Notes: NaNoWriMo was a bit of a bust this year, but at least y'all get this! :)
"We weren't actually here the whole time," Hayate told Red Hood, sitting across the kitchen counter from him on one of the narrow stools. Each of them had a slightly uneven leg, so he wobbled back and forth like noisemaking was a competition. "And definitely didn't eat all the ice cream."
Blue-green eyes narrowed suspiciously at him. Even so, Red Hood scooted the breakfast plate across the table with a faint scraping noise, just to put it within Hayate's reach. "I think I would have noticed both of those things, but thanks."
Hayate cut into his omurice with a spoon, smearing the decorative ketchup. "I promised I wouldn't touch the chocolate one. Which is gross anyway. I had to scrape it off my tongue!"
Red Hood rolled his eyes. "And there it is." Then he went back to the stove without so much as an untoward grumble, like this happened every morning.
I begin to see the appeal of this "Akaboshi" as a provisional guardian.
Kei screwed up a stroke on her latest paper bomb from gripping the brush too tight. As she drew through the characters to scrap the seal, she told Isobu, I cannot emphasize enough how much that is not helping.
Who said I intended to help?
Then what are you doing?
Annoying you.
It seemed the fight last night hadn't relieved Isobu's restless energy at all.
Sleep fixed Kei up like nothing happened in the first place. Even the harm done by carelessly reinserting Isobu into her chakra coils had only knocked her down from full strength for about ten hours, pain be damned. The fight with the Zetsu clones barely cost her a quarter of her remaining power, and going V1 at the right moment brought her back to normal in every sense aside from emotional exhaustion. She wasn't in danger of killing herself through overextension anytime soon.
But there were always other concerns.
Obito was still starfished out and dead to the world, heedless of the ongoing detritus of Kei's fūinjutsu drafting. He had a pad of bandages and a medical herbal mixture stuck to his face with medical tape, which would've rendered him blind if he was awake enough to care about it. Between the healing Rin got him to accept and chakra exhaustion, Kei figured he'd rise around noon or later, ravenous and sore, and eat everything in Akaboshi's fridge. In the meantime, he was a snoring monster sprawled across the air mattress he and Hayate had shared last night.
Hayate had actually tied a knot with the thinnest blanket, attaching Obito's ankle to the coffee table's nearest leg, and he'd slept right through it.
Kei, for her part, managed about four and a half hours on Red Hood's middling quality couch before she gave up and got back to her part of the job. Commandeered Hood's coffee table and ignored the smell of gunpowder and oil and occasional cigarette ash, just cleaning it away without a word so she could work. Even if Sensei hadn't sent along a to-do list for editing her work on the Isobu Independence Seal—working title—she still had an arsenal to create. Or recreate, depending on exactly how many of her talismans Hayate had used while living as Red Hood's underage roommate.
Obito, always eager to facilitate whatever the rest of them were trying to accomplish, would drive himself into the ground for the team's sake without a second thought. Fighting last night, then using Kamui so often and for so long that he'd practically face-planted into the floor after putting up all the security seals—it was too much. If Rin hadn't yelled at him yet, maybe Kei should make up for the lack.
After he woke up.
Strictly speaking, Kei didn't need Obito to do much of anything for a while. She'd already copied all of the surviving fūinjutsu marking up his arm and flank. He could just rest. Aside from his mimicry of the people writing the talismans, which even he admitted wasn't consistent, Kei could do the rest of the work on her own.
The decision to split their team for the remainder of the night had been a difficult one, but possibly inevitable. Rin and Kakashi weren't the best-suited team for collaborating with the Bats, what with the language comprehension shortfall on both sides, and yet Kei couldn't discourage them from it. Rin wanted the chance to observe medicine in this world and on its occupants, while Kakashi secured the perimeter against Zetsu clones with Bull as his backup scent tracker. All of them knew ninken could pinpoint their target's chakra signature as well as their scent as a part of their training. With basic precautions, Kakashi could locate the enemy and avoid being spotted in return.
And they had the most energy left after the night's trials. Better get in a half-shift of work before the city awoke and made panicky noises about the "supervillain" attack.
Not that Kei could blame them. Gotham wasn't specifically known for threats that deleted city blocks, but that didn't mean some Rogue hadn't, at some point, done exactly that. Or at least forced an evacuation. Probably with a chemical attack. The Zetsu clones just…didn't particularly match the Gotham profile of "PhD and/or serial killer with a fixation on Batman and/or murder." Sometimes Kei wondered if the city had a form letter where people could literally check off boxes with those parameters to report an encounter. It would save some of the paperwork.
…Had anyone thought about shoving at least seventy percent of the Gotham-origin Rogues elsewhere? Like, maybe, the surface of the moon? If the Watchtower existed in this world—possibly as a secret—there were likely space-oriented heroes who could leave the Joker in the asteroid belt for the rest of his miserable existence.
That reminds me, Kei thought as she prodded Isobu, that none of us have specific defenses against aerosolized poisons. At least, I sure don't. If something happens—
The cure may be worse than the disease, Isobu warned her. His tails waved with anxious energy; neither of them really liked the idea of forcing Isobu to fight within the limits of a human body. He barely understood the point of having legs. If you are entirely compromised, then I would not be able to seek permission to control your body in your stead.
Which came with its own problems. The chakra burns she'd dealt with earlier were nothing close to the problems caused by a berserker state. While Isobu taking the lead directly, rather than fighting her will the whole way, would mean Kei could shake off the aftereffects, they'd certainly never tested it in this sort of uncontrolled environment. If one of those darts struck home like the League of Assassins had been hoping, the crash course in seeing how hallucinogens interacted with V2 would have been…rough.
Better than dying, though.
We would not be at risk of that, no.
But if people Kei didn't really trust—certain winged mammal-themed heroes, for example—stuck themselves in her crosshairs out of a misguided sense of duty, their survival odds were not great. She wouldn't give a shit if the only people within murder range ended up being a smattering of Gotham Rogues or maybe even the Joker if she was lucky, but she usually wasn't. "Good riddance to bad garbage" only applied in situations where she could control who got pulped.
Gotham was too dense for that.
It was kind of funny, in a way. Kei killed for mission reasons. Everywhere else, she held back. The promise of pure, unadulterated rage hadn't been fulfilled, even for Hayate's sake. Not really. Her personal killcount in Gotham was still zero, with the possible exception of that one League ninja she and Hayate just…let go, right into a crowd of Zetsu clones clamoring for blood.
Kei didn't know if that counted or not. She'd also avoided tallying the Zetsu clones in her personal assessment of lives ended, because otherwise the number would be six or seven times higher.
But she did know that, without a hint of remorse, she was relying on the threat of immense violence to keep people in check around her. When bystanders knew she could crush them if they provoked her, it didn't foster trust. But it did mean they were wary of testing her limits. Knowing Hayate was under her protection made him safer. "Don't make me come over there" with a side of amateur limb removal with whatever tools she brought to the party.
One would hope that even the lowliest Zetsu clone keeps some modicum of self-preservation and might leave us alone, but it is a futile wish.
Kei didn't dignify that with a response. But she did look down at her work and find a neat stack of explosives had materialized off to the right of her writing hand. She'd need to check them over, of course, but her preliminary judgment was that Hayate was probably restocked now. She set her brush down on its little cradle to start flipping through them to check for errors. No one needed to go around losing fingers because Kei's paper grenades included drafting errors.
Maybe due to the blood component, fūinjutsu ink usually dried faster than the norm. Once the actual seal was complete, it also resisted smudging or water damage. Therefore, the spelling problem on the sixteenth seal was definitely just her own shitty handwriting creeping in. Given the particular way that character went wrong, the timer on this one was ten minutes instead of ten seconds.
Kei made a note of it and removed it from the stack.
"Hey." A plate clunked down on the table next to her hand, with a serving of omurice identical to the one Hayate demolished already. There was a spoon on the plate and a napkin pinned underneath, and that was definitely Red Hood carrying food to the disaster zone table for her. Grudgingly, going by the look on his face, but he was still doing it. "Eat something."
"Thank you," Kei said, and was pretty sure she managed to sound honest. She shoved her work to one side and accepted the plate with both hands, setting it on the table atop a stack of blank paper. "Next time, you could ask me to help."
"I wasn't raised to make guests work for their keep." Red Hood didn't immediately leave, though. Maybe it was time for one of those long, difficult conversations Kei would contemplate throwing herself out a window to avoid.
"We were raised to expect food to be a collaborative effort," Kei replied, eying her brother and his pointed refusal to turn around and meet her eyes. Probably that guilt in his chakra signature. "Next time, then."
"If there is one." Red Hood dropped into the armchair off on Kei's right, clearly intending to stay. Instead of a plate, his serving of omurice was in a bowl, and his spoon was one of the flatter, circular ones Kei suspected was supposed to be for soup.
Obito punctuated this forcibly civil conversation with a loud snore.
Red Hood cast a concerned glance in Obito's direction, but Kei's best friend was too busy sleeping off the chakra exhaustion to notice. A wrinkle formed on Red Hood's brow, blue-green eyes narrowing in scrutiny. He'd given up on the domino mask entirely last night. "Is he okay?"
"He should be," was her reply. "He was doing a lot of the heavy lifting last night, but he's usually up again by the next day."
The next snore sounded like a clogged vacuum cleaner. As they all watched, Obito threw his arm over his face and curled closer to the table, hugging a pillow and somehow still not waking. He'd flipped exactly the wrong way to notice the restraint on his ankle.
Kei could reach out and undo it before he did. She didn't. The broken lines of the fūinjutsu work marching up and down Obito's artificial arm kept Kei cautious of interrupting his recovery, no matter how informal and fitful. "Maybe last night was a bit much."
"Sounds like," was all Red Hood said, with his mouth full. Kei couldn't muster any halfhearted criticism of it; Red Hood was being arguably more accommodating than they deserved, given the abrupt takeover of his apartment/safehouse/undesignated living space. "Well, there'll be a courtesy meal for him when he wakes up. Whenever that is."
He probably could have poisoned all of them, given unfettered access to their food supplies. Someone who ran with the League of Assassins, even in past tense, learned all the fun stuff. Kei had a very vague memory of reading about Red Hood, during a stint in Blackgate, getting himself abruptly and permanently removed from the cafeteria rotation after a lot of inmates came down with a case of dead.
Maybe it was the kind of thought that occurred to Red Hood the same way that Kei's mindset occasionally drifted to ripping both of his arms off. Not because of any actual urge to do anything, but an idle urge in service to the idea of maintaining a position of strength. Or the safety offered by putting threats down before they could cause actual damage. Knowing someone was a threat made them, automatically, a target.
Even if only a complete asshole would actually act on that urge without provocation.
If you hurt my brother. If you hurt my friends. If you make a monster out of yourself and have nothing to show for it but the blood on your hands. If, if, if. All dependent clauses.
Isobu's chakra nudged her out of that spiral with the gentle consideration of a punch to the bicep. His rumble inside her head didn't soothe her fears, exactly, but maybe distraction counted.
Chastened, Kei ate the omurice. It was pretty good.
"We could probably pick him up and toss him in my room," Red Hood suggested after a while, looking down at Obito again like he expected Kei's best friend to lunge up and bite him. Or maybe just die. "Does he really sleep like the dead?" At that grim little joke, Red Hood's mouth twisted into a bitter smile.
"He's fine. I could set off one of the tags and—uh." Hayate had cut himself off when Kei glared at him. "I wasn't going to."
"Good. Keep it up."
During cleanup and while carrying all three sets of cutlery, Hayate banged his elbow against Kei's side more than once in a clear hint that he wanted to push forward. Up to her elbows in soap suds and inclined to drink her weight in coffee, Kei sighed and shooed him away rather than instantly cave. As one of the people who hadn't bothered cooking, and as a guest, it was her right to chase teenage boys away from the sink so she could wash all the dishes without interference.
"I wondered where a kid his age was getting access to two-dimensional grenades," Red Hood said when she returned to the main living area. Out of the Red Hood suit and iconic helmet, he looked a lot like any other college-aged gym rat in his dark gray sweats and faded red T-shirt. He flipped an explosive seal between his fingers. "Didn't realize his supplier was so close to home."
"Sensei taught me to make them," Kei said, plucking it out of his hand and placing it among its fellows in her work pile.
"You've been drawing all kinds of weird stuff since I was little." Hayate frowned. "Oneesan, you never taught me how."
Kei plotted multiple murders since…basically the first moment she'd realized what world and what future awaited just a few toddling steps outside her door. Explosive seals—and the fūinjutsu they were derived from—seemed like the simplest way to fulfill all her needs in that department at the same time. As did stabbing people. Once the big names were gone, though, she'd calmed down in favor of securing a steadier, quieter version of Konoha with a day's work at a time. Not every problem could be solved by getting people like Shimura Danzō killed.
Worked wonders for relations with Amegakure once they got all the drama sorted out, though.
Kei scratched the lowest edge of her scar. She'd been entertaining far more violent hypotheticals than usual since her arrival here. But Gotham was, in the end, more of an intensifying factor than something that would plant bloody thoughts in her brain out of nowhere.
You have me for that, after all.
"You should've probably thought about teaching me at least a little bit," Hayate was saying, in a tone just sharp enough to stop Kei's train of thought like a misplaced railroad spike.
"Yeah, well," Kei said, then stopped. Hayate had a point. Inherent danger of losing fingers aside, she used the skills involved far more than even her kenjutsu or taijutsu. Bum-rushing problems as a plain old (young) chūnin skirmisher was the kind of thing that would've gotten her killed during the war. "I could, if you wanted. I didn't really ask you to make the time to learn."
"Not now, obviously." Hayate sat back with a shrug, sinking into the couch's elderly cushions. "I'd probably blow up Aniki's living room."
"For the sake of my career as an interior designer, thanks for resisting temptation today." Red Hood leaned on his upraised, scarred palm. One ankle rested on one knee, and for all the world he seemed entirely relaxed. To Kei, he directed a suspicious glance and the words, "How young?"
Kei debated throwing him that bone. Red Hood seemed to have tucked everyone under eighteen in Crime Alley under his wing like a big broody chicken. He hadn't even met Kakashi and Rin yet, and his only reaction to Obito "letting" Hayate and Kei into the apartment—as though they needed his permission—was to dig out the entire carton of eggs for his cooking spree. Sure, he huffed and puffed like he thought he was the Big Bad Wolf, but it was all hot air. Hayate trailed him around the apartment as though he'd never once had to fear Jason "the dead Robin" Todd in their entire acquaintance.
After everything Hayate had undoubtedly told him, this tidbit couldn't be that much worse.
"I was probably nine." As those blue-green eyes narrowed, Kei added in her blandest tone, "Dad left some designs, so I copied them. Badly. Sensei thought it would be safer if I learned the right way." She waved a hand vaguely at the innocent pile of paperwork, which packed enough force to level the apartment complex if they were properly applied.
Red Hood watched her with a new note of caution in his bearing. He leaned forward, elbows on knees and his hands drawn up to cover his mouth. "Your dad was in the military too?"
"Yeah. Died in battle when I was eight. I think Hayate was…five?" Kei glanced at her brother for confirmation and got an unsure nod in return. "Probably five."
One of Red Hood's hands tightened into a fist. "And this wasn't a hint? That maybe you should stop, or consider a different career?"
What part of "I wanted to become stronger" is not sticking in that head of yours? Instead, Kei went with, "I considered it. I was apprenticed, informally, to an iryō-nin." Kei enunciated the term carefully, then wrote it down so he could read the individual kanji. In English, she explained, "Shinobi who specialize in medical arts and surgery using our powers. They don't see as much combat."
Red Hood's dark eyebrows rose. "Sounds like a decent deal. Less chance of being stabbed on the job."
"Yamaguchi-san didn't want her, though." Hayate leaned forward so he was intruding on Red Hood's view of Kei and her work, waving one hand. "After my sister was assigned to a team, he chose Rin instead."
Kei shrugged. "We had different goals."
"He told you to leave," Hayate grumbled, offended on her behalf even retroactively. It'd been almost seven years, so Kei was long past caring. "Like you weren't good enough."
"I mean, I wasn't." And I didn't really care even at the time.
"Yes, you were! You were good enough to perform the transplant, weren't you?"
Which, thanks to Obito, Red Hood also knew about. Last night, Kei's personal personality battery had clearly been running on empty. She remembered that Obito said it, but not managing to give enough of a shit to interrupt. Once he really got a look at Kakashi, then maybe the true depth of Kei's dive into specialized medical interventions would sink in.
"And I never did it again," Kei said, turning back to her fūinjutsu. Her grip on the brush stayed firm and controlled through sheer force of will. "No more surgery. At all."
"But you could've."
Kei couldn't afford unsteady hands in the field, though everyone had some degree of unconscious movement as part and parcel of being alive. Even before Isobu threw a wrench into her control—which she didn't blame him for—she'd…been unable to handle anything more complicated than flesh wounds since Kannabi. She avoided the problem by throwing herself into missions and letting Rin handle the medical concerns if and when they came up. Even if Obito hadn't truly died under her hands, the memory of his pain and his chakra signature fading away kept kicking at her foundations. She didn't want to hurt anyone by accident in the middle of that kind of crisis. So, she'd opted to hurt people on purpose, elsewhere, and drag herself to Rin if she needed it.
And then, well, Isobu. No one especially wanted a jinchūriki in scrubs when enemies needed killing beyond the village's walls.
"Maybe," Kei said at last. "But I don't think I'd be here now if Yamaguchi-sensei chose me instead of Rin."
Besides, Kei suspected Obito's story (abridged for young ears) was one Red Hood needed to hear. Just a ghost of a life to change his perspective. A bit. In a world where Kei faded to the background and Rin tanked all of Fate's hits, the idea was not remotely feasible. Tobi would have either dismissed this world entirely, not known of it, or killed everyone he couldn't warp in his favor.
Hayate finally seemed to realize this argument was going absolutely nowhere. "He's a jerk anyway."
"Being a jerk doesn't make him wrong. And I think he saved your life at least once, so you could at least pretend to be grateful."
Hayate puffed out his cheeks in clear frustration, but didn't continue.
Red Hood, who watched this back-and-forth like a particularly vicious game of tennis, finally raised both hands like he was ready to toss them both out of the apartment. "As fun as it was to have a front-row seat to that particular stretch of family therapy, it wasn't quite where I planned to go with this conversation."
"Sorry, Aniki," Hayate grumbled. He shook himself. "What did you want to talk about?"
"That was kind of my question. 'What do you want?' is the basis of everything." Red Hood's gaze flicked briefly to Obito still snoozing on the floor, then he said, "I don't know why you decided to stay here, with me, instead of cozying up to the people whose secret hidey-holes don't have to fight occasional cockroach incursions. Far be it from me to encourage you all to work with the Bats, but you didn't seem half as happy to jump ship in my favor back when the other bank accounts were providing resources."
Because my brother decided you were friend-shaped and went all in? Kei tossed that thought aside for its bitter aftertaste, then said, "Some of those bridges are smoldering."
A spiteful glint appeared in Red Hood's eyes. "Interesting."
Once again, Kei debated answering this guy with anything other than truth, wielded as a weapon. She doubted he'd appreciate being told that, in fact, he was benefiting from the imperfect, reflexive consideration Kei directed at all of Gotham's masked defenders. Being lumped in with the Bat-clan would probably infuriate him. Some insidious parasocial attachment stayed her hand, no matter how annoying all of these people could be on a person-to-person basis.
"Oneesan, did…did you do something?"
Kei sighed. "A lot happened after you left."
"Yeah, I figured that." Hooray, sarcasm. Definitely not the part of her brother's metamorphosis into a teenager that Kei looked forward to. "I left in the middle of a fight and then your entire team was here! Except the Hokage."
"Turns out Obito did manage to bring Rin and Kakashi here. But he broke some things in the process." That drew a brief, impatient groan from Hayate, so Kei went on right past him, "The League of Assassins needs to be handled. Batman—" Kei noted Red Hood's minute twitch and tucked it away for later. "—isn't prioritizing that. And none of them are going to like the way we want to deal with the issue, but that disapproval doesn't change reality."
Red Hood snorted.
"What."
"It's just poetic how you've come around to my point of view. Doing what needs to be done because nobody else will put in the time or the work." Red Hood's smirk wasn't entirely unkind, but it was a smugness Kei briefly entertained punching off his face. Just because he was right didn't mean she had to like it. He went on, "The worst part is that I'm not even surprised. The big bad Bat hasn't managed to affect real change in a decade, if not more."
Believing "certain people need to die for society to function" is a preexisting condition, Kei thought, and a prerequisite for being shinobi. I don't care if you rip Black Mask's life down around his ears or kill the Joker with a baseball bat. I have one you can use! None of that is my problem.
Kei glanced down at her work, rather than letting all of that spill out like she'd slit her own throat at the table. Nothing in that rant was worth speaking aloud. What came out instead was, "I'll take your word for it."
"I didn't get the feeling everything was that bad," Hayate muttered. "We took out a whole nest last night, didn't we? That has to be worth a passing grade for something."
"Not with confirmation that they're also after you. Explicitly," Kei told him, resting her head on one hand. Between bouts of fitful sleep, Kei hadn't been able to rip that fact from her anxiety's clutches once Obito said it aloud. "I don't want you going anywhere alone, Hayate."
"Like where?" her brother complained immediately. He had picked up his unused napkin and started folding it into an origami crane while they were holding this useless merry-go-round of a conversation across a coffee table. "The whole city might as well be off-limits!"
Kei's gaze cut to Red Hood automatically. "I don't think it's safe without Obito, at least. For both your sakes."
Red Hood rolled one shoulder until it popped. If he didn't need a physical therapist by the time he was forty, Kei would be amazed. "You really want to have your goofy brat of a teammate following me into the worst of Gotham." The wolfishness was back in his face, like it had never left. Or smugness. "Can't spare your innocent eyes if you do. Well. Eye."
"I resemble that remark," said Obito, from the floor. He'd peeled the bandage off his face without anyone noticing, or maybe cheated using Kamui somehow. With a wide yawn, he heaved himself into a sitting position, only jerking the table a little as his still-tied leg yanked on the cloth shackle. "Morning! Why am I tied up?"
"Good morning," Kei and Hayate chimed back without answering the question.
Obito's stomach let out a loud gurgle. He grinned sheepishly even as he bent to untie himself. "There goes subtlety. I smelled food?"
Red Hood got up and found the plate he'd stuck in the oven for safekeeping, setting it on the counter. "Up here, Sleeping Beauty. Eat with utensils like a human person."
Kei doubted Obito got the reference. Shinobi fairy tales were about as likely as a Grimm story to end with a body count, but had the even worse habit of turning out to be true more often than was safe for everyone's mental health.
…Maybe Kei needed to grab Nagato on his next visit and see if he could get anything out of the Naka Shrine with his Rinnegan that an Uchiha couldn't.
"Fine, fine." Obito griped, though most dinner arrangements in Konoha took place at or around a kotatsu once the weather turned like this. He clomped his way over to the counter, and tucked in without hesitation. Didn't even complain about the lack of chopsticks, or that Red Hood immediately abandoned him to claim the armchair again.
"Akaboshi-san," Kei began, "do you have any plans for today?"
"Nothing you can help with. Just stay out of my business."
"He's gotta go grocery shopping after this," Hayate said immediately after that, and grinned when Red Hood shot him a betrayed glance. "It's just common sense! You went from one resident to two to four inside of like, two days. There's a corner market Aniki prefers."
"I don't know why I let you open your mouth," Red Hood muttered into his hand. "I don't need another stalker."
"Neither do the rest of us, but last night happened anyway," Hayate replied, a little sharper than before. He snatched up one of Kei's explosive seals to add to the growing collection of cranes, which wouldn't end well. "Oneesan, we're gonna hit them tonight, aren't we?"
Kei elected not to make a snide remark amid that particular exchange. Instead, she nodded to Hayate's question. "Most likely. Obito, about that interrogation…?"
"Yep, gimme just a second," Obito said over his shoulder. The remaining portion of breakfast started disappearing so quickly he might as well have used Kamui to cheat.
"If you already know where to hit them, why wait?" Red Hood asked, likely because that seemed like a marginally safer topic. There was still that faint disapproval in his expression, a tightening of the mouth. "Could've solved all the ninja problems in one go."
"Strictly speaking, it probably wouldn't have worked out like that. If the enemy could see us coming, then they'd scatter, and we'd have to hunt them down individually. Given the ruckus last night, we'd lost all pretense of stealth." Obito spun around on the kitchen stool and, still wiping his mouth with the napkin, plopped himself down on the futon again. He tapped the side of his head, next to his inactive Sharingan. "Any info takes a while to settle." Obito cleared his throat. His jaw worked for a second, and then he said in heavily accented English, "But hey, now I know how to talk like this."
Kei could not pin it down for the life of her. It was somewhere in the crossroads between vaguely continental European, a touch of the League of Assassins' common tongue, and then filtered again through Obito's lifetime of speaking Japanese. Some of the phonemes were clearly still developing. His phrasing was his own, and adept enough to be understood, but…
The Mangekyō Sharingan is bullshit.
Correct.
"You sound like someone fell out of the language tree and hit a third of the branches on the way down," Red Hood said, also in English. The way his eyes darted around the table implied that there was some serious recalculating going on, despite the dismissive tone he'd used.
Obito shrugged. In Japanese again, he said, "I'll get there. More importantly, I've got the location of most of the enemy's bases. We just need to decide which one goes down first."
Hayate looked almost offended. "Does the one we took out last night count for anything?"
"Ehhh," Obito said. He tapped his temple again. "The guy seemed to think it was more of a…" Obito trailed off, vocabulary still settling. "Uh. A place where their men could find Zetsu clones and bring them along on the big mission to capture Kei? Since obviously these guys are too weak to do it on their own."
"Weapon depot?" Red Hood idly tossed out. "Forward operating base. Foxhole?"
Obito shrugged again. "Maybe. The point is, nobody who gives orders stays there. Since, duh, it was the sewers. So we need to scout the real command posts, and either sneak in so I can grab someone else or maybe just drown the whole place. Or blow it up."
Generally, the mood in the room rose at the idea of destruction. Especially of people who had been irritating all of the occupants for more than a month.
Then Red Hood's phone chimed. His entire demeanor shifted from what Kei would've called infectious anticipation back to something cold, calm, and entirely ready to face bad news head on. Possibly with a gun. His voice pitched lower than usual, in a fair imitation of his old man's as he answered it with, "What?"
Something tinny and tiny came from the phone's speaker. It sounded like a man's voice, rushing through in panic.
"Slow down," Red Hood ordered whoever was on the other end. "Were there witnesses?"
Another burst of tinny noise.
A laugh, low and cruel, crept out of Red Hood's mouth. "Well, we can't have that, can we? Get eyes on the others."
More fear and babbling from the other end.
"Donalds—can I call you Donny?—" A quick pause that felt so natural it could have been scripted. "Mm-hm. I'd say they can't get any deader, but that's hardly up to me now." Harsher again: "Get back to work. I'll take care of it."
Kei had gone silent out of reflexive phone etiquette, but she couldn't help but think it was probably the purest expression of Red Hood's mob boss credentials thus far. Hayate had gone back to origami bombs, unconcerned with anything said in English around him, and maybe he was desensitized to Red Hood's shenanigans in general. Robin seemed concerned about his acclimation to violence, and Kei could almost see it now.
Obito, however? He was watching Red Hood with his Sharingan active again, and Kei was pretty sure Obito would pick up some offshoot New Jersey accent within the week.
It wasn't like Obito didn't have a temper. All Uchiha did; all people did, though it manifested differently when people could breathe fire at will. Kei wasn't afraid of Obito's anger—felt safer, actually—but despair was another beast entirely. Looking at Hayate, though, it seemed like Hayate felt the same way about Red Hood's moods that Kei did about Obito's.
The comparison fit well enough to make her stomach churn.
Red Hood ended the call after some more vague threats and heaved himself out of the ancient armchair. "There go my evening plans," Red Hood said to the room at large, "and none of you are invited to Plan B."
"I've crashed better parties," Obito replied, without missing a beat. "Can't get away from me that easy."
Hayate laughed outright. Kei couldn't quite tell if he was playing up his brattiness or actually amused. The sparking in his chakra could go either way.
Red Hood scoffed. "The Joker's the guest of honor. I don't think your responsible big sister will let either of you out to play. Might as well suggest tag in traffic."
Everyone's eyes turned toward Kei. Five whole eyeballs.
Kei would rather they didn't. Ideally, the Joker wouldn't exist within a thousand kilometers of Hayate. Seeing as they were in Gotham, that was step one failed from the start. A part of her—reinforced by Isobu—would happily march out into the night and break the Joker's spine to nonlethally limit his future prospects. If Bat rulebooks needed to be sent sailing out the window to get shit done, so be it. He wasn't even a clown. He was a serial killer with a Batman fixation. He would never stop until either he or Batman were dead, preferably both or at the other's hand, and there was no line he wouldn't cross in the pursuit of that goal.
But she couldn't stand devoting time or thought to dealing with that stunningly prominent waste of space. There were so many more important tasks on the docket.
Kei just wanted everyone (else) alive at the end of this fucking nightmare. Was that really so much to ask?
"Obito," Kei said after a while, "I'm going to need to have a talk with Kakashi. And we're going to make a proper plan to scout the enemy strongholds and hit them at night. But I'm not rescinding that order."
"To stick to Akaboshi-san and Hayate?" Obito looked a little amused, but pretended to wipe the expression off his face when she glared at him. "Sure. Not like you'll need me for the whole translation and diplomacy gig if the guys there just need to be dead." He clapped his hands together in forced cheer. "In the meantime: Babysitting duty! What I always wanted to do with my life."
Red Hood, of course, was not appreciative of this attempt to make sure he survived his self-inflicted nonsense. "I'm not agreeing to this. Did staying out of my business sound like a suggestion to you? Dealing with the clown is not a spectator sport."
"Says the guy who's not in my chain of command," Obito replied brightly. His smile had the Naruto-like mischievous quality down pat. "Deal with it."
Breath hissed out of Red Hood like a boiling pot. "I will personally make your life a living hell."
"No, you won't," Hayate said, with perfect faith.
Seemingly out of believable responses to this, Red Hood walked out of the room with a middle finger raised in their general direction. A former bird flipping the bird. Ha.
Kei wondered, briefly, if Red Hood had any idea that Hayate was now one of his biggest weaknesses. A child, unflinchingly certain that there was no level of anger that could ever endanger him. The sheer level of trust laid out before him, easy as breathing. That feeling hit her in the chest during her second childhood, solid as a punch, and then there was no going back.
She wondered if it hit him harder because it happened so fucking fast. From the way Hayate told the story, Red Hood took Kei's bratty little brother under his wing basically at first sight.
Kei wished him luck with that bleeding heart.
For now—forever—there was work to do.
Tim held himself as still as he could during medical procedures, at least when he was conscious enough for it. Gotham life, even before adding midnight vigilantism to the mix, took a Russian roulette approach to ruining a given person's day. Or life. There was no guarantee a particular encounter would leave him enough leeway to control even something as small as whether he flinched away from an approaching needle. Some of those fights had been ugly.
Tonight wasn't the worst, but it certainly wasn't a great night.
Once the hellish combination of fear-induced tachycardia and vivid hallucinations were over, Fear Toxin left most of the same symptoms often found in the aftermath of an all-natural panic attack. Exhaustion was one of Tim's least favorites, but the day's special was tremors. There'd been a variation of Crane's finest brew a few months ago with the same side effects, so at least they had a decent frame of reference. Once he was conscious enough to be annoyed by it, it stuck like a burr in his head.
Meanwhile, Poison Ivy's pollen—usually specced for mind control and not shy about it—tried to compound the problem by giving him a mild fever. Tim's current theory was that Ra's either used a partly-decomposed sample or simply didn't anticipate that Ivy only made people into puppets for her own sake. And with Ivy firmly in Arkham at the moment, that particular horror was left by the wayside.
While those two substances, mixed with that sedative, were never fun, Tim survived. Sure, it took three separate medical interventions as people shuffled his useless carcass around Gotham like a game of competitive hot potato, but he made it! There was a vague memory of the needle finally finding a vein in his hand.
And then Tim found himself in the Manor when he woke up the next morning.
Sunlight filtering through the gaps in blackout curtains, Tim's first instinct was to roll over and go back to sleep. After villain attacks or streets blowing up, schools usually shut down around the disaster site. A big enough attack could convince everyone in the city to keep their children at home. Tim usually spent those newly-free mornings trying to get his thoroughly-destroyed circadian rhythm a moment to recover, then headed down to the Cave after breakfast to spend the day on cases.
Rolling out of bed put him on the carpet immediately when his legs refused to hold his weight. His usual agility was apparently on strike. Or maybe a delay, given that his second attempt went better, and he rolled to his feet with enough grace to not need to catch himself on the doorframe.
You've had worse, Tim's inner voice scolded him. The persistent shivers running up and down his limbs sat squarely in a spot between inconvenient and infuriating, because there was so much still to do. Gotham wasn't safe. This city can't beat you this easily.
But it could gift him just enough fatigue to make him fail at whatever he tried next. So Tim took a long moment to breathe, shoving frustration down deep inside his core where it could hide, and headed out of his room as steadily as he could. It became easier the more steps he put between sleep and work, snatching an apple and a pastry from the kitchen on his way down to the Cave. More importantly, Alfred didn't catch him; while Tim loved the man like a grandfather, he deserved to take a few minutes without fussing.
The secret passage from Bruce's office wasn't left open, which was good for security and vaguely annoying otherwise. It gave Tim just that tiny scrap of "more work to do" piled atop everything else he'd been dealing with so far.
Given Gotham's state of emergency, no one was going to drive out to the manor to remind Wayne Industries' owner to come into the office. But Bruce was expected to give some speech to stockholders who weren't happy with Gotham's general state of "lightly terrorized" and the resulting dip in stock prices. In person. At last report, Lucius Fox was still sure he had the board of directors in hand. A true Gotham resident never knew when someone would get a high-explosive rocket launched through a high-rise's plate glass window, given how Roman Sionis's week had gone so far. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, in Tim's humble opinion, but the death toll of Red Hood's rampage certainly wasn't leveling off soon enough for anyone's mental health.
Granted, Sionis wasn't dead yet, but events trended downward in a way that was dangerous for his life expectancy regardless.
The Cave was empty when Tim arrived, snatching Bruce's computer chair and spinning in it a few times. He ate his breakfast quickly, away from the precious keyboard, and dusted the crumbs onto the floor for the bats to puzzle over later. The literal bats. Or maybe Alfred would catch him and make the Eyebrow first, but he wasn't here yet. And Tim needed time to compile his status report into something coherent for future record-keeping.
Because, well, he certainly hadn't managed a lot of coherency last night. He was making up for lost time.
It was, in the end, a short report. He recounted all of his observations leading up to his decision to visit Genbu and Suzaku at the apartment/safehouse last night. His theory that both of them knew more than they were saying, their account of monstrous humanoid flesh-puppets stalking the streets of Gotham, and the split-second decision to shove Genbu out of the way of the dart that made his night so impossible to recall. He didn't record the poison-inspired trippy nightmares that made up some of those middle memories, though. Putting aside that they were even less useful than fever-dreams, Tim didn't confide that kind of horror in either Bats or computers. It wasn't real, and all he'd get would be confirmation.
Tim slid back from the keyboard, considering. Though he'd documented every relevant theory and deduction, now it was time to cross-reference. Like any good detective, though, he needed more facts. More data. Dick, Bruce, Steph, and Barb, who were the ones whose brains hadn't been yo-yoing somewhere between hell and the stratosphere, probably logged reports that were more useful for the continued investigation.
But first, reading.
This kind of text was more engaging than any novel. For one thing, the events therein actually happened. Aside from Riddler-thwarting operations and puzzles based on wordplay—which Steph gleefully dismantled since Dick wasn't in town much for it these days—what did Tim need novels for?
Tim retrieved and downed a Zesti between reports. Steph's was by far the shortest. Though they'd been friends for a half a year now, and she was a Crime Alley homegrown hero, she'd never been through the entire Bat-training suite like Tim. He ran their communications to the Cave for months before heading into the field for his official debut as Robin, and put in the hours to learn their systems backwards and forwards by then. Short as the account was, there were links running from it to Oracle-provided timestamps and news reports to corroborate Steph's words.
And it told a story Tim found familiar.
Steph, like anybody who knew their home territory occasionally exploded into violence, tended to keep to her space and work on prevention as well as figurative firefighting. She could and did operate outside of Park Row and the surrounding neighborhoods, but never without looking over her shoulder. Even if Red Hood's experimental new take on organized crime never made a move directly against her, his men were as much a threat, in numbers, as he was, and Steph wasn't shy about cracking down on problems within her territory if she could. With her bare fists if necessary.
But last night, when Steph patrolled and did her usual rounds near the Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic, the shadows disgorged dozens of people-shaped things out for her blood.
I didn't see the flechette-bird until after she started attacking, Steph of six hours ago wrote. Her frustration seeped through the screen. Next thing I knew, a guy calling himself Seiryū (with punctuation that was clearly the result of a web search) showed up and shoved me into that weird shadowy space. Doc Thompkins and Robin arrived after, and then Red Hood showed up by invitation. Based on what I heard, Red Hood and Suzaku took Robin to the clinic because the attack in Midtown made it too dangerous to have an injured persona anywhere near them. Based on the footage I've seen so far, I don't think they were wrong. I didn't get that much time to observe how everyone interacted, what with trying to help Doctor Thompkins and all, but I definitely get the feeling Kirin, Seiryū, and Suzaku were all okay with Red Hood. But it wasn't entirely mutual.
From that point, Steph's reports were usually organized like a high school essay. She had points to make, three paragraphs to do it in, and a conclusion at the end. Steph also had a bad habit of taking an assumption and running with it like it was a teammate in a relay race. Impulsiveness and responsiveness were two sides of the same coin, for her, and that instinct served her well when half the immediate neighborhood was overrun by gangs.
It also saved them both so much time when arguing with Genbu. Steph saw a stressed-out teenager and got some of the first concrete info out of her in weeks. She saw Suzaku as a weird, well-meaning kid, and Tim was pretty sure the ninja kid liked her better than him. Sure, not getting the entire story out of them in one go wasn't in the cards, but what Steph had achieved was still impressive.
And here, Steph wrote, I don't think we can deal with all the putty guys on our own.
Tim took that data, logged it for future reference, and skipped to Barbara's report. He reviewed the traffic cam and drone footage, confirming the grim result of the scene Tim had abandoned early and what Dick and Bruce had left to EMTs and police to sort out. A dozen dead civilians, a massed attack of the strange shape-changing monsters, and what looked like a kaiju formed out of some twisted fusion of the attackers' biomass. One of the officers on the scene threw up on camera.
Must've been expecting a traffic stop. Most of the Major Crimes Unit were solid, because Commissioner Gordon kept the firmest hand on that department. It looked like a night-shift rookie in the wrong place.
Tim rubbed his eyes. He'd seen worse. Seeing bodies did get easier, especially if he let analysis eat up all his mental processing power ahead of any emotions, but Tim had been there. He…didn't regret keeping Genbu from entering the fray while in the middle of a drug haze. It could have only gotten worse. He just regretted not doing more .
Oracle had also included multiple video files. According to her annotations, and an access log Tim pulled up, they originally came from the same other world as the Four Gods Quintet. Or whatever those particular ninjas called themselves when there were five named members.
Tim could scan a Wikipedia page just fine, thank you.
He wasn't really sure where the rush of annoyed spite had come from, except frustration at his own helplessness. Yanking his thoughts away from that an instant after, Tim focused on facts as he always did.
It would be par for the course with superheroes and supervillains alike to choose a moniker that fit their actual capabilities—for advertisement if nothing else—but as far as he could tell, none of the friendly ninjas put in much effort. Genbu wore black and her inner demon was supposedly a turtle, but it made sense for turtles to be associated with water. That was easy. The pattern then broke down immediately. Suzaku didn't appear to have any knack for fire or even birds. Byakko's mask was white and had stripes, but so did all of them. Kirin's mask looked like something out of a plague doctor's closet, plus an attack of finger-painting toddlers. Seiryu had basically nothing to do with wood or plants or whatever. The only thing he'd gotten right was the color on his mask. Was the whole point just to assemble enough names to fill out a roster?
Maybe the misdirection was purposeful. Supposedly, that was half the point of ninjas existing at all. But why not go all the way? Slap the turtle moniker on the teammate that kept frying all of Tim's electronics. One of them used a sword? Better hand the dragon title off there!
…Not that they probably care.
On second thought, maybe Tim needed to avoid thinking up ideas for the "masters of deception" to steal. Not that any of them appeared to be particularly good liars so far. He wasn't about to give them tips.
Tim sighed, cracked his knuckles, and got back to work.
Accessing Nightwing's logged mask footage, Tim checked the summary before diving in. Dick's full account of the night was stored in an archival file, but he'd helpfully linked specific timestamps to Steph's report.
According to the commentary Steph left behind…she'd been falling asleep while still upright. The last of her sentences trailed off into lines of Ts until she hit the character cap. Before that, though, she'd left a comment that read, Thinking the shield N was in blocks radio. I didn't hear about any of this until it was over.
Oracle's icon blinked away on the screen, indicating she was noticing him going through the case files. She'd undoubtedly read Steph's report and worked on alternative surveillance methods to get around established limitations. Probably the most futile of the options involved giving Genbu yet another earpiece to destroy, but at least she didn't outright reject wearing such devices. The phone was also either dead, off, or Faraday caged, for whatever that was worth now. Not for the first time, Tim wondered if the entire situation would be resolved faster if they could call on their allies—the Teen Titans, the Justice League, or even Tim's own team. Anything to spread the load a little so it wasn't solely on Gotham's shoulders to deal with the overlapping crises.
Bruce had turned into a brick wall since everything started. Or turned back into one. Tim caught traces of his activity at the Batcomputer, the hints of frantic research. Into Gotham Cemetery's reports—or lack thereof—of hospitalization records, of any rumor across the entire city that something had happened to bring Jason back. Since the revelation that Red Hood was Jason, Bruce fixated on that puzzle. Turned it over.
Ignored Genbu and her team's situation until it exploded in their faces. More than two dozen civilians and first responders dead in an instant, with injured victims crowding the hospitals even now. Only just over half of the survivors were expected to remain so.
Tim couldn't insist on his own innocence, here. Yes, he and Steph and Dick all fought League assassins across the city for the entire span of October. They'd probed the edges of a greater plan, but no interrogation thus far gave up the location of Ra's al Ghul's new base within the city. Genbu insisted, correctly, that they were after her, but she was so much more powerful than any League ninja Tim had ever even heard of that it didn't seem like a real threat. Once a metahuman had that much power backed by control, and once Genbu reunited with her brother, it seemed like the best option was to simply move out of Gotham. Force the enemy to adapt to the change, controlling the rules of engagement. Turn around and destroy them, outside of any hero's domain, because the only thing really stopping her or people like her were the expectations of secrecy.
Tim had been complacent. Callous. Maybe a little naïve.
Until the moment the "Zetsu clones" emerged, Tim couldn't find any hint of their existence. No one had so much as reported a leaking water main in the area. No natural gas concerns, either. And if Genbu's people were familiar enough with the enemy to give a full physiology breakdown with cheerful notes on how to most quickly kill one (complete with citations from multiple necropsies), and they still hadn't been able to predict the attack before it came…something was wrong. This was a bigger issue than even the full roster of all the Bats could deal with.
Bruce was putting out fires. He wasn't dealing with the arsonist. Bruce focused his efforts on blocking out street-level crime and chasing Red Hood around, despite how inconclusive every encounter had been so far. And yet, despite everything, he hadn't called for help. Hell, Tim was sure there'd been a hissed argument last night about Dick maybe, theoretically going back to Blüdhaven to tamp down on problems there, like Gotham's gang war would spread across the river. Or like Bruce wanted his people out of the line of fire and would make every half-baked argument in the world to try and enforce that.
So far, nobody had left. Not Genbu, Dick, not Red Hood. The only person involved in this situation who might've fled Gotham was Black Mask, who'd vanished from Oracle's view during the night. Or maybe he was dead already and no one had realized it yet.
Nobody walked away.
Everyone involved in this was some variety of total trash fire, and Tim wanted to put his face in his hands and scream.
All of them treated Gotham like a nexus point—a battlefield, a stage—and there was no dissuading anybody from having it out in a population center. Tim knew they all had their own reasons. Everyone always did.
And…Tim suspected, past the initial shock, Bruce didn't believe Red Hood was Jason. Maybe clones or alternate universes were involved. Maybe a magical disguise of some kind, like the kind Suzaku had demonstrated with disturbing ease. Anything to separate Red Hood's violent takeover of Gotham's gangs from the ghost represented by the costume memorial case.
Tim also suspected Bruce was grasping at straws. He was too close to the situation to see the whole of it.
A ping on the computer jolted Tim out of his thoughts. Tim looked up and found an alert, this one from Oracle's system.
Tim's most recent headache was back on the radar. Genbu's prepaid cell phone had, miraculously, survived the night. He sighed internally and reached out to open the channel, after making sure every electronic scrambling security measure they had was running at full strength. "Didn't expect to hear from you so soon, G."
"I'm sure." Her phone was…somewhere in Tricorner, two whole islands south of where Tim assumed she and her team were holed up. While an improvement from Park Row and its immediate surroundings in terms of danger, the main appeal might have been either the proximity to water or the relative safety in daylight. "Are you feeling better, then?"
"Being conscious implies that, yeah." Tim moved the microphone a little closer to his face, careful not to scrape its base against the desk. "What did you need?"
"Strictly speaking, I don't need anything, aside from a way home with no strings attached. And that's not something you can give me." Genbu shuffled the phone around on her end of the line. It sounded like she was pinning her phone between her face and shoulder, maybe while carrying something. "But it seemed like the night shift deserved a minor update before it all becomes your mess."
Honestly, Tim would be happy to introduce her to the wonders of Bluetooth if he thought it would help in the slightest. The lifespans of her electronics seemed to be measured in days. The timeline shortened to less than an hour once she actually remembered they existed.
Which was about par for the course, since Tim distinctly remembered the realization from last night (even past the haze of leftover drugs), that Suzaku had killed all the tech in his Robin suit again.
"If this is the level of courtesy I get after a near-death experience, maybe I should never leave the house again," Tim said, even as he clicked through the case files until he found Genbu's folder. Unfortunately, it doubled in size in barely a few weeks. Tim mentally flipped a coin between possibilities as he waited for Genbu to respond. "What are you doing now?"
"Walking dogs."
"…What?" He knew Genbu and her team had dogs, seeing as there'd been a pug in the room when Tim arrived in the bunker, but it felt like a non-sequitur otherwise.
"It's the second- or third-most useful camouflage in the rich part of town: Looking like you work for a living." Genbu paused as someone spoke on her end of the line. "I don't think we could pull off 'college-aged canvassers' with the language barrier. Maybe tourists…"
Tim thought of how historical ninjas supposedly disguised themselves as farmers, servants, or sex workers to get closer to their targets, then decided not to question it out loud. For all he knew, Genbu and her team had changed their appearances entirely in the last few hours. They could be shuffling down Gotham's streets in literal clown shoes for all Tim knew.
…He could probably find a traffic camera to point their way, as long as the cell phone Genbu used was still active.
Tim refrained.
Genbu's voice held a definite disapproving "hm," but she didn't dwell on it. Instead, what came out was, "Did you have a chance to go over the, uh, meeting minutes?"
"Working on it." It was nice of Genbu to try and talk around the situation with potential eavesdroppers in mind, but there was enough background noise from the harbor that Tim mostly wanted her to get to the point. In the meantime, he clicked through to the synopsis on the surveillance video Genbu's team provided from their end of reality. His cursor hovered over another icon for Genbu's personal case file. "You generate paperwork faster than nearly anyone I've ever met. Not bad for someone with no legal identity. At some point, they put you on an FBI watchlist."
"That's…a choice, I guess. Probably easier to get than a green card." Genbu sighed. "But based on your reaction, I'm gonna guess you probably haven't talked to anybody who was there."
Tim's fingers froze, a millimeter from clicking. "…No. What did you do?"
"It was a busy night. Might be better if you look first?"
Tim opened Genbu's file, already dreading what he'd find. Emblazoned across the top was a bold, Impact-font popup warning banner: IDENTITY COMPROMISED. With that horror permanently branded into his memory, Tim clicked through the popup and found two different citation links. One of them was a video from Nightwing's mask camera, so Tim muted his call to Genbu and clicked on that first.
"—know Bruce Wayne is Batman." Genbu's unmasked face was all cold fury, all cornered predator. While there was some blotchiness lingering around her eyes and the scar, her eyes glowed like old amber street lights. Some childhood instinct had Tim shying away from the image before he got ahold of himself.
Even the dog in her lap didn't help soften her image much. Her half-masked teammate, identified as Byakko, watched Nightwing unless he was watching Batman, and that was another wary gaze marked by looming hostility in his body language.
"That's—" Dick's voice began, but cut himself with enough force that Tim suspected he'd literally bitten down on his words. "Not what I expected. I suppose it's too much to ask that you haven't worked out the rest."
"You're Dick Grayson, the first Robin." Genbu spoke with the gravity of a death knell. Tim heard Dick's breath catch, even if no one else did. "The current Robin is Tim Drake. He's the third one."
How in the hell—?
Heedless of the future looking back on her, Genbu concluded with, "And the current Red Hood is Jason Todd, the former second Robin."
Tim took a few seconds to process this information and file it away in his own brain. No time to think about the implications, emotionally. A "breach of trust" was a dramatic overstatement—because there was basically no minimum threshold of confidence that Genbu had actually met. She was undoubtedly a threat, if mostly in the way any metahuman could be to anyone without powers, but her behavior was erratic. Tim never fully knew where Genbu would jump in a crisis. Attack? Avoidance? Or maybe the second until the first response was tripped like a landmine. And of course, she'd blurted all of that information out in front of both Bats and her own allies.
Tim had been awake for less than an hour and already longed for the Cave's supply of ibuprofen and caffeine. In that order.
But there was a case open in front of him and a…client on the phone.
Once he was sure the shock wouldn't show in his face or voice, Tim unmuted the call and said, "How?" Okay, so maybe not quite as controlled as he might have liked. "You didn't really indicate this level of…access beforehand."
"Would you?"
If Tim was being honest—no. His decision to seek out Nightwing and Batman and eventually out-stubborn both of them had been a decision born of both idealism and desperation. Gotham needed a Batman, and Batman needed a Robin. There wasn't anybody else stepping up, so he had. If Jason had survived, and grown up, and maybe just moved on with his life, Tim…probably would have kept the Wayne family secret hidden for the rest of his life. He'd done it for four years already by then. It wasn't like he'd ever planned to blackmail the only people keeping Gotham together.
"You probably think I'm trouble," Genbu said into the gap in the conversation, "and nothing I'm gonna tell you today will change that."
Great. Rather than scream into his hands, or something similarly cathartic, Tim just said, "But are you in trouble?"
"Not yet." Genbu said something in a sharp burst of Japanese, and a dog barked on her end of the line. "Thanks for asking."
Even if Genbu dumped fuel on figurative fires with all the forethought of cats knocking shelves askew, she was still a person who deserved a place to rest. Tim knew she didn't want to hurt innocents. She just flip-flopped between apparent passivity and explosive violence when finally backed far enough into a corner, terrifying everyone in the process and making Batman think of a dozen contingency plans to try and subdue her without putting anyone at risk.
It said something about everyone involved that Genbu still let both Bats and Red Hood interact with Suzaku. Bruce obligingly made plan A some variation of "take Suzaku hostage," though Tim hadn't found any evidence of it yet. He knew Bruce too well not to deduce that.
"Well, you know how it goes. You save me from murderous not-zombies and then I casually ask after your health. Completely equivalent." Tim leaned back against the Batcomputer's chair. It was, of course, adjusted for a man about a foot taller than him, but that just meant he could pull his legs up and sprawl however he wanted without fear of getting metal or plastic shoved uncomfortably into his extremities. "Seriously, though. You left in a hurry."
"Busy night. I needed to decompress."
That was one way to look at it. While Tim sometimes wished his memory wasn't quite so sharp, he found himself simultaneously annoyed and worried about what he couldn't remember. He knew he'd been brought into Red Hood's care and then brought to the clinic well after hours, but only because the doctor told him so once he was lucid. While Suzaku was opaque in all things except his admiration for Red Hood, he hadn't let Tim die when it might've been more expedient to just ditch him. No need to complicate his relationship with the newest Rogue by dragging Robin right into his predecessor's den.
And yet, it had happened. Tim not only survived; far surpassing his expectations, he apparently owed his life to a person who'd been raising hell in Gotham all month for the express purpose of screwing with the current order. As much order as Gotham ever got, anyway.
He was still trying to wrap his brain around Red Hood cooperating with any Bat in any context. Maybe, as Robin, Tim got to skate by under the man's murder-radar because he was still a minor? Steph had so far, too. Hell, Red Hood seemed to kind of respect Spoiler, or at least keep his schemes away from her.
"Yeah, I get that," Tim said at last. He already knew he needed to adjust some of his contingency plans to account for new factors introduced oh-so-recently. Processing time was a must. "So, what are you doing now?"
Then: "We figured out where my problem was. So we're gonna deal with it."
Translation: Somehow, Genbu and her team found the League of Assassins, and Commissioner Gordon is going to have yet more questions to field that he doesn't have a single fucking answer to. Tim rubbed at his eyes. The conversation between them from last night was not logged yet, but Tim would be amazed if Bruce had managed to escape it without giving the poor man some kind of concession regarding the invasion of putty-people. And the ninjas, and the murders, and the mass casualty event in general. How?
"But there's other things in the city," Genbu went on, "so I wanted to see if you had an opinion real quick."
"You already know the company policy." We aren't going to condone murder. Some other part of Tim's brain, impatient and still drug-hungover, sniped, And you're shit at double-speak. You sound more like a gangster than Red Hood. "And frankly, you're more up to date than I am about the current situation."
There was a pause on the other end as someone spoke to Genbu. It sounded like Kirin, backed by a pair of dogs barking. Then a sharp breath even her crappy burner phone picked up. "But you can double-check something for me. Something important."
Genbu's shift in tone was alarming on a good day. Tim said warily, "How important?"
"As important as the other thing."
Fuck, Tim thought. "Hit me."
"There was a kid on the recording last night." Genbu trailed off, sounding nervous as the noise in the background built up. Construction site, probably. Once the noise faded somewhat, she asked, "Did you see what he looked like? Or maybe the woman with him. I didn't stick around long enough to see her."
Tim flipped to another window on his computer, frowning. The urgency in Genbu's demeanor had intensified. The bonkers runtime on the ninja-provided footage aside, Oracle's fingerprints were all over the timestamps here, too. Tim fast-forwarded until he found the relevant stretch of recording, warped as it was by being made through a curved surface and what was likely magic.
A minute or so later, Tim found the only possible candidate. Even the occasional glimpse of figures around the corners of the frame didn't fit the description.
While the edges were occupied by people murmuring without any convenient subtitles, the image on screen was of a well-adorned room. From what he could see, the air of understated luxury clashing with hidden utilitarian touches? Pure League of Assassins. Ra's al Ghul was, under a couple of his known aliases, one of the richest men in the world once one got past the first three layers of shell companies and cybersecurity. He had a soft spot for the trappings of royalty.
A dark-haired woman knelt in front of a boy no older than eight or nine years old. She had an aquiline nose and cheekbones that could cut glass, but even shedding her otherwise signature proud bearing to speak to a child didn't make Talia al Ghul unrecognizable. Tim didn't just memorize the threats to Gotham with mugshots on file. Nothing about what Tim read made her sound like the kind of person who routinely snapped up students from the League's general population, so that had to be her kid.
"No one brings kids to a party like this," Genbu said in a soft tone, sounding as though she'd cupped a hand over the phone's receiver to fully cover a whisper. "And if her name starts with a T, I don't think she has an apprentice that young. Something's wrong."
"Your knack for this is uncanny," Tim muttered back. All over again, he wished all of this information had fallen into their laps earlier. Preferably with audio input that survived contact with the ninjas' profound technological shortcomings. "I can't see a face, but I can't rule out the possibility that he's hers."
Nothing.
"G?"
Still nothing. She probably muted the call. Maybe to conference with her colleagues and possibly scream.
Okay. So. Talia al Ghul had a child. Absolutely not something Tim had guessed he'd learn this morning, but did it change anything? The Bats already didn't want Genbu's team to rush in and kill everything that moved, even before this revelation. Though the ninjas disappeared last night and probably stole one of Red Hood's safehouses or something, it didn't change anyone's actual goals. For all Tim knew, Genbu's kill-or-be-killed attitude extended to preteens. Hood's didn't. Maybe that was a sticking point worth driving a wedge into.
What a fucking mess.
Genbu's longest pause yet was broken by, "Well, that…complicates things a bit."
No kidding. "How?" Tim didn't really try to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "Given how you've clearly edged toward the extreme option the longer you've been in Gotham, I didn't expect you to hesitate now."
"…Sorry to live down to your expectations?"
"No, it's—that was unfair." Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. "What's actually wrong?"
"Um… Doesn't make sense, but… Maybe if I…?" Genbu dissolved into muttering for a moment. Then, after quite the long string of Japanese that sounded like pure invective Tim wanted a translation of, Genbu said in English, "I think I know who that kid is. And if I'm right…"
Tim couldn't forget the other actual truth of interacting with Genbu at all: she lied. She hid things. She avoided the truth because it was inconvenient and uncomfortable even if that constant dishonesty alienated allies. This was…adjacent to improvement. Tim would take what he could get.
"If you're right, your plan's a bust," Tim filled in. He couldn't resist adding, "What plan you had, anyway."
"I hear judgment."
"It's the opposite of judgment," Tim lied. "I'm approving of the least-violent plan you can come up with."
"Sure. Well, have fun telling your boss he's got another son. He's called Damian."
Tim's heart stopped. Just for a moment.
"Sorry," Genbu said, belatedly and immediately unhappy. Like she only just realized what she'd dropped in Tim's lap like a live grenade. Much faster: "And thanks for listening, but I've got to go—"
"Oh no you—"
Click.
"—dammit."
And Genbu's phone disappeared from GPS tracking again.
Tim took a moment, just to himself, to curse Genbu to Metropolis and back. Then he opened his contacts list and started messaging all relevant parties with his fingers flying across the keyboard.
Notes:
The conversation offscreen went something like:
Rin: "So, are we going to talk about the kid?"
Kei: "What kid?"
Kakashi: "Oh. You didn't see the video."
Kei: "Again, what kid?!"
Tim assumes, correctly, that Kei is hell on electronics (as she is in Shell Game). However, she hasn't actually destroyed a single cell phone in Gotham so far, because she instead employs the ultimate Faraday cage by sticking it in a storage seal. Can't track an electronic device in a pocket dimension!
Fun fact: I did not know that Qīnglóng/Seiryū/The Azure (Teal) Dragon was associated with the Wood element when I gave Obito that name to play with. Also didn't know that Báihǔ/Byakko/The White Tiger was associated with Metal, which conducts electricity. What a coincidence!