"Welcome! To…hm. You know, I never actually did find out where this place came from, only that it exists and it's mine." Obito was briefly tempted to thump him on the shoulder in a completely normal gesture of camaraderie, like Gai would, but figured it wasn't worth the risk of not getting all of his fingers back. "We've always called it 'Kamui.' Make yourself at home, and don't wander off a ledge!"

"…Thanks," was Akaboshi's response, once he'd gotten his bearings. "Not exactly the aesthetic I thought you'd choose. Very…geometric."

"I can't tell if that's an insult or not."

"Let's go with 'not' and save some time."

Kamui faked being a real place so hard that it worked, mostly, but there wasn't any disguising its baked-in creepiness. While Obito only ever brought a handful of people through this place at all, the general consensus was that a world made of shadows, white stone cubes, and indirect light was the kind of place that didn't have to be actually hostile to human life to be off-putting. The more practical reason not to let people in here was that Obito hated the idea of trying to dodge through something in the real world and getting someone inside Kamui hurt instead.

It didn't stop him from carrying stuff in it, though. Stuff was replaceable. If Rin wanted to have a whiteboard to sketch out her ideas, Obito would keep it safe and not worry too much if a kunai went through it at some point in the middle of a fight. If Kei wanted him to pack meals for a month in storage scrolls and handed a few to him, into Kamui they went. If Kakashi wanted to keep his dogs from shredding a year's worth of chew toys in one go, sure, Obito knew a place to hide them.

He still had a bunch of furniture in here from the last time he'd moved into a new apartment. And a whole set of bedding to go with the futon he sort of just left someplace dust didn't happen, and a chest full of Rin's surplus medicines. And on the couch sat the actual Rin, because their argument about whether she'd get to come out of Kamui with him to retrieve Hayate had lasted about two seconds, and Obito won.

At the moment, though, there was a bit of a problem.

"Holy crap, is that the Red Hood?"

Guests.

Honestly, Obito needed more time to let the new language settle before he tried dealing with any of these people in theirs. Ripping that guy's brain apart for useful information was something he didn't like to resort to, because while he could never forget anything he learned through his Sharingan, but now he understood the background chatter and…didn't really want to.

Sure, it was worth the cost to discover what all the creepy shit was, but Obito's impending headache was going to outlive some of their enemies at this rate.

Oh wait, it had.

Just needed to keep that up.

Unsurprisingly, Rin and the local doctor had gotten Akahige—Robin—stretched out on a mattress and were both monitoring his condition. He was still woozy enough that the atmosphere change from the clinic to Kamui was probably not helpful, but he'd get his legs under him soon enough. Maybe he'd be able to fight soon after. According to Rin, all the locals lacked the chakra circulatory system that humans were supposed to have, but Obito supposed they'd gotten used to it somehow. It just made predicting health outcomes harder.

Obito had nicknamed the other girl "Murasaki" for wearing so much purple, but now he could remember what she'd actually said and work out her name through his newfound proficiency in her language. "Spoiler" was a little weird, but if she insisted…

Oh, and she was standing in a direct line between Robin and Akaboshi like she expected Hayate's friend to walk up and stab him. Her baton was out and everything. "What are you doing here?"

"Escorting the bird brat somewhere safe. If I'd wanted him dead, I'd have done it ten minutes ago," Akaboshi told her, crossing his arms and standing well back from the medical drama in progress. Obito needed to figure out how to copy that way his voice warped, just in case he needed to masquerade as Akaboshi someday soon. "Pump the brakes, Spoiler."

"I don't take orders from you, Hood."

Akaboshi sighed. "I'm not gonna make a mess in someone else's house. It'd be rude." He made a show of looking around the place a little more thoroughly, since with his helmet it wouldn't have been obvious otherwise.

And in the meantime, Tsuruya—Obito's biggest passenger by far—grabbed the end of Spoiler's cape and tugged her off-balance.

"Ow, jeez, are you trying to kill me? I think the meteorite missed a dinosaur."

She also might have jabbed Spoiler in the butt with her beak in the process. Obito didn't want to be sucked into a potential argument, so he pretended he hadn't noticed.

Tsuruya, who had about as much mastery of this language as she did of chopsticks not attached to her face, replied, "I doubt anything you just said was polite, so I expect improvement."

Which was kinda funny, since Tsuruya had by far the highest kill-count of tonight's haul. When the Zetsu clones made the mistake of acting up outside of the clinic, mostly in an effort to get in, she'd sliced and diced them like particularly ugly vegetables. The only reason Spoiler was even here was because, between the hail of steel feathers and Wind ninjutsu, Tsuruya had decided the only non-Zetsu of all the outdoor fighters deserved to live.

Sensing the tension in the air—because it was obvious to anyone not otherwise preoccupied—Hayate hopped down from the stone column he'd landed on, snatched Akaboshi's arm at the elbow, and immediately dragged him up and out of range of a casual argument. Sort of like an ant picking up a piece of food bigger than it was. Before they disappeared over the edge, Obito saw both Spoiler and Akaboshi move their heads like they were glaring at each other.

Though between the helmet and the full-face black morph mask, it was only because of his Sharingan that he could interpret that much. They were both ridiculous. Didn't they know there wasn't any hostility to spare for normal people when there were Zetsu clones on the loose?

"I've never had to think twice about treating someone without a chakra coil system before we arrived here," Rin complained, even as she monitored Robin's condition with her medical ninjutsu, "because most people with that problem are dead. And now it's like people just walk around without vitals like it's no big deal."

"To them, it's probably not," Obito replied. He'd expected there to be something weird going on here, but admittedly that wasn't on his list either. "Can't miss what you never had."

"I suppose." Rin still sounded miffed. "Kei's lucky her little trick didn't stop his heart."

"Trick?"

"Her chakra is right here," Rin said, lifting one hand to hover just above Robin's weird little yellow-on-black symbol. It took Obito to a couple of seconds to pull enough language knowledge together to identify it as an R. A letter. "Robin doesn't have the circulatory system to get rid of it."

"Uh…"

"He has a circulatory system, for blood," Rin corrected herself. Well, now that she'd pointed it out, Obito could see the Water-tinged glob pooled under her hand, and how it was getting smaller under her influence. "Just not the right one for this. Given the poison in his veins, I'm amazed he lasted long enough for Kei to even do that much."

"So what did Kei do?" That seemed more important than…biology…questions. Obito didn't know what he would do if it became a theology problem.

Rin paused, long enough that the remainder of Kei's chakra was safely dispersed. Though she clearly kept some of her attention on the only person too woozy to stand, she still replied, "I suspect she felt his respiration rate drop and improvised something to open his airways and compensate for that. But it's done its job."

"Uh, while I did get around to downloading Japanese on my phone," said Spoiler, finally waving her hand for attention, "I didn't catch all that. Can you say it again?"

While Obito's approach had been definitely noticed by all three of the locals, it wasn't like they did anything about it. Robin was too wobbly, the doctor was focused on making him less so, and Spoiler was very focused on trying to keep potential fights to her and Akaboshi rather than a full-on brawl.

(Which Obito would win, even if he had to drop certain troublemakers out of Kamui and into a dumpster to make sure they stopped going for each others' eyes.)

So it took a little bit for anybody to actually address Obito and Rin after Obito sat down. He even got to tuck his legs under him like he was planning on attending a tea ceremony instead of someone's sickbed. Sickbench? Whatever.

Rin angled her head so she could peer down at the phone, thoughtful, then said, "For the sake of the patient, it's better if I don't treat any of his injuries because our physiologies are a half-step off from each other and could mean I'd do more harm than good."

Five long lines of text resolved themselves two ways on the flat glass screen. One was in a language Obito understood even upside-down, and the other was the weird cobbled-together monster that Spoiler was reading, which forced the whole neck-twisty bit. He could understand both sets of words, but it'd go all wiggly in his vision if he kept it up for too long without giving his brain time to process. He blinked a few times to try and make his eye stop watering, but it didn't help a ton.

While Obito didn't rip info directly out of people often—since secret files were already a hundred times easier to steal when he could walk through walls—he'd done it enough to determine the absorption rate was "after a good night's sleep." Little bits of other people's thoughts would float up at random in the meantime. Given his quick entry and exit strategies, he could usually manage to find a bolthole.

It was just that tonight was…something new. And not necessarily fun, with all these people in the same place Obito usually retreated to when pressed. Endurance runs kinda sucked.

"Oh," said Spoiler. She shifted her weight a little, scooting closer to Robin so he could have a shoulder to lean on between the pendulum-swaying he was doing. "Genbu said you were magical, but I didn't really think about what that meant. Do you have like…a spot in your brain that does the heavy lifting? I think someone said once that their telepathy came from something in the hypothalamus once."

Rin waited for the translation, then laughed when she read it. "Is your nervous system considered an organ here? If so, yes."

"That different, huh." Spoiler's mask betrayed only a little of that astonishment, but Obito spotted it. The rest of her movements kind of gave it away, like relying on a full-face covering had made some of her acting skills go all rusty from lack of need.

"Very different," Rin agreed. She reached over and pushed Spoiler's phone away, trying to direct the other girl's attention back to Robin. "But for now, that makes you the best available assistant. I'll just take notes."

There was a bit of a delay. Because the act of translation was like that. Obito's brain was just doing it faster than Spoiler could, at the moment. "Gotcha. You can count on me. And you too, Doctor Thompkins."

"Then I'd like you to focus," was the doctor's not-super-gentle response.

With that, Rin finally decided to scoot back out of the potential trouble zone so she could find her notepad amid the rest of the stuff Obito stored for her. It clearly pained her to do it, but Spoiler spoke the same language as the doctor and could avoid needing to go through the phone-person-phone-person mess of trying to communicate. While Obito didn't think Robin would suddenly pop a blood vessel and die on the spot, it still saved on some frustrating seconds.

Tsuruya stayed, poking her long beak into Robin's space to make sure his reflexes were still solid. Probably. She definitely tested Spoiler…'s patience. But it could be really hard to directly argue with a well-meaning bird the size of a cow, even if there wasn't a language barrier. Spoiler was losing.

Obito, for his part, checked on the other half of his passengers. No visible fires yet, but better safe than sorry.

"Hey, mind if I join you?" Obito said, lifting a hand as he arrived on the same bit of white stone where Hayate squirreled Akaboshi away. Just at the bottom of the weird not-mountain instead of the top, standing there and waving. "You can totally say no."

The red helmet peered down at him. "Does it look like I have a choice?"

"That's Aniki's version of 'sure,' just so you know."

"One of these days, that creative approach to interpreter duties is going to get someone shot in the face."

"You're the one who speaks, what, five languages? Just work around me."

"Ach. Was du nicht sagst."

Obito supposed the bad guy—whose name was…René, apparently—didn't know that language, whatever it was. The rest would settle.

Seemed like the other two could keep at it for a while. Obito made his way up anyway, hopping from platform to platform with the lightness of a goat. Or, well, a goat that found its climbing skills thoroughly underwhelmed by a world where half the footing was made of cubes.

It wasn't every day that Hayate latched onto someone so hard that there were still finger-creases in that jacket, at least someone who wasn't Kei. Actually, even then, Hayate did his best to build up his own shinobi career without his sister's shadow hanging over his accomplishments. He got flustered or tetchy if people implied they saw him as a junior edition of her. Sure, that same connection got him more access to tutors—mostly her friends—but it bothered him all the same.

And here he'd made a friend all on his own. No village command structure here. No overprotective big sister to scare people off with her death glare.

Coincidentally, Hayate's appropriately clever and vicious local guardian drove Kei up every wall in the city. It hadn't stopped being funny yet.

The three of them ended up sitting in a row, legs dangling off the side of a drop-off into darkness, more stone, and maybe the unknowable void. Obito hadn't exactly gone spelunking down there. Akaboshi was on the far side of Hayate from Obito, and all of them were like little birds sitting together on a power line as though something interesting might yet happen. Obito made sure to give Hayate enough space immediately around him to swivel whichever way the conversation went. Akaboshi only had one leg dangling, with his other one folded in such a way that he could kick Hayate in the butt with a huge boot at will. And he was still sitting close enough to use Hayate as an armrest.

And Hayate was totally cool with this arrangement. Interesting.

"I didn't really introduce myself before, though I guess Hayate did." Probably a safe opener. "But you can call me Obito. Or Seiryū, if you care about the mask thing coming from us. Kei said it was about keeping up a trend. Anyway, it's nice to meet you!"

"…Likewise." Akaboshi tilted his head a little. There wasn't any expressiveness in the mask, and his body language was closed-off and tense despite the presence of allies, but maybe he just didn't trust them? "Are you supposed to tell me your real name like that?"

To that, Obito could only shrug. It wasn't his hangup. "You clearly know Hayate's name, and Kei probably told you hers when she visited you without the masks. And if Hayate trusts you, that's enough for me."

"If you get any sappier, they'll call you a tree," Hayate suggested, a little of his energy coming back for the sole purpose of teasing. "And then where would the big, bad Phantom be?"

"Pff, I beat you there already." Obito twisted his right hand, palm-up, and a curl of Wood Release sprouted from his wrist to curl around his fingers, like Asuma's trench knives. "See? It's even got leaves."

"Ugh." Hayate definitely rolled his eyes. "After all that whining you did when Kakashi—"

"—And we don't talk about his shitty jokes," Obito interrupted. "Obviously, mine are better."

"Just because he got a book the first time—"

"No."

"You're boring and I hate you."

"Wow, this is the thanks I get for not wanting to relive the horrors of Kakashi learning humor? I see how it is. Sheesh, you could've given me a little notice before firing me as your favorite babysitter."

Hayate puffed up in affront. It was kind of adorable, given how he was still clearly damp from the rain and his hair still hung in unhappy strings and over his be-goggled face. "You have literally never—"

"Hayate? Can you come down here?" Rin 's voice called from below. When they all looked down, she was standing almost directly below them with her hands on her hips. With only about a ten-meter height difference between the two platforms, she hardly needed to raise her voice to be heard. "Can I take a real look at you for a moment?"

"What—oh." Hayate winced as he held out his hands, as though they'd gone stiff after all the fighting he'd done tonight. "I'm not hurt, not really."

"That's a less confident answer than I'd like."

"I was just in two fights! Two! I didn't—" Hayate interrupted himself with a yawn. At least, he moved his head like that was the problem; the mask did its job a bit too well. Goggles, too. "Nothing even broke skin. I mean, my skin. The other guys died."

"Yes, I took the blood and Zetsu goop as a hint. Still, all the more reason for me to check."

With more bratty grumbling as background music, Hayate shuffled off the platform for a brief freefall to meet Rin, then they both took off to a different corner to whisper-hiss at each other. While Hayate liked Rin well enough as a person, he could be an escape artist when it came to medical checkups and often tended his injuries on his own. Obito, who liked being fussed over because the caring was the important part, figured he was spoiled and just let both of them handle things however they wanted.

"So," said Akaboshi, even as his gaze seemingly trailed after Hayate, "did you get any info out of that guy before you boiled his brain out of his head?"

"Some, given the complementary headache." Obito tapped his temple, though his fingers couldn't get through the side of the mask. Bonk, bonk. "Give it a couple hours and I'll have his entire life story. Just needs to settle first."

"Straightforward of you, and I'll ignore the nightmare material hiding in the implications if you do."

"Sure!"

Akaboshi didn't look like he knew how to respond to that any better than Nightwing did to Rin's scorpions. So, he didn't.

"I know the situation isn't ideal, but it really is nice to finally meet you." Obito leaned back a little on his hands, idly kicking his legs. "Finding out that Hayate's had someone to rely on this whole time was a huge relief. I didn't even get that much of a look at the city out there, really, and it makes my skin crawl to imagine him out there alone. So, thank you."

"Yeah, well," Akaboshi muttered, shifting like the praise needled him. "Someone had to."

"Just because someone should doesn't mean they will."

Obito held back from offering his hand to shake or patting Akaboshi's shoulder, like he would to Kakashi or Kei. Akaboshi had curled up a little, arms crossed, and seemed about as receptive to that kind of thing as a Suna cactus. Maybe one of the really nasty, thorny, shrubby ones. Seemed safer to stay away.

"Ain't that the truth."

Hm, genuine bitterness. Probably had something to do with the Bat-people, given how Kei talked about them. She'd said that the locals put on masks to go beat up criminals for some reason.

It wasn't like everyone read in on the Kei-and-Hayate-are-missing situation was miraculously unaware that Akaboshi had issues. Tons and tons of issues. He was a big guy and ran around in a red helmet and killed people at night, sometimes with Hayate shadowing him in disguise. Civic goodwill was fifty percent less likely in people who did that kind of thing, unless they were ANBU, and even then…eh. Obito generally considered ANBU a group pointed at the enemy the same way as a Fire Release ninjutsu, not so much enforcers of law inside of the village.

Obito tilted his mask to one side, so his Sharingan was trained solely on Akaboshi.

The difference between Akaboshi's personality around Hayate alone and with more people was fairly stark. Before finding a spot to conveniently jump in and grab both of them, the guy protected Hayate with the same ferocity Kei used—if with less power. He made up for it with ranged murder instead of turning an enemy into a jumble of limbs.

Usually.

Though Shimika said he was a deft hand with a hacksaw. Ten minutes spent with one saved thirty with a shovel when it came to corpse disposal, for people who didn't have Kamui. It was a practical skill.

Akaboshi, as a local, navigated this world entirely differently than Kei would. He had resources or at least experience that nobody else in Hayate's corner could claim. Hell, half the reason Kei was so upset about him probably came from the realization that, even if Hayate had found her immediately, she might not have been able to protect him. There was no better way to crack open her shell and stab her squarely amid her insecurities.

Anybody Hayate trusted this much was a person worth knowing. And not just to vet them.

"What, something wrong with my face?"

"I mean, I can't see your actual face, so…" Obito shrugged, though Akaboshi couldn't see his mischievous grin either. "It's not every day we meet someone as interesting as you are, Akaboshi-san. Or Akaboshi-niisan?"

"Please don't call me that. I can take 'Aniki' from Hayate, but that's pushing it."

"Aw, c'mon!"

Akaboshi shook his head slowly. Once again, Obito spotted the way he fought down that urge to fidget like a person who was complete crap at receiving compliments. It was simultaneously sad and kind of funny to watch. This guy didn't get enough positive reinforcement.

"Isn't Genbu worried about what I'll do to these squawking little birds?" Akaboshi said it like a taunt, like Obito would lean over and cuff him upside the head with his right arm instead of just giving him a weird look. Like he wanted to get kicked out and left to fend for himself. "I'm not exactly shy about the crime lord thing."

Obito couldn't hold back a laugh. Sort of a shriek that ripped its way out of him, almost crowlike and sharp all the way through. It rattled off the stone and made Rin look over for a second, but it made Akaboshi flinch.

Just for a split second. A person with weaker eyes might not have noticed.

Obito couldn't miss it. But he did move right along. "Kei left her heart in your hands twice and you still think she doesn't trust you to do the right thing? What the hell. You sure you have eyes under there?"

"Excuse you—"

"And even if she didn't, Hayate is the best judge of character I've ever met. If he says you're good, he's right."

Then the words really sank in and seemed to draw Akaboshi up short. "Wait. Her heart—?"

"Hayate. Her whole reason for living, some days. Anyone who knows her knows that." Especially recently. Though it's not like I've seen much of her for the last six months. Obito let his voice fall and his words sharpen, putting the kind of weight behind his statements he usually shied away from. "Don't pretend that doesn't matter. Nothing matters more to Kei than her brother."

And besides, Obito had heard what Akaboshi told Spoiler for the sake of their tentative truth here. He was fishing for a response to justify his bad attitude.

Akaboshi was silent for a long moment. It wasn't the silence of someone surprised or shocked by new information, but more someone finally putting an equation together and seeing the answer for himself. And seeing the shape of it wasn't necessarily making him any happier about it.

Akaboshi dropped his helmet into his hands like he'd prefer to beat his head against a table instead. "Augh."

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait. She told you, didn't she? She told you right to your face that she cared the most about Hayate and you didn't get it?" Obito bit down on his totally sympathetic laugh. Or, mostly. He tried, at least. "She never once thought you'd hurt him. Sure, she wants Hayate within her sight because she's up to her eyeballs in anxiety, but at most maybe she hates that your lifestyle choices are dangerous. And Hayate clearly knew he should go right to you if he needed help."

"Then why the hell are any of you letting him go out and kill people?" Akaboshi burst out at last. "He's fourteen years old! His voice still cracks and he's got a body count in Gotham."

"He was with you for those, though."

"He was not." Akaboshi's voice was a hiss. "He killed two men the first time we met, and we hadn't even introduced ourselves yet." Akaboshi took a steadying breath so deeply that his helmet wheezed with him. "God. I don't blame him for his choices. But—look, he's a kid. He should get to do kid things. Not this."

Obito eyed him. And tried not to think of Kakashi for the sake of the punning. "He started later than we did."

And not during a war. Hayate avoided the parts of the shinobi lifestyle that involved dragging corpses into mass graves, or being caught in sieges, or needing to bomb infrastructure to control the enemy's movements. The muddy, bloody, limb-severing parts.

That helped.

"That's also fucked up." Akaboshi's tone stayed flat, but his body language was agitated at best. Maybe a little desperate. "You know that, right?"

"Well, yeah. But that's what our world's like."

"Your…world."

Something in that tone was a warning, and yet Obito didn't know exactly how. Maybe Akaboshi hadn't realized they weren't local? Only that didn't make any sense. He was smarter than that. Natives always picked out fakers, except maybe trained infiltrator types, and none of Team Minato's members were specialists.

Obito decided not to worry about. Kei would've probably told this guy eventually. "Yep. Makes going home kind of a pain!"

"With that portal power of yours?"

"I—ow." Behind his left eye socket, a steady burning sensation built up in a way that felt familiar. Obito turned away, swinging his legs over the edge of the precipice. He closed his other eye, right before the gray—the phantom view from Kakashi's half of their Sharingan pair—took over. "Hang on a second."

Cutting extra input made the sensation easier to handle. It pulsed like a headache even as Obito pressed his hand against the rounded edge of his mask right above his cheekbone.

The image blurred like overexposed film, at least at first. But Kakashi's view cleared up after a couple of blinks. And there was Pakkun's little squished face, staring up from Kei's arms. Kakashi—who couldn't go around using his chakra frivolously and complained about the smell of the city even between Zetsu kills—wouldn't have summoned Pakkun for anything less than an emergency. And given how the vague shades of Batman and Nightwing seemed to be giving them some space, maybe…there had been one. In a confined space.

Not good. Kei needing a dog, and Kakashi getting stressed out enough to cause Obito sensory headaches? Bad signs all around.

Obito opened his eye again, then swung his head toward Akaboshi again. "Okay. I'm not saying you're wrong in theory or anything. It really does seem simple at first glance! But as the person who owns this place, I've gotta move some bodies."

"I hate your wording and you should feel bad," Akaboshi replied, but the tension in his frame was gone. "Fine. Go be a magical cab driver."

"What's a 'cab driver?' Oh, wait, like a courier?"

"Just go already."

Bossy. But the enlightening conversation had to end sometime.

Obito dropped down to "ground" level, landing with hardly a missed beat as he checked in on the two ongoing medical intervention. He didn't bother to hunt down a book or other entertainment for Akaboshi in the meantime; as a theoretical adult, or at least an equal, he could keep himself busy without needing the host's undivided attention. Maybe he'd clean his weapons or something.

While Hayate was trying to edge away from Rin as far as he could while his wrist was still in her unbreakable grip, like a dog facing a manicure, he cheered up when Obito approached. At least, as far as Obito could tell. They really needed to have a conversation without all these annoying masks.

"So, how long do you have?" Obito asked him, grinning even though the kid couldn't see it.

"I'm going to outlive all of you. Duh."

"Cute." Obito patted Hayate on the head and mostly caught his hood. "And Robin-kun?"

"I dunno, ask him?"

"I thought you two were buddies."

"We've met a total of twice."

"Huh. Thought you'd be a bit more willing to branch out and talk to kids your own age."

"For all I know, Robin's eighteen and just short." In the end, Hayate shrugged. "Oneesan knows them better. And can talk to them, so…"

Obito felt his stomach drop a little at the reminder. Knowing how he heard and understood their language came up short as an explanation for Kei's proficiency. Unless Isobu somehow brought this information to bear for her, which Obito doubted, that mystery remained unsolved. "So you noticed that, too. Did she explain it?"

"Nope. She said I didn't have the correct security clearance."

Reasonable, but Obito didn't know either. He focused elsewhere, like the obvious. "Well, you don't."

Hayate jerked in offense. He finally leaned out of Rin's grip and hopped out of her grabbing range. He slugged Obito's fake shoulder on his way up, annoyed. "Neither do you, apparently."

"Rude. But true." Obito scratched the left side of his face where it peeked past the porcelain. The side with his Zetsu-grafting swirls and whorls was strategically more covered by his mask's slightly uneven design, and his left hand was the one with fingernails anyway. "Did you want to head out now that you're all fixed up, or…?"

Hayate's head twitched like he cut a glance toward Akaboshi. "Um…"

"Think on it," said Obito, and went to check on the three locals he'd sorta-kidnapped.

His three remaining passengers/captives/whatever sat in a triangle arrangement, with Robin in the middle and supported by Spoiler, while the doctor packed up the go-bag she'd grabbed at the last possible second. Obito barely avoided accidentally cutting one of the straps off during the transportation process. From a quick glance, all three of them were in better spirits—and Robin more capable of keeping himself vertical—than before.

"As fun as the scenery is," Spoiler said as Obito approached, holding out her phone as text crawled across it, "I think it's about time for us to head home. You're the one in charge of mysterious world-crossing portals, right?"

Obito waited until the text finished loading, which helped disguise his comprehension, then replied, "I'll drop all of you right in front of Batman. Does that work?"

"You can just do that?" Spoiler's surprise sent a jolt through her. Her hood rustled as her attention shot between her phone and Obito's casual demeanor.

"It's not exactly hard." Obito shrugged, which was maybe a step too far on the acting front. "I'm sure everyone's worried."

"I'm worried too," Spoiler admitted, but didn't present that comment to him for review. She inhaled sharply, held the breath, then let it out slow. "Okay, get us home."

"There's absolutely no way I'm going to avoid this debrief," Robin mumbled. His face was a little pinker around the edges of the mask, and at the tips of his ears. "Just having to send someone through first to catch me is bad enough. Benched for a week, minimum."

"I'm sure you'll survive the humiliation, Boy Wonder," Spoiler replied brightly. And with that, she hauled Robin to his feet with his arm over her shoulders. Since she was a little taller than him, she also took the care to adjust her grip on his waist and settle him on his feet with all due care. "Your incredibly detailed and frankly worrying record of martyring yourself for Gotham kinda speaks for itself."

"No comment." Robin grunted as the motions jostled something anyway, but didn't tell her to stop.

Obito watched this slow-motion process for a second later, then cupped both hands around his mouth and called to Hayate, "So did you decide if you're coming along or not? You can get in line!"

Then he remembered the mask in the way, which doing that kind of ridiculous.

"Just tell Kei we've gotta talk!"

That'll raise her blood pressure, Obito thought. "And Rin?"

"I'll give you an anchor to find them again," Rin replied, even as she watched Hayate dart up toward Akaboshi's brooding corner. With a toss of her long braid, she strode over and got into line with her notepad in hand. "Just remember to tell me if something happens. Otherwise, I'll be working."

Well, it wasn't like she could steal a medical textbook by staying in here. Prior to this, Rin already sat around and waited for a patient influx to no avail, so it was probably better to mix things up a little. And if the Zetsu clones did mount another attack, she'd have a bunch of allies to at least slow them down long enough for Obito to get back and stab things.

Or maybe he could kick Akaboshi out into the middle of that festering argument, then grab Kei and Kakashi, and escape in the confusion. Only, if following Kei's lead and treating most of these people like allies, that'd probably result in an unfortunate bloodbath. Which was counterproductive. And would make Hayate cry.

Obito waved the idle thought away and stepped into the real world again.

Without Spoiler and Robin and Doc Thompkins in Cube Hell with him, the already-eerie space fell silent aside from his own breathing and the trickle of noise that marked Hayate's existence. Jason shifted his weight to knock the heels of his boots against the white stone precipice, with solid-sounding thunks of rubber on rock. The vibration bounced back up his legs and helped get the blood flowing again.

Leftover adrenaline left Jason clammy under his armor, even though he'd rolled up his sleeves as the sweat cooled. From a certain perspective, his night was already far longer than normal. Between his rush through patrolling his territory, the clash with Batman, the brief recovery in his apartment, and then everything that cascaded after Hayate's sudden arrival, Jason leapt from crisis to crisis as though tripping through an entire line of figurative frying pans. The fire, though, seemed to have stayed its hand for now.

Obito—or Seiryū, between his forgetful moments—controlled all entry and exit points. From the way the portal effect moved around him, Jason suspected the resident class clown ninja used his own body as a medium, though he didn't have enough data to be sure if it was a power that only affected things within arm's reach. The Flash dealt with Mirror Master and his portal bullshit through cleverness, slight of hand, and knowing every weakness among the Rogues from long familiarity. But from Jason's observations so far, Obito wasn't using outside equipment and displayed the kind of telepathic power that made direct confrontation a bad idea.

Good thing he was an unrelenting goofball. At least, so far.

"Aniki?" Hayate nudged Jason with his elbow. "You're worrying about something, aren't you?"

"Nothing too serious." If Hayate trusted the other metahuman ninjas—reasonable, given he'd known these people his whole life—and Obito insisted Hayate's judgment was as good as gold, then maybe it wouldn't be a fire. The shuffle from danger to danger could stop.

But Jason doubted he'd be left at peace in Crime Alley again after tonight. If the Zetsu clone guys were as persistent as piranhas, the ninjas who viewed them as mortal enemies were sharks. And he didn't doubt they already had his scent. So to speak.

He needed to get back out there and start cleanup.

"Liar." Hayate leaned forward, trying to catch Jason's gaze despite the mask. "If it wasn't serious, you wouldn't even bother worrying in the first place."

Not wrong, but— "Nothing for bratty little kids."

"Oh, like you're so much older—!"

The bird, who had given up on bothering Spoiler only once she left, took a running leap and crossed the distance between the "ground" and the raised platform in a blink. Her wings swept shut well over Jason and Hayate's heads with a noise akin to someone sharpening knives. Her feet didn't have the talons of a bird of prey, but each claw was still the length of Jason's pinkie finger where they clicked on stone, and the stubby fourth one had a dull hook. Three long toes spread her weight across two spaces as wide as two dinner platters, like some kind of dinosaur.

Though, given the magical bullshit going on, maybe the giant crane didn't count as as much of an avian dinosaur as an Earth bird did.

Even as Jason yanked his hand out of potential stomping range, he wasn't afraid. He'd run out of true fear for himself except on bare, hindbrain-level instinct. But he did need his hands for the next stages of his plan.

Hayate used Jason's shoulder as a pivot to angle himself up and hiss at the bird, like Jason couldn't advocate for himself and his unstomped limbs.

"While I do understand your argument," the bird said in pitch-perfect Japanese, her accent even more precise than Hayate's, "I would never harm an ally." She tilted her long face so that she could point one eye at Jason's helmet. The other, given the arrangement of her skull, would never quite cooperate. "Akaboshi-san, my apologies for the lack of warning. I failed to realize how small this space truly is. I hope you can forgive me."

"It's fine, no harm done," Jason found himself saying on reflex.

Tsuruya's diction wasn't in the same voice or anywhere near the same accent as Alfred Pennyworth's, but it stirred similar emotions. Maybe it was the seamless flow between deadpan teasing, easy deference, and ironclad competence.

Jason's plan was…undergoing revisions.

It was obvious now that there was no avoiding the drama that came with being "Aniki" for Hayate. Even if Jason did foist the kid off on his biological big sister to get work done, Hayate just came back amid the chaos of planning a campaign. While, yes, Jason maintained his control over the drug trade through fear, Hayate's presence undercut the mystique he'd tried to build. Even if the kid was half-myth in the eyes of an already superstitious collective of henchmen, people had eyes and ears. It reminded them of Robin—unavoidable, infuriating, and terrifying all at once.

About the only consolation was that, rather than Hayate being a target because of Jason's actions, Ra's al Ghul seemed to want the kid alive for some reason. Captured, probably traumatized—but alive. The ninja Obito psychically stabbed in the skull hadn't been talking, but he'd avoided either a killshot or drugs despite the opportunity the Zetsu clones gave him by pinning the kid to the floor. That said a lot on its own.

There was no way for that path to end anywhere good.

At the same time, the situation was darkly funny, because between the Lazarus Pit turning Jason's higher brain functions back on with a side order of agony, his habit of dealing with unauthorized League ninja incursions by killing them on sight, and the way Talia was impossible to contact now, Jason was certain Ra's al Ghul wanted him dead.

Again.

Two teenagers—three with Kei in the mix—pissing off a man old enough to have seen the rise of Old World empires with his own eyes. It was like he had nothing better to do with his time.

It did present a moderate practical problem, though. Jason could pull as many stealth entrances and explosive exits as he could plan, but in the end, the surest way to guarantee a secret stayed sealed was to make sure everyone potential witness was too dead to wonder about it. He'd long since blown past the threshold where all of his work was hidden from Bats and pigs alike. If the Demon's Head made a real effort, he could track Jason down in a blink. And while Jason didn't fear any half-dozen League assassins and would happily deal with new serial killers in Gotham the way he did the others, it would keep him too busy to enact any other plans.

Honestly, he was pretty sure the core goon squad were already making up stories about how the Red Hood was really an ex-yakuza enforcer who decided to try his luck in the States. Maybe from the Triads if they had zero language recognition skills.

Jason didn't really care about their opinions any further than what it took to maintain control.

The Joker was out, initiating the "why won't Batman pay attention to me" part of his pattern.

Bats of all configurations should've been busy dealing with that and the clone army crap. Maybe busy enough to drop the ball with the clown and call in the Justice League.

And in the meantime, Jason was stuck in this shadowy hell and feeling his plans crumble around his ears.

"—never stops thinking, not really," Hayate was saying to the bird, having shifted so he could sit back to-back with Jason. He could feel it when Hayate heaved an exasperated sigh. "He's just like her, Tsuruya-san."

"I confess, I don't see the resemblance, but you have spent far longer around both of them. Though Keisuke-sama would undoubtedly be offended by the comparison."

"That doesn't make it less true," said the certified menace. "She'd admit it if she could see past her own nose right now."

"Now that was uncalled for, Hayate-kun."

Jason was briefly tempted to lean backward with his entire weight to teasingly squash the kid flat, but refrained. He'd definitely cite this incident as character assassination later. Instead, he tilted his helmet to the side and said, "You think making me and your big sister get along is gonna solve everything, don't you? Newsflash, kid: none of our major issues are with each other."

"I never thought they were?" Hayate thought that over. "Not from your side, anyway. Oneesan's being a stubborn grump."

"Hayate-kun," the crane said in a clear scolding tone.

Hayate wasn't interested. "I'm still not wrong, Tsuruya-san."

"The only overlap between our problems is with you getting into trouble all the time, and that's exactly as far as it goes." Jason didn't bother to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "You're not going to magically talk your sister into being one of my employees, are you?"

Hayate snorted. "She'd say you couldn't afford her anyway."

Well, Jason had hired her for one job. Judging by the half-assed way she went about it and then basically sold him out to the Bats, though, he'd say she wasn't worth the wasted money.

"But I don't get why you don't think she'd like you if you just got to know each other," Hayate went on. "She already knows—"

The spike of sudden anxiety hit Jason in the gut. What could she possibly know?

He opened his mouth to demand an answer, but was immediately derailed.

Behind him, a stray footstep had him shooting to his feet and whirling on the spot. As soon as he recognized the shape passing through the invisible curtain, though, his hand came away from his gun holster. With a dog nestled in her arms, even the white mask intimidation factor fell flat on its face. Hayate's sister was tall enough to nearly look him in the eye, but tonight had decided not to even make the attempt.

Instead, she knelt to set the dog down on the white stone, shuddered, and opened her arms toward Hayate. Even with her face hidden by that spiky mess, her voice let the relief shine through, clear as day. "I kept my promise."

"You did." Even with that sniffle in his tone, Hayate hugged his sister hard enough to rock her backward. Into the visibly-damp fabric of her hoodie, he mumbled, "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

The dog circled around them a couple of times, then pointed a stubby brown face toward Jason. At a glance, the dog was a mixed-breed or throwback pug, with darker-than-typical coloring and an uncurled tail. Even the muzzle wasn't quiet as short as a show dog, the wrinkly face punctuated by a pair of droopy eyes. It wore a little vest with a cartoon face on it, and a strange bandanna with a metal plate wrapped around its head.

"Hope you're friendly," Jason muttered, and extended a hand for the dog to sniff. He clicked his tongue a little. "Here, boy."

The dog wagged its tail and approached. Once close enough and after having passed the sniff test, the dog accepted Jason's glove-impeded neck and ear scratching as tribute. This dog couldn't have been more than ten or twelve pounds. Tan fur rubbed off on his gloves. Going by the lack of obvious scars or signs of neglect, Jason wasn't sure if this was supposed to be someone's service animal or an actual combatant.

A League ninja would drown the animal without a second thought.

"Oh, hello. It's been some time since we last met, hasn't it?" said Tsuruya as she stretched her neck to put her beak in range of the dog's face. Her beak clicked dangerously close to Jason's fingers. "Pakkun-chan, is your master with you?"

That metal plate, Jason realized, bore the same spiral-leaf symbol as the headband Hayate kept in one of his many pockets.

"He's staying there," said the dog. He leaned his head farther into Jason's fingers, having noticed that Jason stopped. "Hey, you're good at this. Keep it up."

It was somehow worse to hear a dog speak in a human voice than a huge bird. Unlike Tsuruya, whose voice was naturally mild and feminine, Pakkun sounded like a middle-aged man with a theatrical streak. While in children's movies and weird comedies, a voice actor would just dub over the unmoving animal's image on film, the effect in real life was just uncanny.

"All right. Should I call you Pakkun…?" Jason let the sentence trail off. He couldn't decide if he was going soft or if the ninjas' constant "baffle them with bullshit" tactic was actually working on him. That would have implied planning and social skills that he doubted any of them had.

"Hm. Sure, kid." Jason decided he'd take that kind of condescension seriously when it wasn't coming out of a dog that would lose a fight with a squirrel. Pakkun's tail was still wagging as he said, "If Obito and Kei-chan are here, someone has to stay with Rin. So, no more visitors for a while."

As though on cue, Hayate and his sister broke apart from their hug. Time for different dramatics.

"You're not hurt, right?" The human weapon held Hayate out at arm's length, setting him back in his heels and then ripping her mask off with a quick motion. The stress in her face was neatly reinforced by the yellow glow dead center of both her eyes. "Let me see you."

"I'm fine, but okay," Hayate muttered. He stuck the goggles up on his forehead and pulled the red metal mask down so it hung from his neck. "See?"

She cradled his face in her hands for a long moment. Then her shoulders dropped, her face relaxed, and she hung her head with a sigh. "You're…"

"Impossible?" Jason suggested.

Kei's yellow gaze darted toward him for the interruption. There were definitely two sets of hostile thoughts pointed his way. "I don't want to hear you calling anybody else that, ever."

"Oneesan, no."

She still avoided using a snippier "you" for Jason, but her tone made it clear that was the barest courtesy pointed his way.

Jason laughed; a little cruel, but it wasn't like she didn't have a point.

The general fussing continued. While Tsuruya jabbed Hayate's sister solidly with that huge beak at least once, and Pakkun eventually wandered from Jason's reach to accept praise and affection from other people, it wasn't too noisy by the end.

Then Obito stepped back into the pocket dimension, looked down at the august assemblage, and groaned. The pets extended him only vague concern, then left the platform. When Jason looked, they had found the mattress used for Tim's treatment and were nesting on it.

"Are you okay?" Hayate asked him.

Obito flopped down on the bare stone like a cat going liquid, heedless of the way the ninja bookends oriented toward him like they had the impulse to catch him—and then failed to act on it. From his new horizontal spot, he muttered, "I don't know about all of you, but I think I need a break."

And Jason needed this glorified parole officer to let him out of the Phantom Zone ripoff so he could get back to work.

"I think we need to talk," Hayate said, leaning forward so he could get everyone's attention.

"Ugh," Obito whined, facedown on the rock. "If this starts a fight, I'm going to have to kick somebody out where Rin and Kakashi are, and then that'll be a bigger fight, and then all the Bat-clan are going to be mad at us. I just need five minutes."

"You just left a meeting with the Bats," Jason said, his voice gone flat.

"Actually, I did it twice! But this time it's not a weird rescue mission thing."

"…I see we've given up on code names at the first hurdle," Kei muttered, even as Hayate offhandedly patted her shoulder. It probably felt about as condescending as it looked. "Fine, sure, whatever."

Jason ignored her in favor of her apparent teammate. "Then… Thanks for not dropping me in the middle of that mob, I guess."

"I mean, I thought about it." Obito managed to get his elbow awkwardly angled on stone so he could raise his arm, then wiggled that hand in the air in a seesaw motion. "But it probably wouldn't have been that funny."

"Gratitude retracted."

"Could still do it if you're bored!" Then Obito brought both hands up to claw at the edges of his mask, which kept him occupied.

Hayate and Kei just leaned on each other like bereft bookends, though the tension between them was still perfectly clear.

There were too many people here. And while Jason would happily abandon this powwow in favor of his safehouse in Crime Alley, clone army be damned, because all of these kids were—

Kids. Jason swallowed.

Hayate was fourteen. His sister, sixteen. Given how they interacted with Obito, Jason was sure they had to be closer to peers than a true chain of command. Though Obito was probably around Dick's height, Jason doubted anybody on their roster had hit eighteen.

God. This situation was such an unmitigated shitshow. Jason was past the point of being able to pretend that any of these brats were the face of child-abusing evil. No, each represented a finished product of that monstrous system. However the exemplars of indoctrination got here—and Jason got enough of a Titans vibe from them that he doubted this trip was co-signed by their bosses—they were still young. Maybe not naïve, because innocence survived battle the same way fish adapted to frag grenades, but…

And then Obito finally got his mask off and heaved himself into a sitting position, with his ankles crossed and his face bare. The porcelain clacked to the ground. "Ugh, I can finally breathe again! I don't know how Kakashi does it."

And in the eerie half-light, Obito looked like a child-friendly version of Two-Face.

"Something wrong, Akaboshi-san?" Obito asked, bloodshot eye plain to see. There was only one—on the scarred side. The other got an eyepatch instead. The ribbed flesh on Obito was Zetsu-pale instead of pitted, splattered scarring. Like a graft. Like badly molded clay, with the fingerprint ridges left in plain view. "You're kinda quiet…?"

Someone did that to a kid. The easy, unselfconscious way Obito moved and spoke to people hinted at the age of the injury, whatever it had been. That physical trauma happened years ago. Going by the way the discoloration stretched down his jaw and neck, the initial incident probably flayed him. Jason didn't know whether he'd been conscious or not.

He hoped not.

"What happened to you?" Jason asked, tapping at his own cheek despite the helmet, knowing the ninja would get the message anyway. They were generally pretty quick on the uptake, even if Obito couldn't read a room for the life of him.

"Mission gone bad," was the response. With a quick glance at his teammate, and then a wince directed at Hayate's presence more than him personally, he added, "We were infiltrating another country and got caught. And, well, things went bad, and I ended up a little crushed." He leaned back on his palms, then shifted to just his left. With his right, he drew an invisible line from the side of his nose and down across his torso. "Or a lot crushed. I think I died."

Jason's blood ran cold.

While Jason hadn't completed his mental sketch of Obito's character, he mostly seemed like yet another happy-go-lucky brat waltzing into the bloodshed with ignorance as his only shield. Until that mask lifted, anyway. Or, hell, maybe it was all a matter of swinging back and forth between the persona that could rip someone's soul out with a stare and the goofball who seemed to casually share vital information just because. Maybe Jason had to find a way to cram those pieces together even though the jagged edges didn't fit.

Maybe it didn't matter at all.

Maybe they were just all monsters, born of fate and hatred, and this strange place was their impending cage match.

"We don't know that's what happened," Kei said, but not really as an argument. She, too, glanced at Hayate. "But…"

So, she was in on whatever it was. And her brother wasn't.

"I think I know what parts I've lost," Obito said with a sigh. He fidgeted a little, pressing his palms together. His right hand was, apparently, either double-jointed or inhuman. Probably the latter. "Rin and I sat down once and worked out the math. I owe about a sixth of my body mass to grafting and experimental surgery with Zetsu parts. That rockfall should've just killed me the second my blood could circulate again. Being crushed probably kept me alive long enough for the rest of everything, in a twisted kind of way."

Jesus. If Jason got spontaneous cosmic whim and a Lazarus Pit to cap off the resurrection trauma, then it sounded like someone had gone full Frankenstein on this guy. How did the horror of having to dig himself out of his own coffin compare to that? Was it even worth making that into a contest?

Kei bowed her head. "I never should have let you—"

"Don't ever apologize for leaving." Obito poked her in the shoulder with his presumably-human hand. "I told you to run, didn't I? There wasn't anything you could've done. We both knew it." With that argument made, Obito turned his attention to Jason again. "Went out on a mission, got maimed, forced my best friend to transplant an eye into our other friend with my last wish, and then got my name carved on a memorial. So much for a happy ending, right?"

"We finished the mission." Kei's voice was as bleak as her expression. "It was all we could do."

"I mean, I'm pretty sure you killed most of the other guys, too."

Jason stuck to the important facts. Words fell like lead weights. "But you came back."

"Yeah." Obito scratched the side of his nose. He'd tilted his head back to stare up into the featureless void, as though eye contact was suddenly too tall an order. "Six months trapped in a cave with my 'rescuers' and would-be masters, and the physical therapy was an actual nightmare, but I did make it." He laughed faintly, almost disbelieving. "I made it home."

Though he still rested his shoulder against his sister's, Hayate's gaze cut sideways toward Jason. "Like… Aniki, did you…?"

Jason was torn.

On one hand, the fact that any of this had happened in the first place was a cut-and-dried tragedy for all of them. He'd told Hayate what he could stand to, in the expectation that the kid would leave the story lying there. The more fool him for thinking that it'd stay any deader than he was. Telling this kid a single thing in confidence didn't mean much when Hayate was so tied up in his culture and his family and the fucked-up teachings that defined them. His soul felt like it'd been dragged ten miles down bad road just to get this far.

On the other—

God, Jason burned with envy he wouldn't dare speak aloud. It was hideous. It was a writhing pit of black sludge just below his lungs, threatening to drown him. Every inch of him prickled with shame.

Oh, Obito got to wriggle his way out of hell and right back into the open arms of his family and friends, and his killers had probably outlived him by about five minutes. His loved ones were already well-versed in war. The idea that whoever trapped this one-eyed brat in a landslide was still walking around? Absolutely laughable.

But that entire scenario was a crystallization of everything wrong with them. With their world, if Obito was to be believed. Kids made into killers by their parents and teachers, sent into battle and then dying in a relentless, useless war, and seeing the tide of blood roll in and out forever. Of course a society like that didn't have trouble "getting" guys who killed their friends. Another solution probably never crossed their minds.

Who could really envy that?

And still, Jason burned. He had to ask something else. Had to steer the conversation somehow. "How'd they get you if you can teleport?"

"I couldn't at the time." Obito rolled one shoulder. Probably his human one. "But I guess I have the perfect counter to ever being buried alive again. Just, y'know, eight months too late to keep all my original limbs."

Meanwhile, Jason's murderer was still running around, a cackling aberration in the night. He was probably killing someone ironically right now.

Not for much longer, one way or another.

In a way, Jason had also picked up the skills necessary to never end experience that particular hell again. He couldn't say for sure if Obito had done that consciously, but Jason most definitely trained. Though he hadn't taken the rather gauche step of naming his weapons things like "Consequences," it was certainly implied that Jason's weapons were earmarked for usage on a very small list of targets. It was just that other people kept getting in his way.

But he couldn't say that. Couldn't pour that into an unsympathetic ear, too soon after confessing trauma and ugliness to Hayate tonight.

"Let's not talk about this now," Kei said, saving Jason the trouble of coming up with a response that wasn't complete nonsense. But gently. When Hayate made to protest, she leaned more heavily on him and said, "Here, no one can listen in, but we're all cornered. Akaboshi-san can't leave without Obito's permission, we just got out of combat, and I…don't think I can do this right now."

"Oneesan…"

There had to be an end.

Obito nudged Hayate's sister with his foot. "Need longer than five minutes?"

"We're going to take the rest of the night off." Kei reached up and rubbed her temples with both hands. "Digging the Zetsu clone nest out was a partial success—"

"I mean, I know we got all of them," Obito offered. "They don't blend in as well here, and you know I wouldn't have stopped if there were any of them still around."

"—but there could be more nests," Kei continued, glaring sidelong at him. "And Akaboshi-san still needs to secure his territory against them, and then there's the League of Assassins to deal with. The Bats should go crying for help from somebody with better scanning abilities—" The idea made Jason want to burst out in bitter laughter at the absurdity of the idea, right to her face. "—to bolster their operations. All of our problems are starting to run together."

It was strangely heartwarming, in a backhanded and thoroughly grudging way, to have Jason's concerns acknowledged by this particular teenage girl. Sure, he didn't actually care about the gang, but they were mostly stationed in Crime Alley among civilians and were still useful for now. Letting them get picked apart by an enemy they couldn't see was…unfair. Maybe unjust.

And probably concurrent with this discussion.

Still, Jason at least knew the next step there. If shapeshifting monsters were a real consideration and could pop up in enough places to overrun his territory, the response could only be well-placed violence. If he could pick out the hostiles before he shot one of his own men in the face by accident. Going by Hayate's account of the battle in Midtown, these ninjas were perfectly capable of ripping the opposition to shreds even during stacked fights, and any one of them could probably serve as a helpful assistant during a counterplay.

Hayate was out. He was too young for this shit. Even if he knew Crime Alley better than any of the others, Jason was a local guide and could solve his own goddamn problems without relying on a child.

Obito was…an option, and had already demonstrated his escape artist powers. If Jason could stomach it, and if he could follow goddamn orders, maybe that would be doable. Morally repugnant, but still a potential opportunity. It didn't have to last.

He was already a crime lord. The rest was for historians to scream about in the future. He'd burn bright and fast, but he'd burn.

Hayate's sister, meanwhile, just frowned at him.

"Thanks for the fleeting consideration, but I hope you don't expect me to sit here for the rest of the night." Jason raised his arms in a sweeping motion, encompassing this entire cubist shadow world. As he dropped back to a casual sprawl, Jason added, "Despite the accommodations on offer, there's an apartment and bed calling my name from Gotham. If we're shutting down everything for the night, I'd rather be a little less kidnapped."

"But what if one of the Zetsu gets you while you're sleeping?" Obito wanted to know. The concern on his face almost looked real, at least until he took a moment to rub his reddened eye.

"I'll be fine." The monsters hadn't actually tried to attack until he and Hayate were both pinned in a single location for more than fifteen minutes. And they were definitely after the kid.

Hayate adopted a stubborn jut to his jaw. "Maybe we should camp out in your apartment."

Kei appeared, momentarily, like she wanted to throttle Hayate but would happily displace that urge onto Jason instead. The look faded along with the yellow glint to her eyes. "No, Hayate."

"We were safe up until tonight! Nobody came after us until we'd already stripped the safehouse and were planning to leave! And Aniki said I'd always have somewhere to retreat to."

Jason wasn't taking that back. But that'd certainly been a decision made without having all the facts first. Not a mistake, exactly, but certainly a choice that made him recalculate damn near everything since.

Oblivious to Jason's inner conflicts, Kei just rubbed her forehead again and groaned. "Obito, can you get Akaboshi-san safely home? I think we need to have this argument in private. Preferably before the Bats can ask interesting questions about who's hanging out in here with us."

Obito glanced between Hayate and Kei, then winced preemptively and said, "Oh, yeah, sure."

In short order, Jason was dropped in Crime Alley with a masked doofus as his main escort through the rooftops. The smell of the city was the same, but the shadows felt somehow longer in the predawn hours and Jason's was definitely occupied. Obito hadn't bothered to put his mask back on, but the hood was up. He matched Jason every time he darted to a new alcove, silent.

And there were Zetsu clones strewn across the street around the clinic and backlit by police lights. From the second floor of the dilapidated apartment complex, Jason could almost make out the long brown coat and hulking frame of Detective Bullock.

"Well, the good news is that you're probably not getting linked to that." Obito raised both hands in a mild-mannered placating gesture that would've probably gotten a more hostile response out of Jason on any other night.

As it was, Jason just sighed and said, "You're not going to leave me alone, are you?"

"Safety concern, so nah."

Okay, regardless of the sympathy levels involved in teenage trauma, Jason slotted Obito into the "annoying" category. He'd kick the guy out to go back to his pocket dimension and not worry about this shit until everyone was in a more useful mindset. He needed time to process, too. Or sleep. Or recover from that fucking Bat-brawl not four hours ago.

For now, keeping their worlds separate—figuratively and literally—was a better plan.

This assessment did not change in the morning, when Jason found his apartment covered in paper talismans and three ninja teenagers camped out in his living room.

Notes:

1. "Murasaki" can be translated as "purple." There are other ways to get the same idea across, but Obito drops it quickly regardless. It's also coincidentally the name of a character in the backstory of Kei and Hayate's mother, but that one's dead like nearly everyone else from that segment.

2. "Ach. Was du nicht sagst." = the German equivalent of "you don't say?" with the sarcasm turned up. Jason canonically speaks German, but is perfectly willing to fake obliviousness to get the job done.

3. "Ten minutes with a saw saves you thirty with a shovel" is a likely-misremembered quote from Team Fortress 2's online comic series. Miss Pauling's job has a lot of demands in the body-disposal department. As does crime-lording.

4. One of the items in the first round of "Let's Gei Kei and Hayate Back" testing phase was summoning Tsuruya, then having her try to reverse-summon Kei back to Konoha. It failed, and admittedly would have left Hayate stranded even if it did work.