long for his utility belt's pouches and seemed like just a solid piece of steel, so Tim set it on the table for the moment. Suzaku wore the same decal-free holster on his right thigh, presumably for this kind of knife. Whenever he ran into that Red Hood fanboy again, he'd have to check to make sure.

But interrogating Genbu seemed like a bad call. With their stress levels so high, it'd be hard to tell which way they'd jump.

"Red Hood is probably pretty young," Genbu offered unprompted, in place of their personal information. "Younger than Nightwing, at least."

"How sure are you? I wouldn't have picked 'teenager' as a first guess, and I am one."

"Call it a hunch." And they hadn't denied being a teenager, either. "Something about him was really…distinct."

"Besides the helmet."

"The helmet has a built-in voice-changer and it makes him sound like Darth Vader."

"…I think if I had a helmet like that, it's the first thing I'd do. Just to see if it worked." And then he'd work his way through voice samples from his friends and start seeing if he could mess with them without anyone noticing.

"See? Obviously a teenager."

Tim didn't think that was much of an argument, but he added it to the "speculation" section of Red Hood's file. Half the point of giving Genbu this safehouse was to get them off the street, but any information they felt like sharing definitely helped. Especially with the Batman Bat-ban on seeking out Red Hood for surveillance purposes.

The conversation continued like that, with Genbu giving up as little personal information as possible while offering generic opinions about Gotham and persons of interest. Mostly Red Hood, though in between those scraps they offhandedly bothered Tim about local food options.

Especially about pizza.

Tim added "most likely a teenager" to Genbu's profile while they were busy with something else. Their snippets of conversation tended to end like a door being shut in his face. While it was a terrible evasive technique on Genbu's part, Tim let it slide more often than not. He still had work to do, as long as he wasn't swinging from rooftops and Genbu was a non-threat.

There were some lingering loose ends elsewhere.

Link to warehouse shootout on 4th—

Tim checked his notifications for a ping from any flagged parts of the file. While DNA analysis from the crime scene had mostly been a matter of checking blood against bodies, knowing that someone had left the warehouse alive extended the timeframe somewhat. There was only one unknown sample, and GCPD notes were waiting on more lab results. Ever since Red Hood began to escalate, the sheer amount of backlog at the labs was getting a bit untenable.

Batman hadn't quite gotten to the point of stealing from crime scenes, but that threshold was getting closer every week.

Anyway, the amount of blood lost by the Mystery Person wasn't fatal, but probably still enough to be concerning. And a bullet pulled from the side of a shipping container had the same DNA. If they'd gotten away, it'd required assistance.

Ping!

And there it was. Tim angled his computer so that Genbu couldn't see his screen without him noticing, frowned, and opened the message.

The unknown DNA sample wasn't fully human. The actual proportion of nonhuman ancestry was incredibly low—slightly higher than the proportion of Neanderthal in modern humans—but whatever it was had replaced the dormant metagene in the sample. The rest of it looked human—male, probably Asian—except for that part. Tim knew about one in ten humans even carried a metagene, due to a Batman lecture back when he'd first started training as Robin, but this was…odd. Weirdly specific, after all of the mutagens that had made their way into Gotham's population.

And just like the metagene, there was no way to be sure from a blood sample exactly what the person could do. They'd all find out when something exploded and build from there.

Tim added it to the case file and started reviewing the earlier data.

This lasted until Genbu sat on the bed and started double-checked the duffel bag—which was a luggage type that Tim would probably never look at the same way again—and came up with a stack of paper about four inches by eight, as thick as a book. As though they were the world's largest sticky notes, Genbu peeled one out of the stack and walked to the front door, slapping the paper flat over the peephole.

"Kind of a weirdly specific piece of security," Tim said, his gadgets momentarily forgotten. Was this a part of Genbu's metahuman ability? And if it wasn't, was it a party trick he could learn? "Or is it something special?"

"A privacy seal." Genbu reached for another one. No further elaboration followed.

"Hint taken." People had their quirks.

Though in a city like Gotham, it was probably best to stay on the lookout for any developments on that front. Firefly hadn't been put in Arkham until they finally figured out that all the arson was a part of an actual disorder and not just a villain theme, and even then Tim doubted any of that had been handled well. The justice system in Gotham had taken a hit when Harvey Dent took up the Two-Face moniker and in some ways hadn't really recovered. Being a policy-shaping district attorney in this town meant risks that people from other cities probably didn't have to think about much.

Moving from Gotham proper to Bristol township probably saved Tim's family at least some of that. Being next door to the Wayne Manor definitely hadn't hurt. Even with everything that happened since becoming Robin, that was lucky.

Living in Wayne Manor now was almost a dream. Even if his dad was still in the hospital for the foreseeable future.

Tim didn't rub at his eyes, because he couldn't reach them through his mask, but he did blink a few times at the laptop screen before dimming it a few notches. He'd get his night vision back soon enough, but maybe he could make a note to develop a lens type for his mask specifically for screens.

Across the apartment, Genbu's muttering finally got loud enough for Tim to make out words. In this case, it was, "Should I get a coffee machine?"

"There's one in the cabinet on top of the fridge." Tim had checked, even if he'd decided to let Genbu be the first one to use it.

"Thanks."

Genbu kept roaming and sticking talismans to things for the next few minutes. For the most part, they kept to the corners of the apartment and stood back only rarely to examine their work. They went back into the bathroom for a moment or two, then emerged and resumed their survey.

Tim tried to get back to his case files, but something—like the ninja in the room—kept distracting him. Something about their movements seemed almost ritualistic, now that he was looking.

Thankfully, Tim didn't have to wait for long for an answer. As soon as Genbu seemed satisfied with their work, some deep-seated tension leached out of their frame like they'd been on the edge of a precipice until now. They made several strange gestures before clapping their hands together, like people sometimes did for sound-activated lights.

Something in the room settled, somehow. Tim's ears popped.

"What was—oh." Zatanna hadn't done a show in Gotham in a while, but Tim recognized magic when he saw it. Or felt in his back teeth. Sooner or later, a little bit of everything hit a superhero team like it was trying to make a yearly quota, and the Titans were no different. And through Dick, Tim knew Raven. "You're a magician too?"

Genbu, in the middle of trying to find a place to stick their talismans, tilted their head enough that Tim could catch their gaze through the cheap plastic lenses. Past the D. B. Cooper getup, they had one eyebrow raised. "Yep. Good guess."

"Okay, so that means either the metahuman thing is a part of it, or you're using two entirely different sets of powers at the same time." Tim never could resist a mystery. And here Genbu was, a bit more willing to talk than before. A tiny bit, but Tim had worked out more from less. "I'd love to hear how they work together."

"It's the same system, actually," was Genbu's reply. There was just a hint of amused surprise in their tone. "The explanation is a bit long for…tonight." Genbu yawned. "Check back during normal business hours?"

"Just remember that I asked," Tim agreed.

"Oh, believe me, I won't forget."

About twenty-three minutes passed in silence as Genbu started organizing their belongings into the apartment's provided storage options. Unsurprisingly, all of the weaponry stayed within easy reach of the bed. Their mask, though, hung carelessly off the bedpost, along with a plastic ring full of hair ties and other odds and ends. A bag full of toiletries ended up in the bathroom. A too-huge winter coat ended up in the shallow "closet" that was more of a cubby. Genbu only owned two pairs of shoes, one of which was blue and weirdly indecisive about being boots or sandals. Only about half of it had any branding he recognized, and not just because it was well-worn.

Yeah, Tim believed their story about living in a motel for a month. His parents' smallest suitcase held more than what was apparently the sum total of Genbu's Gotham life. He still added the details about clothes to the potential column for leads on Genbu's origins.

"So," Tim couldn't help but push, "how exactly does a sticker enforce privacy? Couldn't someone just kick it in?"

Genbu paused for just a second, looked pointedly at him with those pitch-black eyes, and replied, "It'd be like a bird hitting a plate-glass window, Robin."

Sheesh. "All right, all right, I'll stop." For at least a few minutes. He added "definitely a metahuman," "probably a magician," and "cagey as hell" to Genbu's profile. Bolded the last point, because it seemed worth doing.

At some point, Genbu disappeared into the bathroom with a stack of clothes and wandered back out again wearing flannel pajamas and a sweater at least two sizes too big, though they kept the face mask and the fake glasses. Seeing as they didn't actually come back into the bedroom area except to drop off their day clothes, Tim just made a mental note about their approximate height and weight outside of the costume. If they were busy preparing for bed and their routine involved muttering cryptically to themself, Tim wouldn't judge.

Aloud. That was what his profile-writing was for.

Tim didn't actually realize Genbu was doing anything with food until a bowl of apple slices appeared at his elbow with a sharp rap of ninja knuckles. He blinked up at them as they refused to entirely meet his questioning stare.

Instead, they slid into the other chair across from him and folded their arms atop the wood. It only took a second or two for the finger-drumming to start, which was probably a nervous habit. "Technically, you helped me move into this place," Genbu said by way of explanation, "so, here you go. I'll cook something next time."

"You didn't even have to do this much," Tim pointed out, already reaching for the bowl, "but thank you."

"Going by what Nightwing said, the League of Assassins doesn't normally come into Gotham at all. If that's true, they're only here for me, so I did bring trouble to your doorstep." Genbu scratched the back of their head. "Anyway, you patrol later or something. You'll need the energy."

"Guess I can't argue with that." Though he would've tested the food for poison if offered something just by some random person on patrol.

Up close, Tim noted that Genbu's bare hands were callused like a swordsman's, and faint scars showed up discolored over their knuckles like they'd gone into MMA as a side hustle. Each nail was short and painted dark blue, and a quick glance Genbu couldn't possibly see confirmed that their toenails were the same color. Over the top of the mask, a diagonal scar split their face in two and there were dark circles under each eye, along with one mole off to the far left.

They looked exhausted. They'd rested their head in one hand without apparently noticing and weren't quite looking at Tim despite their face being mostly pointed his way. Instead, their gaze trailed out the window.

Still, Tim was immediately certain that Genbu had snap-assessed him much the same way as he did them, but there was less to work with. The Robin costume gave him a somewhat worse stealth profile than Batman—hard to avoid that, given the classic colors—but there was a reason Tim was the only one to independently work out the secret identities involved. He could hide Timothy Jackson Drake just fine.

"Aren't you going to eat any?" Also, a bonus to having his mouth exposed: Tim could snack on patrol and not have to worry about giving up part of his disguise. At this point, he suspected it was part of the reason Bruce's cowl didn't cover his whole head.

Genbu took that as a hint, rather than an offer, and retreated to the bed instead of creepily sticking around to watch him eat. They even picked up the romance novel and started thumbing through it for a little while. Super casually.

Talk about living up to one's namesake. Genbu was, as advertised, an awkward turtle. There were points where they compensated with aggression or sarcasm, but it was pretty clear that Genbu didn't really know what to do, and was probably too tired to come up with many ideas in the first place. The difference between Tim and Genbu, in this context, was that Tim's sleep schedule suffered only because of his night job. Genbu was apparently pulling double shifts, on top of having no home base.

At least they'd taken care of that, now. Even if Genbu eventually just packed up and ditched Gotham for greener pastures—or at least someplace with fewer assassins—they got to have at least a small reprieve. Gotham was a constant cascade of Things Happening. Sticking around meant Genbu would get caught up in the roller coaster again sooner or later.

"So I forgot to ask earlier, but did you have preferred pronouns?" Tim asked, once Genbu had settled.

"Preferred… Uh. I usually use 'boku' if I'm with friends." Which was…a Japanese word that meant something like "I, an unthreatening man" if taken literally. At least, that was what Tim remembered from when he was trying to say, "Hi, I'm Robin" in Japanese. "'Watashi' is for formal use."

"I meant in English, but that's helpful." Maybe on his next encounter with Suzaku—because Tim was sure it'd happen eventually—he'd manage to stammer through a few pleasantries before they resorted to the computer again. Better to aim for over-formal than shoot too low and get his gauntlet computer destroyed again. "I meant more like 'Hi, I'm Robin, my pronouns are he/him.' You know, basic things like that. We've been using 'they' for you, but now I can actually ask."

Genbu took a few seconds to think that over. While Tim could look up the state of marriage equality in Japan and probably depress himself a bit, he decided against it. It was hard to tell how much that data informed Genbu's approach to life in general, and Tim decided it wasn't worth assuming.

"I don't really mind 'they,' I guess," Genbu said after a while, moving their legs into a crisscross on the bed. "But I prefer she/her. Is that how you do it?"

"Perfect." Tim added that to the file, too.

Genbu made a contemplative noise. Then, "Is it dangerous for me to know that? Since, well, the whole vigilante thing."

"Not as much as you'd think." There were so many other things that heroes did to keep themselves anonymous that pronouns were a small courtesy most of them could afford. Not that Tim ever thought that Bruce would go around introducing himself, "Batman, prefers he/him," but the thought was something to keep in mind just in case. "Though I guess as a new mask, you wouldn't know."

"No one tells me these things." Genbu punctuated that admission of ignorance with a shrug, going back to their book.

And it wasn't like Bruce was going to host a How To Vigilante lecture series in Gotham for newbies. He'd have done it by now if he planned to at all. If Bruce was feeling particularly ornery, he wouldn't even explain his ground rules before trying to muscle out someone trying to set up shop in Gotham without his approval.

Steph had a lot of things to say about that. Her taking a couple of days off for (being caught by her mother with) a sprained ankle was probably the only reason Tim hadn't been hearing more about it. Leaving his phone at the Manor while on patrol meant he procrastinated on the texts, too, so he'd have to find a way to make up for that. Even if Tim wasn't allowed anywhere near Crime Alley since his run-in with Suzaku and Red Hood's subsequent escalation, he could still check in with Steph about what was happening there. Actually living in the Alley meant she was almost definitely going to be the first one affected whenever something new happened.

Tim checked his messaging history again, just in case Steph had gotten sick of his lack of texts and gone around it through the chat client, but she hadn't so far.

They—and every other vigilante in the city barring Batwoman—lived in the second Robin's shadow whether they knew it or not. Anytime Bruce ran into a new teen hero, his first instinct now was to shut them down instead of get them connections in the community. Steph fought as hard for her place as Tim, and thus far the war wasn't over yet.

By this point, Tim had eaten all the apple slices with the same thoughtless, automatic motions as the bag of chips he usually kept near his laptop. For lack of anything to fiddle with, he picked up the kunai Genbu judged subpar and started spinning it on his finger again. As long as he kept it well away from his face, the rhythmic motion was almost meditative.

"That's not… exactly a toy," said Genbu, interrupting Tim's thoughts.

Tim stopped spinning the kunai. It wasn't as though he hadn't used way more dangerous equipment in his career so far, but Genbu sounded unhappy. He'd avoid telling them about how half of his birdarangs exploded. "Fair. So, how do you use them?"

"Generally, as utility knives. You can throw them, I guess." Going by Genbu's tone, the latter option wasn't one she usually bothered with.

"Not a fan?"

"It does the job, but there are better weapons." Genbu nodded at the katana by her bed, which as far as Tim knew she hadn't drawn once since arriving in Gotham. Even with assassins in pursuit, she'd opted for a baseball bat instead.

Tim turned the kunai over just as his laptop pinged again.

Two messages this time.

First, one of the ninjas who'd fought Genbu the other night had died. While the tox screen wasn't back yet, Tim didn't doubt the culprit was in the darts Dick retrieved after the fight. The initial results of the Batcomputer's analysis confirmed the presence of Fear Toxin, but while the countermeasures for it were well-known and usually well-stocked, Gotham General hadn't gotten the guy in time. He'd had a massive heart attack in transit and couldn't be revived.

Second, GCPD had updated their autopsy files—finally—and Tim could get some more work done on the warehouse massacre. It was a message about the two men who hadn't been killed by gunshots, stating the depth of the injuries and best-guesses about the angle of attack, and…

Tim looked down at the kunai in his hand and stopped dead.

Ah, Tim thought. I thought that wound profile looked familiar. He couldn't be sure, not without comparing the injuries more precisely, but it was pretty fucking suspicious that the murder weapon used on Jack Parkins and James MacDonald shared this shape.

Across the room, Genbu obliviously turned a page in her book. Either Tim was in the same room as a murderer, or he'd coincidentally found someone who made weirdly similar equipment decisions and had enough strength to put a six-inch knife four inches into a human skull.

Shit.

Genbu yawned. They even covered their mouth, despite wearing a mask.

After a couple of seconds spent frozen while alarm sent his heart jackrabbiting in his chest, Tim exhaled slowly. If Genbu knew about the bodies, she wouldn't have handed him anything like evidence. She was cagey and strange, but so far hadn't actually tried to attack anyone without provocation. Assuming Genbu was cis, the blood probably wasn't hers, and she hadn't said anything about gang shootouts where Oracle's snooping could catch it. Someone with the skills to fight off League hunter squads wouldn't have been caught by Gotham gangsters in some random East End warehouse either—the two sides avoided each other.

Or, well, the Assassins mostly avoided Gotham street criminals because they were elitist as hell about the killing-people thing, but Tim still figured that counted.

That still left Suzaku. Who carried almost all of the same equipment Genbu did, even if neither of them seemed to use it. He hadn't seen a single piece of tech on Suzaku during their conversation, but the guy hung out around Red Hood. If there was anyone who could barge into a warehouse and kill every gangster there…

Except for two.

Tim didn't want to think about a metahuman his age being inducted into gang life by Red Hood. Or that it had to have been going on for at least a month without anyone noticing. He made a note of it anyway and flagged the file specifically for Oracle. He almost immediately got a message back that she'd look into it, and then—

"Hey, Genbu," Tim called out, trying frantically to figure out if this was acceptably invasive for a first-time meeting, "do you feel comfortable with offering a DNA sample?"

On one hand: Bat paranoia.

On the other: Someone on the run like Genbu probably didn't want to be linked to any crime scenes they might have visited since going on the run from the League of Assassins. They could say no.

"Not really," Genbu replied, looking at him over the top of her book like an annoyed librarian. It was an expression Tim was very familiar with, because Barbara could and did glare Bruce into submission that way. "But you're a Bat, so that means you'll probably steal my hairbrush or something."

Busted. "If I had to, for a case—"

"Just take the brush, Robin. It's fine." Maybe Genbu hadn't committed any crimes.

Tim did take samples from Genbu's hairbrush when he left, but he left the brush itself behind. He even threw in a line about being pretty sure Genbu needed it more than he did, which she waved off with another yawn and a well-wish for a quiet night. She let him keep the kunai, too.

And a few hours later, when Tim brought those samples back from patrol and ran them through the Batcomputer's sequencer, the message was a blaring "Partial Match." Genbu and probably-Suzaku not only carried the same nonhuman ancestry, but were also full siblings.

Somehow, "congratulations, it's a boy" didn't strike the right note.

Robin left sometime around twelve-thirty, after eating the food-bribe and running through the security systems with her. The last Kei saw of him was the trailing yellow lining of his cape as he dove off the fire escape and disappeared into the night.

Fucking finally.

Even if she liked the kid, in theory, she didn't want to be awake. She'd read the same page of that bodice-ripper five times without retaining a damn thing, and she didn't think Robin had noticed.

As soon as she shut the window, closed the blackout curtains, and rearmed the zappy window thing, Kei ditched her disguise pieces. It'd been a lifetime since she needed glasses and wearing a mask in bed sounded ridiculous when she wasn't sick. Everything about this was ridiculous.

Superheroes, am I right?

I would not know. Isobu's tails twitched. But he is gone.

And Kei breathed a long sigh of relief. Finally, privacy. Secure privacy, enforced by people who weren't her.

And easy access to OTC meds, because someone had been thoughtful and stocked the bathroom with the basics. It wasn't like Kei had enough time to grab replacements herself. She hadn't slept since the meeting with Nightwing because she was fucking busy.

It'd been a risk to even cross the city with a Chakra Suppressing Seal pasted to Isobu's tattoo on her sternum, but she'd planned everything out the best she could. Even the thirty-eight minutes spent unconscious in the ivy near a freeway overpass. Even the subsequent trembling as her body tried to adjust to living without a Tailed Beast's input. Like having her core replaced with unforgiving ice.

Kei still pushed onward.

She'd premade all of her security seals this time, wary of the idea of having to perform fūinjutsu while being observed. The connection between them was written with seal complexity instead of just linking them with Isobu's strength and her blood. As soon as the last key was in place, the whole matrix burst from stasis and hummed to life under her control. It muffled both Kei's chakra inside of the security field and cut down on outside noise, like it was supposed to.

I imagine it will.

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

Kei wouldn't wake up with a sensory overload headache for at least as long as these defenses stayed operational. Mostly because she'd used the same seals medic-nin commissioned for prepping a surgery ritual room, which wiped interference right off the board. It made the world quiet.

As for the other precautions… Well, there was something to say for a classic red herring. Shaking a tail locked onto her chakra signature wasn't something Kei had especially thought about before, because there were some benefits to being as strong as she was. It just took most of what processing power she had left to figure out a solution.

Making a dozen shards of coral from Isobu's chakra ahead of time, she'd dropped the pieces throughout the city. While she couldn't be sure, such a chakra-dense material was probably her best bet for laying false trails. Two of them were subway lines, another in the car of a freight train she'd seen, and she'd pitched some of them into storm drains or straight into the harbor. One was heading out of Gotham on a massive container ship and would require so much searching that Kei honestly hoped the assassins ended up stuck looking for months.

She hoped Killer Croc escaped from Arkham and ate them.

She hadn't been able to even hear Isobu until she ripped the seal off. Thankfully, Robin hadn't noticed the power surge under the sheer number of "nothing to see here" effects overlapping in the apartment. If he only noticed the actual matrix once it activated, then it was fine.

Anything to avoid more goddamn McNinjas.

I wish them every misery, Isobu said quietly. Like how Kei had immediately hugged the pillow, Isobu had curled up into a shrimplike shape in their shared mindscape and tucked his arms away. Any creature can be brought down by constant harassment.

Eventually. Kei thought almost involuntarily of Isobu's future(?) self being bombed into submission by Deidara and Tobi during the Tailed Beast hunt of another lifetime. She shook it away like mist. I still think we'd explode first. Might've been a bit more dignified.

Most creatures die fighting. Isobu's tails flicked unhappily. Struggling, at least.

Well, they'd certainly achieved that. Flopping like a fish on a riverbank. It was just that their death throes would turn downtown into a crater. Like his siblings, Isobu promised vengeance on behalf of his jinchūriki, but by this point Kei figured he meant it as a comfort.

Kei cringed away from the memory of losing her composure in front of Nightwing. Her brain kept trying to rub her nose in that mortification. She was supposed to be only a half-step down from a full jōnin, not a—not some distressed civilian. It was just that…

She wanted to go home.

She wanted this fucking side trip to have never happened. To be curled up in the Konoha spring sun and at peace for the first time in months.

Kei curled tighter around the pillow. If she let her hands disappear into cotton sleeves and held her arms just so, it almost felt like a hug. A little less like she'd been tossed ashore in a strange world and left to curl up against the cold. Isobu had tails. Kei made do with blankets and pillows piled up against her back until it was almost circling around her, while she turned herself into a pillbug.

If she was at home and felt this thoroughly miserable, there'd be options. Not just wallowing. Someone would be around—Kushina and Sensei's kids, Kei's friends, Hayate's friends—and Kei would be able to find something to do. Even if it was just to take a nap while someone used her as a pillow. Hell, Kakashi willingly summoned his dogs anytime Kei so much as asked, because furry little critters were just universally perfect. And—

Dammit, she missed them. Every single weird little gremlin she'd associated with, adopted, or just dragged along into her chaotic mess of a life. Even—hell, especially —if they'd found her.

You still have me.

And if I didn't, just think of how much worse I'd be.

A horror beyond horrors, Isobu agreed.

In this city, all she could hope for was this forcibly-sterilized space and constant monitoring. Whatever semblance of safety she could scrape together. Even setting up the security seals here, half of which were to shove the psychic pollution out of the air, was ultimately a temporary measure.

Kei rolled onto her front like Isobu would have, then onto her side again. She needed to rest before moving forward.

Wherever you are, Hayate, Kei thought, stay safe.

And then Kei crash-slept for eighteen hours straight.

Notes:

1. Every once in a while, I remember that Kei exited our world's timeline in 2013. Usually when trying to think of media she can reference without breaking my rules, but also about LGBTQ topics. The discussion Beta and I had about queer issues since a decade ago was kind of funny and sad at the same time. Kei doesn't know very much, but she's pretty easy to teach.
2. Tim's personal timeline in this fic is a bit of a clusterfuck, but here's some concrete info for those who want it: Currently, Tim is fifteen and still Robin, his dad's in a coma (so he's legally under Bruce's guardianship at the moment), and Steph is still Spoiler.
3. There's a cut exchange from this chapter that goes like this:
Tim: "I'm telling you, artichokes are perfectly valid pizza toppings. Especially with Canadian bacon and onions."
Kei: "I thought people usually argued about pineapple."
Tim: "Pineapple's culinary future rides on Nightwing's takeout budget, not mine. You're probably only interested in boring options."
Kei: "Would you believe I haven't had any Gotham pizza since I got here?"
Tim: "…Wait, seriously? You have been deprived."
Kei: "Yeah, my life is an ongoing tragedy like that."
Unfortunately, no one trusts each other enough to just like…order a pizza and put the debate to rest. Or really hang out.