Chapter 8
The girl on the screen had a familiar height and figure. Jason had admired it from afar (and too closely) earlier today. She wore a domino mask, and a mane of black hair pulled into a bouncy ponytail, but what gave her away was the black motorcycle suit with purple accents.
Helena. Damn it.
Jason wasn't surprised. Helena had hidden this secret terribly. Barbara took him for less of a fool but intended for him to ignore the clues and just leave Helena alone. He certainly wanted to.
Nonetheless, Jason cursed his luck. What were the odds the thief he was tailing for fun was involved in whatever gang Helena was crusading against? Did Blüdhaven have a crime syndicate he wasn't aware of?
That was a stupid thought. Of course, it did.
He and Dick had been away quite a while, doing the team-up thing with the Outlaws and the Titans. But they had forgotten one of Bruce's most important lessons: the criminal element does not tolerate a power vacuum. Blüdhaven clearly needed a resident vigilante.
But did it have to be Helena? And was she up to the task?
With the cameras, he watched her skulk around the facility, taking out goons as stealthily as he had on his way in.
He wondered who dared help Barbara train Helena. Dick? Tim? Steph? Cass? Kate?
He stopped himself.
He was better off not knowing. It was impossible to lie to Bruce because he could practically read minds. To avoid Batman's wrath, one was better off actually being ignorant of the information he wanted.
Resolved, Jason got up and left the security office. Helena seemed fine on her own. All he had to do was find and steal back his car without her noticing. Simple.
As he snuck along the elevated walkway, he could hear Helena's grunts of exertion and the thump of her polymer gauntlets and greaves colliding with flesh. Accompanying the sound was the all-too-familiar chorus of goons either threatening violence or suffering from it.
She had been made. So much for stealth on her part. Was her mission compromised? What was her goal here? Did she need help?
He peered out from behind a corner and watched a pack of thugs converge around Helena, who was cornered around a tire-rotating station.
She did not falter. If anything, she used it to her advantage. When a thug charged, she used his own momentum to throw him face-first into the workbench. Then she used the countertop to vault over the incoming pack so that the thugs were the ones cornered. Helena lay into them with graceful brutality. Jason noticed elements of kali, kickboxing, and jiu-jitsu in her fighting style. She even used the environment to her advantage, keeping herself above her opponents as much as next to them. Batarangs and mechanics' tools whizzed through the air, hitting dead on.
Helena was good. Really good.
Jason didn't need to worry about her. Sometimes bailing on a botched mission was a fun challenge—saying fuck it and letting the chips fall where they may. He trusted Barbara's judgment and Helena's skills. Both had told him not to butt in, so he wouldn't. He just needed his car back.
Making his way to his car undetected was more of a challenge now. He had to hide from both Helena and the goons scrambling to take her down. He lost line of sight on the combatants several times as the brawl meandered its way across the depot. Jason's ears told him it was getting closer and not farther away, so he hurried.
When he finally reached the bay holding his car, he hid crouched behind another vehicle. He waited for a second to make sure the coast was clear.
It wasn't. The torrent of Helena's violence crashed into his baby.
His breath hitched in horror.
"Hi-yah!"
Wham! Crunch! Boom!
Moments ago, he had admired Helena's resourcefulness. She used the environment to her advantage and weaponized every loose object. Now he was mortified.
Helena flung a volley of batarangs at a thug to break his guard. The objects lodged in the car's hood. Then, she barrel-kicked the distracted thug straight into the grill of the Challenger, smacked his face back around as he bounced off, and slammed the hood on top of his head.
The man crumpled, sliding to the floor dazed.
The Challenger's grill was scuffed and the hood was scarred and dented.
Jason let out a pained groan as if he had taken bodily harm and not the car.
"Come on, assholes! I've got all night!" Helena taunted, bouncing right in front of the vehicle.
A fresh trio of thugs charged her, wielding tire irons and pipe wrenches.
Jason couldn't hold back anymore. "Don't touch her!"
He drew his gun and cocked it. Rolling from behind his cover, he blew a round into the back of a wrench-holding thug. As he stumbled, Jason grabbed him by the collar and threw him into a second thug, sending them both sprawling. Thug Three's attention was diverted enough for Helena to send her boot into his liver. He keeled over, vomiting and squirming.
As Thug Two recovered his feet, Jason twirled his gun around, held it by the barrel, and drove it into his face and neck like a hammer. When Thug Two tried to cover up from Jason's mauling, Thug One stepped away in fear. Jason turned and lunged, grabbed him by the neck, and choke-slammed him on top of his buddy.
All goons now lay on the floor, squirming, no longer a threat. But they were still conscious, so Jason wasn't done. He holstered his gun and picked up a crowbar, snarling.
"Red Hood, what the hell?" She grabbed his shoulder. "They're down."
Jason shrugged her off. "Not down enough..."
"I said back off!" She pushed him.
He let that turn him around. "Fine." He dropped the crowbar and finally took a long look at Helena, up close.
She wore the same suit she had thrown on the floor of the bedroom last night, confirming his suspicions it wasn't just for motorcycle racing—it was a full kit of armored crime-fighting gear. It was mostly black canvas, leather, and kevlar, with purple accents and piping, reminiscent of Barbara's and Stephanie's crime-fighting uniforms. Her domino mask flared up at the brows, evoking Kate and Selina's masks.
The mash-up left Jason uncertain. "Um, Batgirl?" Barbara was Oracle now, but you needed her blessing to use the code name, not Bruce's. Last he knew, the mantle wasn't currently being used by any of the former Batgirls—Steph went by Spoiler and Cass was Orphan.
"Huntress," Helena corrected.
"Huntress?" He paused, taking her in again. "I like that."
Helena seemed to relax only a second, before recovering her bothered demeanor. "What the fuck are you doing here. I don't need your help."
"I wasn't trying to help you. Seemed like you had it covered."
"Then why did you butt in? Did Oracle tell you I was here?"
"No, she didn't. And I didn't follow you here, I followed her here." He hurried over to the Challenger, deliberately stepping on a fallen thug. "This gang stole my car. I was happy enough to leave you alone, but then you started beating them up with it! Oh, my poor baby..." He pulled off a batarang and popped a dent out of the hood, then tried rubbing off the scuff it left behind. He whimpered.
"You're more concerned about your car's well-being than mine?" Helena crossed her arms. "I don't know whether to be hurt or flattered."
"I don't care if you're hurt or flattered, cuz you're going to help me fix this when we get back."
"Am I?"
"Damn right. Now let's get out of here before..." Then Jason heard a distinctive metal clatter he knew too well. "Fuck!"
"What?" Helena asked.
Jason spun around, trying to find where the noise came from.
The open garage doors.
"Watch out!" He grabbed Helena, yanked the door of the car open, and pushed her inside.
Before he could follow her, a storm of bullets crashed into Jason.
Notes
I love fan-casting Jensen Ackles as Jason Todd, so sometimes I give Jason some Dean Winchester characteristics. One of those characteristics is how much he loves his car. Also, yes, I ripped off this whole sequence from John Wick 2.