Writing this chapter was like pulling teeth, but it has arrived. Enjoy!

(x . x) ~~zzZ

"On a positive note…" began Jiraiya, while trying to herd Minato back toward his office. Or at least out of the ritual chamber. "I think your kids killed most of their immediate problems."

Minato, who had spent the last hour or so barely able to tear his eyes from the crystal ball's projection, finally looked over to glare at him. The last month had been hell on him, and it showed mostly in the way the shadows under his eyes deepened to Gekkō-like shades, and the fact that his messy hair was now, officially, unmanageable. It was a wonder Kushina hadn't cornered him and just tied him to the bed—or couch, or maybe his desk—until the exhaustion and stress caught up to the fastest man alive and knocked him out.

Then again, teleporting shinobi were slippery.

The fact that Minato's two remaining students and their friend had stolen initiative from him had to rankle, even before the insubordination thing sank in. No one in the experiment chamber had wanted to stay within arm's reach of him, and for good reason.

"They're not alone out there," Jiraiya continued, since Minato hadn't told him to stop. Either as an exasperated student or in his capacity as Hokage. Besides, he needed a reminder or two. "Sure, maybe the particular lineup for this mission is…unideal—"

"All three of them are benched for the next month for this stunt," Minato growled. "If I could knock them all down a rank—"

"Which you can't."

"Sensei."

"Just saying." Jiraiya held up his hands defensively. "Innocently" was beyond him. "Coordinating things just got a bit harder, but we still have Shimika-chan's method. We'll get there."

"If we can't—"

"We can. Sure, they may rack up bounties or start a riot or whatever kids do for fun these days, but they're stubborn. They'll keep trying, and we'll keep trying."

Minato sighed, but at last he allowed himself to be steered. "You can't just say you don't have any doubts, Sensei."

"Of course I do." Jiraiya grinned even when Minato shot him another glare. "But I've also got faith in that bunch of knuckleheads. We'll get them home, you'll see. And you can plan the lecture after you get some sleep."

Minato grumbled under his breath, but Jiraiya managed to convince him to teleport them both to his residence rather than have to put up with that for long. And from there, shoving his brilliant but stubborn student into his family's waiting arms was as easy as blinking.

True to his word—and his ulcer-causing behavior in general—Hayate's heat signature pounced on his downed enemy and nearly hacked his head off. The kunai knife came away covered in tacky goo, flipped in his hand, and then shot like a swallow down the hall. Another man-shaped target buckled, gagging.

Jason leveled his sidearm and put two shots into Hayate's victim without conscious thought. One in the head, one in the heart. The guy dropped immediately with a wet thud.

Even with Jason's helmet squarely in place, gunshots boomed in such a small space. No way in hell Leslie didn't know something was up. If she was half as sensible as Jason thought, she'd probably barricaded the door. As soon as Jason killed every uppity putty bastard Hayate didn't stab in the face, they needed to grab the doctor and Tim and exfiltrate as fast as they could.

"Just like that." Hayate briefly blurred as his distorted heat silhouette gave Jason a thumbs-up. He wasn't covering his ears, despite the obvious problems presented by using guns indoors. Maybe that was another magic trick—steel eardrums at a moment's notice.

"Focus, kid," Jason snapped back automatically. "And stay the hell out of my sights."

Hayate didn't draw his katana—the building was too narrow for him to avoid hitting walls—but seemingly didn't need to. Instead, he whipped his arm around and slammed his third kunai into a new opponent's throat with enough force to bury it to the hilt. Then he ripped it out, almost carelessly, and left a spray of white on the wall and a mostly-decapitated corpse.

Two more men, thugs as generic as shooting range cutouts, appeared down the hall.

Jason drew level with Hayate's heat-blob shape and put two shots in their heads with one exhalation. One was maybe slightly off-center and took out an eye in the process, but both fell with white spray splashing around them.

The entire footprint of the Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic was maybe sixteen hundred square feet or so, with a layout Jason knew by heart by the time he was twelve. There was no basement. There were two external doors, besides the one leading to the roof, and not a single security alarm sounded before Hayate kicked into murderous gear. He knew Leslie accepted patients at weird hours, but one didn't live thirty-five years in one of the worst places in Gotham without some precautions.

How the shit did these guys get in without anyone noticing? Sure, Jason had been—distracted, essentially, but nobody in town was enough of an overconfident clod to attack the clinic during Red Hood's patrol hours. And it wasn't the Joker's style.

The instant after he thought that, Hayate's ferocity painted a clear picture in his head. With Jason right here, the kid usually held back and let him take the lead in a fight because it was something they'd argue about during the debrief otherwise. Jason was older, a lot happier with blood on his hands than the Hayate's, and he knew there was a chance he'd fucking shoot Hayate by accident if the kid spent too long tangled up in melee. Bullets weren't picky about who or what they hit.

"Something followed her home."

Jason assumed, then, that the problem was the demon squatting in the girl's head.

"They tunneled under the house and came up through the floor. Got sick of trying to bait me out."

But if the corpses at Jason's feet were any indicator, this payload of mooks was one Hayate knew only too well. Already, what had looked like generic Gotham thug was melting into a different shape. Something pale and vaguely marshmallow-y, held to a hot surface. It was like spotting a wax museum statue in a heat wave.

Still fit the description of "something" all too well.

And Jason remembered how Hayate trembled in his arms, as pain, regret, and fear rattled through him. Compared that to the endless font of sympathy he'd uncovered just a few minutes ago. Could hold up his current behavior to the light, with a clear view. How he stumbled over his words while trying to explain what had happened.

It made Jason's blood boil.

And now the kid stood there in the hall, shoulders still wound tight with tension, and with white slime dripping off his weapons. Some of the splatter had gotten on his forehead, and he wiped it onto his sleeve without thinking—then shuddered in disgust.

This stretch of space was at least quiet, for now. Though Leslie was going to have one hell of a cleanup job ahead of her, and the clinic would almost certainly be shut down as a crime scene the second the GCPD got involved.

"You good?" Jason nudged the kid's ankle with the tip of one boot as he passed, fully prepared to double-tap any of the enemies who even dared twitch postmortem.

"I'll be fine," Hayate said, which wasn't exactly a yes. He pulled himself upright and wiped both kunai clean on the unmelted bits of their dead opponents, which looked and apparently acted like cloth. For a while. "Did you hear any of them talk?"

" No. Do they normally?" Channeling the soul of a man conducting experiments, Jason kicked over one of the corpses and retrieved one of Hayate's kunai from the ruin of the thing's chest. If they followed the general guidelines of human anatomy, the kid had managed to punch a hole clean through the sternum and into the cluster of arteries at the top of the heart.

"They're pretty chatty." Hayate caught the knife and slipped it back into his thigh holster. One of the others disappeared up his sleeve. With his now-free hand, he traced the wall as he headed for the previously-occupied exam room. "The ones earlier yelled in English, too."

Which meant that, somehow, these things out of Hayate's nightmares had gotten enough study time in to figure out what he hadn't. It meant that there was planning going into this. "Would you say they're human?"

"They don't have bones, Aniki," Hayate replied flatly.

Not actually a disqualifier, in Jason's experience. Metahumans could have some weird shit going on under the bright costumes and winning personalities. Still, that was a conversation they could put off for later. For all Jason knew, this was the start of some kind of plant-people plague and Poison Ivy was going to throw a fucking block party whenever she got out of Arkham next and found these things waiting for her.

"Neither does Clayface, and we still let him participate in society sometimes." Though getting a murderous elemental back into Arkham after his latest crime spree was always a massive pain.

The kid definitely rolled his eyes. "Human or not, they're a threat. That's all that matters."

Yeah, he'd packed up his sense of humor and mailed it to the other end of this battle, whenever that came around. "If they're smart enough for strategy and plans, there's a chance we could interrogate one. Find out how they got in, by force if needed."

"They don't really feel pain." This was more a grumble than anything.

Hayate had his hand on the other door and coiled it up to knock. As though he could reassure someone with anything other than his obvious youth; the fabric of his argument didn't matter as much. When Jason shook his head, Hayate stepped back and let Jason take his place in case the good doctor hadn't learned Japanese in the last few minutes.

Jason sighed to himself, too quiet for his helmet's internal microphone to care about, and banged on the door with the handle of his offhand gun. He knew better than to try and force it. "Doc. Time to go. I'm not gonna shoot the lock off or anything, but we're under siege. I didn't spend all this time trying to keep your patient alive to fail at the last second."

Though, given how things had worked out so far tonight, Jason doubted Tim was the real target. Oh, sure, the League of Assassins were usually up for taking a Robin hostage—the better to bait Batman into doing something reckless—but the plant guys?

Yeah, Jason would bet his last bullet they were after Hayate and not the walking, snarking target.

Tim was just over five feet tall with his uniform's boots, but Robins were always dense with wiry muscle. Leslie, for all her steel-solid personality, was well past sixty and almost certainly hadn't been able to move him all that far. The bed—really a gurney—did have wheels, but was at the wrong height to stick under the doorjamb even if barricading was a viable option. After learning these Zetsu guys could bore through walls or tunnel under houses? Bad plan.

The best plan, for Leslie, would be to wait for help. Maybe put in a little distress call to the Bats. Or bolt once it seemed like the bad guys forgot she was there.

There was a thud outside. And some screaming, along with a fairly gooselike honking noise.

And lo, backup. If Leslie wanted a refund, too late.

Upon hearing it, Hayate scooted down the hall with wariness in every inch of him, but he didn't panic. He mostly just peered around the T-corner and tried to see where the enemy was coming from. If that kid ran off now—

Well. He hadn't.

"Is that the bird?" It had better be the bird. Jason was not going to deal with an outbreak of demonic geese. He'd left his long guns in a different safehouse.

"Probably? I've only seen her fight a few times."

"Doc," Jason said again, in a sharper tone. Even if he bothered, his helmet's vocoder overrode any vestige of patience. "The building's compromised. Move."

Something inside the office shifted—sounded like wheels—and then Leslie opened the door so slowly its creak was drawn-out and even more annoying for it. Her gaze snapped to the melty corpses on the floor and her eyebrows knit together in clear disapproval, but she didn't comment on that. Instead, she shoved her white hair back from her face and yanked the door the rest of the way open. "Red Hood, he'll have to be carried."

At least Tim was sitting up, already detached from all the IV lines. His head hung below his shoulders and he swayed even so, but it was still easier to move somebody who could manage that much. And when he heard Leslie talking, he did tilt his head vaguely in Jason's direction.

"We got him here, didn't we? Nothing wrong with an encore." Jason stepped into the room and maneuvered past Leslie, though she never stopped hovering. Reaching out with all due care, Jason tilted Tim's head up by his chin and tapped his cheek with one finger. Noting that Tim responded to at least that much, Jason called over his shoulder, "Hayate, get back in here and grab your cargo."

"In a sec—"

BANG.

Not a gunshot. Too loud, too long.

And his helmet immediately shuttered Jason's vision as the flashbang protection kicked in. Given the amount of time spent shooting in enclosed spaces, it'd be suicidal for him not to have that built into the helmet's core functionality. When the artificial dimming effect ended, it left him staring down at a wincing Leslie and a Tim who'd toppled off the exam table, holding his ears.

And—

Jason was back out in the hall before the echoing stopped. Four struggling forms at the end of the hall, ten feet past the doorway, Hayate's distinct red caught in the middle amid smoke and ash—

"LET GO OF ME!" Hayate shrieked.

The hall lit up with white.

In ordinary circumstances, the tech in Jason's helmet would have just gone for the flashbang shielding again. If he hadn't programmed a mode that was tuned specifically for lightning. For all Hayate's electrokinesis, he didn't tend toward thunder.

(And with the explosives deactivated and removed, because fuck if he was going to let Hayate accidentally trigger a short that blew Jason's head off. The kid wouldn't ever cope with the guilt.)

One of the men restraining him had collapsed, twitching, but the second and third were either made of metahuman stuff or coated in rubber and between them still kept his elbows and ankles restrained.

"I tried to fight, but—uh, the leader broke my leg, then grabbed me by the throat before I could scream, and—and that's the last thing I remember."

With three long strides, Jason closed the distance and delivered three neat headshots from point blank range. Two white sprays of fluid from the ones actually touching Hayate, then a red one from the one that lay stunned on the ground. Rather than chase down the fourth assailant immediately, Jason scooped Hayate off the ground and set him back on wavering legs.

Hayate clutched his jacket hard enough that his fingers threatened to rip the leather, latching onto Jason's waist. His whole body quaked with fear—from bad memories swinging back for round two. If Jason's armor had been any less thick, he'd probably feel Hayate's heartbeat against his ribs.

"I've got you," Jason told him, even as he watched the other man dart into another room to hide. The glimpse was enough to confirm that he was a League ninja and that Jason was going to gut him at the next opportunity. All he needed was line of sight, and no League ninja was fully bulletproof. "Don't worry, I'm right here."

"I—yeah. I know. I-I know that." Breath left him in a harsh hiss. The trembling slowed, by force, as he got his voice back. "They didn't— I mean, I'm fine."

After taking a moment to loosen Hayate's grip a little—but not shoo him away—Jason kicked one of the corpses with a heavy boot. Unlike the Zetsu clones, the last man was a League ninja and his corpse actually rolled instead of squishing. Going by the way the head was clearly concave, Jason's bullet had caught him sidelong in the face.

Good fucking riddance.

Rubble here and there—broken glass, crumbled cement, drywall—told its own story. Whatever these assholes did to circumvent Hayate's unexplained combat precog, it had been messy. There was evidence.

Whoever put a hand on this kid wouldn't leave the building alive.

Jason squeezed Hayate's shoulder as best he could while still armed. Kept his fingers well away from the trigger. "Stick right behind me. You'll be safe."

Hayate nodded, because lying out loud might have been just a hair too far. It was clear that while he was perfectly capable of killing these Zetsu creatures, being caught by them set off a trauma response too strong to buck entirely. Even with his powers, some fears cut too deep to just power through.

Good thing I'm here, then.

With Hayate in his shadow, Jason stalked forward. Lights overhead flickered like some kind of cheap horror movie, almost certainly because one of the other ninjas had gotten to the building's fuse box. All Jason had to do was modify his helmet's HUD slightly, and the display happily pointed out the closest survivor's body heat so he wouldn't miss his playdate with the Red Hood.

"Look, we can do this the easy way or the really easy way," Jason said to the nominally empty hallway. "You've got five seconds to decide."

The shape of the cornered ninja hadn't stopped moving yet.

"Four."

Hayate tensed against his back, as though he'd noticed something. The kid knew where Jason's spare knives were, at the back of his belt, so that was probably something that'd handle itself.

"Three."

A Zetsu clone burst from a room, only for Jason to level his pistol at its forehead and easily blast its head apart like a cantaloupe. White splashed across the wall and made yet a larger mess. No bone structure had some consequences.

"Two," was all Jason said to the corpse on the floor, before resuming his predatory stroll.

The ninja was trying to get into the vent. Only, since Batman was a thing in this town, Leslie kept her ductwork too small for vigilante access in the name of patient safety. He could walk into her office through doors like an ordinary human. Of course, once interlopers were out of her domain, the results could vary, but that was a problem for the future.

Hayate, recovered or else hiding his fear well, darted for the door. He tilted his head Jason's way as though waiting for the cue, one hand on the stainless steel handle.

Jason reached the door. The shape inside was just to the left, having moved to prime ambush position to jump them the second opportunity knocked.

"One."

And Jason put a bullet in the ninja's leg through the wall, because he wasn't born yesterday. The shape floundered and collapsed to the ground, which gave Jason enough time to open the door, grab the flailing guy's ankle, and drag him into the light.

Hayate worked fast, ripping the shortsword and knives away from the downed ninja and squirreling them away among his endless pockets. After fighting enough of these glorified cultists, their usual hiding spots were pretty easy to remember. Going by Hayate's own testimony, he'd been building a resume for just this task ever since he recovered enough to walk.

As a polite reminder not to move, Jason kept the barrel of one gun firmly pressed against the underside of the ninja's jaw. And a boot over the gunshot wound.

"You know, you ruined a perfectly nice evening." Keeping his tone light and conversational was truly a lost cause when his voice modulator made it all menace, but such was the cost of the Red Hood persona. Jason didn't mind paying it, especially now. "I actually thought Gotham might get some new blood, but instead we get you pajama-clad sad sacks chasing someone under my protection. If you've got any good ideas or last words, I'd suggest you get 'em out before I add to this place's cleaning bill again."

"Never, traitorous dog," the ninja choked, before spitting directly onto Jason's mask. Half of it fell back onto his face, defeated by gravity.

Charming. Honestly, Jason didn't know why he bothered being polite with these people. If they kept out of his business, he was perfectly willing to let bygones be bygones once the whirlwind murder tutorial tour was over. And yet, here they were. "Then I guess Doc has to replace her carpet here, too."

Before Jason ended the conversation there, and permanently, Hayate made a noise. Not a scared noise, exactly, but definitely surprised. Just a whisper of sound, but Jason's training and honed instinct for trouble dragged his attention from the downed ninja anyway.

"I can give it a try," said a new voice, about as low as Jason's own.

Jason spun on the spot and had his gun up before he even processed the sentence. For most of Jason's life, surprises were very bad things. Unexpected enemies, hidden weapons, bombs.

Standing right behind him, with one hand raised as though he thought he was in class instead of combat, was another ninja. Only, rather than the League's obsession with dark robes and black ski masks that they refused to admit were just that, this person wore one of those bone-white fashion statements favored by—

Oh.

"Obito?" Hayate called. His voice quavered, just a little.

The mask bobbed in a nod.

When Jason glanced at Hayate for confirmation, he'd gotten one of the League ninja's knives out and pressed the point neatly to the man's jugular, which explained why he hadn't moved despite Jason's moment of distraction. In a different time and place, that could've ended in yet another mess.

"Aniki, if we can't get anything out of him…" Hayate trailed off, tightening his grip on the ninja's neck when the man made to struggle. His hands were steady.

"Fine." Rather than fully stand aside, Jason inched back so that this "Obito" guy could barely slip past him and to the man on the ground. Barely holding back the bite in his tone, Jason asked, "What do you need us to do?"

Hayate, before there was an answer at all, let go of the enemy ninja and hop-skipped a few steps back until he was almost under Jason's arm.

"Nothing." Once Hayate was clear, the newcomer grabbed the League ninja by his collar and held him up at eye level with just his right hand. Red light seeped from the eyeholes of his mask, roving across the man's face like a retina scanner. As though he was trying to glare a hole through the guy's head. "I've been waiting for this all month."

Dread thickened in the air. Like being back in Hayate's sister's presence when her temper started fraying, the spine-crawling fear of a large predator was right back in center stage. Only, instead of something as alien as a demon's attention, this felt—human. Intelligent, offended, and perfectly happy to address offenses with snipers.

As though people couldn't also be monsters, a part of Jason's mind scoffed at the rest of him.

"I'll never talk—" the League ninja snarled, trying to struggle but getting nowhere beneath Obito's iron grip, which only tightened with a creak of leather. Clawing at the arm didn't even prompt a twitch of annoyance.

Somehow, Jason doubted the ninja's input mattered.

"Nah, you don't get a say," Obito said, in a mild-mannered echo of Jason's thoughts. His grip didn't waver, though holding a grown man in the air had to cause some kind of strain. Even Batman didn't show off like this for long before dropping the latest stooge off a roof.

The red light intensified.

Blood seeped from the League ninja's eyes, wide open and wild in terror, and maybe from his nose, going by the wet patch on the lower part of the man's mask. Red splattered the floor as he coughed and choked.

Gurgling screams almost drowned him out.

The League ninja stopped struggling—no more kicks with his good leg or clawing at the arm holding him two inches off the ground as he flailed. He went completely limp in Obito's hold as his eyes rolled back into his skull, head lolling like a puppet with cut strings, before the latter opened his hand and just let the guy fall like a sack of wet sand. The only sound was a ragged gasp before the guy on the ground stopped moving entirely.

Once the twitching was over, Jason checked his pulse. Just as a courtesy. Nobody tried to stop him.

Nothing.

Jason stood up. With this guy dead, there weren't any threats more pressing than the one who'd just declared himself a friend.

"Ooh, headrush. Hate that." Standing back a little, Obito shook his head and then waved in Hayate and Jason's direction rather than approach in a rush. Once he recovered from whatever he'd done to fry the other guy's brain like an egg, he said, "Hi, Ha—um, Suzaku. And Akaboshi-san."

Hayate took a careful breath, then ducked out of Jason's shadow with the knife still in hand. He stopped just short of crashing into Obito, slowing at the last possible second to wrap his arms around Obito's ribs without sending them both slamming into the floor like bowling pins.

"Long night, huh?" Obito curled around the kid's shoulders a lot like Kei had, spine and arms and all oriented in a protective embrace. His mask thunked against the top of Hayate's hood. "I'm so sorry it took us this long to get here."

"You're here." The black material of Obito's coat warped under Hayate's grip. "That's all that matters."

It was like they'd both forgotten the corpses on the ground. Which, for the most part, Jason had made.

That last one had been a real doozy, though. Even after watching it happen, Jason still found it more disturbing to recognize that much soul-killing malice coming from someone who wore a mask that looked like a fucked-up pug alligator with a blue swirly mustache on it. He'd almost laugh if that last scene hadn't been burned permanently into his retinas.

Shit, if these were Kei's friends, he'd hate to see her enemies. They were probably particularly macabre art installations by now.

"Yep! Stopped in to check in on Kei first—um. I mean Genbu." Obito's masked face jerked up in Jason's direction, and he let Hayate spin around in his hold and then dart back. "The Zetsu that attacked earlier came up from the ground, and Tsuruya says only these ones could've gotten past her. She made a huge mess on the street out of the other ones. You can go look."

Hayate almost seemed like he'd take the guy up on the offer, then paused. "Aniki. What did you want me to do, before?"

Oh, so now I'm in this conversation? Jason stomped down the burst of jealousy. "We needed to get Robin and the doctor out of here. Someone has to carry him for a running retreat."

"I can do that," Obito volunteered immediately. "Kei—I mean—well, you know what I mean." He rubbed the back of his neck, clearly embarrassed. "She wanted me to find you and that other kid and bring you back, so we could limit the number of places that might get attacked and maybe come up with a plan." Obito shrugged. "Should be pretty simple."

Which meant that if Hayate left, that would put him and Tim and Leslie in the protective shadow of the Bat, wherever the fuck they were. While probably safer than Crime Alley while it was besieged by plant-people and who knew what else, Jason was thoroughly not interested.

He tapped the kid on the shoulder twice and jerked his thumb over his shoulder, toward where Leslie was surveying the carnage wrought in her clinic. Leaving no attackers alive made all of it twice as offensive to the mission of this place. Still, Jason knew when a conversation needed to happen without an audience. "I'll get Robin."

"Got it, Aniki." And then Hayate drew a deep breath and turned back to Obito. He puffed up like an angry kitten. "The plan should be to rip them out by the roots. What's there to talk about?"

That gave Obito pause, head tilting as he regarded the smaller ninja. Though Jason could not see any expression past the porcelain, he got the distinct sense that it was something even ninja found distasteful. "That's a little complicated…"

Jason met Leslie at the door, holstered both guns, and said, "It's okay, Doc. I'll get him and we'll get out of here."

"Just be careful." Leslie let Jason through without any actual threats or the like, which was better than he deserved as Red Hood.

Strictly speaking, Jason needed his hands free to fight. Carrying Tim in his arms was a temporary state that wouldn't last longer than however long it took to foist him off on the volunteer. And Tim was too disoriented to struggle, protest, or really do anything other than tuck his head against Jason's neck to keep the room from spinning on him.

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, Jason thought, and made his way across the squelching carpet to the ninjas.

Who…appeared to break off a whisper-shouted argument when they noticed him and Leslie approaching.

Once Jason got close enough, Obito peered down at Tim with more theatricality than a real medic would, then sighed. "Yeah, he doesn't look good. At least Rin's waiting with her medkit."

"Just get moving already." Jason barely avoided snapping.

Obito nodded. He reached out with one hand and—

Tim warped out of Jason's hold, as though someone had turned his body into a cartoon or ink and sent him swirling down a drain. Or a rip in spacetime centered on Obito's hand. There was no warning or noise or even a cry of surprise, only a sudden lack of weight. Tim was just gone.

Jason clamped down on the urge to demand an explanation, because neither Hayate or Obito seemed even slightly surprised by the development.

"Doctor?" Obito asked. This time, he held out his hand in an offer instead of grabbing her. Like it was a choice.

Leslie took a second to steady herself, then slapped her hand against Obito's glove with no outward sign of fear. She, too, whirled away into nothing.

Jason still felt the urge to refuse when Obito turned his way. It would be suicidal not to, with the number of enemies potentially lurking everywhere and the sharp limitations on Jason's ammunition stores. At the same time, being dragged out of Crime Alley to face Batman's judgment here and now was throwing his entire plan out the window.

He couldn't.

He was the Red Hood.

It was impossible.

There was no coming back from the baptism of fire and blood that brought him here. Once destroyed for the sake of a lost cause, then revived and destroyed again. Outside of his plan, only the faint semblance of other concerns peeked through the smoke.

One of them was staring right at him. As though reading his mind, Hayate hissed, "Aniki, I'm not leaving without you."

In Jason's head, Kei's voice rang, cold and clear even through her accented English: "Hayate cares about you. He doesn't call just anyone 'Aniki' and claim them as family. Whatever you're doing with Black Mask and the gangs, be smart about it. And don't die."

He'd brushed off her backhanded concern at the time. Kei's entire knowledge of Jason's ambitions and grudges and planning ability were secondhand. She probably just saw a barely-older brat who would be a firework; loud, bright, and short-lived. And he didn't care if she was right, only that she stayed the hell out of his way long enough to finish his plan. That girl didn't care about him any further than his influence extended to her little brother.

But…Hayate did care. More than Jason deserved. Not even fifteen minutes ago, the kid had begged him, "Don't die. Don't you dare die. You can't."

Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit.

This was the kid who'd seen him drop during a fight and attack a bunch of power-suited mercs in a fury. Who'd fussed at him after every nighttime shift, like he could force Jason to live just by being concerned.

"I cannot even begin to describe how much 'staying here' is not an option," was Obito's immediate response. He even went as far as to jab a finger at each of Hayate and Jason in turn. "No. No, absolutely not. Nobody dies—besides the people who've tried to kill us. That's the rule."

Well, if it was a rule.

"You heard him." Jason nudged Hayate's shoulder, like the idea of running hadn't occurred to him. He was as much disguising the bitter tang of defeat with bravado as he was genuine. Fifty-fifty. Maybe sixty-forty. "Argument over."

There was something mulish in Hayate's posture that relaxed only when Jason agreed. And even then, not entirely.

Which was probably why Obito shrugged and put the inkling of a plan to bed by grabbing Jason first.

"Okay, so…"

The sound of Kei's voice trailed off into empty air as her explanation died, slaughtered on the spot by three judging pairs of eyes. Batman concerned himself primarily with risk assessment and damage control, centered around himself and his associates. Nightwing's priority list was similar, if not more intense, because as a solo act in Bludhaven, he had fewer safety nets. Figurative ones.

Kakashi, in contrast to both Bats, was the one Kei owed. The only person whose long-term regard mattered. Her main and most reliable ally, outside of Isobu.

There wasn't a way to satisfy all three brains and still make sense.

Konoha's spy footage played, soundless, on the screen behind the Bats.

"Try to imagine a movie. It doesn't really matter which one." Kei, put on the spot, would have hacked together a melange of Disney films if not for Isobu putting Godzilla to the forefront of her brain. "You can probably picture the whole thing as it flows from scene to scene. The plot, the visuals, the actors' performances. Or at least the pieces you care about."

"Following so far," Nightwing agreed, in the exact tone of a man humoring a civilian in order to talk them off a roof.

"Great." False cheer was beyond her, and the attempt made Nightwing wince. "So, imagine that, after you've seen it, once the credits roll, you're left with questions like, 'What would've happened if the heroes knew all the information at the start?' If the twists…weren't. It'd be different."

At some point during this hack job of a speech, Kei's gaze dropped to the floor. Not even noticing Kakashi's chakra edging closer changed her mind.

"When I was five, I started having nightmares so bad that I had to go meet a Yamanaka. They're a clan specialized in…brain stuff. Magically." Kei wiggled her fingers at her temple. Maybe it got across the idea of the mind-reader clan, maybe it didn't. "My brother dying, over and over again. The same way. None of the surrealism you'd get from normal dreams. Just this…horrible certainty, like someone pinned my eyelids back and wouldn't let me look away."

Kakashi's hand landed on her shoulder, squeezing gently.

Kei couldn't even remember exactly how she'd explained this on Mount Myōboku the first time. She suspected the only reason her story was accepted then was because the Great Toad Sage gave her the proverbial thumbs-up. He'd even deigned to grant their group a prophecy each, because they'd survived the scrap of plot that should have been a death knell for—everything.

And even if Kakashi called her out on the lies told here, he'd hold his tongue until they were in private.

"I couldn't take it anymore. But going there—it stopped them." Truth, but a specialized sort. It left out the less explicable reincarnation thing, where Kei started her existential crisis as a toddler because she was precocious like that. "The problem was that it kind of…collapsed a dam. The nightmares were bad, but they were just persistent, not…useful. I didn't know why my brother was dying, only that he would. And then I got twenty years of context."

"Not all at once?" Maybe it was that she'd laid her most obvious trigger out on the altar first, in a sacrifice play, but it did sound like Kei had managed to win Nightwing's sympathy for the moment. He'd leaned forward and the frown on his mouth was thoughtful, rather than disapproving.

Batman was harder to read. She had a dozen ideas of what his personality was like in her head, but it was impossible to parse which one had won out with so little data.

Some versions of what this man could be were…worse. Worse, like Kei couldn't think of monstrous things her most important people had done or would do, in the future. The difference was that Kei loved them, and could forgive almost anything, and she felt barely anything toward Bruce Wayne other than wary confusion. Hell, Kei trusted his crime lord son more than she trusted him, and that mostly because her brother liked that overly dramatic gun enthusiast.

"It doesn't really matter." Kei shrugged, stiff and uncomfortable. She crossed her arms over her chest, fighting down the urge to shiver even though the bunker was hardly cold. "It's been more than ten years since then. I figured out some things and broke some others, using what I learned. The future probably looks nothing like that anymore."

"The space-time continuum isn't a toy," Batman growled. Unsurprisingly, he adapted well to the idea of having to argue causality problems. "And prophecy always has a price—"

Too bad Kei didn't care.

"And my brother's future isn't up for debate," Kei snapped. Her eyes itched with Isobu's chakra even as he tried to reel her back in. "Haven't you ever known something horrible happened, down to the last detail, and wondered how things could've changed if you just knew it sooner?"

Kei knew he did.

And if Batman couldn't think of a single case that fit those parameters, there was always the definitive tragedy. Everyone in Gotham knew that the Waynes had died in Crime Alley thirty-odd years ago, even if they didn't necessarily care.

There was the death of his son. Red Hood was too fucked up for that whole sequence of events to have happened somewhere else.

Batman could take his "greater good" and choke on it.

"I learned my brother was going to die." Kei nearly drove her nails into her bicep. She was stopped solely by the thickness of her sleeve. "That my friends were going to be maimed, or die, or carry trauma for the rest of their lives, and for what? So some ancient warlord could burn the world to the ground out of fucking spite!"

Here, Kei gave Isobu enough knowledge of fūinjutsu that he'd never be taken by another jinchūriki. There would never be another Three-Tails jinchūriki after her. Even if she didn't mean to do it, it was a change that couldn't be taken back and she couldn't regret it.

Obito got to keep his home and his friends and his family, instead of losing it all because Madara thought he'd be more useful with his heart carved out. With his idealism set on fire and melted down to make something worse, turning him into the kind of person who started civil wars for fun and wanted to break the world over his knee.

Rin got to live. Sensei, Kushina, hundreds of other Konoha-nin—

"You didn't see what I saw. You don't live in my world." Her voice cracked under pressure and unearthed pain like a crevasse in the middle of her too-old soul. "Do not tell me I should've stood back and let my people suffer because maybe something said so."

She was shouting.

Why was she shouting.

Shit—

Kakashi's chakra buzzed at her side, and Kei forced down the remainder of her anger to lean his way, accepting the restraint and redirection. And closing her eyes in the hope she'd claw back control of her temper in time to avoid shouting again. Her control frayed worse than an old sweater under strain. And she needed enough help maintaining it that Sensei could only be disappointed once he learned about this.

Kakashi deserved better than this.

She needed to be better.

She needed not to fall for the most entry-level interrogation tactic in the entire world—letting a target run their mouth out of guilt and fear until something slipped. Well, Kei sure hoped Batman liked swimming through floodwaters. She was such a wreck.

"The power Genbu uses," Kakashi said in his calmest tone, "has prevented hundreds of deaths. And it's accurate enough that mission briefing packages she creates are considered reliable sources in the field." He shifted his grip to curl around Kei's shoulders, tucking her against his side even though she probably burned with Isobu's power. "She's already warned us that accuracy may diminish over time, but our home country's intelligence services existed before her and will exist afterward. Having an additional source is useful, not indispensable."

I would argue otherwise.

Honestly, the fact that he's backing up my account makes him indispensable. The story Kei told contained maybe half truth by volume; a real Jedi truth, dictated by careful word choice and differing points of view. It left out the key reincarnation drama, because that was too far. Just because it had been what happened didn't make it believable.

Kei didn't open her eyes again until she was sure she was back under control. Nobody had drawn their weapons in the meantime. Probably a better reaction than she'd earned so far. Kakashi had even decided to let her stand on her own, not even pretending to restrain her with that side-hug.

Have you ever, truly, attacked a human without violent provocation? I doubt it.

No, but…

And then Kakashi pulled a needle out from beneath his ANBU bracer and pricked the side of his wrist. A tiny bead of blood welled up, smearing against cloth as he made a series of hand seals.

"Byakko, I'm fi—" Kei swallowed the remainder of her sentence as he held out the result of his summoning jutsu, free of clinging smoke wisps. "Oh."

The surge of gratitude in Kei's chest could have knocked her over.

Pakkun stared up at her from the bowl of Kakashi's arms, then made grabby paws in her direction as always. Kei took hold of him like the reflex was a lifetime long, cradling the ninken like a baby, and finally took a seat at the table. Safely tucked onto Kei's lap, Pakkun shifted around until he could turn himself into a donut, wedging his short snout against her stomach.

"Thanks," Kei mumbled, noting the way the tension levels in the room had fallen again. It was almost like everyone could breathe again.

If Kakashi had summoned any of the others, they'd have been about eight times too excitable for the confines of this room. Pakkun, thankfully, had a cat's eye for situations to be treated with disdain. He even knew it wasn't a good idea to reveal that he could talk yet.

"Strictly speaking, how you know what you do isn't the highest priority." At some point, Nightwing had gotten close enough to slide out one of the other chairs and slip into it, putting him across the table from Kei like this was an interview. "Only the 'what' matters. So, using this…power, with its vague parameters, you were able to figure out the basics of operating in Gotham. Am I right?"

"Yeah," Kei said, still turning her head downward so she could focus solely on stroking Pakkun's ears instead of what she was saying. Or the faint chill of drying tears stuck to her eyelashes. Stress-crying sucked, even if it didn't get too far this time. She scrubbed uselessly at her face with her sleeve until Kakashi gave her a handkerchief. "It's just been a really bad month."

Kakashi snorted. "Understatement of the year."

"It's been a bad year too," Kei corrected, then felt the rush of shame for being the first one to lose her cool in this room. Hah, she'd been wondering where that was hiding. "Sorry. I shouldn't snap."

"At this point, you've earned a rest." Though he took the time to shoot a sidelong glare at Batman—who was still standing there, silent and stoic—Kakashi just changed the topic with, "But we do have other priorities."

"Like the League of Assassins," Nightwing suggested. "And the, y'know, shapeshifting alien invasion thing. Seems like a bit of an old hat to you both, given the lecture I got, but I'd like to hear if you have a plan of attack. I'm sure it wouldn't put B at ease, but nothing does."

For good reason.

"The Hokage's earliest stated preference is using our remote operatives to locate the enemy's base of operations and eliminate all threats." Kakashi's mission-bland voice made both of the vigilantes eye him. The difference was that Batman didn't disguise how dubious he thought this whole thing was, and Kakashi didn't bother hiding his disdain in return. "Konoha forces have already infiltrated and recorded the bulk of the underground structure for mission briefing purposes, with the expectation that a summoned beast force could be deployed minutes after the order is given. This plan has been put on hold."

The footage still playing behind Batman's shoulder indicated only one base so far, but maybe there was just a ton of recording left to go. The trick with Shimika's butterfly summons was that they were opportunistic little bastards, so the problem wasn't getting them to kill people. If left to their own devices, they could and would depopulate a town. The real trouble was getting them to stop. That was most of the reason Sensei didn't deploy them often in the first place. Since the end of the war, that level of indiscriminate destruction wasn't even a little necessary.

That's what he has us for.

"Good to know." Nightwing's expression implied that everyone was failing their way through negotiations right now, but he pushed it to the side. "Mind if I ask what changed your mind?"

"Once informed of the dead enemy combatants thus far," Kakashi answered with uncanny calm, "Genbu put in a request to cease such operations until communication could be properly established. If the situation was reversed and the repeated incursions were an effort to retrieve your people, your agents wouldn't be allowed to kill uncontested in our territory, so we agreed with the reasoning." He lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. "In the earlier stages of this plan, the goal was to retrieve Genbu and Suzaku and leave your city to whatever events were already in motion. The confirmed presence of a Zetsu clone infestation changes the math and makes your drama our problem."

What he didn't say was that Konoha still could leave Gotham to burn. The implication still hung in the air like a bad smell.

Nightwing looked like he wanted to laugh, but the atmosphere was trying to strangle him. "'Drama' is quite a way of putting how this month's gone so far." Even without being able to see his eyes directly, it was a little too clear that he was putting puzzle pieces together in that pretty head. "So, how exactly does this tie into the Red Hood thing?"

"If it wasn't for Suzaku deciding he had a new best friend, it wouldn't. But he's made his call." Kei let some of the bitterness seep through again. She pinched the bridge of her nose. "And I've made a deal with Red Hood for his sake."

"You could still order him to go home," Nightwing suggested. Hopeful, but not actually like he believed his words.

"Does that work on teenage superheroes?" Kei asked back, managing to keep the annoyance back this time. "Because while my brother does listen, I think tonight proves that even when he does, we're at risk."

Nightwing had a nigh-perfect record as a leader for the Teen Titans—or whatever people called them when the original roster was well above drinking age—going back to his days as Robin. At least, Kei was pretty sure he did. He'd probably spent time both herding cats and being the herded cat, and driven any nearby responsible adults to drink in the meantime. If he had any direct experience having the chain of command used against him as an admonishment, it probably came from Batman's side of things instead.

Kei would bet money that a man who made a point to set up shop outside Gotham during that moniker changeover probably didn't take orders lying down anymore. He'd spread his wings and didn't answer to Batman most of the time.

If tonight had gone to plan, Kei and Hayate would have disappeared into the city to hunt, rather than sit still long enough to be ambushed by massed Zetsu clones. They'd have cut contact with the Bats in the process. Maybe the immediate area around that safehouse would have still come under attack, or maybe it wouldn't have, but the opportunity was gone either way. And, in a way, being forced to split up and allow Hayate to seek refuge with Red Hood did keep him safe during the battle.

The thought occurred, way too late: Despite allying with the Bats—at least in name—they'd never all sat down and outlined a fallback position in case the safehouse was attacked. Lacking other options, of course Hayate went straight toward his backup guardian. He might have done so regardless, but that decision guaranteed it.

Without even a nod toward Kei's moment of belated regret, Kakashi intervened, cool as a cucumber. "Suzaku's trust in Akaboshi is not up for debate. Hours of observed interactions between them indicate he poses no threat to our people."

That's true today. And maybe just today. Kei thought she remembered Red Hood being specifically called a "wild card" when referring to his relationship with the other Bats, both for the murder thing and for being the family's self-identified black sheep, but the specifics were long gone. Or maybe the information had just never made it into her brain.

It wasn't like she'd ever kept great track of comic book events between all the retcons and writer changes. Being in the middle of a plot she could work out, now, was pure luck.

"While that's…certainly something to keep in mind, I meant how Genbu worked out so many details about Red Hood in the first place." Nightwing held up his hands in a quelling way as Kakashi bristled. "It's fine if it just comes from more mind powers you can't explain. But there's a security concern on our end, not just yours. We need to know how much you know."

"I know Bruce Wayne is Batman." Kei watched the words land like a meteorite strike. Watched Batman's face harden into a grim, cold mask, even though it didn't matter how he braced for impact.

"That's—" Nightwing began, but cut himself off at the expression on Kei's face. "Not what I expected. I suppose it's too much to ask that you haven't worked out the rest."

Kei didn't know what her face was doing. She mostly hoped it looked sincere.

"You're Dick Grayson, the first Robin." Kei saw him flinch just a little, but kept going. "The current Robin is Tim Drake. He's the third one." Each revelation was a blow, and she kept it up in Japanese because Kakashi was here, and deserved to know what the hell he'd walked into by trying to help Kei with anything in this fucking city. "And the current Red Hood is Jason Todd, the former second Robin."

Silence reigned for a second. Then two. Then five.

"Note to self: The next time I meet a psychic, believe them the first time." Nightwing scrubbed a hand over his face. When he was done with that, he sighed and knit his gloved fingers together on top of the table, amid the map section depicting Gotham's southernmost island. "To be clear, are we talking precognitive, telepathic, or…?"

Kei grimaced. An unaligned telepath would probably be the Bats' worst nightmare, but there was no way a man as paranoid as Bruce Wayne skimped on resistance techniques. "It felt like a mission briefing crammed into my head. I got names, places, rules—but all the information is useless the second I go home. We have too many of our own problems to go borrowing trouble from this world."

A spark of amusement from Kakashi, at least. Small victories mattered in a place like this.

That was as far as they got before Obito popped up through the floor like a twisted jack-in-the-box, shooting directly through the table and landing with a showman's bow on top of the map. With a grin in his voice, he said, "Baby bird delivery service! We've got them in red and…also in red! I didn't think that sentence through."

With his back to Batman and Nightwing, he didn't see the way they both went for their weapons. By the time he did turn, after getting Kei's deer-in-headlights look with Pakkun on her lap and Kakashi's exasperated sigh, they'd stowed the potential hostility.

Well, Nightwing did.

Batman still didn't look happy with anything that had happened recently. But for reasons that were his own, he was choosing to keep his own counsel and let Nightwing handle the talking parts.

Kei could relate. Most of the time.

Unless you focus too thoroughly on one task and then lose track of the world around you. Isobu peered out through Kei's eyes, taking in everyone's dispositions with the judgiest intent possible. One would hope this nominal commander is more observant.

Says the one who gets a conversation partner out of it.

Obito almost certainly noticed that brief flare-up of hostility. Even if he had limited visual range, his Sharingan gave him the kind of unfair advantage in fights that most opponents didn't live to see twice. He was just pretending not to, because it was more fun that way.

Instead of acknowledging the threat, he spun—his shoes getting dirt and Zetsu residue on the laminated surface—and bowed again. "Hi! Again. Hope the lecture went well."

"I'll call it a success if we can get Robin back," Nightwing told him, while Obito hopped down off the table. Some of his anxiety was showing through—not that Kei could blame him. "Is he awake?"

"Last I checked! Hang on."

Obito and Nightwing kept up a long string of chatter while Obito started unloading passengers—or interlopers—from Kamui. Robin was first, of course, and the distraction of having to hold him up so he could stay upright was enough for Kei and Kakashi to slip out of the conversation.

Rin came through Kamui's swirling portal next, loudly fussing over the injured party once she got her feet under her. She was holding a notebook and following Robin like a hound, pausing only briefly to shoot Obito an unreadable look between their masked faces. Then she was too busy to even talk about anything else.

Spoiler arrived a second later, catching Obito's hand on landing before following the tide. Kei had no idea how she'd found them—or Obito had found her—and it appeared no one was getting that story yet. It added to the noise.

Batman kind of just…surged around them, herding everyone toward the infirmary bed and barking orders. Like some giant armored border collie.

"Can't have the Boy Wonder faceplanting into a table, can we?" Spoiler asked in her bright voice as she slung Robin's other arm over her shoulders.

"At least it's not another brick," Robin grumbled back.

Nightwing argued with Batman over their heads, even as he helped carry Robin across the room and then shot toward the equipment rack for relevant supplies. Spoiler took up a post at the kid's bedside and continued chatting with him, undeterred by the older vigilantes' tension.

And then Batman was countermanded as Obito brought an older woman, gray-haired and unbowed, out next. Her medical mask and doctor's scrubs gave away some aspects of her identity, but Kei couldn't remember her name at the moment. Then the chaos was fully bilingual and involved putting everyone over in that corner into a tizzy.

With that distraction, Kei retreated to the computer and leaned against the desk with Pakkun in her arms. Even if she wanted to ask Obito why the hell it had taken so long to get back, that could wait. What Kei wanted more was to withdraw from the conversation and also maybe Gotham. And reality.

And what she'd just told a bunch of detectives.

I'm so dead.

Oddly, I hear your heartbeat and can feel you breathe. Whether this is a miscalculation remains to be seen. Isobu's confidence remained unshaken. We will survive.

I didn't mean literally dead—

"So," Kakashi said in an undertone, with his mouth nearly invisible under his black cloth mask, "how much of what you told them was true?"

"Most of it."

Kakashi raised one white eyebrow, specifically the one over his open Sharingan. He wasn't getting scintillating conversation out of following her away from the yelling, but maybe that wasn't the point. "Really?"

"Except for any time I said 'I don't know,'" Kei whispered back. Given all the impending nonsense, she also shifted Pakkun's weight until she could get one arm free and pull her mask down over her face again. "Or 'I think.'"

"...So, fifty-fifty."

"Close enough."

"Oh, hey," Obito said as he strode over, breaking up the remarks with a flutter of thick fabric and a windblown attitude. "Hayate wants to have a word real quick. In Kamui." His head twitched minutely so he could get Kakashi in his field of view, then he added, "Kakashi can come too, but nobody else."

Given the conversation she'd just been through, Kei wanted nothing more than to say no and put this off for another day. Or night. Or forever.

But there was no way she was going to refuse her brother's request, now of all times.

"Okay."

Notes:

Obito interrupting two scenes in one chapter? In this story? It's more likely than you think.

Today, Kei has not given the Bats an existential crisis, but they did get one of their family members back alive and coherent. That's nothing to sneeze at.

Kei and Hayate are both psychic, by some definition. Just not like that.