PART 1 - Chapter 14 - A Night in the Narrows - Casualty
When there is a war, it is always the innocent who fall first.
The explosion was heard from several blocks away.
At the East most area of The Narrows, already notorious for the impressive number of abandoned buildings, places full of all sorts of squatters and the occasional crimes, flames erupted from the top of its most infamous buildings, a lousy excuse for construction, cheap materials and structural failures had made it inhospitable after just twenty years of use, even for the most desperate people in the City.
Jason sped his bike south, signs of a dark cloaked figure gliding on top of buildings hinting that Black Bat was following him and making sure that he knew it too.
At the same time, unbeknownst to them, another vigilante trailed westward, towards the same destination.
The Red Hood parked his motorcycle on the side of an alley, one silent and firm look at the darkness within it, reminding all those who were taking shelter there of who owned the vehicle and who they would have to answer to if anything happened to it.
Any. Thing.
The top of the building had become a burning lighthouse in the middle of the dark violent sea of concrete.
"One of yours?", asked the sudden voice by his side. Years of training with Bruce made him tough enough to not visibly react in surprise. Cassandra's skills had become frighteningly impressive with the years. Soon, she would be Bruce's equal in stealth, easily. And Jason knew Cass could see right through his act. She knew he had been caught by surprise. And how proud he was of her accomplishment.
"Used to be, but I left it six months ago."
Cassandra nodded. She was the only one of them all who did not have any "nests" (caches and safehouses) of her own. Her studio, a gift from Bruce at South Side that she barely visited, was just that, something from Bruce's.
To go and have their own spot, or six, in Jason's case, independent of Bruce, was their unofficial rite of passage. A place to keep extra-uniforms, gadget supply, machinery for repairs or just a place to rest and get away from everything, Batman included.
That and stealing the Batmobile without alerting Bruce or Alfred.
Jason knew all three of Grayson's. Spoiler had just one, but he had no idea where it was, only that it was inside Gotham U. Duke's first and only safehouse was near one of Jason's, inside The Narrows.
(Kid didn't know that he knew about it, and Jason applauded the guts of the newbie.)
Luke had one in Diamond District. Demon Brat, like Dick, had three, the most obvious one near Gotham Zoo. Harper abandoned one of hers, while keeping one still a secret for herself and her brother.
Drake had twenty eight, that Jason knew of, all under different fictional individuals or companies.
(Overachieving brat.)
Cass, though, either used the ones Bruce created or hopped around the ones of the rest of the Family, no interest in getting one for herself, apparently.
But her 'borrowing' the car to go to a drive-thru while Batman was driving it around on an investigation?
Bra-freaking-vo.
Back to the matter at hand, the abandoned building had been one of his hiding spots before, but even he had to admit that there had been more cracks in its foundations than there were in his own psyche. So, not a good place to keep storage of ammo and equipment. Especially his kind of ammo and equipment.
Cassandra pointed to an abandoned store, and Jason caught the meaning immediately. Most of the security systems in the Narrows were either fake or non-functioning, as any one from the neighborhood or the Police Department could attest.
So, hiding their own security system inside the system that should not be working had been, frankly, a stroke of Genius from Oracle.
"Oracle, can you get us footage from nearby cameras? We need info on the AnarKings."
"You cut the Batcave off the system when you moved to the Narrows, Jas-"
"Yeah, bullcrap, I know B and you still have backdoor access to it, O.", came Jason's bored tone.
A moment of silence, Black Bat still looked around in her own investigation.
"Sending it to you."
"Thanks. And Oracle?"
"Yes, Jason?"
"I know, ok? I know. And I don't blame you."
There was a sudden image inside his helmet, a recording of himself and Cass arriving seconds before, then the video rewinded three minutes, revealing two men jumping out of a second floor window of the condemned building.
Jason looked behind him, seeing Cass checking the dumpsters the duo had used to cushion their fall.
The video showed one of them, a man with red hair and heavy golden necklaces, coming out of the trash. The second man, bald with the infamous inverted crown painted on his forehead, leaving the dumpster with a limp.
Cass had, at the exact moment, lifted a small swab marked with blood, evidence she collected from outside the large metal compartment.
"We have a trail.", said Black Bat.
"Send me a scan of the sample. The Bat-computer will help highlight the arsonist's DNA in the environment while I'll ID these AnarKings."
The pair of vigilantes walked away from the scene, the motorcycle left behind, as a colorful figure watched and tagged along, over the roofs.
Spider-Man had turned off his suit's lights, following the Bat-heroes from above as stealthy as he could, easily jumping between chimneys, ledges and heat exhaust vents.
'Firm walk, steady pace, no distraction... yeah, like I suspected, they are after the ones who were responsible.', Peter concluded, using a nearby taller building as a point of swing.
The normal 'thwip' noise of his web-shooter had been greatly lowered in his new silencer mode, while the padding in his feet and palms allowed much quicker movements while wall-crawling.
A sudden stab of his spider-sense made him shift gears and quickly jump across the street, just as the shorter vigilante, the one all in black and donning a cape, turned her head to the right and upwards, checking the roofs.
When she turned left, Spider-Man had already changed position to the other side of the building, still swinging and out of their sights.
"What's wrong?", Jason asked his sister through the comms in her cowl, instead of using the speakers.
Cass quickly moved her hand in a circle, index finger raised, palm upwards, followed by a crossing motion, then quick open palm to her chest, forehead and outwards.
He knew how much Cass had advanced in reading and speech, even helping her during the many visits she would make to his hideout to raid his chocolate bars and stashes of books. To see her sticking back to the signs, that would have meant that, whatever it was that picked her interest, it had done so in such a strong manner that it had forced her back to basics, pure and raw ideas.
"Want to deal with it?", her brother spoke again in the same way, directing them to an alley as his helmet's sensors showed him the way, his hand discreetly going for the holstered right gun. Cassandra shook her head.
'Shadow', she gestured as best as she could one handedly - her own variation that she had developed with Bruce and Tim - which earned a slight hitch on his step, before he looked at her.
As if reading his mind, she replied: 'Not. B.', because she was certain of that. "Not. Harm", she added out loud, trying to assure him.
Cassandra's youth had been filled with several forms of attack against her, deriving from the explosive direct confrontation to the stealth approach, whatever her so-called 'father' devised to teach her the most important lesson of all: survival.
Whoever followed them at the moment, did that out of curiosity. But… there was something else.
'But. Like. B.', she admitted, finally.
Her brother stood a little taller, the subtle worrying, the hint of anxiousness and thrill in his shifting feet.
'Protect'. 'Shield'. 'Family'. 'Anger'. 'Control'.
Even though it wasn't directed at them, whoever followed them - and she had a couple guesses of her own, was hunting. A predator.
She recognized the word her brother suddenly spoke up, one of those things that Alfred did not like to hear from them.
She nodded, in agreement.
His nerves had been dialed up to eleven.
After all, if Cass would compare someone to Bruce while he was shadowing a target, then this someone would have to be supernaturally good at stealth and phenomenally dangerous to boot.
Jason turned his heat sensors for a moment, and got his answer.
Small spots shone on a building they had passed a few moments before, hands on the ledge, proof that someone had stood on it and watched them.
Then, new spots on the ledge of another building, on the other side of the street.
Then a much more precise heat signal, coming at the top of a building in front of them. The whole roof.
Jason swore in his own head. 'The roofs are still warm from the sunlight', Jason could at least identify the shape of a human body, crouching and keeping themselves out of sight.
"Found him?", his little sister spoke up, and wasn't that surprising?
Jason always got surprised by Cass' youthful serious voice. Duke was young and confident, like he himself had been, one day. Damian was serious, but always trying to crush the youth out of his voice, as if it was a weakness.
Cass, however, was dangerous in every aspect of herself, including how she would not appear threatening until suddenly she had taken you down.
"Best guess, Spider-Man", and Cass nodded in agreement. 'Good. You noticed it', she signed back.
'Cheeky brat!', Jason understood, only in this moment, how Cass was waiting for him to figure things out himself.
"Want him to join?", her question made him stop, but not look at her. He was still following the blood tracks, but he knew she would understand his hesitation for what it was, surprise.
As far as he could guess, Spider-Man was a good guy, one of the few that would actually intentionally go around to help out in Gotham. Jason had no beef with him, even though his declarations of promised violence.
But it didn't feel right to be the first one from the Family to open up to the newbie. That should be Dick's job. Or Bruce's, if he wasn't so focused on this Talon business.
"I think you should", was Cassandra's advice, an emphasis on the 'you'. "Batgirl agrees with me."
Jason wondered about that. Maybe, as the one most outside the group, he could be the one… Red Hood quickly turned to the quiet heroine. "You are not telling me something."
The completely dark mask barely moved, demonstrating Cain's great control of her body. "Red Robin said... Nightwing or Signal would be first."
Then, a subtle smile appeared. "Batgirl bet it would be you."
"And you are trying to rig the game in her favor?", Jason concluded. "I knew you were my favorite for a reason."
Five minutes later, a nearby storage room had been witness to a quick albeit brutal takedown.
Two AnarKings had thought themselves safe and free from their recent arson and explosion of an abandoned building's penthouse. Red Hood and Black Bat quickly deprived these two of this silly notion.
Many floors above, on a nearby building, Spider-Man watched the duo rushing in after the criminals. He still suspected that he had been seen by the two vigilantes, so, after some deliberation, he had decided to finally introduce himself and offer his aid...
… in a discreet and safe manner, not at all influenced by the stories he heard about how the gun-toting Red Hood might be a little unhinged and possibly a former crime boss.
Red Hood kept one gun out of the holster while Batgirl barely paid him any attention, as she surveyed the knocked out goons, taking in all that she had learned from them.
There was 'Relief', yes. But most glaring, there was 'Accomplishment.'
Like the man in the car from earlier, these two showed pride and confidence in what they had done. Until the surprise and fear Black Bat and Red Hood made them feel, they were happy with their… 'achievements'.
"You ok?", her brother asked, and she barely shrugged.
"These two... felt pleasure. They liked what they did. They wanted to do more. Because they felt good." Black Bat turned to him. "Why?"
'Anger'. 'Disgust'. 'Hurt'. 'Indifference'. Many were the emotions his body told her.
"I don't know.", he told her honestly, and she was glad. It was pointless to say anything but the truth to her, her siblings understood that she could hear more than the words they said. And out of all of the Family members, Jason Todd had always been the most uneasy with emotions, just like her. "Some people just like being a-holes"
'Hate' again, but not towards the men they hunted. 'Good'. But then, it was clear. 'Hate for himself.'
Cassandra felt bad when her brother felt bad. She knew he wondered about himself, about his own past choices. She knew how often he liked to question himself.
A gentle hand, his hand, landed on her shoulder. She noted to herself the five closest vulnerable spots she could reach out with her lowered right arm, two of them optimal to completely render the limb useless.
"I'm just glad we caught them before they did anything else."
It wasn't her automatic response anymore, to hit first and hit hard. She couldn't stop seeing the targets, but she could see something more important, above the targets and everything else...
'Pride'. 'Happiness'. 'Family'. 'Trust'.
She nodded back, in return.
"Wow, you guys were awesome!"
Red Hood and Black Bat turned around in an instant, a batarang and a pistol already drawn and ready… only to have nobody to aim them at, only shelves full of boxed merchandise.
"Sorry, it got stuck.", came the voice, now the artificial tone recognizable as male, coming from a speaker. "I know, maybe if I do this…"
Suddenly, a small object jumped from behind a couple of large boxes on the floor, Jason only having enough time to perceive its black metallic sheen and mechanical nature, before shooting at it.
"No, WAIT!", 'it' shouted, before getting hit and falling right in front of them, some sort of robotic drone, its limbs twitching while sparks flew from the large hole in its center.
"The heck?", asked Red Hood, with Black Bat looking as perplexed as he was.
"That", came a voice from the broken up door. Both vigilantes spot the newest addition to the crime fighters of Gotham, the Spider-Man, just standing at the entrance, shoulders dropped and lens wide. "was my partner, the W.A.S.P.-Spider."
He slowly got inside the storage room, knelt down in front of the duo, picked up the downed drone and sighed. "I knew it was too soon for it to join me on a mission, but it was so full of expectations. Deep down, I knew, it just wanted to prove itself to me."
Red Hood stared at Black Bat, in confusion, while holstering the gun back.
"Err, look…", only for a red gloved hand, fingers and thumb blue, to be raised.
"Don't. Just. Don't. It's all… too soon, too fresh for me right now.", was Spider-Man's solemn reply.
Black Bat raised her hands, as if asking permission. Spider-Man gave her a look then nodded, giving her the broken arachnid automaton.
The young woman gingerly put the drone inside an evidence bag that she produced from her utility belt, then zipped it shut, returning it to the colorful hero.
He accepted it, nodding at the heroine.
Then, surprisingly, she brought her hand to his shoulder and looked at him, head tilted to the side and up, as the man was at least five inches taller than her.
Spider-Man looked at her right back. Then he looked at the bag. Then his lens narrowed as he looked up.
"You're right.", Spider-Man finally spoke up. "Thanks. Let's go, there is still much to be done tonight."
And the two heroes left the storage room, together.
Meanwhile, Red Hood stood at where he was, left behind by his sister and the new guy in town.
"What the f#$% just happened?!"
Author's Notes:
Out of tragedy, a partnership.
Out of chaos, friendship.
Out of an invasion, a rivalry?
Next chapter: get your movie references ready!