Note:

I gave DCAU!Tim the set of friends' names most associated with comics!Tim in his civilian life and his multiple schools. The TV show doesn't give Tim's friends any names (or even mention any), and Jason didn't have a specific supporting cast of school friends to steal. :(

(The reason Tim gets the Titans as a hero friend group is because of a throwaway line in Static Shock where Bruce tells Static why Robin's not showing up for this crossover episode. It's set during the JL-era, so Dick had already moved on to being Nightwing.)

Tim drew a careful breath to steady himself, then knocked on the open door to Kei's room.

The shape within stirred, briefly blocking the light from the open window. Red, like all Gotham sunsets. Tim knew he had Kei's full attention when two faintly glowing eyes turned his way. A blink, and the spell was broken with a questioning, "Hm?"

"Can I talk to you for a minute?"

There was a clack and a quiet thump as Kei stowed her magic supplies in the bedside writing desk, then turned on both the lamp and the overhead light as she crossed the room. Nudging the door open a little wider, Kei allowed Tim into her space with a completely neutral, "Sure."

Tim sat on her bed while Kei went back to the desk. Cross-legged, but he kicked off his house slippers first. Alfred would never forgive him otherwise. Though it wasn't his first time in Kei's room—she seemed to have a personal open-door policy—Tim couldn't help but catalogue the differences each time. Once a detective, always a detective.

Aside from the general signs of life, like a rumpled bedspread, open curtains, and eraser shavings on the desk, Kei's room also sported a short stack of classic novels from the Wayne family library, each one bookmarked. Very high on the ceiling and down at the baseboards, Japanese talismans outlined the extremities of the room in a much creepier way than Tim's band posters. When asked, Kei only called them "privacy seals" and didn't seem inclined to elaborate even under Alfred's questioning.

This time, Tim did kind of need her to.

"Is something wrong? You're quiet." Not that Kei was all that loud; in the whole time Tim had known her, she only made noise on purpose.

But that was a loaded question.

Truthfully, Tim could point to several problems.

Therapy wasn't going well, for a start. Even though Bruce tried to vet people ahead of time—this was Gotham after, all—the four people Tim had met so far were all bad choices. One clearly left ethics by the wayside in favor of too much interest in celebrity gossip, with the exact same vibe as a Globe reporter. The second candidate talked to Tim like he was five when he deigned to speak to him at all instead of Bruce. The third one seemed to think something was inherently wrong with Tim for being born in the real Gotham, and the last acted just a bit too much like Crane to ever make Tim feel at ease in his presence. Putting aside the weight of Robin on his heart, he just didn't trust any of them. So, the hunt was ongoing for anybody who could supplement Doc Tompkins' overworked expertise.

Tim was almost frustrated enough to demand Robin back solely to give him open access to Justice League or Titans resources, but he hadn't worked up the nerve to talk to Bruce about it. If he wouldn't agree, Tim didn't want to tip his hand too early and get shut down flat.

There was always the option of running to Dick or Barbara. But they were both so busy now with one fewer voice in the field—no. Not happening.

And meanwhile, his nightmares persisted. After years of being on the night shift, Tim's sleep schedule stuttered when forced out of the field by injuries or obligations. Now, after more than three weeks at home, his body reluctantly allowed him to sleep by half past midnight, but his brain kept waking him up. Mostly to the sound of his own screams warping into the Joker's high laughter.

His friends didn't get it. Not even Ives or Callie. How could they? The cover story Bruce concocted couldn't account for Tim's new discomfort with friendly back-slaps and headlocks and the general jostling of life. "Holding it together" took all of his concentration whether he wanted it to or not, which came within a hair of getting him called out in class for not doing his homework. Or schoolwork. Or not listening in general because his brain fogged over to get him through the day.

Even if Tim was retir— benched, now, none of them could know. Ever.

And losing Robin, in turn, meant losing the Titans. None of his friends there even knew his real name. He thought he'd have time to reveal the truth eventually, but now—

It all came back to Bruce, to Batman, and layers of lies. And Tim still didn't know how to talk to him anymore. From the jump, it wasn't like they were equals in the Batman-and-Robin roles, but it felt more like they'd lost any progress over the last three years in favor of uneasy silence. They were in some ways worse than strangers. They still knew enough to hurt.

"It's just a lot," Tim said at last. "Too much. You know how that feels, right?"

Kei made a noise that sounded like agreement.

Tim hadn't actually seen much of her lately. While she did have a cover job now, being Alfred's assistant mostly meant she spent half day following him and the other half dealing with her magical doctor appointments. From what Tim understood, the biggest battle scar on her was invisible except to people who could perceive magic. And while that wasn't life-threatening on its own, every Bat felt grateful enough to get her the best treatment favors could buy.

Tim just hoped they weren't out of ideas yet. "Are things going okay?"

"Broadly." When Tim frowned, Kei added, "Nothing's more broken than when we started."

"That's good." And now Tim felt even more restlessness with nothing to show for it. "Cool."

Kei blinked at him with a catlike air that wasn't too judgmental. "That felt like a lie."

More like an incomplete truth. "I'm fine."

"Ah, so that's what actual lies sound like. Neat."

Tim winced.

"What do you want to do?"

He didn't want to go skateboarding now, for one. Or for a run, which was occasionally fine even if the Wayne family property had some sinkhole issues, particularly around the Batcave. No, the itch in the back of Tim's mind was the same kind solved by swinging between Gotham's rooftops at night. The thrill of falling and the strain in his shoulders as the rappel line caught him before death could follow through. He craved it.

But Tim couldn't say that out loud. He sighed and dropped his head into his hands.

"Do you want to spar?"

Tim jerked his head up and stared at her. "Seriously? You'd do that?"

"It's what I'd do at home," Kei admitted, not entirely meeting Tim's eyes. She scratched at her scar enough that if it had been fresh, the movement would've ripped the scab right off. "When my friends and I feel a little restless, sometimes throwing punches helps keep our minds off other problems."

It didn't sound as bad as any of the other options. Still… "We'd have to go down to the Batcave. Bruce didn't build a ring up here."

Kei's expression didn't change. "You still know how to get in."

"Yeah, but he's down there right now." Probably. It was sunset in Gotham and Bruce was at home. Where else would he be?

Kei didn't say anything for a long moment. There were clearly certain matters she refused to touch with a ten-foot pole. The tension between Tim and Bruce wasn't her business. Not directly. They had to figure out the new idea of "normal."

If Bruce would just—

"To hell with this," Tim burst out once the awful hesitation was too much to tolerate. "The worst he can say is 'no.'" Tim darted to his feet, put his slippers back on, and headed for his room. By the time Tim made it back to the hallway, dressed in a karate gi he'd neglected for weeks, he had to jog to catch up with Kei's progress toward Bruce's office and the hidden Batcave entrance there.

She'd put on house slippers. Otherwise, Kei was in the same relaxation-mode outfit she'd been wearing before. That didn't feel right for a spar, but it wasn't like Alfred would have gotten a karate uniform for someone who didn't really seem to practice.

"Is it?" Kei asked out of nowhere, once they were almost there.

Tim didn't stumble, but he did pause on the threshold of Bruce's office. "Is what?"

"Is 'no' really the worst thing he can say?"

Tim sighed. "Not the point, Quippy." But instead of letting himself get dragged into a pedantry contest, he reached up to the old grandfather clock's face and turned the hour and minute hands to 10:48. The clock obligingly slid away from the doorway behind it, and the pair of them headed down into the dark.

Tim spotted Bruce at the Batcomputer, cowl obviously down even from the entire span of the cave away, and tried to ignore him. Instead, he turned on the big light over the ring, bathing the area in an off-white glow that probably destroyed everyone's night vision. "So, do you know karate?"

"Probably not," Kei hedged, still following along in Tim's wake as though on a tour.

Tim knew Bruce had a background in ninja training—though he'd never gotten a direct explanation—but he could've also learned karate just in the course of his grand world training tour. Not that Tim got many details on that, either. Dick just said a guy from that time tried to kill them about it. The two stories probably weren't entirely unrelated.

But Bruce didn't offer any insights while typing and resolutely ignoring both of them as they approached the sparring ring, so Tim just said, "I guess it was a little stereotypical. Just because you speak Japanese doesn't mean you learned that."

"I did learn how to fight," Kei said. Was that actual annoyance? Just a tiny trickle, but Tim swore it was there. "I'm just not sure what you'd call the style."

"I'm sure we can figure it out." Tim shrugged and went looking for the hand wraps. "There are only so many ways to elbow somebody in the face."

Tim was pretty sure Kei muttered something like "You'd really think so," but in Japanese. He really needed to pick up at least a bit of the language, if only to be sure that she was totally making snippy remarks that only Bruce could understand. At least, Tim didn't think Alfred spoke Japanese. Then again, he was basically an international man of mystery, according to Dick.

Or maybe Dick watched too many James Bond movies at a formative age. Then again, everything they did sort of put the spooky spy crowd to shame, didn't it?

Setting up for the sparring session didn't take that long. Not really. Everyone who used the ring knew to clean up after themselves, so all the necessary equipment was organized.

Tim knew where everything was stored and had learned how to put on all the boots, pads, guards, and headgear needed to survive sparring with someone who outweighed him more than twice over. There were huge foam pads to practice strikes with a partner, not to mention the series of punching bags that could withstand Bruce's attention for hours. For Dick's purposes, there were also never-used escrima in storage. For Tim's, a bo staff worked when he wanted to keep opponents away and in pain.

The issue wasn't lack of knowledge.

Taekwondo, karate, and boxing all used different kinds of gear by preference, and each one felt wrong in a different way as he stared down at the array of options. Robin wasn't weighed down by anything, and right now, Tim wanted a taste of that freedom again.

Staring at the equipment, Tim wasn't quite sure what to go for.

"This doesn't feel like a dojo floor at all," Kei said, breaking Tim out of his thoughts as she whacked the ring experimentally.

But by the time Tim turned around to ask about weapons, all Kei had done was tape up her hands and feet before climbing into the ring. It was jarring seeing her nonchalantly begin a shadowboxing routine with speed that edged a hair past human, like she'd done it a thousand times. The motions were more like Wing Chun than anything. He'd known that she was an athlete—they'd run through Dick's idea of acrobat training about four times now—but it wasn't the same.

Then Kei spotted him staring and said, "Were we supposed to use all those pads?" It was like she hadn't even considered them.

"You don't have to, but now I think I have to," Tim said, though he knew boxers threw even harder punches with the padding in gloves present to absorb the shock. It was a lot easier to break fingers on someone's face than action movies ever acknowledged. "Seriously, no gear at all?"

"I can ignore most of what happens during sparring matches. At worst, I can just go to bed and be fine by morning." With that statement hanging in the air to general disbelief, Kei also spotted Tim's skeptical eyebrow and added, "Before everything, at least. Maybe I should look into other options."

"No better time to try." And it wasn't like they were going to mess with Barbara's training setup. She could keep the laser turrets.

In the end, Kei picked out a set of headgear and allowed Tim to help her adjust it, but avoided the heavier padding with a look of mild confusion. Maybe it was a magician thing, but even Doctor Fate didn't use armor other than spells. Mr. Blood relied on his transformation into Etrigan instead, and then there was Zatanna, who mostly kept to her shows instead of waiting for trouble like Justice League members did.

"Think that's about as protected as I can stand to be," Kei muttered, flexing her fingers inside the padded gloves.

Dismissing the lingering feeling of unease—they desperately needed to get this girl a better sense of self-esteem—Tim squared his shoulders. "Then let's get started."

Kei bowed, though not as deeply as she had to Alfred that first time.

Tim didn't hesitate to mirror it.

Tim was a good fighter by any reasonable standard. Fast, flexible, willing to take a hit if it advanced his tactical position, and with a good instinct for where to make a cheap shot hurt the most. In three years, the rough edges of his fighting style smoothed to a mirror sheen through his hard work and dedication. Bruce didn't take any credit beyond what it took to show Tim a path forward.

Maybe that was why it hurt so much to see him return to the Cave and polishing those skills again.

On a small partitioned window, Bruce kept one eye on the cave's security feed as the two teenagers felt out each other's fighting styles. All of Tim's usual flourishes were muted as he circled Keisuke, who moved more like Katana than a barehanded fighter. Feet on the ground, hands at the ready, eyes trained on her opponent like a hunter.

He didn't turn the computer chair around and offer his opinion. He didn't walk over to the side of the ring and call out strikes. Instead, Bruce sat still, typed, and caught himself staring as the kids continued their careful dance.

Tim struck first. Left jab, not at his full speed, just to see what might happen.

Keisuke leaned back just far enough that Tim's reach fell short, then followed his retreating hand right back into Tim's space. She already had his wrist in hand by the time Bruce blinked.

"Okay, whoa—"

And then Tim was—gently but swiftly—tossed across the length of the ring. Most of the momentum was his, turning a roll into a somersault, but the initial movement definitely hadn't been his idea. The last rotation put Tim back on his feet, but the look on his face was much warier this time.

Then Tim let out a short laugh. "So, I guess you do this a lot?"

"My friends have a lot to worry about," Keisuke offered. "So, yes."

Even when not on the offensive, Keisuke ducked around Tim's attacks with absolute focus. Bruce saw the moments she deliberately chose not to exploit a weak point. Human anatomy could only offer so many kinds of movements at once, and the point of a martial artist's flow between attack and defense was to offer the most of the former without giving up on the latter. Trade-offs, everywhere. Bruce and those he taught augmented their strengths with stealth, gadgets, investigative skills, and intense training to limit all relevant risks.

"You're going way too easy. Come on, lean into it!" Tim's voice said over the sound of Bruce's continued typing.

"That's kind of how practice works," was Keisuke's mild reply between deflected punches. The outsides of her arms and hands would be sore tomorrow.

Tim knew her weak point was her left shoulder, and so she had to defend it more carefully than any other part of her body. Aiming for it drove Kei back faster. "How exactly is this practice for you? Is Alfred not working you hard enough?"

"Ever since my brother had a growth spurt last year, I'm not used to shorter opponents anymore," Keisuke said, still dancing away from his strikes.

"Holy shit you're literally talking down to me."

"I guess?"

And then Tim targeted a flying knee at her head. "Hyah!"

Keisuke didn't laugh as she ducked out of the way, perhaps because Tim's attack continued even after he landed and recovered. Wing Chun's influence showed through his arms as he shot after her. Even the occasional sharp kicks aimed at her sides didn't interrupt the flow much.

"I feel like—" Keisuke caught Tim's ankle and hoisted him off the ground with her right hand alone, then tipped him flat onto his back. "—growing that much threw off his reflexes, though."

Tim managed to flip to his feet, then got into a ready stance again. "Yeah? Gimme an example."

"I watched him trip over a sword form he's known since he was six." Keisuke walked two fingers across her palm before miming a pratfall, then shrugged. "He figured it out eventually."

"How old's your brother, then?"

"What, waiting on your own growth spurt?"

Tim rolled his eyes. " Obviously."

"Sixteen in November." Keisuke paused. "Or…well, it'd be September or August here. I think."

"Calendar thing still screwing you up, huh?"

"There's a reason I don't help with your homework."

The teenagers continued to exchange barbs as their practice session stretched onward. Neither of them fought to their full potential, but it seemed as though the activity helped with Keisuke's habitual shyness. Trading blows with Tim, like kittens batting at each other, was the closest to actual play Bruce had seen from them in his presence. He knew they went out skateboarding on the driveway or in a local park, but only through security cameras and Alfred's testimony. Tim avoided Bruce outright. Keisuke followed his example when not shut up in her room.

But for now, they bonded over a shared willingness to throw each other around.

Bruce watched and listened. While he did have a few open cases, none of them were reading material he'd share with these two in visual range, and not in their current circumstances. The Batmobile needed another two hours of increasing darkness for maximum stealth efficiency. Batman, in turn, was best suited for the shadows of deep night. He only deviated from that plan when operating with the Justice League, who were almost universally bigger, brighter, and more durable targets.

And Tim laughed as he slowly, inevitably lost.

Keisuke was taller, faster, and stronger. And, despite all apparent preferences toward a peaceful existence, was a trained killer. That halting, hurt excuse for a conversation they'd had on the Watchtower came back in full force like recurring tinnitus. Keisuke's healing prowess survived the vagaries of her life, but she still called herself a weapon. A soldier, at best. A lioness batting at a cub with all claws firmly sheathed.

Bruce had no idea if he was giving her enough time and space to find peace.

Tim clearly didn't care about any of that. From the floor, a little breathless, he said, "Please tell me you've seen Bruce Lee movies. Any of them."

Looking down at him, arms crossed, Keisuke clearly had no idea what to say. "Um…"

"Good point. After this, we've gotta watch Enter the Dragon."

"Only if you take a shower first."

"Right back at you." Tim held up his hand and let Keisuke pull him to his feet. "Are you even breathing hard?"

"…A little?"

"Shut up." Tim started stripping off the protective equipment he'd worn for the fight, piling the pieces carefully into a cleaning bin beside the nearby lockers. His hair was a wild mess when he pulled the padding off, then ran a hand through the strands to make it even worse. "I feel like you're the kind of person who punches trees when training or, I dunno, fights bears. Runs uphill both ways in the snow. Full Rocky montage, maybe?"

"Um, no." Keisuke followed him to copy his procedure, but hers was a shorter list of borrowed items. "But I think the term Zatanna used was, uh, 'magic-fueled brawler.' At least the last time I saw her."

"So that's where the energy comes from."

"I can't turn it off, so…"

"No, no, it's fine. But next time, show me magic instead. I wanna see if I can learn any."

"Sure?" Going by Keisuke's tone, she was about as doubtful as Bruce felt.

Tim took that as agreement, because he left the Cave ahead of Keisuke instead of risking a conversation with Bruce. Bruce caught the briefest glimpse of him grabbing a towel off a nearby rack before disappearing up the stairs in a whirl of teenage motion.

Keisuke lingered. Unlike Tim, she scrubbed at her hair for a little while before slinging the towel around her shoulders. And then her shape wandered off the side of the Batcave's overhead camera view until Bruce felt her presence behind his chair. She didn't stay there, at least—instead, she walked up on his right side and asked, "Mr. Wayne? Could I ask you for a favor?"

"What is it, Keisuke?" Bruce asked immediately.

"Can you look up someone's…existence? Please."

Bruce was already bringing up the relevant search engine, but he looked back at Keisuke when she failed to offer either a name or a justification. "Did you remember someone involved in your case?"

Doctor Fate's assurances aside, Justice League resources turned away from Keisuke's ongoing situation because crises kept cropping up elsewhere. Even with her here, in Bruce's home. Ultimately, this house was less flammable than others.

"Not exactly." Keisuke rolled one shoulder, though Bruce doubted even Tim's best flying side kick would throw her off for long. "Isobu just mentioned a few things, so…"

"Then yes, I can take a look." Bruce's hands hovered above the keys. "Who am I searching for?"

"Jason Peter Todd."

A name comprised of three first names was odd, but not one that warranted the strange intensity of Keisuke's stare. It was stranger that an ocean spirit that seemed to speak the same languages as his host could come up with a Western name at all. Bruce would have assumed his naming patterns were otherwise the same. But then, making a career out of assumptions sounded like a good way to end one's days in a deathtrap.

Bruce typed the name into the search bar and awaited the results.

A news article—specifically the sports section—appeared first. Jason Peter Todd, twenty years old, was a junior at Harvard University and a star player on their hockey team last season. According to a post-game interview, he was pursuing a double major in English and social sciences, and planned to return to Gotham after graduation. The picture next to the article helpfully identified him by jersey number in a team photo, but the image resolution was poor. All Bruce could see of the young man was black hair and a wide grin among his teammates.

"Oh." The sound was more an exhalation than anything. When Bruce glanced Keisuke's way, her eyes were moving in a way that suggested reading the article, likely only after assessing the same things Bruce had already noticed.

"Keisuke?"

She dragged herself out of that quiet focus, looked down at Bruce, and just said, "You don't know him."

"I do not," Bruce confirmed. "You do."

But Keisuke shook her head. "No. I was wrong."

"Should I know this person?" Bruce tried. He didn't want to make her any more uncomfortable, but Keisuke had a habit of making strange insights with wild leaps of logic on no evidence. He didn't need to hear another variant of the story about Ivo's android to know that.

"If you don't, you don't. It's…" Keisuke paused, looking down at Bruce with a thoughtful air. "Isobu and I try to work things out through…mental flowcharts, I guess? It's all a bunch of dependent clauses. If 'this,' then 'that,' but with seeing the future. Does that make sense?"

No. "If you want to take a moment to explain, I'm listening." Any additional insight into Keisuke's situation could still offer some clues, even if she didn't realize it.

"I don't know how to explain it." Frustration bled through, a pitch-perfect repeat of that conversation before Tim demanded they take her home. "If you did know that boy, I'd have more to say. But you don't, so I don't. And as far as I know, that doesn't change just because I asked."

Bruce let that sentence sit for long enough that he could actually see the moment Keisuke jolted, without visible external stimuli. While told that she had constant access to her spirit passenger, most of the time she appeared to just be prone to letting her mind wander. It was one of the first times he'd seen her react as though to J'onn's telepathy. Or auditory hallucinations brought on by one or more of Gotham's psychologically-focused villains.

"And Isobu says I'm explaining badly and should give up, so that's fun." Kei scratched the back of her head, looking even more irritated at that reminder. With the air of someone trapped on a phone call, she added, "He also says that you should talk to your family more."

"What?" Bruce couldn't help his tone, but he did notice the way Keisuke winced. She didn't want to have this conversation any more than he did. "Why would Isobu have input on that?"

Keisuke sighed. Running a hand over her face, she mumbled, "Isobu says that just because he's not human doesn't mean he doesn't have family. But we can't contact them, or mine, so…" Keisuke mimed reaching for a word.

"How many more creatures like him are out there?" Bruce asked, because that was the most relevant point.

"Eight siblings, though they don't have looks in common." Keisuke accepted the new topic with only a slight pause. "All of them have human hosts like me. And Isobu's in the bottom third of the power rankings, which none of them ever let him forget."

That did not clarify what any of the spirits looked like. Perhaps Keisuke didn't know. If every one of them was already possessing a human, however she learned that, it didn't matter in a practical sense. Keisuke would learn of their presence the same way heroes did when supervillains debuted and a building exploded.

"The point is, they have a special nearly-telepathic bond and try to keep in contact. They're ultimately stuck to the same destiny. And he thinks…you're not appreciating the gift you have."

Bruce did not let an ounce of what he felt show on his face.

The forbidding silence between Tim and Bruce was his own fault. He knew that. Tim retreated behind quips and sarcasm whenever he wanted to avoid confrontation, as a parting shot. Over the years, Bruce could count the number of times he fully entrusted his heart to anyone in one hand; even in the most recent crisis, Tim pulled back once he could. It was a self-defense mechanism. Avoidance meant a lower chance of being hurt.

Bruce, too, built a wall between himself and others. Whether in the form of Batman as a role, the dozens of ways his responsibilities pulled him in every direction, or just being unable to find his tongue once the pressure closed in, Bruce knew his habits. When there was nothing but terrible silence, he filled it with work.

He had to.

Here was the truth: Bruce couldn't stop. There was a moment before Batman when maybe, just maybe, he might have turned from this path and let Andrea lead him somewhere else. Somewhere kinder and brighter and now beyond his reach. There was no turning from it—the void inside him would devour every other soul around him if he let it.

Bruce's fingers clenched inside his gloves.

Tim had already come within a hair's breadth of dying as horribly as any of Gotham's victims, if not more so. Perhaps a death worse than even what Two-Face would have given him the night they met. Longer. With more pain.

Maybe Tim could see the truth now—that he would be better off forgetting everything about Batman, and Robin, and living a life free of all of this. Nothing about Bruce's life was safe. Better run now than suffer again. If Bruce needed to strip Robin from Tim and the world to keep him safer than that, so be it.

Bruce just hadn't anticipated that Keisuke's shoulder devil would so neatly drive a knife into it. There was nowhere to retreat to now.

Bruce had yet to lay eyes on the infamous Isobu. While Keisuke insisted the ocean spirit deserved far more credit for saving Tim and her, even while using her body and magic as a medium, Isobu seemed mostly to keep to himself. Keisuke did not generally offer Isobu's specific input as it occurred, but the gleam of red-gold light shining out of her eyes gave his presence away even at the dinner table. Daylight hid the telltale sign for the most part, while darkness like this revealed it. The glow from the computer screen sufficed.

Neither Alfred or Tim cared. Used to metahumans or else just confident in the face of Keisuke's clear concern for others, it wasn't difficult to view Isobu as just one more aspect of their new houseguest. J'onn didn't mind the spirit, and Doctor Fate reported that he cooperated with the ongoing research into a treatment for Keisuke's wounded arm. But those were all, in a way, issues focused on the self.

It just seemed uncharacteristically human to gossip about the household.

Then Keisuke added, turning her gaze toward the floor and hunching her shoulders, "He says you're supposed to tell people you love them. Before it's too late."

A second knife slid home between Bruce's ribs.

Then the Batcomputer's main screen was obliterated by a massive alert notification. He noticed when Keisuke flinched back from both the light and the noise, ducking behind the chair, but Bruce hit the spacebar on reflex and opened the call. Given the Watchtower duty roster, this could only be a genuine emergency.

"Watchtower to Batman. Please respond," announced J'onn's voice through the speakers. An instant later, his face appeared IMAX-sized on the screen.

A sick sort of relief flooded Bruce's body. It seemed he'd escaped that conversation for today.

Bruce pulled his cowl on even though he left cameras turned off most of the time. Turning toward the microphone, he said, "Batman here. Go ahead, J'onn."

"Doctor Fate has detected another magical incursion in Blüdhaven, identical to the spell traces that brought Genbu to us." Just over thirty miles from Gotham. And while Dick did prefer to keep his city to himself, there was little chance of the problem staying solely under his discretion now that the Justice League was already involved.

"I didn't feel anything," Keisuke reported, reentering the conversation with a mask—one of Tim's spares—over her eyes. She stepped closer to the microphone, but kept her face pointed at the screen. "But I guess I'm weaker than I should be…"

"I did not expect you to. It wasn't your spellwork, after all," said Doctor Fate's voice, and his gleaming golden helmet crept into frame. "Unfortunately, the original ritual site was obliterated on contact with our current ongoing concern: the subject of the spell. It is currently at large."

"Do we have eyes on it?" Bruce demanded, getting to his feet. Behind him, Kei started mumbling in Japanese so quickly that Bruce couldn't parse it.

"Flash should be reporting shortly. As should Nightwing."

That was something, at least. While Bruce's heart clenched in his chest, neither teleporting to the Watchtower (and then to Blüdhaven) or driving from Gotham to its sister city were faster options than that. Dick knew his city, and the Flash was one of his oldest friends.

And then another of Bruce's smaller monitors changed. Dick's blue bird icon blinked in and out, and then settled.

"Flash has reached the target. Nightwing is backup."

The image viewed through Dick's camera was obscured by smoke, but then a heavy spotlight swung upright in the background of the shot. A lurching figure darted from shadow to shadow, clearly chasing the vague red blur that was the Flash at combat speed. Sirens blared and people screamed as cars were upended, or as local police shot at the figure in the fading daylight.

"Almost got it—" Dick's voice said. "There!"

Image resolution improved as Dick managed to toss road flares into the fight, highlighting broken asphalt and the reflection of a shattered storefront in the side of a delivery truck.

And so they had fully captured the silhouette of the enemy. The exact color of the last burning ember in a fireplace, it was the size of a person but wrong. Two glowing white pits in its face sat over a gaping mouth jagged with unseen teeth, with long, rabbitlike ears trailing after the head as it snarled. A mostly humanoid body shape, but the limbs distorted and bent in an animalistic way as it tried to snap at the Flash's shadow. Four tails extended from the base of its spike and whirled like independent entities, whipping up wind around it and tossing debris everywhere.

Keisuke tapped her hand on the microphone before Bruce could offer his ignorance. In a heavy tone, she informed them, "That's Kurama, one of Isobu's big brothers. His battle mode always puts those ears on his host."

Host. There was that word again. Bruce turned toward her, only to find Keisuke concentrating solely on the video feed from Dick's camera. Pushing his growing concern to the side, Bruce asked, "Do you know how to beat him?"

"If he doesn't kill us first."

Notes:

My backstory for this edition of Jason is that his dad, Willis, got a better job and moved the family to Connecticut before Harvey Dent became Two-Face. And Catherine Todd's cancer is in remission.

"Andrea" is Andrea Beaumont, from Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. She was Bruce's first love in this continuity, and her a) leaving Bruce after he proposed and b) later showing up as the titular Phantasm solidified his resolve to Batman his days away into the bedrock of his identity.

Isobu: "tell him to talk to his family because we cannot"
Kei: "oh my god are we guilt-tripping batman"
Isobu: "yes"
(Justice League alert shows a Kurama jinchūriki cutting loose)
Isobu: "ah"