#and even oracles clocktower has been attack

[lazerswordweilder]

One day, mid way through a meeting, the zeta tube announces the arrival of Batman. Everyone turns to give him a piece of theirs minds for showing up hours late, except he’s barely standing, half his mask ripped off reveals a blue eye that isn’t focused on anything, matted black hair full of blood, he has stubble on his chin and he’s missing a tooth. His hand cluches his stomach as a knife pokes through his fingers he still tries to contain the blood, every breath he takes looks painful and there’s an indent in his ribs that wasn’t supposed to be there, there’s rips all over his suit revealing battered armour underneath, his cloak has long since been torn off and one of his entire boots is missing (along with a sizeable chunk of flesh), and J’onn cringes over at the pain and hunder and thirst and pain coming from his mind, iced over by vauge shock.

(Sorry about any typos, might write a fic on this I dunno)

[havendance]

(Birds of Prey #75) Barbara: You should have broken in more often, Helena. Dinah: Seriously Babs... Maybe there's a silver lining. Too many people had found the tower. B: You're the one who told her where it was! D: Let's not muddy up sentiment with facts. (emphasis mine)

I know I should know better than to expect continuity from comics, but we're going with Dinah told Helena where the tower was? I've got nothing against this on face value, but are we ignoring Nightwing #38-39. Which, while far from my favorite issues for Helena, *does* establish her breaking into the Clocktower during No Man's Land.

Issue #38: Petit's men are attacking the Clocktower because it's got power always on and they've (correctly) identified her as a nexus of information. Huntress is part of this party.

(Nightwing #39) Barbara: No sure what their game is. Pettit must figure I'm a bargaining chip with my dad. He doesn't suspect the whole Oracle thing. But he knows I'm the brains of the ex-GCPD these days.

And you know what? I really doubt Pettit even knows that Oracle exists. However, Helena does. She'd teamed up with the Dinah in Birds of Prey: Manhunt prior to this. As well, as sniping with Oracle over the radio while she was still acting as the Bat.

Prior to this, Oracle has also been running a network of informants to get access to information as well as food, which she has them deliver to the clocktower. While the text doesn't have her recognizing Barbara as Oracle, I think it's entirely plausible that she later puts the pieces together of: Clocktower having a stupidly high tech security system, Batman having her guard it, and Nightwing being there into at least having a suspicion of it.

[mischiefandspirits]

Are You Sure About That?

((Warning for blood and blood drinking))

The seedy streets of Gotham were filled with whispers about the demons and monsters that roamed the city, and outsiders and Gotham’s lawful scoffed at how superstitious the criminals could be.

Gordon had worked alongside Batman enough to be quite sure there were no demons in Gotham. Sure, the vigilante was a little standoffish, but it was Gotham. Likewise, the Robins and Batgirls were all good kids. Maybe the first Robin’s smiles were a little eerie, but that was likely just the contrast with his mentor. Maybe the second and third liked morbid humor, but that was just how kids were these days. Maybe the fourth Robin was a bit temperamental and harsh, but he was young. Maybe the Batgirls’ movements were a little uncanny, but that was probably just the training. Maybe Nightwing seemed a little too cheerful about the stuff they dealt with, but the kid had been doing this since he was young. He could have a worse coping mechanism. Red Hood was the only one he’d really consider monstrous, but the guy was a former crime lord turned anti-hero and he had been getting better since the Bat had taken him under his wing.

The members of the Justice League rolled their eyes whenever someone brought up the rumors. Batman was grim, overly serious, and secretive, but he was a good man who only wanted the best and always had plan after plan to help the league succeed.

The Titans thought the rumors were hilarious. Sunshine Boy Nightwing? A demon? Who could believe the guy who was always flipping around and laughing at his own bad puns was some dark monster?

The Outlaws didn’t believe it, but they understood why someone might make the mistake of thinking Red Hood was a monster. The guy was vicious and maybe a little messed up in the head, but then again so were they.

Young Justice scoffed at the rumors. Corvid was incredibly intelligent and an incredible fighter, but he was also an absolute mess who couldn’t remember to sleep, eat, or drink on his own.

The Teen Titans stared dumbly when they heard the rumors. Sure, Robin was rude, brutal, and a bit entitled, but calling him a demon was a little much, especially considering the team had a cambion member.

The Birds of Prey ignored the rumors. Oracle was a godsend, even when she had to give up the cowl because of an unknown accident. And Batgirl was a brash spitfire, but she was always willing to lend a hand. Likewise, Huntress mostly stuck to herself, but she could be kind and personable when the time came.

The public, well, as time went on they saw more and more of Batman and his companions working with their teams on the news. It was quite clear to everyone that the group was nothing more than baseline humans with incredible training who were out to make the world a better place.

Yet the rumors persisted.

Because in the shadows of Gotham, where only the darkest of souls and their victims could see you, there was no reason to hide.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nightwing licked the blood off his talons as he listened to Batgirl’s story, idly kicking the unconscious gangster at his feet every so often.

“Why didn’t you just kill him, Fatgirl?” Robin huffed from Nightwing’s side and the imp ruffled the tiefling’s hair, carefully avoiding his horns.

“Killing shouldn’t be your go-to option, hdiiga,” he chirped.

“Don’t do that! You’re getting saliva and common blood in my hair!” Robin snarled, slapping away his hand.

Nightwing smirked and leaned down to lick a speck of blood off his youngest brother’s cheek, pulling back quickly when Robin screeched and tried to punch him.

“I’d say it’s an improvement,” Red Hood teased as he finished tying up the gangster he’d had taken down.

“Mind your place or I will put you back in your grave!”

Wiping some blood off his mouth, Hood smiled at Robin. “Go right ahead. I could use the nap.”

“If you’re counting on me to resurrect you, I’ll remind you that the last time I did that, you tried to banish me,” Red Robin said, not looking up from the laptop he was hacking into as his shadows soaked up the blood on him.

Nightwing and Batgirl groaned as the zombie and demon settled into a familiar argument.

“Well maybe if you’d brought me back properly as you did for your blonds, then I wouldn’t have tried to banish you.”

“That was different! I was less experienced when I brought you back!”

“I should have been easier to bring back! I was already a zombie!”

“EXACTLY! You came with a bunch of extra complications!”

“Are you two ever going to let this go?” Batgirl asked, eyes on the gangster she had knocked out. His face was twitching with distress as she twirled her fingers across his forehead, occasionally pulling them away to see the small moment of peace he got before she began brushing them across his forehead again. The revenant looked up at Robin and winked. “And killing’s boring, Human-Bird. Everything ends way too fast.”

Robin clicked his tongue. “I will never understand why we should waste our time torturing someone who has nothing worth telling? If we’re not going to kill them then why bother attacking them at all?”

“Because it’s fun?” Nightwing and Batgirl said together.

“There’s always something you can get out of someone, even if it’s just sustenance?” Red Robin offered.

Hood shrugged when the tiefling turned to him. “Don’t look at me. I’m the white sheep, remember. The only reason I could give you is that listening to B lecture about maintaining appearances by limiting deaths and going after insignificant criminals gets really annoying after a while, and that’s never stopped me.”

“Are you five done?” Oracle’s hissing voice echoed through the alley as the green mist that had been hovering across the ground began to rise in serpentine forms.

“Just finished downloading the data you wanted,” Red Robin said, closing the laptop and passing a thumb drive to the snake coiling up him.

“Alright, the police are three minutes out so either clean yourselves up or get out of there.”

“I will head in. I need to wash off the common blood and,” Robin glared at Nightwing, “saliva.”

The imp smiled back unrepentantly. “I’ll go with you, hdiiga.”

“I should probably take off as well,” Hood said as the two left. “I still need to check on a few things in my territory. Maybe grab another bite to eat.”

“Please clean up after yourself this time. I don’t exist just to disappear all your bodies.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll behave. Not really in the mood for a lecture from His Majesty anyways,” Hood said with an eye roll and swatted the serpent on him off so he could grapple away.

“Guess it’s just you and me on babysitting duty, Red,” Batgirl said. She stood up and stretched before walking over to Red Robin. “Mind helping a lady freshen up?”

The demon snorted, but his shadows rose to clean the blood off her. As they waited, Red Robin raised his guise to make him appear human and Batgirl pulled up her scarf to hide the part of her pure-white face that wasn’t covered by the cowl.

Once they’d gone through the motions with the humans, Red Robin took off on his bike and Batgirl headed up to the roofs.

“Alright, O. Take me home!”

The green mist that had nearly disappeared in the presence of the humans flared to life and condensed into a large serpent that coiled around the revenant until she couldn’t see anything but green. The mist dispersed after a moment, leaving her standing within a summoning circle at the center of the Clocktower.

Oracle was sitting in front of her at a desk surrounded by computer screens and candles with green flames. A scrying bowl sat in front of her and a laptop was across her lap. As Batgirl stepped out of the circle, the scrying bowl stopped glowing and the candles went out all at once. The otherworlder set her keyboard on her desk and spun her chair around to face Batgirl, the white light fading from her eyes and the light from the screen catching eerily on the cracks across her skin that kept her from glamoring.

As she pulled down her cowl, Stephanie tossed Barbara a pendant glowing with psychic energy. “Brought home dinner!”

“Thanks. Your dinner is in the oven. Tiết canh.”

“You’re the best!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hdiiga is an Impish term. It directly translates to mean an infant imp, but it more generally is used as a term of endearment used by parents for their children or older siblings for their younger siblings.

For the record since they didn't appear:

Bruce is a demon king from the same demonic realm as Tim

Selina is a demigoddess who was granted powers by a cat goddess and, as a result, can reincarnate up to nine times

Helena is a cambion that came about as a result of a shared night between Bruce and one of Selina's past lives

Talia is completely human as was Damian's father (Damian's tiefling traits are a result of Talia and Ra's infusing Damian with Bruce's power during his time in the incubator in hopes of earning Demon!Bruce's favor. They are not aware that Demon!Bruce and Batman!Bruce are the same person)

Bernard is also a revenant (he and Steph were the blonds Jason mentioned)

[galahadwilder]

Hey! I'm following you for ML stuff, but I finally figured out you were into Batman as well, took me awhile. Do you have any advice on where to start for people who want to get into it? I just want to know which Robin is which when I read fanfiction hahaha. Thank youu

So the first thing to know is that there is no single Batman comic that will explain the entire Batfamily, because there are so many of them that the Manor must be running out of bedrooms by now. The second thing is that I’m not great at figuring out a starting place—a lot of comics are sort of aggressively mediocre and I can’t exactly tell the standout ones from the bad. Anyone who has any suggestions for anon, feel free to comment with them!

(In terms of fanfic recs: read literally anything by @unpretty. They are a wizard. Their fanfic is so good it has literally won awards.)

Now, a brief introduction to every member of the Batfamily that I can currently remember—save Alfred and Batman, who I am assuming you already know.

The Robins

Dick Grayson (Robin I, Nightwing II, and Batman IV). Richard John Grayson was a former child acrobat, member of the flying Graysons, and the first child adopted by Bruce Wayne. He is a human disaster of a Hufflepuff who makes terrible life choices, leaves his Nightwing costume on the floor of his apartment where literally anyone can see it, and doesn’t know how to cook anything but cereal. Despite his terrible lack of self-sufficiency, actually gives amazing life advice and is the heart and soul of the Batclan. There are villains who are willing to kill to protect him.

Jason Todd (Robin II, The Red Hood II, Red Robin I, Batman III). Jason Todd is the ballsiest Robin, having met Batman while attempting to steal the tire from the Batmobile, and, upon being confronted by the Goddamn Batman, decided the best course of action was to attack him with a tire iron. Jason is passionate and impulsive, but also extremely studious and intelligent. Well-liked despite his abrasiveness. He is the first Robin to die in the line of duty; when he came back, he and Bruce had a falling out over not killing the Joker, and now their relationship is rather shaky. Jason uses guns and has moonlighted as a crime boss in order to better control Gotham’s criminal element from the inside, which works mostly because he has nerves of steel and the ability to spin stunningly convincing bullshit at the drop of a hat.

Carrie Kelley (Robin II.5): See “Elseworlds and Future.”

Tim Drake (Robin III, Red Robin II, Drake I, Batman Beyond II): Tim has the greatest intellect of the Batclan; however, unlike Barbara (see “Batgirls”), Tim’s wisdom score is through the bloody floor. He figured out Batman and Robin’s identities on his own, and after Jason died he walked up to Bruce and basically told him “I know who you are and I’m Robin now,” which... worked. Tim is the least physically gifted of the Robins, but he makes up for it in detective skills and tactical intelligence. He was the only Robin to still have living parents outside of the Batfamily, though they were murdered soon into his career. He dropped out of high school and was acting CEO of Wayne Enterprises for a time. He has crippling depression and is implied to be suicidal.

Stephanie Brown (Spoiler I, Robin IV, Batgirl III): see under “Batgirls.”

Damian Wayne (Robin V): Damian is the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul, and was raised—unbeknownst to his father—by his mother and grandfather to be an assassin, as well as to be the best at literally everything (for context: despite being a young teenager, he technically holds multiple unaccredited PHDs). However, this stunted his social development, so he is rude and abrasive almost constantly, though he has been getting better and his closest friends and family can see that he’s covering for a superiority/inferiority complex a mile deep. Damian has a constant need to prove himself and has taken up his father’s adoption habit, though he prefers animals. Animals are better than people.

Duke Thomas (Robin ??, The Signal): Duke Thomas was the first metahuman Bruce allowed into the Batfamily. Originally decided to take on The Riddler by himself at the age of... seven or so? Eventually joined a collective called “We Are Robin” and fought crime, unsanctioned. After his parents were driven mad by Joker Venom, Bruce took him in. He now fights crime in the daytime, unlike the rest of the Batfamily, using his nebulously-defined extrasensory abilities to augment his Batfamily training.

The Batgirls

Barbara Gordon (Batgirl I, Oracle I): while Tim may be the most intelligent member of the Batclan, Babs is the all-around smartest. Her intellect is damned high, and unlike most of the Batfamily, Barbara is actually capable of making good decisions. She just... decides not to, most of the time. Barbara is the daughter of Commissioner James Gordon and was the first Batgirl; she lost the use of her legs when Joker shot her in the spine, but refused to take a backseat in the Batclan’s war on crime and became Oracle, hacker extraordinaire who directs the activities of every single vigilante in Gotham from her clocktower lair. She has since regained the use of her legs and reclaimed the Batgirl mantle, turning Oracle into a living AI.

Helena Wayne (Batgirl I.5, Huntress I): see “Elseworlds and Future.”

Cassandra Cain/Wayne (Batgirl II, Black Bat I, Orphan I): Cassandra is the daughter of assassins Lady Shiva and David Cain, and had what is hands-down the worst childhood of the entire Batfamily (her father would shoot her in the leg, and if she flinched, he’d shoot her again). She was raised without spoken words, and as a result the language centers of her brain are more adapted for body language than words. This gives her a kind of combat clairvoyance where it’s nearly impossible for a human combatant to surprise her. After her first murder, she swore to never again take a life, and joined the Batclan to atone. I personally believe that she is Bruce’s favorite child and the true heir to the mantle of the Bat.

Stephanie Brown (Spoiler I, Robin IV, Batgirl III): the daughter of Arthur Brown, a criminal known as Cluemaster, Stephanie became a vigilante specifically to oppose her father and then just had a bunch of mission creep. She is brash, sarcastic, and reckless, but has oodles of passion and natural talent. DC editors hate her, so she ends up screwing up or getting pushed aside a lot, but she is much more competent than she appears and is extremely good at getting people to underestimate her.

Others

Kate Kane (Batwoman I): Kate Kane is Bruce’s cousin, dishonorably discharged from the military under “dont ask don’t tell,” though this has likely been retconned thanks to DC’s sliding timescale. She is actually specifically not connected to the Batfamily, being more of an auxiliary member by her own choice—as a military woman, she dislikes their methods and considers them sloppy. She uses guns, has her own rogues’ gallery unconnected to her cousin’s, and is extremely competent.

Jean-Paul Valley (Azrael I, Batman II): Jean-Paul believed himself to be an ordinary college student, but was in fact a genetically modified super-soldier created to punish the wicked through the use of magic and advanced technology. He eventually broke his conditioning thanks to Batman and joined the family, even taking over for Batman briefly after Bane broke his back. (This proved to be a terrible decision.) He fights using powered armor and enchanted medieval weaponry.

Harper Row (Bluebird I): I know very little about Harper except that she is openly bisexual and uses hilariously oversized sci-fi guns.

Claire Clover (Gotham Girl I): a metahuman with Superman-like abilities; however, the more she uses them, the faster her lifespan burns away. Last I checked, she was working with Bane for some reason to do bad things to Batman. Don’t know why. She’s odd.

Lonnie Machin (Anarky I, Moneyspider I): may or may not be the son of The Joker. Lonnie is a genius Anarchist, but not of the “bomb-throwing” variety—in fact, he detests bombers. Briefly acted as Tim’s Oracle, since, thanks to extensive neurological self-modification, he’s one of the few people in Gotham who is actually more intelligent than Tim is.

Helena Bertinelli (Huntress II, Batgirl briefly I think?): daughter of a crime family that got wiped out by a rival crime family. However, she didn’t know her family was mafia, and as a vigilante in Gotham ended up trying to operate under Batman’s rules. Wasn’t very good at that—she’s a bit too vicious and brutal, despite her attempts to rein herself in. Uses crossbows primarily.

Elseworlds & Future

Terry McGinnis (Batman Beyond I): the definitive future Batman. Thanks to Amanda Waller and superscience shenanigans, Terry is the biological son of Bruce Wayne. He wears a highly advanced batsuit that is closer to powered armor than a costume, which gives Iron Man a run for his money. Unlike Bruce’s obsessive preparedness, Terry’s skillset lies in improvisation.

Carrie Kelley (Robin II.5): the Robin of the dystopian timeline of The Dark Knight Returns. It’s been a while since I read DKR, so I don’t remember much about her.

Helena Wayne (Batgirl I.5, Huntress I): Bruce and Selina’s daughter from another dimension.

[m00nslippers]

In a dream world where we are getting a Red Hood live action trilogy, how would you want the three movies to be? Like what plotlines, characters, villians, what arc to develop, how to present his character to appeal to the general audience and such :D

Oh man, this is an interesting question.

Well first of all, this might sound strange, but I absolutely do not think that Under the Red Hood should be adapted to Live Action. I believe this because it already exists in animated form and is perfect. No live-action remake is going to compare unless they recreate it scene by scene and they never will. The dialogue is too good, it cannot be made better, only worse. So, that being said, RH1 should not be a retelling of UtRH, rather that movie/storyline should exist as backstory for the first Red Hood movie. They should communicate the events of that story without retelling it wholesale as the plot in the movie. They should also go ahead and go with the Lazarus Pit explanation of Jason’s resurrection because the superboy-smashing-the-universe thing is too vague and requires more context than a standalone movie can really provide. I would amend it though so that it’s actually more like Arkham Knight games, in that Joker had Jason for over six months torturing him before he finally killed Jason and sent the tape to Bruce. At that point, Ra’s and Talia got a hold of Jason’s body and resurrected him.

I have a really solid idea for the first movie, a more vague idea for the second one and a really vague idea for the last one. I’ll write you guys the synopsis of the first one up here.

Red Hood Movie 1

So, the movie opens on some brief scenes of a seemingly ordinary guy as he goes through his day. He wears blue collar clothes with a leather jacket thrown over the top, rides his motorcycle to work and stops to give money to a homeless guy on the street. He works construction or something, shows himself to be really smart and maybe a little over-competent for his job, he can jump down from high beams like he’s an acrobat, he does complex math in his head, but when colleagues ask how he knows so much he just plays it off. He seems friendly but he’s secretive, keeps to himself. He goes home from work, he’s the only one there, he works out, punches a punching bag, he checks a secret compartment in his house to make sure no one has tampered with it, but we don’t see what’s inside. He eats alone and when it gets dark he walks a ways to a local dive and sits in the corner until a red-headed friend comes in.

He and the friend bullshit together, clearly they’re close. His friend asks if he’ll babysit his daughter so he can work on a case, he says sure. They’re in the middle of talking about the daughter when something on one of the televisions playing in the bar catches his eye. It’s a breaking news feed of an Arkham breakout in Gotham City, with the building on fire, lead by the Joker. He flinches and you see this snarl of twisted fear and rage and his friend reaches out to grab his arm. “Jason, don’t. He doesn’t have to be your problem. You don’t owe Gotham anything.” And Jason looks Roy in the face and says, “Gotham owes me everything. And I’m going to get my payback.”

Jason leaves the bar, goes home, opens the secret compartment–it’s full of guns and all of his Red Hood gear. He packs it up and leaves on his motorcycle bound for Gotham.

Switch over to Bruce being Brucie at a WE function for a charity. He’s called up to give a speech and he talks about how his second son was a boy from Gotham’s streets who’d been exceptional but just didn’t have the opportunities because of his poor background. Unfortunately he was dead in a tragic accident, but Bruce had dedicated this charity in his name for underprivileged youth to fund scholarships and community support, etc. He steps down and has to glad-hand some people until his phone vibrates and he looks at the screen. It’s Oracle telling him there’s a Gotham break out.

Bruce slips away and he’s in the Batcave putting on his Batman gear as Alfred and Barbara–over the computer–fills him in on what’s going on and talks about how most everyone is out of Gotham at the moment, it’s just Bruce and Oracle, and asks Bruce if he wants Alfred to call in Nightwing or someone else for help. Bruce says no he wants them to stay out of it as he’s looking at the Memorial case of Jason’s Robin costume that’s still damaged. Alfred reminds him that since it’s the Joker, Jason is bound to appear, Bruce just grunts and says he’ll deal with that problem as it comes and has Oracle on the look out for any activity from either of them.

Bruce shows up at Arkham and talks to Gordon briefly, who tells him there’s a riot going on inside and they’ve already confirmed the warden had been murdered. Bruce busts in and starts kicking butt and capturing everyone, getting various people to safety that he finds as he makes his way through the building. All the while Oracle is giving him tech support. Bruce finds Joker’s cell but it’s been broken open. Suddenly he thinks he sees joker and and chases him down, capturing him but it turns out it’s just another inmate dressed like him–there’s a whole bunch of fake Jokers running around the building. Oracle tells him they’ll never be able to confirm if it’s really him from cameras alone like this and Bruce has to admit that’s true. But also says the Joker is probably already long gone, and they need to stop worrying about containment and start searching the city for him.

Cut to Jason riding into Gotham. He opens up a derelict safehouse with yet more guns and suits up and hits the streets. Everywhere he goes, he sees flashes of memories–of him as a kid on the streets, of Bruce catching him stealing the tires from the batmobile, him as Robin, him fighting Bruce as Red Hood. He questions homeless people and hookers and roughs up some dealers. They all know him, they’re all afraid, he’s the King of Crime Alley and remember when he ran out Black Mask. After some investigating, someone tells him a certain crime family’s men were hired to riot outside of Arkham and sow even more chaos.

Jason attacks the guy in his big mansion, mowing down hoards of mobsters with guns, all to get to the head guy and question him. He says Joker put out the word he wanted some grunts to help with the breakout and Black Mask had done a deal with him to provide men. The head mobster is Black mask’s man outside of Blackgate prison. The meeting was held in Gotham’s abandoned Amusement Mile between Joker and Roman’s proxies. Jason kills the mobster and leaves for the place he mentioned.

As Jason is on his way, someone hacks into the comms on his helmet–it’s Barbara, she found him after the attack on the mobsters–and she’s trying to get Jason to stop and leave Gotham. He and Bruce had a truce, that Jason would say out of Gotham and stop being Red Hood. Jason says that truce ended when he let Joker escape and now he’s going to kill him. Barbara says he’s not the only person Joker hurt, we see her in the Clocktower in her wheel chair with a picture of her and Gordon. Jason says he’ll kill Joker for both of them. Barbara says she’d rather the Joker be alive than Jason dead at his hands, and Jason says, well that’s where they differ.

Jason investigates the place, an empty funhouse or something. Down a hallway he thinks he sees the Joker and he runs after him but there’s no one there. He keeps seeing images of when he got captured by the Joker in the mirror, sees his younger self bloodied and dead. He’s getting increasingly unhinged. Then Bruce appears as Batman, tells Jason he broke their truce, he came back to Gotham and he killed people, but Bruce is willing to overlook it if he just leaves. Jason goes into his issues with Bruce, about how that’s his problem, he’s unwilling to go as far as necessary to really protect people. About how if Bruce had killed Joker from the beginning, Jason wouldn’t have died or become what he is, and Barbara wouldn’t be in a wheelchair, and all the people who died in the Arkham break out would still be alive.

Jason attacks Bruce, they have a huge badass fight. They are mostly fighting to a draw but they are both getting heavily injured. In the middle of their fight they think they see joker and Jason cuts off Bruce’s path and goes after him alone–only to get clocked with a crowbar from behind and dragged off.

Bruce finally makes it around to where Jason ran off only to a smear of blood on the ground that he runs through the computer and is told belongs to Jason by Alfred. Spray painted next to it is a Joker smile and the location where Jason first tried to get Bruce to murder the Joker.

Bruce goes to the location and finds the Joker there with Jason completely beat up and tied down. “Remember this Batsy? It was a fun little game, wasn’t it? It really had potential.” He’s missed his broken bird in Arkham and getting out has made him feel nostalgic, but alas he has better things to do, so it’s time to tie up this loose end for once and for all. He doesn’t need Red Hood getting between batman and his games, so he’s going to play one final round, winner takes all. “I think we should play again, but this time with a twist,” he says. Joker has set up Bruce to kill him or he’s going to kill Jason again–he’s like you can’t do it can you? Not even for your little robin. So he’s going to die–again.

The confrontation ends exactly like it did in Under the Red hood. Bruce throws a batarang that slits Joker’s throat but doesn’t outright kill him. Joker runs away laughing as Bruce goes to Jason, with Jason weeping and telling him to go after the Joker. Bruce refuses and says Jason’s injuries are more important. He tries to take him to the manor and Jason says no, he refuses to go there, to take him to a hospital. Bruce says if he goes there Red Hood will be arrested for killing the gangster. Jason doesn’t care, he refuses to have anything to do with a father who chooses the joker over his own son twice, he doesn’t get to treat his wounds and act like not going after the Joker was him saving Jason. it was just him betraying Jason yet again.

The last scene is Roy visiting Jason in Blackgate prison. He shows him home videos of Lian and brings him crayon pictures from her. He tells Jason if he ever wants out, just to say, but Jay says no, he’s got some unfinished business to handle. We see Black Mask, also there in the prison…

The End.

—

So pretty much the first movie has the Joker as the main villain in a re-working of the UtRH story, pretty typical Jason stuff.

The second one is where things are a lot less typical and almost brand new and not from the comics because let’s face it–Jason doesn’t have a lot of good stories that don’t involve the Joker. In the second movie Jason is in prison for most of the plot. And the villain? Astrid Arkham, who is the Arkham Knight. How does that work, you may wonder. Oh I have ideas and it’s twisty~ If you guys want to know how I think that one would go, I’ll write it up later.

The third one I’m thinking a League of Assassins thing. Basically Talia comes to Jason to try to get him to lead the league and we find out a lot about the circumstances of Jason’s death and resurrection and training. I’m much less sure about the exact plot for this one, but I think by the end of it Jason should finally forgive Bruce enough to go home and stop killing.

[thedcdunce]

Prometheus

“You can look and you can look but you'll never find me. I'll erase you from the pages of history.” - Prometheus

Aliases:

Retro

Gender: Male

Eyes: Blue

Hair: White

Abilities:

Genius Level Intellect

Intimidation

Hand-to-Hand Combat (Advanced)

Firearms

Tactical Analysis

Survival

Equipment:

Body Armor

Computerized Helmet

Cosmic Key

Microscopic Nanobots

Energized Nightstick

Wrist Gauntlets

Universe: New Earth

Citizenship: American

Marital Status: Single

Occupation: Mercenary

First Appearance: New Year's Evil: Prometheus #1 (February, 1998)

Appearance of Death: Justice League: Cry for Justice #7 (April, 2010)

Abilities

Genius Level Intellect: He is a polymath who has specialized in multiple fields of Physics, Biology, Algebra, Technology, English, History, and Religion.

Computer Operation

Electrical Engineering

Gadgetry

Physics

Biology

Mechanical Aptitude

Multilingualism: He is able to speak English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Portuguese and knows Sign-Language.

Intimidation: He has also seen to be able to instill fear in others and to manipulate them in doing so. This ability was seen when a large majority of super-villains were forced out of fear to help him in succeeding with his plan.

Hand-to-Hand Combat (Advanced): Even without his helmet, Prometheus is proficient in several forms of hand-to-hand combat including Judo, Kickboxing, Boxing, Karate, Capoeira, Silat, and Savate.

Firearms: He has the amazing ability to use almost any common object, such as CDs and pencils with deadly accuracy.

Tactical Analysis: He has created more than 1,000 master plans to escape any situation and defeat any meta-human through planning and preparation and a detailed understanding of the weaknesses and tactics that an opponent is likely to use against him.

Survival

Equipment

Body Armor: The costume is made ​​of a lightweight and durable material, which is intertwined with synaptic relays to increase their formidable fighting prowess and covered with microscopic nano-bites to affect the opponent's brain. The armor is also able to fly through the manipulation of magnetic forces and generate force fields.

Chameleon Device: The device allows him to imitate the voice and facial mannerisms of a person.

Computerized Helmet: Is connected to his brain and central nervous system.

Download Capabilities: Able to download any kind of information into his brain and download movements, mannerisms, and fighting styles into his central nervous system.

Hypnosis: By flickering the lights at a rate of 10 cycles per second, he can induce hypnosis.

Neural Chaff: Given off by the helmet, neural chaff disorganizes thought processes. It interferes with brain electricity.

Memory Enhancement: Enhances his short-term memory.

Pain Killers: His helmet releases endorphin to take care of any pain he feels.

Cosmic Key: Possessed the key to The Ghost Zone that only he could use, allowing him teleportation abilities via another dimension as well as a hidden extra-dimensional base. It can also be used to inflict total molecular disintegration of a target.

Microscopic Nanobots: Attacks central nervous system, infecting the brain of a human and/or metahuman through electronic impulses, causing the individual to lose control of his abilities for 5 minutes.

Energized Nightstick

High Hit-Impact: Able to destroy boulders and anvils with a single light strike.

Computerized Reprogramming: capable of hacking and alternating internal electronic equipment.

Wrist Gauntlets: Fires and/or launches different kinds of ammo and artillery.

Molecular Toxins Dart: Attacks morpho-plastic nervous system. It gives complete spastic paralysis. The victim doesn't have any control over their physical structure. It stops his molecules from forming polymer chains. This effect turns the victim into a puddle and can last about an hour.

Mini-Rockets

Incendiaries

Grenades

Unique Bullets: Special bolts created by Vulcan/Hephaestus that were sold to him by Mercy Graves and're capable of inflicting great damage even against Martians & Kryptonians.

History

The man that would become Prometheus was the son of two loving, hippie criminals who traveled across the United States with him. They committed indiscriminate murders and thefts, often of a brutal nature. Eventually, they were cornered and forced the police to gun them down in front of their son, whose hair turned white from the shock. That night, he swore an oath to "annihilate the forces of justice" after escaping from the police station of his parent's killers by pretending to be one of a group of cub scouts touring the station. His true name has not been revealed.

Training

Prometheus obtained large sums of money both from his parents' hidden stashes of money and by extorting local mob bosses and contacts using his knowledge of their criminal activities. Leaving home at the age of 16, he used his money to travel the world in order to develop the skills he would need. His activities during this period included training as an underground pit-fighter in Brazil, working as a mercenary in Africa, joining terrorist guerrilla groups in the Middle East, studying silat under masters in the jungles of Malaysia, associating with the wealthy social elite in order to learn their secrets, and attending only the finest in legitimate academic schools and universities.

Eventually Prometheus found the legendary Himalayan city of Shamballa, inhabited by a sect of monks who worshiped evil itself. Studying with them, he eventually became a favorite of their leader, who showed him their greatest treasure: an alien spaceship upon which their ancient monastery had been built. The leader then transformed into one of the aliens who had first landed there, and Prometheus was forced to kill him to obtain the key to the what Prometheus dubbed "The Ghost Zone", an infinite expanse of white nothingness that was supposedly the space between dimensions.

Prometheus eventually returned to the United States and went on a killing spree where he shot and killed all but one of the police officers who murdered his parents along with their families, so the one could share the pain of being a survivor of a massacre of loved ones. He eventually decided to kill the entire Supreme Court, but relented when he discovered the Justice League and decided they would be the pinnacle of his targets against dealers of justice. Prometheus would eventually build himself a small, lopsided wooden house in The Ghost Zone along with his first costume and helmet to download information into his mind and advance his technology. Here, he was free to build up a resistance to heroes such as the Justice League of America, unhindered by Earth's authorities or heroes.

Strength in Numbers

Prometheus made his move against the Justice League with the intention of destroying them and the justice that they stood for. By doing so he lured and attacked a contest tour winner of the JLA Headquarters named Retro and took his identity before murdering him to gain access to the Justice League Watchtower on the Moon and almost single-handedly took down the League: He shot the Martian Manhunter with a dart that turned his shape-changing power against him after setting him ablaze; infected Steel's armor with a computer virus which commanded the suit to damage the Watchtower; hypnotized the Huntress into unconsciousness, attacked Green Lantern with a "Neural Chaff" that rendered his ring useless, trapped the angel Zauriel in the Ghost Zone, tricked the Flash into believing that he had planted motion sensitive bombs that would explode if the Flash used his powers; he defeated Batman in hand-to-hand combat with the aid of a device that downloaded the skills of the thirty greatest martial arts masters in the world into his brain and a pair of lights on his shoulder that blinked in an erratic pattern to cause disorientation.

At the time, the Watchtower was filled with innocent civilians that the League had invited for a tour. With the Watchtower under his control, Prometheus then demanded that Superman - the only hero he could not defeat - commit suicide in exchange for the lives of the hostages, sacrificing the two things which he presumed would matter to Superman: his image and his reputation. However, Prometheus's best laid plans were laid to waste by an unforeseen variable: the anti-hero Catwoman, who incapacitated him with a simple whip crack to the groin. Having sneaked onto the Watchtower disguised as Cat Grant looking for things to steal, Catwoman's intervention bought Steel the time he needed to beat Prometheus' virus and, in turn, override Prometheus' helmet. Prometheus then escaped to the Ghost Zone.

Injustice Gang

Prometheus later returned as a part of the second Injustice Gang created by Lex Luthor. He was able to use the Ghost Zone and a White Martian spaceship left over from the Martian Invasion within it to infiltrate the Watchtower. He almost killed Oracle by defenestrating her when she refused his deal of wanting her to betray the JLA in return for being able to walk again. Oracle managed to survive by grabbing the hand on the face of the Clocktower, simultaneously damaging Prometheus's helmet.

He then had a final rematch with Batman who had, in the meantime, managed to unlock the secrets of Prometheus' helmet. Batman replaced the martial arts skills Prometheus had downloaded into his mind with the physical skills and coordination of Professor Stephen Hawking, a famed scientist with Muscular Neuron Disease that rendered him a drooling catatonic. Later, Batman was forced to intervene in order to prevent Huntress from killing the helpless Prometheus, firing her from the JLA in the process.

After the defeat of Mageddon, Batman and Martian Manhunter conceded that no prison could hold Prometheus, so they placed him in a psychic loop to imprison his mind, trapped in his own memories. In this state, he was sent to Blackgate Prison. Martian Manhunter kept him in this state for the rest of his life to be tormented by the prison staff. During this time, Prometheus' "identity" and all his equipment was used by his protegé, Chad Graham. Upon Martian Manhunter's death at the hands of Libra, Prometheus regained control of his own mind and broke out of Blackgate after killing the guards who tormented him. Enraged that his successor hadn't tried to rescue him and ruined his reputation by making him look foolish, he tracked Graham down and killed him along with several members of the Blood Pack.

Cry for Justice

Prometheus blamed the Justice League for the years that he spent with his damaged mind and sought revenge. He instigated a global crime wave that saw the deaths of Freedom Beast, Gloss, Tasmanian Devil, and Sandstorm of the Global Guardians as part of a distraction in order for him to infiltrate the JLA satellite and place teleportation devices in the home cities of various heroes which will "strand" the cities in various places in the past and future. In the process, he maimed Roy Harper and single-handily defeated the JLA until he was subdued by Donna Troy.

While being interrogated by the JLA, Prometheus offered to reveal the locations of the devices and deactivate them in exchange for his release. After one of his devices severely devastated Star City and inflicted millions of fatalities, including Roy Harper's daughter Lian, Prometheus' ultimatum was reluctantly met to save the cities. After Prometheus returned to his lair, he is ambushed and killed by Green Arrow, who shoots an arrow through the villain's head.

[scottwinters714]

New Post has been published on https://comicbookheros.everythingonlinenow.com/review-batgirl-45/

Review: Batgirl #45

Overview: Batgirl faces a mysterious new enemy who encases victims in metal!

  Synopsis (Spoilers ahead): Batgirl sees Jason Bard running inexplicably, given his injured leg, from a homeless woman being encased in metal. She swoops in as Bard escapes, trying to save the woman from both the metal and a hulking dark figure, but the figure wraps her legs with a cable gadget and makes off with the metal-covered woman in a van. Determined not to lose them, Batgirl frees herself and leaps aboard the van, managing to force them to drop the dying woman. As rescuers arrive, the woman dies, and Batgirl sadly collects the metal, revealed to be something like a (but not quite) liquid nanobot metal compound. In her Clocktower lab, Babs discovers it’s a parasitic metal simulating life. Batgirl then gets a text from Jason Bard to meet.

  The scene flashes to Jason’s perspective when he went to meet the homeless woman. That woman had been replaced by a man who told Jason his friend was dead. This man started attacking with the liquid metal and electrical shocks. Jason wakes up after being knocked out by a dark figure and receives a text from Batgirl to meet. He tells Batgirl his side of the story, and she reassures him that he’s trying to change and encourages him to call Barbara.

  Batgirl examines the body of Jason’s friend in the morgue and the file online after a little hacking, but before she can find too much, her job with the congresswoman calls her in to help get Gotham on its own green energy system. Digging into the pseudo metal, Batgirl finds a connection to the congresswoman’s energy company owner, Dasha Berlova. She attends a demonstration and tours Berlova’s factory, noticing that her sample of pseudo metal wants to rejoin the metals being used. Jason and Barbara both realize that Berlova is turning people into statues with her metal, despite her claims of wanting to use it to help amputees and build clean energy buildings.

  Berlova’s team orders them out, and Batgirl investigates her power substation later that night. She finds many more statues, clearly, people covered in the pseudo metal, but Batwoman attacks her, irked that Batgirl has muscled in on her investigation. Berlova arrives, and the two Bat-women watch as Berlova gloats about bringing her dead mother back to life using the deaths of the people in her statues. Batgirl tries to stop her, but the dark figure appears, revealed as KGBeast, Batwoman’s target. The Beast knocks Batwoman out, then grapples Batgirl. Berlova orders that KGBeast use her as another living sacrifice for her experiments.

  Analysis: After the dreadfully frustrating “Evil Robot Oracle” plotline and the incredibly dull “alternate fantasy world” arc, Cecil Castellucci has developed an incredibly complex and reasonably well-paced plot – perhaps only flawed in trying to cram too much exposition into this issue and not leaving enough space for the characters to interact and develop. The moments where Babs and Jason Bard progress their relationship are character highlights, despite being only one or two panels. The villain gives very generic and convenient monologues near the end explaining her motives, which is a bit disappointing after all of the detective work that Babs and Bard do in the issue. The appearance of Batwoman is welcome, though the cliched “heroes meet on a stakeout and fight” scene could have been skipped or replaced with stronger character writing instead.

  The highlight of the issue, though, was the art. Carmine Di Giandomenico returns, with master colorist Jordie Bellaire, and together they make the book once again one of the stronger visual offerings of the week. Di Giandomenico’s sketchy but assured linework, and Bellaire’s well-judged panes of color and shade give all of the our main characters enormous appeal and highlight the best look for Babs’ new suit, even more than designer Sean Murphy.

  This title has clearly undergone a lot of retooling, given the rapidly changing solicitations, and hopefully, Castellucci will continue with the stronger elements of her plot (the complexity, the detective work) and ditch the more cliched elements in favor of better character interaction and more time devoted to resolving (either positively or negatively) the romance between Jason and Babs. This arc will likely have to wrap up quickly so that Batgirl can join the Joker War in the coming months, which probably explains why the villain revealed so much so lazily.

  Giuseppe Camuncoli draws a polished, though not particularly energetic Batgirl with a gorgeous cloudscape behind her saying “Who Owns Gotham?” Terry and Rachel Dodson provide a variant that shows Batgirl shining a flashlight at the reader as she searches through the snow, a much stronger cover than some of their recent contributions to this series. The new costume looks quite sleek in the Dodson’s hands, and hopefully, their variants will continue in this trend rather than the fairly disappointing “spotlight” cover they did recently.

  Final Thoughts: Though significantly better than the last two arcs in both plotting and especially art, the characterization leaves something to be desired.

Original source: http://thebatmanuniverse.net/batgirl-49/

[vellaphoria]

Catch and Release

Slow nights and sad Robins are never a good combination.

“You’re going to have to be faster than that!”

It’s mostly a baseless taunt. He’d had to chase Robin half of the way across Gotham before the kid made enough of a misstep to get caught.

And Nightwing got confirmation that something is bothering the kid when he only managed to get from the center of downtown to just across from City Hall before Robin tagged him back. Record time.

But the night is warm, Gotham is unusually quiet, and Nightwing’s heart hurts when he sees depressed little birds trying to hide in the shadows of the city’s architecture.

Slow nights and sad Robins are never a good combination.

The roof they’re on places them close enough to help if the big guy calls them in for a crisis, but just far enough outside of normal patrol routes to be out of the way; one of those buildings Robin seems to prefer to do this on.

All rounds of tag inevitably end in a spar, and the kid has an uncanny ability for finding quiet, shadowed rooftops unlikely to be found by any passing vigilantes.

He gets it; when he was Robin, he didn’t want anyone to see him get his ass handed to him either.

Speaking of which.

Nightwing shifts on his feet, arches out of Robin’s reach in a bend Bruce would have had difficulty with.

Even though Robin’s finally managed to catch up to him, the older vigilante isn’t going to make part two easy. Nightwing dodges an uppercut, shifting into a roundhouse aimed for Robin’s head just to see the kid duck and roll.

He isn’t quite as flexible as Nightwing, but Robin seems to be improving in leaps and bounds every time these sporadic training sessions come around.

The roll turns into a quick block with his gauntlets – no staff or sticks tonight – to catch a blow that would have locked up at least one muscle group if it connected.

It’s a good block, even if Nightwing catches the retaliatory nerve strike before it hits home.

He twists and tries to temporarily incapacitate the trapped arm, but Robin uses the movement to free himself and return to a starting stance a few feet away.

After that, it’s just a staring contest to see who acts first.

A flash of movement and…

Robin’s feint is obvious.

What’s less obvious is that when Nightwing dodges the real attack and goes to use the momentum to drop Robin into a hold, the kid clearly meant for him to do that because the spin and low sweep materialize out of nowhere, knocking him off balance and ending with Nightwing being the one pinned to the roof.

Green gauntlets press down on his shoulders, the palette match of the tight-clad legs pressed against his hips, trapping him.

Well then.

From his newly acquired position, he breathes a sigh of relief when he sees Oracle’s camera is pointed elsewhere. Most of Robin’s favorite sparring spots have the dubious honor of being both outside of normal patrol routes and just past the range of Oracle’s network.

No blackmail for Barbara, so regardless of who wins, neither of them will have to do her any favors later. Or be laughed out of the Clocktower while a demo reel of their worst screw-ups plays in the background.

Sometimes he forgets that hiding behind the domino is a tricky, scary-smart Timmy. Two steps ahead, even when he loses.

Though it might be closer to three steps right now, Nightwing’s the one on the ground.

Robin is breathing heavily above him, lungs fighting to counteract the rush of adrenaline.

His eyes are wide behind the domino, lips infinitesimally parted from harsh breaths or shock. Maybe both, if Robin wasn’t confident that his last move was going to work.

Maybe the kid avoids the cameras because four and a half years in, Robin still approaches these things like he expects to lose, even if he has been winning more often in recent months.

It’s selfish, but a small part of Nightwing hopes Robin will keep the mindset, if only so Baby Bird keeps giving him these surprised little looks whenever he sees how good he’s getting. Seeing any sort of unfiltered emotion on the teen’s face is rare enough, and Nightwing hoards these moments like Batman hoards trophies.

About a minute has passed and Robin hasn’t moved from the pin. The telltale pink tinge of a blush is threatening to overtake the younger vigilante’s face. Nightwing wonders if the kid knows that he shaved a full minute off his record for time it takes to catch Nightwing.

Probably not, considering the looseness in his muscles and the slightly dazed look on his face, despite being the one who hasn’t had his head slammed into the rooftop. The arms keeping his shoulders down don’t seem to be overly invested in winning this.

Well, lessons learned.

It’s easier than it should be to flip the hold, to twist and unbalance Robin so he lands on his stomach. One green gauntleted arm behind his back, the other held in Nightwing’s vice grip against the tar and gravel roof. Thighs pinned by the weight of the older vigilante’s body.

Baby Bird isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

There’s a small, high-pitched whine from somewhere beneath him, so quiet that he almost misses it.

“Nightwing…”

“Yeah?” He leans closer, soaks up the faint shiver when he brushes against Robin’s ear.

The smaller vigilante doesn’t seem inclined to respond, but the game isn’t over until he successfully escapes the pin or Nightwing lets him up.

And Dick has to get his cuddles somehow, so they both know how this is going to go.

He has Robin in a pretty decent pin, though those dark bags are under the kid’s eyes again. Sleep deprivation would provide a pretty good explanation for why Robin lets his muscles go loose in Nightwing’s hold instead of trying to find an angle for leverage.

Maybe he should bring him to one of the safe houses and make him take a nap…?

Apparently not, since the kid seems to have gotten tired of this, even if he hasn’t found quite the right angle to throw him off. Robin shifts beneath him, restricted to small movements by the press of Nightwing’s body. “Alright! You win – now let me up.”

And the kid must be really sleep deprived if he’s giving up before at least ten minutes of mostly futile struggling that Nightwing always tries and fails to not smile at.

He relaxes his hold and lets the smaller vigilante free himself.

But not without planning the angle so he can scoop Robin up in a hug before he can get his feet under him. Gotham’s still quiet; they have time.

Robin seems more resigned than anything else when he’s pulled back into Nightwing’s arms, leaning against his chest and cradled between his legs, but it isn’t hard to miss the way the younger vigilante melts a little under the attention.

He’d never really met Tim’s parents outside of the occasional charity gala, but even now that Jack Drake has remarried and taken an apparent (and extremely poorly timed) interest in his son, the third Robin isn’t on the receiving end of much affection.

That small gasp of surprise when the youngest member of the Flying Graysons gave a four year old boy his first hug (a fact he had wheedled out of Tim after forcing Batman’s newest protégé into several late night heart to hearts) still echoes in his ears every time the younger vigilante startles at others initiating contact.

It breaks Dick’s heart a little, but the small, almost invisible smile he earns for ambushing Tim with affection never fails to melt the cracks back together.

It’s a work in progress though, and, like any long-term project, it requires consistent effort over a period of time. This game of tag is the first time he’s seen Robin today (the first time he’s seen him in the last few days, actually), therefore it’s his obligation and prerogative to hug him into submission.

As far as projects go, there isn’t really a long-term goal. Just a general idea that someone should make up for the emotional (physical, mental) neglect of Tim’s early years, and

Dick wouldn’t mind so much if it were him.

He thinks, a bit uncharitably, that Bruce would probably just make it worse.

But Dick has turned making up for his mentor’s (his own) shortcomings into something of an art form. After Jason… it really isn’t a choice. He won’t lose another Robin to distance and his insecurities.

But the current Robin is yawning a little instead of trying to escape, and the cloud cover (pollution, smog) is light enough that they can just barely make out a couple of stars.

Nothing like what Clark’s shown him out in the middle of Kansas, but it’s an entire galaxy by Gotham’s stargazing standards.

Robin would probably hit him for even thinking the word – like he might jinx their patrol or something – but it feels about as peaceful as this city ever gets. He’s warm and content; they have nowhere to be and are unlikely to be interrupted.

Not that that’d be a bad thing per se – Batgirl and Spoiler are both completely on board with his Tim-cuddling agenda – but he doesn’t get down from Blüdhaven much these days, and he holds onto times like this (holds on to Tim) a little bit jealously.

That safe house is starting to sound really good right now.

The patrol is almost over anyway. It’s a Friday – not a school night – and Jack Drake is under the impression that his son is spending the night with a friend.

Or at least with a friend who doesn’t routinely wear spandex and punch muggers in the face.

Which means there shouldn’t be a problem with dragging Robin through the window of the small apartment on forty-sixth street; it has some of Dick’s spare clothes (a little too big for Tim, but he can deal), an extremely nap-able bed, and a stash of cereal for the morning. Not a bad way to start the weekend.

He tugs the younger vigilante closer, fits his chin against Robin’s shoulder.

“Ready to call it a night? Nothing’s happening out here and Batman has the early morning covered.”

The kid sighs.

“I guess I could get started on some homework or something.” Nightwing bats at Robin’s shoulder.

“Aww, Timmy, that’s no fun.” Robin rolls his eyes – no names on patrol is implied – but Nightwing is unfazed, “Why don’t we hit one of the safe houses? The Cave is all the way across Gotham and I need a nap.” Which is to say, Tim needs to sleep, badly. But pointing that out would send the kid to the nearest coffee machine before Nightwing could stop him.

“It’ll be fun! We can have a sleepover.” Which is apparently the exact wrong thing to say, because Robin is locking up in his arms, muscles tensing.

Sensing he’s pushed far enough for one night, Nightwing lets his arm fall when the kid stands.

“Sorry, Nightwing. I have some stuff that needs to get done. Not homework! Honest. Just… there’s some paperwork that needs to be finished and B may actually kill me if it doesn’t get done.”

Not one of Robin’s more graceful exits.

The blush seems to have returned full force, its bright pink flush spreading to the edge of the uniform’s collar. A stray thought wonders how far down it goes, but Nightwing crushes it ruthlessly before it can gain any traction.

Sleepover preemptively canceled, Robin turns away from him and walks to the edge of the roof. For a moment, his movements look stiff, but then he’s jumping off the side of the building, the angles of his lines doubtlessly calculated to perfection as he swings across the city and away from his occasional partner against crime.

Somehow, Nightwing thinks he’s missing something important.

(Doesn’t think that six months later he will be wearing the cowl. That Tim will be in Europe, chasing Bruce’s ghost; fueled by anger and desperation, running away from his trauma and everything else in Gotham.

Running away from him.)

But he lets him go.

[redjayson]

I just thought about what if Jason accidentally fakes his death? Like the batfam thought his still in a warehouse or something when it blew, and his comms destroyed so they can't call him, and he just went to a safe house after to sleep and like he doesn't know until a few weeks later when he shows up at the manor to meet up with Alfred for tea.

would it be better or worse if he wasn’t even really getting along with the rest of the family at that point? either way you play it, jason has a bunch of redundancies for his safe houses, and he was trained just as well as any of them. there has to be at least one or two he’s managed to keep secret from the rest of the bats. 

jay doesn’t really make a habit of carrying explosives in his helmet anymore; that was really more of a one-off when he first came back to gotham. since then, he generally just carries more explosives with him to make up for it. because of that, and because he’s usually fighting standard-grade humans, it’s not all that likely that he tosses his helmet aside in the middle of a fight.

a warehouse blows. red hood was in it, they know that (it all but had “This Is A Trap For Red Hood” written all over it), and when searching it, the bats find the badly burnt remnants of hood’s shattered helmet. no body, but –

it’s easy to assume the worst. it’s already happened once, after all. they hold on to hope for a week, but they haven’t been able to find any sign of jason. he can’t be raised on his comms, he hasn’t been in any of the safe houses that they know of, oracle couldn’t find any sign of him on cameras. 

no sign of him in a hospital or even leslie’s clinic, no body matching his description in the morgue. (that last doesn’t mean anything. no body at the warehouse, but someone had set the trap – they could have easily dumped it somewhere else.)

there’s no sign of him, living or dead, anywhere in the city so far as they can tell.

red hood’s been throwing himself into ever-escalating fights since he came back to gotham, and finally they have to assume that this time, his luck didn’t hold long enough for him to get out. 

the family sinks into some kind of shock. it’s impossible to believe that they lost him again.

it’s not something that can even be explained to the public. how do you explain that you’re in fresh mourning for a son and brother that was declared dead over half a decade ago? 

then again, all the bats are good at hiding how they feel. 

they mourn quietly, but they mourn.

what happened is this: 

jason walks himself straight into a trap. he usually ascribes to obi-wan kenobi’s philosophy regarding them, but this time –

it wasn’t a good idea to spring the trap.

there are more men than jason realized there would be. one of them gets a lucky shot, glancing off his helmet and leaving him staggering long enough for another to slam his head down against the concrete floor. jason sweeps his attackers legs out from under him and rolls away, taking cover behind a crate, but his helmet is cracked and partially shattered all along one side.

jason really regrets not having explosives in his helmet anymore, though given all the different kinds of explosives he can see scattered around the warehouse, that might not be a very good option right now anyway.

(why in the hell do they have so many explosives–? but he doesn’t really have time to think about it.)

jason pulls his helmet off, because blood is dripping steadily down from a cut above one of his eyes, where the helmet splintered inwards, and at this point it will only hinder him. 

these henchmen, though. they were just paid to make sure that he stayed in the warehouse long enough. as soon as he walked in, the timer was counting down. when jason ducks back around the crate he sheltered behind, they’ve scattered. 

jason swears when he sees the flickering red numbers. it’s not a scream; he can’t waste the breath. it’s one quiet invective and then he’s running for it, the way that he hadn’t been able to in ethiopia. 

he grapples up and slams through a window, scattering glass everywhere, just as the timer hits zero. the bomb goes off. the very edges of the explosion catch him, flinging him away.

a moment of free-fall, a terrifying reminder of ethiopia when he feels the heat of the blast, a brief thought of no, please no, not again–

jason rolls over onto his back, coughing. blood is still trailing down his face; he has to rub it off one of the lenses of his domino mask. he’s pretty sure he has a concussion. he tries to sit up and he definitely has cracked ribs. 

jason gets up carefully, trying to make sure nothing is moving around in his body where it’s not supposed to, and then he staggers away. he’s not staying around to give them a second shot at him. 

it’s instinct to avoid the cameras. there aren’t as many in this part of the city anyway, and jason likes it that way. it’s near one of the few safe houses he’s sure hasn’t been compromised, and he’d like to keep it that way.

he’d definitely like to lick his wounds in peace. 

it’s not that he thinks any of the bats are going to come after him. he doesn’t even think about the fact that they’ll probably know that he was at that warehouse. he just doesn’t want them butting in on his business, which they’ve done a couple of times at some of his other safe houses.

jason does cursory first aid when he gets back to his safe house. he pays more attention to re-arming his security, and by the time he gets around to dealing with his body, he can tell he’s probably about to pass out. he’s got a bunch of scrapes – nothing too bad, though a few are deeper and bleeding more than he really wants to deal with right now – and he’s pretty sure none of his ribs are out and out broken. he should probably get medical attention for the concussion.

he’ll drop by leslie’s clinic tomorrow, if he really needs to.

jason gets his armor off, makes sure all his guns are unloaded, and then he’s in his bed and unconscious.

he’s pleasantly surprised to wake up in the morning. looks like he didn’t overlook anything life-threatening. 

he’s still kind of a mess, though. the ribs alone are going to take a week at least before he’ll be able to go back out on the street. he could push it, but between the threat of breaking them for real and how much pain he’s in just getting up and going to the bathroom, he’ll allow that in this case, healing is the better idea. 

he doesn’t even think about the bats. their relationship is still rocky at best, though at least it no longer involves any murder attempts. he was given comms to talk with them, but he hasn’t used them very much. 

(he didn’t notice the earpiece getting busted at the warehouse the night previous. he varied between carrying them around in his pockets in case he needed them and actually wearing them, even if he didn’t use them, but he’d been more concerned with saving his damn life than thinking about where he had placed fragile machinery. 

when he finally notices, a couple days later, he figures he can ask barbara the next time he swings by the clocktower. she’s infinitely easier to talk to than any of the other bats are.)

jason’s safe house is well stocked. he doesn’t need to leave for a good while yet. there’s a reason this is his favorite – and most well hidden – safe house.

after a few days, though, he starts going stir crazy. he can’t go out and do anything, but he’s dying by inches in here, waiting to be able to draw a full breath that doesn’t leave him wheezing in pain. there’s only so much daytime tv he can watch, and even when he concentrates on combing through gotham news and networks, it’s to find that a) there’s nothing big happening because b) the bats have been coming down hard on criminals this past week, and c) on top of that disappointment, jason can’t get at his damn contacts to tell him what’s happening on the street level but d) it looks like bats have been prowling along his patrol routes anyway, damn them, and e) apparently it was a good idea to hole up in his best safe house because f) he’s gotten alerts from at least two of his safe houses that they’ve been broken into by people who can only be bats. he assumes more than just the two of them were broken into, but the last one they must have been able to disable his security. 

he spends a pleasant time trying to redesign his security systems when he can’t see what the bats avoided or tripped up on. it’s something else to pay attention to, anyway.

he wonders why exactly they’re trying to find him, but since they’re the ones that broke into his places, he’s not really inclined to give them a response. they can call him if they really need to get into contact with him.

(it’s about then that he realizes the comm was destroyed, and that the only phone number he gave them was to a burner that hasn’t been charged in a week and is currently lying abandoned in his second-favorite safe house.

he doesn’t care that much. 

they’re not a real family. they haven’t been for a long time, if they ever were.)

“fuck,” jason hisses on the ninth day, staring at the date on his phone and the reminder that’s popped up. 

tea with alfred, because that’s one relationship jason is willing to cling to, and it’s fun to hack into bruce’s schedule and figure out what times he’ll be out. jason doesn’t want to have to chance running into him at the manor. he sets the most likely dates in his calendar and goes if he’s feeling up to human company.

jason is definitely up for human company after this week. he’s so damn bored. and honestly, he would love nothing better than to drink tea with alfred and talk about books the way they did when he was younger. 

(being laid up means he’s been reading a bunch of books in his endless free time. he’s just finished frankenstein and he has opinions.)

jason cleans himself up. he tries to make himself look presentable, not like he’s spent a week convalescing after a stupid mistake. he doubts it will fool alfred, but he has to at least try. 

it’s a slightly uncomfortable ride to the manor, but jason grits his teeth and bears it. he parks his bike in its usual spot just outside the manor boundaries, and then he sneaks in. he could blatantly show up, let himself get caught on camera and everything, but that would defeat the whole purpose of constantly hacking bruce’s schedule and only swinging by when he was gone. 

jason walks into the kitchen to see alfred dismally staring down into his tea cup. alfred looks up, something tired and old and sad in his eyes, and then he stands so abruptly that he actually knocks his tea cup off the table. 

jason automatically tries to catch it, but his ribs yell so loudly at it that all jason accomplishes is an aborted motion and a barely-stifled sound of pain. 

“master jason,” alfred said. 

ow, fuck, jason thinks. “you need company for tea time?” he asks, only in part trying to cover that betraying wince. tea and company is what he’s here for, after all. 

“you,” alfred says severely. “need to answer your comms when you find yourself in a bad situation, young man. at the very least, you might find it in yourself to tell us that you are still amongst the living!”

then alfred’s stepping around the table and grabbing jason in a hug. 

“ow, fuck,” jason says, out loud this time. it’s kind of the only response that he can make to that statement. and the hug. 

alfred draws back, eyeing him narrowly. “how badly are you injured?”

“it’s fine,” jason says dismissively. alfred gives him a look. “i busted up my ribs, but i should probably be fine in another week or two.” most everything else has healed up, or at least healed up enough that alfred can’t question him about it.

“the warehouse was quite obviously a trap,” alfred says. 

you might find it in yourself to tell us that you are still amongst the living!

“oh,” jason says. he understands now. his shoulders hunch a little, defensively. “it’s fine. i’m fine.”

“yes, so it appears,” alfred says. “however, we did not know that.”

jason hunches even more defensively. he doesn’t say anything. he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. 

alfred sighs. in that moment, he looks all his years. “please,” he says. “we lost you once. don’t make us believe it’s happened another time.”

“sorry,” jason says. his eyes drop to the floor. there’s some kind of skewed humor, being back here and apologizing like nothing has changed in the time between, even if the apology is for accidentally faking his death rather than stealing cookies when he thought he could get away with it. it’s not very funny.

“would you care to join me for tea?” alfred asks, after a brief pause. 

“yeah,” jason says. he looks up. “i would.”